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------- by Russ Chenoweth ------- ------- Zimmer Katz had a master’s degree in architecture. I’d driven a logging truck before I enlisted in the army, but he and I had hit it off. Zim was sprechen Deutsch with Henry, the bartender at the Darmstadt EM club. I was drinking beer and thinking about the car I wanted. -------“Hey Rich,” Zim said, “Henry’s telling me about this village in the Odenwalt. His sister runs the Gasthaus. You want to go Sunday?” -------“Sure,” I said. Zim had an old VW he got for three hundred bucks. He put a bud vase on the dash the way the Krauts do. Zim spoke German, but he didn’t talk much with the Kamarads. He said it was fifteen years since the war, and they could keep their apologies. Zim was Jewish. -------“Try my sister’s sausage, Rich,” Henry said. “You don’t taste nothing like it.” ------- -------“So what do you think?” Zim asked. It was Sunday morning, and we were chugging up a narrow road that fell off into a deep ravine. There was no guard rail. -------“Nice country,” I said. “Kind of spooky.” -------“This is Cloud Cuckoo Land, Rich. Trolls and vampires. It’s five clicks to Bensheim. You getting hungry?” -------“You bet,” I said. “I want some of that sausage.” -------“You know they don’t waste body parts?” -------“Come on,” I said. “I love all that Bauren shit. Blutwrust and steak tartare, eggs on my schnitzel. My mom’s family was German way back.” -------“So you’ve got sausage genes. Uh oh! A troll.” -------A tall guy in a fancy uniform, with a Tyrolean hat and a rifle on his back was standing beside the road. -------“That’s a Forestmeister, right? Some outfit. Yo, mein Herr!” ------- -------We pulled into Bensheim and parked in front of the Gasthaus zum Hirt. ------- “I see what you mean, Zim,” I said. “It looks like something under a Christmas tree.” Two dozen half-timbered houses were huddled together beside the road, as if they were afraid of the woods. -------Henry’s sister came out to meet us. She was in her fifties and looked like Henry, with a sharp face and gray hair. She talked with Zim a minute, then switched to English. -------“Come in, boys,” she said. “You meet my husband.” -------“Martin, these are Heinrich’s friends.” -------“Welcome, boys. Good you come.” -------Martin put us at a table that looked out over a stream. We drank beer and ate good sausage with rye bread. I was getting homesick. ------- “I got to tell you, Zim,” Martin finally said, “nobody liked Hitler in Bensheim, and we never had no Jews here. A terrible thing.” -------“Thanks, Martin,” Zim said. “I’m glad it’s over. How about another beer?” ------- -------We headed back to Darmstadt feeling good. Zim checked the map and found us a different route. -------“About the woodlands we will go. Right, Rich?” -------“Sure,” I said. -------Zim slammed on the brakes halfway down a steep hill. The sign read, ‘Eintritt verboten.’ -------“Aw jeez, Zim,” I said. He loved to poke his nose in where we weren’t wanted. Maybe it had to do with him being a Jew in Germany. -------The dirt road went down through thick woods and came out on a little river. There was a one-car ferry boat with a rope and pulley but no one to run it. Zim drove onto the raft, and it bobbed under the weight of the car. -------“This is nuts,” I said. -------“Yeah, but kind of interesting,” Zim said. -------We got the across the river and drove on. When we came to an open gate, Zim went right in and pulled up in front of a big stone house. A fat man in lederhosen came out cradling a shotgun. -------“Guten Tag, Mein Herr,” Zim said, and they talked for a while. -------“Come on, Rich,” Zim said. “We’re invited to tea.” -------What a place! There were big leather chairs, a stone fireplace, and an elk’s head on the wall. A sour looking Frau in an apron brought us tea and Kuchen. -------He’d been a general in the Wehrmacht, the man told us in English. The regular army, not the SS. He’d fought in North Africa and Italy and had a lot of respect for the Americans. His family was in the publishing business, so he gave Zim some books in German. -------“Zimmer Katz?” the general said. We’d been talking for half an hour. ------- “Simon Katzkopf, really,” Zim said. -------“Ha! Your father wasn’t Lev Katzkopf? -------“Yep,” Zim said. -------“A fine scholar! I was sorry to learn of his death.” -------“Yeah? You’re a little late,” Zim said coldly. “He might still be alive if we hadn’t had to leave Heidelberg in ’38.” -------“Of course,” the general said. “We should have made allowances.” -------“For scholars, you mean?” Zim said. “A little fine tuning, and everything would have been okay?” Zim stood up. “I’m glad finally to have met a true German, General. We’ve presumed on your hospitality, and I apologize.” -------Zim and the general talked while he walked us to the car. They shook hands like friends. I looked around at the wooded hills. -------“How big is your estate?” I asked. -------“Almost four hundred hectares,” the general said. He smiled. “Lebensraum.” ------- ------- 7 June 04 |