The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

  “Times were changing, and you had to change with them,” the man said.

  August 1939. The subtropical heat was back. During these, his last days in America, Max wandered all over Manhattan as he had when he first arrived, taking it all in. The streets were hot and muggy like a steam, and he had to press his handkerchief to his neck to keep the sweat from soaking his last good shirt. He hoped he would run into Lucy. Maybe she hadn’t really gone to California. Maybe he wasn’t really going back.

  Before he knew it he was aboard an ocean liner, which seemed too familiar, as if those eight years and change had only been days. This time, heading out of port, there was no fog or clouds. The sky was a crystal blue and the sun glared. This time Max saw the Statue of Liberty, shining jade green. They passed so close he could spot the tourists waving goodbye.

  In the bar he had a rye, for old time’s sake. Polishing glasses, the Irish bartender asked him how he liked America. Max told him:

  “Funny you should ask me this. Because you know what I’ve realized? Everything I saw—the clothes, food, newspapers, door handles, drugstores, what have you—was different from what I knew growing up in Germany. But it was that way precisely—precisely—because they wanted it to be. And this was the very point. Why should they be like us? Do you know?”

  “I’m afraid I do,” the bartender had said, and then he’d poured Max another rye even though Max hadn’t ordered one. Max drank it down, his hand trembling.

  “Your American English, it’s grand,” the bartender had said.

  “Danke,” Max had said.

  Sixteen

  “I’m going to try to make it back there,” Max said. He and Felix were still camped out on the bed, but the wind had started to rush through the fire-scorched house. They’d pulled their knees to their chests, hugging themselves.

  Felix stared with his thin lips pursed. “You’re deserting,” he said. “That’s what you’re telling me.” Of course, Felix knew of his plan. He’d known all along.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Max said. “I’ve had it.”

  Felix nodded, in the dark.

  “America spit me out because I let it,” Max added. “I see that now. I didn’t understand what was possible there. Anything is possible there, really. I probably began to realize this even before the ship put me back in Hamburg. Only later did I begin to understand that America in this sense—this promise of the possible—can happen anywhere. One must simply keep striving. One must not lie back down.”

  “So it’s a state of mind. A worldview. That’s rather romantic.”

  “Perhaps. I suspect we’re more ‘American’ than most Americans, you and I.”

  A wolf was howling, from deep in the woods. Max told himself it was a wolf because he hated to imagine it a lost dog. Too often Max had wondered about the animals. How did they survive in war? Cities were being bombed. Food was scarce. All able men were called up. Yet zoos had cages and locks. Such thoughts horrified him. In war one had to keep the imagination hemmed in. And yet this was exactly how you lost your soul in war—by losing the capacity to imagine.

  “Look, I’m going to make it easy on you,” Felix said. “Just walk away.”

  Max stared. “What are you going to do?”

  “I never got my munitions depot, did I?” Felix said. “Better yet, maybe I’ll stumble upon a general. Farther north is a town called Spa. There’s an American divisional headquarters.”

  Max had suspected something like this. It didn’t mean he couldn’t try to prevent it. “That’s to the northwest, in the opposite direction. It would be against orders. We—you—are supposed to return.”

  “Then what? Reassigned? Slog on with the old men and boys? Cut down in the snow with the rest of the mob? That’s all that’s left. Our monocle-wearing generals are hardly romantics. Plus, you heard that MP—Ami Counter Intelligence is out here looking for us. No, there’s no way I’m sticking to this sector.”

  “So you’re the fanatic. The true believer.”

  “Perhaps. I want to go out in a rage of glory, as the Americans say.”

  “It’s ‘blaze of glory’—for once, I get to correct you.” They shared a laugh. “You can have the jeep,” Max said. “I’ve had enough jeep for a lifetime.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Take the radio, too. I won’t need it.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll wait a few hours—till early morning.”

  “Splendid.”

  As always, Felix had been one step ahead. While Max was asleep, Felix split up their supplies. He was keeping the money, even though it was counterfeit and easy to spot under scrutiny. He gave Max the rations.

  “Won’t need food where I’m heading,” he said.

  He offered to shave off Max’s mustache. The water was freezing, but his gentle touch made up for it. There wasn’t so much as a nick.

  “I told you I was here to help,” he said.

  Together, they scraped the Confederate flag off the hood. “Why did you stick around so long?” Felix said. “I mean really. You had your chances.”

  “Shame? A Kamerad’s bond? I thought I could help you first—you and Zoock. Then I’d go.”

  Felix made a tsk-tsk sound. “You got sentimental. That’s a romantic’s curse.”

  “I suppose so. I was also scared. And, I still am.”

  Four o’clock in the morning. After a couple shaky attempts at sleep, Max was ready. He had his overcoat buttoned to the top and two knapsacks crisscrossing his shoulders. Felix insisted he take a tommy gun—for authenticity’s sake, he said.

  “Rattner might have killed me,” Max said. “He might have got us all killed. Truly, I’m indebted.”

  “Nonsense.” Felix pressed something into Max’s hand. It was one of the poison lighters. For Felix, Max smiled and slid the thing into a breast pocket. Felix placed his own into his breast pocket.

  “So. Der Vorhang hebt sich,” Max said—“And so, the curtain rises . . .”

  Felix pulled Max’s scarf tight around his neck, to better hide Max’s SS uniform underneath his American tunic and overcoat. He pulled up Max’s overcoat collar around it. “In another time? We might have made a good team, you and I. Grander souls would have seen the brilliance in pairing us together.”

  “On stage? I would have liked that very much,” Max said.

  “What the hell. Break a leg,” Felix said in English.

  “Hals- und Beinbruch,” Max countered—the equivalent in German.

  “I won’t give you away, Herr von Kaspar.”

  “Nor me you.”

  Max gave his odd friend a little bow, and then a hug, and he was off, out into the expiring night. He trekked across a snowy field, clambered over a short rock wall and, checking his compass, entered the woods.

  When the fire-scorched house was far behind him, well out of sight, he tossed the poison lighter far and high up into the trees. It knocked and clattered between branches, and was sure to land in the soft white snow without a sound.

  Seventeen

  The snow fell in heavy curtains, a white shroud that brought nature to a standstill. Fog evaporated. Wind ceased. The crows fled. By dawn all was white, and Max broke new snow traversing roads, fields, and woods. At times the snow reached his knees, yet it was powdery and resisted little. He saw humans only once—he’d emerged from woods to discover an American command car coasting downhill, tossing up the soft powder like a snowplow. As it passed, GIs stared from the turret with pale exhausted faces. They were coasting to save gas and didn’t dare stop. And that was it. Max was alone. Free. The armies of Allies and Axis appeared to have vanished from his path.

  His plan was to trek westward around the north side of Malmedy and on to the Meuse River. He had a long way to go. He had to pace himself. An hour after daybreak he stopped to rest. Within minutes his cold wet feet began to cramp up; he couldn’t feel his toes, and the sweat under his wool chilled to ice water. Then a hunger
started low in his stomach, piercing like indigestion, but he couldn’t touch his rations, or they would never last. When he started up again, he began to lose confidence in his judgment. At one point he was certain he’d traveled in a circle, so he disregarded his compass and chose a direction on instinct—which really did lead him in a circle. After that he kept his compass pressed inside his fist, checking it every quarter mile. The thicker the flakes, the slower they fell. The snow hid everything. What if he was traipsing through minefields? Or right into a checkpoint of Military Police?

  The forest seemed to grow denser, with no exit in sight. Thin shafts of daylight burned themselves out before reaching him. The snow became heavier and wetter, and fat globs of it smacked him at unknown intervals, trickling down his neck and chest. He shivered. His knees ached. He slogged on, getting clumsier. He had to climb over a fallen trunk but he couldn’t feel his fingers grasping and he toppled down the other side.

  Ten o’clock in the morning. For hours it had dragged on like this, a slow death. Then, the daylight formed patterns on the trail up ahead. The trees became skinnier and stood farther apart. He had to be close to something or someone even if just a village. He pushed on, stabbing his dead toes into the snow, flailing his arms, muttering like a madman, his heart pumping against his ribs. The forest gave way to a low valley that was hemmed in by more forest on all sides. In the middle of this white basin stood a boxy structure that resembled a factory or a modern train station—but upside down. A series of squares were set atop one another in the Bauhaus style, some held up by columns, others by sections of glass that seemed to have no girding whatsoever. A clean round tower rose from one corner. Flat stretches of roof bore puffy blankets of snow.

  Max stopped at the edge of the trees and consulted the one map Felix had given him. This site was nowhere on it. He couldn’t even locate the valley. Kneeling, he pulled out binoculars and scanned the snowbound grounds. No people, soldiers, vehicles, nothing. Closest to Max, statues, fountains, and dead shrubs poked through the white at symmetrical distances—what had to be a classical garden under all that snow. It meant the building had to be a villa. Max focused on the windows. Most blinds were closed. No smoke from any of the three chimneys.

  Since he’d stopped, his sweat had cooled again. His shirts and underwear were soaked. Holing up a while might be the best thing for him. He could get a fire going. He tightened his scarf and buttoned up his overcoat to the top. He scanned the still scene once more, pulled his tommy gun off his shoulder, and marched down to the villa.

  The double front doors—he guessed this was the front entrance—were black metal etched with gold, a Byzantine design of intersecting angles and swirls that reminded Max of monkeys tumbling down flights of stairs.

  Why knock and announce himself? He was a soldier. He turned the handle and the door opened. He tiptoed through a foyer, and into the main room. Just enough snow-white light made it through the blinds and high windows to lend everything a dim, blue-gray hue. He passed chromium columns and semicircular partitions. The furniture was draped in white linen yet the protruding wooden feet and legs revealed to Max the antique styles of Louis XIV, Neoclassical, Empire. Even from under the linen, the pieces gave off the telltale muskiness of damp antique upholstery. The furnishings didn’t match the villa’s sparse and sterile design, and the effect was jarring. The curved modern walls held traditional tapestries, glossy plaques, and colorful coats of arms. Ornate rugs from the Levant covered the cold, polished tile floors. He descended into a sunken room and climbed short stairs into a higher room, and on and on, so that it became difficult to tell whether he was above or below ground without consulting the nearest window. He followed what sounded like a dripping faucet, only to realize he was hearing leaks within the villa’s many skylights.

  He caught what could only be the aroma of a fine perfume. Following the scent, he entered a room that looked like the den. The walls and pillars had elegantly carved woodwork. He sat on a settee before a window and, pulling back the linen, saw that it was covered in marvelous Belgian tapestry. “Wonderful,” he muttered. He checked his watch. Eleven o’clock in the morning. Only an hour or so before he dared deplete his rations—

  “Psst. Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “Who goes there?” Max bolted up aiming his tommy gun. He saw no one. The voice had been a whisper. It was a woman’s voice, her English heavily accented. “Please, I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.

  A desk was draped in linen, fronting a wall of built-in bookshelves. From behind the desk, a woman raised her head. Her blond hair was pulled back tight and her long, slender nose showed a faint crook at the bridge. The eyes were set so deep, Max couldn’t tell their true color. They focused on Max and refused to blink. “I’m asking you, what is it that you want?” the woman said in Belgian French. “Speak up now, soldier Joe.”

  Max remembered—to her, like this, he was an American. “Sorry, don’t speak much French,” he said although he knew some. “And who you calling Joe? It’s Lieutenant Joe to you.” He lowered his tommy. He added a wide American smile.

  The woman studied Max from head to toe, taking her time. Max kept smiling. The woman placed an old Luger pistol on the desk and stood. She was wearing a plain but elegant blue housedress with a faint pattern of orchids. She sighed and said in rough English, “You may have been killed, entering here without announcing. I might have killed you. But what is there to be done now? You are here.”

  “Yes. I seem to have lost my way,” Max said.

  The woman sat next to Max on the settee, and Max could smell her freshly soaped and scrubbed skin. For a moment, his hunger for food subsided.

  “This is not an inn, you understand?” the woman said.

  “I know. I understand. I was only cold.” Max told her his cover story fast and all at once, dumping it in her lap just as any American would. His name was Price—Julian Price. His unit got hit hard east of Malmedy. The survivors were scattered and lost behind German lines. He had been able to escape. He just wanted to get home and go back to night school if he wasn’t too old. He hoped to find a job where he could help people.

  “I am Justine—Justine DeTrave,” the woman said. She told Max she was watching over this, her family’s country villa, along with her younger brother. Her brother had disappeared looking for food and she feared the worst, she said, bowing her head. As she spoke, the white window light revealed the soft curves of her face and long neck. She looked thirty at the most. He saw no wedding ring on her finger. She was beautiful even with her pinched features and curt manner—a hardier disposition than her noblesse upbringing must have wished on her.

  “And your parents?” Max asked.

  “They are dead,” Justine said, sticking to English.

  “Oh, forgive me,” Max said, his confidence growing. With a Belgian, here like this, he could perfect his role. He could work on his mannerisms, and she’d notice few inconsistencies in his American English. Plus, the Belgians had to love the Americans for liberating them, for driving the hated “boche” back into Germany. “I should apologize,” he added. “We Americans are always asking for a person’s life story.”

  Justine gave a shrug.

  They listened to the snow water trickling down the windows. They had no reason to hurry this. They weren’t going anywhere soon.

  “My compliments on your fine furniture,” Max said.

  Justine laughed, her head back, and she touched her neck. “Ah yes, but, the house itself? You don’t like it so much?”

  It certainly wasn’t an actor’s abode, Max thought. “These are smart, the modern Bauhaus designs—Gropius, Le Corbusier. If one can afford them. Even so, one has the many water leakings to contend with, what with so many windows.”

  “So many, yes—don’t tell me about it,” Justine said, waving a hand. She cocked her head at him. “How did you know this house is a Le Corbusier?”

  Max chuckled. “Yes, well . . . I went to college for a while.”r />
  “In any case, I quite agree with you. This house, it’s not how maman and papa wished it. It turned out all wrong. But then have not most all things?”

  “Indeed. You got that right, Ms. DeTrave.”

  Max drew a pack of cigarettes. They were Chesterfields—a surprise gift from Felix. He offered Justine one. She waved it away. From her hip pocket she drew a pack of Belgian cigarettes and placed one between her slim lips. Max offered a light, but she ignored it. She sat with her hands pressed to her knees as if ready to spring up.

  “I will tell you about this house,” she said finally. “The original structure, it is dated back to the 1400s. The French bombed it in 1916. Then the British, the American and—mais oui—even the German had a go at it before 1918 was over. So it was rebuilt, in the newer style. I despise the new style.” She slapped at Max’s knee and smiled. “Why can’t they bomb it now? We could rebuild it in the old style, eh?”

  “You must be careful what you wish,” Max said.

  “Yes, I suppose so. The furniture, that’s from the original house—what we could salvage, in any case. Also this woodwork here in the, how do you say—repaire? Refuge chamber? Sanctuary?”

  “It’s a den. They just call it a den.”

  “They?” Justine straightened, her eyes hard again.

  Max shrugged, smiling. “’Just an expression—figure of speech.”

  Justine was staring at his two knapsacks, and his wool overcoat with the two bullet holes under the arm. Only now did she light her cigarette. She blew smoke up at the ceiling.

  Max stood. “You don’t trust me. I understand. I’ll go.”

  “Non.” Justine stood. She was whispering again. “You wait, okay? Remain here? You must be hungry, yes?”

  “I could eat a horse,” Max said, recalling this phrase from the POW camp.

  Justine frowned, an endearing curl of her mouth that made her look ten years younger. “Another expression, I hope? In any case the horses are gone.” She grabbed the Luger off the desk and slid it into the pocket with her cigarettes. “I will procure some food. Relax yourself now. Lay down.”