Twilight in Danzig

by Siegfried Kra

  “You show me Paris through your eyes and you think I could stay here without you?”

  “Things are going to change soon,” the Prince said, his eyes sad. “I wanted to see this all now.”

  “Then why don’t we stay in Paris?” Bill said. “I could enroll in the Beaux Arts right here and we would get a cheap apartment on the Rue Jacob, near the school.”

  “Because, because, because, my lovely Bill, in spite of everything, I cannot run like a rat and abandon the sinking ship. Danzig is my home. I have responsibilities to my estate; there are still many people who depend on me. And yet I think it would be best if you return to America or stay in Paris. It is not safe for you in Danzig.”

  “I am not leaving. I am as safe as any American citizen.”

  The Prince did not want say that it was he, not Bill, who was in great danger. The letter from Hess had been prophetic. A prison camp, which people were calling a concentration camp, had been built in Mauthausen, and thousands of people were being taken off the streets of Berlin, from cafés, even from homes: homosexuals, transvestites, prostitutes, cocaine addicts, and most recently, some Jews and gypsies.

  It was the beginning of the purification of the German race, the purging of the unclean elements that had stained and corrupted the Aryans.

  A shade was beginning to drop over everything.

  Chapter Eleven

  SOPOT BY THE SEA, 1935, was as exquisite as ever, a jewel of a resort. This charming village was an international playground for the elite. White silky beaches stretched on for miles, lined by the famous boardwalk. They came to Sopot to swim, to sunbathe, to listen to the concerts, and to gamble at the casino, which was almost as famous as the one at Monte Carlo. This little village was nestled between Poland and Germany, and even the North Sea, which all but surrounded it, usually cruel and harsh, was as calm as a lake this June. Nevertheless, it was too early in the season for the gaiety of Sopot to have begun in earnest. Everywhere there was the smell of fresh paint and the sound of hammering. Sopot now belonged to the carpenters, the painters, the waiters shining the stemware, and the croupiers making ready for the arrival of the elite crowd.

  Although it was still spring, Lucia decided to come to Sopot a few weeks early. With Jonas’s illness last year, they had entirely missed the season. Now that he was better, the sea air and the warm sun could only have a salutary effect.

  It had been a long, tough year for them all.

  It took almost one full year for Jonas’ temperature to subside and for him to begin to feel stronger again. The pains in his arms and legs left him tired and irritable. And so Jonas had remained home most of the time, away from his playmates and his outings with his governess, as Dr. Sauerbrucher ordered. Lucia knew this change would do her son good.

  The Krugers owned a sprawling twelve-room villa, high atop the dunes, facing the ocean, only a few minutes from the largest boardwalk in Europe. Their house was surrounded by ten-foot hedges, immaculately manicured, and facing the sea was a lush garden and a rolling lawn dotted with colorful chairs and umbrellas. This was their home for the summer months every year, until the September chill announced unmistakably that it was time to leave. It was a forty-five-minute drive by car back to their home in Langfuhr.

  When they first arrived, Lucia had warned Jonas, “We are going to have many guests this summer,” thinking of her family in Warsaw. Her sisters and their children, as well as her parents, would spend a week in July with them. The Prince and Bill would follow in August, and Uncle Herman, and very likely one of his women, would come too. “So you will have to share your room with Fräulein Marlow, but it is, after all, the best room in the house.” Indeed it was. From it one could see the beach, the sea, the boats, the boardwalk – everything!

  Fräulein Marlow, standing next to Jonas, wearing linen trousers and an open-collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up past the elbow, said, “Well, Jonas, you will just have to put up with me. Don’t worry, Frau Kruger. We will manage just fine. Jonas, you can have the bed by the bay window.”

  Jonas looked down at his sneakers, his face hot crimson, thinking that this summer, his twelth, would turn out to be the best one of all. He loved it here. The house had once belonged to a sea captain, and his upstairs bedroom had large bay windows with a small widow’s walk outside. The original captain’s telescope was still in place, mounted on a brass stand, still pointing out to the sea.

  For the first three days, Jonas stayed close to the house, taking a morning walk with his mother on the beach, Astor running happily around them. The governess helped Lucia put the house back in order, making it spotless for the many visitors to come.

  In the evenings, Jonas played checkers with his mother and turned in early. He was usually in bed by 9:00 p.m. and asleep by the time Fräulein Marlow came to bed. Sometimes he feigned sleep and listened to the rustling of her clothing as she undressed. Through his half-closed eyes he saw her beautiful half-naked body as she climbed into her own bed. In the morning he waited for the governess to leave the bedroom, because he always awoke with a stiff erection, which embarrassed him; often, his sheets were soaking wet and sticky.

  By the middle of the second week, Jonas was running on the beach with abandon. His governess watched him from the top bay window. In his white shorts and red shirt she could follow the boy for miles, and she watched as he and Astor explored the long white beach, always running by the edge of the water, kicking it, splashing it, delighted by its coolness. She marveled at how, even with a year-long convalescence at home, nature had asserted itself. Jonas’ body was lean and lanky now. The sea air would tone it. Like his father, Jonas had a natural athleticism. The young boy was disappearing before her eyes. Jonas was growing up and perhaps away from her. She wondered now if she was losing him.

  That afternoon Fräulein Marlow sat beside Jonas as he read on the porch. For Jonas, during his convalescence, reading became one of his greatest joys. Each new book introduced him to another magical world in which he lived vicariously. When he read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for the first time, Jonas could identify with Tom’s adventurous spirit. He volunteered to paint the picket fence around the Sopot house just as Tom did in the book. He imagined himself part of the round table in King Arthur’s Court with Fräulein Marlow as his Guinevere. When he walked on the beach, he was Robinson Crusoe, isolated, alone, waiting to be rescued.

  “Jonas, you read so quickly,, I can’t get books fast enough for you,” Lucia frequently exclaimed to him. He carried one with him at all times, and he used every free moment to read.

  He loved reading Jack London’s sea stories. He liked to read Conrad, too, even though he was more difficult. The family library in Langfuhr was a treasure trove, but thanks to Uncle Herman, who still brought the new releases with him when he visited, Jonas was introduced to new authors, too. He loved especially James Hilton’s Good-bye Mr. Chips, which had just been translated into German.

  “Jonas, you like to read so much,” Uncle Herman had told him many months earlier as he presented his nephew with a handsomely wrapped package, “I want you to keep a diary, your own secret diary. Perhaps someday you will become a writer and you will have oh, so many things to write about.”

  It was a beautiful leather-bound diary with a little lock and key, and Jonas kept it under his pillow. Each night before he went to sleep he wrote, at first just a few words about his parents or his day, and then a whole page of everything he observed around him.

  “I wish my father would spend more time with me, and mother loves me very much, but she likes to have a good time and is always laughing. I feel well now, but I think a lot of Dr. Sauerbrucher, the hospital, and the silly man with the mustache.” He added, “I have a governess. Her name is Fräulein Marlow. She is like no one else. She tells me things and shows me things only grown-ups know, but never talk about.” Jonas also became more contemplative and he had profound thoughts of life in general, his life.

  Lucia also realized that summer that Jo
nas was hardly an ordinary boy. He had a marvelous memory and an inquisitive spirit. His zeal for reading was a side she adored.

  She remembered Dr. Sauerbrucher telling her, “Your son is very bright. All he needs is to have some pool of knowledge open to him and he will suck it up like a fish out of water, gasping for air.”

  As the weeks passed, Jonas no longer waited for the governess to leave the room in the morning. He now awoke at sunrise, ran to the bathroom to relieve himself, laughing at the death of his erection, then was immediately out on the beach with Astor, a book under his arm. The governess, still sleepy-eyed, watched the young boy march to the bathroom, his pajama bottoms made taut by a ramrod.

  On one of those bright beautiful mornings, he went to his favorite spot, not too far from the house, where the rocks jutted into the sea. There he sat on the edge, first watching the waves hit the shore, then reading by the light of the newly risen sun.

  He felt alone and wished there were some boys his age to talk to or that his cousins from Warsaw would come visit soon and explore some of the caves on the far side of the beach with him. He made several resolutions as he sat on the huge smooth white rock facing the sea. He said out loud, talking to the waves as they struck the shore, he would become a doctor and help sick people as Dr. Sauerbrucher helped him and write books and stories that would also make people happy.

  He thought of Ala, now living in America, and their promise to each other to marry some day.

  In the distance he saw a small figure walking by himself. At first he thought his eyes were tricking him because the boy looked like his old friend, Gerhardt, whom he hadn’t seen since that terrible accident so long ago. Then he thought that it must be a ghost, because Gerhardt had moved far away. The apparition of the boy passed by the jetty, and Jonas skillfully tip-toed over the rocks onto the beach like an escaping dainty sea-creature, and then started to run after the boy.

  Jonas had never stopped thinking about Gerhardt, and believed that because of Gerhardt God had punished Jonas and made him sick. He was convinced, in fact, that he had driven Gerhardt into the streets and caused a car to hit him. He still dreamed of him at night.

  “Gerhardt, Gerhardt!” he called against the wind, and ran as hard as he could.

  The boy turned when he heard his name called. There was a long ragged scar across his face, and another that traveled zigzag from his thigh to his toes, which looked like a road map.

  “Jonas, I heard you were at the beach. How wonderful!”

  “You are back! I thought I’d never see you again. Why didn’t you tell me you were here? Gerhardt, this is wonderful!”

  Gerhardt shrugged, kicking at the sand with his left foot. “I was in the hospital a long time, you know. Then we moved away.” The strong Baltic Sea sun made Gerhardt wince and he raised his hand on his forehead to better look at Jonas.

  The gulls encircled them as the waves burst against the rocks spraying them.

  “Me, too. I was also in the hospital,” Jonas said.

  “I know. I saw your picture in the newspaper.”

  “Oh, that.” Jonas paused. “Can we see each other tomorrow? I have a great bedroom with a real telescope where a captain once lived, and my father has a schooner, a big one. Oh, I am so happy you are back! I didn’t mean to chase you into the street. I am sorry you were hit by a car. I was so miserable that for a long time I could not sleep from thinking of you.” His words tumbled over each other, and he continued, “We can have a terrific time here in Sopot. Come and meet me in the morning, tomorrow, by these rocks, at seven, and we can spend the whole day together. You can sleep at my house. I heard there are some secret caves on the beach. I think I know where they are, and then we can go to the boat. Please come. I’ve missed you.” His enthusiasm and genuine happiness over this reunion built with each word he spoke.

  “All right, that would be fun. I will see you in the morning, Jonas. I am not angry at you. I don’t remember much about what happened, anyway. The whole thing was probably stupid. Anyway, it’s over. So there!”

  Jonas wanted desperately to entice his old friend to see him again. He seemed the same inside, although the scars that raked his friend’s body made Jonas quiver. He watched with sadness mixed with joy as Gerhardt walked down the beach with a limp. Excited, stumbling down the rocks, his feet pushing through the warm sand, Jonas ran into the house to tell Lucia the good news. She did not appear to share any of his enthusiasm. She was preoccupied by some terrible rumors swirling about the elite summer community, like the high winds on the beach.

  Brand and Lucia became pariahs to the few remaining Jewish families, who deliberately avoided them. When Lucia went shopping or to lunch in town, she was no longer greeted with affection and kisses. Instead, her former women friends stiffened up and barely greeted her.

  Was it her fault that Hitler had greeted them? They were just standing in the hotel lobby. They were victims of circumstances beyond their control. And why couldn’t they understand that they had done what any parent would do by bringing their sick child to Berlin for treatment? Who among them would have done anything differently? Now, even Jonas would be punished. Where were the playmates? The gods played a dirty trick on them.

  These were the thoughts that raced through Lucia’s head as Jonas stood smiling in front of her. In addition, many of her close friends had left for other countries. Some went to Poland, others to Argentina, Venezuela, even China, as they could not get visas to America. The Anspachs did get to New York, and with their money the Krugers could go to New York also. Brand had a cousin living in Baltimore, and he could send some money ahead.

  They had a few friends left, but even at home in Danzig, none would allow their children to associate with Jonas.

  And yet they simply could not commit themselves. It was not that they lacked the courage, though some might see it as such. They had obligations, and ties of love that bound them willingly as much as necessarily. Chiefly, Lucia’s parents in Warsaw were old and retired, and they had no desire to change their lives so late in life.

  “What am I going to do in America?” her father said whenever the subject arose when she visited. “Here I have a lot of money, a good life with servants. There, your mother would have to learn to cook. They don’t have servants in America. They don’t have servants in America unless you are very rich. And then to learn a new language, ach.”

  “I am too old for all that,” he told Lucia.

  Poland was safe for now, and they had a beautiful home there. Why tempt fate?

  Lucia was about to have her morning bath when Jonas ran into the house. He stayed just long enough to tell her his news about finding Gerhardt and then was outside once more on the beach with Astor. She closed the bathroom door, undressed completely, and sat on the edge of the bathtub watching the water. Her morning routine was to fill the tub with hot water, then add to milk and gardenia gel and to listen to her small shortwave Blaupunkt radio that Brand had bought for her in Berlin. She was able to get Radio Warsaw and listen to Richard Tauber singing German love songs. Her body felt languid as the warm milk and water covered her. Above the bathtub was a Victorian round mirror that Brand had installed for her. At the age of thirty-four, she thought her body was as youthful as when she was twenty. Giving birth to Jonas had left her with barely a stretch mark. Her breasts were still taut and her belly flat. Her mother had told her to soak in milk to keep her skin soft and white and to always wear a hat because the sun will make a woman old fast.

  Brand still made love to her skillfully, but of course the passion was different. She still carried the guilt of having yearned for Bill and for the clumsiness of her failed seduction. How pathetic she must have appeared. But she also realized that it must have been an act of God that Bill turned out to like boys better than girls. What a risk she had taken. All this time later, she wondered why she had been attracted to him anyway. Was it because he was so young? American? A trophy in her tight little community of bored wives? Or had she only b
een trying to catch Brand’s attention? As some of her friends told her, Bill was a bed-warmer.

  “Just what is a bed-warmer?” Lucia had asked her friend Lotte.

  “It is someone you meet in the afternoon that makes all your insides flow and you are ready for the night. Men often have bed-warmers,” she told Lucia. “They catch fire.” She knew Brand had a few of those. No matter how many baths Brand took, or how much cologne he doused his body with, Lucia always knew when he had been with another woman. And although she never had caught him with the governess, Lucia knew. That one fact rankled her deeply.

  “Why do you stand for it then?” Lotte asked her. “You are beautiful, sexy, and so young, you can get dozens of men. Leave the pig, divorce him, run back to Warsaw and take Jonas with you.”

  “Why, why? I ask myself a thousand times. And the answer is I love him and I know he loves me. And I know he will tire of her and always be mine.”

  She moved her lips in the bathtub as she thought of her last conversation with Lotte. Lucia had told her friend she thought, in fact, Brand was no longer seeing the governess. He had neither the appetite nor the energy. He was tired these days.

  Fräulein Marlow knocked on the bathroom door, which startled her for a moment.

  “I have some fresh towels for you; the chambermaid did not change them yet, Frau Kruger. Should I drop them in?”

  “Please do, Fräulein. Come in please.”

  Fräulein Marlow came into the bathroom with two fresh towels under her arm. She gathered up the dirty ones as Lucia rose up from the bathtub, her body covered with droplets of water mixed with milk. Fräulein Marlow was taken aback for a moment by her employer’s graceful, sculptured body, her youthful breasts and swollen hard pink nipples. This was the first time she had seen the mistress of the house naked. She handed Lucia a towel, and Lucia bent down to study her large painted toenail. As she rose up slowly she caught Fräulein’s eyes staring at her. Fräulein blushed and felt a surge of warmth between her legs. Slowly, she backed out of the bathroom, stunned and confused.