by Jon Cleary
“I can do nothing if the Gestapo won’t respond. Reichsfuehrer Himmler and I are not the best of friends.” He smiled again, letting her in on a secret, being intimate. Producers had tried the same game with her, letting her in on the secrets of studio politics. “Let’s sit over there to have our coffee.”
Over there was a two-seater couch, an elegant piece that made her feel safe: it was too narrow and delicate for any gymnastics. She poured the coffee and he sat back waiting to be served; they could have been a happily married couple. She asked him how things were at the office; he asked her what was happening at the studio. It was all a game, one that they had both played before, though not with each other.
Then, as if to say let’s get on with it, he put down his cup and moved closer to put his arm round her. He smelled nice, her nose was glad to tell her; but all her other senses were suddenly affronted. Up close he was indeed ugly; at a distance ugliness can sometimes have a charm, but not close up. She stiffened inwardly as his arm tightened about her; then his mouth closed on hers. She had been kissed before by men who had no appeal for her, including several actors; she had learned to fake reaction, but this was much harder. Those other men had had only their personality and their physical unattractiveness working against them; this little man in the white suit, still decorous with his jacket on, was a master of political evil, a man who hated Jews. He was more repellent than any of the others she could remember, yet she did not push him away at once. Mady, the Jewish mother, was pushing her towards him.
Passion was taking hold of him; she was surprised that the hand that squeezed her breast was trembling. She didn’t brush his hand away; she even opened her mouth a little under his kiss. This was one of the Perils of Pauline; but she knew something the villain didn’t know. His hand went down to her belly and that was when she said, “That’s far enough, Joseph.”
He drew his face away from hers. “Why?”
“I have my period.”
“I don’t believe it!” He slid his hand down between her legs, felt the pad there and drew his hand away in disgust. “Why did you come if you were like that?”
The pad had been the piece of safety equipment she had installed; her period was two weeks away, but he was not to know that unless he stripped her. Goebbels was an experienced seducer, but there were limits beyond which he would not go. He was so fastidiously clean she would not have been surprised if he had worn surgical gloves to make love. It was his fastidiousness on which she had relied. She was an experienced seducee.
“I came because I enjoy your company,” she said; flattery is the best salve for a wounded lover. “Women are always fascinated by powerful men. Haven’t you been told that before?”
He was half-mollified, half-angry; his ego was at odds with his genitals. “I had planned we would do more than just talk. There are other ways of enjoying my company.”
Oh God, the ego of men! She wanted to laugh at him, at his way of putting things; but there was still a long way to go, her mother was still missing. “Joseph—” She put everything she had ever learned into the way she said his name; the M-G-M dialogue coach would have been proud of her. “I am not a whore. If I spend an evening—or a night—with a man it’s because I like him for himself, not just for sex—”
He had gone to stand in front of the tall narrow fireplace, something he should not have done: it made him look shorter. He knew enough not to stand with his hands behind his back, the natural pose of men in front of fireplaces; that pose only narrowed his already narrow shoulders. His hands were stuck jauntily in his pockets, he was a rake in virginal white. She was glad he did not stand with arms akimbo and legs apart, the stance of so many German men these days.
His humour had improved. “We should have had supper months ago. By now—”
By now we’d be in bed: she gave him the sly smile he expected. Her nerves were becoming frayed; she was nowhere near as composed as she looked. He had given her a glimmer of hope that he would trace her mother; she could not let that glimmer be put out by throwing cold water on him. She was playing the scene as she would play it on the set: make-believe gave her a grip on reality.
“You were the one who was slow—I couldn’t ask you to supper.”
He nodded, his good humour completely returned. “We don’t have long to make up for lost time.”
Is war going to break out? But she couldn’t ask him that. “You mean, the picture will soon be finished? You could offer me a new contract.”
“I’d have to talk to the studio about that.”
That, she knew, would only be a formality, certainly not a necessity. When her agent had told her that UFA was looking for an American actress to star in Lola und Ludwig, a casual remark over lunch, he had been surprised when she had told him to do everything he could to get her the job. She had not told him why she wanted to go to Germany, except to say she was fed up with her progress at M-G-M; she had seen it as a heaven-sent opportunity to go looking for her mother. Advising her against the move, he had reluctantly done as she told him; he had come back to her to say that the evil little son-of-a-bitch Goebbels was personally choosing the actress who would get the contract. There had been a dozen actresses who had applied for the part; she had said Catholic prayers for her Jewish mother and she had won the role. She had been welcomed by Goebbels at a reception on her arrival, but he had made no instant play for her. He had, however, given her the strongest hint who was her boss: himself.
“I’d be willing to stay, if the right picture came up.” She had to keep him on the string.
“Even if there is war?”
“I don’t believe Germans want war.”
“Who told you that?” But then his voice softened; he was not going to play the Gestapo with her. “Of course nobody wants it. Why should they?”
“Then if you find the right picture . . .”
“I should like to do that.” He allowed himself a little make-believe; he knew she would be gone as soon as the current picture was finished. “I have two favourite women’s films—Anna Karenina and The Blue Angel. I should like to re-make them. Which would you prefer?”
Despite herself, she jumped with interest; there will be actresses willing to play the Devil’s mistress on Judgement Day, so long as they get equal billing. “Garbo and Dietrich? I could never be as good as them.”
“Perhaps not as good as Garbo.” The best, most intriguing of them all; he had run the film at least a dozen times. “But Dietrich? All she has are her legs. Yours are as good.”
“Who would play the Professor in The Blue Angel? You?”
He laughed aloud, like a schoolboy; indeed, for a moment he looked like a schoolboy in his all-white uniform. “Do you think I could play a man besotted by a woman?”
“If the woman was the right one.” She knew how besotted he had been with Lida Baarova. But she smiled, keeping the focus on herself: “That would depend how I played the part, wouldn’t it?”
He stopped laughing, his eyes grew darker. Damn it, he thought, she knows that I think of her as more than just a night’s entertainment. Why did he fall for actresses? None of them was intellectual, certainly not this one; nor had Lida been. Their beauty attracted him, of course; and their sexuality, less hidden than that of women in government and business circles. Perhaps it was their glamour, however one defined that. Or was it that their world was one of make-believe, where, no matter what fantasies he had, they would always respond without question? He did not recognize the fact, but fantasy had taken him over under the guise of power. But that was in his persona as Reichsminister; now he was the lover. He stared at her, looking at the future and knowing even then any affair they might have would be doomed. The Fuehrer would see to that.
“No,” he said, “I could never play the Professor. I could never be made a fool of by a woman.” Forgive me, Lida.
“Well, try me for Anna Karenina—” She stood up, picked up her cardigan and threw it round her shoulders. “I must go.”
/> “To throw yourself under a train?”
“Like Anna?” She shook her head. They were smiling at each other, but there was an underlying air of seriousness. He was afraid of his infatuation with her; she was afraid of it, too. But both would play the dangerous game for their own ends: “I hope you’ll invite me again. Oh, and will you try and find out something about Frau Hoolahan for me, please?”
He kissed her hand, something he had learned from the Fuehrer, the Austrian; Hitler had always kissed a woman’s hand, even in the days before he had risen to power. Steeling herself, Cathleen leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. Down payments have to be made.
“Next time . . .”
III
Carmody was annoyed and jealous that Cathleen was spending the evening with another man. He was even more upset that the man might be Goebbels; he had not believed her story that it was someone from the studio; she had sounded too nervous for such an innocent date. She was creeping out on a limb that might fall off beneath her at any moment; he wondered if she appreciated the danger she was in. He wished she had listened to what he had to tell her, that there might be no need to try to enlist Goebbels’ help in tracing her mother.
He had met Fred Doe, as arranged, at the Kranzler at two o’clock that afternoon. Doe, a night worker, had ordered breakfast; Carmody had settled for coffee and a sandwich. They were at a table on the terrace, hemmed in on either side by other occupied tables. Carmody, still a bush boy at heart, did not like to be so close to strangers; Doe, it seemed, wanted to be in someone else’s pocket and conversation. He kept turning his head as he picked up scraps of conversation around him.
“You ever listen to the man in the street?”
“All the time,” said Carmody, who had begun to doubt if the man in the street, especially in countries where the Gestapo operated, had anything worthwhile to say.
“That’s the guy I wanted to play music for. Once upon a time . . .” He grinned sourly above his ham and eggs. “Now I play in a joint where the man in the street couldn’t afford a cup of coffee.”
“How did you finish up here in Berlin?”
“Finish up? An undiplomatic phrase, pal. But you’re right. This is the finishing line. If war breaks out, I gotta go back to the starting gate.”
“Where was that?”
“Charleston, South Carolina.” There was just the faintest trace of Southern accent in the husky, rotted voice. “I started playing there when I was a kid, seventeen, eighteen. I was gonna be the greatest cornet man since Kid Ory, King Oliver, those guys. The first great white guy on trumpet. Then I heard about a guy up north, Bix Beiderbecke, from Iowa, some place in the cornbelt. Everyone said how good he was. So I went up to hear him. He was with a band called the Wolverines, they were playing a date at Indiana University. Bix stood up, played a chorus of Panama and that was it—I knew I was never gonna be the greatest man on cornet. You gotta hear the greatest to know how mediocre you are.”
“You’re better than mediocre,” said Carmody truthfully, though he was no authority on jazz, just had an ear for it.
“Maybe.” Doe was unflattered; he had his own standards. The tables next to them were empty now; it was the slack hour between lunch and afternoon tea. With no surrounding conversation to distract him, he seemed to have turned in on himself. He was talking to himself as much as to Carmody, the eggs congealing on his plate as he forgot them: “I went on up to New York, got a job there, but I kept hearing those notes from Bix’s horn. So I took a job on a liner, the Berengaria. Maybe going to work on the Berengaria was an omen where I’d finish up. She was originally a German ship, the Imperator—the British grabbed her as part of the reparations after the Great War. I did four crossings, but every time I went back to New York it was like I could still hear Bix. So I went to London, then to Paris.”
“Why did you leave Paris?”
“I fell out with a guy I was living with, so I skipped town.” He looked at Carmody, who looked blankly back at him. “You know what I mean?”
“No.”
“I’m a homo, for Christ’s sake. I’m queer, as you’d describe it.”
“I’d never have known.” He felt suddenly ill at ease, as he always did. He had met more homosexuals since coming to Europe than he had believed existed in the whole wide world. His innocence, he sometimes thought, was a world in itself. Mateship between men was all right; but love, sex? Australia had taught him nothing.
“We don’t all waltz around with limp wrists and falsetto voices. I make you uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Don’t bullshit me, pal. Relax, I’m not gonna rape you.”
“Why did you come to Berlin?” Carmody changed the subject; or thought he did.
“This is the homo capital of the world. Or it used to be. It’s mostly underground now, like the Jews. Goering would let it come out into the open again, but Hitler’s too goddam strait-laced. I think he’s like you, pal.”
Carmody managed to smile. “Thanks for the comparison. When did you come here?”
“1931. That was the year Bix died. But I still couldn’t go home . . . Crazy, isn’t it? Running away from a guy’s music. But you dunno, pal, how much I wanted to be the greatest,” he said wistfully. “To be remembered.”
“Are there any good jazz men here in Berlin?” Carmody tactfully made no effort to console Doe.
“One or two, but they don’t really understand what it’s all about. It’s improvisation and that don’t fit the German mind. They like their music organized, like everything else. There was one little guy, a Jew, he understood it. But he had to drop out.” He looked at Carmody and the latter raised his eyebrows in an unspoken query. “No, the Gestapo didn’t get him. He survived a lot longer than most of ‘em, up till a year ago, but then he knew it was time to go. I gave him some names in New York and he went. I dunno how he’s doing, I told him not to write me, just in case.”
“How did he get out? Just bought a boat ticket and went?”
Doe waved to a waiter to take away his plate and ordered more coffee. He lit a cigarette, took it out of his mouth and looked at it. “They’re killing me, them and the grog. But if you don’t die one way, you die another. Right, pal?” Then he looked carefully through the cigarette smoke at Carmody. “You want a story on me or the little Jew-boy?”
“Both,” said Carmody, wondering where the second story would lead.
“You careful about what you write? About the people who give you your information? That dame Lady Arrowsmith, you ever mention her in your stories?”
“Never,” said Carmody, and hoped, for Meg’s sake, he would never have to.
The waiter came back with the coffee and when he had gone again Doe said quietly, “There are still Jews here in Berlin. Some of them are like the pale nigras down home, I guess—they pass for white. They got Benny out. I dunno how they do it, but they’ve done it with some other Jews, too. They are a sorta—what did they call it in Spain?”
“A fifth column.” Carmody could not see any Jewish organization operating in Berlin as the Nationalist Fifth Column had done in Madrid. There was no army at the gates of the city as there had been in those days. At best the Jews could run only a rescue effort . . . “Do these Jews keep track of people who disappear?”
“What do you mean?”
“If someone is taken away by the Gestapo, do they try to find out where he’s been taken?”
“I wouldn’t know, pal. Why?”
Carmody took a chance: “I’m trying to trace someone, an American woman.”
“Jewish?”
He took another chance: “Yes. She came over from the States earlier this year and her family haven’t heard from her since. Could you put me in touch with your Jewish friends?”
“They ain’t my friends, pal, they were Benny’s. Benny was my friend. You understand?”
Carmody was not so slow this time. He nodded, all at once sad for the lonely man.
“Okay, I’
ll ask them if they’ll see you. But you’ll keep your mouth shut?”
“I told you—I never disclose a source.”
“What about your story on me?” Then Doe grinned, waved a hand. “Don’t worry, pal. Nothing you could write could rescue me from obscurity. I don’t care any more. If I went home, became top horn with Artie Shaw, any of them big bands, it still wouldn’t matter. I’d still be hearing Bix playing better than me. I got that sorta ear, it itches with memories.”
Thank God Shakespeare doesn’t affect me that way: I’d never write another word. “When can I meet these people?”
“You in a hurry? Sure, why shouldn’t you be? War’s gonna break out any day.” He said it as if it would not concern him in the least; he could be expecting an outbreak of influenza. He was a true neutralist, much more so than the isolationists back home: he was close enough to make a considered choice. “I’ll try them soon’s I leave you. If they say okay, how about tomorrow?”
“Any time they say, anywhere.”
When they shook hands on parting Carmody said, “I’d go back home and try your luck. You sound great to me and I’m sure a lot of other people would think the same. There’s room for someone besides Louis Armstrong.”
“Sure, pal. I’ll think about it.” But one knew he had already given up, that he would be forever haunted by music from the past. His resignation, Carmody guessed, was a form of integrity.
So now Carmody, sitting in his apartment, surrounded by the furniture of the Jewish doctor who had got away, itched to tell Cathleen that at last he might be on to a lead that would tell them where her mother was.
IV
Extracts from the diaries of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels:
18 August 1939:
I spoke by telephone today with the Fuehrer. He is still down at the Berghof at Obersalzberg, waiting to hear what transpires in Moscow. Why is Stalin stalling? (I do not mean that as a pun—one leaves that sort of humour to the English.) Cannot he see the advantages of a pact with us? Or is he as devious, as unscrupulous, as we have been led to believe? Is the Fuehrer taking too big a gamble with him?
