Out of Such Darkness (13 page)

‘We shouldn’t demean the rabbi’s position on this. His is an honestly held view. He would like us to cast another boy, a gentile, as the Hitler Youth singer.’

Jay bangs his hands against the back of the seat in front of him. ‘You can’t do it. Ben has set his heart on the role. The school has to stand firm. You mustn’t allow yourself to be intimidated.’

‘You’re preaching to the choir here, Jay. I’m with you. I needed to find out how you feel about it. If the school stands up to the rabbi, we need to know you as a family are not going to back down.’

Jay draws his palms down over his face. ‘We won’t do that.’ He sits upright. ‘There is a compromise.’

‘Which is?’

‘That you use symbols that are fascist-style – lightning bolts, for instance – but they’re not swastikas.’

Mark’s jaw sets firm. ‘I couldn’t do it. It would compromise the integrity of my directorial vision.’

What!

Jay nods. ‘Hmm. I can see it would be impossible.’

How long Leo and I stood in the crowd by the Brandenburg Gate watching the Brownshirts parade I can’t say. Still they came, row after row. To my right the flow swept through the Brandenburg Gate and to my left more still, voices strong. It was an overwhelming show of strength. One by one, the people around us stretched out their right arms. They were self-conscious at first but as more and more of them did it, so the arm-spasm spread like a contagion. And swept up in it, I too pushed out my hand. I could feel the flush on my face, the exhilaration of the moment as this display of manpower strutted in front of me. I felt the sex of it and I’m sure many of the women and men like me experienced it too. I glanced at Leo. His face showed no emotion. His hands were stiff at his sides.

The Brownshirts had passed at last and here came the Hitler Jugend – hundreds and hundreds of them, with each platoon divided by a gap in which a solitary leading figure carried a banner. I studied each of these individually and there he was: Wolfgang, his chest puffed out, marching at the head of his group. I nudged Leo and pointed. He nodded.

All too quickly Wolf’s squadron had passed, yet more Hitler youth girls and boys marched by until, finally, the parade finished with Brownshirt officers mounted on horses. As they passed, the police cordon broke and the watchers dropped their right hands and joined the procession. It looked as if all Berlin was marching that night.

Darkness descended. I turned to Leo, careful to speak in German. “Did you see him? Did you see my Wolf?” My right shoulder was painful from having held out my extended arm for so long.

Leo shook his head and turned away.

We hardly spoke on the train back to Zoo Station. We had broken away from the crowd early – most of them had gone on, presumably, to listen to speeches at the Reichstag.

“What’s troubling you, Leo?” I said.

He shook his head. “There were so many of them.”

“Brownshirts? Yes, but they looked good, didn’t they? Somehow, not so thuggish when you see them together like that.”

He whispered even though the nearest passenger was at the other end of the carriage. “No, so many Berliners. Look, Cam, this is meant to be Germany’s liberal city. This is where the communists are strongest. It’s the city of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. How can there be so much support here for Hitler and his crazy gang? They’re like a Music Hall turn. Did you see the hysteria? Even you were taken in.”

I spluttered. “I was melting into the crowd like you said.”

He snorted. “You couldn’t see the look on your face. It was pure rapture. You looked like you were going to … well, you don’t want to know what you looked like.”

I scratched my ear and adjusted my hat. “It was a magnificent show, though, wasn’t it?”

“Hmm. That’s the problem. I think things are coming to an end here for me in Berlin.”

The city settled down but for only a month. The Reichstag fire at the end of February gave the Chancellor a pretext for outlawing the Communist and Social Democrat parties and this passed into law at the end of March. Leo was convinced that most of the leading communists were arrested weeks before it was legal.

All this was going on in the background. Another harsh Berlin winter was blossoming into spring and Wolf and I emerged into the streets. Our weekly ‘lessons’ first moved to the indoors of the cafe in Savignyplatz and, as the sun became warmer, to a table outside. There we would discuss the affairs of men airily while we both smoked my Turkish cigarettes. The only evidence of the changing political times was that the Brownshirts became even more arrogant as they strode along the pavements.

Occasionally we might see a Jewish man, one who was clearly identified by his brimmed hat and ringlets, forced to step into the gutter by a Brownshirt wielding a swagger stick but this was not a regular sight.

More regular were the collections for the Nazi Party at almost every street corner and in every bar, restaurant and cafe. It was never wise to refuse on any pretext and Berliners became accustomed to having a pocketful of change to keep the collectors happy.

It was easy to see the growing tension between the brown-uniformed SA and the sharp-edged crows of the SS. The latter, who appeared to be chosen as much for how they filled the uniform and their militaristic bearing as for their aptitude as soldiers, were generally magnificent creatures. If one came to the cafe, Wolf and I would suspend conversation and watch him strut to the table, cast an arrogant look about him as he removed his cap and gloves and sit down before crossing one extravagantly jodhpured thigh over the other. I wondered whether they had classes in deportment. The sight of this routine was usually enough to set us both drooling. These sophisticates treated the Brownshirts as their country cousins.

One of the advantages of the ascendancy of the Nazis was the colourful street scene that resulted. Every building along the Ku-damm, for instance, displayed one of the vertical pennants in black, white and red and these fluttered in the breeze of that Nazi spring.

Wolf was radiant. His father’s firm was booming, having recently secured another Wehrmacht contract and his party was in the ascendant. He spoke of how he would be prepared to serve Der Fuhrer in any capacity but that, after he had served his term in an elite post in Roehm’s SA, he would probably have a political role. He saw no conflict between his being of our kind and the likelihood that the Nazis would stamp out the laissez-faire attitude to ‘deviancy’ for which Berlin was famous.

Wolf was an enthusiastic and, as far as I could discern, leading member of his Hitler Youth squadron. If he held extreme views he kept them largely to himself, perhaps because he knew I was unlikely to be sympathetic. For instance, one Wednesday in May that year, Wolf excused himself from the lesson because there was a large demonstration he wanted to join. This turned out to be the book burning in Opernplatz off Unter den Linden. I read about it afterwards and realised that he must have taken part but we didn’t talk about it.

Our relationship remained platonic even though I fantasised about taking it further. I was fixated with the notion that he was innocent of grown-up physical relations and was also conscious that, if I acted upon
my
desires, it would be an abuse of my position of trust. There was also the simple mathematical fact that he was sixteen and I was eleven years older. He could not be interested in me sexually. I knew that he enjoyed my company and looked forward to our lessons, because he told me this every week, but that was as far as it would go.

It was a Saturday in the August of that year, as I was approaching my 28th birthday, that Wolf was unwell during one of our lessons. We had been watching the people passing by at the Savignyplatz cafe when he complained of a headache. Perhaps it was the sun or the noise from one of the loudspeakers in the square. Every Platz had them, relaying one of the speeches of Hitler or Goebbels always with the same message ‘Germany is awake’.

In any event I took him out of the square and we walked back to the Green House with Wolf leaning heavily on my arm and me enjoying the weight of him against me. I could feel the heft of his young body through the thin cotton of our summer jackets.

On the drive back to Burford Lakes after his meeting with Mark Costidy, Jay runs through the events since the morning he missed the train. He’s aware of the MC lurking at the back of his brain –- as if he’s sitting in one of the rear passenger seats – monitoring his thoughts.

He’s certain that he’s right to defend Ben’s role in the play. Somehow it has become central to the success of their time in America. If the family fails in this it means an ignominious return to the UK with nothing achieved.

$3 million?

Okay, there’s the money. But it’s not everything. Rachel’s right, there’s nothing for them here. He wants to go home – and yes it is home – with Ben’s achievement ringing in the ears of their Burford neighbours.

His research into the history of
Cabaret
isn’t a diversion. It’s part of his support for Ben and it has led him to Cameron Mortimer – an earlier Englishman in New York. Jay’s intrigued by him and senses a connection from Mortimer to Isherwood via Auden.

You have to thank the lovely Prentice for knowing about Mortimer. Prentice of the twin peaks in a twin set.

Yes, Prentice. What of her? There
is
a flirtation going on there. But if he was to go down that route …

Teri is the better option.

Teri
would
be the better option. But why would he be unfaithful?

Because you’re alive and you can?

Wouldn’t it be
really
living to have that sort of fling? His heart rate quickens and his palms go moist. Yes, if he was going to engineer it to happen with anybody, Teri’s the one.

Hmm. Not sounding to me like a religious man, Jay.

Oh, yes. There’s his Jewishness. Is this where the answer to the question ‘why me’ lies? All that his Jewishness has brought them is Rabbi Stern’s opposition to the play and …

And you come full circle.

Which takes him back to Ben and Rachel – the family who are in a holding pattern until they can return home. And Teri?

The thing with Teri will develop or it will not.

With Teri it’s wait and see. And Rachel’s right – they have to go back at Christmas.

The Holidays.

Correction – the Holidays. But can he continue flitting from one enthusiasm to the next until something concrete turns up? It feels like his life is on hold …

Waiting.

‘They need to know we’re not going to back down.’ Jay says. He and Rachel sit at the dining table in the afternoon after his visit to the school. They’re waiting for the school bus, each with hands clasped round a mug of tea. ‘If the school stands up to Stern, they don’t want to be left high and dry.’

Rachel takes a sip. ‘What do you think?’

‘I said we’d be rock solid behind them.’

‘Is it wise? Aren’t we going to make enemies?’

‘We already have. The good thing is we don’t know anybody from that part of town.’

‘And even if it does cause problems, how long do we have to live with it? We’ll be gone by Christmas.’

‘Hmm. Yes, the Holidays.’ Jay’s lack of confirmation hangs between them.

‘We
are
going aren’t we?’

‘What if we settle here?’

‘What?’

‘You ought to see the facilities at the school.’

‘And?’

‘And – I don’t know. Look at the sun shining. It’s cold but it’s not like the constant grey days at home … winters in the UK … the whole year … there it’s like you only ever see the sun through a filthy skylight.’

‘So?’

‘Shouldn’t we give it a year at least? We didn’t see the
whole
of the summer – the bit we were here for was all sunny days, time by the pool. There’ll be more of it – much more.’

Rachel looks into her mug. Her knuckles are white. ‘We’re not staying and that’s an end to it. If we leave at Christmas Ben will have only missed one term. We can settle down again.’

Don’t forget the $3million.

He leans forward and clasps her arms. ‘Think about it, Rache. $3million – think what we can do here with that sort of money.’

She aims her laser-stare at him. ‘I can’t work.’

‘You wouldn’t need to – not for money. Do something voluntarily – at the school – at the library – anywhere.’

‘Jay, I’d end up like one of these skeletal Burford wives. Anyway, what would
you
do if we stayed?’

He puts his palms to his forehead and drags them down across his eyes drawing down the skin of his cheeks. ‘I don’t know. But going back. It’ll look like we’re running away.’

But you decided you won’t be – as long as Ben keeps the part and he’s a success.

That evening, Bob Cochrane from next door invites Jay to join him for Monday night football. At a few minutes before 9pm Jay and Katy Cochrane cross on the boundary between the front gardens as if they’re characters in a Checkpoint Charlie hostage exchange. Katy carries a bottle of wine and Jay has a four-bottle pack of
Rolling Rock
straight from the refrigerator.

After closing the front door behind him, Jay stands at the top of the half-flight and looks down to where the dimmed moving light from the television appears to be the only illumination. The TV is out of sight at the end of the room but he can see part of the couch with Bob’s tousle-haired blond head leaning back. He has his eyes fixed on the screen, but half-turns to throw his voice over his shoulder. ‘C’mon down, buddy. Pick up a beer in the fridge.’

Jay enters the kitchen, opens the refrigerator and spies bottles of Budweiser in ranks. Is it rude to drink his own, the one he prefers? He turns and shouts. ‘Bob! Can I get you one?’

‘Nah! Got one on the go.’

Doing what he would have done in England, Jay takes one of his
Rolling Rock
s and puts the other three on the shelf. He steps down into the den and sees that Bob is not alone. ‘Hi, Tyler,’ he says.

Tyler waves a hand but his eyes stay on the television screen which is showing commercials. ‘Hey, Mr Halprin. Ben not coming over to watch the game?’

‘He’s not really into American football.’

Both the Cochranes chuckle.

‘What’s up?’

‘We just call it football, buddy.’ Bob says. ‘Tyler, you come over here so Mr Halprin can sit down.’

‘Can I go to Mr Halprin’s and hang out with Ben?’

‘Don’t you want to watch the game, buddy?’

Tyler’s shoulders sag. ‘Nah. Will it be okay, Mr Halprin?’

Jay nods. ‘I’m sure Ben will be happy to see you. There’s a TV in his room so you can watch the game there if you want.’

On the TV, a sombre flag-raising ceremony is conducted in silence. The Stars and Stripes is carried by officers from the fire service to honour their dead comrades. Jay’s anticipation of the spectacle drowns under a tidal wave of despair.

The MC bows his head and wrings his white-gloved hands.
So many dead …

The game starts and Bob watches intently but as a neutral. The teams are the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers and he’s a fan of the New England Patriots. He’s there because it’s Monday night football and every fan is in front of a screen – especially today.

‘I hope Tyler watches the game at yours.’ Bob swigs from his can. ‘It’s important to show solidarity – the first Monday football after 9/11 and all.’

The words 9/11, so often on everyone’s lips, twist in Jay’s gut.

‘I like it that Prime Minister Tony Blair is standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush. Okay, Bush is a blowhard but he’s the only President we’ve got. It’s good to know you’re on our side, buddy.’

They watch a play in silence and when it finishes Bob takes a slug of beer his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Gather your Ben has a big part in the school show.’

‘Not one of the leading roles – but he’s in it, yes.’

‘Been a bit of trouble with the synagogue up by Burford Station.’

‘Yes, Rabbi Stern has taken against the idea of Ben wearing Nazi regalia.’

‘Because he’s Jewish?’

‘Yes.’

The action restarts but Bob speaks over the commentary. ‘Think the people of Burford Lakes are happy to go along with what’s decided by the school. It’s not for the church – any church – to interfere.’

‘Has it been discussed in your church – which is it?’

‘Presbyterian – on the green.’ He waves the beer can. ‘Not as such. But most folks round here think that Jefferson High is doing a good job. We leave it to them.’

‘So you won’t be marching with Rabbi Stern?’ Jay inflects his words with an irony that his English friends would have picked up.

‘Hell no!’ There’s a commercial break and he stands. ‘’Nother one o’ them beers?’

‘Thank you.’

With one foot on the first riser of the half-stairway, Bob stops and, looking up towards the kitchen, says, ‘Well, neighbor, we hold by the First Amendment in this house. Katy and me – and Tyler. We’re gonna stand by Rachel and you on this. I reckon most of the people round here are. Burford Lakes folks – generally we’re not the marching sort and Rabbi Stern is going one step too far. We’ll be shoulder to shoulder with you crossing the picket line if it comes to it.’ He nods in affirmation of his pronouncement and continues up the stairs. He shouts from the kitchen, ‘Yep, shoulder to shoulder just like Prime Minister Tony Blair.’

Jay is relieved to hear him rearranging the cans and bottles in the fridge because it gives him the opportunity to take a tissue from the box on the coffee table wipe his eyes and blow his nose. ‘Thanks, buddy,’ he says when Bob returns and hands him his second bottle of
Rolling Rock
.

It’s now Jay’s custom to attend Synagogue every Saturday. Rachel stays at home but Ben joins him on the basis that this duty will lead to a bar mitzvah party when they go home.

Rabbi Zwyck is not putting pressure on Jay to do any more about becoming a practising Jew than ‘see how he feels’. She’s invited him to attend shul and was relaxed when he declined and said he’ll take it up when he returns to England. On this Saturday she asks him to stay behind after the service so they may ‘have a word’.

He waits in the vestibule while the rabbi stands at the door shaking hands with the members of her congregation as they leave. She turns back to face him and Jay, sensing that they will talk about
Cabaret,
suggests to Ben that he waits in the car. ‘Catch!’ he says, as he tosses his son the keys.

‘Elayna.’ They shake hands.

‘Come!’ she says flicking her hand up by her shoulder. She totters ahead of him and Jay wonders whether the heft of her bosom means that her feet are always trying to catch up with her centre of gravity.

It’s the counter-weight of that posterior that keeps her upright.

The rabbi sidles behind the desk and topples back into the chair. Jay sees the North Tower imploding, settling on its haunches.

It never goes. Not while you can imagine such things.

She signals to the guest chair. ‘Sit!’ She says it without command, as if she is talking to an aging pet with arthritis. She waits until he’s in the seat with his hands clasped in his lap. ‘I’ve met Rabbi David Stern at Beth El twice now to plead Ben’s case.’

Jay nods.

‘As Americans we both believe in the First Amendment.’ She shrugs and her head wobbles from side to side. ‘Unfortunately, David believes the First Amendment supports his right to protest at what is happening – to put his case forcibly enough to persuade Mr Costidy to change the casting for the Nazi boy.’

‘So no progress then.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. My main argument after the school’s right to freedom of expression is that your boy Ben is not Jewish enough to be part of his congregation. And I tell him this does not sit well with his concern about Ben wearing the swastika. Either Ben is a Jew or he’s not. Stern’s response is to make a distinction between Ben’s Jewish ethnicity and his religious practice. I have to say, David has an annoying certainty about him. He doesn’t entertain doubt as many rabbis do.’

‘So it
is
Ben’s Jewishness that troubles him.’

‘His Jewish ethnicity, yes. ’

Ethnicity – shethnicity. Ben is doing it – end of story.

‘And he’s not going to shift?’

‘He’s implacable. It’s not just a bee in his bonnet about Ben wearing the swastika, it’s also where it comes in the play. He’s turning this into some sort of personal crusade. As I say, I’ve not met many rabbis like him. Generally, we’re questioning – we turn to rabbinical teaching for our guidance. Rabbi Stern is a dogmatist. It’s as if his life depends on each decision he’s taken and he can’t turn back.’

‘Well we can do implacable too.’

Good one, Jay!
The MC is skipping on the spot clapping his fingertips together. The red gash of his lips splits into a wide smile revealing his off-white teeth.

‘If I say that Ben’s doing it, whatever Rabbi Stern says, do I still have your support?’

‘I’ve taken soundings. The elders here understand what
Cabaret
is – it has to be seen in the round. It’s a condemnation of Nazism and all it stands for. At Bar Shalom we stand for tolerance. We stand behind the production and we stand behind Ben’s part in it.

She’s good this one. How we could have done with her in my time.

There’s an uneasy truce in the Halprin household. Rachel is making preparations for the return to England. Like Rabbi Stern she sees the distinction between the family’s ethnicity and its religion. She has no intention of joining Jay and Ben in the synagogue. She accepts the Friday evening obligation to sit down to a formal family meal because it gives them an opportunity to spend time together. However, she doesn’t light the candles; nor will she recite the prayers. Jay cooks the meal and his recipes avoid pork and shellfish. In return Rachel expects Jay and Ben to think of their Sunday evening meal also as a
mitzvah
. Ben grudgingly accepts both. Jay hasn’t mentioned the mitzvah that married couples have sex on Shabbat. He’s not sure Rachel would believe it.

It’s over the family meal on the Friday following the discussion with Rabbi Zwyck that Jay asks Ben for the latest news regarding
Cabaret
. He registers Rachel’s tight-lipped glance but ploughs on – this is
his
meal. ‘Rehearsals – how are they going?’