Twilight in Danzig

by Siegfried Kra

  “I love them, Papa. We can build a fort together.”

  “Jonas, are you feeling all right?” Brand decided to test the water. “Is there anything wrong? If you don’t like your governess, we can have her leave.”

  “Oh, no, Father. I love Fräulein Marlow,” he protested, almost in panic. “She is wonderful to me. Just because I don’t want to go to the Maccabee Club, Muttie thinks something is wrong.” Of course, thought Brand. Of course that’s all it is.

  Nonetheless, Brand and Lucia insisted he continue with the group which met on Sunday mornings at the gymnasium of the Sankt Johann High School. Several weeks later twenty young boys were lined up in a straight line, all wearing white shorts and white shirts. The little Maccabees had just finished body-bending and jumping jacks ten times. Jonas’ school friend Gerhardt stood next to him.

  “Now, boys, everyone run to the ropes,” ordered the gym master. “Take your rope and start swinging back and forth.”

  “Did you ever see a woman’s tits?” Jonas casually asked Gerhardt as he swung back and forth like a pendulum of a clock.

  “No, have you?” Gerhardt whispered.

  “Yes. At first, I saw them in some secret books in our library. Black tits of all shapes and sizes.”

  “I don’t believe you. You show them to me next time I come to your house, yes?”

  “I also saw them – real, live, and touched them with my hands and kissed one, right on the nipple, and I almost . . .”

  “Jonas, you are such a shit liar. You make everything up.”

  “No, I don’t. My Fräulein always lets me see them and touch and kiss them. She even promised to show me her hole and touch it.” Gerhardt snorted. Goaded, Jonas continued: “And you know what else, Gerhardt? I belong to the German Youth.”

  “You are crazy, Jonas. I am going to tell Herr Ott.”

  “I have a uniform, and carry a knife, march, sing songs, and have an armband like the Nazis. If you want to become a member I can ask Fräulein to let you come with us.”

  “You make me sick, Jonas, with your lies. I hate you and all your stupid lies!”

  “I hate you too, Gerhardt, and if I had my knife with me I would stab you.”

  Gerhardt waited for Jonas to swing back into his path and then punched Jonas in his face. Jonas let go of the rope and fell to the ground crying. His nose was bleeding. Gerhardt stood above him waiting to strike him again. One of the gym teachers came running and picked Jonas up from the ground. “He hit me!” Jonas cried.

  “Well, he lies too much! He lies about terrible things!”

  After the gym hour was over, both boys took the short walk to the trolley car that would take them back to their homes. As they walked in silence, Gerhardt suddenly kicked Jonas, who pulled off his leather knapsack and began to swing at Gerhardt’s head. Gerhardt ran off laughing and yelling, “Asshole! Liar!” with Jonas in hot pursuit. As Jonas neared him, Gerhardt turned, stuck out his tongue, and dashed off the sidewalk into the gutter. A fast-moving car came from around the corner. There was a scream, and Gerhardt was on the ground, his head covered with blood.

  Jonas and other boys ran out to him, surrounding the unconscious boy. Jonas bent down, shouting, “Gerhardt, I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! Please don’t be dead!” He was stricken with fear and panic, slapping his thighs, pulling at his hair.

  Grown-ups arrived and then the ambulance. When the trolley car came, Jonas, frightened and trembling, quickly boarded it. A very long ten minutes later he was on Ranestiffe Street. Astor was waiting at the window of the Kruger’s house as usual and ran downstairs as Jonas opened the door, jumping on him and kissing his face.

  “Mother, Mother,” Jonas yelled. “Something terrible happened!” But Fräulein Marlow was not at the house and Lucia was lunching in town. “Astor, something terrible happened. We have to go to Gerhardt’s house and tell his mother.” With Astor following in pursuit, both ran as fast as Jonas’ young legs could manage to Gerhardt’s home, just a few houses down, past the Prince’s mansion. Still out of breath, he rang the doorbell, and when the boy’s mother answered, he quickly said, “Frau Baum, come quickly! Gerhardt was hit by a car and he is bleeding from his head.”

  “What? Jonas, is this another one of your stories?”

  “No, Frau Baum,” he cried. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  Frau Baum began to scream hysterically, and Jonas became frightened and ran away, down the street back to his house, with Astor barking beside him.

  Lucia was waiting at the door as Jonas came stumbling in, tears streaming down his face.

  “My poor Jonas, what happened? Your face is all bruised.” She pulled him toward her.

  “Who hit you? Astor, why did you let Jonas get hit?”

  “Astor was not there. Gerhardt was hit by a car because I chased him into the street.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Several days later, in school, Jonas learned that Gerhardt was in the hospital. The boy had sustained a severe concussion and multiple cracked ribs, but he would live. Jonas was ashamed to cry in class, but was unable to hold back the tears. His teacher, Frau Zahn, was a tough Prussian who wore a long black dress and black shoes, and who deeply resented the few Jewish children in her class. She had a picture of Adolf Hitler hanging by the blackboard and forced the children to recite the oath to the Fatherland each morning. In spite of the protests of the Jewish families, she was allowed to conduct her class as she wished.

  “There is no crying in my classroom,” she chided Jonas. “If you continue this way you will stand outside.”

  That night Jonas was unable to sleep; his guilt mixed with relief, the tears would not stop coming. He lay under the bedcovers, shaking. Brand and Lucia had called on Gerhardt’s parents. Evidently, the child remembered only exchanging angry words with Jonas but none of the pushing and shoving that resulted in the accident. So Jonas escaped punishment, but on his own he remained inconsolable. Not even Fräulein Marlow was able that night to soothe the shattered boy. He laid awake crying and remembering.

  Gerhardt had been his best friend. What had he done?

  Just the previous weekend they had spent a wonderful day together. At 8:00 in the morning, Gerhardt’s mother had come in the chauffer-driven Rolls Royce to take Lucia and Jonas to the transit camp at Troyl. The mothers were bringing bags of provisions donated by their friends to the unfortunates and had decided that an outing among the refugees would develop the boys’ characters. A small island near Danzig, Troyl housed Jews from revolutionary Russia and Poland who were on their way to Palestine and America, and even to Shanghai and Brazil.

  As soon as the car halted, the two boys jumped out like mad dogs and ran toward the large gray barracks in front of them. It was useless for the two mothers, for all their cajoling and threats, to try to slow them down. The boys saw old men with beards who looked like their Rabbi and young boys with long sideburns and skullcaps on their small heads, dressed in shabby clothing, sitting around a long wooden beat-up table eating their breakfasts out of wooden bowls. Jonas was dressed in a splendid dark green leather suit complemented by a leather cap and blue scarf. He gamely walked into the large hall which was lined with a row of beds. Gerhardt stood by the door, afraid to move. One small boy sitting on a bed beckoned Jonas by waving a small toy car. The boy was dressed in light clothing and was shivering. They just stared at each other, neither of them able to say anything. The shivering boy pushed the small car over the bed.

  “That is a nice car,” Jonas said in German, and then the Russian boy, still shivering, said something that Jonas could not understand. He touched the leather on Jonas’ coat and stared at the leather button-down shoes. The little boy gave Jonas the car to push on the blanket. Jonas saw how pale and thin the boy looked. From his coat pocket he gave him some chocolate marzipan that he had taken before they left from the living room candy dish when no one was watching. Jonas watched the boy eat the candy with blissful pleasure, then gave him al
l the rest he had in his pocket. The little boy offered the car to Jonas, who refused it, but the child placed the toy in Jonas’ pocket anyway. Jonas removed his leather hat and blue scarf, placed the hat on the boy’s head, left the scarf on the bed, and ran outside. He found Gerhardt standing by the long dock where a steamer was anchored. It was leaving for Palestine in the afternoon.

  Both boys climbed the steep gangplank. Once on deck the first mate, a tall blond Swede, assumed that these two were some of the refugee boys he was going to be transporting.

  “You boys are early, but get along with you. I don’t blame you.”

  Jonas led the way down the stairs to the engine room, climbing over the wheels and pipes and brass railings. They were touching and pressing everything, while a Portuguese sailor with black grease smeared on his face looked on, astounded.

  “Let’s go up on deck, Gerhardt,” Jonas called excitedly. They raced up the many long steel stairs until they got to the very top deck, to the pilot’s room. “Get down from there, you two devils, at once, before I get the police.”

  “We are not leaving,” Jonas called. “I am the captain now, and we are going to America. Everyone aboard.”

  One of the sailors grabbed both boys roughly by their collars, pulling them back to the dock. “I should keep you on board and put you both in shackles in the boiler room to teach you rascals a lesson,” as he handed them over to their apologetic mothers.

  They were driving back from the island when Lucia noticed that Jonas’ hat and scarf were missing.

  “You are impossible, Jonas. Where is your beautiful leather cap and scarf?”

  “I must have dropped them somewhere.”

  Gerhardt gave Jonas a secret look, and said nothing, saving him from a certain scolding.

  “He was a real friend,” Jonas said under his bed covers, now remembering that look.

  He began to cry some more. “I am sorry, Gerhardt. I don’t hate you, and I didn’t mean to chase you into the street. Gerhardt, please, please, please forgive me.”

  Chapter Six

  THEY HAD BEEN LOVERS for almost two months. Since the day after Lucia’s attempted seduction, in fact. Worn out, Bill was tired of fighting his attraction to men. This was what it is, wasn’t it? This nameless intruder that had stalked any attempted encounter he’d ever had with women. If he couldn’t do it with Lucia, then who? He had arrived at the Prince’s for their usual afternoon English lesson over tea and drinks. This time, the Prince sensed a change. He saw Bill’s mouth had the expression of trustfulness, like a child’s, and the gentleness of surrender. The Prince saw that Bill was back to wearing the Brandenburg signet ring. He put down his cards of vowels and English conjugations, and took Bill into his arms. Inseparable since, the Prince had experienced a tenderness he had never known and Bill, who cried that first time after they held each other in the Prince’s large bed, experienced a release, like a fist unclenched.

  “Now you look like a Berliner in your green jacket and pants, instead of those boring chinos and sweaters,” the Prince said approvingly to Bill. They were walking on the Wilhelmstrasse, toward the old Gedachtniskirche. It was Bill’s first visit to the German capital. The Prince was proud of the figure Bill now cut in his fine clothes. He was handsomer than ever, if that were possible.

  “With this nice outfit you bought me, are you taking me to see another church?”

  “We are going to the center of intellectual life in Berlin, the famous Romanisches Café. It is even better than Le Dôme in Paris, or the Café Central in Vienna.”

  “You have been everywhere,” Bill admired.

  “Not everywhere. Not yet to America.”

  “Then it will be my turn to show you something. You can’t imagine how different America is.”

  On all the streets, crowded with beggars, shabbily dressed, Bill saw hungry and desperate-looking people, and long banners with the Nazi insignia hanging from the buildings. Children and old people were scavenging garbage pails for food.

  A decorated horse-drawn wagon suddenly passed by them, carrying barrels of ale. The horse was festooned with white feathers around its thick neck, blue leggings and a colorful blanket over its back and down its sides. The driver, an old man wearing a Tyrolean outfit, had a warm smile on his weathered face and was speaking to the horse gently, lovingly:

  “Hilda, you old mare, just a little longer, hang on. Soon we will dump the barrels and take a nice slow ride home to eat. You’d like that, yes?”

  “Each beer-maker has his distinct wagon,” the Prince explained. “The Lowenberg Brewery in Munich has an entire stable of beautiful Arabian horses to pull their wagons. They decorate their horses as if they were nobility.”

  As the men were about to enter the café, the horse suddenly slipped and lost its footing, rolling over on the ground, tossing the wagon on its side. The barrels rolled off the wagon into the streets like ungainly bowling balls, spilling beer. The old man, unharmed but distraught, ran to the horse, screaming, “Hilda, my poor Hilda, what in God’s name have you done to yourself, my dearest sweetheart, so old and noble. How can you fall like this in the streets?”

  He placed the head of the stiff horse against his face, crying. Consumed in absolute grief and trying to soothe the stricken mare, he took little notice of the dozens of young and old men and women who ran to grab the barrels of beer. They rolled the barrels with their hands and knees down the inclined street. Others placed their mouths against the barrels as beer spurted into their desperate faces.

  “They are so pathetic, these Berliners; they have lost all their dignity,” the Prince said as he surveyed the chaos. “I heard things like this also go on in America now with your Depression.”

  “I didn’t see this in Columbus. There were bread lines and lots of beggars, but nothing like this.”

  “We better go into the café,” the Prince said quietly.

  “No, I have to see.”

  “It is going to become ugly.”

  “I have to see,” Bill repeated, shaking his head.

  “Very well, then. I will wait for you inside.”

  By the time the police arrived, the driver of the wagon was screaming from frustration, and all the beer barrels were gone. The policeman walked toward the horse on the ground.

  “His leg is broken. Do you want to shoot him?” the police sergeant asked the frantic driver, not unkindly.

  “No, I can’t kill Hilda. Let me leave, please,” the old man begged.

  The policeman waited for the old man to disappear down the street, and then he pulled a revolver from his holster. He pointed at the mare’s head and shot the quivering horse. The decorative feathers were now covered with blood. The horse lay motionless on the street.

  Minutes later, after the police were gone, the street smelled of death. Everything was still, frozen in time, a lantern slide. Like silhouettes on a movie screen, people began to appear from nowhere – small children, old men, young, gaunt, shabby people, looking like corpses. Some carried large knives, and others cleavers or hatchets. They all carried something as they circled, like stalking animals, the dead horse. Suddenly, as if someone had given a signal, they all broke out in a run, making directly for the mare. Bill could only see stooped bodies and the frantic sounds of cutting and scraping, and sucking. Then one young boy broke free from the crowd. He ran with a slice of raw meat, still warm, in his hands, his mouth and face covered with blood. Others like the boy also ran away – mad wolves with their bloody bounty. When the crowd finally dispersed, there was only a pile of feathers and the butchered, pitiful remnants of a once-strong steed.

  Bill felt sick to his stomach. He was about to fall when the Prince returned to his side and placed his arms around the American.

  “Hunger is a terrible thing,” he whispered, his fingers softly grazing Bill’s cheek. “I am sorry you saw this. These were once proud people.”

  “How did you know it would happen?” Bill asked weakly.

  “I saw it once befor
e. Come, let’s go into the café. Just a few feet away a great culture still prevails, an oasis where some sort of sanity still lives.” The café was poorly lit, filled with stale smoke and the smell of sausage, wine, and cheese. Hordes of interesting-looking people were sitting at decrepit tables. The café looked old, worn out, seedy, devoid of charm.

  “Its decay,” the Prince said, “gives it a certain gemütlichkeit. Unfortunately, that is a word not possible to translate into English. How should I say it to you? It means warmth, friendliness. It is like a big warm cushion to sit on while you sip on good brandy and smoke a Havana. So don’t be fooled by its appearance. All the greatest minds in the world have come through this café at one time or another.

  “I don’t think I am up to this,” Bill said haltingly. “I can’t get that horrible picture out of my head. That poor horse, devoured by people who have also become animals.”

  “Very well, then, try hard my good fellow,” the Prince said gently, his arms still around Bill’s waist.

  Bill’s eyes focused toward the bar where three beautiful women were standing in long black gowns, smoking and laughing with each other. Occasionally, they hopped to the different tables, exchanging greetings. They looked at Bill, giving him a seductive look as they blew small smoke rings in his direction.

  “Now, then, I knew it would not take long for you to erase that heinous scene of the outside world. It’s different here.”

  Bill could not restrain a smile as his eyes and brain and sense adjusted to the Café Romanisches. His friend was right. He did feel better.

  “Here in this marvelous place sit lawyers, doctors, actors, artists, politicians, writers, conductors, musicians, dancers, and publishers – bohemians of every sort, size, color and sexual persuasion. Here, on the right, is the smaller room, called the ‘swimming pool,’ where the artists of the day gather. Look over, my friend, there you see Bertolt Brecht and George Grosz, the caricaturist, sitting in the corner. The large room which looks like a beer hall, called the ‘non-swimming pool,’ is for the American literary people. You can see Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis and his wife, Dorothy Thompson.”