Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition (21 page)

“I have Mr. Khrushchev’s son-in-law with me,” said the President. “He would very much enjoy seeing it.”

“Yes, sir,” said the Commodore. He was right by the switch. He turned it on. The whole neighborhood was bathed in flashing light.

“Thank you,” said the President. “And
leave
it on, would you, please?”

“Sir?” said the Commodore.

The cars started to pull away slowly. “That way,” said the President, “I can find my way home.”

(1963)

E
IGHTY-ONE
small sparks of human life were kept in an orphanage set up by Catholic nuns in what had been the gamekeeper’s house on a large estate overlooking the Rhine. This was in the German village of Karlswald, in the American Zone of Occupation. Had the children not been kept there, not been given the warmth and food and clothes that could be begged for them, they might have wandered off the edges of the earth, searching for parents who had long ago stopped searching for them.

Every mild afternoon the nuns marched the children, two by two, through the woods, into the village and back, for their ration of fresh air. The village carpenter, an old man who was given to thoughtful rests between strokes of his tools, always came out of his shop to watch the bobbing, chattering, cheerful, ragged parade, and to speculate, with idlers his shop attracted, as to the nationalities of the passing children’s parents.

“See the little French girl,” he said one afternoon. “Look at the flash of those eyes!”

“And look at that little Pole swing his arms. They love to march, the Poles,” said a young mechanic.

“Pole? Where do you see any Pole?” said the carpenter.

“There—the thin, sober-looking one in front,” the other replied.

“Aaaaah. He’s too tall for a Pole,” said the carpenter. “And what Pole has flaxen hair like that? He’s a German.”

The mechanic shrugged. “They’re all German now, so
what difference does it make?” he said. “Who can prove what their parents were? If you had fought in Poland, you would know he was a very common type.”

“Look—look who’s coming now,” said the carpenter, grinning. “Full of arguments as you are, you won’t argue with me about
him
. There we have an American!” He called out to the child. “Joe—when you going to win the championship back?”

“Joe!” called the mechanic. “How is the Brown Bomber today?”

At the very end of the parade, a lone, blue-eyed colored boy, six years old, turned and smiled with sweet uneasiness at those who called out to him every day. He nodded politely, murmuring a greeting in German, the only language he knew.

His name, chosen arbitrarily by the nuns, was Karl Heinz. But the carpenter had given him a name that stuck, the name of the only colored man who had ever made an impression on the villagers’ minds, the former heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis.

“Joe!” called the carpenter. “Cheer up! Let’s see those white teeth sparkle, Joe.”

Joe obliged shyly.

The carpenter clapped the mechanic on the back. “And if
he
isn’t a German too! Maybe it’s the only way we can get another heavyweight champion.”

Joe turned a corner, shooed out of the carpenter’s sight by a nun bringing up the rear. She and Joe spent a great deal of time together, since Joe, no matter where he was placed in the parade, always drifted to the end.

“Joe,” she said, “you are such a dreamer. Are all your people such dreamers?”

“I’m sorry, sister,” said Joe. “I was thinking.”

“Dreaming.”

“Sister, am I the son of an American soldier?”

“Who told you that?”

“Peter. Peter said my mother was a German, and my father was an American soldier who went away. He said she left me with you, and then went away too.” There was no sadness in his voice—only puzzlement.

Peter was the oldest boy in the orphanage, an embittered old man of fourteen, a German boy who could remember his parents and brothers and sisters and home, and the war, and all sorts of food that Joe found impossible to imagine. Peter seemed superhuman to Joe, like a man who had been to heaven and hell and back many times, and knew exactly why they were where they were, how they had come there, and where they might have been.

“You mustn’t worry about it, Joe,” said the nun. “No one knows who your mother and father were. But they must have been very good people, because you are so good.”

“What is an American?” said Joe.

“It’s a person from another country.”

“Near here?”

“There are some near here, but their homes are far, far away—across a great deal of water.”

“Like the river.”

“More water than that, Joe. More water than you have ever seen. You can’t even see the other side. You could get on a boat and go for days and days and still not get to the other side. I’ll show you a map sometime. But don’t pay any attention to Peter, Joe. He makes things up. He doesn’t really know anything about you. Now, catch up.”

·    ·    ·

Joe hurried, and overtook the end of the line, where he marched purposefully and alertly for a few minutes. But then he began to dawdle again, chasing ghostlike words in his small mind: … soldier … German … American … your people … champion … Brown Bomber … more water than you’ve ever seen.

“Sister,” said Joe, “are Americans like me? Are they brown?”

“Some are, some aren’t, Joe.”

“Are there many people like me?”

“Yes. Many, many people.”

“Why haven’t I seen them?”

“None of them have come to the village. They have places of their own.”

“I want to go there.”

“Aren’t you happy here, Joe?”

“Yes. But Peter says I don’t belong here, that I’m not a German and never can be.”

“Peter! Pay no attention to him.”

“Why do people smile when they see me, and try to make me sing and talk, and then laugh when I do?”

“Joe, Joe! Look quickly,” said the nun. “See—up there, in the tree. See the little sparrow with the broken leg. Oh poor, brave little thing—he still gets around quite well. See him, Joe? Hop, hop, hippity-hop.”

·    ·    ·

One hot summer day, as the parade passed the carpenter’s shop, the carpenter came out to call something new to Joe, something that thrilled and terrified him.

“Joe! Hey, Joe! Your father is in town. Have you seen him yet?”

“No, sir—no, I haven’t,” said Joe. “Where is he?”

“He’s teasing,” said the nun sharply.

“You see if I’m teasing, Joe,” said the carpenter. “Just keep your eyes open when you go past the school. You have to look sharp, up the slope and into the woods. You’ll see, Joe.”

“I wonder where our little friend the sparrow is today,” said the nun brightly. “Goodness, I hope his leg is getting better, don’t you, Joe?”

“Yes, yes I do, sister.”

She chattered on about the sparrow and the clouds and the flowers as they approached the school, and Joe gave up answering her.

The woods above the school seemed still and empty.

But then Joe saw a massive brown man, naked to the waist and wearing a pistol, step from the trees. The man drank from a canteen, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, grinned down on the world with handsome disdain, and disappeared again into the twilight of the woods.

“Sister!” gasped Joe. “My father—I just saw my father!”

“No, Joe—no you didn’t.”

“He’s up there in the woods. I saw him. I want to go up there, sister.”

“He isn’t your father, Joe. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t want to see you.”

“He’s one of my people, sister!”

“You can’t go up there, Joe, and you can’t stay here.” She took him by the arm to make him move. “Joe—you’re being a bad boy, Joe.”

Joe obeyed numbly. He didn’t speak again for the remainder of the walk, which brought them home by another route, far from the school. No one else had seen his wonderful father, or believed that Joe had.

Not until prayers that night did he burst into tears.

At ten o’clock, the young nun found his cot empty.

·    ·    ·

Under a great spread net that was laced with rags, an artillery piece squatted in the woods, black and oily, its muzzle thrust at the night sky. Trucks and the rest of the battery were hidden higher on the slope.

Joe watched and listened tremblingly through a thin screen of shrubs as the soldiers, indistinct in the darkness, dug in around their gun. The words he overheard made no sense to him.

“Sergeant, why we gotta dig in, when we’re movin’ out in the mornin’, and it’s just maneuvers anyhow? Seems like we could kind of conserve our strength, and just scratch around a little to show where we’d of dug if there was any sense to it.”

“For all you know, boy, there may
be
sense to it before mornin’,” said the sergeant. “You got ten minutes to get to China and bring me back a pigtail. Hear?”

The sergeant stepped into a patch of moonlight, his hands on his hips, his big shoulders back, the image of an emperor. Joe saw that it was the same man he’d marveled at in the afternoon. The sergeant listened with satisfaction to the sounds of digging, and then, to Joe’s alarm, strode toward Joe’s hiding place.

Joe didn’t move a muscle until the big boot struck his side.
“Ach!”

“Who’s that?” The sergeant snatched Joe from the ground, and set him on his feet hard. “My golly, boy, what you doin’ here? Scoot! Go on home! This ain’t no place for kids to be playin’.” He shined a flashlight in Joe’s face. “Doggone,” he muttered. “Where you come from?” He held Joe at arm’s length, and shook him gently, like a rag doll. “Boy, how you get here—swim?”

Joe stammered in German that he was looking for his father.

“Come on—how you get here? What you doin’? Where’s your mammy?”

“What you got there, sergeant?” said a voice in the dark.

“Don’t rightly know what to call it,” said the sergeant. “Talks like a Kraut and dresses like a Kraut, but just look at it a minute.”

Soon a dozen men stood in a circle around Joe, talking loudly, then softly, to him, as though they thought getting through to him were a question of tone.

·    ·    ·

Every time Joe tried to explain his mission, they laughed in amazement.

“How he learn German? Tell me that.”

“Where your daddy, boy?”

“Where your mammy, boy?”

“Sprecken zee Dutch, boy? Looky there. See him nod. He talks it, all right.”

“Oh, you’re fluent, man, mighty fluent. Ask him some more.”

“Go get the lieutenant,” said the sergeant. “He can talk to this boy, and understand what he’s tryin’ to say. Look at him shake. Scared to death. Come here, boy; don’t be afraid, now.” He enclosed Joe in his great arms. “Just take it easy, now—everything’s gonna be all-l-l-l right. See what got? By golly, I don’t believe the boy’s ever seen chocolate before. Go on—taste it. Won’t hurt you.”

Joe, safe in a fort of bone and sinew, ringed by luminous eyes, bit into the chocolate bar. The pink lining of his mouth, and then his whole soul, was flooded with warm, rich pleasure, and he beamed.

“He smiled!”

“Look at him light up!”

“Doggone if he didn’t stumble right into heaven! I mean!”

“Talk about displaced persons,” said the sergeant, hugging Joe, “this here’s the most displaced little old person I
ever
saw. Upside down and inside out and ever’ which way.”

“Here, boy—here’s some more chocolate.”

“Don’t give him no more,” said the sergeant reproachfully. “You want to make him sick?”

“Naw, sarge, naw—don’t wanna make him sick. No, sir.”

“What’s going on here?” The lieutenant, a small, elegant Negro, the beam of his flashlight dancing before him, approached the group.

“Got a little boy here, lieutenant,” said the sergeant. “Just wandered into the battery. Must of crawled past the guards.”

“Well, send him on home, sergeant.”

“Yessir. I planned to.” He cleared his throat. “But this ain’t no ordinary little boy, lieutenant.” He opened his arms so that the light fell on Joe’s face.

The lieutenant laughed incredulously, and knelt before Joe. “How’d you get here?”

“All he talks is German, lieutenant,” said the sergeant.

“Where’s your home?” said the lieutenant in German.

“Over more water than you’ve ever seen,” said Joe.

“Where do you come from?”

“God made me,” said Joe.

“This boy is going to be a lawyer when he grows up,” said the lieutenant in English. “Now, listen to me,” he said to Joe, “what’s your name, and where are your people?”

“Joe Louis,” said Joe, “and you are my people. I ran away from the orphanage, because I belong with you.”

The lieutenant stood, shaking his head, and translated what Joe had said.

The woods echoed with glee.

“Joe Louis! I
thought
he was awful big and powerful-lookin’!”

“Jus’ keep away from that left—
tha’s
all!”

“If he’s Joe, he’s sure found his people. He’s got us there!”

“Shut up!” commanded the sergeant suddenly. “All of you just shut up. This ain’t no joke! Ain’t nothing funny in it! Boy’s all alone in the world. Ain’t no joke.”

A small voice finally broke the solemn silence that followed. “Naw—ain’t no joke at all.”

“We better take the jeep and run him back into town, sergeant,” said the lieutenant. “Corporal Jackson, you’re in charge.”

“You tell ’em Joe was a
good
boy,” said Jackson.

“Now, Joe,” said the lieutenant in German, softly, “you come with the sergeant and me. We’ll take you home.”

Joe dug his fingers into the sergeant’s forearms. “Papa! No—papa! I want to stay with you.”

“Look, sonny, I ain’t your papa,” said the sergeant helplessly. “I
ain’t
your papa.”

“Papa!”

“Man, he’s glued to you, ain’t he, sergeant?” said a soldier. “Looks like you ain’t never goin’ to pry him loose. You got yourself a boy there, sarge, and he’s got hisself a papa.”

The sergeant walked over to the jeep with Joe in his arms. “Come on, now,” he said, “you leggo, little Joe, so’s I can drive. I can’t drive with you hangin’ on, Joe. You sit in the lieutenant’s lap right next to me.”