The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

  Justine watched with hands on her hips as if she’d been working hours on the meal.

  “It’s good chow, thanks,” Max muttered as he chewed. A little egg on the bread, then a dip in the soup, followed by a crunch of the cabbage. He was feeling more like Maximilian von Kaspar with every precious gulp. “Truly, it’s heavenly,” he added.

  Justine brought him a bottle of the local monk’s ale, popped off the porcelain cap and, after he downed that, produced a sweet black currant beer as dessert.

  “Such a fine woman to guide me. You’d make a lovely innkeeper.”

  Justine’s eyes narrowed, and yet she smiled. Only an American would say such a thing to a lady of the manor, he hoped she was thinking—and only an American should get away with it. She mocked a full curtsy, one foot before the other, and snickered: “At your service, my Lord,” in French. Then she sauntered up the stairs.

  Max pushed his plate away, hunched over the table, the candle flickering. The milk soup had made him tired, and the thought of going back upstairs into that cold, sterile, blue-white world with its linen-clad ghosts for furniture and trickling skylights left him aching. He’d hole up here a couple hours more. The Americans seemed to buy his act, for now. Plus, those woods were no place for him now with the harsh weather and volatile front lines. Out there Germans could mistake him for an Ami, and the Amis him for a kraut.

  Over in the corner was a bedroll. He unrolled it. It was quilted and soft. He crawled onto it. Placed the gentlest bulge of his knapsacks under his head. There. That was better. A little patience never hurt anyone, he decided, while the opposite was equally true. Just ask those black MPs, and Captain Rattner. He unbuttoned his overcoat, just two buttons.

  Now, and finally, he believed he could close his eyes and sleep.

  At one point Max woke and rolled over to see Slaipe and Smitty up at the table, eating. No harm there. He rolled back over, his limbs and eyelids heavy. Here he could sleep forever. The next time he woke the two Americans were still there, but this time they sat at opposite sides of the table, and the aromas of sweet red cabbage and hearty bread were gone. A rounded bottle and two brandy glasses stood on the table. Max lay back and listened but he couldn’t understand them, not fully. Why was it that one could learn a foreign language fluently enough, yet when two natives bantered they seemed to speak a different tongue altogether? He sat up, his back to the bumpy brick.

  Slaipe turned from the table, smiling. “Evening, Price. Or night, I should say.”

  “Night?”

  “Without a doubt. It’s near midnight.”

  He’d been asleep for ten hours? His pulse throbbed in his neck and temples. What if they’d searched him? They might have done anything to him, these two. He felt at his American overcoat. Still buttoned the same. He checked under the overcoat and American tunic—his SS uniform was still buried underneath, the closest layer to his underwear. The tommy was still against the wall near him, and his two knapsacks at his head. Near midnight? Soon it would be December 20.

  “Dang,” he said.

  Smitty chuckled.

  Max had to urinate; his bladder pressed at his gut like a jagged rock. Next to the tommy was a bedpan—Annette must have left it. He grabbed it and turned to the wall.

  “We needed a midnight snack,” Smitty said. “And low and behold? Ms. DeTrave came through with dried Jägerwurst, if you can believe that.”

  Max stared.

  “That’s a stick of jerky—to us Yankees,” Slaipe said. “Talked the woman out of her Armagnac, as well. Take a drop? Why don’t you? Come up, sit with us.”

  “Shake those cobwebs off,” Smitty said. He lifted his glass to the light so Max could see the copper, Cognac-like hue. “Keep sleeping like y’are, war’ll be over.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Max sat at the end of the table closest to the stairway, his back to the warm oven. Smitty sat to his left and Slaipe to his right. Between them the candle had become a droopy glob of melting wax.

  The jerky was rich with spices and fat, just what Max needed to wake up. He took the glass from Slaipe and washed the jerky down. Splendid.

  “Guy could get used to this, heya Price?”

  Max nodded, chewing. They smoked. They talked about women. Max had to admit, he could get used to these fellows. Yet the longer he was with them, the sooner they’d find him out. It was up to them. They only had to start asking about his background, get in some trick questions.

  Smitty suggested a game of poker. In English the card names were different. If only Max had dared to play in America when he had the chance. “No, no, you guys go ahead,” he said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  He would have liked to play poker with these two. War was a nightmare of lost chances. This thought saddened him, and the intense and aromatic Armagnac didn’t help. He drank it anyway. He might as well be back in America—that nightmare of elusive fate, he thought as he swirled his glass. The brandy inspired him, and he wanted to shine like Maximilian von Kaspar. But Kaspar had never really shined, and he certainly would not here, not with this script. He could take no chances with this role. Any striking characteristic could give him away. He was stuck in the role of the vague, American everyman. A man without qualities.

  “No poker. Let’s leave that for later,” Slaipe said, and Smitty, nodding, got up and closed the door to the hallway. He peeked up the stairway. He returned to the table and Slaipe said, in a low monotone voice, “Here’s the thing, Price. You should know about Ms. DeTrave and her family. Justine DeTrave is a Rexist.”

  Max wrinkled his forehead as if stumped.

  “French Belgian Nazi,” Smitty added.

  “A Wallonian fascist,” Slaipe said. “Just like her parents. We don’t trust her, as if you couldn’t tell. You probably felt the ice on her yourself.”

  Max nodded.

  “Old guard like the DeTraves got real chummy with the krauts,” Smitty said. “She tell you about a brother gone missing? All bullshit. Truth is he’s Wallonian SS. Probably on the Eastern Front if he’s lucky—back in Liège they’d be stringing him up by his toenails.”

  Eastern Front—even in English the words gave Max a twinge in his intestines. He took a sip. “Too bad for him,” he said. “And, the parents?”

  “Murdered in Liège, by partisans. This Ms. DeTrave survived it. Now she’s here.”

  “Can’t fault her for hiding,” Smitty said. His face sagged, exaggerated by the shadows, and he drank.

  Slaipe cut in. “Oh, she’s certainly a good egg, at heart. In her mind they’re only defending their monarchy and church from the Reds. But this villa is not the family style, is it?—Probably belonged to one of the many Jews the DeTrave family helped denounce when the Germans came. I would not be surprised.”

  Max believed them. But why were they telling him? Were they testing him? They wanted to see how he reacted? Slaipe was staring at him.

  “Figures. Christ,” Max said.

  They sat in silence a while, sipping and smoking. They might suspect nothing, Max thought. They might actually trust him. Or, perhaps they’d known all along. They might even have told Justine he was an SS spy, to test her too. He lit another cigarette, and watched it burn.

  “How do you know?” he said. “I mean, about Ms. DeTrave?”

  “Wasn’t hard. We have all the staunch Rexists in our lists.”

  “Your lists? What are you, the Gestapo?” Max said, chuckling. He was playing with fire, but he had to take chances. No kraut would say anything so stupid. He chuckled loud and deep.

  Smitty laughed long and hard, sputtering “that’s good, Price, that’s a good one.” Max laughed with him. Smitty poured more Armagnac all around, but Slaipe put a hand over his glass. He was not smiling. He said:

  “More right than you know, Price. Once we make the big push into Germany, the German civilians might well call men like Smitty and me the Ami Gestapo. No doubt they will. Because they don’t know any better. Sad thing is, the label will prob
ably help us get the job done.”

  “But, you’re not like them at all,” Max said. He put down his glass. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  Smitty and Slaipe shared a glance. Smitty drank. Slaipe said, “No harm in telling you. We’re G-2. CIC.”

  CIC meant Counterintelligence Corps—the expert eyes, ears and brains of the mighty US Army. Max’s thoughts raced, and the chances, hopes, and tragedies collided in his head. If he could fool these two, he could fool any American west of the Meuse. Yet he was so far out of his league. He held his glass with both hands and stared into it. “Going into Germany, that’s going to be bloody,” he said.

  “Or, they could cave like old women. If they’re smart.”

  “So, what do we do?” Max said. “About Ms. DeTrave. What can I do?”

  “Nothing for now. Just keep an eye,” Slaipe said.

  Smitty said, “She’s not why we’re here—stuck here, I should say. We were heading over the border into Germany but got cut off. It’s krauts we want. So, I guess it’s really up to her. She wants to play cowboy, she’ll get the full posse. She toes the line, plays the sympathy card, she might just get off easy.”

  Max reached for the bottle. Slaipe grabbed his wrist.

  “Make no mistake—her day will come. Woman like her can never return to the mess she’s made of her allegiances. Once this is all over, we’ve cleared out, her enemies could well have a field day. Her demons will too, I suspect. Her only hope is to atone for her sins, with open arms, and hope good fate protects her. After all, she didn’t personally pull any triggers, did she? She only got caught up in the thing. And, I’d say she does have certain values to offer in the tough days that will come after. Girl like her is still young. She’s smart. She could discover a new world and remake herself in it.”

  Was Slaipe hoping to send him a message, but without provoking him into something stupid and disastrous for all? The captain released his wrist. Max pulled it under the table.

  “And her brother?” Smitty said, shaking his head. “Now that one he went too far. Who knows the atrocities he’s left in his wake. What sort of tricks he’ll go for—might even try to pass himself off as someone else altogether. For that we would not spare the rod, I can assure you of that.”

  “Sure, right, most definitely,” Max muttered.

  “And till then? It’s a waiting game,” Slaipe said. “We hole up, and we observe, and we be ready to jump at a moment’s notice. Right now Eisenhower is screwing his head back on. We’ll counterattack in full force soon enough, it’s just a matter of resupplying, getting new troops from the rear. You understand, this is a war of attrition, Price, time, weather, and materiel are all on our side, and they always will be. You’re either with us, or you’re on the wrong side no matter where you hide.”

  “I understand,” Max said. He reached for the bottle again. They let him. They watched him drink. “Ms. DeTrave is a looker, in any case,” he said. “Have you seen it when she smiles? A different lady altogether.”

  “Certainly. It’s no lost cause.”

  “She could inherit much,” Smitty said, “she plays her cards right.”

  “No need to rush it. No need to accuse her,” Max said.

  “No, no. Locking her up here wouldn’t do any good. Create undue tension.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Max added.

  “That’s the hustle,” Smitty said. “She’s on ice and we’re on ice. So we might as well enjoy it while the fronts firm up. The big counters might not come till Christmas Day.”

  That was four days off. How could Max make it that long? He choked down more Armagnac. “A white Christmas,” he mumbled.

  “Damn straight,” Smitty said. “Even thinking of cutting me down a Weihnachtsbaum.”

  “Say again?” Max said, forcing a smile.

  “A Christmas tree. You know. Wouldn’t have to go far looking either—there’s good ones right here at the edge of the woods. So whenever you’re itching to help me out with that, Price, well, you just say the word.”

  Twenty

  December 21—Max’s second day at the DeTrave villa. He’d let a couple hours become days. And why not? He was alive, and warm, and fed. He, Captain Slaipe, and Sergeant Smitty each did solo watch shifts up in the villa’s tower. When not on watch, he volunteered to move the last of the coal to the cellar and, since the stash was dwindling, cut down some small trees in the classical gardens (with a reclining statue of Neptune as his sawhorse). Meanwhile, Slaipe and Smitty wrote reports, studied their maps and files, and deliberated in hushed and sometimes heated voices. The two slept in short stints and random spots about the villa with their weapons close at hand. Once Smitty made a short trek into the woods where, Max suspected, they had a jeep stashed. The heap was probably out of gas. And Max didn’t want to know about it. He’d had enough jeeps for three lifetimes.

  Late in the evening, as Max descended into the cellar, chilled and tired from his second watch, Justine met him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I brought you a blanket, for your bedroll,” she said.

  “Hi. Oh, thank you. Very kind.”

  “There is nothing to thank. It is nécessaire. The fire is out just now, and coal we have not much to remain. You may become cold, yes? If you wish, we will sleep together. Side to side. It is for the warmth of the body.”

  She’d said it businesslike, as if she was telling him they were out of Limburger but she could offer Gouda. Max cracked a nervous smile. Stalling, he slid the tommy off his shoulder and set it against the wall. Perhaps she had true physiological reasons for her proposal, since she slept upstairs with a tricky 300-year-old Dutch tiled heating stove that Annette struggled to keep lit. Or, she was simply making her first play for the new conquerors, commencing that crucial change Slaipe spoke of. An American would feel awkward yet inspired by her move. Max was less roused. In a flash he saw millions of young, hungry, and bored German woman making the same play once the Allies took Germany. He didn’t feel jealousy, but rather a hot tinge of cynicism. In their sorry place, he’d be doing the same thing.

  “I tell you something,” he said, his English wobbly after hours of wintry silence. “If you become too chilled, you come to me. How’s that? D’Accord?”

  “D’Accord, Meester Price,” Justine said, as if he’d said he’d make do with Gouda. Then she lit him a couple candles and headed upstairs.

  Justine never came to Max that night, although it turned as chilly as she predicted. He had to sleep in his overcoat and gloves, and curled up for warmth. Still, he was relieved she hadn’t come. This was what he told himself. This girl was playing a sick trick on him and she could hardly know it. She was reminding him too much of his Liselotte—a colder, harder, even opposite version of his Liselotte, and yet the damn die had been caste.

  As Max huddled there in the cellar, too cold to sleep, how could he not think about the good warm days? His return to Germany in 1939 had been almost as big of a shock as his arrival in America eight years earlier. When he left, the average German was still struggling, troubled, and wary. No more. The reformed economy and higher living wages had created in many a childlike loyalty to Hitler. After all, wasn’t Germany’s rebirth the Führer’s doing? (Providence, they were calling it.) Never mind the Nazi’s persecution and their blather about revenging past defeats and betrayals. Faced with such optimism, such conviction, Max saw it was senseless to argue. All he had to do was look around him—the streets of Hamburg revealed a city, a country, a nation transformed. It seemed all the buildings in this once grim port had been scrubbed and repainted, their windows clear as camera lenses—from the most trivial factory to the holiest cathedral. Even the cracks between the cobblestones were spotless, and the old red bricks seemed to sparkle. And so many new roads! So many automobiles! So many bright, alert faces! Every day people dressed as if going to church or an afternoon party, with their shoes gleaming and shirts white as snow, and the strangers greeted each other as if longtime neighbors
. How ironic, Max had thought then—in those first few days back he’d believed he experienced more hopefulness than all his time in that idealist’s El Dorado, Amerika.

  This was hardly the mood of a people bent on war. On the ocean liner, certain British and French in the know had assured Max that another war was imminent. Just in the past year, Hitler had seized Austria and Czechoslovakia, and the man was far from finished—the appetite of that Bavarian Corporal was insatiable. Max nodded along and let them buy him drinks, but after he was in Hamburg a few days he saw it differently. He wished he could buy his British and French traveler friends one more drink and tell them his fellow Germans were too happy for war. They had gained too much. Why would they want to bring all this down again? Hitler might not know when to stop, but surely the people knew, and that would be enough.

  In the theater world Max’s American credentials impressed (despite the lack of meaty roles), and his first week back he signed with a prestigious talent agency, Agentur Unger. Max’s agent, Herr Kunz, got him two supporting roles first thing—one in a film and another on stage. In celebration, Max splurged on a spacious apartment with a view of Hamburg’s bustling harbor. The endless auditions and parties kept him hustling, his contacts swelled, and he had to hire a part-time assistant just to answer the phone while he worked on his lines.

  At one of the parties he met Liselotte Auermann, an opera singer on the rise. She was a tiny thing, but she put her curves to full use with splendid dresses and the highest heels, like some exotic bird that fluffed itself up. Her eyes were so wide and shimmering blue. Yet she was also delicate beneath the diva fluff. When Max first met her, she was out on a balcony alone, feeding caviar to a stray cat.

  She was everything that he had hoped for in New York. Her apartment had a salon and a ten-person auditorium like a tiny chapel. She drank champagne daily, but never to excess. She kept life in perspective. The New Germany was like the surprise success of a provincial show, she told him. Relish the run—and the attention—while it lasts, but don’t let it destroy you when it falters. There will always be another show.