Twilight in Danzig

by Siegfried Kra

  “I read Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel on the crossing over here!” Bill exclaimed, clearly awestruck to be in the man’s company.

  “Ah, the Prince comes to Berlin with his American protégée,” greeted a neat-looking man in a dark suit with a red tie, a white handkerchief in his hand.

  “This is Berlin’s most notorious gossip columnist,” the Prince nodded. “Meet ‘Rumpelstilzchen,’ as he is called. But we know his real name is Adolph Stein. He is part of the regular crowd, and they don’t like the casual drop-ins, nicht wahr?”

  “Quite, but you are an exception.”

  “My young friend is seeking interesting conversation,” the Prince gestured around the room. “Whom shall we have him meet?”

  There were girls standing at the bar, gesturing to Bill, others placing their hand on their breasts, and licking their lips.

  “Any interest?” the Prince asked and then threw his head back and laughed.

  Bill felt uneasy and was annoyed by the Prince’s tone. “No, it’s all right,” He said hesitatingly, not sure what his friend meant.

  “A wise decision, Sir,” nodded Rumpelstilzchen, “because ‘things are seldom what they seem; ‘skimmed milk masquerades as cream,’ as wrote your English geniuses, Gilbert and Sullivan. These women are our impersonators.”

  “Men,” the Prince nodded, laughing again and enjoying Bill’s naiveté.

  “They are in the theater.” They sat at one of the empty tables, and the Prince ordered something Bill could not understand. The waiter brought two large glasses and cups of coffee. Inside each of the glasses were soft-boiled eggs.

  “The specialty of the house,” the Prince explained. “Do you see the man with the mysterious eyes and mustache? That is the writer Stefan Zweig, and in the corner is Erich Remarque. His book came out a few years ago, and it is still raising many eyebrows. Bitterly anti-war, you know? I believe it’s English title is All Quiet on the Western Front.”

  “What do I do with the soft-boiled eggs?” Bill asked.

  “You gently divide each with your spoon, and mash the yolk and the white.” His companion demonstrated.

  On the periphery of the large room were dozens of telephone booths occupied by reporters, their ID tags around their necks and many of them speaking English. The room had a busy, almost carnival atmosphere. They were gathering information about the turbulent, tempestuously changing, political picture of Berlin, and then contacting their home offices.

  “I am going to leave you here for a while,” the Prince said. “I have to take care of some business matters, much to my disgust. Stay for a while, if you wish, and then take a walk. We will meet at the Zoo Station and take the midnight train back to Danzig. Don’t let one of the sexy ‘girls’ get hold of you. We will meet, then, at 6:00 p.m., yes?”

  The Prince had planned this in advance, and Bill was prepared for his swift departure.

  “I regret to leave you like this, but I am late for that goddamn meeting as it is.”

  Not long after the Prince departed, an accordion player stood in the center of the large room and started to play a sad lieder with lyrics by Heine. A tall woman appeared in a black top hat and tuxedo. Bill had seen pictures of Marlene Dietrich and felt certain it was she. She sang a song in accented English that made Bill melancholy. Everyone had become lugubrious.

  “Do you want to buy an illusion? I have some to make you laugh and some to make you cry. One penny.”

  Bill had many illusions in his young life, and plenty of confusions, too. The Prince had enriched his life beyond his wildest dreams. He had moved into the Prince’s mansion, where he had his own room and dressing room. And although for appearances sake Bill had kept his flat, they were together every night.

  And then there was Lucia, a lonely and lovely coquette, so marvelously happy and bright, whom he had disappointed. When he was a teenager he used to fantasize about seeing naked women and making love to them. He had the chance that night when she tried to seduce him in her private salon, but he just couldn’t. Now she was another bead in his short pathetic string of failed conquests. But it had woken him up.

  “Do you like our Marlene?” a young voice interrupted. He was startled by her voice. She was an American woman, not much older than he, plain-looking and preppy, the type Bill used to see at college football games on Saturday afternoons.

  “My name is Saunders. They call me Dee. I work as a ‘gopher’ for the Tribune. Hang around here and you’ll find more action than outside. Those fucking Krauts are serious business. Are you an artist or a lover?”

  “Both.” Bill laughed. “Where are you from?”

  “Boston,” she said. “Beacon Hill, and the rest is bull.”

  “And you?”

  “Ohio, Columbus.”

  “Is that in the United States?” she smirked. When she smiled she did not look so plain, he thought. Her face took on a warmth that made her look almost attractive.

  “You seemed to be beguiled by our Marlene. But, she is a he, and don’t you know, I swear he could double for the real thing. May I sit down? Don’t look shocked. This is Berlin. An open city. Did you try cocaine yet?”

  “No,” he lied. Yes, the Prince had introduced him to the pleasures of that powerful powder too. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Just order a hamburger for me, with lots of French fries.”

  “Do they have that here?”

  “Are you kidding? I would give all my passion to anyone for a hamburger. That is some ring you are wearing,” she said with admiration, and Bill was glad he had slipped it back on his finger after that night at Lucia’s. He had done it with a calculated fatefulness. It was a signal. If the Prince noticed, what would be would be. He was willing to see where it led.

  “Are you in love? Were you in love? Do you want to be in love?”

  “All of the above,” Bill responded with a sickly laugh.

  “This is the sexy spot in town, for sensitive souls, and you have such sensitive eyes. You are a writer, of course?”

  “No, I am sort of an architectural student.”

  “Well, mystery boy, I have to run. I heard a hot scoop: The Nazis have forbidden the playing of Jewish composers at the Berlin State Opera, but they will allow Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer to conduct. Both are Jews. You aren’t Jewish by any chance, are you? Because if you are, keep it to yourself.” She lowered her voice. “I am Jewish. No one knows that. See you again,” she said, returning to her animated self. “I am here every day. Let’s have coffee.”

  “That would be nice.” She left like a windstorm before Bill had a chance to tell her he was going back to Danzig.

  He smoked one more cigarette and looked at his watch. He still had more hours ahead of him before he was to meet the Prince. “Marlene” kept singing, and he became sadder when he/she sang “Falling in Love Again,” huskily.

  It was in Danzig, in Europe, far from Columbus, Ohio, that he found his real self, unashamed, free. Meeting Lucia was important, and fortuitous, because his real sexuality was tested. It was not guilty feelings or fear that had prevented him from “cutting the mustard,” as one of his high school friends called it; he was just not meant to be with women.

  And fortunately Lucia, if disturbed, failed to show it. She adored the Prince and was genuinely happy he had found someone to love him. The incident in her private study, designed to spark a harmless affair that never happened, an afternoon delight, like those of which many of her women friends boasted, was in her mind forgotten.

  The two remained good friends, however, sharing their secrets together. Bill realized that she was using him to make Brand jealous. She confided in Bill that she suspected Brand, like so many of the men in his society, had a mistress. “The best way for a woman to keep a man is to make him realize there are other men out there who long for her.”

  And what about himself? Sitting in the Café Romanisches, somehow enjoying the bittersweet languor of it all, he tried to rationalize his perversion, this be
autiful unexpected love that had found him at a ripe moment. He was young and in Europe, after all. He knew the stories of Rimbaud and Mann, and Verlaine and Wilde. But he wasn’t like them. This wonderful freedom, this uncorked self, this “new” Bill, this “real” Bill…would the genie ever return to the bottle? Yes, of course it would. This mad intoxication would end eventually, and he would return home. He was an American, after all, a midcwest boy, and in his head, if not his heart, a heterosexual. Wasn’t he?

  It was late afternoon when Harrington walked down the prowling boulevards towards the Zoo Station, its name derived from its proximity to the famous Berlin Zoo. In some ways Main Street in Columbus was not that different from many of the streets he passed. Bakeries, pharmacies, shoe shops, small lingerie shops – he stopped at each one, studying the styles used in displays. The confectionery stores were wonderful. Varieties of chocolates and marzipans, formed into shapes of people, animals, houses and small mountains, were more beautifully displayed than he had ever seen. The architecture of the city was beautiful too. The museums and monuments, the wide boulevards and the lovely Tiergarten, had captivated him. He had been right to come here.

  But now the young American came across a line of shops with white paint splashed on the windows, and he recognized the word Juden with the Star of David painted underneath. Posters crying out that “German children are starving!” were pasted on the doors. Other signs read, “Germans – defend yourself against Jewish atrocities.” The only other anti-Semitic signs he had ever seen were those displayed on the classy inns in Columbus: “Christians only. No Jews are welcomed.”

  Somehow, here, the white paint made it all look so much more perfidious and dangerous. Germany, after all, was not Ohio. The air here was charged with explosives. The fuse seemed to grow shorter and shorter.

  He noticed an elderly man walking ahead of him, a small man with a full beard and skullcap, carrying several heavy and worn books. He had never met any Jews in Ohio. Now, for the first time, Bill had the Krugers and their friends. They bore no resemblance whatsoever to the pictures he had seen all his life. The man in front of him must be a Jew. He quickened his pace to get a good look. Perhaps that is how Jews look in Germany: bearded, wearing skullcaps and long black coats.

  Coming from across the street at that same moment were four teenage boys dressed in Brownshirts and green pants. He remembered the scurrilous boys who had come into the Café des Artistes. They blocked the bearded man’s path. Bill stopped, listened, and watched the scene unfold.

  The bearded man tried to continue on. One of the boys pulled off the old man’s glasses and smashed them with his foot. Another one pulled the skullcap from his head and tossed it in the air while the others laughed like hyenas.

  “Please let me go. I am late. You can have the cap and anything else I have.”

  “He sounds afraid,” they guffawed.

  “You can have the cap, you filthy Jew. Beg for it. Get on your knees.”

  One of the boys grabbed the man by the neck and pushed him to the ground. “Get on your knees and cross yourself, pig.”

  Bill watched the pathetic scene with pity for the old man. Surely, they were only going to molest him and intimidate him, nothing more.

  “He won’t cross himself,” one of the other boys yelled and took a leather baton he was carrying in his belt and struck the helpless man across the face.

  The American was no longer able to restrain his anger, as he saw blood running down the elderly man’s face. He ran up to the boys, insisting, “Leave him alone, you bastards!”

  Bill was much taller than any of the boys, and with one swift jab he punched one of them in the face. They backed off as they saw blood appear on the stunned face of their comrade. As Bill helped the man up on his feet, he felt his body pummeled with fists. He was not able to intercept a swinging leather club that struck his head. The excruciating pain he felt unleashed all his rage. Only one other time had he felt such anger, and that was while on the wrestling team in college. It was just after Jean, that college girl he liked, had broken up with him and his nerves and self-esteem were already frayed. The break-up smarted for, although she had hadn’t said as much, they both knew why she had dumped him. He heard she was already seeing a player on the football team while, if things weren’t bad enough, his parents could not understand why he wasn’t dating. Then one of his teammates had kiddingly called him a “fairy” during practice. Suddenly something Bill had never felt took hold of him, a raw seizing feeling erupting from a deep channel inside him. The coach had become alarmed when he saw that Bill would not release the body hold of his accuser.

  “Take back what you said! I mean it!” Bill yelled. The boy kept silent and Bill had tightened his grip.

  Finally, the boy sputtered, “I give up. Let go, Bill.” But Bill kept squeezing the boy’s chest until there was barely any breath left and his ribs were about to snap. Bill’s mind had traveled to another zone of reality.

  He was deaf to the pleas and cries of the boy and the coach. Two other wrestlers and the coach struggled to pull him off. After that episode he quit the wrestling team, fearful of his own strength and the madness that overtook him.

  Now Bill felt the same uncontrollable anger. He grabbed one of the Brownshirts by the neck and squeezed it in a wrestler’s hold. “Run!” he yelled to the wounded man. But the old man just stood there. The other boys, like Lilliputians, pulled at Bill’s legs and arms as he brutally smashed his strong fist with the Prince’s large ring into any face that was before him. But it was to no avail. The boys piled on him, kicking and beating him with their clubs, which only angered him more. Bill flung his wrists at them like a wild man. Across the street the police watched, making not even a weak gesture to interrupt the struggle, until the police saw that the boys were being brutally mauled. They finally stepped in and broke up the fight. Before the beat-up hooligans ran off, they pulled the old Jew to the ground, stomped on his head and kicked him in the ribs as Bill lay panting on the ground. An ambulance finally arrived, picking up the old man, who was already dead from the beating.

  “Do you want to go to the hospital? You are bleeding,” the paramedic asked.

  “Are you kidding? Just let me out of this fucking country. Take me to Zoo Station, and give me a towel to clean myself.”

  Across town, while his paramour seethed, Prince Brandenberg checked his watch and waited for this interminable meeting to finish. The Prince’s wealth came from ancestral property holdings, and the family owned a grain and lumber company. After the world war, the Hanseatic company was decontrolled, but Brandenberg still sat on the board and received a generous yearly stipend of fifty thousand guldens, some forty thousand dollars a year.

  It was a sum ample enough to allow him to live lavishly. He had also befriended his neighbors, the Kruger family, and through Uncle Herman he profited greatly, following their good advice to buy dollars when the gulden was becoming worthless. In Berlin, meanwhile, people were hoarding barrels of worthless currency to buy a loaf of bread. The government simply kept printing more and more paper money, while all this time the Prince was flush with gold and dollars.

  The parent company had re-established itself in Berlin, and what had brought the Prince to Berlin this day was to attend their monthly board meeting. The board members, mostly Danzigers, some from the new and increasingly powerful Nazi Party, were meeting privately before the Prince had arrived. They wanted Danzig reunited with the Fatherland since, they argued, it was only a matter of time now that Hitler would become chancellor of Germany. Besides, they had the blessing of their American business associates.

  “Prince Brandenburg is the most undesirable member of our board,” Wilhelm Brenner, the chairman said. “He is one of the major stockholders, however, and there is no way we can legally wrest away his interest. At least his association with the Jew coal dealer can help us for the time being. But he has to be convinced that his future lies with the new Germany.”

  “Or we coul
d arrange to discredit him, get him arrested, if we can catch him in one of his flirtations. I gather he now has a young American boy living with him,” said another of the members, his lips curling in distaste.

  “You are insane,” interrupted a third. “It won’t happen. Hess is an old school friend and whatever else. He will protect him.”

  “True; so we have to tread very lightly. Luckily, he has no interest in fiduciary matters. The only reason he comes to these meetings is to pick up his check.”

  And so, when the Prince arrived, all the board members rose and greeted him warmly. A few matters were discussed, in particular the Baltic Kohlen deal with the Luirgi company, which was under the direction of Brand’s friend, Schiller.

  “Prince, you are good friends with Brand Kruger. Propose to him to use his barges to ship our lumber. Tell him this will be the Hanseatic League of 1934, a Baltic merger. Tell him he will be the chairman of the largest consortium since the original league was formed in 1430, and it will be headed by a Jewish merchant, no less.”

  The meeting was interrupted by one of the clerks who handed a telephone to the chairman. “A matter of great urgency, sir.”

  The room became silent as the chairman listened, a frown on his face. Then he slowly spoke in an ominous voice, looking at the Prince.

  “That was the chief of police,” he said. “There was a bloody incident on the Kammerstrasse. Four teenagers were badly beaten and an old Jew was stomped to death. Your American friend was involved in the incident. One youth has a broken nose, another is almost blinded, and the third nearly had his neck broken. All the boys are no older than fourteen or fifteen. The parents are demanding the American’s immediate arrest.”

  “That young man is a gentle soul,” the Prince responded vehemently. “He would not hurt anyone. They must have made a mistake.” The Prince was troubled, agitated.

  “Not from what was reported by the police. They saw him brutally attack the teenagers, and they were going to arrest him when he told them he was your guest in Berlin and displayed a ring you gave him. He did not carry a passport to prove he was an American. They want to verify if he is your friend.”