Bolko sat on one of the beds and grinned. "Yes. Perfect, isn't it?"
"Disgusting. Mama will be utterly disgusted and -- "
"So will the freikorps."
Manfred sat down abruptly. Bolko smiled even more broadly and went on. "These freikorps folks are good moral men, right? Trying to purge German society of debauchery and lewdness, yes? They certainly won't think of looking for you when they see those two young tarts."
Then he got serious. "If you're worried about Mama objecting -- better they be here than out on the streets, getting syphilis or getting robbed or whatever. You've seen their sort all over the country, you must have. Some of them were from good families, gone broke in this terrible inflation. All they have left is selling their bodies."
"And what are you going to say when they come scratching at the door at two in the morning, saying 'Hey, sweetie, why don't you come out here?'"
Bolko apparently couldn't think of an answer to that.
Over the next two days he went nearly mad, cooped up in that room. The room service food was barely edible, and he had to run the gauntlet of the two off-the-street streetwalkers sitting in the sitting room, who insisted on giggling at him as he came out to get it. Never mind what they said when they weren't giggling: "And then the big Ami, he put the cigar in his mouth!" he heard one say during one of his excursions, and he didn't want to hear any more.
Other times he needed to leave the bedroom had their own problems. They primped in the loo all morning, it seemed, particularly when Manfred needed to shave because someone was coming in five minutes.
His visitors weren't any more impressed. Junkers was upset, for example. "Have you become a brothel-master?" he said, outraged. It may have been the fact that one of the girls had not even bothered to cover herself up while looking him over.
After settling his nerves, Junkers began going into the details of this business deal with Russia. The Junkers firm, with the under-the-table help of the government, would be building planes at a factory near Moscow. Manfred was dubious about that arrangement. The Bolsheviks would use them and discard them, he thought. Perhaps they weren't that much better than the two girls. At least they could keep up the skills they needed for the day when affairs became normal again. They would have to become normal again.
On Thursday he got out. Eddie Rickenbacker would be there, and with him the new Mrs. Rickenbacker. It was reassuring to see his big, craggy face again. But the first thing Eddie said to him was, "Gosh, aren't prices high these days?"
"You don't know the half of it."
Then Eddie looked embarrassed. "Oh -- Adelaide, this is Manfred von Richthofen. Manfred, this is Adelaide, my wife. We got married last year.
"We were so sorry to hear about Lothar. Adelaide, Manfred's brother, the other ace, died saving his passengers. His plane flipped and he managed to keep them from being too hurt, but he couldn't save himself. They're – well, they were both like that. I wish I could have known Lothar better.
"Remember how I showed you that one airstrip in France? That was where we were stationed when the war was over, and I took up that Spad and ran into him at five after eleven."
Manfred said, "Mrs. Rickenbacker, it is a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for the kind words, Eddie. You two must come to Schweidnitz and meet my family. Eddie must have told you I myself married back three years ago, and we have one son and another child on the way. And then there's Doris, my sister-in-law, Lothar's widow, and their two children . . . and our mother, you must meet her.
"Eddie, will you be flying in the meet?"
Eddie shook his head and said, "We're not here for that. There's an auto show next week. I didn't tell you? I'm back into cars again, making them. Say, would you like to drive one of our new models? 'Richthofen in a Rickenbacker!' What a great ad!"
"Oh, don't let's talk business now! We should get together later -- er, where are you staying?"
The prospect of their visiting his suite was not the most pleasant that he could imagine. Adelaide had that look in her eye that reminded him of Mother, and he could imagine the sort of woman who would have to stand up to Eddie. The thought of her seeing their sentries was not a reassuring one.
That evening Eddie was forthcoming. They were dining at a restaurant in his hotel. Let someone else be stunned by too many zeros to fit on the bill. It was dark and cozy (another million million marks for the ambience; as the joke went, "Who the hell ordered the ambience?") and he could barely see their eyes in the candle light.
Adelaide had the most amusing story to tell him. "It was last year, when we were in Venice, St. Mark's Square, on our honeymoon," she said. "We were feeding the pigeons there, and one flew up and landed on Eddie's hat! It was the funniest thing! Someone even took a picture!"
"Makes me a real birdman," Eddie said.
Thinking of the image alone was enough to make him laugh. It took his mind off what he was eating, which fortunately he couldn't see. If it were pigeon at least . . .
But then the conversation turned to what they were doing on this trip, and it seemed to be bothering the traveler. "You guys are serious." Eddie said. "Udet showed me around and you guys are really working hard at building up a secret air force."
Now Manfred was glad for the gloom, for it hid his reactions. "You can hardly call it secret if they let you see it," he said. "Would they let me come see your air bases?"
"Oh, I'm sure they would. If we had any. Our air corps is a mess. General Mitchell wants to take it away from the army and navy. He sure showed the navy what he can do when he, er."
The High Seas Fleet had been one of Wilhelm's more expensive toys. To his mind, "Luxusflotte" was a perfect description, and he said so. "For Germany, a big navy, a war fleet like we had, is as we used to say a 'luxury fleet', and to spend on luxuries when we were short on necessities was -- " and he shrugged, then realized they couldn't see him, and said, "well, unwise. I'm not put out at all that General Mitchell sank one of those drains on the public treasury."
"Yeah, and an air force is a necessity. Ernst showed me the planes you were building. And he said you were buying into those companies. What gives?"
Manfred described Bolko's financial maneuverings (or manipulations). "We have been buying options on land and in industry, and now we are exercising them," he concluded. "He only gets ten percent and he is rich. I'm becoming a veritable Krupp.
"All this is coming at a price, this insane inflation. Back when he got started, Bolko told me he saw that the government was going to just print more money, and with more money chasing the same amount of goods, you can expect this sort of Quatsch -- nonsense. Sorry, Mrs. Rickenbacker --"
"Oh, please, call me Adelaide," she said.
"Adelaide, but the German word fills the mouth better, I think. As I was saying, you can expect this sort of Quatsch and that was how we got into our current state of affairs. Do you want an example of what I mean? The other day, I went looking for some toy blocks to give to my niece, Carmen, Lothar's little girl -- now that he's gone I suppose I have to be father to her. Do you know what I ended up getting her? Bundles of banknotes. They were cheaper than wood blocks.
"Do you want an autographed banknote? There's plenty of room for the autograph. I could have all the men from my Geschwader sign them, in fact." He took one out, leaned across the table, and showed them the dire truth. "They're blank on one side, see? If the Reichsbank were to take the time to print them on both sides, they would lose half their value."
That evening, while the girls giggled in the outside room, blind drunk on champagne -- at least Bolko got them real champagne, and not some rotgut laced with lead and arsenic, if one of the girls were to die in their rooms that would make for a gross embarrassment -- Manfred signed milliard mark notes. His signature was worth more than the face value of the note, and Eddie knew a man who would sell them in the United States. This would mean that there would be more American dollars for Bolko to borrow against.
Their business was d
one Saturday, but Manfred had asked Junkers to come by to consult about a related matter. While Bolko took care of getting their bags ready to go on the train -- he had sold the trunks, since they no longer needed them -- Manfred stepped out into the drawing room and put on his Kommodore mood. "Get dressed!" he snapped to the two girls.
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. "Come in!" Manfred said, and took the girls by the arms. If Junkers had been shocked before at seeing the debauchery, now he was horrified. In outrage he said,. "Herr von Richthofen -- "
He felt the girls jump in amazement, and ignoring that, said quickly, "Herr Junkers, Bolko and I have been conducting interviews for you, and here are two fine young receptionists for our growing company. Now, ladies, now that you have steady jobs and reliable incomes, surely you won't inconvenience Herr Junkers or myself by carrying on, er, disreputable trades, where you can run into angry, er, hiring agents with razors or, er, customers with unpleasant ailments. Won't you?"
He had suspected that part of that lascivious attitude of theirs was from hunger; they had to act sleazy to get more money. And his guess had been right; their combined ages were only a year more than his. On the other hand, they could have made something if they had known his real name.
Bolko stood in the doorway as he watched their visitors leave, a somewhat startled Junkers and two grateful young women in his trail. "A man from the Ehrhardt Brigade did come by that evening when you were dining with the Rickenbackers," he observed. "One of them -- Monika, I think -- opened the door and tittered as he ran off. Probably because he could see her tits."
"Don't they say, 'Good riddance to bad rubbish?' The freikorps, I mean, not those two honest whores. Ex-whores, I should say." And that was what he told the womenfolk at home, fortunately for his marital and parental peace of mind.
The Oberbürgermeister made much of the great visit of the American Jagdfleiger des Jagdfleigers. Eddie found himself being rushed off his feet by everyone in Silesia, or so it seemed, who wanted to meet the American friend of Our Richthofen.
That one day Eddie went to see Doris's two children, then told them (for all that they would have barely understood regular German, never mind that Swiss patois he spoke), "You'll never know your father, but he was a brave and good man." That was kind of him to say that. The War had scarred them all, and Manfred was not sure whether his wound, which was only physical, was worse than Lothar's wound, which had been spiritual.
Then Eddie looked at the three children in the nursery, Carmen and her brother Wolf-Manfred, and his own young Manfred, and said, "If we could only spare them the grief."
"Why wait, Doctor? I can fly to Berlin and get it."
Summer had passed away to fall, and the raw weather had brought illness to the Richthofen household. Carmen had been playing in the park across the street, the park where he had landed so many times, and had brought home illness. All the children got it, and for a while it was touch-and-go for little Lothar, their new son. Doris had cried when they told her of her new nephew's name, and when she could speak through her tears said, "He would have wanted that, he would have liked that." He had written Frau Andra, back in America now. So young, too young to be so sick. He had held the boy upright all one night, so he could breathe. In spite of their worst fears, all the children had pulled through.
But not so his wife. First the birth, then the influenza, now this. "Diphtheria," the doctor said, in an ominous voice. "And there isn't a bit of serum left. Not here, and I called Breslau, they are out too. It will take hours to bring it down from Berlin, even if they put on a special train, or drove like madmen." The doctor had forgotten who he was talking to. So nineteenth-century!
In half an hour, Manfred was in the Junkers Type 20 he was trying out, off to Berlin to get the serum. He only needed one briefcase for money; the serum was bought and paid for, so he only had to take into account cab fares, lunch, refueling, and the like, only two or three hundred million millions total.
The flight was unexceptional. Once he had landed, however, it was a different matter. The police were out in full force; even the cab driver was silent. He drove to the clinic he had been told about, picked up the box with the serum, and was driven back.
It was when he paid the fare that the trouble began. An almost obsequious police officer, in full fig with fancy shako and gorget, was waiting by the gate. "Herr von Richthofen, if you please. We just need you to answer a few questions."
"Very well," he said, half distracted, "but I have to be off soon. I have a very urgent matter to take care of."
The policeman escorted him to a spare room with only a table and a couple of chairs. Manfred put his box of serum on the table and sat down, and then it hit him what he had heard and ignored. The door lock had clicked when the officer closed it. He was locked in.
After half an hour -- he had checked his watch hourly and another five minutes had passed -- the door was unlocked and two inspectors came in. They had to be inspectors, they had all the confidence of policemen and the dress of respectable bourgeois.
One of them swung a chair around and sat, his arms crossed across its back. The other stood by the door. The sitter -- they didn't seem to think introducing themselves was called for, looked like -- said, "Look here, we're all adults, we know the ways of the world. No need to toy with social Quatsch. You know why you're here, we know why you're here. So if you tell me what all Ludendorff said, it'll go better with you."
Manfred stared at the man. After a moment to recover his composure he said, "I haven't seen the Herr General since the War, since he ran away."
The inspector standing by the door laughed sarcastically. "Sure you haven't. Right. And you haven't seen Herr von Kahr, either."
"Who?"
The first inspector came back, "You know as well as I do that this putsch of yours in Bavaria won't work. All you have are this bunch of street thugs that your old friend Göring sleazed up. They can't stand against the Reichswehr. If you come clean I can get you off."
Manfred was beginning to wonder if he was dreaming. One of those bad dreams, what one has when the knackwurst has gone off. But he said, "Putsch? Hermann? Göring couldn't lead a putsch! He can't manage his way out of a paper bag! I had to spend a week unsnarling the mess he had made of my Geschwader!"
"And you haven't been meeting with Herr Hitler, either," the second inspector said, derisively.
Why he kept on introducing irrelevancies puzzled Manfred. "I have no idea what you people are doing. I have to get back to Schweidnitz. My wife is dying."
The two inspectors spoke simultaneously. The sitting one said, "And if you just tell me what you were going to do with Ludendorff and von Kahr, you can go back to your home. We'll even drive you."
The standing one said, "Oh sure, right. Tell me another."
Then they looked at each other. "Seppi, this isn't working," the sitting one said.
"Perhaps we ought to work him over."
Manfred shouted, "Look, call my home in Schweidnitz!" He barely kept his temper.
Without responding the two inspectors left.
About an hour later the obsequious policeman came back. "Herr von Richthofen, they have your airplane ready," he said, as if it had been merely a fueling problem, and not some exotic inexplicable quiz about people from the past.
His head ached, one of those bad aches from after he had been wounded. He had flown when he felt like that and now he would fly again. Blindly, he stalked to the hangar where the J20 was waiting, got into the cockpit, and waited for the ground crew to remove the wheel chocks. They let him take off.
He landed in the park in Schweidnitz, across the street from home, as he had so many times before, in happier days. He jumped out of the cockpit, his precious case in hand, and rushed across the street; the traffic was light. In fact it was stopped. There were people around the house, but when they saw him the crowd parted to let him by.
There was a black wreath on the door.
He existed in a
perpetual pervading gray mist. Somewhere, somewhen, somehow there had been events outside of him. A doctor had said, "The crisis came about an hour before you arrived."
He had been standing at the edge of a grave "I am the resurrection and the life," he heard. Would that it had been his.
In the morning he would rise from a cold bed and go through the motions of a life, his morning toilet, some indistinguishable food thrice a day, and then back to bed. He spent the days sitting in a dark room, trying not to think.
Every now and then someone would intrude. Bolko, for example. "Well, if you won't decide, I'll just liquidate everything!" What was the point of deciding.
He said the most absurd things. "At least it was perfect timing. We have a new Mark now, and prices are stable. You're rich, brother! I'm even rich!" Irrelevant.
Others came, for example Mother. "Manfred, what will I do with the condolences?" Why did it matter.
Udet appeared in his void once. "Manfred . . . Rittmeister . . .if you ever need me I will be there." Why.
Then, after a time, there was a polite knock on the door. It swung open, and Mother was there with Doris and all the children. She looked very stern. "Manfred, we are having Christmas dinner tonight, and you have to preside."
Christmas, as if that mattered. Happiness -- a nullity
He found himself in the dining room, surrounded by light. There was a plate before him, heaped with food. As if it mattered.
Then a little hand pulled on his sleeve.
He turned to look at the interlocutor. "Daddy, why are you so sad?" It was young Manfred, his son -- her son! "You won't talk to me. What's wrong?"
"Your mother is gone."
"Yes I know, Daddy, and I'm sad too. Please, won't you talk to me?"
He looked into those blue eyes and felt a strange feeling, pain and love all mixed in together. "Would you like to go flying with me?" he said, struggling to break through his shell.
The boy threw his arms around his father and cried.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 6