The One From the Other (6 page)

 

 

A few days later, we sailed from Alexandria, on the Italian steamer
Palestrina,
for Brindisi, stopping at Rhodes and Piraeus on the way. From Brindisi, we caught a train and were back in Berlin by October 26.

 

 

ONE

 

 

W
e were just a stone’s throw from what had once been the concentration camp. But when we were handing out directions, we tended not to mention that, unless it was absolutely necessary. The hotel, on the east side of the medieval town of Dachau, was down a cobbled, poplar-lined side road, separated from the former KZ—now a residential settlement camp for German and Czech refugees from the communists—by the Würm River canal. It was a half-timbered affair, a three-story suburban villa with a steep saddle roof made of orange tiles, and a wraparound first-floor balcony overflowing with red geraniums. It was the kind of place that had seen better days. Since the Nazis and then the German prisoners of war had left Dachau, nobody came to the hotel anymore, except perhaps the odd construction engineer helping to supervise the partial erasure of a KZ where, for several very unpleasant weeks in the summer of 1936, I myself had been an inmate. The elected representatives of the Bavarian people saw no need to preserve the remnants of the camp for present or future visitors. Most residents of the town, including myself, were of the opinion, however, that the camp presented the only opportunity for bringing money into Dachau. But there was little chance of that happening so long as the memorial temple remained unbuilt and a mass grave, where more than five thousand were buried, unmarked. The visitors stayed away, and despite my efforts with the geraniums, the hotel began to die. So when a new two-door Buick Roadmaster pulled up on our little brick driveway, I told myself that the two men were most probably lost and had stopped to ask directions to the U.S. Third Army barracks, although it was hard to see how they could have missed the place.

The driver stepped out of the Buick, stretched like a child, and looked up at the sky as if he was surprised that birds could be heard singing in a place like Dachau. I often had the same thought myself. The passenger stayed in his seat, staring straight ahead, and probably wishing he was somewhere else. He had my sympathies, and possessed of the shiny green sedan, I would certainly have kept on driving. Neither man was wearing a uniform but the driver was altogether better dressed than his passenger. Better dressed, better fed, and in rather better health, or so it seemed to me. He tap-danced up the stone steps and through the front door like he owned the place, and I found myself nodding politely at the hatless, tanned, bespectacled man with a face like a chess grandmaster who had considered every possible move. He didn’t look lost at all.

“Are you the owner?” he asked as soon as he came through the door, without making much of an effort at a good German accent and without even looking at me while he awaited an answer. He glanced idly around at the hotel decor which was supposed to make the place feel more homey, but only if you roomed with a milkmaid. There were cowbells, spinning wheels, hemp combs, rakes, sharpening stones, and a big wooden barrel on top of which lay a two-day-old
Süddeutsche Zeitung
and a truly ancient copy of the
Münchener Stadtanzeiger.
On the walls were some watercolors of local rural scenes from a time when painters better than Hitler had come to Dachau, attracted by the peculiar charm of the Amper River and the Dachauer Moos—an extensive marsh now mostly drained and turned into farmland. It was all as kitsch as an ormolu cuckoo clock.

“You could say that I’m the owner,” I said. “At least while my wife is indisposed. She’s in the hospital. In Munich.”

“Nothing serious, I hope,” said the American, still not looking at me. He seemed more interested in the watercolors than in the health of my wife.

“I imagine you must be looking for the U.S. military barracks, at the old KZ,” I said. “You turned off the road when you should have just driven across the bridge, over the river canal. It’s less than a hundred yards from here. On the other side of those trees.”

Now he looked at me and his eyes became playful, like a cat’s. “Poplars, aren’t they?” He stooped to stare out of the window in the direction of the camp. “I bet you’re glad of them. I mean, you’d hardly know the camp was there at all, would you? Very useful.”

Ignoring the implied accusation in his tone, I joined him at the window. “And here I was thinking you must be lost.”

“No, no,” said the American. “I’m not lost. This is the place I’m looking for. That is, if this is the Hotel Schroderbrau.”

“This is the Hotel Schroderbrau.”

“Then we are in the right place.” The American was about five-feet-eight, with smallish hands and feet. His shirt, tie, pants, and shoes were all varying shades of brown, but his jacket was made of a light-colored tweed and nicely tailored, too. His gold Rolex told me there was probably a better car than the Buick in his garage back home in America. “I’m looking for two rooms, for two nights,” he said. “For me and my friend in the car.”

“I’m afraid we’re not a hotel that is approved for Americans,” I said. “I could lose my license.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” he said.

“Don’t think I’m being rude, please,” I said, trying out the English I’d been teaching myself. “But to be honest, we are almost closing. This was my father-in-law’s hotel, until he died. My wife and I have had very little success in running it. For obvious reasons. And now that she’s ill—” I shrugged. “I’m not much of a cook, you see, sir, and I can tell you’re a man who enjoys his comfort. You would be better off at another hotel. Perhaps the Zieglerbrau or the Hörhammer, on the other side of town. They are both approved for Americans. And they both have excellent cafés, too. Especially the Zieglerbrau.”

“So am I to take it that there are no other guests in the hotel?” he asked, ignoring my objections and my attempts to speak English. His German accent may have been nonexistent, but there was nothing wrong with his grammar or his vocabulary.

“No,” I said. “We’re empty. As I said, we’re on the verge of closing.”

“I only asked because you keep on saying ‘we,’” he said. “Your father-in-law is dead and you said your wife is in the hospital. But you keep on using the word ‘we.’ As if there’s someone else here.”

“Hotelier’s habit,” I said. “There’s just me and my impeccable sense of service.”