The Losing Role (25 page)

The harbor district was off-limits. It was far too
dangerous, the guards told Max. The British bombers had hit
everything—the open-air markets, rows of apartments, even two bomb
shelters. Max hurried on, the handkerchief now tied over his mouth.
At the nearest hospitals they could tell him nothing. They were
sorry but he would just have to wait. He returned to the apartment
after midnight. The phones were still down, but the electricity
worked. Yet he didn’t bother to switch on a lamp. He sat in the
dark, on the bed, and waited for first light. The clouds reflected
red and orange well into the next day. The carnage created a stench
that smoldered and shifted with the wind. Down at the harbor Max
joined the “rubble gangs” who cleared debris and bodies. He worked
there for days, from dawn until dusk. He extracted many bodies.
They never found hers.

For months after, a stupor blurred Max’s days.
Unable to concentrate on his lines, he left his current role to a
greenhorn understudy. Moments of clarity came and went—he thought
he heard Liselotte’s voice on the street or he saw her stepping
onto a streetcar, the soft lines of her neck glowing with sunlight.
For a time he got wild ideas. What if she was living a secret
double life resisting the regime and had to get out? She wouldn’t
have been the first German to live as an impostor. Emboldened, he
inquired with Liselotte’s family lawyers about the possibility
(they suggested he take a long cure) and became a kind of roving
detective, checking ship’s manifests and questioning railway
conductors who staffed the international routes. Months of this
passed.

In the fall, as the harbor excavations turned to
rebuilding and the first snows threatened, the harbor morgue was
able to identify the remains of Liselotte Auermann.

1942. America the sleeping giant had declared war on
Germany, and Great Britain looked to be saved. In North Africa,
every German victory was followed by a costly defeat. Hitler had
invaded the Soviet Union the year before, yet the advances were
volatile and Moscow held out. Then came the bitterest loss, at
Stalingrad—147,000 Germans dead and 91,000 taken prisoner.

The films and plays waxed patriotic, and the roles
were trite. Once, Max had vowed never to play a hackneyed
character. In America he’d avoided doing the monocled Prussian and
the sinister Nazi. Now he was playing the dashing lord and the
brave lieutenant in period melodramas. The scripts were all the
same—Teutonic Knights tales, Alpine Singspiels, Frederick the Great
epics. One was filmed on a grand Louis the Fourteenth studio set
while, just beyond the soundstage walls, heaps of smoldering rubble
loomed and children wandered the crooked paths, calling out for
parents.

The depression set in Max, a black rolling wave of
it, blacker than any he had suffered alone in New York City. Why
would a people want to sell itself out, and destroy itself? It was
happening to him, too, wasn’t it? Was not the theater world a
microcosm of Germany’s affliction? The producers, directors, and
Kunz’s were like the party leaders, generals, and ministers while
the actors, dancers, and musicians were the poor foot soldiers. He
was going along with a cruel scam; he was a cog in a machine
engineered to self-destruct; he would end up no better than his
father, the common baker who aspired to something he could never
be.

1943. Total defeat in North Africa. Hitler’s exalted
Latin ally Mussolini fled for his life, leaving only the north of
Italy in German hands. The air raids hit German cities night and
day—the Brits by dark, the
Amis
by sunlight—and the lost
Liselottes could never be counted. Men were drafted, young and old.
Shows closed, the roles dwindled. Max lost his apartment and moved
in with the assistant who once answered his phone. Max was one of
the lucky ones. His agent, Kunz, was taken away by the Gestapo, and
for what Max never learned. All were suspect now.

Max carried around a flask of
Korn
in his
breast pocket like some smalltime speculator, a little in his
Kaffee
to kill the pain. And why not? His favorite café was
rubble, his corner store squashed along with its owners, a kind old
couple who called him
Herr
Maxi. He had let America chew him
up, and now he was letting his own land blacken him on the insides.
Did he have so little understanding of the world, and his part in
it? He truly was the classic self-centered actor. And that’s what
the New Yorkers had seemed like to him—self-centered? He did not
drink alone though. Not this time. Many of his friends had turned
to the bottle, dope, and vice. Some clichés were true—the funny
thing about being on the losing side was, you really did celebrate
as if every day was your last. Max woke up with Liselotte
look-a-likes, Lucy Cage doubles, dancehall girls and wannabe
actresses fresh from the League of German Maidens.

He purposely played his roles badly. No one seemed
to notice. He stopped looking for roles. Theater officials from the
party called him in to discuss what they called his “questionable
behaviors.” If he wasn’t interested in landing the patriotic roles
they could send him into the
Truppenbetreuung
—the Troops
Entertainment Section. How would he like that? Performing near the
front, with wooden stages on mud, a cold barn to sleep in. “If you
think that’s how I may best serve the Fatherland, then I welcome
the opportunity,” Max told them, adding a bow. He only wanted to
hurry this up, since he had a date with a general’s daughter in a
half hour. This girl, Hedwig (no stunner but a bold wit), was fast
becoming his prime contact in his moonlighting gig as black market
operator. Like many with contacts up high and roots down low, Max
began playing intermediary between those who controlled scarce
foods and liquors and those who craved them. Along the way he often
came into possession of rationed bulk goods, such as meats and
wheels of cheese, milk and coffee, baby formula. These he
practically gave away, letting those at the top believe he was
charging exorbitant prices when it was the needy who were getting
the deal.

Spring 1944. The Russians pushed west on multiple
fronts, and the invasion of German-held France was sure to come
within the year. Max was detained for questioning over his black
market activities, yet he kept at it. War rationing had grown
harsher by the day, and he was practically giving away whatever
bulk goods he could get his hands on. Families with more than four
children got the milk and meat free. All he had to do was charge
the fat cats more for the finer items. His deeds warmed him at
night and kept him singing in the dim air-raid shelters.

Before the spring rains ceased, he was arrested
twice and warned to watch whom he was gouging. He shrugged it off
with a smile. Why be sensible now, Max?

Summer 1944. Max was drafted. He saw it coming. Film
production was stalling, and fewer than ten theaters and operas
were left performing. By the end of June he was on the Eastern
Front in the uniform of an army private.

By the fall of ’44, it was the horrid darkness of
Eastern Front. Cold so severe it slowed your heart. Roadside blazes
so hot they singed eyebrows. Scorched, shrunken corpses. The dead
toddlers. An enemy so maddened, so dogged, that Germany was sure to
pay dearly for the pain it wreaked. Huddled in dark foxholes,
shaking, Max had made the wildest secret vows. He was never going
back to the Germany he knew—the Germany that had betrayed him.

Twenty-Three

Under his bedroll blanket Max was cold and his joints
stiff, even though he could hear a new fire crackling in the cellar
oven. It was the next morning. Justine DeTrave was up and gone. Max
sat, pulling the blanket up with him. Young Martin was still
sleeping in the next corner, and Max watched to make sure the young
soldier’s chest was still rising and falling. Martin turned to Max
and blinked. Max smiled.

“So then, what are you going to do?” Martin wheezed
in German.

“I don’t know . . . what you’re talking about,” Max
said in English.

Martin kept staring, and blinking as if unsure of
their previous conversation (perhaps it had been a dream?). Max
heaved himself over to the table, where Annette had left a pot of
coffee. It was empty. He shook his head at it and sighed. Today was
December 24, 1944. Christmas Eve. Back on the Eastern Front, he had
doubted he’d live to see it. And now after all he’d been through
these last weeks? It was a wonder.

He pulled on his overcoat and, leaving his unloaded
tommy gun in the far corner, slogged up the stairs and walked about
the villa. He called out names but no one answered. Captain Slaipe
would be up in the tower, he figured, and Sergeant Smitty was
probably on their radio again. He reached the den. His thigh
muscles ached so he sat on the settee, pulled the linen over him,
and stared out the window at the gray sky like some invalid in an
Altenheim
. How could he not be weary? He had no idea what
was next for him. Not even Captain Slaipe could know, it
seemed.

“What’s the matter?” Justine DeTrave rushed into the
den and closed the door behind her. She stayed at the doorway,
staring at him.

“Nothing’s the matter. I’m just tired. Morning. I
missed you, waking up.”

“Never mind that,” she whispered in French. “I know
everything.”

Max showed her a puzzled look. Lieutenant Julian
Price didn’t know French. “How are you? Come on over and sit by me.
Come on.”

A broad smile stretched across Justine’s face, and
her head cocked to one side. “
Ich weiss alles von Dir
,” she
whispered in rough German—I know all about you, she’d said.

Max stared.

“Yes, I heard it last night.” She pranced over to
him. She sat on the settee and pushed hair off her ears. The
strands shimmered gold in the white light. She grinned. She chirped
in French: “And you know, I think I knew it all along, my
dearest.”

Max glared, out the window. He had to nip this bud.
He said in rusty French, “All right then, but for God’s sake use
one language.”

Her eyes bulged. “Yes, yes. Good,” she said in
English. “It’s best they do not know what I know. Is that not the
way?” She put a hand over her mouth, holding back another grin.
“Oh, this is—how do they say?—Providence.”

Max pushed off the linen and held her shoulders.
“No, it’s not that. It’s simply what they call ‘dumb luck.’ It’s
unintended. Coincidence. An accident, you understand?”

Justine wagged her index finger. She placed the
finger on his thigh, and then all her fingers. “
Mein Schatz
,
you must not play the role with me. I know that you plan things.
The American
capitaine
, he thinks you give up, yes? But we
can fix this now. You see there are five of us, and only two of
them.”

The way she said
Schatz
, as if singing it,
forced a twinge in Max’s gut. Certainly she’d said it many times,
to her German lovers—staff officers, most likely.

She scampered over to the doorway, peered down the
hallway, and then hurried back. “And do you know? I know where
their radio is.”

Max moved closer to her and placed her hands in his.
“Look,
ma chère
, you must listen to me. Forget the radio.
Forget about the five versus two. It’s over for you, and for me.
Germany, as you know it, will soon cease to exist. As I know it.
It’s the Americans’ show now. So let’s be sensible.” He repeated
the last sentence in French.

Justine’s smile faded. She shook her head. She
yanked her hands away. “You’re tired. It’s food you need, that’s
all,” she said and stood, brushing her hands on her spotless apron.
“I’ll find Annette, get you a pot of coffee. Where is she? Her man
is here, that’s the problem, and she’s really lost all sense of the
propriety . . .” Her words trailed off. She bent to kiss Max but
stopped, inches from his lips. It was all he could do not to pull
her down to him.

She pecked him on the forehead and rushed out.

Back down in the cellar Annette and her husband, Old
Henry, treated Max as the same barely tolerated guest he had always
been. They knew nothing. In front of Max they spoke between each
other as they never would had they known Max understood their
French and German. In this respect Captain Slaipe had kept his
word—exposing him and locking him up would only create confusion
and fear.

Sergeant Smitty was another matter. He came
downstairs pulling a small Christmas tree that trickled with
melting snow. Max was at the table playing solitaire. He moved to
help but the sergeant waved him away and stood the tree in the same
corner as Max’s unloaded tommy.

The “cat had been let out of the bag,” as the
Americans said. Or was it “the chickens coming home to roost”? Max
forced a chuckle. “So, I see it’s no presents for the tree this
year, eh Sergeant?”

Smitty said nothing. He passed the table and checked
on Young Martin, who was still sleeping, and then he warmed his
hands at the stove with his back to Max. His tommy was still on his
shoulder.

Max slapped down a few more cards. “Good morning?”
he said finally.

“Don’t be so sure,” Smitty spat in German.

Only openness would do now. Max played a few more
cards and said in High German, using the formal address,
“
Herr
Sergeant, please understand that you shouldn’t have to
worry about me. I intend to behave just as the captain wishes. Keep
your weapon close if you like, but it’s my hope you don’t view me
as a threat.”

Smitty kept his German gruff. “Aren’t you? Think
that’s pretty clear.”

“I understand your meaning. You mean Malmedy, yes?
And all the rest. All the horrible tales to be revealed after
Germany is defeated. You are certainly correct. But I myself pose
no threat. We’re ‘done for,’ as you say. I’ve known it for years.
Hopefully the captain told you my story—”