42.

ROLLING HOME


Nun ade, du mein lieb' Heimatland,
Lieb' Heimatland, ade.
Es geht nun fort zum fremden Strand,
Lieb' Heimatland, ade!

The band was playing on the first-class promenade deck, but you could hear it all over the ship and all over the huge, teeming St. Pauli Landing Stages -- great echoing hangars through which people and luggage moved slowly from buses and taxis and railroad cars, past the customs and ticket and passport controls and over the two gangways. One led up to the glassed-in promenade, the other straight across through an open hatch in the black steel hull, into the lower depths of the S.S. Albert Ballin.

Can you be homesick going home? Can you be so homesick that you deliberately try to get drunk in the dining car between Berlin and Hamburg?

The answer is Yes, you can.

Miss Boatwright had taken me to the Lehrter Bahnhof that morning. I had shipped a small trunk with a few unfinished pictures. I carried one suitcase and the Princess in Berlin, still wrapped in brown paper.

We stood on the crowded platform and looked at each other.

The conductors began to close the doors. Whistles blew.

"I'd better get on, Miss Boatwright. I hope Mr. Wood likes the portrait."

"I'm sure he'll like it, although it flatters me outrageously."

"No, that's what you look like.... Miss Boatwright, I want to thank you so much -"

"Peter Ellis, there's nothing to thank me for. A severe crisis has made thee a stronger man. I can see it. I wish thee a safe journey home and a happy New Year. Give my love to everyone, and put this in thy pocket."

An envelope.

"Get on the train!"

"Is this money, Miss Boatwright?"

"Get on the train!"

They were shutting the doors, so I had to scramble into the car, but I pushed my way into the first compartment and put my head out the window. Other people were doing it too.

"Miss Boatwright, what is this money?"

"That's what they transferred to my account in Paris, plus a fee from Whitney Wood."

"Miss Boatwright, you paid Professor Jaffa! You paid for my steamship ticket!" The train was moving, and Miss Boatwright took a few steps along the platform.

"The Waldsteins paid Professor Jaffa," she called, and then there were too many other people in front of her, waving, and I couldn't see her anymore. The train gathered speed, left the station, and passed through miles of freight yards, my last view of Berlin.

Give my regards to Broadway
Remember me to Herald Square ...

"First and Second Class this way, please!" They shouted it over and over again, in German and in English. They didn't shout it in Polish or in Russian. The people for Third Class were crowded behind a wooden fence: men with black hats and black beards and long black coats; women in black dresses and shawls; bundles, baskets, cardboard boxes; many children of all sizes.

"My God, just look at them," said a woman somewhere behind me. "At least they're going to America and not staying here."

"The Americans feel they have enough, too. They're reducing the quotas again next year. That's why there's such a mob of them."

I turned around but couldn't see who was speaking.

"Passport please, sir?"

"I don't have my passport. You're supposed to return it to me here." I handed him my letter from the Polizei Präsidium Alexanderplatz, feeling a sudden silence behind me, feeling the eyes, feeling grateful for the Scotch I had consumed in the dining car.

"Will you step into our office, Mr. Ellis"

There wasn't any trouble at all. The Grenzpolizei station was full of noise, shouting in unintelligible Eastern languages, crying, shouting in German about whatever was wrong with their papers - but when the officer with me presented my letter, the Germans behind the counter stopped shouting, looked me over coldly, extracted my passport from a drawer, made me sign a receipt, and handed it over. "Have a good voyage home, sir. And a happy New Year."

Gangplank. Sunshine and ice-cold air for a moment.

Muss i denn,
muss i denn
zum Städtele hinaus
- Städtele hinaus -
Und du, Mein Schatz, bleibst hier?

I was right beside the red-faced sweating musicians and the music was blasting in my ear. The promenade was jammed: passengers and people saying goodbye, kissing and crying, waiters passing trays of champagne, bellboys carrying flowers, porters carrying luggage....

"My name is Ellis, I'm in the Second Class -"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Ellis. You are in Cable 242, C Deck, with Herr August Ansbach. The boy will take your suitcase."

Kann i gleich net allweil bei dir sein,
Han i doch mein Freud an dir....
Wenn i komm', wenn i komm',
wenn i wieder, wieder komm'.
Kehr' i ein, mein Schatz, bei dir!

Wieder, wieder komm'? Come back again? Not bloody likely! I followed the uniformed boy down the narrow steel companionway, but I could hardly see him.

Herr August Ansbach was not in the cabin but he had certainly established his presence. Blue silk pajamas and a blue bathrobe were carefully laid across the lower bunk, two large and expensive steamer trunks, two beautiful leather suitcases and a crocodile toilet case left very little room for my bag; the closet was almost filled with suits and the bureau drawers were almost filled with immaculate shirts, socks and underwear.

I tipped the boy and he left. I unwrapped the Princess in Berlin and propped her up on the upper bunk, leaning against the bulkhead.

The ship was throbbing now. I could hear the gongs that meant the visitors had to leave. I desperately wanted fresh air - and a drink.

Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wa-ave,
O'er the la-and of the free
And the home of the brave!

When I reached the open deck - the forecastle this time - the band was finishing the anthem and I glanced squinting up into the sunshine at the second mast, where an American flag was snapping in the wind. I had not heard that song for a long time....

The gangplanks had been removed, the hawsers had been released, a couple of tugboats began to ease us away from the landing, out of the basin, into the main stream of the Elbe. The tugs belched coal smoke. I was overwhelmed with a memory of Schloss Havelblick.

Foghorn. People shouting and waving.

DeutschIand, DeutschIand, über alles,
über alles in der Welt....

Quite a lot of people sang along. A handsome woman in a black fur coat stood alone, holding a handkerchief to her eyes.

Foghorn. The tugs fell back, S.S. Albert Ballin was under power, moving through the brilliant cloudless winter afternoon, moving swiftly through the enormous maze of the harbor - cranes and warehouses and landing piers, shipyards and drydocks and grain elevators; ocean liners and freighters and tankers and tugboats pulling trains of barges, ferryboats carrying railroad cars ... foghorns, coal smoke, seagulls, gray water with chunks of ice bobbing....

I wished the band would stop playing, but I had the feeling that this band on this ship on this night would never stop. I wished that somebody had not taught me the words to all these songs:

Hamburg ist ein schönes Städtchen
Siehst du wohl!
Weil es an der Elbe liegt
Siehst du wohl!

Drinnen wohnen schöne Mädchen
Aber keine Jungfer nicht,
Siehst du wohl!.
Denn es ist ja so schwer,
Aus der Heimat zu geh'n ,
Wenn die Hoffnung nicht wär
Auf ein Wieder-Wiederseh'n
Lebe wohl,
Lebe wohl,
Auf Wiederseh'n!

"It's four hours to the sea," somebody said. "Might as well have lunch before it gets rough."

I wanted to speak to the woman who was crying but I couldn't. I went to look for a bar.

I wasn't paying attention to them, at first. I was drinking an other Scotch-and-water, feeling it burn, trying to concentrate on that, trying not to hear two Americans on my right topping each other's inflation anecdotes- "No, but listen to this: we rented the whole Schloss - food, servants, wine, everything - for twenty-five bucks, and . . ." from my left came the words "verfluchte Schande".

It wasn't the words themselves, which mean something like "damned shame"; it was the tone - soft, almost a whisper, but loaded with such fury that I turned to regard the two Germans on my left.

They were drinking beer, they were staring down into their glasses, and the verfluchte Schande obviously had nothing to do with the boasting on my right. They were absorbed in something else. Both looked like ordinary middle-aged business types: celluloid collars; slightly threadbare black suits; vests; wedding rings. One had long hair parted in the middle and a pince-nez; the other had a crew-cut and a neck that bulged over his collar. There was nothing special about them, nothing sinister; neither had that face I had learned to recognize, that "officer's face" described by one witness to Rathenau's murder, that cold-eyed, handsome, slightly demented look of the Freikorps Epp, the Freikorps Rossbach, the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt-- and the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler. These were just two traveling salesmen, hoping to make deals for German goods in New York and Chicago and St. Louis....

"It isn't much of a ship," said the crew-cut, very softly. "But it's our first new liner since the War - and they name it after a Jew! "

"Na ja," said the pince-nez with something of a shrug. "He built the HAPAG, you know. They must have been under pressure -"

"Of course they were under pressure! From the bankers who put up the money -"

"Mr. Ellis, please? Mr. Peter Ellis?" A bellboy stepped into the compartment, shouting.

The boy stood aside to let me in, but there was hardly room: Cabin 242 already contained two uniformed ship's officers and a very tall, very fat young man who was busily trying to wrap my Princess in Berlin back into the brown paper. He had a pink acne pitted complexion and slicked-down black hair; he wore an expensive blue pinstripe suit with a white carnation.

"Simply unbelievable.. .," he was saying when they all turned to look at me.

"Mr. Peter Ellis?" asked the assistant purser.

"Right."

The deck officer began: "Herr Ansbach here has made an accusation --"

"This picture within the last two weeks by the firm of Joseph Ansbach and Co. to Professor Max Liebermann was sold! " bellowed Herr Ansbach in English. He stopped trying to wrap the picture and now faced me, his hand son his hips. "You have heard of the art gallery Joseph Ansbach in Berlin, my dear sir? Potsdamer Strasse 101?"

Silence.

I guess I was a little drunk by now. Maybe I was still thinking about the voices in the bar. Maybe I was ashamed of myself for running off behind the bellboy instead of saying something to them. At any rate, I was in no mood to bother with this clown.

"You know my name is Peter Ellis," I said, in German.

More silence.

"I painted that picture, but it's not finished."

Young Herr Ansbach stooped to examine my Princess, who was now lying half-wrapped on the bureau. The assistant purser and the deck officer leaned forward too.

"Hmm. Ellis 'twenty-three." Ansbach still insisted on speaking English.

"That's not my signature because it isn't finished. Fritz Falke put my name on it and sold it to your gallery. And kept the money, I might add."

"Fritz Falke you know?" Ansbach thoughtfully picked his nose. "Ellis, Ellis, yes ... the American friend, yes? Always the same girls ... So! But this picture, all the same, was personally sold by my father to Professor Liebermann, who does not buy paintings every day, I can tell you, and therefore it is the ... it is the ownership of Professor Liebermann --"

I told them what happened. In German.

"You have of this documentary proof?" demanded Ansbach.

"No, I do not have of this documentary proof, but I have the picture." I really had enough by now -- or maybe too much -- and it all came bursting out, in English, at these three startled men who thought they had caught a thief.

"Are you accusing me of having stolen this picture - my own unfinished picture - from Professor Liebermann? From Baron von Waldstein? Because if you are, I'm going to a lawyer the day we land in New York, and I'm going to sue you for slander, and if the Hamburg-Amerika Line assists you in this matter I'm going to sue them too, and when my lawyer produces affidavits from Baron von Waldstein and Professor Liebermann, you are going to look like a god-damned fool, Ansbach! "

Sometimes I think that Germans like to be yelled at. The atmosphere changed instantly.

"Herr Ansbach," said the assistant purser, "perhaps it would be advisable for you to consider Mr. Ellis's position during the voyage -"

"Perhaps you are right," said Ansbach, speaking German to them. "I will take the matter under advisement, I can send my father a telegram from Southampton. . . ."

The deck officer turned to the assistant purser. "In view of this ...situation, perhaps some rearrangements of cabins ... ?

The assistant purser rolled his eyes. "Herr Müller, if you please!

You know the ship is full! We would have to move somebody else in here-"

"Gentlemen," said Ansbach, who had been staring at me with an entirely new expression, "perhaps Mr. Ellis and I can discuss the matter alone for a few minutes? If we desire a change we will notify you before dinner. Thank you for your help."

Visibly relieved, they bowed, withdrew, and closed the door.

Ansbach was still staring at me. "Ellis? Baron von Waldstein? You are the fellow ... in the newspapers... with your revolver you shot the Nazi brother Keith ... the Cain and Abel murder?"

What could I say?

"Mensch!" Ansbach, stepped forward and grabbed my hand. "You are a god-damned hero, you know that? I wish they would shoot every single one of those swine!"

"Well, there are a couple in the bar, if you want to begin."

"You have your revolver?" he asked, sotto voce, apparently in earnest.

"No. I don't have my revolver, and your government doesn't think I'm a hero. They threw me out of Germany. "

"I say you are a hero, I say I am proud to know you, I say I will
be proud to share this cabin with you, and I apologize for the fuss about this lady here. All right?"

"All right."

"All right. Let us have lunch."

Of course it was too late for lunch. They didn't want to serve us in the Second Class Dining Room, but after Ansbach slipped the headwaiter a dollar bill, they did.

"God-damned second class! With my father I never traveled in the Second Class, it is the god-damned inflation, what it has done to our liquid capital you would not believe. . . ."

I wasn't hungry. I ordered a ham sandwich and another Scotch-and-water. He ordered potato soup and smoked eel with cucumbers and Schweinsrippchen with red cabbage and half a bottle of Moselle, which he cut with seltzer water.

He talked as he ate and drank his way through. He was going to New York to establish a branch of his father's art gallery. He wanted to practice his English.

"I remember now your other paintings quite well. They are care
fully done and pleasing to the public."

"Thank you."

"You mentioned Falke. I carry in my luggage six or ten of Falke's pen-and-ink drawings. You know them: fat naked whores, fat ugly businessmen, officers with the faces of pigs, beggars without legs -"

"Yes. I know them."

"You think I sell a lot of Falke's work in New York?"

"No."

"No, I think so, too. But in some future time, he may be recognized. You think? A picture of our time?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I too. We show them sometimes, and we wait. In the meantime, I have many other pictures, very beautiful pictures.... I could sell your Princess in five minutes."

"She's not finished."

"All right, finish her. You have other pictures? You have other pictures like those girls on the bed?" He looked up over my shoulder. "Yes, what is it?"

I turned to see a bellboy, the same one who had called me out of the bar. He was holding a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with black string.

"Mister Ellis, Cabin 242?"

"Yes."

He handed me the package. "From the purser's office, sir. Delivered by a bank messenger just before we sailed -"

Ansbach raised his voice: "And it's taken all this time --"

"That's all right, thank you." I gave the boy a coin and began to tear at the strings, because I recognized the handwriting. I was clumsy and it took me a moment to get the wrapping off.

"Oh, wonderful," said Ansbach. "Someone has sent you a bon voyage bottle. What's in it?"

"A sailboat," I said, handing him the bottle, then tearing open the blue envelope.

"That is Schleswig-Holstein on the right, the province of Hannover on the left ... that next lighthouse I think is Brunsbüttel, where the Kiel Canal comes in. When we turn there we enter the estuary -"

August Ansbach, bundled in a long plaid greatcoat with a fur collar, was marching me around the deck, pointing out the sights as we steamed through the darkening winter afternoon, past mile after mile of snow-covered flatlands, past villages, past lighthouses....

The band was playing again.

There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into my Amytal dreams ...

What an odd song for them to be playing, I thought. I was not thinking very clearly anymore, which was the point, and I wasn't steady on my feet, either.

August Ansbach wanted me to take a nap.

"Look here, this is New Year's Eve, you know, Sylvesterabend. You have a tuxedo? I tell you what we do: we get some sleep now, then we put on our tuxedos and we - how do you say that? Steal? We steal into First Class, we meet a couple of nice girls, we dance, we drink champagne...."

I told him that was about the last thing I wanted to do.

"Oh yes, is what you need, my friend. I will persuade you. Meeting ladies is easier by two.... In any case, I want a little sleep now. Don't stay up here too long, or you freeze. Even with whisky inside!" He clapped me on the back and walked away.

We cleared the light at Brunsbüttel and moved across the wide estuary of the Elbe. The band on the promenade deck fell silent; passengers and musicians all had to rest before the exertions of Sylvesterabend.

"Warum. denn weinen" she had written,
"wenn man auseinandergeht,
Wenn an der näcbsten Ecke
schon ein And'rer steht?"

"Why cry?" Why not? There is no one else at the next corner - no one else I want so much - and there never will be, so is it all right to cry?

No address, no date, no signature.

I walked as far forward as I could get and leaned against the railing, feeling the bottle hard in the outside pocket of my overcoat. I smelled coal smoke. I smelled the sea. I stood there for a long time as the sun sank, as the S.S. Albert Ballin passed Cuxhaven where the land ends, and rounded the lightships marking the channel. We were out of the Elbe now. Turning west, turning toward the last gleam of sunlight, the ship began to roll a little in the North Sea swell, rolling me into a new year and a lonesome life, rolling me home.


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first pages of book
PROLOGUE - THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
I. HOW I GOT THERE
1. PARIS 1922
2. VERDUN 1916
3. IT'S STEALING MONEY, ISN'T IT
4. WHERE WERE YOU IN 1919?
5. RELIABLE TROOPS
6. AN ISLAND
7. BISMARCK FOUND THEM USEFUL
8. INTRODUCTIONS
9. THE LITTLE HOUSE
10. INDIAN CROSSES
11. ANOTHER PART OF TOWN
12. A VIEW OF THE GENDARMENMARKT
13. TWO FOR TEA
14. ON THE TOWN
15. A VIEW OF THE HAVEL
16. REIGEN
II. WHAT HAPPENED
17. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
18. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1922
19. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922
20. FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1922
21. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922
22. WHAT HAPPENED?
III. THE WITCHES' SABBATH
23. SILENCE WITH VOICES
24. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
25. SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT SINGERS
26. THEY'RE ONLY GOING TO HIRE HIS VOICE
27. INFLATION WORKS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
28. SMALL CHANGE
29. WHY NOT PAINT LILI?
30. COLD WIND IN MAY
31. ROLLING THUNDER
32. WALDSTEIN'S VOICE
33. THE MATTER OF A DOWRY
34. A RUSSIAN WORD AND A GERMAN WORD
35. THE MARCH ON BERLIN
36. A PIG LOSES MONEY ALL THE TIME
37. THE ARTISTS' BALL
IV. STRIKE TWELVE ZEROs
38. AMYTAL DREAMS
39. LETTERS
40. PROFESSOR JAFFA'S PROGNOSIS
41. THE OTHER SUBJECT
>42. ROLLING HOME
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