Bagombo Snuff Box (24 page)

“For eighteen months after Celeste struck it rich and we
moved here,” said Harry, “I walked the streets, looking for a job suitable for
the husband of the famous and beautiful Celeste.”

Remembering those dark days, he rubbed his eyes, reached for
the catchup. “When I got tired, cold, or wet,” he said, “I’d sit in the public
library, and study all the different things men could do for a living. Making
catchup was one of them.”

He shook the bottle of catchup over his hamburger,
violently. The bottle was almost full, but nothing came out. “There—you see?”
he said. “When you shake catchup one way, it behaves like a solid. You shake it
another way, and it behaves like a liquid.” He shook the bottle gently, and
catchup poured over his hamburger. “Know what that’s called?”

“No,” I said.

“Thixotropy,” said Harry. He hit me playfully on the upper
arm. “There—you learned something new today.”

I was astonished one day in 1944, in the midst of front-line
hell-raising, to learn that I had been made interpreter, Dolmetscher if you
please, for a whole battalion, and was to be billeted in a Belgian burgomaster’s
house within artillery range of the Siegfried Line.

It had never entered my head that I had what it took to dolmetsch.
I qualified for the position while waiting to move from France into the front
lines. While a student, I had learned the first stanza of Heinrich Heine’s “Die
Lorelei” by rote from a college roommate, and I happened to give those lines a
dogged rendition while working within earshot of the battalion commander. The
Colonel (a hotel detective from Mobile) asked his Executive Officer (a
dry-goods salesman from Knoxville) in what language the lyrics were. The
Executive withheld judgment until I had bungled through “Der Gipfel des Berges
foo-unk-kelt im Abendsonnenschein.”

“Ah believes tha’s Kraut, Cuhnel,” he said.

My understanding in English of the only German I knew was
this: “I don’t know why I am so sad. I can’t get an old legend out of my head.
The air is cool and it’s getting dark, and quiet flows the Rhine. The peak of
the mountain twinkles in evening sunshine.”

The Colonel felt his role carried with it the obligation to
make quick, headstrong decisions. He made some dandies before the Wehrmacht was
whipped, but the one he made that day was my favorite. “If tha’s Kraut, whassat
man doin’ on the honey-dippin’ detail?” he wanted to know. Two hours later, the
company clerk told me to lay down the buckets, for I was now battalion interpreter.

Orders to move up came soon after. Those in authority were
too harried to hear my declarations of incompetence. “You talk Kraut good
enough foah us,” said the Executive Officer. “Theah ain’t goin’ to be much
talkin’ to Krauts where weah goin’.” He patted my rifle affectionately. “Heah’s
what’s goin’ to do most of youah interpretin’ fo’ ya,” he said. The Executive,
who had learned everything he knew from the Colonel, had the idea that the American
Army had just licked the Belgians, and that I was to be stationed with the
burgomaster to make sure he didn’t try to pull a fast one. “Besides,” the
Executive concluded, “theah ain’t nobody else can talk Kraut at all.”

I rode to the burgomaster’s farm on a truck with three
disgruntled Pennsylvania Dutchmen who had applied for interpreters’ jobs months
earlier. When I made it clear that I was no competition for them, and that I
hoped to be liquidated within twenty-four hours, they warmed up enough for me
to furnish the interesting information that I was a Dol-metscher. They also
decoded “Die Lorelei” at my request. This gave me command of about forty words
(par for a two-year-old), but no combination of them would get me so much as a
glass of cold water.

Every turn of the truck’s wheels brought a new question: “What’s
the word for ‘army’? . . . How do I ask for the bathroom? . . . What’s the word
for ‘sick’? . . . ‘well’? . . . ‘dish’? . . . ‘brother’? . . . ‘shoe’?” My
phlegmatic instructors tired, and one handed me a pamphlet purporting to make
German easy for the man in the foxhole.

“Some of the first pages are missing,” the donor explained
as I jumped from the truck before the burgomaster’s stone farmhouse. “Used ‘em
for cigarette papers/’he said.

It was early morning when I knocked at the burgomaster’s
door. I stood on the step like a bit player in the wings, with the one line I
was to deliver banging around an otherwise empty head. The door swung open. “Dolmetscher,”
I said.

The burgomaster himself, old, thin, and nightshirted,
ushered me into the first-floor bedroom that was to be mine. He pantomimed as
well as spoke his welcome, and a sprinkling of “Danke schon” was adequate
dol-metsching for the time being. I was prepared to throttle further discussion
with “Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin.” This
would have sent him padding off to bed, convinced that he had a fluent, albeit
shot-full-of-Weltschmerz, Dolmetscher. The stratagem wasn’t necessary. He left
me alone to consolidate my resources.

Chief among these was the mutilated pamphlet. I examined
each of its precious pages in turn, delighted by the simplicity of transposing
English into German. With this booklet, all I had to do was run my finger down
the left-hand column until I found the English phrase I wanted, and then rattle
off the nonsense syllables printed opposite in the right-hand column. “How many
grenade launchers have you?” for instance, was Vee feel grenada vairfair
habben zee? Impeccable German for “Where are your tank columns?” proved to be
nothing more troublesome than Vo zint earn pantzer shpitzen? I mouthed the
phrases: “Where are your howitzers? How many machine guns have you? Surrender!
Don’t shoot! Where have you hidden your motorcycle? Hands up! What unit are you
from?”

The pamphlet came to an abrupt end, toppling my spirits from
manic to depressive. The Pennsylvania Dutchman had smoked up all the rear-area
pleasantries, the pamphlet’s first half, leaving me with nothing to work with
but the repartee of hand-to-hand fighting.

As I lay sleepless in bed, the one drama in which I could
play took shape in my mind. . . .

DOLMETSCHER (to BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER): I don’t know what
will become of me, I am so sad. (Embraces her.)

BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER (with yielding shyness): The air is
cool, and it’s getting dark, and the Rhine is flowing quietly.

(DOLMETSCHER seizes BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER, carries her
bodily into his room.)

DOLMETSCHER (softly): Surrender.

BURGOMASTER (brandishing Luger): Ach! Hands up!

DOLMETSCHER and BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER: Don’t shoot!

(A map, showing disposition of American First Army, falls
from BURGOMASTER’S breast pocket.)

DOLMETSCHER (aside, in English): What is this supposedly
pro-Ally burgomaster doing with a map showing the disposition of the American
First Army? And why am I supposed to be dolmetsching with a Belgian in German?
(He snatches .45 automatic pistol from beneath pillow and aims at BURGOMASTER.)

BURGOMASTER and BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER: Don’t shoot!
(BURGOMASTER drops Luger, cowers, sneers.)

DOLMETSCHER: What unit are you from? (BURGOMASTER remains
sullen, silent. BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER goes to his side, weeps softly.
DOLMETSCHER confronts BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER.) Where have you hidden your motorcycle?
(Turns again to BURGOMASTER.) Where are your howitzers, eh? Where are your tank
columns? How many grenade launchers have you?

BURGOMASTER (cracking under terrific grilling): I—I surrender.

BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER: I am so sad.

(Enter GUARD DETAIL composed of Pennsylvania Dutchmen,
making a routine check just in time to hear BURGOMASTER and BURGOMASTER’S
DAUGHTER confess to being Nazi agents parachuted behind American lines.)

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller couldn’t have done
any better with the same words, and they were the only words I had. There was
no chance of my muddling through, and no pleasure in being interpreter for a
full battalion in December and not being able to say so much as “Merry
Christmas.”

I made my bed, tightened the drawstrings on my duffel bag,
and stole through the blackout curtains and into the night.

Wary sentinels directed me to Battalion Headquarters, where
I found most of our officers either poring over maps or loading their weapons.
There was a holiday spirit in the air, and the Executive Officer was honing an
eighteen-inch bowie knife and humming ‘Are You from Dixie?”

“Well, bless mah soul,” he said, noticing me in the doorway,
“here’s old ‘Sprecken Zee Dutch.’ Speak up, boy. Ain’t you supposed to be ovah
at the mayah’s house?”

“It’s no good,” I said. “They all speak Low German, and I
speak High.”

The executive was impressed. “Too good foah ‘em, eh?” He ran
his index finger down the edge of his murderous knife. ‘Ah think we’ll be
run-nin’ into some who can talk the high-class Kraut putty soon,” he said, and
then added, “Weah surrounded.”

“We’ll whomp ‘em the way we whomped ‘em in Nawth Ca’lina and
Tennessee,” said the Colonel, who had never lost on maneuvers back home. “You
stay heah, son. Ah’m gonna want you foah mah pussnel in-tupretah.”

Twenty minutes later I was in the thick of dolmetsching
again. Four Tiger tanks drove up to the front door of Headquarters, and two
dozen German infantrymen dismounted to round us up with submachine guns.

“Say sumpin’,” ordered the Colonel, spunky to the last.

I ran my eye down the left-hand columns of my pamphlet until
I found the phrase that most fairly represented our sentiments. “Don’t shoot,”
I said.

A German tank officer swaggered in to have a look at his
catch. In his hand was a pamphlet, somewhat smaller than mine. “Where are your
howitzers?” he said.

George M. Helmholtz, head of the music department and director
of the band of Lincoln High School, could sound like any musical instrument.
He could shriek like a clarinet, mumble like a trombone, bawl like a trumpet.
He could swell his big belly and roar like a sousaphone, could purse his lips
sweetly, close his eyes, and whistle like a piccolo.

At eight o’clock one Wednesday night, he was marching around
the band rehearsal room at the school, shrieking, mumbling, bawling, roaring,
and whistling “Semper Fidelis.”

It was easy for Helmholtz to do. For almost half of his forty
years, he’d been forming bands from the river of boys that flowed through the
school. He’d sung along with them all. He’d sung so long and wished so hard for
his bands that he dealt with life in terms of them alone.

Marching beside the lusty pink bandmaster, his face now
white with awe and concentration, was a gangly sixteen-year-old named Bert
Higgens. He had a big nose, and circles under his eyes. Bert marched
flappingly, like a mother flamingo pretending to be injured, luring alligators
from her nest.

“Rump-yump, tiddle-tiddle, rump-yump, bur die-bur die,” sang
Helm-holtz. “Left, right, left, Bert! El-bows in, Bert! Eyes off feet, Bert!
Keep on line, Bert! Don’t turn head, Bert! Left, right, left, Bert! Halt—one,
two!”

Helmholtz smiled. “I think maybe there was some improvement
there.”

Bert nodded, “It’s sure been a help to practice with you,
Mr. Helmholtz.”

“As long as you’re willing to work at it, so am I,” said Helmholtz.
He was bewildered by the change that had come over Bert in the past week. The boy
seemed to have lost two years, to become what he’d been in his freshman year:
awkward, cowering, lonely, dull.

“Bert,” said Helmholtz, “are you sure you haven’t had any injury,
any sickness recently?” He knew Bert well, had given him trumpet lessons for
two years. He had watched Bert grow into a proud, straight figure. The collapse
of the boy’s spirits and coordination was beyond belief.

Bert puffed out his cheeks childishly as he thought hard. It
was a mannerism Helmholtz had talked him out of long before. Now he was doing
it again. Bert let out the air. “Nope,” he said.

“I’ve taught a thousand boys to march,” said Helmholtz, “and
you’re the first one who ever forgot how to do it.” The thousand passed in
review in Helmholtz’s mind—ranks stretching to infinity, straight as sunbeams. “Maybe
we ought to talk this over with the school nurse,” said Helmholtz. A cheerful
thought struck him. “Unless this is girl trouble.”

Bert raised one foot, then the other. “Nope,” he said. “No
trouble like that.”

“Pretty little thing,” said Helmholtz.

“Who?” said Bert.

“That dewy pink tulip I see you walking home with,” said
Helmholtz.

Bert grimaced. “Ah-h-h-h—her,” he said. “Charlotte.”

“Charlotte isn’t much good?” said Helmholtz.

“I dunno. I guess she’s all right. I suppose she’s OK. I
haven’t got anything against her. I dunno.”

Helmholtz shook Bert gently, as though hoping to jiggle a
loose part into place. “Do you remember it at all—the feeling you used to have
when you marched so well, before this relapse?”

“I think it’s kind of coming back,” said Bert.

“Coming up through the C and B bands, you learned to march
fine,” said Helmholtz. These were the training bands through which the hundred
men of the Lincoln High School Ten Square Band came.

“I dunno what the trouble is,” said Bert, “unless it’s the excitement
of getting in the Ten Square Band.” He puffed his cheeks. “Maybe it’s stopping
my lessons with you.”

When Bert had qualified for the Ten Square Band three months
before, Helmholtz had turned him over to the best trumpet teacher in town,
Larry Fink, for the final touches of grace and color.

“Say, Fink isn’t giving you a hard time, is he?” said
Helmholtz.

“Nope,” said Bert. “He’s a nice gentleman.” He rolled his
eyes. “Mr. Helmholtz—if we could practice marching just a couple more times, I
think I’ll be fine.”