Clifford's Blues (29 page)

I went downstairs. I could hear him shuffling around in the kitchen, from the table to the sink; then I heard him go slowly up the stairs. Sometimes Dieter Lange needed talking to in a hard way. Anna cajoled. She often buried her impatience beneath a pretended interest and listened to him, mining every complaint like a jeweler with that thing to his eye used for diamonds. I wondered, as I often have, how it was that a man like Dieter Lange could hold in his hand the life of a man like me.

So it's me and You again, God. You riding that sad train with its bells of brass ringing for clear passage into hell; You with a bunch of Polish prisoners in the boxcars. Will You send them like that in the middle of winter, too? Can You see me? Can You hear me through the sounding silence that is Your response to the prayers that climb up to You? Can You hear the prayers of the Gypsies, the prayers of the Jews, the
ASOS
with their curses, the criminals with theirs, the politicals? How can You not, if You are there? You have heard the cries of the Polish boys; where are You? Isn't there
something
You
must
do? Have You no more good Loas to send us? You know, sometimes,
most
times, I think You are not there at all, that You are snake oil, that You are a vision that comes with cocaine. I've been in Your desert with its serpents for more than forty nights; in fact, I have suffered this desert more than forty years, it seems to me; I've been embalmed in the salt of fear for longer than forty days. The dead drift through my sleep—are they with You or with the Other Guy? And I see the shapes of those yet to die, crowding like clouds on the horizon. The sky is filled with them. I hear the music as they march down the 'Strasse:

Ta-dum, ta-dum; ta-dum, ta-dum

ta-dum ta-da-da ta-dum, ta-tum

The sad weak music of a harmonica, a drum, and an accordion. Marching to the gallows, the Tree, the Bunker, the rifle pits where sound splits the silence like a pointy-nosed dog barking once or twice or three times.

Were You there when they crucified my colonel?

Were You there when they crucified my Menno?

ooOOO—sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble,

tremble.…

Were You there when they crucified them all?

Were You there when they crucified Herr Ulrich?

Were You there when they crucified his girl?

ooOOO—sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble,

tremble.…

Were You there when they crucified them all?

Were You there when they crucified Nyassa?

Were You there when they crucified Moritz?

ooOOO—sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble,

tremble.…

Were You there when they crucified them all?

Ah, so. Nothing. I am still in my room and Pierre is still in his block, You willing. Dieter Lange and Anna still pound each other (can't You hear them through the furnace flues?), and in the camp someone is dying in great pain that You will not ease; someone is hanging himself; someone is hungry and whimpering beneath a blanket whose warmth never was; someone is crying; someone is running away (bang! bang!); someone is cradled in the steel arms of the crematorium, which will soon be rebuilt by the priests; someone is locked inside a van whose destination is Hartheim Castle; someone is released and will report to his nearest police station for his homecoming; someone is on his way to work in a war plant, and someone is on his way home from a war plant; a German soldier just got killed in Poland; twenty-five Polish soldiers just got killed by a German machine gun; a baby was just born, and its grandmother just died. My music is wounded and it bleeds my life away. It won't
JUMP
and
SHOUT
, do You hear me? It won't
SWING
and
SWAY
… and I can't get a sign that You hear me. I asked for a sign a long time ago. Your train done stalled? Didn't You talk to Moses? Didn't You talk to Jesus? Didn't You give Saul the sign that he should be Paul? How come You talked so much
then
and ain't sayin' shit now? So I
ain't
Your sweet, smiling Christian, Your kick-my-ass Witness, your
Rabbiner
Jew; so I only talk to You when the Amper River's at flood tide like the Jordan, when the blues open up to nothing like a rotten fishnet. Say what? Faith is
what?
Hahahahahaha. You think You slick. But You know better than to show up down
here
. Germans eat Your ass for lunch, jack! You so chickenshit, You sent Your son down here and them
other
Germans nailed His ass to the cross, didn't they?

You just snake oil squeezins? If not, please help me take care of Pierre. Please?

Saturday, November 11, 1939

Dieter Lange came up behind me this morning while I was cleaning the house before going to the canteen. Anna had gone shopping in Munich to get some new clothes. “They almost got him!” Dieter Lange whispered, as though someone was hiding in the house. “Almost got him!”

“Got
who?
Who's
they?
”

His eyes were bright and he was all up in my face like when he's drunk and he whispers,
“Wie steht es?”
How about it? “
Hitler!
They almost got Hitler, with a bomb in Munich, Thursday night!”

I snapped the dust out of my cloth. To me a miss was as good as a mile. I didn't know what all the fuss was about. “But who did it?”

“Some Red carpenter in Munich. They got him.”

“But who else? You said they.”

“Just him, as far as I've heard. But it shows that people don't want war and they want to be rid of Hitler. So maybe the next time they'll get him, eh? And maybe that's not too far off.” He walked around the room, his hands behind his back. “You know I'd let you go if we got out of this mess. I'd give you the money to get back home. I really would, Cleef.”

“I'd sure appreciate that,” I said, but it wouldn't happen. He knew it and I knew it. White people fulla shit, especially when they run a place like Dachau. He stopped walking right in front of me and held my dusting hand. “What's the matter with you, Cleef?” He gave me a close look, as though he might find something in my face that he'd missed before. “You've been …
nicht heir
for over a month now. Are you sick?”

I looked at him. I didn't know what he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?”

He raised his arms and moved them slowly up and down like he was a bird on the wind. “You just
flott machen
all the time, maybe like you had some cocaine?”

I released my hand and went back to dusting. He watched me and said, “
Achtsam
, Cleef,
bitte, Achtsam
” then he went upstairs to his office.

When I finished, I shouted to him that I was going to the canteen and left. I didn't wait for him to answer.

It was another Armistice Day, ha-ha-ha, to celebrate the war to end all wars, except the one that just began. Ta-ta, da-da, de-dum …

“Hey, Sunshine!!”

I stopped and turned around. I'd passed through the
Jourhaus
gate. Sergeant Rekse, his
Schaferhund
straining at his leash, was shouting. I didn't know why.

“What do you do, why do you skip like a little kid? Are you nuts, Pepperidge? You want to wind up in the Hartheim wagon like those other niggers went out of here this morning?” Skipping? I was skipping?

I whipped off my cap. “No, sir.”

“I'll tell your mother on you!” he roared, laughing, rolling back on his heels. He rubbed my head for good luck. The shepherd he'd brought to heel snapped his head from me to Rekse and back again, its tongue hanging out. Would Rekse never forget that visit by Ruby Mae?

“Get going, Pepperidge, and get those marbles out of your head. They're glass, you know, and can be broken.”

I thanked him and replaced my cap and walked quickly away, up the west-side path, into the stiff, cold wind. I lowered my chin to protect my throat even though the sun was shining. But would Pierre be gone? Would he have been one of those “niggers” on the wagon ride to Hartheim?

We used to gather on this side of the camp to hear Hitler's speeches, which were broadcast over the loudspeakers hooked up across the moat on the
SS
side. The moat is outside the wall on this side of the camp. Now there are walls with electric fences on top. I could see the rooftops of the factories, hear the banging and clanging of work going on inside them, the hum and screech of machinery. I was almost never on this side, but I could marvel now at just how much the prisoners had done since I first came. Down at the end of the camp the sun was reflecting off the glass of the new greenhouse. Oh, Pierre. A group of prisoners pulled a wagon loaded with the dead from the
Reviers
and the morgue.

Then I was at the northwest corner where the small north road bisects the smaller west path, where the gates lead to the inferno the dead don't feel. Or if they do, they can't say so. The greenhouse stood before me; to its right was the garden, then a space where rabbits were raised for
SS
Hasenpfeffer
and for Luftwaffe pilots' jackets. Then the disinfection hut where Pierre had worked. Above all this was the north watchtower with its sliding glass windows, its machine gun, and the guard with his rifle. I stood there with my pass at the ready to show any guard, and watched the prisoners wheeling barrows of rich black dirt from a huge pile into the greenhouse. The prisoners were all white, untouched by that soft golden color that was Pierre's. My stomach began a slow cold slide downward. I moved forward a few steps. Maybe the sun was shining too brightly, or the cutting wind was blurring my eyesight. “Oh, Pierre,” I whispered. I looked at the pile of earth, then saw a shovel and a pair of blackened hands, disembodied parts, moving in a slow steady rhythm, filling a barrow. I walked to where I could see who the shoveler was. It was Pierre! He saw me and winked and smiled. I smiled back and felt the wind sharper on my face where it met the tears. I waved and turned away toward the 'Strasse. Why were my footsteps heavier than before? Would Pierre be in the next group to Hartheim? Would it be easier for me if he was, or even if he'd gone this morning? There would be no more “Suppose,” no more worry. It would be over and done with. I felt I was walling up something inside me that no one could touch or reach from now on, that no one could hurt. Dieter Lange could be in me, but not in that place; Pierre could “Suppose” me, but never again would he be able to touch that place, because it was my sanctuary, my church, the grove where Loa Aizan, forever watchful, now rested.

I skipped up the 'Strasse humming. In answer to the smiles, the circles drawn on the sides of heads, I muttered, “Fuck you. Fuck you.”

Sat., December 8, 1939

That carpenter Dieter Lange told me about, who tried to blow up Hitler, is in the Honor Bunker. His name is Eller, but that's a fake.

There are now supposed to be two Englishmen in the general population. Don't know why not the Honor Bunker, where, the gossip is, they've got the president of Austria and some big shots from Czechoslovakia. I wonder how those people live there. I wonder what they think when they look between the poplar trees and see the rest of us. Are they keeping notes, too? Will they tell what happened? Hell, they're probably thinking the same thing I'm thinking: better them than me.

I have finished putting new labels on Bernhardt's records, and also on Dieter Lange's. Of course, I played them all again as I was doing that, just to make sure I had the right labels for the right records. In the canteen, Huebner, Lappus, and me handle the Christmas rush. The prisoners with their sorry bits of money or camp chits buy the shitty items Dieter Lange stocked for them. The only good things are what Lappus has made—little lampstands and walking sticks and jewel boxes—and the
SS
guards want them for next to nothing. Other items are starting to come in. Mineral water, biscuits, candy, tins of fish and meat, but hardly anyone can afford these things. Sometimes groups put up the money, and each man gets just a taste. The packages from home and the
Hilfe
are coming in steadily. They usually do around Christmas. Sometimes I think Christmas was invented to help bad people do something good once a year.

For Pierre I have a pair of wool socks, brand new, and a sweater Dieter Lange gave me. The Langes plan to stay at home this Christmas—which means work for me. Not only the house and the cooking, but they want to have a party or two as well. Who will entertain? Guess who.

Sunday, December 9, 1939

Sundays are nice for me now. I don't have to rush around after a Saturday night at The Nest and, while the canteen is often busy since the prisoners don't work, there's still a lot of time to drift around the Appellplatz and talk to people I don't see very often. Some prisoners go down to the
Priesterblock
to church, and others visit friends. Today I introduced Pierre to Willy Bader who wears number 9 on his uniform. So he came here 2,994 prisoners before I did. And almost 13,000 prisoners before Pierre. He used to be good friends with Werner. I don't know what happened. Bader seemed to know something about Pierre, but I suppose if you're a colored man in a place like this, everybody knows, or thinks he knows, something about you. (The bad thing about walking around the 'Platz in the summer are the boxers—who don't box, thank God, in cold weather. They put on shows for the
SS
. When I walk by, they call and whistle and holler “Choe Louis!” “C'mon fight, Choe!”)

The work in the greenhouse is hard, but comfortable, Pierre says as we walk and talk. In our game of “Suppose” he has finished his engineering studies. He has a girlfriend. She has rippling blond hair, he says, and I tell him, “Not in America you don't.” So I have to explain that shit to him, and explain and explain, but somehow he can't seem to get it, and I wonder, as I have done before, if we should continue to play this game. Then I look at him, see his tic, think about the way things are with his mother and how he'll probably never see his father, and I decide that some things just ought to have a good ending, because life's so goddamn shitty, and I feel sorry for him all over again. But not as sorry as before, 'cause he's just not going to get into that place any more. Besides, he just doesn't look as well as I thought he would. I think, He's going to die. Pierre is going to die, and if he knows it, he never says it. After meeting Bader, he says he wants to go back to his block, 24, and find a place to sit down. He is tired. “Mr. Pepperidge, I also have great pain.” That is the first time. I don't suggest that he go to the
Revier
, and I don't think it ever crossed his mind. The last medical place he went to hurt him, and he is hurting again, with pain he can feel in his body this time, as well as in his mind, which, I think, won't ever leave. God never tells you how much time you got. And neither does Loa Aizan.