Sergeant Salinger

by Jerome Charyn

  “Maja, is it true that Sonny and Doris were child prodigies … that they were on the radio as little wizards—quiz kids?”

  Maja giggled with white chocolate in her mouth. “It’s an invention, Liebchen. He is always lying, that Sonny, making fibs. He was never on the radio. He was a normal child.”

  “And Doris?” Sylvia asked. “Gott, they look like twins … doubles with the same dark eyes.”

  Maja smoked and ironed and gobbled chocolate, all with the same intensity and concentration. “Ah, she is the clever one, that Doris. But she can get you any blouse or skirt, take it right off the racks at Bloomingdale’s. I have an entire wardrobe, thanks to Doris Salinger. But she was not so lucky in love. Her Mann was a gigolo…. I’ll tell you a secret, Sylvia. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. He came into my room at night.”

  Sylvia was befuddled. “You live here—in this room—with the Salingers?”

  “Dummkopf, of course,” Maja said, teasing Sylvia with her swollen eyes. “I am a live-in maid. I would not accept such a position otherwise. I have been with the Salingers for sixteen years, before they moved to Park Avenue. I have always had the finest employers. Herr Salinger is a gentleman. I call him ‘Vati.’”

  Sylvia was still perplexed. “But they do not seem so fond of the German language.”

  “I don’t care. He is Vati. But Doris’ Mann, he sent me love notes. He was without shame. He was also a crook. He stole from Doris and Herr Salinger. He wanted to steal from me. All of us, we had to push him out the door. It was a terrible scandal. And now that you and Sonny are here, Doris has come back to live with us, in her old room.”

  “The two quiz kids reunited,” Sylvia said. “And Madame Salinger, what about her and her red hair?”

  Maja pounded the ironing board with a steam iron that looked like an enormous clubfoot. She was removing a crease in a pillowcase. “We fight like cats and dogs. She threw an ashtray at my head once. We had to call an ambulance.”

  “Then why do you stay?” Sylvia asked.

  “Because,” Maja said. “I crave the excitement. It’s in my blood. Being around the Salingers is like living in a cabaret. Frau Miriam loves Sonny, but she is not always so kind. She has found a name for you.”

  “Well?”

  Maja pounded the board again. “But you must guard it as a secret—swear. I could lose my job, and I’ve grown lazy and fat, on white chocolate.”

  Dark pellets appeared in Sylvia’s eyes. “What does that Rotkopf call me behind my back?”

  “ ‘Dracula’s Daughter,’ ” Maja said.

  Sylvia inherited her husband’s habit—her cheek started to twitch.

  Dracula’s Daughter.

  “Is that what they think of me?”

  “What do you expect?” Maja asked. “A Mädel from Nuremberg. But you must not give me away.”

  “Maja,” Sylvia said, “I will guard your little secret—with my life.”

  But she stopped eating Doris’ white chocolate. She shouldn’t have come to America with a husband who had lost the art of making love to her. Yet she wanted to heal him somehow. She’d spent much of her childhood in Switzerland, in Luzerne. She could have joined the Bund Deutcher Mädel—the Nazi Girl Scouts—at her gymnasium in Nuremberg, but she did not. Yes, she was loyal to Herr Doktor Ulrich Fleck, the director of Krankenhaus 31, but not because he had been with the storm troopers and the SS. He was devoted to his patients, whoever they were. He understood das Trauma, the annihilation of the spirit and the psyche under mental and physical duress. He would not permit the German generals or the Gestapo access to his clinic. He guarded his patients, mostly uneducated farm boys who were just as afraid of killing as of being killed, guarded them with his own stubborn stamina, until the Army of Occupation arrested him and removed his picture from the wall of Krankenhaus 31. The new director did not have Herr Fleck’s gifts. He could not deal with a farm boy’s calvary, could not wander through the psychiatric ward for hours, seeing patient after patient, singing to them, holding their hands while they wept. The new director rarely visited the wards. And she was not welcome there, under his pale stewardship.

  5.

  SHE WORE WHITE PAINT TO DINNER, like a mime or a master clown. Sonny didn’t interfere. And not a word was said, though Doris had that familiar subversive smile. Sylvia didn’t understand the strange habits of the Salingers. Maja, the maid, sat at the table and dined with the family, like a minor relative, or a jester right out of King Lear. It was Miriam who cooked and Miriam who served—the Rotkopf herself. The dining table had four leaves and could have sat ten or twelve, if there had been more Salingers.

  They had roast beef and cauliflower and yams, and Jarlsberg from Herr Salinger’s own company stock, and a bottle of Bordeaux that he’d saved from his minuscule wine cellar in the basement of 1133. As the Vati of the clan, he opened the bottle, savored the cork, let the bottle sit, then hopped around the table as he poured, and proposed a toast to the bride and groom.

  “To our Sonny,” he said, “and to Sylvie, his ravishing French bride.”

  Now it was Sylvia who had the subversive smile. She stood up and said, “We must put an end to this little farce, please. I am not French and I never was. Your son had my papers forged. I am a German citizen, Mrs. Sylvia Salinger. And I am not a letter carrier. I was an intern at the psychiatric ward in Nuremberg.”

  “You’re still welcome,” Miriam said without standing up. “But why the white paint?”

  Sylvia knew she was betraying Maja, and that they could never be allies again. But she had to risk that rupture.

  “Frau Salinger, I couldn’t be Dracula’s Daughter without some white paint on my face.”

  Miriam sat where she was and stared at Maja as if she meant to stick Sol’s corkscrew between her eyes. “Someone at this table has a big mouth.”

  Maja’s face reddened, but it was almost like a rash. She wasn’t frightened of Miriam, wasn’t alarmed in the least.

  “Madame, did you want me to lie to the war bride?”

  “Ingrate,” Miriam said. “It was a private matter, between family members.”

  But Maja wouldn’t be swayed. “Isn’t Sylvia a member of the family now?”

  “That’s not the issue,” Miriam said. “Don’t play semantics with me. You sit with us at my table. You eat our food.”

  “And wash your underwear—wash, wash, wash.”

  Sonny’s hands were trembling. He couldn’t even cover the twitch in his cheek. Doris had to intervene.

  “Mother, you will apologize to Sylvia, and you will not call her Dracula’s Daughter ever again.”

  But Miriam was on a tear, and she wouldn’t be tangled with. “Look who’s taken the high road, the princess of Bloomingdale’s, the buyer of buyers.”

  The house telephone rang. It was Maja who picked up the phone. “Yes … yes.” She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s here,” she said.

  “Don’t be so damn mysterious,” Miriam said. “Who’s here?”

  “Billy Samuels.”

  “That’s impossible,” Sol said. “We haven’t seen that gonef in years. What’s he doing here—at dinnertime?”

  Maja kept her hand over the mouthpiece. “He wants to congratulate Sonny and his bride.”

  “Send him away,” Miriam said.

  Sonny stood up. His cheek was no longer twitching. “I like Billy—I always did.”

  “He stole from us,” Sol said. “But Sonny’s the war hero … whatever he says.”

  Doris was bristling. “He was my husband, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t I be consulted?”

  “Certainly,” Sol said. “You’re the boss in this matter.”

  “Ah, the hell with it,” Doris said with a wave of her hand. “Show him up.”

  And they all waited while Sol muttered, “That gonef.” A prince among Park Avenue Gentiles and vice president at a pork and ham company, yet he never forgot the Yiddish of his childhood.

  The doorbell rang. A kind
of panic arose around the table; even Benny, who sat between his master’s legs, began to growl. It was Miriam who was the first to collect her wits. “Maja, be a darling and let the gonef in.”

  Maja curtsied like an eloquent rag doll and opened the unlocked door. Billy Samuels wandered in wearing sharkskin shoes. He had a blond handsomeness, with sideburns and a blond mustache. And Sonny realized why he had once worn a mustache in occupied France. He was cultivating Billy’s debonair look as a kind of talisman, but he shaved off the mustache once they got to the Hürtgen and had to live for a month among all the devils in a darkened wood.

  Billy hadn’t prospered without the Salingers. His cuffs were ragged and his necktie was unclean. He was carrying a bouquet of wilted roses for the bride. Sol had helped Billy build his career in the wholesale grocery business, then abandoned Billy to his own fate. Billy seemed to twist about in some invisible wind. He nearly tottered, but he still managed to wink at Sylvia and give her the wilted flowers.

  “Sonny, I couldn’t resist. Home from Germany, and here I am. I had to introduce myself to the lucky girl.”

  “Billy,” Sol said, “we’ve hardly seen or heard from you in seven years.”

  “A mere detail,” Billy said. “My heart has always been with the Salingers. May I sit?”

  “Maja,” Miriam said with a gruffness in her voice, “set the table for our Billy. Give him some silver. He can’t eat with his fingers.”

  It was Sonny who got up, went into the sunken living room, swiped an armchair, and put it at the far edge of the table, near one of the unfolded leaves. He listened to the clatter of silverware as Maja set a place for Billy. Sol poured him some wine with a half turn of the wrist, like the most experienced sommelier.

  “Mazel,” Billy said, “to Sonny Salinger and …”

  Sylvia sensed a new ally in this raggedy blond man. They were both outcasts at 1133. “Sylvia,” she said. “My name is Sylvia.” She put the stem of a wilted rose, with its prickles, between her breasts, while Billy began to gobble up all the roast beef that was on his plate.

  “Stop,” Sol said. “We haven’t said grace.”

  Sonny’s hand was trembling again. “Dad, what’s this? We never said grace, not once.”

  “It was your mother’s idea,” Sol said. “We started to recite a benediction while you were fighting in France.”

  “Was it a wager with God?” Sonny asked. “Dad, were you playing the odds, like a bookmaker? I was in a death camp, and there were no damn angels on my shoulder.”

  “Darling, you shouldn’t blaspheme,” Miriam said. “We recited a prayer for your safe return.”

  Sol clasped his hands together, shut his eyes, and chanted, “Oh Lord, bless this meal. We are humbled in Your presence and grateful that You have given Sonny back to us.” Sol opened his eyes. “Now, Billy, you can dig in.”

  “No, Dad,” Sonny insisted. “You have to bless the living and the dead, and those who lost their limbs.”

  “Darling,” Miriam chirped, “it’s a benediction, not a battlefield.”

  “Then I can’t accept your blessing,” Sonny said, “and I can’t eat this meal.”

  He got up from the table, thrust his napkin down, and went into his old room, with the schnauzer trailing behind.

  Sol was bewildered, forlorn. “I don’t understand. Miriam, did I do something wrong?”

  It was Doris who went after Sonny, galloped across the living room and the foyer in three great strides and entered her brother’s room, which he now shared with Sylvia. Their trunk had yet to arrive from the piers, and Sonny had gone shopping with Sylvia at Saks and Bloomingdale’s, with Doris as a kind of commandant. Sonny still had his clothes in the closet from the time before he was drafted. He preferred his old suits, and wouldn’t even buy a new fedora. He had a signed picture of Pete Reiser, Brooklyn’s batting, running, and fielding wizard, on his nightstand. Sonny had always been a Dodger fan. But he had a particular affection for Pistol Pete, who kept crashing into the far wall at Ebbets Field and fracturing his skull as he reached for impossible fly balls. Both Sonny and Pistol Pete were born in the same year—1919. And Sonny loved to compare Pete Reiser’s acrobatics in the outfield to a writer’s quest to discover his own style.

  “Doris,” he would say, “Pete has his music and I have mine. But it’s all about the reach, the desire to do what can’t be done.”

  “And his reward,” Doris would say, “was a broken head.”

  “Same as mine,” Sonny would answer like an acolyte, “same as mine.”

  Sonny was lying on the same narrow hardwood bed he’d slept in as a child—Miriam and Sol had made scant accommodations for Sylvia. She had to share whatever Sonny had. Doris fondled the covers of the worn Dostoyevsky classics in Sonny’s bookcase. Her brother read rapaciously, like a hawk, outlining sentences, savoring words. He had the same desk he’d had as a child, an old shoemaker’s table. He’d brought his army-issue Corona back from the war. There was a manuscript on the desk, a scatter of pages with scribbles all over them; Doris couldn’t decipher a single word.

  “Sonny, is that your Holden Caulfield? When was the last time you worked on it?”

  He was lying facedown, like a floating corpse. “I can’t remember, sis. It’s been so long …. Even before we drove into that death camp.”

  “Then why did you stay in Nuremberg a whole other year? You could have come back with the Fourth Division.”

  “Yeah,” Sonny said, “the hero with the nervous tic. Nuremberg made more sense. I could structure my days as a counterintelligence agent. But I was worthless as a Nazi-hunter. I couldn’t break the bastards down, catch them at their tricks. So they sent me to deal with the orphans in the DP camp, like some exalted playground director. But they didn’t like my deals. I was too emotional, they said, too involved with the DPs. I wouldn’t treat them like numbers in their own trick deck—kids, for God’s sake. I wasn’t going to help them stack the deck. So I came home to 1133 with Sylvia. It’s not her fault that she married a guy who’s made of glass. I shatter every now and then, and she glues the pieces together as best she can.”

  “With white paint?”

  “Ah,” Sonny said, “that’s her way of dealing with Mom and Dad.”

  “Don’t hit them so hard on the benediction,” Doris said. “They were worried … and that’s how they coped.”

  She lured Sonny back into the dining room, with the schnauzer at his heels. He took his seat at the table, Benny between his legs.

  “Dad, I’ll make the benediction. I’ll bless our bread. Will you all bow your heads, please…. Oh, Lord, we all deserve to die.”

  “Sonny,” Sol said, “that’s enough.”

  Doris stared her father down. “Dad, let him finish.”

  “But if live we must,” Sonny chanted, with his head bowed, “then let us not live in vain. Let us give our possessions away, and devote ourselves to utter stillness. It’s in silence that we will thrive…. Now we can all eat. As Dad said, dig in.”

  There was a great clatter around the table. Sol hummed to himself. Miriam smiled at her brood. “We’ve had our benediction. And God returned Sonny to us—in one piece.” But Billy wasn’t listening. He wolfed down whatever he could. It was Sylvia who picked up the great sadness in his face. She’d seen the same sadness on the ward at Krankenhaus 31, of a psyche spinning out of control in front of her eyes. He hadn’t come to bring her flowers and welcome Sonny home. He had a darker motive.

  “Herr Billy,” she asked, “what is wrong?”

  Billy didn’t answer at first. He devoured every bit of roast beef that was left on the table, wiping his mouth with one of the mono-grammed napkins that Maja had ironed that morning. Miriam had borrowed the enormous rounded S from Schrafft’s and had the Salinger crest—Miriam & Sol Salinger, 1133—sewn on every napkin, every pillowcase.

  Billy belched once, wiped his mouth, and muttered, “I’m dead.”

  “Gonef,” Sol shouted across the table. “We ca
n’t hear you.”

  “Dead is dead.”

  Miriam grew surly. “Must you come here and speak in riddles? Dead men don’t swallow enough roast beef to choke a horse.”

  “I got involved with a bad crowd,” Billy said. “I owe them a lot of gelt.”

  “You swindled,” Sol said.

  Billy wiped his mouth again with the Salingers’ monogrammed napkin. “You’re the swindler, Solly, not me. Didn’t the government fine you for making phony Swiss cheese?”

  “We settled,” Sol said in a rage, “settled out of court. But I’m not the one who’s on trial—you are, Billy. Was it the Scheherazade crowd?”

  His ex-son-in-law had gotten involved with a notorious café on the Upper West Side, ripe with gamblers, extortionists, and guns for hire who shrouded themselves in a Roumanian poets’ society. These were poets who had a gift for scribbling letters that threatened to break your fingers and your head. Billy must have performed cartwheels for the Roumanian poets, been their bagman, and borrowed from the poets, heavily.

  “Yes,” Billy said, “those bandits, with their passion for poetry.”

  “And you want us to bail you out?” Sol asked, his eyes hidden under the wire frames of his spectacles.

  “Not at all. But I would like to give them a dose of Sergeant Salinger. They’re all draft dodgers. Anything to do with the military would scare them out of their pants. If Sonny himself could go to the Scheherazade in his uniform and play Sergeant Salinger, the Nazi-hunter and intelligence whiz, like Don Winslow of the Navy, well, that would do wonders for me.”