by Robert Klein
My association with these friends changed the course of my life, especially in my appreciation for music. I had been raised on Broadway show tunes and fallen in love with doo-wop at fourteen. An early rebellion? My parents respected the light classics (my mother played piano beautifully by ear), but it was the so-called heavy stuff, which my friends introduced me to, which I had never heard at home, that took flight in me. While I couldn’t afford to buy records, I could borrow anything I wanted from the Fordham library to play on my primitive, scratchy Webcor record player. What I wanted then was all the Johann Sebastian Bach I could get my hands on—the wonderful, esoteric, expensive performances on the best European labels, like Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, and Odeon—and the library had them all. I was especially captivated by the vocal music: the cantatas, The Magnificat, and The Mass in B Minor. My father referred to them as “that German crap,” but the sound of them brought me goose bumps and sometimes tears of exhilaration. The Jewish boy from the Bronx had definitely fallen for German Christian liturgical music, though by no means in the religious sense. I largely ignored the text, except in those instances where Bach matched his music deliberately and splendidly to the words in the libretto. For example, when an angel or Christ ascended to heaven, the musical notes would go up accordingly and quite subtly.
I was hardly religious; my piety at the time was largely confined to asking occasional favors of God, like for me not to fail algebra, or to get this stuck elevator moving again. Perhaps I was an agnostic, but I was grateful for Bach’s spiritual fervor. His music seemed to prove the presence of godliness presumed by many to be in each of us, Christian or otherwise. Listening, I would often think that only God could compose this, or create the genius that could.
There was a contradiction for me in that the great Bach was German. I had, as a matter of culture and upbringing, developed in my life a healthy repugnance for all things Teutonic. I was inundated, like many Americans of that era, with stereotypes. The language had a guttural, displeasing sound reminiscent of gestapo officers in Hollywood depictions of the recent war, not to mention the newsreel speeches of the little prick who had started it all. Charlie Chaplin’s linguistic imitation in The Great Dictator was right on the money. Yet the composer had died in 1750, well before Nazism was conceived. I remembered that Dante, in The Inferno, had sort of excused Plato and Aristotle from the worst damnation, even though they weren’t Christians, their having lived well before Jesus Christ. Mercy with an asterisk. Certainly old Bach deserved no less an acquittal. As I grew to love the music, the sound of the German words did not intrude on the beauty of the compositions. They seemed less guttural and more soothing the more I listened to them, especially when sung legato or in a long note. Through Bach, they began to sound like a fuzzier, friendlier German; at times I imagined I was hearing Yiddish.
I even loved to play this music during sex, on those rare wonderful occasions when the roaches and I had a female visitor. The feelings about this were never mutual; alas, there was not a Bachophile among them. These young women were invariably baffled by my choice of music to make love by, despite my best efforts to enthuse and infuse them with its glory. As I rapturously conducted and hummed the exquisite trumpet and choral sections of The Magnificat, they looked at me like I was deranged. Couldn’t they hear the beauty and brilliance and yes . . . sensuality of it? For far too many American girls, classical music apparently reminded them of church and boring music-appreciation classes. I must have been an annoying proselytizer at times, especially during sex. I got reactions ranging from “Can’t you put on some more appropriate music?” to “Turn off that classical shit.” At twenty-two and no fool, with an eager legal-age naked woman in my bed, musical principles took on a more trivial aspect, and compromise, or even outright deference, seemed like an excellent trade-off. I was quite content to have sex accompanied by Little Richard or Dylan, or garbage trucks clanging on 153rd Street for that matter. There was a new concept in my life since my Bronx exodus: privacy. I meant to make up for lost time. I had always lived in a small, crowded apartment or a dormitory with hundreds of people around. I had never had a room of my own, having spent much of my childhood on the Castro convertible ottoman in the living room, not even love-seat-sized, which folded out into a single, narrow bed. Bear in mind that an ottoman is supposed to go with a chair. It is a footrest. My room was a footrest. How one recovers from such a stigma I do not know, but it was an extraordinary feeling to now be in my own room and not on my own room: free to entertain as I chose, and to feed my infatuation with music composed over two centuries earlier.
Listening to it exhilarated me and gave me hope, and I felt richer hearing it. Eventually, my veneration of this work opened the way to my understanding that German did not equal Nazism (in fact, Bach was much less frequently performed in the Third Reich). A whole generation of young Germans had grown up in democracy, and they were our grateful allies. I had even been profoundly touched by John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. But there was no forgiveness for Nazis or their sympathizers, and any German over forty was suspect.
So here I was in June 1964 with an apartment of my own, several passions and high hopes, but no job until the fall school year and no prospects in my chosen field. Then something turned up, as David Copperfield’s Mr. Micawber would say. My buddy from Yale Jim Burrows called and asked if I might be interested in a job on an NBC television project he was involved with at the World’s Fair. The show was called Ford Presents the New Christy Minstrels, who were a popular folk-pop singing group. He asked if I might go to the various foreign pavilions at the fair and have them send their representatives in uniform or native dress to appear in the audience of the eight weekly summer tapings. The fair had been garnering all kinds of media attention, and I jumped at the chance to participate in the excitement. Besides, though there was no pay, it was at least in a tangential way show business, and almost a thousand years more current than my previous gig.
I put on my best suit and made the rounds of the many pavilions, identifying myself as Robert Klein from NBC, complete with an official badge-credential. This introduction seemed to impress, and before long I got many commitments of attendance, each pavilion wanting to be included in what seemed an excellent opportunity to publicize themselves. The job was delightful, and afforded a perfect way to see the fair as an insider. Best of all, the people actually thought I was important, something I needed desperately in my comeback spring.
Along the way I met dozens of charming people, many of them attractive young women from all over the world, wearing uniforms and other exotic clothing, with whom I would dawdle and shoot the breeze. There was Samina from Pakistan, who was an authentic princess bedecked in the traditional sari, though she had gone to high school in Kansas on an exchange program and spoke perfect colloquial American English. There was Angelique from France, a beautiful, gregarious flirty six-footer who wore a size-twelve shoe. There was Myoshi, the gorgeous and friendly staff member from the Japanese pavilion. These unwitting admirers did not look at me as an overeducated nonsuccess who had a gofer job with no salary. On the contrary, they considered me a distinguished visitor representing the big-time American entertainment industry, which was surely one of the most powerful cultural influences in the world. I, Robert Klein, associated with and represented the power and influence of American show business.
One day on my rounds, it was time to approach the Berlin pavilion, and I felt some uneasiness. Perhaps it was a bit immature of me, but I couldn’t shake the notion that despite nineteen years since victory, here was the enemy personified. As I entered the ultramodern structure, I fortified myself with Johann Sebastian in my head, along with the comforting thought that we had won the fucking war. The building was a sort of futuristic tent, reminiscent of Eero Saarinen’s imaginative TWA terminal at JFK Airport. I heard the strains of Bach’s Musical Offering, one of my favorite instrumental pieces, playing over the loudspeakers. How bad can these people be? I thought
.
The inside of the pavilion was full of huge photos of the rebuilding, dynamic city of West Berlin, with tons of John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, and Willy Brandt, and not a Hitler in sight. There were photographs of the ruins of the city after the war, to contrast its smart new rebuilt look, as well as scenes of a moribund East Berlin, with lots of jackbooted Communist guards. Everywhere was a veritable plethora of economic charts. I went to the information desk and was met by a petite, fair-haired woman in a smartly tailored pink suit, which was the uniform of the pavilion. Her name was Inge, and she spoke in a shy accented English, eager to please. A real authentic German, I thought, though this sweetly smiling young woman did not seem the genocidal type. In fact, she was kind of cute.
I explained the purpose of my visit, which she took to be of consummate importance, and she immediately summoned Herr Haufner, her superior. He was a portly, neatly dressed man of fifty, with wire spectacles, the kind favored by Himmler, and a heavy German accent right out of a Sid Caesar professor sketch. He was polite though not particularly cordial, a real bureaucrat, and I had an overwhelming desire, which I thwarted, to ask what he had done during the war. It was a strange feeling to be exchanging conversation with someone who had definitely fought against us. What if he knew I was Jewish? The bastard. I flashed for a second on blurting out “Revenge!” in a kind of uncontrolled Tourette’s episode, and then strangling him.
He said the proposal sounded good. “Sank you. Vee vill get beck to you, Meesta Klein,” declared Herr Haufner. We were joined by a striking blond woman with her name, Elizabeth, written on a badge on her pink uniform. My mind flashed for a second on having sex with her, and disregarded historical-political differences for the time being. She took over the desk as Inge and Herr Haufner retreated to an office behind it. She asked if she could be of any service, and while she could not, I contrived some reason or other to stay and chat with her. She was lovely and shapely, with wonderful imperfections in her features; she had a rather prominent, aquiline nose, large feet, and gorgeous blue eyes. She spoke perfect grammatical English, though with a pronounced accent, and she projected a palpable warmth, with a glint of mischief in her eyes: eyes that looked right into mine as she spoke and listened.
The Bach piece was still coming through the loudspeakers, and I instantly associated her with the beautiful music, as one might associate a woman with a certain perfume. I told her that he was my favorite composer. “Ach, me, too,” she said, smiling with genuine enthusiasm. She suggested that Bach was the greatest thing to ever come out of Germany, a premise that I heartily agreed with. Perhaps it was a bit premature for me to feel this way, but I was in love.
“You are from New York, Mr.—”
“Klein. Robert Klein. Call me Robert. Yes, born and raised in New York,” I answered. “And you?”
“I am Elizabeth Schmidt. I am from Munich.” Munich, I thought, where Hitler started his climb to power, the land of lederhosen, beer, Oktoberfest, and smacking Jews around. “Klein, this is a German name, no?” she said as I shook her lovely, soft hand.
“Yes, all four of my grandparents came from Hungary at the turn of the century. Of course, it was Austria Hungary then,” I said, pretending to be a little more German.
“Klein means little in German, but you are not little,” she laughed. Two more of her colleagues appeared behind the desk, Goetje and Helge. Goetje, who had a gorgeous face, was curious to know about the television tapings. Helge was a bit more stocky and serious, and though she was from Düsseldorf, she spoke English with no accent whatever; she could have been from Cleveland. Soon they left to perform their office duties. Elizabeth and I continued our chatter, though she kept a wary eye out for Herr Haufner, whom she referred to as “that pompous little German man.” She explained that he was always on the lookout for “goofing off.” The incongruity of this jazzy American colloquial expression and her German accent made me laugh.
But it was no laughing matter when I saw Herr Haufner exit the office, and I dashed away like a thief toward a photo montage of the old versus the new Berlin and, most difficult of all, pretended to be interested in it. Running like a thief was not the image I would have chosen to impress a woman, but I saw the positive side—it was good acting practice.
Haufner appeared to give Fräulein Schmidt some last-minute instructions with vigorous gestures and, after wiping a bit of dust off a statistical graph of the 1963 foreign investment in Berlin, he proceeded out the door.
Elizabeth looked at me and laughed. “Komm, Ro-behrt, it’s uh-kay, he won’t be beck, thank Gott.” Her smile was amused, but she didn’t mock me, which minimized my embarrassment. She rested her face between her hands, elbows on the counter, framing her pretty and fascinating countenance with a much more relaxed demeanor. She looked like she was studying me. Then she asked me to tell her the story of my life.
This is a good question to hear from a girl you’re interested in. To begin with, it’s flattering, and there is so much room for beneficial manipulation in the storytelling that one must fight the urge to bullshit too much. “My goodness, where should I begin?”
It was a more or less rhetorical question, but she took it at face value and wrinkled her forehead in contemplation. “At the beginning,” she said.
The next time I looked at the clock, an hour and a half had passed, and we had exchanged much information about relationships with parents—her father was a German officer killed in the war—aspirations, and experiences. Unfortunately, there were many interruptions: mostly annoying visitors to the pavilion, morons who made outrageous requests for such things as information about what they were looking at. Weren’t those photos and charts self-explanatory? At these moments, Elizabeth would slide away and politely engage the curious visitors in English, German, and very proficient French, giving me an opportunity to study her.
As a matter of fact, I couldn’t take my eyes and ears off her. Her sweet-voiced trilingual conversation was like music, like The Brandenburg Concerto #2, playing on the pavilion sound system. How clever, I thought, to speak so many languages. From the increasing frequency of interruptions and a look at my watch, it was apparent that both Elizabeth and I had a job to do. I still had to go to the Pakistani and British pavilions. I dared not ask for her telephone number but told her that I would surely drop by again, which she took to be a good idea. We shook hands and, somewhat smitten, I floated out into the World’s Fair sunshine wanting to dance like Gene Kelly in an MGM musical.
In the course of the next week, I visited Elizabeth daily and learned more about the new Berlin than I cared to while dodging Herr Haufner on his occasional forays around the exhibition. Here I was, hiding from a German authority. Perhaps it was genetic. What did you do between 1935 and 1945, eh, Herr Haufner? I’m sure you had no idea about the concentration camps, you swine, I thought as I peeked from behind a display at his obviously cruel, unfeeling face. This was a difficult courtship, if that was what it was to be.
After two weeks and many visits, Elizabeth’s colleagues began teasing me about my frequent appearances, and Helge dubbed me an honorary Berliner, an accolade that, for me, was a million-to-one shot at birth. Around this time, I was sure that Herr Haufner was beginning to notice me. My whistling and looking innocent while reading about the history of Checkpoint Charlie for the fourteenth time were beginning to look transparent. Though I wanted to very much, I still couldn’t find the nerve to mention going out with Elizabeth, unsure whether she would be interested in seeing me in some other environment. “Unsure” gravely understates the matter. I had experienced a tremendous loss of confidence. I suspected that she thought I was just a kid with whom she passed some time at work. She was a woman of the world, literally, having lived and worked in Hong Kong, Paris, and other exotic parts. I had been to New Jersey. I envisioned a worst-possible scenario in which I asked her out and she laughed in my face.
I have always been somewhat fearful of rejection; no doubt many people are, to some degree. Yet
there are those, whom I envy in a way, who push the envelope, are often rewarded with success, and deal with rejection with a minimum of emotional capital, if any.
Elizabeth had seemed pleased with the time I spent with her, and I had allowed myself to think of, dare I say it, romance. An opportunity presented itself for me to pique her interest and test my prospects. An ad in The New York Times music section indicated that a prominent Park Avenue church was presenting a concert of Bach’s Cantata #147 and some motets. It was the kind of evening my friends and I wouldn’t miss, but I had never taken a date. With some apprehension, I entered the Berlin pavilion, did my usual search for that ubiquitous Germanic pest Herr Haufner, and was relieved to see Elizabeth at the desk conversing with some yokel from North Dakota who had a cousin in Stuttgart. “His name is Manheim, Helmut Manheim. Would you know him?”