Clifford's Blues by John A. Williams Read Free Book Online

and long, like something still growing. He said he was Menno Becker and waited like I would know him. He smiled again. He was beautiful. He asked my name and I told him. He looked at my triangle, then into my eyes. “Do they treat you badly, Brother?” His voice was so soft and low that I guessed he had figured everything out just like that. My eyes grew water and I couldn’t talk. “God loves you,” he said. He took my elbow and we started to walk. Inmates walked up and down, down and up beside us, maybe trying to believe that walking was being free. He asked about America, if I had a family, what I did, how long I’d been here. When I answered with the emptiness of what my life was, recognizing its sound—like a bass drum being hit in a closed saloon—the tears came again. Again he said, “God loves you, Brother.” I said that was hard to believe. He said Dachau and the other camps were a sign that the Lord was about to bring mankind to judgment. The Great War, the Depression, Mussolini, Hitler—they were all signs of His coming. Menno said God gave us the signs to give us a chance to repent, to find the Truth and the Faith. Up we walked and down we walked.
    He worked in the Infirmary. (It’s also called the Revier .) He’d learned English from a tutor because he’d wanted to go to America to work with the Brothers and Sisters there. He was named after the man who founded the Mennonite faith, he said. The Mennonites did not believe in slavery and had opposed it. He did not know how he’d become a Witness, but he was sure it had to do with most of his family being Mennonites. He said to me that as a musician, I should try whenever I could to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. “The Lord understands travail,” he said, “how a man can be made to suffer. But if a man has musics—although Witnesses do not use it—he should use it in the service of God.” I asked if he was a minister and he said, “All Witnesses are ministers.” Then he took my hands in his. My fingers relaxed; his fingers caressed mine.
    I dreamed of Menno last night. He had long brown hair and a soft brown beard and a full mustache. He came near me and his breath smelled like magnolias. I woke up. I stared out at the camp, so silent its walls stabbed by lights, and thought about the dream. I decided that I loved Menno Becker, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
    Mon., July 2, 1934
    Between catching parts of radio broadcasts, overhearing Dieter Lange and Anna and especially Dieter Lange with his SS buddies, and exchanging news with the other calfactors, it seems that Hitler’s man, Ernst Roehm, and Roehm’s boyfriend were killed Saturday night in Munich. Gitzig says there were shots way out in the camp swamp Saturday night, too. A bunch of SA leaders were executed at Lichter-fede, and generals have been wiped away like snot, I heard Dieter Lange say. “Hundreds of people killed, leaving the SS in charge and completely loyal to Hitler, and Hitler totally in charge.” I always thought he was anyway. Dieter Lange and his friends sang marching songs and toasted each other, Hitler, the SS , Roehm’s death, and victory. Victory?
    Sunday, July 22, 1934
    I have not seen Menno Becker in a month. I can’t ask too many questions, and when I am in the camp I can’t hang around Block 26 or the Infirmary. But we have exchanged notes—some of them pretty hot—through Werner. Of course, we must destroy these.
    Anna almost caught me writing in this diary. She has taken to walking softly about the house, so I loosened a couple of the steps on the stairway to my room; now they creak when anyone steps on them. I am very nervous when she comes down to talk. Suppose Dieter Lange started down, or the Gestapo man, Bernhardt? Anna still doesn’t understand the way things work. She wanted to practice her English. She always wants to