Carry Me

by Peter Behrens

  There was a drawing room on the ground floor where visitors were received, and this is where Longo brought us. The hallway and the rooms we passed were paneled in a dark wood. Everything shone. The house was oddly dark and bright at once. Like the main house at Walden it was lacquered with an atmosphere of privilege but more than a little uncomfortable. We sat on dark, carved chairs. A flunky served us coffee and stale cakes.

  “Longo, old chap,” Karin said, “you’ve brought us all this way in your wonderful motorcar, but aren’t you going to show us the heart of the house? We want to see how you really live here. These rooms are a bit dreary, my dear. A bit grim, aren’t they? Let’s go up to your room and have our coffee there. Aren’t you going to show us your precious boudoir?”

  “No women allowed upstairs, of course.”

  “How sad.”

  “Not at all. The spirit of brotherhood within a Korpshaus, my dear Karin, is something a woman will never understand.”

  “Can’t you break the rules for once? Only a little?”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking, Karin. Of course I can’t.”

  Usually Longo was a good sport about her teasing but it was clear that, in the Korpshaus anything less than reverence very much annoyed him.

  “It would be against my honor to do so,” he continued. “It would be a violation. Don’t you feel the spirit of this place? It is quite ineffable and, at the same time, solid as rock. Everything we have as Rhenanianer is built on the spirit of honesty and straightforwardness. It’s not a matter of rules for us, it’s a matter of honor.”

  Karin smiled, but I could tell she was irritated by Longo’s tone, quite unlike his usual easygoing, man-of-the-world demeanor. “Why ever did you bring me here, dear Longo, if it wasn’t to visit your boudoir?”

  Just then a couple of blond Korpsbrüder entered the room. Longo leaped to his feet and began introducing them to Karin and, somewhat offhandedly, to Mick and to me. It seemed to me Longo was flustered.

  The young men were being very cool with us, even with Karin. One of them, Hugo von-something, had been Longo’s Füchsmajor, or “sponsor,” when Longo was a “fox,” which was what they called new members of the Korps.

  The Brüder had just returned from a visit to England, and both wore atrociously wide, cream-colored Oxford “bags,” along with fresh, raw haircuts, and saber scars on their left cheeks. I knew from their accents and their self-confidence they were rich. They ignored the three of us and started talking to Longo about England, what an unpleasant country it was.

  “English trains are so filthy!” I remember the sneer on blond Hugo’s lips as he spoke. “The people unkempt! In London these days you hardly ever see such a thing as the English gentleman! And the women! The English race is dying out: it’s true. When you’re there it is hard to believe that London is the capital of an empire, that’s all I can say, because it doesn’t have anything of greatness. No, not a bit. The English are great no longer.”

  “We played some wonderful tennis, though,” the other blond remarked.

  “Games!” sneered Hugo. “It’s all the English do well. They are corrupt and lazy and really the first-class coaches are disgusting.”

  “You fellows won’t know anything about England until you’ve ridden to hounds in a good country like Northamptonshire or Shropshire.” Karin was refusing to be ignored. “People tell you Northamptonshire is the best hunting country, but that’s only because the railway timetables make it easy to get to, whereas it’s bloody difficult getting to Shropshire on time. I should say the Ludlow is a jolly good hunt and as rough as any, but I had no luck with my horses, ever. I was asked to stay at Attingham, which is a very damp house, but Lord Berwick was such a great friend of my grandfather’s I couldn’t refuse, do you know Attingham? No? It’s not a great house, but big enough, only one can become a bit fed up with England and English weekends after a while, I must say. The food’s never much good; there is something a bit too frugal and cold and ridiculous. Were you at the Savoy? It’s my favorite hotel in the world.”

  The Korpsbrüder were smirking. They’d identified exactly who Karin was, the noisy daughter of the filthy rich Jewish baron, the traitor.

  Longo was looking increasingly uncomfortable. He was still only a fox as far as the Rhenanians were concerned. Underneath his skin, underneath his scar, he must have been afraid of his Korpsbrüder. They controlled so much that he wanted.

  Karin went on, undimmed. “Oxford is amusing for a while. But I must say, the undergraduates, such sad young men, they don’t seem as manly as the German youth.”

  It was embarrassing.

  “But whenever I’m in England, I never for so much as a second forget about the war, do you agree? I broke my damned shoulder hunting in Shropshire, it wasn’t my fault at all, really, the horse was a shyer, everyone thinks they must give the timid horse to the girl. Do you hunt? Only it’s no good, riding a weak horse like that, I’d be much better on a thruster. When I was out at the Bismarcks’ place last month they gave me a half-broke gelding to ride, a big black fellow, probably seventeen hands, and we had some fun. Of course it wasn’t hunting season, but they are all mad for tennis, the Bismarcks.”

  The Korpsbrüder nodded their heads at the same time and exchanged a quick glance. They were impressed despite themselves. How I hated them. I was furious at Longo for having brought us there and at Karin for displaying such vulnerability.

  “Do you play tennis? You look so elegant in your flannels. We’ll organize a tennis afternoon at Walden. Poor Longo is getting awfully tired that I’m beating him again and again; his forehand is mighty, but his backhand is nothing to be proud of—”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. Getting to my feet, I announced Mick and I were going to take a look around the town.

  Karin threw a glance at us. Did she want us to rescue her? Were we abandoning her to the German wolves?

  She laughed. “Well, go on, then, dear Billy, go on, we certainly don’t want to keep you.”

  Turning her back, she resumed conversation with the blond pair. Whose narrow bodies, I must admit, were bending toward her. It wasn’t just famous old names she was strewing before them. She was the sun in the room. Her energy, her heat, were winning them.

  Longo looked relieved. With a friendly smile he suggested to Mick we all meet up later at a famous old student tavern, the Red Ox Inn. “We’ll have a glass of beer and a bite to eat before starting back. Now you boys take a good look around our old town. You’re in the heart of Germany here. We’ll see you at the Red Ox, say around seven.”

  As we were leaving, Karin threw another glance at Mick, and for a second I hoped she was about to abandon the Korpsbrüder and come along with us, den beiden Iren. But she didn’t. She was where she most wanted to be, a German among Germans. We were dismissed.

  It was warm and close in Heidelberg. I could smell the river as we hiked up to the ruined castle. We sat on a wall overlooking the town and smoked cigarettes. I started telling Mick my idea of heading out across El Llano Estacado aboard the motorcycle I’d seen in the BMW showroom in Frankfurt.

  “And once you get across, Billy, what then?”

  “You sound like my father.”

  Buck was worried because I hadn’t fixed on a profession. My mother said the problem of my future was keeping him awake at night. If the law wasn’t what I wanted, then we ought to ask the baron about finding me a place at IG Farben when I graduated. With headquarters in Frankfurt, IG Farbenindustrie was the largest corporation in Europe, fourth largest in the world, and the baron had a seat on the board of supervising directors.

  My father wanted iron security for me because his life had been improvised, scattered, even reckless. Born out of sight of land. A jockey at fifteen. A cavalryman. An ex-prisoner. A man whose two careers—racing yachts in the English Channel and raising thoroughbred horses for the highest levels of European competition—were all about risk, chance, beating the odds.

  The west wall of
my bedroom at Newport was covered with oil company road maps, courtesy of the U.S. consul at Köln. I’d pinned the states in sequence and traced a route in blue pencil from New York to California that dipped south to cross El Llano Estacado. That blue line floated over me as I slept and was the first thing my eyes fixed on when I awoke. Sometimes it seemed a skeleton, the bones of a dream. Sometimes a skeleton key, unlocking a life I couldn’t even imagine yet.

  The afternoon was too hot and close to inspire us to take in the sights of Heidelberg. Neither of us had any interest in being tourists. I could feel a thunderstorm starting to build. The azure sky was foaming over with gray. The air was thick, with scarcely a breeze, even along the Neckar.

  That was where we met the two girls, Lilly and Coco.

  They were from Strasbourg and a bit older than us. Speaking Alsatian dialect, they told us they’d been working in vineyards up the Rhine and along the Mosel.

  It was Mick’s idea that we treat the girls to beer at the café near the train station. Lilly told us her father was the deputy mayor of Strasbourg. Coco said her father was a famous general killed in the war. When I asked which side he had fought on, she laughed, and it dawned on me that we weren’t meant to believe their stories.

  The girls went inside the station to use the restroom. Mick said, “I’d say ten marks each, Billy, and no more.”

  “What for?”

  “They’re brassers, Billy. Whores.”

  “Of course. Yes. Certainly.” But it hadn’t occurred to me. I thought of prostitutes as heavy, scarred wretches like the women on the Kaiserstraße in Frankfurt. Lilly and Coco were small, sunburned, cheerful. “Are we going to sleep with them?”

  “We’re going to fuck them, Billy my man, once we’ve settled on a price.”

  There was no way to back out of the situation without seeming like a schoolboy. Not that Mick would have said anything; he wasn’t interested in making people feel small. And when I was with him I was always bolder and older, more satisfied with my own life. So I knew I was going to follow him again, though I felt anxious about it.

  When the girls came out of the station lugging one suitcase between them, Mick handled negotiations with Coco. He didn’t speak French or Alsatian, but that transaction is a straightforward one, and they had no trouble understanding each other.

  The girls didn’t have a room in Heidelberg; they were passing through. Coco suggested we hike up into the woods above the town where they had spent the night sleeping rough. Mick and I took turns carrying their suitcase as we climbed back up the hill toward the ruined castle. The girls led us off the road and down a path through woods to a grassy clearing where they had slept. Opening their suitcase, each took out a little gray blanket. We hadn’t discussed who was going with whom, though we’d settled on twenty marks for the two of us. Coco took the money. I was nervous, tense, and wasn’t sure I wanted to go through with it, but the redhead, Lilly, hooked her arm in mine. Chattering gaily like a little French Alsatian bird she led me down the steep path to another grassy spot. I helped spread out and smooth her blanket. She wore a yellow dress bought in Köln, which she was proud of. I agreed with her that it was vraiment gentille. She hated her boots, which were falling apart, the soles worn thin and starting to separate. Did she wear underclothes of any sort? I don’t remember. The sex was over pretty quickly, as you can imagine. Her breasts were soft but her nipples were hard. Afterward, it was stunning to be lying there with my hand cupping a woman’s bush and the sun warm on my back. I dozed. It began to rain lightly and I sat up, not knowing where I was for a moment. Lilly, wriggling into her dress, smiled at me. I looked down at the red-tiled roofs of Heidelberg squeezed into that narrow cleft of a valley with the Neckar running through. The rain came down all of a sudden in a thick silver drench. It was warm. We were both soaked in an instant. A wonderful rain.

  We bought the girls coffee and cakes at the station café, then Mick heaved their suitcase aboard a third-class coach, and as the train wheezed from the platform they leaned out the window waving and blowing kisses at us.

  “That was charming,” Mick remarked. “However, Billy Lange, from the looks of you, we both could stand a bath and a curry before we see the vons.”

  We were disheveled. Mick solved the problem by charming our way into a guesthouse where the landlady agreed to dry our clothes on her kitchen hob and press our suits while charging us two marks to share an enormous tub, where we sat soaking at opposite ends, smoking, and sipping tumblers of cherry brandy. We did not discuss our experiences with the girls, Mick somehow making it clear that to compare notes on that subject was unmanly. Instead we talked of horses and of Mick’s uncle Jer in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

  “I’ll want a bed for a night or two, no more,” Mick told me. “There’s a fellow Jer knows who can steer me to getting on the police. It won’t happen overnight. There’s an examination. It might be I do stable work at first. There’s plenty of Irish at the horse tracks.”

  “Do you think Karin meant it? About going with you?” Lolling in the hot bath, smoking and sipping cherry brandy, I felt manly and nonchalant.

  “Jesus,” said Mick. “You must leave off that subject.”

  “I wish she’d come with us instead of hanging on to Longo’s pals.”

  “Your Karin von don’t know what she wants.” He blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. “Can you see a girl like that on the run with a fellow like me? No money, nothing behind me. Girls like her are expensive, I would say.”

  “Have you known girls like her?”

  “No. No. She’s one of a kind, your Karin von.”

  “But you won’t let her come with you to America.”

  “I tell you what, let’s drop the subject. It would end badly, Billy boy, it surely must.”

  The evening—close, gray, shot with weird bullets of light—was gathering to another downpour as we came out of the guesthouse. We were clean, our clothes in good order. I wondered if Lilly could replace Karin in my fantasy life. Could I imagine Lilly traveling across Texas at fantastic speed?

  At the Red Ox we found Karin and Longo drinking beer in one of the snugs. The student tavern was dark and smelled of smoke and yeast and hops. In the next nook, a table of American students bawled drinking songs in execrable German.

  “We’re awfully glad to see you boys, aren’t we, Longo?” Karin said. “It’s been a perfectly wonderful day. We went punting on the river and got soaked. Longo’s not nearly so good an oarsman as you’d think. Not so good as he ought to be. Really it was rather a disappointing performance, Longo.”

  She was angry about something, I could tell right away. Something had upset her.

  “Don’t be silly, Karin, it was perfectly fine, and you looked beautiful in the rain.”

  The waiter brought tankards of beer for Mick and me, and Longo ordered Jägerschnitzel for all of us.

  “Longo has tickets to hear a perfectly dreadful little man speak at the Stadthalle,” Karin said. “Dear Longo says it’s time I opened my eyes to the eternal truths of Germany. What do you think, Mick McClintock? Are my eyes open?”

  She looked straight at Mick who was raising a tankard to his lips.

  “They are,” he replied. “Very much so.”

  “Here’s my idea,” Longo said. “Herr Hitler is scheduled to speak at the Stadthalle at eight o’clock but probably won’t get there until nine at the earliest. I have got my hands on four tickets. The fellows say it could be amusing. My father heard him speak last year at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg.”

  Was that the first time I heard of Herr Hitler? He was not a famous figure yet, not outside Bavaria anyway. He was still banned from public speaking in most of Germany—in the state of Prussia, for example, which included Frankfurt.

  “Tell them what your father called him, Longo dear,” Karin said.

  “Dear Karin,” Longo said patiently, “if you don’t wish us to go, that’s the end of it, we shan’t.”

  “It’s not what I want or
don’t want, it’s that you want to take me. That’s what I find so fascinating.”

  “But I’m not insisting.”

  “Only because it is not in your power to insist, Longo dear.”

  “Fine!” He spoke in sharp, rapid German. “We’ll go straight back to Walden, that’s all. And you may ride your wonderful Irish horses, win your tennis matches, and allow your papa’s great pile of money to keep you out of the world. And anything you don’t like, that you don’t wish to see, you can offer it money and hope it will go away. Fine! The rest of us may be curious, we may wish to know our country better, our Germany. But that is that. We will leave.”

  It shocked me to hear him use that tone with her.

  Karin spoke English. “Your Germany, Longo? Tell them what your father called the Hitler clown. Your Germany?”

  “Die Donaustaaten Kuriosität.” Longo shrugged.

  “ ‘The Danubian Curiosity,’ ” Karin translated.

  “My father doesn’t like Austrians,” Longo said, with another shrug. “Northerners hate southerners, Protestants hate Catholics, all the Germans have such idiotic complaints. We refuse to understand we are one nation after all.”

  “Die Donaustaaten Kuriosität, it actually means: ‘from Austria, the strange,’ ” Karin said. “The Strange One. In American they should say, perhaps, ‘the oddball.’ The Danubian Oddball.”

  “Very funny.” Longo was getting fed up. Probably the attitude of his Korpsbrüder when first meeting her had surprised him; though considering who her father was, Longo should have seen that coming. But Longo wasn’t used to resistance or to people disapproving his choices.

  “Easy to dismiss a fellow whose accent isn’t as nice as yours.” The morning’s ride in the open car had reddened Longo’s Schmiss. “My father, however, also said, ‘There is something there.’ This Hitler was a front soldier. He hates the Bolsheviks. He speaks, and plain folk understand him even with ein Donauakzent. And he is lively entertainment, say my Korpsbrüder. I have tickets to the hall for four. We can go or not, as you like, Karin.”