The Losing Role (22 page)

“I brought you a blanket, for your bedroll,” she
said.

“Hi. Oh, thank you. Very kind.”

“There is nothing to thank. It is
nécessaire
.
The fire is out just now, and coal we have not much to remain. You
may become cold, yes? If you wish, we will sleep together. Side to
side. It is for the warmth of the body.”

She’d said it businesslike, as if she was telling
him they were out of Limburger but she could offer Gouda. Max
cracked a nervous smile. Stalling, he slid the tommy off his
shoulder and set it against the wall. Perhaps she had true
physiological reasons for her proposal, since she slept upstairs
with a tricky 300-year-old Dutch tiled heating stove that Annette
struggled to keep lit. Or, she was simply making her first play for
the new conquerors, commencing that crucial change Slaipe spoke of.
An American would feel awkward yet inspired by her move. Max was
less roused. In a flash he saw millions of young, hungry, and bored
German woman making the same play once the Allies took Germany. He
didn’t feel jealousy, but rather a hot tinge of cynicism. In their
sorry place, he’d be doing the same thing.

“I tell you something,” he said, his English wobbly
after hours of wintry silence. “If you become too chilled, you come
to me. How’s that?
D’Accord?
”

“
D’Accord
, Meester Price,” Justine said, as
if he’d said he’d make do with Gouda. Then she lit him a couple
candles and headed upstairs.

Justine never came to Max that night, although it
turned as chilly as she predicted. He had to sleep in his overcoat
and gloves, and curled up for warmth. Still, he was relieved she
hadn’t come. This was what he told himself. This girl was playing a
sick trick on him and she could hardly know it. She was reminding
him too much of his Liselotte—a colder, harder, even opposite
version of his Liselotte, and yet the damn die had been caste.

As Max huddled there in the cellar, too cold to
sleep, how could he not think about the good warm days? His return
to Germany in 1939 had been almost as big of a shock as his arrival
in America eight years earlier. When he left, the average German
was still struggling, troubled, and wary. No more. The reformed
economy and higher living wages had created in many a childlike
loyalty to Hitler. After all, wasn’t Germany’s rebirth the Führer’s
doing? (Providence, they were calling it.) Never mind the Nazi’s
persecution and their blather about revenging past defeats and
betrayals. Faced with such optimism, such conviction, Max saw it
was senseless to argue. All he had to do was look around him—the
streets of Hamburg revealed a city, a country, a nation
transformed. It seemed all the buildings in this once grim port had
been scrubbed and repainted, their windows clear as camera
lenses—from the most trivial factory to the holiest cathedral. Even
the cracks between the cobblestones were spotless, and the old red
bricks seemed to sparkle. And so many new roads! So many
automobiles! So many bright, alert faces! Every day people dressed
as if going to church or an afternoon party, with their shoes
gleaming and shirts white as snow, and the strangers greeted each
other as if longtime neighbors. How ironic, Max had thought then—in
those first few days back he’d believed he experienced more
hopefulness than all his time in that idealist’s El Dorado,
Amerika
.

This was hardly the mood of a people bent on war. On
the ocean liner, certain British and French in the know had assured
Max that another war was imminent. Just in the past year, Hitler
had seized Austria and Czechoslovakia, and the man was far from
finished—the appetite of that Bavarian Corporal was insatiable. Max
nodded along and let them buy him drinks, but after he was in
Hamburg a few days he saw it differently. He wished he could buy
his British and French traveler friends one more drink and tell
them his fellow Germans were too happy for war. They had gained too
much. Why would they want to bring all this down again? Hitler
might not know when to stop, but surely the people knew, and that
would be enough.

In the theater world Max’s American credentials
impressed (despite the lack of meaty roles), and his first week
back he signed with a prestigious talent agency, Agentur Unger.
Max’s agent,
Herr
Kunz, got him two supporting roles first
thing—one in a film and another on stage. In celebration, Max
splurged on a spacious apartment with a view of Hamburg’s bustling
harbor. The endless auditions and parties kept him hustling, his
contacts swelled, and he had to hire a part-time assistant just to
answer the phone while he worked on his lines.

At one of the parties he met Liselotte Auermann, an
opera singer on the rise. She was a tiny thing, but she put her
curves to full use with splendid dresses and the highest heels,
like some exotic bird that fluffed itself up. Her eyes were so wide
and shimmering blue. Yet she was also delicate beneath the diva
fluff. When Max first met her, she was out on a balcony alone,
feeding caviar to a stray cat.

She was everything that he had hoped for in New
York. Her apartment had a salon and a ten-person auditorium like a
tiny chapel. She drank champagne daily, but never to excess. She
kept life in perspective. The New Germany was like the surprise
success of a provincial show, she told him. Relish the run—and the
attention—while it lasts, but don’t let it destroy you when it
falters. There will always be another show.

September 1939. Germany invaded Poland—after being
“attacked” by Polish border troops— went the official line. But
most Germans did not cheer and shout in the streets as they had in
1914. They gathered around newspaper kiosks and spoke in hushed
tones as if gossiping about a deceased relative. Max, for one, woke
from his naps with deep worries. His acting aspirations had always
seemed like a race against time. Would they now become a sprint to
outrun death?

“This silliness will end,” his Liselotte assured
him. “Germany is only rejoining its place among the civilized
nations. The chaos of the last war will not return. My father
assures me of it.” Her father was an influential staff general,
from a long line of officer corps standouts.

If only his
Mutti und Vati
Manfred and Elise
could see him—before it was too late. He wondered how much young
Harry had grown. Max had to laugh. Suddenly he was sentimental? He
told himself he would write them when he had really made it, but
when would that be? It was happening so fast. He and his
Liselottchen
shared apartments in Berlin, Munich, Vienna.
She held certain thoughts on the direction of his career. Here his
stage name of von Kaspar would not work. The “von” modifier would
have to go, since he wasn’t true nobility.

The agent Kunz loved her ideas for Max. “Germany is
changing, and we must change with it,” he said. By the spring of
1940, Kunz was getting Max roles for a year in advance, and the
actor now known as Maximilian Kaspar was becoming a moderate hit
among directors, producers, reviewers, and informed theatergoers.
His was a face you could trust for the role, they said.

At the same time, Max was no fool. Perhaps he was
only an actor but his head was not that far in the sand. He saw how
the Nazis were exploiting Germany, how they had been for a long
time. The buoyancy and bustle masked scowls and perverse cravings.
Take his agent,
Herr
Kunz. Kunz was the former assistant of
Agentur Unger’s namesake, the legendary Julius Unger. An elderly
Jew, Unger had been forced to leave Germany in the mid-1930s, first
to Paris and then Switzerland. He left the business with Kunz under
the gentleman’s agreement (in Germany Jews had lost their civil
rights) that its name would never be changed. Yet in the spring of
1940, with times good and the business booming, Kunz changed the
name to Agentur Kunz and transferred all remaining disputed royalty
commissions to himself. And, not being one who simply danced to a
tune when he could sing along too, Kunz joined the Nazi Party that
same week.

Fall 1940. Germany had conquered France, and Great
Britain was sure to be next. Max played Berlin’s Prussian State
Theater for the first time—a small role, but it was still a boyhood
dream come true, while Liselotte sang in Paris to rapt German and
French audiences. Max tried to be sensible. He wasn’t the only
actor for whom the goose-stepping and bully swagger were a solid
bore. Still, a gig was a gig, and a well-paying one offered an
income most could only dream of. Besides, where else was a German
actor going to act in his own language? Certainly not in New York.
As long as one was not “racially undesirable” or did not act
“subversively,” the brownshirts left a man alone. Of course, it was
sad what happened to their Jewish friends, the Socialists.
Naturally it was humiliating for those dandies, salon contrarians,
and anyone else who’d livened up their days and nights. One muted
one’s shrill tone or one disappeared.

The more coveted the role, the darker Max’s mood
grew. Success brings not alleviation, only new pains—hadn’t the old
hands always said that? They were making deals with devils, every
day, everywhere one looked.

At least he had had his Liselotte. She too was
playing her share of kitsch. She let the thug SS officers and crass
party bosses kiss her hand, escort her to dinner and functions. Yet
she always came home to Max. To fall asleep she always snuggled his
back, spooning him, her toes nestled into the bend of his leg.

Twenty-One

December 22, late afternoon. As the sun set, Max and
Captain Slaipe kept watch up in the villa’s tower. The gray sky
turned a pale violet, the treetops were skeletal silhouettes, and
the snow fell in light flurries. Up here the captain looked fiercer
than the intellectual warrior Max knew down in the cellar. He wore
bulky tank goggles and a thick black scarf and carried German Army
binoculars. Instead of his pipe he smoked unfiltered Camels. His
mood had dimmed, too, and Max hoped it was only the cold.

They had their backs to each other, scanning the
dark surrounding woods with their binoculars. “Buzz bomb,” Slaipe
grunted as a V-2 rocket droned high overhead. The distant clatter
of war had returned—thuds of artillery, cracks of tank battles, the
snaps and burps of small arms—and now and then Slaipe called out
the faraway weapons’ types.

“Wonder where it’s heading,” Max mumbled, unsure how
to answer. This was the first time Slaipe had joined Max on watch.
Max was used to being alone up here. He could keep his mouth shut.
He had his thoughts to himself. Sometimes he hummed and sang, in a
whisper. A couple times he’d watched Smitty or Slaipe trudge
through the snow below, making the short trek to the villa
guesthouse that stood off to one side of the classical gardens,
within a ring of trees. Max had been in there. He’d expected to
find their field radio but only saw old pine furniture, a stone
fireplace, maps and briefcases, and a couple US Army bedrolls.

“I have some bitter news,” Slaipe said.

“Oh?”

“You’ve heard of Malmedy? The town? Your unit
probably passed through it.”

“Of course. It’s not too far from here.” Max pointed
out, westward.

“You haven’t heard what’s happened there. No, of
course, you couldn’t know.”

“What? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know if ‘happened’ is the word for it,”
Slaipe said. He groaned a long, slow sigh. “About fifty of our boys
were withdrawing down a road, but they ran right into Waffen-SS—the
First SS Panzer Corps, to be exact. Our boys surrendered, but these
SS thugs—these unholy pigfuckers, they didn’t keep them prisoner.
They herded our GIs into a field and gunned them down. In cold
blood. Murdered them.” The captain’s voice was cracking. He paused,
what must have been a full minute, and then he cleared his throat.
“Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, 7th
Armored. Only a couple got away, by playing dead. Rest? Frozen
corpses, in the snow.”

First SS Panzer Corps was the spearhead force Max
had ridden with into battle only days before. “Horrible,” he said,
his chest tightening. “War is war, but . . . who could do such a
thing?”

“Any German in SS uniform, it seems. Vicious
gangsters basically. First SS Panzer has been on a rampage. Cutting
down civilians too, we hear.”

It must be true. The offensive was to move fast and
instill terror, and far more soldiers than Felix Menning and
Captain Rattner would have discovered a passion for butchery.
Better men. Scared men. Max shook his head. “It’s mad. There are no
words for this.”

“Yes, well, there might be a silver lining. The word
on Malmedy’s traveling faster than small-town gossip along our
lines, from the far rear to the front foxholes. Calling it the
‘Malmedy Massacre.’ Our boys are mad as hell now, which is exactly
what we’ll need for the counterattack.” Slaipe’s voice lightened,
and he said, “Wouldn’t be surprised if we’re taking less prisoners
ourselves. War being war.”

“Still, it’s no excuse. There can be no justifying
it.”

Max squeezed at his binoculars and tried to
concentrate on his watch, but the woods were blurring in the dim
light. They heard the muffled screeches of missile launchers.
“
Nebelwerfer
,” Slaipe said. A couple minutes passed.

Slaipe said, “Remember those Germans posing as
Americans? Smitty asked you about it.”

“Yes. I didn’t run into any as far as I know.”

“No, but others have, and some are seeing a
connection between the Malmedy Massacre and the Germans posing as
GIs. Think about it. Both appear to be SS ops. And the fake GIs
we’ve tagged so far? They were wearing SS uniforms underneath. Some
even ran with the First SS Panzer, we’re hearing.” Slaipe lit a
cigarette. “I can tell you, Price, we needed a big wake-up call and
now we got it. Security is the new priority all along the line.
Every platoon’s using passwords. No one’s above suspicion. Real GIs
with accents have even been shot, on accident.” Slaipe gave a sad
chuckle. “Some say a select few Germans in GI uniform want to
assassinate our generals, but I say it’s bunk. I just don’t think
they’re up to it.”