Man, he ran on with this Just, throwing out all this stuff—marine biologist, head of the department of physiology (or did he say psychology?), mostly working with worms, had reversed the sex of some worms (oh, yes?) in an experiment, made more chromosomes (?) in animals, reproduced the histological characteristics of human cancer cells (or did he say historical characteristics?). Then he asked me if I’d ever heard of a Dr. Domagk, but didn’t wait for me to say no. This man had invented a miracle drug, Nyassa said, to kill bacteria and therefore infection.
“Hummm,” I said.
Then he said it was called Protonsil, sulfanilamide. Domagk was the director of the I.G. Farben Research Institute, and Nyassa said he’d written to him for his help in getting out. I said I wished him good luck. What was his own work about, I asked, and he said it was cellular physiology (or philosophy?).
I didn’t have one damned idea what he was talking about, but I could see that it made him feel better to talk about such things, so I sat there for an hour, thinking, Here are two darkies stuck in the middle of a cotton field, a concentration camp, and one is talking about all these ologies, and the other is hoping his officer is having a good time with his wife so he can go back where he lives and slip downstairs to his bed in the cellar and not be bothered. Didn’t neither one of us say anything about how strange it was for us to be here. When I got up to go, the glaze went out of his eyes and he suddenly started talking like a normal person. He asked me to tell him about jazz music, how it was played, how it felt to play it. He sounded just like white folks. I sat back down and I asked if he’d ever gone back to his father’s home in Tanganyika, and he said he had not, that he was sure he’d find it too primitive for him, but he liked jazz music because it was American. I said it wasn’t like any other music, because it was always changing. Not like playing Bach, I said. But is it fun playing? he wanted to know. I said it sometimes wasn’t.
He smiled when I spoke. My German was street German, Berlin Alexanderplatz German, and I guess that’s why he smiled so much when I talked. Then he wanted to know if I knew Bessie and Jelly Roll, or Duke and Louis and Sidney, and I told him I’d met them, of course, and then went into Mr. Wooding and how I came to Europe with him and stayed, and now wished I hadn’t. He excused himself and came back with some “medicinal brandy,” he called it, and I said it was good for the Dachau Blues. Then I told him about this music running around in my head, new sounds, and then he said all this reminded him of music by an Austrian named Schoenberg, who developed a 12-tone scale. He wasn’t blue anymore. Nyassa poured some more “medicine,” and we just sat there, looking out the window at the Appellplatz.
Nyassa asked me about my crime. He said real quick that he’d never known criminals until he came here and that I didn’t seem to be like the rest of them. I stroked my face with my finger and said “Black.” Then I got up and left.
While I was walking across the ’Platz, through the Jourhaus gate and through the section where they were rebuilding the ammunition factory, and down the street to the officers’ quarters, I wondered, maybe for the first time with my dumb ass, if Malcolm would have done what he did to me if I’d been white. I cried when I got in and went downstairs without running into Anna or Dieter Lange, cried because there are some things you never let yourself know, even when you do know them.
Sunday, Sept. 22, 1935
Last night Dieter Lange had me playing the piano along with some new records he got somewhere. Know he didn’t buy them. But he had Charlie Barnet’s “A Star Fell out of Heaven” with “When Did You Leave Heaven” on the flip side, and a Cab Calloway, “Avalon” up and “Chinese Rhythm” over. Dieter Lange loved them because they were new, but they weren’t nothing special, even though Doc Cheatham was playing lead trumpet. It was nice playing with Doc again. Made me homesick and sad. Benny Payne was on piano, but I cut him good (or at least it sounded that way to me, because mine was real music and his was on a record). It’s been a little while since we had a good house-rent kind of party. Sometimes it just isn’t too good to move up in the world.
So this morning, while Anna and Dieter Lange stuffed themselves with ham and eggs American style, and with biscuits I’d made and strawberry jam Annaliese’s mother had made, he talked about the latest new law. Every time you turn around, these Germans’ve got themselves a new law or two or three. Can’t do this, can’t do that, can’t do the other, just like living in a colored section back home. Jews can’t vote any more and, on top of that, the government took away their citizenship. Jews can’t marry anybody who’s not a Jew, and Germans can’t marry anybody who isn’t German. Can’t cross the line, boy, can’t even diddle a liddle. Do you suppose the Nazis—that means everyone who isn’t in a camp—been studying with some of those crackers like Bilbo and Vardaman and Ben Tilman and Hoke Smith? “Racial desecration”? Well, that’s what they got old Nyassa on—even before they passed the goddamn law. Nothing changes. Wherever you are, if you’re colored it’s all the same.
When Anna wasn’t watching, Dieter Lange looked at me and winked. I knew what that meant. Fuck the Nuremberg Laws. He was going to fuck me whenever he wanted to, and, as he once told me, he didn’t have to worry whether or not I had “the rag on.”
Thursday, Nov. 28, 1935
Yesterday Dieter Lange came back from a trip to Amsterdam. (Annaliese had a good time while he was away, and I’m glad she did.) He brought a Brunswick-French record and a Decca-Dutch record, both cut by Freddie Johnson. And he had another one cut by Willy Lewis. “Freddie Johnson and His Harlemites.” “Willy Lewis and His Orchestra.” Both had been in the band. Both were free. Now, I never liked Freddie because he played the piano too sometimes, when Mr. Wooding didn’t want to. Mr. Wooding figured it was best to have two other piano players, since he thought I was “delicate,” and whether I played or not, I could do the vocals. But I could have made a lot more money if it hadn’t been for Freddie. Willy played alto, so he wasn’t in the way.
Here I thought they’d all gone back home, and the bastards are still in Europe. Dieter Lange knew what I was thinking and he laughed; he laughed and I cried. Did he see them play? Did he talk to them? Did he tell them about me? What did they say? (Being in the sweet life, I didn’t pal around with the guys in the band too much. They teased me. Asked if I wanted to dance. Tried to goose me with drumsticks and then pretended they didn’t know what they were doing. But this was a different time, different place, and they were free and I wasn’t, so I kept on with the questions.) Could they help me get out? Did you tell them to see somebody who could help? The more questions I asked, the harder he laughed, spinning around and pounding the floor with his feet. I knew for real then, if I didn’t want to know it before, that Dieter Lange, even after all this time, had never meant to let me go.
I got so mad, I snatched the records and slammed them on the floor. They broke. He stopped laughing then. But that wasn’t all. I went crazy, and I slapped him as hard as I could. Spun him around. Then he tried to punch me. I scratched his face. He started hollering that I was going into the camp right away; he didn’t have to take this shit from some black fairy. I screamed back that I’d tell the Gestapo he was a coal-digger and that would finish him, too. He said no one would believe me, so I was wasting my breath, and anyway, it’d be nothing to shoot me and tell them I tried to escape, and I said that never happened to a calfactor and they’d certainly know something was funny, and that was when Anna said from behind us, “I believe. I know.”
Dieter Lange went red. He was shitting chitlins. Anna was standing in the doorway. She had that look on her face—the one she has when she’s been with Bernhardt. There we were, both of us, in her fat little hands. I could see that Dieter Lange was trying to think of something to tell her, anything to tell her. She waddled into the room, the big room where the piano is. She walked across the floor to the couch and sat down. She slid her dress up to the top of her stockings, unfastened the garters and rolled them down. Then she reached up behind her dr
ess and loosened her girdle. When she was finished with that, she pulled down her bloomers and threw them on the couch beside her. She pulled her dress way up, letting all that bloated white skin show. She looked like a partly skinned hog, and in the middle of all that was the hair on her pussy. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. She opened her legs wide and her eyes were like she’d been smoking Mary Jane, or had had some cocaine. She looked at me and smiled. She looked at Dieter Lange and said way down in her throat, “Eat me, sweetheart, eat.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Dieter Lange took a couple of clumsy steps forward, collapsed on his knees, and slid toward her. He buried his head between her thighs, and her body snapped up and settled back quivering around him. Dieter Lange was at it like a pig at a trough, slobbering and grunting, grabbing her thighs, and she was working those hams up behind his back and moving his head this way and that. Her mouth was open, her lips wet, and she kept saying “Ahh, yes, oh, yes, yes, ahh.” Once, while sucking in her breath, she opened her eyes, looked right at me but didn’t seem to see me. It was like I was just a part of the furniture in the room, like I was blind.
I came down here. I closed my door. I heard them grunting and moaning, heard Dieter Lange’s feet sliding on the floor. And then there was quiet. Then some moving around, some walking, Dieter Lange’s brisk, Anna’s kind of clumsy. I know their footsteps better than I know my own. Then they talked, his voice going loud and then soft; hers did the same thing. I’d never heard her being sharp with Dieter Lange before. I sat and shook. I was scared thinking of what was going to happen to me. Then, suddenly, they were shouting and screaming at each other. But there was a new sound in Dieter Lange’s voice, like someone pretending he’s as tough as he was before he got his behind kicked. I kept waiting for his footsteps on the stairs. I knew he’d never get over that slap I gave him. And I knew as sure as cotton is white that he’s sorry he brought those records back and laughed at me.
I thought about Anna. She said she believed, that she knew, and Dieter Lange must sure believe that, the way he did that crawl. The bitch had him. Now, what was she going to do with him—and me? How did she get to know? Did Bernhardt know? I heard them go into the kitchen, heard pots and pans. I waited for the footsteps and Dieter Lange’s yell: “Cleef!” The smell of food. One minute I was hungry and the next the smell of it made me want to puke. Voices, then silence; silence, then voices. I crept to the furnace and quietly opened the door. The fire was low. I tiptoed to the coal bin and grabbed a handful of coal and one by one tossed the pieces in. I made four trips while waiting for the sound of his feet on the stairs, his shout. I slid open the vents so the fire could catch and, still shaking, crept back to my bed. I didn’t bother to undress. I must have dozed off, finally, because when I heard Anna calling from the head of the stairs, calling for me to fix breakfast, I could see daylight through the cellar windows. And I had to go to the bathroom bad. Thanksgiving Day back home.
Sat., December 7, 1935
Something’s changed in the house. Dieter Lange doesn’t say much, and Anna smiles all the time like she’s got a pat hand. Guess she isn’t as dumb as she looks. And coming from a farm where every time you look around you see one animal fucking another, she’s probably got lots of tricks she can do. I thought by now I’d be over in the camp, maybe even dead, but things just go on here. They went to some rally in Munich tonight. Yesterday Anna had a bunch of women, officers’ wives, over. They sewed swastika flags. That was in the morning. In the afternoon, when they’d gone, Anna wanted to do some more English. Do I think she’s really better, or am I afraid not to think that? I don’t want her mad at me.
She had some Life magazines from America. I don’t know anything about them, but there are lots of pictures with writing underneath. This beats books. She asked about things in the pictures, too. Sort of like “This is a table, this is a chair” stuff again, but the magazines are more interesting. This was the first time we’d been alone like this in a while, and the first time since the fight. I didn’t feel nervous with her, and I thought I could ask some questions.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“What should happen to you?” she asked back.
“But you know,” I said.
“And you know, too,” she said.
“What?” I asked her.
“Bernhardt,” she said. “I know you know. Don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. It’s always dangerous to say you know something about white people, whether they’re Germans or Americans, French—it doesn’t matter.
Anna laughed. “You’re smarter than I am. I shouldn’t have said anything last week, but I was feeling reckless, you understand. And anyway, I have him over a barrel and you could have me over a barrel, nicht wahr? Paaa! One word to Bernhardt and down the toilet he would go like a turd—but then I must have a husband, Cleef, because Bernhardt has a wife, understand?” She didn’t know how well I understood.
“But if you could get me out of here, then you wouldn’t have to worry about me saying anything about your husband. Not that I would,” I said.
She got up for a cigarette and came back to the table where we were sitting in the kitchen. She blew out a big blue cloud. “I’ve tried,” she said. “If only you hadn’t been with that boy from the American embassy!”
I was surprised. “You’ve known about that all along? How come?” We were becoming like two bitches sitting at a bar exchanging gossip on a slow afternoon.
“Bernhardt,” she said.
“Bernhardt!”
She smiled. “Oh, he won’t do anything. He wants you here for Dieter, so he can have Dieter over a barrel. It was Dieter who saw you got the green triangle instead of the pink one, but Bernhardt found out about the whole business. See, this thing with Entartete Musik … and nobody coming to help you, and you not helping yourself with the big names, and the American embassy under quiet, proper blackmail by our government because of you and that boy.…” She shrugged and pounded out her cigarette in a cheap ashtray that had figures in Lederhosen on it. “You are an example. The prisoners who are released talk about you and the power of the government when it can hold an American, you see? They do not say that you are a black American because no one would care, verstehen Sie? Yes?” She reached over and patted my hand. “Your skin is so smooth,” she said, and she gave me the strangest look and said, “Don’t worry. All is in a balance now. Remember, Bernhardt loves jazz music.” We went back to studying with the Life magazines.
Thursday, January 9, 1936
Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone. In the house here, things go on like always. But yes, something’s changed. It’s like a Saturday night in a saloon, late, when the tough guys start drifting in. You know something’s going to happen before the night is out, so you’re playing and singing and watching out the back of your head all the time, ’cause you never know. But now I can understand a lot of things. I think Dieter Lange’s got over wanting me gone from the house, since he knows Bernhardt and Anna won’t let that happen. If Dieter Lange doesn’t know about Bernhardt by now, he’s a bigger fool than I thought. We didn’t have any parties for Christmas and New Year’s, but they were out a lot—Dieter Lange had to get the canteens reorganized at Oranienburg and Borgermoor, and Anna’s father came down with pneumonia—so I was alone and on the piano many hours and playing the phonograph.
Music sounds strange in this place, stranger when it’s empty. But playing what I want to play makes me feel not so blue all the time.
Over in the camp, new ones come in and some of the old ones go out. But the Reds stay. No release for them. Some of the Greens get out, but they’re small potatoes. The smart ones like Gitzig they still keep, and sometimes they get good details. When I cleaned the house a couple of days ago, I noticed among the papers on the desk in the small room off the kitchen where Dieter Lange does his work, that 85,000 people were arrested last year, 15,000 more than the year before. Werner likes to know things like this. No wonder D
ieter Lange is so busy running from camp to camp. In our camp they are still working, making it bigger and bigger, and details still come out here every day to work on the SS quarters. The SA is back with some changes in their uniform. They aren’t so rowdy now; Himmler is boss over everything having to do with the cops and the SS. He can kick everyone’s ass, almost.
I feel sorry for the details when they’re marched out here singing or yelling out songs. It’s bitterly cold. The wind seems to search you out around corners. It’s like a knife. Now it’s hard to work in the swamps or on the plantation where they grow vegetables. But not too cold to work the quarry. Of course, they have to work the 4711 details all the time to make sure the latrines don’t fall apart. In winter the problem is pipes freezing and breaking. In summer it’s shit and piss and too much paper that clogs up everything. The prisoners who work inside have it good during weather like this. They’re in the SS quarters or officers’ homes, like me, or the kitchen, the laundry, or offices; or, like Menno and Dr. Nyassa, in the Infirmary. Then there are those Koppeln, the men who pull the wagons. There are attachments on the wagons for two men to pull, like horses, and four men to push from behind. The wagons are filled with rocks and gravel and machinery. Right now the mud is frozen, but they still push and pull, grunting just like animals. The lucky inmates get the wagons that are on tracks, but the prisoners are still the engines.
Clifford's Blues Page 7