I was feeling mellow after the second set. Usually, the thought of being driven back to where I would have to put up with the who-struck-john of Dieter Lange, if he was home, or of Anna and Ursula, if they were home, turned my stomach the way taking Black Draught without baking soda did. No one seemed to care much anymore about me being in the house alone with Anna when Dieter Lange was away. That was because, I am sure, Anna said she’d be all right if Ursula was with her. Yeah, I guess so. The ride with Ulrich would be a pleasant change, a comfortable way to get “home.”
He had a girlfriend, and she was as tall and as blond as he was. She was “class.” She wasn’t wearing any gardenia perfume, I could tell that right away. Her scent was French. She was very beautiful, but there was something standoffish about her, and nobody can be that way more than upper-class Germans. But she tried to be friendly as we got into the car, me in the back seat. I wished I looked like her. I wished I was her. She had a bundle resting on her lap. Her name was Maria. Ulrich started and I leaned back in a corner of the car, waiting for the talk we were supposed to have. But he didn’t talk and neither did she. Halfway to the main road, Ulrich suddenly pulled off to the side, turned off the lights and stopped. Maria began to rip and snatch at the bundle. The smell of new clothes filled the car.
“Change, Pepperidge, now.” Ulrich was handing things back to me: a shirt, trousers, a jacket, a tie, a pair of shoes, a fedora. I was amazed that I recognized such things by touch, but my heart was galloping right up into my throat, and as tired as I was, I came wide awake. I asked what was going on, and Maria said, “Freiheit, my friend.”
“Change! Change!” Ulrich was saying. He sounded like a camp guard, and you do not argue with camp guards—or anyone else who’s not a prisoner. But—
“We go to the Swiss border, Mr. Pepperidge,” Maria said. She spoke English with a British accent, like Ulrich. She seemed to struggle to find words. I was pulling off the prison suit, with Ulrich’s help, but it was hard in so little space. “We have got papers for you, so now, when we get there, you can be free—”
“Come on, Pepperidge,” Ulrich was saying. Everything I managed to get out of he handed to Maria. I wanted to say, Wait, suppose—but Ulrich was speaking almost with a growl, “Quickly, quickly.” What a lovely smell the clothes had. I was out of my old pants and into the ones they’d brought. I slipped on the new shoes, pulled on the jacket, and got the tie around my collar while Ulrich mashed the hat down on my head, adjusted it, and pulled down the brim. Maria was already wrapping up my old shoes and uniform. “Let’s go!” Ulrich said. “Freedom can’t wait!” I was still feeling for buttonholes and fastening buttons when he started up and got back on the road with the car lights on. Wasn’t no need of me playing around. I told Ulrich I was scared and wanted to go to the camp. This was like a movie, or a dream, and I had the feeling both were bad.
“Don’t you want to be free?” Maria asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t be afraid. Eric’s got everything fixed.” She passed me a heavy silver flask, and I turned that baby straight up and poured the cognac down my throat. I returned it and she held out a cigarette case. I took a cigarette and she lighted it. Of course, I wanted to be free, free to walk the streets of Paris or Amsterdam or New York—streets anywhere but in Germany. I couldn’t stop the tears from starting up. I could see me and Willy Lewis, me and Ruby Mae Richards, me strolling along 125th Street or Lenox Avenue, me in an apartment somewhere on Sugar Hill, me playing the best piano of my life. I also saw me hanging from the “Tree,” in the Bunker getting the shit beat out of me, saw myself standing alone in the center of the ’Platz under the hot sun until I passed out, me dead in the same corner of the Revier where I’d seen Menno. Hell, yeah, I wanted freedom, but God knows I was afraid to take it, so these two who wouldn’t listen to me would have to take me to it and hand me over.
“It’ll be all right, Pepperidge,” Ulrich said. Maybe, looking in the rearview mirror, he’d seen my tears as we passed an occasional light. At another main road, he turned south and a buzzing started in my head. “There’s a blanket back there. Wrap yourself in it if you get cold.” I didn’t move. “I understand you had a visit from Ruby Mae Richards,” he said.
I told him yes, I had, and that she’d told me he was a friend. “You sure didn’t act like one,” I said. “Bernhardt didn’t give you no permission to drive me to camp,” I said. “Did he?”
He gave a little laugh. “Well, Pepperidge, one has to be careful, very careful. All this will get worse before it gets better. And no, Bernhardt didn’t give me permission, and I’d never ask him anything like this, anyway. He’s just waiting for me to make a mistake. He’s my enemy; he’s the enemy of whatever good is still in Germany. And yet, I don’t understand—he loves jazz music, loves to listen to it.” He went on talking to me in English. I was thinking he had the same puzzlement about Bernhardt that I’d had about him. “Strange,” Ulrich said.
“Anyway, Colonel Bernhardt’s away,” Maria said.
I asked Ulrich how he could get away with whatever he was doing if Bernhardt was watching him. Ulrich said, and he and his girlfriend laughed as he said it, “We just have to be smarter than he is. For example, right now I am in my quarters, already asleep.” They laughed a little louder. “And of course we have friends. So we have until noon tomorrow to get back, by which time you’ll be free in Switzerland and we will have put another one over on Bernhardt.” I didn’t say anything about that “another” business.
Maria said, “On the other side it would be wise if you said nothing about an SS officer, Mr. Pepperidge.” I said all right. She said it was dangerous work, what they were doing, and she was sure I appreciated that.
Ulrich put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Sure he does.” She leaned her head against his arm and her hair fell like a patch of moonlight down the back of the seat.
We took side roads around most of Munich—we could see the city lights now and again—and then followed the sign to Starnberg. Ulrich stepped on the gas and we rushed through a tunnel of light, passing only a few other cars, until we got to the town, then slowed as we went through it. I was pressed back into my corner, the hat pulled down so that I could just barely see. We passed some SA patrols, but they didn’t stop us; Ulrich was wearing his uniform. Outside the town, we drove on toward—the signs had said—Lands-berg and Kaufering. Ulrich picked a road that seemed to go right between them, and another sign read To Buchloe. Ulrich told Maria to give me the papers. “American passport,” she said, “and money. We got your picture out of an old magazine from Berlin, re-shot it, and there you are. There’s enough money to get you to Paris.” In the few dim lights we were passing I saw that my occupation was—musician!—and that I’d entered Germany from Colmar, France, on business a week ago and was returning via Switzerland. My residence was in Paris. I remember how officially solid the passport and visa read, and how good that little book felt, and for how long I’d wanted to hold one just like it in my hand. Ulrich said, “Feels better already, doesn’t it?” I told him it sure did. But I was still afraid, and when we came around a curve near Buchloe, we almost ran over two old SA, and they flagged us down. They saluted when they saw Ulrich’s uniform, and started backing off; we slowed, but didn’t stop. Ulrich, who’d rolled down his window and held out his Ausweiss for identification, said good evening to them as we picked up speed. I hadn’t realized how long I’d held my breath; now I let it out and it seemed to never stop coming. Ulrich laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a couple of old farts; should be in bed. Nearly everybody wants to protect the Fatherland. Pepperidge, everything, believe me, is copasetic.”
I grunted, I remember, and then began to tremble in my corner. They wanted to be heroes and maybe they were, but if we got caught, it’d be my ass to fry. I thought about that. Theirs, too, and their friends. But, shit, why didn’t they rescue somebody who wasn’t afraid of being rescued? Mindelheim, I could see through the thin, cu
rving space beneath the brim of the hat, was a two-light village with two or three buildings—the church and the town hall I supposed. Mem-mingen was larger, but we had no trouble there, either, just kept boring through that tunnel made by the headlights. “Leutkirch, Wangen, and then Friedrichshafen,” Ulrich said. “Then Lindau and the border.” He stepped on the gas again. Friedrichshafen sounded familiar, like Kaufering, but I was beat to my socks; it’d been a long day, and my stomach had been in my mouth every second since we’d left The Nest. The buzzing in my head got louder, and the being tired, half-high with the cognac, and just plain scared, all came together. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t have minded being one of the servants who had to get up on Saturday morning and drill. They were asleep right now. I imagined our passage through the mountains we could see on clear days from Dachau. I knew we were climbing and climbing, because Ulrich was shifting gears, and it was getting colder in the car. Ulrich started humming “Dardanella” and Maria joined him. I knew it would please them if I joined in, but as far as I was concerned, if I was going to do any singing, it would be when I was safe in Switzerland. Maria was good. Sometimes she took harmony, and sometimes she took melody while Ulrich riffed his way through. I guess they’d done it before. I wondered who she really was and how many times they’d done this, and how many more Germans there were who were “friends.” It was better not to know. I asked no questions and they volunteered no more information. I must have fallen asleep because when the car stopped, I tried to lose myself behind the seat.
Cold air came whipping in through the window Maria was opening. I had the feeling we were on top of a mountain. She took the bundle of clothes and tossed it out into the night. “There,” she said. “No more uniform, no more number.” My number, I thought, is 3003, 3003. Outside Wangen, Ulrich stopped and filled the tank from a can of petrol he had in the trunk. That woke me up, too, but right away I started to think of the names of the towns and villages we’d passed through. In Dachau I guessed there were prisoners from every city, town, and village in Germany.
I dozed off again, and when I woke it was to the sound of Ulrich’s voice: “Achtsam! Pepperidge, careful!” The first thing I noticed was that Ulrich and Maria seemed to have got all stiff in their seats, like a couple of bird dogs. And they weren’t humming anymore. There were lots of lights up ahead in Friedrichshafen. “Keep that hat pulled down, Pepperidge.” Ulrich sounded as though he was going over a score with somebody in a band. “Pretend to sleep. They hardly ever see colored people down here, so don’t worry if they flash lights in your face. You pretend to wake up. You’re some high potentate, got it? From now on, if we get stopped, you’ve got to pretend to be above all this shit. Germans go for that, okay?” I said okay but my belly was skipping and jumping as I saw the lights of the town growing brighter beneath my hat brim.
“One more thing, Pepperidge, to stiffen your spine. It’s got to be now, this trip, for two reasons. I’m being reassigned; we don’t know when someone else will replace me. Second, we’ve heard that Frau Lange is pregnant. We can’t take the chance that this is a fraud. You know some SS wives have been caught abducting babies right out of the nursery back there. The Ordinance of September 13, 1936. You probably never heard of it. Every SS man has to have four kids.”
Yeah, I remembered it, but I didn’t tell him. I wondered how many he had; if he had any, I didn’t think they were with Maria.
“Now, think, Pepperidge, if Frau Lange has a child or children, what’ll happen to you? They’ll get female servants, won’t they? Oh, they might keep you on, but then again, maybe not.” His voice got low. “Do you think Lange could afford to have you running around loose in camp?”
I was thinking, If she is pregnant, it’s Bernhardt’s—or maybe not. Maybe Dieter Lange did his duty. Or maybe she was jiving. There did seem to be a lot more babies and female servants around the SS. compound lately. If Dieter Lange was looking for a chance to get rid of me, this would be the time—if Anna had been bigged. Hadn’t looked any fatter than usual to me. Who would listen to me in the camp? And why would I want to say anything anyway that would make it tougher for me? Oh, God. Why was everything happening at once?
“So now’s the time, isn’t it?” Maria said.
“Sure looks like it,” I mumbled, and it sure did, since we were nearly there and I couldn’t do boodily-boo about Anna or anything else. While I was thinking, they’d been talking about going through the town to save time, and we were driving slowly down a street a couple of blocks away from what looked like the main one. Ulrich and Maria were remarking that it looked good so far, when headlights swept up from the rear, swung to the side, and a police car pulled up beside us. There were two men in the front seat. The driver waved us down. Ulrich stopped and lowered his window. The cop in the passenger seat got out and came around to Ulrich’s side; I tried to vanish into the seams of the seat. When he was at Ulrich’s window, all I could see was a blotch of green that was his uniform. “What do you do, where do you go, this time of night, sir?” I was sure he was looking at Ulrich’s card, and had seen his uniform, because he wasn’t all loud and bullying, the way Germans can be if they have more power than you. The blotch of green was wrinkling and unwrinkling, and I could just see light poking around inside the car. The cop said good evening to Maria, and she answered in a chilly, high-class voice. The light lingered longest on me. “Please don’t wake him up, officer,” Ulrich said. “I have to get this man out of Germany. It’s a duty I preferred not to do, so I brought a friend to keep me company. He’s someone we don’t need in the Reich. And someone you’re better off not knowing about.” The green blotch grunted behind the light, which suddenly vanished, but with my eyes still closed, I saw flashes of red from it. Sweet words: “Okay. Sorry to have to stop you, sir. Heil Hitler.” Ulrich answered, “Heil,” with Maria joining in. We drove out of Friedrichshafen in silence. We’d gone several miles. Ulrich downed his window again. “Smell that, Pepperidge? That’s the Bodensee. Halfway over is Germany; the other half is Lake Constance, Switzerland. One side smells just like the other, the way land does, even if there are frontiers.” I felt a hand I knew to be Maria’s on my knee.
“Mr. Pepperidge, we’re almost there,” she said. She asked Ulrich in German if he was very tired, and he answered in German that this kind of trip never exhausted him. We were going down, easing through the night that was barely beginning to lighten.
Ulrich said, “Listen now. We have to go through Lindau and then Bregenz—German and Austrian frontier. Germany now controls Austria. Once in Austrian territory, we cross into Switzerland at Lusteneau. On our last trip the border was manned by Austrians. They’re still there, but so are Germans now. We have to be more careful here than anyplace else, and I mean Achtsam!” Again he sounded like a guard at camp. “If I have to say certain things, and do certain things, know now that I don’t mean them, understand? It is a game I may have to play. Once you’re on the Swiss side, forget them.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can do this,” I said. I heard the resignation in my voice. Ulrich shouted that I had to. His girl tried to calm him down, but he said, “He’s just got to, that’s all.” He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Pepperidge, I know you’ll do your best. I understand what you say. A man doesn’t spend five years in that shithole without losing something. That’s the way it is, and that’s why they’re there. But damn it, man, you never thought you’d lose your freedom, and you did. I’m sure there were many times when you thought you’d never get it back; now you’ve almost got it and you’ve had two hours to prepare to take it. It is minutes away now, minutes.”
There was more silence, before Maria said, “If it doesn’t work, it won’t be just you going back to camp—”
“Maria,” Ulrich said, interrupting, “Don’t.” But she went on.
“Eric will go and I will go and some others as well, and the people who need help won’t get it, not from us. So don’t be nervous. Do nothing to make them suspicious,
just like you did back there. You were fine. Oh! And remember, you know no German. Eric will translate everything, if necessary.” I told her I understood.
“What’s the name of your perfume?” I asked.
“Seducteur. You like it?”
“Devastating,” I said, and they laughed. The car seemed to glide to a stop at the crossing in an area of bright lights through which walked two border policemen on either side of the car. The red-and-white barriers lay waist-high across the road. Steam whiter than the lights rose from the mouths of the police.
Through his lowered window Ulrich called in German, “C’mon. Don’t take all night. I’ve got to get back to quarters.” He was already holding out his card. Maria was smiling at the cops on her side. Now, once more, I could see beneath my hat brim blotches of green-gray uniforms.
“What’s the hurry, sir?” one of the policemen said.
“To complete this rotten mission and get back to Munich. What’s yours, to drag ass all night?” Ulrich said. Once again, small, powerful beams of light swept through the car, coming to rest on me.
“Raise your hat,” one of the cops said in German. I didn’t move.
“Your hat, nigger,” Ulrich said in English. “Remove your hat.” I took off my hat.
“Papers,” the officer said.
Ulrich said, “Give him your passport and visa.” I did. I squinted at the light. Maria offered the officers on her side cigarettes from her case. They took them, checked the brand and smiled. On Ulrich’s side one officer was studying my papers while the other looked at me like I had three heads. Ulrich said, “Officer, his papers are okay. Let’s get this nigger out of here into Switzerland.” The cop shuffled faster through the passport.
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