The Kiss of the Prison Dancer

by Jerome Richard

  The hall itself was a large room with green paint peeling from its wooden walls. On one side were two blind windows; at the front, facing the rows of wooden chairs, an upright piano and a platform with an American flag.

  Two men sat on the platform, one in uniform with his arms folded in front of his chest, the other in a suit, his hands clasped around his crossed legs. A third man stood at a microphone. He also wore the uniform. The microphone looked like a stick in his hand. “Welcome friends,” he said. The words blasted out at the audience, trailed by a thin, high, wailing sound. At one side of the platform, someone adjusted the volume on the loudspeaker equipment. The speaker tried again. “Welcome friends.” In the small hall there was no need for a microphone at all.

  Max took a seat in the last row. The hall was not more than half full, a largely middle aged crowd with a scattering of young men and lone old women an informal shirtsleeve crowd, though a few men wore suits. Max felt conspicuous in his best suit. Just down the aisle, a man took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and as the air in the hall warmed up and thickened Max knew he would be tempted to do the same. He could take his jacket off, but he could not roll up his sleeves without revealing the row of blue numbers on his forearm. Only the people in uniform looked stiff and ceremonious. There were some of them in the front row and three more standing against the back row. Now Max saw that some of the people who wore suits also wore swastika armbands. A fat man with a cannonball head who wore an armband was talking to the three uniformed youths in the back of the hall. Max turned sideways so he could watch them out of the corner of his eye until they stopped talking and Max realized they were watching him. He faced the speaker and sank down a little in his chair.

  “It’s the same old pattern,” the speaker was saying. “Any set of trumped-up charges is good enough against a member of the National Resurgence Party. They don’t dare try young Mort Holtz for his beliefs; no, they want to make him out a raper of young girls. Well, some of you know Mort Holtz.” Max listened closely as the speaker described Holtz’s boyhood in the orphanage and then how he had come to San Francisco where he met members of the Party. Max wondered where he was the day Holtz became a Nazi. Had they ever passed each other on the street? Perhaps they had bumped into each other in a crowd and excused themselves like strangers.

  Max took a deep breath and climbed the stairs.

  “We are gathered here tonight because the National Resurgence Party does not abandon its members in time of need. Mort practically grew up in our Party. Now our Party will grow up around Mort Holtz.”

  Max suddenly realized that either way they could not lose. If Holtz were acquitted, the Party would be vindicated; if he were found guilty and executed, they would have a martyr.

  A burst of applause sprang from the audience. Max clapped his hands twice, then once more. The speech was over. Max sneaked a glance at the back of the hall where the doorman had joined the fat man and the three uniformed youths.

  A thin, nervous young man stepped to the microphone and a woman went to the piano. Clutching the microphone, the young man announced a popular song. The pianist began an introduction which the singer followed with his lips and at her signal he plunged in, but he was late and he never quite caught up. The next song they managed to do together, his glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling somewhere over the middle of the audience, her face close to the keyboard. Max wondered if it would be all right to go to the men’s room if there was one, but just then the doorman tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned Max to follow him.

  The three youths had taken seats in the hall, but the fat man still waited just outside the door. “What’s your name?” the fat man asked.

  “Max.”

  “What’s your last name?” He did not sound threatening. Except for the armband he could have been an office clerk or a census taker.

  “Warner,” Max said, mentally recording another demerit. “Max Warner.” When he was a boy his mother always knew when he lied because his face turned red. He prayed his face was not red now.

  “We haven’t noticed you around here before. Is this your first time?”

  “Yes. It said in the paper everyone was invited.”

  “Certainly,” the fat man said. “Everyone is invited.”

  Then the doorman stepped up closer and asked, “Are you Jewish?”

  “Jewish?” Max gripped the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Now, Paul,” the fat man admonished his companion. But he turned and waited for Max to answer.

  “Jewish? Would I be here if I were Jewish?”

  “Well, we didn’t really think so,” the fat man said, adjusting his armband. “Interested in the Party?”

  Max’s mouth was too dry to make words. He nodded.

  “Wait a minute.” The fat man went to a room near the entrance to the hall and left Max and the doorman staring at each other. He came back a minute later with some pamphlets and a card on which he asked Max to write his name and address. Max took the card to a table by the door. He had to lean his wrist hard against the table in order to control the pencil as he made up an address. Then he took the pamphlets and went back inside the hall. The singer and the piano player were taking a bow. Max’s hand was shaking and he could feel perspiration on his forehead, but he didn’t dare wipe it off.

  Max heard the door behind him open and close again. All over the hall heads began to turn, but Max stared straight ahead, relaxing only when one of the men on the platform jumped up to introduce the Western Division Commander of the Party and Max saw a tall man in uniform move slowly down the center aisle. People began to stand. At the back of the hall, the three uniformed youths, the doorman, and the fat man all stood at attention. Slowly, Max got to his feet, his head slouched forward. He closed his eyes and did not open them until he heard the sound of people taking their seats again and when he looked the Western Division Commander stood on the platform, his arms folded, his marble eyes fixed on the audience.

  With apparent reluctance the Commander unfolded his arms and stepped to the microphone. He had an almost square face with a jaw that jutted out like an open drawer and a head shaved so that a turf of gray hair rose from it. He pulled the microphone up to his level and in a voice that exploded as if he had been saving it up for this moment, he immediately began talking about what he called the International Jew Communist Conspiracy. “Who runs the world?” he shouted. “Washington and Moscow! Jews and Communists! The little guy is out in the cold. But not when he belongs to the National Resurgence Party.”

  Max felt an old chill sweep his body. The Commander’s words seemed to change from English to German and Max remembered the store front meeting halls in Berlin when in 1930 and ‘31 he would sometimes stop for a minute outside and listen to the speeches until someone came out, someone wearing a brown shirt and boots and a swastika armband, and push him away. His father told him to stay away from those meetings, but once, after Mordecai was killed, he stood outside a meeting hall itching to go in and tell them about his grandfather until a boy in the brown shirt uniform, younger than Max, came out and slapped him. Max could still feel the sting of the boy’s hand.

  The Commander was talking about Holtz: “A clean cut young man who wanted nothing better than to serve his fellow men. The agents of the Jew Communists have framed him. They know he is innocent. Would he have been arrested if he didn’t belong to our Party?” The audience shouted “No!” “Would he be in jail now if he belonged to the Democrat or Republican or Communist Party?” Some people in the audience rose to the chorus of “No!” The Commander stood on his toes to shout, “Mort Holtz is a hero!”

  While the audience stood and applauded, Max remembered Horst Wessel, the young Nazi storm trooper killed in the Berlin street fighting in 1930 who left behind a song that became the unofficial anthem of the Nazis. Max saw that these people would make a martyr out of Holtz just as the Nazis did out of Horst Wessel. The Jews did not leave their houses the day of the funeral, but afterwards Max saw news
reels of it, the Germans lining the street, the old men at attention, the old women weeping. When they heard the funeral procession go by in Max’s house, his mother spit. Now Max hoped that Holtz did not write songs.

  The man in the suit who had sat quietly through the meeting was introduced as Holtz’s lawyer. He took a bow and then the announcer asked for a collection. Holtz’s defense, he said, would cost money. Men in armbands lined both sides of the audience and began passing baskets down the aisles. “This is a time for sacrifice,” the announcer said. The plate came to Max half full of coins and a few one dollar bills. Max put another five dollar bill in the plate and the man who took the plate from him reached out to pat him on the shoulder.

  When the collection was completed, dancing was announced. Everyone got up and began to fold the chairs and carry them to the sides of the hall. They all seemed to know exactly what to do except Max. He stood in front of his chair wondering if he should help when he saw that an old woman who had been sitting in the row in front was standing alongside him now and smiling pleasantly. Max excused himself and took his chair to the side of the hall. Then he left. He thought he heard someone call him as he hurried down the stairs, but he did not look back or wait.

  Outside, the deep voice of a foghorn drifted in from the bay. Max ran downhill towards the lights of the city until he found a taxi. All the way home, the strains of the Horst Wessel Song pounded in his head.

  14

  One thing was clear: he could not allow Holtz to become a martyr. So it had to be the boy. The only question now was how to go about it. If he went to the police they would want to know why he waited all this time. A better course was writing an anonymous letter. Then he would have done his duty and he wouldn’t be bothered by a lot of unpleasant questions. He went to the bureau and took out the girl’s button and then at the table that served him for a desk he spread a piece of stationery. Now that he saw clearly that he had no other choice he felt liberated by his decision, and the idea of the anonymous letter was the perfect means by which to rid himself of the problem completely. He hummed to himself as he lifted his pen, but no words would come. After staring at the blank sheet of paper for a long while, he put down the pen and placed the button on top of the paper. There was time in the morning to write the letter.

  He sat down to it again after breakfast, but it looked like such a nice day out he decided instead to call Clara. He hurried downstairs and listened for the Thompsons. “Hello,” he called. There was no answer and remembering that it was Sunday, he quickly leafed through the phone book so he could call before they returned from church. He was dialing the number when the door opened.

  “Good morning, Mister Friedman,” Mrs. Thompson said.

  Max slammed the phone down.

  “Bad news?” Mr. Thompson asked, indicating the phone.

  “What?” Max said. “Oh, the phone. No, it’s all right.”

  “It was a lovely service today,” Mrs. Thompson said. She wore a white hat with a veil and white gloves which she was just peeling off. “It’s a shame you couldn’t have been there.”

  When Max first moved in, Mrs. Thompson tried to get him to go with them to church. Each Saturday afternoon she would say, “Shall we wake you tomorrow morning for church?” until he explained that he was Jewish. She seemed genuinely puzzled at that and though she did not ask him again, whenever they met on Sunday morning she was sure to tell him what a nice service he had missed.

  Mr. Thompson, struggling out of his tie, said in a loud whisper: “You can take my place next Sunday if you want.”

  Mrs. Thompson turned red and marched into the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” Max said. He slid by Mr. Thompson in the narrow hallway and went out to call.

  Just as he was about to hang up, Clara’s voice floated out of the receiver. He quickly pressed it to his ear again. “Hello, please,” he heard her say.

  “Clara? Mrs. Axelrod? Did I wake you?”

  “Who is this?” she asked, still panting for breath.

  Disappointed, Max considered hanging up. For a moment there was only the sound of Clara’s breathing on the line as if he had tuned in to the winds of some vacant world. “It’s me,” he said at last, “Max Friedman. From the Agency.”

  “Of course,” she said, her voice rising from the low tone of propriety to one of warm familiarity. “Forgive me Max. I should have recognized.”

  Max sighed with relief. “You’re sure I didn’t wake you? I can call back.”

  “Oh, no. I was just going downstairs when I heard the phone. How are you?”

  They talked a little about the weather before Max asked if he could see her. “I was just going to the park,” she said. “Would you like to join me?”

  “That’s fine,” Max said without enthusiasm as the shadow of the boy leaping out of the bushes passed through his mind.

  “I’ll bring sandwiches,” Clara said.

  He met her by the Tenth Street entrance and as they passed the path leading to the grove where the girl had been killed, he ached to tell her about Holtz and the boy, but he held his tongue and looked the other way and soon they were in the Music Concourse.

  “Do you come to the concerts?” Clara asked.

  “On Sundays it’s usually too crowded for me,” Max said, though there were not as many people there now as he expected.

  “I don’t like the band concerts too much. All that oompahpah,” Clara said, “but I come sometimes when they have the different days. I like it on French Day and Irish Day and especially on Israeli Independence Day, the dancing is beautiful. Let’s to go the Tea Garden.”

  Max suddenly realized that Clara was carrying the picnic basket. He lifted it gently from her arm, hoping she did not see him blush, as they passed through the carved wooden gate of the Japanese Tea Garden. Here the Sunday crowds squeezed into the narrow paths and Max squirmed as he found himself imprisoned in a large family outing while Clara walked a few steps ahead, pointing at the arched bridge where children scrambled up the steep steps. She was saying something he couldn’t hear. After maneuvering in several directions, he broke free and caught up to her in time to hear her say, “There’s so much peace here. I come almost every week.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Max said. They stood in line for the stepping stones across the brook and then made their way to the giant Buddha.

  “Look at him,” Clara said, “how peaceful he looks.”

  Max looked up at the placid, squatting figure. “What is he smiling at?” Max asked as a pigeon fluttered to the Buddha’s head.

  “He smiles at what’s inside of him,” Clara said.

  Max thought a minute. “It’s easy to smile if your insides are made of stone,” he said.

  “Max!”

  They left the Tea Garden and found a meadow where they ate lunch. “I hope you like cold pot roast,” she said, handing him a thick sandwich. “I love it,” he told her, matching eyes with her for a moment before biting into the crisp roll. “Ach,” he said, his mouth full. “Wonderful!” She smiled and spread the rest of the lunch out on the tablecloth.

  For a while neither of them spoke and Max, to avoid her eyes, studied the trees at the edge of the meadow. In Berlin at this time the leaves were choking to death in red and yellow and orange, but here the trees went on being green.

  “What are you thinking?” Clara asked.

  “I was just wondering if the trees ever died here. All these years I lived in San Francisco and I can’t remember whether or not they die. You can’t even tell what season it is here.”

  “Sure you can,” Clara told him. “In the summer it doesn’t rain, so if it’s raining you know it must be one of the other seasons.”

  Max stood up suddenly, straining for memory.

  “What is it, Max?” Clara asked, alarmed.

  “A poem by Rilke I was trying to remember. ‘O Tree of life, how do you know when winter comes?’ No, that’s not it.” He closed his eyes. “Something like that. In the Elegies.” He
sent his mind back once more, but it could not get through the barbed wire of his years. “Do you know Rilke?” he asked Clara, sitting down again and selecting a peach from the picnic basket.

  “No,” she said. “My favorite is Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

  “An American?”

  Clara nodded.

  “I don’t know her. Actually, I only know Rilke from a course at the university. I don’t care for modern poetry so much.”

  “The university, Max? What did you study?”

  “Literature. I liked best of all Schiller. And of course Shakespeare.”

  He started to tell her about his university days and how he wanted to be a professor, but now memory did come back and arguments with Sarah echoed in his mind. “Then they kicked all the Jews out of the universities,” he concluded.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. They finished eating in silence and then Clara said, “My father was seventy-two years old when he started college.”

  “Is that so?” Max said. “Seventy-two? I guess it’s never too late to start.”

  “Or to finish either,” Clara said.

  Max did not answer. When everything was gathered back into the wicker basket, they just got up and began to walk in no special direction until they came to the lake. For a while they watched the boats weave about on the sun capped water and then Max asked if she would like to go rowing. “Sure,” she said. “Full steam ahead.”

  Max rented a boat, hoping he could still row. He held the boat for her as she climbed in. “Careful,” he said. Then he climbed in, holding onto the sides to keep the boat from rocking. The attendant pushed the boat away from the dock and Max quickly put the oars in the locks, but he got them in backwards. “It’s been a long time,” he said, but he did not think yet of how long it had been. The boat drifted back to the dock where the attendant pushed it out again. Max righted the oars and began to row. At first it was easy, but before they reached the island in the middle of the lake, his arms began to ache and he let the boat drift a little. “Isn’t this beautiful?” Clara said, gently rocking back and forth. “I would like some day to live on a houseboat. What do you think, Max?” But Max did not hear. He was remembering the last time he rowed. He and Sarah had gone all the way across town to the Tegeler See on a hot summer day. “Don’t row so fast,” Sarah had said, but Max rowed even faster and laughed along with Sarah who said, “Max, you’re showing off,” until he collided with a boat manned by two Hitlerjugend. A blondhaired boy at the oars, only a couple of years younger than Max, yelled: “I knew Jews were dumb, but I didn’t know they were blind too,” as he used his oar to separate the two boats, and his young companion sitting in the stern said, “What can you expect from a Jewish sailor?” The boys laughed. Max yelled back, “If you don’t watch out, I’ll ram you again.” The boats drifted apart. Just as Max bent to the oars, the younger boy made an obscene gesture and Max answered by shaking his fist at them. “My hero,” Sarah said.