American Romantic

by Ward Just

  One night after the music, Joseph arrived at her side with two glasses of wine and asked her where she was from in Germany. She said, without enthusiasm, Hamburg, and Joseph nodded in a complicit manner and said, Berlin for me. Born in 1935, he said, the last good year. Good being a relative term, don’t you agree? She said nothing to that, having no wish to discuss Germany. Joseph said his family actually lived in Potsdam, but he always thought of Potsdam as part of Berlin, only forty-five minutes on the S-Bahn. His father worked as an accountant at Babelsberg studios. He loved motion pictures and every once in a while would bring an actor or actress home for supper, one of the young ones living hand to mouth. My mother would roll her eyes and set places for them at the table, resigned to an evening of stories concerning the tribulations of the cinematic life. As if the tribulations were unique. I was so young, Joseph said, I remember them only vaguely. But even a child can apprehend glamour, and perhaps a child most of all. Don’t you agree? My father was encouraged to join the Party so that his job would be secure. Of course by then Babelsberg was an arm of the Ministry of Propaganda. Some arm, Joseph said, sipping his wine, raising his eyebrows. They were sitting in camp chairs, Joseph leaning close to her, a little closer than she would have liked. He had a musty smell; she thought of it as the granular smell of the desert. His face was tanned to mahogany, his teeth white as milk. When he smiled, what she saw were teeth and deep creases either side of his mouth. She thought him handsome in an actorly way. His gestures seemed timed. He was certainly aware of himself and the effect he had on people. Women. He looked like a man who could take care of himself and whoever was with him. Still, he had come a little too close so she pulled her chair back a fraction and as she did so he smiled, perhaps a smile of apology, perhaps of something else. His easy assurance disarmed her. She heard the German language in everything he said; his s’s were the giveaway. She liked his soft American voice and wondered if he missed his language. She had not spoken German since she had left the hospital ship and did not speak it now, but she heard it in his every word.

  She said, And what then?

  My father became a Nazi, Joseph said. He didn’t wear the armband but I’d call that a detail. He loved Babelsberg, loved the craft, loved the people. I would say he loved the dreams that film people had. Film dreams were more real than their own dreams. Still are, I suppose. And everything went to hell soon after, including Babelsberg. The Soviets arrived, Ivans everywhere in Potsdam and Wannsee. What they did to women was unspeakable. The excuse was that the horrors of the eastern front had made them into brutes, scarcely human. What do you think? There’s always an excuse. I saw a French documentary not long ago, the heroism of the Resistants. By this account, the Resistance made D-day possible. The Americans and the British lent valuable support to the Resistants in their successful liberation of Paris. Do you believe that? We live in a turnstile of lies.

  Joseph lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring.

  So the Ivans came, he went on. By then I was living with my grandfather in a little village in the Black Forest, one narrow road in and the same road out. The war was far away. We were so remote, I don’t remember seeing a single soldier, German, American, or Russian. And suddenly the war was over, and that was strange because in our village it had never truly arrived. People did not know what to think. Hitler was dead. Who would look after them now? I have no idea what happened to my parents. We Germans are unnaturally meticulous when it comes to recordkeeping. It’s a kind of religion with us, don’t you agree? Statistics of all sorts, no statistic too small to be noted, especially where human beings are concerned. Who died. Where they died. How they died. Our house in Potsdam was destroyed utterly and I assume my parents along with it. That was my grandfather’s belief when he told me they were missing. But I have no idea, really. That is a blank space in the time of my life. We had relatives in Milwaukee and in 1947 I went to Milwaukee to live with them, an interminable voyage aboard a tramp steamer, and then a train to Chicago. They were kind people, older people in their sixties, not in the best of health, and I believe the last thing they wanted was a twelve-year-old boy with little English and very bad memories. But they were forgiving, and hospitable, and determined that I forget my German past and become a good American boy. I was told not to discuss the war, nor my father’s work at Babelsberg. I was never under any circumstances to mention the Führer. Milwaukee was filled with Germans who had rapidly Americanized themselves, beginning before the Great War. Often they changed their names, the first step in assimilation. My aunt and uncle in Milwaukee went easily from Braun to Brown. They wanted to separate themselves from the old country, and who could blame them? But it was difficult for them, and for me, too. The accent was hard to lose. And if you liked pilsener and schnitzel, well, you liked pilsener and schnitzel instead of Coca-Cola and a hot dog. My aunt and uncle are dead now. They had no children of their own, only me. And I got out of Milwaukee as soon as I could. And I did not go back. So that’s my story. And you?

  How did you get to the university?

  I was always a good student. And I had a colorful past.

  A refugee, Sieglinde said.

  Yes, a refugee. Now, your turn.

  I spent the war near Hamburg, Sieglinde said, and that was all she said.

  I won’t ask you about it, Joseph said.

  Sieglinde shrugged and looked away.

  I like talking to you, Joseph said. Shall we speak German?

  Sieglinde shook her head.

  I’m out of practice, Joseph said.

  I can hear it in your voice.

  I know that. I knew it when I first spoke to you. And you recoiled a little. Why did you recoil?

  I suppose I did, Sieglinde said. What of it? I was surprised. I assumed you were English or American like the others. I was surprised when you weren’t. She fell silent again, and then she said, I think it’s fair to say I am escaping Germany. Trying to. I am trying to find a normal life for myself. She paused there, knowing she had said too much without saying enough. She said, I do not think I can find a normal life in Germany because Germany is not a normal country, divided in two. And they say that’s a good thing, the division, not so many of us within one boundary. They say we have an economic miracle and perhaps that’s true. You should see Hamburg, where forty thousand souls were lost in a single night’s bombing. Now almost no trace of it, the bombing. We keep our heads down and produce goods, machine tools. Automobiles. We have elections. But there are everywhere ghosts, and the machine tools and the automobiles and the elections cannot dispel the ghosts. I have no relatives there that I know of. My family has vanished, disappeared from the map.

  We are both orphans, Joseph said.

  I suppose we are, Sieglinde replied. I do not like to think of myself as an orphan.

  Nor I, Joseph said.

  He handed Sieglinde her glass of wine, untouched. She took the glass and sipped a little. The others had gone to their tents. She could see light in Suzanne’s tent. The other tents were dark. She wondered if she had made a mistake, listening all this time to Joseph’s story, so like her own except the American part. There were so many Americans in the world. Everywhere she went she found Americans. Americans went everywhere and seemed untroubled. She wondered if she had made a mistake leaving Madagascar. In Madagascar she knew no one and no one knew her. She had given it up too quickly, not the first time she had given up something or someone too quickly. Apparently she did not possess the German thoroughness gene. Instead, she was strenuous and too eager to call it a day, not much difference at all between arrival and departure. Looked at in a certain way, they were the same thing. She was ill at ease. And now here she was talking about her disorderly past with a stranger from Milwaukee. He too had a story. Well, everyone had a story. Because they had one didn’t mean she had to listen to it. Sieglinde finished off her wine and stood. Joseph stood also and took her hand.

  He said, We are displaced persons.

  I suppose so, Sieglinde sa
id. I would say stateless.

  Perhaps, he said. Will you stay on here, then?

  For a while, Sieglinde said.

  Joseph’s tent was identical to the other tents, twenty feet long by twelve wide, the canvas of a color similar to the hardpan underfoot. Mosquito netting covered the tent flap. He pushed both aside and preceded her into the tent, where he lit a kerosene lamp. The wick flickered and then caught, casting a yellow light into the interior, hard dark shadows. Sieglinde paused inside the tent flap, startled by what she saw. A figured carpet covered the hardpan. A canvas chair and a table piled high with books were next to the lamp. Two steamer trunks sat opposite, more books atop the trunks. The books gave the room an academic air, as if there were a classroom nearby and students. Hooks in the canvas held sketches, evidently Joseph’s. They were drawings of the terrain, various aspects of it, though the line of sight was monotonous. Sieglinde could not see how he found variety. On the hook over the steamer trunk was a print of Caspar David Friedrich’s lonely traveler atop a German mountain looking west into the dying sun, smaller mountains in fog between the traveler and the sun. Friedrich called the piece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. He painted the traveler from the rear so that his face could not be seen, only a slender figure in a black cloth coat and black gaiters, one hand holding a walking stick, no hat. He stood in the submissive posture of the aesthete. Joseph’s sketches seemed to take their inspiration from Friedrich, yet there was something subtracted. Sieglinde could not define what, unless it was the absence of human forms, leaving only the bleak landscape of eastern Tunisia. The sketches and Joseph’s books suggested a life apart from the ardor of the archaeological dig. Men needed a distraction from their workaday lives. Thinking of that, she thought also of Harry Sanders’s piano, so badly out of tune in the tropical heat.

  Joseph’s tent had a nest-like quality and was spotless and orderly in the way a bachelor’s life was said to be orderly, spoiled only slightly by the industrial odor of kerosene. His clothes hung on wire hangers from a hat rack. The ashtrays were clean. On the table beside the books was a carafe of water and one cup. When she looked up, Sieglinde noticed a mobile suspended from the ceiling, turning slowly as she imagined the earth turning. There was no breeze inside the tent, and then she saw above the table a little grilled window fitted with mosquito netting. She had not seen a mosquito since arriving the week before, so that could be bachelor’s caution. Joseph sat on the bed, a double cot with a blue duvet and two pillows with white linen covers. He motioned for Sieglinde to take the chair.

  Heimat, he said, and she laughed, unaccountably at ease in Joseph’s tent. Her own tent was without ornament of any kind, unless you counted a wind-up clock and a bottle of eau de cologne as ornaments. She especially admired Joseph’s carpet, solid underfoot and yet soft to the touch. Her single cot had one threadbare blanket, olive drab in color. She suspected it was army issue but she had no idea which army. Her pillow was without cover of any kind, and it, too, had seen years of use.

  She said, I expect to find a valet in the closet.

  No valet, he said. No closet.

  You live nicely, she said. Do you often invite people in?

  I never invite people in, Joseph said.

  She noticed a photograph in a silver frame on the bedside table, a low-slung building of Bauhaus influence, people milling about. She said, What’s that?

  Babelsberg, Joseph said.

  Sieglinde nodded, admiring the frame. She sneaked a look at her wristwatch, near midnight. She removed her sandals and rubbed her feet on the carpet. She knew that if she did not leave now she would not leave until morning.

  A souvenir of my father, Joseph said.

  I have no souvenirs except one photograph, my father in his uniform, off to the war. A big smile on his face. He might have been going off to the bierstube with friends, a glass of pilsener before dinner. A game of darts. Something like that, except he was in uniform and holding a rifle. My mother took the picture.

  What rank? Joseph asked.

  Rank?

  Military rank. Was he an officer?

  Corporal, Sieglinde said. He was good with cars. Probably he was a mechanic in his unit. But he was also a marksman. He loved to hunt and there was plenty of woodland near our village. I wonder if they needed mechanics more than they needed marksmen.

  Mechanics, I imagine, Joseph said.

  I have so few memories of him, she said.

  It’s the same with me, Joseph said.

  He was killed a week after the photograph was taken.

  I’m sorry, Joseph said.

  We never knew the circumstances.

  Was he returned to you?

  No, Sieglinde said. He has no marker. All I have is the photograph.

  I’m sorry, Joseph said again.

  He, too, was a Nazi.

  Joseph did not reply to that.

  I have no idea why. My mother told me once that he was not political. He had no interest in politics or government. He enjoyed being with his friends. He liked to hunt and he loved cars. I don’t understand.

  Joseph said, Probably his friends joined and he joined, too. Solidarity. All for one, one for all. My father joined to save his job. He loved the films. So he joined the Nazi Party to stay in films.

  At least he had a reason, Sieglinde said. My mother said nothing beyond his being nonpolitical. Of course much was left unsaid in those days. And what was said was so often not the truth.

  Does it matter to you?

  Sieglinde was silent a moment, weighing the question. She said, Yes, it does.

  To me also, Joseph said.

  So there we are.

  You must try to put it away—

  How do I do that?

  It was so long ago, he made whatever choices he made. My father, too. From this distance it’s impossible to know why they did what they did. Your father, my father. Cogs in the machine. In any case, they are gone now.

  Does it matter to you?

  Of course it matters. And what have I taken from it? I’ve refused to be a cog in a machine. That’s my answer. Your father loved cars, mine loved the movie business. Joseph opened his mouth to say something more but evidently had a second thought, because he lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring and said nothing further. They sat in unsettled silence. A breeze had developed and the tent billowed slightly, creaking. Here and there were spots of dust in the air. Joseph reached under the bed and came up with a bottle of schnapps and a cup. He filled the cup and walked the few feet to Sieglinde and handed it to her.

  A nightcap, he said. It’s good schnapps.

  She took a swallow and handed it back.

  He said, Did your mother survive the war?

  I don’t know that either. She went away and did not return.

  A missing person, Joseph said.

  I do not believe she survived. I made an effort to find out, not a very big effort I think. I didn’t know where to look and I was perhaps frightened of what I might learn. She abandoned me. What sort of mother does that? She was not right in her head. I don’t know where she went after she left me. She could be anywhere. But surely now, so many years later, she is dead. If I saw her I would not recognize her.

  Joseph nodded sympathetically at the phrase “so many years later . . .”

  I don’t want to talk about her, Sieglinde said.

  All right, Joseph agreed.

  Sieglinde look around the tent and said, Your sketches remind me of Friedrich.

  He said, Yes. The Nazis claimed him, you know. Heroic melancholy and all that. His reputation suffered terribly, but then, after the war, he was rehabilitated. An artist is not responsible for his admirers. That was the idea. For God’s sake, Friedrich was born in the eighteenth century. Died a recluse, I think. But his work is in all the museums now, a part of our artistic heritage. They say you have to be German to appreciate him, in the way that you must know our language to appreciate Goethe. He does not translate easily. I’m not so sure about Fr
iedrich. It seems to me he could appeal to anyone with a romantic streak. It is not only Germans who are romantic.