A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Fluid?” I erupted. “What kind of fluid?”

  The giggles became louder.

  “Blood of course, soldier.”

  “My blood!” I protested.

  Even the doctor thought that was pretty funny.

  So he gave me some kind of local anesthetic and then stuck a needle in my knee and drew off the “fluid,” a grisly mix of dark brown stuff that looked like chocolate milk that had turned sour.

  “That doesn’t look like my blood.”

  “Some infection in there. We’ll give you a shot of penicillin too.”

  That reminded me of Trudi and I was sad again. With the medical personnel, however, I must continue to play the clown.

  “I’m sure it will make me sick.”

  “It will protect you from being sick,” one of the nurses said.

  “That’s what people like you always say before they stick a needle into your rump.”

  More laughter.

  So they gave me the shot and the pain pills, which I was not to use till I was finished with the car for the day, and I was to stay off my feet for three or four days.

  “Will the medicine give me pretty dreams?” I demanded. “With people like you two in them?”

  “More likely nightmares.”

  When the nurses departed temporarily to find me a cane, the doctor added, “Good act, son. That must hurt like hell.”

  “It reminds me of the time I fell two hundred feet off the Jungfrau.”

  “What happened?” he asked, actually believing me.

  “I died.”

  The nurses, giggling still, outfitted me with a cane so elaborate with carvings and inlays that it must have belonged to Hermann Göring. They warned me again to stay off my feet. Maybe tomorrow. I had some things to do first.

  I limped into the HQ, making as much as I could of my injury and my cane. Take the sympathy wherever you can get it.

  “Chucky! What happened?” Captain Polly and General Meade were talking at the door of his office. She saw me first.

  “What did you do to yourself, O’Malley?” the general demanded, as if my injury were somehow a violation of military discipline.

  “It was done to me, sir. In the line of duty. I will accept any rewards that might be given. Purple Heart for example?”

  Laughter.

  “Who hit you?”

  “A car, my car in fact. Or rather the Army’s car which I’m driving.”

  “Where were you?” Polly demanded.

  “Classified,” I said ominously. This time it really was.

  The general caught my eye and I nodded slightly.

  “What did the medics do?”

  “Robbed me of some of my blood, gave me some medicine, and said to stay off it for several days.”

  “You’ll do that, naturally?”

  “Of course, General, sir. Nothing I like more than staying off my feet.”

  “Where are you billeted, son?”

  “Vinehaus Messerschmitt, sir. Named after the pilot and plane maker.”

  “I know who Messerschmitt was. . . . Captain Nettleton, we have some rooms available in the Bambergerhof, don’t we?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s transfer Sergeant O’Malley over there indefinitely. Get someone to move his things for him. He’s obviously in no condition to carry anything. You might as well assign the car to him indefinitely too. No point in having it just sit in the car pool.”

  None of this had I counted on. I must have looked more pathetic than I thought. I was not, however, about to argue.

  It was a shame, however, that they had moved me into the hotel where my girl had worked a few days after she had left.

  “How soon, Chuck?” General Meade whispered when Captain Polly rushed off.

  “If we’re lucky, sir, a week from today. I want to have evidence that cannot be challenged before I make a charge.”

  “Good thinking. . . . Take care of that knee.”

  “I will, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  As soon as the GIs had moved my stuff to the luxury of the Bambergerhof (with suitable awe about the change in my status) and departed from the room, I shoved myself off my luxurious bed, removed the film from the Leica, and drove back to the Residenz and the darkroom in the basement.

  The pictures were even better than I had expected.

  Got ’em!

  I drove back to the Bambergerhof, stumbled up to my new room, gobbled some of the painkiller medicine, and slept till the next morning. No dreams at all as far as I could remember when I made notes in my diary the next day.

  The next Sunday morning, despite my still painful leg, I took a train to Stuttgart. I figured there would be more room to stretch out my leg in the train and I could finish my Faulkner books and maybe get into Hemingway.

  In daylight the new construction was even more impressive than at night. Stuttgart was a great city struggling to be reborn—and succeeding.

  All day I hobbled through the city and searched for a familiar beloved face. I realized that it would be pure luck if I found her. If I were in her position, I would have shaken the dust of the Mercedes-Benz city off my shoes as quickly as I could.

  But, I told myself, I would keep in touch with the man who had saved my life.

  Would I really? Or would I trust no one?

  I was not so much hurt as numb. She was my love, my passionate partner, my whole life. And I had lost her.

  Had I really ever had her?

  Would I ever be able to answer that question?

  When the numbness wore off, maybe the pain would start, just like my knee.

  Was there a new life in Trudi’s body when she kissed me goodbye? Somewhere in Germany was there a child in the making who would be my son or daughter?

  I swallowed some painkillers and slept most of the way back to Bamberg.

  Next week I would go back to the Outfit’s rendezvous point and make sure they came every Thursday.

  In the meantime, grace caved in on us.

  27

  Late Tuesday morning, Brigitta approached my desk. “Your knee is better?”

  “Much better, thanks, Brig. I don’t really need the cane, but it’s fun to pretend that I’m a Herr Feldmarschallgeneral.”

  “You look like one,” she said, giggling. “But, Chucky, I need a favor.”

  “Good Chicago line. . . . Name it, you got it.”

  “Would you wait for the train this afternoon? I must do translation for Gen. Lucius Clay.”

  She handed me a tiny photograph of her husband, handsome and smiling in his Wehrmacht gray.

  “I’m impressed. . . . Sure, I’ll be glad to. Any special hunches about today?”

  “I have special hunches about every day.”

  “What’s Lulu doing here?”

  “He and General Meade and the next chancellor will discuss police problems after the Federal Republic is established next year.”

  “I did not know they had chosen a chancellor.”

  “The people will vote for the Bundestag and they will choose the chancellor. Everyone knows it will be Konrad Adenauer.”

  “Good man?”

  “He is of the Catholic Center Party like we are. He was the Herr Oberbürgermeister of Cologne. The Gestapo removed him because he was a democrat and because they couldn’t intimidate him. The British reinstalled him and then removed him because they too could not intimidate him. Recently because of pressure from General Clay and President Truman, they restored him to office.”

  “Tough man. How old?”

  “He was born in 1876.”

  “Seventy-one years old! He won’t last very long.”

  “He is a very strong man. He was chairman of our Senate during the 1920s and resisted Hitler to the end. They were always afraid to kill him. He knows what German democracy should be like.”

  “That is?”

  “Much like yours. Our states will be called Lands or Länder and they will have much power. In a truly federated c
ountry, nothing like the Nazis could ever happen again.”

  Her eyes shone brightly. She had something political to believe in again. I was skeptical about this old man. Were there enough people in the country who would really believe in a kind of United States of Germany?

  “I hope it works,” I said cautiously.

  “It will be a great pleasure for me to meet him again. That would not be enough to keep me away from the Bahnhof. But they need me here and I cannot refuse after all that has been done for me.”

  “I’ll be glad to wait for the train.”

  I wondered as I stood under an umbrella at the Bahnhof how long Brigitta’s faith would last or even should last. Stalin was still sending a few prisoners home occasionally for no particular reason, save perhaps to torment those who were still waiting. Kapitän Kurt Richter was probably dead. Surely the odds were heavily against his surviving. Her confidence that he was alive was rock solid. But how much should one credit a wife’s confidence?

  I shivered again. Still a bitter winter. The sky was gray and the wind was biting. The rainstorm had ended in a drizzle. We’d have some nice weather for another month and then it would be rain every day, and soon after that winter would arrive. However, next spring I’d be on my way home.

  The train from the border beneath Leipzig chugged into the station only a couple of minutes late. They said that Mussolini made the trains run on time in Italy. Hitler didn’t do that in Germany. Here the trains always ran on time.

  A few German civilians climbed off and a couple of our military personnel. No one else.

  Another disappointment for poor Brigie.

  I folded my umbrella and walked back to the Buick—now my Buick. I opened the door and paused to think a minute.

  On other days she had not come up here—not many but a few. This was the first time she had asked me to fill in for her. She must have had some sort of hunch that was different from the usual one.

  So I turned to look back at the station, still a pile of ruins from one of the few air raids to hit the city. (It would be rebuilt by the time I left for home.) Walking slowly in front of the station was a man in a ragged Wehrmacht uniform and peaked fatigue cap. I drifted back to the station to get a good look at him.

  He was obviously sick and weak. His cheeks were unshaven, his face was hollow from hunger, he was dirty and terribly thin. Yet, despite his hesitant gait, he had a certain jaunty air, a defiance of sickness and death.

  I removed the photo Brigie had given me from the pocket of my Ike jacket. Up close he did look like he might be Kurt Richter. Only one way to find out.

  “Herr Kapitän Kurt Richter?”

  He was startled by the words and perhaps even more so by the comic-opera uniform.

  “Ja . . .”

  “Staff Sgt. Charles C. O’Malley, sir. Headquarters Company, First Constabulary Regiment, Army of the United States.” I saluted. “Welcome home to Bamberg. Frau Richter sends her compliments, sir, and regrets that urgent duty as a translator for the next chancellor makes it impossible for her to be here, but she has sent me to represent her.”

  The man swayed as if he were about to collapse. But he spoke to me in good, Chicago English.

  “My Brigie is still alive!”

  “Very much so, sir, as are your children Heinrich and Cunnegunda. Lovely children, sir. Now, if you’ll accompany me to the car”—I raised the umbrella and steadied him by taking his arm—“we will drive to the Residenz where the Constabulary is headquartered and then find you some medical assistance.”

  “Chancellor,” he mumbled as we approached the car. “Who?”

  “Well, I guess there will have to be some elections, but he is what we call the winter-book favorite.”

  “Ah? But who is he?”

  “I understand that he is the Herr Oberbürgermeister of Cologne.”

  “Adenauer!” he exclaimed.

  “That’s it.”

  I eased him into the front seat and closed the door.

  “I am confused, Sergeant,” he whispered as I turned on the ignition. “How did my wonderful Brigitta know that I would be here today?”

  “She didn’t, sir. She has waited here every day for two years.”

  He moved his thin lips in what might have been a smile. “That would be my Brigitta.”

  “Mulier fortis,” I quoted the Bible.

  “Yes, fortissima. . . . You’re from Chicago?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “You have taken care of my Brigitta?”

  “Not exactly, sir. I’m kind of a photographer. I was taking pictures up here one day and she upbraided me for exploiting German misery. I told her that my picture was of fidelity, not misery. We spoke for a bit and I realized that she had studied in Chicago. We needed a really good translator and I felt that Chicagoans ought to stand together.”

  “Your family is in politics?”

  “Kind of . . . like most Chicago Irish.”

  “I thought so. . . . Thank you for what you have done for my wonderful Brigie.”

  “She deserves the best, sir.”

  “What is your unit again, Sergeant?”

  “Constabulary, sir. Kind of a national police force in the transition to the new German government. We wear these musical-comedy uniforms to persuade people, including ourselves, that we are an elite group, though to be perfectly candid, we’re not, but neither is anyone else.”

  He smiled again and then drifted off into half-consciousness.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “I am very tired and very weak, Sergeant, but also very happy, and”—he rested the claw that was his right hand on my arm—“very grateful to you.”

  Classy guy.

  “Thank you, sir. But there are others more deserving of your gratitude.”

  We pulled up to the Residenz just as an array of brass, military and civilian, came out of the building. It was easy to pick out the next chancellor. He may have been a democrat politically, but this tall, dignified, aloof old man was a patrician to his fingertips.

  I pulled up behind the string of black limos that were waiting to take them away and helped Kurt out of the car.

  Konrad Adenauer was only a few feet away from me, chatting with General Clay and General Meade. I figured I ought to get his attention so he would see Kurt.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Oberbürgermeister.”

  He looked up, startled. Then he gave me a slight, frosty smile. “Guten Tag, Herr Roter.”

  It could have meant Mr. Socialist, but in the context it meant only Mr. Redhead.

  Generals Clay and Meade frowned. Then Adenauer recognized Kurt.

  “Kurt?” he said hesitantly.

  “Ja, Herr Oberbürgermeister.” He saluted weakly.

  The two men embraced. I think there was a tear in the corner of the eye of Der Alte (The Old One) as he would come to be called.

  The exchange in German was too fast for me to understand in detail. Adenauer said that he had just seen Frau Doktor Doktor Richter and she was as lovely as ever. Kurt said he could hardly wait to see her and praised me for taking good care of her. Adenauer said that both of them were needed to build a new and democratic Germany and that he was more optimistic now that “unser Kurt” (our Kurt) was home.

  I had the feeling that I was seeing here a hint of the new Germany, not a perfect Germany perhaps—no country is ever perfect—but a much better one than the German people had known for a long time.

  Kurt and Adenauer disengaged. I held Kurt’s arm again. I was introduced to General Clay, who returned my dubious salute with a crisp smile. “Good work, soldier.”

  “Thank you, sir. Now with your permission I’ll bring Kapitän Richter to a reunion with his wife.”

  As we hobbled through the doorway, the Oberbürgermeister called, “Herr Roter!”

  “Ja, Herr Oberbürgermeister?”

  He saluted me and said, “Danke schön, Herr Roter.”

  “Bitte schön, Herr Oberbürgermeister.” I saluted back
.

  I hoped that I would meet him again. As it turned out, I would.

  Generals Clay and Meade were whispering, doubtless about me.

  Clay was undoubtedly wondering where the hell Meade had found me.

  Well, as the Chicago Irish in imitation of their Irish cousins would say, “Fuck ’em all.”

  We rested halfway up the steps while Kurt recovered his breath.

  “Never fear, Herr Roter. I will survive.”

  “You damn well better, sir.”

  He made a sound that could have been a laugh.

  There might have been better ways to arrange the reunion between these two married lovers that would have given them more privacy. Yet no one in the ballroom of the Residenz on the late afternoon of that gloomy day would ever forget what he saw.

  Her back to the door, Brigie was pounding away furiously at her typewriter, oblivious to everything else in the room. Minutes of the meeting probably. When I came in with Kurt, everyone in the room stopped moving, stopped talking. In front of the general’s office, Captain Polly was frozen into a statue. Softly and implacably, Kurt and I approached his wife.

  He drew a breath when we stood behind her. Then, slipping out of my supporting arm, he placed both his hands on her shoulders.

  “Brigie,” he said gently. “Liebe Brigie.”

  Shocked, she looked up and then screamed, “Kurt!”

  They did not so much embrace as collapse into each other’s arms, both weeping softly.

  The whole room applauded.

  Kurt turned his face away from his frau and looked at me. “Why do they applaud, Herr Roter?”

  “For your wife’s fidelity, Herr Kapitän.”

  He raised his arm in a feeble salute.

  They cheered and applauded again.

  Then Captain Polly and the general took charge. Kurt, leaning on his wife now, was promptly and efficiently spirited away to the American hospital, to whose services he was entitled since his wife worked for the American government.

  “They’re pumping antibiotics and nourishment into him,” pretty Polly told me later. “He’s close to starvation and has all kinds of infections, but he’s going to be all right. They’ll take care of him for a week or ten days and then send him home. Brigie and the kids are with him now.”