Dreams Bigger Than the Night (14 page)

In conspicuous silence they walked to the fun house. The first room, with its floor-length mirrors, gave them a distorted glimpse of themselves. Wishing to redirect her attention from his faux pas, he said that depending on the lenses people saw through or the cast of their minds, Jay and Arietta might actually appear to some observers in these grotesque shapes. She fired back, “Anti-German feelings, for example, lead people to behave abominably, and those targeted do equally terrible things.”

To recover lost ground, he observed, “We all suffer from our heads getting in the way of what we see. Just think of all the craziness afoot in the world.”

She looked deep in thought. Taking his arm, she walked toward the “Tunnel of Love.” As they waited in line to board one of the cars, he asked, “Where did you learn to shoot? I couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

She laughed and said, “Of course you could, especially if you’d practiced enough. My mother belonged to a gun club in Germany and won several awards. She introduced me to the sport.”

“I learn something new about you each day.” Before she could reply, an empty car arrived, the attendant seated them, and they entered the darkened tunnel. When the couple in the car in front of them started necking, he said, “Let’s,” and they kissed deeply, whispering endearments. Ten minutes later, they exited, hand in hand, and made their way to the boardwalk.

“Yoo hoo!”

Arietta and Jay turned to see Margie Smith waving her parasol. Damn! What an unfortunate coincidence. Why here? Now? Embarrassed by memories of the Kinney Club, he feared what Arietta would think. Dressed in a tight-fitting black skirt and silver blouse that accentuated her breasts, Margie had a red boa wrapped around her neck and wore an outrageous picture hat with ostrich feathers. The man holding her arm was none other than scarface, the very one about whom he wanted to know more. His high style and Margie’s low tastes made Jay wonder if this guy was her fancy man.

Pickled in perfume, as always, Margie had a wad of gum in her mouth, which she repeatedly cracked. Although she had the bust to compete with Mae West, she lacked the wit; nevertheless she tried hard, introducing her date as Axel Kuppler, a “butler” who worked for a ginger ale “buttling” company. Then she laughed too loudly at her own joke.

Dressed in a black Eton jacket and gray slacks, Mr. Kuppler bent at the waist in greeting and said in a slight German accent, “I have had the pleasure of meeting Fräulein Ewerhardt, but not you, sir.”

“Miss Ew . . .” he started to say, trying to clarify the mistaken identity, but Arietta elbowed him in the side.

Turning his back to the women and bowing slightly, Jay took Mr. Kuppler’s hand and murmured “Richard Wagner,” since he had registered with the Friends under that name. He would tell Arietta later.

“Anyone who exhibits the good taste to spend a day out with Fräulein Ewerhardt has my admiration.”

The sweet talk this guy exuded brought to mind Huck Finn trying to save his life on the raft. After the compliments ended, they all walked to the boardwalk railing and watched the sea and the bathers. Several men, no doubt of the poorer class, wore union suits instead of bathing costumes. Eventually, a policeman directed them from the beach. Margie, standing next to Jay, oohed and aahed at the thrill of the breaking waves, and then leaned over and whispered, “It’s like sex . . . rising and falling.” She knowingly nudged him with her elbow. “I’m leaving the Parrot,” she continued confidentially, “to be on my own. Axel’s volunteered to drive the car and balance the books.”

A foot or two away from Margie, Mr. Kuppler and Arietta were quietly chewing the rag, so he took the moment to tell Margie about his phony name and promised he would try to see her. He then eased himself into the other conversation.

“Did I hear you mention Germany?”

Mr. Kuppler, looking ill at ease, replied, “I was just recommending to Fräulein Ewerhardt a Beethoven concert. Beethoven, one of the German greats.”

Skeptical, Jay deliberately tried to discomfort him. “And where is it being held?”

Mr. Kuppler glanced at Arietta and then back to Jay. “Frankly, it’s a private concert, just for members.”

“Do you mean for the Friends of the New Germany?”

His eyes widened and fixed Jay in their stare. For a moment, he felt like a butterfly skewered on the end of a pin. But unlike those monarchs of the air, Jay took the initiative. “Yes, I am a member.”

With that admission, he thought Arietta would faint. Her legs went wobbly and she reached out a hand toward him, which he took as she righted her balance.

“I heard you speak a couple of weeks ago. You’re quite an orator. Impressive.”

“
Ach
, then you approve of our movement and our ideals?”

“Absolutely.”

Mr. Kuppler visibly relaxed, no doubt relieved that Jay was one of them. Arietta, though, clenched his arm, and not, he thought, for support. Margie cracked her gum and suggested they go to the vaudeville or the dance hall. As he hoped, Arietta demurred.

“Well, then,” said Margie, annoyed, “Axel and me, we’ll just go see the show and have dinner later . . . by ourselves.”

After another deep bow, Axel led Margie down the boardwalk, and he steered Arietta toward the beach and the numerous folding chairs spread near the water. While the parents sat and ate, their kids tossed balls, flew kites, played tag with the tide, and leapfrogged over each other, laughing when the “bridge came falling down.”

“Arietta, I must confess. I sometimes wonder if I really know you.”

She tried to dismiss his concern by playfully alluding to one of the biblical meanings of the word “know.”

“Oh, you know me!”

“This Mr. Kuppler, what’s his story?”

She paused to kick some sand. “I like Coney, but the beach at Sea Girt is far nicer.” She paused. “He’s a man I met . . . at a meeting. He came to the house once or twice.”

“Is he sweet on you?”

One of the kites, trailing a tail of shredded rags, lost height and began to drop toward the sea.

“I suppose so . . . but I have no special feelings for him.”

“He talks like a Nazi sympathizer.”

“Maybe you can tell me what
you
were doing at a meeting of the Friends of the New Germany!”

The kite fell into the ocean, and the kid, yanking on the string, tried to bring it back to land.

“Looking for you.”

She stood watching the efforts of the young boy trying to reel in his kite.

“I didn’t lie to you at the Chanticler. I’m not one of those types . . . but I can’t explain now.”

“The day you told your father that you had an ice-skating date with me, you met Axel. Right?”

At last, the shaver landed his kite, which looked battered owing to its buffeting by the waves.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s my excuse for attending meetings of the Friends.”

What was one to conclude from this admission, assuming it was true?

“The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me you’re also a member of the movement.”

“No, I’m more Magliocco than Ewerhardt.”

“Then why attend meetings of the Friends as Fräulein Ewerhardt?”

“For my own safety.”

He halted and, ignoring those people spread out on blankets, begged her, “Please stop speaking in riddles.”

“Sometimes, Jay, you ask too much of me.” She turned and started back toward the boardwalk steps.

Now more at sea than before, he might as well have been trying to ride a wave to the beach and, for all his efforts, been overturned, landing on his head. As he followed after her, he looked back and saw Axel Kuppler peering in their direction through binoculars.

Catching up to her, he said, “Your friend seems to be training his binocs on us.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t. But how can one be sure of anything?”

“Faith, I guess.”

“Faith is not a proof. It’s a hope, and hope blinds us to reality.”

She turned her generous smile on him, the look that said, you’re the only person in the world I care about, and remarked, “I have faith in you.”

“To do what?”

She paused and then replied softly, “To tell me the truth.” He waited for her to continue, guessing from her expression that she had something in mind. And she did.

“What was Margie saying to you?”

“Margie used to work in a brothel and . . .”

She interrupted. “Is that where you met her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I do admire your honesty. Did she mention Axel?”

“Margie said she’d left the brothel, and he was her pimp.”

Angrily, she shot back, “I don’t believe you!”

The energy of her protest unsettled him. She had asked for the truth, and he had honored that request. Feeling ill used, he rubbed it in. “Yeah, that’s what she told me: ‘I’m on my own now, and Axel’s my one and only very special pimp.’”

She mumbled, “That bastard.”

Suddenly he wasn’t so sure of the landscape. Was this guy a government agent or a pimp? Or both? He could see his analysis going up in smoke. Back to square one.

“Why do you care?”

“It’s degrading.”

Here was his opening. Perhaps he could finally learn more about him. “For whom?”

“Me!”

But what did she mean? If his behavior degraded her, she must be either working with this guy or seeing him on a personal basis. For all their closeness, he still found himself groping for answers. Persuaded that the ends justified the means and that nothing less than betrayal, of person or perhaps country, was at stake, he decided that when the time was right, he would trail her.

As if nothing had changed, he brought Arietta to Goldsmith Avenue for dinner the following Friday night to meet his parents. She gave them a lovely serving plate packaged in wood shavings and boxed with a ribbon. His mother was speechless, his father troubled, since Jay had told them the Magliocco family had once been well off, but no longer. Where did the money come from? Arietta wore a blue velvet dress with a pink sash and black soft-leather shoes. When she had first arrived and handed his father her coat to hang up in the front closet, he noticed him nuzzle the mink collar. Frankly, he wished that Arietta had dressed less tastefully and guessed, not incorrectly, that his father’s dinner conversation would lead to the subject of money. His mother, as expected, behaved sweetly, completely charmed from the first moment Arietta crossed the threshold, a sure sign that the religious issue would not be a part of the postmortem.

When Arietta asked about his father’s business, a throw-away question since Jay had already described the Jeanette Powder Puff Company, his father repeated what she already knew and observed that people had stopped buying cosmetics because of the Depression.

“And you, what do you do?”

With a quick glance at Jay, she replied, “I’m a dance instructor at Castle House on Bergen Street.”

“In these hard times does anyone take lessons?”

“A few.”

“If you’re on commission that has to hurt.”

“We’re hoping it will pick up.”

“And your father?”

“He’s disabled with a bad back. Too much heavy lifting over the years, I guess.”

“A lot of people have to hold down two and three jobs to make ends meet. Of course they’re the lucky ones. Thousands can’t find any kind of work.”

That comment had written all over it “fishing expedition.” Clearly his dad had not bought her dancing instructor explanation, and asked, “I suppose that’s true of you, as well?”

Reluctantly, she murmured, “Yes.”

Since he had never heard Arietta admit to anything more than working at Castle House and at another job she couldn’t tell him about, he paid close attention. She was obviously ill at ease, fingering her napkin and staring at her unfinished first course, chopped liver. For what seemed a painfully long time, she said nothing.

“I work as a German translator.”

Not knowing whether to laugh at this fabrication or to applaud her chutzpah, he said lamely, “I thought I told you about that, Dad.”

“I think I would have remembered.”

Again the table grew silent, as everyone waited for Arietta to fill in the details. When she paused, his father persevered, “Who’s your employer?”

Without precisely answering him, she explained, “Nowadays the authorities like to keep tabs on the German-language newspapers. I read them and translate those articles that seem seditious.”

A good answer. But was it true? Arietta went on to talk about her adored mother, and the good woman’s lessons in Deutsche.

“When I was a child, she always spoke to me in German and paid for lessons. If I answered in English, she pretended not to understand. Before long, I could speak the language. Now if only my father had done the same in Italian . . .” She trailed off.

His mom, for the first time, said something that didn’t bear on the dinner. “How did your parents communicate?”

“Mostly in English and, believe it or not, sometimes in Latin, which both had been taught and took pleasure in speaking. I think that must have been one of the attractions when they first met in Rome. They charmed one another, as it were, in a classical way.”

Arietta’s mention of German newspapers and sedition led his father into a discussion of the Weimar Republic and the observation that ardent Nazi university professors counted among its harshest critics. “I’ve never been able to understand how an intellectual could be drawn to National Socialism. Democratic socialism, yes, but fascism, no.”

Arietta appeared genuinely interested. “From the papers I read, I can tell you what the issues are: the unfairness of the Versailles Treaty, excessive war reparations, unemployment, inflation, the belief that Communists and Jews are threatening the Fatherland, and of course, Hitler’s promise to restore Germany to its former medieval glory. At the moment, nationalism and patriotism are rampant.”

Jay’s father, a well-read man, huffed and quoted Dr. Johnson, “Patriotism . . . the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Arietta looked nonplussed, leading him to add, “When reason and argument fail, wave the flag.”

Arietta’s claim to reading the German newspapers certainly appeared to be true, but for whom did she work? When she observed that the German government had its doubts about the steadfastness and intentions of American Nazis, Jay decided the time was right to start observing her activities.