Clifford's Blues (14 page)

The letter was from Willy Lewis in Amsterdam. I turned off the food. I wasn't hungry any more. I finished the brandy. Goddamn! If I hadn't popped Dieter Lange … eleven months ago … because he was teasing me so hard, I could have been in touch with Willy by now. Maybe that sonofabitch Dieter Lange … Aw, shit. If I hadn't popped him, things would be the goddamn same.

Wednesday, Jan. 13, 1937

It was last Thursday, the 7th, when I woke up listening to my thoughts and the conversations in my head. This was when I was sick. I heard myself from a long way away, in a place I didn't know. I could see myself seeing: in the night sky, fat speeding clouds, red, black, and white, tumbled through each other, the way clouds come running in from the Gulf over New Orleans. The clouds gave off a strange, flickering, gray-pink light that made dogs I couldn't see bark and snarl. I thought I heard a voice like thunder crackle and snap with the naming of numbers and names through a great wide place like the 'Platz, which became the Dancing Ground when some voices did not echo in response to the thunder clapping across the sky. Men danced the slow death of complete exhaustion and fell with a splash, one after the another, into the knee-deep blood that had seeped through the marsh underfoot, the dirt, turf, gravel, stone, concrete, and asphalt. Splash, splesh, splish, splosh, splush. The spotlights, bright as the eyes of God, did not follow their fallings. Those who remained standing as the night caterpillared down, wavered until at last, to the north, as usual, the shots rang out or did not ring out. The reprieve was always the truck that sped up and unloaded its cargo, live or dead. The first to be battered with club and fist and foot into the blood; the second to be heaped before the wavering thousands as examples of “pieces” that had gone astray and would dance no more anywhere, except in heaven or hell.

I heard myself hear music, the music I saw myself playing without a mistake, without nervousness; it bounded out of the Steinway, louder and cleaner than the barking dogs, the rifle shots, the moaning men, the snarling guards, and the sirens; the music leaped beyond the blocks and the
SS
noncom barracks, the electric fence with its low, mean hum, beyond the newer, higher walls, the moat. I heard my music angling south on an upward slant toward the Alps, then above them, soaring higher into a darkness that was becoming lighter because it was speeding toward the brightest thing in the southwest sky. Oh, I heard myself play melodies I'd never ever heard, and chords that should not have been possible on any piano, and I approached that brightness on an impossibly fast beat, saw myself look at that incredibly bright ball with smaller balls caught in their own rhythms rounding it, and I heard myself say, “How fine it is.”

Yes, it was last Thursday when I started to get better. I don't know why I was hearing myself so good that I couldn't forget what I said or what I saw, heard, and did when I was sick. I was in my room in the basement. It smelled like medicine. When the door was open I thought I was in a hospital because the walls were white, too. Then I knew that wasn't so; Dieter Lange must have hung sheets over the fence where he kept his stuff locked up. I must have had visitors.

I said to Dieter Lange (we must have been alone) “I hate you.”

“Don't hate me,” he said.

I wondered where Annaliese was. Hadn't there been someone with her when she came—I think they came—to visit?

“Why didn't you tell me about the letters? Why did you take Malcolm's money?”

“I didn't take the money. Someone in the camp post did. I know you'd have felt better if I'd given you those things earlier, but it was too much of a risk. And now, you see, they didn't make you feel better after all.”

“I really do hate you, Dieter Lange,” I remember saying again. I remember feeling hungry just then, and I knew somehow that was a good sign.

Dieter Lange was sitting on my stool. I said, “You changed the records.”

“Yes. I had them changed, and you know the reason for that, too.”

“Was I in the
Revier?
”

“No, because you might have said something to get us into trouble. And Bernhardt didn't want you to die over there. He needs you.”

“Everybody needs poor old Cliff,” I said. I watched us from somewhere. “And all I got is a big asshole and can play the piano.”

He didn't say anything then, but it occurred to me that we were whispering or seemed to be. I said, “What's wrong with me?”

“The grippe,” he said. “Pneumonia.”

“Bad?”

“Bad, but better. Twenty people a day die of grippe or pneumonia in the
Revier
. I didn't want that to happen to you. Neither did Bernhardt. Neither did Anna. So Bernhardt arranged for the black man in the
Revier
to come and bring you medicine and look you over, and for Gitzig to help, too.”

I remember myself thinking that I didn't want Gitzig to be mad at me because he had handled my piss and shit and washed me. But if he hadn't put something in my water he must like me.

“And Anna has been looking in on you, too, and Ursula and Lily.”

I thought then,
Anna and Ursula
, and I wondered if Dieter Lange heard my thoughts, they seemed so loud. He lit a cigarette.

I said, “Did anyone else come to see me?”

“No one. Just that Gitzig and the black man from the Infirmary. I found those letters I gave you at Christmas. I destroyed them.”

“You don't care about me, Dieter Lange. I hate you. I meant for you to find them.”

“Is that so. Well, anyway, don't be such a sissy,” he said, his voice getting thick. “You got yourself here. I found you. I saved you. The
SA
would have ripped your ass open all the way to your heart if I hadn't. And if they hadn't killed you, the swamps would have or the quarry, and if they didn't, you'd have been drowned in shit on the 4711 detail—and you wouldn't have been the first fairy to vanish like that.”

He honked his snot and swallowed it.

“I want to die, Dieter Lange.”

“You love music too much to die. You will die, sure, but not now.”

“You told Willy Lewis he could buy me out. I'll buy myself out.”

“You can't. You've only earned 80 marks. Oh, your guitar player, the Jew, he got bought out. But Bernhardt's got another guitarist. Claims he's a cousin of Django Reinhardt. Never met a Gypsy who could play anything who didn't claim to be related to Django.”

I remember thinking, the thoughts bouncing off the drying hams and sausages, the rows of canned goods and glass jars behind the white sheets, that the rhythm section was going to need work with a new man. “How much for Sam?” I asked him.

“Seven thousand five hundred marks. Fifteen thousand dollars.
U.S.
Jews have money.”

“How much for me?”

“Ten thousand marks. Twenty thousand dollars
U.S.
”

I thought, Sam is worth $15,000, me $20,000.

It seemed that I heard snowflakes hitting the ground. “Twenty thousand dollars,” I said. “Get me out of here and I'll send it to you.” I thought, The price of slavery has gone up.

“You see,” he said, “the Reich wants so much per head. The middlemen who arrange such things must have so much. Bernhardt's a middleman. So am I.”

“Dieter Lange, get me out.”

“It's too late. It's not like the old days. I can't get myself out. That's why I have to pull so many strings to cover me and you.”

“Run, Dieter Lange, run. You travel. You can run. Paris. Madrid. Rotterdam. Copenhagen. Zurich. Stockholm.”

“And what would happen to you if I did? Besides, Cleef, in five years' time they'd catch up with me. They mean to have it all.”

“I hate you, Dieter Lange, and your fat pig wife.”

“I thought you liked Anna. I know you like Anna. She likes you. You don't hate her.”

He put out his cigarette then and I thought of Anna and Ursula, who'd come to visit me, who'd chased Gitzig out, and who'd pulled down the covers to look at me, measure me, feel me, put their mouths to me; Anna, and Ursula with the high heels and high butt, taking turns playing the clarinet, causing me to rise through my sickness; who exchanged comments between vigorous wet riffs and tiny, musical, secretive
Ohs!
And then I knew who had come down the stairs the night I got home after our opening at The Nest. (Oh, Anna, Oh.) The house was full of Tricksters.

So, I was saved even as I was lost in the funhouse. If I hated, I hated with the reserve of the rescued and measured myself against those in the camp who surely would have died and been buried, or who, within a few months, would have their bodies cremated and their ashes sent home in urns at 50 marks a pop.

“Would you like to hear some music? I can bring the phonograph down.”

“No.”

He sighed, or seemed to.

“Why did you give me those papers, Dieter Lange?”

He lighted another cigarette from the pack of Camels. Business must be good, I thought.

“I guess I wanted you to know I was looking out for you. But that day after you slapped me and Anna walked in, the last thing I was ever going to let you know about was Willy Lewis. I could have killed you then and even later, because that's when Anna got the upper hand. I know about her and Bernhardt. I'm not a fool, so I know he's got me—us—right under his thumb.” He played with his cigarette before crushing it out half-finished. “Just a little bit prominent, that's all I wanted to be, but, shit, Cleef, the whole thing's like a quagmire. There are already over 275,000 Germans in jail. This gang means business.” Dieter Lange stood and dipped a cloth into a wash basin and wrung out the water. He wiped my face with it. He was very gentle. Then he bent and kissed my forehead and left.

That day, rising out of my sickness of both body and mind, I think I understood that Dieter Lange was afraid.

Monday, February 1, 1937

Today I got back into the house routine. Anna's insisted that Dieter Lange not send me to the canteen. I need my health for the band; I do not yet need to go out to get sick again, she says, and that's all right with me, because January, February, and March can cut your butt a duster around here. I thought of that guy, Hans Beimler. How had he got away? Why hadn't I heard anything about it? The place was big; you could never know everything that was going on. Some rumors ran around like rats gone crazy; others never went anywhere. Everyone hoped Beimler's book would make things better, even get us out.

Gitzig sneaked over while no one was home. “Now that you're almost well, they don't want me about,” he said. “That's all right with me, because I was getting tired of cleaning up after you. You know, your shit's the same color as mine. I always thought black people had different color shit, and piss, too.” I told him I always knew the colors were the same. And the smells. He said the tailors were making new uniforms, with stripes, and I told him that's what they wore on the chain gangs back home. He wanted to know what chain gangs were. I told him. Then he wanted to know if I was getting much before I got sick, and I just looked at him and asked if
he
was getting much. He didn't answer.

“It's a mess in Czechoslovakia,” Gitzig said. “Next year the Nazis'll get what they want. Bet you.”

I kept on dusting the furniture.

“I hear they've got some Gypsies in over there. Brown triangles with ‘z' on them.”

“What's that mean?”

“
Zigeuner. Sinti
. Gypsies. ‘z' for Gypsies, ‘J' for Jews. They got a letter for every nationality, don't worry.” He took one of Dieter Lange's Gauloises from the pack I held out to him. “Is it true about
Lebensborn?
They have a club? They just go to drink, dance, and fuck? Really? It's enough to make you wish you were
SS
.”

He fidgeted. “I'm glad you're well—or almost. I didn't mind being your
Pfleger
. If things go bad out here I could work in the Infirmary. From what I hear, I'd be better than any of those other nurses in the
Revier
. Knock on wood I don't get sick. You can die over there.”

I finished dusting and sat down. I was tired, yet I hadn't done that much. I wondered if I'd be better by Friday.

“Frau Lange and Frau Winkelmann are
very
good friends,” Gitzig said. He looked at his cigarette before putting it out.

“They did come to see me, didn't they?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, they did. Threw me out, they did, so they could have you all to themselves to clean and coo over.”

He gave me a sharp look; I looked somewhere else. He said, “I guess you had a wet dream after they left, and you with a fever of 103.”

He smiled, but it was a kind of jealous smile. “Well, Pepperidge, if you ever have a spare, or need a bit of help, I wouldn't mind delivering a quart of milk to a housewife once in a while, okay?”

“Why do you think I—”

“Pepperidge. It's crazy; it's all crazy and it's not over yet.” He came close to me. “You see Werner, tell him I've looked at Bernhardt's list of museums in these cities. Listen. Vienna. Salzburg. Amstetten. Graz. Linz. Okay?” He was slapping the air with his finger at each name. “Prague. Pilsen. Brno. Bratislava. Ostrava. Kosice. Okay? Warsaw. Czestochowa. Breslau. Stettin. Danzig. Cracow. Poznan. Torun. Okay? Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland. Okay? I've got to get back. Remember: if there's more milk than you can deliver …”

Tues., March 9, 1937

He blows that horn like Coleman Hawkins, a wide, sweet coolness on the slow pieces, and on the fast ones he's like a jackhammer biting up a road laid with diamonds.
Oberleutnant
Eric Ulrich. He's that big blond guy I spotted the first night we played at The Nest. The first time he played with me was on a Friday afternoon. We'd come in from the camp for our usual early rehearsal. I wasn't hungry, so I left the guys in the kitchen feeding their faces like eating was going out of style—which, in the camp, it did sometimes. He was already onstage. Older up close than he looked standing near the stage. Looked like he was waiting. Didn't have on no jacket and his shirt was open and he was twisting the mouthpiece and licking the reed. When I came out he pulled up a chair. Ain't said shit yet. Neither did I. I tickled on out with “Tea for Two.” Lightly: da, da-da, da-da, da-da … He took counter as we moved through the melody. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him lower the horn, that big gold Selmer, and he just tapped his foot while I ran through a whole lot of bars, changing up as I went. Then I led him into his solo, throwing him a handful of dinkles and chord changes. He jumped on them like a starving dog. He was calm and collected and once or twice his eyes seemed to twinkle when I turned to look at him. When he came to the end of 8, I upped the tempo to jump and took off again. Cut this sucker's ass a duster, I said to myself. By this time Franz had come out and leaped on his stool. The
Oberleutnant
nodded and the shit was going socko when Teodor came out and pushed through the small crowd of workers. He grabbed his horn, turned the bell away until he found a fit on his chops, then turned back. Damn! It was like a jam session! Then Danko—we called him “Little Django,” the one who'd replaced Sam—somehow was on stage, too, with his guitar and moving fast on the beat. Reminded me of Teddy Bunn and Eddie Lang rolled into one, so I figured big Django must be copasetic. I led them around again and Teodor took a solo, then “Little Django,” who could have cut Sam with just one string, and then Franz with his hepcat moves, all shoulders and hands and very little wrist; then the
Oberleutnant
again. We jammed on the same piece for the better part of an hour. The workers applauded real loud, and I had a feeling that we let ourselves get carried away and maybe that was why the
Oberleutnant
, a big smile on his face, stood and nodded to each of us, unhooked his horn, put it in the case, said
“Morgen,”
and left the stage walking fast. He was back for our first and second set dressed in his uniform. Later Teodor told me who he was: Eric Ulrich, the best jazz player in Germany, who had played in America and France as a guest with Ellington, Webb, and Lunceford, and I thought, Damn, no wonder! He only played the Friday and Saturday rehearsals. He never showed any emotion, except maybe a smile, a twinkle in his eyes. On Fridays when we finished he only said,
“Morgen,”
which meant he'd see us the next day. On Saturdays he said
“Wochenachst,”
which meant he'd see us the next week. Sometimes I saw him talking with Bernhardt. We thought he had to be careful with his
Neger Musik
, and, yeah, we did notice that when we jammed after that first time, the workers weren't around. I could never understand how he got such feeling for the music. Didn't seem right he was a Nazi, and maybe he felt what we were thinking, because he had a phonograph brought into the dressing room and a shelf full of the latest records from back home, like “One O'Clock Jump,” “Cherokee,” “Every Tub,” and low-down nasty blues, stuff we sure nuff didn't,
couldn't
, play during the sets.