Authors: Thomas Berger
“Shelby?” Caution made him pretend briefly not to recall the name.
“
Shelby,
yes!” Schatzi’s breath into his ear was like a long needle piercing the drum. “He is a sympatizer, but he will not forever be one with rudeness.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“You might have smelled it—but that is not the point. A source in the very headquarters of the major American medical hospital in Berlin. If Major General Floyd Parks becomes ill, where does he go? To
1209th
! If the deputy commander, Colonel Frank Howley?
To 1209th
! Eisenhower comes to Berlin, twists his ankle—even you should see the actualities. There is no brains in making enemies of someone who has the slightest power. That is the first rule. The second is, give to a man a chance.”
Give to a man a chance! It was a touching slogan of wonderful, innocent charity, like the creed of some early social reformer, some Robert Owen, now outworn but fond in memory. He had not looked for such a sentiment in Schatzi and finding it was not quite sure he got its sense, unless beneath that scarred and charred carapace there was an old idealism that had remained impervious to the arrests and tortures and the subtler ravages of the illegal life.
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Do you wish me to identify myself to him?”
“He was told someone would come to ask his assistance.”
Schild did not think it wisdom to remind Schatzi his directions had been simply to go to the 1209th, with no mention of a source; the injustice being done him stirred more caution than hurt.
“Now they must give him another carton-box of vodka.”
“He is bribed?”
“To be sure, he is only a sympatizer and not under discipline. But tell me what time is it? Ah, so late! One more detail: in a room on the south front of Shelby’s building is a closet filled to top with papers of the old
Winterhilfe
—this was a Nazi agency to deal with the poor, clothing and food for charitable distribution. In the last years of the war, one hears, they gave out clothing of the Jews exterminated in the camps, sometimes even forgetting to cut off the yellow badges. Haha, cynicism could not be carried farther on...”
How innocuous Schild’s own little joke had been in contrast to this, the authentic, vintaged gallows-humor.
Schatzi continued: “Now there is a boy in that office, with some kind of entertainment service for the Ami troops. A great lout, with him you would be correct when you said clown. Just go there and get the files from him, no need to let Shelby know.”
“No need to let Shelby know?” Schild could do no more than parrot the sentence.
“Certainly not! Anything you can get without him, all the better. One shouldn’t wish that
Scheisskerl
to become too self-important. As I told you, he is not even a member of the Party, he cannot, in the end, be controlled—
Achtung
!” He reared back and harked with hand to ear. But it was only someone entering Lovett’s door down the block.
“Isn’t that a Wehrmacht cap?” asked Schild, seeking a moment’s respite, for prolonged exposure to Schatzi’s undiluted presence was very like being worked over with a blowtorch; one had left only short breath, and that was filled with the smell of scorching. However, Schatzi’s own habit of disregarding nothing was so influential that he found himself eager for the answer, for some clue as to his frequent changes of costume, which were more likely to achieve publicity than disguise.
But Schatzi gave every notice he could, in silence and darkness, that the question was a faux pas, social and not conspiratorial, nonetheless offending.
“Go now to your party,” he whispered coldly. “And for heaven’s sake don’t be rude to anybody. Have pleasure, dancing and drinking, show yourself to be a normal person. What there is to lose but your chains?” With the latter he moved into better humor, saying in what no doubt was a friendly way: “Here is a little gift from me to you.”
He pressed a small, flat package in Schild’s hand. What was it, rubbers? Schatzi didn’t understand and Schild, laughing, didn’t know the term of the German-in-the-street.
“Empfängnisverhütende Mittel?”
The dictionary formality got a laugh even from Schatzi. “Cigarettes of the Fleetwood brand.
Also,
unless emergency, the usual time and place.”
He left, or rather he was no longer there. Nor was there a sound that could not have been made by a leaf crashing onto a pillow of moss. The “gift” lying uneasily in his pocket—as if it were soaked in phosphorous-water which when dry would explode—Schild went again towards Lovett’s gate. Just before it he met the stout chaplain, whose pipe had once more gone out, this time, however, without appeal. A soft girl of about fifteen and in long braids stood swaying at his side.
“Good evening, men,” he voiced richly. “I don’t suppose—no, I see you’re busy.” Peering. “Oh, just one of you! Well, to the party, eh? I may look in later, but just now I must act the Samaritan to this child, who is out all alone after curfew.” He reached for a braid. “You don’t suppose you—no, go on in and have fun. This is what chaplains are for. But, I say, have you any idea where Jugenheimer Weg lies?”
Telling him, Schild thought he heard a distant, hideous snicker, a passage of air through corrupted channels; and so it was, and no more: the chaplain sucked on his dead pipe.
“Sank you from zuh bottom of my hot,” said the girl, with a pliant little moue very visible in the glow of Lovett’s porchlight.
Were they all dead drunk or had he got the wrong night? He knocked interminably without result, and no doubt would have given up had he not received so many counsels, nay, commands, to go there and enjoy himself. At length Lovett unbarred the portal, showing a face painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, slightly under the weather, and donating three white fingers towards hospitality.
In the living room, which was the smaller and more airless for it, sat a number of guests in contemplation of their belt buckles. As Schild came in from the hall they looked up as one and stared ominously, hatefully, man and woman, and as quickly looked away in instant boredom. Lovett gave him a green tumbler, and Nader, who it appeared was also
en menage,
presented a hard look from beneath the one long eyebrow like a caterpillar across his forehead, and went into a corner from which presently a phonograph began to bray. The company arose to dance claustrally, the rug having been cleared away but not the furniture. A nurse or two, lacking partners, watched Schild in a hopeless expectancy which soon settled into resentment, for he had discovered a sofa in the opposite quarter where one might settle to view the passing parade.
At one end of the couch sprawled a young man, who had managed by a disorderly arrangement of large limbs to command nine-tenths of the surface that should have been free; as if this were not enough, Schild was astonished to see he wore corporal’s stripes.
With a failure of consideration he immediately regretted, since the fellow on his approach made ample room, he asked: “Is this affair for enlisted men, too?”
Taking no seen offense, the young man grinned and waved his hand abroad. There were, in truth, several noncoms scattered through the crowd. A sergeant waltzed by at that moment with a bony nurse, in some danger of being impaled on her chin.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything was wrong. I’ve heard these medic outfits practice a good deal of democracy.”
“More in the breach than in the observance.” But the corporal’s very impudence belied this. Schild anticipated trouble. He warily took stock of this soldier, whose olive-drab hulk slouched into the couch as if he owned it. Assuming comparable
sang-froid,
Schild without looking lifted the drink in his hand and took a modest draught. It was not a green glass at all, but a clear tumbler containing a viscuous green fluid, an oleaginous, minty, sweetish ooze. His tongue curled in revulsion. While he fancied desperate measures, the liquid crawled across the palate and drained into his throat.
“God, that fool gave me a full glass of crème de menthe!”
“That’s probably all he had left. They pooled the officers’ liquor rations for the party, but most of it was wines and liqueurs. I got Chablis.” The young man, lips parted in good humor, lifted the glass that stood between his feet. “It’s awful, too, if that makes you feel better.”
Strangely, it did. There was a generosity in the corporal’s ease which minimized his impudence. With a wry nod at his orders, and despite a sense of imminent nausea, Schild organized himself for fun. But when the opportunity appeared, it was in the corporal’s name.
“Reinhart!”
A large nurse, constructed on the plan of Rubens’ second wife, stood before them offering her heroic body with a slight upthrust of the hips. High above, gigantic breasts made bold, made brutal, and threatened the poor weak seams of her olive dress. One listened for the
ping
of parting threads deep in her armpits. Very likely, said fun-loving Schild to Schild, she cocks her hips to balance the bulk of those incredible glands.
“Come on, Reinhart,” she cried and rowdily assaulted the corporal’s arm. “Don’t be sticky.” She got him on his feet and into the amplitude of her façade. From the phonograph wailed a niggardly statement of love denied. And Schild sat in his standard condition: alone.
N
UESE LIEUTENANT VERONICA LEARY
presided over the nut ward of the 1209th. Reinhart knew her by sight and name; was not, however, in the least acquainted. Were the standards of rank, which he approved, now to be swept aside?
This was his first mixed-grade party, and he had so far found it difficult to put off his snobbery, even though most of the officers were from the medical staff, which meant an amiable, unsoldierly, democratic lot whose professional view of man as viscera saved them from megalomania. The administrative officers, having got wind of the conglomerate guest-list, stayed away, victims of poor judgment. For of the enlisted personnel Lovett had invited only notorious brown-nosers whose obsequiousness no intimacy could corrupt.
With qualms about his own status, Reinhart had soon retreated to the isolation of the sofa. Now here was Leary, legitimizing him by her substantial presence, like Europa and the ox with functions reversed. But since he was, despite nature’s perverse generosity, larger still than she, the issue was a push-pull in a progressively diminishing tempo, and a nettled comment, charged with liquorous and sexy odors, blown into his ear.
“Do you know, you’re really a punk dancer.”
“Never claimed to be a good one.”
Which she went for in a large way, with a splendor of teeth and a marvel of air-blue eyes, in a demonstration of the frequently altering but at any given moment perfect dominion of her withal fragile, sentient face over the dumb classicism of that body.
“D’yuh know what?” she asked, giddy again but kindly, “Really, when it comes right down to it, you don’t have much fun, do you?”
“I’m having fun right now,” he said, so pitifully that his heart cracked right through at the vibration and hung like a sundered glacier about to plunge into the sea.
“Aw, kiddy, come on and cheer up! When I used to see you I would think there’s the very nicest boy in the 1209th. And also the saddest, because who knows what secrets lu-r-r-r-k in the hearts of corporals.”
This was actually a horror to Reinhart: as he walked in dignity and rectitude, strange eyes had marked him, had abstracted a piece of him, as it were, that, insensitive fool that he was, he had never missed.
“All right, it was just an idea,” she said then, surprisingly enough, eyes bright with the fool’s-gold of ennui, mouth parodying good humor. This came from hither-and-yon; she was revolving her head, apparently surveying the room for another candidate to storm, who, not capitulating instanter, would get the same short shrift as Reinhart.
For he had her sized up, and stood enjoying bitterness confirmed. When a nurse smiles at a corporal,
caveat
would-be lover! A nurse is an ill integration of woman and officer, with one of the roles appearing wherever the ordinary lines of human deportment would ordain the other; so that you are always puckering to kiss a golden bar or saluting a breast, a stranded sycophant between sex and power.
The music having suddenly pooped out, the rest of the crowd clogged the rear of the room, where Nader gave first aid to the record player with loud frustration at the complexities of wire. No man being opposed—even the dark, nervous officer had vanished—they returned to the couch, where Lieutenant Leary announced her name to Reinhart as “Very,” and plumped down proprietor-close. He had then, by default, been chosen.
Since high school Reinhart had made it a principle to avoid really pretty girls, with their detestable and arrogant ignorance of the principle: they’re all the same upside down. He played courtier to no one, and was gratified in college to see that the lackeys of the prom queens were to a man spectacled and pimply, usually students of science. However, although she was beautiful, Very was reclaimed by her size; it was a near-deformity, being almost divine, and made her human.
“Do you have the time?” he asked, for in spite of all, he was horribly bored.
“Sure, but who’ll hold the horse?” Very answered brightly. “An old joke that if my father’s said once, he’s said a thousand times. But I can’t tell you because yesterday I sold my watch to the Russians for two hundred and fifty dollars.”
She showed a fine, empty wrist—at such narrowing places she was as slim as she was generous in the areas for expanse—and went on to add that really the watch was sold through an agent, who no doubt had kept a sizable commission since timepieces went for about five hundred; but to her it was well worth the missing half: she feared the Russians, who were reputed to prefer large women.
“And I’m not what you’d call petite.” Robustly she snorted.
“The Russians like ’em fat,” Reinhart said gallantly. “And that’s not you.”
She looked away with a hint of pain, as if the remark were out of order, and then returned to, anyway, do best by it: “One thing I know, it’s sure hard to lose it when you put on blubber. Cripes, you get so hungry, sometimes!” Her extraordinary grin over nothing, open, unafraid, witless, was more splendid than anyone else could make for cause. Trying unsuccessfully to match it, he cursed the fate that had led him early in life and from a false psychology to cultivate the impassivity of an Oriental. Now, in a time to be bravura, he found himself instead sneakily edging his knee over against hers, laying his hand on the cushion where hers, he had observed, habitually flew at punctuations in her speech, studying the rich mouth as it carved words from the adamant of the northern Midwest. If he wished to touch her, he should do it; there was a bond between large people, as among Negroes, Greek-Americans, soldiers, etc., by means of which their secrets were kept only from the outside world; thus, if he had such a wish, she already knew it and sitting there unprotestant was not offended.