The Losing Role Read online

  Two

  The SS captain had orders to put Max on a train for Bavaria. The problem was finding the right train, since it was high season for full retreat on the Eastern Front. For a night and a day Max’s SS escorts traveled the countryside in search of rail lines, crossings, stations. In better times it might have made a fine motoring tour. The low green hills shimmered in the late fall sun. A rocky stream rushed alongside the road, foaming white. Max kept his blanket draped over his lap. The captain’s men brought him hot food and schnapps and played cards with him. And Max vowed to keep this damn good thing going as long as he could.

  In the middle of the night, they stopped at an abandoned mansion. The usual scavengers—passing troops and forced laborers on the lam—had cleaned out the food and liquor; but in an antique armoire Max discovered riding boots, jodhpurs, a corduroy blazer, a lambswool sweater, and a floppy upper-class hiker’s hat. He put all this on. In the mirror he saw a cultured German impersonating an English gentleman, the very look he’d given himself before the army. He would wear his finery the rest of the way. He even took an ivory-handled cane with him. The captain had no objections and let Max keep his worn field gray-green uniform in a rucksack. The men played along by calling him “Mein Herr,” as if they were seeing off a rich and eccentric uncle for an adventurous trip abroad from which he’d have many interesting stories. They lent him a leather overcoat like the captain’s. And Max played it up all the more. He had a shave with warm water and left a pencil thin mustache like the one he had in America. As they toured on, he told himself he was over his farm girl Anka. Had she really almost talked him into deserting? Wait out the war in a refugee camp and then score a little farm? Nonsense. Crazy girls put crazy ideas in your head. The war put crazy ideas in your head. Her new sergeant was probably dead already.

  They ended up at another mansion. At dawn the captain invited Max out on the veranda where they draped their fine overcoats over their shoulders, drank coffee, and smoked as if this place was the captain’s country villa and a real war was his future hope and not a daily nightmare far out of control. The captain told Max his name was Pielau—Adalbert von Pielau.

  “I am a real ‘von,’ Herr ‘von’ Kaspar,” the captain said and sighed. “These days, I mostly leave the ‘von’ off. Some see the noble background as a weakness. I never imagined it possible.”

  “They’re just envious,” Max said. “We all want what we don’t have, isn’t that so?” The coffee was perking him up. He tapped his cane on the veranda slate, two pops. “Now, good von Pielau, if I may, how about you telling me what they’re to do with me.”

  Pielau smiled. Max had asked the captain’s men this many times. They’d only shrugged. They were on a top-secret job, they said.

  “When the SS comes looking for you,” Max said, “it can mean a tight spot.”

  “Or, something great, something honorable. Don’t forget that.”

  “It has to do with performing?” Max said. “I mean, what else am I good for? Maybe it’s the Troops Entertainment Section, give our boys a good show. That’s the only way you’ll see me back at the front, I can tell you—in stage makeup.” This last bit was pushing it, despite the sugar coating. He had to gauge Pielau’s SS principles.

  The captain’s flabby jowls had stiffened. He moved to the edge of the veranda and glanced around to make sure no one was listening. He whispered, “Here’s the thing, Kaspar. If I knew more myself, I think I could confide in you. Believe me, I want to survive as much as you.”

  Max took the captain’s disclosure for one of those tricks of implied meaning. The playwrights called it subtext, but regular Germans had perfected the art in the last ten years. It required a response of equal measure.

  Max walked to the edge of the veranda. “If I were in your boots,” he whispered, “I’d get as far from the Russians as you can. Get to the Western Front. You’re a nobleman, right? With contacts? Get nearer to the Americans. And for devil’s sake, when the end comes don’t be wearing that uniform with an SS death skull on the collar. The Americans will take it literally.”

  When the end comes, Max had said—when the war was lost, was his subtext. Did Pielau get it? Or was Max merely projecting his own hopes?

  Pielau’s face had lost color. “Let’s not talk rashly. There are many ways to survive. Victory is the best way.”

  “Of course, yes,” Max blurted and let out a nervous chuckle. “Who’s talking rash, my good man?” He patted Pielau on the back. Pielau chuckled and offered Max another of his Gauloises.

  That afternoon they crossed from what used to be Poland into Germany. In a town called Görlitz, Pielau found Max a passenger train west. On the platform, the locomotive pumped steam as people pushed their children and elderly into the packed cars. Pielau issued Max his papers. He saluted Max first, though Max was only a corporal. “With any luck, we’ll meet again,” he told Max.

  Still in his fine clothes, Max climbed into a passenger car and muscled his way through to a cramped spot in the passageway. He sat on his rucksack, his head pressed up against the cold window. At least he had a window for the night. For long dark hours he slept sitting up, nodding off and jerking awake, as the car rocked and the tracks clicked, and the train stopped for problems he did not want to know. In the morning, he barely recognized Germany. Along the horizon, towers and spires he’d known had vanished. Barrels of black smoke spiraled up into the sky, and the air was peppery with soot.

  Traveling into Nuremberg was like passing through a rock quarry. Once splendid medieval streets were rubble piles of gray and black. Seeing this, the elderly couple next to Max cried. The main train station was such a ruin that the armed forces check-in post was a tent outside. Max reported here. A teenage clerk issued him pea soup from the field kitchen and a truck ride to Grafenwöhr.

  Grafenwöhr. Any German with the slightest military Bildung knew this massive training complex between Nuremberg and the Czech border. At least it wasn’t a concentration camp, Max thought. His truck was packed with fifteen or more soldiers from all branches of service. They straightened for Max when he climbed in wearing his fine getup. They probably think I’m a producer, he thought. In no time he’d be telling them he was only an army corporal, and he hoped they could see the sad irony in that.

  During the bumpy ride the men sounded upbeat, if not thankful, and it kept Max’s confidence high. Most in the truck had volunteered, he learned—they were responding to an urgent armed forces-wide request for English-speaking personnel, and that was all they knew. Hearing this, Max let himself feel somewhat honored that the powers-at-be had come looking for him. And they all had so much in common in the truck! There were other actors, a dancer, musicians, a chef, headwaiters, a playwright, and even a screenwriter. A few had been merchant sailors before the war. Two of the sailors smoked large curved pipes.

  Like Max, most all these men had been to America.

  They rolled into Grafenwöhr at dusk, passing rows of army barracks shaded purple from the sun going down. The compound had perimeter fences as if for POWs. “That’s for secrecy,” someone chanted. “Right. It’s for our safety,” another said, and they nodded in agreement. At the front gate they poked their heads out and joked with the guards, but the guards only stared back as if deaf or zombies (straight from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Max thought).

  The trucks left them on a parade ground lit up with bright spotlights, and even Max had to shield his eyes from the light. Another truckload had already arrived. The men huddled in groups, mostly according to branch of service, and sat on crates that seemed to have been set out for them, the beams of white light illuminating their steamy breath. A group of Luftwaffe noncoms played Skat. A circle of medics passed around music magazines. An army private was juggling turnips, alone. He managed four, then five, and then added his knife into the mix. Around his neck he wore an orange scarf that was a little too bright and long. His hair flopped over his ears, longer than many women’s. A real seedy cabaret type, this
one. What sort of production was this to be? Max wondered. Could it be vaudeville? Not so bad there. He would be returning to his roots. Still, that didn’t explain the sailors and chefs.

  A group of sappers was doing some black market trading. Max strode over and let them jeer at his exclusive attire. He loved it. The sappers loved it. One offered a Jägerwurst and three potatoes for Max’s cane, and Max commenced negotiations, “That’s all good and well, but what a gentleman really needs, boys, is a nice country egg—”

  “What the devil are you? Mister dandy pansy?” Someone was yelling. It came from the office at the edge of the ground, some thirty feet away. An SS lieutenant was standing on the office steps, his hands on his hips. Max assumed the lieutenant was yelling at the juggler, but the juggler had stopped. He’d tucked his longish scarf into his tunic. The lieutenant continued, “That’s right, I’m talking to you! Speak up you!”

  “Surely that little tyrant’s talking to someone else,” Max said to his group.

  The SS lieutenant marched across the ground, the steam pulsing out his mouth. The sappers parted and stepped back. Max’s uniform was packed in the rucksack on his shoulder. He lowered the rucksack to his feet. The lieutenant came straight for him.

  “Excuse me, gents,” Max said and turned to the lieutenant—

  Who screamed and spat spittle: “Why aren’t you in uniform? Speak, you. Name and rank and unit.”

  Max smelled Bockbier and liver dumpling. What a bore, he thought. He stood at attention and saluted, and only then did he notice he still had on the white gloves he’d traded for on the train. “Before I tire you with the whole story, sir,” he began, “I should clarify that I’m a lowly army corporal, in the infantry, just arrived from the Eastern Front and, well, my uniform was so worn from the hard fighting, I did not want to offend anyone.”

  “Another goddamned thespian, that it? Now strip and get your kit on.” The lieutenant kicked Max’s rucksack for emphasis and marched off with his arms folded behind his back like a drill instructor.

  Men joked with Max as he stripped in the biting cold and switched into his itchy old uniform. The sapper returned, frowning, and gave Max one egg for his sore luck.

  Across the ground, the SS lieutenant had stopped at the juggler. He screamed something in the juggler’s face and the juggler, tottering, reached in his tunic and pulled out the length of his tucked-in orange scarf. It flopped at his belt buckle. The lieutenant grabbed at the stretch of scarf, pulled the juggler to his chest, drew his service knife and hacked the scarf off close to the juggler’s neck. This got few laughs. The lieutenant laughed anyway and sauntered back to his office, his arms swinging.

  Their training was so secret the enlisted men could not send mail or have outside contact. Max got a bottom bunk in a barrack and a standup locker slapped together with cheap pinewood. That first night he set his fine clothing in a neat pile in his locker and dropped into his bunk, worried. He was little more than a recruit again, it seemed. Then he lay back, his head snug in his new pillow, and decided worrying was pointless. Almost anything was better than where he came from.

  The lone juggler got the bunk above him, and Max suspected the SS lieutenant put them together so he could keep an eye on them. The juggler’s name was Menning, Felix Menning. As they stowed their gear, Max tried to chat him up, get his mind off that asshole lieutenant, but Felix Menning gave him little. He too had been in America, he said—for over two years, and he’d been in the circus to boot. Then he clammed up and climbed into his bunk.

  Soon after lights out, Max heard what first sounded like sniffles. It was sobbing, but muffled as if into a pillow. It was Felix Menning up above him. Max nudged the upper bunk with a knee. “Buck up, Kamerad,” he whispered. “Change is good, don’t you see? Even in war. One door closes, another opens.”

  “Amen,” someone said a couple bunks down. “He’s right, circus boy,” said another.

  Felix Menning said nothing. Soon he was snoring.

  Next morning at reveille, Max and Felix were the last two out the barrack door. Max was groggy and slow getting his uniform on, while Felix took his time. At the doorway, Felix waited for him.

  Felix put a flat hand to Max’s chest. “Listen, Kaspar, you leave that shithead lieutenant to me. I know how to handle the likes of him.” He said this with emphasis, but not anger, as if he were counting out change.

  “You can have him.” Max fought a smile. “Such the blackguard, aren’t you? I forget, you were in the circus—”

  “And Berlin. Parts you don’t even want to know about. So I know my way around a lug like him.” Menning’s stare had become a smile. He patted Max’s chest. “We’ll get on better that way. Trust me.”

  Max never got to the quartermaster first thing. That morning the interviews began, and Max was one of the first to be called in. Two of the strangely mute guards escorted him to a wooden bungalow that looked like a larger version of the standard German garden hut. They left Max inside, alone. A chair stood in the middle of the room before a desk. Max sat in it. The interior was little more refined than the exterior. As in the barracks, everything here was unpainted wood—floor, walls, ceiling, desk—all made of pinewood planks and so raw it was furry in the light. One could catch a sliver on any of it, he thought. Frightful. Four metal chairs and two file cabinets completed the dreadful decor. Only the iron wood stove in the corner helped warm this up.

  The door swung open. Four officers entered—two horse-faced SS lieutenants who looked like young doctors, the shithead SS lieutenant who Felix Menning said he could handle, and to Max’s great delight, Captain Adalbert von Pielau.

  Max wanted to shout out the good man’s name. He stood and gave his best salute.

  Pielau did the Hitler salute, as did the others, and they sat, Pielau at the desk facing Max’s chair and the other three behind Max. Pielau introduced the horse-faced lieutenants. Shithead introduced himself. His name was Rattner.

  Pielau tried a curt smile. “So, we meet again, Corporal Kaspar—or is it von Kaspar?”

  Max got the picture. This Pielau had to play it straight. “My army paybook says Kaspar, sir,” Max said.

  “So it does, yes.” Pielau pulled folders from his map case and slapped them on the desktop. He stared at some papers as if reading, but his eyeballs weren’t moving. Behind Max, one of the officers was trying to clear his throat, and the phlegmy screech combined with the greasy smell of the wood stove fire made Max’s stomach clench up and his throat constrict.

  “You lived in America,” Pielau said. “Eight years. Your family had emigrated there and got themselves to New Hampshire. You end up in New York City. Why?”

  “I’m an actor,” Max said. “We like a new challenge.” Pielau stared, expecting more. “And a shot at success, of course,” Max added.

  Pielau pursed his lips and moved them around, as if he had meat stuck between teeth. “Other Germans went too. They made films. Hollywood embraced them. That traitor bitch Marlene Dietrich. That little rat Lorre.”

  “Hollywood still embraces them.”

  “Lucky for them. You dabbled in American forms.”

  “Forms, sir?”

  One of the officers behind Max said, “Musicals—with the Negro’s jazz.” It was Lieutenant Rattner. “And all the while you work with Jews,” he added.

  “I’m not Jewish,” Max said. “My race certificate is in order and on file.”

  Pielau was glaring at Rattner. “No one’s doubting your racial purity, Corporal. So, why return to Germany? Why return in ’39?”

  “I’m a German. By ’39 I knew my place was here.” Max too could play it straight. He wasn’t lying so much as interpreting. He’d really believed something like this back then.

  “You never joined the party,” one of them said.

  “You never joined the SS,” another said.

  “You were lucky not to land in prison, the schemes you’ve been up to,” Rattner said. “Refusing good German roles. Exploiting the bla
ck market. We should have thrown your type back to America.”

  If they insisted on pecking, why sit behind him? Max turned and glared at the three lieutenants. He wanted to say what was really on his mind, but a modern German had to pick his battles. His refusals had been about art, at first. The roles he declined were melodramatic junk that not even Hollywood was doing. As far as the black market went, Max was only one of many. These sheltered SS clowns had no idea. Max simply had the poor fortune to be one of many minor scapegoats. The three met Max’s glare with dead stares, their eyes dark. Max said, “No, instead you put me in an army uniform. Let me fight. And for that I am grateful. Sirs.”

  Rattner spat.

  “Corporal, please, turn back around,” Pielau said. “Thank you. Back in Germany, there was also a woman.”

  “Liselotte. Yes.”

  “Not just any woman, I should add. Frau Auermann was an inspiration to us all.”

  They had no idea of inspiration, Max thought, simmering. Inspiration took imagination.

  “She died, in an air raid,” Pielau said.

  “In Hamburg. It was an American air raid, to be exact.”

  Silence behind him. They’d all lost someone close. Max turned to them and could tell from Rattner’s looser stare that Rattner had lost more than one. He faced Pielau again, and they shared a knowing glance.

  “Perhaps we leave loved ones out of it,” Pielau said.

  “In New York you changed your name, called yourself a noble,” Rattner said to Max.

  “My agent’s idea,” Max said. The name change was Max’s doing. His agent thought it too corny yet hokum only seemed to help in America, Max had argued.

  “And you let him,” Rattner said. “Amis say jump you say how high, is that it?”