A Room Full of Night by TR Kenneth

Author:TR Kenneth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2018-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THIS EVENING WE went to a private party at Horcher’s Restaurant. We dined on Viennese fried chicken—because even you agreed that a corpulent man like Goering couldn’t be wrong when it came to his favorite fare. The night was rare. You don’t like to take me anywhere. Instead we nest and idle in my apartment. But this was a secret party, your favorite kind, the room full of high-ranking SD and their Salon Kitty girlfriends awash in jewels and peroxide. So you arrived at my door and said we must attend to escape the boredom of the apartment.

Imagine Goebbels’ chagrin when he saw you there? The good doctor had his hand stroking the exiled actress Lida Baarová’s thigh, and when he saw you, the fear and distaste made his little troll face crumble like rubble. At one point, Joseph and his “pet” went to the wine room, an auspicious place for a man who loves not wine, but I don’t think he took Lida there to browse the vintages. And when they disappeared, you looked at me, the derisive tug on your lips for me alone. You tolerate Goebbels much better than Himmler, with his silly fascination for the occult and spurious Aryan folklore. While Goebbels has no interest in food, his face usually carries the sheen of Lida on it. You, in your inimitable way, always remarked it was too bad Lida’s juice couldn’t cure his bad skin.

Through all these antics, you drunkenly put your usual quell on the atmosphere. The band attempted to revive the crowd, and during a sweet little tune, you stroked your fingers against my palm, and then played with my hand, as if a tender mood had caught you up in the music, and you couldn’t help yourself.

The whole time you held my hand I couldn’t help but think how intimate the simple gesture was. How much is communicated through the clasping of hands. The warmth comes through, the respect. Even more than a kiss, it seems. Perhaps it is the furtiveness of it, the lack of possession. It asks permission, it doesn’t demand. We sat together, holding hands, and the entire time I longed for the comfort of it, while you longed for the intimacy I shall never give.

But then I had my first laugh. Gigli, your favorite blond from the SS orchestra, turned to you, and in her solo, almost mockingly began to sing the old Johnny Mercer favorite from the Garrick Gaeties of 1930. She ended pointedly with the famous line:

All you had to do is say, “Boo.”

Out of breath (and scared to death of you)

Her song ended and a terrible silence filled the room. Everyone was frozen, waiting to see if our Hangman would get the joke.

It was then I began to laugh.

I laughed and laughed, unable to control myself, until tears streamed down my cheeks. My God but it felt good! To release all the black absurdities I’d been living with. To lose myself in a primal surge of rueful hilarity.

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