by Thomas, Lee
He crossed the room and again entered the hall, leaving me to wonder if I had hurt his feelings or angered him, though he seemed nothing but happy. When he returned he stood on the far side of the living room, back straight, eyes sharp. He put his hands on his hips, appraising us like a sergeant inspecting his squad.
“You need ice for your head,” he announced. He spun on his heels and marched into the hall again.
Bum nudged my shoulder and pointed rapidly at the front door. He clearly didn’t want to spend another minute in Mr. Lang’s house. I shook my head and put a finger to my swollen lips so he didn’t say anything that might get us in trouble.
From the kitchen, I heard my neighbor hacking at a block of ice with a pick. Strange grunts accompanied the sounds of chopping and I realized Mr. Lang was laughing. Anxiety rolled through my veins, lighting up my nerves with tension. The laughter sounded harsh and crazy. Mr. Lang marched back into the living room, holding a rag that bulged around a hunk of ice the size of my fist. He put the cloth to my brow.
“You hold this,” he said, “and I’ll teach you about bullies and wars and men, yes?”
“Okay,” I said.
“You are a man, yes?”
“I guess.” I didn’t feel much like a man with my wounds and the ice against my head, but I understood what he meant.
“And you?” he asked of Bum, who nodded cautiously. “I am a man, yes?”
“Yeah,” Bum and I agreed in unison.
“So, we are all men. You agree?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You see me and you say, ‘Good morning, Ernst, isn’t the weather nice?’ because we are civilized human beings. You don’t hate me, because we are, in this moment the same. You couldn’t just pull out a gun and shoot old Ernst, because he is a man like you, yes?”
“I suppose.”
“Now imagine we are at war. You and I wear different uniforms. We aim guns at each other. You are an American and I am a Kraut. You would shoot me then, yes?”
“You’re not a Kraut.”
“No? Why? I am German. I love my country. What makes me different?”
“You just are,” I said. He was my neighbor. He’d helped me. He wasn’t some lunatic butcher under Hitler’s command.
“Nuh,” he said, appearing frustrated. He looked around the room and scratched the back of his neck. “You do not want to understand,” he muttered. Then his eyes lit up and he turned back to me. Absently, he kicked his shoes off, sliding them across the floor to thump against the wall. “Your name is Tim, yes?”
“Uh huh.” He knew that so why was he asking?
“What if I called you something else? What if I decided to call you Tater, because you like your mother’s potato salad so much?”
Bum laughed nervously and poked me with his elbow. “You’re a Tater.”
“Yes. It isn’t a bad word is it? Maybe funny. Maybe a little odd. But it’s not a bad word, nuh?”
“I suppose not.”
“Good,” Ernst said. He took three long strides across the floor and leapt onto the sofa next to Bum, who screeched and slid close to me. Mr. Lang stood at his full height and peered down. “I have just taken away your name and made you a thing. You are no longer a young boy called Tim who likes to swim and eat potato salad. You’re now a Tater, yes? You are not an individual man, but a Tater like all of those other boys who like their mothers’ potato salad.”
“A lot of people like potato salad,” Bum said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “A lot of people and they are all Taters. Now, I look at you and I don’t see Tim or his fat friend, I see a Tater, and I see that Taters wear torn pants and dirty shirts. You are sloppy like a pig. I think it must be true that you never bathe. Certainly you can’t be smart. A person who is smart knows to keep his clothes clean and his face washed. How very terrible Taters are because they are filthy, wretched brutes that can’t even keep their clothes clean.”
He took a step back and climbed onto the arm of the sofa. He teetered for a moment. Then he raised his hands and put his palms against the ceiling to steady himself. “And I took care of you after you were hurt. You didn’t thank me.”
“I was…”
“You didn’t thank me,” Mr. Lang interrupted. “Therefore Taters are ungrateful and selfish. And you came into my house and sat on my sofa and got dirt on it. So Taters are also inconsiderate.” He pretended to shiver. “What awful creatures these Taters are. They are nothing like me. I am clean and smart and grateful and considerate. I am a human being, with feelings. You are a thing, a nasty ungrateful thing.”
What did this have to do with war or bullies or anything? Taters weren’t real. They were just these fictional things he’d made up. I wasn’t a Tater. I was still Tim.
My neighbor hopped off the arm of the sofa and landed on the floor with a thunk. He walked to the wall and grabbed his shoes, then sat in the rocking chair next to the couch.
“You call them Krauts,” Ernst said, leaning forward to tie his shoes, “but they were just little boys who liked their mothers’ cooking and liked to swim and hike and play games. If you knew that, it would be harder to kill them, yes? It is easier to kill a thing than a little boy.”
“You can’t be saying the Nazis are good?” Bum asked.
“No,” Ernst replied quickly. “No, they aren’t good. They are sick. He made them sick. He twisted them. I’m saying they’re human. Like you and me and that boy who beat you up. That boy didn’t see Tim. He saw something low and beneath himself, and that made it easy for him to hurt you. The Nazis have done the same to the Jew and the gypsy. I watched it happen. They need to find things to hate so that they won’t hate themselves.”
“Not all people are bullies,” Bum said defiantly, standing from the sofa. “Good people don’t go around trying to hurt each other.”
“Then I am wrong,” Mr. Lang said. A cloud of distraction ran over his face and then vanished. He forced a smile, though his eyes still seemed engaged by distant thoughts. “Yes. Good. No more talk of it.” He helped me to my feet and patted me on the back. “You go home now. I hope you feel better soon.”
And we were dismissed. Mr. Lang didn’t even try to argue with Bum. He didn’t need to. My neighbor had won the argument. We simply didn’t understand what we were arguing about, and by the time I understood it many days later, the damage was irrevocably done.
Twelve: The German
July 27, 1944 – Translated from the German
I act foolishly with the boys. It is exciting to be addressing new minds not yet set in their beliefs, though my elation gets away from me and I climb on the sofa like a drunkard using a bar for a pulpit. At first I am a teacher instructing the boys, and then I am a child, performing buffoonery for his friends, and when this oddity of character dawns on me, the fear that my mind and actions are not my own takes hold. I end the conversation and send my neighbor Tim and his fat friend away.
Rarely have I ventured out since the second boy was found. I hear of the disharmony in town and see the anger in the eyes of the Americans, and though I am not afraid of these people, neither am I comfortable amid so much simmering emotion. They carry the fear and anger of revolutionaries but suppress the action, and for this I should be grateful as the hate they hold is for my countrymen. Still it reminds me of the worst days of the Weimar, when all was thought but nothing was done.
The excitement of my young guests has passed, leaving me saddened and convinced that my own company will not be good tonight. It is better to get out of this cell house and go. It is fortunate the sheriff’s curfew applies only to women and children. I consider the Longhorn Tavern, but know my greeting there will be harsh, and the Mueller Beer Hall is out of the question, because for all of my dislike of the repressed revolutionary, I loathe to see it more on the faces of my countrymen, so I choose to walk out of town to Mitch’s. On the walk, I think of what I told the boys and feel a compulsion to have them back in the house so that they might learn more
of soldiers and human beings, but my neighbor’s friend was afraid – perhaps thinking me the killer of young men – and I do not think they will return.
The walk is long. July is a hellish month in this place – always hot and dry. By the time I reach Mitch’s my throat is parched, and I already wish to be back in my own house.
This place is dishonest. Not like the beer halls at home, where even the lies were infused with truth. These people know no better. It is their culture to be dishonest, to be masks and types rather than individual human beings. The building itself is a deceit. The walls are simple pine planks sealed with paste, more like fencing than the walls of a proper business. Tables made from old casks with wooden disk tops stand about the room. Light bulbs like hanged white kittens dangle from the rafters, emitting scant illumination, providing much darkness in the corners for those who drink alone. Smoke rests in a thick cloud over the bar as I enter, casting a dozen men and women in gray haze. All heads turn when I enter. They look. Some nod their heads. Others scowl. The rest realize I’m of no interest to them and turn back to the bar. They’ve seen me a hundred times over the years, and I am nothing but another German to them.
An old man in a tattered felt hat plays his guitar on a stage made of beer crates. A frown cuts a face that resembles a pale desiccated gourd. His gray suit is old. The knees mended with black patches a dozen times over. Clawed hands clamp filthy strings. The music shares a rhythm with the polka, but not the joy. The tempo is too slow. A minor key. The music reminds me of death.
At the bar, I order a beer, or rather what these people call beer. Even the drink is deceitful. It has no depth. It is a weak beverage made of grain, aspiring to be more. The man behind the bar is named Howard and he is attractive – broad shoulders and thick forearms. The arms of a man who appreciates labor. A soldier’s arms. Howard reminds me of William Powell, only thicker in the neck and face with a full mustache rather than the pencil-thin whiskers the actor wears. Such painstaking vanity is beyond these people.
I pay for my drink and cross to a table. Standing behind it, I watch the man on the stage and the way his hand moves in gentle strokes over the front of his guitar as if he is comforting a dying dog in his lap.
The weathered guitar player ends his song and begins another that sounds like the last. There is no happiness here. The men at the bar laugh at crass jokes about Niggers and Bean-eaters and Japs and Krauts. They play patriot, condemning all that is not of their culture, but they share no military victory among them, so their boasts are meaningless, their pride empty. Pretenses to intellect are laughably brittle. One man suggests the Third Reich is nothing more than a madman’s device. His companions agree and toast his idiocy, unaware of the Chicken Farmer and the Pilot and the others who feed the figurehead lies and repulsive strategies. They don’t understand the core of this evil. Few do. I was there when it began, yet even I underestimated the brutal juggernaut that destroys my homeland.
The fool turns from his audience to glare at me. He is a foul-looking man with a pocked bulb nose and a prominent brow. I’m reminded of a Rottweiler. Such a dog and this man share the same eyes, always alert for weakness and meat.
I meet his gaze but offer no expression such a dolt is likely to interpret. Once I would have been bold. His stupidity would have put the blood in my cock and the argument in my throat, but no more. Ernst is gone and Ernst lives.
The king is dead, yes?
The man turns away from me, refocusing his attention on his friends. He makes a comment and they all laugh. Two of his drunken companions look in my direction, confirming that I have just been insulted. I drink my beer and look at the old man and his guitar.
From the corner of my eye, I notice a couple at the end of the bar. The woman is stout with waves of curly hair pushed back in barettes. The bands of her undergarments create trenches in her fat. Lumps and rolls strain against her snug dress. It has magnolia blossoms printed on cloth the color of midnight sky. The man next to her is smiling. He is masculine of feature and bearing, though wholly unremarkable. I would not notice this face in a crowd. He has worn a suit to this place, which strikes me as discordant with the atmosphere. Perhaps he is a salesman traveling through. He nods and leans close to the woman’s ear, perhaps to tell her a secret but his eyes fall on me.
A group of three men enters. The door slams open amid guffaws of laughter. They lean on one another, already intoxicated though it is still very early. They are Germans and they speak boisterously. Memories of home cut my chest. Among this group, I recognize my friend Karl Baecker. He has changed the spelling of his name to Carl Baker. He called this assimilation. Karl is dead and Carl lives, yes?
For a moment I wonder why they are not at the beer garden in town, and it occurs to me, they are returning from Austin. Carl lifts a hand in greeting and calls my name. One member of his party is uncommonly tall. He is a thin-armed man with white hair and a mustache the color of carrot soup. His attention falls on me, and his words stutter mid-sentence, and he halts in the center of the room as Carl and the other man continue to the bar. This towering German makes no secret of his interest in my face. His attention is uncomfortable. I do not match his stare as I had with the Rottweiler-eyed fool at the bar. Instead, I pretend to find interest in the old guitarist’s dreary music.
He taps a foot in time with his dirge. A hole at the toe of his brown shoe has been patched with cardboard.
The man finishes looking at me and joins Carl at the end of the bar. Next to them, the fat woman and the unremarkable man lean closer together, allowing Carl to speak his order to Howard. The tall man taps Carl’s shoulder impatiently. His lips move frantically. He is suddenly flushed. The third man in the group, who is built short and round, peers around his back and his eyes narrow.
He shakes his head, which only infuriates the tall man.
It is time for me to leave. I finish my beer and set the bottle on the table. Before I reach the door a man shouts.
“Murderer,” he calls. “Brute.”
Turning slowly toward his voice, my pulse quickens. Now the blood is in my cock and my skin tingles. The men and women at the bar look on with confusion. The tall man is shouting in German, and though they do not understand the words, they recognize the prelude to violence. It is a tune these people enjoy.
“Eh?” I call.
“Stormtrooper scum,” the tall man bellows, and he shakes his fist at me, and there is a folding knife in that fist, and Carl and the fat man hold my accuser back. Carl has his shoulders. The fat man his waist. “Thug. Brute. Murderer.”
“Take this shit outside, you crazy Kraut fuck,” Howard calls.
The old man stops playing his guitar. He stands from the wooden stool and backs off of the beer crates.
My accuser tears himself free of Carl, who is too drunk to recapture him. As the tall man moves forward, he drags his obese friend over the floor comically. Obscenities pour from his lips as he struggles to remove the fat anchor from his waist. He screams the name of a dead man – a name profoundly familiar to me – and I am lost.
With a twist of his hips, the corpulent friend is cast aside and the tall man charges forward. The knife comes down to his waist. His grip and the positioning of the weapon tell me he’s been taught to fight – tells me he is willing to kill. The woman at the bar giggles loudly. The men begin shouting approval. Howard and Carl are the only ones to voice opposition to the impending conflict. The others are already drunk on blood. This is their coliseum.
The tall man bears down on me. As I expect, his knife arcs upward before he plants his feet. He is still moving, which makes him vulnerable. Yes, he was taught to fight, but he doesn’t fight well. Stepping out of the blade’s path is easy. I twist my body and let his momentum carry him into my range. A fist to his ear disorients him, sends him teetering to the side, and a second blow to his kidneys drops him to the floor, and he is easy to kill now. Exposed. Weak. I could apply my hands like a vice to either side of his head and snap his
neck. I could punch his throat and crush his windpipe. I could break his arm and take his knife and sink the blade deep into his chest.
I realize I am cursing this man. Vulgar expressions rumble from my throat like the growls of a wounded cur. My palm slaps his head and my curling fingers ensnare his white hair. I am behind him now and I pull back so that he can see my face. He swings with the knife. Predictable and foolish. With a simple motion, I could drive it into his eye. But I turn aside as the blade slashes smoke-filled air. I snatch his wrist and turn it until the joint pops and the knife clatters to the floor. I yank the tall man’s hair and feel strands come loose in my palm. He cries out. Again he calls me thug and brute and murderer.
His friends, Carl and the fat man, are near me now. I feel them at my back. Their voices are desperate, but they sound so far away and scratching as if shouting at me through a hailstorm. A hand falls on my shoulder and I coil my body, twisting to see what idiot has touched me. It is Carl, of course. His eyes are pools of worry, overflowing with tears, and he begs me to leave the tall man alone. He calls the man Udo, says they are cousins. The name means nothing to me. Names are for the corpse registry, for the carvers of stones. I am turning away when I notice the fat man’s face. It is a childlike face, the face of a boy who is seeing violence for the first time. It frightens him, and his expression of fear pours through me like cold water.
I release Udo and brush strands of his hair from my palm.
