Saints and Villains

by Denise Giardina

  “Of course you do not have wine?” Dietrich said, still oblivious. “You do not have any hidden in a cellar, I suppose?”

  “Sir,” the waiter said. “Of course it is impossible to serve you. You must leave at once.”

  “Was?” Dietrich exclaimed. “Because I ask for wine? My apologies. I know it is verboten, but I also have learned some places—” He fluttered his hand. “Is it so bad to ask?”

  “Sir!” The man gestured at Fred. “We do not serve Negroes. You must go.”

  Dietrich’s mouth was open, and his eyeglasses glinted in the candlelight. “Negroes? What are you saying? My friend? You will not serve—” He looked at Fred in disbelief. Fred stood, tossed his napkin on the table, and put on his hat.

  Dietrich held on to the table and looked around as though he expected the other diners to take his side. “Dies ist eine Beleidigung!”

  “English, please,” said the waiter impatiently. “I don’t know German except for the food.”

  Dietrich stood up so fast he knocked over his chair. He waved his arms. “An outrage! An outrage! Do you understand that?”

  Fred said, “I’m going. You can stay if you want, and they’ll serve you.” He left.

  Dietrich followed. At the door he stopped and turned. “We don’t vant your lousy food!” he yelled, jerked on his jacket lapels, and marched out.

  On the sidewalk again, Fred burst out laughing. “Where’d you learn the word ‘lousy’?” he asked.

  “How can you laugh?” Dietrich asked, astonished.

  “Beats crying.”

  Dietrich shook his head. “I am ashamed for Germans.”

  “It’s not Germans. It happens everywhere in America. Even in Greenwich Village, where all the radicals live. And in the South, forget it. I walk in a white place like we did tonight, they’d take me out back and lynch me.”

  “Lynch?”

  “Hang. Hang me.”

  “Mein Gott!”

  They walked awhile in silence.

  “You knew this would happen,” Dietrich said.

  Fred shrugged.

  “Why did you come?”

  “Wanted to see what you’d do,” Fred admitted. “Wasn’t nice of me, was it? Sorry.”

  “No,” Dietrich said. “Do not apologize. It was good for me to see this. I could not have thought. Imagine, in Germany, if a restaurant refused to serve Jews, for example. Such an outcry!”

  At the subway Dietrich turned and put his hand on Fred’s arm. “Take me someplace where no one is turned away. Surely there is such a place.”

  “Okay,” Fred said. “We take the 4 train to Harlem and I’ll find you some ribs and collards. And hooch.”

  “Hooch?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  They ate at Craig’s, a writers’ hangout, because Fred thought Dietrich might be more comfortable there. There was decent gin, made in a bathtub but without the medicine cabinet thrown in. The music was soft smoky jazz, good for talking instead of dancing.

  “You must love Harlem,” Dietrich said, looking around. “Here you will be yourself.”

  “Yes. I love Harlem. I could stay here too easy.”

  “Why not stay?”

  “Too safe. There is such a thing as a call, isn’t there? You believe in that?”

  “A call?” Dietrich said. “You mean from God?”

  “From God.”

  “This call,” Dietrich said, “will take you—South?”

  “You guessed it. Not to Alabama, though. Not too close to my father. I’m not Adam Junior.”

  “Who is Adam Junior?”

  “You’ll meet him soon enough. His father is the pastor at Abyssinian Baptist. Adam Junior was supposed to be a doctor. What he wanted. But changed his mind because his daddy’s making him heir to the throne. Easier way to go, I suppose. Maybe not. Any way you try to help the Negro in America isn’t easy. I shouldn’t talk about Adam Junior. Hell of a nice guy, actually. Wild, though. He’ll have trouble after he’s ordained.”

  “Wild?”

  “Loves to drink. Loves to party. Loves the women. Wild.” Fred shook his glass. “’Course, by Alabama standards, by the Rev. James Johnson Bishop’s standards, I’m wild too. Like my bathtub gin and my Southern corn likker. Like the ladies, even though I don’t chase as many as Adam Junior. Hell, seminary corrupted me. I never cussed, drank, or chased skirts until I came to seminary. Tell that to the little old ladies back home.”

  Dietrich took a gold-plated cigarette case from inside his jacket, opened it and lit two, gave one to Fred. “Add tobacco to your sins,” he said.

  “How about you?” Fred asked.

  “How about?”

  “Let me guess. You probably cuss, but it’s in German so it wouldn’t mean a thing to me. I know you smoke and drink.”

  Dietrich waved his hand so blue smoke swirled around his face. “Everyone drinks in Germany. I was given wine when I was very young.”

  He was watching the vocalist, a tall woman with coffee skin and a large behind, breathing into the microphone Oh Daddy.

  Fred said, “What about women?”

  The darkness hid Dietrich’s blush. He was slow in answering.

  “I have never—” He searched for a word, whether an English one or a modest one, Fred wasn’t sure. “Never been with a woman. I have never even had a girlfriend. I have my passions, it is true, but I am a difficult man. I know this. No woman would how do you say put up with me, I am thinking.” He dragged deep on his cigarette, “Women, they are a bit fearful. No, that is not the word. Frightening. Except for my sisters, but that, of course is quite another thing.” He stubbed out his cigarette and dug for another. “And you. Is there someone for you?”

  “No one that would have me,” Fred said. “Better to settle into a church, look for someone there. Takes a special woman to be a pastor’s wife, you know. If I get messed up with the wrong woman I’ll end up with no church to take me except Sixteenth Street Baptist in Birmingham, Alabama. And I couldn’t stand working with my father.”

  On Dietrich’s first Sunday at Abyssinian Baptist, Adam Junior was preaching. The round blueglass sanctuary window glowed and throbbed as though the church were not on 138th Street but at the bottom of an ocean. The choir sang Savior, savior, hear my humble cry, while on others thou art toiling do not pass me by, slow as though their hearts were breaking, and Fred sat in his black robe beside Dr. Powell, whose light-skinned son who passed for white to get in the Cotton Club climbed the pulpit and prayed. Fred surveyed the congregation, where Dietrich sat, pale among the beige chestnut chocolate hazel mahogany tan faces.

  Adam Junior said, “My text today is from the prophet Daniel, the third chapter. Three young men are cast into a fiery furnace because they refuse to worship a golden idol. They are foreigners, strangers in a strange land. Their names are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or as some say, A Bad Negro.”

  Laughter.

  Dietrich was smiling, his English good enough to catch at least part of the joke. Earlier, during the choir’s anthem, he had been wiping his eyes.

  After the service, as Fred pulled off his black robe in the vestibule, Adam Junior tapped him on the shoulder, nodded toward the sanctuary, and said, “Damn, Fred, if that isn’t the whitest thing you could carry into Harlem.”

  My dearest Sabine, he wrote, I am much happier than before. There is still little to interest me in my classes. Good-fellowship is more valued here than is serious inquiry. And the informality is disconcerting. The eminent Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, is called “Reinie” by the students. I cannot think that this is beneficial.

  But I now have a friend, an American Negro called Fred Bishop. You know I have been very much alone. It is not so hard now.

  I attend Fred’s Baptist church in Harlem each Sunday, where I have been put in charge of the Ladies’ Bible Study Circle on Wednesdays and a boys’ Sunday School class. I also visit people too elderly or sick to leave their homes and read the Bible with them.


  I continue to be shocked at the treatment of the Negroes in this country. You know very well the problems faced by Jews in Germany, you feel them now in your own body. Believe me when I say Karl-Friedrich was correct; they do not begin to compare with the ways Negroes are mistreated, the great variety of injustices, and the hatred white Americans bear them, or at best the condescending pity which must be as hard to bear. This scandal is not a vestige of the past, but continues. Where it shall end, who can say.

  My depression still plagues me, especially here in the dormitory where one is expected to join in as a matter of course and always be jolly. I retreat to my room. Sometimes I pretend I am not in, and ignore the knocking at my door.

  As for other matters…

  Like all his letters, this one did not tell Sabine nearly enough. Dietrich had always been more comfortable writing about ideas, and filled pages with summaries of the lectures he heard, along with his continued displeasure at the intrusion of politics into theological debate (a complaint he made less and less, she noted, as the year went on). But he told her little of the impressions New York made upon him. She was never to learn of the endless blocks of buildings, their brick flanks scored in the late daylight by the shadow grids of fire escapes. Vendors in stained aprons hawking baked sweet potatoes, brownroasted ears of yellow corn, grilled frankfurters and sauerkraut. Clotheslines spanning back alleys like supporting cables, avalanches of neon light, the sharp burn of illicit whiskey, skyscrapers that forced Dietrich’s neck back and mouth open.

  The difference between German sirens and American sirens. German sirens up and down, regular, crisis expected to be under control. American sirens a chaotic wailing as though the emergency vehicles were themselves in distress.

  Sabine had written, Dearest brother, our people are more than flirting with fascism. On every side one hears expressions of the purest hatred directed toward the government, toward Jews, toward emancipated women, toward artists and writers. If this state of affairs continues, everything will be up with the likes of us.

  Dietrich’s father had written, Do not believe any alarmist news from Germany. Of course your sister is upset. The Nazis make noise, and regularly brawl with Communists in the streets. (Not in our neighborhood.) There is some harassment of the Jews as well. But the German people will never vote for Hitler. Only a putsch could bring him to power, but a putsch requires secrecy, and a popularity Hitler does not enjoy. Never fear, we are keeping a close eye on our little Austrian. Sleep well, my son.

  Dietrich did not know what to believe.

  As for other matters, he wrote, there is a Frenchman here, Jean Lasserre….

  At dinner, on the first cold evening of the autumn, Dietrich joined a table that included Myles, Fred, and Krause. And Lasserre, he realized after it was too late to find another place without giving offense. He had so far avoided the Frenchman. The war was not so far in the past as to be easily forgotten. It was not that he hated the French. But they had beaten Germany with the aid of other countries, which was not fair, and had required the Fatherland to acknowledge guilt for a war that was as much their own making. Then there was Walter’s death. Dietrich sat down, unfolded his napkin, and nodded at the others. He had nothing to say.

  Platters and bowls circulated around the table. Roast beef cooked to dryness, parsley potatoes, creamed corn, hot rolls. Dietrich ignored the corn, which he had never seen before arriving in America and had quickly come to despise, and instead ladled extra potatoes onto his plate.

  “So, Bonhoeffer,” said Krause, “if it’s clear tomorrow, how about a game of tennis? Good way to get the blood moving in this weather.”

  “Thank you but no,” said Dietrich. “I watched you last Saturday and you do not play well enough for either of us to enjoy it.”

  Myles glanced at Fred across the table, then looked away to keep from bursting into laughter. Fred bit his lips and pretended to carefully butter a roll.

  “Oh,” said Krause. He looked miffed but was still in awe of Dietrich. He turned to the Frenchman. “How about you, Lasserre? You play tennis?”

  Lasserre smiled. “I’m afraid no. I live in a place that does not play this game.”

  Myles said, “Yeah? Where’s that?”

  “Bruay, in Artois province. It is a coal-mining region.”

  “Coal mining!” Myles leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “You going back when you finish here?”

  “Mais oui. I have always intended it.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I live with one of the mining families and I try, quite simply, to share in the life of the community. My church pays me a small stipend, but I give away all but a few francs each month. Sometimes I go in the pit and work beside the men, help them load their coal.”

  Krause looked skeptical. “Why would a man with your education want to do menial labor?”

  “I would like,” Lasserre said, “to be a saint.” He smiled and began to cut his meat into small pieces.

  Everyone stopped eating and stared. Lasserre ignored them and reached for the pepper. Finally Dietrich said, “A little vain, I should think.”

  “It is not so vain as bragging about tennis,” said Lasserre. He went on eating.

  Dietrich stood suddenly and picked up his plate, said, “Pardon me,” and moved to an empty table.

  Fred followed, sat down beside him.

  Dietrich said, “I meant nothing disrespectful by my words to Krause. I thought only to spare him. As for Lasserre, it was an outrageous statement he made. Besides, he mocks me because I am German.”

  “Aw, man, don’t take things so damn serious. Have a sense of humor.”

  “I do have a sense of humor. But one cannot be humorous where one cannot be oneself.”

  He began to eat, not tasting a thing he put in his mouth. Fred watched him a moment, then returned to his table.

  “Touchy,” said Myles.

  “Yeah,” Fred said. “And I sure ain’t taking him to raise.”

  The moon was full. Dietrich walked to the Hudson and sat on a bench. In the distance, the George Washington Bridge was draped from shore to shore like a strand of tatty black lace. He stared west toward the vast American continent, could feel it pulling at him. Behind him was the impenetrable city, a curtain of light-spangled darkness and noise. Homesickness swept over him so strongly he felt ill, and he wept silently, now and again dabbing at tears with his knuckle.

  After a time, a man in overcoat and hat sat beside him. Lasserre. He lit a cigarette and handed it to Dietrich, lit another for himself, leaned forward.

  “I’ll go if you want to be alone,” he said.

  “No,” said Dietrich. “Stay, please.”

  They sat smoking while a tarpaulin-covered barge sliced the water’s surface.

  “Of course I must apologize,” Dietrich said at last. “I am behaving very badly here. I am not always like this, please believe.”

  Lasserre waved his hand, kept looking across the river.

  “There is a very big land beyond this city,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Dietrich. “One can feel it bearing down. It is a bit frightening.”

  “Do you ever speak with Krause? He will tell you America is the greatest nation in the world.”

  Dietrich smiled.

  “You, of course,” said Lasserre, “love Deutschland.”

  “Ja,” said Dietrich. “Very much.”

  “Et moi? Pour moi, c’est la France. At least, it is supposed to be.”

  “And isn’t it?”

  Lasserre shook his head. “I have a better country, mon ami. And all the nations are as dust in comparison. As dust.”

  “But your homeland!”

  “One thing you must understand about me, Bonhoeffer, and if you grasp it, perhaps we may get along. I am no nationalist. I love France. And sometimes despise it. As I love and despise Germany, and love and despise America. I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God, Bonhoeffer. And one cannot be such a citizen and also
a nationalist. C’est impossible!”

  “But surely we are not required to renounce our—”

  “Read the Sermon on the Mount. How can I promote the glory of France before the glory of God? My brothers and sisters are in every country. And how can I love my enemy if I am willing to take up arms and kill him? If I kill a human being, I kill Christ as well.”

  “I lost a brother in this war,” Dietrich said.

  “I did not kill him,” said Lasserre. “Nor would I even if he leveled a rifle at me. Better to die myself.”

  “You are a pacifist, then?”

  “Yes. That is it. And you, of course, are not.”

  “No. I doubt I am strong enough for that.”

  “Then at least,” said Lasserre, “we are clear who we are. And whatever we are, Bonhoeffer, we are not enemies.”

  “No,” Dietrich agreed.

  “Bon.”

  Dietrich smiled. “Gut. Sehr gut.” He reached inside his coat and took out a pack of cigarettes, handed it to Lasserre. “You were not joking about being a saint.”

  “No,” Lasserre said. “Though I did not mean it to sound so arrogant as perhaps it did. I only meant this is my ideal.”

  Dietrich shook his head. “I would be content,” he said, “if I could have faith.”

  “You do not have faith now?”

  “I have theology. But very little of the sort of faith I witness among my Harlem churchgoers. They seem to feel the presence of God, and I feel nothing. I only think.”

  They didn’t return to the seminary until after midnight, swinging their arms as they mounted the hump of Manhattan to Claremont Avenue. By the time they reached the heavy doors beside the chapel, Dietrich had made up his mind. He turned to Lasserre.

  “You know this new film? All Quiet on the Western Front? The Remarque novel—”

  “Of course, of course. Who does not know of it? In fact, I read the book last year.”

  “Perhaps we should see it together. Would you be my guest?”

  “I should like that,” said Lasserre.