In the summer of 1982 Count-No-Count phoned my East Village apartment. Kurt was calling from Hamburg with an offer of a job as 'tursteher' at his nightclub BSIR. The pay for a doorman was $150 a night, free accommodations, and all I could drink. Being dead-broke I answered, "Ja."
I spoke bad German with a Boston accent thanks to an ancient Bavarian teacher Bruder Karl at my high school south of Boston. My stay in Hamburg had been pleasant throughout the warm season, but the coming of autumn brought the cold rain, gray fog, and dark days. The sun's traverse of the sky descended each day approaching the winter solstice like a frisbee weakening in flight. Even worse was how German the Germans became once the tourists had fled to southern climes.
There were old Nazis on the streets. The bad weather allowed these arrogant fascists to creep out of their hiding places and I walked through Jungfernstieg spotting various members of the Waffen SS and Gestapo. Maybe it was my imagination playing tricks with the shadows, but their eyes didn't lie about what they had seen in Russia, Poland, France, or Germany. They were not extras in a Hollywood movie. These men had not only obeyed orders, they had carried them out to the letter.
Of course the young Germans were obsessed by the ghosts of the pasts.
"We are the Porsche Reich, not the Fourth Reich," Count-No-Count told me on many occasions in Paris. The Telex millionaire's best friend was a Reeperbahn pimp, Nigger Kalle, the son of an American sergeant from Harlem and a local woman from Hafenstrasse on the harbor of Hamburg. A black Zuhalter was an anomaly in Hamburg, but his right-hand man was SS Tommy, a deadly killer without any humor. The two of them controlled the notorious Eroscenter's six-floors and the thousands of Huren or whores for their boss Thomas Baker. Nigger Kali was always good to me. In truth he was my boss and not Count-No-Count.
SS Tommy believed in the Second Coming of the Third Reich. The original Thousand Year Reich had lasted twelve years, but he was not a real Nazi. Not like those old men who had done things no one liked to speak about at parties or even behind their backs. Still when SS Tommy presented me a large bill for having sex with a blonde girl at BSIR, I handed him the keys to my car and left Hamburg that evening without saying good-bye to anyone. The Rechtung was for 20,000 DMs or $12,000. Everything had been itemized on his list.
Everything. Every sex act in five words or less. He had charged twenty DMs for holding hands. Nothing was left off the list. Not even holding hands.
A midnight train pulled into Hamburg's Hauptbahnhof a little after midnight on time. I expected SS Tommy's to grab me from the platform or at the Belgian frontier, but I reached Paris at dawn and I felt lucky to be in France. Everyone does if they left someplace else in the middle of the night.
In the autumn of 2011 I had been living at the British Embassy in Luxembourg. The old fortress city was centrally located in Europe and I had visited to Paris, Brussels, and Charleroi in the first month. I googled Germany.
It was very close and I planned a trip to Trier, the ancient Roman city of 70,000, only a forty-five minute ride on the train. Telling the Ambassador my plans, I caught the morning express to the Moselle and ferried across the river to Konz for a short ride to Trier.
On my arrival I half-expected SS Tommy to be waiting on the train platform, but several years ago we had met in Pattaya, Thailand. The criminal had aged into a stone-cold killer and was threatening my dear friend, Fabo, and pretended to be a friend. He hadn't recognized me and I hadn't bought the act. Fabo's French friend confronted the killer with the fury of an ex-legionnaire. I was lucky not to have been involved in the confrontation and had later heard that the monster had been arrested for a solo bank robbery in South Africa. Still I feared he might be out and sighed relief leaving the train station.
Germany had changed in the last thirty years.
The old Nazis had died off and while the young Nazis had become very active in the East, they weren't here, but I kept my eyes open. Walking through the old Roman ruins I studied the faces of the young and old. I didn't spot a single Nazi. It was, as if their genes had been erased from the Germanic race.
In town the only broken glass were from broken bottles and not the windows of Jewish homes and synagogues. I ate a bratwurst and drank a Kloster beer.
I visited Karl Marx Haus. The creator of Communism had been born in the old city. The street was in the heart of the sex zone. Nothing was happening in the afternoon. As I stood outside the house and old man passed and muttered under his breath, "Juden."
"And fuck you, you old Nazi." My comment made him turn his head. "Ja, du alte arseloch."
I rushed him and he cringed in expectation of a blow. His uplifted arm stopped my blow.
"Gehst heim," I said with Boston accent.
He was about 91. I was 59. One blow would have put him in the hospital and I would have gone to jail. He was still a Nazi and I was me.
Some things never change.
"Nicht war?"
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