When the Prince rushed out of the meeting, the chairman said, “Gentlemen, we now have an answer to the problem of our Prince.”
Bill was sitting on a bench near Zoo Station facing the Tiergarten. His new outfit was torn, covered with blood. With his swollen right hand he inspected his face and felt his chest for any broken ribs. A passerby could have taken him for just another drunken street person on the bench, hungry, dirty, dissolute, a quotidian scene these days in Berlin. He was in pain and embarrassed that the Prince would see him like this. Bill took his beating as just punishment from Providence. He felt disloyal to his parents, to the Prince, to himself. Never had Bill Harrington ever witnessed such vicious violence. But he was like those ruffians, no better, ready to destroy them any way he could. This city, he thought to himself, is where the devil lives. It makes monsters out of ordinary people. Although it was chilly, his body was still hot, sweating. The violence was still in his soul. Could this happen in America? He thought. Never. Not like this.
For a few minutes the Prince stood at a distance, shaking his head in sorrow as he saw his beautiful young American friend, to whom he was now so deeply attached, once so splendidly naïve, looking ten years older than himself.
“We’d better stay the night at the Europa Hotel, Bill. I am so sorry,” the Prince said, his arm clasping Harrington’s shoulders. “We’ll get you cleaned up and find a change of clothes. But good for you. You tried to help an old innocent man. We have a lot to learn from you. If you had merely stood and watched you would then be as guilty as they. For me, the biggest crime is to be indifferent. The silent onlooker is as guilty as the predator.”
Chapter Seven
LUCIA HAD MADE SOME of the arrangements for their spring pilgrimage to Marienbad. The beautiful and unsullied spot, far removed from the feverish events of Berlin, sits in the soft foothills of Czechoslovakia. Long the restful retreat of European aristocracy, surrounded by sloping hills and long paths through ancient pine forests that wind between the gently running brooks, it was Arcadia, a pristine retreat where one came to be rejuvenated after a hard winter of frolicking. Here they came to have the sulfur waters flow soothingly over exhausted joints, and to drink the elixirs of lime water to flush out kidneys, relieve melancholy, and relax nerves stretched taut.
Regarding the party’s accommodations, the Prince arranged for three suites at the Park Hotel, which was off limits to Jews and “common people.” In spite of the world Depression, all the area hotels were booked years in advance. Everything was normal in Marienbad this May of 1934.
Private trains, fitted with salons, arrived at a local station, met by obsequious servants in bright red uniforms and caps, who then escorted the noble souls to majestic carriages decorated with gold leaf, which effortlessly carried them to their hotels.
Brand and the Prince had loaded the Duesenberg with cases of Dom Perignon, pâte, and Viennese chocolates. Alcohol was not permitted in this sophisticated spa, and the cuisine could be pretty spartan, except for once a week when the famous chef, Mothnam, served his masterpiece of Truite a la Meuniere, laced with brandy mustard sauce, and his renowned Bombe Brazilene for dessert. This spectacular feast made the simple meals in between worthwhile.
Included in the Kruger party were Uncle Herman and his Wagnerian girlfriend, Frieda; Bill Harrington and the Prince; and Carl Anspach, the head of the National Bank of Danzig, with his austere-looking wife, Gretchen. It was going to be ten days of bliss.
They dined together, played cards late into the night, and during the day luxuriated in the sulfur baths, drank freely of the mineral water, had their bodies covered with loathsome mud, and then surrendered to massages vigorously given by supermen and Amazons. Many guests of the Park Hotel looked with disdain at this “different” group. “Money buys honey,” as the wits noted and, after all, these “outsiders” had paid top dollar for their accommodations. It was unseemly to argue with wealth.
By the third day of their austere dining, Lucia had tired of mineral water, munching on carrots and celery, and having her body contorted into a pretzel each day by the never-ending staff of sadistic masseuses. But there was some private time between the schedule of organized health activities, and then she and Brand would walk the carpeted forest paths hand-in-hand like lovers. At night, in their resplendent suite bedecked in red and blue, the walls covered with gold satin, they rediscovered each other. It was fresh and stimulating, exciting being together. She now felt a great burden was lifted from her heart. Her crush on Bill was long over and Brand was never more loving. Life was good and fair.
Her father’s words on the eve of her wedding day rang in her ears. “If you wait long enough, live long enough, things straighten out, and love always prevails if it is real love from the start.”
“We are letting the years run from us,” she said one morning as they took their obligatory walk. “I do know you love me. It’s been a good marriage, all twelve years of it, but it has been so long since just the two of us have been together! Dinner parties, travels, you always away. Sometimes I feel we deliberately set up our lives to keep us apart. Even now. Why didn’t we simply come here alone?” She took his hand and raised it to her lips, kissing it. “Brand, you are as handsome as the day I saw you for the first time from my window. Do you remember?”
“Of course.”
“So proud and strong in your officer’s uniform, parading with your cavalry. Such fire in your eyes as you looked up at the window. Father said, ‘That is Brand Kruger, a distant cousin of yours.’ There and then I knew I wanted to marry you.
‘Let’s invite him for tea,’ I asked father, who was a little reluctant at first, but I knew, young as I was, Father feared I was going to be an old maid. Our city was full of nice Jewish men, but there was no one I fancied. I was determined to hold out for a love match, even if I was going to be the last well-bred girl in Warsaw.”
They sat down on a large rock facing one of the many streams where the last traces of winter were being pushed along.
“How did your father find me?” Brand asked.
“Well, he called one of his old friends from Pilsudski’s cavalry, and he was told that you were camped outside of Warsaw. When a messenger came with the invitation to tea at our house, all of them laughed because they thought it was from one of the prostitutes in town.” Lucia laughed softly. “And there you were, tall and dashing at the door, a box of marzipan in your hands, smelling of lemon.”
“I had been to the Jewish Market, Nalefke,” Brand said, “and with the few groschen I possessed, I purchased marzipan from a sweet girl. I told her I had a date with a rich young lady in town, but that I had just a few groschen. She understood. She was so kind that she filled the box with more than she had to. Then she insisted I take several lemons. She knew all about cavalrymen who always smell of manure. She squeezed the lemons over my uniform, and told me to rub my face and hands with the juice, even to put some lemon peels in my pockets.”
“It certainly did the trick,” Lucia laughed. “You smelled like a blossoming fruit tree. We sat in the living room, not really at all comfortable with each other. Mother served tea and snacks on her favorite Rosenthal china, and . . .”
“I crossed my legs, and my damned boot knocked over the tea tray. What a wonderful way to make an impression!”
“My sweet Brand, I felt so sorry for you. My heart melted. It was that helpless look on your very crimson face that made me fall in love with you immediately. How could I resist? And those lemons,” she teased.
“My men thought I had the best whore in town.”
“Brand!” she exclaimed.
He looked sheepishly at her. “How could I tell them I was only chatting and drinking tea? Think of my image.”
From the distance, Bill saw Lucia and Brand laughing and embracing like young lovers. He smiled and suddenly looked away. They’d all accepted the relationship between the Prince and him so casually as if here was nothing to be ashamed of. In his letters home, he had
written about his noble friend, calling him an excellent guide and a generous mentor. He’d also hinted there was another friendship beginning to root between him and a young female art student. The white lie left him feeling sad, guilty, and very lonely as he tried to straddle two worlds, two cultures with very different rules
When Lucia and Brand came down from the little mountain, they were met by Bill, the Prince, Anspach, Herman, and his Frieda.
“We decided,” Herman said, “after a long drawn-out meeting of the board and by a majority vote, that we as a civilized group can no longer stand all this health food crap and carrot juice. My body is so purified that these goyim will canonize me.”
“Get the champagne, the pâte, the duck, and chicken; we are going on a picnic far from the madding crowd.”
Two young-looking men, wearing leather knickers and carefully cultivated mustaches, one carrying a hunting rifle, were standing close enough to overhear Uncle Herman. Both men were Germans who were staying at the hotel. They recognized the Prince, and exchanged looks when they heard the word goyim, but they said nothing.
With knapsacks filled, Herman informed the concierge they would not be having lunch at the inn and that they were going out into the mountains to a picnic.
They walked for nearly an hour, uphill through the pine forest, Uncle Herman puffing like a mighty steam engine. By lunchtime they found a plateau of grass, and with the very resourceful Prince and Lucia in charge, tablecloths, candelabras, Waterford crystal, and porcelain plates appeared as if from nowhere. It was magical.
By late afternoon the champagne was finished and Lucia was reciting poetry from Verlaine’s Fetes Galantes. The banker’s wife, a tall thin woman with wide black eyebrows and dark finger-waved hair, stood in the center of the circle of this happy crowd strewn over grass like a Monet painting, and she began to whistle, with a masterful talent, as she imitated the bluebird, then the red cardinal, and then went through several choruses of “The White Horse.”
Anspach, ever the banker – even here in the pine forest – wore his white shirt, stiff collar, and tie. He edged over to Brand, who was blissfully stretched out on the bed of grass, his eyes closed. Lucia was swaying to and fro, never happier. Bill was enchanted by it all; thoughts of Ohio floated far from his mind.
“Brand, we have to talk,” Anspach whispered.
“No business today,” Brand said in a sleepy voice.
“This is not business. I am worried, I tell you, worried sick. The National Socialist Party will control Germany as soon as Hindenburg dies. Danzig will be Nazified soon.”
“The world will never allow it, Anspach,” Brand said. “What is going on in Berlin is simply not going to happen here.”
“Brand, you are certainly not stupid, but you are dreaming. Your friend, Max Schiller, the grain company, and our friend, the Prince, want to form a conglomerate. If you sell your share to them you can still get a very handsome price. Brand, millions are waiting for you. Take it and go to America or Switzerland. You will never have to work again. Listen to me. I am your friend. Everybody is running. Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill, and Schnabel are already gone. Bruno Walter is planning to go, even Freud – if he can get out! So many of the intellectuals of Europe. The list is endless.”
“They are all radicals, Reds,” Brand said, now wide awake. “Nothing can make me sell this giant I built,” he continued. “You are crazy. Paranoia, that’s what it is. A world gone mad over a little man it would laugh at in a dance hall. And what if the Germans did own Danzig? How would that affect my life? The Bosch also once owned the Saar Valley, the Ruhr, Silesia – and they will get them all back in due time. Why shouldn’t they? They belong to Germany.”
“Brand, I am going to sell the bank,” Anspach whispered, “and I am leaving in six months. I tell you this in great confidence.”
“Before the election?” Brand asked incredulously.
“Come with me. We will go to America and build an empire. It will be easy in America. They are so busy with their baseball and frankfurters. The Depression has distracted them, and whatever business we want, we would buy cheaply. The time is right. My head knows it. My bones feel it.”
“I am sorry you are leaving,” Brand said. “You have a solid bank here. You belong here. Panic doesn’t suit you.”
“Wisdom, my friend, not panic. Life is more precious than money. And how much is freedom worth? It is over Brand. Are you so blind you can’t see Hell is knocking at our door?”
The banker’s words seemed to shake the leaves, but not Brand. A late afternoon breeze now sent a chill through the happy tipsy group sprawled out like Roman centurions after a fierce battle. Lucia took it as a signal to prepare for the trek back to the hotel. There was a sharpness in the air. Lucia even started shivering.
“Come children, gather ye rosebuds while you may. Time is flying. Let’s go back.”
They all rose from their comfortable positions, and not without difficulty. Each gathered something from the picnic. The Prince gently collected each of the flutes, as if they were delicate rosebuds, and placed each in a cotton container, then into his rucksack.
“Let’s fold our tents and silently steal away,” Lucia said in mock seriousness and hiccoughed loudly, causing everyone to giggle.
“Now we are getting literary,” Bill mused.
“When Lucia starts quoting from memory, you know she has had too much,” Brand laughed. “The whole world becomes her library.”
Like a caravan on a safari, the rollicking group walked in a reasonably straight line, Brand and the banker leading the way down through the narrow paths of the pine forest. They came to the crossroad, staggering to a halt. The banker said, “It is to the left.”
“No, it is to the right,” the Prince said.
Brand had mentioned some landmarks when they first arrived at the open field and stretched out his arm to the right, a cavalry officer clearly in command of himself and his troops.
“When the Captain says to the right, we go right. Orders are orders,” the banker stated.
Suddenly, a terrible scream tore through the forest. Everyone stopped short, immediately sober. No sooner had the echo faded than there followed wild, hysterical laughter, and a shower of rocks began bouncing around them. Lucia felt a sharp pain as one of the rocks hit her face. Brand ran over and saw that there was a small abrasion on her cheek and that it oozed slightly. Lucia wept quietly, “I knew we were having too much fun. How could it last?”
Then, a shot pierced the forest. Another cry, from the Prince this time. “I have been hit,” he announced, almost calmly. He placed his hand on the growing red mushroom on his shoulder, and pulled his white silk ascot from his neck to cover the wound.
“Now I know what it is to be wounded,” he sad, matter-of-factly. “A Prince must also know these things,” he said, wincing at the hurt.
“Everyone flat on the ground! Crawl to the other side of the road,” Brand ordered.
More shots, more hysterical laughter.
“We got the fairy. The goyim got the fairy!” resounded from the woods. “The fairy will fly no more!”
“Follow me, Bill,” Brand said quickly, harshly. Crawling on their hands and knees – infantry style – they got to the other side of the woods. They saw two men there, one standing, the other crouching, a pointed rifle in his arms. When they came within a few yards, Bill ran towards the standing man and tackled him, hard. Brand jumped on the man crouching on the ground, twisting the weapon from his hand as he was about to again fire at the Prince. Brand raised the rifle high, smashing the steel butt plate of the mauser rifle on his head.
“Unfortunately, he is not quite dead,” Brand said to Bill, trying to regain his breath and something of his composure. The other man had twisted away from Bill, running frantically back into the forest.
“I recognized them,” Brand said. “Those bastards are staying at our hotel.”
Chapter Eight
HIS PARENTS
HAD BEEN gone only nine days, but it seemed like weeks, even months. His next-door girlfriend, Ala, was invited for dinner on this late May night. She was eleven years old and her puberty was starting early, like the buds on the roses in the gardens on the terrace. Fräulein Marlow instructed Cook to make large golbsens, meat balls stuffed with onions and parsley, accompanied by mashed potatoes with lots of cream, the way Jonas liked it; and to top it all, a chocolate pudding for dessert. The two children ate in silence, except for the occasional knowing glances they exchanged with one another as they did the food proud. They had been taught by their respective governesses to talk little at meals, and to listen rather than to participate in conversation, even if the result was a tomblike atmosphere. It was considered bad manners to speak with a mouth full of food. Only the poor and ill-mannered allowed a morsel of the meal to spill from their mouths.
“The Jews from the shtetl, farms, and Judenstrasse, the Jew street, use their hands and spit food out all over the table while they talk. But you are not one of those!” Jonas’ governess had said on many occasions.
“Hold the knife in one hand, the fork in the other. Never, but never, use the knife as a spoon. You can cut your tongue. And don’t openly pick your teeth. Cover your mouth with your hand and then do it, if you must. If you have to sneeze, turn your back to the guests at the table and cover your face with the napkin. Picking your nose is disgusting. Eat slowly, enjoy each bite, chew carefully. Don’t gulp the food like Astor. Use your napkin often, and dab, not wipe, your mouth. Never use your sleeve.”
Those were the rules of the house that she strictly enforced. They were for the civilized, the urbane, not for “shtetl slime,” as Fräulein Marlow announced often.
“You can always tell what class a person is by watching how they eat. How you eat tells the world who you are. Understand?”
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