The Losing Role Read Online Free Page A

pulled folders from his
map case and slapped them on the desktop. He stared at some papers
as if reading, but his eyeballs weren’t moving. Behind Max, one of
the officers was trying to clear his throat, and the phlegmy
screech combined with the greasy smell of the wood stove fire made
Max’s stomach clench up and his throat constrict.
    “You lived in America,” Pielau said. “Eight years.
Your family had emigrated there and got themselves to New
Hampshire. You end up in New York City. Why?”
    “I’m an actor,” Max said. “We like a new challenge.”
Pielau stared, expecting more. “And a shot at success, of course,”
Max added.
    Pielau pursed his lips and moved them around, as if
he had meat stuck between teeth. “Other Germans went too. They made
films. Hollywood embraced them. That traitor bitch Marlene
Dietrich. That little rat Lorre.”
    “Hollywood still embraces them.”
    “Lucky for them. You dabbled in American forms.”
    “Forms, sir?”
    One of the officers behind Max said, “Musicals—with
the Negro’s jazz.” It was Lieutenant Rattner. “And all the while
you work with Jews,” he added.
    “I’m not Jewish,” Max said. “My race certificate is
in order and on file.”
    Pielau was glaring at Rattner. “No one’s doubting
your racial purity, Corporal. So, why return to Germany? Why return
in ’39?”
    “I’m a German. By ’39 I knew my place was here.” Max
too could play it straight. He wasn’t lying so much as
interpreting. He’d really believed something like this back
then.
    “You never joined the party,” one of them said.
    “You never joined the SS,” another said.
    “You were lucky not to land in prison, the schemes
you’ve been up to,” Rattner said. “Refusing good German roles.
Exploiting the black market. We should have thrown your type back
to America.”
    If they insisted on pecking, why sit behind him? Max
turned and glared at the three lieutenants. He wanted to say what
was really on his mind, but a modern German had to pick his
battles. His refusals had been about art, at first. The roles he
declined were melodramatic junk that not even Hollywood was doing.
As far as the black market went, Max was only one of many. These
sheltered SS clowns had no idea. Max simply had the poor fortune to
be one of many minor scapegoats. The three met Max’s glare with
dead stares, their eyes dark. Max said, “No, instead you put me in
an army uniform. Let me fight. And for that I am grateful.
Sirs.”
    Rattner spat.
    “Corporal, please, turn back around,” Pielau said.
“Thank you. Back in Germany, there was also a woman.”
    “Liselotte. Yes.”
    “Not just any woman, I should add. Frau Auermann was
an inspiration to us all.”
    They had no idea of inspiration, Max thought,
simmering. Inspiration took imagination.
    “She died, in an air raid,” Pielau said.
    “In Hamburg. It was an American air raid, to be
exact.”
    Silence behind him. They’d all lost someone close.
Max turned to them and could tell from Rattner’s looser stare that
Rattner had lost more than one. He faced Pielau again, and they
shared a knowing glance.
    “Perhaps we leave loved ones out of it,” Pielau
said.
    “In New York you changed your name, called yourself
a noble,” Rattner said to Max.
    “My agent’s idea,” Max said. The name change was
Max’s doing. His agent thought it too corny yet hokum only seemed
to help in America, Max had argued.
    “And you let him,” Rattner said. “ Amis say
jump you say how high, is that it?”
    Max shrugged. In German, the word “ Ami ” was
slang for an American. He thought it boorish and never used it. Now
he’d use whatever it took. “Not exactly,” he said. “The Amis are persistent, to be sure, but not in that way. Especially in New
York. They won’t listen to reason. They follow their own paths, I
suppose. But the longer you’re there, the less you know . . . ”
    A moment of silence crept in. They all knew less
these days.
    “You