What Is All This? (33 page)

Something's wrong. I unlocked the door to my mother's apartment as I do every night to check up on her and take her garbage out, and a breeze blew past me into the public hall. It's winter and very cold out and during this time of year she always keeps her windows closed.

I go in and see from the foyer, papers floating to the kitchen floor. I run to the kitchen. Her pocketbook's on the floor, has been turned inside out and its personal papers and coins are scattered about.

I yell “You sonofabitch, I'll kill you,” and open a kitchen drawer for a knife, but right away know I'll never use it on anyone. But I can hit a head with a hard object if I have to, so I grab a candlestick out of a cabinet and bang the base against the counter and yell “You better get out the way you got in here or just peacefully identify yourself to me and leave through the front door, or I'm going to beat your thieving head in,” and go into the breakfast room.

A window to the backyard is open and two of its bars have been pried apart. The backyard door is locked and I open it and go outside, and nobody's there. I check the downstairs bathroom. The light's on, there's a cigarette in the toilet bowl and a faint odor of cigarette smoke. I flush the toilet, then think I shouldn't have—police might have wanted to examine the cigarette—and go upstairs.

The ceiling light in the girls' room is on and all the dresser drawers have been pulled out, nothing inside them but clothes of my five brothers and sisters from ten to twenty years ago. I look under the bed, inside the closet, throw open the door of the bathroom right outside the bedroom and shove the shower curtain aside.

My mother
, and I run to the front of the apartment, turning on the lights as I go and glancing around, and listen at her door. I hear breathing, she seems to be sleeping. I turn on the night light in her room. She dozed off in her house dress, closed book on her chest, afghan she'd knitted, covering her. I make the same quick search: closet, bathroom, under the bed, candlestick ready to come down on the burglar's head, though I'm almost sure he escaped through the breakfast room window and over a backyard fence right after he heard me open the front door.

I put the book on her night table and turn off the light. I search the baby's room next to my mother's, the linen closet, living room, boys' room, which is now unused like the baby's and girls' rooms and where I slept with my older brothers in bunk beds for about fifteen years.

I phone the police from the kitchen, then yell from the backyard “Attention, neighbors who have backyards on these streets. A burglar, about ten minutes ago, broke into my mother's apartment here and climbed over one of the connecting fences to get away, so turn on your yard lights and all your rear room lights and make sure your rear doors and windows are locked tight.”

I repeat the message and then return to my mother's room and shake her shoulder. “Mom, it's me, don't worry,” and I tell her what happened. She puts on a robe, is very shaky and I have to hold her arm when she walks downstairs. I make us both a drink. We sit in the breakfast room while we wait for the police. It's now her sitting room of sorts, where she embroiders and reads and watches TV. There used to be a table and eight chairs in here when the family had breakfast together every Sunday and dinner together almost every night.

She says This never used to happen on the block when you kids were growing up.”

“I know, I know.”

“We used to keep the front door unlocked during the day because of all you kids running in and out, and nobody but someone we welcomed or invited ever came in.”

“You started locking the front door about twenty years ago, when all of us were grown up or could be trusted with keys, but I get your point.”

“But double bars I didn't have on these windows till three years ago, and only because a couple of neighbors got burglarized from the backyard, but the thieves still break in.”

“I'll get more bars put on. Stronger ones. Maybe even gates, if you can overcome your aesthetic distaste for them, but you'll be safe.”

“It's not my safety I'm worried about. At my age, though I don't want them here, they can come and go, so long as they don't do it while I'm asleep. It's just that I hate to see these things deteriorate the way they have, for everybody's sake.”

“Your safety is important. You're just talking like that because you're flustered and upset. You're healthy and can live lots of years yet, so we're going to make it extra safe for you here. Unless you want to give up the place and come live with Marion and me.”

“Never. I like my privacy even more than you do. And we'd end up barely tolerating each other after a few months, and I'd probably sour your marriage a little besides. You will sleep over tonight, though, won't you?”

“Sure. In the boys' room. Marion would want me to. Then early tomorrow I'll call the locksmith.”

The police come, write up a report and give us a prediction and statistic: we'll never again see what was stolen and this was only one of an average of ten burglaries a day in this precinct.

One of the policemen picks up the silver candlestick and says This what you made your noise with to chase the kid away?” They already determined it was a strong man with a crowbar who pried the bars apart and a small wiry kid who slipped in. Think you would have used it on him like you did on the countertop?”

“I don't know, now that you say it was a kid.”

“Even if it was a kid, you think he came empty-handed and wouldn't have used his weapon on you, and believe me, he had one.”

Then I suppose I would have had to protect myself with this stick, though I wouldn't have liked myself later on for doing it.”

“No,” my mother says, “I wouldn't want you hitting any child, even if it meant he took everything from me.”

“Even if it meant he'd bash in your son's brains protecting you?” the policeman says.

There are ways. There have to be. Talk, for instance. He was a junior high school teacher, so he knows how to talk to boys and girls.”

“
Talk
. That's years ago. When I was a boy, and I've got at least ten years on your son. Anyway, you'll have to take it to a silversmith to get the dent out, if you can find one these days. Looks like an antique.”

“It is,” I say. “A wedding gift to my folks from my mother's parents more than fifty years ago.”

“You want the truth after all this time?” my mother says. “I only told your dad that's where they came from. It's fifty years old, all right, but I bought the pair of them in a department store for myself so he'd think my parents were even more generous than they were.”

“He never knew?”

“Why would I have told him? It was only a harmless fib. Now it comes out because of this robbery and I don't want to tell real lies for the policeman's report. Otherwise, I would have kept it to myself for life.”

Hitler was coming to town and he wanted one of us girls. Young, he liked them young. “How young?” I asked the prostitute who told me this.

“Young like you,” she said. That's what I heard from a friend of mine who's still a prostitute in Berlin. She was in a house that Hitler went to—oh, that was a long time ago. Now he doesn't go to houses. We just go to him and he or one of his aides selects. Anyway, he specified young—at least twenty years younger than him. That was ten years ago when he was first becoming our leader. Now it's maybe thirty years younger than him—who knows? So you got a good chance to be the winner, sweetheart.”

“Did your friend say what he's really like in person? Because I don't think I could take doing it with such an incredibly powerful and famous man.”

“He's all right.”

“She say that?”

“She didn't say much. Just that she didn't get him. She was already too old. And that he took the youngest girl in the house, who also happened to be the prettiest and best built, so nobody was sure if he picked her only for her being young or pretty or her build or what. She had big boobs, that's what my friend said. Big and high and a tiny waist and hips that were in proportion to her breasts and long legs. And she was blond.”

“He prefers them blond too?”

“It's difficult to say what he prefers. Remember, this is all secondhand. I don't know what other houses he's been to or if he's changed his taste much in women since then, but he's seen plenty of women, I understand. That's what a general friend told me. Not a friend—a client, a one-shot deal. He came in here a couple of years ago for a supposed quickie and said before we did anything ‘You know what?' I said ‘No, what?' He said ‘Did you know I'm on Hitler's personal general staff?' I said ‘No kidding, that's great.' What else was I to say? He said ‘Wouldn't you like to know what Hitler's really like?' I said ‘Yeah, yeah, tell me,' because I could see he was aching to say it. I didn't actually care then or now, but you do?”

“Well, yes, in a way. After all, he is Hitler. The leader of the entire continent. Maybe one of the greatest men ever.”

The hell with Hitler, and you know it. And the hell with all the continents he conquers—though don't breathe a word to anyone I said any of this. Oh, go ahead. Tell the world—what do I care? I'll say I never said it. No, that never works anymore. But I couldn't give a toot what Hitler's really like. Just give me my money, get your cookies, and go—next customer, please, know what I mean? But he was a general and, if he was telling the truth, on Hitler's staff. And he had plenty of money to throw around also, so I said ‘Of course, I've always been eager to know. But he's very nice, though, am I right? Sort of like a god.' I said that to make sure he knew whose side I was on. He said ‘He's a god like you say, but a real god.' I could see he was having second thoughts, as if I might be an informer or so patriotic that I'd run out and blab if he said the least thing critical of Hitler. ‘You would like him,' he said. ‘He goes for girls like you and makes them excited with his godlike qualities, and I'm not just talking about the spiritual and moral, you understand?' ‘Not exactly,' I said. ‘Because maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, General, but I heard from a prostitute friend who's now dead that he likes girls much younger than me—half his age, preferably–and with big parts in all the important places, no disrespect meant, is that true?' He said ‘The cut of the female figure doesn't matter to him so long as it's perfect for him.' Now that can almost mean nothing or two things, which can also be nothing if you can't or don't want to figure it out, so I dropped the subject. After, which is way after, for that was a weary old general who I think fought his greatest and maybe last battle on me and in the end won at an enormous sacrifice to himself, he said ‘Want to know what Hitler's really like?' I said ‘Didn't you ask me that before?' ‘Did I?' he said, and I quickly said ‘No, it must have been someone else,' for he seemed angry. He said ‘Who? You know people who are talking disparagingly about our great leader?' ‘No, just some harmless lieutenant in the tank corps I saw a year ago.' ‘You go to bed with lieutenants?' he said. ‘No, I only overheard him downstairs when I was wandering through the main room looking for a lost brooch. Me, I save myself only for colonels and higher.' Anyway, Hitler's coming to town to check the military base, I suppose, and his first stop after he detrains is the Forest Hotel. We're all to be in a room there when he or his aide comes in to make the choice. And no men for any of us till after the selection, as he wants the one who's picked to be, at least for the time being, pure.”

Two hours later the madam, Mrs. Dorfer, came into our room and said “Knock knock, darlings. Get your finest finery and most daring undies on, as we're going to Hitler's hotel.”

We all get into a couple of officers' cars Hitler sent over. Seven of us girls packed in to each one, which was almost the entire house. Lotte and Ilse were left behind. They were obviously too old—girls Mrs. Dorter saved for soldiers and townsmen who had drunk or gambled too much and were down to their last marks. During the ride I asked the girl next to me “Excited?”

“For what? None of us has more than an eight percent chance of getting him. This was also supposed to be my day off, and besides that I'm coming down with the sniffles, so with my luck it'll probably be me.”

“But Hitler. Just that you might see him up close.”

“Yes, Hitler. Maybe you've a point. Truth is, till now I didn't even think there was a real Hitler. He's so easy to impersonate and look like, and that voice—even my brother fooled me with it once on the phone. I thought there might be four to five men dressed like him making speeches and shaking their fists all over Europe—something thought up by some military and industrial geniuses to get our economy rolling again, and knowing the national mentality, what better way? But real or not, I was never one of his bigger fans. He comes in like hailstones and thunder, and thinks we're going to take over the whole western world? You ever read world history? I did—before, when I was becoming a teacher, plus all the best literature there is. In the end, we got to lose. You can only stick it out so far and for so long before choppo, you get your head and hands cut off and, if you're not looking, your behind too. So big deal, I quietly say in my own way—Hitler as a client. No, I thought it over. Years from now if I'm alive and I tell people that, they'll say ‘That miscreant and baboon? He brought the great German nation to its lowest ebb yet. You had the devil himself in you.' But believe me, if I wind up with Hitler I don't move any more for him than I would for any other man, unless he puts a cocked gun to my head. And with his responsibilities and heavy worries and past decisions, you think he's going to do any amazing tricks in bed? That's for the newsreels. Like all deep thinkers I've had, it'll take everything he has for him to get started and then stay with it, so I suppose I will have to move a little more for him than with others, just to get the job over with.”

“Well, I'm excited at the prospect,” the girl on my other side said.

“It's like a fantasy come true. When I was a young girl—I am not old—I fell in love with him right after they jailed him for that putsch. His face—so sensitive and brooding, yet sweet. And his presence, defiance and physique. That was then. Maybe now his body's a little changed. But I wrote him a letter, even. When he got out of prison he wrote me one back. He said ‘Your faith in my cause inspired me and inspires me still. We will win.' That was very nice. I kept the letter, knowing it would be valuable one day, but my ancestral home was bombed early in the war and everything went up in it—I won't even specify what people were inside. But from that prison sentence till now I have adored him. If I was chosen over all you girls it would be like for some other women making love with the world's most famous movie star who they've been writing about in their diaries for years. And he's still very handsome and gallant like one, wouldn't you say?”

“Very,” I said. “Do you know anything about what kind of girl he prefers? I heard he likes them extremely young.”

“I don't know, though I'm sorry to hear what you said. Perhaps if he'd succeeded with that putsch and we were in the same situation now, only ten years earlier, my chances would be better. But I wasn't a prostitute then, so I guess I lose out no matter what.”

“I've a good idea what he likes,” a girl on one of the jumpseats said.

“Helga, the cleaning lady in our house, told me he only likes girls with big derrieres. She said years ago she was a girl in the most elegant house in Hamburg, and Hitler, who'd just become chancellor then, came in with Goebbels or Göring—though I know those two don't look alike, I always get their names mixed up because of the G and O. They were some pair, she said, Hitler and the other one. Joking, playing the piano, throwing money in the air. You should speak to her. She has funny stories to tell about them just from their one trip. But Hitler took the girl with the biggest buttocks. She was also very young, chunky, and kind of happy-go-lucky, and had short black hair.”

“Someone else thought he liked tall blondes with tiny waists,” I said.

“I'd heard that too. So I asked Helga again, but she said Hitler definitely picked the stubby black-haired and Göring or Goebbels chose a tall blond. But you got a nice derriere—not fat, but just big and broad enough to qualify. Mine? Too small and firm, I think—coconuts, which lots of men prefer. If Helga's right then I guess I should count myself out too. Though I'd love to be the one selected. Not just for the money involved but because it'll be one hell of a story to tell for the rest of my life.”

“Did Helga say what kind of man Hitler was like?”

“Only the girl he was with saw him. But she did say something quite strange happened soon after Hitler left. The girl fainted dead away in the room she'd used. They thought she was overcome with being with the new dynamic chancellor, and maybe he also had something unique going in a physical and amorous way to have had such an effect on a young pro. They revived her with salts, but she said she couldn't speak about what happened, nor could she work anymore that night. For two days after, all she could speak was gibberish—his stress, his anxieties, how it isn't easy guiding an entire nation and maybe becoming the future number one leader of the world. They got her a doctor, but the third day after she saw Hitler and without allowing herself another man, she really cracked and had to be taken away.”

“She must have been very immature,” I said. “I know I wouldn't let myself go like that if he picked me tonight.”

“You never know. Have you ever had a truly great man?”

“You mean a powerful figure—world famous, like a great artist whose name everybody knows? Once; Johann the tightrope walker.”

“You had him? Out of the air I'd think he'd be ungainly and tense.”

“Sort of. But he's called the best ropewalker in Germany and so maybe the rest of the world, we can say, can we not?”

“We might.”

“Even still, he fell. Two weeks ago—I read it in the paper. Broke both legs and his spine entertaining our troops. He was the most famous man I ever had, and just average in bed. Wanted things done, wouldn't do much, peter out, come back, give him a few wiggles from below and you're done with him. Nothing out of the ordinary. Normal.”

“Maybe that was a bad day for him, or a very good one. Maybe all aerialists and the like only think they have to come to us, but don't do well because they get most of their fulfillment on the ropes and bars. And like our leader, just think of all the tensions they come to you with. Everybody watching them, one false move and so forth, some people even hoping they'll fall because that could be more exciting than just his high-wire walk. But Hitler's problems are much different than any other man's, so I don't want to prejudge him too hard. Though I do think he'll be an experience to make love with just because he is who he is and all those pressures he has to release.”

The cars stopped. “Everyone into the hotel,” an officer said. “Leave your pocketbooks and accessories in the cars.” Soldiers all around—naturally, security was tight. So many flags above the entrance, and the lobby never seemed so clean and bright.

We were led into the dining room. Only now, nobody was there except maybe fifty soldiers on guard. The middle of the room had been cleared except for fourteen chairs in a row for us girls. We were told to sit. A few minutes passed. Then the commanding officer said “Everyone rise.” The soldiers stood at attention, and all the girls rose. The door from the kitchen opened, and out first in front of a group of officers was Hitler, who walked quickly and was in full uniform and knotted tie and holstered pistol and with his hat and swagger stick under one arm, but instead of those riding boots I'd always seen him in photos and newsreels, he wore highly polished black shoes. He walked past us with the commanding officer, as if we were this officer's troops he was inspecting. He was taller than I thought he'd be, and he didn't look well: pale and fleshy in the face and with big bags under his eyes. His hair style and mustache were the same as always, and his paunch and the way his body drooped were no different than most men his age. He also looked a little annoyed, as if with just one glance he knew that none of us were what he'd had in mind and that he was wasting his time here. Then he smiled.

That one,” he said, pointing the stick at Vera, the girl who'd been wanting him since the Putsch. “No good. Sorry, my dear,” he said, sort of bowing, and the officer snapped his fingers and a soldier escorted her out of the room. Vera, who threw her hands to her mouth and screamed in delight when she'd thought she'd been picked, left sobbing. Hitler walked past us all again and kept shaking his head.