Twilight in Danzig

by Siegfried Kra

  “Thank you Fräulein, that was very thoughtful of you,” Lucia softly called after her. She had performed her moves deliberately, to show Fräulein that her body was beautiful and desirable and that she wasn’t just another naïve housewife. She had seen envy and admiration in Fräulein’s eyes, and she was content.

  The following morning, Jonas was up at the crack of dawn. He was almost breathless with anticipation. He rushed to the beach to wait for Gerhardt by the breakers. He had skipped breakfast, even risking the wrath of Cook, who had prepared warm rolls, jam, fruit, and hot cocoa.

  He waited and waited, hopping back and forth just beyond the waves that chewed the sand. The sun was now high in the sky, blindingly high, but Gerhardt did not appear. Perhaps he was mistaken about where they were to meet. Back and forth Jonas ran on the beach, running from jetty to jetty, but Gerhardt never came. Disappointed and heartbroken, Jonas slowly returned to the house.

  Why didn’t Gerhardt come? I guess he must still be angry at me, he told Lucia. Lucia was having her breakfast on the porch, and was expecting his return.

  “Gerhardt must have forgotten. Do you know where he lives?” Jonas asked his mother. “Maybe something happened to him,” he said with a pitiful voice. She placed her arms around her crestfallen son not knowing what to answer.

  “Jonas, he will show up somewhere. Come and have breakfast with me.”

  Lucia knew the reason why Gerhardt had not appeared. His family, like so many others, had no doubt also forbidden Gerhardt to play with Jonas, whom they had taken to calling “the Hitler boy.” And while Lucia did not know that her son had attended the youth movement at the Toppengasse Hall, Danzig was a small town, and like all small towns, nothing remains a secret for very long. Everyone in the Langfuhr crowd also knew of Brand’s business association with the German firm, Luirgi Company.

  Brand arrived that same day and was running off to the tennis court when Lucia intercepted him. “Please, Brand, not today. Jonas is upset because of Gerhardt. I think today you could give him some of your precious time and forget about tennis.” Her voice was almost strident.

  “Sit down and listen please.” She gave him a detailed account of the meeting with Gerhardt and when she finished, Brand said, “Those lousy bastards!” Lucia quickly retorted, “That is what they must say about us.”

  “You are right, as always. I will take Jonas with me today. This will be a good time to teach him to swim.” Brand felt guilty for not teaching his son to swim during the many summers in Sopot. For a long time, Jonas had been terrified of the water following an incident at the pool back when he was little. Brand and Lucia had wisely decided to back off. And then time passed. As Brand came to Sopot only on the weekends, and much of that was reserved for tennis with the Chief of Police and for business meetings, the truth was that Jonas had simply not learned. But now Brand felt that perhaps there might not be many more summers spent in Sopot. The time had come to spend more time with Lucia and his son. “Call them at the tennis court,” he said, “and tell them I can’t make it.”

  Jonas was proud of his father and loved him very much, so any time they spent together was precious. He knew Brand was a very important and busy man, and a brave person who knew a lot about many things. But he was rarely home long enough to spend any time with Jonas. Once, while Jonas was convalescing after they had returned from Berlin, he showed his son a locked-up gun collection and promised the child he would teach him how to shoot when he became just a bit older. “I am going to teach you how to defend yourself. Every man must learn that.” Brand told stories about when he was a cavalry captain as Jonas sat on the edge of the chair, enthralled as Brand described some of his adventures. “And you will learn how to ride a horse in the fall,” he had promised Jonas.

  So when his father now suggested that he would teach him to swim, Jonas quickly stopped sulking. The boy knew, too, it was well past time he learned. Brand brought out a long fishing pole with him and telephoned the captain of his schooner to meet them by the pier.

  “I thought you said we were going swimming, Papa?” Jonas was surprised they were not heading for the club pool.

  “We are, but we will need the fishing pole.” Jonas looked at his father bewildered.

  The dock located at the long pier was crowded with pleasure boaters and fishermen lounging around, displaying the morning catch. A mild morning breeze blew in from the North Sea, moving the spotty clouds above them, and bringing with it the slight chill in the air so characteristic of the northern port.

  “All right, Jonas. I will put this strap around your body with the line attached and you will get into the water, off this dock. Don’t look so afraid, just jump in the water.” Brand placed a double fishing line around his son’s frame. “Trust me, I won’t let you drown.” The captain of Brand’s schooner stood by, near the shore, his arms folded against his chest as he watched Jonas jump in the water, the fishing line attached to him.

  “It is freezing!” Jonas screeched. Brand stood on the pier, yelling down, “Kick and crawl on the water like a lobster. Keep your head up, don’t swallow the water!”

  Brand pulled harder on the line to keep Jonas above the water. The onlookers were amused that the boy showed no fear and they applauded, shouting, “Bravo, bravo, keep kicking, move your arms out and in,” which gave Jonas even more courage. The captain stood over him as Jonas gracefully moved his body nearer to the pier. And when he felt confident that Jonas could negotiate the water successfully, Brand slyly detached the line as Jonas was swimming. He stayed easily afloat until he realized there was nothing holding him up. Afraid to do otherwise, he continued to do the crawl, and there was more applause. He started to swim out to sea, but then the captain wisely directed him back toward the shore and escorted him out of the water.

  Brand knew the older the beginning swimmer, the more afraid they were. He had seen adults larger, older, and stronger than his fourteen-year-old son, flail and thrash. Now he was so proud of the boy that Brand pulled a towel around Jonas’ shivering body and hugged him. Jonas thought that was wonderful. His father rarely hugged him or kissed him anymore. Jonas could even smell his father’s aftershave lotion, which he loved. He had never felt more secure.

  “Wait ‘til I tell your mother, and your governess. Will they be proud! But remember, you are never to go swimming alone. Not until you become a stronger swimmer. The ocean waters can fool even the most experienced swimmers. Either I or the captain must be with you. Understood?”

  “I really did swim, didn’t I?” Jonas laughed with joy. “Please, let me go in again by myself.”

  “Tomorrow, Jonas, we will go again,” Brand nodded.

  So often his father had made plans with him but something urgent always came about and it did not come to pass. Jonas was tempted to remind his father about all the times he had not kept his word. Uncle Herman always kept his word.

  Perhaps this time it would be different.

  Now he loved his father even more because he cared what could happen to him. The other men standing by congratulated Jonas: “Brand Kruger, when he does something he does it – with no pussy-footing around. That boy has courage.” They returned to the house and Lucia also gave her son a warm hug and kissed him on his cheek. For now the disappointment of not meeting Gerhardt left his mind.

  “My goodness, how quickly he grows,” Lucia said, “But his skin is red as a lobster’s.”

  “He swam like one,” Brand added.

  “We will have to get some soothing lotion on soon or he’ll have a bad night.”

  After supper, Brand and Lucia went to the casino, and Jonas went upstairs to his bedroom to use the telescope. The governess came into the room with a bottle of lotion.

  “Jonas, you know what we have to do now?”

  “Just a few minutes more, please. I want to find the North Star. Father said that if I find the Big Dipper and then the brightest of those stars, I will have found the North Star, the one sailors use for navigation when they a
re lost.” He pointed to the sky. “See? Look, there it is!”

  The governess peered through the telescope. “It does look like the North Star. Smart boy. Now, come,” she added. “Let’s go to work before you are up all night feeling like you are on fire.”

  Jonas took his shirt off and she gently rubbed the scented oil across his shoulders. It smarted just a little at first.

  “Feel good?” she asked softly, enjoying this very much.

  “Yes.” He shivered not sure if it was the cooling balm or his governess’ soft touch he was responding to.

  “Now, let’s get the rest of you,” she said in a voice at once imperious and casual. “Take off those pants and shoes. You have had a bad day not seeing Gerhardt but you did learn how to swim, so it turned out to be a good day.”

  He pulled his pants down around his shoes and stood naked before her. There was a slight breeze in the room; it was as soothing and provocative as her gentle rubbing hands. The governess, dressed in a long skirt and summer blouse said, “I had better take this stuff off because this oil will ruin everything.” She removed her outer garments and to Jonas’ shock, she wore nothing underneath.

  The oil slick on his torso grew slowly, tantalizing until a finger on the hand rubbing his belly barely touched his stiff member. Then another finger. Then the whole hand.

  “Massages are the most relaxing thing just before going to sleep,” she said in a controlled voice, as if lecturing. For a moment she remembered Lucia’s look of triumph the other morning as she rose from her bath. Or was it disdain? No matter. “People have enjoyed them for thousands of years, you know,” the beautiful Fräulein continued, her voice now as soft as a whisper. One cool hand was in the small of his back, pushing him forward. The other, in the shape of a fist, surrounded his penis, and moved rhythmically up and back. Jonas’ knees were buckling. She understood the situation very well.

  Chapter Twelve

  DOWN BY THE WATERFRONT, Brand’s 100-foot schooner was being painted and refurbished under the supervision of Captain Kowalsky. Its luxurious cabins slept six and were outfitted with a full dining room, complete kitchen, and darkly gleaming bar. The schooner belonged to Brand’s Baltic Kohlen Company and was primarily used for fishing and entertaining. Sometimes on weekends, she had been sailed to the Isle of Usedom, but this was now restricted. This was where Captain Walter Dornberger had been assigned to begin construction of a secret base for the building of rockets – Peenemunde. If Brand had known that his coal was being used to help build the V-8 rockets destined to destroy Europe, he would hardly have been so quick to deal with the Luirgi Company. Perhaps Brand was not greedy, as he was often accused, but merely naïve.

  Each morning, Jonas walked with Lucia along the splendid white beach. He gave up looking for Gerhardt and his father did keep his promise to take him swimming the next day and every weekend after. Most weekends were spent on the schooner. Jonas did not feel so lonely or abandoned as he did in the beginning of the summer. And when his Warsaw cousins visited that July, filling his days with picnics, races, and digging for crabs, there was little time left to read.

  The captain of the schooner was the tallest man Jonas had ever met. Were it not for his comforting smile and those twinkling blue eyes, he would have petrified the boy. He had large bushy red eyebrows and a full shock of red hair. When he smiled, as he did often, the captain displayed a line of crooked stained teeth; and his arms were tattooed with weird creatures and exotic serpents with endless tongues. Captain Kowalsky had been commander of Brand’s schooner from the beginning. He had never married but claimed, without fanfare, to have fathered dozens of “little cannibals” throughout the Pacific, every one sporting red bushy eyebrows.

  Jonas and his boy cousins, Samuel, David and even young Benjamin, were given paintbrushes and assigned to different little jobs, which they performed well. There was always a break, a rest period when they and the captain sat in the galley around the thick wood table drinking lemonade, and it was then that he told the boys wonderful adventure stories about his trips to Samoa and Fiji and Africa. Now the books by Joseph Conrad that Jonas had read came alive. The captain described the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin did so much of his work, and the natives of Bali, especially the gorgeous women. Jonas could smell and see the color of the islands, almost touch them. The captain’s descriptions were so vivid that Jonas felt transported to each place he described. He, too, would someday go to sea, he told the captain, and might even write stories like Joseph Conrad did.

  On one afternoon after Lucia’s family had gone home, when the captain was not aboard and only a single member of the crew was, Jonas roamed freely, opening all the drawers and cabinets, looking for precious secrets. Jonas had long before decided that every place had a secret hideaway which waited only to be discovered. One door opened to a large pantry closet crowded with provisions and cylinders of water. Another door, located by the pilot’s room, had a large black lock dangling from it, but the lock wasn’t closed.

  Jonas removed the lock and gently pushed open the door. Inside were dozens of rifles, guns, ammunition, flares, and knives. It was an arsenal. Jonas picked up one of the small handguns, and twirled it in his hand as he had seen Tom Mix do at the Arts Cinema in Danzig. If only he had a gun like this, no one would dare fool with him, not even the toughest of the tough guys. And, he fantasized, one day, when he became a German Youth leader, they would allow him to carry the gun in a holster. Fräulein Marlow would surely approve, but not his mother, father, or Uncle Herman, and certainly not the Rabbi. Jonas could sneak the gun out and it would never be missed.

  All these thoughts danced through his mind as he teased the trigger and looked down the barrel. Suddenly, he heard the loud trampling of feet, and he jumped back, swiftly replacing the gun on the shelf just as Captain Kowalsky burst into the room.

  “Jonas, my God! Those guns are all loaded! Don’t ever, ever touch a gun, because it can go off and blow away your head!” The captain was so icily angry that he scared Jonas to tears.

  “Come, up on the upper deck! Now!” he ordered. He took the small handgun Jonas had held. “I will show you what can happen.” Kowalsky escorted the frightened boy up the narrow stairs to the deck, firmly pushing him in the small of the back.

  “I will teach you how to use a gun if your father agrees; but for now, stand behind the wheelhouse, watch carefully, and learn.”

  The captain barely touched the trigger. The sudden report made Jonas flinch. Once again, the captain fired into the sea, emptying the five remaining chambers so quickly it sounded like a huge explosion.

  “You see, Jonas, how little it takes to fire a revolver! You could have shot yourself in the head.”

  Suddenly, flying the flag of Danzig and the swastika, a German gunboat approached.

  “We are coming aboard, Captain,” came bellowing through the megaphone.

  Jonas moved close to the captain, as two German naval officers in starched whites climbed the ladder and walked smartly toward the pair.

  “Good afternoon, Captain Kowalsky. Why the shooting? A jealous husband, perhaps?”

  “Very funny, Wolfgang,” the captain said to one of the officers. “This is Brand Kruger’s son, Jonas. I was merely demonstrating the dangers of a loaded revolver. I think he learned a lesson.”

  Both officers smiled. They had been teenage boys once and they immediately understood. “Fixing up the boat, Kowalsky?”

  “Well, you know Kruger. He wants to go fish, cruise over to the islands, and have parties, special parties, I think. It is rumored that he is having guests from Berlin this summer, important ones,” Kowalsky lowered his voice, “Perhaps even the most important guest of all.”

  “We have already heard. We will be providing extra surveillance. There are some radicals – freedom-fighters – they call themselves, on the prowl, looking to pirate some ships. So keep a watchful eye. This ship, after all, is a prize. Tell Herr Kruger not to sail out of reach, yes?”

  �
��Come aboard tonight, Wolfgang. We’ll have some beer and you can bring a friend. Better yet, since you’re an adventurer, I will find someone nice who will know how to appreciate a distinguished naval officer.”

  Jonas stared at this Wolfgang, and at the polished black holster at his side. He was very grateful that the man was a friend of his captain.

  “Why not, it’s boring as hell out here. Who can resist an adventure on the high seas, even in the harbor? Tonight, for late supper, yes?”

  Sopot, besides being famous for its resplendent casino and the longest boardwalk in Europe, was noted for its grand concerts and lavish operas. In the past, many of the greatest musicians had performed at the Sopot Music Festival. Now, only Wilhelm Furtwängler and his ilk, those sympathetic to Hitler, would conduct. Many of the others, like Artur Schnabel and Bruno Walter, had already left for the U.S. or England. Now only Wagnerian operas were permitted, those magnificent tributes to blood and race. On this beautiful August night, The Flying Dutchman was to be performed. Brand had eight excellent tickets for his family and guests. He decided that this would be a good opera for Jonas to see.

  Everyone was dressed formally, beautifully, including the governess, who was breathtaking in a white gown, a Nordic princess. Her charge was dressed in a starched shirt, dark trousers, and a blue jacket. The governess had combed his long brown hair back and had generously applied pomade to make it glisten.

  “Now you look like my gentleman.” She kissed him on the brow.

  Brand was elegant and confident, and he kissed Lucia on her slender neck. “You are the most beautiful woman in Sopot and tonight is going to be a very special night.”

  She wore a splendid sapphire necklace, and it sparkled when they descended the staircase of their summer home. Their guests turned to look at the brilliant couple. Among them were the Prince and Bill, who had arrived at the villa earlier in the day for a week’s beachside holiday, and applauded the majestic entrance.