Chapter VII

When the door opened, it was Lukas. He looked different — younger, perhaps — not wearing the usual garb he donned at school. His long, messy hair was free from the Homburg hat, and he wore no jackets or scarves; only a buttoned shirt and slacks held up with a fancy pair of suspenders.

At first, he didn’t notice me. He just smiled widely as he greeted Leah with a hug, an action which made me feel a pang in my stomach.

“Hey, Leah,” he said. As he rested his head over her shoulder while hugging her was when he saw me. Lukas let Leah go, a disdainful expression plastered on his face. “No!” he shouted. “What is he doing here?”

Leah took a step back, confused. She had no idea that I knew Lukas, had no idea of the confrontation I’d had with him earlier, and definitely no idea that I was “friends” with the people who picked on him at school. At that last thought, I felt a deep, burning shame. Earlier I had ignorantly wondered why Lukas was so hostile towards me in the alley by the bakery. Of course, it was because he saw me as just another one of his bullies.

“Wait,” Leah said, “you two know each other?”

He folded his arms tightly across his chest. “We go to gymnasium together, unfortunately! How do you know him, Leah?”

“Milo and I both lived in Reutlingen,” she said, seeming put off by his attitude. “We are old friends from primary school.” 

“Well,” he scoffed, “did Milo tell you who his new friends here in  Stuttgart are, hm?” 

Leah turned to give me a quizzical look, but Lukas supplied the answer for her before I could say anything at all. 

“Anton and Arnold and their ‘mattresses’!” he spat venomously.

I barely found my voice for that. “Mattresses?” I croaked.

A malicious, wolfish grin spread across Lukas’s face. “Yeah, you know — Mina and Astrid of the League of German Maidens — I mean — Mattresses!” He placed the back of his hand against his forehead in a mock swoon. “Because we all know the only thing they learn there is to lay back and think of the Reich so they can make lots of precious Aryan babies.”

My face went hot with mortification when I realized what his play on words insinuated.

“What’s wrong with you!?” Leah frowned and shoved him. “Stop being so crass and so mean!”

Lukas pointed an angry finger at her. “Then you stop defending this trottel and his fascist friends!”

Something about that statement struck me. “They’re not my friends!” I snapped. “In fact, the first day I met them, all they did was make fun of me!”

Lukas seemed stunned at first. Perhaps he didn’t expect that I would stand up for myself so vocally. But then his expression changed from flabbergasted to furious. “Well, you sure had no problem sitting with them while they made fun of me!”

The words stung, because they were true. There wasn’t anything I could say back, so Lukas continued to speak. 

“Look, like I told you earlier, piss off!” He shoved me and I stumbled backward off the stoop. 

“Fine then,” Leah said angrily, “if you’re going to be like that, we’ll both leave. Let’s go, Milo.”

She grabbed me by the wrist and we began to walk away.

“This really isn’t like you, Leah!” Lukas shouted after us. 

She stopped in her tracks. I could feel the rage radiating off her as she let go of me. When I glanced over at her, her eye twitched a bit. Then she turned on her heel, stomping her way back toward Lukas. There had been a smug sort of look on his face, but it faded rapidly upon realizing Leah’s return. She stepped right up to him and jammed her finger into his chest.

“You’re the one who isn’t being yourself!” she shouted. “I brought Milo here because he could use some real friends in this city, and I thought we Swing Guys and Swing Gals were supposed to be welcoming of society’s misfits — but you’re not being welcoming at all! You’re just being an arschloch!”

Lukas laughed in exasperation. “You seriously think he’s Swing Guy material?”

“I do! In fact, we were reunited when he came into my shop and bought one of my brother’s special records — Ella Fitzgerald.”

I had no idea what they were talking about, but I figured it had to do with jazz music. That was the reason Leah had wanted me to meet her friends, and Lukas’s penchant for American music had been one of the reasons Anton and the others picked on him. 

“I’m sorry,” I began, “what’s a ‘Swing Guy’?”

Lukas laughed again, this time with an air of derision. “A Swing Guy,” he said. “You know — someone who’s cool, a real hep cat. Ya dig?” 

I squinted. The words he said sounded like nonsense. Later I came to find out that they were English phrases — jazz slang, to be exact.

Lukas threw his hands up in the air. It was the same gesture of defeat he’d done in the alley earlier when the girl he’d been with convinced him to let me go. “You know what, fine!” he conceded. “Whatever! You can come in.”

Lukas left the front door wide open as he stomped back inside. Leah and I shared a sidelong glance before also entering, and when we did, Lukas was already long gone to wherever he’d stormed off to. 

Instantly I was taken aback by the glamorous interior of the foyer. Beneath my feet were floors of black and white checkered marble, with tiles so polished I could see myself in them. Two staircases on either side of the foyer wound upward to meet at a balcony on the second floor. Plush black rugs carpeted the stairs and the hallway, contrasting crisply with the cream color of the walls and the sinuous Art Nouveau railings. I had never in my life seen anything so elegant.

Leah, however, seemed unmoved by it, so I tried to suppress my astonishment.  I didn’t want to seem like some simpleton because I’d never been in a rich person’s home before. 

As we walked through the foyer and down the hall, she turned to me to speak. “I apologize for Lukas,” she said. “That’s not how he really is. Once you get to know him, he’s actually quite kind. He just … he hasn’t had an easy life.”

“I know,” I replied. “I’ve heard about it at school. Is it true that his father’s in the SS?”

Leah’s expression became somber. “Yes … it’s true.”

We reached an entryway that opened up into a large parlor. The checkered tiles continued into this room, but the walls were painted a warm golden yellow. There was a sitting area in the center with a set of black velvet couches, and much of the room’s perimeter was lined by cases brimming with books and interesting artifacts. All the other open spaces in the room were occupied by a multitude of potted plants, their large leaves waxy and deep green.

Lukas and the dark-haired girl I’d seen him with earlier were seated next to each other on one of the couches, and when Lukas saw we had entered, he slightly rolled his eyes. He leaned back, crossing his leg over his knee, and then he pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Meanwhile, the girl just smiled kindly at us.

By the time I reached the sitting area, Lukas had already lit his cigarette, and its acrid smoke choked me a bit. He pulled out an unlit one and presented it to me before I could find a place to sit down.

“You want one?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” I said as I nervously waved a hand.

Lukas returned the unlit cigarette to the box and put it back in his pocket. “Good.” He chuckled. “It’s a disgusting habit.” Then he took a long, melodramatic drag on his cigarette and released the smoke ever so slowly. I thought maybe I might laugh at him, because it seemed like his attempt at humor — but then again, I was bad at reading social situations, and he still kind of scared me — so I just stood awkwardly by the adjacent couch as Leah took a seat. 

The smile on the dark-haired girl’s face faded into an indignant pout. Just as Lukas seemed relaxed, she jammed her elbow into his side. Now, that made me suppress a laugh I couldn’t help. 

“Ack!”  Lukas shouted. “What was that for!?” 

The girl just rolled her eyes and cleared her throat.

“Oh, sorry,” Lukas mumbled, rubbing his side as he realized whatever she was implying to him. He gestured to me. “Salomé, this is Milo.” Then to her. “Milo, this is Salomé.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, making myself smile again. 

“Nice to meet you too, Milo.” Salomé then turned to Lukas. “See, you can be polite when you want to.”

Lukas shrugged and grumbled a bit, and then Salomé and Leah began chatting with each other about their day. All the while I simply stood there awkwardly until I felt something at my legs. I looked down in surprise to see a very fluffy cat. His fur was mostly white, but it faded into orange towards his face, tail, and legs. He purred loudly as he rubbed his head on my leg.

  “That’s Thor,” Salomé said. “He’s quite friendly.”

I leaned down to pet him, very amused over his name. Thor continued to purr as he looked up at me with the most striking deep blue eyes. Then he turned, languidly slinking away in the fluid manner only cats can do. I followed him over to one of the bookcases. This one was near an older gramophone with a bell-shaped speaker, and it was filled with dozens of records. At the sight of them, I promptly forgot about the cat. Carefully I pulled out some of the sleeves to get a look at the records. I was astonished. 

“Count Basie,” I said. “Duke Ellington! Cab Calloway! You really have everything here.”

I looked over at Lukas, but his expression was impassive, betraying nothing. 

“Your aunt and uncle allow you to have these?” I asked.

At this, his stoicism waned, and he snickered dismissively. “Pfft! They’re both nearly eighty — they can barely even read the small print on them. Besides …” He took a drag on his cigarette “ … they’re almost never here anyway. Just like my father, they’d rather be wherever I’m not. It’s Vienna this month! Maybe next month it’ll be Prague!” 

I stared at him. “They … just leave you here by yourself?”

“No,” he said, casting his thick-lashed eyes downward, a sense of melancholy beneath his veneer of sarcasm. He flicked ash into the ashtray on the marble-topped coffee table. “The housekeeper and Herr Fleischer, the butler, are here. I just pay Herr Fleischer a few extra marks from my allowance every month to leave me alone.” The crooked grin returned to Lukas’s face. “A real capitalist, that guy.”

I turned back to the records, contemplating them as I also thought about what a lonely existence it must've been for Lukas. It seemed like Leah’s assessment of him being more than hostile and rude was probably true. All the wise-cracking and sardonicism must’ve been a way to deflect his true feelings about things. 

“You really do have an appreciation for jazz, don’t you?” Lukas asked me. He had a different expression in his eyes now: curiosity. 

“Of course,” I said, “ever since I was little and my mother used to play Gershwin for me. You know … before everything got the way it is.” I thought sadly about those times — Rhapsody in Blue on the first phonograph we ever had. “She hasn’t even pulled out those records in years now…”

Lukas grunted. “Of course. It’s no longer tasteful to listen to ‘degenerate music’ made by Jews and colored folk.”

I looked down, remembering how ridiculous I thought it was that anyone could tell us what music we were allowed to listen to. Lukas leaned forward, stubbing his spent cigarette out in the ashtray. He smiled at me, this time genuinely. 

“You know what,” he said, “maybe you could be a Swing Guy yet.”