The Berlin Boxing Club

by Robert Sharenow

  “That’s why I need to shovel the coal, to build up strength. Herr Schmeling suggested it.”

  “Herr Schmeling?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes. He’s going to teach me.”

  “Max Schmeling?”

  “He’s a friend of my father’s.”

  “Why would a good German like Schmeling be friends with someone like your father?”

  “My father sold him a painting just last night.”

  “Yes. I’m sure your father found a clever way to take his money.”

  “Can I shovel the coal? Bitte? You can watch me to make sure I don’t steal.”

  He crossed his arms, his slow brain considering.

  “Won’t it save you work?” I added. “And give you time to tend to more important matters?”

  “The coal pile is here,” he said, indicating a large mound in the corner of the basement near the bottom of the chute that led up to the street. “You fill the wheelbarrow just to the top and load the furnace once in the morning and once in the evening.”

  “Danke, Herr Koplek.”

  “But if I find you stealing so much as a single piece, I’ll have you dragged away by the police. Understand?”

  I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed the shovel that stood against the wall by the coal pile, and started to fill the wheelbarrow. I dug into the pile and got into a pleasing rhythm, listening to the coal clunking into the metal bottom with a rich and satisfying thud. But after just a dozen shovelsful, my hands and arms began to ache. With the barrow only half full, a blister formed on my right palm, just below the thumb. By the time it was full, my hands were throbbing in pain. I tipped the wheelbarrow up to move it toward the furnace, but I had taken just two steps when the barrow teetered and tipped over, spilling all of the coal.

  “Not so easy, huh?” Koplek laughed. “Make sure you sweep up the dust pile.”

  Then he went back inside his room and shut the door. I cursed myself and reloaded the barrow. By the time I made it to the furnace, coal dust was coating my clothes and skin. I carefully opened the grated door of the iron furnace, a monstrous wheezing thing, with thick metal pipes sticking out of the top like gigantic arms punching through different points in the ceiling.

  My shirt was filthy and soaked with sweat, so I decided to take it off to cool down and spare it further damage. The heat of the furnace stung my hands as I brought the shovel into its mouth and back. I felt a sharp wet pain on my palm as one of the blisters on my hand opened with a rip. I had to keep adjusting the shovel to find an undamaged patch of skin to rest the handle. I was nearly finished when I heard a girl’s voice from behind me.

  “Well, if it isn’t Vulcan at his forge.”

  I turned to discover Greta Hauser, the greatest object of my desire, standing at the entrance to the basement, watching me with a bemused grin. I immediately felt self-conscious and could only imagine how ridiculous I looked with sweat and soot dripping down my skinny chest. I grabbed my shirt and put it back on, struggling to get my sticky arms into the sleeves.

  “It’s not polite to sneak up on someone like that.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking, Vulcan. I just walked in.”

  “Vulcan?” I said.

  “The god of fire. Don’t they teach you anything at that school of yours?”

  Greta and her family lived just downstairs from our apartment on the third floor. She was a year older than I was and had long platinum blond hair that she wore in a thick braid snaking down the center of her back. A small patch of freckles over her nose made her look younger. But her body was just the opposite. In just one year she had gone from being completely flat-chested to sprouting the most miraculous pair of breasts I had ever set eyes on. She wore a plain blue skirt and a white blouse, and a simple silver necklace hung from her neck with a four-leaf-clover charm.

  I was never comfortable speaking with girls my own age, but with Greta I was absolutely hopeless. There was something mysterious and intelligent about her. Her eyes and expressions made it look like she was always thinking something clever, making silent judgments or observations. As much as I ogled her body, I also longed just to talk to her, to unravel some of her mystery. I imagined that if I could have her as my girlfriend, life would be perfect. She had come to the basement to retrieve a box of clothes from a storage bin opposite the furnace.

  “I . . . uh . . . no. We haven’t really covered the Greeks yet,” I stammered.

  “Vulcan was a Roman god. Wow, you really are dense. Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire.”

  “Right,” I lied. “I know about Hephaestus, but we haven’t gotten to the Romans yet.”

  “They barely wore any clothes, you know,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The Greeks. In most of the statues you see of them, they’re half naked. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. I guess.”

  “I mean, didn’t they get cold in the winter?”

  “I don’t know. Do they even have winter in Greece?” I said.

  “Even I don’t know that one, Vulcan,” she replied.

  Images of Greek gods and goddesses dancing naked in the snow played in my mind. I hoped she would ask me why I was shoveling the coal, so it would give me the opportunity to brag about Max Schmeling and my new life as a boxer. But she didn’t ask.

  “Well, see you later,” she said.

  And she turned and walked away; her long braid bounced against her back, swishing back and forth like a clock pendulum. I stared at that braid until she glided up the stairs out of view.

  Principal Munter

  FOR THE REST OF THE SUMMER, I DEVOURED THE PAPER for any scrap of information about Max. In June he traveled to Barcelona and fought Paulino “The Basque Woodchopper” Uzcudun to a draw. I hoped Max would return to Berlin after that bout, but instead he traveled to America to train and fight there.

  Despite Max’s absence, I continued my training regimen while on break from school. At first Herr Koplek would stand and watch me shovel the coal as he smoked his morning pipe. He smirked whenever I struggled and laughed if I dropped a shovelful. Yet as time passed, the shoveling got easier, and I felt new muscles forming on my arms, back, and shoulders. Herr Koplek soon lost interest.

  Each day I nervously expected Greta Hauser to appear behind me to retrieve something from her family’s storage bin, so I would flex and extend my small arm muscles with each shovelful to make sure the biceps were accentuated as best I could, given what little I had to work with, just in case she walked in. The whole process took on the feeling of a performance. Yet she never showed up, and I performed my act for no audience at all.

  I also started to chip away at the 300. The sit-ups were the easiest, probably because I was so light. Push-ups were harder, but I developed a pattern in which I added to my total every three days, and my numbers steadily grew. The hardest part of the 300 was the chin-ups. Within two weeks I could still do only 3 or 4, but then I had a breakthrough and was able to get to 10, which had felt like an impossible number when I started. Once I reached 10, my strength seemed to level off again, and it was a few days before I could push it to 11, 12, 13. By the time school started again, I still had not heard from Max, but I had raised my total from 143 to 225—still well shy of the 300, but good progress.

  Hildy sometimes woke up early when she heard me at my morning routine and asked if she could come in and help count with me. Generally I said no, but if she persisted, I would let her record my results in my journal. She would sit on my bed with her stuffed rabbit, Herr Karotte, and count my reps. It was one thing to have my little sister as my training assistant, but I felt downright foolish every time I glanced up and saw Herr Karotte perched up next to her, staring at me. One day as I struggled to finish my push-ups, Hildy manipulated Herr Karotte’s hand, as if he were counting along. My arms eventually gave way, and I collapsed onto my belly.

  “Could you please put that stupid rabbit away?”

  “He’s not stupid,” s
he replied. “He helps me count.”

  “Well, I’m going to use him as a punching bag if you don’t get him out of my sight.”

  “Fine,” she said, moving to the door. “Are you sure Max Schmeling is going to give you lessons?”

  “Of course he is,” I snapped back too defensively. “He and Papa made a deal.”

  “Then why hasn’t he called?”

  “He’s in America,” I replied. “He said he’d call when he was in Berlin.”

  In truth, I was starting to have my doubts about Max, but I would never admit them to Hildy.

  Despite my newfound strength, I dreaded my return to school. On the first morning of the new term, I stood outside the entrance door near the stairwell where I had been attacked and hesitated. Would the Wolf Pack be waiting for me? Other kids streamed inside. My friend Kurt Seidler approached.

  “Hey, Karl, you look like you’re about as excited as I am to be back in there.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said.

  “Well, let’s go,” he said. “Might as well, right?”

  He pushed open the door, and I tentatively followed him inside. I exhaled as I saw no sign of the Wolf Pack and followed him upstairs.

  That morning all the boys gathered for an address in the school auditorium. As I shuffled into my seat, I caught a glimpse of Gertz Diener entering one of the back rows, with Franz Hellendorf and Julius Austerlitz close behind him.

  They wore small swastika pins on their sweaters. As I scanned the crowd, I saw many boys wearing some sort of Nazi or Hitler Youth insignia, from buttons to belt buckles, or kerchiefs around their necks. It seemed like overnight most German boys were decked out in some form of Nazi regalia. The Hitler Youth uniforms filled me with envy rather than fear. What boy wouldn’t want to wear a military uniform?

  When all the boys had settled into their seats, a huge man with a round red face capped by a full head of prematurely white hair strode onstage. He wore small, round spectacles, which sat over his eyes like tiny coins, accentuating his fat head, and a green Bavarian jacket with a small enamel swastika pin on his lapel.

  Instead of saying, “Good morning, children,” or “Welcome back,” he raised his arm in the Nazi salute and shouted, “Heil Hitler.” On cue, most of the boys in the auditorium raised their arms and returned the greeting. Not wanting to draw attention to myself for not doing it, I also returned the salute. The echo of the unified voices sent a chill down my back.

  I sat next to Kurt and our other friend, Hans Karlweiss. Neither of them had joined the Hitler Youth, and they seemed to be oblivious to all the changes that surrounded us. Kurt yawned and Hans took a peek at a folded-up piece of the sports page of the newspaper that he had tucked into the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Good.” The huge man continued. “It’s nice to hear your strong German voices greet me this morning. Some of you may have already heard that Principal Dietrich has been dismissed, because he did not agree with some of our school’s new policies. I am your new principal, Herr Munter. This will be a glorious year for our school and our country. I believe in high standards, hard work, and discipline. Our Führer has challenged us to purify our nation from corrupting influences, and that goes for this school as well. I have meticulously gone through our curriculum, and you will be pleased to know the works of left-wing radicals and Jews have already been removed from the library shelves.”

  He said the word “Jews” very casually, yet to my ears, it felt as if he had screamed it at the top of his lungs.

  “Also, I have been challenged to make sure every boy in our school joins the Hitler Youth, and I am determined that we meet this challenge. In your daily life I would also caution you to avoid corrupting influences, particularly Jews, who are the greatest threat to our fatherland.”

  There it was. He hadn’t just said the word “Jews” in passing; he had warned every single boy in the school to specifically avoid us. For a moment I wondered if he even knew there were Jewish boys at the school. But then he let his eyes scan the crowd until they came to rest one by one on the few Jewish boys in the room: Benjamin Rosenberg, Mordecai Isaacson, Jonah Goldenberg, and Josef Katz. I prayed he would not include me with them, but finally his beady little spectacled eyes found me too and held my gaze.

  I glanced at Kurt and Hans, sitting beside me, but they were tuned out, as if it were just another boring school address.

  “Now, let us close by all singing our national anthem, ‘Deutschland über Alles,’ followed by the ‘Horst Wessel Song.’” As every boy began singing, I moved my lips, but I could barely make any sound come out. The Nazis had recently added the “Horst Wessel Song” as an official part of the country’s anthem, and everyone was required to raise his hand in a Hitler salute during the first and fourth verses. I raised my arm and held it high with the others, but I could feel it begin to shake. Despite how much stronger I had become, I could barely get my arm to hold the salute. It ached and shook until finally the song ended and I could bring it back down to my lap.

  The Return of Piss Boy

  LUCKILY, HERR BOCH WAS AGAIN MY TEACHER, AND HE did not go out of his way to integrate Nazi ideals into his teaching. While other classes studied biology and received long lectures on the purity of Aryan blood versus Jewish, African, or Gypsy blood, Herr Boch stuck to traditional scientific knowledge. He taught us about Nobel Prize–winning scientist Karl Landsteiner’s discovery of the ABO blood group system, which divided blood types into three basic categories, A, B, and O.

  “Landsteiner later added a fourth type, AB,” Herr Boch explained.

  Hermann Reinhardt, a boy sitting near me, raised his hand.

  “Excuse me, Herr Boch, but did Herr Landsteiner experiment on Aryan blood or did he use other kinds too?”

  “I have no idea whose blood he used.”

  “I just read in an article in Der Stürmer that a scientist has proved that Gypsies and Jews have rat blood in their veins. So wouldn’t they fall into a different type?”

  “Any scientist Der Stürmer would write about probably has a brain the size of a rat,” Herr Boch replied. “All human blood is basically the same.”

  Despite Herr Boch’s deft handling of the question, blood was very much on my mind. Der Stürmer frequently ran pseudoscientific articles about blood researchers who were proving Hitler’s theories of racial superiority, along with medieval myths about Jews’ kidnapping Christian children and drinking their blood in strange religious rituals. There was so much talk about blood, I wondered if my own blood was different in some way. Jews, Africans, and Gypsies were darker than Aryans, so perhaps they did have some darker element in their blood.

  Hans and Kurt knew I was Jewish but didn’t seem to care, because like most boys, they took their cues from their fathers, who had not yet joined the Nazi Party. Most of the other boys at school were indifferent to me. My non-Jewish looks still helped to insulate me from the daily hazing that started following Benjamin, Jonah, Mordecai, and Josef. The Wolf Pack, however, had me squarely in their sights. Their ranks had grown significantly, and I carefully avoided them on the schoolyard and tried to stick as close to Kurt and Hans as possible. But many days I came to my locker to discover folded-up pieces of paper stuck inside with anti-Semitic passages from Mein Kampf, like vicious little valentines.

  One afternoon in between classes I had to go to the bathroom. As I pushed my hand against the door to enter, I felt a shove from behind. I stumbled and fell onto the hard bathroom floor. The black-and-white tiles formed a checkerboard pattern, and I followed the small squares to a row of shoes forming a circle around me.

  “You’ve done a good job of avoiding us,” Gertz said, stepping into the room and standing over me.

  I looked up and saw that Julius, Franz, and at least four other boys from various grades surrounded me. I lunged toward the door, but Julius and Gertz grabbed me by the arms and pulled me back, pinning my arms behind me.

  “Halt!” Franz snapped.

  “We have so many ne
w members who have yet to meet you,” Gertz added, gesturing to the other boys in the room. “Take a good look, boys. On the outside, he appears like us, but his blood and his cock are pure Jew.”

  I scanned the faces around me, all of them eager with anticipation at what might happen next.

  “Let me go,” I said, twisting in their grasp. I flexed my muscles against their grips and shocked them and myself by actually pulling my arms free. I didn’t fully realize until that moment how much stronger I was than the last time they had confronted me.

  “Grab him!”

  “Don’t let him get away!”

  I stepped back and put up my fists and assumed what I hoped looked like a convincing defensive pose. Before I could throw a punch, Julius, Franz, and Gertz grabbed me again and held my arms more firmly.

  “No fighting today, Piss Boy,” Gertz hissed in my ear. “We’ve devised a new method of initiation for our little group. Each member has to baptize a Jew.”

  He signaled to the new boys, and one by one they entered one of the stalls and urinated into the bowl. I heard their streams filling the bowl. When all four had emptied themselves into the same toilet, they maneuvered me toward the stall.

  “Time for your baptism.”

  Again, I twisted and tried to pull free, kicking wildly with my legs.

  “Grab him!” Gertz commanded.

  Two of the new boys grabbed my legs and hoisted me up, so I was fully horizontal, like they were carrying a rolled-up carpet. They moved my head toward the toilet, which was now nearly full. The other boys laughed as they bent my head down. I quickly held my breath as I felt my hair and top of my face plunge into the water. I clamped my eyes shut, tightening every muscle and pore in my head to block anything from penetrating the skin. I heard them counting to ten above me. “Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! . . .”

  When they reached ten, the toilet flushed, and I felt an enormous whirling sensation as fresh water poured down into the bowl and in and around my face and the old water was sucked out. My hair twisted down into the porcelain mouth at the bottom of the bowl and then back up as the suction of the flushing subsided. They pulled my body up and dumped me back on the floor in the middle of the room. Urine and water ran off my hair and into my eyes and down my face. I coughed and spat, and they laughed. I felt like vomiting, but choked back the urge, not wanting to give them the satisfaction. Anger rose up inside me, but not as much toward the Wolf Pack as toward Max Schmeling. If he had honored his bargain, I would’ve been able to defend myself. Just like Gertz and the others, he had probably decided my father and I were dirty Jews.