clip earrings, and immediately below her cleavage, a matching sapphire brooch that must have fallen off a maharajah’s best turban. She hardly looked like a writer-that is, unless she’d been a queen who’d given up her throne to write novels about the grand hotels of Europe. She spoke German well, which was fine with me since, for several minutes after shaking her gloved hand, I could hardly speak German myself and I was more or less obliged to let these two women talk across me like a Ping-Pong table.
“Mrs. Charalambides-”
“Noreen, please.”
“Is a playwright and journalist.”
“Freelance.”
“For the
“In New York.”
“She’s just returned from Moscow, where one of her plays-”
“My only play, so far.”
“Was being produced by the famous Moscow Art Theater, after a very successful run on Broadway.”
“You should be my agent, Hedda.”
“Noreen and I were at school together. In America.”
“Hedda used to help me with my German. Still does.”
“Your German is perfect, Noreen. Don’t you agree, Herr Gunther?”
“Yes. Perfect.” But I was looking at Mrs. Charalambides’ legs. And her eyes. And her beautiful mouth. Now, that was what I called perfect.
“Anyway, her newspaper has asked her to write an article about the forthcoming Berlin Olympiad.”
“There’s been a lot of opposition in America to the idea of our taking part in these Olympics, given your government’s racial policies. The AOC president, Avery Brundage, was over here in Germany just a few weeks ago. On a fact-finding mission. To see if Jews are being discriminated against. And, incredibly, he reported back to the AOC that they were not. As a result of which the AOC has now voted, unanimously, to accept Germany ’s invitation and to attend the Berlin Olympiad in 1936.”
“Any Olympiad that doesn’t include the United States,” said Hedda, “would be completely meaningless.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “Since the AOC president returned to the U.S., the boycott movement has collapsed. But my newspaper is puzzled. No, it’s astonished that Brundage could have arrived at the conclusions he did. The American ambassador, Mr. Dodd; the chief consul, Mr. Messersmith; and the vice consul, Mr. Geist, have all written to my government expressing their utter dismay at the president’s report. And reminding it of their own report, sent to the State Department last year, which highlighted the systematic exclusion of Jews from German sports clubs. Brundage-”
“He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee,” said Hedda, interrupting, redundantly.
“He’s a bigot,” said Mrs. Charalambides, becoming angrier. “And an anti-Semite. You’d have to be, to ignore what’s happening in this country. The many instances of open racial discrimination. The signs in the parks. In the public baths. The pogroms.”
“Pogroms?” I frowned. “Surely that’s an exaggeration. I haven’t heard of any pogroms. This is Berlin, not Odessa.”
“In July, four Jews were murdered by SS men, in Hirschberg.”
“Hirschberg?” I sneered. “That’s in Czechoslovakia. Or Poland. I forget which. It’s troll country. Not Germany.”
“It’s the Sudetenland,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “The people there are ethnic Germans.”
“Well, don’t tell Hitler,” I said. “Or he’ll want them back. Look, Mrs. Charalambides, I don’t agree with what’s happening in Germany. But is it really any worse than what’s happening in your own country? The signs in the parks? In the public baths? The lynchings? And I hear it’s not just Negroes who get strung up by white people. Mexicans and Italians also go carefully in certain parts of the United States. And I don’t recall anyone suggesting a boycott of the Los Angeles Games, in 1932.”
“You’re well informed, Herr Gunther,” she said. “And right, of course. As a matter of fact, I wrote an article about just such a lynching I saw in Georgia, in 1930. But I’m here and I’m Jewish, and my newspaper wants me to write about what’s happening in this country, and that’s what I intend to do.”
“Well, good for you,” I said. “I hope you can change the AOC’s mind. I’d like to see the Nazis take a blow to their prestige. Especially now that we’ve started spending money on it. And I’d love it, of course, if that Austrian clown got some egg on his face. But I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. I’m a hotel detective, not a press attache.”
Hedda Adlon opened a silver cigarette box the size of a small mausoleum and pushed it toward me. There were English cigarettes on one side of the box and Turkish on the other. It looked like Gallipoli in there. I chose the winning side-at least in the Dardanelles -and let her light me. The cigarette, just like the service, was better than I was used to. I looked hopefully at the decanters on the sideboard, but Hedda Adlon didn’t drink much herself and probably thought I felt the same way about the stuff. Apart from that, she was doing a fine job of making me look nice. After all, she’d had plenty of practice doing it.
“Herr Behlert told me what happened when you went to the Alex,” said Hedda. “About that poor Jewish man and how the police are refusing to investigate his death. Because of his race.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Apparently you thought he might have been a boxer.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Neither of them was smoking. Not yet. Perhaps they hoped to make me light-headed. The Turkish cigarette in my mouth was strong enough, but I had the feeling I was going to need more than one to go along with whatever it was they wanted from me.
Noreen Charalambides said, “I was thinking that the dead man’s story might be the basis of an interesting article in my newspaper. In the same way I wrote about that lynching in Georgia. It occurred to me that the dead man might have been murdered by the Nazis because he was Jewish. It also occurred to me that there might be an important sports angle that could tie his story in with the Olympics. Did you know that the German Boxing Federation was the first German sports organization to exclude Jews?”
“It doesn’t surprise me. Boxing’s always been an important sport to the Nazis.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
“Sure. The SA has been punching people in the face since before 1925. Those beer-hall brawlers always liked a good fight. Especially after Schmeling became world champion. Of course, when he went and lost the title to Max Baer, that didn’t exactly do the cause of Jewish boxers in Germany any favors.”
Mrs. Charalambides looked at me blankly. I guessed that her remark about the German Boxing Federation had probably emptied the spit bucket of what she knew about the sweet science.
“Max Baer is half Jewish,” I explained.
“Oh, I see. Herr Gunther, I’m sure you must have already considered the possibility that the dead man-let’s call him Fritz-that Fritz was a member of a gym or a sporting association and was expelled because he was Jewish. Who knows what happened after that?”
I hadn’t considered the possibility at all. I’d been too busy thinking about what might happen to me. But now that I did, what she said made some sense. Still, I wasn’t about to admit that. Not yet. Not while these two wanted something from me.
“I was wondering,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “I was wondering if you might care to help me find out some more about Fritz. Kind of like a private investigator. I speak pretty good German, as you can see, but I don’t know my way around this city. Berlin is a bit of a mystery to me.”
I shrugged. “If all the world is a stage, then most of Berlin is just beer and sausage.”
“And the mustard? That’s my problem. I’m afraid if I go around asking questions on my own, I’ll run into a large dollop of Gestapo and get myself kicked out of Germany.”
“There is that possibility.”
“You see, I also plan to interview someone on the German Olympic Organizing Committee. Von Tschammer und Osten, Diem, or possibly Lewald. Did you know he’s a Jew? I wouldn’t like them to find out what I’m about until it’s too late for them to stop me.” She paused. “Naturally, I’d pay you. A fee for helping me.”
I was about to remind them that I already had a job when Hedda Adlon took over the sales pitch.
“I’ll clear it with my husband and with Herr Behlert,” she said. “Herr Muller can cover for you.”
“He resigned,” I said. “But there’s a fellow in the juvenile section at the Alex who can probably use the overtime. Name of Stahlecker. I’ve been meaning to give him a call.”
“Please do.” Hedda nodded. “I’d count it as a personal favor, Herr Gunther,” she said. “I don’t want Mrs. Charalambides to come to any harm, and it seems to me that having you alongside her is the best way of ensuring her safety.”
I toyed with the idea of suggesting her safety might be better enhanced by forgetting the whole idea; but the prospect of spending time with Noreen Charalambides was not an unattractive one. I’d seen comet tails that were less attractive.
“She’s determined to do this, regardless of what you decide,” added Hedda, reading half of my mind. “So don’t waste your breath, Herr Gunther. I’ve already tried to dissuade her. But she’s always been a stubborn woman.”
Mrs. Charalambides smiled.
“You can borrow my car, of course.”
It was clear they had the whole thing worked out between them and all I had to do was go along with it. I wanted to ask about the fee, but neither of them seemed inclined to return to the subject. That’s the thing about people with money. It’s only the absence of money that ever makes it seem relevant. Like having a sable coat. The sable probably paid no attention to it until the day it wasn’t there.
“Of course. I’d be delighted to help in any way I can, Frau Adlon. If that’s what you want.”
I kept my eyes on my employer while I said this. I didn’t want Hedda thinking that my delight in her friend’s glamorous company might be anything other than rhetorical. Not when her friend was so very beautiful. Not when my own excitement at the proximity of her person seemed to me so very obvious. I felt like a porcupine in a room full of toy balloons.
Mrs. Charalambides crossed her legs, and it was like someone striking a match. To hell with the Gestapo, I thought, it’s me, Gunther, she needs protection from. It’s me who wants to strip her naked and to stand her in front of me and then think of some extra things she can do with her sweet behind than only sitting on it. Just the idea of being alone in a car with her put me in mind of a novice father confessor in a convent populated with nuns who were ex-chorus girls. Mentally I slapped myself across the mouth a couple of times and then once more to make sure I really got the message.
This woman is not for the likes of you, Gunther, I told myself. You’re not even going to dream about her. She’s a married woman and she’s your employer’s oldest friend, and you’re going to sleep with Hermann Goering before you lay a finger on her.
Of course, as Samuel Johnson reminds us, sex is usually what happens when you’re busy resurfacing the autobahn with good intentions. Perhaps it loses something in the translation. But it was true enough in my case.
