Crazy in Berlin (57 page)

But why should he be Schatzi? How could he be? From the second button of his coat hung the medical tag with which they each had been labeled, like laundry sacks, at the hospital. Then there were dogtags, medical records, shipping orders, and duplicate copies of the roster for everybody from Eisenhower down. And what of the ludicrous, revealing accent? Of course, some GIs were refugees, and many native Americans went through the Army with never a public word but “sir.”

“Y’all want some chewin’ gum?” The nurse stood before them, offering Juicy Fruit. “Y’ears won’ have diffi-culty with th’air preshah, you chew gum.” Tall, serpentine, rather slack-titted in the coverall, wearing tawny hair a bit long for a servicewoman, she handed a slice to each—her fingers touched Reinhart’s and did they not linger?—and turned to the other row.

Sarge accepted his piece, unwrapped it with enormous care, folded the paper and placed it in his breast pocket!, put the gum in his mouth, chewed—and the largest boil beneath his left eye loosened and fell to the floor, where it stuck like the actor’s putty it was.

Now was Reinhart astonished at himself: despite this proof he could not believe sergeant and Schatzi were synonymous. In Berlin he had learned to doubt all appearances, which must also include a false one: that is, its falsity might consist in its being real. The world was strange—and interesting.

And difficult. For of course he recognized Schatzi and his problem was what to do about it, which he would rather avoid. Crucial times were not at an end with the simple killing of a Monster, the dying of a Schild, with an unrequited proposal, or with leave-taking of lovers and friends; nor even with personal
non compos mentis.

But the gods, to whom he was dear, no matter how far they had permitted him to wander alone, finally furnished aid. Apollo resolved himself into a sunbeam, came down through the livid overcast and penetrated the Plexiglas window, striking the T/5 in the medulla oblongata, inspiring him to jar Reinhart with his elbow and add: “That’s what the sentries say in the hospital: ‘Halt. Who goes there, friend or enema?’ ”

“What did we do to deserve you!” Reinhart cried in burlesque despair. “Talk to Trooper. I see a guy I know.” He rose and crossed the cabin.

The seat at Sarge’s left had been used briefly by the nurse to sort her gear; now it was empty. Sarge turned the other way when Reinhart took it. Seen at six inches, the make-up was an outrageously poor job, the acne an obvious work of mucilage, eyebrow pencil, and lipstick (Trudchen’s ‘raddest of the rad’). Whom could it have taken in for a moment? Answer: Every typical person, who would no sooner see the disability than avert his eyes, so as not to embarrass the sufferer; so as for health’s sake to suppress an interest in the corrupt; so as—but Reinhart, enough! The typical person simply would not imagine such a fake and therefore would not see one.

Under the cover of the other passengers’ conversation, which was amplified in the metal tube, he asked into the sergeant’s pseudo-foul ear: “What did you hope to gain?”

Schatzi faced front, seemingly watched the T/5 across the aisle, and answered, quietly venomous: “I vill get to America and you vill not try to stop me.”

Reinhart checked: the nurse had gone into the cargo compartment in the rear; Trooper, the T/5, and a redheaded fellow were pooling complaints about the Army.

“You are mad,” he whispered, “hopelessly, utterly mad, and I pity you.”

Schatzi choked on his gum, which he had been chewing all wrong anyway—too consciously, like all Europeans, as if it were candy rather than a substitute for twitching—choked and responded in desolation and fear: “Let me alone or you’ll be sorry.”

Reinhart covertly withdrew a roll of Occupation marks from his pants pocket—they had been too many for the wallet—and without a glance at the denominations pulled off and retained two, and placed the rest under Schatzi’s tight arm.

“I promised I would get your money from Schild. There it is.”

Schatzi was truly overcome; among the patches of false acne grew areas of real emotion’s rash, mottled, hot. He grappled with his American uniform, then with himself. He wiped his chin and drew away a palm of smeared cosmetic. His eyes sprinkled. Yet he managed to stay inconspicuous. They still had no one’s notice.

“I do not understand your tricks,” he whisperingly wailed. “Are you the new agent? But being an American still comes first—I cast myself upon your merciness. Oh God do not give me to Chepurnik. You cannot know what they are like, they are not people as we are. They are objects without blood. See what happens to Schild. With this I had nothing to do, believe me.” But towards the end he had forgotten and raised his voice. The T/5 heard and in a mock soprano began to sing “They Wouldn’t Believe Me.” Schatzi turned on him the old death-ray eyes and he shriveled in midnote.

“I don’t care about your squalid black-market deals,” said Reinhart.

Instantly Schatzi dried and hardened. “Oh yes, your lovely friend Schild, for whom you would, and did, kill. You saw none of his profits,
ja
? He used you as a sexual rubber.” At last he gave him the whole hideous face. But it was more ludicrous than repulsive. He stank of Juicy Fruit. “Black market! Black market was my trade. This swine Schild sold his country. This fine land America that we poor victims of to-tah-li-tahrianism would die for, he died to betray. With good fortune I happen to learn of these facts in the course of my business. I report them to the Ami FBI, who are ready to seize him just when comes this well-known fight.”

Calmly, Reinhart enjoyed the lies, a souvenir of Europe. They would be all too rare in America. But he must get to work before the engine started, the propellers revolved, and his initiative was gone. If he knew the pedantic ways of people who do such things as fly planes, the C-47 would not kill its motor, once started, for the end of the world. And just this time he did not want Schatzi to succeed in an imposture. Those of the past he forgave him—yes, truly forgave, not like a god but like a man; he expected no reward—but this one was too vulgar.

“What shall we do about you?” he asked, preparing to rise.

“You harm me at your own cost!”

“My dear fellow,” said Reinhart. “With all good will, I cannot understand you.”

Schatzi began a sneer of victory—or, at any rate, what
he
thought was one—but the Juicy Fruit clogged in his teeth. Humiliated, he plucked it out and held it in his right hand. Obviously it felt nasty there, and no better in the left. He brought the paper wrapper from his breast pocket and was on the point of rolling the little gum ball therein, when the nurse came out of the cargo chamber and, undulating bow-wards, saw his heresy and warned: “You don’ chew, you gon’ be dog-sick.” He guiltily returned it to his mouth, where, according to his expression, it grew to baseball size.

“Why you grinnin’?” she pseudo-sternly asked Reinhart. She bent and read his tag. “What’s this, an Eyetalian name? Carlo. Kind of cute, though. You a psycho? Well then what do the normal ones look like?”

When she left Schatzi threw in the towel. He gagged on the gum, finally swallowed it, and again begged for mercy in the name of the United States of America: “You people believe a man is what he will become rather than what he has been,
ja
? I tell you I have reformed. Just this minute, sitting here amidst your fine comrades who love one another. I do not ever belong to anysing. Loneliness! Lack of love! These can make a man to a criminal. Have I been a rascal?—no. Yet had impulses come to me which have been dangerously near. After I arrange with great difficulty and money to be included in this shipping-to-Paris I discover your name on the list thereof. Wal, I thought, this Reinhart causes trouble and I strike back. His German relatives! Yes, I have found them, Heinz Tischmacher, son of his grandfather’s sister and second cousin to him. Tischmacher, Heinz: office worker, member of the Nazi Party. Tischmacher, Frau Emmi: likewise. Tischmacher, Reinhold: twenty-one years of age, graduate of Hitler Youth to the Waffen SS, killed on the Eastern Front in 1944. Tischmacher, Gertrud, Trudl, Trudchen: sixteen, member of the Jungmädel, girls’ branch of Hitler Jugend.

“On the other side of his descent Tischmacher has a distant relation to this monstrosity Bach, whom he takes money from, for four years, not to reveal to his Nazi comrades that Bach, Lenore,
Mischling
Jew, has not gone to Switzerland so much as does she hide in a closet of her man’s flat so as to avoid the Gestapo and subsequent killing.”

“These then are my people,” said Reinhart. But he worried only over whether he had committed incest with Trudchen. “You have done a good job. I’m afraid this is all I have left to pay you.” He brought forth his last two notes.

Chuckling madly, Schatzi refused them. “No, these are not your kinsfolk, dear boy! Is not this evidence of my reform? This is my untruth with which I prepared to threaten you. Which now I reveal and confess. This evil impulse to destroy you which I have conquered. So Christ said,
‘Die Wahrheit wird Euch frei machen.’ ”

“Destroy
me
?” asked Reinhart. He banged his head back against the fuselage, denting it (the fuselage), and guffawed.

Schatzi smiled, frightened to death but also hopeful. “Ah then,” he whispered, “mirth and good feeling. You will not expose me,
ja
? In the States we must make a partnership: you belong and have the handsomeness and the muscles—however did you break that great swine’s back?—I provide the mental.”

The nurse appeared at the door of the pilot’s cabin, her hip reared to catch her sexy, sinous wrist. She said: “Y’all settle down and connect your seat belts. We go in two seconds. ... Ah got my eye on you, laughin’ Carlo!” She would be a different kind of piece.

Reinhart shook Schatzi’s hand and winked elaborately. He whispered: “My friend, you have my word on it.” Then he went to the nurse, and for another reason feeling her supple arm, betrayed him.

As many readers will have recognized, I am indebted to Konrad Heiden’s classic work
Der Fuehrer
(tr. by Ralph Manheim, New York, 1944) for some of the events in the career of one of my imaginary people.

Thomas Louis Berger (b. 1924) is an American novelist best known for his picaresque classic,
Little Big Man
(1964). His other works include
Arthur Rex
(1978),
Neighbors
(1980), and
The Feud
(1983), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Berger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Charles, a public school business manager, and Mildred (née Bubbe) Berger. Berger grew up in the town of Lockland, Ohio, and one of his first jobs was working at a branch of the public library while in high school. After a brief period in college, Berger enlisted in the army in 1943 and served in Europe during World War II. His experiences with a medical unit in the American occupation zone of postwar Berlin inspired his first novel,
Crazy in Berlin
(1958). This novel introduced protagonist Carlo Reinhart, who would appear in several more novels.

In 1946, Berger reentered college at the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelor’s degree two years later. In 1948, he moved to New York City and was hired as librarian of the Rand School of Social Science. While enrolled in a writer's workshop at the nearby New School for Social Research, Berger met artist Jeanne Redpath; they married in 1950. He subsequently entered Columbia University as a graduate student in English literature, but left the program after a year and a half without taking a degree. He next worked at the
New York Times Index
; at
Popular Science Monthly
as an associate editor; and, for a decade, as a freelance copy editor for book publishers.

Following the success of Rinehart in Love (1962), Berger was named a Dial Fellow. In 1965, he received the Western Heritage Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for
Little Big Man
 (1964), the success of which allowed him to write full time. In 1970,
Little Big Man
was made into an acclaimed film, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway.

Following his job as
Esquire
’s film critic from 1972 to 1973, Berger became a writer in residence at the University of Kansas in 1974. One year later, he became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Southampton College, and went on to lecture at Yale University and the University of California, Davis.

Berger’s work continued to appear on the big screen. His novel
Neighbors
(1980) was adapted for a 1981 film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In 1984, his novel
The Feud
(1983) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; in 1988, it too was made into a movie. His thriller
Meeting Evil
 (1992) was adapted as a 2012 film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.

In 1999, Berger published
The Return of Little Big Man
, a sequel to his literary classic. His most recent novel,
Adventures of the Artificial Woman
, was published in 2004.

Berger lives ten feet from the Hudson River in Rockland County, New York.