Destined to Witness

by Hans Massaquoi

  That really got my attention, since I had lost the two suits I had when our apartment was burglarized. Looking at Fred’s fine threads, I figured that if anyone could put his hands on quality clothes, he was certainly the man, and I agreed to meet him the next day to pursue the matter further.

  The next day came and went without Fred being able to contact “the man with the suits.” And so did the next day and all the next days afterward. As much as I hated to give up on my dream of having nice clothes to wear, I finally had to admit to myself that Fred, while charming, was about as dependable as the weather in April.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have taken the first opportunity to tell him to get and stay lost. But after we had hung around together for a few weeks, he had grown on me, and I had to concede that I enjoyed being around him despite his foibles. Once I had learned never to depend on Fred, no matter what his good intentions, we got along famously, as I found him witty, resourceful, original, and utterly entertaining. As far as he was concerned, I hadn’t come empty-handed to the table either. I soon realized that he enjoyed my company because it provided him with an opportunity to share the spotlight with me whenever my exotic looks drew attention. The result was a symbiotic relationship in which each of us got his money’s worth, so to speak.

  This was particularly true when it came to Fred’s uncanny ability to attract good-looking women. Like a general mapping war strategy, Fred never proceeded without a plan when the objective was to ensnare a beauty. On a rainy day, for instance, he would position himself with an umbrella at the entrance of an office building at just about the time the offices would close, keeping a sharp lookout for an umbrellaless damsel in distress. Once he had spotted a likely subject, he would offer to accompany her with his umbrella to the next streetcar stop or wherever she had to go. Most of the girls who accepted his offer and listened to his charming BS were also willing to see him again on a date.

  Since Fred usually arranged more dates than he could possibly keep, he generously let me have my pick from the surplus. After describing the young woman and giving me the address where he was supposed to meet her, I would go there, take a look, and, if I liked what I saw, tell her that Fred had been unable to make it, and had sent me as a substitute. Rather than being stood up, they always accepted me as their ersatz date.

  Even if Fred exaggerated a lot, he had been uncharacteristically modest when he told me that he had connections. Wherever we went, he was greeted by members of Hamburg’s Prominenz, including stage and screen stars, radio personalities, and other high-profile types, who remembered him from his Waterloo days. During each encounter, he generously shared his five-mark-apiece cigarettes although, as far as I could determine, he had no visible means of support.

  Hanging out with Fred at the Faun Bar and Haus Vaterland, two prestigious nightclubs that had survived the war, became an enjoyable pastime when I wasn’t musically engaged. We’d always gather at one of the more conspicuous tables near the orchestra. Invariably, we were joined by other exotic types, such as Pallah Tuba, a swarthy, devastatingly handsome playboy from Iran, whose working older brothers imported Oriental rugs, and Coo-koo, a young Cuban, who, I was told, also owed his leisurely lifestyle to his prosperous working family. Both had only limited German-language skills, so our conversations, if one could call them that, were totally lacking in intellectual content. For the most part, they centered on the latest trends in American music and dress, and—last but not least—which of the girls could be considered prospective love objects. Occasionally, we were joined by Hugo Zeisse, the only true capitalist in our group. Hugo, a tall, impeccably dressed young man whom I had met during the war, was working in his father’s ship brokerage firm. Since his father, Tom Zeisse, was English-born, we deferred to Hugo in matters relating to British manners and style. Hugo drove a Mercedes-Benz and lived with his parents in a fancy house in Fuhlsbüttel. In short, he lived the lifestyle to which Fred and I aspired.

  In view of the exceedingly modest circumstances in which we lived—Fred in a tiny working-class apartment and I in a basement whose ceiling leaked whenever it rained—I was amused by our cafe society image and by all the attention our presence attracted. To keep up appearances, Fred would go to extraordinary lengths. Once we were headed for a red-hot double date when, about three blocks from Haus Vaterland, Fred flagged down an elegant car with a distinguished-looking man behind the wheel. Holding up three cigarettes, the equivalent of fifteen marks, Fred asked the gentleman whether he would be kind enough to give us a lift to Haus Vaterland, since we were “running late for an important appointment.”

  I thought Fred had lost his mind. But before I had a chance to ask for an explanation, the driver told us to get in. When, after accepting Fred’s cigarettes, he dropped us off in front of the club, our two dates were duly impressed. Although we had traveled most of the way by streetcar, Fred told the girls that “one of our friends gave us a lift.” The entire operation was designed to keep the girls from knowing that we were using public transportation like everybody else.

  THE RUBBER BARON

  Dropping in on Fred Gass one day, I found my usually impeccable buddy seated in his mother’s tiny kitchen, dressed in a pair of work pants and an apron, about to pull a crooked heel from a woman’s shoe with a pair of pliers. “What in the world are you doing?” I inquired after surveying the scene.

  “I’m repairing a shoe,” he replied, as if he had done nothing else in his life.

  Suspecting that there was a story somewhere, I asked for an explanation.

  “Remember my shoes with the white crepe rubber soles?”

  “Yes. What about them?” I replied.

  “Remember that I had worn the soles so crooked that I was about to throw them away, since repair shops don’t have any crepe rubber since the war?” he kept digging.

  “Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?” I shot back impatiently.

  “Plenty,” he responded, then picked up the shoes in question, but with brand-new snow-white crepe rubber soles.

  He then explained that by chance he had passed a junkyard where they sold old, treadworn automobile tires, and he noticed that one of the tires had a cut that revealed a layer of white rubber. For a few marks, he said, the junkman cut him a piece of tire from which he whittled two perfect-looking soles. As proof of his labor, Fred held up a pair of badly blistered hands.

  “But that’s only half of the story,” he added with the excitement of a boy explaining his new toy. “Since I have worn the shoes with the new soles, I can’t walk a few blocks without being stopped by all kinds of people who want to know where they can get their shoes fitted with white rubber soles.”

  Fred said that even after he told them that it would cost them one hundred marks a pair, the requests kept coming. He had already accepted more than a thousand marks’ worth of work. When he noticed my skeptical look, Fred opened a closet and several dozen men’s and women’s shoes tumbled out.

  “At this rate,” Fred said, with unbridled enthusiasm and characteristic generosity, “I’ll be a rich man within a few months. If you want to, you can join me. There’s enough work for both of us.”

  As much as I appreciated Fred’s offer, I told him thanks but no thanks. Having just barely escaped the blue-collar brigade, I had no interest in exchanging my carefree musician’s lifestyle for working my hands to the bone while being tied down for countless hours to some workbench, no matter how great the monetary rewards. I felt strongly that while it was well-paid and honest work, being a cobbler didn’t quite fit the image I had of myself.

  To my surprise, dapper Fred, who had written the book on projecting a café society image and cultivating a somewhat creative approach not fully anchored in our grim reality, had no such concerns and threw himself with gusto into his new enterprise. After his mother evicted him from her kitchen, he moved his business to the basement, where he pounded, glued, and carved rubber from morning till night. If he still had any energy left,
he would transform himself into the old, supergroomed Fred and join the gang at the Faun Bar or Haus Vaterland, his pockets stuffed with a wad of marks thick enough to support a two-pack-a-day Chesterfield habit. One annoying byproduct of Fred’s new entrepreneurship was the fact that every Klaus, Karl, and Ilse would stop at our table, not to say hello but to find out from Fred when their long-overdue shoes would be ready.

  When business picked up to a point where Fred could no longer handle the volume, he recruited his eighty-four-year-old foster father to help out. Henceforth, the two cobbled away, Papa in the kitchen and Fred in the basement, to reduce the backlog of shoes and to meet the mounting demand for crepe soles, which had clearly become an upscale Hamburg fad. It was inevitable that the junkman who supplied Fred with old tires should become suspicious when the volume of Fred’s purchases increased steadily. One day, without any explanation, he upped the price from twenty marks a tire to two hundred marks, a steep increase but one Fred could easily absorb.

  I, too, was being besieged by people who wanted me to tell them how they could become the proud owners of white crepe soles like the ones I had cobbled on my shoes. At first, I would send them to Fred, but when Fred and his father could no longer keep up with the demand, I simply couldn’t stand by while money was being turned away. I decided to get into the shoe-repair business myself—but the Hans Massaquoi way. Instead of spending my days cobbling, I told potential customers that I could get them the rubber, but that they would have to find a shoe repairman or do the installation themselves. Once I had collected enough orders, I would buy an old tire, then cut it up into sole-size chunks that I would sell to my customers for fifty marks a pair. While I made only half the money Fred made, I had virtually no work to do other than buying and cutting up the tires. I tried to convince Fred that my way was the smarter way of doing business and persuade him to change his modus operandi, but for a reason I have never been able to figure out, he stubbornly stuck to his own arduous method of making a living. Having already paid my dues in the sweatshops of Nazi Germany, I had no intention of giving up my tenuous hold on the white-collar class, and besides, I liked my callus-free hands just fine.

  MOVING UP

  As a victim of the Nuremberg racial laws, I had repeatedly applied for an apartment for my mother and me without success. Just when I was about to throw in the towel, a letter from the British military government informed me that two rooms had been requisitioned for us in a home in Othmarschen, one of Hamburg’s upscale suburbs along the River Elbe, and that the letter would serve as my introduction to the owners of the home.

  When my mother and I arrived at the Othmarschen address, a plain, three-story duplex of which one half had been razed by a bomb, I was met by our new landlords, Herr and Frau Flemming, and their two grown sons, the oldest a recently discharged ensign of the German navy. They appeared less than thrilled by the idea of having to take in tenants, but tried hard not to make their displeasure too obvious. I had no idea what had gotten them on the British military government’s housing list, since not all Germans were required to take in roomers, but I couldn’t have cared less. Since they had survived the bombings unscathed and were spared the loss of their belongings, I found it difficult to feel sorry for them for having to rent out two rooms.

  The rooms were minuscule and located on different floors, but they were above ground and had a proper, nonleaking roof over them. To my mother and me, who had become used to living like moles in smelly, dank, and cold basements, they meant no less than a return to civilization. Just being able to walk barefoot for a change on clean wooden floors instead of the rough, always damp, and always cold concrete of our previous “home” seemed like sheer luxury to us.

  Othmarschen, like most of Hamburg’s suburbs, had been left mostly unscathed by Allied bombs. This meant that we had to get used once more to walking through streets with intact sidewalks and buildings instead of negotiating narrow footpaths through mountains of rubble. I also appreciated having escaped the stigma of living in a rodent-infested basement under the ruins of a bombed-out building. No longer did I have to beat around the bush when someone asked me where I lived. The mere word Othmarschen got me immediate respect.

  Our new home was conveniently located a five-minute walk from the train station, which was only a half dozen stops from downtown Hamburg. It also was within a few train stops of Blankenese, and thus gave me the welcome opportunity of seeing more of my friends, the Giordanos.

  When I paid them a visit, I found them well and, as usual, in a state of excitement. This time the focus of their excitement was a recently arrived addition to the family, a baby sister. Between cooing and talking baby talk, Ralph and Egon brought me up to date on their various journalistic activities. To my surprise, I noticed a drastic change in Ralph’s political orientation. Whereas only a few months earlier he had been filled with enthusiasm for our British and American liberators, he now lashed out angrily at capitalists who, he maintained, were exploiting the masses and making common cause with the Nazis. “Wait till you get to your wonderful America,” he told me. “You’ll soon enough find out what I mean.”

  In years to come, while observing the wretchedness of America’s urban and rural poor, I had ample opportunity to view the less pleasant side of capitalism, but at the time I was truly shocked and disappointed at his political metamorphosis. Ralph told me that he had become a full-fledged member of the German Communist Party, and a correspondent for Die Hamburger Volkszeitung, the Communist Party’s newspaper. There was no doubt in my mind that behind Ralph’s drastic conversion was his resentment over the Allies’ lenient treatment of former Nazis. As a victim of Nazi racial hate, I, too, favored the approach of the Soviet troops who, it was widely known, purged the Nazis in their zone of occupation with an unforgiving head-for-an-eye policy. But my orientation was too Western and my knowledge of and interest in dialectic materialism too vague for me to throw out the baby with the bathwater and abandon my American dream.

  As much as I regretted Ralph’s switch to the Communists, whose slogans and coercive methods seemed no different to me from those of the Nazis, I decided not to let our political differences mar our friendship. We had come too far together to let a little controversy like capitalism versus communism come between us.

  ALKAZAR

  Bumping into my buddy Addie Wulf, the tenor sax man, one day, he invited me to audition with him for a young bandleader who was putting together a big dance band. The bandleader, Addie explained, wanted nobody older than himself, and he had to have the group ready to go to work in only one month, when he intended to audition for the Alkazar, the biggest theater-nightclub in the city. Without hesitation I picked up my saxophone and clarinet and went along to the audition. The bandleader, a fellow by the name of Rolf Wehlau, took one look at me and decided he wanted me in his band. It was obvious that he valued me more for my decorative value than for my musical ability, of which he knew nothing at the time. I explained to him that I didn’t think I was ready to handle first E-flat alto sax parts because of the many solos, but that I played a pretty solid third alto. After putting a few third alto sheets in front of me and asking me to play contemporary American favorites to his piano accompaniment, he told me I was hired. Addie, too, was hired as second B-flat tenor man. The catch was that the hiring was contingent on the band’s passing the Alkazar audition a month hence. To make sure we did, we all agreed to rehearse as many hours a day as it took to get it right.

  The Alkazar, in the heart of St. Pauli, was a cavernous ballroom with a huge dance floor that could be hydraulically raised to serve as stage for various acts. It was surrounded by two floors of balconies and its high ceiling permitted aerial and high-wire acts. Although the Alkazar had seen better days before the war, and much of its art deco glitter had faded, its popularity as one of Hamburg’s hottest nightspots was undiminished.

  We arrived—all fifteen of us—almost an hour early for the noon audition, prepared for hours of musical grilling. We
had rehearsed almost incessantly for an entire month until we were convinced that there was no hotter dance band this side of the Elbe. Thus, we were caught totally off guard when a short, skinny fellow with a cigar in his mouth and a hat perched on the back of his head announced that he was the boss of the Alkazar and that he wanted us to play John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” “I know you all know how to read music and that you know how to play all the latest American hits,” he growled. “I don’t give a shit about that. Every two-bit musician can do that. What I want to know is how good you are at improvising, and I don’t mean playing jazz improvisations. If you want to accompany a variety show program, you’ve got to be able to think on your feet, be prepared for unexpected problems. An artist may not show up and you have to accompany a replacement act you’ve never seen or heard before. This means you’ve got to know how to improvise.”

  We looked at each other dumbfounded. Nobody, it turned out, had the slightest idea who John Philip Sousa was nor what his “Stars and Stripes Forever” was all about. Exasperated, the Alkazar’s boss removed the cigar from his mouth and started whistling a few strains of a march that sounded vaguely familiar to me. Slowly, we picked up our instruments and began to play along—first meekly, then louder and louder as more and more of us caught on. When we reached the end in a rousing finale that reverberated throughout the theater, the man clapped enthusiastically and told us we were hired. “You guys are okay,” he praised. “You know how to improvise.”