Crazy in Berlin (55 page)

Hearing the nurse at the door, he withdrew his hand. Miss Bronson’s beet-face, pickled, cautioned against further noise and gave him five minutes to conclude.

“Then you must hate love,” said Lori, “not to mention life—no, I don’t mean that. It has been a long day for me. Fräulein Leary stayed home from duty and had numerous requests—to press her clothes and so on. I think she is in love again. Why not get yourself an American girl? People from different countries really don’t understand each other, as Bach says.”

With one or two other more important items to check off his list, Reinhart put them by, to insert here: “That is why we have these tragic wars.”

Lori rose and gathered her old coat about her waist. “According to Otto, no. War is the one time when they really do understand one another. Therefore he champions obscurity in human affairs—no,” she raised a hand, “I will not discuss it; they both say I never can get anything right.”

He had not only recaptured his sense of time: he had got back a better one than he lost, with a precise second hand. Exactly four minutes of Bronson’s ration remained.

“Lieutenant Leary is in love
again.
Who was it the first time?”

The candid eyes were now impure. “Yourself, of course.”

“Don’t do me any favors. I’m not really sick. I’ve been faking all the while. And by the way, does nothing affect you? If you remember, Schild and I were at your home only a few hours before he was killed.”

“If you remember, I have lived in Berlin for twelve years of Hitler and five years of war.”

“I’m sorry,” he said truly. “I just want you to tell me who was Miss Leary’s lover in August.”

“Facts, always facts, what will you do with them?
Oh-kay, it’s ah deal!
This captain who lives, lived, with Oberleutnant Schild.”

He began loudly to laugh, then choked it off for fear of Bronson. In mirth he used his own language: “He is shorter than her!”

“Please? As yet I don’t understand so much English.”

“Knorke,
it doesn’t matter. ... So you are old enough to be my mother. You really are a twin of the doctor? Which would make you sixty.” He shook his head. Two minutes left.

“Sixteen February, 1905, for both of us. Otto was the younger-looking before he went to Russia. I did not see him again until after he had gone through the camps.” She shook Reinhart’s hand, once up, once down. “If at eighteen I had had a son like you, and he survived, I would not be disappointed now.”

Bronson stuck her head in and called time, and Reinhart growled: “Go away or I’ll tell Lieutenant Llewellyn you applied duress.” She winced and left.

“However,” Lori went on, “I didn’t and I’m not disappointed either.”

“You would say then, life goes on.”

She pushed a sportive lock behind her ear; she stood in need of a washing and combing; in the center of a general relief which he could not explain, Reinhart felt a twinge which he could: he would never provide the brush and soap.

“I do not!” she answered fiercely. “Life can do as it pleases.” Still feral, she leaping captured his neck, drew down his head, and kissed his mouth.

He concealed his momentary anguish of regret: “Thanks, anyway, for never caring about me.”

“Have it your own way.” Tough, small, unkempt, Lori marched modestly into the corridor, uneasy Bronson voiding the route. Once through the outer door, she returned to hovering, vacant, liberated Reinhart for her formal peroration.

“I have forgotten! Here comes some English: ‘Ve mawrn zuh death of a man of honor, First Lieutenant Schild, zalute zuh gallant Corporal Reinhart, shall effer keep green zuh memory of the former, and await with affection and respect the... re-choining by the latter of our fellowship, Knebel, M.D., your dear Lenore, and yours truly Bach, Ph. D.’
Also,
I have remembered every word!”

Old Sad Sack St. George had topped Veronica. Now Reinhart understood why the captain had not tried to visit him on the psycho ward. He should notify St. George that Very worked nights, up to suppertime the coast was clear; except that this action was as much as to admit he was privy to their quondam goings-on. And he detested having the goods on anybody, which were always squalid. Besides, the captain, who physically favored his father, carried to Reinhart a suggestion of what he, himself, would be in twenty years: middle-aged, ingratiating, secretly prurient. He didn’t try to get in touch.

With Marsala, too, contact had been broken, which he laid to a primitive, Italianate superstition towards bats in the belfry: extravagance was permitted only in the service of lust, drink, and anarchy. Well, it had been an accident anyway that he was quartered with the damn guy; he was never so close to Marsala as the fellow ginzos with their home packages of sausage and cherry peppers.

Veronica returned to duty the next evening and squirted him loving, guarded looks as she went about ward business, but not having taken his afternoon nap, he dropped off to sleep at lights-out and so did not get to the office. Next morning he suspected having been touched on the face sometime during the night, but it could have been just a dream. However, he did find under his pillow a note on unlined paper, which read: “I’m going to knock myself off—Jesus destroy this mesage.”

He actually believed it was Veronica’s until Trooper reached over a long, thin arm and tore it away, saying, “I changed my mind.”

Reinhart looked at his bird-dog face and said: “That wouldn’t have settled anything.”

“You’re wrong,” Trooper answered. “It would so have, but I just realized I don’t want anything settled. That’s my trouble.”

“Well, what do I care about you?” Reinhart said irritably.

“That’s all right. Nobody does. That’s why I used to piss the bed, to get somebody to. But they didn’t.” He pulled the sheets over his head and said, underneath: “I don’t care any more.”

Furious, Reinhart jumped across the aisle and re-exposed the forsaken face. “Knock off that crap, Trooper. Tell me, is it true you got the Silver Star in the Holland jump?”

“I didn’t deserve it. The ones who did were all killed.”

“Don’t hand me that. The fact is I understand you were screwed. Anybody else who singlehanded bumped off ten Germans and captured fourteen more would have got the DSC. An officer would have got it.”

“He would?” He crept up on the pillow but still disbelieved, and they argued, Reinhart temporarily winning. However, it would be a long fight to get Trooper to understand that the world, and not himself, was wrong.

He concealed his new mission from Millet when they talked, and observed the captain’s techniques. Afterwards, with his own variations, since Trooper was not so sophisticated a case as he, he used them on Trooper. Trooper ate a good lunch for the first time since he had come on the ward. Another two days, Reinhart had him traducing the doctors.

He said, almost smiling: “Reinhart, you ought to take up this psycho stuff when you get out of the Army.”

Reinhart winked. “Have you been reading my mind?”

True, like knighthood, this profession gave you a permanent upper hand; like the priesthood, it made everybody else feel guilty and also grateful; like the Jews it was much reviled yet indispensable and always right. For example, Millet as a person was probably not much—he looked as if in civil life his sport was golf; his tips to caddies, meager—here he sat as universal daddy.

He sensed a certain competition with Millet in succeeding interviews, but was forced to simulate his old quest for approbation.

Towards the end of the week he reported: “I am all right again, Captain. I am sure now. I sleep well and in the regular hours, I realize that wound in my head was just imaginary, time is again just as it used to be, and I am not suspicious of anybody. Your treatment has been successful.”

“That’s good,” admitted Millet. “Why do you refuse the recreational therapy?”

“Because I don’t like to weave baskets and I already have a billfold.”

Millet said permissively: “Uh-huh. Nurse Reynolds tells me”— he found the place in a document—“you stated a wish to make a shoulder holster. Which she opposed. Were you—”

“Oh that was a kind of joke. I wanted to give it to my roommate Marsala. His brother’s a hood in Murder, Incorporated.”

“No, I don’t question that. I merely wished to know if Reynolds’ refusal made you angry.”

“Yes—well goddammit, she said no in that sweet, tolerant manner used towards psychos, yet I know what she was thinking—don’t let Reinhart do anything that suggests violence.”

“What did you do then?”

“I walked away and didn’t say anything.” He stared at Millet’s pale, bored eyes and shouted: “What in hell do you think I did, beat her up?”

“Did you want to?”

“If you don’t mind my saying it, sir, you know about as much of a man’s mind as a golfball.” He glanced at Millet’s desk, insultingly clear of letter openers, etc., even pencils, for obvious reasons. “If you mean deep down, I probably wanted to screw her. All men want to make love to every woman and kill every man. Man is a savage only partially tamed.”

Millet smiled. “Is that your own theory?”

“I read it somewhere, and then consulted my own soul. I know you people don’t think a man can help himself, but I have.”

“Was Lieutenant Schild your friend?”

Reinhart sighed. “You want me to say no. But one thing I will not do to get out of here: lie. It seems very clever to look only for the deep secrets. What we see of a person is supposedly only the false exterior; what he
really
is, is underneath and hidden. Thus a man who appears generous is really selfish, great lovers are secretly queers, and heroes are really cowards covering up. A fellow who feels guilty about the Jews is actually the worst anti-Semite of all, and so on. No doubt this is true. But out in the world we have no time to check these things. If a bully comes towards you with a club, you have no chance to reflect that he is actually not frightening but pitiful, that if you gave him love and understanding he would be your friend.

“Because if the front is a lie, so are the depths when taken alone. For himself, a hero may be a coward. For you, if he is on your side in a battle you do not want to know what he is in some reality outside yours. A Don Juan may be a fairy, but in practice he will make love to your girl and not to you. Do you see what I mean? The façade, too, has a reality and truth. You sit here in front of me like a god, asking me questions which I cannot ask you. Why? For reasons of your own. Somewhere back no doubt you grew a guilt towards people with mental troubles because you really have contempt for them. But I don’t want to hear about it and obviously you don’t want to tell it.

“Now the Jews and me. My feelings about them are irrational. Actually the Jews bore me stiff. And so do the Germans. All I ever cared about was old medieval Nürnberg, and that is long gone. Italy, I think, is what I like, with sunshine and that melodic language. I also hate politics and sociology and all that crap that deals with people as groups. I hated those mobs of idiots screaming
Sieg Heil!
and who didn’t?, but I also dislike those hordes of Russians in Red Square, who in spite of Communism are supposed to be generally good, and also the ‘starving multitudes’ of Asia and the ‘laboring masses’ everywhere. I name these examples in an effort to be honest. I don’t like conventions of generals and bosses any better, but there everybody agrees with me.

“So with the Jews, who seem to be a persistent mob throughout history, only acting in the reverse of the usual mob; they storm nothing but are stormed. They are always around with their dull troubles and their rituals and their foods, feeling special everywhere and superior. I confess I used to think it was a trick for the Jews to always complain about mistreatment. They seemed a race of gripers.

“Then the Nazis came. Or rather, I finally noticed the Nazis. And they were something new. When you speak badly about the Nazis you cannot tell a lie. Maybe, secretly, every gentile wants to kill every Jew, but the Nazis did it in practice and the other Germans, or many of them, didn’t care. But you see,
someone must care.
”

Millet raised his head, which had been lowered as if in sleep, and asked: “Why?”

“So that Germany will not perish.”

“But you were concerned about the Jews.”

“If you want to understand anything, you must listen,” Reinhart chided. “I am concerned about myself.”

Millet’s head sank again.

“So I met Schild that night. He forces himself on me. The motives get all mixed up, who is doing what for whom. We listen to a man who is himself confused. It is a grotesque evening, like everything in Berlin turns out to be: giants, twins who are apparently twenty years apart, blind men, would-be abortionists, experts on art, turncoats, Communists, ex-prisoners of the concentration camp, good Germans who turn out to be bad, and vice versa, and Schild and I.”

“How many people were there?”

“In addition to Schild and me, only three. I assure you it was fantastic and ridiculous. And all in this damp cellar, but we sat on a Goblin couch worth a thousand dollars. And afterwards we get in this mortal combat. But I’ll tell you this: it all happened and is still easier to believe than the concentration camps—which, by the way, the Russians have, too.

“Now I’m ready to answer. Was Schild my friend? On one hand, yours, no. I used him. If he hadn’t been a Jew I wouldn’t have given him a minute, for he was a kind of creep. I felt this definite satisfaction when he got it in the back, and it wasn’t the one you spoke of. More complex than that. I felt it because, fighting for him as I was,
nobody could blame me for his death.
Well, here comes a joke: no one does but myself.

“But was he my friend? In my sense, yes. He was someone I could talk to, and not the way I am talking to you, which is a sort of fraud since you are invulnerable and never talk back. And then for another reason. When you hear it you will never let me out of Psycho, because I guess it means I really am nuts. When Schild was a boy he read the King Arthur stories. And he still believed them up to the time he died.”

Millet asked lazily: “What’s ‘nuts’ about that?”