Briar Rose (16 page)

Beauty)" Transformations

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.

-P.L. Travers: About the Sleeping Beauty

You must understand (he said) that this is a story of survi-v heroes. The war was full of them. A man is not a hero if he s to stay alive; if he struggles for one more crust of bread, o: ragged breath. We were all heroes of the moment. None m, Josef P.

He was born the last child and late of a large famiI3

connection with the aristocracy was more a matter of long than money. When his father died, his still beautiful moth(

ried almost at once, causing the more knowledgeable to I to the rumors of her affair with the local Potocki heir. Josef away, much too young, to a British public school where hi ugly for a child, but quite beautiful for an adolescent raised when stories of faery abandonment were current in certair brought him both abuse and favoritism. He was first bullie cifully, a British specialty, and then doted upon by both th(

and the top boys. He managed by sheer stupidity, really, tc virtue until he entered the university where a particularly I

tutor managed to instruct him in both Dante and the act!

He believed at that point that he would never go home t again and adopted his stepfather's last name and title bi

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England he had become a snob.

He was wrong in many things, but never about his feeL

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he found he had three aptitudes: for the theater, for political amne-sia, and for love.

He took a first at college, more by accident than study, and went immediately to Paris where he discovered a fourth aptitude-for the demimonde life. To say he survived it is to point out the obvious.

To say he understood his survival is to credit him with more introspec-tion than he-at the moment-actually had. He went from Paris to Vienna to Berlin with as little thought, writing for the small theaters and being passionate about his leading men.

He was on the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, determined to enjoy every last minute of it, in Berlin in 1936. He was in love with the most perfectly Aryan-looking boy of twenty-two. The boy had a shock of white blond hair, even teeth, a Greek nose, and cornflower blue eyes. His name was Adam Gottlieb. He was a Jew. But under

Potocki's protection-Prince Potocki as he was known in the theater circ es-Adam was safe. They changed his name to Alan Berg, Alan of the Mountains, and everyone conveniently forgot that he was

Jewish. Especially Josef P.

Josef loved it best when he and his Alan drove out into the mountains on holidays, staying in the small chalets, and hiking for days. He used to crown Alan with twinings of edelweiss and they would gaze out over the high peaks, singing songs from the latest cabaret shows. It was as close as Josef would ever get to heaven.

They were, of course, living in the belly of the wolf. They never thought they would be devoured. Apolitical, noticing only each other, quoting Goethe and Schiller and the darkly sensual verses of

Rimbaud and Baudelaire ("May they come, may they come," Alan would sing over and over,

"the days which enchant us.") they were surprised when the world overtook them. Their first real shock came when they entered the town where they had rented a new chalet.

A banner was suspended over the road: JEWS ENTER AT THEIR

OWN RISK.

For a moment Josef could not understand why Alan had cried out. Then he reached over and touched Alan softly on the shoulder, careful not to disturb his driving, but nevertheless to assure him

Josef thought the banner a hateful thing.

"No one will know," Josef whispered.

"I know," Alan said. "It is enough." His shoulder shuddered beneath Josef's hand.

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"In Bavaria . . ." Josef said, oT;moi~aq, he had hoped that in a small village politics would play no gert. But when they pull in front of the hotel that rented out a a chalets, there was a si the door: "Dogs and Jews not .11roM."

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"I will not stay," Alan said. "1 %,411 not." His arms shoob the tension of holding his hands still on the wheel.

"They will not know," Josef said. in, not understanding the wrong thing to say, not e*i s the gulf that had su(

opened between them. "How could ahey know?"

Alan did not even try to respond -isrd so, foolishly Josef sz final thing to divide them and did 4xeit till years later unde what he had done. "But we have '-Vn looking forward to away together, and it is just a stupid -itn. What harm can it Look-we will not even eat in the s M-9 9 room. I will cook fc the chalet. I will even go in now and Tt the keys. You do n(

to do any of that."

Alan shuddered but said nothing esixe.

They stayed only overnight, -MW~ in separate beds. TJ

morning they returned to Berlin, TI:Wng bitterly all the w never mentioning politics. Josef did oot see him again. A]

first to Paris, then later-Josef WM-M Palestine where he some silly border squabble. Such a vAste of a beautiful lif thought then, raging mindlessly at 4b desertion. But yea]

sitting in a dark forest, outside of 01rnhof, he realized th had gone down fighting and that in itself, a good th had even quoted Charles Darnay's so Mel speech in Alan's n with as much theatricality as a agL.L&M bottle of cognac coi him.

M, believe it was God's will to send .vboy forth from this the Reich, to let him grow to o-smiMeTeld, to raise him to b, of the nation. . . ."

He listened to that speech over Rete radio in the arm

Viennese lover. It was 1938 and Josef believed his lover A after all, high up in von Schuschnigg'--. government, wher that Hitler was a false, wretched liar mho did not stand against the strength of the Austrian gople.

"We are a people," he had told -Mf, "who have mor in our noses than this paperhanger 19% in his behind."

It was the crudest thing Josef had ever heard his lover say and Josef giggled nervously at it. He refused to hear the false bravado, the utter fear behind the boast. How could he? They rarely talked politics. They rarely talked at all. They ate together, long leisurely meals. They slept together. It was enough.

They made love during Hitler's victory speech, a horrible, angry, passionate thrusting, that left Josef bruised and somewhat stunned. He had planned to have a long talk with his lover about being more gentle the next morning. But when he woke, he found the man dead in the marble bath, his wrists still bleeding soft red lines into the tub. There was no note, but the blood was fike scripting in the water, and even Josef could read that. He fled, carrying only an overnight case, crossing back into Germany, though by then the borders between Germany and Austria were

9ply paper formalities.

did he stay in Germany? Why did anyone stay? The music still in the cafes and nightclubs: "At Katrina's with the golden air ... tum-de-dum ... The boys and girls are dancing there ...

m-de-dum . . ." The drinks were cheap. The theaters were still open. And Josef was not Jewish.

He turned his eyes away from the yellow stars on the coats, the beatings. Hadn't he survived his own floggings in school, survived his own tauntings? And the the music stiff played in the cafes, Why did he stay in Germany? Why did anyone stay? There was an electric current of national pride in the air. Wine ran like blood from the open necks of bottles in the beer halls. Slogans
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charged the waffs of every street. And there was the humor-Galgenhumor, gal-lows humor-which they all shared and which made everyone laugh. So much laughter. Jokes like: Have you seen the German

Forest brand suits that began to swell in the spring and change color in the fall? He did not really notice when the Communists began to disappear, and the Gypsies. He had a protector in the Berlin government. They laughed at the FUhrer, that ugly little man, but only at night, only in bed, only within the circle of their own arms. And the music still played in the cafes.

Why did he stay in Germany? Why did anyone stay? Children on the street corners jumped rope to rhymes:

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Handschen falten, kopfchen senken, Und an Adolf Hitter denken.

Fold your little hands, lower your little head, And think of Adolf Hitler.

The pamphlets about the Jews multiplied. He heard ru internment camps for antisocial elements like Jehovah's V

and socialists. And faggots. The kind who cross-dressed a flagrant in their habits. The kind who sang falsetto and apj men in the streets. The kind who frequented the homosey The kind who had to wear pink triangles. The 175ers. H(

have a lover for a year. But the music still played in the , The persecution-systematic and horrible-against the horr had begun as early as 1933. Some part of Josef must hav(

But it was mostly rumor. He was good at dismissing rumor men who disappeared weren't just homosexuals. They \

known agitators-politically outspoken or garishly arrayed.

tors. Not lawyers. Not playwrights. With his dark, mascu looks, with his family connections, with his protectors v also protecting themselves, Josef never thought the pin]

laws were meant for him.

But he stopped going to the theaters and bars and stopped frequenting parties where men were the only gues even from himself, dating women of limited virtue. He e-limited love to one of them. Only one.

In the end, of course, he was found out. After the 19"

Putsch it was inevitable. It is only remarkable that he was out until the end of 1940.

His arrest happened in such a banal manner, he alrr.

telling of it. He was reported on by his landlady who h ered-so she said-literature of an unnatural nature in his n never said what she was doing in his rooms, except spyin,, line did him no good.

What she had found was his batt of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a textbook from his days, which he had not opened since a student. Erotica N

any interest to him. Yet it was enough to bring him to tho of the Gestapo and their attention was guaranteed to

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an. He admitted finally not only to homosexuality, but named his past lovers as well. Since two of them-Alan and the Viennese politician-were well beyond the heavy sticks of the SS, they concentrated on the others, forgetting to tell Josef that the men he named were already in their custody.

He found that out much later, though had he known at the time it would not have relieved his guilt. He was sent without further trial to Sachenhausen.

es

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Sachenhau5en. The name does not have the same death knell ring as Dachau or Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz. But for the prisoners, what they called it did not matter.

Thirty kilometers north of Berlin, so conveniently located in the town of Oranienberg, it was an ill-kept secret. Only Josef seemed never to have heard of it. Prisoners were brought there openly by public railway, disembarked at the station, force-marched through three kilometers of residential and factory streets. The local industries used the inmates for hard labor. Everybody knew. Except Josef. Hiding from himself, he hid from the facts, too.

Sachenhausen was a labor camp, not strictly a death camp, and not an extermination camp. The distinction was lost on the 100,000

people who died there. But for Josef that distinction meant a half-life of almost a year's duration in what the president of the people's court, Judge Roland Freisler, called a "recreation home."

The train that Josef was on arrived at the station midday, and the cattle cars opened. Prisoners were hauled out but Josef managed to cou

T

*cat~

p down on his own. His head was still ringing from the beating at had closed one of his eyes, and he thought he heard some hn orrible chorus of singers. Shaking his head to try and clear it, he or~

only succeeded in making the music louder. It was then he realized that the prisoners were surrounded by a crowd of jeering townsfolk who were half singing, half chanting: Kill the Bromberg murderer5!

Vengeance for our brothers in Poland.

Blut fuer blut!

He turned slowly, "But I am your brother in Poland!" he cried.

It was the wrong thing to say. One middle aged woman, seeing theatrically around, raising his hands to them.

i,

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the pink triangle on his coatsleeve-a present from the aimed a stone at him. "Faggot!" she cried.

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"Filth!" Her ai and she hit the man standing next to him.

A boy near her, not more than ten years old, was bett the stone he shied hit Josef on the arm.

"Butt-sticker!

cried.

"Don't talk to them. Don't look at them. Run! Run!"

a cry of fear but a command from the guards. While continued, unimpeded, to pelt them with cobblestones and street filth, the weary prisoners began to stumble f run down the streets.

Later he found out this was the usual greeting given by the cultured citizens of Oranienberg.

Wars do not of everyone.

Josef's first glimpse of the camp was of the wooden e with one eye swollen shut from his interrogation, an slight concussion as well, the gates looked twice as tal in their outline. He was by this time no longer running walking quickly side by side with a man who was cle vah's Witness, for he kept up a steady litany of strang

"Shut up!" Josef suggested, but it only served to make louder, which in turn served to get them both beaten ra several times with the butt of a gun. The Witness said silently from then on, and Josef was careful to walk ahead and two to the left, just in case. Wars may ma men, but not all the time.

'They were herded into a great assembly square unde afternoon sun. Josef was surprised the skies were not them, then almost laughed at his own fancies, exce would have hurt his head and his ribs. He dared a q around with his one good eye. There were signs eve one read them quickly, they made a kind of perverted

THERE IS A ROAD TO FREEDOM.