Saints and Villains

by Denise Giardina

  He was also embarrassed by the communal bathing arrangements. A bathroom at the end of the hall held showers, toilets, and urinals. There were pegs along the wall for hanging towels and clothing and no place to undress in privacy, though the showers had damp canvas curtains. One morning Dietrich left his room wearing an embroidered dressing gown with velvet collar and carrying a soap dish. Fred Bishop, still damp from the shower and wearing only a towel, was walking down the hall. Dietrich pulled the door to his room shut behind him. Fred looked offended and moved to the far wall to let Dietrich pass. Dietrich tried to be friendly, to show he had not meant to imply distrust of the other, nodded his head, and, forgetting to speak English in his nervousness, said, “Guten morgen.”

  “Morning,” Fred answered.

  “I must remember to use my English,” Dietrich said. “It isn’t yet very good.”

  Fred said, “Oh. Well. You’re doing all right. Lot better than I’d do in German.”

  “Dank— Thank you.” Dietrich looked away, then back. “So. On to clean.”

  “Good. Clean.”

  Suddenly the coming year stretched before Dietrich like a barren, solitary eternity where he would never hear a kind word from someone who knew and understood him. He felt close to tears, and to cover it, he moved on down the hall. He was surprised to hear Fred call after him, “Stop by my room sometime. Listen to the Victrola. Five oh two.”

  Dietrich stopped. “Ja,” he said. “Thank you. Five oh two.”

  Fred Bishop had just begun to tackle Kierkegaard when there came a knock at his door and there stood the German holding a promisingly dark bottle and two tiny glasses.

  “Is this a good time?” Dietrich asked. “Do you now study?”

  “I’m always ready for a break,” Fred said. He couldn’t imagine Dietrich sprawling on the bed, so he offered him the armchair. Dietrich placed the glasses on the desk and opened the bottle of schnapps.

  Fred whistled. “Jesus, where’d you get that?” He went to the door and shut it.

  “My brother Karl-Friedrich sends it in the mail. He cuts a hole in a cheese and puts it inside.”

  Fred shook his head admiringly. “Man, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the sneaky type.”

  Dietrich wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted, so he blushed. “Well, Karl-Friedrich has lectured once in America and knows I will want this. I much prefer a good wine, but this bottle is small and does not easily break. It is a great foolishness, isn’t it? This Prohibition?”

  “Your first lesson about America,” Fred said. “We got a sizable portion of the population that thinks human beings should be deprived of sight, touch, sound, and taste. No contamination, go straight to heaven that way.”

  They sipped the schnapps, which tasted like wild cherries.

  “You said you have music?” Dietrich asked shyly. He could not begin to say how much he missed his family’s musical evenings.

  “You bet. Don’t know if it’s your cup of tea, though.” Fred pulled out a box which held his albums, laid out his favorites on the bed. “Some of these are older. Willie the Lion Smith. Stride piano on the Okeh label. These here are all on Black Swan.” He held up one after the other as though displaying the contents of a treasure chest. “Chick Webb. Benny Carter. Fess Williams. Swing.”

  “Was ist swing?”

  “Tell me what you listen to and I’ll try to compare it.”

  “I enjoy Bach, of course. Some of Mozart. Schumann. Brahms.”

  Fred sighed. “We got a problem here.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, just I don’t know if you’ll like this. It’s stuff you dance to.”

  Dietrich nodded his head, confused. Fred filled his glass again and said, “I’ll put on some Benny Carter. Just shut your eyes and relax. And keep drinking that stuff.”

  “Ja,” Dietrich said.

  He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair with such a look of concentration on his face Fred had to stifle a laugh. He switched on the Victrola and lifted the elongated arm carefully, ran the tip of his finger over the needle. “This Victrola is my most prized possession,” he said as though crooning to a child. “I dust it every day. Dust the little dog on the label.” He wiped the album before laying it on the turntable, set the needle on “Liza.” Soon he was moving around the room, alcohol pushing the music into his fingers and toes. Dietrich was still reared back, clutching the arms of the chair.

  “Let go the chair,” Fred said.

  Dietrich opened his eyes, startled, then let go of the chair like a man pushing himself out onto a precarious ledge. Fred was dancing back and forth to the beat, and Dietrich watched transfixed while the room filled with the rhythmic wail of a saxophone.

  “Move your legs!” Fred commanded.

  Dietrich started to jiggle his legs. He smiled.

  “Stand up!” Fred cranked up the volume. The sax was howling. He whirled around, elbows up. “Move!” he yelled.

  And Dietrich moved.

  (“Damn, he did,” Fred told Myles later. “Got that body like a little truck and moved it around that room.”)

  Fred’s hands were above his head and he was wishing Dietrich were Mavis Pruitt from Sugar Hill, who eyed him from her Abyssinian pew when he preached but wouldn’t give him the time of day because she knew he would leave Harlem, and she was Harlem. Dietrich was outside himself as well somewhere in Berlin with someone whose face could not be seen. The trumpets had taken over, and they didn’t even hear the pounding on the door until the music stopped.

  Fred flung open the door to face a student named Krause.

  “Some people are studying, Bishop,” Krause said.

  “It’s the first week, Krause. You’re a senior. Nothing to prove.”

  “I have seventy-five pages of Calvin to read for Baillie tomorrow.” Then he noticed Dietrich and almost stammered, “Bonhoeffer. I wouldn’t have thought—” He looked back accusingly at Fred.

  “I like to dance,” said Dietrich, a little tipsy. “I am the best dancer of my family.”

  “We’ll keep it down,” Fred said and shut the door in Krause’s face, muttering, “Like I’m corrupting the Teutonic race.”

  Dietrich raised his head. “Was?”

  “Nothing,” Fred said. He replenished their glasses. “Pretty good dancing for the first time. Like that music?”

  “Oh yes!”

  “But a recording is nothing, scratchy, drums don’t come through. You should hear it in person.”

  “Where? Do you know places?”

  “Do I know places.” Fred smiled. And because of the schnapps he added generously, “Bonhoeffer, how would you like to go to the Savoy?”

  “It sounds very good.” Dietrich raised his glass. “And please. Call me Dietrich.”

  In addition to his formal ways, Dietrich became an object of gossip because he never attended chapel. When Fred asked him about it, he shrugged and said he didn’t see much reason for it, had never been a regular churchgoer. Fred looked surprised.

  “Why go into the ministry, then?”

  “Not the ministry,” Dietrich said. “Theology. Very intellectual, very rigorous, very disciplined.”

  Which might explain, Fred speculated to Myles Horton, the German’s behavior in class. For a couple of weeks Dietrich had been quiet, listening, not saying a word. “Biting his tongue, apparently,” Fred said.

  For Dietrich’s silence, brought on by his shock at the informality and irreverence of American classroom discussion, came to an abrupt end in an ethics seminar. Niebuhr was lecturing on Erasmus and Luther.

  “In De libero arbitrio, or ‘The Freedom of the Will,’ Erasmus makes the case for the freedom of the individual to choose the good. The individual, therefore, has an ethical responsibility to act morally, and to challenge any ruler who fails to act justly. So, for example, Erasmus might say when a rational man sees government troops breaking the skulls of striking coal miners in Kentucky, a rational man
would exercise his free will to protest, even intervene.”

  Myles Horton, who had spent his summers with coal miners in Harlan County, was happily scribbling away. Niebuhr paced and rubbed his bald forehead, pushing back hair that wasn’t there.

  “Erasmus,” he continued, “was the great humanist of his age. He anticipated the Enlightenment thinkers as a champion of reason and human freedom. Some would say a bit naively. Luther, for one, disagreed strongly with Erasmus. He responded with De servo arbitrio, ‘The Bondage of the Will.’”

  “Typical German,” Myles said, just loud enough to be heard. He had completely forgotten Dietrich’s presence. Fred, who was sitting behind Dietrich, saw the German’s ears and neck turn a bright red. Niebuhr noticed as well and glanced at Dietrich uneasily but kept on with the lecture.

  “For Luther, man is a sinful, irrational creature with no will of his own to act morally. Only the grace of God allows some to choose the good. Others receive no such grace and choose evil. God hardens such men. Now why, one might ask Luther, are only some given God’s grace, and not all? Is this fair? Can such a God be called just? According to Luther, these questions are not to be asked. If God hides His reasons from us, it is no concern of ours. God is so far above us as to be inscrutable. And so we must not question why God hardens the man who does evil.”

  There were whispers in the back near Myles’s desk, then titters. Niebuhr pretended he didn’t hear. “Of course, I am not Martin Luther,” he continued. “I do ask questions. Why would God harden one man and not another?” The titters were growing. Myles had his hand over his mouth and was looking at the ceiling. “Luther would say that God hardens a man for the salvation of other men.”

  “And the women love it too,” said Myles.

  Everybody hooted, even Niebuhr.

  Dietrich slammed his notebook shut. “What sort of theology is this?” he cried.

  The class fell silent. Then Myles said, “God can take a joke, Bonhoeffer, even if you can’t.”

  Dietrich turned. “It is not just jokes. It is your theology. Or lack of it. There is no critical thinking here. I cannot take notes in these classes. There is nothing to write down, only this fellow’s feelings and that fellow’s opinion. Too much about the working class and politics. Not enough exegesis, not enough dogmatics.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Krause.

  Niebuhr, angry himself now, folded his arms across his chest. “By all means, then, let us hear what one of the leading intellects in Germany has to contribute to this discussion.”

  “If you are asking whether I am a liberal, a rationalist, a Calvinist, or a Barthian—”

  “At this moment I don’t care which you are,” Niebuhr interrupted. “What does any of it have to do with human experience? What does it have to do with you?” When Dietrich looked puzzled, he added in what he meant as a joking tone, “You know, Bonhoeffer, I recommend a strong dose of the prophets. Can you find them in the Bible?”

  Dietrich turned red again. “When you speak to me as if I have no familiarity with the scriptures, you insult me and you insult German theology. Not to mention the intellect. This is what I observe in America, to reject the intellect.”

  Fred said, “I know a woman in Harlem name of Ruth Jones. Her oldest son is serving ten years in jail, arrested on the picket line at a slaughterhouse for cussing a white policeman. Her youngest son had a tumor in his brain. Doctors cut it out. Said he was cured. Two months later a taxicab jumped the curb and ran right over him. What can Ruth Jones know about God?”

  “He’s got a mean sense of humor,” said Myles.

  Dietrich was staring at Fred.

  Fred continued, “From what she knows, there’s no sense to any of it, and tell you what, that’s as much as you know too. So don’t go to Ruth Jones with that intellect stuff. Know what she’ll say? Woman will ask you if you love Jesus. Intellect! Take your intellect and argue her any kind of theology you want to. She won’t pay you any mind. Mourns her sons. Loves Jesus. Won’t let go of any of it.”

  Dietrich said, “Then why do any of you study theology? Why are you here?”

  “I’m not saying don’t study theology,” Fred said. “I’m saying don’t take yourself and your head so damn seriously. Man, spout all the theology you want, you can’t scratch the surface of God Almighty.”

  He expected a response, but Dietrich had gone silent and distant. He relaxed as though the anger were visibly draining from him.

  “Bonhoeffer, how well do you preach?” Niebuhr asked suddenly.

  Dietrich looked around. “I have preached on a number of occasions,” he said self-consciously. He ducked his head. “I have been told my sermons are very boring. Even my father says so.”

  Niebuhr turned abruptly to hide a smile and began erasing the chalkboard. “You know, Bonhoeffer,” he said, back to the class, “you really should work with Fred this year at Abyssinian Baptist.”

  Behind Dietrich, Fred almost came out of his seat, shaking his head at Niebuhr as hard as he could. Niebuhr wouldn’t turn around and look at him.

  “You really should,” Niebuhr repeated. “I think I’ll mention it to Dr. Powell.”

  Fred decided the only way to get out of taking Dietrich to Abyssinian was if Dr. Powell said no. And the best way to get him to say no, since he wouldn’t have any good reason to, was for Adam Junior to drop a hint. But Fred hadn’t seen Adam Junior since school started, so he checked the registrar’s office. He was told that Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was scheduled for Church History with Moffat at eleven o’clock, so he waited outside the classroom. The door was open, because it was still hot in the city; Moffat was lecturing away about the Desert Fathers who wore animal skins and fasted and lived their whole lives praying on top of twenty-foot-tall poles. Adam Junior was not in the classroom. But Rita, one of Abyssinian’s church secretaries, was in the last row, wearing a neat white blouse and black hat and scribbling away in shorthand with an amused look on her face.

  She emerged when the lecture was over, adjusting her hat. Fred said, “Rita, what you doing here? Where’s Adam Junior?”

  “He’s too busy for this,” she said. “Eleven o’clock the soup kitchen is just starting lunch and he’s got a line a mile long asking about jobs. Why they have these classes so close to lunch?”

  “And Moffat said you could do this?”

  She leaned close to Fred and lowered her voice. “He hasn’t said it. Fact is, he looks a hole through me every time I come in the door. Said this morning he was complaining to the president, see about getting young Mr. Powell kicked out if he doesn’t start coming to class.”

  Which was almost what happened. Except Adam Junior quit before the seminary had a chance to expel him. Fred didn’t see him or Dr. Powell until the next Sunday at church, and that was too late. The decisions had been made. Adam Junior would drop out of Union and Abyssinian would ordain him anyway. In the meantime Niebuhr had talked to Dr. Powell, who said he’d be happy to add the German exchange student Bonhoeffer as a second intern. Exciting for the congregation to have somebody from a foreign country, and a good learning experience for the young man. Working with Fred Bishop, of course, doing whatever Fred set him to do. So that was that.

  Myles was visiting in Fred’s room that night when Dietrich came by.

  “So,” Dietrich said, standing in the doorway, “we shall work together. Splendid, splendid.”

  Fred invited him in, tried to act as though he were happy about the new arrangement. Dietrich asked Myles, “At which church do you work? Is it Harlem also?”

  “I do my fieldwork with a labor organizer in Brooklyn.”

  Fred said, “Myles isn’t getting ordained. He belongs to the church of Norman Thomas.”

  “Who is Norman Thomas?”

  “Union Seminary graduate,” said Myles. “Also happens to be the Socialist candidate for president.”

  “And what has this to do with theology? Ah well, the Socialists. My brother Karl-Friedrich thought himself a Social
ist for a time, but it was what my father calls youthful idealism. Nothing more.” Dietrich waved his hand.

  Myles glanced at Fred and rolled his eyes, got up to leave.

  “Don’t go,” Fred said quickly.

  Myles said, “You and Bonhoeffer have to make your plans.”

  “In fact,” said Dietrich, “I cannot stay to talk. I must return to my room and write a paper. But I have an idea. I am a bit homesick, you see. Dr. Niebuhr tells me there is a German neighborhood on the Upper East Side, Yorkville. Many German restaurants. Let me take you there, Fred. You will be my guest.”

  Myles said, “Something you don’t understand, Bonhoeffer. Fred can’t—” But Fred waved for him to be quiet.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Splendid, splendid!” Dietrich said again, slow and loud, as though this were a new word he’d learned and liked a lot. He shook hands all around and left.

  Myles sat back down. “No way,” he said. “Especially not in Yorkville.”

  “I know. I want to see how he acts. May be a good excuse to get out of working with this sucker.”

  Fred had never been in Yorkville, which had a reputation, left over from the war, of being an unsavory place stocked with spies, black marketeers, and white slavers in search of pure Anglo-Saxon girls to ship back to Germany. But that wasn’t why Fred felt so uncomfortable as they walked down East 86th. Too many people stared at them, which Dietrich didn’t notice but Fred had to. They stopped beneath a sign.

  Deutsches’ Restaurant Platzl Dining Dancing

  “Dancing,” said Dietrich. He smiled at Fred. “You want dancing?”

  Fred knew he wouldn’t be doing any dancing there, but he didn’t say anything except “Sure” and followed Dietrich up the steps. Inside the light was dim. There were tables with white cloths and oom-pah-pah music coming from the next room. Dietrich headed toward an empty table, and again Fred followed, aware that every eye in the room was on them. Dietrich sat down. He was ecstatic.

  “Smell!” he cried. “It is like my mother’s kitchen!”

  They unfolded their napkins. Then Fred looked away and stared at the wall because a waiter was bearing down on them with an angry expression. He stopped beside the table.