I said to Edith, “Are we safe to leave—who are those men?”
“Are you dumb, Charlie Beck? They are obviously dressed like Americans and they were speaking English and looking for you. Unless you are a criminal, they probably want to use you to spy on Erich.”
“I, well, I wouldn’t ever do that.”
“And why not? You don’t like your Uncle, I can tell.”
“No, I detest him. He is a son-of-a-bitch.”
“Never mind, we should leave here and talk later,” she said.
She pulled me by the arm until we walked, arm linked in arm, together down the bridge toward the street. Upon reaching the street, we walked down an alleyway and she stopped in front of two doors that were largely made of glass shaped like an oval, surrounded on the periphery by wood. Someone came outside staring at his watch.
He looked at Edith, ignoring my presence, and said, “You’re late, dear.”
The boy—who looked our age, sixteen or so—embraced her and she abruptly pulled her arm free of mine. He kissed her on both cheeks and then for a moment on the mouth!
“Oh, Tommy, don’t,” she said, while so obviously pretending to be offended, “it isn’t like we are together.”
She then turned to me and said, “Tommy, I would like you to meet Charlie.”
Tommy looked unimpressed. “What kinda suit is that—you look ridiculous.”
Edith said, “Tommy, he is a friend, leave him be.”
“Alright, well, if you are a friend of Edith’s, then you are a friend of mine.”
“You speak German with an awful American accent,” I said.
He smiled proudly, saying in English, “That is because I am American. I am the ambassador’s son, Tommy.”
He reached out his hand to shake mine, and I in turn shook his. He had that annoying habit some men do of twisting your hand slightly—squeezing your knuckles together so that it hurts. They always do this, it seems, to show they have a superior grip. My knuckles ached slightly, but of course I smiled, pretending I was enjoying meeting him, though I didn’t like him at all.
Tommy said, “Let’s go in and get a seat and a drink. You drink, don’t you, Charlie?”
“Now and again.”
“Well, it is now, I don’t think it’ll be now again anytime soon. Hey, doll,” he said, turning to Edith, “let me open the door for you, my lady.”
He thought he was cute, and he was a handsome boy, though I hated to admit it even to myself. And he was charming in a sarcastic-ass sort of way.
When we entered, it seemed that everyone knew Tommy and worshiped him, guys and girls. They all said hello as we passed and gave him handshakes like he was some dignitary. They knew Edith also, people said hello or waved to her, but she was not held in the popular esteem the entire crowd seemed to hold Tommy in.
A band was playing a swing song and Tommy asked Edith to dance in the plain but large dance hall. And he pulled her toward the dance floor. I had thought we were going to sit for a drink, but that was not what Tommy wanted to do initially. He wanted to strut on the dance floor, flipping Edith around, showing her bloomers to the world, owning her publicly. I was jealous and followed the crowd to watch the entire song and dance play out. The music was coursing through me. Neither of them knew that I could dance, I could dance better than he had. Edith was talented and so was he, but I was better than him and I knew it. So, right as the song ended and as the band began another tune, I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder to cut in.
He shocked me as he pushed me—not hard enough to push me over, but hard enough to let me know to lay off. I tapped him again, this time harder.
He then pushed me on the ground, shouting so everyone could hear, “Ya think you can dance, kid?”
Everyone had stopped dancing, the band had ceased playing, and they were all staring at me—yet the music still pulsated through my mind.
“I know I can dance.”
He cupped his hand to his ear, yelling out, “I don’t think everyone can hear you, kid—say again?”
“I know I can dance!” I shouted.
Everyone laughed.
Tommy held his hand up to silence them, and as if pre-planned and on cue, they all stopped laughing at once.
“I will let you prove yourself a fool and you can dance with Edith all night. IF you impress us.” He motioned to the crowd surrounding us.
“Or what?”
“Or I teach you a lesson in manners—that’s what.”
I looked at the band and shouted, “Louis Prima.”
“Which one?” shouted the band leader in return.
“‘Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing),’ of course.”
The man looked at me and grinned. “That is a fast one, buddy.”
I glanced at him as my eyes went to Edith’s lovely hips and up to her face.
“Exactly,” I said, “exactly.”
“Tum, tum, tum—Tum tum ta tum,” went the drums.
I started shaking my head up and down with the beat. The beat—it awoke a wildness inside me.
Then the trumpets joined the beat—whining and tempting me to dance. I had to wait just a little longer. I locked eyes with Edith. She was beautiful, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about the moment that was coming. It was almost there. Not just yet—just another beat or two.
The entire orchestra joined in and I started to swing my arms and danced toward Edith. I grabbed her by the waist and we were one. The throb of the song was all I felt, and all I saw was the deep blue of her eyes. And we swayed for a moment before a crescendo came and I twirled her body into mine and flung her back out. I then grabbed her waist. My eyes not leaving her eyes. I swung her to my side and then to the other side, and then flipped her over my head. She knew how to dance. She knew how to swing. She was born for this. With every movement, she showed no resistance, but rather moved in perfect step to the beat. She trusted me to catch her and not to drop her. Her body partially yielding to me—Edith never really yielded to anyone fully.
I had not noticed that everyone had stopped dancing. Everyone was clapping and tapping their feet as we danced. As the song ended with “doo, doo” from the trumpets, I twirled her one last time and we stopped. Breathing heavily and still locked onto her bright sapphire eyes, I didn’t notice that everyone was clapping for us. Edith grabbed my jaw gently and forced me to look to the crowd and the sound of their collective clapping and whistling suddenly flooded my ears.
Someone, a male voice, yelled, “What’s his name?”
Edith shouted, answering, “Charlie, he’s American.”
A female voice said my name as if a proclamation, “Charlie!”
“Charlie, the American,” someone else yelled.
I was being crowned, and Tommy looked dejected, like I had defeated him and they had forced him to cede power to me. He bowed. But I could see the contempt in his eyes, in his half smile. I didn’t care, I just reveled in it, for a moment I reveled in the admiration. I looked at Edith and my heart jumped. Tingles, lightly brushing my arm as if kissed by a soft breeze.
After the dance, I sat down with Edith and Tommy at a table to drink a beer. Everyone around me had come up to say hello. I felt like a celebrity. Tommy glared at me; I think he tried to hide it from the others with a smile that was unconvincingly painted on his face. But I could tell that he loathed my very being.
Then my heart skipped three beats as Edith leaned over to me and said in my ear and over the music, “They are here—to your right.”
I turned and saw the fedora-adorned gentlemen approaching me from the right. Strangely they didn’t even acknowledge me, but went over to Tommy, who was facing us on the opposite side of the table. Over the loud trumpets and beating drums, I couldn’t make out a word of what they were telling him. I did notice that his expression changed slowly as he focused on me—ignoring Edith and all other things in his peripheral vision completely. His hate turned to wide-eyed curiosity and then to what looked like resolve to me. I didn’t know what he had resolved to do until he stood up, passing Edith and leaning down next to my ear.
He said in English, “Hey, Charlie, your uncle is Erich Beck? Obergruppenführer Beck?”
I nodded.
“And you are American?”
I nodded again, unsure what this all had to do with anything.
“Last question, do you love America or Germany?”
“What—what do you care?”
He said, annoyed, “I have my answer then.”
I practically shouted, “America, I love America!”
“Shh, not so loud,” he said, as he put his finger to his lips, “that is all I needed to hear.”
He continued, “Could you follow me, brother? You aren’t in any trouble. We are your friends, your countrymen, we just need a favor from you, perhaps.”
I nodded to signal that I would follow him—I was too curious to say no.
I looked at Edith, who looked confused.
Tommy went up to Edith and whispered something in her ear that satisfied her curiosity, I supposed. She smiled at me.
I got up to follow Tommy.
Tommy led me through the hall, to the back of it, through some door that led to another alleyway. Deserted. It was almost black, and I regretted coming out here even if they were Americans. The two men in fedoras stood ominously silent, blocking the way back into the club.
Tommy stood in front of them and my back almost touched a wooden fence.
Tommy said, “Please accept my apologies for my cockiness in there. I didn’t realize who you were. We wanted to know, are you willing to work for us, to collect information from your Uncle?”
He paused, as if I would say something. I did not.
“Well, being that you are a loyal American … I assume you don’t like Nazis, do you? I mean, you don’t even know your Uncle. You were just sent here by your aunt after your mother died and he hasn’t exactly been nice to you.”
“How do you know …?”
“We know a lot of things. You’re not a fan of Nazis or your Uncle, are you?”
“I don’t even have any special knowledge. I am not of much use to you. Don’t you already have spies with all the information that you seem to know?”
“We already have spies. What we don’t yet have is someone who is as close as you are to a Nazi official on your Uncle’s level. Your Uncle is an obergruppenführer, he reports to Heinrich Himmler who reports to Adolf Hitler. Your Uncle regularly gets calls from Himmler and Hitler directly sometimes.”
“I am not close to my Uncle. At all.”
“Ah, but that could change if you wanted it to, you could manipulate him.”
“Look, I don’t even know you. Why should I help you? It is a helluva risk for me to get involved in any sort of spying.”
“Because you love your country.”
“Yeah I do, but we aren’t at war with Germany and I don’t want any part. There is nothing that would keep me safe in case he found out.”
“What if I told you that your Uncle was fucking Himmler’s mistress? Would that make him leave you alone if you were caught? If you had evidence kept somewhere he didn’t know, say by us, that would become public if anything happened to you?”
I was astonished. “He has slept with Himmler’s mistress?”
“Indeed he has, and we have proof—photographic evidence.”
“Then why don’t you blackmail him?”
“He would then just watch everything he did. And, furthermore, no one who has ever been blackmailed can truly be trusted to tell you the truth. It is more of a failsafe against him hurting you. It provides you some cover.”
“What would I even find out about for you? I don’t have access to any information. I still don’t want to participate, it is too dangerous.”
“Look, all we need is for you to find out who they are targeting. They are more than annoyed at our intelligence gathering, and we need to know who among our informants is a double agent. They always seem to know our next move.”
“No, I don’t know anything and I wouldn’t know where to start to get that information. I don’t want to get involved. Let me back inside. I feel like you are the Gestapo with those men blocking the door. I don’t feel comfortable, am I free to go?”
“We are Americans, not Germans, you are free to go anytime you please.”
“Harry and John, please let Mr. Beck re-enter the hall.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder as I began to walk back into the dance hall, saying, “When you change your mind, you will find me at the embassy—I work there. I can bring you to the ambassador, my Father.”
“If I change my mind, and I won’t. Thanks.”
Upon re-entering the hall and returning to our table, I found Edith yawning.
“Edith, we must leave now,” I said, and grabbed her arm to help her up.
I noticed she was very wobbly on her feet and saw several empty glasses in front of her. There was a boy who had been sitting next to her who got up upon me helping Edith to stand. He must have been trying to prime her for some after-party fun by getting her drunk, which she obviously was, as she laughed at her lack of coordination and balance.
“Here, lean on me.”
“You, Charlie, are a gentleman,” she said, as she gave me a kiss on the cheek.
I helped her out of the establishment and people waved as if I was famous. I didn’t wave back, I wanted to get back home. I wanted to get Edith home; I had this fear that Erich somehow knew about that conversation I had had with Tommy and that he would blame me for it if he knew. It worried me he would find out we went swing dancing and not for coffee, which was bad enough. I thought if I could escape this place fast enough, perhaps we could get home unscathed.
“You know Tommy wants me to be a spy for the US, that is what he asked me.”
“I know, Tommy said that he had to tell me, too. He said that with what you would be doing I would probably find out, anyway.”
“I told him no.”
I don’t know if the chill wind finally awoke her from her drunkenness, or if it was my statement, or both. What I do know is that she regained her composure and balance almost instantly.
She leaned into me and kissed me; my lips melded to hers and we kissed until my mouth was raw and chapped from the dry, cold night air.
I was so attracted to her and I had only kissed one other girl; I wanted to keep kissing and my hands started to involuntarily slide up her waist, which I had been holding, and lingered deliciously near her breasts. I didn’t quite touch them, but she noticed how vivid my hunger for her was, and she pulled away.
She wiggled her finger playfully at me. “Not that easy. But I do like you a lot, Charlie.”
Continuing, she said, “Now, Charlie, why would you say no to the Americans, why in God’s name would you do that? Erich is a bastard and I know you despise him.”
“I don’t want to put us at risk, Edith …”
“Don’t worry about me, I will be fine. I think you would be, too—they would protect you.”
“I don’t know that they could against him, but even so …”
She kissed me again and pulled away so that our noses almost touched and I could feel her lips as they lightly touched mine while she spoke quietly.
She said, “Promise me you will think about it, Charlie, promise me.”
I was intoxicated by her, “Yes, I will consider it.”
“Good,” she replied, and she kissed me hard, reapplying her lips to mine. She put my hand on her chest and I could feel her breasts under her dress, but more importantly, I could feel her heart beat. She then put her hand to my heart.
She suddenly pulled away, saying, “You see, Charlie, that is the secret—that right there—to my heart. Bravery and integrity. You are handsome, but that is not enough for me. A lot of boys like me, mischling or not. It is that you are brave, I can see it in you, you just need a little time to figure that out.”
She became wobbly again—apparently this moment of lucidity had been temporary. I carried her to her house, and she promised she could make it inside. I watched from under the street light to make sure that she entered safely. I then caught a taxi back to the ghetto-mansion.