A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I look back at that eighteen-year-old kid with the wire-brush, red hair and the small, pinched face, walking across the Domplatz to the Residenz, and shake my head in dismay. He was only a kid yet he thought he was responsible to wheel and deal, charm and deceive, so that he might save everyone in Bamberg who needed help.

  Back at the Neue Residenz I approached Capt. Polly Nettleton.

  “Staff Sergeant O’Malley, ma’am”—I saluted with as much competence as I could muster—“requesting an interview with General Meade.”

  I wasn’t sure that she and her husband were not tied up with the black market, a pervasive presence in the Army of Occupation. What had he been doing in Nürnberg the night the previous winter when I had my first encounter with the black market, an encounter that led to my fall from grace? How had he got back to General Meade’s poker game before I arrived?

  Of course, I had been rescuing a fair damsel at the same time.

  “Hi, Chucky.” Polly grinned at me. “The general said you would show up and that I should send you right in. Are you coming to our party tomorrow night? My husband delights in you.”

  “Colonel Nettleton thinks I’m the only other mick in town, ma’am. And regulations strictly forbid fraternization between officers and enlisted men.”

  “We’ll see you then on Thursday?”

  “Only if Major Carpenter isn’t there, ma’am.”

  She turned up her cute little nose. “My husband doesn’t particularly like rednecks who pretend that they went to West Point.”

  “Admirable taste on his part, ma’am.”

  “You will escort Brigitta, won’t you, Chucky darling?”

  Peg asking me to escort Rosemarie to a prom.

  “She’s a bit old for me, Captain Polly, isn’t she?”

  “But she trusts you. . . . Besides, I bet you haven’t had a date since you came to Bamberg.”

  I’ve had plenty of them, but I won’t tell you about them.

  “She has agreed?”

  “She suggested it. . . . We were going to invite you anyway.”

  What was I getting into now? Tread carefully, Chucky Ducky, you have enough problems as it is.

  “I’ll look forward to my first date in Bamberg,” I said. Better me than Sam Houston Carpenter.

  “Staff Sergeant O’Malley reporting, general, sir,” I said when I had entered the general’s office.

  “Sit down, Chucky.” The general waved at a chair in which I suspected more than one courtesan to the prince bishops of the past had reclined. “I suppose you want to talk about the, uh,”—he glanced at the papers on his desk—“the Wülfe case.”

  “Yes sir, sir.”

  He put on his thick glasses and glanced at the papers. “I don’t particularly like it, Chucky,” he sighed. “I never like turning people, especially women, over to the Russkies, especially when the charges are so vague.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We do what we’re told to do, but we don’t have to be perfect, do we?”

  “Yes, sir . . . I mean, no, sir.”

  “There’s no real charge against the man. He was apparently a minor city official in Dresden. Waterworks or something like that. Never did anything to anyone. Probably joined the party to further his career, huh?”

  “Yes, sir. Like joining the Republicans.”

  In my world, to join the Republicans was not quite as bad as joining the Nazis, but it was certainly not the moral thing to do. “Party of selfishness and greed,” my father would say.

  “I suppose so.” General Meade looked at me sharply, trying to figure out what I meant. “Anyway, there’s no particular war crime mentioned in the document sent me. The Russkies want them and that’s that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I don’t like that FBI man with the red nose. Someone probably sent him out here to get him the hell away from Washington.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So the whole thing looks smelly to me. That’s why I assigned you to the case. Keep an eye on it all and let me know if you think this is one of the times we should be less than perfect.”

  “Yes, sir. Less than perfect, sir.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. He was giving me a chance to use my own judgment without promising to back me up if something went wrong. Not much there. But something.

  “Like we did that time we raided the werewolves out in the Bohemian Alps, huh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I agonized through the day, wondering what I would do if we were unable to fend off Special Agent Clarke.

  There was a letter waiting for me in my room. From Rosemarie. By U.S. airmail. She disdained APO mail because it required a week. Pan Am was flying New York to the reopened Rhine-Main airport at Frankfurt every day, so airmail from Chicago arrived by train in Bamberg within four days. Time, to Rosie, was important.

  “Are you sure it’s all right if I fly over to spend a weekend with you in Bamberg?”

  18

  I woke up from my dream with a start. It was still bright outside. But here that didn’t mean a thing. I had something to do tonight. Class? Not again! No, there was a party at Polly’s at nine. I had a date with Brigie. I fumbled around for my watch. Eight o’clock. Still time. I stumbled out of bed and headed down the corridor for the shower—which I had to myself.

  I picked Brigie up on time (show the krauts they have no monopoly on punctuality). She was waiting for me at the corner of the upper parish church (at the foot of the Kaulberg, the first hill east of the Dom), dressed in a sleeveless summer dress, aquamarine with a deep V neck, and the common currency of the occupation, nylons. Now that she had recovered her youth and her health and her flawless cream complexion (on which there was almost no makeup), she was even more vividly an image of mystery—haunting, tragic, sad yet hopeful. My estimate was that she wore only the minimum necessary under the dress, though be it noted in those days the minimum necessary was substantially more than it is now. Her smile when I got out of the jeep would break the heart of a man much stronger than I.

  “So, Chuck, we continue to play the game of who can be more Teutonic in punctuality?”

  I helped her up into the jeep. “And since I’m Irish and have a bit of the devil in me, I like to cut it closer than you . . . and you are absolutely gorgeous tonight.”

  “Thank you.” She blushed deeply. “It is good to hear someone say that.”

  “Like a model in an American fashion magazine.”

  You cannot, I would later understand, ever compliment a woman too much on her appearance.

  She blushed even more deeply, the flush extending down to the tops of her small, high breasts, a tiny part of which peeked out of her dress. What fun a man might have with them!

  “Irish blarney,” she chuckled.

  “Then I won’t say you smell nice too.”

  She turned serious. “Chanel. When I buy things like that at your PX, I think the GIs believe I am someone’s mistress.”

  “Well, you’re not.” I turned on the ignition and fiddled with the choke. “And they’d also think the someone had incredibly good taste.”

  “Sam will not be at the party?” she said as I valiantly but unskillfully backed the jeep down the street to turn it around.

  “I don’t think so, though Polly doesn’t clear her invitation lists with me.”

  “Your friends don’t like him, do they?”

  With considerable help from both God and my guardian angel, I finally had the jeep pointed in the right direction.

  “They’re your friends too, Brig.”

  “Of course. But they do not understand him.”

  “You might want to consider the possibility that they understand him better than you do.”

  I had donned my mask of the wise old man of the world—a role I played pretty well, though I could not imagine why this ethereal medieval countess would take me seriously in it.

  “You’re being mean, Chucky,” she sniffed.

  “No, I�
��m telling the truth. You might also want to consider the possibility that your friends understand his kind of person better than you do. He’s charming and gracious and utterly unreliable.”

  “He wants to marry me.”

  “Don’t believe him.” I drove across the bridge downriver from the Altesrathaus—which glowed in the sunlight like a daffy ship moored at a dock. “He’s a married man with political ambitions in a Southern state, which ambitions would be ruined by a divorce and even more thoroughly ruined if he comes home with a foreign bride, much less a mystically lovely German bride.”

  “You’re being very harsh.”

  I turned into the Grünerstrasse, a street that, unlike most Bamberg streets, was a little wider than Menard Avenue. I drove more confidently, distracted nonetheless by the lovely and sweet-smelling person next to me.

  Thank God she was not crying.

  “I’ll be harsher. This town is a sexual marketplace. A lot of men without women, a smaller number of women without men. So the men acquire the women as prostitutes, concubines, mistresses, maybe even as potential wives. Since they’re in short supply, the women hold out for the highest-priced role they can get. It’s pure economics. And in this sexual marketplace, you are a very expensive prize. Don’t settle for anything less than the maximum price, preferably guaranteed before the altar in the Uberepfarrkirche.”

  Preferably some nice, rich, Irish Catholic bachelor.

  She did not blow up as I was almost sure she would.

  “I understand what you are saying, Chuck,” she said thoughtfully. “But am I truly an expensive prize?”

  A reasonable response; but after all she was a smart woman, a graduate of what we Chicagoans call The University. She could grasp an argument put together on the fly from my Econ 101 class.

  “Bank on it. Haven’t you noticed the way men look at you with longing? Check it out at the party tonight.”

  “Yes . . . ,” she said hesitantly. “Since I’ve recovered my health and vitality.”

  “So,” I said as two MPs waved us to a stop next to the broad Maximilliansplatz, “if you really want a man, don’t settle for someone who will certainly not marry you, who in fact will not be able to marry you, would not be able to marry you even if he wanted.”

  The poor woman had been so beaten down by the events of the last five years that she had not been able to value herself enough to realize what the possibilities were. Self-respect, I began to comprehend, doesn’t return just with physical health and attractiveness.

  The larger MP, built like a nightclub bouncer, swaggered over to the jeep, evaluated Brig with a single lascivious glance, and snarled at me in pure Brooklynese, “Hey, punk, what you doing with a Constab jeep?”

  I struggled into my Ike jacket that was on the backseat with its blue and white flummery and my sergeant’s stripes. I flipped open my ID and barked out, “Staff Sgt. Charles C. O’Malley, Headquarters Company, First Constabulary Regiment, Corporal.”

  I kind of made the last word a sneer.

  “I see. . . . What are you doing with a fräulein in your jeep?”

  “Frau, Corporal.” I held up her left hand with its thin wedding band. “Wife of a friend of mine. I’d ask you to show a little more respect.”

  He touched the tip of his helmet liner politely. “No disrespect intended, ma’am. . . . I still need to know where you’re going, Sarge.”

  “Frau Richter is a translator at Constabulary HQ.” Without looking at her I extended my hand for her ID. “I have been asked to chauffeur her to a party in honor of Gen. Radford Meade. You can accompany us if you want General Meade’s confirmation of my bona fides.”

  Her ID appeared in my hand almost at once. She knew the game too.

  “That won’t be necessary.” The big man grinned. “Sorry to bother you, Sarge.” He gave the two IDs back to me.

  “Not at all, Corporal. You got a job to do. I don’t blame you for feeling that they’re growing staff sergeants kind of young and puny these days. It’s a market phenomenon. Supply and demand you know. They take what they can get.”

  I heard Brig stifling her laughter.

  “Yes, sir.” The MP laughed, though he didn’t quite get what I had meant. “Have a nice time at the party tonight. You too, ma’am.”

  “We’ll try,” I said.

  “Thank you very much, Corporal,” Brig added, turning on all her charm.

  “Not at all, ma’am.” He touched his helmet again.

  “You’re outrageous, Chucky,” she said, laughing. “You frightened that poor man, then you charm him.”

  “See what I mean?” I tried to be serious again. “Did not that man look at you first lustfully then respectfully as though you were a much sought after prize?”

  “Yes,” she said curtly. “They all do . . . but, darling Chuck, I am so lonely.”

  She was still not crying. Still her soft expression of loneliness tore at my heart. Actually she was also sexually hungry, another result of her returned health. It was not the time for me to let up.

  “You still go to the Bahnhof every afternoon to wait for the train from Leipzig?”

  “Of course!” she snapped.

  “Why?” I drove across the Rhine-Main–Danube Canal, which shimmered blue and gold beneath the bridge.

  “Because my Kurt is still alive!”

  “And yet you could think of going to bed with Sam Carpenter?”

  “I . . . It’s two different parts of my life, I suppose.”

  “Hell, woman”—I pounded the steering wheel—“you’re smart enough to know that you can’t compartmentalize your life. The next time he turns on his charm and tries to seduce you, just think about how guilty you will feel afterwards.”

  Yeah, I did warn her about compartmentalization of life, me of all people.

  As John Raven often said, your problem, Chucky, is not merely that you are so good with words. You have a precocious understanding of human nature, other than your own.

  How else would a square like me survive in the O’Malley clan, I would reply.

  “You talk like my father,” she said sadly.

  “I’m not your father, Brig. I’m an Irish Catholic punk from the West Side with only a high school education. But what I’m saying is true and you know it is true.”

  “My father was a very good and wise man.”

  I parked the jeep at the end of a line of cars behind the Nettletons’ canal-front apartment—jeeps, staff cars, an occasional old Mercedes roadster, the kind the Gestapo used to favor in the war movies.

  No, that’s not true; I have never properly parked a car, because I never learned how to do it. Hence my family argues that rather than parking I merely abandon a car.

  Brig kissed my cheek softly as I took the keys out of the ignition. “Thank you, Chucky. You’re magic.”

  “I doubt it,” I stammered. “But, if you kiss me like that, you can call me anything you want.”

  “Silly.” She laughed.

  To hide my embarrassment, I scuttled around to the other side of the jeep to help her down and was rewarded as she bent over with a much more extensive view of her exquisite little breasts.

  When I recovered from the wallop of that sight, I remembered what I had intended to ask her before I was forced to play father confessor to her.

  “By the way, Brig,” I said as we walked down the street to the entrance of the Nettleton apartment, “do you know where I can buy some new identity papers in this town?”

  She thought about it. “For a good cause, I’m sure.”

  “Naturally.”

  “On the Grünerstrasse, at the corner of the Jesuitenstrasse, in the shadow of Martinkirche . . . we passed it tonight.”

  “I know where the Jesuit church is.”

  “There’s a small camera-supply store—for those who can’t shop at the PX, I suppose. The owner is a former aerial photographer for the Luftwaffe. He is very good at that sort of thing.”

  “You know this town pretty w
ell.”

  “Tell him that Brigitta sent you. We went to primary school together before the war. You can trust him.”

  It sounded like a story my father would tell about how you got into a speakeasy during prohibition.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re not planning to do something dangerous and be a hero again, I hope?”

  “Not me, Brig. I’m not your hero type.”

  “Not at all.” She kissed me again, this time leaning slightly against me and thus touching my chest with one of those adorable breasts.

  “Chucky always comes with the most beautiful date.” Polly Nettleton pecked at my cheek in a manner that, after my recent experiences, seemed perfunctory. “Brig, you are simply gorgeous tonight! Come in, both of you! We’ll be ready for Chucky’s songs in a few minutes.”

  “Not till I’m fed.”

  “Sit down in that chair. Here’s your Coke, all iced up for you, and some Hershey’s semisweet chocolate.”

  “Is there a shortage of it at the PX?”

  “I have a dozen more tucked away in the fridge so they won’t melt in this heat.”

  “No peanuts?”

  “Of course there’s peanuts. Here’s a big bowl.”

  Paradise. I sank into my chair contentedly, only to be rousted out of it by John Nettleton, who wanted to introduce me, and more particularly Brigitta, to the other guests, perhaps thirty men and women.

  Polly was wearing an off-the-shoulder floral-print dress that left no question about her full and sturdy charms. She was also wearing the same scent as Brig, presumably the result of a joint visit to the PX. The two of them were becoming as thick as Rosie and Peg. Her husband’s eyes were usually dancing, his lips twitching, his expression changing, especially when he saw the opportunity to say something outrageous.

  They could not be involved with the black market, could they? Yet the luxury in which they lived suggested a good deal more money than their combined salaries. In those days in Bamberg, no one asked where anybody’s money came from.