Clifford's Blues

by John A. Williams

  Saturday, September 16, 1933

  Dieter Lange’s first party. Oh, I was so nervous. Playing in a club is one thing; the atmosphere is different. If the owner is nasty or the customers mean and you don’t need the money, or even if you do, you can always leave. No chance of that here! Dieter Lange got me some black pants, a white shirt, and a tie. He also got me some decent shoes. When I told him how nervous I was, he gave me some schnapps. But, damn, I was nervous. First thing I noticed was how all the SA people stuck together; the SS people did, too. Come to think of it, Dieter Lange was more the SA than the SS type. Wonder how he managed that. I thought I could make things mellow by doodling around with “Falling in Love Again,” because the Germans loved to hear Dietrich sing that song. Then I picked it up a bit with “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home.” You have to play your audience as well as the music, and the second number was bright with a good tempo. I thought that somewhere down the line I’d lean into “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.” When you’re playing, you also listen to the way voices out there start to rise, from a hum to just plain loud. I went into some low-down blues, “Sweet Cat,” “Black Cat,” and “Weary,” and seeing that everyone was now feeling good, joking and calling out, introducing their wives and girlfriends to each other, I did “Tiger Rag” and that got them onto the floor, so I gave them “Bullfoot Stomp” so they could bang their feet, and eased into that neat little “Button Up Your Overcoat.”

  Dieter Lange was beaming; Anna was high and beaming. The food and liquor never stopped flowing. Dieter Lange kept slipping me schnapps and I kept saying to myself to hell with it and romped away. Oh, man, they got to feeling good. They called me “Cleef,” and rubbed my head so much I thought the hair that was growing back would come off. There’s always a point when the smell of perfume and the smell of sweat bump heads, and that happened. Dicks starting to ease up out of the crotch; tits starting to stand straight out. I mean, the worst dancers in the world thought they could dance to my playing; dancing, fast or slow, seemed to me to be dry-fucking; it was like a Saturday night back home when everybody just cut loose and drank and danced and fucked and fought till daybreak. The floor was creaking with the dancers. Everyone was bringing me drinks, wine, beer, schnapps, rye, scotch, bourbon, splashing the glasses on top of my beautiful new piano. And they rested cigarettes on it, too. I was sweating, getting funky like everyone else, when Dieter Lange calmed everybody down so I could go to the bathroom and get something to eat. While I was in the bathroom, I rammed my fingers down my throat to puke up all that shit they’d given me. Then Anna, pretty drunk herself, made me eat in the kitchen, fixed a plate for me and patted me on the shoulder. I liked that, a pat on the shoulder instead of a rub on the head.

  When I went back to the piano, they gave a little cheer and some applause. They seemed less boisterous, and when I looked around I saw why. There were a few high-ranking officers standing in a corner. Dieter Lange was having what seemed to be a pleasant conversation with them. I opened with “Love Me or Leave Me,” hung up tight behind “Stormy Weather,” and then cut to “Sometimes I’m Happy,” and then “You’re the Top.” I guess I played and sang a lot longer, but I don’t remember what songs. I sat on that stool and felt myself going in twenty directions, but I knew that I had to play better than I ever had in my life. Because if I couldn’t get out of here, I was going to try to live as comfortably as possible. So yes, I’d do Sambo. Play my ass off, sing my ass off, as long as I could remember, a number, as long as my fingers held out, and as long as my voice didn’t crack too much. Once, just once, while I played and sang, I felt I wanted someone to love me, nice or mean, didn’t matter. Just wanted to be close to someone, but that passed.

  I’m writing this with a hangover the size of New Orleans and New York put together. The house is quiet, but it smells like a Sunday morning in a honky-tonk, a two-bit saloon. God help me if I don’t help myself. Is this the way to do it, Lord? I still hear the echoes of the last two songs I played; everyone joined in, drunk or sober. How could they not? The songs were the “Horst Wessel” and, of course, “Deutschland Über Alles.”

  Wednesday, September 27, 1933

  There’s always talk among the calfactors working in the SS and SA homes—gardeners, cooks, tailors, houseboys, streetsweepers, and the like. When details are marched out from the camp to work on the roads or sewers here, even more news is exchanged, like it’s getting worse for the queers over there, but we all knew that. A few have been lucky and found protection under guards or block leaders or prisoner foremen. But for the rest …

  The talk today was about the Munich prosecutor, Winterberger. He’s visited Himmler about the killings in camp. Dieter Lange says Winterberger is a Jew who will soon have his eyes screwed in right at the least. I gave a barracks orderly two packs of cigarettes and two cans of sausages to smuggle out a note to Winterberger. Why not take a chance? I can’t depend on Dieter Lange, and every little bit helps. I don’t think Dieter Lange in no way, shape, form, or fashion, wants me free, especially not now. The party was a great success. I feel like a hog must feel, being treated nice, but there’s always a fence around the pig pen, and you’re always a pig, and there is always a hog-killing season.

  Monday, Dec. 25, 1933

  Merry Christmas. Dieter Lange gave me some cocaine for a present. Anna cooked a goose. I heard them fucking. She whined a lot. Maybe she’s beginning to think something’s wrong, the way they fuck. By evening she was in a better mood because Dieter Lange talked about the New Year’s Eve party he’s planned. I think Anna likes parties. Merry Christmas.

  Saturday, January 6, 1934

  Anna had a good time last night. She danced a lot, mostly with a political officer from the Gestapo name of Fritz Bernhardt. The prisoners talk about him. They say he fucks anything that moves. An SA colonel kept rubbing my butt. He was very good-looking.

  Thursday, January 11, 1934

  Winters in Berlin were not like this. The wind and the dampness lie on you like a suit of clothes. The weather seems to beat men down to half their size. You can see the rain, snow, and sleet pushing down the plain, but it’s never quite so cold and nasty until they hit the camp and turn the roll-call area and the streets and alleys between the blocks into mud. No one can play football then. They have had some wild games on the soccer field across from the officers’ section, along the road into Dachau. The SS vs. the SA, the guards against the prisoners, the officers against the enlisted men. And then they go right back to doing what they did before, all of them.

  Tuesday, Jan. 23, 1934

  Dieter Lange went off this week to Karlsfeld, Allach, and Gemering, so I stayed in the back of the canteen and did roll call in the rain and snow. That colonel who rubbed my butt sent for me. Name’s Friedrich Schuler. I didn’t know until the second time I was with him that he had had Dieter Lange sent to check out campsites. The colonel is a lot of fun and easy to be with. Not rough the way Dieter Lange is. He asked me a lot of questions about myself and how I got there and how long my sentence was. I couldn’t answer the last question, of course. He supposed I’d like to get out, and I said, certainly. He plays the spinet. He played for me. He said it was Debussy, and I did recognize “La Mer” and “Claire de Lune.” He said he sometimes heard color in Negro music the way he heard it in Debussy’s, especially in Ellington. Then he said he would do everything he could to get me out of Dachau. And I believe him! He’s a colonel! Of course, he can do it. I don’t believe he’s lying like the others. Oh, God. Maybe, maybe, maybe …?

  Wednesday, January 31, 1934

  Werner is now a barracks orderly, so things are easier for him. He is convinced that he will spend the rest of his life in Dachau. He worked on a Berlin newspaper and is a veteran of the World War. He says he often sees Greens being let out, because they’d rather release them under strict supervision than let someone like him out at all. He wrote about the Nazis. He hates them. Something happens to his face when he talks about them. The Greens who continue
in crime come back and go right into the prison company in Block 7. Then, he says, anything goes. I gave him a small bag of candy. He told me more about himself. He’s married and has kids. Three. He’s heard that his family got away to the U.S., “Amerika,” he said. He told his wife that if anything happened to him, she should get out fast. He’s relieved they’re out, but I can tell he wishes they were near. Some visitors are allowed and there’s mail, but it’s always opened. Werner says he’s happy for the prisoners when they have visits from family and friends or get mail from them. We all get stuff from the Rote Hilfe, and in spite of the regulations, money does get around, but somehow it all eventually winds up in Dieter Lange’s canteen. Whatever happens from now on, at least Werner won’t have to worry anymore about his family. He asked me if they would be all right. I told him yes, his family would be all right, that it would be easy for his wife to find work, that the schools were all good and opportunities hung just around every corner. I know that’s the way it works for white folks whether they speak good English or not. (Werner said she didn’t.) For most of them, anyway.

  Sun., February 11, 1934

  Sometimes Annaliese’s parents come to visit on Sundays. This was one of them. They’re a little like farmers I remember back home, except they’re white. They’re thick and slow and eat like pigs. (Farmers back home got good table manners on Sunday.) But they bring all the good things from their farm, so it’s all right. Anna and her mother cook with lots of laughing in the kitchen, and Dieter Lange sits and talks with his father-in-law about the Nazi party and how things are changing for the better in the country now that Hitler’s going after the Jews, the unions, the Reds, the Catholics, and the worst kind of Protestants. Anna’s mother, no mistake, is fat. Maybe Anna will become just like her. Her father is big, too, but he’s not fat. That’s muscle, even between his ears. I can tell that Dieter Lange puts up with them. There’s always some cute bullshit about Anna getting pregnant, but I know Dieter Lange isn’t the least bit interested in having kids. There is a faint odor of cowshit in the house when Anna’s folks come, even though they are scrubbed clean and red. Dieter Lange is always relieved when they leave.

  A new group in the camp, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They say they prefer God to Hitler, so it’s their asses, naturally. They get purple triangles for their jackets and legs. They’re called Bible students. And there are more than a few ministers and priests here. It’s plain and simple: if you ain’t for the Nazis, you’re against them, and you wind up here. The South was like that. That’s why I left it.

  Wednesday, Feb. 28, 1934

  My handsome Colonel Schuler tells me he’s still working on my project. But he seems worried. Where there were no problems, suddenly there are. He assured me that they had nothing to do with me, but with some struggle between the SS and the SA, which he is sure won’t last. All very silly, really, he says, this foolishness between the Brownshirts (SA) and the Blackshirts (SS). What a charming, cultured man he is, the kind I used to see in the Berlin clubs. Why he is in the SA and Dieter Lange in the SS, I’ll never understand. Shit, I don’t understand Germans at all. They’ve come from being a nation with a culture Americans can’t ever catch up to, to a place where they murder not only their own culture but the rest of the world’s, too; from a people who sometimes reined in their pride, to a bunch of arrogant bastards. My colonel thinks there are many in the SA who do not agree with Hitler’s policies, and that makes for certain frictions between the SS and the SA. The colonel likes to play Bach records for me with the volume turned way down, because Bach is bad, the Nazis say, and Wagner is good. Friedrich says, whispering, that no one’s better than Bach; Bach has piety, power, precision, and passion. And I just think to myself that Negro jazz must be pretty damn good to be banned alongside Mr. Bach! And Mr. Hitler isn’t doing too hot a job, because some of his people are listening to colored music, and Friedrich can’t be the only German listening to Bach.

  Thursday, March 8, 1934

  Dieter Lange does not like the new SS Gestapo troop leader, name of Adolph Eichmann, and calls him a Schlemiel, which was the name of Dachau village’s most famous writer, Peter Schlemiel. The town is very proud of him.

  There are nineteen regulations posted by Commander Eicke, most punishable by whippings and detention in the Bunker with the Prisoner Company, solitary confinement with bread and water, or death by hanging. But the guards have their own unwritten regulations. They’re worse.

  Sunday, Mar. 24, 1934

  We had another party last night. At first only the SS people showed up. Later the SA came, and as usual, they made two separate groups with their wives and girlfriends. There was a lot of drinking and dancing and singing, just like before, but something had changed. The colonel was very careful not to take the sly liberties he always did, and he gave me no sign, not even a look, that things were going well for me. Dieter Lange had to go out for a while this afternoon, and for the first time Anna came downstairs to my room to talk. I think she caught me watching her and that Fritz Bernhardt kissing in a corner when I looked up from the piano once. She let me know in so many words, all nicely put, that Major Bernhardt liked me and was sorry I was a prisoner. But since I was, he could make life a bit easier for me—or harder. When I asked why harder, she gave me a long, deep look, as if to ask, Don’t you know why? But I can play it as innocent as an angel, and I think she was convinced that I didn’t see anything. She smiled and rubbed my head and went back upstairs humming. So, a little goose and gander, but shit, why do I always have to be in the middle?

  Friday, April 21, 1934

  I feel like a juggler, tossing lots of balls in the air, not daring to drop even one, because then the act is over. Between Dieter Lange and my colonel, and Anna and Major Bernhardt, who seems to be here whenever Dieter Lange has to make a trip, I’m going crazy. The good thing is that we haven’t had any parties in about a month. The camp is growing; more guards and officers are coming in, and maybe it was one of these who complained about hearing Neger Musik. My colonel is even stranger these days. Maybe things are falling apart, but I’d be one of the last to know. There’s so much fucking going on around here, I don’t see how anybody has time to be mad, unless the fuss is about fucking. At least that’s what I gather from the news from other calfactors.

  I’ve heard that at Buchenwald they have a slogan on their gates, too: it says: “Right Or Wrong, My Country!” You can have the motherfucker.

  Sat., May 19, 1934

  We had a party last night. There were no SA. The mood was quiet, so I played soft stuff. There wasn’t much eating and not much dancing, either. The wives and girlfriends seemed to be as watchful and careful as the men. There wasn’t that rise in the pitch of voices, and not many smiles. Kind of an evil atmosphere, where you want to be near the kitchen door when all hell breaks loose. The weather has been good, although when it rains, it’s cold. But the weather doesn’t make any difference; the details still march in and out, and of course the prisoners still do roll call in the Appellplatz, ankle-deep in mud. This keeps the doctors and medical aides busy in the Infirmary. I have not been sent for by Friedrich. From what I hear, he and all the SA are in some kind of trouble. Serious trouble. I hope Friedrich isn’t hurt by it.

  Diary, have I told you about Hitler’s speeches? Wherever you are, you have to stop and listen. In the camp there are loudspeakers hooked up and whenever he speaks, everyone crowds outside, pressing against the fences and walls, climbing on rooftops to listen. There are prisoners who cheer when he’s finished, and they mean it. Others cheer or make noise because they know they’d better.

  A few of the Bible students work out here because the officers would rather have them as calfactors instead of the Reds or Greens. I feel very blue today. With every letter I try to smuggle out, my hopes rise. Then nothing happens and they sink. The colonel was my best hope, and his silence means bad news. I look at Dieter Lange as a burden I have to handle with care. Oh, he got promoted to major. I forgot to write that.
Anna was happy. They had champagne and whooped and hollered in bed, but later while she was asleep, he came downstairs, something he’d never done before. He was drunk. My playing, just as he planned, sweetened the way to his promotion. What would have happened if I hadn’t been here?

  There’s a calfactor named Gitzig who works down the street in Major Bernhardt’s house. It’s Gitzig who says things are going to get worse and that we should start hiding stuff, like cans of food and cigarettes and even old clothes and matches. He’s growing potatoes and turnips in the Bernhardt flower bed, hiding them among the flowers so the Bernhardts won’t know. Also, he said, we should not throw away old radios or radio parts. He wanted to know if I was a Mischling. I told him no, I was not part German, I was all American. He said many Americans liked Hitler, so why was I in Dachau, was I a “race defiler,” fucking Aryan Frauleins, or ein Homosexuell, fucking Aryan Seigfrieds, or really ein Kriminal? Did I play the Neger Musik he’d heard about? He asks one question after another, without waiting for a single answer. Dear God, dear diary, do you know I have been here almost one year?