Page 108 of Hell to Pay
“I imagine plenty of women were desperate, though,” Alix said.
“Very true,” I said, “and many GIs’ intentions weren’t as honorable as Joe’s. Most of them were hardly more than boys—nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-four—and girls can be very silly. Some received the nylons and the lipstick, the chocolate and cigarettes and oranges, and dreamed most unrealistically of marriage and an easy life in America. Even when one could tell the man in question probably worked in a gas station or a drugstore or had barely left school, some silly girl would imagine him a singing cowboy or a wealthy banker. We knew of two places in America: Hollywood and New York City, and everyone in those places apparently lived in enormous flats where women swept into rooms done up in Art Deco style, wearing silk dressing-gowns and slippers with feathers on them, their hair beautifully curled, to meet their dashing husbands who had just come from the office in their perfectly tailored suits. Of life in Alabama or Minnesota or on a farm in Nebraska, we knew nothing at all. And then, of course, there were other women, married women, even, with their husbands still away … Well, times were very hard. Later that year, when the Americans arrived in force, there was some … we’ll call it ‘bartering.’”
“Prostitution, you mean,” Ashleigh said.
“Not so cut and dried,” I said. “Not a profession, but perhaps a necessity. I remember a woman—not young andnot beautiful—telling me in a queue once, as we watched a Jeep full of GIs rolling by, ‘It’s so very hard now to get sugar for the preserves, and how can one live without preserves? Not having butter or even lard is bad enough, but no preserves? How else can one put up the fruit for winter? The children would have a vitamin deficiency.’ I commiserated with her, and she said, ‘Luckily, I’ve met a soldier. He’s not handsome, but he’s kind enough, and after all, one must have sugar. He never goes without leaving me some, and often cigarettes as well. They could be American dollars, one can get so much for them. A rabbit haunch on the black market last week—how we feasted on that stew!’ She sounded quite cheerful about it, too. I didn’t know what to say, so I just agreed with her that, yes, sugar was very important, and rabbit was most delicious.”
“Sounds like prostitution to me,” Alix said.
“Or maybe just desperation,” Sebastian said.
“One will do a great deal,” I said, “to keep oneself and one’s children alive. Who was I to judge, with my American dollars and my American GI?”
“So what did Grandpa bring you from England?” Alix asked. “And how did you … you know, hang out? It can’t have been at your place or his place, not if he was in some …”
“Barracks,” I said. “And one didn’t take a man up to one’s room, of course. Frau Adelberg would have been horrified at the very idea, and as for sitting in her living room, at that early date—tongues would certainly have wagged even more than they already were had an American GI been seen entering the upstairs rooms. She had a business to protect, so we had to find another way to get to know each other.” I pushed back from the table and struggled a bit getting to my feet. “But the rest of the tale, I’ll tell tomorrow. For now, I must have a rest.”
“Tomorrow is your last full day here, though,” Ashleigh said.
“Yes,” I said. “I will have to talk faster.”
I rose late the next morning, and breakfasted with the others in the hotel restaurant. DelicateWeisswurst,with its white color and lovely herbal flavorings, a soft Bavarian pretzel still warm from the oven, and sweet mustard—heaven! Ben said, “You’re basically eating a hot dog for breakfast,” and I said, “Perhaps, but such a delicious one.”
After breakfast, I continued my story. I couldn’t have done anything else, for I’d dreamt of Joe in the night. I could see his smile even now, his hands draped over his knees as we sat on a blanket under the big willow beside the Pegnitz River in the soft light of September.
He’d arrived at the bakery again in the early afternoon, only a week after I’d seen him last, holding back as the final stragglers collected their bread and departed. He didn’t attract any curious looks or censorious whispers this time, for he was in civilian clothes: a gray suit and blue tie. And his rucksack, which went oddly with his clothes.
I got that same rush of heat I’d had last time, and a bit of the same confusion, too. I tried my best for tranquility and said with a smile, “You look very smart.”
He said, “My first civilian outfit over here. There’s nothing available in London—they’ve got rationing like you wouldn’t believe, except that I expect you’d believe it—but I managed to come back via Switzerland. The Swiss seem to have done all right. Nice to have nearly impassable mountains between you and the rest of the world. Almost as good as having a couple of oceans.”
“Also nice,” I said, “to bank the high Nazis’ plunder for them and thus be indispensable.”
His eyes sharpened. “Is that so?”
“Indeed it is,” I said. “The Nazis didn’t just send the Jews east, you know. They robbed them first. Money, art, jewels, furniture … oh yes, they took it all.” As the Russians had no doubt taken all my family’s possessions by now—art especially, one heard, had been removed to St. Petersburg, and how sad that made me! My mother had had a painting by Monet in the morning-room, at least until all our paintings and other treasures were removed for safekeeping. Nothing but trees and sky reflected in the Seine, but oh, how beautiful! It had been a gift from my father, and how sad she would have been to know that it was gone. I didn’t say anything about that, though. That spot was still too tender, and would require too much explaining.
“Now I don’t feel so good about my Swiss suit,” Joe said. “Does this mean you don’t want any chocolate, either?”
I had to laugh. “I’m not so virtuous as to refuse that.”
He undid his rucksack and pulled out a bar. An entire bar of Cailler chocolate! I hadn’t seen such a thing since my childhood. “This one,” he said, “is for Matti.” He pulled out a second. “And this one is for Frau Adelberg. I don’t think she likes me, but maybe this will soften her up.”
“Oh, you are kind,” I said. “Shall I run up and take them to her?”
“Well, I kind of hoped you could do that later,” he said. “I thought about that meal we had at the hotel and couldn’t face it again, so I’ve brought a picnic instead. I figured maybe you could get away more easily later in the day. If you’re hungry, of course.”
“I’m always hungry,” I said. “Wait a minute and let me ask Frau Adelberg.” I turned back at the door. “But give me the chocolate first.”
Upstairs, Frau Adelberg said, “What, he’s back again? You’ll come to a bad end if you go on like this. What would your parents have said?”
“We’re having a picnic,” I said. “In public view.” I pulled the two chocolate bars from behind my back. “And he brought you these. One for you, and one for Matti.”
She still looked disapproving, but she took them. “Put up the sign, then. And remember the most important rule: Don’t lie down. It’s much more difficult for bad things to happen when one is sitting up.”
“It would be difficult for bad things to happen anyway,” I said, “dressed like this.”
She gave a snort of disbelief, and I took five minutes to remove my apron and tidy my hair. There was nothing to be done about my clothes; one of my dresses had developed a great rip in its threadbare back and was now added to my stock of rags. I was wearing a pair of Frau Adelberg’s lost son’s trousers, hemmed short and taken in at the waist very clumsily—I should really have asked Lippert for lessons—together with a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up from the same source, and a pair of suspenders. I looked, I realized as I gazed anxiously into the mirror, a bit like Charlie Chaplin.
