Dark Tunnel (5 page)

I waited in the dim hall outside her door and in ten minutes she came out dressed for the street.

She looked happy and excited, with bright color in her cheeks and flashing eyes. Though the play as a whole had not been liked and the theatre had not been full, her performance had been well received. Especially by me.

“I think you did a marvelous job,” I said.

“Thank you. But let’s not talk of it now. I am finished with work for to-day.”

“I’d like to go some place and celebrate. Where could we go to celebrate?”

“Celebrate what?”

“Meeting you. I thought German girls were dull and had thick ankles.”

“We’re a very giddy lot,” she said. “Giddy, giddy, giddy. I thought American men had long grey beards like Uncle Sam.”

“I shave mine off every morning but it grows again during the night. Like mushrooms.”

She laughed, and we went out the stage-door into a side street.

“I know where we’ll go,” she said.

She took me to a cabaret where the wine was very good. We were served at a table in an open booth like the booths in American restaurants. In the centre of the long low room, a tall black-haired man stood against an upright piano, playing an accordion and singing a German song about Hamburg on the Elbe. He was very pale in the bright light, and his heavy black beard sprinkled his shaven jowls like black pepper on the white of a fried egg.

He had a rich baritone, though
Schnaps
had raised slivers on its surface.

“That singer should be able to sing blues,” I said to Ruth.

“Buy him a glass of beer and ask him for
St. Louis Blues,
” she suggested.

“Does he know
St. Louis Blues?
”

“Try him.”

When he had finished chanting about Hamburg on the Elbe, I ordered him a glass of beer and asked for
St. Louis Blues.
He sat down at the piano and sang it in English. For three or four minutes I found what every American abroad is unconsciously looking for, the illusion that he’s at home. I forgot that the great city around me and the girl on the other side of the table were mysterious and alien to me. I was an American college boy out on a date and the world was my oyster and there was an R in November.

A thin young man with a long nose and corrugated fair hair came past our booth before the singer had finished.

Ruth said, “
Hallo,
Franz,” and the fair young man turned and smiled at her with teeth that were too good to be true.

“Why, Ruth,” he said in German, “it’s good to see you again.”

“I’d like you to meet Mr. Branch,” she said. “Mr. Branch, this is Franz.”

I rose, and he gave me a hand like leather-covered wood and clicked his heels. He looked about my age but there was something faded about his eyes that made me wonder if he was older.

“How are you,” I said. “Won’t you join us?”

“Delighted,” he said in English and sat down on the long seat beside me. “You’re American, are you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your last name.”

“Franz has repudiated his last name,” Ruth said with a smile. “He’s an Austrian baron but he refuses to admit it.”

“I’ve enough personal crimes to answer for without assuming responsibility for the crimes of my ancestors,” Franz said, smiling like a precocious boy. “My ancestors were in the aristocracy racket.”

“And you’ve been in the United States,” I said.

“Apparently I still talk United States adequately. Sure, I lived in California for several years. They deported me for being a Wobbly. That’s one of my crimes.”

“A Wobbly? You’re older than you look.”

“And younger than I feel. Thanks. How have you been lately, Ruth?”

“Very well, I–”

Two young men in black uniforms went by the open end of the booth. They looked in but neither spoke. Ruth turned pale and bit her lip.

Franz got up and said, “I must be going. I hope I have a chance to talk with you some time, Mr. Branch. I haven’t been in the States for ten years.
Auf Wiedersehen.
”

He was gone almost before Ruth could say, “Good night, Franz.” As he went out, I saw the deep wrinkles on the back of his brown neck and the leather patches on the elbows of his shiny suit.

“He’s a surprising sort of person,” I said to Ruth. “How old is he?”

“Over forty,” she said.

“Really? He looks about twenty years younger.”

“Danger keeps some men young. It destroys some but it keeps some men young until they die.”

“What kind of danger?”

“There are many kinds of danger,” she said, “especially in the Third Reich. … I’m sorry, but I think I must ask you to take me home.”

“Of course,” I said and got up. “I haven’t offended you, have I?”

“No.” She touched my arm. “No, you haven’t offended me. It’s just that I’m suddenly tired.”

I helped her on with her coat and we went out to the street. We had to walk blocks before we found a taxi near the Bahnhof, and then it was a run-down affair standing high on its wheels like a horseless buggy.

When we got in, she leaned back against the worn leather seat and sighed before she gave the driver her address. The motor spluttered and the rickety cab moved away.

“We Germans are a poor people,” she said as if in apology.

“There are things more important than automobiles, Fräulein Esch, and you Germans have many of them.” My words sounded wooden in my ears.

“Please don’t call me Fräulein. I hate that word. Will you call me Ruth?”

“I’d like to. If I may see you again.”

“I want to see you again. There are so few people I can talk to any more.”

“You haven’t talked much to me.”

“I will,” she said. “I’m fearfully—loquacious. Giddy and loquacious.”

“To-morrow for lunch?”

“If you wish.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank
you.
I’m afraid I’ve spoilt your evening, and now you’re inviting me to spoil your luncheon.”

“That’s the first giddy thing you’ve said. You’ve lit up my evening like a Christmas tree. Is there something the matter, Ruth?”

“No, I’m just tired.”

“Who were the SS boys that passed our table? You looked as if you didn’t like them.”

“Did I? I must cultivate a dead—is it dead face?”

“Dead pan,” I said. “Poker face. Your man Hitler has one most of the time.”

“He’s not my man Hitler,” she said sharply. The driver cocked an ear. She changed her tone: “He’s not my man. Der Führer belongs to all of us.”

The driver stopped the cab and smiled at us benignantly as we got out. “Heil Hitler,” he said.

“Heil Hitler,” Ruth replied.

She turned and gave me her hand, which was slim and cold.

“Heil Ruth,” I said under my breath. “When and where to-morrow?”

“Well, I’ll be working here in the morning—”

“May I call for you here? At twelve, say?”

“That would be very nice,” she said. She looked so soft and sweet in the lamplight I thought of kissing her, but she turned and ran up the steps with a wave of her hand and the massive paneled door closed behind her.

Before taking the cab back to my pension, I got out my new map of Munich and marked the location of her apartment in two colors, with the street and number in large block capitals.

Next morning after breakfast, I set out for the Englischer Garten to kill two birds with one stone. I was supposed to be studying English romantic influence on the Continental garden, and it happened that Ruth’s apartment house overlooked the Englischer Garten. I walked around the great park all morning and thought more about Ruth than I did about English romanticism.

At five minutes to twelve I was in her street scanning a tall row of blank-eyed stone houses with faintly Asiatic tilted eaves. Her number signaled in brass from above an arched doorway, and I knocked on the locked door. It opened immediately.

“Mr. Branch! I’m so very glad you’ve come.” She looked glad.
“Kommen sie nur’rein.”

She motioned me in and I passed her in the doorway. Her morning freshness made me think of lilies of the valley.

“Lilies without, roses within,” I said to myself.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was just quoting a little verse. It comes over me all of a sudden and I have to quote verse. You’re looking very well.”

“So are you,” she said as she led me down the hall.

“I feel well, I’ve been walking in the Englischer Garten all morning.”

“Have you? Did you see the water-birds—the water-fowl?”

“Yep. And the pagoda, and the Greek shrine on a hill. Is it by any chance a shrine of Venus?”

“What a funny question. Why do you ask?” She opened a door and stood aside to let me enter.

“Because I said a brief prayer to Venus there, invoking her aid.”

Her eyes passed over me like a cool wave as I entered the room. “That’s rather a compliment, I suppose. A very courtly one. I didn’t know Americans—”

“Were capable of courtliness? You should see me with the powdered wig and ruffles that I wear around the house when I’m at home.”

She laughed for no good reason and said, “Won’t you sit down?”

I sat in an armchair by the window and she sat down facing me on a straight chair beside a desk. There was a typewriter with paper in it on the desk. Beside us two tall windows with the shutters thrown back opened on the air. Venetian blinds hid the room from the street.

“I saw you in the street,” she said.

“I wondered how you got to the door so fast.”

She blushed and I said, “I like this room.”

It was lovely and strange like the green-eyed woman. Chartreuse walls with Chinese bird-prints, pale green curtains the color of new leaves on a willow-tree, dark green leather chairs. Noon light seeped through the curtains and filled the room like quiet water. I felt like a fish at the bottom of a pool, a little strange but I liked it. Her hair shone steadily in the underwater light like an inextinguishable aureole.

“Do you live here by yourself?”

“Yes, I am a bachelor girl.”

“I have no family, either.”

“Oh, I have a family. My mother is dead, but my father lives on his estate near Köln.”

“And you left him for a career?”

“No, not exactly. I am not eager for a career. I do what I can. My father is a deputy in the Reichstag and I have not seen him since 1934.”

“Because he supports Hitler? Hell, I sound like a questionnaire. Ask me some questions.”

“I don’t mind your questions,” she said. “I think I can trust you. You’d be much more subtle if I couldn’t.”

“You can trust me all right, but that’s no reason why you should answer my questions.”

“I like to. There are so few people I can trust. My father would not be a member of the rump Reichstag if he wasn’t a Nazi. He was a member of von Papen’s
Herrenklub,
and he has supported Hitler since 1933, like many other rich men in Germany. He has been afraid of the people since the Revolution of 1918, afraid that the Communists would gain control of the country and seize his estates. Now he still has his estates but he has nothing else. Nothing at all.”

“Not even you,” I said.

“He has my brother Carl.”

“What does he do?”

“He was a student.”

“Was?”

“He is not any more.” There was a look of complete loneliness on her face as if she was an alien in a strange country. Two days in Germany had given me the same feeling but it was superficial compared with hers. Germany was not the only country I had.

She didn’t want to talk about her brother and got up to offer me wine. We had Chianti out of a bulbous bottle with a long neck.

Then we went downtown on a streetcar and had lunch together, and after that we went to the basement of the Hofbrauhaus for beer. I drank a couple of liters out of huge crockery mugs. I was feeling jolly and she was as light-hearted again as a young girl. I felt very jolly and forgot about Hitler and loved all the jolly, sweating Germans who were drinking beer and eating pale sausages in the basement of the Hofbrauhaus.

I said to Ruth, “Munich is a wonderful city.”

Something about my enthusiasm brought the ice age back to her eyes. “You’re fortunate to be able to think so. You don’t have to live in Germany. There is insane anger in this city, and all over Germany. Last summer I saw a group of teen-age boys kill another boy by beating his head on the sidewalk, because his father happened to be a Jew. When I tried to stop them, they drove me off with stones, and there was nothing I could do.”

“Why don’t you leave Germany? You could get a job in America, or anywhere.”

“Because I am a German and I can’t escape being a German. I am going to stay here.”

The jolly faces seemed suddenly to glisten satanically along the tables and the pale sausages to wriggle like worms. We got up and left the rathskeller. As we came into the street, a regiment of boys went by at the double, looking to neither left nor right. Above the stone buildings, a single bomber circled, learning to understand cities from the air.

For a month Ruth and I were together almost every day. We walked in the Englischer Garten and went to the opera. We took a bus to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and skied in the mountains. We went riding along the Isar on rented horses, and I learned how female centaurs carry themselves. I was in love and young enough to forget, or almost forget, about Hitler and the certainty of war, but I don’t think she ever forgot. There was always a secret strain in her face as if she was carrying a weight hidden under her clothes.

By the second week I was urging her to marry me and come to America. She wouldn’t leave Germany. By the fourth week I was desperate. She hated the Nazis, yet she wouldn’t leave Germany and to me there was no sense in it.

On the last day of the last week we were sitting together in her apartment, and I said for the twentieth time, “Marry me and come to America.”

“Marry me and stay in Germany,” she mocked me.

“It isn’t the same. I have a living to make. My life is in America.”

“My life is in Germany. The people are angry and wild, they’ve let the nightmares out of the inside of their minds. I must stay here because I am not insane. Is that egotistical of me, Bob?”