Crazy in Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

took a flask from his briefcase and tasted of it. “Ah!” He spat. “Good drink will make a cat speak! They are, isn’t it true, simply myopiac? A fat small man, a little soccer ball of a man with eyes like that—and thicker spectacles—came into the K.Z. along with myself. I watched, in vainly, to see the existence there bring him down.” He spat again, making a nasty sound on the sand. “Ah! Cuts the flame.” Schild preferred to assume his version of “phlegm” was a portmanteau word: he must be burning inside. “One gets obsessions when you are a captive. But at the end of three months still he bounced. I never did see him on a work gang. He disappeared days somewhere but in the nights returned to the barracks. I had been convinced that he was a police spy and I am in fact yet. He lay in the bed each night end-to-end with my own bed and stared at me over his round belly and through his feet. It was terrorizing, I tell you, a man could never once find him asleep. When I awokened in the morning he looked, still; perhaps he did not close his eyes the night long. Because I do not know, you see, because I tell you I slept, I functioned as usually I do, under the watching of sixty-six devils I could do as always, because I tell you that beyond a club to my genital members there is nothing which a man can do which will touch me at all.”
    Schatzi’s voice had taken on the authority usual to his concentration-camp reminiscences. On Schild’s refusal he pocketed the flask, but not before illustrating its quality, heavy silver; its feature, a spring cap worked with the thumb. As always, he withheld the dénouement until Schild in the double dread—the tedious responsibility of the auditor to help dramatize, the terrible certitude that the small fat man, whether bona fide police spy or hero, would like all the other creatures of Schatzi’s memory meet an unspeakable end—until, cold in July, he must urge him to go on.
    But Schatzi had got a sudden subtlety. “Is Captain St. George the ass you take him as?” He pronounced “St.” as Sankt: no cue for worry, a man fills out abbreviations in his native tongue.
    “He’s a Republican.”
    “Are not we all? What does this mean? I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”
    “I’m sorry, I forgot. He’s nonpolitical, an aboriginal American type. I thought all the world knew. Let me explain: If I express so much as simple approval of a labor union, he will say, ‘Well, I’m not against unions but you’ve got to admit sometimes they go too far. I understand if a light bulb burns out in a factory the place stays in darkness until an authorized member of the electrical workers’ union comes to replace it.’ But if he saw me leading a mob on the White House under a red flag he would lay it to money or some private passion. Do you understand now? We have billeted together for two years, he knows how I look in my underwear and that I use a soap stick instead of tube lather for shaving. He knows whatever my eyebrows do when I’m puzzled, the contents of my musette bag—”
    “I understand now that you are the ass. How does a police agent operate if not this way? Fritz, Fritz, it is a little wonder that after four years of duty you are yet a first lieutenant!” It was not clear that Schatzi meant more than chaff. He had himself taken irresponsible risks near St. George, more than once lingering before Schild’s billet on a bicycle. What was obvious now, though, was his unease at Schild’s developing a point, hence the underground name, a remonstrating symbol of the overwhelming awareness and power which they both served and before which elaboration was ludicrously futile.
    “With all this knowledge,” Schild finished defiantly, “what could not be forgiven? He would trust a man forever whom he had watched cutting his toenails.”
    “Also,” said Schatzi. “I used to swim at this place but I do not mourn it—any more than I need to play the piano again.