by Kluge, P. F.
After the fight, Max claimed Louis had hit him a kidney shot, illegal, it can practically paralyze you. But no one was listening. He’d won once on a foul already, the first fight against Sharkey. Then, Max said, well, I beat Louis once and he beat me once, and how about a rematch and no one paid attention to that either. He’d had his moment and now it was back to Germany with him. Looking back, I see Max had a point. They each won one, they each knocked the other out once and, measuring those victories, it seems that it was Schmeling who climbed the higher mountain. All in all, they fought thirteen rounds and Max won most of them. But never mind. They were never going to meet again, till years later, when Joe was a guest on a TV show, “This Is Your Life.” I read that Max wrote him a check to help pay his tax bills. Paid for his funeral too, out in Las Vegas. So I heard.
I didn’t hear from Heinz after the fight and, to tell you the truth, I was relieved. Also— no visits. I should have called, I should have gone into the city, gone the next day and sat down with him and made a plan, Florida or whatever, because the boxing part of his life was over and Yorkville was a good place to be getting out of. But I didn’t go in. I waited for him to come to me. He was the one with the problem, I told myself. Besides, he was three years older. He owned me a phone call, a letter. He owed me money.
“Your brother says goodbye,” Otto Hofer said. This was two weeks after the fight. Already, Schmeling was back in Germany. And Heinz was on his way. He’d come to Hofer’s apartment late at night. He let himself in: he still had keys from the year he worked there. Otto thought it was a burglar. He came out of the bedroom carrying the only thing he could find, a broom. Max laughed at him. Otto was still scared.
“Sit down, Otto,” Heinz said. “You’re going to be alright.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You might have knocked.”
“I know what time you go to bed, Otto,” Heinz answered. “Also … I wasn’t sure you’d let me in.”
It’s late,” Otto said. “Some people work in the morning.”
“Otto, I made a bet. My own money and money I borrowed, up and down the street. And it was over in two minutes.”
Otto didn’t answer. What he thought, he said, is that in many ways, Heinz was the best of us. If you’d stood all his greenhorns in a line and asked, which one makes it in America, makes it big, you wouldn’t pick me or any of the others because whatever we did, it wouldn’t be big. We didn’t think big, we didn’t dream big, we didn’t take big chances. That one jump across the Atlantic, that was all the gambling that was in us.
“A thousand dollars, Otto. That’s the hole I’m in. Up and down the street. The bakers, the beer men, the wurst-geschaeft, the delikatessens. A family emergency, I said. A problem back home. That was five hundred. And another five hundred, I borrowed someplace else. They look for me already. They’re not from Yorkville.”
“Why do you come to me?”
“A place to stay. Down in the cellar, maybe. The old spot.”
“That you had already. For one year. You know the system. One year and out. There’s someone else now. Fritz Kammer.”
“Only till I leave.”
“You’re going? Where?”
“I’m ready to take your advice, Onkel. The ship sails both ways across the ocean, you told me.”
“So it’s not just a place to hide,” Otto said. “It’s a ticket to run.”
“Yes. That too.”
“Well,” Otto said. “That’s a lot.”
“I know.” Otto could see my brother was on the edge of tears. When he told me, I asked, did you ever think of calling me, Otto? Or reminding him he had a brother in New Jersey? “He didn’t need reminding,” Otto said. “He knew.” And that was that. Otto gave Heinz a corner of an apartment, where the people were in New England for the summer. And he got him a ticket on North German Lloyd. The next week, being a thorough man, he took Heinz to the pier. And he only asked for one thing in return, one thing only. He put it to Heinz fifteen minutes before they left, handing him paper and pencil.
“The names and where I can find them,” he said. “And the amount.”
Heinz nodded. He was dressed to go, halfway out the door almost. Now, he bit his lip and sat at a little tap in the hall, jammed up next to a coat rack. Otto went into the kitchen to see Hilde. He was talking about supper that night, he thought rouladen was a good idea and Hilde interrupted, holding up her hand, what’s that I hear and it was Heinz out in the hall, crying. Hilde started to go to him. Otto stopped her.
“Let him cry,” Otto said. “As long as he writes.”
“It’s sad.”
“Sadder than you think, when we start to pay.”
“Sad, also for him,” Hilde said. “Going back there. Now.” Hilde read the newspapers. She’d been through World War I. “Not a good time to be a German in America,” I once said to her. “Not a good time to be a German in Germany,” she answered back. Later, by the way, I offered to help Otto with the money. He wouldn’t hear of it. We didn’t talk about Heinz, after that: he was the one who got away. And I couldn’t talk to Mom either. She’d made me leave him behind at that camp. And then, she got sent a ticket by her family, a short last trip to Germany. And she went alone and came back to New Jersey with a photo of my brother in uniform. Arm in arm with the irresistible Heinz. And years later, she made me leave his picture on the mantel in the living room.
Go figure.
IV.
THREE DAYS IN VIRGINIA. GEORGE AND I TALK at breakfast. Nothing heavy, just whatever we feel like. There’s the problem with most family visits. There’s always an agenda, reports from the finance committee, the social committee, old business, new business, open discussion, bang the gavel and wait till next year. At breakfast, we just talk about the stuff we used to argue about— baseball, blacks, Israel, labor unions, Japan, acid rain, pre-nuptial agreements. After breakfast, he hits the road, like a salesman making calls, only his stops are at state parks, bed and breakfast places, new hotels and restaurants, scenic vistas, chambers of commerce, roadside museums, historic downtown districts. Meanwhile, I take walks, sit around and wait for my son to come home.
We had a family custom that whenever someone went on a trip alone, they couldn’t come home empty-handed. That meant peanut brittle, Indian blankets, petrified wood. The custom continues. From a second-hand bookstore, George brings a novel, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. It’s about a Russian conman called Chichikov who goes running around old Russia. His gimmick is to buy “souls”—the names of dead serfs—that he can use in a swindle he’s got going. He travels all over the country and everyone he meets is a little crazy. In between visits, you get a picture of Russia, and the Russia he travels through is a huge, raw, lonely country. And the America we travel is like that too. And George is a bit of a Chichikov, a flim-flam man, a traveling saleman with lots of time between deals, all those miles along the way, all those empty little towns with signs that advertise the most famous people who were ever born there and got the hell out, just like the places in Dead Souls.
“We’ll eat out tonight,” he says, coming through the cabin door. We’ve got a refrigerator full of food—in memory of Mom— but we always eat out. “So how was your day?” he asks.
“Not bad,” I say. “Been reading.”
“Are you into it?
“Well, I see why you gave it to me. You’re in it. You’re the star of the show.”
“I guessed you’d make that connection.”
“Does Chichikov ever get himself straightened out? If he has a happy ending, then I guess there’s hope for you.”
“That was supposed to happen in the second volume,” he says. “Only Gogol never finished it. Couldn’t get it to work. Took it out and burned it, most of it. All that’s left are some fragments.”
“Great,” I say. There’s another connection I don’t tell him about. I can’t read about Russia without thinking of my brother. Another con-man in that land of endless snowy plains. Years and years ago now,
but so what? If Chichikov is someone I can feel, then so is Heinz. Sometimes I can feel him standing right next to me.
“I walked all around here,” I say. “The leaves are really happening. And I saw two kids on the side of the road, blond- haired kids with fishing rods. One was carrying a bucket and a dog was trailing along behind them and it was just like one of those old Saturday Evening Post covers. And I thought, me, I was lucky to see all this again. And that’s how I feel about my whole life in this country. I came to America at just the right time, George. I’m sure of that.”
“But it was only a visit?”
“Half a century … that’s more than a visit.”
“But the important thing is knowing when to come and when to go. Is that it, Pop?”
“You really want to have this talk?” I ask. “Because I have this one figured out.”
“Go ahead,” he says.
“Okay. Let’s face it … most of the people who come to America came … why? … They came for the money. Economic opportunity. They didn’t come because they got excited about Thomas Jefferson. They came to make out. That goes for the Irish potato farmers, the Haitian boat people, the Israeli taxi driver, the Korean vegetable dealers in your neighborhood, and the Indians selling newspapers and magazines. That goes for me … let’s face it. It wasn’t the land of the free that brought the most of us … it was free land. Lots of room. Am I going too far?”
“Maybe,” he says. “But I want to hear it.”
“So let’s at least admit it. Most of the folks who came weren’t here because of what they believed … they were here for what they wanted. Being an American wasn’t the main thing. And I have no problem with that, George. Everything has to begin someplace. And … let me tell you … it’s great being in at the beginning of something. Getting in on the ground floor … of the tallest building yet! I’m telling you, coming to America in the twenties … what a country! Who wouldn’t love America? Are you kidding?!”
“There was a Depression in there,” he reminds me. “A war too.”
“I always worked.”
“Not everyone else did.”
“They didn’t have jobs. But they worked. I’m telling you, it was a different country then. People your age don’t know. You’ve never had your world fall apart. And if it does … what are you going to do? Can you garden? Hunt? Can your women bake? Put up vegetables? Sew? What would your idea of belt tightening be? Cutting back on movies?”
“But that’s not the question, Pop. The question is, why you’re turning your back on …”
For a minute, he’s right on the edge of saying: “me.”
“… America. Because I can listen to all the rest of it. I can hear it all over the place. I defend this country all the time. Aging superpower. Coca-Cola culture. I’ve heard it all. But I never thought I’d hear it from you, Pop.”
“I told you before, I feel like a stranger in my neighborhood. Since Mom died. The walls come in on me. I just wanted more around me in my old age.”
“What? What more?”
“Let’s go eat,” I say, getting right up. “No point in continuing. I’ve got nothing against anybody, believe me. When I go, I’ll go quietly. I’ll pay my bill. I’ll leave my tip. Memories? I’ve got a million of them, milestones and tombstones all over the place. I trip over them in my sleep. Heinz going back. Closing of the Ballantine Brewery. Dodgers off to California. Mom dying. You changing your name. No big deal. But still …”
The buffet. The old man and I were seated at a table right next to the salad bar. We couldn’t see anybody’s legs. Those were out of sight. And, since the buffet had a sort of hooded roof over it to prevent people’s hair and snot from landing in the food, we couldn’t see anybody’s face. All we saw was from the belt line to the bustline. A buffet view of America. We studied the different strategies people used. Most started at the beginning, loading up on lettuce and tomatoes, basic stuff that crowded their plate, but then got to the olives, to the Jello, and you could see everything go to hell, plates turning into mish-mash, with vinegar and oil slopped over pineapple, bread croutons going on the Jello, jalapeno peppers dancing with the kumquats, and phony bacon bits thrown onto everything, like rice on newlyweds. Some folks tried two plates, juggling, bumping, dropping. Every now and then someone would do a preliminary reconnaissance, working from the back to the front. But what never happened was that someone would make a simple selection, take one or two or three things and leave. Mostly it was a mess. That put us in a philosophical frame of mind. Inhaling Manhattans helped out too.
“You know what I’ve noticed?” asked the old man. I expected him to say that here, right here, was the problem with America, that buffet said it all, low quality, high volume, etc. I was wrong. “How rare we are.”
“Rare?”
“Look around this place. You’ve got families galore, chowing down. Mom and Pop and kids, all messing around together at the salad bar. It’s not, can they have a nice meal together. It’s, can they eat enough to run the place into bankruptcy. Or die trying.”
“That’s called ‘family dining,’ Pop.”
“There’s a bowling league or softball over there,” he said, signaling towards where a mixed-gender crew of sumo wrestlers were waiting for a tray of nachos and chicken wings. “And …” A gesture towards a table of seniors dressed in Western garb, string ties, cowboy shirts, jeans on the men and women, all coal miners’ daughters, wearing fancy lampshade-shaped skirts and dirndl tops. “I can’t say what they do.”
“That would be the square dance club,” I said.
“And there’s some kids. Dates, I mean. Not many.” Some young couples sat against one wall, unlikely to get into much trouble, after all that food.
“Fressen. Nicht essen.” Another chunk of German popped out of me. Childhood table talk. Essen was to eat like a person. Fressen was to gobble like an animal.
“What you don’t see is a father-and-son. You notice how they look at us when we come into a place? What brings those two out together? And when we tell them, they act like it’s the cutest idea in the world, no one ever thought of it before.”
“I’m glad we did this,” I announced. And then, feeling lucky—it was the Manhattans—I took another chance. “Just bear with me on this one, Pop. Have you ever noticed, on road maps, how they mark the scenic routes? A broken green line, usually?”
“Sure.”
“Ever think there’s someone who decides those routes? What’s scenic? What’s not. Somebody has to drive those roads and decide.”
“And that should be you?”
“I’d love it, Pop. Forget all this other stuff. No columns, no tips-for-travelers. No words, even! I’d be a writer who never wrote except for the marks I made on a map. One true map. A green line alongside a road. That would be my life’s work, clean and honest. One true map. What do you think?”
“I think the fried chicken looks good. Or the liver and onions.”
“Okay …”
“And the buffet’s quieted down some, what’s left of it.”
We cruised the buffet. He settled for some liver, beets and onions, two German vegetables it’s hard to do much harm to. I chose something called Swedish Noodle Bake. The restaurant was emptying out now, with customers who’d ordered off the menu carrying doggy bags. In Europe, they let dogs into the restaurants. In America, they carried the food out to them. I felt a column coming on.
“It’s tricky, Pop,” I said. “Listen, you’ve got to find some scenic routes in every state, or else you haven’t done your job. So Colorado is easy. But what about … not to beat around a bush … New Jersey? And who decides how much scenic mileage a state has? Is it in relation to the size of the state? The population? The total miles of road? There’s more. There’s the fairness question. You have a road that’s real pretty in New Mexico, but not quite pretty enough to make the top of the list. In New Mexico, that is. But it’s a heck of a lot better than the best in, say, Oklahoma. What do you
do?”
“I see what you mean, son.”
“It’s a mess. It’s affirmative action, quotas, reverse discrimination. And there’s more. Just suppose you had a road that’s been a scenic route for years. Only, what with this being America and progress is our most important product, it gets ugly. What then?”
The buffet was now a miniature battlefield, with weapons, shells, uniforms and bandages all over the field of combat. Kernels of corn, chunks of onion, little rivers of Jell-O-colored mayonnaise. The waitress slipped us our check which she autographed on the back. “Thanks! Krissie!”
“You know what you do, son?” he said. “I know. It’s like when they … what is it? … decommission a church.”
“Deconsecrate.”
“Yeah. That. You just take the road that used to be marked yellow … and you mark it black.”
“I LOVE IT!” I shouted out. And I loved talking to my father. “I can hear the howl going up from the Chambers of Commerce. But I’m gone. I’m down the road!”
“There you go …”
“One true map, Pop …” I said. “That’s all I want to make.”
We’re both wobbly on the way back to the motel, but the thing about being half-drunk is not that you notice things more —probably you notice less—but everything is fascinating. A dog barking somewhere is all the loneliness in the world. Then I hear myself say something he can’t quite make out. “What’s that?” he asks.