Bliss, Remembered (21 page)

He said, “Did Hitler ask you to go around town with him?”

“No. I think he had other fish to fry.”

“Well, good, then you can come out with me instead. It’s a perfect day to see Berlin.”

“Lemme just change.”

“And bring a bathing suit.”

“I’ve been in already. It’s wet.”

“That’s what bathing suits are supposed to be.”

And so I got into my best casual outfit, which was a tropical print dress—mostly blue, with a big red belt. I’d been saving it for a nice day. I’d’ve felt silly wearing a tropical print when it was all grim and gray. And after all, you hafta understand I didn’t have that much of a wardrobe selection. I hadn’t expected a courtship in Germany.

But today, the tropical print with the short sleeves was just the ticket. At that time we called those sorts of clothes “gay.” You know, it didn’t have anything to do with sex; it meant light and festive. And this particular gay dress worked with my coloring and showed me to best advantage, which was the point. And I wrapped up my wet bathing suit in a towel, and we took off around Berlin in Horst’s roadster.

I will spare you the travelogue, Teddy, especially since I can’t remember all the names of this street or that plaza. Strasses and platzes. But Horst was so proud of the way his city looked, and he wanted to show it off to me. It was so fresh and clean, too—but not bright, you understand. Berlin was a gray city, so you couldn’t say sparkling clean, the way we do. But it was spic and span. A lot of the Berliners had window boxes, where they grew vegetables. Times in Germany had really and truly been desperate only a short while before, so every little bit helped. But, for the Olympics, to make things prettier, the Nazis had made everybody grow flowers instead of vegetables. The Nazis were very good at spin, Teddy, although, of course, nobody called it that then.

All the buildings were scrubbed. If a store was vacant, they dressed it up as if it was thriving—Potemkin shops, if you will. Horst made a point of taking me to some plaza where the United States had bought a big building for its embassy, and that one building stood out because it was all drab. The Germans were really ticked off because after we bought the building, we didn’t have enough ready cash to spruce it up. I mean, if we didn’t have enough money for bathing suits, we certainly didn’t have enough for spit and polish. That was the Depression, Teddy. People nowadays have no clue. They think you can just put anything and everything on a credit card, ad infinitum. The Germans actually wanted to buy the building back and put a shine on it, but we wouldn’t sell. So that was the one eyesore, and Horst rubbed my nose in it a little, but only in a teasing sort of way.

Well, I do remember that the plaza that the embassy was on was a big boulevard called Unter den Linden. It was lined with lime trees. Oh, it was a magnificent thoroughfare, Teddy. There were banners looped along the trees, and every fifty feet or so, there were green flagpoles flying either the Olympic banner—you know, with the interlocking circles—or swastikas. One after the other. The snow-white Olympic flag played off against that harsh red and black. Every major street was the same: an absolute cavalcade of banners and flags. Every building, every shop. The Nazis must’ve adored flags more than anyone else. They never learned less-is-more when it comes to flags, did they?

Then we turned down one side street, and it was very striking because suddenly there were no swastikas at all, just a profusion of the Olympic flags. That brought me up short, because after seeing so many swastikas, their sudden absence was all the more striking. So, naturally, I asked Horst about it. I could tell right away that he was uncomfortable, that he regretted coming this way, and he barely glanced over when he answered. “Well,” he said, “those are all Jewish stores.”

“So?”

“Jews aren’t allowed to fly the swastika.”

“Oh, I see.” It cast a momentary pall in the roadster. In fact, I think it was the first time when our conversation had wilted, even for an instant. He made a quick turn at the next corner, though, so once again we were on a street that was flying both the rings and the swastikas. I tried to think of something to say, but, of course, at times like this anything you say comes with a big stupid sign over your head that says: “I’m changing the subject,” which is worse than saying nothing.

Horst was no better. He just stared ahead, pretending to concentrate on driving. Luckily, though, I suddenly heard: “Achtung! Achtung!” You see, Teddy, they’d also set up loudspeakers along the main streets, and whenever an event concluded in the stadium, the results would be announced. “Achtung! Achtung!” Then the results. And if the Germans won a medal, everybody would stop and cheer to beat the band.

It sort of bugged me at the time that they could get so worked up over the javelin throw or some such thing, but, then, when it comes to sports, we’re all brothers under the skin, aren’t we? We beat up on Bolivia or Mongolia or some little pissant country in basketball, and we all go nuts screaming, “U!S!A! U!S!A!” and “We’re Number One.”

Anyway, Horst eventually figured out a way to get us back into a natural conversation. “At night,” he said, “they play marches and Viennese waltzes. You wanna come here some evening?”

“Yeah, sure, great.”

“There’re clubs and cabarets. We could dance, Sydney.”

“I’d love that,” I said. “I’d love to dance with you, Horst.” The way he’d said “we could dance,” I knew he must be a good dancer. Boys don’t bring up dancing unless they’re good at it. Men don’t. So, I knew: one more thing he was good at. One more thing to love him for.

That caught Mom off guard, and she pondered it for a moment.
“Well, you’re absolutely right about that, Teddy. Your father certainly was.”
But then, very quickly, she was back in the car with lover boy.

So Horst said, “Then it’s a date. But now: it’s time for a picnic.”

I said, “A what?”

“A picnic, of course. It’s a perfect day for a picnic. Look in back.” Sure enough, when I picked up the beach towel there, it revealed a lovely picnic basket beneath it.

Horst turned the car toward Charlottenburg, west of the city, and then he drove down toward Grunewald, which was the next fancy suburb. We passed the Rot-Weiss Club, and then, a bit further along, we came upon this large forest. I mean, we are still in what I’d call greater Berlin, but all of a sudden here we are in a regular forest—dark green, rich in these tall fir trees. It was like any minute we were gonna come upon Hansel and Gretel following their bread crumbs. But then, only a bit further, everything opened up and there before us was this perfectly lovely lake. You could see large mansions ringing it, speedboats, and people swimming off this pretty beach. All the beaches on the Chesapeake, I’d never seen anything like it. Even Easton, as fancy as it was, couldn’t hold a candle to it. “This is Lake Wannsee,” he said.

We found a table, and I opened up the basket. Horst had provided quite a spread: sandwiches, cheese, sausage, and even apple streudel for dessert. He bought us a couple beers at the concession stand, and we laughed and exchanged stories. I told him all about Eleanor, and when he told me about living in Japan, I decided I’d let him in on my dream. “I want to go there,” I said.

“Tokyo?”

“Yeah. The ’40 Olympics. I think I can be the best by then, Horst. I think I can win a gold medal. That’s what I’m gonna work for.”

He smiled and cocked his head, but made me drop mine because he kept looking at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re so beautiful, Sydney, and I can’t believe someone so beautiful is so wonderful too.” He reached over and took my chin with his hand and raised it up so that I’d look into his eyes. “Will you let me come to Tokyo and be your guide? I can still remember a few words in Japanese. Let’s see: Arigato. Sayonara. Gaijin . . . uh . . . kimono. Of course, that wouldn’t be much help.”

“But you’d come?”

“Sydney, I’d go anywhere with you.” That made me blush all the more. “Besides,” he went on. “Nineteen-forty. I’ll have graduated from college and finished my military tour by then. We all hafta serve in the army for a couple years. It’s a nuisance, but Hitler’s very conscious of what happened to us after the war. So we all hafta learn to be little soldiers to make sure we’re not conquered again.”

He shook his head at the nonsense of it all. Remember now, Teddy, the First World War was The War To End All Wars, so anybody with his wits about ’em was sure there wouldn’t be any more wars. Because wars had ended. Finis. “Well,” he said, “would you let me come?”

“To Tokyo?”

“Yeah.”

“Horst, I’d go anywhere with you.” I was repeating, of course, exactly what he’d said to me earlier.

He reached across the table and took my hands in his. “What will happen to us, Sydney?”

“After I leave?”

“Yes. This can’t end. I’ve fallen in love with you. Did you know?”

I just shrugged and said, “Yes.”

Such an abrupt answer took him up short. “You know?” he asked.

“Uh huh.”

“How?”

“Well, I’ve fallen in love with you, and you act the same way with me that I do with you, so I figured it out from there.”

“You are amazing. I can hardly understand it . . . you . . . us.”

“Me neither. I always wanted to believe in love at first sight, but it scared me because I thought, well, maybe it’ll be first sight for me, but not for him.”

“Well, it was.” He squeezed my hand. “Could you live here?”

“In Germany?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, Horst.”

“You couldn’t?”

“No, no, it’s just—I never thought I’d ever live much beyond the Eastern Shore. Wilmington, maybe. Baltimore. But Germany. Wow. That’s a stretch.”

Now, you gotta understand something, Teddy. This wasn’t just a lot of idle lovey-dovey. I was only eighteen years old, and he was only twenty, but back then, if you could scrape up the money, people got married at those ages. You couldn’t just live together WBOC.

WBOC. Without benefit of clergy. That was sinful. There weren’t any halfway houses you could move into together. So you got married. I mean, we mighta been skirting the heart of the subject, but we really were talkin’ about marriage. Marriage! It was all going so fast, I got scared. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go swimming.”

There were changing rooms. He came out in a navy blue bathing suit with yellow piping. Remember, he’d seen me in a bathing suit before, but this was the first time I’d seen him in one. Oh boy, Teddy! What a doll! Now, remember, this is a long, long time before bikinis. The bathing suits now would make what I had on look like Old Mother Hubbard, but, for that time, between the two of us there was plenty of skin to go around. A lot of men still wore tops, like basketball shirts, but Horst was bare-chested. And here was the thing: by my exacting standards, he had just the right amount of hair on his chest. Not too much, but just enough. I mean, he was picture perfect, lemme tell you. “Come on,” I said, and I ran into the water.

When Horst followed me in, he kidded me. “Now don’t swim too fast, so I can’t catch up with you.”

Fat chance—right, Teddy? I ducked down and swam underwater, and he came after me and took me in his arms. Hey, I’d been doing a lot of swimming these last couple years. I’d been in the water a whole lot, all over, but now, this—this was like all of a sudden I was swimming in champagne. I mean, the water just didn’t feel like water anymore. We came up for air, and when we did, he kissed me.

Oh yes, it wasn’t that deep. We were standing on the lake bottom, and he said, “Ich liebe dich,” and I said, “What?” And he said “That’s ‘I love you’ in German,” so I asked him to repeat it, and I said it to him, “Ich liebe dich,” and then we kissed again, and I said, “I feel like I’m swimming in champagne,” and I broke away from him and swam on my back a ways, looking up to the blue sky, just like I did back home, but thinking, how can this be the same blue sky that I looked up into when I was alone in the Chester River? How could that be possible?

Oh, Teddy, what a honey of a day that was. What a honey of a day.