A Choice of Enemies

by Mordecai Richler

  Norman read Nicky’s letter twice more. He had time to write him a brief note before he went off to meet Charlie and Joey, but it wouldn’t do to write I love you, everything you say makes me feel good. A letter to Nicky had to be a funny letter. Norman sat down by his typewriter. He was in a very good mood.

  III

  A damp copy of Reveille clung to the concrete at Norman’s feet. He glanced again at the picture of the bathing beauty that had been smudged and ripped by footprints and then looked up just as the boat train rounded the bend. A brief shock of sunlight suddenly illuminated the cracked, soot-soiled glass overhead, but then the clouds closed again and a thin rain began to fall on the black concrete platform of Waterloo Station. Two West Indians with flashing ties passed a Woodbine between them. Norman felt elated, but he was apprehensive too. He wasn’t sure whether Joey had ever told Charlie the truth.

  Norman saw them first.

  Charlie was bent over a little boy who appeared to be lost. One look was enough, one look at Charlie and you could tell that the child wasn’t, couldn’t be, his. He was too rigidly attentive for a father. And once you saw him stand upright and smile and then pat the boy’s head and smile even fuller you knew him for a childless man who kept pockets full of candies and never forgot to bring a toy when he visited. Charlie was a small rotund man, bald except for the thick unruly horseshoe of hair that ran from ear to ear. His face, the face of a middle-aged cherub, had a remarkably gentle quality. He returned the little boy to his parents and then looked about him, confused, as though he was expecting to be accused of a misdemeanour.

  Joey was talking to a young girl. They made an odd contrast. For Joey, slim, fair-haired, and thirty-five, with a brown bony face and enormous brown eyes, was a fully-realized woman. She was smartly dressed. The young girl, who had wild streaky blond hair and a white creamy face, was dishevelled from her journey. Joey, had she been as plump as the young girl, would never have risked slacks. But it was the young girl who caught Norman’s eye. She seemed so refreshingly American.

  “Norman!” Charlie rushed up to him. “Norman!”

  Joey hugged Norman; she held him close.

  Norman noticed that the girl who Joey had been talking to earlier was smiling at him faintly and he returned the smile. The girl looked down at her shoes.

  “I couldn’t sleep all night, Norman,” Charlie began. “I was so excited. Ask Joey.” He squeezed Norman’s arm. “I’ve got so much to tell you.”

  Joey, after a perfunctory backward glance at the girl, took Norman’s other arm.

  Sally waved half-heartedly. Then forgotten on the platform, she watched the three of them walk off arm-in-arm. Sally had a grievance. Over the years, what with all her father’s stories about him, she had fabricated a romantic picture of Norman Price. He was to incorporate the most alluring characteristics of Hemingway and Fitzgerald heroes into one tall expatriate. In the flesh, however, he looked like just another socialist schoolmaster. Norman and Joey went into the tea room while Charlie looked after the baggage.

  “It’s wonderful to see you again, Joey.”

  “And Charlie?”

  “And Charlie. Of course, and Charlie.”

  The uplifted brown face she turned to him, the hardened brown face, hadn’t altered.

  “You’re staring, Norman.”

  “I was wondering what would have happened,” he blurted out, “if I had agreed to go to Mexico with you.”

  Joey laughed her bony laugh.

  “Do you despise me?” he asked.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Norman.”

  Norman reached out impetuously and stroked her cheek. “Are you happy,” he asked, “happy with Charlie?”

  “I’ve made my peace.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known. Underneath it all, that’s what he is.”

  “You sound like you’re recommending an hotel.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Are you happy?”

  Looking at him, waiting for his reply, she remembered sadly that there had used to be things you couldn’t do or write or say because Norman, Norman Price, Asst. Prof. Norman Price, would call them dishonest. Today he wrote thrillers. And all at once she wanted to sting him, but, warming to his slow tender smile, she realized that would embarrass him for her sake rather than hurt him. Writing thrillers would be a game to Norman. He had no creative pretensions. He was still the tallest of the group.

  “Do you still think I’m pretty, Norman?”

  “A smasher, you are. Scout’s honour.”

  As he leaned over to kiss her on the mouth he felt Charlie’s hand on his shoulder. “You can look,” Charlie said, “but you can’t touch.”

  Norman grinned.

  “I’ve been standing over there –” Charlie pointed towards the door “– and spying on you for the last minute. You looked so cosy, the two of you, that just for a second I hated you both. Hell, am I ever going to miss my analyst.”

  In the taxi, Charlie slipped into a long denunciation of American foreign policy. He had the manner of someone who had forgotten some little task or errand but couldn’t, try as hard he would, remember exactly what it was, so while he talked to you he seemed to be thinking of, or seeking out, other issues. Charlie began to curse those who had informed.

  “Not so fast,” Norman said. “The choice was a difficult one. Fifteen hundred a week is a lot to give up for honour, for people and ideas you no longer believe in.…”

  “What Norman is trying to say, Charlie, is that you weren’t earning anywhere near that on the coast.”

  Charlie applied his hand to his forehead like a poultice. “I’d have done it,” he said. “You did it.”

  “I was only earning a hundred-odd dollars a week at the university, Charlie. Besides I was bored with my job.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Joey said.

  “Well, here we are.” Charlie squeezed Norman’s knee and smiled. “Joey and I. Still together after fifteen years; always smiling, always bright. Canada’s Sunshine Kids.”

  They all laughed.

  “How long since we’ve seen you, Norman? Five years.”

  “Six,” Joey said quickly.

  Norman told them about Nicky. He also told them that they could have his flat for a while.

  “What a town,” Charlie said. “Oh, I’m going to love it. Really I am. I feel lucky.” He grinned. “Wait till you read my new play. It’s sensational. Sally loved it.”

  “Sally?”

  Joey told him who Sally was. She explained that they had met her on the ship. Charlie said that he had asked her to come to Sonny Winkleman’s party on Saturday night.

  “That’s nice.” Norman took a letter out of his pocket. “Do you mind if I ask the driver to stop at the next mail box? I mustn’t forget this letter to Nicky.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “No,” Norman said, “it can’t. My brother Nicky is the most. It’s his birthday tomorrow.”

  IV

  As the sun suddenly broke through a heavy wad of clouds over the grey barracks of the McGraw Kaserne, Malcolm Greenbaum, a hefty boy with a big open face, hitched up his trousers with his elbows. Malcolm suffered from boils. His thick knotted neck was bandaged. “Remember,” he said plumply, “if we’re going into town we must conduct ourselves like matoor representatives of the U-nited States abroad.”

  A responsive grin spread like butter over Frank Lord’s freckled face. But Nicky frowned. He didn’t appreciate it when Malcolm remarked on his own reserve. He didn’t want the others to think him “different.”

  The three boys raced across the street and leaped aboard the army bus. Inside, Milly Demarest, a pretty blonde crafts director, sat by the window. “Hello, boys,” she said, flicking her greeting at them like cigarette ashes, “going into town?”

  “You guessed it.”

  As the bus pulled out of the Kaserne gates Frank said: “It’s Nicky’s birthday.” />
  Frank Lord was six foot three, maybe more, with hair red as fire. He never cursed. They said his father was a baptist preacher. Frank could play a banjo. They said that, too. They also said that his brother had been hanged, but nobody knew for sure. Unless Nicky, maybe. For Frank didn’t talk much, except to say that he was going to study pharmacy when he got out of the army. That was for sure.

  “Oh,” said Milly, “how old?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You act it,” Milly said.

  “Touché,” Malcolm said.

  Big American cars, a casual proof of the conqueror’s affluence, were parked without care on either side of the Grunwalderstrasse. Looking out of the window, Nicky noticed the usual set of army wives, in pincurls and blue jeans, drinking beer morosely in the gasthaus garden. They struck him as a curiously touching group.

  “Nicky’s brother sent him a hundred dollars for his birthday,” Frank said.

  Nicky was skinny and tall and awkward with his fair hair clipped short and his eyes blue and brooding.

  “Nicky’s brother is a square,” Malcolm said. “He can’t forgive cats our age for not having been killed in Spain and all.”

  “Is your brother a commie?” Milly asked.

  Nicky looked pained. “He’s a paraphrase writer,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “Tell her, Mr. Bones.”

  “A paraphrase writer,” Malcolm said, “is a guy who can read a story in Collier’s, rewrite it, and then sell it to the Saturday Evening Post for more loot. Right?”

  “Young man,” Nicky said, “you have just won a bar with a built-in Cadillac and your choice of three of the Philippine Islands. Would you like to try for sixty-four dollars?”

  “For heaven sakes,” Milly said, “can’t you answer a question?”

  “My brother,” Nicky said, “was an English lit. prof. until it was discovered that he was an agent of the Kremlin. A fact uncovered by close examination of his income tax returns. So he was fired. And just about then a publisher got after him for his confessions. But he refused. On that day in fact Norman Price made that now historic statement: ‘I’d rather be left than vice-president.’ ” Nicky puffed frantically at his cigarette. “ ‘So what happened next,’ laughed the pretty young crafts director. ‘He was deported to Canada,’ snarled the young soldier with the wrinkle in his eye. And from there he came to Europe where he is now otherwise employed as a witchhunt hunter. More specifically, honey-child, my brother is compiling a list of anti-communist front organizations for Hollywood-hacks-in-exile, Inc. The aforementioned hundred bucks is hush money. Moscow gold. I’m the Munich fingerman.”

  “A hundred dollars is a lot of money,” Milly said. “Does Peggy know yet?”

  “Peggy bugs him,” Malcolm said.

  “Well maybe Peggy is getting just a bit tired of Nicky picking up stray Germans here and there. Maybe Peggy” – she turned to Nicky – “is beginning to find you just a bit too moody.…”

  “Come on,” Nicky said as the bus came to a stop, “let’s see what’s doing at the American Way.”

  Soldiers slumped in easy chairs in the immense lounge of the American Way Club and a juke box hillbilly hollered:

  “Wahoo, somebody ughed on you

  And I know all about your secret, I’m afrai-ai-aid.”

  The three boys stopped before a cardboard figure of a hillbilly who advertised a barn dance. Pappy Burns’ Tune Twisters, the poster promised, would play on Friday night. Another poster, this one on the wall above the information desk, read:

  DACHAU

  Bus Leaves Every Saturday at 1400

  VISIT THE CASTLE

  AND THE CREMATORY

  The boys walked through the lounge into the snack bar.

  “What’s happened to Nicky?”

  Malcolm looked round. “He’s probably upstairs playing ping-pong.”

  They looked, but he wasn’t there. They found him drinking beer with a German in a bar around the corner.

  “Meet Ernst,” Nicky said.

  Ernst had a lean, quiet face. His hard blue eyes were mindful. Vigilant. Had he been dressed differently he could have passed for a man who considered himself better than his job, but obviously he had none. Yet he did not seem cunning or squalid. That (the possibilities of true friendship) is what had attracted Nicky to him at first. For Nicky, more than the others, was conscious of the hatred evoked by his uniform. He yearned to be recognized as something more personal than just another occupation soldier.

  Ernst wore a G.I. combat jacket that had been dyed blue and under it a strikingly clean white shirt opened at the collar. His baggy, cuffless black trousers had originated with some other army, probably the Russian, but his tan loafers were distinctly unmilitary.

  “Ernst’s from East Germany,” Nicky said. “He’s on his way to Paris.”

  “Who’s holding him back?” Malcolm asked.

  “No money.” Ernst spoke softly, his accent was thick, but his American, just like his Russian and his French and his English, was incongruously colloquial. He spoke the language of soldiers. “And no papers.”

  “That’s crazy, you wanting to get out of Germany,” Malcolm said, his thick neck reddening. “Real crazy.”

  “Cut it,” Nicky said.

  But Malcolm edged closer to Ernst. “My name’s Greenbaum,” he said. “G-R-E-E-N-B-A-U-M.”

  “All right,” Nicky said, “he was a kid when all that happened.”

  “A kid, sure.” Malcolm turned to Ernst again. “Were you in the war?”

  “Yeah. During the last weeks.”

  Malcolm grinned triumphantly and afraid.

  “And I’ll bet you come from a leading family of anti-Nazis.…”

  Ernst averted his eyes. “I would like to be your friend,” he said. “I have nothing against –”

  “Nothing against the Jews, huh? That’s very white of you.”

  “I am not an anti-semite,” Ernst said.

  “Shake with him,” Frank said to Malcolm. “Come on.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “I was with the communist youth,” Ernst tried again. “They have lots of Jews.”

  “If there’s anything I hate worse than an anti-semite,” Malcolm said, “it’s a commie.”

  Frank walked away in disgust, put a coin into the juke box, and asked a heavily made-up girl, who had been sitting with three men, to dance with him. Malcolm ordered a round of drinks and then pulled Nicky into a corner. “I don’t dig the kraut,” he said. “I thought we were going to have us a ball, just the three of us, and then maybe later some schatzies.” A boil had burst on the back of his neck and Malcolm fingered the yellowing bandage tenderly. His quick black eyes pleaded for assurances. “Be a pal,” he said, slapping Nicky on the back. “Let’s ditch him here and go to Peg’s party.”

  “Nobody’s stopping you from going to Peggy’s party.”

  “It’s your birthday but. The party’s for you.”

  “Drink your beer, man. And try to be friendly.”

  The bar, cheap but not quite a dive, smelled of cooking fat. The tinsel decorations over the mirror were covered with dust. There were many salesmen and office workers and small businessmen about. Men with uniformly spic faces. There were a few more girls, but no other soldiers. Frank held his girl tight and she giggled and pushed his hand away from her breast – and all the men heard and watched.

  One of the men, a big one with cold little eyes, came up to Ernst and pressed his arm. Ernst tightened and slipped his hand into his jacket. Malcolm watched.

  “Get them out of here,” the big man said. “The girl is with us.”

  Ernst recognized the type, and he would gladly have started a fight but remembering that he had no papers, remembering the dreary Nissen huts and the drearier lectures on democracy in the refugee camp at Sandbostel – what he would have to return to if he were caught by the police – he decided that a fight would be foolish.

  “All right,” Erns
t said, “but let them finish their drinks first.”

  So the four boys left. Frank and Malcolm walked ahead.

  “The kraut’s packing a shiv,” Malcolm said.

  “Do you think there’s going to be trouble?”

  “Not if we warn Nicky.”

  “You can’t tell Nicky anything. Don’t you know that yet?”

  The four boys picked their way between bars and churches and brothels in the constricted grey streets of the old town and finally emerged into the broader twilight of the up-and-coming streets at the Marienplatz. For several years now men had been working day and night rebuilding what had been almost totally destroyed by allied bombings. Week by week Munich was being restored and pushed higher. A scaffolding came down here, another shot up there. This changing of the face of the city day by day lent a certain excitement to the streets, but, as far as Nicky was concerned, it was difficult to believe in the boom. Everywhere there were busy bosses and busy workers, but the new shops of the Theatinerstrasse had the ephemeral quality of a carnival big top and one could never be sure that the circus would not be dismantled and pulled out of town during the night. Men of a certain age were scarce. The cafés were too thick with unaccompanied women. You could believe in nothing these days. Nicky sensed that, Ernst knew it. And as they crossed the Stachusplatz Ernst said, “In 1919 the Reds held this square against a whole regiment with only two machine guns and four men.”

  “Are you a communist?” Nicky asked.

  “I used to be. I was an official in the FDJ, but now –” Ernst hesitated; he would have liked to have said something sardonic about East and West “– now I have no politics.”

  “Neither have I.” Nicky waited until Frank and Malcolm had turned the corner and then pulled a pile of papers out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, separating three twenty dollar bills from the other papers. “I know you’re broke. Pay me back when you have it.”