The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

  For months after, a stupor blurred Max’s days. Unable to concentrate on his lines, he left his current role to a greenhorn understudy. Moments of clarity came and went—he thought he heard Liselotte’s voice on the street or he saw her stepping onto a streetcar, the soft lines of her neck glowing with sunlight. For a time he got wild ideas. What if she was living a secret double life resisting the regime and had to get out? She wouldn’t have been the first German to live as an impostor. Emboldened, he inquired with Liselotte’s family lawyers about the possibility (they suggested he take a long cure) and became a kind of roving detective, checking ship’s manifests and questioning railway conductors who staffed the international routes. Months of this passed.

  In the fall, as the harbor excavations turned to rebuilding and the first snows threatened, the harbor morgue was able to identify the remains of Liselotte Auermann.

  1942. America the sleeping giant had declared war on Germany, and Great Britain looked to be saved. In North Africa, every German victory was followed by a costly defeat. Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union the year before, yet the advances were volatile and Moscow held out. Then came the bitterest loss, at Stalingrad—147,000 Germans dead and 91,000 taken prisoner.

  The films and plays waxed patriotic, and the roles were trite. Once, Max had vowed never to play a hackneyed character. In America he’d avoided doing the monocled Prussian and the sinister Nazi. Now he was playing the dashing lord and the brave lieutenant in period melodramas. The scripts were all the same—Teutonic Knights tales, Alpine Singspiels, Frederick the Great epics. One was filmed on a grand Louis the Fourteenth studio set while, just beyond the soundstage walls, heaps of smoldering rubble loomed and children wandered the crooked paths, calling out for parents.

  The depression set in Max, a black rolling wave of it, blacker than any he had suffered alone in New York City. Why would a people want to sell itself out, and destroy itself? It was happening to him, too, wasn’t it? Was not the theater world a microcosm of Germany’s affliction? The producers, directors, and Kunz’s were like the party leaders, generals, and ministers while the actors, dancers, and musicians were the poor foot soldiers. He was going along with a cruel scam; he was a cog in a machine engineered to self-destruct; he would end up no better than his father, the common baker who aspired to something he could never be.

  1943. Total defeat in North Africa. Hitler’s exalted Latin ally Mussolini fled for his life, leaving only the north of Italy in German hands. The air raids hit German cities night and day—the Brits by dark, the Amis by sunlight—and the lost Liselottes could never be counted. Men were drafted, young and old. Shows closed, the roles dwindled. Max lost his apartment and moved in with the assistant who once answered his phone. Max was one of the lucky ones. His agent, Kunz, was taken away by the Gestapo, and for what Max never learned. All were suspect now.

  Max carried around a flask of Korn in his breast pocket like some smalltime speculator, a little in his Kaffee to kill the pain. And why not? His favorite café was rubble, his corner store squashed along with its owners, a kind old couple who called him Herr Maxi. He had let America chew him up, and now he was letting his own land blacken him on the insides. Did he have so little understanding of the world, and his part in it? He truly was the classic self-centered actor. And that’s what the New Yorkers had seemed like to him—self-centered? He did not drink alone though. Not this time. Many of his friends had turned to the bottle, dope, and vice. Some clichés were true—the funny thing about being on the losing side was, you really did celebrate as if every day was your last. Max woke up with Liselotte look-a-likes, Lucy Cage doubles, dancehall girls and wannabe actresses fresh from the League of German Maidens.

  He purposely played his roles badly. No one seemed to notice. He stopped looking for roles. Theater officials from the party called him in to discuss what they called his “questionable behaviors.” If he wasn’t interested in landing the patriotic roles they could send him into the Truppenbetreuung—the Troops Entertainment Section. How would he like that? Performing near the front, with wooden stages on mud, a cold barn to sleep in. “If you think that’s how I may best serve the Fatherland, then I welcome the opportunity,” Max told them, adding a bow. He only wanted to hurry this up, since he had a date with a general’s daughter in a half hour. This girl, Hedwig (no stunner but a bold wit), was fast becoming his prime contact in his moonlighting gig as black market operator. Like many with contacts up high and roots down low, Max began playing intermediary between those who controlled scarce foods and liquors and those who craved them. Along the way he often came into possession of rationed bulk goods, such as meats and wheels of cheese, milk and coffee, baby formula. These he practically gave away, letting those at the top believe he was charging exorbitant prices when it was the needy who were getting the deal.

  Spring 1944. The Russians pushed west on multiple fronts, and the invasion of German-held France was sure to come within the year. Max was detained for questioning over his black market activities, yet he kept at it. War rationing had grown harsher by the day, and he was practically giving away whatever bulk goods he could get his hands on. Families with more than four children got the milk and meat free. All he had to do was charge the fat cats more for the finer items. His deeds warmed him at night and kept him singing in the dim air-raid shelters.

  Before the spring rains ceased, he was arrested twice and warned to watch whom he was gouging. He shrugged it off with a smile. Why be sensible now, Max?

  Summer 1944. Max was drafted. He saw it coming. Film production was stalling, and fewer than ten theaters and operas were left performing. By the end of June he was on the Eastern Front in the uniform of an army private.

  By the fall of ’44, it was the horrid darkness of Eastern Front. Cold so severe it slowed your heart. Roadside blazes so hot they singed eyebrows. Scorched, shrunken corpses. The dead toddlers. An enemy so maddened, so dogged, that Germany was sure to pay dearly for the pain it wreaked. Huddled in dark foxholes, shaking, Max had made the wildest secret vows. He was never going back to the Germany he knew—the Germany that had betrayed him.

  Twenty-Three

  Under his bedroll blanket Max was cold and his joints stiff, even though he could hear a new fire crackling in the cellar oven. It was the next morning. Justine DeTrave was up and gone. Max sat, pulling the blanket up with him. Young Martin was still sleeping in the next corner, and Max watched to make sure the young soldier’s chest was still rising and falling. Martin turned to Max and blinked. Max smiled.

  “So then, what are you going to do?” Martin wheezed in German.

  “I don’t know . . . what you’re talking about,” Max said in English.

  Martin kept staring, and blinking as if unsure of their previous conversation (perhaps it had been a dream?). Max heaved himself over to the table, where Annette had left a pot of coffee. It was empty. He shook his head at it and sighed. Today was December 24, 1944. Christmas Eve. Back on the Eastern Front, he had doubted he’d live to see it. And now after all he’d been through these last weeks? It was a wonder.

  He pulled on his overcoat and, leaving his unloaded tommy gun in the far corner, slogged up the stairs and walked about the villa. He called out names but no one answered. Captain Slaipe would be up in the tower, he figured, and Sergeant Smitty was probably on their radio again. He reached the den. His thigh muscles ached so he sat on the settee, pulled the linen over him, and stared out the window at the gray sky like some invalid in an Altenheim. How could he not be weary? He had no idea what was next for him. Not even Captain Slaipe could know, it seemed.

  “What’s the matter?” Justine DeTrave rushed into the den and closed the door behind her. She stayed at the doorway, staring at him.

  “Nothing’s the matter. I’m just tired. Morning. I missed you, waking up.”

  “Never mind that,” she whispered in French. “I know everything.”

  Max showed her a puzzled look. Lieutenant Julian Price didn’t know Fr
ench. “How are you? Come on over and sit by me. Come on.”

  A broad smile stretched across Justine’s face, and her head cocked to one side. “Ich weiss alles von Dir,” she whispered in rough German—I know all about you, she’d said.

  Max stared.

  “Yes, I heard it last night.” She pranced over to him. She sat on the settee and pushed hair off her ears. The strands shimmered gold in the white light. She grinned. She chirped in French: “And you know, I think I knew it all along, my dearest.”

  Max glared, out the window. He had to nip this bud. He said in rusty French, “All right then, but for God’s sake use one language.”

  Her eyes bulged. “Yes, yes. Good,” she said in English. “It’s best they do not know what I know. Is that not the way?” She put a hand over her mouth, holding back another grin. “Oh, this is—how do they say?—Providence.”

  Max pushed off the linen and held her shoulders. “No, it’s not that. It’s simply what they call ‘dumb luck.’ It’s unintended. Coincidence. An accident, you understand?”

  Justine wagged her index finger. She placed the finger on his thigh, and then all her fingers. “Mein Schatz, you must not play the role with me. I know that you plan things. The American capitaine, he thinks you give up, yes? But we can fix this now. You see there are five of us, and only two of them.”

  The way she said Schatz, as if singing it, forced a twinge in Max’s gut. Certainly she’d said it many times, to her German lovers—staff officers, most likely.

  She scampered over to the doorway, peered down the hallway, and then hurried back. “And do you know? I know where their radio is.”

  Max moved closer to her and placed her hands in his. “Look, ma chère, you must listen to me. Forget the radio. Forget about the five versus two. It’s over for you, and for me. Germany, as you know it, will soon cease to exist. As I know it. It’s the Americans’ show now. So let’s be sensible.” He repeated the last sentence in French.

  Justine’s smile faded. She shook her head. She yanked her hands away. “You’re tired. It’s food you need, that’s all,” she said and stood, brushing her hands on her spotless apron. “I’ll find Annette, get you a pot of coffee. Where is she? Her man is here, that’s the problem, and she’s really lost all sense of the propriety . . .” Her words trailed off. She bent to kiss Max but stopped, inches from his lips. It was all he could do not to pull her down to him.

  She pecked him on the forehead and rushed out.

  Back down in the cellar Annette and her husband, Old Henry, treated Max as the same barely tolerated guest he had always been. They knew nothing. In front of Max they spoke between each other as they never would had they known Max understood their French and German. In this respect Captain Slaipe had kept his word—exposing him and locking him up would only create confusion and fear.

  Sergeant Smitty was another matter. He came downstairs pulling a small Christmas tree that trickled with melting snow. Max was at the table playing solitaire. He moved to help but the sergeant waved him away and stood the tree in the same corner as Max’s unloaded tommy.

  The “cat had been let out of the bag,” as the Americans said. Or was it “the chickens coming home to roost”? Max forced a chuckle. “So, I see it’s no presents for the tree this year, eh Sergeant?”

  Smitty said nothing. He passed the table and checked on Young Martin, who was still sleeping, and then he warmed his hands at the stove with his back to Max. His tommy was still on his shoulder.

  Max slapped down a few more cards. “Good morning?” he said finally.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Smitty spat in German.

  Only openness would do now. Max played a few more cards and said in High German, using the formal address, “Herr Sergeant, please understand that you shouldn’t have to worry about me. I intend to behave just as the captain wishes. Keep your weapon close if you like, but it’s my hope you don’t view me as a threat.”

  Smitty kept his German gruff. “Aren’t you? Think that’s pretty clear.”

  “I understand your meaning. You mean Malmedy, yes? And all the rest. All the horrible tales to be revealed after Germany is defeated. You are certainly correct. But I myself pose no threat. We’re ‘done for,’ as you say. I’ve known it for years. Hopefully the captain told you my story—”

  “You want to do penance, fine. But you didn’t surrender right away, did you? To me, that’s shifty.”

  What would a man like Smitty have done in his shoes? “In any case,” Max said. “I had looked forward to helping you with the Christmas tree.”

  Smitty, staring, slid a Camel in his mouth. Max offered his lighter, but the sergeant only stared at that, too. “I’d like to think there’s a few krauts with common sense,” he said, now in English. “Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe because you were in the states. Or, maybe you’re just a chameleon, being an actor and all. Truth is, I don’t know and I don’t care. So just watch your step, every fucking step. Alles klar?” He mocked a stiff Prussian bow and stomped out, up the stairs.

  Max stayed in the cellar until his turn at watch, playing more solitaire, watching over Martin, and helping Annette and Old Henry attend to the young soldier. Martin’s face had grown sallow and sunken, and he broke out in sweats. In his sleep he mumbled, promising his mother he’d return from the war, unlike his father and his brother. It made Annette glower with bloodshot eyes and Old Henry swear and punch at his chest. And their distress made Max think of Felix Menning, caged in, facing a firing squad at a cold, stone wall. He had expected Felix to gulp down his poison lighter before any interrogation. What if the sly little juggler had confessed about killing the those MPs? In American eyes Max would be no less guilty than Felix, or Rattner. Yet Max could still make up for it. He only had to choose. Wasn’t that what Captain Slaipe was really telling him?

  Time for watch. Max climbed to the top of the tower—still without his tommy. Cold air bit at his eyes and cheeks. Some clouds had broken at the horizon and the sun was setting, twinkling behind the treetops. Captain Slaipe smiled at him, his cheeks red. “You made it. Still here. That’s a good start, Kaspar. Sleep well? How’s our young soldier doing down there?”

  Seeing Slaipe filled Max with a rush of emotions he hadn’t expected. This captain was the only thing that stood between him and a firing squad, and the man was smiling. Caring. Max stammered: “Young Martin? Not so well, but, Frau Annette and her Alter Heini, they do what they can for him. Captain, I, just want to thank you. If I may. You might have tied me to a tree and let me rot in the cold, and no one could have blamed you. I think you are a human man.” He did a little bow at the waist.

  “Aren’t we all? I’d like to think so.” Slaipe sighed. He took a long last look out and said, “I’m thinking we won’t keep you up here too long. It is Christmas Eve after all.”

  The sun went down. More clouds broke now and then, revealing black gaps in which Max saw stars for the first time in what seemed like weeks. He heard no airplanes now. All battles seemed to have ceased for the holiday, and the quiet was a joy. He daydreamed of what might have been on a Christmas without war. He and Liselotte up in the Alps, engrossed by winter scenes much like these, holed up in a warm cabin . . .

  A couple hours later Old Henry came clattering up the ladder waving his cap. His cheeks were red like Slaipe’s and he chirped in broken English: “Now you go under, Joe, yes? With us in cellar. It’s the festively time.”

  Captain Slaipe had called off watch for the rest of Christmas Eve. Max thought this foolish but the captain knew better than he did. Everyone was down in the cellar. Annette had decorated the Christmas tree with whatever she could find—strips of torn linen, a couple sticks of jerky, matchboxes, rotting turnip and carrot stubs, empty cigarette packs, a headless doll for the top, and, at Young Martin’s urging, photos of the young soldier’s family. She’d also baked what she called her “Noël patisserie” and Old Henry a “Weihnachtsstollen.” It was a Christmas bread unlike any Max had ever seen,
a dark brown oval blob instead of a loaf or log, and it lacked a proper dusting of powdered sugar. For spices she had only cinnamon, and she’d apparently used it in bulk, for when she cut a few thick slices Max caught an aroma that could only compare to burnt bacon fat. Lodged in the slices were a few small hard raisins and chunks of apple, some of which Annette had dyed red and green to resemble more varieties of fruit (where she got the dye, Max didn’t want to know). Annette explained she was doing what she could with the few goods she had, and who was he to tell her how to bake?

  They praised Annette’s efforts, lit all the candles, and sat at the table except for Young Martin, who they propped against the wall in the corner. The Christmas bread and candles seemed to perk Martin up, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Too much talking or laughing caused fits of coughs and blood to his handkerchief. Next to Max sat Justine, now as withdrawn as when they first met. Slaipe and Smitty faced them, Slaipe cheery but Smitty just as grumpy. Old Henry and Annette each took an end of the table as if they were the parents. They ate the bread, drank their ersatz coffee, and played cards, conversing politely in a mix of languages, each doing their best to stay clear of politics, history, war, and their sorry fates that weighed on this cellar like a thousand of these villas. Slaipe smoked his pipe. Smitty averted Max’s gaze. Max felt silly acting like an American now. If he could only be himself—he’d certainly translate better than Smitty, who’d interpreted Stollen as “fruitcake,” or Justine who, in her apathy, called the American Santa Claus “Monseigneur Noël.”