And they had
become
furtive and sneaky. Covering up. Lying low. Watching the door. Hiding away. Survival rats. Constantly nervous, trying to blend in, avoiding people’s eyes, keeping out of people’s way. Attempting wherever possible to conceal the fundamental truth about themselves.
Exactly
as Goebbels and Streicher said they did.
‘It’s a kind of ghettoization of the soul,’ Frieda said.
Wolfgang sat in the little bar with the smoke-blackened ceiling and played. Eyes closed, his mind transported far away by the music.
Yes, sir! That’s my baby. No, sir, I don’t mean maybe
.
Slow and rolling, not like Lee Morse had immortalized it back in ’25, but soulful, like a blues. A faraway blues. Far away in America.
‘Hello, Wolfgang.’
The voice came from behind him. It was quiet, gentle even, but it shattered his reverie just as surely as if it had been the voice of the Leader himself. Wolfgang was, after all, vermin. A rat or a cockroach, startled, terrified, looking for a skirting board to scuttle under.
Warily he opened his eyes and glanced around. A handsome blond man in his late twenties or early thirties was standing just behind him, elegantly dressed, with a rakish pencil-thin moustache and a sardonic, knowing smile.
And a Gold Nazi Party badge on his lapel.
Wolfgang turned back to his piano, his fingers stumbling on the keys, clumsy with fear.
Gold party members were
real
Nazis.
Only the first hundred thousand members owned such a badge. People who’d joined when the rest of the nation were dismissing Hitler as a lunatic. These were true believers who despised the so-called
Septemberlinge
who had begun to flock to the swastika after Hitler’s first electoral breakthrough in September 1930.
And this Gold Party member knew his name. And if he knew his name, he knew he was a Jew. And if he knew he was a Jew then Wolfgang was at the mercy of his slightest whim.
‘I’m not sure I ever heard you play piano before,’ the man said, still from behind Wolfgang’s back.
‘Well, you’re hearing me now, mister,’ Wolfgang replied, concentrating on his keyboard, ‘and if you’ve been listening, then a few coins or maybe a beer would be much appreciated.’
‘Oh absolutely. Always a pleasure to drink with an old friend. Single malt’s your tipple, if I recall. Am I right, Mr Trumpet?’
Wolfgang remembered now. It was the use of that old nickname that did it. ‘Mr Trumpet’ had been Kurt’s invention but all his gang had used it.
‘Hello, Helmut,’ Wolfgang said, stopping playing and turning around on his stool.
‘Ah. That’s better,’ Helmut said with what appeared to be a genuinely friendly smile, pressing a tumbler of scotch into Wolfgang’s hand.
It had been eleven years but, apart from the moustache, the slim, handsome, somewhat effete young man Wolfgang had known in another life had not really changed all that much.
‘Long time since the Joplin Club.’
‘Indeed. Eleven years,’ Helmut replied cheerfully.
‘Eleven years for you. Eternity for me.’
‘Ah yes,’ Helmut said with a nod but nothing more.
Wolfgang raised his glass. ‘How about we drink to Kurt?’
‘Yes. Why not? To Kurt. I still miss him. I remember warning him at the time: if you can’t afford
decent
drugs,
don’t take any
. Such a shame. Mind you, perhaps it was for the best. I don’t think he’d have fared very well in our brave new Fatherland.’
‘Unlike you, Helmut,’ Wolfgang said, nodding at the badge on his companion’s lapel. ‘You seem to be faring all right.’
‘Ah yes. Bend with the wind, that’s me. And I saw the way it was blowing earlier than most. Drink up.’ Helmut ordered another round of drinks. ‘You’re still playing music, I see, and I’m very glad, I might add.’
‘Well, things are a little more difficult these days of course,’ Wolfgang answered warily. ‘I play when I’m allowed. This isn’t a job, you know. I do it for tips, that’s all. I’m not employed here.’
‘Please, Wolfgang,’ Helmut said. ‘I wear this badge because it is practical to do so. It has nothing to do with who my friends are.’
Wolfgang sipped at his second whisky, focusing on that brief, now unfamiliar luxury rather than the demeaning fact that whatever Helmut might say, Wolfgang was still a Jew and so they were
not
friends. Their relationship, such as it was, existed only on sufferance. It was simply impossible to ignore the fact that socially they were polar opposites. One the master, the other the dog. And no matter what kindnesses a master might show a dog, the dog was still a dog.
‘And you?’ Wolfgang said finally. ‘Are you still—’
‘A queer pimp? Oh yes, very much so. More than ever. My brown-shirted comrades have
tremendous
appetites, some of them
most
exotic. Funny really, the more they rail against depravity the more they seem to want it. Perhaps they’re just checking that it really
is
as bad as they say it is. You know, for purposes of research. For how can one
really
know how wicked it is to batter open the arse of a penniless unemployed youth who only wanted bread and a uniform until you’ve actually done it?’
Wolfgang tried to smile at Helmut’s levity, his newly acquired dog instincts prompting him to want to be ingratiating, despite seeing no humour in what was being discussed. ‘Well, you know what they say about power corrupting,’ he observed, gratefully accepting one of Helmut’s American Camel cigarettes. Wolfgang himself could now only afford to smoke cheap local brands, and not even as many of those as he would have liked.
‘Yes and
absolute
power corrupts absolutely,’ Helmut said, grinning, ‘which of course is what we Nazis have got, so absolute it’s positively tasteless. Hey ho. ’Twas ever thus, and in the meantime the standard-bearers of New Europe are fucking themselves senseless and there are more shivering little girls and boys working the pavements of Schöneberg and the Potsdamer Strasse than ever there were under decadent old Weimar. Ain’t life a scream?’
‘You said brown-shirted “comrades” a moment ago,’ Wolfgang said, looking his companion properly in the eye for the first time. ‘Are you in the SA, Helmut?’
‘Oh absolutely. Since 1927 in fact … almost an
Alter Kämpfer
, don’t you know. Not that I’ve ever been in a fight in my life, you understand. No, I went straight to the top. Pimp-in-chief to Röhm himself. Funny, don’t you think? That a man who commands three million devotedly obedient young men needs a chap like me to fix him up. I suppose it avoids small talk, although I can’t imagine dear Ernst’s small talk consists of much more than “Get your trousers off, lad, turn around and bend over”.’
Wolfgang was most surprised at Helmut’s indiscretion. Of course everyone in Germany had heard the rumours that the SA’s all-powerful leader was a homosexual and one with a brutal and rapacious appetite, but Wolfgang could not imagine anyone being so open about it.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Helmut laughed. ‘In a way me and old Ernst are a bit like you, in so much as we’re officially blood enemies of National Socialism. The party’s
terribly
down on us homos, you know. There’s talk of having us sterilized, which is hilarious, don’t you think? I mean, what would be the point of
sterilizing
a queer? But that’s my dear party colleagues for you. Never let an inconsistency get in the way of brutality. Thick as two short planks every one of them. My dear, you won’t
believe
the ignorance.’
Helmut was making no effort to lower his tone and one or two of the other drinkers in the bar were beginning to shift about, casting aggressive glances in his direction. They looked away again, however, when Helmut ostentatiously displayed the black and red badge ringed with gold that was pinned on his lapel.
‘Come on,’ Helmut said. ‘If you’re not officially working here, you can take the evening off, can’t you? Let me buy you dinner. There’s no one here I’m interested in anyway. Did you ever
see
an uglier bunch?’
‘Dinner? You want to
eat
with
me
?’
‘That’s right, a Jew and queer, eh? The SS would love that, wouldn’t they? Perhaps we can plot an assassination attempt.’
At first Wolfgang was astonished at Helmut’s provocative behaviour, but he soon recognized that it was not so very surprising and certainly not brave. The Nazis respected nothing more than authority, and as a senior SA man close to Ernst Röhm, Helmut was invulnerable. Wolfgang decided therefore to try and relax for an hour or two and enjoy a free dinner.
After all, he could be in no safer company in all of Berlin.
And besides, there was something he very much wanted to ask Helmut. He raised it the moment they had sat down in a cosy little restaurant and ordered their drinks and food.
‘Do you ever see Katharina?’ Wolfgang asked.
A shadow of sadness passed across Helmut’s habitually amused countenance.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you were rather in love with her, weren’t you?’
‘Was it that obvious?’
‘Glaring, my dear. Glaring. And who can blame you? Katharina, lovely Katharina, she was such a very exquisite creature. Loveliest of them all.’
‘Was?’ Wolfgang asked, the shadow passing from Helmut’s face to his own.
‘Yes – was, I’m afraid,’ Helmut replied, staring sadly into his Martini.
‘Helmut. Please don’t tell me she’s dead.’
‘No. Not dead. Not yet. I don’t think so anyway. But she’s been very ill for years. Not a nice condition at all; sad to say, she has syphilis.’
‘Oh my God. Not Katharina.’
‘It’s quite advanced and so of course she’s rather disfigured. Such terrible luck. You know how reserved she was, never loose at all, not like most of us that year. She told me it was one mistake. A film producer. She wanted to be an actress, you recall.’
‘Yes, I recall.’
Wolfgang felt such pain. Real physical pain. Katharina was his secret. The funny, wistful little might-have-been that he kept hidden in a box somewhere deep in his heart. He scarcely even looked into the box any more. He had plenty else to worry about, after all. But it was always there, a sweet memory of something beautiful that had passed him by.
‘I’m sorry, Wolfgang,’ Helmut said, sniffing the wine the waiter had offered him. ‘I know how much she meant to you … you didn’t ever … did you?’
‘No, no, we didn’t,’ Wolfgang said, ‘but not for want of desire on my part. I tried one night, when I was drunk, but she put me in my place. She didn’t sleep with married men.’
‘For which you should be very grateful. You may have had a lucky escape. Life is undoubtedly unfair and cruel and swinish.’
The waiter brought the soup and they ate for a few moments in silence.
‘What more can I tell you?’ Helmut went on. ‘She pretty much retired from everything and went to live with her mother. I saw her about a year or two ago. The symptoms were in remission but she was very scarred.’
‘I should like to see her.’
‘I very very much doubt she would want that, Wolfgang. Besides …’
Helmut left the sentence hanging where it was while he studied the diamond on his cigarette case. He didn’t need to say more. It was pretty obvious that the last thing any distressed girl needed was a Jew trying to befriend her.
Wolfgang could be of no help to anyone. Not Katharina, not his family, not himself.
‘Best to remember her as she was, don’t you think?’ Helmut said. ‘Beautiful, captivating Katharina.’
They ate their meal together. Sharing happier memories of the great and glorious Joplin Club, memories which for Wolfgang were destined always now to be suffused with an intolerable sadness.
It was certainly no consolation that all the other members of Kurt’s old gang were doing very well in the newly awoken Germany. Dorf the bookish money launderer was now with Schacht at the Reichsbank.
‘Still juggling debt,’ Helmut laughed. ‘The only difference is that now he does it while he’s sober. And you remember Hans? Believe it or not, he’s also at
exactly
the same game as he was in 1923. Acquiring expensive motor cars on the cheap from those who find they have to liquidate their assets urgently.’
Wolfgang nodded. Wondering how many of those fine cars that had pulled up outside the Kempinski hotel for the Fischers’ ‘farewell’ party a year before had since been bought short and sold long by his old friend Hans. The Fischer Mercedes probably amongst them.
‘And Helene, of course,’ Helmut went on. ‘You remember dear sparkling Helene? She is the star of us all, still passing out at the end of parties but now she does it in the homes of ambassadors and in ballrooms on the Wilhelmstrasse. A friend of Goering, no less. Who as we all know does love a pretty girl.’