The Eighth Dwarf

19

In the dream, Heinrich Himmler was only a meter away. And in the dream it was always raining as Kurt Oppenheimer slowly drew the pistol from the pocket of his SS greatcoat, the belted leather kind; aimed; and squeezed the trigger. Then, in the dream, there was always the business of deciding whether to shout it in Latin or German. Sometimes it was one and sometimes the other, but most of the time it came out in Latin — “Sic semper tyrannis” — just before he squeezed the trigger of the pistol: which he knew would never fire. And it was always about then that Himmler smiled and became someone else. He became Kurt Oppenheimer’s father, who frowned and demanded to know why his son was standing there on the street with no clothes on. After that Kurt Oppenheimer would look down at himself and discover that he was cold and wet and naked. Then he would wake up.

In reality, it had been raining that day in Berlin, and he had been wearing the stolen belted leather SS greatcoat, plus the rest of the uniform of an SS captain, and there had been a pistol in his pocket. A Lüger. He had been standing there in a group of SS officers when Himmler got out of the car.

He and the Reichsführer had looked at each other from less than a meter away. But there had been no shout, and the pistol had remained in the greatcoat’s pocket, because Kurt Oppenheimer had suddenly realized what he had long suspected: that he was afraid to die.

Sometimes when he awoke from the dream, as he did now, lying on the cot in the cellar of the ruined castle near Höchst, Oppenheimer would compare the dream with what had actually happened. In the dream he felt shame. But the shame came from standing naked in front of his father. Had it been shame he felt when he turned away from Himmler, the pistol still unfired in his pocket? No, not shame. The shame happened only in the dream. In reality, there had been that great surge of relief when he realized that he would do no dying that day.

After that January 19 of 1945, the day he had turned away from Himmler, he had also turned away from killing. He had gone back to living in the bombed-out ruins and scrounging food wherever he could. Then there was that air raid in early May. Had it been the last one of the war? He wasn’t sure, because there had been the explosion, he remembered that, and then he remembered very little until he heard the voices debating whether it was worth the effort to dig him out because he was probably already dead.

He had shouted something then, or tried to, and they had dug him out. He was unhurt except for a few scratches. He learned then that the Russians had taken Berlin and that the war was over. He told the men who had dug him out that he was very hungry and thirsty. They gave him some water, but they couldn’t give him any food, because they had none. Nobody had any food, they told him. Nobody but the Russians. If you want food, go see the Russians. Then they had laughed.

But he didn’t seek out the Russians. They were after him, the Russians. Because of the Himmler thing. They had learned about it. How? Well, the Russians had their ways. Now they were combing the city for him. When they found him, they would arrest him and try him for cowardice. He would be found guilty and then they would shoot him. He would suffer a long time before he died.

A part of him always knew that his fears were groundless. This part of him, the mocking part, would stand aside as he cowered in some bombed-out ruin and with biting logic explain all about the irrationality of his fears. Finally, the fears began to go away and depression set in. The mocking part of him was not nearly so adept at dealing with depression. About all that this mocking self could tell him was that he was slightly mad. But then, he already knew that.

Sometimes, however, the depression would immobilize him for days at a time. He would sit, virtually motionless in whatever ruins he happened to find himself in, with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped tightly around them. During these times he would neither sleep nor drink nor eat.

It got better in early June after he killed the rat. He killed it with a stone, skinned it, cooked it, and ate it. For nearly a week after that he lived on rats. They gave him enough strength to go poking about in the destroyed building in which he found himself. In a heap of rubble that once had been a bathroom he discovered a piece of broken mirror and looked at his reflection for the first time in more than a month. He started laughing. It went on for a long time, the laughter, and although at the end it may have turned into a kind of hysteria, when it was all over he felt better. Much better.

In fact, he felt so much better that he dug around in the rubble of what had been the bathroom and found a straight razor, a brush, and a cracked, gilt-embossed shaving mug with just a bit of soap left in its bottom. He walked three blocks to the nearest water, brought back a large tin of it, and shaved off his beard, cutting himself only twice in the process.

He didn’t eat rats after that. Instead, he stole food when he could, and when he wasn’t doing that he wandered aimlessly about Berlin. After a week or so of this he no longer even trembled at the sight of a Russian soldier, although somewhere far deep inside he remained totally convinced that each Russian soldier had orders to arrest him on sight. When his mocking self told him, for at least the hundredth time, that this was madness, he would reply, sometimes aloud, “Well, it just possibly could be true.”

On July 2, 1945, he noticed a group of gawkers standing at a corner, so he joined them, as he nearly always did. The object of the gawkers’ curiosity was a jeep. In it were two American soldiers, obviously lost. They were the first American soldiers that the gawkers had seen, and they belonged to the Second Armored Division, which had finally entered Berlin that morning.

One of the soldiers was a big man of about thirty with flaming red hair. He wore a carefully trimmed pirate’s beard and the stripes of a master sergeant. Next to him, behind the wheel, was another sergeant, a three-striper with smart, bitter eyes and a mouth that snapped open and shut like a purse.

The red-haired Master Sergeant was examining a map. The other Sergeant was smoking a cigarette. He flicked the butt away and watched idly as the gawkers scrambled for it.

“I told you that was the wrong fuckin’ turn,” he said to the Master Sergeant.

“Ask them,” the Master Sergeant said.

“Ask ’em what?”

“Ask if any of these good burghers speak English.”

The three-striper stood up in the jeep. “Any of you fuckers speak English?”

It could have been because he was bored, or because he was curious, or simply that he had never spoken to an American soldier, but Kurt Oppenheimer found himself saying, “I speak English.”

“Git over here, boy,” the three-striper said.

Oppenheimer moved over to the jeep. The man with the red beard examined him with greenish-blue eyes that seemed to be filled with a private kind of laughter.

“We are, I’m afraid, a trifle lost.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“Do you know Berlin?”

“Fairly well.”

“We are trying to get to Dahlem.”

“You’re going in the opposite direction.”

“I told you we took the wrong fuckin’ turn,” the three-striper said.

“You speak very good English,” the red-bearded Sergeant said.

“Thank you.”

“Doesn’t he speak good English?” the red-bearded man said to the Sergeant behind the wheel.

“Like a fuckin’ Limey.”

“We’re going to need someone.”

The three-striper nodded glumly. “Might as well be him.” He stared at Oppenheimer. “Whadda they call you, boy — Hans or Fritz?”

“Hans, I think,” Kurt Oppenheimer said.

“Git in the jeep, Hans; you’re hired.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Sergeant Sherrod,” the red-bearded man said. “My associate here, Pecos Bill—”

“My name ain’t Pecos Bill. I wish to fuck you’d quit callin’ me Pecos Bill. My name is James Robert Packer from Abilene, Texas, and my friends, which you’re gittin’ to be not one of, call me either Jim or J.R. — I don’t give a shit which, as long as it’s not Jim Bob or Jimmy Bobby; but you can even call me that, long as you quit callin’ me Pecos Bill.”

“You through?”

“I’m through.”

“Good.” Sergeant Sherrod turned back to Oppenheimer. “Pecos Bill here and I are in need of a guide, interpreter, and dog robber. Are you familiar with the expression dog robber?”

“No.”

“It means factotum.”

“Servant.”

“Not quite,” Sergeant Sherrod said, “but close. Americans don’t have servants. They have hired hands, the girl who lives in, mother’s helpers, and maids, but seldom servants. The British have servants; the Americans have help. A subtle distinction which I think we need explore no further, at least for the moment.”

“Oh, Lordy, how long’s this shit gonna go on?” Sergeant Packer asked nobody in particular.

“You were never a Nazi, were you, Hans?” Before Oppenheimer could reply, Sergeant Sherrod continued. “An idle question, I realize, but in recent months Pecos Bill here and I have inquired of perhaps three hundred citizens of the Reich whether they were ever members of the Nazi Party, and to a man, they have declared that they were not. This leads one to the interesting question of who’s been minding the store these past few years.”

“I am a Jew,” Oppenheimer said.

Sergeant Sherrod grinned. “Another rare species. If you agree to work for us, Hans, you’ll be paid in cigarettes. You can fatten yourself up on U.S. Army rations, and we can probably scrounge you some different clothes, which although not stylish, will be somewhat better than the rags and tatters that you’re now wearing. Well, sir, what do you say?”

“You’re quite serious, aren’t you?” Oppenheimer said.

“Totally.”

“I accept.”

“Git in, boy,” Sergeant Packer said.

The gawkers watched glumly as Oppenheimer climbed into the back of the jeep. As they drove off, the red-bearded Master Sergeant turned and offered Oppenheimer a Pall Mall. It was with a luxurious sense of well-being that Oppenheimer accepted a light and drew the smoke down into his lungs.

“How much are American cigarettes bringing on the black market, Hans?” Sergeant Sherrod asked.

“I have no idea.”

“That, I think, will be your first assignment,” the red-bearded man said with a smile. “To find out”

During the next few weeks Oppenheimer learned that the two American Sergeants had one simple objective: to make $50,000 each on the Berlin black market. He also learned that they both knew exactly what they would do with the money.

Sergeant Packer was going to buy a certain ranch with his, just outside of Abilene. The Sergeant, who had taken a liking to Oppenheimer and occasionally referred to him as “a pretty good little old Jew boy,” often described the ranch in loving detail. The descriptions were so graphic that it became almost as real to Oppenheimer as his own former home in Frankfurt. Sometimes, in his dreams, the two places became blurred.

But Oppenheimer took more than a dream from Sergeant Packer. He also took from him his accent and his detailed knowledge of the city of Abilene, Texas. Both, Oppenheimer felt, might prove useful someday, although he wasn’t at all sure how.

The red-bearded Master Sergeant’s dreams were of a somewhat different nature. Before enlisting in the Army, Sergeant Sherrod had been an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. Twice he had turned down a battlefield commission. His postwar dreams were clearly mapped out — provided he reached his $50,000 black-market goal.

“With half of it, I intend to buy oceanfront lots,” he sometimes told Oppenheimer. “I don’t care much which ocean, as long as it’s warm — Spain, Southern California, Florida, Hawaii, and maybe even the Caribbean will do. The remaining twenty-five thousand I intend to plunk into something called IBM, which is a stock I am convinced will make spectacular gains during the next few years. Then, after a few more years of penury in Academe, I will be able to tell the world to go fuck itself — to use one of Pecos Bill’s more graphic expressions.”

“You know what he is, don’t cha, Hans?” Sergeant Packer said.

Oppenheimer shook his head. “No. What?”

“He’s a fuckin’ Communist, that’s what.”

“Are you, Sergeant?”

The red-bearded man smiled. “A renegade Marxist perhaps, but scarcely a Communist. There’s a difference, you know.”

“Yes,” Oppenheimer said. “I know.”

By the time the Russians were given the plates, the two Sergeants had made perhaps $5,000 each, mostly from cigarettes whose sales Oppenheimer had negotiated in the thriving black market that had sprung up in the Tiergarten.

“I don’t understand,” Sergeant Packer had said. “You mean to say we just gave those fuckers the plates to print up their own money?”

“Exactly. Our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Morgenthau, seems to believe that nothing is too good for our gallant Russian allies, including the privilege of printing their own money, which we, of course, eventually will have to redeem. From what I understand, the Russians intend to pay off their troops with it.”

“You mean it’s gonna be good money?”

“Just as sound as the occupation marks that we print. Naturally, the Russians are wise enough to issue one proviso. Their troops will have to spend the money in Germany, not in Russia.”

“You know something?” Sergeant Packer said thoughtfully. “Some of those old Russian boys ain’t been paid in two-three years.”

“More, in some instances,” said Oppenheimer.

“Now, just what item would they like to spend all that lovely money on, Hans?” Sergeant Sherrod said.

“Watches,” Oppenheimer said promptly. “In Russian villages there is often only one man who is rich enough to own a watch. A watch is a symbol of considerable substance.”

“You mean to say everybody has to go see this one old boy just to find out what time it is?” Sergeant Packer said, obviously shocked.

“Well, there are clocks, I suppose.”

“How much are they paying for watches, Hans?” the red-bearded Sergeant asked.

“It varies. But it’s somewhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars.”

“But if all these old Russian boys’re gonna be paid all at once,” Sergeant Packer said, “then the price for watches is gonna go up, right?”

“The inexorable law of supply and demand, which I’ve been scoffing at for years,” Sergeant Sherrod said, “will again go into operation. Our problem is supply. Where are watches plentiful?”

“Switzerland,” Oppenheimer said.

“Ah, but how does one get into and out of Switzerland undetected with a suitcase full of watches?”

“It can be done.”

Sergeant Sherrod stared at Oppenheimer carefully. “Could you do it?”

“Yes.”

“For some reason,” Sergeant Sherrod said, “I thought that you might.”

Carrying $5,000 in U.S. currency taped to his stomach, Oppenheimer used the same routes and the same crossing into Switzerland near Singen that he had used during the war. Nothing was changed now, except that it was easier.

In Zurich, he bought one hundred wristwatches a few at a time from different dealers. Most of the watches had black faces with sweep second hands, and all of them had easily removable backs. The Russians liked to open their watches up and examine their insides. They also liked to count the jewels. A few dabs of fingernail polish would increase the number of jewels in each watch that Oppenheimer bought from seventeen to twenty-one.

Back in Berlin, the three men fed the black-faced watches slowly to the Russians. They became such highly prized items that the last five sold for $1,500 each. The two Americans’ total profit, less expenses, amounted to $97,500. They sent the money back to the States in the form of postal money orders, never more than $1,000 at a time. Less than a week after they sent the final $1,000, the Army woke up to what was going on and clamped down. But by then, Sergeant Packer had bought his 640-acre ranch, and Master-Sergeant Sherrod had bought his first 100 shares of stock in International Business Machines and was negotiating by mail for three beachfront lots in Malibu.

Kurt Oppenheimer’s share amounted to $10,000, which he took in the form of cigarettes. In Berlin in 1945 he discovered that he was a very rich man. He also discovered something else while occasionally answering Sergeant Sherrod’s Headquarters Company telephone. He discovered that he was usually mistaken for an American.

It was while pondering this information one evening in a café on the Kurfürstendamm that he spotted the Gauleiter from Bavaria. The Gauleiter’s name was Jaschke, and during the war he had ranked high on the death list of Oppenheimer’s long-destroyed organization. The Gauleiter had made it a point to cleanse his district of Jews. By 1943, not one was left. All 1,329 of them — men, women, and children — were either dead or in concentration camps. The Gauleiter, Oppenheimer remembered, had been given some sort of commendation.

Oppenheimer followed Jaschke from the café. On a dark street, he accosted the Gauleiter with “Your name is Jaschke.”

“No, it is not. You are mistaken. My name is Richter.”

As in the dream about Himmler, Oppenheimer slowly drew the Lüger from a pocket of his raincoat and aimed it as Jaschke. “Your name is Jaschke,” he repeated, wondering what would happen next.

“No, no, you are wrong. See, I have proof.” Jaschke reached for his inside coat pocket, and Kurt Oppenheimer squeezed the trigger of the Lüger. He was slightly surprised when the pistol fired, and even more so when most of the top of Jaschke’s head seemed to explode.

Oppenheimer turned and walked away. He had been wondering what to do with his newly acquired black-market wealth and now he knew. It was very much like having an avocation and the leisure to pursue it. He would again seek out those who needed killing and kill them. You are quite mad, you know, he was promptly informed by the old, familiar mocking self whom he had not heard from in several months.

“Yes, I know,” Kurt Oppenheimer replied, and after a few more steps realized that he had said it aloud.