Circles of Time

by Phillip Rock

  “I imagine you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I haven’t pumped millions into CBC because I think radio’s a toy.”

  “I still don’t see how you can make money. Everything you broadcast is free.”

  “You’ve been away from the States too long, Marty. Sure, it’s free—free music, baseball games, news. People getting something for nothing every time they turn on their sets. But America isn’t Europe. The government doesn’t own the radio stations. We can sell air time to companies who have a product they want to move. A short message over the radio can sell a lot of toothpaste or long winter underwear. There isn’t too much of that yet, but it’s growing steadily. It’ll take some time to pay off, but don’t worry your head about my going broke.”

  “That’s the least of my worries. This broadcast from Berlin—”

  “Two broadcasts—two. One in German at about six P.M. Berlin time; the other at midnight, in English, for transmission to New York.”

  “You can do that?”

  “You bet. If I showed you the radio tower I just built at Sandy Hook, you wouldn’t believe your eyes. This is going to be a historic broadcast, and an important one.” He leaned closer toward Martin and lowered his voice. “A lot of things are taking place in Washington these days. I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but it was a blessing for progress when Harding dropped dead. Coolidge may look like a sour apple, but he’s a smart, honest guy and not afraid to ask for advice. He wants stability in Germany and he wants it now. So do the financiers in America and here. They want to invest in Germany and do business, but not with the mark sliding like a pig on ice. There’s a plan being worked out between Washington, the Bank of England, and the new German finance ministers. I don’t know the details yet, no one does, but you’ll be told the whole story when you get to Berlin in November.”

  “When is the broadcast to take place?”

  “Saturday, November third.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “I’d like nothing better, but I have to be back in New York by the first.” A wistful look came into his eyes. “Berlin won’t be the same when the inflation’s over, will it? You know, Marty, I once spent over two hundred million for a piece of ass.”

  THE WANING DAYS of October brought a warning of winter in bitter winds and low, sullen clouds. It was too dangerous to fly. He took the channel steamer to Rotterdam and then traveled by train to Berlin. Dix met him at the station with his car and drove him to the Hotel Bristol, through a city bleak and cold, but crowded with people. There was an air of delirium in the rushing throngs. Those who had jobs were being paid daily, or even twice daily, and then hurried to the shops with their thick bundles of marks, hoping to buy something, anything, before the money turned useless in their hands. The mark, on this first day of November, had plummeted to one hundred and thirty billion to the dollar. Kingsford’s two hundred million wouldn’t have bought much of a woman now.

  “Did you find Herr Kingsford in good spirits?” Dix asked.

  “Happy as a fed tiger,” Martin said gloomily. “Are you up to date on what this broadcast is all about?”

  “Reasonably. Herr Schacht will be sending me more data tomorrow.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “You soon will be. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht. Head of the Darmstadt National Bank. He’s giving advice to the new finance minister, Hans Luther, on a plan to go into effect on the fifteenth of the month. It’s simple but brilliant. There’ll be a new currency called the rentenmark, backed by a supposed mortgage on what gold there is left and on all of Germany’s land and assets. It’ll be pegged at the prewar rate of the old mark, four point two to the dollar. The rumor is that the Bank of England will participate in underwriting the new marks and that the Americans will rework the reparation agreements to be more realistic and less punishing. Thank God this madness is coming to an end. Democracy never stood a chance while a postage stamp cost a year’s salary.”

  “And the broadcast, Dix. What am I to talk about?”

  “On the German broadcast you’ll interview Schacht and Luther, starting off by saying that America is deeply concerned about the deteriorating financial condition of the country. Schacht and the minister will then go into details on their plan. All very dry and formal. The midnight beaming to New York will be what you do best, a kind of verbal article about what inflation means in human terms. Pull out all stops, as Kingsford would say. Pluck a few heartstrings. The Yanks may have talked about hanging the Kaiser and General Ludendorff, but they don’t like to hear of women and children starving to death because they can’t afford the price of bread. It’s a public-relations broadcast, Martin, to pave the way for whatever conciliatory plan President Coolidge is working on.”

  “It sounds simple enough—if I don’t get stage fright at the last minute.”

  “You won’t. Forget about the microphone. Simply pretend you’re in your own living room talking to friends.” He pulled up in front of the Bristol and a uniformed doorman hurried to the side of the car. “I’ll drop by later if you’d like—we could go to the Romanische for a taste of the low life.”

  “I had enough low life in London with Kingsford.”

  Dix laughed. “I know what you mean. He told me once, quite seriously, that he required two women a day—for health reasons!”

  Hotel Bristol, Berlin. Sunday, November 4, 1923

  Observations and reflections.

  Talking over the radio is like jumping into a chilly lake. The idea of going into the water is repellent, even terrifying, but once in—well, the water’s fine. I couldn’t hear myself, naturally, but Dix and a dozen or more people came into the studio after the broadcast and patted me on the back. They all said my voice sounded deep and resonant—a voice of authority!

  Hello, America. This is Martin Rilke speaking to you from Berlin, Germany....

  I can’t for the life of me understand why I started out that way. It just seemed like a natural thing to say, like talking to a friend. Hello, John … Hello, America. Well, it’s over—and I hope that was the last time. Not as unpleasant an experience as I thought it would be, but I still prefer shorthand, the typewriter, and the cable office. Scott Kingsford was right. I’m old-fashioned.

  Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht. Extraordinary name for an extraordinary man. Prickly, brilliant, a chain smoker; not much for small talk, but sure of what he’s after and what he intends to get—which is financial health for Germany. He expects the mark to tumble to four trillion by the middle of the month. When it does, he will permit it to drop to exactly four point two trillion and then wipe out twelve zeros. A theatrical touch. He’s in his early forties, but likes to be referred to as the Old Wizard. After the broadcast he handed me one of the new rentenmarks as a souvenir. It’s still nothing but printed paper—but nicely printed paper, he told me with a wink.

  And so it will end soon. Order and stability, the matrix of any nation, will return. But how much damage has been done? Can the scars ever be erased? Stability, even if it comes tomorrow, will be too late for millions of people. The once solid middle class has been wiped out, the young have pinched faces and rickety legs, and the vaunted Lutheran morality of the old days is now a painted whore’s face along the Kurfürstendamm.

  His eyes were getting tired and he put pen and notebook away, poured a glass of Cognac, and sat in bed to drink it. Wind drove a thin, cold rain against the windows. He sipped the brandy, listened to the wind, and thought of ragged people huddled on the subway steps of Spittelmarkt, and of men curled under their wagons in the leafless Tiergarten while their unsheltered horses nuzzled the freezing grass.

  WHEN HE CAME down to the lobby in the morning, he found that he had become, if not famous, at least better known. A smiling desk clerk presented him with a sheaf of cablegrams.

  “The telegraph office says there are more to deliver, Herr Rilke.”

  They were addressed care of Radio Berlin, but there was one f
rom Kingsford that had come directly to the Bristol and was in his mail slot.

  All thrilled. Stop. Reception faint but perfect. Stop. Hello America catchy as twenty-three skidoo. Stop. Write yourself a fat raise. Stop.

  Wolf von Dix read the cablegram with amusement and then handed it back across his desk to Martin.

  “I’ve seen him get carried away before. I wouldn’t write too many checks on that raise or they’ll bounce like rubber balls.”

  “I think he’s sincere this time. Anyway, raise or no raise, I’m inviting you and the staff for dinner tomorrow night—at Resi’s.”

  “Ah, Resi’s. I’ll have to sponge and press my dinner jacket.” Dix swung his chair to face the window and rested his feet on the sill. “When are you planning to go back to England?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “I think it would be better if you went down to Munich.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I believe, from information received from various sources, that a good story is brewing down there.”

  “So? Send Kurt or Emil.”

  “Emil’s been in Munich for the past ten days. You’ll find him at the Sternhotel in Goethestrasse.”

  “Come on, Dix, I’m not a backup reporter. What’s this about?”

  “A contemplated revolt in Bavaria against the Republic. Nothing new in that, I’m sorry to say. Withdrawing from the reich is a Bavarian preoccupation. State Commissioner Kahr is toying with the delicious idea of becoming either a kingmaker and helping the Wittelsbachs regain the throne, or an Oliver Cromwell. He’s hardly suited for either role. The point is, he’s beginning to act as though a separate Bavaria is a fait accompli, which it isn’t. Hitler and the Nazis are about as anxious to see a king on the throne as they would be to see Lenin. A God-awful stew is brewing down there, and your kinsman is salting the pot.”

  “Werner?”

  Dix popped his monocle out and held it to the light, squinting at the glass. “Herr Hitler and the National Socialists have made big strides since you were here in the spring. Enrollment has shot up to nearly thirty-five thousand and they have a private army of considerable size. The Storm Troops—well equipped with everything from steel helmets and machine guns to trucks. Supplying an army, paying and feeding the men, that takes money; but then, Werner von Rilke has the money, so there is little problem on that score.”

  “Is that proven fact, Dix?”

  “He’s quite open about it. Recklessly open, I would say. Friday’s edition of the Munchener Zeitung is a case in point. He wrote a long article which you will find revealing. You can read it on the train.”

  Martin helped himself to one of the editor’s cigars and toyed with the ornate band. “There’s hardly a state in Germany that doesn’t have putsch fever. When the mark’s stabilized, most of the intrigues will blow over.”

  “Not this one. Emil was able to get through on the telephone this morning. He said that things are heating up, not cooling down. The thinking among all the factions in Munich—the Nazis as well as the royalists—is that they’d better do something before the rentenmark turns from theory to fact. Strike while the iron’s hot. The mark slumped a great deal overnight. It reached a trillion to the American dollar.”

  “They breed in chaos, these people, don’t they?”

  “Yes, Martin. Turmoil is their life’s blood.”

  The train rumbled out of Berlin in the dusk on the long run to the south. An old engine and dilapidated carriages, the overhead light so weak that Martin could barely read the newspaper Dix had handed to him. He didn’t have to read all of Werner’s article. The opening words set a strident, almost hysterical tone: Deutschland Erwache! …

  Germany Awake had been written on the swastika flags. The article called for the people of Bavaria to throw their loyalty to Herr Hitler, who had the vision—and the will—to lead Germany to greatness and power.

  He folded the paper into a ball and shoved it under the seat. Through the frosted window he could see the blistered slums of the city, unlighted windows and broken glass. It would be a harsh winter.

  He thought of Werner as the train rattled and swayed across Brandenburg toward Leipzig and the mountains beyond. Was he going to Munich because Dix had assured him it was a good story, or was he going with some notion that he could stop Werner from plunging any deeper into the politics of discord? A combination of both, he decided, thinking not only of Werner but of Carin and the two little boys. Blood was thicker than water. And yet he knew in his heart there was nothing he could say to Werner that would alter his fervid beliefs. Drawing his overcoat tighter around his body, he curled up on the seat and closed his eyes.

  EMIL ZEITZLER HAD received a telegram from the Berlin office and was waiting at the station when Martin arrived. He had been waiting for hours and looked drawn and cold, but he could still manage a smile as he watched Martin walk wearily through the frigid station toward him.

  “A terrible trip, Herr Rilke?”

  Martin gave the young man a baleful look. “Grim is the word, Emil. I never thought we’d get here. It was nice of you to meet me, but I could have found my way to the hotel.”

  He took Martin’s suitcase and led him toward a side exit into a narrow street choked with wagons and trucks. It was bitterly cold with a fine sleet swirling in the wind.

  “I left the Sternhotel quickly this morning, Herr Rilke. I believe I was being watched.”

  “By whom?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Two men. I think they were possibly separatists from Dr. Kahr’s faction. The rumor I heard was that—but let’s find a taxi and go someplace warm. I know a quiet little restaurant in Schwabing where we can talk in peace. A Chinese artist owns the place and the customers have no interest in politics.”

  They ate rice and tiny rolls of chicken wrapped in paper and dipped in a sauce of soy and sherry. There were only a few other people in the restaurant, a group of artists arguing loudly over the merits of Dadaism.

  “Kahr, General Lossow, and Hans Seisser of the Bavarian State Police have called a mass meeting for tomorrow night at the Bürgerbräukeller, on the other side of the river. I’m sure they intend to declare Bavarian independence—or at least the need for independence. Whether they’ll propose restoring the monarchy is anyone’s guess. Anyway, they’re so touchy about it that there’s talk of them placing foreign journalists under house arrest until after the meeting. And by ‘foreign’ I mean any journalist not on a Munich paper.”

  “Does Hitler go along with this plan?”

  Emil shook his head and lifted a chopstick of rice. “God, no. He has more ambition than that. If Kahr succeeds, the Nazis are finished here. And the one thing Hitler would hate to see is an idiot like Crown Prince Rupprecht mounting the throne. He wants Bavaria to move forward, not backward. That’s one of the things the Storm Troops have been shouting in the streets for the past week: Forward! Forward! The great example of boldness they keep referring to is Mussolini’s march on Rome last October.”

  “Do you get the impression Hitler’s thinking of stealing a page from the fascists and marching on Berlin?”

  “I do—crazy as it sounds.”

  “The army would have to fall into line behind him in order for that to succeed. What can you tell me about that possibility?”

  “Remote to impossible. General Lossow can’t even guarantee army support for Kahr, let alone for Hitler. He doesn’t even have command of the army in Bavaria any longer. Another general’s been sent down. I don’t know his name. It’s almost impossible to get any confirmed information in this city, Herr Rilke.”

  “Well, Emil, we’ll just have to use our own eyes. Do you know of a place we can spend the night? I don’t want to risk missing that meeting tomorrow night.”

  “I met a girl, Herr Rilke. She has a large apartment on the Shellingstrasse. Her parents are in Stuttgart and she can find plenty of room for us.”

  Before going there, Martin placed a call from a kiosk to Bad Isar and finally, a
fter many delays, was connected to Werner’s villa. The servant who answered said, no, Herr Rilke was not at home. And, no, Frau Rilke was not at home either—she had left with the children for Salzburg.

  He was grateful for that.

  November 8 was a cold, wet day. Looking down from the apartment at the avenue below, Martin could sense nothing out of the ordinary. People went about their business. Traffic moved in a normal fashion in spite of the slippery streets. There were no demonstrations of any kind in view. Later in the afternoon, walking through the Odeonplatz, he was struck by the same sense of calm, unhurried behavior that was the stamp of this southern city. He saw no more than the usual number of police and none of Hitler’s khaki-clad storm troopers with their swastika brassards.

  “I get the feeling that absolutely nothing is taking place,” Martin said as he met Emil for supper in a café near the river.

  “Which in itself is out of the ordinary, Herr Rilke. There have been demonstrations of one kind or another almost every day since I’ve been here.”

  “Maybe they’ve burned themselves out.”

  Emil scowled and stirred his coffee. “Or are preparing to pounce, Herr Rilke.”

  There were at least three thousand people jammed into the cavernous beer hall by 7:30 that evening, almost all of them men. Emil had made contact with a waiter who had agreed, for three American dollars, to sneak them inside. He led them to a small table in the very back of the room near one of the urinals, a busy place on that night with the beer flowing. The acrid ammonia smell of urine was almost overwhelming.

  “You should have given him more money,” Martin said.

  “It was the best he could do for us,” Emil said, breathing through his mouth.

  Martin noticed several men turning in their seats to look at him. My clothes, he thought, the English cut and cloth. Emil was aware of the attention also.