Up in Honey's Room

She said, “I’m Aviva Friedman.”

“Really?” Otto said. “You’re a Jewess?”

“And you’re a Kraut, a Nazi?”

“I’m an officer in the SS,” Otto said, wanting to smile.

Aviva said, “Oh dear.”

And now he did, he smiled because he felt good knowing he could talk to this woman, this girl who was up to something.

Otto said, “You remind me of a woman I knew in Benghazi. She was Italian.” He smiled again and removed his homburg and laid it across two copies of Forever Amber. “I was in love with her.”

“That’s right, they’re on your side,” Aviva said, “the Italians.”

“For whatever good they do us.”

She said, “You look much younger without the hat.”

“I am young, and free,” Otto said, looking at his watch, “for the next one and a half hours. Then I’m taken back and told not to leave the premises.”

She kept staring at him.

“You’re a German prisoner of war.”

“And if you tell anyone,” Otto said, “I’ll put the Gestapo on you. I told you I’m in the SS.”

“Did you ever send people to death camps?”

“I was in North Africa with Rommel, commanding tanks.”

“The Italian girl you think I resemble, she was there?”

“Yes, in Libya. She was a nurse at the hospital. She placed a dressing on my chest, where it was burned, and I fell in love with her.”

“You’re like what’s his name, in A Farewell to Arms.”

“Frederic Henry,” Otto said. “Are you sure you aren’t Italian?”

“You know the nurse in real life,” Aviva said, “wasn’t an English girl, like the one in the book.”

“No, I believe she was Polish,” Otto said.

“I know what I bet you’d like,” Aviva said, “ Leave Her to Heaven.” But right away said, “No,” turned to the table behind her, came around with a book saying, “The Prisoner, by Ernst Lothar.” She turned the book over to read from the back cover, “‘From the Normandy beachhead to an American prison camp in Colorado, the story of the unmaking of a Nazi.’ What do you think?”

Otto said, “Tell me what you’re up to.”

She said in an offhand way, “I’m curious to know what you read.”

“For what reason?”

“I knew you were German. I should say I knew you weren’t American and I guessed you were a Kraut.”

“I don’t care to be called that.”

Aviva said, “I don’t care to be called a Jewess. What are you, Lutheran?”

“At one time, yes.”

“What do you call women who are Lutheran, Lutheranesses?”

Otto said, “You have a point. But what do you care what I read?”

“First tell me your name.”

“Otto Penzler.”

“Otto, I was making conversation, that’s all. You’re an interesting-looking guy. Then I hear your accent, I find out yes, you’re German, and I thought oh, wow, I should get to know this guy.”

“Why don’t you think I look American?”

“I don’t know, the way you carry yourself. You don’t act like an American.”

“But why do you want to know me?”

She seemed to have to think about her answer.

“I don’t live here,” Aviva said. “But when I come to Detroit I always stop at Hudson’s. I love this store, and the book department, the tables and tables of books. I came to Detroit this time to buy the typescript of a play by Bertolt Brecht.”

“Which play?”

“You know Brecht?”

“The Communist playwright.”

“He digs Marx,” Aviva said, “but he’s never been a card-carrying Communist. You know his work?”

“Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder. I saw the one he did with Kurt Weill before they burned his books and threw him out of Germany, Die Dreigroschenoper. You see it, it’s the Threepenny Opera. What is he doing now?”

“He’s in Hollywood working on movies,” Aviva said, “Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die with Brian Donlevy. It’s about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s alter ego. Brecht wrote the story, not the screenplay. When you write a screenplay there’s always someone telling you what to write, and he’s not good at writing to order. But the main thing Brecht’s doing, he’s getting ready to show his new play.” She stopped and came around to the end of the Forever Amber display to be closer to Otto. She said, “Can I trust you?”

“Aviva,” Otto said, and had to smile at her. “Can you trust me-you can do anything you want with me. Don’t call the police and I won’t send the Gestapo after you.”

“Tell me,” Aviva said, “they let you out for the day, the afternoon. Don’t tell me you escaped, okay? If I can trust you, Otto, I’ve got a job for you. Translating Brecht’s play into English.”

“What does he call it?”

“The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”

Otto said, “Der kaukasische Kreidekreis,” mumbling the words. “What is it about?”

“I have no idea. It’s sort of based on a Chinese play five or six hundred years old, The Chalk Circle.”

“Brecht is a friend of yours?”

“No, the guy I’ve been doing business with, he’s in the army, in Hollywood fooling around and met Brecht. I think he sold him something. They’re having drinks at Brecht’s house, some kind of party going on. A copy of the play is sitting on the coffee table the whole while. Brecht got sloshed and went to bed.”

Otto said, “Yes?” starting to smile.

“Pete had his eye on the script the whole time. He left with the script under his jacket and called me from his hotel. Asked if I’d be interested in buying the play.”

“Why did he think you might want it?”

“We’ve got something going. Pete’s in army transportation, he’s a Detroit mob guy who somehow got drafted. For the past year he’s been selling me paintings and art objects he and his guys smuggled out of France. All the stuff the Nazis stole, Pete took a lot of it off their hands.”

“Important works of art?”

“Some, but it’s all marketable.”

“This is what you do, you fence stolen goods?”

“I find art collectors who look at my catalog and get a hard-on. I sell paintings that hung in the Louvre to people living in New York and Palm Beach, at a discount. I still make a pile of money and the collectors give me a big hug.”

“How do you get into this business?”

“My dad got it going. He was a captain in the merchant marine, retired now, he’s almost seventy. I called him to see if we should buy a play by Brecht, one that’s still unknown to the world. Dad said he’d check with book collectors, see how much any of them were interested. I could tell he liked the idea. He said, ‘Offer Pete five hundred, but don’t go over a grand.’”