‘You can’t understand that, here in Switzerland. In the auditorium you don’t really understand what’s happening on stage.
‘Beslozzen in minem herzen,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Verlorn ist daz slüzzelin. Lost is the key.’
‘Herr Blau…’ Désirée began to frame a question.
‘His name was Schlesinger.’
‘Herr Schlesinger — did he die in the camp?’
‘No,’ said Herr Grün. ‘It was much worse. They let us go.’
70
He stood up so suddenly and violently that his chair fell over, just left it lying there and said into the sudden silence in the pub, ‘We’re going.’ He threw a handful of coins on the table — he carried his money loose in his pocket, something that people usually do only when the small change doesn’t matter — spoke into the gap between Rachel and Désirée as if someone invisible were sitting there, or as if he couldn’t look them in the face, and repeated impatiently, ‘Let’s go.’ Didn’t help them into their coats, did hold the door out for them, but not like a gentleman, more like a bouncer, and outside in the alleyway he made so quickly for the Limmat Quai and Münster Bridge that they practically had to run after him.
Then, in the middle of the bridge, he suddenly stopped, had a very old, sad face and said, ‘I’m sorry. You think you’ll get used to it, but… You don’t. You just don’t…’
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘No,’ said Herr Grün. ‘I do. Otherwise it will never get better.’
All three together, yet apart, they walked from the Münsterhof to the St Peterhofstatt, and then up a narrow, dark path to the Lindenhof, sat down on one of the benches where lovers usually sit, or drunks, looked out over the Limmat and down at the meat market, the dark façades of the guild-houses, the empty windows of the museum society, and waited for Herr Grün to find the words he needed for his healing.
The night was warm. The moon lit the square as the cold neon light lit the sewing room in Zalman’s factory. On a fountain a woman stood in full armour and guarded the unthreatened city. Everything was still. Only sometimes did a heavy beetle buzz over their heads as if on its way to deliver an important message or drop a bomb somewhere.
‘They set us free in the summer of 1936,’ Herr Grün said at last. ‘Because of the Olympic Games.’
The weeks of the Summer Olympics, he said, were an exceptional time in Germany. The dictatorship took a holiday, outwardly at least. The tourists wanted to see a Berlin that was open to the world, so the order was issued by the Propaganda Ministry to present them with a Berlin that was open to the world. The way one might take the backdrop of a long-forgotten play out of the props room. Iron the mothballed costumes. Have the music played one last time.
‘They’d always known a lot about show business,’ said Herr Grün with the reluctant acknowledgement that one grants to the professionalism of an unloved branch of something. Yes, their actual speciality might have been mass marches and rallies, but a good director can stage anything that the management puts on the bill. Olympic tolerance is an easy exercise in that respect. Particularly when you have enough extras at your disposal. A whole country full of extras. You just have to be careful that no embarrassing details disturb the beautiful picture as a whole.
So on the Ku’damm the ‘Jews unwelcome’ stickers on the shop doors were suddenly no longer desirable. The glass Stürmer cases around the Olympic stadium stopped showing hate-filled caricatures, and instead displayed pictures of defiant-looking athletes. And at the Wannsee beach baths they took down the signs saying that ‘bathing is forbidden for Jews and those with skin conditions.’ Berlin smartened itself up. Put a white waistcoat over its brown shirt.
It was just for a few weeks, after all.
They took away the seals and padlocks from the doors of the long-closed cabarets and gay bars. The international guests wanted to enjoy themselves, they expected the wicked pleasures of the big city, and their expectations were to be fulfilled. The performers were at hand, in fact. They were all sitting in the camps. You just had to take their striped suits off them and put their old costumes back on. It was still all there. The feather boas for the transvestites and the tailcoats for the masters of ceremonies.
It was only for a few weeks.
‘We were to tread the boards again,’ said Herr Grün. ‘“If you’re not willing to join in, you stay in the camp,” they said. Which amounted to, “Would you rather live, or would you rather be beaten to death?” We had a free choice.
‘We even got our names back. On loan. Suddenly I was Felix Grün again, rather than prisoner 4892. That was my number in the camp.’
‘I know,’ said Rachel quietly.
‘We were to play the old sketches. Including the dialogue about the apples. Particularly that one.’
The text was placed on the table in front of them. Someone had sat at one of the shows and written it down. Word for word. They were to play it again exactly like that. With the punchline about the browns that had to be got rid of and the joke about the Reich that’s not for eating, it’s for throwing up. ‘And if you can think of anything especially pointed about us,’ said the man in the brown uniform, ‘don’t hold back. We’re not like that. We’ve got a sense of humour.’
‘And after the Games?’ one of them dared to ask.
‘We’ll see.’
If you cast a person’s feet in a concrete block and throw him in the water — does he drown?
We’ll see.
It was just for a few weeks.
‘We had got the same dressing-room.’ Herr Grün said it as if nothing had ever given him such grounds for amazement. The same dressing-room. The same stage. The same sketches. ‘Only my suit didn’t fit any more. You don’t stay fat in a concentration camp.’
In the stalls the sport tourists from all over the world ordered expensive wines, had the punchlines translated for them and were amazed to find such freedom of thought in a Germany that had been decried as a dictatorship. Evidence once again that you couldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.
Guten Tag, Herr Grün.
Guten Tag, Herr Blau.
All as it had been.
Not quite everything. For the first time in the career, Grün and Blau were on after the interval. The big names weren’t there any more. One had emigrated to Holland. One to America. One had been run over by a tipper in a quarry.
There was no applause to greet them when they came on stage, either. They had been forgotten. ‘A year in the camps does nothing for your popularity,’ said Herr Grün, and there was not a trace of irony in his voice.
Much had changed behind the scenes as well. Between their performances Schlesinger no longer read clever books, and Grün no longer romped with the twirlies. They sat in their dressing-room, looked at their own strange faces in the mirror, and every now and again one of them asked, ‘What do you think?’
‘It isn’t true,’ said Herr Grün, ‘that you think more quickly when it’s a matter of life and death. On the contrary. Thoughts get bogged down like car wheels in the sand. Wheels in the sand.’
He fell silent and looked out into the peaceful Zurich night, without seeing it.
On the Limmat Quay a light came on in a bathroom. A shadow moved behind the frosted glass. Only when the window was dark again did Herr Grün go on talking.
‘We put on our performances, two every evening. But it was as if we weren’t really standing on the stage. As if we were just pushing ourselves back and forth, like big puppets. I don’t know if you can understand that.’