Live Bodies

by Gee, Maurice

  Dulcie was one, Phyllis the other – names I could not place on a social scale.

  ‘Dulcie,’ I said. ‘That’s unusual. Where did you get it?’ She was the plump one. Willi’s little half-nod had told me she was mine.

  ‘From my mum,’ Dulcie said.

  ‘But where does it come from?’

  She shrugged and looked at me strangely, as though I meant to criticise her. ‘It’s just a name.’

  Willi rowed. Then he took his shirt off and rowed some more, glancing along his forearms to see the muscles shine.

  Are all German boys big like you?’ Phyllis asked. She was in the bow, watching his back.

  ‘They’ve got blue eyes and blond hair,’ Dulcie said. I understood I was to be left out: black-haired, brown-eyed, I was not foreign but alien. It would have been a waste of time to explain that I was Austrian. And a Jew. They would not have known what ‘Jew’ was.

  ‘I’m not a boy,’ Willi said, offended. He was a man of twenty-eight.

  ‘Mmm,’ Phyllis said, and wrapped her hands round his upper arm to feel it work. Drugged, I thought. Just his physical presence was enough. He winked at me, ignoring Dulcie at my side, and nosed the dinghy into the mangrove trees.

  ‘Time for a swim.’

  ‘We didn’t bring our togs,’ Dulcie said. She knew she was not chosen. ‘Togs’ – a new word, I filed it away – had an ugly sound, expressing her resentment.

  ‘No need,’ Willi said. He clambered out of the dinghy and climbed away through the branches of the mangrove trees.

  Dulcie leaned at Phyllis and said through her teeth, ‘If you do.’

  ‘There’s no harm.’

  ‘Without any togs?’

  Willi came back, walking waist deep in the water. He put his clothes on the seat. ‘Come on, girls. You get no prizes just for sitting there.’ He sank, went under the dinghy – we heard him knocking – and came up at the stern, where he put his wet hand on Dulcie’s neck, making her scream. Then, with a kick, he went backwards into the river: a flash of white hips and silky penis and he was gone, deep down, along the mud.

  Phyllis stood up, looking away from her friend. ‘Turn your eyes,’ she ordered me. I obeyed, and felt her, a moment later, sit on the edge of the dinghy and lower herself. She went soundlessly and when I looked I saw her and Willi, two blond heads, bobbing away along the mangrove fringe.

  ‘You can have a swim if you want,’ I said to Dulcie. ‘I’ll go somewhere else.’

  ‘No,’ she said, crumpling Phyllis’s clothes in her lap.

  ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘You try it.’

  I saw her dislike of me, and knew she would have swum with Willi if they’d been alone. So, I thought, she doesn’t want me, but on the other hand I don’t want her, that makes us even. I felt too, or seemed to feel, something sliding, slippery, something anarchic here, and did not want to be part of it. So I climbed away through the mangrove trees; felt the water, did not care for its blood-warmth; climbed on to land and into trees that seemed to me more natural, although too close and dark, and spent half an hour there, wandering and gazing and thinking that Willi was fortunate and unfortunate both and that I must not let him take over my life; then went back and found Dulcie sitting in the dinghy still and holding it in place by gripping a mangrove tree. The tide had started out. There were tears on her face.

  ‘They haven’t come back,’ she sobbed.

  ‘They’re swimming,’ I said, climbing in and letting her free her hold.

  ‘You know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, uncomfortable, ‘it’s their business.’

  She rubbed her face, smearing lipstick on her chin. I gave her my handkerchief.

  ‘I was the one who saw him,’ she said.

  ‘It’s like that.’

  ‘She always … she always…’

  I let her cry. Later, as we waited, I tried to talk with her. I asked what she did for a job.

  ‘I’m at school.’

  ‘I thought you were older.’

  ‘I’m sixteen. She’s not yet. He could go to prison.’

  ‘You’re both too young for this,’ I said, adding silently that Willi was too old. But I thought it likely that he too had misjudged their ages. Prison, I thought: impossible, he has to stay free, he’s a natural man. I overlooked, for some time, that I was implicated.

  He swam back, strong against the current, and gripped the dinghy and grinned at Dulcie as though it might be her turn.

  ‘Where’s my friend?’ she cried.

  ‘Waiting for her clothes.’ He took them, took his own, held them bunched in one hand, high out of the water, and floated away down the mangrove fringe.

  ‘Bring the boat down and pick us up,’ he called to me.

  I wondered whether they had lain on mud or grass. I could see nothing wrong with what they’d done, in spite of Phyllis’s age, but that was a judgement influenced by sun and water, and no doubt by my concupiscence (no small thing), and I knew, when I thought coolly, how the world would see it. They clambered aboard from the mangroves and Willi took the oars from me by right and guided us to the river mouth. He treated Phyllis casually but was kind to Dulcie, which I thought clever. Kindness was not easy for him. He walked on the beach with her a little way and patted her like an older brother. Phyllis grinned at me.

  ‘She’s a dope.’ I was learning words. ‘A real sap.’

  When the girls had gone I said, ‘You know how old Phyllis is?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ I said. ‘She’s still at school.’

  Fifteen brought a frown to his face. He was not pleased that she had lied to him. ‘I know about school. She’s going to wear her uniform next time.’

  ‘She’ll tell on you. You could go to prison.’

  ‘Not me. I made her happy, Josef.’

  ‘The other one will tell.’

  ‘Dulcie?’ He liked the name. ‘I’m meeting her on Wednesday night. We’re going to the pictures.’ He bared his big horse teeth at me. ‘You are not trying. We must stop these little girls from being virgins.’

  ‘I’ll bet your Phyllis wasn’t.’

  ‘No. And nor’s the other one.’ He patted me the way he’d patted her. ‘There is nothing wrong with fucking, my friend. It is one of the main things we’re here for.’

  He had his way with me as surely as he had it with those girls. ‘I’ll leave it so, although it brings a bad taste to my mouth. But that was Auckland, where, as I’ve said, things melt and become promiscuous. In Wellington, on that cold harbour, he was still the boss, but there I learned to stand on my own.

  The other main thing was politics. Willi was being political, in his way, on the night I met him. I had been in Auckland several weeks and could see no reason to stay longer, or to explore further south. I thought I might go to Australia and then perhaps to India and Egypt, and creep home to my parents by that route. I drew a map for Susi, showing the places I would stop, with a likely date alongside each, and drew myself woeful on an elephant, then a camel, and looking happier at the Parthenon. I would be home in Vienna by March, perhaps in time for some skiing, and then, in summer, we would swim at the Kuchelau but this time keep out of the Nazis’ way. My money (Father’s money) would last until March, I said.

  Then, having decided, I began rushing about like a tourist. I went to Rotorua on the bus and saw the geysers and the boiling mud and Maori children diving for pennies under a bridge. Why am I not where I belong?, I thought. I went to Taupo, the rapids and the falls and more steam hissing and mud plopping, and saw a mountain smoking far away, and thought, Interesting, interesting, but Vienna is where I should be. Back in Auckland, I needed to hear my own language. I needed, for an hour or two, not to translate but just to let my ear hear and my tongue speak, and meet the lost native part of myself again. So I went along to the Deutscher Verein, the German club.

  As well as need in this there was bravado. Although I had been propelle
d by my father (by Mother too), I also felt that I had run away. Walking through a door into a room where I might not be welcome, where indeed I might be insulted or attacked, appealed to me as a blow I might strike for the cause I had left behind: as, perhaps, an Aktion. It might define me in a place where definition was lost. I did not expect real trouble, perhaps only veiled hostility, perhaps even, from a few, a civil welcome, civil enquiry, this far from home – and, whatever else, words in a tongue that brought a dampness to my eye when I spoke aloud to myself.

  I walked from my hotel through a park and stopped to view the little city from the top of a hill. A red and yellow tramcar passed through an intersection. The sight of it, the sound of it, said ‘home’, and I thought, I’m going and this place will be as though it never was. A ship, all lights, was steaming into the harbour. I wondered if I might be on board when it steamed out. Tomorrow I would make enquiries.

  In a dark street I found a narrow stairway and went boldly up. A green corridor with a brown lino floor – was everything in this country green and brown? – led to an open door with light streaming out. I heard voices murmuring and although I could not make out the words it was my tongue. They stopped as I reached the door in my creaking shoes. Four faces, four white moons, shone at me; but it was the fifth, and the thing beside it, that stopped me in my tracks: Adolf Hitler and his flag, the Hakenkreuz. The space and time between me and Vienna rushed away and I was there, I stood entrapped, swaying in the lighted door of the enemy. Now I felt the slimy crawling thing, here on the wrong side of the world.

  Let me name those three men at the table, sitting underneath their leader and their flag. I was to know them on Somes Island: Geissler, Hoch, von Schaukel. Geissler with his narrow head and flattened ears and a slug moustache copied from the man on the wall; Hoch with beer face, sky-blue eyes, glass-marble eyes (yes, I am aware of it, Hermann Goering); von Schaukel with oiled hair and a curling mouth and pince-nez at the end of his thin nose – bored, aristocratic, above the fray, that was von Schaukel, but Prussian above all, and willing to pass the orders on.

  The fourth man? Willi Gauss? I’ll come to him.

  They knew me. While my eyes stayed fixed on Hitler with his holstered pistol and black stare, and the black hooked cross on its red ground, they knew me in that time. There is no place to hide, anywhere.

  Geissler nodded. He smiled and, I don’t imagine it, beckoned me. Von Schaukel curled his mouth and turned away. Willi Gauss watched with interest. It was Norbert Hoch who spoke. So I heard the language I had come for.

  ‘Run, little Jew, before we squash you.’

  It was a large room. Benches stood around the walls, stacked three and four high. Inside the door was a wooden chair with a white heavy blue-ringed porridge bowl on it, meant for coins, just like in church.

  I had no clarity of purpose. I was armed with rage and loathing. And quickness too. I stepped into the room and gave the red salute. I seized the bowl by its lip and pitched it underarm at the man on the wall. Hit, I think, the flag instead. Turned and ran.

  I can see them rise: Geissler, Hoch, Willi Gauss. Then I was in the corridor, sliding, running, bouncing off the walls.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ cried a voice. I flung a backward glance from the head of the stairs and saw the big man, the perfect Teuton, burst into the corridor and fend himself off the opposite wall and come at me.

  I was too quick for him. I went down the stairs four at a time and into the street, and ran for the lighted end of it where cars might pass and people walk – although in this city which closed down for the night that was hoping for too much. I heard his steps come after me, but was confident, I was elated, and turned long enough to throw another clenched-fist salute at him.

  ‘Stop,’ he cried softly, ‘I’m your friend.’

  ‘Ha!’ I responded. ‘Mörder! Schläger!’

  In the lighted street I slowed down, to play with him and let him think he gained, then I kept ahead a dozen steps, calling Viennese insults over my shoulder.

  ‘Look,’ he said, stopping, ‘come back’ I’ll put my hands in my pockets. I’ll give you a free hit. You can have two. But we must talk.’

  ‘What would I talk to a Nazi thug about?’

  ‘I’m not a Nazi. I hate them too.’

  ‘Hands off Austria. Free Thälmann,’ I cried. A strange conversation for an Auckland city street. It struck us both, and we laughed, but singly, not with each other.

  ‘Ah little Jew, I love you,’ Willi said. ‘You are so brave.’

  ‘Don’t call me Jew.’

  ‘Why not? It is what you are.’ I had let him come close, confident I could dance away. ‘But I don’t care. It’s your politics I’m after. You can keep your race.’

  ‘What do you know about my politics?’

  In answer, he gave a slow, half-mocking salute – strange too for an Auckland street, that upraised fist.

  ‘You’re up there with a gang of Nazis,’ I said.

  Willi smiled. ‘Ah, but you see, I am infiltrating. I am finding out their game.’

  ‘They can’t do anything here.’

  ‘No, not much. Propaganda, that is what they do. Painting pretty colours on the Nazis is their game. The German consul helps. He brings pressure on us, all the Germans here. I will write an article when I have enough.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Those ones? Little cur Berliners and Müncheners, that is all. They love their Führer, he has made them feel so brave. He tells them, Go out in the world and show your teeth. So they piddle on all the lamp-posts here.’

  ‘They’re not spies?’

  ‘No, not spies. They’re businessmen. Chemicals and cutlery and suitcases. That is Hoch and Geissler and von Schaukel. Geissler is married to a New Zealander. She is a worse Nazi than him.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Willi Gauss. Journalist. At your service.’ He gave a satirical click-heeled Prussian bow.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘We cannot talk now. They will be expecting me back. With blood on my knuckles. Can you spare some blood?’

  ‘No,’ I said, stepping away.

  ‘Very well. I will say you were too fast for me. They like it when Jews run. You dived down a rat hole like a rat.’ He raised his hand. ‘Do not punch me. I am too strong. What is your name?’

  ‘Josef Mandl. And I’m not a German, I’m an Austrian.’

  ‘I can tell that from your Geschnatter. A Viennese. How long do you think there will be an Austria, Josef? No, I do not want your slogans. Do you have a family in Vienna?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell them to get out. Tell them now. And don’t go back.’ He stepped away. ‘You see, I have put myself in your power. It is not recommended. But here at least there is no Gestapo. Come and see me and we will talk. Come on Saturday.’ He stopped and pulled a notebook and a pencil from his pocket. He wrote and tore the page out. That is my address. You take the ferry.’

  ‘You’ll have a gang of thugs to beat me up.’

  ‘Ah’ – he smiled sadly, and yet mockingly, and let the piece of paper flutter to the ground – ‘come or not. As you please. And be careful, Josef’ – raising his fist. ‘They like communists here much less than Nazis.’

  I watched him walk away to the street light at the corner: a tall man, shabbily dressed (although I knew it later for carelessness), looking – how did he manage it, through confidence, through arrogance, through knowledge of a history and a cause? – looking German. He was unhurried and in charge. It made me shiver. I did not want to trust him, and yet he had said ‘trust me’ in a simple way that belied arrogance.

  I picked up the piece of paper and saw that he lived in a place called Milford. Back in my hotel room I looked at a map. It would take a bus as well as a ferry ride to get there. And Saturday – by Saturday I wanted to be on a ship heading away from this dull little land.

  Yet I let that ship go, and I took the ferry and the bus. Why was t
hat?

  We walked on Milford beach from the reef at the southern end to the creek and the saltwater baths at the other, then back again, five or six times, exchanging histories; yet when it was done I had said everything I’d ever wanted to say and he, although he used many words and was large in his ambitions and his hatreds and his cause, had given me, once again, just his name and trade. His evasions, which I did not recognise fully on that occasion, came, I think, from habit; or perhaps he simply practised for the time of more strict interrogations to come. He told me lies as well. That was practice, and for fun. It pleased him to deceive, it was his nature.

  I shall put down the facts that I gleaned over the years. He was born in Berlin in 1909, of lower middle-class parents. His father was a clerk and a drinker and waster and wife-beater. His mother, from Swabia, was the daughter of a magistrate, which may sound grand, but in the Germany of that time a magistrate, a country magistrate, although he had great power in his court, was no more than a legal drudge, poorly paid and with little hope of advancement. Will’s grandfather was, as far as I can tell, a failed bitter man trapped in a small town. His daughter married beneath her and escaped to Berlin, where another failed man reduced her to a frightened kitchen drudge. Willi had beatings too and was hungry most of the time. His father went to the war and died there in the mud or on the wire – and good riddance, Willi said. His mother sent him to his grandfather in the country. In the collapse, the hunger, at war’s end, the old man gave legal advice in the inns and taverns of the town and was paid in bits of bacon and sausage and bread. Sometimes he took the boy with him. The wheat and rye still ripened, the pigs grew fat and cream turned into cheese in the same old way, and Willi, thin and hungry as the farmers chewed their sausage and drank their beer, boasting of fornication with the dairy maid – yes, he was selective, like me – Willi began to ripen too for his life in the politics of the back room and the street.