Up in Honey's Room

Seven

They came out the side door from the kitchen, Jurgen saying, “I told him you’ll go mad and run away if you aren’t let out of the house.”

“The confinement is worse than the camp,” Otto said, “Walter so afraid someone will recognize us. I don’t see how it’s possible from the photos in the post office.”

“I told him you want to see what our bombers have been doing.”

“What I want,” Otto said, “desperately, is to leave this place and find something to do until the war ends. And I would like to speak German, which you refuse to do, you have become so American.”

“You talk to Madi and Rudi.”

“Yes, about chickens.”

“Ride in front with Walter, he loves to speak German.”

“Walter doesn’t converse, he makes speeches. He says the greatest all-out attack in the history of modern warfare, the Ardennes Offensive, was stopped. What they call the Battle of the Bulge. Yes, we were pushed back, but it does not mean we are defeated.”

Jurgen picked it up saying, “Not as long as the fire of National Socialism burns within us.”

“Walter says ‘burns within our breast.’”

“He thinks we might want to see an exhibit of war souvenirs at Hudson’s, a department store downtown.”

“Guns and samurai swords?”

“The usual stuff Americans bring home to show they were in the war. Or what they bought off someone if they weren’t. Helmets with bullet holes. Maybe you’ll see your Iron Cross the Yank took from you. Walter said he’ll drop us off and pick us up in a couple of hours. You know by now,” Jurgen said, “Walter’s a coward. His claim to fame, he looks like Himmler.”

“And takes himself seriously,” Otto said. “He snaps on his pince-nez he becomes the lunatic’s twin brother. Walter is as mad as Heinrich but not as naughty. He wants so desperately to be a real Nazi and I can’t help him.” Otto said, “Jurgen, I have to get away from this place.”

They walked to the back of the house, Otto in his new double-breasted gray suit, his homburg cocked at a conservative angle, the suit and hat Walter’s gifts to him. Jurgen wore a tweed jacket that had cost Walter thirty-nine dollars, the felt hat he got for six-fifty.

There he was by the car, gunmetal gray shining hot in the sun, the Ford sedan always polished. What Jurgen was wondering as they approached the car, how he might get a duplicate key to the ignition. Though in an emergency he could hot-wire it.

From Farmington, in Saturday small-town traffic, Walter turned onto Grand River Avenue, telling them in German the road was a straight line southeast to downtown Detroit, twenty-two miles to Woodward Avenue and the J.L. Hudson Company. From the backseat Jurgen looked out at miles of farmland, pastures, and planted fields not yet showing a crop, the Ford rolling along at thirty-five miles an hour. Gradually there was more to see, filling stations and a few stores, now used-car lots as they passed Eight Mile Road, the city limits, while Walter explained meat rationing to Otto, in German.

Jurgen was thinking that if Otto insisted on leaving, he should go with him, keep him out of trouble, if that was possible. Or, if he wanted to go, let him, and stop worrying about him. But first, at least try to convince him he should stay here to wait out the war. He did hear what Walter was telling Otto when he stopped thinking and paid attention.

How the United States produced 25 million pounds of meat a year, the armed forces and their allies, England and Russia, getting eight million pounds of it, leaving 17 million pounds for the 121 million meat eaters in America, and it amounted to two and a half pounds a week for each meat eater, counting a child and a person who was ill as half a meat eater. Walter said, “The motto butchers must live by is ‘Sell it or smell it.’ Meat goes bad. If you hold out meat for good customers and they don’t come in? Throw it away. You have to sell meat on the basis of first come, first served. But if we have enough meat that everyone in America can have two and a half pounds a week, why are there meat shortages? Because when German U-boats torpedo and sink ships carrying meat, hundreds of thousands of pounds of it going to the war in Europe, they then have to send more. And where do they get it? From the seventeen million pounds meant for butcher shops and I put a sign in my window no meat today. The government won’t reveal that German U-boats caused the meat shortage, it’s a military secret. It becomes a mystery to the meat eaters. They cry and complain ‘Why is there no meat for us? Why are we giving our meat to the Russians?’”

He told Otto, “Go to a high-class restaurant or a nightclub and order a steak. Don’t faint when I say it will cost you as much as seven dollars. You believe people will pay that much for a porterhouse steak? They do, because so many are making money working in war plants. Some of them eat out three times a day. You can buy black market meat almost anywhere. A chuck roast with a ceiling price of thirty-one cents a pound? Maybe you pay seventy-five cents a pound if you must have it. Pay the price, you don’t have to give the butcher stamps from your ration book. People don’t think buying black market meat is a bad thing to do. It was the same during Prohibition, people drank illegal alcohol because it wasn’t the business of the government if they drank or not.”

Jurgen said, “What happens if you get caught selling meat on the black?”

He saw Walter look at his rearview mirror.

“The government penalizes you, makes you stop doing business for a time, thirty days, sixty days. If they want, they can put you out of business until the war is over.”

Walter spoke to Otto in German, to Jurgen in English.

He brought them all the way on Grand River Avenue, stopped for the light at Woodward where downtown was waiting for them: crowds crossing both ways in front of the car, people waiting at the curb for buses, in safety zones in the middle of Woodward for streetcars, and Walter said in English, “There is the J.L. Hudson Company over there, I believe the world’s second-largest department store. Notice it takes up the entire block. When the light changes I’m going to drop you off over there on the corner, where you see the clock above the entrance to Kerns, another department store, though it doesn’t compare to Hudson’s. Exactly two hours from now I’ll come by. Please let me find you waiting there, if you will. Under the clock.” He said to Jurgen, “Go in Hudson’s and ask where is the war exhibit show. You ask, please, not Otto. All right?”

They strolled among cosmetic and perfume counters, hosiery, costume jewelry, women’s gloves and belts, coming to umbrellas now, across the aisle from men’s neckwear and suspenders, and Jurgen stopped. He said, “There,” looking up at the poster on the square white column that rose above the counter where neckties were displayed. Now Otto was looking.

“Aren’t they proud of themselves,” Otto said in German, “showing what they took from our comrades lying dead.”

Jurgen turned his head to see a salesgirl in Gloves and Belts watching them. She couldn’t have heard Otto, but someone would if he kept ranting in German.

“You know how to say pain in the ass?” Jurgen said. “It’s how you’re still acting. If you don’t want to look at war souvenirs, tell me in English. I don’t care if I see them or not.”

“I would like a whiskey, a big one,” Otto said, “and to dine in a good restaurant. My needs are simple.”

Jurgen said, “Don’t move,” and walked over to the counter where the girl sold gloves and belts.

Otto watched him talking to her, the girl wide-eyed to show she was listening and would answer his question, Otto thinking he could use a girl like that to give him a bit of comfort, smile and touch his face with her hand, tell him she would do anything for him, anything at all. He had not been with a girl in more than two years, since the Italian girl in Benghazi.

Jurgen was coming back. Otto waited. Jurgen said, “The dining rooms are on the thirteenth floor, the Georgian, the Early American, and the Pine Room. Take your pick.”