Briar Rose

Why did he stay in Germany? Why did anyone stay? The music still played in the cafes and nightclubs: "At Katrina's with the golden hair ... tum-de-dum ... The boys and girls are dancing there ... tum-de-dum . . ." The drinks were cheap. The theaters were still open. And Josef was not Jewish. He turned his eyes away from the yellow stars on the coats, the beatings. Hadn't he survived his own floggings in school, survived his own tauntings? And the the music still played in the cafes.

Why did he stay in Germany? Why did anyone stay? There was an electric current of national pride in the air. Wine ran like blood from the open necks of bottles in the beer halls. Slogans charged the walls of every street. And there was the humor- Galgenhumor, gallows humor - which they all shared and which made everyone laugh. So much laughter. Jokes like: Have you seen the German Forest brand suits that began to swell in the spring and change color in the fall? He did not really notice when the Communists began to disappear, and the Gypsies. He had a protector in the Berlin government. They laughed at the Fuhrer, that ugly little man, but only at night, only in bed, only within the circle of their own arms. And the music still played in the cafes. Why did he stay in Germany?

Why did anyone stay? Children on the street corners jumped rope to rhymes:

Handschen falten, kopfchen senken,
Und an Adolf Hitler denken.

Fold your little hands, lower your little head,
And think of Adolf Hitler.

The pamphlets about the Jews multiplied. He heard rumors of internment camps for antisocial elements like Jehovah's Witnesses and socialists. And faggots. The kind who cross-dressed and were flagrant in their habits. The kind who sang falsetto and approached men in the streets. The kind who frequented the homosexusl bars. The kind who had to wear pink triangles. The 175ers. He did not have a lover for a year. But the music still played in the cafes.

The persecution - systematic and horrible - against the hormosexuals had begun as early as 1933. Some part of Josef must have known. But it was mostly rumor. He was good at dismissing rumor. And the men who disappeared weren't just homosexuals. They were also known agitators - politically outspoken or garishly arrayed. Not doctors. Not lawyers. Not playwrights. With his dark, masculine good looks, with his family connections, with his protectors who were also protecting themselves, Josef never thought the pink triangle laws were meant for him.

But he stopped going to the theaters and bars and cafes. He stopped frequenting parties where men were the only guests. He hid even from himself, dating women of limited virtue. He even made limited love to one of them. Only one.

In the end, of course, he was found out. After the 1934 Roehm Putsch it was inevitable. It is only remarkable that he was not found out until the end of 1940.

His arrest happened in such a banal manner, he almost hated telling of it. He was reported on by his landlady who had discovered - so she said - literature of an unnatural nature in his rooms. She never said what she was doing in his rooms, except spying. But that line did him no good. What she had found was his battered copy of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a textbook from his university days, which he had not opened since a student. Erotica was not of any interest to him. Yet it was enough to bring him to the attention of the Gestapo and their attention was guaranteed to break any man. He admitted finally not only to homosexuality, but named his past lovers as well. Since two of them - Alan and the Viennese politician - were well beyond the heavy sticks of the SS, they concentrated on the others, forgetting to tell Josef that the men he named were already in their custody. He found that out much later, though had he known at the time it would not have relieved his guilt. He was sent without further trial to Sachenhausen.

– …И король сказал, что пора позвать гостей.
– Много гостей? – спросила Бекка, хотя знала ответ наизусть.
– Огромное множество гостей. И накормить их всех пирожными и мороженым с золотых тарелок. А главное, не забыть послать приглашение всем добрым феям королевства.
– Но не злой фее.
Гемма крепче обняла девочку.
– Конечно, не злой – не той, что ходит в черном платье, в больших черных ботинках и в шляпе, расшитой серебряными монетками.
– Но она все равно пришла.
– Она пришла, словно ангел смерти. Она пришла и сказала: «Я проклинаю тебя, принцесса Шиповничек, и твоего отца-короля, и мать-королеву, и всех твоих дядюшек и тетушек, и двоюродных братьев и сестер. И всех окрестных жителей. И всех, кто носит одно с тобой имя».