but later I
am unhappy that I will die in disgrace. Now I want to live only old and please self, so I eat sweet cake. I hungry now. In war days I only sometimes hungry, sometimes whore. Now I always hungry,
always whore. Now I live to eat.”
I nodded and asked when Meister Geld was coming. She looked in my eye and said, “I know you do not want me, but I always pay for cake.”
She opened her blouse and presented her naked breasts to my gaze. They were abundant and firm, underlined below by a long, jagged horizontal scar on her stomach. “Gift from lover,”
she said, touching the scar. She closed her blouse and stood up.
“I know nobody with name Meister Geld,” she said. “It is silly name.” Then she left the café.
What was I to make of that? Conned out of two pieces of cake by a sugar whore? Was that all there was to it? I paid the check, and as I left the café, thinking about my next move, a black
Mercedes pulled alongside me; and from the rear seat came a greeting.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. I have your tidings from Archie Bell,” this in very good English from a man in a dark blue leather coat, and a dark suit of color and cut not unlike the
suit on my back. The man was corpulent, with the red beard of a Viking warrior. I judged him to be forty.
“Meister Geld?” I asked, and when he smiled and opened the car door I got in beside him.
In my hierarchy of personal demons at the time of the fall, Meister Geld holds a position of eminence. He had been wounded by the weather in December, 1941, on the day the
Russians stopped Hitler at Stalingrad. Forty-two degrees below zero, and his left foot froze into the similitude of marble; a frozen foot as good as a bullet in the chest. He ran barefoot in the
snow to gain circulation, then stole a felt shoe from a Russian soldier who lay dead in the street, needless of the shod life. He did not steal the Russian’s right shoe but kept his own, a
piece of cracked leather. His foot of marble recovered in the felt, but his right foot congealed and died inside the sodden leather. Also a hole in his glove cost him his right thumb.
The Meister told me all this when he saw me staring at that peculiar ersatz thumb: an unlikely length of glove-covered hard rubber, tied with a finger-threading thong. And, in the shoe where the
front half of his foot used to be, a piece of toe-shaped wood. Why had the Meister not understood his thumb was freezing? Why had he not stolen the Russian’s right shoe along with the left?
Look to the minor devils of war for answers.
My simple task, to change two thousand marks for dollars, was achieved in the first moments of talking, the Meister excavating from a vast interior coat pocket a leather bag thick with
banknotes, and giving me the going street rate of exchange.
“A formidable amount of marks, Lieutenant,” the Meister said. “You have been saving your pfennigs.”
“Some belong to an associate of mine,” I said.
“Archie Bell?”
“No. Archie handles his own.”
“So you not only deal in money, you are also a courier for others. And out of uniform. You have the air of the adventurer about you, Lieutenant.”
The thought pleased me. I began to think of myself as Orson-at-large, Orson-on-the-town. Other than manipulating cards and a few black-market cigarette sales, I had done very little in life that
could be construed as illegal. My moral stance on cards was that it was a survival tactic; also I gave back as much as I stole, although not always to the same citizens. I knew I was an adept, a
figure of reasonable power in an unreasonable world, flush now with money, love awaiting at the other end of a taxi ride, Europe at my doorstep, needful only of a weekend or three-day pass to know
the glories of civilized empire, including the empires of love, lust, beauty, and freedom (temporal for the moment, but longitude will develop; all things wait on the man who embraces the muse of
freedom). And now, as I
am unhappy that I will die in disgrace. Now I want to live only old and please self, so I eat sweet cake. I hungry now. In war days I only sometimes hungry, sometimes whore. Now I always hungry,
always whore. Now I live to eat.”
I nodded and asked when Meister Geld was coming. She looked in my eye and said, “I know you do not want me, but I always pay for cake.”
She opened her blouse and presented her naked breasts to my gaze. They were abundant and firm, underlined below by a long, jagged horizontal scar on her stomach. “Gift from lover,”
she said, touching the scar. She closed her blouse and stood up.
“I know nobody with name Meister Geld,” she said. “It is silly name.” Then she left the café.
What was I to make of that? Conned out of two pieces of cake by a sugar whore? Was that all there was to it? I paid the check, and as I left the café, thinking about my next move, a black
Mercedes pulled alongside me; and from the rear seat came a greeting.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. I have your tidings from Archie Bell,” this in very good English from a man in a dark blue leather coat, and a dark suit of color and cut not unlike the
suit on my back. The man was corpulent, with the red beard of a Viking warrior. I judged him to be forty.
“Meister Geld?” I asked, and when he smiled and opened the car door I got in beside him.
In my hierarchy of personal demons at the time of the fall, Meister Geld holds a position of eminence. He had been wounded by the weather in December, 1941, on the day the
Russians stopped Hitler at Stalingrad. Forty-two degrees below zero, and his left foot froze into the similitude of marble; a frozen foot as good as a bullet in the chest. He ran barefoot in the
snow to gain circulation, then stole a felt shoe from a Russian soldier who lay dead in the street, needless of the shod life. He did not steal the Russian’s right shoe but kept his own, a
piece of cracked leather. His foot of marble recovered in the felt, but his right foot congealed and died inside the sodden leather. Also a hole in his glove cost him his right thumb.
The Meister told me all this when he saw me staring at that peculiar ersatz thumb: an unlikely length of glove-covered hard rubber, tied with a finger-threading thong. And, in the shoe where the
front half of his foot used to be, a piece of toe-shaped wood. Why had the Meister not understood his thumb was freezing? Why had he not stolen the Russian’s right shoe along with the left?
Look to the minor devils of war for answers.
My simple task, to change two thousand marks for dollars, was achieved in the first moments of talking, the Meister excavating from a vast interior coat pocket a leather bag thick with
banknotes, and giving me the going street rate of exchange.
“A formidable amount of marks, Lieutenant,” the Meister said. “You have been saving your pfennigs.”
“Some belong to an associate of mine,” I said.
“Archie Bell?”
“No. Archie handles his own.”
“So you not only deal in money, you are also a courier for others. And out of uniform. You have the air of the adventurer about you, Lieutenant.”
The thought pleased me. I began to think of myself as Orson-at-large, Orson-on-the-town. Other than manipulating cards and a few black-market cigarette sales, I had done very little in life that
could be construed as illegal. My moral stance on cards was that it was a survival tactic; also I gave back as much as I stole, although not always to the same citizens. I knew I was an adept, a
figure of reasonable power in an unreasonable world, flush now with money, love awaiting at the other end of a taxi ride, Europe at my doorstep, needful only of a weekend or three-day pass to know
the glories of civilized empire, including the empires of love, lust, beauty, and freedom (temporal for the moment, but longitude will develop; all things wait on the man who embraces the muse of
freedom). And now, as I
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