Germans With A Tan by Philip Henderson

Martin Thad Taylor was one of the few black guys in Berlin whom many people felt had all of his marbles. Many in the “expat community” (or whatever the fuck you call it) dismissed him as a rabble-rouser, stuck in the 1960s; he was notorious for getting himself kicked out of bars by screaming at the owners for what he perceived were racist slights. Of course, his perceptions were usually correct. He was a Rasta, with long, regal dreads half-way down his back; rastas were always given short shrift in Berlin, especially if they were black.

Martin’s response to people’s skewed perception of his radicalism was short and to the point. “Fuck ‘em,” he would say. “What do they know about anything?”

One afternoon, however, he told Ted something that made him doubt his sanity. 
“You ain’t gonna get very far hangin’ around the ‘brothers’ here in Berlin, Ted,” he said. “Hell, if I wasn’t black, I’d probably join the KKK. I just get so sick of all the crabs-in-the-barrel, backstabbing bullshit here. Ted, you got talent. Carl’s got talent, too. He just needs to grow up. Most of these motherfuckers here would get laughed off the stage back home. They ain’t shit, and as much as I hate to admit it, many of them are good friends of mine. But they just stupid.”

Ted couldn’t fathom why he would say such a thing. Most of his friends, naturally, were “brothers.” He thought many of them highly talented. Of course, this was long ago: he hadn’t been in Berlin long enough to tell apart the good ones from the frauds. He suffered through a lot of the frauds and mediocrities because he didn’t know any better. He was just happy to be away from New York’s even more mediocre, suffocating, uptight bullshit. But Martin had brought Carl and Ted down to Yorckschlössen for a reason: to talk about doing something different for a change. Martin wanted to gather as many of the best Berlin talents he could find and stage a play for the upcoming Black History Month.

Ted, who was seated next to Carl, scoffed at the proposal. 

“Seriously, man,” he snorted, taking a sip of his coffee, dressed in his sloppy, natty tweeds (which were slightly less stained than usual); he set his cup down, crossed his arms and looked at Carl.

“Who is going to give a shit? And is it really all that relevant HERE?? In fucking BERLIN??”

“There are black people in Berlin, Ted,” Carl reminded him. “Plenty of them.”

“Well, I don’t see ‘em, do I?” Ted then scoffed, looking around the old, dingy kneipe. “I don’t even see Martin’s skinny ass. And why does he need me, anyway?”

“Because you’re talented as hell, and so am I.”

“Fuck talent,” he scoffed. “Paula’s got talent. She thinks she can sing, the silly bitch.”
A word about Yorckschlössen café: it was an old jazz and blues venue situated in a cosy, bushy little corner just off of Grossbeerenstrasse and Yorckstrasse. Notwithstanding the huge, garish make-believe marquee, it looked like an old German biergarten. Walk past the little black gate up the staircase, which may have a few nuts like Nat Watkins or Johnny Cohn waiting outside with their trumpets, draining the spit out of them while they gossiped alongside their desiccated German floozies. Inside the little foyer, flyers, advertising upcoming musical events for the coming months. Pick one up and look at it. Each event used to be exciting but now, after three years, it makes one’s nose crinkle. 

The interior has the feel of a huge, rickety, crumbling attic with an enormous pillar in the middle of the main room, around which are grouped a number of old tables, chairs and benches. Few people are sitting in them today. The walls, including the ceilings, are completely covered with hundreds of autographed photos of visiting and local musicians. Ted Barnes had always felt quite comfortable here, no matter what the situation; he had experienced some genuinely happy moments in this kneipe. Yet Ted stopped coming to this goddamned place whenever they play the events because he was utterly fed up with hearing “Sittin’ On the Dock of The Bay” or “Summertime” for the nineteenth-schmillonth time. Now, fortunately, there are no bands on its little bandstand, which looks very much like those you’ll find in some dingy hall in Bourbon Street, New Orleans. The upright piano sits there by itself, the lid shut down on it, along with the house drum set, and the little chairs that the musicians sit their asses in during performance are all emptied of people.

There are a few men seated in the far back of the café, German ones, with the same silly, furtive faces doddering over their tall glasses of blond beer, but they are no threat. The Yorckschlössen is cornball, but—unlike Quasimodo, or the A-Trane—it is not enemy territory. You don’t feel patronized, and you will not get heckled here.

After Ted lit a cigarette, the voice pricking in his ears was all too familiar: raspy, light-baritonish, full of slang and double-negatives. “Cliff,” Ted snorted, quietly, grabbing his coat and hustling towards the bathroom. Two or three unidentified German voices were behind him asking Cliff questions about Warsaw. Warsaw was wonderful, Cliff said. I love Poland; such a tragic history and yet such a wonderful people. No, I didn’t encounter no racial shit like that, nothing like that. But the women were certainly something else, though. “I bet they were,” Ted added, out loud, across the club, opening the bathroom door. “They just didn’t fuck him, is all.”

After Cliff had his little chat, he waltzed past Carl, without even saying a word or looking his way. He had on all black: black stingy brim, black leather overcoat, black turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and pointy-toed black leather Oxfords. Somebody seated at the bar nearby snorted and made a sarcastic remark in German as Cliff descended into the cellar carrying his sax case. Fifteen minutes later, Cliff soon returned, without his sax, and with his overcoat off. He had on a dark-brown three-button camel-hair jacket. He approached Carl’s table and then practically draped himself on Carl.
“Hey,” he said, “main man. Whassup with you?”

“The usual,” Carl said.

“The usual what?”

Carl saw he’d shaven off his goatee and only had a mustache. He shrugged and twisted his palm outward. “My life sucks,” Carl then said. “I wish I could tell you more. I can’t even write anything because of where I’m at.”

“Where do you live right now?”

“At Weser Strasse—with Paula.”

At that, Cliff frowned. “You mean,--that Paula?”

“Which one? You mean there’s more than one?”

“The one with the German name—“

“Oh, yeah, Paula Krauss,” Carl said.
Cliff gave off a snort and shook his head. “Man, Paula doesn’t seem like the marrying kind to me,” he said. “Looks like Ted fucked up. I mean, this woman is fucking every nigger in town, and that’s his wife? Doesn’t he worry about it?—I mean, I even fucked her. Lots of times. She seems to really dig my music, though. She’s even talkin’ about movin’ in with me but I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

“I don’t think anybody can,” Carl said, matter-of-factly. Then, he asked Cliff, “Did she kind of smell funny to you?”

“What?”

“Did Paula smell rather—strong, you know what I mean?”

“Where?”

“Down there,” he said, “in her pussy.”

“I never noticed anything,” Cliff told him, raising his brows. 
Coming out of the bathroom, Ted heard a trumpet and trombone begin to play. The trumpet ran up and down the scales from low F to middle A, and then back again. The trombonist blew a few cracked notes, stopped, and then played a fairly clean, boppish passage. He sounded a little bit like J.C. Higginbotham. Ted heard laughter at the bar near the toilet and found Carl casually sitting there, by himself, quietly trading a joke in broken German to the bartender; Cliff was drumming his fingernails on the table morosely, looking at Carl, trying to keep from laughing too loudly. “He has other women,” Ted heard Carl say, “It’s an open relationship.”

“Yeah,” added Cliff, “but why’d you ask me if she smelled?”

Ted sucked his teeth and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He instantly knew who they were talking about. What else are a bunch of Berlin niggers going to do but gossip about Paula Krauss?? 
At the entrance Ted heard a rude, ornery voice cutting unceremoniously into Yorckschlössen’s musty quiet. It was female and very loud. Two other, quieter male voices accompanied this one rude voice, which was speaking German. For the first few seconds he couldn’t tell—he thought she might have been Polish, or Italian. Then it dawned on him that she was black. It didn’t take long, not even with his back turned to her. Ted saw a tall, stout, rather severe-faced woman, medium-brown complexion, with large, heavy-lidded, unfriendly owl eyes that said to Ted that she was an American. A short, thick neck, shiny processed hair pasted down to her skull; white earrings, white fingernails and an outrageously expensive purple overcoat confirmed his suspicions about her Americanness. She did not look like a pleasant person. It gave him a flashback to the bad old days of New York City, where women like her were legion. Cliff had gotten up from Carl’s table to make it to the bar—presumably to talk to Ted—when he ran smack into Missus Owl Eyes. To Ted’s befuddlement, Owl Eyes literally gushed all over Cliff. They exchanged a few happy, gushy words with one another, talking to each other in that really phony, feigned intimacy that makes one nauseous. Whereupon Cliff, so suddenly, broke off the gushy intro by trying to introduce this purple mohaired lady to us. “Carl? Ted? This is Althona Winters.”

Althona Winters took one look at Ted—it was a blank, empty look, and he knew what it meant. It was exactly as if she was looking at a telephone booth while passing up the street. She then looked at Ted and squinted, raised her brows, muttering something inaudible to herself. “I think I’ve seen you somewhere?” was all she managed to get out. “You’re a journalist, right?”

Ted nodded, brows raised, and smiled laconically. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand, “I’m Teddy Barnes, well-known author and critic.” 

Althona’s mouth dropped in a kind of affected disbelief. “Well-known? So, how come I don’t know you, then?”

“Maybe you haven’t read me yet.”

Ted didn’t know what the others felt about the woman—Carl made a quiet little raspberry to himself—but he was enraged. The incident served to remind him that Ted Barnes was a zero in the eyes of black women. No Ossi bigot—not even that fag jumping up and down on his goddamned ceiling—could have pissed him off like this creep. She abruptly jerked her head from Ted when Cliff tried reintroducing him to her. Cliff sighed, chuckled a little, and then when Althona turned back towards him, she began once more with “I heard you were really good now! The woodshedding must have really paid off! An’ you’re really makin’ it an’ all—I mean, that’s wonderful, Cliff.”
“Thank you,” Cliff drooled. “I put everything into my performances. I don’t hold anything back!”
Ted and Carl looked at each other.

While the two of them were thus preoccupied—and while the two other Negroes chimed in accordingly with their own four cents—Carl strode over and joined Ted at the bar. The lilt of their accents filled him with nostalgia. It made him realize how lonely he had been in this city, how much he really desired to be surrounded by members of his own tribe. So—initially, anyway—Carl was not too displeased to see a large gathering of his people again, even if he did not recognize any of them. The only thing he could discern about them was that (judging from their cases) they were musicians, and at least one of them was outrageously gay. Ted, however, felt differently. He had come to Berlin precisely not to see niggers like this again. Like that silly fag with the ladies’ fur coat on, and—God forbid!—Althona, clad in a long purple cashmere coat (like Paula’s, and possibly the same make) and draped with all that absurdly expensive turquoise jewellery. To Carl, who immediately picked up on Althona’s arrogance—Ted could see it in Carl’s face—any good feelings he might have had about the gathering were spoiled. Or, rather, Ted bitterly mused, it merely brought Carl rudely down to earth concerning his own kind. “That goddamn fat nigger bitch,” Ted hissed, extremely quietly.

There was another entrance by the bar where patrons used to access the little sidewalk terrace that Yorckschlössen had. It was in use year round. Winter was no problem since a plastic tent sealed one off from the bitterest cold if one wanted to sit outside. Martin, whom they all thought had stood them up, walked in through the second entrance by the bar. He was dressed in a turtleneck sweater, battered denim jacket, raggedy jeans and had his dreads bundled up in a large, colourful cap. He had been smoking a joint on the terrace; however, the dope didn’t seem to have mellowed him a bit. He hobbled over towards Ted and Carl. “Hey, Carl? Where you been at? I’ve been waiting out here for over an hour!”

“Oh, sorry,” Carl said, rather shame-faced, “I didn’t know you were out on the terrace.”

“That’s okay,” he said, and then, cutting his eye just slightly at Althona, “I just wanted to have this conversation in private!”

Althona heard the last two words spoken out loud, and then jerked her head up, away from the bartender, her two little negro friends, and looked at Martin and Ted. “Excuse me, young man?”
Martin frowned. “Excuse what? Do I look like a young man to you? I might be old enough to be your daddy.”

“That’s it,” Althona then snarled. “Rob? Harlan? Let’s go someplace else where we won’t be harassed like this!”

“You don’t have to leave, Althona Winters, ain’t nobody in here harassin’ you. We were just having a little talk among ourselves. You an’ your little entourage can stay here if you wish. Maybe you just bein’ a little uber-sensible.”

“Fick dich,” Althona then snarled. “You Berlin niggers make me sick to my asshole!”
All of them in the place cracked up, Carl included. Althona saw Ted again and this time, the blank look morphed into one of complete contempt. “Talk about an asshole,” he found himself muttering, against his mental will but obeying a blind instinct deep in his gut. Althona angrily poked her tongue out at Ted Barnes. 

“Wow,” Carl then muttered, along with most of the other patrons inside who saw the act. 

“Wow is right,” Ted said to him, biting his lower lip. “Is it any wonder that all she can pick up is fags?”

“How in the hell do YOU know, you retarded bitch-ass nigger? You don’t know me, and certainly, don’t NOBODY know you—“

“Lady,” Ted spat, “Waaay more people know me than will ever know you in a lifetime. I’m Teddy Barnes—THE most prominent black author in New York City.”

Althona then threw her fat, jewelled, processed head back and laughed aloud. “Yeah, right! All you Berlin niggers are from New York! Jesus! You damn nerds—let me sit my ass down somewhere….”
“You need to sit it down,” Martin then snorted, quietly, “’cause it’s stinkin’ up the damn place….”
Martin then sat down on a stool between Carl and a German bloke who was quietly quaffing down a tall, bulbous glass of beer. Carl noted the bartender—yet another one, it seemed—a hawk-faced, pale-eyed, crew-cut fellow giving Martin rather dirty looks. Martin, however, was ignoring it. He wanted to discuss the new arts festival he had in mind for next year. He wanted to work it out of either Kreuzberg, which had a bunch of these little venues, or the Werkstatt der Kultur in Neukölln, where there was a large stage he could have access to. Once again, Ted began feeling ornery; none of Martin’s talk made any sense in his mind.  He told Martin bluntly why in the hell did he want to have a black arts festival in the first place, since there weren’t but so many blacks in Berlin. Martin, predictably, got pissed. “For your information, Teddy Barnes, there have been black people living here in Berlin since the 19th century.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. Plenty of ‘em, too. You just don’t see that many of them where you live at in Friedrichshain. But there are a lot more here than you realize. And they need cultural institutions just like any body else. Right now there really is nothing for them. Black History month is not just an American thing, as far as I’m concerned. I want this to be a global thing. Afro-Germans ain’t got no role models to look up to in their own goddamn country. They ain’t got—“

“Martin,” Ted then snapped, “There aren’t that many Afro-Germans here.”

“That’s because they don’t go out all the time,” Martin replied.

“Or maybe because they’re in Munich or Stuttgart?” Ted queried. “I mean, Martin, give it a rest. American blacks are on a different wave length than German blacks.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re just Germans with a tan,” Ted said, emphatically. 

“Oh, really?” Martin then snapped. “My son is half-German—is he just a German with a tan, then?”

“I dunno—I haven’t seen your son,” Ted shrugged.

“But he’s black, nigger,” Martin hissed. “That’s just your problem. Can’t nobody tell you shit about anything ‘cause you think you have all the answers, but you don’t. You ain’t entirely wrong, but you don’t know the nuances of the situation here concerning Afro-Germans. And you should, since you live here.”

“Martin,” Ted sighed, “I came here to live because I wanted the space and the quiet to concentrate on my work. I don’t feel like telling Afro-Germans how to be black. Let them figure it out for themselves—it’s THEIR country and THEIR culture. We aren’t German—“

“So what are we supposed to do—we, who have half-German kids?” Martin snapped. 

“We? We are Americans. American Negroes,” Ted began, then, watching the other black patrons of the kneipe raise their brows, hastily added, “black Americans, African-Americans. Our culture is obviously rooted in Africa but it is also distinctly American, a mixture of other cultures that don’t have a damn thing to do with Germany. My point—“

“I don’t get your point,” Martin butted in.

“My point,” Ted continued, “is that though our children may be half-black American, there are also Afro-German kids whose fathers and mothers are NOT American blacks. What about them? I mean, I would not mind—“

“See, Ted,” Martin began, sighing, obviously irritated, “you just getting shit confused. It don’t matter. It—“

“It DOES, Martin. And another thing—what aspects of American Black culture are being promoted here in Berlin? Tell me that. You know what I’m talking about. It’s always the most ignorant, degenerate bullshit. Look at all these fucking billboards advertising 50 Cent and all that shit. Even some of these so-called ‘black artists’ over here in Berlin are caught up in a fucking time warp, still doing the same played-out shit they were doing in the eighties or even the fucking seventies. I mean, do we really want to foist that shit on black German kids?”

After Ted finished talking—during which he became increasingly self-conscious—everyone grew silent for about seven seconds. He did not bother to sigh, or suck his teeth, or do anything to step on the now delicate toes of his black brethren. Martin, so it appeared, had heard little of what he said. “So what you’re telling me,” he began, “is that you don’t want to be a part of this gathering?”

“No, Martin,” Ted said, “That’s not what I mean—“

“Ted, we are a part of this shit, whether we wish to be or not. You married to a Brazilian woman who is, herself, half-German, so you are in on it.”

“She just married a German to get papers,” Ted said. “Paula’s a lying bitch.”

“Well,” Martin then chuckled, “Whatever. But we are involved, whether we wish to be involved or not. We are involved because we are a part of the problem. There is a nigger here who thinks he better than Coleman Hawkins. He thinks he’s the shit. And yet, this ‘genius’ nigger lives just a U-Bahn stop away from his son, who is fourteen years old, and yet this motherfucka ain’t seen his son but two times in his whole life! I don’t give a fuck how talented the dumb motherfucka is, if he won’t see his motherfuckin’ son, all that beautiful music hardly means shit in real time—I mean, he can play a saxophone, but he can’t raise his goddamn kids. And this is NOT an unusual phenomenon here in Germany. This explains why so many Afro-German kids grow up with very negative attitudes about themselves. Plus, they mommas don’t help matters, either. They try and raise the Afro-German child as if he was just another German. I know you see these stupid-ass, washed-out, brainwashed Afro-German bitches in these clubs an’ onna street, an’ most of them just look right at you an’ through you. They black, but they have no clue how to be black. There is nothing in this city, nothing in German culture that they can use as any standard, any starting point, to being who they really are, unless they Africans. But I ain’t talkin’ about African immigrants, I’m talkin’ about the ones whose mammas and pappas were German. The German parent has no clue how to raise a black German child. The parent is gon’ pretend that their skin color don’t matter, that they are exactly the same as the white child. An’ you just know how true that is, don’chu?”

“Please,” Althona scoffed. “You talkin’ shit. I’ve been here for eighteen years, an’ I’ve always known I was black!”

“Althona, everybody knows you weren’t even born here, so you not even in the topic of discussion, thank you,” Martin then snapped, visibly getting angry. “You always—“

“Martin, please,” Ted sighed, looking ahead towards the bottles on the shelves above the bar filled with their pickled goodies, “you know it’s not even worth it.”

“My ass!” Althona then shouted, and wouldn’t you know it, she began to go through the most stereotyped head-wobble routines you could think of. “Little boy, you must not know who I am. I am Althona WINTERS. EVERYbody in Berlin knows who I am!”

“Well, I don’t,” Ted said, matter-of-factly. “I’m a bestselling author.”

“And what about the people back home in Hollyweird??”

“Now YOU—both of you two motherfuckers—can it! CAN THE FUCKIN’—Oh, God, Cliff, who on God’s green earth are these damn fools?!”

“They are writers, okay guys, really. Maybe a little salty but they’re really cool. This is Ted Barnes, he really was on the New York Times bestseller list once—“

“Once,” Althona then snorted with derisive laughter. “I hoped you saved your money!”

“And over here’s Carl Lomax—“

“Already met him. He seems cool. Let’s stick with Carl, ‘cause ain’t nobody knows who this Ted Barnes is.”

“He’s the best damn writer in Berlin,” Cliff then said.

The whole entourage burst into hysterical laughter when Cliff said that. The laughter enraged Ted. Cliff was laughing somewhat: yet, when he said those words, he was in earnest. Out of the shadows emerged some lanky, tall greying German, ponytail, backwards black Kangol cap, bellbottom jeans, earring in one ear, grey turtleneck and fashionably busted-up black leather jacket. He spoke in very heavily accented English. Another Kreuzberg reject, Carl thought, here to add his own two pfennigs. “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” he gushed, his face breaking out into a wrinkle-filled smile, “hold on one second, ja? Althona, I have been looking all over town for you, where have you been? I zeenk you have just a little bit too much to drink—at zat ozzer bar….”

“Oh, Thorsten,” Althona sighed, looking relieved upon seeing his emaciated face; she affectionately rubbed her palms down his chest—“please, baby.” Althona kissed him on the lips.

“Thorsten, man, chill. Don’t be scared of us niggers. We are just some passionate, fierce motherfuckers. You know, like Sicilians and shit. Well, Althona, you’ve heard me play. But me, Carl, Ted and Martin are talkin’ about creating a play for Black History Month. We need to see a real congregation of black talent in this city—“

“Ohhh, yeah,” she then gushed, “I agree. I see what you’re saying now.”

“—An we wanna see some writers, too, some poets, singers, playwrights, you know, a whole buncha shit. We don’t like the image we see of African American or just black performers here in Germany. It sucks—“

“Well, I don’t suck,” Althona protested…. “No, what I mean is that we are the exception and not the rule. There are a lotta fuckin’ clowns out there who are makin’ us look bad, and a lot of ‘em play right in here. But we’re some bad mo’fos who need to have our own thing going. Right?”
“Cliff, that was my idea from jump. But yeah, you right. Carl, you once told me you could play music, too.”

“Yes, I can. But I haven’t done it in quite a while—“

“Oh, really?” Althona then croaked, looking at Carl in a new light. I sighed….Okay, Carl, just do it, say it. “Yeah. Alto and tenor sax. I gave it….”

Carl noted Cliff looking at him with a glance that said he’d said too much. “Well, interesting! I need two saxophonists to play behind me at Soul-Trane sometime in the near future. Cliff, I know you good, but you—uh, what was your name again?”

For a few seconds, Ted stood there looking at Althona as if she were completely mad. Of course, any gig in Soul-Trane was a hell of a lot more prestigious and carried a lot more weight than anything Martin could come up with. Ted of course had long shelved his musical ambitions and concentrated his energies on literature; he hadn’t played a regular gig in over twenty-two years. Yet there was a little spirit somewhere in the not-too-far off distance that was whispering by his ear, telling him you might as well take to the keyboard again, go into music, because you can’t write anymore. Every two weeks you bring home a ream of typing paper from Postbank of Karstadt and less than two weeks later, the whole ream is nothing but balled-up paper. All those “new ideas?” Nothing but junk, sheer crap, caca. But then Ted knew about the predicament of his friends who were gigging. Cliff thought he was healthy, but playing five or so gigs a week was showing on his face. Percy, who was now playing with him at Café Junction, told me that each gig was pushing him closer and closer to Dieffenbachstrasse. Their music, Cliff’s music, was giving him nightmares. He insisted on improvising his own way and didn’t give a shit if the bar patrons often drunkenly heckled him, or if they thought he was too old-fashioned, or “out of tune”: he played what he liked. As a result, he was getting a bad reputation among the musicians who worked Berlin’s chitlin circuit. Ted knew he could do better. He saw himself on stage in a musical battle with Cliff, weaving brilliant melodic lines all around him, as if he were entangling him in a spider’s web of his own making. He saw himself dressed oh-so-elegantly, black suit, white tie, white shirt and cuff-links, with Lenny Mays and Russell Sands off to one corner, watching hesitantly while he poured out one brilliant riff after another, with light, Art Tatum-like assurance alternating with Monk-like stabs and thrusts. And then he saw the crowd cheering, jeering, Ted giving them the finger as he continued to play, literally blowing Cliff and all the rest of the competition off the bandstand. He knew he could do it, he could hear the music in his head; he always had better melodic ideas coming to him than the ones he heard from these musical clowns.

Of course: it was just a fantasy. Ted Barnes was never going to play jazz in this fucking city. He saw Cliff unpack his sax, and put on the mouthpiece, and then wet the reed. Althona stood there looking at him with mouth agape. The other Negroes in the entourage talked amongst each other at a nearby table; the queer guy was putting on a little show for them. Greedy hesitancy and icy detachment were all over her face. “Come onnnn, come on—oh, Jesus! It just takes these things so long to get together, doesn’t it? You poor musicians—“

“Hey, Carl.” Ted nudged Carl’s abdomen with his elbow. Carl nervously jerked around, as if Ted was waiting to kill him. Ted wanted to laugh at how utterly paranoid Carl was. Ted then whispered in Carl’s ear: “There’s some dude’s alto sax sitting in a case on the bandstand. Go get it.”

“Why?”

“Let the cocksucker have it,” Ted snarled, “He’s an asshole.” 

“But—“

“Do you really need to know why??” Ted then asked.

“Well, come on, come on!” Althona actually snapped, watching Cliff warm up….Carl got up, walked past the narrow-set tables towards the bandstand, and found the alto laying there in its red-velvet lined case. He could not find the owner of it anywhere. Carl guessed he just left it there overnight, naively thinking nobody would fuck with it. He took it up, took the cap off the mouthpiece and just his luck, it already had a reed in place…. “We ain’t got all day, do we--?”

“Althona,” Martin snorted, “you not gon’ get very far shouting at the dude.”

Immediately, Carl started playing, just what came into his head. Ted thought he didn’t sound so bad: he had good ideas and a good tone, albeit seriously out of tune. Carl must have sensed his limitations, since everyone in the entourage, including Cliff, stopped, and looked askance at Carl. Althona in particular was looking rather scornful. She looked him up and down. “Uh, please,” she spat. Cliff rolled his eyes to the ceiling, closed his eyes and, as if he was trying to remember something, started slowly improvising on a little melodic theme in D-major. He had a somewhat thicker tone than what Carl was accustomed to hearing, whenever he was obliged to listen to Cliff for friendship’s sake. It did not sound so bad this time. But he was still the slick R & B honker—it definitely showed. “Hold it, hold it,” Althona then interrupted, “is that it?”

“Lady,” Cliff panted, “I’m just warming up already.”

“You got to do better than that, my dear,” she then snapped, “because even this sad sack over here can play better than you can, and I wouldn’t hire him to wipe my butt!!” Laughter again. “I’m Althona Winters! Everybody in Berlin society knows me! Sadal knows me! Günter Grass knows me! Even Angela Merkel knows me! Shit—I need a goddamn drink! Is this the bar?! Lord, have mercy on me, Jesus!”

Cliff abruptly dropped the sax from his lips and looked at me in disbelief. Martin then started looking at all of us, back and forth from me, Ted and Cliff. “What the hell does this dumb, pompous bitch think she playin’ at? Has she lost her damn mind?!”

“Fuck her,” Ted snorted, quietly. “Let the Germans fool her into thinking she’s hot shit. She’ll get hers, the moment she decides she wants to sing in Paris.”

And then he heard a glass clink, the slight sound of a purse snapping shut near the bar. It was Althona, watching both Ted and Martin like a half-drunken blood-hound. “Affe-neger!” Ted then heard her hiss, very quietly, jerking her head away from them—but whether it was directed at Carl, or Cliff, or Martin, or Ted, or even herself—or, just perhaps, his bitter imagination, Ted couldn’t be so sure.