by Dick Cluster
“Correct about Lenin.” She tilted her chin up in a way that implied a certain respect, but warned him not to take on any airs. “So now the DDR parrots the tactics of the Hohenzollerns. They provide a sealed train for the heretical Poles, as well as travelers like ourselves from the West. The Ost-West Express stops in Berlin, East and West, but nowhere else between here and the Polish border. As to whose Nazi, I suspect we may be able to share.”
The last word was accompanied by a motion of her hands, coming together with fingers laced, and the index fingers pointed upward like a steeple. Without reason, Alex imagined her wide hips pressed tightly against his, her energetic thighs quivering around him.
“Would you mind showing me your passport?” he asked abruptly.
Cynthia raised her eyebrows, but plucked the passport from her bag and tossed it onto his lap. She sat while he thumbed through the visa pages. She’d been to Italy once— via Czechoslovakia, it appeared. Aside from that, a mass of rubber stamps showed she’d been back and forth across East Germany from Berlin quite a number of times. The stamps bore images of locomotives, some diesel and some steam. She hadn’t been to England or America, not on this passport anyway. By its date of issue, it was three years old.
“I used to teach school in Frankfurt,” she said dryly. “I still have friends there. That’s where I was coming from, if you have to know.”
Alex shook his head, but leafed through the passport once more anyway.
“No, there’s a police detective who dreamed up the idea that you weren’t really in Europe when you and I talked on the phone. I can reassure him, and maybe get some information in return. Now, what about what happened to me on the train? That guy seemed to know something about you, or about your ancestry anyway. I think the word he used was Mischling.”
“As in ‘half-breed’,” she said. “Like a dog, you know.” She reached into her bag again and pulled out a magazine, opening it to the page she wanted him to see. “Look. This is an expose about a game that someone has been circulating, in discos and schools. The board is a six-pointed star; each player chooses a color as his target: purple for the gays, red for the Communists, yellow for the Jews. The goal is to gas as many as possible. Its purpose is to teach contempt, and contempt is something to which we Germans are susceptible. Whoever that was, on the train, the psychological reality is that he was trying to build up that sort of contempt inside himself.”
The magazine was on newsprint, with smudgy black-and-white photos. Alex looked it over, then passed both magazine and passport back. Cynthia’s hand covered his, seeming to linger longer than necessary. Alex had a sense like what he’d felt with her and the policeman the night before— something about being taken possession of. Afterward she jumped up and paced to the wall and back, in the space between Alex’s bed and the green plastic curtain.
“This is not just something German,” she said after a few paces. “These neo-Nazis are part of a larger mood, a racist mood, in the Western world at large. Look at your own country. Look at Reagan, who came here to make his peace with the graves of the SS. Look at Rambo, the ugliest American yet.”
She stopped opposite him and fastened the snaps he had left undone, covering his bandaged wound. Alex imagined the hands unfastening instead, exploring his chest. Her chosen topic was hardly a sexy one, but he was sure that something was going on. He couldn’t yet put his finger on the chemistry at work. He felt it had more to do with Freud than with Hitler.
“Nazism and anti-Semitism are officially illegal in Germany,” Cynthia resumed. “But legalisms do not matter very much. Race discrimination is illegal in the United States. We have right-wing parties that officially disavow Hitler, but long for the past nonetheless. We have veterans’ organizations that turn out for the funerals of Luftwaffe and SS heroes. And— especially in the next generation— yours and mine— there are paramilitary grouplets. They have names like Army Sports Club and Stalwart Vikings and Steel Swords for the Defense of Europe. They shoot people and bomb buildings, too. Primarily ‘guest workers’ and their houses— Turks, Vietnamese— but also American blacks, and Jews. Not many, a few a year, some years none.”
Alex concentrated, with an effort, on the thread of her argument.
“The police don’t seem to take what happened to me too seriously,” he said.
“Well, they do raid some of these groups, from time to time. Then things get embarrassing, because Nazi leaflets are discovered in the home of a small-town mayor or a police captain, someone like that. But in general, it’s the left rather than the right that’s seen as a danger to the state.”
“I see,” Alex said. “You must have been quite a teacher.” It occurred to him that all his favorite women were teachers, or once had been.
She smiled. There was definitely a crookedness— a kind of squint on one side, a lifted eyebrow on the other— that offset the ruddy cheeks and the tumble of wavy yellow hair. It was the combination that appealed to Alex.
“Leaping to the big picture rather than remaining with the small is a German intellectual vice. Not only teachers exhibit it. That is one reason, I think, why we tend to hurry to extremes. But I was enthusiastic about my work, yes, until the Berufsverbot caught me.”
“Occupational ban?” he translated.
“One of our special democratic laws.” She sat in the chair again, and this explanation came out wearier than the ones before. “You can be kicked out of teaching if it’s discovered your loyalty to the state might be questionable. If you ever demonstrated against NATO missiles, for instance. Or the American war in Vietnam. This conveniently weeds out people who would like to introduce ways of life that involve more than taking orders and getting rich. The younger generation is kept out of the reach of socialistic and pacifistic influences. They hope. That’s why I wanted to play down our connection, you see. I’m on a good number of such lists. Apparently we are destined to be allies, in something. I don’t think it will help us for the police to decide you are a wounded terrorist in disguise.”
“I see,” said Alex. “And after you got weeded out…”
“After I was fired, I went to California for a few years. When my mother got sick, I came home to Berlin to be with her. I took over the Gasthaus, the pension, and I got to like it.”
“And your mother?”
“She died. Krebs, cancer.” Cynthia did not look away from Alex, as many people would. She held his gaze with her clear blue eyes and added, “And now they want to light our streets and protect us from the Soviets— with plutonium, so more of us will die.” Only when her point was made did she drop her eyes suddenly, and surprise him by picking nervously at loose bits of cotton on the bed sheet.
“Now I hope I’ve established my credentials,” she said finally. “Isn’t it time for you to tell me about what happened to my so-called father?”
Alex suppressed an impulse to hold the fidgeting hands that picked and smoothed at the fabric near his thigh. He wanted to make them steady and strong, the way they had been until now. He couldn’t change Gerald Meyer’s story, however. He delivered the facts bare-boned, without a sugar coating.
“Last Friday he mailed you something. Two men who were following him seemed to want it. He may have told them where he’d sent it, I don’t know. He hired me to traipse after you and get it back. Then he met a woman, unknown, at the airport. Soon after that he was shot at close range, behind my house.
“Since then, someone has tried to implicate me with planted evidence. And a man in London named Jack Moselle has told me to do what Gerald Meyer hired me for, but deliver the goods back to him. The legalities aren’t clear to me, but practically speaking, I guess these goods belong to you. You also probably know a lot more about Moselle than I do. So I was on my way to talk all this over. It still looks to me as though, whoever’s a Jew or half of one, it was the idea of our having that talk that somebody didn’t like.”
18. Wurst and Gravy
“Your counts are fine,” declared Dr.
Bazargan in a flat tone. “Be sure to get them checked again at the end of the week. Don’t bathe the wound until tomorrow. Watch for redness, draining, or swelling, and have the stitches taken out ten days hence.” Then he stepped out, for a moment, from behind his mask. He took his right hand from the pocket of his white coat, and pointed with his index finger at Alex. The pinkie— if that was an appropriate term— and ring finger were missing.
“If I may say so,” the doctor commented, “you seem to be getting in a good deal of trouble. My advice is to wait another six months before you try to show the world how fit you are to fight it.”
The Shah or the Ayatollah? Alex wanted to ask. He forced himself to look at the face rather than the absent fingers. The doctor put his hand back in his pocket and turned on his heel as he had the night before. He turned again in the doorway.
“I appreciate the advice, Doctor,” Alex said. “Maybe it’s just that I like fighting someone my own size.”
“Not microscopic, you mean. Take care, Mr. Glauberman, not to choose someone too big for you. We all have a bit of Don Quixote in us. When we get close enough to the windmill, we observe that its vanes have the edge of a scalpel. Most of us put up our lance and say, ‘Just having a bit of fun, sir.’ Then we turn tail and ride off, if we value our necks.”
Alex ran his right thumb and forefinger along his neck. He was trying to remember whether Don Quixote’s had been protected by a beard. He didn’t doubt that the doctor was speaking from experience. He supposed he just hadn’t as yet had a close enough look at those vanes.
* * *
At the hospital door, Cynthia waved to a man in a little white Fiat waiting at the curb. In the backseat were Alex’s bag and her own, minus the white rose. Alex climbed in beside these. “Wolf,” Cynthia said, seating herself in front. “Alex.”
Wolf’s hair was neatly parted, wavy light brown, and cut just to the collar of his tweed sport jacket. He turned and extended a hand toward Alex. A small button on his lapel displayed a mushroom cloud with a diagonal line through it. He said nothing, drove his passengers to the station, and sped off.
The sign directing them to the proper platform read BERLIN-POZNAN-WARSAW-MOSCOW. Cynthia reported in a travel guide’s manner that Poznan had been the medieval seat of the Polish kings, annexed by Prussia at the end of the eighteenth century. German colonists, including her maternal ancestors, had skimmed the cream from the city and the province, both of which they had renamed Posen. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles had made her grandparents into Polish citizens. They had sent their daughters to Berlin for schooling, and welcomed the Nazi troops when they came. The Nazis had deported the majority of the citizens, according to race: ethnic Poles to slave-labor camps, Jews to the camps equipped with ovens. Now Poznan was Polish again. She and her mother had visited once. Many of the older residents spoke German, but none would admit it.
Alex swallowed and said his own ancestors had come from eastern Poland or Russia, it was hard to know which. Probably many relatives had died in the camps, but none whose stories he knew. He asked her about the silent Wolf— was he a teacher, too?
“Oh, Wolf? No, Wolf is the proverbial gay interior decorator. He used to be a hotshot architect, actually, before he gave that all up. He credits me with saving his little brother from life at the wrong end of a needle. You’ll meet Hans, most likely, in Berlin.”
Alex could not work up much enthusiasm for meeting Hans or anyone else, but he found himself absurdly placated by Wolf’s sexual orientation. When the twelve-thirty train pulled in from Paris, he followed Cynthia forward to the dining car— warm and shabby and pleasingly old-fashioned. Two rows of long, high tables extended from the walls, with a narrow aisle between. Cynthia placed orders with the cook, a stout man with thinning hair, clad in a white apron. Alex chose a stool at an empty table.
Behind Alex, a woman smoked silently as a man harangued her in a strong New York accent about what was wrong with her attitude. Alex was about to move, but Cynthia came toward him with a bottle of beer in each hand. He noted that heads turned to watch her move.
“To our sealed train,” she said. “I see a few Russians, by the way. The men drinking at the far table, there. They book the first-class sleepers, to cut down on fraternization, but they come out here for air. That’s an American couple behind you, right, the ones fighting? I don’t notice any Poles. Lots of Germans, but none with a mustache and a brown jacket. Are you worried, Alex? Or are you as nonchalant as you pretend?”
Alex sipped his beer slowly. It had a bit more sour taste than its American counterparts, but was nothing to write home about. Cigarette smoke swirled past him.
“I keep telling people,” he said irritably, “I fix cars. It’s two parts understanding how they work, one part trial and error, one part persistence, and one part muscle. I’m confident that same guy isn’t lurking behind me right at this moment. The more you can tell me about what’s going on— and the more I can believe it— the better I’ll feel about any chances I choose to take.”
Cynthia regarded him with amusement. “Very logical, very German. Sometimes I think all men should be Germans— even Jews. Who are you, besides a man that fixes cars?”
“Born 1947, formerly married, one daughter, about half of a college education, widely read, moderately traveled. Currently well-attached to a British citizen, professor of literature and women’s studies.” That seemed too abrupt, so he went on. “I have tendencies toward being a hermit, but I’m getting a little bored with spending all day among machines. I play first base sometimes.”
Cynthia swiveled on her stool and went to the counter for the food. This time she came back with two paper plates that might have been issued from a vanished diner in the American Midwest. Thick wursts swam in a greasy brown gravy, along with soft, overcooked peas and slices of soft tomato. Alex found himself suddenly delighted to be alive and attacked the food with enthusiasm. It was warm, solid, and delicious. They both mopped up their plates with thick slices of dry bread. Alex swallowed the rest of his beer. Cynthia slid her tongue over her teeth, gathering up anything that was left in the way of food.
“Okay,” she said. “That improves my mood, and it looks like it improves yours. Dann gut. Let me answer some questions you haven’t asked yet.
“I told you how I came to be running the Gasthaus. Since my mother’s time, I’ve made it less conventional. I get more than my share of punks, antinuclear activists, non-whites, gays and lesbians, and such. I sometimes harbor aliens without papers and, within my limits, others who are trying to stay away from the cops. My circle of friends is enough to make me an obvious target for neo-Nazi threats in Berlin. On top of that, my friends and I are active in trying to expose these groups. You remember the magazine article I showed you. We’re particularly concerned about their influence in the army and police.
“But you believe that what happened to you last night has something to do with the death of my father. All right. I have not usually thought of myself as having a father at all. I have his name, because my mother never remarried. She had her share of lovers, of love, of life, but she had no more desire to marry.”
Alex was conscious of her legs, dangling from the stool, in rocking motion as she talked. She seemed as though she would be happier moving, pacing, attracting an audience as she lectured. Innkeepers performed, just as teachers did. They kept in motion, clearing, serving, ushering in and out, lecturing the new arrivals, giving advice.
She stopped, unzipped the vinyl jacket, slid it off, and folded it in her lap. The green T-shirt, underneath, said in faded letters, “Reagan Go Home.” Sizable breasts with obvious nipples gave a solid shape to the injunction. Cynthia brushed tousled hair back from her face.
“Jack Moselle is someone I have known since I was a child. He was an old crony of my father’s. He liked to make a fuss about making up for his friend’s defection— a stag demonstrating its dominance by protecting the females. He arranged the mortgage on our building
, so that my mother could buy it and repair the war damage. He used to stay with us, later, when he returned on visits to Berlin. Now we move in different circles, but— excuse me— is this your first trip behind the famous Curtain?”
Alex swiveled on his stool to see a pair of green-uniformed men with caps like taxi drivers wore in the films of the thirties. “Passport,” they demanded. The taller one, with a hatchet face, stared hard at Alex’s Kodacolor photo and then back at Alex. The passport came back stamped with date, place, and time of entry, and the steam locomotive. Alex swallowed involuntarily and waited while Cynthia went through the same treatment.
“So, what can you tell me about Jack’s circles today?” he asked. “Particularly any part that has to do with payoffs to public officials.”
Cynthia watched the border police chat with the cook and then proceed through the front door to the next car. “Look,” she said, pointing out the window, to the north, and back somewhat toward the end of the train. “Out that way, in the Free World, is the port of Hamburg. In that port cocaine and heroin are unloaded, concealed among the cargo of certain ships. An official must be persuaded to look the other way. That is one of the kinds of things Jack Moselle is good at. Or maybe, to make things go more smoothly, it would be best to change which political party controls the municipal government. Jack also becomes involved in things like that.”
“Interface,” Alex said. “How do you know about this, if you move in such different circles?”
“Well, Jack and I find it useful still to exchange information sometimes. For instance, one way to remove or pressure a chief of police or a customs inspector is to reveal that he is also a member of a proto-fascist gun club, or that he once was a member of the Hitler Youth. These things are all right in private, but it is not good for them to be in the news. So Jack likes to keep tabs on such things, and so, for the quite different reasons I’ve explained, do I and my friends.”
