by Phillip Rock
Martin studied the table and tried to work out a shot. “Well, he’s owned the losingest team in the American League for the past twenty years. I suppose that’s a form of charity—at least to the players. That’s baseball, by the way—an American game.”
“I have heard of it,” Charles said laconically, watching Martin miss his shot by a wide margin. “Obviously billiards is not.”
“I used to be damned good. The eye has lost … whatever an eye loses.”
Charles chalked his cue. “He wants you to work for him.”
“I know. What did he say to you?”
“He offered a five-thousand-dollar donation to the school—if I could convince you that joining the old family firm was in your best interest. I rather like the proposition. Not a whiff of charity. Something for something.”
“I suppose the school could use the money.”
“Oh, yes, but we can survive very well without it. Why does he want you?”
Martin racked his stick and ambled over to the sideboard to pour a whiskey.
“Paul’s thinking is about as devious as a straight ruler. He’s always had a twinge of conscience about me. It’s the inheritance. I was—oh, I don’t know, five or six, when Grandfather Rilke died. I never knew I had an American grandfather. My father never spoke of his family. Anyway, according to what my mother told me later, the reality of being disowned came to my father when he received a check from a Chicago law firm in the amount of one dollar. He cashed it and got drunk. I imagine one could get very drunk in Paris on one dollar in those days.
“Paul gained a good deal by my father’s disownment. When old Rilke died, he got what would have been his brother’s share. It gave him two-thirds of the Rilke estate and Hanna one-third. That was fair enough, I suppose, because Paul had been running the business for several years. He could have ignored my mother and me—except for token money orders—but he came to France and brought us back. Looked after us very well and gave me everything but a share of the profits.”
“And now he wants you to sign on. Potential heir apparent, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Something on that order perhaps. Karl’s a washout. A pompous prig with a brain like a vacuum tube.”
“I remember him vaguely. Dropped in on us one summer before the war on his way to Germany. Smoked a pipe and wore a Yale sweater. That’s all I can recall of him.”
Martin splashed some soda in his drink and leaned against the sideboard. “I’m not a businessman and Paul knows it.”
“You may not be a businessman, old boy, but you’re a first-rate organizer and an intelligent man. A Pulitzer Prize winner, a top executive in the second-largest news agency in the world.”
“Ex–top executive.”
“Your choice, though, Martin. You weren’t sacked for juggling the old books or pinching secretaries’ bottoms. Any corporation with interests on the Continent would hire you like a shot. One of your problems, if you don’t mind my saying so, is that you tend to hide your light under a basket.”
Martin drank reflectively and looked at Charles over the rim of the glass. He then finished the drink in a swallow and set the glass on the table.
“Speak for yourself, John—as the saying goes. I watch you riding off to Burgate every morning on your knobby-kneed horse. A canvas sack of books over your shoulder. Dressed in scruffy corduroys and an old sweater. You—a viscount, scholar, and gentleman, not off to great fame in Whitehall but on your way to teach a bunch of kids. And you know what you look like when you ride off? You look contented. And I’m contented. I have no burning ambition to make money or to be head of the Rilke empire after Uncle Paul kicks the bucket.”
“Then I would make that very plain to him, Martin. I don’t think he quite believes there are people in this world who don’t hunger for money and power.”
“I have told him, but he only stares into space and says, ‘Like father, like son.’ It’s a nagging conscience, if you ask me. The ghost of Willie Rilke grinning at him.”
PAUL LOOKED FAR from ghost-ridden as he sat in bed, cigars and a brandy decanter handy. A bed tray spanning his short legs overflowed with papers. He peered at Martin over his eyeglasses as he came into the room.
“Saw the light under your door,” Martin said. “Thought I’d wish you a good night.”
“You already did. But come and sit down. Have a cigar and a glass of Cognac. I’ll say one thing for Tony, he has the best damned wine cellar of anyone I know.”
Martin smiled as he drew a chair toward the side of the bed. “I’m surprised you were able to get old Coatsworth to part with a bottle of the really good stuff.”
“Oh, we see eye to eye. Coatsworth only hates to uncork a bottle for people who don’t know the difference between good and superb.” He lit a cigar and watched his nephew pour himself a brandy. “I know what’s top-rate in wines—and people. I’m not offering you a job out of charity, Martin. You’re the type of man I need. The world is about to explode with new technocracy, and Rilke will be a part of it, making and selling everything from radio sets to refrigerated railway cars. Work for me and I’ll make you a millionaire in five years. I guarantee it.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. But to be truthful, Uncle Paul, I’m not that anxious to become a millionaire.”
“That’s a lot of baloney and you know it. Everyone wants to be rich.”
“Not necessarily in your sense of the term. Most people are content to be successful in whatever it is they do, be it painting a house or writing a daily column for the London Times. I’ve achieved that kind of success, Uncle Paul. I know that anytime I want to go back to work I can join any newspaper or wire service I want to.”
“And in the meantime you can loaf.”
“Well, hardly that. Writing a book isn’t loafing.”
“What’s your book about?”
“The political turmoil of post-Versailles. The rise of fascism and communism in western Europe and the effect of these movements on democratic principles of government.”
“How long will it take you to finish?”
“About a year.”
“Can you hold out financially for that long?”
“Yes—with a little generosity from friends.”
Paul scowled at the tip of his cigar and then flicked ash on the bedspread and swept it away with his hand.
“I’ll make a deal with you. I’d like you to come to Germany with me. This is a very important trip. I won’t explain now what’s at stake—it’s complicated and would take too long. Suffice it to say it’s worth a great deal of money to me—to the Rilke companies. You’ve seen the German Rilkes since the war, I haven’t. I know that cousin Frederick had a stroke, I know that his son Werner is running things now. That’s about all that I know. You and Werner are friends, I understand from Hanna.”
“I feel sorry for Werner and he respects me. That’s about the extent of our friendship.”
“When did you see him last?”
“About two and a half years ago. He’d finally been released from the hospital in Berlin. I drove him and his wife, Carin, to Altenburg.”
“A pleasant trip?”
“Lovely scenery. Werner was in pain.”
“What exactly is the matter with him?”
“He was hit in the belly during the fighting around Amiens in nineteen eighteen. They took out most of his intestines.”
“How bitter is he about that?”
Martin’s smile was a shadow as he poured himself another glass of Cognac. “Not overjoyed at having a grenade explode next to him.”
“Naturally. But I didn’t mean that. Does he feel much bitterness toward us? The Americans … the Allies?”
“As soldiers? No. Men rarely feel bitterness toward the men they face in battle. I wouldn’t know his feelings about the peace treaties—we never discussed them.”
Paul leaned back against the pillows and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“Good enough. I’ll as
sume he’s like most Germans, not overjoyed by Versailles. But then neither were you—if I judged your articles correctly.”
“That’s right.”
“And Werner probably read them.”
“If he read the Vossische Zeitung in nineteen nineteen.”
“We’ll say he did—or at least heard about your criticism of the terms. I think it would make him inclined to trust you—and your motives.”
“Exactly what motives are you talking about?”
“Business motives. Pure business, Martin.” He waved his cigar at his paper-strewn tray. “Rough proposals I’ve been working on. I want to buy a variety of patents and manufacturing rights from the Rilkes and the Grunewalds. I’ll pay good, sound Yankee dollars. Do you know what one dollar means in Germany today, Martin? It means over two hundred thousand marks.” He blew a stream of smoke and stared at it for a moment. “Sweet Jesus. Before the war, one dollar bought four marks and a few pfennigs. Now it’s two hundred thousand and will go to half a million by summer if the slide continues—and I can’t see what can stop it. I’m offering our German cousins a chance to keep from going bankrupt. My proposal is fair—five million dollars deposited in any bank they wish—but I’m a little afraid they might turn me down … might think me a carpetbagger.”
“Aren’t you?”
Paul grunted and flipped ash onto the bed. “You’re damn right. But I’m a rich carpetbagger paying in hard coin. And between you, me, and the gatepost, I’ll go as high as eight million. And that’s not highway robbery, Martin.”
“No, I don’t imagine it is.”
“And if you can help me swing the deal—just pave my way with those damned Junkers on the Rilkeswerke board—I’ll hand you fifty grand. Think it over—and goodnight.”
MARTIN THOUGHT OF Werner von Rilke as he lay in the darkness and watched the delicate tracery of shadows and moonlight on the walls. He had met most of the German branch of the family on his first trip to Germany in August and September of 1914—as war correspondent for the Chicago Express. There were so many German-American readers of the Express that the editor had wanted coverage of the war from the German side of the fence. Werner and his brother Otto had met him at the railroad station in Berlin and had taken him to meet their great-aunt, the ninety-four-year-old Louise, Baroness Seebach, in her huge house in the Grunewald forest with its magnificent view of the Havel. Then back to Berlin the next day. Dinner at the Adlon and then on to the Winter Garden on Friedrichstrasse. Werner a happy-go-lucky guy of his own age. Otto a year or two older, studious and shy. Otto gloomy and pessimistic about the war and unhappy about being called up by the artillery reserve. Werner a lieutenant in the Lübeck grenadier regiment, hoping to see a little action before the war should end—Christmas at the latest. So long ago. Otto killed at Verdun, and Werner not so happy-go-lucky anymore.
THEY WENT BY sea, a north German Lloyd steamer from Folkstone to Hamburg, Paul Rilke moody for a day, feeling somehow insulted that Martin had agreed to come with him—but not for money. But Paul had shrugged it off—‘Like father, like son’—and he was in an expansive mood as they took the train from Hamburg to Berlin, smoking his corona-coronas and telling anecdotes about the German Rilkes and their varied family branches, the Seebachs and Grunewalds and Hoffman-Schusters. Martin only half-listened as he looked through the window of the carriage at the lush farmland, woods, and lakes of Mecklenburg. A white horse plodded slowly across a meadow, led by a young woman with flowers in her hair who did not look toward the train nor wave.
Ich liebe vergessene Flurmadonnen
und Mädchen, die an einsamen Bronnen,
Blumen im Blondhaar, träumen gehn …
“What’s that you said, Martin?”
“Just part of a poem, Uncle Paul—about the melancholy of young girls with flowers in their hair. This is a sad country.”
Paul grunted and rolled the cigar between his lips. “They’d be happy enough if they’d won the war. It’s the price they paid for marching into Belgium.”
The Berliners looked happy enough viewed from inside a taxi rolling down Unter den Linden. The cafés were filled and the smart shops crowded. And there was no sign of unhappiness or poverty in the gilded lobby of the Bristol Hotel. But it was all thin icing on a sour cake. Martin was aware of that, even if Paul chose to ignore it.
The cold sweat of poverty lay beyond the bright lights and the verdant linden trees, behind the facade of elegant bars and restaurants along Kurfürstendamm, in the rotting stucco tenements of Nollendorfplatz and Neukölln. The great gray stone sprawling city with its hideous Hohenzollern monuments. But it was not all granite, bronze, and iron. Past the Doric columns and mammoth horses and chariot atop the Brandenburg Gate stretched the chestnut trees of the Tiergarten. And there was the clean, brisk air and high, pale sky of spring. The chattering of birds and, from somewhere along Mauerstrasse, the tinkling hurdy-gurdy notes of Strauss.
Not all defeat, Martin thought as he stood by his window on the fourth floor of the hotel. Berliners knew how to roll with the punches and turn inevitable disaster into a gallows jest. The New Yorkers of Europe, proud, cocky, openly derisive of Germans who had the misfortune to live elsewhere—the great melting pot of people and ideas. Below him in Unter den Linden, shabbily dressed young men in blue workers’ caps peddled copies of the communist newspaper Die Rote Fahne elbow-to-elbow with young men in faded army uniforms trying to sell copies of the Volkischer Beobachter, a crudely written weekly printed in Munich and grandly subtitled “Battle Organ of the National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany.” The police did their best to hustle them away from the entrances of the hotels and restaurants, ignoring the street urchins who darted about like sparrows, peddling mimeographed sheets advertising the clubs and bars where every known sexual preference of man or woman could find satisfaction.
Berlin!
MARTIN STEPPED OUT of the elevator in the lobby and spotted Werner von Rilke seated stiffly in a high-backed chair next to a potted palm. He was wearing evening clothes, the black suit and white shirt enhancing his air of spectral frailness. His thin, handsome, sharp-featured face had a waxen pallor. He saw Martin coming toward him and got to his feet.
“It’s good to see you, Martin.” He smiled warmly. “I really do mean that.”
Martin took his cousin’s outstretched hand. “And it’s wonderful to see you.”
Werner scanned the lobby. “Where’s Paul?”
“Still struggling with his shirt studs, I think. He’ll be down soon. Can I buy you a drink?”
“I would like nothing better, old fellow, but I am no longer permitted to touch alcohol in any of its delightful forms. I think at times of my father’s wine cellar and weep.”
“How are you feeling?”
Werner reached down and touched the wooden arm of the chair. “No more pain, thank God. But I look like a rail.”
“Well, you’re thin, but you’ll put on weight again.”
“I don’t see how. I have the intestines of a canary bird.” A shadow crossed his face and then he smiled again. “But enough of talking about me. I was surprised and delighted when Paul cabled that you were coming, too. Not strictly business, I hope?”
“No. But to be truthful, Paul asked for my help.”
“I thought as much. I told Father and Uncle Theodor. I said, ‘Cousin Paul is bringing along an ambassador of goodwill.’”
“I hope you don’t resent it.”
“Why should I? Frankly, I’m all in favor of a deal—Paul needn’t have worried. Things here have gone from bad to worse since he left Chicago. French and Belgian troops squatting in our factories in Essen and Duisburg … the mark going under like a drowning man. I don’t envision any problems with Father or my uncles as long as Paul’s check is good.”
“Looks like I came for nothing.”
“Are you working for Paul now?”
“No. He wanted some help and I felt I owed it to him.”
Werner put an arm
about Martin’s shoulder and gave him a quick hug. “God! That’s one of the things I admire about you, Martin. If the family tales are true, he owes you. But you live by your own codes, don’t you? Your own unique sense of honor and duty. What a true German you are!”
THERE WAS NO sign of hard times in the palatial home of Frederick Ernst. The baroque house of pale yellow stone set amid woods and formal gardens sparkled with light from every window. Uniformed servants stood on the gravel drive to escort the arriving guests into the house. It was a large party this night, in honor of Paul Rilke, although fully half of the guests had come out of a desire to meet Martin. His battle reports had been printed in many German newspapers even after America’s entry into the war in 1917, picked up from Dutch or Swedish papers and run without the official permission of Associated Press. After the war, his articles on Versailles had been widely circulated. The Berliner Tageblatt had called him “An honorable and impartial man … a compassionate friend of the German people in this, our hour of despair.”
Frederick Ernst was a large man, much like his cousin Paul, but the stroke he had suffered in the last year of the war had shrunk him. He was confined to a wheelchair now, the left side of his body paralyzed. It was difficult for him to speak; and when he did talk, saliva dripped from the frozen corner of his mouth. He dutifully met his guests in the long marbled hallway, and then a white-jacketed attendant wheeled him to an elevator and took him to his quarters on the second floor.
“I shall play host for Father,” Werner said, taking Martin by the arm. “Just as I play at being chairman of the board—only the former is more pleasant than the latter. I find business to be boring, especially now when there is no business. There is only speculation now. It is a great game for the rich. I warn you, all you will hear tonight from most of the guests is how much they have prospered by the inflation. Hardly a man or woman here who hasn’t paid off old debts with bloated, worthless marks—or bought this building or that good piece of property for virtually nothing by having had the foresight to speculate on inflation. How they paid so many thousands of solid marks down a year ago, the balance to be paid now. Clever, you see. Very clever. They exchange many hundreds of thousands of inflated marks for a trust deed in the property—and the poor seller can take all that money he has received and buy a sandwich with it and maybe, if he’s lucky, a cup of coffee as well. And it’s all so legal—to the letter of the contract. We Germans abide by the law.”