“I’ve always been fascinated with the Graf Spee,” Toca said. We were sitting at a table in the little square between the café and the Abbey. I was just beginning to wonder if I was a hopelessly untalented teacher or if I had a hopelessly untalented group of students. “No, no, darling,” Toca had just said, “you want them to feel something and they’re too young to feel something. You’ve forgotten what you were like at that age. They are all concerned with their clothes, are they wearing the right thing, is their hair all right, are they popular? That’s the sort of stuff that those ages are involved in.”
I had said, “I always was in love with someone, even if I was only ten or twelve or fourteen. I felt things.”
And Toca replied, “You were unusual. And you were probably unusually beautiful and all the older boys were trying to get into your pants.” I decided to drop that subject right there. I’m too young to be reminiscing about the loves that were.
“But don’t you think that all theater revolves around placing someone else’s welfare before your own. Being able to imagine another person’s existence at least?”
“Not at all,” Toca said. “I think you’re projecting what’s going on in your own life right now.” Toca is not really stupid. Not at all. He went on. “No. I think theater is more about the Seven Deadly Sins. About what happens to people when they become unbalanced and Power or Lust or Avarice takes over their lives. Did you ever see the series of Seven Deadly Sins painted by Paul Cadmus? They’re at the Metropolitan Museum now. I knew Paul. A painter who is going to be much admired in the next century. And probably even more in the twenty-second century. Do you ever think about what the future will make of our art? We can understand Michelangelo and Poussin and David and Van Gogh whether we like them or not. They’re going to look back at Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Motherwell and say, ‘What the fuck?’ All those blotches of color and lines running about and terrible photographs painted over. My least favorite is Cy Twombly. Those wandering lines and tracks and blotches. My theory is that if it only takes a few hours to paint, it only deserves a few hours of attention. And then we can all forget it.”
“You are so nineteenth century,” I said.
“To get back to Paul Cadmus, he thought there was an Eighth Deadly Sin and that was Jealousy. He did a painting of it to add to his original series. And sometimes I think it all boils down to Power. Even Love. You want to control your world so it can’t get away from you.
“And one thing that rarely appears in theater is natural tragedy. In the past, famine and flood and disease probably did much more to devastate lives than the shenanigans of other people. We are quite exempt from all that,” Toca added.
“There was the tsunami,” I said.
“But for most people it only existed on the television and in the papers,” Toca said. “Most people probably registered it as some kind of horror movie.”
“Are we in the wrong profession?” I said.
“You mean, are we in the business of entertaining people with unreality while they ignore reality?” As I said, Toca is smart.
“A lot of business is just that. Show business. But I think a lot of it can call reality to the audience’s attention and make some sense of it for them. Point out how they have failed themselves,” Toca said.
“I’d love to believe that,” I said.
“That we make sense of things for them?” Toca said.
“No. That they come away from the theater with a strong sense of failure.”
Toca said, “That would be nice. Since they are such flops, most of them. But sometimes drama just comes sweeping into your life on such a large scale you really don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to perform that role that has been brought to you. I’ve always been fascinated with the Graf Spee.”
And then he told me about the Graf Spee. “I don’t think I could care deeply for any man if he wasn’t of the stature of Captain Langsdorff. He was the commander of a pocket German battleship. After World War I, the Germans weren’t allowed to build large ships. Ten thousand tons was the maximum. The American and the English ships were something like thirty-five tons. Much bigger.”
“You know your subject. Can I have another Diet Coke?”
“Be my guest,” Toca said and waved grandly toward the waiter while pointing at my glass with the other hand.
“It certainly brought on the submarine menace. Submarines met the tonnage requirements. And they also built speedy little ships which were very high tech for their times. The latest in radar, great artillery, very fast. They were called pocket battleships.”
I said, “I wonder if there is a German navy now?”
Toca said, “I don’t know. We should find out. You never meet a German sailor. From the pictures I’ve seen of the crew of the Graf Spee they were very good-looking.”
“Curious, isn’t it? It’s almost like Swiss sailors. Of course, there’s no such thing, but Germany is a close second. It almost has no coast line,” I said.
“But so little use for a submarine,” I said.
“So true,” he said. “But let me go on. I know the Germans were the enemy, but even so, it is a romantic story. The Graf Spee was sent to the South Atlantic under Captain Hans Langsdorff to prey upon shipping to the Allies. From South Africa and India. There was very little loss of life because they would stop a merchant ship with a shot across its bow, take the crew off, and then torpedo it. They always had a lot of prisoners aboard. You wonder if they were prepared for that, regarding food and accommodations. It’s the sort of thing you would never think of. You’re in the middle of the Atlantic, and suddenly everyone is eating half-portions of porridge.”
“Where did they go into port?” I said.
“They didn’t. Supply ships came out from Germany with fuel and food and things like that.”
“Those poor sailors,” I said.
“They had each other,” Toca said. “I’ve seen pictures of them sunbathing on the deck. They looked great. They had pecs, even then.”
“So?” I said.
“So, they sank some ships off the African coast. Then they went around the Cape of Good Hope and sank a ship or two in the Indian Ocean. Coming from India. Those ships carried things like wool and frozen meat. They got things to eat from those ships certainly. But then the British Navy sent ships into the South Atlantic to find them. One of the ships they sank managed to get radio signals off before they foundered and the British were able to locate the Graf Spee.”
“You love this kind of stuff, don’t you?” I said.
“It’s thrilling. The handsome captain. The handsome crew. The lack of killing. It’s sort of like a movie. An all-male movie. They don’t make all-male movies anymore, do they?”
“We probably know a lot more about homosexuality these days,” I said.
“There are those Oceans Eleven sort of films.”
“Yes. What gives with those people like George Clooney and Marky Mark Wahlberg who live in those compounds with a gang of male friends and never have girlfriends? Does that look suspicious to you?”
“I guess if you’re a big enough star there can be no suspicion,” Toca said.
“Tom Cruise should stop running around with women and move in with a house full of guys. The rumors would stop immediately,” I said.
“You are so cunning,” Toca said. “Are you getting bored with my infatuation with the Graf Spee? Is that why you keep drifting off the subject?”
“Indeed not. I, too, am infatuated with the subject. I think I need yet another Diet Cola,” I said.
“You’re even beginning to talk like Noel Coward,” Toca said. The waiter reappeared again carrying the drinks. He didn’t need to ask what they would be.
“There was a battle at sea just off the Uruguayan coast. The Graf Spee was beaten about, some men were killed, but it managed to escape and make its way to the harbor of Montevideo in Uruguay. They buried seventeen sailors there and started some repairs, but the Uruguayan government would only let them remain a few days. Too few for real repairs. And there were three British battleships laying in wait in the estuary for them.
“Uruguay was very much dominated by the British at the time. The British Embassy ruled the roost in Montevideo. The ambassador was Teddy Millington-Drake. Very charming. Very handsome in that tall, curly-headed, fair English way. Had married an heiress. I saw a bust of him once in Montevideo. Very handsome. And if he wasn’t gay he certainly missed his calling.”
“Now I digress,” Toca said. “However, Argentina, just across the river, was pro-German. There was an important German Embassy in Buenos Aires, and Argentina had been doing a lot of business with the Axis. If you’ve ever been in a cemetery in Buenos Aires, you’ve seen all those heroic neo-Nazi monuments, many stalwart homoerotic nudes.”
“I have that to look forward to,” I said.
“The German Embassy in Buenos Aires was several hours upstream and across the River Platte, but they had representatives in Montevideo very promptly. There were a lot of discussions about burying the sailors who had been killed in the sea battle and getting the wounded into hospitals. I don’t think the Uruguayans were either pro-British or pro-German. War was a long way away in their past. They hadn’t had any contact with it since the 1830s. They were just trying to do the humane thing.
“The British weren’t cooperative, though. They wanted the Graf Spee out of there and at sea where it could be sunk by the waiting British ships. Then the word came from headquarters in Germany, also. Hitler wanted them to sail. For the glory of the Third Reich they were supposed to be sunk by the British right there in the estuary without a chance of escape.
“There was a German merchant ship in the harbor and Captain Langsdorff asked them to anchor in a position where the Graf Spee cut off the view from the shore, and began to send the crew in small boats over to the merchant ship.” Toca was getting really warmed up.
“I don’t know if he had a plan yet or not, but he started as soon as it was clear the Graf Spee was going to have to leave port without being repaired. There was something like 300 men aboard the Graf Spee. He called for tugboats from Buenos Aires, and they came alongside the merchant ship, where they were out of view, and began to take the sailors off to transport them upriver so they would be prisoners of war in Argentina. They would be far better off there.
“The authorities in Montevideo finally began to see what was happening and sent port officials to the merchant ship to stop them disembarking the German sailors for Buenos Aires. Two of the tugs had already left and the third was taking the last of the crew of the Graf Spee. Captain Langsdorff boated over to the merchant ship and somehow charmed the port officials into letting the last of the sailors leave. Captain Langsdorff knew the crew would be treated much better by the Argentineans than if they went into camps in Uruguay, where the British ran everything.”
“You know all the details of the story, don’t you, Toca?” I said. “I’m surprised.”
“I’m in love with Captain Langsdorff,” he said. “The least I can do is my homework.”
“So then, once Captain Langsdorff got all his men safely ashore in Buenos Aires?”
“He took the Graf Spee out into the depths of the river and sank it,” Toca said.
“Right in the harbor?” I said.
“You have to understand that the river Platte is very wide there. Large ships like the Graf Spee had to stay in channels in the river to navigate out into the ocean, so Captain Langsdorff was just off the mouth of the harbor when he sank the ship in one of the channels. I recently saw a picture of it. I thought that it plunged to the bottom, but it was so shallow there that the superstructure never submerged. He set explosives with a skeleton crew, and then they took a small boat to Buenos Aires. The piers and shores of Montevideo were crammed with spectators. Evidently everyone knew it was going to happen.”
“I’m always interested in the people who knew it was going to happen but stayed home anyway because they had to do laundry or something like that,” I said.
“Well, first things first,” Toca said.
“You’re right. How important is a German battleship being blown up in front of your eyes in comparison to getting those whites whiter?” I said.
Toca said, “For a young person, you have a very good grasp of how the world works. Nothing is ever too small or irrelevant to not be concentrated on by someone.”
“Hitler must have been furious. And the British, too,” I said.
“Captain Langsdorff had no alternative except to commit suicide, which he did in Buenos Aires,” Toca said.
“Oh, God, how sad. Having been that brave, couldn’t he have been brave enough to keep living?”
Toca said, “From our point of view he would probably have been excused of everything by the Allies once the war was over. But of course, he didn’t know the Allies were going to win. Although he may have begun to have some idea. No, what was more important, I’m sure, is that he violated the code of naval honor and hadn’t gone down with his ship. And he had to prove that he was willing to die for his ship. He just wasn’t willing to take his men with him.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” I said. “Here’s this pillar of honor in the German navy disobeying Hitler, and Hitler was this almost show-business personality who had violated every role of honorable behavior to get where he was. Very apples and oranges. Two completely different worlds. The honor of the past reporting to the chicanery of the present.”
“Chicanery. That’s a good word,” Toca said. “You are full of surprises.”
“I read a lot,” I said.
“And there’s another thing, too. In all the books and pictures I’ve seen, Captain Langsdorff was always surrounded by handsome sailors who obviously adored him,” Toca said.
“Perhaps he was in love with one of them,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“And he didn’t want him to be drowned and lost. He saved his life,” I said.
“I think World War II was the end of the romantic legend period in world history,” Toca said. “People did things in a large-scale way. Now it’s all about hoodwinking the public, stealing large amounts of money from the companies you direct, and then retiring with no one thinking any the less of you for it.”
“And what’s worse, you don’t even think poorly of yourself for doing those things. Guilt is dead. You know that Native Americans think guilt is a little three-cornered piece of tin that revolves in your brain, cutting and hurting. But after a time, the points wear down and you don’t feel guilty anymore,” I said.
“The points have definitely worn down,” Toca said. “But I will always be in love with Captain Langsdorff. I wish I could have been with him when he put on his dress uniform, put the German flag down on the floor, lay down upon it, and put a bullet in his head. As long as I’m living, he will not be forgotten.”
There was something noble about Toca as he said that. Even sitting at a stupid little folding table in front of a French café on a hot afternoon in the Loire Valley.
“Were his sailors all right?” I asked.
“They were sent to a number of small cities in Argentina to work and spend the rest of the war there. Some went home, but a lot of them stayed there and married local women.”
“I would so like to know what happened to the handsome young man he loved,” I said.
“Of course, assuming that he did love a handsome young man,” Toca said.
“I have decided that he did,” I said.
“Well, let’s make up the story that he remained in some provincial city in Argentina, married a local beauty, and begat many gorgeous children, and that they are still living there, a whole tribe of beautiful Argentineans as a result of his remaining there, happy and safe,” Toca said.
“I hope so,” I said.