Twilight in Danzig

by Siegfried Kra

  They arrived at a small street called the Toppengasse, and came upon a large building of whitewashed brick which had been the headquarters of the British Army during the Allied occupation after World War 1. Now it was the headquarters of the National Socialist Party – the Nazis. A large flag was flying over the entrance; it had the same insignia on it that Jonas had drawn on his armband. Almost directly across the street was the medieval Central Synagogue, the pride of Danzig’s Jews, built by Lithuanian immigrants in the fourteenth century. It was the very proud depository of the most ancient Torahs and holy books in Europe. For a moment, Jonas thought they were going to the synagogue. During the High Holidays, Fräulein often brought him there to visit with his parents during the long service. Every year, the shrewd governess would place a red rose in his hands which he then gave to his delighted mother, who showered him with kisses as the worshipers looked on at the charming, elegant little boy who showed so much love for his parents. But this was certainly not the High Holidays, and judging from Jonas’s excited little face, his parents were the furthest thing from his mind right now.

  Any confusion felt by Jonas was soon eased as they turned away from the synagogue and mounted the stairs to the white building. He felt uneasy and embarrassed as they entered a large hall brimming with young boys and girls, many his own age, sitting on small wooden folding chairs. Up front was a long wooden table surrounded by men wearing brown uniforms. Hanging from the wall in back of them was a huge poster of a man with a small mustache, in uniform. Each side of the hall was flanked by flags flying the colors of Danzig, and there were red and black and white swastika flags, too. The boys wore brown uniforms; the girls were in blue skirts and white blouses.

  “We will sit here in the back, Jonas, so we can watch,” Fräulein whispered to him.

  Bruno left their side and was soon sitting at the long table with the other men. A tall, young, blond man was standing in front of the stark room. He had a warm pleasant smile, and was speaking much more softly than the others.

  Jonas surveyed the audience of children. The governess removed his warm fur-lined leather coat and then took off his woolen cap, holding it in her hand as she placed her other arm around his shoulders.

  “Boys and girls, I want to tell you today about our great city, Danzig. All of you born in Danzig are Germans, proud Germans. Even your birth certificates are written in German. Danzig has been part of Germany for hundreds of years. It is like living in a big house. Germany, the fatherland, is the big house, and Danzig is one of the rooms of the house. For now, Danzig is called a Free State and everyone, all kinds, are living in this house when it really should be reserved only for our German family. But soon, I promise you all, our leader, Adolf Hitler, will unite us and we will be one big happy family again. You are Aryan. That is a big word for you to remember. Aryans. Aryans. You know there is not enough food in our homes, that our people are living like rats. The food is taken away by those ugly people, these foreigners who are not part of our family.”

  Jonas felt his stomach grumble. He remembered it was getting near dinner time. He began to worry that there would not be any food when he returned home.

  “We are forming clubs all over for you to join. We will teach you German songs. You will learn how to march. The boys will learn to wrestle and box, even how to use a knife, and later, how to shoot a gun. We want you to be little soldiers for the new country, for the new Germany. We want you to be strong. You do want to be strong, don’t you?”

  Jonas nodded his head affirmatively and felt for the muscles in his arms. “I am strong enough to jump the pommel horse at the Maccabee Club,” he said to himself.

  The tall man in front continued to talk, his voice growing louder. “You, too, all of you, will someday become leaders. When you march on the streets all the people will shout and be proud of you, the strong German youth, as they see you in your uniforms, strong and tall, and they will talk of you as the real Germans of the future, their hope. We have enemies out there who want to take the food away from your tables and leave you without your homes,” he said, and then repeated the sentence three times.

  “Let us all now give the salute to our leader, to the man who saved us all.”

  All the children in the hall shouted, “Heil Hitler!”

  “Say it louder! Louder!” And they did, over and over.

  The hall became warm and stuffy as the children started to sing German songs.

  Today Germany, tomorrow the world!

  Jonas liked stamping his feet and he enjoyed the shouting. When it was over he was wet with perspiration. Fräulein Marlow proudly slipped a small band around his arm.

  “This is for you, my little Jonas, you are now a member of these scouts. Next time, I will get you a uniform to wear, just like the other boys.”

  As they forged their way back outside through the sweaty crowd, she said, “You were such a wonderful boy that I am going to reward you with some hot chocolate with a marshmallow.”

  They went to Springers, the popular ice cream store on Long Street, and sat inside at one of the small wrought iron tables. Jonas sipped on the hot chocolate drink, while he fingered his armband.

  “Now, you remember, this is our little secret. You must not tell your father or mother, not yet. Later, we will surprise them.”

  In the long months that followed, every Thursday Fräulein and Jonas could be seen boarding the red-and-black trolley car to go to the Toppengasse to attend the Nazi Youth meetings. Lucia thought it was sweet of Fräulein to sacrifice her day off to take Jonas to the museums. Some days, his governess would put Astor on his leash and together the three of them would go to Stefan’s Park.

  There – the Brownshirts – the Hitler Youth, would gather to practice marching and running.

  “Go Jonas, you can join them, run with them,” she urged.

  “I don’t want to Fräulein. I’d rather stay with you and Astor.” Going to the meetings was fine, but to be out in the open cavorting with those boys made him feel uncomfortable. Besides, then it would no longer be a secret, a clandestine meeting, and his parents would learn of it. They might even see him and become angry with his Fräulein and make her leave and he would be left all alone.

  Chapter Four

  THE CAFÉ DES ARTISTES was so named became it was Danzig’s favorite hangout for writers and artists. They would meet in the evenings, smoke hashish, sip a Pernod, and sniff cocaine. It was not as glamorous as the fast Rue Flaubert crowd in Paris, but it was still their café, and Lucia liked going there very much. During the day, throughout the afternoon, it served as an elegant tea house and a nice place for a rendezvous with a lover, with fresh flowers on every small round table, carts with delicate patisserie circulating around the room, and a Hungarian violinist playing Liebestraum or some Strauss love songs, and more recently the songs of Kurt Weill.

  Bill Harrington was sitting at one of these tables on this February afternoon waiting for Lucia to arrive. Surprisingly, for a destination so popular, this was his first visit. In the three months since his arrival in Danzig, he had discovered it was not uncommon for her to be late an hour or more. This tardiness was not deliberate. It was just that by the time Lucia finished her toiletries, spoke to Cook about dinner that night and to Fräulein Marlow about Jonas (already long gone at school by the time she rose), she had simply lost all sense of time. Lucia had her own clock, Lucia Time. She was so charming a woman, so lovely and adorable, that it was not possible to become angry with her ways. She also had her own peculiar style. Her clock was the reverse of most people’s. Her best hours of alertness, productivity, and sexuality were after 11:00 p.m. It was at this hour she read her newspaper, wrote her letters, and munched on marzipans and plums while reading poetry. At three in the morning she might then go and awaken Brand, who could always be counted upon to have a nocturnal erection. Satisfied, she then slept until noon. The only time she was up in the morning was to attend funerals, to catch a train, or to meet Bill Harrington near the B
eaux Arts for their weekly lunch. Today, Lucia wanted something a little more soigné. A late lunch a deux.

  Bill had become a fixture in the lives of her little set. He was so fresh and unspoiled, and as an American and a university graduate yet, he was interesting, well-read, and just delicious to look at. Certainly the other ladies at the café today had noticed. As he sat at one of the corner tables while finishing a second cup of tea, they saw a tall handsome man with a certain understated sexuality about him that made him dangerously attractive. His thick, uncombed brown hair, his marvelous blue eyes, like cornflowers, and his comfortable and casual brown corduroy jacket gave him the appeal of a young poet. And of course it would only be when Lucia arrived that they would be able to admire the row of healthy white teeth that only an American diet of fresh food and whole milk, lots of milk, could produce as he greeted her with a wide smile. For now, they saw that his complexion was soft, unblemished; and his shoulders were well-developed, round, sturdy, and certainly roomy enough for a delicate, forlorn, young woman to nestle her head on.

  Today, they may have also have been enchanted by the look he wore of a bemused school boy as he struggled to read the local Danzig newspaper, moving his pale lips while trying to interpret the German. The Prince had advised him to read the local newspaper rather than the English one because that way he would learn the language. Bill had grown surprisingly close to the Prince, perhaps closer even than to Lucia. The young American had quickly come to admire the Prince for his exquisite manners, and for his charm and generosity. A highly cultivated man and true Continental who really knew literature and music, the Prince had even recently finished re-reading Crime and Punishment, in French. Most important, Bill discovered how disarmingly easy it was to make conversation with him, real conversation, beyond the superfluities of polite society. Each had spoken frankly of their very different upbringings, about the books they best loved, and about ideas – from art and architecture to philosophy and politics. And the man was, after all, a Prince! He had listened intently to all Bill had to say, and his responses, always crafted with insight and rendered with such respect, made Bill feel important. So of course, the Prince’s suggestion that Bill improve his German by reading the daily paper made excellent sense to him.

  Bill was reading now about last week’s news, the elevation of Adolf Hitler to German Chancellor. It felt that there would be no stopping the National Socialists now. If he had read on he would have learned that certain elements in Danzig seemed energized by this event, coupled with the conscious hatred for Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and non-Aryans felt by all classes of society. But Bill had stopped reading to wonder instead what strange, sick society would struggle with this difficult, impossible language. Why did the verb have to be at the end of a sentence? It was really as ridiculous as Hebrew, which had to be read from right to left.

  Oscar, the notorious mâitre d’ of this café, who normally knew everyone there, was circling the tables like a dragonfly. He kept eyeing the American, the only person new to him. He was unable to answer the ladies’ inquiries about the mysterious young man who was sitting alone struggling with the newspaper.

  “You are English?” he asked Bill.

  “No, American.”

  “Ah, I speak a little English. This place is very nice also. We have some Negro players, a combo, who come some nights to play American jazz. It is very dark and much smoke here, but much people come. You could speak to them. Are you a student?”

  “Yes, I am here to study architecture. I am waiting for a friend.”

  “Some Pernod for you?”

  “Yes, please,” Bill said, suddenly quite pleased with himself for accepting – just another little piece of the adventure, drinking before lunch as opposed to with lunch! He crossed his long legs and put down his paper, and he decided that if he had only a glass before Lucia arrived, it should not be difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. He began thinking about everything that had happened since he’d decided to leave America.

  Just half a year ago, he was a senior with no clear post-graduate prospects, shooting baskets in the gym at the state university of Ohio, cheering at football games, captaining the wrestling team, and cleaning tables in the school cafeteria to help pay for his tuition. His father, a successful merchant with a small chain of hardware stores, had wanted his son to take upon himself some of the responsibilities for his education. Bill had no desire to spend the rest of his life selling nuts and bolts and lighting fixtures in Columbus. He was a good architectural student, but hardly a brilliant one. His teacher, a Prussian, suggested he take a year in Europe to learn the real stuff.

  “We copy everything from the old world,” the Prussian had said. “Go to Germany. The Walter Gropius School is where you will learn. Study Gothic medieval buildings and places like Danzig. Everyone is going to Florence and Venice. You go to Germany, Berlin.”

  His father consented and gave him enough money to get started. He paid the fare for the trip on the SS Bremen. If Bill was still determined to apply to architecture school when he got back, his father would let him try for Carnegie Mellon in not-too-faraway Pittsburgh, though Bill himself dreamed of Columbia and Yale. But in exchange, Bill had to promise to first work a year in one of the hardware stores like his two older brothers, and to give the family business a serious try. Now, however, he knew he could never return to Main Street in Columbus. He had met Lucia the second day after he arrived in Danzig, at the Beaux Arts, when he was looking for student housing. He was standing in front of the bulletin board in the dimly lit medieval hall, trying to read the announcements.

  “Do you speak English?” he asked the petite, pretty woman who was looking at the board, reading announcements of courses and special lectures. Bill would later learn that Lucia loved to drop in to the Beaux Arts. Marriage and early motherhood had arrested any hope she entertained of an art school education. But she believed that as the wife of one of Danzig’s most powerful men, it was useful for her to display not only a quick wit and a lively way with conversation, but to have ideas of her own on the important interests of the day: furniture, painting, decoration. These requisites the Beaux Arts handsomely satisfied.

  “A little,” Lucia had said.

  “I am looking for a room in which to live. I am a student.”

  She took him to a charming rooming house minutes away from the university. Although many students from all over the world came to the famed University of Danzig to study philosophy and art, this was the very first American Lucia had met and, rather like taking up a new hobby, she had befriended him ever since.

  It was beginning to get dark when she finally arrived. Her cheeks were red as rouge, completely the effect of the cold air. She was wearing a Persian lamb jacket.

  “Of course, I am sorry to be late.” She stretched her small body as Bill bent down to kiss her on the cheek. “God, I am frozen. I must have some coffee at once, and perhaps a little Pernod.”

  Oscar was quickly at her side, clicking his heels and kissing her hand, helping her off with her coat. She wore a simple wool dress of navy blue and her cherry-stained mouth popped against her white skin and dark lashes.

  “Everything is mixed up,” she said as she made several circles with her small soft hands and then brought them to her lips. She looked up into Bill’s eyes as she gently blew warm air on her fingers. “Now that’s better. They are alive again. Brand left for Berlin this morning, as usual, leaving me with this house and all that. Thank God for Fräulein.” She spoke in English, sprinkling her words with French and German phrases, which made her even more charming.

  “How is young Jonas?” Bill inquired. He liked to hear Lucia speak and to watch her animated hands, which spoke their own language. Occasionally, her right hand brushed against her brown hair and her eyes would focus on him as if there was no one else in the room.

  “That little monster.” She laughed as menus were brought to them. “I never get to see him these days, except when he is sleeping at n
ight, like an angel. The other day I saw him with the forbidden books on the upper shelf of the library.”

  “The forbidden books?” Bill asked blankly.

  Lucia laughed. “Brand has a collection on exotic women of Africa, some kind of anthropological survey of women’s breasts. Jonas managed to find one of the volumes. I caught sight of his little body stretching on the tall ladder, and he was gaping at the book in complete fascination. I was afraid to startle him because he might tumble off. I watched him for a while. He didn’t look at all like my innocent nine-year-old. The Fräulein was in the library with him pretending to be reading. I silently closed the door. I was really too embarrassed to do or say anything.”

  “Boys are always curious. Who isn’t fascinated by the naked body?” Bill remarked nonchalantly.

  “I see my little boy changing, but I really can’t put my finger on it. He is as loving as always, but something is different.” The waiter came to the table and took their order. Bowls of steaming potato soup and more Pernod.

  “Perhaps he is having an early change. Some boys do, you know,” Bill opined with an air of authority.

  “Enough of Kinder talk. How is the American architect?”

  “Ganz gut, very well, thank you. I am seeing buildings, studying and having the best time of my life.”

  Her eyes now focused on his hands, which were resting on the checkered red tablecloth, and her fingers gently brushed them, as if she were painting.

  “Your hands are so smooth. The hands of an artist, a great pianist. I always wanted to touch the hands of an artist. You know, once I saw Schnabel up close, performing in the Opernplatz in Berlin, and I kept wondering how his hands must feel, thinking those wonderful fingers must lead an independent life, have an intelligence of their own.”

  She continued to chat, her head now bending down slightly, while continuing to stroke each of his fingers. If she had looked up she would have seen Bill’s face flushing crimson.