Manfred said, "Even tests?"
Half an hour later he was at the controls, a very nervous Junkers test pilot at his side. "Look, don't worry, I've only crashed once -- well, twice, if you count my first solo." Manfred said reassuringly as he taxied to the takeoff point.
The plane flew well, and in spite of the closed cockpit he was at his ease. To be high, above the petty squabbles of the world . . . Life could be beautiful.
Back on the ground he spoke again with Junkers. "Thank you for the opportunity, Herr Junkers. Such a pity . . ."
"Things are looking better. This month, we just set up an air transport division. I understand we may be able to actually operate the planes soon." Junkers looked away for a moment, then he said, "Could I put a proposition to you?"
"What sort?"
The next corporate meeting of Junkers Flugzugwerke A.G. would include among the directors Major a.D. Manfred, Frhr. von Richthofen. Who could know what would happen in flight?
Over the next few months he bought into companies he knew, in a manner of speaking. Every existing airplane maker had a visit, and sometimes the visitor would go away with a stake in the business. He also looked into new ones; he had gone to the shore in Pomerania and seen seaplanes produced by an engineer named Heinkel, in between trips to another part of the Baltic shore, where he shot ducks. Sitting by the sea in a duck blind, hearing the clear crisp winter air resonate to the boom of his shotgun, prepared him mentally for the exertion of flying from that same sea. And they could have duck dinners afterwards.
Over and over again the comment resounded in his ears. "Soon, we will be able to operate our own airplanes." Sometimes it had less commercial overtones. At one place he had run into Ernst Udet, who was full of plans. And kept on trying to bring the conversation around to Göring and what he was doing now.
They were in a hotel in Bremen, having dinner in the restaurant. Manfred had gulped at the bill. For that much before the War you could have bought the entire cow or three. While he glared at the absurd figure on the check, for all that the bills in his pocket had a like absurdity of magnitude that would cover it, Udet said, "Yes, the civilians have messed everything up!"
"No, they don't seem to be doing well," Manfred said.
"All the same we are going on with plans. This dominance will not last forever. We are planning to have an air force again!"
Udet then started talking about plans to rebuild the aircraft industry and have a new air force -- no, "air arm", he was saying -- ready for the day when Germany would be itself again. This wasn't too bad, but then he launched into a spiel about their successes in the War. He of all people knew about successes, but when the conversation then went around to failures Manfred had to make him stall and come in for a landing. "I can understand why Herr Ludendorff says that everyone let him down," he said. "Ernst, you remember as well as I do how isolated the General Staff became. They sat in Spa and had the best of everything, and never saw the front lines, never knew what was going on. So I can see why he could say something like that.
"But you? I can't understand why you, who sat in the bunkers right next to me, flew with me against more and more Allied planes, saw all their troops down below, can possibly believe that. You saw the fighting, you know what it was like."
"Hermann says -- "
"The man who ran the Jagdgeschwader like a civil servant!?"
Saying that Göring had run the unit like a civil servant in some ways was an insult to civil servants; but all too many Beamter had that nitpicking, controlling habit that Göring had displayed. Then too, as he recalled it, Udet and Göring had not been on the best of terms back then. Something about running the Jagdgeschwader like civil service, as he had been told. Why was Udet so close now? Rebuilding a German air force was hardly an idea he was opposed to, but sneaking around like cloak-and-dagger boys hardly sounded effective to him. But then, he had seen a picture of Mata Hari once, and wondered what men had seen in her until someone pointed out to him that they had seen everything . . .
This conversation was not going anywhere, and he had more pleasant things to do, like meet with Herr Professor Focke about those plane designs. Udet seemed to be in agreement with that. Manfred settled that staggeringly huge yet rather small dinner bill and went up to his room, where he booked a call home to see how everyone was doing and if Bolko had bankrupted them yet.
Before he fell asleep that night a thought flitted across his mind. Ernst had said, over and over again, "Luftwaffe". Hermann had been saying the same thing, those final months of the War. Why "air arm" instead of "air force"? Was there something special about the term?
Spring crept in on little cat feet. There was another Manfred in the family to look after: Doris's and Lothar's new boy, born that March, was Wolf Manfred, Freiherr von Richthofen, just as Ilse's oldest was Manfred von Reibnitz. A fine set of Manfreds to go with their own Young Manfred. It was an omen. Mentioning that had earned him a wifely, "Of course! Everyone else loves you, but not as much as I do." Mother had said, "It will make a fine tradition." And the other brother observed wryly that said tradition left him with one choice the fewer to make.
The next month the weather cleared, both in metaphor and in fact. The rumors everyone had heard were true, and on a lovely spring day the Junkers Luftverkehr began its run from Berlin to Königsberg with a different sort of pilot at the controls, and about a thousand pressmen at each end of the trip. More mountebankery, but this time more would gain thereby. Oh to be in East Prussia, now that April's here . . .
The course of events certainly seemed to have emboldened Lothar, who was now himself a charter pilot. One day in May had happened to find them both at home, between flights as it were, and Manfred had offered Lothar a place in the growing network of his businesses -- if little Bolko, who had been no more than a cadet during the War, could be his manager, surely the other half of the Richthofen aerial partnership could take an even bigger role in the business! Or so he said, enthusiastically, to his brother after dinner that evening.
"Thank you, and maybe I will in a while," Lothar said. "I'd like to, and I will someday. For now, I have to get things straight with myself, and I'd be better off doing things by myself. I don't envy you, brother."
Manfred spent some time trying to bring his brother around but knew when to break off an unpromising pursuit. The regularity would have done Lothar some good. He understood that things were not going altogether well between Lothar and his wife, Doris, and a settled job not only would be to his advantage but to theirs, and to that of Carmen and little Wolf Manfred even more so. A brothers' quarrel, however, would not be so advantageous.
Lothar had to work out his problems. Forcing him would do more harm. He was a hunter, and he had to hunt them down in his own way.
That afternoon had been a busy weekday work day. Lothar had called Sunday and told them that he would be flying some cinema people to a filming site on the coast near Hamburg. After listening to his description of the passengers and flight plan Manfred said, "I'll leave it at that." One of those passengers was an actress, not bad-looking. As if Lothar wasn't already in enough trouble with Doris. . .
The next call came at mid-afternoon, and was of a different kind. "Freiherr von Richthofen?" the nursing sister said when he answered the telephone. He listened for a while and then said, "Yes, make the arrangements." Then he gathered himself together and went to give Mother the bad news.
Lothar's airplane had had engine trouble. Back during the War, that time he had been shot up, he had missed that power line on landing. This time he hadn't, the plane hit a power line, flipped over, and crashed. His passengers, that actress Fern Andra and her agent, were both badly hurt. Lothar had died.
They buried him next to his father, in the garrison cemetery there in Schweidnitz.. Mother was in mourning. Manfred remembered how he had begged her, "Mama, do not ever put yourself through such torment for me." But she was in heavy dress, long black veil, and such. He could understand that she had
done so for Father. At least she was bearing up emotionally. Doris was not so well off.
She had come to them that evening. "Manfred, Manfred, it's my fault!" she had sobbed. "I was going to divorce him, abandon him! It's all my fault."
They all looked at him. It made quite a scene, there in the dark drawing room (it cost so much to light it properly), wife and mother looking to him, sister-in-law broken and sobbing before them. He thought for a minute and then said, "Will it bother you to live here for a while, until you get back on your feet?"
So it was that Doris, little Carmen, and even littler Wolf Manfred moved in. This made the house a trifle crowded, but the money Doris could contribute to the household budget was welcome. Mother had developed a habit of economizing after she married Father that had kept them going very well, during the War, and now during this financial madhouse was even more useful. The price of coal was absurd, but then the price of everything was absurd. At least there were absurd quantities of money available to pay for those goods.
About a month after the funeral, about, Fraulein Andra -- she was an American, fancy that -- came to Schweidnitz; the doctors had let her out of the hospital.
Manfred and Bolko had gone to the station to greet her. She knew them. "His brothers," she said as she stood there on the platform, bag at her feet, her face covered. "You're his brothers. He talked about you all the time, how you were looking to the future, and how you needed him. He wanted to be his own man first, 'I've got to settle my mind, have something of my own first. But they need me, and I need them.' You must miss him dreadfully."
People were looking at them -- mostly at him, Manfred thought. If it had been a few years ago -- he quit thinking that. "We do," he said. She had a scar on her face, they said, her looks were gone and her work with them. He was familiar with that state of affairs, but somehow it seemed more . . . obscene, cruel on a woman's face. He struggled with his feelings, while saying, "I am pleased to meet you, Frau . . . Fraulein . . . Frau Andra."
Bolko said, "It's a shock. You'll want to meet Mother, and his wife and children. Shall we be on our way home?" And he picked up her bag. They couldn't afford servants now, not for lack of people to be hired, but lack of money. Things were turning better, or had been before the accident.
If nothing else the woman was enthusiastic. "After your flights in America -- I saw you in California, that one time you had to hide behind the plane because of the rush -- I couldn't imagine why you didn't go into the movies! Those looks! Your brother would have made a great movie star, that resolute look. Why didn't you two take it up? I know you must have had an offer."
If he had, if he had sent for Lothar, if he had come, he would be alive today.
They led her to the car, and as they went she said, "I want to see where he's buried. Where can you get flowers here? I owe him that much."
She made much of Doris and Mother, far too much of Carmen and Wolf-Manfred, and even of his own wife and son. They owed her that. That afternoon, Manfred took Frau Andra and Doris out to the cemetery, and left them there for a few minutes, to pray or say whatever they wanted to say.
He looked at her, injured and bereft. She might never act again. He imagined himself never flying again, and realized how much he had lost, and how much he could lose.
The days and weeks passed. Manfred might have been annoyed at Doris's putting herself up as a new connection of the Richthofens, but then was he really all that different? He spent some time travelling around the country, meeting with airplane people. Those dreams were coming true. There were so many companies springing up, making plans, waiting.
Perhaps Herr Orville was right. Manfred would try out a new plane, and feel the air thrilling past him, as if the plane was part of his body. That was the thrill he got from flying, not the combat. Lothar had been learning that when he died; that was the tragedy and the symbol of his life.
Then he got the letter from America, Eddie was coming to Berlin. So he wasn't the only one with that idea! Time to return a favor.
August in Berlin was a wonderful time to be alive. And that was where the air show was. All his potential investments would be showing up (at least the potential ones he was interested in, as opposed to say the chemical ones, or that switching company), and indeed both Herr Junkers and Herr Heinkel had requested his presence. Even Eddie would be there, newly married and hoping to introduce the new Frau Rickenbacker to all his friends.
Both Manfred and Bolko would be there, too. While the Red Battle-Flyer was sweet-talking the makers of flying machines, his brother would be making the hard decisions about deals with them. Also, guarding the steamer trunks of currency that would be needed to close the deals.
This kind of baggage was what made Manfred's jaw drop. Back in the spring, the French had taken issue with how the Germans were living up to the treaty that had been dictated to them, and moved into the Ruhr to collect directly. The government was indeed "playing chicken" with them. To keep the game going took a full-scale effort at the Reichsbank.
As a result, anyone with a few American dollars earned as much financial respect as a great banker had before the War. He had a few American dollars. Quite a few, in fact, over and above those remaining from those heady days of performing at fairs. Eddie had brought out his own book, Fighting the Flying Circus, and the American publisher had wanted to hear from the other side of the trenches. The Red Battle-Flyer by Manfred von Richthofen (now, really and fully by him, as he had reviewed the translation to comb out the oafish comments that the High Command had "requested" he make, and remove other infelicities such as prices in English money -- not that prices in German money made any sense these days) was now available in English for the curious American, and doing well enough in sales.
On the strength of a hundred dollars, one could borrow a hundred million million marks. And he did. Those options Bolko had taken out last year, when prices were only insanely high, were now bearing copious fruit. He owned vast tracts of land in the east. Once upon a time the Richthofens, back in the days when their name was merely "Schmidt", had been farmers but never on this scale. He was also the master of industrial properties of all kinds, people around Schweidnitz, in Breslau, in Berlin, even in the Ruhr (well, they could be, and would be doing so once the French and the government came to their senses) acknowledged him as not only the Red Battle-Flyer but the Boss.
It made sense to come here for the action. However, other people could see the same prospect, to turn it to their own purposes.
"The Ehrhardt people are still active," Manfred said as his brother sorted through papers piled on his desk.
"Ehrhardt, Ehrhardt . . ." Bolko said, absently, "Aren't they in chemicals?"
"No! Murdering politicians and trying to take over the government. One of the freikorps this man Kapp had. Back when I was laid up they were sending men down to get my support. Don't you remember? Mama was at her wits' end trying to keep them out. They would kill -- " he shuddered as he realized what he was saying. Gathering his feelings, he went on, "They would kill to have my support. And if I turned them down, they might do that, too.
"And those are just the obnoxious people in Berlin. Göring is down in Bavaria at the same stand, and it seems that everyone he says hello to comes up here to beg me to join him.
"This idea you had, that you won't tell me about, had better work."
Bolko chortled. "Oh the freikorps! Don't worry, I have the perfect repellent."
He flew in late that afternoon. After Lothar's death, it seemed proper that they should not fly together, even though there were already two little boys of the next generation to go with Carmen, and soon there would be another grandchild for Mother to spoil. While Bolko took the train, he flew -- of course the Red Battle-Flyer, hero of the air, should fly. It also made for a perfect demonstration of the product. What better salesman could there be?
Bolko would be there first, to check in. And not the Continental, with its memories of the War, but the Kaiserhof, on Wilhelmstrasse.
They might know him. Therefore, while Manfred, Freiherr von Richthofen had flown into Tempelhof and took a taxi to the hotel, Herr Albrecht Schmidt arrived there, and after paying a fare of sufficient size to have once upon a time bought an entire private rail car, asked at the front desk for the key: "My brother, Karl, should be here," he said. The clerk gave him the key and told him the room number -- the suite number.
He did not understand the disparaging look the desk clerk had given him until he opened the door to the suite and heard girlish laughter. "Oh, Paula, here's the other one!"
Had he interrupted an orgy? Two girls -- and they were girls, he would have wagered that their combined ages were not much more than his -- two dark-haired half-dressed girls were sprawled in the room, drinking and looking generally, if genially, debauched.
The other girl said, laughing, "I hope he's not as boring as his friend. Hallo, sweetie. I'm Paula and this is my friend Monika. Herr Schmidt hired us. Do you want to have both of us or --"
"BOLK-- Karl! Come here at once!" Manfred bellowed.
The bedroom door swung open and Bolko looked out. "Come back here and I'll explain the plan. No, girls, just keep on having fun."
Manfred tried to keep from brushing against the profoundly disappointed nymphets as he passed. He entered the bedroom, closed the door and glared at his brother in best Kommodore fashion. "What exactly is the meaning of this -- this debauchery?!"
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 5