The Losing Role (2 page)

“You can come out. You’re in good hands,” shouted an
officer from the doorway. The accent was educated High
German—Hanover, most likely.

“With those guns trained on us?” Max said,
chuckling. “My good fellow, show us some civility.” A flashlight
hit him in the eyes, but he didn’t flinch. He’d had worse
lighting.

“Very well.” The officer waved for his men to lower
their guns.

The farm girls came out first, clasping their hands
together in thanks. Max relit candles for a better look at the
soldiers. They were Waffen-SS—the standard combat SS, but this was
no frontline unit. At least they weren’t those Special Police
bastards, or the Gestapo. Still, they had brand-new gear like those
bastards. They shot smiles at the farm girls. Max pulled back, out
of the light.

“What’s the special occasion?” one of Max’s
sergeants said.

The officer who’d called them out was a captain. He
strode down the aisle wearing a tailored, shiny leather overcoat.
Max hadn’t seen such fine costume in a long time. The captain had a
passable henchman’s look, but his jowls were flabby and his eyes
too soft. He stopped halfway down, putting himself in the middle of
the scene, and studied the worn, tired faces. He pulled his gloves
off and slapped them in an open palm. Now that was better, Max
thought.

“So. Who’s in charge?” the captain said.

“Maybe you could tell us?” one of Max’s other
sergeants said. “Sir.”

The captain wagged a finger. “Don’t you worry. We’ll
get you right back to your regiment so you can keep up the fight.”
He shook a fist and showed his teeth. “That’s right,
Kameraden
, we’ll push those Bolshevik bastards all the way
to the Orient!”

Such poor material—it was straight from propaganda
section. Heads were down now. “‘The Orient,’ he says,” someone
grunted.

“First things first.” The captain pulled a file from
his map case and read. He cleared his throat and said in a
monotone, as if doing a casting call, “I am looking for a man, and
his name would be . . . Kaspar, or perhaps ‘von’ Kaspar?”

The word ‘von’ meant a noble background. The
soldiers and farm girls gaped at each other. Max had never told
this group his old stage name. Some were chuckling now.

The captain eyed Max. “First name, Maximilian?”

The group gathered nearer the stage, perhaps to
protect Max, perhaps to get a closer look. The whole room was
looking to him. He had sat back down, on the edge of the stage. His
head felt heavy and he let it hang. This performance was over, show
closed.

“This fine fellow right here is none other than
Corporal Max Kaspar.” It was one of the farm girls talking,
practically shouting in her Eastern German. “Oh, you don’t
recognize him now, not like this—some sorry, worn-out, aging
footslogger, aye, but he was a grand performer once. The toast of
New York City he was.”

“Well, not exactly,” Max muttered, “maybe I was
laying it on a little thick.”

The captain held up a promo still from 1940
Berlin—Max in tuxedo and top hat, flanked by dancing girls.

“That’s him! And our leaders are such good judges of
talent, they went and made this man a corporal in the infantry,”
added a third sergeant (using one of Max’s own favorite lines).

“He dances! Sings! Impersonates!” It was the first
sergeant, sounding like Max’s press agent. “You want it, our Kaspar
has it, from opera to cabaret, drama to comedy . . .”

The captain held up a hand. He looked to Max. “Your
name is Kaspar. In New York you called yourself Maximilian von
Kaspar.”

Max let out a sigh. “True story. Too true.”

“I must say, you’ve been harder to find than toilet
paper out here.”

“Nothing is so hard,” Max said. “So. Where are you
taking me?”

“Why, we’re taking you back where you belong. Where
else?”

They had little time to say goodbye. Max squared his
shoulders, set his chin high, and strode up the aisle as the old
gang lined his way. “It’s a special call from above,” said one.
“Look, it could be your great comeback,” said another. They said it
slowly, mechanically, the way you tell a child the trip to the
dentist will be fun. They shook his hands. They hugged him. The
women kissed him. One gave him the tongue. What a wench. He loved
that about wenches.

At the top of the aisle, he pivoted to face them.
“It was an honor to play for you,” he said and gave a long and slow
bow, one arm outstretched. No need to be too grim. After all, they
were the ones who had to stay. It was the way the world worked. One
day you’re down, and the next? “Breaking a leg,” as the Americans
said. If he had any luck left at all.

Outside, the captain escorted Max to the rear of a
late-model Horch command car. The seats were leather and almost
warm. Feeling cheeky, Max asked for a blanket, and to his surprise
they gave him one. He draped it over his shoulders like a cloak.
Before they sped away, rain started to fall, tapping at the fabric
roof. The driver handed him a cigarette. It was a rare French
Gauloises, made it all the way to the Eastern Front, rich and full
of life.

Max smoked and sat back and thought of lovely Anka.
He looked out the window—and saw her. She had returned to the
group, who were gathering in the doorway of the theater. She was
with one of the sergeants now, inserting herself inside his
overcoat, rubbing at his ribs, and laughing. It made sense, Max
thought. His Anka had probably run into that SS captain and pointed
him in the right direction. She could have made a play for Max,
told them she just had to be with him, but she’d placed her bets on
a warm sergeant and a shot at more horsemeat. Smart girl, Max
thought. Sensible. Can’t teach what she’s got. The sad fact was,
comebacks were a lost art these days, and his needy Anka knew it.
Then again, he thought, chuckling, she should have seen him do that
Rodgers and Hart number.

Two

The SS captain had orders to put Max on a train for
Bavaria. The problem was finding the right train, since it was high
season for full retreat on the Eastern Front. For a night and a day
Max’s SS escorts traveled the countryside in search of rail lines,
crossings, stations. In better times it might have made a fine
motoring tour. The low green hills shimmered in the late fall sun.
A rocky stream rushed alongside the road, foaming white. Max kept
his blanket draped over his lap. The captain’s men brought him hot
food and schnapps and played cards with him. And Max vowed to keep
this damn good thing going as long as he could.

In the middle of the night, they stopped at an
abandoned mansion. The usual scavengers—passing troops and forced
laborers on the lam—had cleaned out the food and liquor; but in an
antique armoire Max discovered riding boots, jodhpurs, a corduroy
blazer, a lambswool sweater, and a floppy upper-class hiker’s hat.
He put all this on. In the mirror he saw a cultured German
impersonating an English gentleman, the very look he’d given
himself before the army. He would wear his finery the rest of the
way. He even took an ivory-handled cane with him. The captain had
no objections and let Max keep his worn field gray-green uniform in
a rucksack. The men played along by calling him “
Mein Herr
,”
as if they were seeing off a rich and eccentric uncle for an
adventurous trip abroad from which he’d have many interesting
stories. They lent him a leather overcoat like the captain’s. And
Max played it up all the more. He had a shave with warm water and
left a pencil thin mustache like the one he had in America. As they
toured on, he told himself he was over his farm girl Anka. Had she
really almost talked him into deserting? Wait out the war in a
refugee camp and then score a little farm? Nonsense. Crazy girls
put crazy ideas in your head. The war put crazy ideas in your head.
Her new sergeant was probably dead already.

They ended up at another mansion. At dawn the
captain invited Max out on the veranda where they draped their fine
overcoats over their shoulders, drank coffee, and smoked as if this
place was the captain’s country villa and a real war was his future
hope and not a daily nightmare far out of control. The captain told
Max his name was Pielau—Adalbert von Pielau.

“I am a real ‘von,’
Herr
‘von’ Kaspar,” the
captain said and sighed. “These days, I mostly leave the ‘von’ off.
Some see the noble background as a weakness. I never imagined it
possible.”

“They’re just envious,” Max said. “We all want what
we don’t have, isn’t that so?” The coffee was perking him up. He
tapped his cane on the veranda slate, two pops. “Now, good von
Pielau, if I may, how about you telling me what they’re to do with
me.”

Pielau smiled. Max had asked the captain’s men this
many times. They’d only shrugged. They were on a top-secret job,
they said.

“When the SS comes looking for you,” Max said, “it
can mean a tight spot.”

“Or, something great, something honorable. Don’t
forget that.”

“It has to do with performing?” Max said. “I mean,
what else am I good for? Maybe it’s the Troops Entertainment
Section, give our boys a good show. That’s the only way you’ll see
me back at the front, I can tell you—in stage makeup.” This last
bit was pushing it, despite the sugar coating. He had to gauge
Pielau’s SS principles.

The captain’s flabby jowls had stiffened. He moved
to the edge of the veranda and glanced around to make sure no one
was listening. He whispered, “Here’s the thing, Kaspar. If I knew
more myself, I think I could confide in you. Believe me, I want to
survive as much as you.”

Max took the captain’s disclosure for one of those
tricks of implied meaning. The playwrights called it subtext, but
regular Germans had perfected the art in the last ten years. It
required a response of equal measure.

Max walked to the edge of the veranda. “If I were in
your boots,” he whispered, “I’d get as far from the Russians as you
can. Get to the Western Front. You’re a nobleman, right? With
contacts? Get nearer to the Americans. And for devil’s sake, when
the end comes don’t be wearing that uniform with an SS death skull
on the collar. The Americans will take it literally.”

When the end comes, Max had said—when the war was
lost, was his subtext. Did Pielau get it? Or was Max merely
projecting his own hopes?

Pielau’s face had lost color. “Let’s not talk
rashly. There are many ways to survive. Victory is the best
way.”

“Of course, yes,” Max blurted and let out a nervous
chuckle. “Who’s talking rash, my good man?” He patted Pielau on the
back. Pielau chuckled and offered Max another of his Gauloises.

That afternoon they crossed from what used to be
Poland into Germany. In a town called Görlitz, Pielau found Max a
passenger train west. On the platform, the locomotive pumped steam
as people pushed their children and elderly into the packed cars.
Pielau issued Max his papers. He saluted Max first, though Max was
only a corporal. “With any luck, we’ll meet again,” he told
Max.

Still in his fine clothes, Max climbed into a
passenger car and muscled his way through to a cramped spot in the
passageway. He sat on his rucksack, his head pressed up against the
cold window. At least he had a window for the night. For long dark
hours he slept sitting up, nodding off and jerking awake, as the
car rocked and the tracks clicked, and the train stopped for
problems he did not want to know. In the morning, he barely
recognized Germany. Along the horizon, towers and spires he’d known
had vanished. Barrels of black smoke spiraled up into the sky, and
the air was peppery with soot.

Traveling into Nuremberg was like passing through a
rock quarry. Once splendid medieval streets were rubble piles of
gray and black. Seeing this, the elderly couple next to Max cried.
The main train station was such a ruin that the armed forces
check-in post was a tent outside. Max reported here. A teenage
clerk issued him pea soup from the field kitchen and a truck ride
to Grafenwöhr.

Grafenwöhr. Any German with the slightest military
Bildung
knew this massive training complex between Nuremberg
and the Czech border. At least it wasn’t a concentration camp, Max
thought. His truck was packed with fifteen or more soldiers from
all branches of service. They straightened for Max when he climbed
in wearing his fine getup. They probably think I’m a producer, he
thought. In no time he’d be telling them he was only an army
corporal, and he hoped they could see the sad irony in that.

During the bumpy ride the men sounded upbeat, if not
thankful, and it kept Max’s confidence high. Most in the truck had
volunteered, he learned—they were responding to an urgent armed
forces-wide request for English-speaking personnel, and that was
all they knew. Hearing this, Max let himself feel somewhat honored
that the powers-at-be had come looking for him. And they all had so
much in common in the truck! There were other actors, a dancer,
musicians, a chef, headwaiters, a playwright, and even a
screenwriter. A few had been merchant sailors before the war. Two
of the sailors smoked large curved pipes.

Like Max, most all these men had been to
America.

They rolled into Grafenwöhr at dusk, passing rows of
army barracks shaded purple from the sun going down. The compound
had perimeter fences as if for POWs. “That’s for secrecy,” someone
chanted. “Right. It’s for our safety,” another said, and they
nodded in agreement. At the front gate they poked their heads out
and joked with the guards, but the guards only stared back as if
deaf or zombies (straight from
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
,
Max thought).

The trucks left them on a parade ground lit up with
bright spotlights, and even Max had to shield his eyes from the
light. Another truckload had already arrived. The men huddled in
groups, mostly according to branch of service, and sat on crates
that seemed to have been set out for them, the beams of white light
illuminating their steamy breath. A group of Luftwaffe noncoms
played Skat. A circle of medics passed around music magazines. An
army private was juggling turnips, alone. He managed four, then
five, and then added his knife into the mix. Around his neck he
wore an orange scarf that was a little too bright and long. His
hair flopped over his ears, longer than many women’s. A real seedy
cabaret type, this one. What sort of production was this to be? Max
wondered. Could it be vaudeville? Not so bad there. He would be
returning to his roots. Still, that didn’t explain the sailors and
chefs.