Clifford's Blues

by John A. Williams

  Dieter Lange was sitting on my stool. I said, “You changed the records.”

  “Yes. I had them changed, and you know the reason for that, too.”

  “Was I in the Revier?”

  “No, because you might have said something to get us into trouble. And Bernhardt didn’t want you to die over there. He needs you.”

  “Everybody needs poor old Cliff,” I said. I watched us from somewhere. “And all I got is a big asshole and can play the piano.”

  He didn’t say anything then, but it occurred to me that we were whispering or seemed to be. I said, “What’s wrong with me?”

  “The grippe,” he said. “Pneumonia.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad, but better. Twenty people a day die of grippe or pneumonia in the Revier. I didn’t want that to happen to you. Neither did Bernhardt. Neither did Anna. So Bernhardt arranged for the black man in the Revier to come and bring you medicine and look you over, and for Gitzig to help, too.”

  I remember myself thinking that I didn’t want Gitzig to be mad at me because he had handled my piss and shit and washed me. But if he hadn’t put something in my water he must like me.

  “And Anna has been looking in on you, too, and Ursula and Lily.”

  I thought then, Anna and Ursula, and I wondered if Dieter Lange heard my thoughts, they seemed so loud. He lit a cigarette.

  I said, “Did anyone else come to see me?”

  “No one. Just that Gitzig and the black man from the Infirmary. I found those letters I gave you at Christmas. I destroyed them.”

  “You don’t care about me, Dieter Lange. I hate you. I meant for you to find them.”

  “Is that so. Well, anyway, don’t be such a sissy,” he said, his voice getting thick. “You got yourself here. I found you. I saved you. The SA would have ripped your ass open all the way to your heart if I hadn’t. And if they hadn’t killed you, the swamps would have or the quarry, and if they didn’t, you’d have been drowned in shit on the 4711 detail—and you wouldn’t have been the first fairy to vanish like that.”

  He honked his snot and swallowed it.

  “I want to die, Dieter Lange.”

  “You love music too much to die. You will die, sure, but not now.”

  “You told Willy Lewis he could buy me out. I’ll buy myself out.”

  “You can’t. You’ve only earned 80 marks. Oh, your guitar player, the Jew, he got bought out. But Bernhardt’s got another guitarist. Claims he’s a cousin of Django Reinhardt. Never met a Gypsy who could play anything who didn’t claim to be related to Django.”

  I remember thinking, the thoughts bouncing off the drying hams and sausages, the rows of canned goods and glass jars behind the white sheets, that the rhythm section was going to need work with a new man. “How much for Sam?” I asked him.

  “Seven thousand five hundred marks. Fifteen thousand dollars. U.S. Jews have money.”

  “How much for me?”

  “Ten thousand marks. Twenty thousand dollars U.S.”

  I thought, Sam is worth $15,000, me $20,000.

  It seemed that I heard snowflakes hitting the ground. “Twenty thousand dollars,” I said. “Get me out of here and I’ll send it to you.” I thought, The price of slavery has gone up.

  “You see,” he said, “the Reich wants so much per head. The middlemen who arrange such things must have so much. Bernhardt’s a middleman. So am I.”

  “Dieter Lange, get me out.”

  “It’s too late. It’s not like the old days. I can’t get myself out. That’s why I have to pull so many strings to cover me and you.”

  “Run, Dieter Lange, run. You travel. You can run. Paris. Madrid. Rotterdam. Copenhagen. Zurich. Stockholm.”

  “And what would happen to you if I did? Besides, Cleef, in five years’ time they’d catch up with me. They mean to have it all.”

  “I hate you, Dieter Lange, and your fat pig wife.”

  “I thought you liked Anna. I know you like Anna. She likes you. You don’t hate her.”

  He put out his cigarette then and I thought of Anna and Ursula, who’d come to visit me, who’d chased Gitzig out, and who’d pulled down the covers to look at me, measure me, feel me, put their mouths to me; Anna, and Ursula with the high heels and high butt, taking turns playing the clarinet, causing me to rise through my sickness; who exchanged comments between vigorous wet riffs and tiny, musical, secretive Ohs! And then I knew who had come down the stairs the night I got home after our opening at The Nest. (Oh, Anna, Oh.) The house was full of Tricksters.

  So, I was saved even as I was lost in the funhouse. If I hated, I hated with the reserve of the rescued and measured myself against those in the camp who surely would have died and been buried, or who, within a few months, would have their bodies cremated and their ashes sent home in urns at 50 marks a pop.

  “Would you like to hear some music? I can bring the phonograph down.”

  “No.”

  He sighed, or seemed to.

  “Why did you give me those papers, Dieter Lange?”

  He lighted another cigarette from the pack of Camels. Business must be good, I thought.

  “I guess I wanted you to know I was looking out for you. But that day after you slapped me and Anna walked in, the last thing I was ever going to let you know about was Willy Lewis. I could have killed you then and even later, because that’s when Anna got the upper hand. I know about her and Bernhardt. I’m not a fool, so I know he’s got me—us—right under his thumb.” He played with his cigarette before crushing it out half-finished. “Just a little bit prominent, that’s all I wanted to be, but, shit, Cleef, the whole thing’s like a quagmire. There are already over 275,000 Germans in jail. This gang means business.” Dieter Lange stood and dipped a cloth into a wash basin and wrung out the water. He wiped my face with it. He was very gentle. Then he bent and kissed my forehead and left.

  That day, rising out of my sickness of both body and mind, I think I understood that Dieter Lange was afraid.

  Monday, February 1, 1937

  Today I got back into the house routine. Anna’s insisted that Dieter Lange not send me to the canteen. I need my health for the band; I do not yet need to go out to get sick again, she says, and that’s all right with me, because January, February, and March can cut your butt a duster around here. I thought of that guy, Hans Beimler. How had he got away? Why hadn’t I heard anything about it? The place was big; you could never know everything that was going on. Some rumors ran around like rats gone crazy; others never went anywhere. Everyone hoped Beimler’s book would make things better, even get us out.

  Gitzig sneaked over while no one was home. “Now that you’re almost well, they don’t want me about,” he said. “That’s all right with me, because I was getting tired of cleaning up after you. You know, your shit’s the same color as mine. I always thought black people had different color shit, and piss, too.” I told him I always knew the colors were the same. And the smells. He said the tailors were making new uniforms, with stripes, and I told him that’s what they wore on the chain gangs back home. He wanted to know what chain gangs were. I told him. Then he wanted to know if I was getting much before I got sick, and I just looked at him and asked if he was getting much. He didn’t answer.

  “It’s a mess in Czechoslovakia,” Gitzig said. “Next year the Nazis’ll get what they want. Bet you.”

  I kept on dusting the furniture.

  “I hear they’ve got some Gypsies in over there. Brown triangles with ‘z’ on them.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Zigeuner. Sinti. Gypsies. ‘z’ for Gypsies, ‘J’ for Jews. They got a letter for every nationality, don’t worry.” He took one of Dieter Lange’s Gauloises from the pack I held out to him. “Is it true about Lebensborn? They have a club? They just go to drink, dance, and fuck? Really? It’s enough to make you wish you were SS.”

  He fidgeted. “I’m glad you’re well—or almost. I didn’t mind being your Pfleger. If things go bad
out here I could work in the Infirmary. From what I hear, I’d be better than any of those other nurses in the Revier. Knock on wood I don’t get sick. You can die over there.”

  I finished dusting and sat down. I was tired, yet I hadn’t done that much. I wondered if I’d be better by Friday.

  “Frau Lange and Frau Winkelmann are very good friends,” Gitzig said. He looked at his cigarette before putting it out.

  “They did come to see me, didn’t they?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, they did. Threw me out, they did, so they could have you all to themselves to clean and coo over.”

  He gave me a sharp look; I looked somewhere else. He said, “I guess you had a wet dream after they left, and you with a fever of 103.”

  He smiled, but it was a kind of jealous smile. “Well, Pepperidge, if you ever have a spare, or need a bit of help, I wouldn’t mind delivering a quart of milk to a housewife once in a while, okay?”

  “Why do you think I—”

  “Pepperidge. It’s crazy; it’s all crazy and it’s not over yet.” He came close to me. “You see Werner, tell him I’ve looked at Bernhardt’s list of museums in these cities. Listen. Vienna. Salzburg. Amstetten. Graz. Linz. Okay?” He was slapping the air with his finger at each name. “Prague. Pilsen. Brno. Bratislava. Ostrava. Kosice. Okay? Warsaw. Czestochowa. Breslau. Stettin. Danzig. Cracow. Poznan. Torun. Okay? Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland. Okay? I’ve got to get back. Remember: if there’s more milk than you can deliver …”

  Tues., March 9, 1937

  He blows that horn like Coleman Hawkins, a wide, sweet coolness on the slow pieces, and on the fast ones he’s like a jackhammer biting up a road laid with diamonds. Oberleutnant Eric Ulrich. He’s that big blond guy I spotted the first night we played at The Nest. The first time he played with me was on a Friday afternoon. We’d come in from the camp for our usual early rehearsal. I wasn’t hungry, so I left the guys in the kitchen feeding their faces like eating was going out of style—which, in the camp, it did sometimes. He was already onstage. Older up close than he looked standing near the stage. Looked like he was waiting. Didn’t have on no jacket and his shirt was open and he was twisting the mouthpiece and licking the reed. When I came out he pulled up a chair. Ain’t said shit yet. Neither did I. I tickled on out with “Tea for Two.” Lightly: da, da-da, da-da, da-da … He took counter as we moved through the melody. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him lower the horn, that big gold Selmer, and he just tapped his foot while I ran through a whole lot of bars, changing up as I went. Then I led him into his solo, throwing him a handful of dinkles and chord changes. He jumped on them like a starving dog. He was calm and collected and once or twice his eyes seemed to twinkle when I turned to look at him. When he came to the end of 8, I upped the tempo to jump and took off again. Cut this sucker’s ass a duster, I said to myself. By this time Franz had come out and leaped on his stool. The Oberleutnant nodded and the shit was going socko when Teodor came out and pushed through the small crowd of workers. He grabbed his horn, turned the bell away until he found a fit on his chops, then turned back. Damn! It was like a jam session! Then Danko—we called him “Little Django,” the one who’d replaced Sam—somehow was on stage, too, with his guitar and moving fast on the beat. Reminded me of Teddy Bunn and Eddie Lang rolled into one, so I figured big Django must be copasetic. I led them around again and Teodor took a solo, then “Little Django,” who could have cut Sam with just one string, and then Franz with his hepcat moves, all shoulders and hands and very little wrist; then the Oberleutnant again. We jammed on the same piece for the better part of an hour. The workers applauded real loud, and I had a feeling that we let ourselves get carried away and maybe that was why the Oberleutnant, a big smile on his face, stood and nodded to each of us, unhooked his horn, put it in the case, said “Morgen,” and left the stage walking fast. He was back for our first and second set dressed in his uniform. Later Teodor told me who he was: Eric Ulrich, the best jazz player in Germany, who had played in America and France as a guest with Ellington, Webb, and Lunceford, and I thought, Damn, no wonder! He only played the Friday and Saturday rehearsals. He never showed any emotion, except maybe a smile, a twinkle in his eyes. On Fridays when we finished he only said, “Morgen,” which meant he’d see us the next day. On Saturdays he said “Wochenachst,” which meant he’d see us the next week. Sometimes I saw him talking with Bernhardt. We thought he had to be careful with his Neger Musik, and, yeah, we did notice that when we jammed after that first time, the workers weren’t around. I could never understand how he got such feeling for the music. Didn’t seem right he was a Nazi, and maybe he felt what we were thinking, because he had a phonograph brought into the dressing room and a shelf full of the latest records from back home, like “One O’Clock Jump,” “Cherokee,” “Every Tub,” and low-down nasty blues, stuff we sure nuff didn’t, couldn’t, play during the sets.

  Wednesday, March 17, 1937

  On the roof of the Wirtschaftsgebaude, in big letters, they have posted these words:

  THERE IS ONE ROAD TO FREEDOM. ITS MILESTONES ARE: OBEDIENCE, DILIGENCE, HONESTY, ORDER, CLEANLINESS, TEMPERANCE, TRUTH, SACRIFICE, AND LOVE OF ONE’S COUNTRY

  Inmates can see the sign from the end of the Lagerstrasse, way down where the gardens and the disinfection hut are. Can’t miss it. From the canteen window the words jump out like giants.

  I don’t like Baum. I don’t like him because he is friendly with Karlsohn, who is really the only guard who gives me trouble. Doesn’t seem to matter too much to him that Bernhardt is my patron. Even Dieter Lange, still a major, can’t have Karlsohn done in. Karlsohn’s only a corporal. Only a corporal! But the plainest soldier—hell, a free civilian—has the power of God where we prisoners are concerned.

  Dieter Lange is very busy now with planning a canteen for a new camp to open in July. I think he said it’s near Weimar and is called Buchenwald. He has also been able to arrange for a regular detail from the camp to be trucked out to his father-in-law’s farm to turn the soil and ready it for the spring planting. He’s not the only one who makes such arrangements.

  Coal has been scarce this winter and we’ve had to switch to coke. Dieter Lange is in charge of ordering it for the crematorium and he has got himself a good racket with the dealer. I guess the dealer himself is doing pretty well, since he knows the potter who makes the urns for the ashes. They all know each other, like anywhere else.

  Monday, May 10, 1937

  The Blacks have come in by the hundreds, and Dieter Lange has raised prices on everything—cigarettes, candy, gum, biscuits, canned goods—everything.

  “These are the crazy ones, the Blacks,” Werner said, “but some are crazy like foxes. They’re all meat for the Institute for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology.”

  The Institute deals with people it calls asocials, like the Blacks. “But in the meantime,” Werner said, “they can help finish the camp, drain the swamp, cut stone from the quarry, rebuild the factory buildings, and all that other shit. The Nazis have got a pretty good slave system here. By the time they finish, with the forced labor and the slaves, Germany will be as big as America became with slavery, eh?”

  We were looking out the canteen windows watching the trucks unload yet another batch of Blacks. They didn’t have their black triangles yet, but we knew what they were. When I told Werner about Bernhardt’s list that Gitzig had seen, I knew something was going to happen to the museums. I didn’t know, though, that getting news of that list gave Werner time to get word to “his people,” as he called them, to get out of those cities fast. The Reds seem to have a smooth-running organization that reaches outside the camp, even to America, where, I heard, Werner has learned that his wife is very sick. “His people” in New York are looking after her, helping out. I thought that was kind of strange—after not hearing anything from her or even about her for such a long time and now …

  I’ve seen Dr. Nyassa a couple of times lately. I thanked him for his care when I was sick. He has th
e blues. His wife can’t get any answers. They’ve offered to pay whatever money they have and leave Germany, but they don’t have what the Nazis want—15,000 marks for him and 30,000 for her. That’s $22,500! She’s written to Dr. Just, but he can do no more than write to people he knew in Germany. Now it seems safer for her to leave, and that’s why he’s so blue. She’s off to Paris. Dr. Nyassa said he was doing better, even getting along with that evil-looking Revier block leader, because he’s been treating his friends with the clap and syph with the sulfa powders, and they’re grateful. He knows it cures, but they don’t, so he said he goes into a lot of mumbo-jumbo about maybe it’ll work and maybe it won’t, but it’ll be better than running that thing down their dicks, huh? He gave me some medicine, just in case of a slight relapse, and a swallow or two of the old medicinal brandy. This, he said, he has to keep hiding, moving from one place to another so the block leader can’t find it and either drink it up or sell it.

  Becker? They can’t break him, Dr. Nyassa said. So they’ve eased off a bit, but they’ll try something else, he said, watch and see.

  Thurs., May 27, 1937

  I’ve noticed that Karlsohn doesn’t holler at me anymore in the canteen unless we’re alone. Oh, he’s got the meanest look, the kind that says, Let me catch you on a dark night in an alleyway and your ass is mine, boy. My Aunt Jordie once told me about this Negro man who hurt colored people. White people didn’t pay him much mind as long as he wasn’t bothering them or their favorite colored people. Did just what he wanted to do, cut people with his razor, beat them up, was fresh with women—anybody’s woman—and he would walk right into someone’s yard and help himself to a chicken or a watermelon or a burlap sack of pecans. Karlsohn treats me like that sometimes. For a prisoner, I’ve got a little “prominence,” as Dieter Lange calls it. I didn’t think there was such a thing in Dachau. Now I know different. That’s only because I’m a musician and a freak. I know just being a freak wouldn’t be enough to keep Karlsohn and some of the others off me, but being Bernhardt’s and Dieter Lange’s musician so far has done just that. Thank you, Jesus. I am a Prominenter.