Clifford's Blues (20 page)

I heard doors squeaking open, felt eyes boring through the dim. This was the third week of this, and the guys in the band thought he must be good and mad by now. Maybe they heard something strange in the dissonant sounds Ulrich was now tootling. I was throwing out notes and smothering or snatching them back in favor of other ones. Our music never celebrated death the way white folks' music did, I was thinking; our music rose above it or at least didn't take you to Valhalla where you killed all day and ate all night and didn't even have time to make love. James Reese Europe took all the fighting songs and built joy into them; the Europeans sensed that. For us, death was a Rambler, an Easy Rider; when the music took you through the St. James Infirmary, it remembered what love had been like. So I noodled and Ulrich tootled. We could have been a hundred miles apart. The bark and bite of the red, white, and black never came. Ulrich packed his horn and left without a word, once more, and the band came on for rehearsal.

Moritz eased up to me and whispered, “Is this wise, Pepperidge?”

I said, “Look. Fuck wise. Let's work on ‘Lady Be Good.' Give you a chance to work off some of that bitchiness.” Some of my anger was catching; rehearsal was a mess until Teodor just went off the scales with some bleedily-blee shit and I had to holler at him. They were mad at me because they didn't know what Ulrich would do to us, but I knew he had to be Double C, calm and collected, because of Bernhardt. That's exactly why I showed my ass the way I did. I ain't no fool. I don't have to let these jokers know everything
I
know. But we did the sets as we always did, a little weak now and again, and more sweet than swing, and I was wishing for the biggest brass section in the world to cover up the faking. But, however bad we are, if I cut the fool now and again, got down over the keyboard like it wouldn't let me go, or sang with my eyes closed like the shit is even good to
me
, why, we got by.

The day after Dieter Lange and I had that little talk about Baum, Baum was gone. Baum was on the
Baum
, the “Tree,” hanging up there with his hands behind him. I didn't see him; Dieter Lange told me. When they cut him down, he couldn't use his arms, but they took him to the shower anyway so the prisoners who keep the place clean could help him wash. Unfortunately, poor Baum couldn't use his arms to break his fall when he slipped, hit his head on the concrete floor, and died. Dieter Lange told me this after we'd made love. Anna was at a meeting to plan larger flower gardens throughout the
SS
quarters. I don't know why I use that term, “made love.” I don't love Dieter Lange and never did. He doesn't love me or anybody else. What we do is fuck, that's all. We are different men in strange times—but I never thought so strange that people would be killed to protect us, or that I would have to play along with his wife and her friend also to protect us. It had often crossed my mind and Dieter Lange's that if Anna wasn't around we'd be safer. But it was too late for that. So we didn't make love, we fucked, sometimes with all the passion of men trapped by what and where we were. He had to save me to save himself.

I said to him, “A
Badeaktion
.”

He said, “Yes. It had to be that way. To protect us. You heard then?”

I laughed. I knew before he did. I said yes, I knew. A
Badeaktion
is a killing in the shower. You don't need the
SS
to do that; there are always Greens or Blacks willing to do a favor to get a favor. Dieter Lange, stupid man, seems to think he is the only person who tells me about what goes on in camp, like my ears are stopped up and I am blind. There is a knowledge and a kind of talk that the prisoners and the guards have that no one else shares or speaks, and Dieter Lange is no guard. He likes jazz music, but playing it and sharing it with other musicians is still another world he can't get into.

I lay there and considered that Dieter Lange, with the exception of my colonel and Menno, was the only lover I'd had in five years. But, here we were, growing older, old queers who on the outside would have fewer choices anyway, but here on the inside had almost none. We were a bad habit. But … Dieter Lange traveled. He had power. He could take what he wanted. How could I know what he did or who he did it with? My own urges seemed to come slowly, sometimes with blazing heat, most times not. Then I'd have to be warmed up, and we were not in a situation where that could take a lot of time.

Thursday, May 5, 1938

Yesterday I walked from the garden near the north fence up toward the main building where, in the showers, Baum got his brains splattered on the concrete floor. It was a nice day. There was a column of prisoners marching south about a hundred yards ahead of me on one side of the 'Strasse, and two other columns, one in the middle and one on the far side, marching north, facing me. At the head of the column on the far side were about fifteen Negroes or Africans—I couldn't tell—and I was so surprised my mouth fell open. I
know
it fell open, because when I closed it, it was filled with dust. The colored men were carrying rocks down to the new wall. I knew they'd just come because not all of them wore the new striped uniforms, and they weren't marching in step, and the old prisoners knew that whatever they did, they had to do it in step, whether the command was called or not; they had to watch the detail leader and fall in exactly as he did. I had to talk to Dr. Nyassa about the colored men, where they were from, what it was they were supposed to have done. There was another very large bunch of Gypsies brought into camp from Austria, Burgenland, wherever that is. But colored men?

I was still pooting in my pants with the fear that any moment now I could be in one of those columns, marching out to work or marching back in from it, marching down to the main hall to get my bowl of food, standing roll call, fighting to keep whatever I had from being stolen, worrying about lice and typhus and just catching a cold from another prisoner, worrying about bedbugs and time to shit. These days, I am afraid, running scared, even though the other prisoners believe I'm still lucky, still “prominent.” If God lets me through this one, He's got a deeper believer. There isn't a moment when I'm not praying or thinking of praying, and I have been since April 23.

We'd had two good sets; rehearsal had gone well, with Eric Ulrich sitting in. Things had gotten a little better between us. You could feel spring getting up in the air, and there was a smell of good green things out at the Pussy Palace. I didn't even pay attention to the babies crying in the nursery. All the
Frauleins
looked good that night, and of course all the
SS
were turned out in their dress uniforms. That night made me feel kind of sad and sweet both. Everybody in the band felt it. Alex, Fritz, Oskar, Franz, Ernst, Teodor, Danko, and Moritz; all their solos were like nothing else I'd heard them play before that night, and I know I was the best jazz music piano player in the world. You can feel things like that, that you could cut the piano player at God's right hand. And when we finished each solo, we came back together better than Germans marching, because that's the way music is; it fits into where it came from, some place without a name, but some place we know is there. There were numbers we couldn't ever play at The Nest, of course, and keys we couldn't play in, but we were as close to the music as we could get, and that made us know we could do better if we had the chance. During some of the numbers I had the distinct feeling that this, being a prisoner of Dachau for all this time, was a mistake that any second would be discovered and made right. I suppose we all had feelings like that, and maybe wearing tuxedos twice a week helped. Maybe some of the way I felt was because Ulrich, before the guys joined us for rehearsal, had spoken to me for the first time in English.

“I understand why you were angry with me,” he said. “But I have to be careful—don't stop playing.” I played and he apologized out of one corner of his mouth, while his sax rested in the other. Then we got into a groove. Just before the band came out, Ulrich said, “Bernhardt's given his permission for me to drive you back to camp tonight. We can talk more then. Meet me near the front of the Parkplatz. Black
BMW
, plate number
DAH829
. Then he led me into “Sometimes I'm Happy.”

I was feeling mellow after the second set. Usually, the thought of being driven back to where I would have to put up with the who-struck-john of Dieter Lange, if he was home, or of Anna and Ursula, if they were home, turned my stomach the way taking Black Draught without baking soda did. No one seemed to care much anymore about me being in the house alone with Anna when Dieter Lange was away. That was because, I am sure, Anna said she'd be all right if Ursula was with her. Yeah, I guess so. The ride with Ulrich would be a pleasant change, a comfortable way to get “home.”

He had a girlfriend, and she was as tall and as blond as he was. She was “class.” She wasn't wearing any gardenia perfume, I could tell that right away. Her scent was French. She was very beautiful, but there was something standoffish about her, and nobody can be that way more than upper-class Germans. But she tried to be friendly as we got into the car, me in the back seat. I wished I looked like her. I wished I
was
her. She had a bundle resting on her lap. Her name was Maria. Ulrich started and I leaned back in a corner of the car, waiting for the talk we were supposed to have. But he didn't talk and neither did she. Halfway to the main road, Ulrich suddenly pulled off to the side, turned off the lights and stopped. Maria began to rip and snatch at the bundle. The smell of new clothes filled the car.

“Change, Pepperidge, now.” Ulrich was handing things back to me: a shirt, trousers, a jacket, a tie, a pair of shoes, a fedora. I was amazed that I recognized such things by touch, but my heart was galloping right up into my throat, and as tired as I was, I came wide awake. I asked what was going on, and Maria said, “
Freiheit
, my friend.”

“Change! Change!” Ulrich was saying. He sounded like a camp guard, and you do not argue with camp guards—or anyone else who's not a prisoner. But—

“We go to the Swiss border, Mr. Pepperidge,” Maria said. She spoke English with a British accent, like Ulrich. She seemed to struggle to find words. I was pulling off the prison suit, with Ulrich's help, but it was hard in so little space. “We have got papers for you, so now, when we get there, you can be free—”

“Come
on
, Pepperidge,” Ulrich was saying. Everything I managed to get out of he handed to Maria. I wanted to say, Wait, suppose—but Ulrich was speaking almost with a growl, “Quickly, quickly.” What a lovely smell the clothes had. I was out of my old pants and into the ones they'd brought. I slipped on the new shoes, pulled on the jacket, and got the tie around my collar while Ulrich mashed the hat down on my head, adjusted it, and pulled down the brim. Maria was already wrapping up my old shoes and uniform. “Let's go!” Ulrich said. “Freedom can't wait!” I was still feeling for buttonholes and fastening buttons when he started up and got back on the road with the car lights on. Wasn't no need of me playing around. I told Ulrich I was scared and wanted to go to the camp. This was like a movie, or a dream, and I had the feeling both were bad.

“Don't you
want
to be free?” Maria asked.

“Yes, but—”

“Don't be afraid. Eric's got everything fixed.” She passed me a heavy silver flask, and I turned that baby straight up and poured the cognac down my throat. I returned it and she held out a cigarette case. I took a cigarette and she lighted it. Of course, I wanted to be free, free to walk the streets of Paris or Amsterdam or New York—streets anywhere but in Germany. I couldn't stop the tears from starting up. I could see me and Willy Lewis, me and Ruby Mae Richards, me strolling along 125th Street or Lenox Avenue, me in an apartment somewhere on Sugar Hill, me playing the best piano of my life. I also saw me hanging from the “Tree,” in the Bunker getting the shit beat out of me, saw myself standing alone in the center of the 'Platz under the hot sun until I passed out, me dead in the same corner of the
Revier
where I'd seen Menno. Hell, yeah, I wanted freedom, but God knows I was afraid to take it, so these two who wouldn't listen to me would have to take me to it and hand me over.

“It'll be all right, Pepperidge,” Ulrich said. Maybe, looking in the rearview mirror, he'd seen my tears as we passed an occasional light. At another main road, he turned south and a buzzing started in my head. “There's a blanket back there. Wrap yourself in it if you get cold.” I didn't move. “I understand you had a visit from Ruby Mae Richards,” he said.

I told him yes, I had, and that she'd told me he was a friend. “You sure didn't act like one,” I said. “Bernhardt didn't give you no permission to drive me to camp,” I said. “Did he?”

He gave a little laugh. “Well, Pepperidge, one has to be careful, very careful. All this will get worse before it gets better. And no, Bernhardt didn't give me permission, and I'd never ask him anything like this, anyway. He's just waiting for me to make a mistake. He's my enemy; he's the enemy of whatever good is still in Germany. And yet, I don't understand—he loves jazz music, loves to listen to it.” He went on talking to me in English. I was thinking he had the same puzzlement about Bernhardt that I'd had about him. “Strange,” Ulrich said.

“Anyway, Colonel Bernhardt's away,” Maria said.

I asked Ulrich how he could get away with whatever he was doing if Bernhardt was watching him. Ulrich said, and he and his girlfriend laughed as he said it, “We just have to be smarter than he is. For example, right now I am in my quarters, already asleep.” They laughed a little louder. “And of course we have friends. So we have until noon tomorrow to get back, by which time you'll be free in Switzerland and we will have put another one over on Bernhardt.” I didn't say anything about that “another” business.