In fact, he said, his one distinct impression of Hitler had come from a newsreel that showed him walking out of the Olympics a few months earlier when Jesse Owens, the Negro runner, mounted the platform to accept his fourth gold medal. “Which was pretty bad sportsmanship,” he said, “but let’s face it, something like that could have happened in lots of places.” The truth was, Harold had a hard time concentrating on politics at all. His life was tap, nailing his next gig, keeping edible food on his table and his troupe from splitting up and forcing him to train new people in his routines. And, of course, with his American passport in his pocket, he could always pick up and pull out and go back to the Balkans or even home, if worst came to worst.
• • •
They arrived in Berlin on Tuesday evening and were met as they stepped down from the train by two men, one in a suit resembling Fugler’s but blue instead of green, and the other in a black uniform with white piping down the edges of the lapels. “Mr. Fugler is awaiting you,” the uniformed one said, and Harold caught his own importance in this and could hardly control the thrill it gave him; normally he and his troupe emerged from trains hauling their heavy leather luggage while struggling with some idiotic foreign language to direct porters and hail cabs, usually in the rain. Here, they were led into a Mercedes, which gravely proceeded to the Adlon Hotel, the best in Berlin and maybe in all Europe. By the time he was finishing his dinner of oysters, osso buco, potato pancakes, and Riesling alone in his room, Harold had buried his qualms in imaginings of what he might do with his newfound money and he was ready to go to work.
Fugler showed up at breakfast next morning and sat down in his room for a few minutes. They would perform at midnight, he said, and would have the club for rehearsals until eight that evening, when the regular show started. This was a slightly more excited Fugler; “He looked like he’d throw his arms around me any minute,” Harold said.
“I was getting along so good with Fugler,” Harold said, “that I figured it was time to ask who we were supposed to be dancing for. But he just smiled and said security considerations forbade that kind of information and he hoped I’d understand. Frankly, Benny Worth had mentioned that the Duke of Windsor was in town, so we wondered if maybe it was him, seeing he was pretty snug with Hitler.”
Breakfast done, they were driven to the club, where they confronted the six-piece house band, whose only member under fifty was Mohammed the Syrian pianist, a sharp young sport with fantastically long brown fingers covered with rings, who knew some English and translated Harold’s remarks to the rest of the band. Relishing his new authority, Mohammed proceeded to take revenge on the other players, all Germans, whom he had been trying for months, unsuccessfully, to bring up to tempo. They knew “Swanee River,” so Harold had them try that as an accompaniment, but they were hopelessly slack, so he managed to drive off the violinist and the accordionist as diplomatically as possible and worked with the drum and piano and it was tolerable. Waiters and kitchen help started arriving at noon, and he had an amazed audience standing around polishing silver as he went through the troupe’s stuff. To dance before applauding waiters was a new experience, and the troupe began to feel golden. They were served a broiled-trout lunch in the empty room, another first, with wine, freshly baked hard rolls, and chocolate cake with marvellous coffee, and by half-past two were sharp on their feet but sleepy. A car brought them back to the Adlon for a nap. They would have dinner at the club, free, of course.
Harold for a long time lay motionless in a six-foot marble tub in his habitual pre-performance hot bath. “The faucets were gold-plated, the towels were yards long.” It was the waiters’ unprecedented near-reverence for him and the troupe that forced him to suspect that his audience tonight had to be some very high-level Nazi political people. Hitler? He prayed not. His own stupidity at having failed to insist on knowing appalled him. He should have deduced this problem the moment Fugler had said it was to be a single performance. Once again, what I imagined must have been his lifelong curse of timidity soured Harold’s mind. Sliding down the bath until his head was underwater, he said, he tried to drown but finally decided otherwise. What if they discovered he was Jewish? The images of persecution, which he had seen in newspapers earlier this year, marched out of the locked closet hidden in a recess of his mind. But they couldn’t possibly do something to an American. Blessing his passport, he got out of the tub and, dripping wet, fear in his belly, he checked that it was still in his jacket pocket. The plush towel on his skin somehow made it even more absurd that he should be feeling anxiety rather than happy anticipation as a command performance neared. Standing at a tall, satin-draped window, tying his bow tie, he stared down at the busy thoroughfare, at this very modern city with nicely dressed people pausing at store windows, greeting each other, tipping hats, and waiting for traffic lights to change, and felt the craziness of his position—he was like a scared cat chased up a tree by some spectre of danger it had glimpsed which might have been only an awning snapping in the breeze. “Still, I remembered Benny Worth’s saying the Nazis’ days were numbered because the workers would soon be knocking them out of office—so all hope wasn’t lost.”
He decided to gather the troupe in his dressing room. Paul Garner and Benny Worth stood in their tuxedos and Carol Conway in her blazing-red filmy number, all of them a little edgy since there was no precedent for Harold’s summoning them before a show. “I’m not guaranteeing this, but I have an idea we are dancing for Mr. Hitler tonight.” They nearly swelled with the pleasure of their success. Benny Worth, a born team player, his gravelly voice burgeoning through his cigar smoke, clenched his heavy right fist, flashing a diamond ring with which he had more than once wounded interlopers, and said, “Don’t worry about that son of a bitch.”
Carol, always a quick weeper, looked at Harold with waters threatening her eyes. “But do they know you’re—”
“No,” he cut her off. “But we’ll get out of here tomorrow and go back to Budapest. I just didn’t want you to be thrown off—in case you see him sitting there. Just play it the same as usual, and tomorrow we’re back on the train.”
A massive chandelier hung over the nightclub’s circular stage, a blaze of twinkling lights which irritated Harold, who distrusted anything hanging over his head when he danced. The pink walls had a Moorish motif, the tabletops were grass green. They watched through peepholes from behind the orchestra as, promptly at midnight, Herr Bix, the manager, stopped the band, stood center stage, and apologized to the packed room for interrupting the dance, assured the customers of his gratitude for their having come this evening, and announced that it was his “duty” to request everyone to leave. Since normal closing time was around two, everyone imagined an emergency of some sort, and the use of the word “duty” suggested that this emergency involved the regime, so that with only a murmur of surprise the several hundred patrons gathered up their things and filed out into the street.
• • •
Some strolled off, others entered cabs, and the stragglers halted at the curb to watch, awed, as the famous long Mercedes appeared and turned in to the alley next to the club, preceded and followed by three or four black cars filled with men.
Through the peepholes, Harold and the troupe watched, amazed, as twenty or so uniformed officers spread out around the Leader, whose table had been moved to within a dozen feet of the stage. With him sat the enormously fat and easily recognized Göring, and another officer, and Fugler. “In fact, they were almost all enormous men; at least, they looked enormous in their uniforms,” Harold said. Waiters were filling all their glasses with water, reminding Harold, also practically a non-drinker, of Hitler’s reported vegetarianism. Bix, the Kick manager, who had scurried around backstage, now touched Harold’s shoulder. Mohammed, no longer in his usual spineless slope over the keyboard but bolt upright, caught the signal from Bix and, with his ringed fingers and with the drummer backing up with his brush, went into “Tea for Two,” and
Harold was on. The shape of the number could not have been simpler; Harold soloed soft-shoe, went into the shuffle, then, on the third chorus, Worth and Garner cakewalked in from left and right, and finally Carol, as happy temptress, swooned pliably around the formations that were made and unmade and made again. Within a minute, it was obvious to the astonished Harold as he glanced at Hitler’s dreaded face that the man was experiencing some profound kind of wild astonishment. The troupe went into the stomp, shoes drumming the stage floor, and Hitler seemed transfixed now, swept up in the booming rhythms, both clenched fists pressing down on the tabletop, his neck stretched taut, his mouth slightly agape. “I thought we were looking at an orgasm,” Harold said. Göring, who “began to look like a big fat baby,” was lightly tapping the table with his palm and occasionally laughing delightedly in his condescending fashion. And, of course, their retinue, cued by their superiors’ clear approval of the performers, was unleashed, ho-ho-ing in competition over who would show the most unmitigated enjoyment. Harold, helplessly enjoying his own triumph, was flying off the tips of his shoes. After so much trepidation, this surprising flow of brutal appreciation blew away his last restraint and his art’s power took absolute command of his soul.
“You couldn’t help feeling terrific,” Harold said, and a curiously mixed look of embarrassment and victorious pleasure flushed his face. “I mean, once you saw Hitler in the throes, he was like . . . I don’t know . . . a girl. I know it sounds crazy, but he almost looked delicate, in a kind of monstrous way.” I thought he was dissatisfied with this explanation, but he broke off and said, “Anyway, we had them all in the palm of our hands and it felt goddam wonderful, after being scared half to death.” And he gave a little empty laugh that I couldn’t quite interpret.
The routines, repeated three times at the order of the more and more involved Leader, took close to two hours to finish. As the troupe took bows, Hitler, eyes shining, rose from his chair and gave them a two-inch nod, his accolade, then sat, his chaste authority descending upon him again. Fugler and he now busily whispered together. The room fell silent. No one knew what to do. The retinue picked at the tablecloths and sipped water, staring about aimlessly. On the stage, the troupe stood, shifting from hip to hip. Worth, after several minutes, started to walk away in a silent show of defiance, but Bix rushed to him and led him back to the others. Hitler was clearly impassioned with Fugler, time and again pointing at Harold, who stood waiting with the troupe a few feet away. The dancers’ hands were clasped behind their backs. Carol Conway, terrified, kept defensively nodding, coquettishly lifting and lowering her eyebrows toward the uniformed men, who gallantly smiled back.
More than ten minutes had gone by when Fugler gestured to Harold to join them at the table. Fugler’s hand was trembling, his lips cracked with dryness, his eyes stared like a sleepwalker’s; Harold saw in the man’s tremendous success tonight the volcanic power Hitler wielded, and once again was touched by fear and pride at having tamed it. “You could laugh at him from a distance,” Harold said of Hitler, “but up close, let me tell you, you felt a lot better off if he liked you.” In his adolescent face I began to see something like anguish as he smiled at his remark.
Fugler cleared his throat and faced Harold, his manner distinctly formal. “We shall speak further in the morning, but Herr Hitler wishes to propose to you that . . .” Fugler paused, said Harold, to compose the Leader’s message carefully in his mind. Hitler, slipping on a pair of soft brown leather gloves, watched him with a certain excited intensity. “In principle, he wishes you to create a school here in Berlin to teach German people how to tap-dance. This school, as he envisions it, would be set up under a new government department which he hopes you will take charge of until you have trained someone to take your place. Your dancing has deeply impressed him. He believes that the combination it offers of vigorous healthy exercise, strict discipline, and simplicity would be excellent for the well-being of the population. He foresees that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Germans could be dancing together at the same time, in halls or stadiums, all over the country. This would be inspiring. It would strengthen the iron bonds that unify the German people while raising up their health standards. There are other details, but this is the gist of the Leader’s message.”
With which Fugler, with military sternness, indicated to Hitler that he had finished, and Hitler stood and offered his gloved hand to Harold, who scrambled to his feet, too nervous to say anything at all. Hitler took a step away from the table, but then, with a sudden bird-like snap of his head, turned back to Harold, and with pursed lips smiled at him and left, his small army behind him, their boots thrumming on the wooden floor.
Telling this, Harold May was, of course, laughing at times, but at other times one could see that he still had not quite shed the awesome distinction implicit in the story. Hitler at the time of the telling was only two years dead, and his menace, which had hung over us all for more than a decade, had not completely disappeared. His victims, so to speak, were still in fresh graves. Repulsive as he had been, and grateful as all of us were for his death, his presence was like a disease we had had to focus on for too long for it to heal and vanish so quickly. That he had been human enough to lose himself in Harold’s performance, and had even had artistic aspirations, was not a comfortable thought, and I listened with a certain uneasiness as Harold pushed on with the tale. He looked different now than he had at the start, seeming almost to have aged in the telling of the story.
“Fugler showed up for breakfast again next morning,” Harold said, “a totally changed man. The fucking Führer had offered me a department! In person! And my hit had also raised Fugler a couple of notches in the hierarchy, because the whole audition had been his idea. So the both of us were super hoch, big shots. He had a hard time staying in his seat as we went over the next steps. I would have the pick of Berlin spaces for the school, since my authority came directly from the top, and somebody from some other department would shortly be coming by to discuss my salary, but he thought at least fifteen thousand a year was possible. I nearly fell over. A Cadillac was around a thousand in those days. Fifteen was immense money. I had blasted the ball out of the park.”
With a school and immense money on offer, he was handed a dilemma, he went on. He could, of course, simply leave the country. But that would mean tossing away enough money to buy himself a house and a car and maybe seriously think about finding a girl and marrying. He now began trying to explain himself more deeply. “I’ve always had a hard time with major decisions,” he said to me, “and of course Hitler’d been in office only a few years and the real truth about the camps and all hadn’t hit us yet, although what was already known was bad enough. Not that I’m excusing myself, but I just couldn’t honestly say yes or no. I mean, going back to the Balkans wasn’t exactly Hollywood, and knocking around in the States again was something I didn’t want to think about.”
“You mean you accepted the offer?” I asked, smiling in embarrassment.
“I didn’t do anything for a couple of days except walk a lot in the city. And nobody was bothering me. My people were enjoying Berlin and, I don’t know, I guess I was busy full time trying to figure myself out. I mean, if you were walking around in Berlin just then nothing was happening. It was no different from London or Paris except that it was cleaner. And maybe you’d notice a few more uniformed men here and there.” He looked directly at me. “I mean, that’s just how it was,” he said.
“I understand,” I said. But Hitler was too horrible a figure; I couldn’t appreciate even the most perverse attraction to him or his Berlin. And it could be that that thought was what made me ask myself for the first time whether Harold had done something utterly outrageous, like . . . falling in love with the monster?
Harold stared out at the street through the drugstore window. I had the feeling that he hadn’t quite realized how the story would sound to others. It was partly the particular character of the late forties;
for some, but by no means for everyone, there was still an echo of wartime anti-Fascist heroism in the air; on Paris street corners, stone tablets were still being cemented into buildings, commemorating the heroism of some anti-Nazi Frenchman or -woman who had been shot on the spot by Germans. But of course most people, Harold probably among them, were oblivious of these ceremonies and their moral and political significance.
“Go ahead,” I said. “What happened next? It’s a great story.” I reassured him as warmly as I could.
He seemed to open a bit to my acceptance. “Well,” he said, “about four or five days later, Fugler showed up again.”