"We can give it a try," he said finally. "You don't need to know much here. Reliability and discretion are more important How does eight dollars a day strike you?"
At that I awoke from my dreams of peace. "For how many hours? Morning or afternoon?"
"Morning and afternoon. But you'll have plenty of time to yourself in between."
"That's about what a high-class errand boy makes."
I expected Silvers to tell me that was what my job amounted to. Instead, he told me exactly what a high-class errand boy made. It was less.
"I can't do it for less than twelve," I said. "I have debts to pay off."
"So soon?"
"I've got to pay the lawyer who's working on my residence permit."
I knew Lowy had told Silvers that, but he pretended to be hearing it for the first time—a drawback that obliged him to reconsider the whole deal. The pirate was finally showing his true colors.
With his diffident smile, Silvers pointed out to me that since my job was not legal, I wouldn't have to pay taxes. And besides, he added, my English wasn't fluent I countered that by remarking that my French would come in very handy. In the end we settled for ten. He even held out the prospect of a raise if my work proved satisfactory. I knew that was hot air, but I had no choice.
VIII
That night Kahn and I went to Betty Stein's. In Berlin she'd had open house on Thursdays, and she did the same in New York. Anyone who could afford it brought something—a bottle of wine, a few packs of cigarettes, a pound of frankfurters. Old records were played: lieder sung by Tauber, operettas by Kâlmàn Lehar, and Walter Kollo. Now and then a writer would read a passage from his works. Most of the time we just talked.
She means well," said Kahn, "but the place is a morgue: the living dead reminiscing about the dead dead."
Betty was wearing a lavender silk dress from the pre-Hitler years. Its flounces rustled and it smelled faintly of moth balls. It didn't go very well with her red cheeks, ice-gray hair, and sparkling dark eyes. She welcomed us with plump outstretched arms. She was so touchingly warmhearted that you could only smile helplessly and love her. She acted as if the years after 1933 had never existed. They might exist on other days, but not on Thursdays. On Thursdays she was still in Berlin under the Weimar Republic.
In the large room with the photographs of the dead, a circle of admirers had formed around an actor by the name of Otto Wieler. "He has conquered Hollywood!" said Betty with pride. "He's made it!"
Wieler lapped it up. "Whafs the part?" I asked Betty. "Othello? The Brothers Karamazov?"
"I don't know, but it's something big. Hell show them. He's a future Clark Gable."
"Or Charles Laughton," said Betty's niece, a shriveled old maid, who was serving coffee. "More like Laughton, I'd say. He's a character actor."
I had never heard of Wieler, but that didn't mean a thing.
I hadn't had much time for the theater in my last few years in Europe. The only actors I really knew were those of the preoccupation days.
Kahn gave me a sardonic look. "It's not much of a part," he said. "And Wieler wasn't much of an actor: in Europe either. Do you know the story about the man who takes his dachshund to a White Russian night club in Paris? The owner wants to impress him. 'Our doorman,' he says, 'used to be a general; the waiter was a count, the singer a grand duke, and so on. Finally the customer, who is getting rather bored, interrupts him. He points to his dachshund and asks: I bet you don't know who this little fellow used to be? All right, I'll tell you. He's come down in the world, but he used to be a Saint Bernard.'" Kahn smiled sadly. "Wieler really hasn't got much of a part. He's playing a Nazi in a class-B picture. An S.S. man."
"But isn't he Jewish?"
"What has that got to do with it? The ways of Hollywood are strange. A Jewish-looking S.S. man doesn't bother them in the least This is the fourth case I've heard of. There's a kind of poetic justice in it. The Gestapo has saved these Jews from starvation."
The next arrival was a timid little man with a black goatee., "That's Dr. Gräfenheim," Kahn informed me. The name was well known. He had been a leading gynecologist in Berlin and had developed a contraceptive that bore his name. A few minutes later he came over to Kahn and me.
"Living in New York?" Kahn asked him.
"No, in Philadelphia."
"And how's your practice?"
"No practice," said Gräfenheim. "I haven't taken my examination yet. It's hard. How would you feel about taking your examinations all over again? And in English."
"But you're a famous man. They must have heard of you here."
Gräfenheim shrugged his shoulders. "That has nothing to do with it. The Médical Association over here thinks we ■ refugee doctors are a threat to the American profession. They make it as hard as they can for us. That's why wè have to take examinations. It's no joke in a foreign language. I'm over sixty." Gräfenheim smiled apologetically. "I should have studied languages. But we're all in the same boat. I'll have to do a year of internship, too. But at least they'll give me board and lodging in the hospital."
Betty interrupted him. "Tell them what happened to you," she said.
Gräfenheim shrugged. "I didn't come here to talk about my troubles."
But Betty would not be discouraged. "Then I'll tell about them. He was robbed. Robbed by a no-good refugee."
It seemed that Gräfenheim had owned a valuable stamp collection. He had entrusted a part of it to a friend who left Germany before he did. But when Gräfenheim arrived in New York, the friend wasn't a friend anymore. He said Gräfenheim had never given him anything..
"Didn't you have a receipt?" Kahn asked.
"No," said Gräfenheim. "That was impossible. If the Gestapo had found a receipt, they'd have locked me up for sending valuables abroad."
"And that swine is living on the fat of the land," Betty fumed. "While Gräfenheim has been starving."
"Not exactly starving. But I was counting on my stamps to see me through my second education."
"How much could you have got for them?" Betty asked.
Gräfenheim squirmed. "Quite a lot," he admitted. "They were my rarest stamps. At least six or seven thousand dollars."
"A fortune!" Betty exclaimed. "Imagine what you could have done with all that money!"
Gräfenheim tried to mollify her. "It's better than if the Nazis had got it"
"What a way to talk!" cried Betty in a rage. "Why are refugees always so resigned? If I were you, I'd curse the day I was born."
"What good would that do, Betty?"
"Such talk makes me ashamed of being a Jew. So understanding. So forgiving. A Nazi would have more spunk. He'd find that crook and crack his skull."
With her lavender neck frills, Betty looked like an angry tropical bird. Kahn looked at her with affectionate amusement. "Sweetie pie," he said. "You're the last of the Maccabees!"
"Don't laugh! You at least showed those barbarians what a Jew can do. It there's one thing I can't stand, it's résignation!" She turned angrily to me. "What about you? Do you just put up with everything that happens?"
I said nothing. What could I have said? Betty gave herself a shake, laughed at herself, and joined another group.
I went back to the hotel. Betty's party had made me sad. I thought of Gräfenheim trying to build a new life. What for? He had left his wife in Germany. She wasn't Jewish. For five years she had resisted the pressure of the Gestapo and refused to divorce him. Those five years had made a nervous wreck of her. Every few weeks they had taken Gräfenheim away for "questioning." Every morning from four to eight he and his wife had trembled; that was the time when they usually came for him.
When they took him away, he was thrown into a cell with other Jews and usually held for several days. They huddled together, bathed in the cold sweat of terror. They whispered to each other but no one heard what the others were saying. They were too busy listening for steps in the corridor. The steps meant that one of their number was being called for questioning.
Minutes or hours later a bleeding mass of flesh would be heaved into the cell. Without a word the others would do what they could to help. After the first few times, Gräfenheim was careful to have two or three handkerchiefs in his pocket. If bandages had been found on him, he would have been sent to a concentration camp for believing atrocity stories. It took a good deal of courage even to tie up a man's wounds with a handkerchief. If you were caught, you could be beaten to death for "obstructionism."
Gräfenheim had been obliged to cede his practice to another doctor. His successor had offered him thirty thousand marks for it and actually paid him a thousand—it was worth three hundred thousand. One day his successor's •brother-in-law, an S.S. Sturmführer, had come to his house and given him his choice of being sent to a camp for practicing illegally or of accepting a thousand marks and signing a receipt for thirty thousand. Gräfenheim knew the score; he had accepted the thousand. His wife was on the verge of madness, but she still refused to divorce him until he had left the country, because she was convinced that he owed his relative safety to having an Aryan wife.
And then Gräfenheim had a little luck. One night the Sturmführer, who had been promoted to Obersturmführer in the meantime, came to see him. He was wearing civilian clothes. After some beating about the bush he stated his business. He wanted Gräfenheim to perform an abortion on his girl friend. Suspecting a trap, Gräfenheim refused. He pointed out that his successor was not only the Obersturm-führer's brother-in-law, but also under obligation to him. "The stinker won't do it," said the Obersturmführer. "All I could get out of him was a National Socialist speech about elite stock and genetic duty and crimes against die nation— all that rubbish. That's how the bastard thanks me for getting him his practice!". All this without a trace of irony. "With you it's different," he went on. "And you can be trusted with a secret. If my brother-in-law did it, he could blackmail me for the rest of my life. I wouldn't put it past him. But with you it's a cut-and-dried bargain. We're both illegal, so it's sure that neither of us will talk. Ill bring the girl tonight and take her home tomorrow. Is it a deal?"
"No!" cried Frau Gräfenheim from the doorway. Trembling with fear, she had overheard the whole conversation. "Listen to me," she said to her husband. "You're getting an exit visa out of this, and you won't lift a finger before you have it." She turned to the Obersturmführer. "That's the price." He tried to tell her that visas weren't in his department. He started to leave. She threatened to report him to his superiors. He only laughed: "who'd take the word of a Jewess against that of an S.S. officer? "I'm as much an Aryan as you are!" she told him—the first time Gräfenheim had ever heard her use that preposterous word. And besides, she pointed out, it wasn't his word against hers; the authorities would investigate and find that his girl friend was indeed pregnant. In the end the Obersturmführer gave in. The abortion was performed two weeks later. When it was all over, the young Nordic admitted to Gräfenheim that he had had still another reason for coming to him; he had more confidence in a Jewish doctor than in his imbecile brother-in-law. He seemed to be really in love with the girl. To the very end Gräfenheim suspected a trap. The Obersturmführer offered him a fee of two hundred marks. When Gräfenheim refused it, the Obersturmführer stuffed it in Gräfenheim's pocket "It will come in handy, Doctor." Gräfenheim was so suspicious that he didn't say good-by to his wife. Soon after his departure, the war had broken put, and he had never heard from her. If only he had kissed her good-by!
Outside the Hotel Reuben stood a Rolls-Royce with a chauffeur. I heard Meliko's voice from the lobby: "I'm sorry. I haven't got time. Here comes your escort now."
I saw Natasha in the corner. "Is that your buggy outside?" I asked.
"Borrowed!" she said. "Borrowed like my evening gowns and jewelry. Nothing genuine about me."
"The voice is genuine. And so's the Rolls."
"She needs an escort," Melikov explained. "She's only got the car for this evening. She has to return it tomorrow."
I did a little mental arithmetic. I had enough money for a good dinner, even at the Pavilion if we didn't take more than one bottle of champagne.
"We've even got an English chauffeur," said Natasha.
"Do I have to change?"
"Of course not. Look at me."
I don't know what I would have changed into. I only had one other suit, and it was shabbier than the one I had on.
"Let's go!" she said.
"It's my lucky day," I said. "I've just given myself a three-day vacation, but I wasn't expecting a surprise like this."
"Can you give yourself a vacation?" she asked. Tm not so badly off, but I can't do that."
"Neither can I. I'm between jobs. In three days I start Work for an art dealer. Porter, framer, and handyman."
"Won't you be selling, too?"
"Heaven forbid! Mr. Silvers does that."
Natasha looked at me for a moment "But why can't you sell?"
"I don't know enough."
"You don't have to know anything about what you're selling. You make out better if you don't. You feel freer if you don't know what's wrong with the merchandise."
I laughed. "How do you know all that?"
"I do a bit of selling now and then. Dresses and hats. I get a commission. So should you."
"I doubt if I'll get a commission for sweeping and for serving drinks."
We drove slowly through the streets. Natasha pressed a button. A small table detached itself from the mahogany panel in front of us and sprang into place. "Cocktails," she announced. She opened a door and produced two glasses and an assortment of bottles. "Ice-cooled," she said proudly. "What will it be? Vodka, whisky, mineral water? Vodka, I suspect"
"Right you are!"
I looked at the bottle. Genuine Russian vodka. "Good Lord," I said. "Where did this come from?"
The man the car belongs to has something to do with the State Department. He's always going to Washington. The Russians have an embassy, and they're our allies."
The vodka was first-rate. Nothing like MelikoVs rubbing alcohol. "One more?" she asked.
"Why not? I seem to be fated to live as a war profiteer. They let me into America because there's a war on; I found work because there's a war on; and now I'm drinking vodka because there's a war on. I'm an involuntary parasite."
Natasha laughed. "Make it voluntary," she said. "It's much more fun."
We drove up Fifth Avenue, along Central Park. The roaring of the lions could be heard from the zoo. It was summer and they were still out of doors.
"We're coming to your territory," said Natasha a little later. We had turned into Eighty-sixth Street The pastry shops, beer halls, and displays of delicatessen made me think of the main street of some small town in Germany.
"Do they still speak German here?" I asked.
"As much as they please. The Americans are open-minded. They don't lock anybody up for the language he speaks. They're not like the Germans."
"Or the Russians," I reminded her. "Not to mention the French."
"I suppose it's always the wrong people that get locked up."
"Maybe so. One thing is sure. The Nazis on this street are free to run around loose. Can't we go somewhere else? Why should I have to look at all these Nazis? How about Central Park?"
Natasha looked at me for a moment in silence. "I'm not usually like this," she said. Then, thoughtfully, "But there's something about you that irritates me."
"Isn't that lovely I feel the same about you."
She ignored my answer. "A kind of secret smugness," she said. "As if you owned some truth that nobody else could touch. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it gets on my nerves. Do you see what I mean?"
"Perfectly. It gets on my nerves, too. But why are you saying all this?"
"To annoy you," said Natasha. "But let's turn the tables. What impression do I make on you?"
I laughed. "No impression," I said.
She gasped. I already regretted what I had said, but it was too late. Her face had
gone pale. "You lousy Boche!" she said between clenched teeth.
"It may interest you to know," I said, "that the Germans don't regard me as one of them. TheySre taken away my citizenship."
"I don't blame them," said Natasha, and tapped on the glass partition. 'To the Hotel Reuben."
"Yes, ma'am."
"You don't have to take me home," I said. "I can get out here. There are plenty of buses."