time and a card to show that he was a member.
Roger Kraus served the N.S.D.A.P. well. As an athlete, and as a soldier.
In 1935 he was sent to Spain. Here he was an intimate of
Hoheitsträger
Hans Hellermann and frequently appeared on Fichte League platforms. Officially employed by Hellermann & Phillippi as a member of the Harbour Police, he worked as an informer and a hunter of men, taking orders from Carl Cords and occasionally from Zuchristian. In Madrid, during July, 1936, he distributed Mausers or early potatoes to Lafarga and Torres. Later in the year he joined Queipo de Llano’s army. In 1938 he was decorated for exceptional service by Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
Kraus, under sentence of death in Paris, returned to Spain in 1945.
He disliked Spain. The men were effeminate, Semitic, and they made poor soldiers. Even when they killed it was always from a passion, never with a sense of order. But these were bad times and he must be satisfied with anything.
He examined his reflection in the hallway mirror. The clothes are bad, he thought. They hang loosely from my body. She should see me in my uniform. My boots black and polished, my legs masculine, slender, my tunic tight against my chest. Still, I have the figure of a young man. My muscles are hard.
Not like Chaim – soft: plump: Jew. Godless.
And Chaim reminded him of last night. Theresa had quarrelled with him again, and Toni had avoided him at the Mocambo. So he had gone on to Noël’s and there, young Chicu, drunken again, had greeted him with a mocking
“Sieg Heil
, Colonel.” There had been others in the bar but Kraus knew them and that they were cowards. He had grabbed Chicu and swung him around so that his arm was pinned in back of him. Then, gradually increasing pressure on his arm,Roger had ordered him to lay his other hand flat on the bar. He had drained his beer mug while Chicu crouched, whimpering, his hand quivering on the bar. Then, quickly, swiftly, he had smashed his beer mug down on Chicu’s hand. He had heard the bones crack, and he had felt Chicu go limp and fall to the floor.
Godless, he thought. Impudent, and cowards.
But street brawls.…
Yes, the last months had been bad. He, Roger Kraus, was a soldier. But there were no calls. He was without an army or a commander or a reason. There had to be a reason, a prey, an enemy. Not this nothing, this waiting, this freedom.
She will be surprised to see me, he thought.
And in his room André puffed solemnly at a cigarette. The light was not strong enough for painting but it was sufficient just now to stare down at the street with nothing to do but think or wonder.
So many souls arising and greeting the new dawn dull-mindedly. Chaim, what is old Chaim thinking? (You are wonderfully wrong, old Chaim –
We cannot love all men because many of them are evil and not worth the cheapest of our sentiments which is pity.)
In Montreal, mother is awakening and father is yawning (eyes half-shut because he doesn’t want to see mother’s wrinkled body), and with the ineffable confidence of the untried he stretches and decides he will wear his trousers with the grey stripe.… Pepe is stirring, perhaps María is ill, poor Derek is probably staring into a mirror.
But me, what do I believe in? Not even in the validity of my own anger. (We, doomingly haunting a back-alley of prehistory, suffer the asking warlords and gods unworthy of men.)
But is it necessary to believe in something?
Because I do not know enough or cannot guess enough or feel enough I believe in being good and understanding and brother to other men and painting because it is the only thingI can do half-well and perhaps finally it will explain to me what I am looking for.
As a child, and later as an adolescent, André enjoyed wandering on the mountain which rose like a camel’s hump in the heart of Montreal.
He had been brought up in Westmount where the Canadian rich lived, and every morning at eight his father got up and had
Roger Kraus served the N.S.D.A.P. well. As an athlete, and as a soldier.
In 1935 he was sent to Spain. Here he was an intimate of
Hoheitsträger
Hans Hellermann and frequently appeared on Fichte League platforms. Officially employed by Hellermann & Phillippi as a member of the Harbour Police, he worked as an informer and a hunter of men, taking orders from Carl Cords and occasionally from Zuchristian. In Madrid, during July, 1936, he distributed Mausers or early potatoes to Lafarga and Torres. Later in the year he joined Queipo de Llano’s army. In 1938 he was decorated for exceptional service by Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
Kraus, under sentence of death in Paris, returned to Spain in 1945.
He disliked Spain. The men were effeminate, Semitic, and they made poor soldiers. Even when they killed it was always from a passion, never with a sense of order. But these were bad times and he must be satisfied with anything.
He examined his reflection in the hallway mirror. The clothes are bad, he thought. They hang loosely from my body. She should see me in my uniform. My boots black and polished, my legs masculine, slender, my tunic tight against my chest. Still, I have the figure of a young man. My muscles are hard.
Not like Chaim – soft: plump: Jew. Godless.
And Chaim reminded him of last night. Theresa had quarrelled with him again, and Toni had avoided him at the Mocambo. So he had gone on to Noël’s and there, young Chicu, drunken again, had greeted him with a mocking
“Sieg Heil
, Colonel.” There had been others in the bar but Kraus knew them and that they were cowards. He had grabbed Chicu and swung him around so that his arm was pinned in back of him. Then, gradually increasing pressure on his arm,Roger had ordered him to lay his other hand flat on the bar. He had drained his beer mug while Chicu crouched, whimpering, his hand quivering on the bar. Then, quickly, swiftly, he had smashed his beer mug down on Chicu’s hand. He had heard the bones crack, and he had felt Chicu go limp and fall to the floor.
Godless, he thought. Impudent, and cowards.
But street brawls.…
Yes, the last months had been bad. He, Roger Kraus, was a soldier. But there were no calls. He was without an army or a commander or a reason. There had to be a reason, a prey, an enemy. Not this nothing, this waiting, this freedom.
She will be surprised to see me, he thought.
And in his room André puffed solemnly at a cigarette. The light was not strong enough for painting but it was sufficient just now to stare down at the street with nothing to do but think or wonder.
So many souls arising and greeting the new dawn dull-mindedly. Chaim, what is old Chaim thinking? (You are wonderfully wrong, old Chaim –
We cannot love all men because many of them are evil and not worth the cheapest of our sentiments which is pity.)
In Montreal, mother is awakening and father is yawning (eyes half-shut because he doesn’t want to see mother’s wrinkled body), and with the ineffable confidence of the untried he stretches and decides he will wear his trousers with the grey stripe.… Pepe is stirring, perhaps María is ill, poor Derek is probably staring into a mirror.
But me, what do I believe in? Not even in the validity of my own anger. (We, doomingly haunting a back-alley of prehistory, suffer the asking warlords and gods unworthy of men.)
But is it necessary to believe in something?
Because I do not know enough or cannot guess enough or feel enough I believe in being good and understanding and brother to other men and painting because it is the only thingI can do half-well and perhaps finally it will explain to me what I am looking for.
As a child, and later as an adolescent, André enjoyed wandering on the mountain which rose like a camel’s hump in the heart of Montreal.
He had been brought up in Westmount where the Canadian rich lived, and every morning at eight his father got up and had
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