by David Stukas
“Siegfreid,” I said excitedly, “I bought something today I thought you would get a kick out of.”
“You bought something? Well, I must see it!” he replied, trying to match my enthusiasm word for word.
I left the kitchen and ran upstairs to our bedroom. Since I couldn’t remember what shopping bag the item was in, I carried the lot of them downstairs and back into the kitchen. As I pushed the door open, I caught Helmut with his arm practically around the count, showing Siegfreid how to garnish the top of the penne on each plate. I say caught, because it looked quite suspicious to me, but since Helmut didn’t jump back or withdraw his arm hastily, he lent the entire incident an air of innocence. I tried to be open-minded about the whole thing. I had been in Europe only two days, so I figured perhaps Helmut was living up to the European reputation of people standing close to each other when they talked. After all, I couldn’t expect others to respect my idea of personal space. If that were true, I would be at ease only if Helmut were standing in Belgium.
While I was uneasy about what I discovered, I felt better when I saw Siegfreid thought nothing of Helmut’s closeness. It was as if the servants in Siegfreid’s life practiced gay chokeholds on him all the time.
I pawed nervously through several bags and found what I was looking for.
“Let us see what you have there,” Siegfreid said as he casually pulled away from Helmut and examined my purchase. When he didn’t burst out laughing at my gift, I felt the need to explain it.
“It’s a Mister Hanky stuffed toy. From South Park, a television program. He’s a talking piece of poop. Squeeze him,” I said, encouraging Siegfreid to join in the fun. He did as I asked him and Mister Hanky rewarded us with a rousing “Hai-de-ho!” salutation from his hidden voice box.
No laughs from either the count or Helmut. Just puzzlement.
I continued to dig my grave deeper. “He says other things, too ... this one speaks in German, no less! Mr. Hanky is very popular in the States!”
No guffaws. Not even a knee slap.
“It’s not as funny if you’re sober,” I said, tossing the disappointing toy onto a counter behind me. It was time to change the subject. “Are we ready to eat?”
“Yah, it’s time,” Helmut reported, carrying our dishes out to the dining room. Siegfreid and I sat down while Helmut returned with a bottle of Italian white wine from the kitchen. He gently eased the cork out of the bottle, which came out faster than Helmut expected and flew to the floor along with the corkscrew.
“I am most sorry, Count,” Helmut apologized, then bent over to retrieve the cork, holding his position just long enough to offer his snugly clothed butt for Siegfreid to admire. I stared in shock at Helmut’s stunt, but Siegfreid either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it. Was I going mad, or was all this really happening right in front of my nose?
Helmut picked up the cork and put it in his pocket. He poured the wine, checked the table to make sure we had everything we needed, and withdrew to the kitchen. I was going to say something, but I was in too much shock. Any moment now, I knew I was going to wake up and find this was all a dream and I was still in my crummy apartment in New York, still worked in a dead-end job, and had no boyfriend.
To prove that this was all a dream, I stabbed a fork into my hand and ... winced from the pain. Nope. No dream.
I merely smiled, dug into my salad, and wondered what the hell was going on in this house.
“How did work go today?” I asked the count, trying to introduce some sort of normalcy into the evening. It wouldn’t hurt if I knew a little bit about where Siegfreid spent most of the day, either.
“Oh, much of the same. Ships coming in, ships going out. So many details.”
Siegfreid’s answer told me about as much as I knew about him to date, which was zilch.
“And how was your day, Robert?” he asked. “Did you have a nice time shopping and seeing Berlin?”
“Yes, I enjoyed everything—except for this woman.”
“A woman?”
“Yes, on the street. She started yelling at me. She kept yelling ‘oinky staff’ and pointing at me.”
“Are you sure she didn’t say die Eikaufstasche?”
“How did you know? Yes, that sounds like what she was screaming. I thought she was a street person who was delusional, so I ran.”
“My, my! And what was she pointing at before you ran away?”
“Her shopping bag. Then she’d point at me.”
“I think you’d better go look in your shopping bag. I think you got hers by mistake.” I went back into the kitchen and searched through every bag. Sure enough, there in a generic-looking brown paper bag was a brassiere in a size that could hold two cantaloupes comfortably. I walked back into the dining room holding the black-lace bra.
“Oh, I see!” The count started laughing. “You are only here a day or two and you become kinky. You are already becoming German!”
“If you only knew. The bag that the other woman got stuck with had a pair of handcuffs. I wandered into a store called der Boss.”
“I see,” Siegfreid commented while raising his eyebrows with a look that said “I’m impressed ... and I’m interested.” He motioned to me to grab my bowl of pasta and bring it with me. We went upstairs, and Siegfreid proceeded to dish small amounts of the penne onto different parts of my body and eat it off in a sensuous dining experience I will never forget.
Once I got past the idea of how sticky this could potentially make the sheets, I learned to relax and enjoy the count’s food fest. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get over the fact that those handcuffs would have come in handy at that point.
The next morning, the count woke early, ate, showered, and dressed so he could polish off some meetings he said couldn’t be avoided. He admonished me to stay in bed and sleep in, since he would be gone most of the day. I followed his advice. I got up later, had a quick breakfast, took a luxurious bath, and was just getting dressed to head out on the town to take in the Pergamon Museum when there was a knock on my door.
“Yes?” I asked.
“It is me, Herr Willsop. Karl. At za door, zair iz man to zee Siegfreid. Heez name he say iz Ludvig.”
“Karl, the count is gone on business. I will come down to see him,” I said through the safely closed door. (I decided it would be a good idea to keep closed doors between me and Karl as long as the count wasn’t around. You never could tell.)
“I vill put heem in za ... li ... li ... how do you zay ... za room mit da books.”
“The library. Thank you, Karl. I’ll be right there.”
I didn’t quite know what to do, but thought as long as I was titular head of the house, I would try and handle the count’s affairs as best I could. Dignity above all else, I told myself. Siegfreid’s visitor could very well be royalty—some heir of a long-forgotten principality of Prussia or a duke from Austria. As I descended the stairs, walked down the hall and into the library, I found I wasn’t far from the truth. Sitting there on one of the leather sofas was a big ol’ queen. I was so startled by Siegfreid’s guest, I stopped for a moment, then offered my hand as a gesture of friendship.
A hand with rings on every finger poked out of a voluminous caftan and inched its way to offer a limp handshake, but also suggested I should kiss it in the Continental manner of a gentleman to that of a lady. There was no fuckin’ way I was going to kiss that hand. I had no idea where it had been, but from the look of it, to several dozen jewelers. So I shook it and sat down on a sofa across from him.
“You are Robert!” he squealed with delight. “Siegfreid, he tell so much to me about you!”
It’s at moments like this one that I wished I had a camera to prove to others what I was seeing. You just couldn’t make this guy up. Ludwig looked like a very large inmate from a men’s prison that had tried to escape a transvestite planet, but never completely broke away from its gravitational pull. Parts of him, like the close-cropped military Mohawk haircut, seemed downri
ght butch, but they were outweighed by items such as very false eyelashes and gold brocaded slippers with Arabian Nights curled-up toes. Long, dangling diamond earrings and a caftan bearing a print of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus fought with a facial scar for butch supremacy. The earrings and the caftan won.
I had to stop staring and say something. “I’m sorry to tell you Siegfreid isn’t here. He’s out on business all day. I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
“All the time he is gone! I try to see him a lot and I can only talk to him on the phone. He is always out when I come here!” he complained fussily. He reached into a silk purse and retrieved a handkerchief, then blew his nose with a daintiness that would put Queen Elizabeth to shame.
“Perhaps you could tell me why you came and I can convey your message to Siegfreid when he gets home this evening.”
“It is business, too. Siegfreid and I have a small ... what is the word ... arrangement we have made. I must talk to him about it—man to man.”
Man to man, I thought. In your dreams, honey. “You mean it’s personal?”
“Yes, it is something I can say only to him.” He looked as if he were going to say something else, but changed his mind.
“So how long have you known Siegfreid, Ludwig?” I asked. Since the count never really told me a lot about his past, I figured Ludwig could possibly shed some light on this area.
“I have known him twenty years.”
“Twenty years, wow! I guess you must know a lot about him, then. What’s he like?”
“Oh, he is ... what is the word ... popular. Many men in Berlin want to be his boyfriend, but he says no to them all,” Ludwig reported. “You have much luck that you get chosen as his boyfriend. This is not Siegfreid.”
“So he’s never had a boyfriend?” This didn’t sound good, coming from a friend.
“No, he had boyfriends in the past, but most were long ago.”
“Long ago?” I inquired.
“Franz was his boyfriend many years, but Franz died ten, eleven years ago. Hans was last one, but count has not dated him for at least a year. Maybe more. Hans moved to Bonn, I think. Or Düsseldorf. I do not remember. You must be lucky for Siegfreid.”
“Me? Lucky?” I answered. I can’t even associate the word lucky with myself.
“Oh, yes. Before Siegfreid go to United States, he say he is going to look for a boyfriend. Then he finds you! You are lucky, it would seem. Maybe some of your luck would rub off on me if I touch you!” he suggested as his stubby fingers led him to get up and change his seating arrangement. He rose from the sofa and floated around the large coffee table to take his place next to me—uncomfortably close to me. He reached out and traced a finger back and forth across my knee.
“So we must become good friends, yes? Must I wait until I see you at my party next week?”
“Oh my God,” I said, finally getting it. “You’re Mad Queen ... er ... you’re having the famous ball! I never connected that you’re that Ludwig!”
“My name is Ludwig Buxtehude, but you may call me a queen or mad—I am a little of both. But what is bad about being a queen or mad? Call me any name, because I can be any man you wish me to be,” he stated, his finger winding its way up toward my crotch. “Yah, Robert? You want me to be Hercules?”
Mad Queen Ludwig, I thought. Boy, his friends didn’t just pick that name out of the air, did they? “I was thinking you were more of a Samson ... or Salome even!”
“You want me to do my dance of the seven veils?” he said, waving his hand seductively in front of his face as if it were a silk scarf.
Another thought: it would take far more than seven veils to cover this girl. I wondered if they had baseball field tarps in Germany. While I considered this possibility, Ludwig’s hand kept up its relentless march across my leg and was quickly joined by his other hand in exploring my body, which decided it would run itself through my hair.
I didn’t mean to let Ludwig get this far, but I was trying to be polite. But it was becoming clear I needed to do something fast. I was just about to pull away from Ludwig when the door to the library flew open and there stood Karl, tray in hand and an accusing look on his face. He stood there motionless, in a move calculated to make a fairly innocent scene look guiltier than sin. The overly shocked look on his face was meant to pin the scarlet letter square on my shirt. I wouldn’t put it past Karl to have been eavesdropping through the door and peering through the keyhole, waiting for just the right moment to catch me in the act. He was obviously an amateur. A real pro would have had a camera.
“Everything is fine, Karl. You can go now,” I said as I waved him away.
“I am zorry, Herr Willsop. I forgot you were in here,” he lied through his capped teeth.
“That’s OK, Ludwig was just like you ... in the process of leaving,” I replied, hoping Karl would take the hint—and Ludwig, too.
Karl went out, backing through the door, but before he closed it behind him, he turned and flashed me a just-wait- ’til-I-tell-daddy look and smiled like he had the goods on me. From now on, Karl couldn’t be trusted. And there would be no year-end bonus in his Christmas card.
“Ludwig, I think you need to go. I will let the count know he must call you.”
“Yah, you must, Herr Willsop. This is very important. Very important,” he stressed, putting so much emphasis on the word that it sounded criminal.
I saw Ludwig out, but not without him raising my hand at the door and kissing it like it was the Holy Grail.
“I can’t wait to see you at your masquerade ball, Ludwig. Until then,” I said, waving him away in his chauffeur-driven, flaming red Rolls Royce—perhaps the only one of its kind in Germany (or existence).
Just as Ludwig was driving away in his chariot of the goddesses, another car drove into the driveway after it and parked. Out jumped a virile-looking German man who started speaking excitedly in German to me. When he saw nothing he said registered on my face, he cocked his head and asked me in almost flawless English, “You are Robert, no?”
“No, I am ... I mean yes ... I don’t know what I mean.”
“My name is Heino. I am Siegfreid’s business partner. I came to see the count. He is around?”
“No, I’m sorry, Heino. He left a few hours ago on business. I assumed he was with you.”
“No, no, he is not with me. I told him I had to see him today and he said he couldn’t, that he was on a honeymoon. No business. But I said I had to see him in person.”
“If he didn’t want to talk with you, why did he tell me that he was going out on business, I wonder?”
“I do not know,” Heino answered. “He has been so busy lately. He used to be very much involved in his shipping business, but now he leaves everything to me. I think he wants to settle down and spend time with his new boyfriend,” he stated, pointing at me. “I do not blame him. You are so much better than a ship,” he said in earnest.
I supposed it was a compliment, but it was a strange one. I tried to picture a ship that would represent me: The S.S. Neurotic. It wanted to set sail for exotic and exciting places, but never left port because it was afraid something bad might happen.
Heino looked around as if the answer to Siegfreid’s whereabouts was scrawled on the face of the count’s town house. “Well, I must go now. Please, tell Siegfreid I must talk to him about something urgent. I will try to call him on his cellular phone, but he never answers.” Heino reached out and shook my hand good-bye, said he was glad to have met me, and got into his car and departed—leaving me confused.
I went out for a walk, had lunch at a sidewalk café, and returned home around three in the afternoon. I was tired, so I took a nap. My do-nothing lifestyle took more effort than I realized. You didn’t just sit around all day eating chocolate bonbons and talking on the telephone to your friends. No, siree. You had to deal with amorous drag queens, hateful servants, snotty chauffeurs, and prying housekeepers.
I had a brief nightmare where Ludwig was wea
ring a G-string and threatened to take it off. Thankfully I woke up before he could remove the garment—but was confronted with something equally frightening: the sight of Karl standing over me with a pillow in his hands.
“Zorry, Herr Willsop. I vas changing zese sheets in da udder bedrume und braut deese pillow in to gif to you.”
I propped myself up on my elbow, still in shock that I had caught Karl trying to smother me while I slept. I was still groggy, so I said the first thing that came into my mind: “Karl, would you bring me a .357 Magnum to put under my pillow?”
Karl looked at me quizzically, then laughed, even though he didn’t understand what he was laughing about. “I’m zorry, I do not understand.”
“Never mind,” I replied.
The minute Karl left, I locked the door to the bedroom and ran to the phone. I dialed the phone and prayed it would be answered.
“Hello? Monette O’Reilley.”
“Monette, thank God you were in your office! Karl, one of the servants in the house, just tried to kill me!” I heaved.
“Oh, really,” she responded. “Our receptionist tried to stab me and a Mongolian hit man tried to assassinate me this morning. And it’s not even noon yet.”
“I’m serious, Monette. I just took a nap and when I woke up, Karl was standing over me, holding a pillow he was going to smother me with.”
“OK, calm down and tell me the whole story.”
I did, embellishing a bit here and there for effect. Who’s to say there wasn’t a titanic struggle as my arms flailed about, trying to valiantly loosen the pillow from Karl’s homicidal clutch of death? Everything is subjective, right? Likewise, Helmut’s amorous penne-garnishing episode more correctly reflected his ruthless and cunning nature as a rapacious mantrap.
“My advice to you,” Monette started, “is to spend as little time in the house as you can. Or at least whenever Siegfreid is out. Have witnesses.”
“What is it about me that makes people want to murder me, Monette? Last year, Michael’s mother pushed me down a flight of stairs and tried to bean me with a four-hundred-pound painting. Now Karl’s trying to snuff me out. Why is it no one ever thinks of snuffing out someone really obnoxious, like Pat Robertson?”