“All right! You don’t mind if I check this piece of American shit, do you? You’ve got a job to do, I’ve got a job to do. Relax.” He went through the passport again and checked the visa once more. “Good thing he’s not one of those Rhineland bastards, or his ass would belong to us,” the cop said. He snapped shut the passport on the visa. “All right, sir. Proceed. Get him out of Germany.” The light on my face went out. The cop saluted Ulrich. “Heil Hitler,” he said, and Ulrich returned the salute and the words. I melted into my corner. Maria waved as the barriers were raised. Up they went, crank turn by crank turn. I was trembling. Maria and Ulrich said nothing until we moved.
“Not as bad as I thought,” he said, and sighed. “Just think. If we could have done this two months ago, you’d be free right now.”
“It went so well back there that I don’t think we’ll have any trouble ahead,” Maria said. “Now Switzerland. What would Europe do without Switzerland?” She put her head back on the seat.
A little while later Ulrich said, “Sam’s waiting for you on the other side.”
“Sam?” I said, “Sam who was guitar?”
“The same.”
“I thought he was in America.”
“He was, but he came back to help Jews and anyone else who needs it. He’s got a place. You’ll rest for a day or so and he’ll get you off to France. The Swiss will be kinder to you than to the Germans who’ve run there. In fact, Sam’s residency period has not much time to go. He’ll have to be replaced. The Swiss don’t want to upset the Germans by protecting refugees too long. If the refugees can’t get papers to France or anywhere else within a few months, phttt! back to Germany.” I was thinking of Sam with much fondness now. He was a so-so musician but, apparently, a great person. “Fifteen kilometers to go,” Ulrich said. Then I thought of Friedrichshafen and Kaufering: there would be camps going up there, part of the Dachau system, according to a map I’d seen on Dieter Lange’s table.
We came to the frontier at Lusteneau. I said to myself, Good-bye, Austria, hello Switzerland, see you soon, America. I was sweating, cold as it was. I remember the arrangement of it. There were five SS standing across the roadway in front of the barriers. The one in the middle patted his left hand flat down on the air, giving us the slowdown sign, while his right went up to signal Ulrich to stop. There was a smile on his face and he took a dainty little step toward us even before we stopped.
Ulrich said “Scheiss!” at the same time I recognized Bernhardt. Maria moaned. I pushed myself deeper into the corner of the seat. The rifles of the four men were pointed at Ulrich; Bernhardt’s pistol appeared suddenly in his hand. He aimed it at Maria who jerked back with her hands raised before her face. Ulrich braked and we all lurched forward. He climbed out slowly and raised his hands. Maria got out even more slowly; I think she was trembling. I didn’t move. Through the opened doors I heard the jangle of the metal on the gunbelts of the SS. The lights were very bright.
Bernhardt said, “You made good time, Ulrich. Is my piano player all right?” Ulrich said nothing. Bernhardt jerked his chin up and the four SS moved Ulrich and Maria away from the car with their rifles; Bernhardt looked inside. “Pepperidge, are you all right?” My teeth were chattering so much I couldn’t say anything. The sound of his voice was calming. “A little nervous then, Pepperidge?” I nodded vigorously. “You look dressed for Switzerland. How we’d have missed you—me, Lange, Frau Lange, and Frau Winkelmann, eh? We have another suit for you. Come on. Get out. Go over there into the office.” He pointed to the building, where several border guards were standing. I think I shuffled, because my legs seemed to have a mind of their own. As I went, I heard Bernhardt say loudly, I guessed to Ulrich and Maria, “Heil Hitler,” because they said together, as though they’d rehearsed it many times, “Fuck Hitler, fuck you.” I must have passed out then.
I woke up on the floor of a truck. It was daylight. I was back in uniform, but the new shirt was still on under the jacket, and the new shoes were on my feet. It seemed that a month had passed since the night. There were sharp pains everywhere—my face, my whole body. My lips were swollen, my eyes half-closed, and when I moved, pain jooged from one end of my body to the other. I groaned, and one of the two guards asked did I want a cigarette. I said yes, but it came out “yepths.” He stuck a Drummers in my mouth and lit it. The other guard looked at me and slowly shook his head. I couldn’t tell where we were going, but I supposed to the camp, to the guardhouse, and from there to the Bunker. I didn’t care. I didn’t mind dying then, but I didn’t want to die badly; I didn’t want it to hurt. I finished the cigarette and slipped back to sleep. The guards woke me this time. We were in front of Dieter Lange’s house. They helped me out and into the house, and left me. Dieter Lange came down the stairs real slow. He stopped and studied me, then finished coming down.
“Bernhardt was right,” he said. “He used you as bait. He would’ve looked very bad if they had pulled it off, but you know Bernhardt wasn’t going to let that happen. Took a little while, but he’s a patient man. Can you imagine, right here in the SS. Cigarette, Cleef?” I nodded. He gave me a Chesterfield. I was shaking so much I couldn’t light it; he had to do it for me. I asked about Ulrich and his girl. He got a basin of water and a cloth and helped me downstairs before he answered. “Bernhardt had them taken to Friedrichshafen prison. They were beheaded there, Execution durch Fallbeil.”
I finished the walk up the Lagerstrasse and went back to open the canteen. I knew that soon Dieter Lange would have a replacement for Baum, some sneak to keep an eye on me. I went into the back room and opened the new carton of toothpaste. Outside, the columns flowed up and down the main street, feet pounding, dust rising.
Thursday, May 19, 1938
“Guess what?” Anna asked me in English. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup; her attitude was like a saint’s. I shrugged. I was washing dishes. Dieter Lange was not home. “Oh, come on. You must forget what happened. It wasn’t your fault. Colonel Bernhardt should not have beat you the way he did. But you are special to him, unique, a colored jazz music band leader. No one else in Germany has one, so you make this Lebensborn famous for him, in an unofficial way. You’re all right now. You are back home, back at the canteen, and back with your music. Don’t sulk. You could be where Ulrich and his girlfriend are, you know. So, now you guess what, Cleef.”
She said she was going to have a baby. She held up two fingers. Two months on the way. I said congratulations. She said thank you. That means you’ll be sending me into the camp to stay? I said. She said no, they—she and Dieter Lange—hadn’t discussed that. I knew she wasn’t pregnant at all. I clean up. I gather the garbage. I take care of what has to be burned, and, since I’ve been able, I’ve gone through all the Lange trash bit by bit, as I never did before. And I last saw Anna’s dead blood cunt rag last week. The bitch was padding herself. “And, can you imagine? Ursula’s pregnant two months also.”
I said, “Oh, imagine that.” So they were both going to pad themselves up to nine months. I didn’t know if Winkelmann would be happy. Since he and Dieter Lange were not friends, I didn’t know if he was a freak or not.
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” I asked.
She switched to German. “I don’t care, but I want it to be tall and with blue eyes and blond hair—even though I don’t have blond hair and neither does Dieter.” In my head, suddenly, there was an empty space waiting to be filled, and I knew nothing would fill it except saying something that was true. I told her that her hair was lighter around her pussy, so maybe she would have a blond kid, if she was pregnant. She started to scream, but stopped. She was worried about being heard. The saint was gone. She snatched my hands out of the dishwater and began to push me down the stairs to my room. She was following me down, her voice deep in her throat, calling me names, threatening me. She said she would send me into the camp, that Dieter Lange would make me disappear, that Bernhardt would chop off my head. I was being backed up into my room during all this. She s
uddenly quit and sat down on the steps. “Well, you see, we must do something. People are wondering where my babies are, when my babies will start coming. So.” She had started to cry. She lit a cigarette while we went back to the kitchen and the dishes. I asked what she would do with four kids, since she didn’t even like them. She said she didn’t know. Suppose, I said, you lose this one—the one you’re supposed to be having now. “And then?” she said. I asked her did she remember the whole ordinance about having babies, that the husband could have them by another woman? I saw that didn’t appeal to her, either. I was spieling and scheming to keep my behind out of that camp and she knew it; but she also didn’t wish to be held down by kids she didn’t want. So I told her she should have Dieter Lange make some arrangement to get a fake statement from a doctor saying she shouldn’t even try to have kids anymore because she might die. She lit another cigarette, all the time moving her head up and down. I knew the spiel was sounding good to her. “Umm,” she kept saying. “Umm.” She put out her cigarette, stood up pulling and tugging at her dress. “Some walking, some thinking,” she said, and then went out. Bitch, I thought. Everything I said she’d already thought of. I know it.
Mon., June 27, 1938
Last Thursday night Dieter Lange let me listen to the radio with him and Anna. Joe Louis was fighting Max Schmeling for the second time, and Joe Louis, I’d read, was now the heavyweight boxing champ. In camp they’d been talking about the fight for a week, throwing up their fists and laughing when I walked by, like they did after the first fight. “Oh, Schmeling’s gonna kill that guy, Sunshine, you watch! That nigger’s gonna get his, Snowball. Schmeling’s of the master race!” All this coming from some raggedy-ass Black or Green or SS. In a fair fight, I could’ve whipped half those cocksuckers, but the people in this camp don’t know nothing about fair.
When I first joined Mr. Wooding’s band, and people kept giving me this crap about my coming from Storyville, I got into some scrapes and did so well that, for a while there, they were calling me “Pepper.”
Anna set out some coffee and cake and schnapps. It was like a family, each of us with secrets put up on a shelf for the time being. The German announcer, Arno Helmers, said there were 70,000 people in Yankee Stadium. “You know that place, Yankee Stadium?” Dieter Lange asked. I told him I knew where it was, that it was practically brand-new when I left New York, and I thought about the bridge that carried you from Harlem into the Bronx and to the stadium. The announcer was describing the crowd, the records of each fighter, and how Schmeling had beaten Louis the first time. He said it was hot in New York, that Mike Jacobs was the promoter of the fight, and that now the fighters were entering the ring.
“Why does Schmeling get almost as many cheers as Louis?” Anna asked me. I was ashamed to tell her that white Americans wanted Louis to get beat almost as much as the Germans did. I pretended I didn’t hear her. We settled back and waited for the bell to begin the first round.
“Louis is across the ring,” the announcer said, “moving to the left. Schmeling moves back against the ropes. Louis! A left! A left and a right to the jaw! Schmeling’s trying to push Louis off with his left, but Louis keeps coming! A left to the jaw, another left and a right! Another left hook to the body and a right! Schmeling is reaching for the ropes! Louis is all over him! Schmeling’s knees are buckling! He’s turning away from Louis and here’s Louis with another right. Arthur Donovan is moving between them, counting … one, two … Now Donovan steps back and Schmeling advances and—Louis! A right that sends Schmeling to the floor. And now Schmeling is up, but—Louis! Left to the chin, another left, and another and a right to the chin—Schmeling is hanging on the ropes; Louis, another left to the head, a right to the body …”
I thought I heard a scream above the crowd noise, and then it was like somebody took a great big knife and sliced off the sound and the scream. The radio spit static, nothing else. Cursing, Dieter Lange sprang up to turn the dials. “What’s this? What’s going on?” He pounded the radio with the flat of his hand. Then he snatched his hat and ran out.
“I bet you they cut it off because Schmeling is losing,” Anna said. I didn’t say anything, but to me it sounded like Schmeling was getting murdered. Somehow I managed to keep from smiling, even though I wanted to jump and shout. First there was Jesse Owens and now Louis. In the first round! In seconds! That superman shit of Hitler’s was taking a whipping! I bet those colored men over in camp are catching hell from the other prisoners. You’d think they’d be happy to see Schmeling take a beating. But I know those jokers; they’re white and German first, prisoners second. I didn’t think white folks back home would go out killing black folks the way they did after Jack Johnson beat Jim Jeffries when I was a kid. Two colored men were killed by crackers over in La Providence then. But you never know.
When Dieter Lange came back, he was mad. I went downstairs to my room. In the darkness I raised my arms and opened my mouth and screamed silently, “Yay! Yay!! Yay!!!”
Yesterday I finally found Dr. Nyassa back in Revier One. Nobody seemed to know where he’d been. He looked and sounded tired and weak. He was thinner. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He told me he was now under medical care; he was now as much patient as nurse. I asked where he’d been, and he smiled a little sad smile. “A long, bad story, my friend, very long and very bad.” First, he told me that some of the colored men I’d seen were Africans stranded in Germany, students, one or two boxers, adventurers. But the Germans called them Ballastexistenzen—persons without value. With them were some of “The Rhineland Bastards,” Der Rheinlandbastarde. These, he told me in a low and weary voice, are, or were, the children of the French colonial soldiers, the Senegalese and other Africans, and of the colored American soldiers who helped the Allies occupy the Rhineland after the World War. Some, of course, had grown up since 1918, and were among the men I saw; the rest were in other camps. How many may have gotten out of Germany he didn’t know. Dr. Nyassa was quiet for a long time, during which one of the new doctors stuck his head into the room and told him not to tire himself because they were going to do some tests on him. We had both scrambled to attention and said, “Yes, sir.” We sat down again. I asked him what tests, and he waved the question away. “A lot of those people, grown and children alike, were taken to clinics. I’ve been away, to Frankfurt, to the clinic of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. I’ve been sterilized.”
I jumped in my chair. To me that meant they cut off your dick. I said, “They cut—” He said no.
“They just fix it so you can’t ever have children. I knew of this doctor. There’s a whole program being run by people who were members of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Just and I knew many of them, like this Verschuer and Eugen Fischer.” Nyassa leaned closer and whispered, his sour breath spilling over, “That goddamn Fischer, back in 1913, did a study on the kids of German fathers and Namibian mothers, ‘Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardisierungsproblem beim Menschen,’ ‘The Bastards of Reheboth and the Problem of Miscegenation in Man.’ So these wretched Germans have been at it for a long time. Nineteenth-century science belonged to the Germans, so they go back with this quite a distance.…”
He leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. I asked if he was all right, and he said no. He wondered what Just would think of all this. I asked him again what tests they were doing with him, and he said he didn’t know, because they never told the truth, and anyway, they weren’t going to do anything more to him. I felt so sorry for him that I wanted to tell about Ulrich and Maria and my ride through the night. “They have to kill me, one way or another,” he said. His voice was so low I could hardly hear him. “Whoever heard of a Neger Biologisch? Only those people from the KWI, and just a few of them. I can’t exist, but I do. The solution is simple: I must not exist. I am a life without value, even here.” He got up slowly. “Well. I have bored and frightened you. Take this. My wife’s last address. If you get out, just tell her it was too much. They’ve made me
feel like a frog. It would have been good to hear you play, just once. Come. I’ll walk out with you.”
We went out of the building, and all the while I felt like I was walking with one of those jokers back home who’s on his way to a fight he knows he can’t win, but he has to go. Has to go. I didn’t know what to say. He walked me to the middle of the Lagerstrasse and shook my hand; his felt light, even though he tried to squeeze hard. There was no strength in it. He turned and walked, not back to his building but around it. “Wait!” I hollered. I followed because I knew what he was going to do. I suppose I could have stopped him. I didn’t. He knew what he wanted, and who in the hell was I to get in his way? But he was, besides Werner and Gitzig and maybe a few others, the only person I could talk to in camp. Most certainly the only colored man. “Wait, Doctor!” I shouted after his thin, bent back. Sometimes the prisoners stopped a fight; I’d seen that happen many times, because a lot of people besides the fighters could get into trouble if the guards came. But if a prisoner was doing something all by himself, something that didn’t bounce back on other people, you let him do it. It was the one thing a man could do, make the decision to walk on the forbidden grass strip, which Nyassa was now doing, even as the guard in the tower was shouting and swinging his machine gun toward him. Nyassa started to run; he moved like an old, crippled man. The gun chattered; prisoners stopped what they were doing if they were not in a column, and ran toward the sound. Dr. Nyassa jumped high in the air to clear the moat. I think he was hit a couple of times as he sailed through the air like a balled-up piece of paper, because something disturbed the smoothness of his flight. But still he flew and landed, without moving again, on the electrified barbed-wire fence, which bulged out, then back in, with Nyassa’s fingers clutched tightly through it. The guard kept shooting. I thought of Revelation: “I was dead and now I am to live forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld. Now write down all that you see of present happenings and things that are still to come.”
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