“One may make a great deal of money by traveling, especially if one is an American officer like yourself.”
“I’m in the mood for money,” I said.
“From the black market?”
“Everybody does it.”
“The army frowns on it.”
“But they do very little to discourage it, especially among officers. My partner in this deal is another officer.”
“I can’t tell you how it pleases me to hear this,” said the Meister. “I sense an alliance of substance.”
In agreeing to travel for the Meister, I perceived a change in my attitude toward myself and others. Clearly, I thought and acted faster and with more resolution than other men, knew what others would think before they thought it, knew, for instance, when I caught the Captain biting his nails, and he then guiltily hid his hands, that he was behaving like a recidivist thumbsucker, which is to say an autoeroticist. How swift the demon Orson — or is it Oreson-Whoreson? — faster by a whisker than old Freud devoid.
As he listened, the Meister unfolded the tale of his childhood in the war, early soldierhood in the Wehrmacht, surviving the bombings of Frankfurt, aiding in their aftermath (his half a foot then only a stump), putting out fires, carrying wounded to belowground shelters. The boy into man became the peddler who could get anybody anything at a price by the time he was twenty-three. He crossed into the British, French, and Russian zones during the early occupation years with great ease and casualness, owning papers of four nations, fluent in five tongues, and with a sixth sense for survival.
He stole an artificial leg from the hospital where he recuperated, sold the leg to an amputee for two hundred cigarettes, bartered the cigarettes for a live pig, traded the pig to a butcher who supplied the mayor of Darmstadt in exchange for the loan of a Leica and a roll of film, bided his time until he had secretly photographed an American lieutenant colonel in bed with three Fräuleins and a Doberman pinscher, blackmailed the colonel into lending him his automobile, drove to the officers’ quarters and cleaned out another colonel’s vast hoard of medicine, chocolate, uniforms, military insignia, and whiskey, imposed these gifts on a black marketeer known as the King of Mannheim, and earned himself the right to deal in currency for the King, which was his goal from the outset.
The Meister carried a pistol, which was visible in the crotch of his left arm, and as he dropped references to this killing, that murder attempt, I grew wary of getting thick with his mission, which I had yet to understand. But as he unraveled the operation, I again grew comfortable, because I would be dealing with legitimate life: buying money at banks, using legitimate dollars that I could easily have come by legally. I lost my fear and entered into the brilliance of a solvent future, one in which I would crown Giselle the queen of all fortune, and where we would reign as sovereigns of a post-military life in the haut monde.
The Meister’s method was a complex cycle of money in motion. On the street he sold marks to Americans for scrip, turned the scrip into greenbacks through a network of American army associates (like myself) by legal means, buying money orders, for instance; then sent me and others to Switzerland with the greenbacks, where we bought German marks at considerably less than their value in the American sector of Germany. Back in Frankfurt we’d take our cut, and the Meister would then sell the marks for scrip at a profit, turn the scrip into greenbacks, and off we’d go again to Switzerland on our moneycycle.
The danger was minimal. Military personnel underwent baggage inspection at the American zone’s exit points, but I had educated luggage and also the inspection of officers was usually perfunctory for officers are honest — except the Captain, who was a grand thief in his heart, a petty thief in his skin. It was he who owned half the marks I first changed with the Meister, and it was he who saw dollar signs in his dreams after I told him of the Meister’s scheme.
What can I say of international currency violation? Not much more than that it’s the rape of the system. The Swiss have been fucking the rest of the world with their secret vaults for generations. What the Meister and I did was to join the game.
It would have taken me years to get rich on this arrangement, but I did finance my marriage and honeymoon, did fulfill the vision of Venice as altar and nuptial bed — Giselle and I afloat on the Grand Canal, stroked along in our gondola of desire, knowing that today is tomorrow, and tomorrow is forever, and that we will be in ecstasy, we will be rich and free, and we will manifest our own destiny forever; and not only will we never die, we will not even grow old. That’s what I told Giselle the night before we returned to Germany and I was arrested by the Military Police.
They interrogated me for two days, then let me go but confined me to quarters, not as a total prisoner, but restricted to one room and the grounds at headquarters Kaserne, where the MPs were billeted. They escorted me to chow and kept checking to see that I hadn’t gone off. Being a married officer, I’d had my own apartment in an army housing project close to the center of the city, but I could no longer live there.
They knew that two other officers were involved with the scam — my boss, the Captain, and Warrant Officer Archie Bell. They transferred Archie to Korea but sent the Captain to cushy London, which led me to believe that the Captain was the informer in the case. Vengeance is my estimate of his motive, since I took Giselle away from him. The police must have known he was dealing, confronted him, and he ratted. And there I was, an upstanding citizen, suddenly thrust among outcasts, thrown into an underworld role for which I had small talent and less stomach.
Right after they checked on me I dressed and left the Kaserne, walked past the guard at the gate and took his salute, then caught a taxi to my apartment, where I changed into my German suit. Giselle was at work and I decided not to leave her a note. I’ve always quested after mystery, and as I studied myself in the mirror I realized that the Orson of the past was gone forever. I took all the cash I had in the drawer, slicked my hair with Vaseline, put on the leather coat I’d bought in emulation of Meister Geld, and stepped out into the Teutonic darkness.
I went looking for the Meister, my first stop being his movie theater. The usher said he’d never heard of anybody named Meister Geld and I realized then that I didn’t know the man’s real name, or if he had one. The usher grew impatient and said if I wanted to go inside I’d have to buy a ticket, and I did.
A military hanging was in process in the film. A much-decorated warrior wearing his uniform and medals ascends to the gallows, and disdains the hood that covers a hanged man’s death gasp. Hangman loops rope around his neck, man proudly strokes his medals, and hangman weeps as trapdoor springs. Close on face of hanged man: tongue out, eyes all but exploded. Hold on face as eyes return to normal, tongue recedes into mouth. View on military guards weeping as they look at hanging man. Close on hanged man, dead and smiling. His eyes suddenly open, his smile widens, and he laughs.
I went up the stairs toward the office by the projection booth. It was as I remembered, but empty: no movie posters, no naked women, no furniture, telephone, or rug. Meister the Magnificent had made himself disappear. The usher came in behind me, said I shouldn’t be up here, and ushered me out into the night. I circled several blocks, looking for the Meister’s car, my peregrinations bringing me eventually to the only other place where I knew to look for him, the Rhineland Bar. It was busy with a mix of men and women, whores and pimps, and I sought my main connection, the sugar whore, but without success. I wanted to see her again expose her scar, the validity of which I had begun to doubt. Was it pasted on? Tattooed? Drawn? Would it run during sex, or come off on your stomach? Would you then be scarred?