The Chelsea Girls

CHAPTER THREE

Maxine

May 7, 1945

We managed to get into the jail to see the boy, Paul. They locked us inside his tiny cell with him while we talked, probably to keep us safe from the other prisoners, whose shouts and whistles echoed off the stone walls.

Right after we got back to camp, I dictated the basics of the conversation to Hazel and we sent it off to the colonel, convincing one of the drivers to hand deliver it today.

Now we wait, but I can’t get him out of my head. Our report didn’t say everything, like how the Italian guard eyed me up and down as I handed over the bottles of beer, and how glad I was to have Hazel next to me at that moment. That the cell Paul was kept in smelled like rancid meat.

So I’m writing it down myself. I have to, or I’ll go mad with the waiting. We’re not supposed to keep diaries, but I have to get these images out of my head and onto the page, so they don’t haunt me anymore.

Inside his dingy cell, Paul talked with great detail, straining to make the story as vivid as possible, knowing that Hazel and I were most likely the only people who cared what happened to him.

The report didn’t say that the first thing he did was pull out a ragged photo of his mother from his pocket, the words “Greta, Age 28” scribbled on the back. She had pale hair and eyes and looked like a ghost, and he told of his father’s cruelty, how the beatings were more frequent as the German forces lost their hold. Greta disappeared two days after they’d been abandoned by his father, having gone out to find them some food. Rumor was she’d been drowned in the river by some villagers, held down until she stopped squirming. Paul had sought shelter in the home of his friend, Matteo, and they’d hidden him away, kept him safe.

The report didn’t talk about the stretches of boredom as he cowered in the basement, staying quiet when a neighbor dropped by unexpectedly, of playing card games with Matteo to pass the time. Of their deepening friendship, and how worried he was that Matteo wouldn’t be delivered home safely from Naples.

Before, when the Germans were in control, Paul would creep into his father’s study late at night and copy the maps laid out on the oak desk as best he could. He’d bring them to Matteo, who’d pass them on to the Italians fighting against the Germans. I asked him why he did this, and he said it was revenge for his father’s cruelty toward his mother, for the suffering of Matteo and his family. A way to sabotage the Nazi war machine from the inside.

I wondered if he’d been drafted into the role of spy—if Matteo’s family had homed in on him as someone to be manipulated into doing the bidding of the resistance. He talked about Matteo as if he were his own brother, how their bond was unbreakable. As his tears fell in dirty tracks down his cheeks, Hazel asked what he was saying and I told her. She said to tell him that one day maybe he and Matteo would see each other again. I didn’t bother translating that back to him. I didn’t want to give him false hope.

A blind rage seized me in that moment, out of nowhere, at the fact that this kid had been dismissed by his own father. I knew that feeling well, but at least my grandmother had stepped into the void and made my childhood bearable. Paul was so young and vulnerable, yet had been so brave. I recognized the pride in his voice as he spoke of channeling his confusion and distress, becoming a fighter for a cause he believed in. I understood his pain.

Paul told of traveling by night on stolen bicycles, how the freedom of being out in the world, of the scents and sounds of the earth, gave him courage. Until Naples, when they’d been flushed from their daytime hiding place and quickly surrounded.

The report was full of details of the maps he’d copied, the plans he’d handed over, and the names of the people who might vouch for him. It didn’t say that since being put in the jail, he’d been kept in solitary confinement. The report didn’t include the way he reached out as we got up to go, wanting to touch us but knowing that he was filthy and unwashed and that we’d be repulsed. Or how Hazel marched right over and held him close anyway, and then I did, too, stroking his hair as he wept.

“Have you heard the news?”

Betty-Lou burst into the tent, brimming with excitement. Hazel and I exchanged looks. Neither of us had felt like venturing out that day, not after seeing Paul so wretched. At least Hazel’s script for her “American Hero” idea impressed Colonel Peterson to no end, which meant we could keep going back. The subject was a sweet kid from Kansas who has a girl back home, can’t wait to see her, aw shucks, happy to be righting Hitler’s wrongs in the meantime. Bringing order to chaos. It started out corny but by the end I was stifling a sob on air.

I tucked the diary under my mattress and stood as the cheers of the soldiers radiated across the camp. “What’s going on?”

“Germany has surrendered!” Betty-Lou shrieked, her arms clenched to her chest and her fists curled up tight like a baby’s, before bouncing back outside. We followed. There were cheers, hugs, the men lining up to give me a squeeze. I was happy to provide what comfort I could. Some of these boys haven’t felt a woman’s arms around them in years.

With Hazel, of course, they were more circumspect, preferring to get into a deep conversation, spill their guts. She’s got this girl-next-door quality—it’s as if she were wearing pigtails and overalls, not a uniform. They may like to look at me, but they want to get to know her. I have to admit, when we first met, I thought she was a prude, and an insecure one at that. If I hadn’t pushed her onstage that first day she showed up, I suspect she would have run for the coast and swum her way back home.

But now I see that she’s stronger than I gave her credit for, and bolder, too.

With the celebrations in full swing, that night the five of us girls hit a Neapolitan nightclub, an after-hours joint on the second floor of a restaurant. The place was just how I like it: dark, music blaring, a mob of movement. The liquor poured freely and they asked me to sing, so I got up on the makeshift stage and belted out “That Old Black Magic.” The band had my back, we shook the town. That’s where the power is, when you’re onstage, untouchable, and on fire. That kind of attention is like rocket fuel to me.

After, I stepped down and joined the girls at the table.

“You’re so courageous,” Hazel said. “Do you ever get nervous or doubt yourself? I can’t imagine pulling off a song like that.”

I admit, the compliments warmed me up. I told her the truth: “I never get nervous. I figure if I mess up, I’ll just shimmy my way out of it.” I performed a quick shoulder shake, and the soldier walking by us tripped on his feet. “Works every time.”

When a young waiter brought over another round of drinks, Hazel examined him closely. The nightclub was staffed by POWs, and I knew who she was thinking about.

“Are you sure Colonel Peterson got our report?” I said. “What if he’s mad that we met with Paul?”

“I don’t care if he was mad, I’m glad we did it.” She added that she’d even dreamed of Paul last night.

I didn’t tell her I had, too, Paul’s face as pale as a specter. And how my grandmother had appeared in the dream, trapped in the cell with him, screaming for help.

When my grandmother moved in with me and my parents when I was just a little girl, none of our neighbors wanted a Kraut nearby. Before coming to Seattle, she’d lived alone on tiny Vashon Island, a crazy hermit that the other islanders just barely tolerated. But my mother was sickly, and needed help raising me. Grandmother didn’t make things easy on herself, speaking English only when necessary, defiant as ever.

My father, a failed salesman and successful inebriate, raged every evening against the world or his boss or both. I stayed hidden as much as possible, my grandmother bearing the brunt of his anger. At my mother’s wake, when I was just five, one of his coworkers pulled me onto his lap. I could smell the liquor on his breath and it reminded me of my father. Shocked by the unexpected warmth of a man, the arms wrapping around me, I softened into his embrace.

I remember looking up at the man’s face, the one who’d pulled me close. He kissed my forehead and pulled my hips in tighter. Into something that felt very wrong.

My grandmother appeared out of nowhere, yelling at him in German and yanking me by the arm. He’d crossed his legs and arms and called her a bitch, a Hun.

At my mother’s wake.

“So tell me, do you have a boy back home, Maxine?”

Hazel’s question, clearly an attempt to lighten the mood, snapped me back into the room. The nightclub was emptying out. Without the crush of bodies, the room’s charmless decay was exposed, and depressing. My performance, like all performances, had vanished without a trace once the spotlight was turned off.

“No. No boy.”

A man. But I’d never tell her that. He and I had made a pact not to tell anyone our secrets.

Sometimes I miss him so much I don’t feel like I can keep it in, but I must. Although he’s been part of my life for so long, I can’t even write him letters home, knowing that the arrival of a letter from abroad will arouse suspicion. Yet I know he’ll be waiting for me when I return. He promised.

“No one special?” Hazel was slightly drunk. She blinked a couple of times, trying to focus her gaze.

“No one special,” I repeated. “How about you? Any beaus back in New York?”

“No. But that’s fine. I was always too busy working.”

The heat in the room was stifling and the mood of the remaining men had shifted, ever so slightly, from celebratory to predatory. The other girls had left to return to camp, leaving Hazel and me on our own.

That’s when Colonel Peterson appeared, looking like he’d had as many drinks as we had, his cheeks as red as apples.

“Ladies, I received your report.”

We both froze, unable to speak.

“It was surprisingly helpful. We were able to compare it to the report from our contacts in Calabria, and it appears that the boy’s story checks out.”

We whooped and hugged each other. I asked him what happens next.

“He can’t go back to Germany, nor stay here. We’ll have him released to the British forces, and taken to England.”

Paul will be safe. That’s what counts. While I’d love to see him again and say goodbye, wish him well, at least we know he’ll be safe.

I know why Hazel got so tied up with Paul, even if they don’t share the same language: She sees her dead brother in him. We don’t speak about that, of course. For me, it’s also personal.

I was out with my grandmother, when I was fifteen. We were shopping downtown, and I was proudly wearing grown-up shoes with a heel for the first time. I tripped over my own feet, splattered down on the sidewalk. My grandmother shrieked, then rattled off a scolding about picking up my feet when I walked, that I should stop scuffling along like a mule.

But in her frustration, she’d spoken German.

Before long, we were surrounded by angry men. I began crying, and they thought it was because I was afraid of a German stranger who’d pushed me. My grandmother stepped away from me, fear-stricken at having revealed herself, her nationality. A few men spat at her, called her a Kraut.

The injustice enraged me, and my teenaged embarrassment of drawing attention to myself faded fast. “Nein. Sie ist meine Großmutter.”

The crowd grew silent. I repeated the words, in English. “She’s my grandmother.”

Of course, that was the wrong thing to say, as it only incensed them further. Then a woman stepped into the crowd, a woman with a deep voice like thunder and the stature of Cleopatra, and mouths dropped. That was how I met Lavinia Smarts. I’d fallen on my face right in front of the theater where the actress was playing Lady Macbeth, and she took our hands and led us inside, to safety. Just as I’d saved Paul. I’m still not sure how I had the nerve to get into the driver’s seat of the Jeep and slice through the crowd, but it was like an invisible line connected me to those boys. I remembered Lavinia’s determined expression as she plucked me and my grandmother from danger, bringing justice to the world, and I couldn’t let her down.

The Seattle Repertory Playhouse, run by a kindly couple named Florence and Burton, became my refuge. The plays they put on were fancy, with lots of poetic lines—Shakespeare and Chekhov. But I watched every rehearsal and helped out at the box office before landing a couple of small parts as a reward for my industriousness, eventually winning bigger roles. The professional actors passing through, including Lavinia, regaled us with stories of New York City, and I decided then and there to head east after high school.

My father told me the choice was teaching or nursing. No way would he have a daughter in the theater, exposing herself to ridicule. One evening, my grandmother stole into my bedroom and sat beside me on the bed in the dark.

“You want to go to New York? Leave me behind?” She spoke in German, knowing my father wouldn’t understand us.

“I want to make something of myself. I love the theater.”

“What do you love about it?”

I considered the question before answering, nestling into her the way I’d done as a child. “I love the way the actors treat each other, the way a play comes to life. That there are all these moving parts to a show that are entirely separate at first: the actors, the scenery, the lights. Slowly, they all come together and become something bigger. And then, after the applause dies down, it disappears. It’s magical.”

She smelled like peppermint as she reached down and kissed me on the forehead. “Your mother loved watching plays when she was young. We’d go to the puppet shows and she’d insist on climbing behind the stage after the performance, to see how it was put together. She wanted to touch the strings.”

“That’s what I want, as well. I want to touch the strings.”

“Then you go.”

She gave me enough money to get across the country and I checked into the hotel that Lavinia had told me about, a safe haven for artists, for activists, for freedom: the Chelsea. Fifty years earlier, it had been at the center of the theater district, but the Broadway houses had since moved uptown to Times Square, leaving the Chelsea behind. The room I stayed in was tiny, with a balcony decorated with cast-iron sunflowers and a wonderful view overlooking Twenty-Third Street.

Lavinia took me under her wing and got me a job as an usher at one of the smaller theaters, as well as an agent. Eventually, I began getting roles in touring productions. Somehow, though, I could never break through to the big time and land a part on the Broadway stage. Even though I tease Hazel about her serial understudying, part of me is jealous she’s worked on the Great White Way. She got to watch Gene Kelly and Uta Hagen from the wings, had the chance to show up at opening-night parties and hobnob with the big-time critics, producers, and players. Better than singing your heart out in Cleveland for peanuts, then packing up and doing it all over again in another town, another state. To a bunch of nobodies.

It’s funny, but sometimes I feel more for Hazel than I have for anyone else in my life, and other times I want to strangle her. I suppose this is what it must be like to have a sister.

How tenuous the line is between friends and enemies in a world at war.

Hazel’s crying on her cot, inconsolable.

We went to Naples to do the broadcast, secretly hoping for a chance to say goodbye to Paul, to wish him well. Colonel Peterson looked up from his desk but didn’t rise, just pointed to the chairs and suggested we sit.

“There was a miscommunication,” he said. “We gave instructions to release the German boy to the British. Either they didn’t understand or they chose not to, but instead he was released into the general population of the jail.”

My stomach lurched at the thought. A German teenager among Italian convicts.

“What happened? Is he all right?” I asked.

No. He wasn’t.

As soon as the prisoners had been herded out into the courtyard for fresh air, two of them had dragged Paul over to a far corner, the colonel told us. One by one, the others drifted over to punch, kick, or stab Paul with whatever weapons they’d hidden from the guards. Never enough movement to draw attention in the crowded enclosure, but enough to brutalize. When they were called back into their cells, Paul lay crumpled in the dirt, breathing, but barely. He died on the way to the hospital.

We saved him from one mob, but he was torn apart by another.

Hazel hasn’t stopped crying since. She paused once in her tears to wonder out loud what was it all for, why we even bothered. I didn’t respond. Because I know that it wasn’t fruitless, it just wasn’t enough.

I thought of the war still raging, and of my grandmother back home, and vowed to not stop fighting.