They would have to put a special seat in the co-pilot's chair. They drove out to the airport to install the seat. The city administration had been understanding about his having landed the airplane in the park, but he had been reminded that from now on, he had to take into consideration that there were things called municipal airports, and even national heroes had to use them.
It was a clear winter day, and his piloting was enlivened by whoops of childish joy. Not to mention the ones coming from the seat beside him.
Bolko and another man were waiting when he finally came down to earth. Someone very familiar. He hopped out of the cockpit as they approached, once it was safe. "Bodenschatz! Karl! What are you doing here?" he said.
Bodenschatz drew himself up stiffly. "Herr Major, I am here to resume my duties. I have resigned from what Army we have left for an assignment with a better future."
Manfred looked from him to Bolko. "What financial fiddles are you doing now, brother!?"
"We needed a professional administrator -- I just gamble with investments -- and here he is. Didn't you tell me over and over again about how Karl here could find water in the Sahara?"
"If he had enough pictures I'd autographed. Herr Bodenschatz, welcome to Richthofen and Richthofen Partnership. Aviation, agriculture, electrics, and entertainment -- giving small boys airplane rides. Yes, unbuckle the belt and let me help you get out." He turned and helped young Manfred out of the cockpit.
The world had changed in the past month. He was surprised, for example, to see banknotes with a single digit on them.
There was a greater hostility in the financial world, though. Some people had guessed as well as Bolko had, and as a result there were a lot of new rich out there. As often came to pass with the new rich, a notable few were crass. Add to that the debauchery that had become established during the inflation, and this made for some grotesquely lurid scenes in Berlin's night life. He made it clear to Bolko that he was not to take part. They could run casinos (that was the real entertainment he was thinking of), but none of this having naked women dance on the dice tables. Besides, the real heavy rollers would not even notice if naked women danced in front of them.
It was like the social issue. There were nobles whose titles went back to time immemorial, who sometimes even took the time to look down their noses at the family von Richthofen, a commonplace gaggle of parvenu Briefadel, upstart nobility whose title only dated back a mere century and a half; hardly more than the peasants in their fields. It was the same with wealth.
Sorting out what had happened elsewhere was harder. As near as he could tell, those police had had some basis for their questions, and the fact that he resented their jumping to conclusions didn't matter one bit.
There had been an attempt by von Kahr, the state commissioner of Bavaria, to split off the state, declaring independence. (Some people said the French were behind it; they loved the German nation so much they wanted to have as many of them as they could.) Then someone new and unexpected stepped in. That Austrian agitator, Hitler, and his men, including Ludendorff and Göring, had intervened in what had been a friendly little secession and turned it into a full-blown riot. The Bavarian officials had ducked out and then there had been a shootout in the streets of Munich; it was worse than the Kapp affair.
Göring had vanished while most of the other leaders of this mob action had been scooped up and were waiting to stand trial. It had not been one of Germany's most glorious days, but there had been a profound shortage of such days of late.
If you were of a suspicious turn of mind, and given the events in Hamburg and Saxony not all that long ago, suspicion would not be such a bad thing, it would make sense for Germany's Red Battle-Flyer to be in Berlin to consult with other leaders before making a dramatic flight down to Munich to join the rebels. And this specious excuse about medicine . . .
Or so he thought as he sat at his desk, trying to make sense of the financial empire in his name that had come into existence over the past two years. Comparing that with the state of the nation made for quite a contrast in prospects.
Some investments he had to turn down, as with Rickenbacker's automobile company. What did he know about automobiles? Perhaps when he had established a track record.
The freikorps were, he hoped, a spent force. Politics, however, remained something he was better out of. This separation had its roots, the traditional concept of the army being apart from politics had been drilled into every cadet from their first day in barracks. Looking at the way affairs went in France, with that general on horseback who had had all France on edge waiting for him to ride into the National Assembly, was reason enough. Never mind those comic-opera South American generals . . .
Doris had upset him one day in January. She had only meant to ask about the proper inscription for the permanent headstone and the thought, somehow, had sent a flash of pain through his head. After raising it again he said to her, "Doris, I know you mean well, and we all loved her dearly. But her name -- I wish it brought back the good memories, but the bad ones come first. Please don't say it to me. I'm sorry if I seem unloving, but believe me, it's quite the opposite."
She passed the word along.
No, life would never be the same again. But he, he would tend his family and his own garden, and perhaps make a little life of his own, far away from the cares of the Reich.
INTERLUDE
Reichspräsidentenpalais, Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany, Friday, January 27, 1933
Manfred looked from one of them to the other. The Reichspräsident, Paul von Hindenburg, that great man of wood and iron who had been the image of the nation's safety during the war, and had become so again in these troubled times, sitting behind the desk, his great hooded eyes moving carefully as he looked from one man to another. His son, Oskar, a lesser version of his father, tense with excitement. His Franzchen, his Franz von Papen the sometime Reichskanzler, that cynical knowing look about him, stopped now, looking at him with an eager readiness in his manner. The Reichspräsident and his closest advisors had offered him a post in the government, a seat among the mighty, an opportunity to put his dreams into action. How could he refuse?
"Thank you, but I don't think so," Manfred said.
"What!?" Hindenburg said, speaking for the first time.
Papen was equally dazed. All his ideas, all his plans, all his power, were being snatched from his grasp. "Herr von Richthofen . . . you must!" he said, stunned, amazed. "The Reich, your country, our Fatherland needs you. This is the last chance to save the Reich from chaos, we stand on the brink of the abyss, looking into our doom!"
"And you propose that we take a giant step forward. Herr von Papen, I am certain you have forgotten more about politics than I shall ever know. I defer to your superior knowledge in that field. But that field of knowledge is not what we are talking about here, now. You are talking about chaos, and you are seeking to bring an end to chaos with the greatest makers of chaos.
"Not that I think they will do any better. You want me for an Air Ministry? Think about it. Who stands at the right hand of Herr Hitler? Göring. My sometime successor, Herr Göring. Herr Hitler will want his own man in that post, Hermann will want it -- not only will it fall in with the plans of his leader, but it will fall in so well with his own desires -- and they will get their way.
"What will they do with the Reich when they get it? If Hermann is any indication, they will run the country into the ground. Look at what he did when he only commanded a squadron, my very own squadron, the one with my name on it. He left it a wreck, ruined, devastated! I had to spend days and nights undoing the administrative mess, the personnel chaos he had created! He grounded one of our, one of my best pilots, Feldwebel Gabriel, Willi Gabriel. Willi wouldn't let Hermann fly his plane at a remove, he insisted on flying for himself, showing initiative. Hermann manages everything himself and he lacks the skill to even manage himself. Look how he's let himself go, personally. What ruin will he bring about when he has the whole Reich to play with!?
"And he is the best man Herr Hitler has! Look at the rest of them! Failed shopkeepers, unsuccessful novelists, broken soldiers, ruined farmers. Or worse. I hear dreadful things about their storm troopers. They talk about society being decadent, well, look who's talking!
"You want to talk about the War? Take a good look at Herr Hitler's service there. His pet publicists brag about his being a front-line fighter but during that titanic struggle he rose all the way from private to the exalted rank of private first class. 'Stabsgefreiter Hitler has no leadership ability.' That was what his personnel record said and that is right. The man doesn't exist, he's only the noise he makes. Those noises won't save the country, those noises won't fix the economy. He builds wondrous castles in the air but those castles are of the air. He promises everything to everybody but won't give anything except to himself.
"No, Herr Reichspräsident, Herr von Papen, Herr General von Hindenburg, I can't accept this offer. Once when Ernst Udet got shot down, he had a parachute and used it, he got out safely. I don't think I could bail out of this. Thank you. I am sorry to have wasted your time."
He got up to leave. Papen's face had been working, he was struggling with some idea. "Please?" he said. "Herr von Richthofen, if you will wait a few minutes."
"I don't see much point in doing so. Herr Reichspräsident, I am honored by your confidence in me, but I do not think this will work out."
"Wait," Hindenburg said.
They all stopped to look at him.
"If Herr von Papen has an idea . . ." he went on, slowly.
"Herr von Hindenburg, perhaps we had better discuss this in confidence," Papen said, quickly. "As the Herr Reichspräsident has asked, Herr von Richthofen, will you keep yourself available? Just a few minutes, the waiting room will be quite sufficient. I believe you will find it much to your liking."
Fuming, Manfred went into the waiting room. It was late in the afternoon; the sun was close to the horizon. Below, the streets were beginning to fill with home-bound Beamter. Even a crisis couldn't keep civil servants at their desks at the end of the work day. The brown partridges of the SA were getting thicker on the ground; perhaps they sensed that something was up. Herr Hitler woudn't have told just everyone but sometimes people can pick up the scent.
He could have been far far away. He could have been in America, living a life of ease, hunting, riding, and flying without a care in the world. If only their problems weren't Germany's problems.
CHAPTER 4
New York, New York, USA, Tuesday, April 10, 1928
Rickenbacker had sent the man to him, a few years ago. "Finest designer Curtiss had," he had written, "I wish I had the money." Manfred and Bolko had talked it over and put up the fifty thousand American dollars this Donald Douglas was wanting. (They had also finally put some money into Rickenbacker's automobile company, which had shortly thereafter gone bust. You can't win every time.)
California was very pretty in the summer, Douglas had said, so he decided to see for himself. They were finally able to go there after five years of peace and quiet in Germany. Though there were those bothersome friends of Göring's . . . eventually, he supposed, they would tear themselves apart in some beer-hall fight, but for now one couldn't go very far without running into a brown partridge, some mock-freikorpsman, soliciting at a street corner. And there were still Bolsheviks, flaunting their revolutionary ardor and zeal.
Manfred had packed up the entire family to go visit California; Mother, Doris, Bolko, and all the children. It took quite an army of servants and outside agencies to get them prepared and on the move and at one point he had had to ask Bodenschatz to organize the movement. "Moving the Richthofen Geschwader," he had said, laughingly.
They would spend a week in New York before taking the train east; Detroit, St. Louis, and finally Los Angeles. Doris had concerns about flying -- he could understand why she felt that way -- and Mother did not want to have the entire family wiped out in one grand aerial smash. So he would fret in special railway cars.
He had wanted to come and see this airplane the American flier was taking to the South Pole. The North Pole plane had been a good Fokker craft, and he had sent Herr Byrd a telegram of congratulation. But this South Pole plane looked suspiciously like Junkers's new transport and he was going to do a little investigating.
In St. Louis he wanted to see Herr Lindbergh. Eddie had offered to bring them together. Things hadn't gone well for Eddie's motorcar company, and he was going into other lines of work, some old, some new. As for this Lindbergh, it was nice to see someone else be the Pilot All the Girls Loved for a change. Did he have nuns hopelessly in love with him? Manfred had had a long talk with Chamberlin about the man, after their flight from New York almost to Berlin, and wanted to find out the reality. Then in California he would get to fly Douglas's new transport plane. On the way back they might see this horse-racing country he had heard so much about.
But they were taking a week in New York to adapt and otherwise prepare. For that week they would stay in this hotel, which Bodenschatz had picked almost at random. "It's near the top of the list," he had said. Manfred had wondered why the best hotels in New York arranged themselves in alphabetic order.
Names again. The Press pestered one no end, and therefore the Schmidt family, Kunigunde, Albrecht, Karl, Doris, and the boys had registered in a bunch of rooms there. (This time no streetwalkers would haunt the sitting rooms.) Manfred also tried to look as civilian as possible. That bit at the art museum in Berlin had made him realize how much his image was an image of the stern young god of war in uniform, and so a lounge lizard in a seersucker suit and loose tie was obviously not the famous Red Battle-Flier, or as the Americans and British seemed to insist on calling him, "the Red Baron".
That was a busy morning. Doris and Mother were going to take the children out shopping. Bolko would be meeting with bankers downtown, and then in the afternoon they would review whatever the financial conference had worked out. He alone had nothing to do this morning, and wanted to enjoy the rare opportunity for a rest.
Around lunchtime he decided to go down, if not out. He wrapped a scarf around his neck, took the elevator down to the dining room, and found a table. His pose was of a man who spoke little or no English, and so he pointed to the menu items and said "Bitte?", or "Plizz?", and other such things. As long as his money was American, that was all that mattered.
The table behind him filled up. He ate lunch to the sound of lively conversation, punctuated with a good bit of laughter. The sallies were going back and forth too fast for him to follow. It had been like that one time he had snuck off to that Kaberett in Berlin, and the host had cracked off one sly comment after another. That he had followed.
Then one comment was addressed to him. "Yes, these days everyone has a hot stock market tip," someone with a high-pitched voice said. " The bootblacks recommend Radio, the newsboys let you know that Seaboard Airways is about to split three for one. I would venture to say that even that little fellow at the next table has a hot stock market tip. Excuse me, sir, do you have a hot stock market tip?"
Manfred turned and looked. The man was large and round; he looked rather like a giant overstuffed owl. "Excuse me, sir?" he said again.
Time for his guise. "Bitte?" Manfred said, "Nicht spricht Englisch."
The owl-like man didn't seem fazed. He addressed another of his fellow diners, a balding round-faced man, "Happo?"
The other said, in rusty but adequate German, "He wants to know, do you have a stock market tip?"
Manfred sighed internally. "Buy low, sell high," was all he said.
The German-speaker translated the comment. His friends let out a wave of groans, which redoubled when the translator made a fantastically grotesque face, eyes popping out, lips curled absurdly; he looked as if he should be squatting high on the eaves of a cathedral, not sitting at a luncheon table. But after that byplay they left Manfred alone to eat in peace.
Nemesis soon arrived. He heard Doris say, "Ther
e's your father, go show him what you found," and young Manfred came running through the door of the dining room, past a startled cashier and server, waving something in his hand. "Daddy! Vati!" he cried. At least he was practicing his English. "Look! They put you in this magazine! A story all about you!"
There, on the cover of that magazine that his son was waving so proudly and prominently, was a drawing, of him. And a title in big lurid red letters: "FIGHTING THE RED BARON!". He would have to talk to this Liberty Magazine . . .
"Kindl, is that the 'Red Baron'?" the German-speaking man said. Why is it that children's voices are so penetrating? The conversation at the neighboring table had abruptly died at the sound of his son's comments and now every one of them was looking his way.
"Yes, that's my Daddy, the best pilot that ever was!" his son loyally if misguidedly said.
Manfred sighed. Then he turned around in his chair and addressed the people sitting at the other table. "This is my son, Manfred, and, yes, I am the Manfred von Richthofen as in the picture. You seem to have the advantage of me, gentlemen, oh and ladies."
The owlish man said, "And I, sir, am Alexander Woollcott, the leading critic of drama in this benighted city. You have, by fortunate happenstance, stumbled on that epicenter of wit and drollery we call the Round Table . . ."
Herr Woollcott and his friends were, it seemed, well placed in the literary world, and he somewhat brusquely indicated that he might indeed condescend to read and take note of The Red Air-Fighter. "With Lindbergh in all the newspapers, on every screen and magazine, fliers are quite the rage," he sniffed.
The translator, who bore the not exactly well-favored name of "Marx", was from a German family. "You ought to tour the homeland," Manfred said. "My brother knows some people in the entertainment trade." But, it seemed, Woollcott had virtually adopted this Marx, and they were displaying the spectacularly bad judgment of going to France for the summer. Maybe in a couple of years -- they were also doing a film, with sound now.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 7