This morning when I got up to stoke the stove and start breakfast, I heard the details singing down the road as they marched up to the SS barracks. There was ice on the windows and the sky was growing lighter and bluer. The sun was coming out, shining on the ice and snow. The song, cracking through the cold and icicles that hang from the houses, was “Moorsoldaten,” and soon I could hear the footsteps of the men hitting the frozen ground like one big metronone, cr-ump! cr-ump! Louder and louder:
Wo-hin auch das Au-ge blicket
Moor und Hei-de nur rings-um.
Vo-gel-sang uns—nicht er-quick-et
Ei-chen ste-hen kahl und krumm.
Wir sind die Moor-sold-da-ten.
Und zie-hen mit den Spa-ten ins Moor.
Dann zieh’n die Moor-sol-da-ten
Nicht mehr mit dem Spa-ten ins Moor!
Then two details peeled off and came down our street. CR-UMP! CR-UMP! As usual, the men were four abreast. One of the middle two in the very first rank was Menno Becker. Menno! I thought as I ran quietly from window to window to make sure. What’d happened? Why was he on detail and not in the Infirmary? Oh, damn! I hadn’t been in the camp for a week. Something was going on. Oh, he looked so cold and red in the face. And was there a bruise or two on his face? Oh, Menno! And the breaths of all of them made a white vapor that drifted back between the ranks. Oh, Jesus, sweet God, I thought.
Sunday, January 19, 1936
For a week Menno was on that detail—it was to lay new sewers for one of the SS barracks. The prisoners marched out in step, their feet banging the frozen ground, their songs hanging like icicles on the morning air. Then I didn’t see him again, and I just couldn’t get into the camp until today. Things seemed to have quieted down around the house. Dieter Lange has started picking at my ass again and Anna seems friendlier to him, so he sent me to the camp. I walked so fast one of the guards thought I was running. He laughed and said something about how I must still be used to warmer weather.
There wasn’t much business. Everyone was trying to stay warm, I guess, huddling around stoves in those drafty blocks. I worked on the stock for a couple of hours and then, because no one came in so I could send word to Werner, I went out to find him. I ran into him and Hohenberg in one of the streets. The wind was walking those streets, too. It was cold. I pulled Werner away and we went back to the canteen, and before I could say anything about Menno, he said, “They caught him with a Puppe, one in that last batch of Bible students. They haven’t sent him to the Prisoner Company or given him the pink—yet—because everybody’s got the grippe and they need him in the Infirmary. Stay away from him. One whole day they beat him. In the Bunker. Forget him. He’s trouble now. They put the pink on the boy. Pink and purple.” Werner leaned on the windowsill and looked out. “Everybody’s mean,” he said. “When it gets so cold and it’s hard to stay warm, they get mean.”
I had gone back to the stock and the shelves. I asked him about his family, had he heard anything lately. He didn’t turn around, just said “Nothing.” Then he asked if I’d brought anything for him, and I told him no, because of the problems back at the house. Then he left. He looked older and more tired. Winter does that. I kept working, thinking, I’ve become an old queen, the most sorry of queers, hauling around age like a chain-gang leg iron, but still thinking and acting, sometimes, like fifteen years younger, always competing, never quitting, deaf to the low rates other faggots put on you, and deaf to the laughing. I thought it was different with us, me and Menno. It was a half-assed, hurry-up, sneak-on-in-here life, but I thought it was a life. I also wonder, again, what Dieter Lange would do about me. He could only do so much plucking now. All he had was me, really, if he wanted to be careful. Hell, he had to be careful now. Bernhardt could do us both in. It was very quiet in the canteen; the snow and ice outside made even inside feel cold.
Tues., June 23, 1936
It has been a long, long time. I’ve been so blue I could hardly hold my head up. I asked myself why I was writing this, what’s the point, who cares—but then, for some reason, I began to miss you. I know why. There’s no one else I can really talk to. So here I am.
Looks like the cat-trailing-cat game has cooled down. Made me a nervous wreck but also kept Dieter Lange away from me. But I think he’s starting to feel his oats again, seems more confident. The rumor out here is that Bernhardt has been assigned to the Sicherheitsdienst, the brain boys, the SD—the Gestapo. Not a man to fool with, and I think Dieter Lange has his own grapevine about that. There are a lot of grapevines to tap into around here. Germany went back to the Rhineland and took it, and the French just let them. Wonder what happens now to Hohenberg’s lass who’s so nice in the ass. Not a shot fired. You’d think the prisoners wouldn’t give a shit about what happens anywhere but here, but they’re happy; they cheered when the announcement was made, and they cheered when that boxer Max Schmeling knocked out a colored fighter named Joe Louis back in New York over a week ago.
“Proves absolutely Aryan supremacy,” said Dieter Lange and Hohenberg and Karlsohn over in camp. Shit, I guess they all said that except me and Dr. Nyassa. Guess they never heard of Jack Johnson and Battling Siki and Joe Gans. They’re all so full of shit. Even the guards at the Jourhaus run up to me when I go in and out and put up their fists and laugh and shuffle around. “Put ’em up, put ’em up,” they say. They sure don’t give a colored man a break, even if they’re just as bad off—or worse.
Sunday, July 5, 1936
This afternoon Bernhardt and his wife stopped by, then Anna and Lily (Bernhardt’s wife) went for a walk down to the soccer field to watch the officers play. I served them some iced tea and Lily said their Gitzig made splendid iced tea and tapioca, too. Better than their cook. This was before they went for their walk. Was all I could do to keep from throwing up. As soon as the women had gone, Bernhardt and Dieter Lange settled down for a talk. I didn’t make myself so scarce that I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The talk was about me and something called Lebensborn, or Spring of Life, some more of that high-falutin’ Nazi shit. I got scared and went the hell away from the window where I was listening. Last person I wanted to catch me listening in was Bernhardt. I went out back and pulled a few weeds from the lawn, waved to some of the other calfactors who were also pretending to work. It was a fine, warm, clear day, and it was Sunday after all, the time to recover from hangovers, for the prisoners to worship.
“Cleef! Cleef!” Oh, shit, I thought. What’s he want now? Dieter Lange didn’t want me; Bernhardt did. There was going to be a Lebensborn club between the camp and the town. A place where strong young SS men and Aryan young women could meet and get to know each other. The women would be the best German types, just like the SS. Bernhardt laughed. They are supposed to make babies. First, though, to like each other and then … Well, that was all I needed to know, but he thought a band could play music, not jazz music, but swing music. Jazz was, he said, heh, heh, Entartete, but swing was all right. “From what I hear from the States there are two or three white kings of swing, so I guess that the music is all right to play here,” he went on. What he wanted was for me to lead the band. He could get from camp a drummer, an accordion player, a harmonica player, a guitarist, a cellist/violinist, a man who played the French horn, and someone who could double on clarinet and flute. No saxophones, trombones, or trumpets. What did I think? I would continue to stay with Dieter Lange and Anna and still work in the canteen. At first, there would be rehearsal, of course, so some time would have to be taken from the regular duties, but once everything was in order, I’d go back to them, just like everyone else in the band. Dieter Lange didn’t look all that happy, but I guessed there wasn’t too much he could do about it. I didn’t feel that I had to tell him I couldn’t write music; I couldn’t even read music. But he must have known because he said some of the others could do the arrangements. I could tell them how to make things—uh—swingy. But mainly I would just lead and play jazz things like swing. I said okay. What the hell else c
ould I say? No? Or even dare tell him that both were from the same big old black tree?
Saturday, August 1, 1936
It’s like party time. The Olympic Games began today in Berlin. And the band was driven to the Lebensborn club, which is in one of three connecting mansions way off the Dachauerstrasse between Dachau and Karlsfeld on the road that leads into Munich. It must have taken us close to an hour to get through the woods to the place. It was strange seeing people going about their business as we looked out of the rear of the truck. It’s summer, so the women wore light dresses, kids played in the parks, the men wore no coats. We were feeling like special people. We hadn’t had to drill, and the sergeant in charge of us said we’d have all the food and beer we wanted when we got to the club. “Just the way musicians ought to be treated,” he said. We didn’t say anything, but we certainly agreed. We were silent because you never know when these guys are bullshitting you, setting you up for a billy club on the head or hands or kneecaps. We knew we couldn’t fuck up. This was too good an arrangement to do that.
We had been reading about the Olympics and how the Americans had a track team with some colored boys on it. Gossip had it that all the freak bars had been reopened in Berlin and the signs against the Jews had been taken down. Juden Unerwuenscht. Well. They were still rounding up people, those damned Nazis. They brought a bunch of Gypsies into camp just a couple of weeks ago. I can’t imagine what they ever did. They’re supposed to not have much to do with people who aren’t Gypsies. Most Europeans don’t give two shits about them; treat ’em just like colored people back home.
The sign at the door of the building we went into read Nisten von Gluck. If what we’d been told and heard about the Lebensborns was true, that was sure right. Love nest, yeah. Legal prostitution, we’d heard, only no money was involved. The Nazis were providing free pussy to the SS. The girls only had to be “real Germans,” blond, no mistake, or the next best thing to it. Of course, the SS were supposed to be the cream of the crop. I guess the Nazis didn’t want to stir that cup too much and turn up all those people like Dieter Lange. We guessed there were a lot of rooms upstairs in the “Nest of Happiness” (we called it the Pussy Palace), but we had a large room to practice and play in, a place where we could rest between sets, and a kitchen with a big table where we’d eat. The icebox was filled with food. We’d be under guard at all times and driven to and from the camp whenever we had to rehearse or play. The hours were going to be long on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, but it beat putting up with Dieter Lange and Anna and their who-struck-john. Looks like old Bernhardt is my angel now, so Dieter Lange better not fuck with me.
The piano is smaller than the one in Dieter Lange’s house, but it’s brand new, probably from some poor Jew’s store. I thought I knew a lot of crooks in Storyville. They stole things and ran away. These Nazis, now, they just take stuff from right under your nose and dare you to say anything: “Gimme that! What? You don’t like it? BANG!”
Thursday, August 27, 1936
Now there’s a war in Spain. First Italy and Ethiopia and now Spain. Civil war. I liked Spain. I guess Werner’s prediction is going to come true, but right now the Games are what everyone’s still talking about.
When I saw his pictures in the papers and magazines, I thought Jesse Owens was the most beautiful man in the world. He looked like a black eagle or a voodoo spirit rushing down the track. He’s won four medals and set records all over the place. (I’d set some, too, if they just gave me a little running room.) Of course, with all this Aryan superman shit, the Germans were not too happy that this black boy did so well. There are more papers and magazines around the “Nest of Happiness” than back in camp, where you have to hustle and scheme to get them and then they’re days, even weeks old. I smuggled a letter out to the U.S. Olympic Team, Berlin, to Jesse Owens. I thought he would get my letter and because he was so famous and because the Nazis were putting the best face on everything, he might be able to demand my release. I imagined that a long, official Mercedes-Benz would drive up to the camp, that the guards would click their heels and salute, and that the American ambassador, Mr. William Edward Dodd, and Jesse Owens would get out and go right to Eicke’s or Karl’s office (Eicke is now also the inspector of all the camps), and when they came out I’d be sent in and Eicke or Karl would apologize and I’d drive away with Jesse and the ambassador. The fact that Mr. Dodd was from North Carolina wouldn’t have mattered a bit. But the Games are over and at thirty-six I’m too old for this kind of daydream.
At Dachau things go on exactly the same, except this Lebensborn business. Who back home would believe I have a band? Not much of a band, but I suppose the guys in it haven’t caused any problems in camp, so Bernhardt picked them, even though there are probably greater musicians here. Today, while workers were fixing up the dance floor and the bandstand, Bernhardt said we could play blues, but we shouldn’t call them that because, of course, they were Entartete. “But get ready for the times, Cleef. Get used to them and you will survive, okay? Make up new names for the old numbers, understand?” I asked like what. He said, “Something fancy, French, see. Like, you won’t say ‘The Man I Love’ but—ah—” He snapped his fingers. “L’homme que j’adore,” he said. “I heard that somewhere. Just make up titles, and when you sing, change some of the words. You’re no dummkopf, Cleef. You know what you have to do. No Neger Musik.” I got the point. I asked if he could get me some scores—stuff from Benny Goodman, since we had this guy who doubled on clarinet and flute, and some stuff from Ellington, since he featured a lot of trumpet with Cootie Williams. That way I could use the guy with the French horn as a soloist. I could make up the rest. He said he could. He was rubbing his hands and smiling. He called for a couple of cognacs and we drank as I listened to the band going every which-a-way.
Drinking with Bernhardt was like drinking with the gangster who owns the place you play in. You’re always glad when he leaves. I had enough problems. This band was not going to sound like anything Freddie Johnson or Willy Lewis could put together in Amsterdam or Paris. I hoped it would sound bad enough for Bernhardt to give me some people who he’d let play brass, and more reeds. But he’d made it sound like this was it and I wasn’t going to be fool enough to push for more. So I set up my front line:
Clarinet/flute. This is Ernst, a joker who looks evil all the time. Tall and thin. Moves slow like if he doesn’t, something will snap loose. He’s heard Benny Goodman, but not Barney Bigard or Garvin Bushell. Got a tough, pure sound, like for a symphony, which is where he played. Ernst is a Red.
The boy on harmonica, Oskar, is a Green. Got quick eyes. Scratch your nuts or flick a cigarette and Oskar’s watching. I hear he played while a buddy worked the street crowds, picking their pockets clean. Seen people like him all over Berlin. Can’t read, either. Short, and even though he has to keep himself clean like every other prisoner, he looks dirty.
Moritz is a Pink. He plays the violin. Like Ernst, he reads music. Chubby fellow. Moody, and we can all see that he thinks his shit don’t stink, even if he is in Dachau. A couple of days ago when we took a break from practicing, he came up to me and said, “How did you get that?” He cut his eyes to my green triangle. “Who do you belong to?”
I told him right quick, “Shut up, faggot,” and for a minute there he looked confused.
“Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t mean it. I walked on away. Sum-bitch trying to fuck up my play just ’cause he couldn’t get his own arrangements together.
Teodor’s a Red. Says he could play trumpet if they gave him one instead of the French horn (which is all they had in the storage where they keep things from prisoners who’ve died or were freed and left in a big hurry) because he’s a pretty good “Hotter,” he says. Yessir, they’ve all heard of hot jazz and think because I’m colored I’ve got to be good. Teodor’s got good jaws; it’s just the damned horn that gives off the soft, round sound. And he’s a little slow on the tonguing, but he can sure carry the back line without
trouble, and read, too.
First time I ever saw accordions in a band was here in Europe. Not my idea of a jazz (okay, swing) instrument, but hell, I stuck Alex in the back line because I didn’t know where else to put him. He doesn’t read, either. Like Oskar, he’s a Green. Probably worked the same swindle Oskar did—but maybe with a monkey and a tin cup to help. He can do some crazy things with that Hohner, though.
Fritz is the guy on cello; he’s a Red. He’s always apologizing. If he plays doo instead of daa, he hears the mistake if no one else does and apologizes. He apologizes for wanting to speak to you or even if he gives you a cigarette. He can saw, though, and read his ass off. I let him do trombone parts.
On the side there’s me, piano and vocals, Franz on the drums, and Sam on guitar. Franz is a Black—a vagrant, an antisocial, a race defiler, whatever they want you to be—and behaves like a drummer. Shows off too much; likes to rap hard with his sticks on the high-hat. Told him to make some brushes somehow, someway. But he’s tough, got good control, can pick up when the rhythm’s falling apart. Takes good direction, because, of course, he thinks I know it all. And he’s heard of Zutty Singleton and Big Sid Catlett and Cozy Cole. Does some cute things on the snare.
Sam is a Gold/Red, a Jew, and really works on the gitbox, feeding light-line rhythms in case Franz falls off. Got a strong wrist like a banjo man. Franz acts like colored, tries to talk like colored, because he speaks a little English. Everything is “Man” this and “Man” that. A real wish-he-was hepcat. Sam is calm and careful; he tries to stay out of everybody’s way, but he gives the impression that if you push him, you can only push so far.
Saturday, August 29, 1936
I thought by now that every Jehovah’s Witness in Germany was in a camp, but yesterday the Nazis had another big roundup. Maybe now they have them all.
We’re sounding as good as we possibly can. With what I have to work with, it’d take a miracle to sound better. Some of the local SA men brought in a bundle of black dress shoes and black tuxedos (no navy blue or plum-colored ones), white shirts and black bow ties. Probably cleaned out two or three haberdashers. “This isn’t going to be a bumshow,” Bernhardt keeps saying. “No one wants to dance to a band dressed in gray prison suits. You must look smart!” Our bandboxes are red, white, and black, the Nazi colors. The red, gold, and black, the German national colors, are sort of in the background these days. The bandboxes also have some of that glitter dust on them. I hope someone takes pictures so The Cliff will have something to remember when this business is all over. “Cliff Pepperidge and His Wittelsbachers.” The Wittelsbachs came even before the Counts of Dachau, they say, and everyone loved them. That was a long time ago.
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