Up in Honey's Room (8 page)

T
he elevator stopped twice on the way up to let people crowd on, Otto and Jurgen pressed against the back of the car by the time they came to thirteen. Otto waited while people in front of them walked off the car with some purpose, knowing where they were going, but not the two old ladies in front of him. Otto saw the wide-open entrance to a restaurant, people at rows of tables that reached to windows showing sunlight, Otto thinking he would like a table back there to look out at the city, the streetcars, the crowds of people, uniforms among them but not that many. They called this city the Arsenal of Democracy. Oh, really? He saw nothing to tell him these people were at war. Jurgen had gotten off and Otto saw him now standing with the hostess. The two old ladies made it out of the elevator and came to a stop and Otto stopped. He saw Jurgen looking over the room of tables with the hostess pointing her pencil, a good-looking woman, her hair done…Jurgen turned and now he was looking this way at the elevator, then holding up his hand to tell Otto
Halt,
Jurgen shaking his head. Otto turned and stepped in the elevator again.
Jurgen had seen someone he didn't expect to see, didn't
want
to see, and that was enough. He was coming now, his face, his expression, telling Otto nothing. Now he was stopped by the two old ladies in front of him, Otto watching from the elevator as the door closed and the Negro girl at the wheel turned the handle of the circular control and said as the car rose, “Fourteenth floor. Beauty salons, Hudson's Americana Salon and the Executive Barbershop. Employment office, employees' cafeteria, and the J.L. Hudson Company hospital.”

Otto said to her, “Where are the books?”

 

On the mezzanine, tables and tables of books, nearly all by American authors. This was acceptable to Otto, he believed Americans wrote the greatest variety of readable books found in any language, all kinds of novels by authors who kept you turning pages. One of his favorites, about the confident gentleman who addressed his friend as “old sport.” He also liked the author who used a blunt way of writing his stories set in Spain and Africa, not North Africa, East Africa, where the tall, handsome American on safari with his wife had “bolted like a rabbit” in the face of a full-grown wounded lion coming at him. He and Jurgen had both read the story while in the Oklahoma prison camp. Jurgen didn't understand the wife turning on the poor man, insulting him to his face. “Because he proved himself a coward,” Otto said. Jurgen said, “But it wasn't his job to kill lions.” Otto remembered saying, “What does the white hunter with the cold blue eyes tell him? ‘In Africa no woman ever misses her lion and no white man ever bolts.'” Otto liked the woman using her husband's cowardice as an excuse to sleep with the white hunter, Robert Wilson, who brought a double-size cot on these trips, anticipating the strange behavior of American women. Otto
liked the guns too, the white hunter's big-bore .505 Gibbs, and the 6.5 Mannlicher the wife used on her husband once he had redeemed himself and she realized she had lost him, shooting Francis Macomber “two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his skull.” He called her Margot. Otto would see himself having a drink with Margot, smiling, toasting her with his glass.

 

He came to a table laden with green and gold copies of a book,
Forever Amber,
some of them upright, the woman on the cover of the novel looking at him, showing Otto bare shoulders but not much in the way of breasts. Now he was aware of a woman on the other side of the table watching him as he looked at the woman on the cover who must be Amber, though the blond ringlets made her look so innocent.

“Amber St. Claire,” the woman across the table from him said and then recited, “uses her wits, beauty and courage to…well, become the favorite mistress of the merry monarch, Charles II.”

Otto raised his eyes to this one in a black suit with trousers, a young woman, much more interesting than the one on the book cover, this one up to something.

Otto said, “Is it a good story?”

His accent didn't make her hesitate.

“It was banned in Boston, and you haven't read it?”

Otto said, “No,” and smiled at her. He felt good and couldn't help smiling.

She wore round glasses in thin black frames, red lip rouge, no jewelry, no blouse beneath the slim, the very slim black suit he knew was expensive. She was tall, still a girl without being girlish, clean dark hair to her shoulders. He liked the easy refinement about this one he believed was up to something.

She said, “Are you a Vicki Baum fan? She's just out with
Once in Vienna
….”

“I don't think I've ever read a book,” Otto said, “written by someone named Vicki.”

He watched her stroke her hair from her face with the tips of her fingers lacquered bright red, then toss her hair and he liked the way she did it, though it was only a gesture. He watched her turn to pick up a book from the table behind her and come around to him saying, “Werner Richter's
Re-educating Germany
. You know Richter?”

“He was Weimar, pre-Nazi,” Otto said, “from olden times.” He said, “Tell me your name.”

She said, “I'm Aviva Friedman.”

“Really?” Otto said. “You're a Jewess?”

“And you're a Kraut, a Nazi?”

“I'm an officer in the SS,” Otto said, wanting to smile.

Aviva said, “Oh dear.”

And now he did, he smiled because he felt good knowing he could talk to this woman, this girl who was up to something.

Otto said, “You remind me of a woman I knew in Benghazi. She was Italian.” He smiled again and removed his homburg and laid it across two copies of
Forever Amber
. “I was in love with her.”

“That's right, they're on your side,” Aviva said, “the Italians.”

“For whatever good they do us.”

She said, “You look much younger without the hat.”

“I
am
young, and free,” Otto said, looking at his watch, “for the next one and a half hours. Then I'm taken back and told not to leave the premises.”

She kept staring at him.

“You're a German prisoner of war.”

“And if you tell anyone,” Otto said, “I'll put the Gestapo on you. I told you I'm in the SS.”

“Did you ever send people to death camps?”

“I was in North Africa with Rommel, commanding tanks.”

“The Italian girl you think I resemble, she was there?”

“Yes, in Libya. She was a nurse at the hospital. She placed a dressing on my chest, where it was burned, and I fell in love with her.”

“You're like what's his name, in
A Farewell to Arms
.”

“Frederic Henry,” Otto said. “Are you sure you aren't Italian?”

“You know the nurse in real life,” Aviva said, “wasn't an English girl, like the one in the book.”

“No, I believe she was Polish,” Otto said.

“I know what I bet you'd like,” Aviva said,
“Leave Her to Heaven.”
But right away said, “No,” turned to the table behind her, came around with a book saying, “
The Prisoner,
by Ernst Lothar.” She turned the book over to read from the back cover, “‘From the Normandy beachhead to an American prison camp in Colorado, the story of the unmaking of a Nazi.' What do you think?”

Otto said, “Tell me what you're up to.”

She said in an offhand way, “I'm curious to know what you read.”

“For what reason?”

“I knew you were German. I should say I knew you weren't American and I guessed you were a Kraut.”

“I don't care to be called that.”

Aviva said, “I don't care to be called a Jewess. What are you, Lutheran?”

“At one time, yes.”

“What do you call women who are Lutheran, Lutheranesses?”

Otto said, “You have a point. But what do you care what I read?”

“First tell me your name.”

“Otto Penzler.”

“Otto, I was making conversation, that's all. You're an interesting-looking guy. Then I hear your accent, I find out yes, you're German, and I thought oh, wow, I should get to know this guy.”

“Why don't you think I look American?”

“I don't know, the way you carry yourself. You don't act like an American.”

“But why do you want to know me?”

She seemed to have to think about her answer.

“I don't live here,” Aviva said. “But when I come to Detroit I always stop at Hudson's. I love this store, and the book department, the tables and tables of books. I came to Detroit this time to buy the typescript of a play by Bertolt Brecht.”

“Which play?”

“You know Brecht?”

“The Communist playwright.”

“He digs Marx,” Aviva said, “but he's never been a card-carrying Communist. You know his work?”

“
Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder
. I saw the one he did with Kurt Weill before they burned his books and threw him out of Germany,
Die Dreigroschenoper
. You see it, it's the
Threepenny Opera
. What is he doing now?”

“He's in Hollywood working on movies,” Aviva said, “Fritz Lang's
Hangmen Also Die
with Brian Donlevy. It's about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's alter ego. Brecht wrote the story, not the screenplay. When you write a screenplay there's always someone telling you what to write, and he's not good at writing to order. But the main thing Brecht's doing, he's getting
ready to show his new play.” She stopped and came around to the end of the
Forever Amber
display to be closer to Otto. She said, “Can I trust you?”

“Aviva,” Otto said, and had to smile at her. “Can you trust me—you can do anything you want with me. Don't call the police and I won't send the Gestapo after you.”

“Tell me,” Aviva said, “they let you out for the day, the afternoon. Don't tell me you escaped, okay? If I can trust you, Otto, I've got a job for you. Translating Brecht's play into English.”

“What does he call it?”

“The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”

Otto said,
“Der kaukasische Kreidekreis,”
mumbling the words. “What is it about?”

“I have no idea. It's sort of based on a Chinese play five or six hundred years old,
The Chalk Circle
.”

“Brecht is a friend of yours?”

“No, the guy I've been doing business with, he's in the army, in Hollywood fooling around and met Brecht. I think he sold him something. They're having drinks at Brecht's house, some kind of party going on. A copy of the play is sitting on the coffee table the whole while. Brecht got sloshed and went to bed.”

Otto said, “Yes?” starting to smile.

“Pete had his eye on the script the whole time. He left with the script under his jacket and called me from his hotel. Asked if I'd be interested in buying the play.”

“Why did he think you might want it?”

“We've got something going. Pete's in army transportation, he's a Detroit mob guy who somehow got drafted. For the past year he's been selling me paintings and art objects he and his guys smuggled out of France. All the stuff the Nazis stole, Pete took a lot of it off their hands.”

“Important works of art?”

“Some, but it's all marketable.”

“This is what you do, you fence stolen goods?”

“I find art collectors who look at my catalog and get a hard-on. I sell paintings that hung in the Louvre to people living in New York and Palm Beach, at a discount. I still make a pile of money and the collectors give me a big hug.”

“How do you get into this business?”

“My dad got it going. He was a captain in the merchant marine, retired now, he's almost seventy. I called him to see if we should buy a play by Brecht, one that's still unknown to the world. Dad said he'd check with book collectors, see how much any of them were interested. I could tell he liked the idea. He said, ‘Offer Pete five hundred, but don't go over a grand.'”

Otto said, “You got it for…?”

“Two-fifty. I told Pete we'd be happy to give him a percentage if we get any interest in it. You play it straight with this guy.”

“If you're going to sell it,” Otto said, “why do you want a translation?”

“I'd like to know what it's about.”

“You could go to prison.”

“Everything I sell comes out of Europe. Good luck trying to trace it back. Pete's guys bring it into the country. I don't do any of that.”

“And now you go home?”

“What I'm thinking,” Aviva said, “you ought to come with me. You could start doing the translation on the boat.”

Otto said, “The boat?” He loved this girl already.

“A forty-foot Chris-Craft. It's tied up at the yacht club on Belle Isle.”

“You have a crew?”

“I'm the skipper,” Aviva said. “I have a gook—excuse me—a Filipino boy who handles the lines and serves drinks in a white jacket. We head down the Detroit River past Ford Rouge and the steel mills to Lake Erie and we're almost home.” Aviva said to Otto grinning at her, “Have you ever been to Cleveland?”

 

The first thing Walter said to Jurgen getting in the front seat, “Where is Otto?” Walter anxious, looking for Otto in his homburg in the crowd waiting for the light to change. Now cars behind them were blowing horns. Walter didn't move. He looked at the rearview mirror and said, “Be quiet!” But now he did put the Ford in gear and began to crawl past the block-long front of Hudson's.

“We were separated,” Jurgen said.

“How could that happen? You were careful?”

“He got on an elevator without me,” Jurgen said.