Leo (Part I)

The next day, after a thorough check of the mailbox, where again to my relations with the army nothing had come, at well before half to four I was already sitting at a two-person table across from the bar. The fish probery was a local establishment having as its aim the promotion and advertisement to the dim masses of the consumption of fish in the country, which after the war had extended her coastline. 

The seafood dishes served here were super, and the restaurant belonged to the most elegant in town. I ordered carpe in the Jewish way and a glass of white wine. The Russian magazine I placed discretely at the edge of the table, as if it weren’t mine, but punctually at three thirty with visible objection and disgust I took it in my hands. 

The worst was the fear that I’d be seen by one of my associates, or even just someone who knows me by sight, as I delighted in some Russian press. 

At all costs, I attempted to cover myself with the magazine and to make myself in a certain sense unseen, cursing on the inside what an ugly number Bławat had pulled on me, and at this moment I wholeheartedly hated him. 

Someone tapped me on the arm. I mindlessly looked away from the completely incomprehensible Cyrillic. Leo stood over me. 

I was ready to apologize to him, that he should not sit, because just at this table I made a date with oh such a beauty, when he began to drivel on about the nice autumn weather. For a moment it did not even occur to me, because in my life it would never cross my mind, that this someone I was waiting for would be Leo. 

When I came to my wits, I recited the response and he sat down. “I see you have finally begun to read normal magazines, tell me now, how is comradette Nadieżdża Krupska?”

I had known Leo for several years. He was about forty, which for me was old. Leo handled in clothing. At first, he had a huge stall in one of the giant marketplaces in town that carried the name of some historical bishop.

It was possible to buy absolutely everything there: Rembrandt, every kind of arm and ammunition, French impressionists, real and counterfeited Stradivariuses, well-built women, Coleman Hawkins records, motorcycles by Harley-Davidson, Indian, Triumph, Victoria, Norton, BMW, BMW-Sahara, Zundapp, Zundapp-Sahara, DKW, NSU, Moto Guzzi and Jawa, dogs of all races, American dollars, gold Patek Phillippe watches, Otto Dix, morphine, gold, tipped American prophylactics, where the same tip wasn’t so important as was, with the spread of syphilis and other such French diseases throughout the country, the reliability of the product itself. 

Every seller and every buyer, with tears in their eyes, reminisced the not yet so distant times when en masse the rest of the Germans were deported, allowed only a bag in their hand, and in practice only what they could manage to pack on the spot. The once rich German residents’ possessions were disposed of here, often at a rate equivalent to one percent of the actual value. And rightfully so, this situation was the Germans’, it was their fault we had what we had. Let them give thanks for all this to their beloved Hitler. 

Eventually Leo got rid of his stall, which he had always preferred to dignify by calling a stand, and moved his business to an apartment located in the center of town. He had several rich clients and his trade prospered terrifically. He held court every day from five to seven at a table in a small coffee shop not far from Bławat’s. 

He always made arrangements for the following day, as he said in English, “by appointment only,” at the apartment. He never made anyone any exceptions; he had an iron-clad policy. On Saturdays, he was nowhere to be found. He lived alone and even asked me a few times to come by to visit and he would go back and forth in the apartment, because some clients were coming and he was not so sure about and even a little scared of them. 

Possessing good suppliers, he had and offered such amazing wares, that you always left all your money with him, often returning the next day with the rest of the owed sum. There were no banks then, and even if there were, only as clean fiction and in abstract. CASH was king.

Leo was blue-eyed and freckled, and a slightly reddish shade of a light blonde, but he had such strikingly Semitic features that during the time of the war in any part of occupied Europe the poor fellow would not have had a chance even to pass discretely more than a hundred meters. An informer or a German would spot him immediately. 

The funniest thing was that Leo carried himself like an AK-man. On short, thin legs Leo put on, always shined and always, in spite of the rubble strewn everywhere and the fat layers of horrible dredge, dust and mud, always glistening horse-riding shoes, worn with a cavalry belt with a characteristic brass link chain on the left side, used by cavalry men to hang their swords, which Leo unfortunately did not have. 

With his slightly hunched back he wore a giant tweed jacket, the kind under which AK-men often concealed the so called atomizer, that is, a Tommy gun, most often a quite shapely air-dropped English STEN, so that at the most opportune moment, in an unexpected fusillade they could mow down whatever SS men, Gestapo agents or other types of fascist pigs found themselves in the range of fire. 

But, as if it were Leo’s main punch line, he always had on a tie, worn usually with a small-collared blue shirt. The ties were always gigantic, colorful and with some scene, a dancer in a Hawaiian lagoon, or a cowboy’s torso with his faithful mustang in the background, or palms under the southern California sun, or a jazz band or even a blown up American dollar, which already from Leo’s side was a complete provocation in view of the recent imposition of severe punishments for the possession of or trade in dollars, up to the penalty of death. It was not just that Leo’s ties were American, Leo’s ties were in fact America. 

Never before had I had much trust in him. Maybe this was because of his horse-riding shoes, which were gladly worn by his peers operating with the UB. So I was quite delighted when it became clear that in fact, Leo was as clean as a whistle and had nothing to do with the UB. He called the waitress and ordered two vodkas. I always had a negative stance towards vodka. Even irrespective of my sports activities, I was perfectly aware of the fact that every finished glass was another brick in the task of building communism. Often because of this I fell into conflict with different colleagues of mine, who themselves imbibed liberally, and were unable to understand how you could be like me, and not drink profusely. To that time my one and only real breach of this was fulfilled with one Zula, several months earlier.