Dieter Lange was right about Baum. He clips cigarettes, the expensive foreign ones like Gauloises, Luckies, Camels, Benson & Hedges, Players, and so on. So I said to him yesterday in the canteen when we were alone, “We’re lots of cigarettes short, Baum.” He turned twenty different shades of white. He thought I was dumb, couldn’t count, couldn’t read the invoices; that I could seemed to surprise him. He’s a fat little man who jokes all the time. When he farts, he holds one of his legs way up like a dog. He’s lucky. Don’t know how lucky he is, because a fat man in prison is like a red cloth to a bunch of bulls looking to stick him. I’ve told him that. Wanted to put that fear in him, because it’s there in every man, the idea of going to prison and having your nature bent south. ’Course he went into a lot of labba-labba yabba-yabba. He knows if I tell Dieter Lange he’ll be sent to the Prisoner Company, where they put targets all over your clothes and work you to the bone. Fat man like Baum probably wouldn’t make out his time there. Thing is, I’ve learned—and maybe it works even outside a concentration camp—that to have something on someone is like having money in the bank. And that’s only the beginning; once you have him, yank the hook, again, again, like you got a channel cat on your line. Too bad he’s not taller and good-looking.
“An error in the accounts is all,” he said.
Then I said, “But where are the cigarettes? They should be here even if there is an error. But they aren’t. I guess I better have the major go over the cigarette invoices. But he’ll be mad. That’s our job, not his. He expects the pieces to match the money, Baum, and they don’t. Now what am I supposed to do?”
At that moment I knew he hated me as much as Karlsohn does—but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Nothing. “Well?” I said. Baum had been in the plumbing-supply business, I’d heard—not plumbing, but supplying the parts—and had made a little fortune on brass and copper parts. They caught him, so he was here claiming his boss was the one who got rich, not him. That was probably true, but I guessed he was closer to grand than petty theft. The big shots always got away.
“I don’t have the money to put back,” he said. He choked on the words. He knew what he faced, and here was this black faggot who was gonna do him in. I asked if he was willing to make a bargain. He said yes. Anything. But he didn’t mean that. Anything reasonable.
“Your wife comes once a month?”
He said yes, oh yes.
“She comes next week?”
He said yes again, and I could see he was trying to think what I would ask. I said, “I’ll give you a letter. She must smuggle it out. In my letter I’ll ask the person to write back at once, addressing the letter to your wife, and that letter she will bring when she comes next month.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t like to get my wife involved, you know.”
I said, “Okay.” I went back to checking the invoices.
“But I’ll do it,” Baum said. “This once.”
“No,” I said. “You’ll have to do it whenever I say. That depends on the kind of answers I get.”
“To America?”
“Holland. Why?”
“I don’t want to make trouble for my wife. I think they check all the mail from America and going to America.”
“You already made it,” I told him. But I didn’t tell him how I’d cover up his stealing. I’d simply not say anything until Dieter Lange was up to his neck in work in the room he used as an office, and then I’d tell him some of the guards came in and helped themselves to the cigarettes, which they did often enough anyway, but we were supposed to keep count of what they took. Sometimes we couldn’t because there were customers and sometimes we didn’t even see them. Things haven’t gotten better with four eyes instead of two because there are more people in camp now. I can handle Dieter Lange. Hmmm. Could even suggest to him that he keep an eye open for Karlsohn and the guards on his watch. He could pass it up to Bernhardt that Karlsohn was making trouble for me! Now the SS Prisoner Company was a solid dick-licker, Jack, like gods booted out of heaven into pure-dee hell. Heh, heh. Slick score, Cliff.
“You’ll take care of it then, Pepperidge?”
“Yes.”
“No money?”
“No money. But Baum, you won’t steal anymore, will you?”
“No. I won’t. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet, because if your wife doesn’t bring me a letter next month …”
His face turned a color again, this time somewhere between red and purple. “But—suppose the Hollander does not write back?”
“He will. And move the cigarettes to the back shelf, so Karlsohn and his buddies can’t reach over and help themselves. Now.” I think he also hated me because I could talk to him in his language. My German isn’t great, but it isn’t bad, either. Having to translate English lyrics into German has helped a lot. Knowing someone else’s language is something like being a spy. Oh, in a restaurant they’ll pat you on the back and say your German or French or Italian or any other language is great, but they don’t really want you to understand the bass notes.
A small group of asocials (ASOS, we call them) crept into the canteen and looked around in surprise like every new prisoner does, and you could see in their eyes they were thinking, A canteen! Well, not so bad. Like a store on the outside. And they were used to stores.
After my talk with Baum, I slipped in to see Werner. He’s now got both sections of his block under his “command.” His block is still made up of Roter, the Reds. In his block there is the “Committee,” or “Familie,” which tries to look after the guys who don’t have their rabbit’s foot with them. They gather information from all over—workers in the Medical Office, Political Office, Labor Office, the SS homes, the SS and SA barracks. What they gather, they pass around. They try to get their very sick people off the tough details. They keep a record of who’s missing and when he was first missed and which guards were with him, and they try to help the newcomers get used to things like the commands and keeping track of their bowls and spoons. They’ve even been known to try to talk the guards into going easy on jokers who aren’t yet used to the slavery.
Werner told me that there are a few Thaelmann Brigaders in camp now, picked up as soon as they hit their front porches after being sent home from Spain with wounds. The Germans fighting with the Spanish Republicans named themselves after Ernst Thaelmann. He lost in two elections in 1932. Thaelmann’s a Red, one of the first the Nazis put into a concentration camp. It was kind of strange, Werner telling me that, because I had a bunch of magazines from Italy and France to give him and they carried stories and pictures about the Spanish war. He thumbed through them looking at the pictures. He doesn’t speak French or Italian, but there are a lot of people in his block who do. “Well,” he said. “They sat on their hands when that idiot Mussolini went to Ethiopia, and they’re still sitting. But now the Germans and the Italians are in Spain. Why is everyone so goddamn blind?” He was so disgusted he spat on the floor. Then he got up to hide the magazines. In Dachau, everybody hides everything. From the guards and from each other.
Monday, June 7, 1937
The summer uniforms feel good, but tuxedos feel even better, like you’re somebody, not a prisoner. The guys in the band have a feel for each other now. Moritz and Fritz and me sometimes play some of their stuff. I struggle on the piano (I’m reading more now because of them) with stuff like Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano and Violin and Brahms’s Violin Concerto, which is mainly for Moritz. If I lose my way they just go on ahead without me, hearing a piano where there should be one until I catch up or plain drop out. Mostly they like the Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. I’ve heard Moritz many times off in a closet of The Nest playing his favorites, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor, and Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto. And he’ll go on as long as he can with violin sections from a lot of Bach.
Sometimes Teodor’s in another room running through Haydn, Vivaldi, and Purcell. The first ti
me I heard him he stopped to explain that Bach had a guy named Gottfried Reiche playing trumpet for him, and Handel had Valentine Snow, and Henry Purcell had John Shore. “Now,” he said, “Cliff Pepperidge has his Teodor Loeb—with a French horn.” He waved up his circle of brass and valves and grinned. This guy Haydn also did a lot of things for cello, so many times Fritz sits in with Teodor and then does “Clouds” and “Festivals” from Debussy. They say they’re jamming when they play Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival,” because it’s fast.
Then there’s Ernst; I know he prefers the flute to his clarinet, and he woodsheds with Bach, too—Sonata in A Minor and Sonata in C Major. Thing that gets me about their music is that if you put down the right time to it, it can swing, which is exactly what my colonel once said. Seems like two thousand years since I knew him. Lord, how long? Maybe once I start writing and hearing from Willy Lewis on a regular basis, who knows what might happen? Who knows? All this made me think of Sam. Long gone by now, with his guitar, without looking back once, and I don’t blame him. I hope his whole family, if he had one, got the hell outa here. The Germans are death on Jews, the way Americans are death on Negroes. I really don’t understand that shit, but I know I can’t like it, don’t like it. I just wish I had the geetz, the gelt, the money, that Sam was able to come up with. I hope he can do another book, like Beimler, tell about Dachau, get us out of this place. But, you know, mostly, when a joker’s got his, it turns out he’s not too worried about anybody else.
It’s Eric Ulrich, though, who intrigues us the most. When he sets up we don’t have no time to worry about no Sam or anything else. The music is all. Did he really play with those jokers? We can understand that he’s gotta be careful. He don’t say shit but see you tomorrow or next week. Then gone. Then back again. Last Friday I thought I’d put some questions to him. I mean, who the fuck he think he is, just slipping in and pulling up a chair? Didn’t nobody invite him to sit in. Sure, Bernhardt probably told him it was okay, if he was careful, but Bernhardt’s probably already got some kind of bag to put Ulrich in by now. Like I got Baum.
So here he comes. I saw him. But I just took myself another sandwich in the kitchen and let him wait out there. Of course, when I went out and found him sitting on the stand, I pretended to be surprised. All right. I sat down and ran up and down the keyboard and he ran up and down his stops. Franz sneaked up and settled his cheeks. Danko just sort of floated up beside the drums. Oskar and Alex grabbed their Hohners, and Ernst and Teodor sidled up a respectful distance from the Oberleutnant. Moritz stayed in the kitchen with Fritz. I never said what I’d be playing because I didn’t know myself until I was already into the intro. Friday it was “The Man I Love.” I played that intro like a lawyer laying out his case, slow and serious, heavy on the chords to let the Oberleutnant know they were questions I wanted answers to. In the dim house lights—Ulrich never sat directly under lights—I saw from the corner of my eyes (it’s not only in Dachau where some things are better seen from the corners) his head turn toward me, his bright hair, like new hay tossed in going-down sun, sparkling as he moved. I finished the melody, statement, and questions, and started a series of ad-libs. The first was “What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?” How come you play like you know the lyrics, the kinda poetry in the words some of you jokers don’t even know are there? And if you are the greatest thing since fried chitlins because you played with Duke, Chick, and Jimmy, how come you wearing that Nazi shit, and how come you can’t understand my—and here I gave him some melody from “Mood Indigo”—? And I kept playing, finding melodies within crazy long lines of improvisation, losing everyone on the changes but Danko, throwing him “They Didn’t Believe Me,” “Body and Soul,” “You Rascal You,” “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
Even with all the Chinese—the band trying to find the changes—I heard Eric Ulrich’s feet slide into a wider position. His lips went funny into a little smile when he inhaled around his mouthpiece. Right in between Danko’s beat he blew very quickly the seven notes that intro “I Cover the Waterfront,” then back into the melody of “The Man I Love.” But before he finished that, I thought I heard (and I looked around quick to see if anyone else thought he heard, too), “Deutschland, Deutschland, Über Alles,” played hard like running over stones, and cynical and made-fun-of, the way some of those Masters of Ceremonies sometimes introduced acts in Berlin: daaa-daaa, dee-dee, dum da do-do. I thought I even heard a goose step in there. But before anybody could know for sure, he found a spot to fit in “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” He loved jazz and where it came from and how it made him feel. He hit some notes that were solid and on time (da da da-da da, ba tha ba da-ba da) … “I can’t believe it, it’s hard to conceive it …”
Danko swiveled his head from me to the Oberleutnant and back; he scowled at the others, What’s going on? I know he didn’t get any answers. Franz was whisking those brushes around so soft that I knew he didn’t want to miss any answer that might come. It was just me and Ulrich. In phrases that just ran beside the melody (and I knew he was searching), he found the reprise of “My Buddy.” “Buddy” my behind, I thought, and threw him “I’ll Never Be the Same.” He got to his feet and planted them, and damned if he didn’t cut the rhythm right in half to play um humm-humm da da da-da da dummmmm, um humm-humm da da da-da da dummmmm … “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows My Sorrows.” I led him back to “The Man I Love” and gave everybody time to get in, and we closed out. The Oberleutnant sat back down waiting for the next number. Everyone else sort of shuffled around trying not to look at each other. We had been doing some good things with “Tea,” so we worked out on that and then “Honeysuckle Rose.” Never forget that session. With the exception of Teodor soloing on “I Can’t Get Started With You,” me on the vocal, of course, the sets didn’t go so hot that night, not that anyone but us knew it, because we were all thinking of Ulrich getting to his feet and the way he played and what he played. Everybody in the band knew I knew what he was saying, but they knew better than to ask. Maybe Bernhardt did notice. He thought we should add a conga and a rhumba to our repertoire.
Wednesday, June 30, 1937
Dieter Lange isn’t fooling me. He’s spooked because Himmler said not long ago that SS men caught in homosexual acts should be “shot while trying to escape.” But he also said that actors and other artists who were caught plugging the hole or anything like that could not be arrested unless he approved. I been peeking at Anna; she sure doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near pregnant. I thought that last edict would have scared her and Dieter Lange into making a baby, but maybe they can’t. And, even if she did get pregnant, dime to a dollar it wouldn’t be Dieter Lange’s kid. Hell, I know she’s not pregnant.
I’ve managed to keep him off me a few times just by saying, “Shhh! What’s that noise?” Or, “Listen—is that Anna?” There are always those times, though, when, whatever happens, I have to get mine, too, and there’s no one else but him to give it to me. Yeah, he’s scared. But he’s been scared before.
Wrote this long letter to Willy Lewis telling him how much I cost and did he know people who could help get me out without the money, maybe because they got connections. Told him not to send anything because I wanted to keep the mail simple and not suspicious, and that he should send his letters to the woman whose return address is on the envelope. She would see I got his letters. Gave the letter to Baum in time for his wife’s visit. He told me she was nervous, but he’d told her if she didn’t take care of the letter, the answer, and other letters that would be going out and coming in, they’d bury him under Dachau. She just had to do it, he told her, and the less she knew why, the better off she’d be.
The new crematorium is finished.
We put in the conga and the rhumba. Then we threw the rhumba out, but kept the conga—da-da da-da doomp da, da-da da-da doomp da. (“Am-per Riv-er Con-ga!” “Am-per Riv-er Conga!”) We got some maracas and gave them to Fritz. He found a sassy line inside the rhythm, and the conga line f
ormed at least twice each set. I made up lyrics in my head, like the “Amper River Conga” and (also in my head) “Shake Yo Booo-ty This Way, Shake Yo Booo-ty That Way.” Or, “Girl You Got Some Big Ones, How You Get Such Big Ones?” Or, “Hit-ler Is a Fag-got, What a Big Mouth Fag-got.” New words came whenever we did a conga. It got to be fun. I was explaining the conga to Dr. Nyassa. When I finished, he said, “They do the same dance in Western Africa, only they call it the “High Life.” Africans carried the dance to South America when they were made slaves.” He laughed. “And look at the supermen and super-women, the Aryans, dancing,” he said growling, “like niggers.”
Friday, July 9, 1937
It’s a hot bright day and it’s quiet in the canteen where I’m writing today. Found myself a hiding place for you under the floorboards in the back room where we keep most of the stock. It gets very, very hot in here. There are no side windows, just front and back, and when they’re open all the dust from the work that’s always going on drifts in and settles everywhere—even under the floorboards. Outside: singing, running, marching, working, the loudspeaker, sometimes, and the dogs snapping at prisoners, right along with the guards.
The only time we hear the radio over here is when the big shots speak, but in Dieter Lange’s house we listen to it just about every night. Goebbels, Hitler, this one, that one, some news of the fighting in Spain, a lot on how great Germany and the Germans are. The news about Martin Niemoeller being arrested and brought to Dachau was never broadcast. Werner told me. This man was captain of a submarine during the war and was pastor of the Protestant Free Church in Berlin. An anti-Hitlerite. Werner doesn’t think he’ll be here long. This is just to teach him a lesson. And if he doesn’t shut up when he gets out …
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