Armageddon In Retrospect (8 page)

T
here was a time when I was at one with my Father in feeling that to become a reverent, brave, trustworthy, and courteous Eagle Scout was to lay the foundations for a bountiful life. But I have since had occasion to reflect more realistically upon twig-bending, and am wondering now if Hell’s Kitchen isn’t a more sound preparation for living than was the Beaver Patrol. I cannot help feeling that my friend Louis Gigliano, who had been smoking cigars since he was twelve, was a great deal better prepared to thrive in chaos than was I, who had been trained to meet adversity with a combination pocketknife, can opener, and leather punch.

The test of the manly art of surviving I have in mind took place in a prisoner-of-war camp in Dresden. I, a clean-cut American youth, and Louis, a dissipated little weasel whose civilian occupation had been hashish-peddling to bobby-soxers, faced life there together. I am remembering Louis now because I am stone-broke, and because I know that Louis is living like a prince somewhere in this world he understands too well. It was that way in Germany.

Under the democratic provisions of the Geneva Convention, we, as privates, were obliged to work for our keep. All of us worked, that is, but Louis. His first act behind barbed wire was to report to an English-speaking Nazi guard that he wanted no part of the war, which he considered to be brother against brother, and the handiwork of Roosevelt and Jewish international bankers. I asked him if he meant it.

“I’m tired, for God’s sake,” he said. “I fought ’em for six months, and now I’m tired. I need a rest, and I like to eat as well as the next guy. Brighten up, will you!”

“I’d rather not, thank you,” I said icily.

I was sent out on a pick-and-shovel detail; Louis remained in camp as the German sergeant’s orderly. Louis got extra rations for whisk-brooming the sergeant three times a day. I got a hernia while tidying up after the American Air Force.

“Collaborationist!” I hissed at him after a particularly exhausting day in the streets. He was standing at the prison gate with a guard, immaculate and sprightly, nodding to his acquaintances in the dusty, weary column. His response to my taunt was to walk beside me to the sleeping quarters.

He laid a hand on my shoulder. “And then you can look at it this way, kid,” he said. “Here you’re helping Jerry clean up his streets so he can run tanks and trucks through ’em again. That’s what I’d call collaboration. Me a collaborator? You’ve got it backwards. All I do to help Jerry win the war is smoke his cigarettes and hit him for more to eat. That’s bad, I suppose?”

I flopped down on my bunk. Louis took a seat on a straw-tick nearby. My arm hung over the side of the bunk, and Louis interested himself in my wrist watch, a gift from my Mother.

“Nice, very nice watch, kid,” he said. And then, “Hungry after all that work, I’ll bet.”

I was ravenous. Ersatz coffee, one bowl of watered soup, and three slices of dry bread are not the sort of fare to delight a pick-swinger’s heart after nine hours of hard labor. Louis was sympathetic. He liked me; he wanted to help. “You’re a nice kid,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a quick deal for you. There’s no sense in going hungry. Why, that watch is worth two loaves of bread, at least. Is that a good deal, or isn’t it?”

At that point, two loaves of bread was a dazzling lure. It was an incredible amount of food for one person to have. I tried to bid him up. “Look, friend,” he said, “this is a special price to you, and it’s a top price. I’m trying to do you a favor, see? All I ask of you is to keep quiet about this deal, or everybody will want two loaves for a watch. Promise?”

I swore by all that is holy that I would never reveal the magnanimity of Louis, my best friend. He was back in an hour. He cast a furtive glance around the room, withdrew a long loaf from a rolled field jacket, and stuffed it beneath my mattress. I waited for him to make the second deposit. It was not forthcoming. “I hardly know what to tell you, kid. The guard I do business with told me the whole bottom’s dropped out of the watch market since all these guys came in from the Bulge. Too many watches all at one time is what did it. I’m sorry, but I want you to know that Louis got you the maximum for that watch.” He made a move toward the loaf under the mattress. “If you feel gypped, all you have to do is say the word, and I’ll take this back and get your watch again.”

My stomach growled. “Oh hell, Louis,” I sighed, “leave it there.”

When I awoke the next morning, I looked at my wrist to see what time it was. And then I recalled that I no longer owned a watch. The man in the bunk overhead was also astir. I asked him for the time. He stuck his head over the side, and I saw that his jaws were crammed with bread; he blew a shower of crumbs over me as he answered. He said he no longer had a watch. He chewed and swallowed until a major portion of the great wad of bread was cleared from his mouth and he could make himself understood. “I should care what time it is when Louis will give me two loaves and ten cigarettes for a watch that wasn’t worth twenty dollars new?” he asked.

Louis had a monopoly on rapport with the guards. His avowed harmony with Nazi principles convinced our keepers that he was the only bright one among us, and we all had to do our Black-Marketeering through this superficial Judas. Six weeks after we had been quartered in Dresden, nobody had any way of knowing what time it was outside of Louis and the guards. Two weeks after that, Louis had done every married man out of his wedding ring with this argument: “O.K., go ahead and be sentimental, go ahead and starve to death. Love’s a wonderful thing, they tell me.”

His profits were enormous. I later found out that my watch, for instance, brought a price of one hundred cigarettes and six loaves of bread. Anyone familiar with starvation will recognize that this was a handsome prize. Louis converted most of his wealth into the most negotiable of all securities, cigarettes. And it wasn’t long before the possibilities of being a loan shark had occurred to him. Once every two weeks we were issued twenty cigarettes. Slaves of the tobacco habit would exhaust the ration in one or two days, and would be in a state of frenzy until the next ration came. Louis, who was coming to be known as “The People’s Friend” or “Honest John,” announced that cigarettes might be borrowed from him at a reasonable fifty-percent interest until the next ration. He soon had his wealth loaned out and increasing by half every two weeks. I was terribly in debt to him, with nothing left for collateral but my soul. I took him to task for his greed: “Christ drove the moneylenders from the temple,” I reminded him.

“That was money they were lending, my boy,” he replied. “I’m not beggin’ you to borrow my cigarettes, am I? You’re beggin’ me to lend you some. Cigarettes are luxuries, friend. You don’t have to smoke to stay alive. You’d probably live longer if you didn’t smoke. Why don’t you give up the filthy habit?”

“How many can you let me have until next Tuesday?” I asked.

When usury had swelled his hoard to an all-time high, a catastrophe, which he had been awaiting impatiently, caused the value of his cigarettes to sky-rocket. The USAAF swept over the feeble Dresden defenses to demolish, among other things, the major cigarette factories. As a consequence, not only the P.W. cigarette ration, but that of the guards and civilians as well, was cut off completely. Louis was a major figure in local finance. The guards found themselves without a smoke to their names, and began selling our rings and watches back to Louis at a lower price than they had given him. Some put his wealth as high as one hundred watches. Louis’ own estimate, however, was a modest fifty-three watches, seventeen wedding rings, seven high school rings, and an heirloom watch-fob. “Some of the watches need a lot of work done on them,” he told me.

When I say that the AAF got the cigarette factories among other things, I mean that a number of human beings got blown up as well—something like 200,000. Our activities took a ghoulish turn. We were put to work exhuming the dead from their innumerable crypts. Many of them wore jewelry, and most had carried their precious belongings to the shelters. At first we shunned the grave goods. For one thing, some of us felt that stripping corpses was a revolting business, and for another, to be caught at it was certain death. It took Louis to bring us to our senses. “Good God, kid, you could make enough to retire on in fifteen minutes. I just wish they’d let me go out with you guys for just a day.” He licked his lips, and continued: “Tell you what—I’ll really make it worth your while. You get me one good diamond ring, and I’ll keep you in smokes and chow for as long as we’re in this hole.”

The next evening I brought him his ring, tucked into my trouser cuff. So, it turned out, did everyone else. When I showed him the diamond he shook his head. “Oh, what a dirty shame,” he said. He held the stone up to a light: “Here the poor kid risked his life for a zircon!” Everybody, a minute inspection revealed, had brought back either a zircon, a garnet, or a paste diamond. In addition, Louis pointed out, any slight value these might have was destroyed because of a glutted market. I let my plunder go for four cigarettes; others got a bit of cheese, a few hundred grams of bread, or twenty potatoes. Some hung on to their gems. Louis chatted with them from time to time about the dangers of being caught with loot. “Poor devil over at the British Compound got it today,” he would say. “They caught him with a pearl necklace sewed into his shirt. It only took ’em two hours to try him and shoot him.” Sooner or later everyone made a deal with Louis.

Shortly after the last of us had been cleaned out, the S.S. came through our quarters on a surprise inspection. Louis’ bed was the only one undisturbed. “He never leaves the compound and is a perfect prisoner,” a guard was quick to explain to the inspectors. My mattress was slashed open and the straw scattered over the floor when I came home that evening.

However, Louis’ luck was not air-tight, for in the last weeks of fighting, our guards were sent to stem the Russian tide, and a company of lame old men was moved in to watch over us. The new sergeant had no need for an orderly, and Louis sank into the anonymity of our group. The most humiliating aspect of his new situation was the prospect of being sent out on a labor detail with the common people. He was bitter about it, and demanded an interview with the new sergeant. He got the interview and was gone for about an hour.

When he got back I asked him, “Well, how much does Hitler want for Berchtesgaden?”

Louis was carrying a parcel wrapped in toweling. He opened it to reveal two pairs of scissors, some clippers, and a razor. “I’m the camp barber,” he announced. “By order of the camp commandant, I am to make you gentlemen presentable.”

“What if I don’t want you to cut my hair?” I asked.

“Then you get your rations cut in half. That’s by order of the commandant, too.”

“Do you mind telling us how you got this appointment?” I asked.

“Not at all, not at all,” said Louis. “I just told him I was ashamed to be associated with a bunch of sloppy men who look like gangsters, and that he ought to be ashamed to have such a terrible bunch in his prison. We two, the commandant and I, are going to do something about it.” He set a stool in the middle of the floor and motioned me toward it. “You’re first, kid,” he said. “The commandant noticed those long locks of yours, and told me to be sure and get ’em.”

I sat down on the stool and he whisked a towel around my neck. There was no mirror in which I could watch him cut, but his operations felt professional enough. I remarked on his unsuspected skill as a barber.

“Nothing, really,” he said. “Sometimes I surprise myself.” He finished with the clippers. “That will be two cigarettes, or the equivalent,” he said. I paid him in saccharine tablets. No one but Louis had any cigarettes.

“Want a look at yourself?” He handed me a fragment of mirror. “Not bad, eh? And the best thing about it is that it’s probably the worst job I’ll do, because I’m bound to improve with time.”

“Holy smokes!” I shrieked. My scalp looked like the back of an Airedale with mange—patches of bare scalp alternated with wild tufts of hair, and blood oozed from a dozen tiny cuts.

“Do you mean to say that for doing a job like this you get to stay in camp all day?” I roared.

“Come on, kid, simmer down,” said Louis. “I think you look real nice.”

There wasn’t anything very novel about the situation after all. It was business as usual with him. The rest of us continued to work our heads off all day, and to come home weary in the evenings to be trimmed by Louis Gigliano.