Frankfurt am Main

         The train crossed the Main river into the workers suburbs surrounding Frankfurt am Main.

          --Why Frankfurt am Main?

          --There’s also a Frankfurt am Oder.  In the East.

          For the first time I heard the Communist half of the country mentioned. We had our rendezvous in front of the first newspaper kiosk as we passed from the train quay into the station proper.  The station itself looked like a gigantic hangar with a vaulted ceiling supported by iron arches.  Which is was, of course.  A hangar.  A cathedral of the 19th century, dim and foggy.  I had read that somewhere. 

          I handed the boys their address books.  We had also travelled in separate compartments, just in case they were followed.  I thought it more likely that I would be followed. My telephone was taped and I drove around in a Thunderbird, wearing the fur coat Max felt was so important.  Stood out like the white wolf.  But Hermann and Piotr were students and liked to think they were the target.  Also true, perhaps, but they would have been harder to follow.  The four leaflets from the War Resisters International I held onto.

          The station was full of GI’s, in uniform, out of uniform but easily recognizable by their short hair, GI’s with wives, wives with and without children, GI girlfriends who looked German.

          --I can see why they leaflet here, I remarked, looking around to see if anyone was.  It was early in the morning for leaflets, whether student or hippie.  Their identification with the working class, as Max said, did not extend to early rising.

          The Frankfurt Central Station was set in a concrete waste of traffic islands, bus stops, taxi stands, and a knot of streetcar tracks terminating and twisting themselves around the station before straightening out and running away in all directions. “The three travelers had to pick a hazardous way through a variety of four wheelers to reach the shore of a circumference sidewalk.”  Things had not changed much since Henry James wrote that sentence over a hundred years ago, except that now the four wheelers were motor-propelled.  And the city landscape had changed.  Grey concrete buildings rose up on every horizon with dead neon lights, pushing Coca Cola, General Motors, Pan American, Dow Chemicals and other joint ventures in Germany.

Crossing the square was easier than it would have been in Paris.  Frankfurt drivers ignored jay walkers but might have hit us out of sheer lack of reflection.  We washed up on a sidewalk disgorging more GI’s from a military bus with a cafe-restaurant next to it, half full of Germans.  The American soldiers did not seem to run to cafe hopping at twelve-thirty in the morning.  So we found a table and they ordered beer and sausages.

          --What a place!  sighed Piotr.

          I ordered coffee and cakes, and Hermann went off to telephone.  Like Max.

          --If you want bread, you have to order it, said Piotr.

          --You can have some of my cakes.

          The sausages came, so did the coffee and cakes, so did Hermann.  He did not speak until he had finished his sausages and half a glass of beer.  Then he wiped his mouth and asked me whether I intended to come out and stay at the University with them or get a hotel in town.

          --Whatever you think.  Maybe we should stay together.

          --I have a friend who can put us all up, said Hermann.  But we have to sleep on the floor.

          I said I would stay in a hotel.

          --Yes, said Hermann.

          --I wonder where?

          The only hotel in Frankfurt I had ever heard of had been the Frankfurter Hof.  It did not fit into the way I lived now.  However, if I had time I would not mind going by for tea because that was where Rosemary Nitribitt had picked up her clients, and taped their confidences and was eventually strangled to death with her own stocking. 

          --Stay here, said Piotr.

          --But this is a restaurant.

          --It is also a hotel.  And there are pay phones inside in the lobby which is also convenient.

          There were also phones in the room, said the clerk, so I stayed there. 

          Hermann and Piotr went out to the university and said they would phone later.  The desk clerk told me I would have to wait an hour until the room was ready.  Max would have said that that gave them time to bug the room, but I was not that paranoiac, fur coat and Thunderbird notwithstanding.

          --If I can just leave my suitcase with you, I’ll be back.

          I took a walk up Bahnhofstrasse. Or down.  James Joyce.  Except his Bahnhofstrasse was in Zurich and not at all like this one.  There were not many soldiers at this time;  Bahnhofstrasse was for the evening and was waiting for them.  Beer joints, coffee bars, third and fourth rate hotels down side streets, shops with cheap suits, shops with records, tape recorders, all sorts of souvenirs, and pornography:  books, posters, photos lying in the window next to Catch 22 and detective stories.  Outside of the shops along the sidewalks, Bahnhofstrasse itself was wide, spacious, with solid buildings.  Back in the days of the four wheelers, it must have been pretty.

          I walked all the way down to the new Opera House, read the announcement of a lecture on US Aims and Achievements in Southeast Asia plastered on a kiosk, and then turned down to the Main River, lined with tall trees, and back to the Central Bahnhof and the Dow Chemical and Coca Cola signs.  Profits for the pundits and pornography for the soldiers.  Prolos for the alliteration, which most of them were. 

          Tired of walking, I found the hotel and asked for my key.  It was not easy to get the clerk’s attention.  Did he think I was a call girl, a second-hand Rosemary Nitribitt, because I had come with two men?  If I was, I’d be in the Frankfurter Hof, not this joint.  The room was small, opening off a narrow carpeted corridor with lots of doors leading undoubtedly to innumerable copies of my small room.  The bathroom was small but clean, as I expected in Germany.  In the bedroom were a radio and the telephone.  I turned on the radio and ran a bath.  The American Forces Network spoke with a woman’s voice:  “And now for Sergeant MacDonald, all the best from his buddies on his birthday and Deep in the Heart of Texas.”

           In the bath, I was a captive audience.  “And now for Tom Jones—“

          brr ring

          Shit.

          Naked in the bath, I stood up, climbed out, walked to the naked telephone.

          --There is a telephone call for you, said a voice. 

          --Well, put it through.

          --You must come downstairs; the phone connection does not work with the outside.

          --What do you mean?  You told me--

          --The phone connection does not work with the outside.  Should I tell the correspondent to call back?

          --No!  Hold it.  I’ll be down.

          Serve them right if I went down naked.  Politically irresponsible.  So I pulled my skirt and sweater, slipped my wet feet into leather heels, and waited for the elevator, pulling at odd doors unsuccessfully seeking the stairs.  In and out on the ground floor, I called to the clerk.

          --My phone call?

          --Over against the wall, please.

          Against the wall.  Piotr told me they had been calling for the last half hour, put off and cut off by the hotel clerk until a German comrade had worsted him.

          --Meet us at seven at the Mensa, said Piotr.  We have made the contact and will go somewhere and talk.

          --Where?

          --The Mensa.  It’s at the university.

                                                         

                                      §                                    §                                    § 

    

          It was already six and so I hurried upstairs, put on my underwear, redressed, made-up, and went down to the bar-restaurant to eat again. I ate whenever the opportunity presented itself, preferring two meals to none.  Like Max.  The German plates were very disciplined with potatoes, veg, meat and gravy, each in its own compartment, the bread and butter in a special bread and butter plate like in the States.  While waiting, a whiskey to wash it down.  Then I felt up to tackling the next problem which was the Mensa and the university.  Having no illusions about my ability to get anywhere by the Frankfurt bus system, I went to the taxi line on the traffic island in front of the hotel.

          --Mensa?  I asked the first in line.

          --Mensa?

          He was old and did not act as if he knew what I was talking about.  What was the German for Mensa?  He went down to the second taxi and they talked.  Then he came back and held open his door.

          --The university, he said in English.  You want the university.

          --Yes, I do.  The Mensa at the university.

          The cab was old and jolted and jerked once it got away from the smooth streets of the center of town.

          --Die Mensa ist dort hinüber, he said, pointing to a group of blockhouses.

          On the opposite side of the street were lots of empty lots, some with cars parked inside, one with a bulldozer sitting in the middle.  Max said this was a sign of the First World, that you could leave a bulldozer alone overnight.  In the Third World it would be dismantled and gone by morning.

          Once I had paid off the driver, I had to figure out how to get dort hinüber.  The Mensa, if Mensa it was, was ringed around with board fences and ditches.  And even if I did get to it, how would I find Piotr and Hermann and the SDS?  How would a GI feel if he came out here for help in deserting?  But then he might be better at finding things than I was.  At least he could climb the fence.  And then what?  How would he find SDS headquarters or the right person to help him once he found it?  I guess if he wanted to desert enough, he would.  He would have to be lucky.  Once you broke loose from a life of guarantees, luck paid a big role.

          Luckily I saw Piotr, Hermann and a boy and girl rounding the corner.  They did not seem at all surprised I had found them, told me the boy was called Bautz, and we all went to a Bierstube to eat.  My third meal of the day.

          --Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

          --Sorry.

          --He will begin by explaining the situation here, said Piotr.  He is the connection with the American SDS.

          --I thought they weren’t connected.

          --Not organizationally connected, said Piotr. But Bautz is the one who handles international relations.

          --Not the IVth International?  I asked.

          --We are not Trotskyites, said Bautz stiffly.

          --I know, I know.  I just said it to see how you would react.

          Max would not have thought this was very funny either.  Oh well, I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life wondering what Max would say.

          --All I really know about the American SDS is that it is the largest student organization there.

          --The same here, said Bautz.  Here it is very active in its campaign against the NPD.

          Nazis.

          --We have made an agreement to help each other, said Hermann.  That is to say, if they get a deserter who would make a good test case for Holland, they will bring him to us.  On the other hand, if they need help in getting deserters to France, we will work together on this question.    Well, we already started with Keith.

          --What I would like to know is, how will they ever find you?

          --Who?

          --A deserter.  I had a hard time finding this place and I took a cab.  Even the driver was not sure where it was.

          --But you did find it.

          --You found me.  What I mean it; this is not a good address to put on a leaflet.

          Bautz shrugged.

          --And even if he gets inside the university, who does he ask for and in what language?  The SDS here is probably crawling with CIA.

          --The CIA most probably would come masquerading as a deserter, said Bautz.

          --We thought of that too, I said.  But it isn’t easy to behave like a GI unless you are one.

          --A real GI could also be an informer, added Hermann.

          --That’s more likely.

          --At any rate, said Bautz.  The network is our concern.

          --What about the leaflets?  Do you still have them?

          I took out To American Soldiers in Europe  and To American Servicemen in Europe and placed them on the table.  Bautz and his girl bent over them.  Hermann took one, but he and Piotr had already seen them in Paris.

          I watched Bautz and thought that yes, he reminded me of Hertha, slim, boney, Hertha with curly brown hair and blue eyes.  She was from Dresden originally but now lived in East Berlin.

          --Are you from Dresden?  I asked him.

          --No, he said, not looking up.  If I were, I would be there.

          I wondered if that was a political statement.  Nothing prevented him from going there.  Except possibly his SDS activity--it mustn’t be too popular in the DDR.  But Bautz and Hertha did look alike, a pair of Thomas Mann twins?  No.  But Mann was very popular in the DDR.  Felix Krull, a male version of Rosemary Nitribitt at the Frankfurter Hof?  Not really.  Maybe nothing was related to anything else and Hertha was after all fifteen years older than Bautz, abnormally sensitive to sirens after the bombing of Dresden babahadalgfhharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntohnerenntuevinthuhutrevarheunawnskawntoohoohooidenenthurauk spoke the thunder.  Said Joyce.  But in Dresden it had been the bombers, not the thunder.  One morning Hertha had gone out on her bicycle after a raid and “there were all these strange shrunken objects burnt black, with round knobs on one end.  For awhile I did not recognize they were what was left of my fellow citizens.”

          --Very bad, said Bautz.

          --Yes.

          --Politically they are completely reactionary.

          --I know West Germany is reactionary, I agreed.  Willy Brandt has not come out against the Vietnam War because he wants to stay in with the Americans.  But in Dresden they have.  Or do you mean the leaflets?

          --Your War Resister leaflets are reactionary, said Hermann.  I already told Max that.

          --Who is Max?

          --Head of the Paris network, said Hermann.  The fat man.

          --That is not the point, I said.  The GIs are also reactionary.  In the sense that they are not for revolution and communism.  But they are against the army.

          --I know your argument, said Hermann.  If you write a leaflet for GI’s and tell them to overthrow capitalist imperialism in order to establish  the dictatorship of the proletariat, not only does he throw away your leaflet, but he will throw a beer bottle at your head.  You must just tell him some simple truths about the Vietnam War.

          --It doesn’t hurt if you throw a little mud at the army too.

          --Mud-at-the-army?  repeated Bautz.  Translate.

          Piotr said that mud-at-the-army was hard to translate.

          --There is a gap, continued Hermann, between--

          --Though from anti-army they move very quickly to anti-Vietnam positions and anti-imperialism, I said.  Buster, for instance--

          --There is a large gap, continued Hermann imperturbably, between an SDS militant and a GI.  We know that.  The class struggle is manifest.  A GI is from another class, culture, and country.  He must be appealed to otherwise than as a student.

          --There are a lot of leaflets written for students, I said.  But nothing yet for GI’s.  Besides what we have here.

          --This is a bad leaflet, said Bautz, picking up To American Servicemen in Europe.  Putting the Russian intervention in Budapest on  the same level with American aggression in Vietnam is exactly what the Americans want.

          --We agree that it is a bad leaflet, said Hermann.  You must write one yourselves.  And get an American to check your English afterwards.

          He got that from Max.  Should I say so?  No.

          --You see, added Piotr.  GI’s all come out of the States brainwashed about communism.

          --When we asked Buster and Manfred why they hadn’t deserted into East Germany or Hungary or Czechoslovakia, continued Hermann, instead of deserting to Holland, they said they weren’t communists, they were just anti-Vietnam.

          --Buster and Manfred?  repeated Bautz.

          --They were two of the first deserters, said Piotr.  We got them to Paris where Max took them over.

          --We will write a leaflet in GI English, said Bautz to Hermann.  And send it to you  to check for GI grammar.

          --GI American, I said with Hermann.

          We looked at each other.

          --How did you hurt your hand?  I asked Bautz.

           A fresh cut ran up his wrist into his sleeve.

          --A pitcher broke, said Bautz.

          --At the Amerika Haus, said Piotr.

          --US Aims and Achievements in Southeast Asia, said Bautz.

          --What happened?

          --Tell her, said Hermann.

          --It was an Amerika Haus conference on US  Aims and Achievements in Southeast Asia, began Bautz. we went an hour early.  Some of us sat in the speakers seats and drank the water in the pitchers.  The rest of us filled the hall.  The Americans did not know what to do.  They asked us to get up and let the speakers sit down, and we said we wouldn’t let anyone talk about US aims in Southeast Asia since their achievements had already resulted in more bombs being dropped on Vietnam than on Germany during the Second World War.  So then the Americans went away to call the German police.  The Americans do not like being reminded of their bombings.  Past or present.  And they use our police to do their arresting for them.

          --But you are only saying what everyone knows, I said.

          --Do the GI’s know it?  asked Bautz.

          --You could put that in a leaflet, said Piotr.

          --Go on with the story.

          --What was funny was that they locked all the doors, continued Bautz.  We could not get out, but then neither could the police get in.  So for awhile all the police had to stay out on the sidewalk with all the German bourgeois who had come for the conference.  By the time the doors were opened, they had all gone home.  The bourgeois, not the police, naturally.  They told us to go home, but we said no.  We resisted.  He smiled.  It was a pretty fair fight.  You see, at the last Berlin demonstration, some newspapers began calling the police storm troopers. So they had orders to go easy.  No guns, no tear gas.

          --Nothing?

          --Clubs and pitchers, said Bautz.  They had clubs, and we had pitchers.

          --Beautiful, I said.

                                                          Cafe Voltaire

           Pine-panelled, beer-steined, poster-plastered, smoke-filled, the Cafe Voltaire was crowded   with young men and women; the bar was to one side and, beyond it, six small steps led down to a lower terrace, equally smoke-filled, poster-plastered, beer-steined, and pine-paneled.

          We joined two Germans at a corner table.  Students?  One got up and offered me a chair, the other went with Piotr to search for more chairs.  I ordered a beer. 

          --Only have one, said Hermann when he sat down. And then go.

          --Why?

          --It is important not to attract attention in this bar.  It is very infiltrated.  You know you stand out and attract attention because you are not a student.

          On the corner wall, I saw myself reflected in a glass-framed picture of old Dr. Faustus listening to Mephisto.  I stood out because I was older than they, drained of color in the glass over the old black and white engraving of Dr. Faustus listening to old Mephisto.  What did Dr. Faustus give to Mephisto again?  Mephisto gave him back his youth, but Faustus--oh yes, he gave him his soul.

          --What are they students of?  I asked Hermann, not sure whether to address them directly.

          --Sociology.

          --Oh really?  I wonder if they know my friend Professor Wiesengrund?

          --You can ask them, said Hermann.  They speak English, you know.

          --Yes, said the girl.  We speak English and we know Professor Wiesengrund.

Piotr brought over the beers.

          --He is very well-known, said the boy.

          --But not as well known as Professor Habermas, added the girl.

          --Who is Professor Habermaus?

          --Mas not maus.

          --And who is he?

          --He too is a professor of sociology.

          --He is more politically active than Professor Wiesengrund, said the boy.  He has, for example, taken a public position on the Notstandgesetze.

          --She does not know what that is, said Hermann.

          --As a matter of fact, I began.  The Easter March.  The Emergency Law clause voted by the government so it can do anything it wants to demonstrators.  Why didn’t Professor Wiesengrund take a position against those laws?

          --He does not want to be bothered, said the girl.  He is too old.

          --Not too old to look at my breasts.

          The four young men looked at my breasts.

          --I know every man can look at a woman’s breasts sometimes.  But Wiesengrund was something else again.  He never stopped looking at them.  When he was talking to you, he looked at your breasts instead of your eyes.

          The four boys looked at my eyes instead of my breasts.

          --A friend in Paris introduced me to him, and we all went to Pruniers and ate oysters.

          There was silence.

          --Outside of that little quirk, he was a nice man.  And during the Nazi time, he left Germany.  For California.  But it could not have been pleasant.

          I meant the Nazi time, not California.

          --And then what? 

          --Well, he was a victim.

          --So were many people.  What did he do, or is he doing, to stop such things happening in the future?

          --He thought he did enough, I guess.

          --Being a victim is not enough.

          --You mean things like the NPD and the Emergency Laws--that he doesn’t come out against them?

          --He gives money to us to leave him alone, said the boy and smiled.  That is better, of course, than not giving money.

          --He is afraid, said the girl.  He is afraid of losing his post at the university again.

          --Well, losing it during the Nazi time was probably bad enough.

I felt like sticking up for him if only because of the oysters at Pruniers.  The sociology student, the boy, smiled again and repeated that suffering was not enough.

          --You don’t think he’d help us with a deserter network, for example?

          --No.

          --He is scared.

          --He was a victim of the old Nazism and is a silent accomplice of the new.

          --Silent?

          --He does not speak out against it.  What else is a silent accomplice?

          --He likes the nobility, I remembered aloud.  Countesses and things.

          --He sees the young noble face of European civilization, said the girl.  And closes his eyes to its hideous diseased rump.

                                     §                                    §                                    §    

          At 9:30 the next morning, I left my bag in the hotel cloakroom and started back to the Uni.  The SDS conference was at ten and the two trains to Paris were at four-thirty and eleven-thirty in the evening.  Whichever I took, there was no point paying for the room any more. In daylight the Mensa was easy to see and get over to.  It was a new building, all glass and concrete; the entrance was down a wide alley between board fences.  Piotr was standing, waiting for me.  He said that Hermann was to speak in twenty minutes and was already upstairs.  He also said it might be best if we did not sit together.  Still on the infiltrator vibe.

          Two stands selling SDS literature flanked the unimpeded Mensa entrance. Garlic and sapphires in the mud/ Clot the bedded axle-tree.  The literature was all in German, however.  Inside, opposite the glass entrance doors, was a cafeteria, to the right a coffee bar, along the wall a concrete staircase leading up to the first floor European, second American, where the conference was going on.  Piotr led upwards.  Outside the conference room door was a row of bulletin boards with clippings and photos.  A travel prospectus shouted:  Come to South Africa!          Land of Astonishing Contrasts!  Modern Cities!  Animal Reserves!  The SDS had illustrated the astonishing contrasts with photographs labeled: High life on hotel terraces!  Low life in the mines!  Each daiquiri sipped by each white drinker on a terrace costs a black worker 10 hours in the mines.  Not calculated are the diamonds the black worker extracts to pay for the whole hotel.  Piotr translated this.

          --What does it say over here?

          --Come.  You’ll see that later.

          --Just one.

          The family von Kramm announces the death of their beloved husband and father, Herbert von Kramm, formerly SS Oberstürmführer and German patriot, respected and mourned^., let’s see,  next to it: Bruno Ohnesorge dies of gun wounds from an unknown assassin during a student demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Iran to our city;  this regrettable incident furnishes yet another reason for the banning of all demonstrations of students, inevitably erupting in a violent...Come,  you can look at all of this later.

The conference room was large and bright; one whole side of the wall was windows.  The speakers, representatives of various SDS chapters throughout Germany were seated around a large oval formed of many square tables filling half the room.  Auditors filled the other two quarters.  Chairs, which seemed originally to have been place in orderly rows were, by this second or third day, dispersed around the floor, much as the original plan of the conference had been altered and changed as it progressed.  I said it seemed pretty anarchistic for Germany.   

          --They are very anarchistic in many ways, said Piotr.  It is a reaction against German discipline.

          --Junkers?

          --More the failure of the German Communist Party--which Lenin said was the nearest thing to the political party the proletariat needed to lead them to victory.

          --Victory?

          --To make a revolution.  Find a seat and we’ll see each other later.

          During the speeches, a series of mimeographed documents were passed out in the audience by girls.  SDS girls.  I was passed pages 8,  9, and 10 on one subject, beginning in the middle of one sentence and ending in the middle of another.  Since the text was totally hermetic to me, my participation was nul.  Sometimes I could follow the drift of the speaker for a few sentences, depending on how fast he was talking and his choice of words.  The -isms were the easiest.  The speakers were all male.  I had located Hermann sitting on the platform, but he never gave his speech, and so the morning passed away.

          At lunch time, Piotr came over and told me I could eat in the cafeteria downstairs.  Hermann would not give his speech until after lunch.

          --So what am I doing here?

          --Perhaps Bautz can join you later for a short while.

          --I saw Bautz last night.

          --Well, that’s what Hermann said.

          But Bautz came and sat at my table.

          --Do you go to this university?  It is being all done over, isn’t it?  Elegant cafeteria.

          --You are impressed?

          --Well, after living in France...contrary to what you might think, you never get fed there at political meetings.  Sometimes at 24 Hours for Vietnam they may have egg rolls and beer or wine, but, as a general rule, you just starve.

          --Later some comrades will come who will be interested in the deserter network.  I will have them contact Hermann and Piotr.

          --When is Hermann giving his speech, by the way?

          --Four o’clock.

          --I thought it was after lunch?

          --Four o’clock is after lunch, said Bautz and left.

          I got myself another coffee and wondered whether to stay or go.  Not for long.  The seven hour gap between the four o’clock speech, which I would not understand, and the eleven o’clock train was too much to face.  Besides, what assurance did I have that Hermann actually would read his speech at four?  I found Piotr and told him I was leaving.

                            §                                    §                                    §

                            

          I got in Paris at eleven and went over to Max’s place to report.  He didn’t have a street bell and so I stood on the sidewalk and threw stones up at his window.  They were building here too.  After a minute, Max threw open the window, looking disheveled, with a rifle in his right hand.

          --I didn’t expect you back tonight, he said.  I thought it was the DST trying to lure me down.

          --OK.

          --Polly’s here.

          --Give her my best.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

          I wasn’t surprised that Polly was there, but that Max came to the window with a rifle seemed a part of the general paranoia I had not thought he shared. 

                            §                                    §                                    §       

  --Why the DST and not the CID?  I asked when he came by the next day. 

          --I don’t understand.

          --I mean, if some secret service is after you, wouldn’t the American military be more likely than the French?

          --The Americans are not supposed to make arrests in France.  They are supposed to turn the case over to whatever section of the French surveillance apparatus is appropriate.  In my case, the DST.  What does that stand for?

          --I know it is the French secret service, but what the initials actually stand for?

          --It’s hard to guess, Max conceded graciously.  Department--you might have figured that out--Department de Surveillance Territoriale.

          He decided he had to go to Germany himself.  Nothing conclusive had been done about putting out a leaflet there, no address was available for GI’s to go to who wanted to desert, and they had parked me off by myself at the meeting, so we didn’t even know if Hermann  had made a speech about US deserters or not.

          --You meant well, June, he said.  But you don’t have my experience.

          --Well, bon voyage.

          --I assumed you were coming with me.

          --Why not take Polly?

          Control to show I was on the inner track?  I liked Polly and would not actually have minded if he had taken her.  At least, I don’t think I would.  I was pleased that he took the suggestion seriously.

          --She’d like to come, he said.  But I’d have to carry her.

          I didn’t know whether he meant literally or not.  Polly had been lamed by polio after a hitchhiking holiday through North America.  She had, as Max put it, fought and won her battle but would remain in steel braces and hand supports for the rest of her life.

          --I mean figuratively, of course, he said.  Literally too, sometimes.  Up the stairs to my place, for example.

          --Figuratively?

          --Well, in a funny way.  I mean--it doesn’t sound very nice to say this, but I’m supposing  you’ll understand me--if Polly had her legs, she’d be an asset.  She’s pretty, she has assurance, capable--I mean to say, even her English accent helps.

          --That sounds very snobbish.

          --It’s not intended to.  I’m speaking purely from a point of view of political utility.  A lot of people who are turned off by me react favorably to one of their own--like Polly.  Or you.

          --Middle-class liberals.

          --Whether you like it or not, middle class liberals can be very helpful in looking after deserters.

          --But the SDS aren’t middle class liberals.

          --Of course they are.  Do you think workers sons go to the University of Frankfurt?

          --No, but they classify themselves according to ideology, not according to the part they occupy in the system.

          --That may be very fruitful politically, but the fact remains that they are middle and upper-middle class.

          I didn’t argue.  As it turned out, the SDS reacted no better to the middle-aged Stalinist they saw in Max than they had to me, the middle class liberal.  Finally, they might have been more impressed with Polly than with us.  At least she was an unusual representative of our species. 

                   §                                              §                                    §

          --What do you think of it?  asked Max.

          Once over the border, he had pulled in at one of the Autobahn restaurants, marched to a back table and taken the new War Resisters leaflet out of his briefcase.  In fact, he had taken the Spiegel out of his briefcase and told me to open to page sixty-two where he had hidden the War Resisters leaflet, warned me not to hold it up but to look as if I were reading the magazine and tell me what I thought of it.  Since I had already seen it in Paris, I said it looked okay to me.

          --That’s not enough.  What would you do if you were a GI and wanted to desert and someone handed you that?

          --I’d ask him--no, maybe I wouldn’t.  I’d read it later.

          --Then what?

          One of Max’s most annoying characteristics I thought--and I use the word advisedly because this particular one did characterize him more than his stocky figure, black hair, or demanding brown eyes--was his habit of suddenly turning a perfectly ordinary conversation into a series of questions and answers “in  order to make people think.”

          --Why don’t you just say what you want to say?  I asked him.  Or what you want the other person to know?  Why go through this elaborate process of dragging out every word by a question?

          --Because then they’ll remember.  Half the time when you tell someone something, he listens with half an ear and forgets what you say before you’re finished.  If you drag it out of him, he remembers.

          --All right, so I’m a GI thinking about deserting and someone hands me this leaflet.  I don’t ask the person who gives it to me how to desert because I’m afraid he’s from the CIA.

          --CID.  What else?

          --I go home and read it.

          --What about the person who gives it to you?

          --I told you, I’m afraid he’s CID.

          --CID agents do not usually give out leaflets in front of US Army bases.

          --All right.  I’m afraid my commanding officer will see me, and I’ll get in trouble--or one of my buddies.

          --What about the guy that gives it to you?

          --Oh, I don’t know, he’s probably a German student or something.

          --This particular leaflet was given out by English students.  Or English war resisters, which are not always the same thing, but near enough for me to make my point.  What does a student, almost any student, look like?

          --He has long hair.

          --Do GI’s have long hair?

          --No.  They have to have it cut in the Army.

          --How would a GI feel who, as you say, has to have his hair cut in the Army, about a student with long hair, and maybe beads, and a Persian or Indian jacket?

          --It would turn him off, I guess.  Exactly.  He might even wing a Coca-Cola bottle at him.

          --In any case, he wouldn’t stop and ask the student for information.  But he might look up the addresses and go to one.

          --I see.

          --That’s what we are going to do.  Now, look at those two leaflets and tell me what you notice?

          He slid another leaflet across the table.  I picked it up.

          --Don’t do that, he said.  Leave it flat on the table.

          I often felt with him that we were playing an elaborate game of cops and robbers.  Just like the phoneless friends, actually.

          --And don’t touch it--I don’t want fingerprints on it.  This is a collector’s item.

          --Here, take them back.  I couldn’t care less what the difference is.

          --Don’t be annoyed, June.  I’m sorry if I yelled at you.  I just wanted you to be careful.

          --I am careful.  I am used to being careful with books.

          --These are papers.

          --And papers.

          --Anyway, do you want to try and tell me the differences?  It’s not complicated.

          He seemed suddenly sad I would not play--as if my refusal put the whole game in question.  I thought of the French and Spanish dogs and said the quality of the paper was different.

          --Good girl.

          Max reached over and patted me encouragingly.

          --What else?

          --All right.

          I grudgingly compared the two leaflets.  I have always disliked those games in the newspaper where the reader is supposed to compare seemingly identical cartoons and pick out a certain number of hidden discrepancies.

          --The first leaflet says To American Soldiers, the second says To American Servicemen and has about fifteen addresses, all in England except for the one in Offenbach.  Also, more text.

          --Ah, what about the text?

          --I’ve read it already, you know.  Back in Paris.  The second leaflet puts the Russian invasion of Hungary on the same basis as the US invasion of Vietnam.  None of the French students will distribute it--you told me all that.  I don’t know why we are going through the whole thing again.

          --Oh, did I tell you that?  I forgot.  Well, anyway, let’s see if anyone is distributing it in Offenbach.

          --You don’t agree, do you?

          --About what?

          --About Hungary and Vietnam being the same?

          --Of course, I don’t agree, but it’s not important. GI’s are not going to read the text anyway--more pictures would have been better.  The point is--this is all we got--there ain’t no more.

          --What about the provos leaflets? 

          --When did we go to Amsterdam?

          --Oh, last February, I think.

          --And it’s now April.  The provos are all very nice and all that, but they’re not Shakespeares.  Doppelt genäht hält’s besser as my mother says.  So that’s why we are going to try to set something up in Germany.  Okay, slip the leaflets back in the Spiegel and push it carefully across--carefully--okay okay, I didn’t say anything.  Here, take the map.

          Back in the car, I opened the map on my lap and Max drove us to what I supposed was the region of Offenbach.  Once we got off the Autobahn , he leaned over and put a stubby finger on the region.

          --Okay, he said.  Bergstrasse No. 2.  Here we are.  Well, if I don’t come back--

          He looked ominous, opened the door, and tramped off.

          Second Maxist characteristic;  a conspiratorial manner.  He used it with much relish, and I could only hope he was using it as a double negative on the principle that no one with something to hide would look so mysterious; therefore, he had nothing to hide.  Actually, as a foreigner starting a deserter support network, he had reason to be secretive, but he certainly enjoyed playing it up.  I felt that if he were being taken off to be hung, his last words would be “Don’t tell anyone where I’m going, it would only discourage them.”  I told him this once, and he said it was perfectly true.  People would be inclined to stop working if one of them got hung.  “But everyone would know anyway,” I had said.  “Someone in the group might not know,” said Max.  “And one undiscouraged person is better than none.”

          Ten minutes later, he came stomping back to the car.

          --Wrong address, he said briefly.  Never heard of the War Resisters.  We’d better get away before they get suspicious.

          He pressed down on the accelerator.  Nothing would make an ID jump forwards.  I thought regretfully of my Thunderbird, piling up garage rent in Paris.  Like the phoneless friends, Max had thought it too outstanding to take to Germany on what I guess was supposed to be a secret mission.

          --Look at the address again, said Max.  On the leaflet.

          I reached over and opened his briefcase and took out the Spiegel.

          --And don’t tell me to be careful.  It says Hochbergstrasse 2, Offenbach.

          --Now check it with the second leaflet.

          --They both say Hochbergstrasse 2.

          --Oh, ha, now I get it; we were at Bergstrasse 2.

          --James Bond muddles through.

          --Even Max makes mistakes, said Max.

          Offenbach was a town which looked like a small cross section of Frankfurt pushed twenty kilometers out.  There was a nice tree-lined residential street of family houses set back from the road and a small commercial center with a Salamander shoe store.  Like in New York.  International capitalist conspiracy.

          Hochbergstrasse was harder and harder to find.  The street we were on ended in arable land divided into lots.  No names or numbers.  Long ago I had run into this same difficulty in growing young cities like Caracas and Dakar.  Now Offenbach.  There must be a conclusion to be drawn.  National capitalist expansion?

          --Imagine what a carless GI would do, said Max.  He would have given up a block ago.

          --Why only a block?

          --I didn’t think you had noticed.  We just passed the last trolley stop.

          The street became a dirt road which climbed around some round and troubled hills before ending.  Dead.  We got out of the car and looked around.  Here, a year earlier, it must have been tranquil, woody, a bosky oasis.  But Offenbach had apparently decided to divide and subdivide itself into lots and sell them to well-to-do middle and upper middle class people with money enough to build their own houses.  One or two were completed, and the turf was gashed with projects for the future.  According to the map, we were in the right place, but we had left the last street sign back at the trolley stop.

          Max looked at me.

          --I’ve already gone back to the base, I said.

          --You mustn’t want to desert much.

          --Yes, I do, but I’m easily discouraged.

          --I’m not.  I’m on orders for ‘Nam.  Wait here.  If I don’t come back...well, you know how to drive the car.  I’ll leave the key in the switch.

          He walked off alone again, with his air of mystery.  I wondered where I was supposed to drive the car to--back to Offenbach, to Frankfurt, or all the way to Paris?  In case of what?  I watched him stump across the lot to one of the half-finished houses where he seemed to be asking directions of a carpenter wearing blue overalls and putting in a window.  From there he cut back towards me, but then turned and continued up the hill.  His goal seemed to be an island of turreted, old, two-family houses about five hundred yards away, outposts of the old suburbs climbing up the hill from the other side.  I opened the car door, placed myself so the sun was on my face, and shut my eyes.

          --You certainly wouldn’t be very prepared if someone came.

          --How long have you been gone?

          --You didn’t even notice, said Max reproachfully.

          --I’m sorry.  Did you find the place?

          --Yes.  They were very surprised to see me.

          --Did you say you were a GI?

          Max looked down at his waistline and raised his eyebrows.

          --It would have seemed highly improbable to them.  But I foresee it is going to take a certain amount of pushing to get things clear, and so I thought you had better come along.

          --Is the car all right here?

          The ID was marooned in a sea of beaten earth and grass.

          --Well, I don’t much like to walk, but I don’t see how we are going to get through the fields with it; so we’ll just lock it up and leave it.

          We locked it up and left it.

          A footpath led across the fields and came out on a cement roadway in front of an irregular line of the old-fashioned turreted houses.  Up a pair of stone steps to a glass-windowed, gauze-curtained front door with a bell pull which we pulled and were automatically buzzed into a small entrance where a series of  pushbells indicated the names of the tenants.

          --War Resisters, said Max authoritatively pushing one button.

          The inner door opened into a small hall attached to a moderately steep staircase where Max stumped up three flights with me after him.  The door on the third floor was ajar for us, but Mad had to tramp to the other end of the corridor before unearthing a frazzled-looking secretary who said we could go into the office and wait, but they were very busy, as she had told the gentleman, preparing the Easter March and besides, the man in charge of the War Resisters was on a trip and wouldn’t be back  till tomorrow. All this in German, but the drift was clear.  I had the feeling she had hoped to see the last of Max when he went to get me.  Max said there must be someone else who knew about the leaflets.

          --After all, your address is on them.

          --Well, the man in charge is--

          She was harassed but not disagreeable and repeated he was away on a trip.

          --Do you realize that this leaflet is addressed to American soldiers? asked Max accusingly.  If an American soldier came all the way out here to talk to you, you wouldn’t tell him the man in charge was away, would you?

          She said something about not issuing these leaflets any more, but that someone would come and see us in the office if we would be so good…

          When we were alone, Max smiled.

          --Actually, she would probably tell a GI the same thing she told us, he said.  That’s why I won’t accept it.

          Man in charge or no man in charge, we agreed that another and more acceptable address would have to be found for the GI’s.

          A very young man came in to see us next.  He began by repeating that they were already very busy with the Easter March.  Max said he knew.  The young man said they no longer were responsible for the leaflets to the American deserters.

          --To the American soldiers, amended Max.

          --Yes, the soldiers.

          --What would happen if a soldier came out here with one of these leaflets in his hand?

          --A soldier came here once, he said uncertainly.

          --He did!  exclaimed Max.  The poor guy.  What did you do?

          The young German looked around as if hoping the answer would be piped in to him from the secretary in the other room.  But no help was forthcoming and so, left to his own devices, he told the truth.  This was a good sign.

          --We told him--that is, he saw the man you asked for who is out of town--that we could not do anything and that the police had taken all our leaflets.  I think the director gave him some money. 

          --Liberal reaction, said Max.  PACS did the same thing.  Give ‘em money and get rid of them.

          --Who?

          --Never mind.  Some people we know in Paris.  Tell me about the police taking the leaflets.

          --None of us are very au courant, said the young man.  I have just been working here a month.  From what I understand, we received these leaflets from the English War Resisters who came to Frankfurt and gave them out themselves.  I believe they were arrested.  At any rate, a few days later, the police came here and took all the leaflets we had received from England.

          --Didn’t you do anything about it?

          --Naturally.  The War Resisters have a lawyer and we consulted him.  He said the police had no right to take our leaflets, and we have started a suit against them for illegal seizure.

          The young man finished very firmly with an air of “Don’t tread on me.”  A war resister resisting.

          --How long ago was this?  asked Max.

          --About a year ago.

          He looked a little less resistant suddenly and said that German law was very slow.

          --What have you done in the meantime?

          --In the meantime?

          --Yes, in the meantime.  Look. Over a year ago a group of our English colleagues went to a great deal of trouble to print leaflets directed to American soldiers in Europe, the greatest number being in Germany.  They send you a supply and then come themselves to give them out.  They really start an action.  They start the action, the police stop the action, you start a lawsuit.  So far so marvelous.  But then what?  Everything remains at a complete standstill for a year, and the one GI who is enterprising enough to find his way to you is sent off with a handout.  I have rarely encountered such irresponsibility, political or otherwise.

          --But since the police were wrong...when we get our judgment...

          --The war will be over, said Max.  The government has every interest in dragging it out, and your lawyer undoubtedly has a hundred other cases that he considers more important.

          The young man hung his head.

          --I never thought about it, he said.

          Third characteristic of Max:  once he has pinned someone down, he picks him or her up and moves on, if possible.

          --First things first, he began.  Isn’t there any other place a GI could go for help that would be willing to put its name on a leaflet?  No one but Max or a phoneless friend could ever find this place.  And one GI.

          --A phoneless friend?

          --Never mind.  Another address?

          --The people here are not very daring, said the young man.  The students would be ready to do much more with American soldiers.

          --Ah, said Max.  That’s more like it.  What students?

          --The SDS.

          --Good.  What are your relations with them?

          --I have a friend in the SDS, said the young man.

          --Why aren’t you in the SDS?

          --I’m not at the university till next year.

          --Can you get in contact with them?

          --Certainly.

          The young war resister gave us a name and an address.

          --You have to come with us, said Max.

          --Oh, I couldn’t do that.  It is only five o’clock.  I work here until six.

          --Why can’t you leave early?

          --I don’t think they would--

          --Ask the lady to come here.

          --Which lady?

          --The one we saw before.

          --But I don’t think she would--

          --Ask her.

          The young man left--

          --At certain levels, said Max.  Germans respond to orders.

          --and was shortly replaced by the lady.  Max ran over the facts again with her, ending with the request that the young man accompany us to the Frankfurt SDS.  The lady said no.  They were no longer occupied with American soldier leaflets, and everyone, including the young man, was busy with the Easter March.  She would bring us a map, and he could show us where to go.

          --No, said Max.

          --I will bring you a map, said the lady.

          She brought and left us with a map.  The young man had disappeared.

          --We will never get anywhere this way, said Max.

          He left the waiting room and tramped through the apartment.  I tried, less successfully, to tramp too.  The young man made us a sign of impotence from a file room.  Max gave the lady back the map.

          --I am sorry, he said.  But we must commandeer your young assistant.  We have come all the way from Paris to get this question settled, the person in charge is away--that’s not your fault, but we can’t wait, to have to return to Paris tonight, and we can’t afford to spend two hours driving around Frankfurt looking for an address.  I know your Easter March is important, but it’s a month away and, as far as I’m concerned, the Vietnam War takes priority.

          I thought this last sentence was rubbing it in, but I had to admit the authoritative tone worked.  Enough has been said and written about the effectiveness of an authoritative tone with Germans.  I dislike such generalizations.  But I too, although often unable to construct the language, understand the tone.  On this particular occasion, something worked, maybe the tone, but it might also have been the logic of Max’s argument that we had come from Paris, that the young man would have been through at six anyway, and that the War Resisters, if not GI-oriented, were at any rate nice people.  Because the young man was given permission to leave, and we all three took the old Autobahn from Offenbach to Frankfurt.

          On the way, Max talked to the young man, Uwe I think his name was, about desertion and resistance, all the way to Frankfurt.  He began, as usual, by asking him questions.

          --How many Germans deserted under Hitler?

Uwe did not know.  Neither did Max.

          --It would be interesting, said Max, to have those figures.  How many resisted inside the German Army?  Was there a movement?  There could not have been much of a one.  I don’t count von Stauffenberg, who was an officer and was trying to bring off a coup; anyway, if there was a movement in the ranks, it was crushed.  Probably explains the SDS today.  That’s a hopeful sign.  For the future?  It shows the capacity of a people to react, even belatedly, to fascism, or evil, whichever term you prefer.

I did not think the SDS considered themselves in the light of a belated reaction to evil but, as usual, I was too tired to argue with Max.  Like most liberal snails, I preferred to withdraw from irritation.  Besides, we were on the outskirts of Frankfurt.  There was a lot of traffic, and we never would have found the address without Uwe.  The SDS was occupying the top floor of another old-fashioned house in a section which reminded me of a Boston suburb.  It was full of students, newspaper copy, posters.  Uwe’s friend wasn’t there, and Peter, the student running it, treated us like CIA agents.  I didn’t blame him.  Two middle-aged Americanized--more or less middle-aged and more or less American--coming from Paris to Frankfurt just to talk about American deserters, what else could we be?  Max talked to him about putting out a leaflet, and he said yes, he would see, but the SDS was vacating this address and there was no point writing a leaflet until they had an address to put on it.  I thought we might ask if he knew Bautz, but Max was on his way out before I could suggest it.  We left Uwe in the street, exchanging addresses with him too.

          --This guy was one of the paranoiac SDS, said Max.  If I had given him any names, he would have been sure we were agents.

          --They are not nearly as nice as the Dutch.

          --They are more organized, said Max.  Hence, more suspicious.  Perhaps they are right, of course, but it makes our work more difficult.

          --I don’t think anything will come of it, I said pessimistically.  He certainly said we could not use that address because they are going to move.  Do you think it is true?

          Max shrugged.

          --Who knows?  At any rate, we have the SDS address for further contact. They may not dig us, but they are more serious than the Easter March people who are nicer.  Do me something.

          The trip ended with our parting.  I had to return to Paris for whatever reason; so Max dropped me off at the Frankfurt Bahnhof, and he stayed on to see if he could find Bautz.  Neither the Germans nor the Dutch ever came up with a leaflet, but finally it did not matter because Max put Buster, and two new deserters (whom we shall now meet), onto writing their own leaflets in GI American:  Desert!  It’s the sweetest thing in the world! began Buster’s leaflet, and it was given out all over Europe;  nothing politically incorrect here about comparing the invasion of Hungary with Vietnam.  We stamped In-adam-ugo-2 provos on the front, and that’s what the deserters did.  They were just as paranoiac about going to an address in Germany as the German groups had been about providing one. For the next year, it all worked out.  Then came May ‘68 in Paris engulfing all Europe in its wave for a few months, and everybody could go wherever they wanted--Les frontieres on s’en fout or fuck the frontiers--which is a little stronger-- was a favorite slogan at all the demonstrations.