Over the next few visits, I ran into Trudi Bauer again a couple of times.
Once when Emma was practicing cursive and I was reading the papers she brought over a cinnamon roll cake. Zimfladden, she called it. She was surprised to find me there, but seemed happy to find Mrs. Shearer; they seemed to know each other well.
And I met her husband too. Willi Bauer. He was a jovial man, dapper in a vest with a pocket chain attached to his watch. Plump and seemingly easygoing in demeanor, his thinning white hair combed across his scalp, he also looked like he sampled a bit too much of his wife’s rich desserts.
“Uncle Willi,” Emma called him, of course, and his ruddy face lit up when she got up from the table to give him a hug.
“My wife informs me Emma has an expert in Swiss languages in the family now,” he said to me.
“Not at all,” I replied. “I’m afraid I reached the limit of my expertise in our first conversation.”
“No, no, modesty is not becoming, young man, and any student of history is a friend of ours,” he said. “I dabble at it myself. In any case, I’m sure Emma is over the moon to have you around again.”
“I think so,” I said, with a glance to her. “I know I feel that way.”
“I am.” Emma nodded brightly.
“Well, I’m aware you have had a difficult path of it lately,” Willi said, with a glance to his watch. “But you’ve come through. My goodness, look at the time. I’m afraid I must go. An appointment. It would be my pleasure to discuss areas of your studies should you ever wish to share them.”
“Very kind of you, Herr Bauer,” I said.
“Please, Mister. We’ve been here for many years. And anyway, just Willi would be perfectly fine. Everyone knows me as that. We are no longer back at home.”
“Willi, then,” I said, extending my hand.
A few minutes later, as Emma and I were leaving, for the second time we caught a visitor knocking at their door. This one heavyset, portly, in a gray tweed suit and homburg, seemingly nervous to be surprised there. He quickly averted his eyes and barely muttered as we said hello to him and continued down the stairs.
Above us, the Bauers’ door opened. “Herr Bitner…,” Willi Bauer said, letting the man in.
“All these customers,” I said to Emma when we got outside. “Do you know what Uncle Willi and Aunt Trudi do for work?”
“Mother says they sell beer.”
“Beer? You mean, like in a bar?” There were, in fact, dozens of German bars all around Yorkville.
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I don’t drink beer. Last one to the park is a rotten egg.” She skipped ahead of me.
“Wait a minute, Emma.” I ran and caught up to her. “Take my hand.” Cars and trucks darted in and out on Third Avenue. It was no place for a child.
“Oh. Daddy, I’m six years old. I know how to wait for the light and cross the street.”
That was the way it went for the first couple of weeks. I was pleased Emma looked at me as her father again. And thankful I could make it happen under Mrs. Shearer’s watchful and seemingly suspicious eyes. As if I was not to be trusted. And who always took the chance to remind me around a quarter of six that it was time to be getting on. True to Liz’s request, I never stayed around to run into her.
“Please, have her back in thirty minutes,” Mrs. Shearer would say, always tapping her watch as we went out for a treat or to the park. “Mrs. Mossman wanted me to have her washed and changed before dinner.”
“By all means, Miss Shearer,” I would reply, purposely teasing her.
“Mrs.,” she would say back crossly.
Which made me smile inside.
After another week, I couldn’t stay in my car another night so I went to the cheapest clean motel I could find, the Lido Lodge, not far from the beach, in the Rockaways. I swallowed my pride and took a job night to night washing dishes at an Automat just to earn the five-dollar nightly rate. It was clear, no one needed an ex-drunk teaching their kids, especially one who had been held responsible for someone’s death and spent time in jail. Jobs were still hard to find; the papers said the unemployment rate still hovered around 14 percent. The only thing that kept me going was my twice-a-week visits with Emma.
One night, to relieve the boredom of being alone, I went to the movies to see Gary Cooper star in Sergeant York. The film started with a newsreel, The March of Time. It was how most of us saw the war at that time. By that time Hitler’s armies occupied everywhere from Scandinavia to North Africa, and his Luftwaffe rained a nightly hell on London. It seemed only a matter of time before the Brits would be forced to give in and sue for peace.
This particular news report was by the famous Edward R. Murrow and showed the relentless nightly pounding of London: bombs exploding, disturbing images of caved-in buildings, and the dead and wounded being carted out on stretchers. And Parliament, with speeches by Winston Churchill, who was trying to hold the flagging spirit of his country together; and an animated speech by a defiant Adolf Hitler, addressing what was said to be a half million Germans about the “special destiny” of the German people and the need for more room to expand. Lebensraum, it was called, living space, the way in which the dictator justified his military expansion.
And right now it looked as if no one could stop him, as—though we continued to supply goods and arms to Britain via the high seas—FDR also continued to bow to Congress and waffle on the sideline.
After the film, hungry and lonely, I went to my local Horn & Hardart cafeteria and had a sandwich for dinner.
Lebensraum. I laughed to myself—I needed my own elbow room. My own living space. I couldn’t continue this way anymore. I was almost ready to beg Liz or Uncle Eddie—please, let me just flop on your couch. Only for a night or two.
After I ate, I asked the restaurant manager if I could put an ad up on the window, ’36 Buick Roadster For Sale. Very low mileage. Need to sell now. I went back to my car. That night, it was in a parking lot behind a closed rug store on Queens Boulevard. The cops had twice found me sleeping in Silver Point Park in Rockaway and told me next time they’d arrest me for vagrancy. It was September now. It was starting to get colder at night. There were still people living in makeshift cardboard homes on the streets; others—loan sharks, booze peddlers, numbers pushers—huddled on corners, preying on anyone who had a dime. I almost felt desperate enough to want to find a way in to that sort of life. I had no idea how I would find real work. The result of the last two years seemed insurmountable. If I wasn’t overage I would have gladly walked into an armed service recruitment office and signed myself up. Just to have a bunk under me at night. I once had a dream how my life would go. I’d be teaching somewhere, in some bucolic college in New England. Married. With a beautiful kid or two. A book with my name on the cover. My twin brother would still be alive, practicing medicine. And that punch I’d thrown would never have happened.
“If you’re there…,” I said with a laugh, summoning my old nemesis on my shoulder who I hadn’t heard from in almost two years. “I’m willing to listen to any ideas if you have any.”
Fortunately, he didn’t answer. I’d banished him long ago back in prison.
But little did I know I’d be hearing from him again tomorrow.