The Losing Role (18 page)

It was too late. The summer of 1939 was approaching
and the scene was set—Germans in America were either bad Nazis or
hopeless Jews. Max didn’t look like a Jew. “So play a general or a
spy,” his agent told him, “that’s the way it’s been and the way
it’s gonna be for a while. Except in Hollywood. It has to be in
Hollywood, Max.”

Max stood his ground. New York City was the reason
he came, and Lucy Cage was the reason he was staying. What else was
there? He still had a hovel of an apartment on the Lower East Side,
a small rectangle five stories up with one window facing the inner
courtyard. Children cried nonstop. The elevated trains rumbled and
clicked. To tell the weather he had to stick his head out the
window and look up through the iron steps and railings of the fire
escape. How many rides home had he declined so people wouldn’t have
to see how he lived?

One day, Lucy Cage picked up and left. She left Max
this note:

I’m heading to California, Maxie. I’ll be getting
more work there, and you can bet I’ll be seeing more sunshine. I’m
sorry. I wish it could have worked out better for us, you know?

Love,

Your Luce

She might have been sorry, but she didn’t even leave
an address.

For weeks, then months, Max slept well into the day.
He stopped looking for roles and started drinking rye whiskey like
the tough guys did in the movies. Once he passed a prostitute who
resembled his Luce and considered paying her to call him Maxie in
her New York accent. But rye was overrated and so was sleeping
late. One day, he began to snap out of it.

He didn’t belong anywhere, but he was from
somewhere. Was going back to Germany such a bad thing? After all,
he was a German. So what if Germany was fascist? Many Americans
admired fascism. Businessmen told him the fascist movement seemed a
prudent and dynamic product of the modern age. Besides, who could
appreciate the trains running on time better than an American? What
better mirror of the efficient corporation than the resolute
fascist state? Who else better represented the bold and decisive
fascist leader than George Washington himself? Lots of Americans
seemed to think so. Fritz Kuhn and the German American Bund thought
so—they held a rally that filled Madison Square Garden, and who
else should preside three stories high on the stage backdrop,
between the stars and stripes and swastika, than that primeval
All-American who could not tell a lie? For a time, American Nazism
was more of an evolutionary certainty than many would care to admit
by 1939.

Max was not political. He never had been. He was
only seeing things for what they were, and the way things were
going in Europe, he might not have another chance in a long time to
make the jump. Hitler had annexed Austria. Then, he’d gone back on
his word and taken all of Czechoslovakia even though he’d promised
England and France he’d do no such thing. Max didn’t blame Hitler
for this. Of course, the little Austrian would overdo things in his
first years of power. That was the way power worked, at first. Then
he’d drink his tea and calm down.

Meanwhile, Max’s auditions had dwindled to none.
Hollywood wasn’t an option anymore either, his agent told him on
their last meeting—the place was now full of German speakers
playing bad Nazis. Then his agent left town and hit California
himself.

Max shrugged it off, best he could. He began talking
to women again. A string of dime-a-dance gals kept him amused. He
got a job as an elevator operator in a bank building. He heard
American accents all day and perfected his American English in a
frenzied rush.

In the back of his mind, he knew he was going
back—and it wasn’t back to Manchester.
Überall ist es besser, wo
wir nicht sind
—“the grass is always greener,” went the old
saying in English.

One day an upper-class German man entered his
elevator, and they struck up a conversation. The man said he was
from the German embassy—a cultural attaché, he said. He invited Max
to a nearby bar, and one drink became three.

Max was privileged this way, he knew. Most émigrés
couldn’t and wouldn’t talk to embassy people. It felt nice to enjoy
privilege. Max told the man everything. He loved America but it
didn’t love him back. He might have made a big mistake.

The man twirled the whisky in his glass and held it
to his chest. He stared at Max a long while, peering into Max until
the whisky was motionless, a straight brown line parallel to his
manicured fingers. “In that case, you’d have to go back before it
was too late,” the man said. “Wouldn’t you? And what’s stopping
you? The Jews had ruled German show business, and now they’ve all
left. There’s a great hole there. An opportunity. Think about it.
You go back, make a real name for yourself. Return a hero to
America someday if you like. This is the way to do it. So you think
about that,
Herr
von Kaspar—or simply Kaspar if you
like.”

“I like. Maybe I like.”

The man from the embassy frequented Max’s elevator
many times over the next weeks. The embassy would even cover Max’s
fare, the man told him. It was the least they could do for the
serious-minded artist who appreciated the aesthetic opportunities
in the new Fatherland.

“Times were changing, and you had to change with
them,” the man said.

August 1939. The subtropical heat was back. During
these, his last days in America, Max wandered all over Manhattan as
he had when he first arrived, taking it all in. The streets were
hot and muggy like a steam, and he had to press his handkerchief to
his neck to keep the sweat from soaking his last good shirt. He
hoped he would run into Lucy. Maybe she hadn’t really gone to
California. Maybe he wasn’t really going back.

Before he knew it he was aboard an ocean liner,
which seemed too familiar, as if those eight years and change had
only been days. This time, heading out of port, there was no fog or
clouds. The sky was a crystal blue and the sun glared. This time
Max saw the Statue of Liberty, shining jade green. They passed so
close he could spot the tourists waving goodbye.

In the bar he had a rye, for old time’s sake.
Polishing glasses, the Irish bartender asked him how he liked
America. Max told him:

“Funny you should ask me this. Because you know what
I’ve realized? Everything I saw—the clothes, food, newspapers, door
handles, drugstores, what have you—was different from what I knew
growing up in Germany. But it was that way
precisely—precisely—because they wanted it to be. And this was the
very point. Why should they be like us? Do you know?”

“I’m afraid I do,” the bartender had said, and then
he’d poured Max another rye even though Max hadn’t ordered one. Max
drank it down, his hand trembling.

“Your American English, it’s grand,” the bartender
had said.

“
Danke
,” Max had said.

Sixteen

“I’m going to try
to make it back there,” Max said. He and Felix were still camped
out on the bed, but the wind had started to rush through the
fire-scorched house. They’d pulled their knees to their chests,
hugging themselves.

Felix stared with his thin lips pursed. “You’re
deserting,” he said. “That’s what you’re telling me.” Of course,
Felix knew of his plan. He’d known all along.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Max said. “I’ve had
it.”

Felix nodded, in the dark.

“America spit me out because I let it,” Max added.
“I see that now. I didn’t understand what was possible there.
Anything is possible there, really. I probably began to realize
this even before the ship put me back in Hamburg. Only later did I
begin to understand that America in this sense—this promise of the
possible—can happen anywhere. One must simply keep striving. One
must not lie back down.”

“So it’s a state of mind. A worldview. That’s rather
romantic.”

“Perhaps. I suspect we’re more ‘American’ than most
Americans, you and I.”

A wolf was howling, from deep in the woods. Max told
himself it was a wolf because he hated to imagine it a lost dog.
Too often Max had wondered about the animals. How did they survive
in war? Cities were being bombed. Food was scarce. All able men
were called up. Yet zoos had cages and locks. Such thoughts
horrified him. In war one had to keep the imagination hemmed in.
And yet this was exactly how you lost your soul in war—by losing
the capacity to imagine.

“Look, I’m going to make it easy on you,” Felix
said. “Just walk away.”

Max stared. “What are you going to do?”

“I never got my munitions depot, did I?” Felix said.
“Better yet, maybe I’ll stumble upon a general. Farther north is a
town called Spa. There’s an American divisional headquarters.”

Max had suspected something like this. It didn’t
mean he couldn’t try to prevent it. “That’s to the northwest, in
the opposite direction. It would be against orders. We—you—are
supposed to return.”

“Then what? Reassigned? Slog on with the old men and
boys? Cut down in the snow with the rest of the mob? That’s all
that’s left. Our monocle-wearing generals are hardly romantics.
Plus, you heard that MP—
Ami
Counter Intelligence is out here
looking for us. No, there’s no way I’m sticking to this
sector.”

“So you’re the fanatic. The true believer.”

“Perhaps. I want to go out in a rage of glory, as
the Americans say.”

“It’s ‘blaze of glory’—for once, I get to correct
you.” They shared a laugh. “You can have the jeep,” Max said. “I’ve
had enough jeep for a lifetime.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Take the radio, too. I won’t need it.”

“All right.”

“I’ll wait a few hours—till early morning.”

“Splendid.”

As always, Felix had been one step ahead. While Max
was asleep, Felix split up their supplies. He was keeping the
money, even though it was counterfeit and easy to spot under
scrutiny. He gave Max the rations.

“Won’t need food where I’m heading,” he said.

He offered to shave off Max’s mustache. The water
was freezing, but his gentle touch made up for it. There wasn’t so
much as a nick.

“I told you I was here to help,” he said.

Together, they scraped the Confederate flag off the
hood. “Why did you stick around so long?” Felix said. “I mean
really. You had your chances.”

“Shame? A
Kamerad
’s bond? I thought I could
help you first—you and Zoock. Then I’d go.”

Felix made a tsk-tsk sound. “You got sentimental.
That’s a romantic’s curse.”

“I suppose so. I was also scared. And, I still
am.”

Four o’clock in the morning. After a couple shaky
attempts at sleep, Max was ready. He had his overcoat buttoned to
the top and two knapsacks crisscrossing his shoulders. Felix
insisted he take a tommy gun—for authenticity’s sake, he said.

“Rattner might have killed me,” Max said. “He might
have got us all killed. Truly, I’m indebted.”

“Nonsense.” Felix pressed something into Max’s hand.
It was one of the poison lighters. For Felix, Max smiled and slid
the thing into a breast pocket. Felix placed his own into his
breast pocket.

“So.
Der Vorhang hebt sich
,” Max said—“And
so, the curtain rises . . .”

Felix pulled Max’s scarf tight around his neck, to
better hide Max’s SS uniform underneath his American tunic and
overcoat. He pulled up Max’s overcoat collar around it. “In another
time? We might have made a good team, you and I. Grander souls
would have seen the brilliance in pairing us together.”

“On stage? I would have liked that very much,” Max
said.

“What the hell. Break a leg,” Felix said in
English.

“
Hals- und Beinbruch
,” Max countered—the
equivalent in German.

“I won’t give you away,
Herr
von Kaspar.”

“Nor me you.”

Max gave his odd friend a little bow, and then a
hug, and he was off, out into the expiring night. He trekked across
a snowy field, clambered over a short rock wall and, checking his
compass, entered the woods.

When the fire-scorched house was far behind him,
well out of sight, he tossed the poison lighter far and high up
into the trees. It knocked and clattered between branches, and was
sure to land in the soft white snow without a sound.

Seventeen

The snow fell in heavy curtains, a white shroud that
brought nature to a standstill. Fog evaporated. Wind ceased. The
crows fled. By dawn all was white, and Max broke new snow
traversing roads, fields, and woods. At times the snow reached his
knees, yet it was powdery and resisted little. He saw humans only
once—he’d emerged from woods to discover an American command car
coasting downhill, tossing up the soft powder like a snowplow. As
it passed, GIs stared from the turret with pale exhausted faces.
They were coasting to save gas and didn’t dare stop. And that was
it. Max was alone. Free. The armies of Allies and Axis appeared to
have vanished from his path.

His plan was to trek westward around the north side
of Malmedy and on to the Meuse River. He had a long way to go. He
had to pace himself. An hour after daybreak he stopped to rest.
Within minutes his cold wet feet began to cramp up; he couldn’t
feel his toes, and the sweat under his wool chilled to ice water.
Then a hunger started low in his stomach, piercing like
indigestion, but he couldn’t touch his rations, or they would never
last. When he started up again, he began to lose confidence in his
judgment. At one point he was certain he’d traveled in a circle, so
he disregarded his compass and chose a direction on instinct—which
really did lead him in a circle. After that he kept his compass
pressed inside his fist, checking it every quarter mile. The
thicker the flakes, the slower they fell. The snow hid everything.
What if he was traipsing through minefields? Or right into a
checkpoint of Military Police?