Cathedral Late Afternoon: Notes From the Cold War

By Bob Lavner

This is a compelling historical fiction novel about a young man whose life is profoundly altered by the darkness and danger of the Cold War. If this were the 21st century, Aaron Rivera wouldn't be a soldier. He isn't the military type, prefers reading history to making it. But this isn't the 21st century, it's 1958 and young men like Aaron from Brooklyn are conscripted all the time, trained to kill or be killed and shipped to places they never heard of – like Schweinfurt, Germany, minutes from the nuclear-mined Cold War border, where the barracks still bear their World War II Nazi décor. With memories of that war still fresh, how can another, surely far worse catastrophe be contemplated? How can Aaron, who is Jewish, train with soldiers of the new German army, attend a reunion of the old German army, and be smitten with an art-loving German young woman? These questions lie heavy in the mind of Aaron, as he navigates his way through love and conflict in this fascinating Cold War tale.

Life is a mix of training and alerts. Soviet forces are minutes away and Aaron's unit is in their path, a tripwire in the event of war. Beyond the East-West confrontation, he encounters smaller wars – ethnic, racial, and religious. His fellow GIs, integrated by law, themselves practice a self-imposed form of segregation. Aaron comes to see hatred as a sort of laziness, an easy way of dealing with change. His buddy Calley thinks otherwise. The past happened, he argues, it can't be denied, and Aaron would be wise to forget Liesl Hofmoeller, the girl he met in Paris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098394660

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I half-believe she’s still out there, a small figure stepping briskly through the Paris twilight. Schoolgirl dress, evening-out handbag, fair hair lifted by the breeze. A piece of the envelope.

I’m there too, bone thin and lonely as an orphan.

The Eiffel Tower, I shrug, behind that street lamp… it was there a minute ago…comprenez-vous?

She’s beautiful, bright eyes under dark brows. Hazel eyes.

It’s still there, she smiles, in front of your nose. And I’m not French, I’m from Germany.

Germany? Me too!

She laughs at the absurdity.

Really… I’m in the army!

Oh I see, you’re in the army so you must find La Tour.

We both laugh and it’s easy to ask, And you?

She’s on vacation and making something of it. Living in the City of Light, soaking up the language and culture, earning her keep as an au-pair. Something medical I guess. In three days she’ll be heading home.

But at the moment I’m late for the cinema.

She nods vaguely when I mumblingly suggest accompanying her. I extend my hand and tell her I’m Aaron Rivera from New York. She takes it and says she’s Liesl Hofmoeller from Schattigstein.

All of which happens in an eyeblink. In that instant darkness sets in, turning the sky to ink and kindling the first evening stars. Ornate street lamps cast their spell and Paris, a moment ago so cold and preoccupied, wears the tinsel of a greeting card.

Liesl walks beside me, her pace slowed by mine, hands in pockets and shuffling along, embarrassed at my own audacity.

It’s my first time in Europe, I blurt. "In France that is, we’ve been in Schweinfurt three months. Leaves start at midnight and nobody hangs around. Grab the overnight to Frankfurt and in the morning you’re there, Rhein-Main.

"That’s where our big airbase is. Catch a flight anywhere and if you’re in uniform you’re on it. They hang a parachute on you but nobody says how to use it.

So we’re in Laon. That’s France you know-- at retreat they play the Marseillaise. Retreat’s our evening bugle call. The Marseillaise is stirring don’t you think?

A bit bloody to my taste, she frowns.

By then I’m so bushed I sleep thirteen hours. Next day we cop a ride to the station…I really like it here.

Yes, Paris is beautiful.

She’s been listening to my chatter, her eyes turned away, toward the river and vague shapes to our left. Light and shadow play on the water, the cracked sidewalks and shuttered stalls. And on us.

I manage a glance at my companion. She’s short, maybe five-two or three, but not what you call petite. Her wind-tossed bangs and pony tail are the fairest shade of brown and her features are perfect, thoughtful one moment, bright with excitement the next. Her little-girl dress and oversized handbag are hopelessly passé.

She thinks she knows Schweinfurt. It’s near Wurzburg… Franconia, it’s famous for the wine… have you been to Marienberg and the Dom? …Schattigstein’s much farther north.

Her country’s borders, like its governments, come and go. Today, Friday, August 14, 1959, the Federal Republic stretches some 830 kilometers north and south—clicks we GIs say-- and about 450 east and west.

Get a map and find East Germany’s southern bulge. A hangnail from the tip of that protrusion, where the twisting Main hangs a U-turn, you’re bound to run into Schweinfurt. Now head north into what used to be the British Zone. Due east of Einbeck, amid hills of pine and spruce and acres of slate, you’ll reach the outskirts of Schattigstein.

Schweinfurt, where I’ll spend the next fifteen months, is only 40 clicks from the border, fewer than 25 miles. Liesl’s domicile is nearer by half.

It’s a nice town known for the university. My father teaches there.

I picture a small school in a modest setting. I’ve no idea, yet, that Schattigstein’s a mecca of learning, a renowned classroom for the likes of Hegel, Emerson and Kippling, a must-see even for Ben Franklin who stopped by one stormy night in ’66.

Nor guessed that Herr Hofmoeller is himself renowned, an authority on that father of the North European Renaissance, Albrecht Durer. Nor yet heard of his latest conquest, discovery of a long-lost treasure, one of two small paintings of Saint Veronica who comforted Christ.

The Harz are Germany’s most northerly range, she explains. Northerly, is that correct? Along with the mountains I meet Liesl’s range of siblings: Martin of scientific bent, Hermann, art-loving like his father and Albrecht who’d love to meet a Sioux indian.

We have museums and theaters, concert and lecture halls, and of course the university. There are shops and cafes and libraries, but not like yours in New York, so probably Schattigstein would disappoint you. Though you probably feel quite at home in Paris.

You’re right! I’m beginning to think of the great cities as one big town. The same problems and pleasures, the same penthouses and slums. We hit one spot it could have been the Village… except the coffee was better!

The Village?

Greenwich Village. Our artsy neighborhood. Where everyone thinks they’re in Paris.

What does it mean, to hit a spot?

We stopped there.

You’re traveling with others?

A buddy, another soldier.

He’s also from New York?

Canton… Canton, Ohio.

So… where is he?

God knows, probably doing his thing. I hadn’t thought of Calley all day.

I catch her smile in the lamplight. I think you’re not so fond of your buddy. Am I wrong?

Calley and I are pals. We’re very much alike.

Yes? she says, in that European way.

Well to start with we’re both lousy soldiers, one worse than the other! Right away I’m sorry I said it. Nobody loves a loser, much less a pair of losers. I needn’t have worried.

I’m glad you’re lousy, says Liesl, and I completely understand.

You do?

Of all things on earth armies are the stupidest. Soldiers either kill or get killed themselves. Which is worse? It doesn’t matter what kind of soldier you are but what kind of man.

Then, so help me, she claps me on the shoulder. Aaron, she says, real earnest and all, I’m glad that we met.

It’d be rude to correct her. To admit we didn’t choose to be lousy. Actually wished we were better. Even wanted to be officers. But the Navy scuttled me as hypertensive and the Air Force shot down Calley for strabismus. Frank’s cockeyed.

So we pushed up our draft and were overjoyed to pass the physical. Only later did we realize our shortcomings.

Still she has a point. Wars are lethal, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. And how beautiful she is when she says so. So fervent and convinced. So why bust chops about it?

Someday, Liesl, I hear myself saying, wars will be a thing of the past, never resorted to and only dimly remembered.

Even in Portuguese with French titles the flick’s easy to watch. It’s a spin on the Orpheus story, full of music and dance because it takes place in Rio. It’s carnival time and the characters are black people with Greek names.

Orfeo, a streetcar driver, falls in love with Eurydice, a pretty girl from the country. She’s visiting her cousin for the holiday and when she dons her costume a skeleton appears. The movie doesn’t say who the skeleton is or what he has against her. But she dies trying to escape him and not even voodoo can bring her back.

You wouldn’t think that makes for a great ending but apparently it does. With the sun shining brightly on little Brazilian kids playing happily by the sea.

When we reach the exit, I turn to Liesl. Tears are rolling down her cheeks and she’s more beautiful than ever. For a couple of blocks neither of us says a word. Then I ask her what the movie meant.

That love is stronger than death, she says. Eurydice dies but life goes on.

Not for her, I object.

Yes it’s tragic, she smiles. A problem perhaps for your American optimism.

We’re walking slowly now, it’s quiet and the breeze is gone. The air is warm and not as fresh as before. I enjoyed it very much, says Liesl, but I’m sorry you couldn’t see it in your own language. Maybe some day you’ll have the chance.

I understood well enough. That’s what high school French is for isn’t it, to see Portuguese movies in Paris? But you’re right, we Americans expect others to speak our language. That optimism again.

I don’t like to be laughed at, says Liesl, I only meant you have your own way of seeing things.

We’re nearly at the place where we met, a lighted plaza overseen by marble chariots. I can go the rest of the way myself, she says. It’s quite safe.

I’m in Paris until Monday, I tell her. I’d certainly like to see you again.

I’m free tomorrow but then I must prepare to leave. She suggests we meet at a subway station near her apartment. It sounds something like, va-grom.

CHAPTER 2

The hotel’s on the Rue de Lille--and up Frank’s alley.

The understated elegance and stagebox view of Paris grandly feed my buddy’s grand illusions. The wood paneling, polished brass and white marble staircase beat downtown Canton all to hell.

Calley thinks he was born for this life. Black-haired and facile with a rolling-R, he buys the legend of the Grand Armada. Survivors of the sunken fleet, high-born grandees all, washed up on the Irish coast, stunned the colleens and planted the tribe of Black Irishmen.

An odd conceit for an avowed socialist. Odder yet, he thinks we can handle 575 francs a night the way Drake handled the Armada. We can’t and putting it mildly, the army’s impatient with overdrawn merrymakers.

Sprawled beneath his headboard in chamber 6, Frank’s fully dressed from the waist up.

Where you been? he demands.

Out.

Out? While I been busting hump to get us back?

You got us here!

Well it’s all fixed now. Skanks rolled us in Pig Alley. While we were screwing them they were screwing us. The MPs bought it, okay? Where you been?

Sometimes when he gets it, Calley actually taps his head.

A broad! You bastard! …Madmoiselle from Amanteers. fahla-la!

You mean fraulein, Frank.

Fraulein? Oh Christ, poor Sophie!

Sophie’s my mom.

I sink ze mutter’s nut heppy.

Frank’s accents are weapons. His Brit a hapless stammerer, his Jap a hissing snake, his Russky a cold plate of stale borscht. This of course has been Charles Boyer week. The grunts and groans of an amorous frog.

But it’s Frank’s Prussian who takes the cake. All clicks and clacks and siegs and heils. Calley really has it for the krauts. Don’t ask me why. He has no Jewish grandma, no Gypsy cousins. Frank’s Irish to the core. Germans should be his pals. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

It wasn’t his fault that Captain Spindler came late to Kerry, his arms-laden Aud scuttled in Queenstown Bay, the Easter heroes left to their fate. Among them socialist-patriot James Connolly, a saint to the left-leaning Calleys.

Is that what Frank can’t forgive, that rare instance of Teuton inefficiency? If so the war in Spain was the capper. Calleys from Sligo to Seattle volunteered, campaigning recklessly enough to inspire a Hemingway novel. Or so the story goes.

At first I doubted his venom. A show I thought to impress a new Jewish buddy. But the more you know him the less you doubt Frank’s rancor. Like Belafonte’s song, he don’t like anybody very much.

Do you know what their problem is? he wondered rhetorically one day.

Whose problem?

The krauts, who else? It’s that Rube Goldberg language. Rigid, convoluted and complex. Backward sentences for backward minds. The hell with the forest, screw the trees, it’s the branches that count… the fucking twigs!

Wow Frank, I said, I’d no idea you were that conversant.

You don’t have to be a goddam professor. These people need a paragraph to sneeze. It’s not just ah-choo and that’s it. Thank God for English Aaron, good old flexible English. In more ways than one we’ve got freedom of speech!

Needless to say, I don’t share Frank’s close-mindedness. Germany’s sins, a mountain to be sure, are most of all a mystery. How could so many be fooled so thoroughly by so few? But of course not every German was guilty. One can’t generalize.

Why can’t one? said Calley, when it’s generally true!

People aren’t apples, I argued. The bad ones don’t spoil the bunch. Plenty of Germans have been good guys, even contributed to our own freedom. Gottfried Leibnitz comes to mind, the genius of Leipzig who inspired those words about life, liberty and the pursuit of what beguiles you.

The philosopher-mathematician suggested them to Franklin who gave them to Jefferson who just then was looking for something zingy. On one of his European junkets, Poor Richard discovered he and the Leibnitzites had something in common. Both were as popular in England as Mohawk tea-handlers.

Unwelcome there, boatloads of liberty-lovers headed this way. The list stretches from Zenger to Eisenhower to Marlene Dietrich. Not even Yankee rooters know that either Ruth or Gehrig could handle a fast-breaking umlaut.

If Frank were reasonable I would have said more. So I merely observed how quickly newcomers from Germany become full-fledged Americans. In just a year or two you can hardly tell the difference.

Thank God for little things, he said.

No, Calley takes no prisoners. But neither does he make any enemies. His targets think he’s funny, enjoy being ridiculed, inexplicably beg for more. Gorgeous gals who routinely laugh me off invariably laugh him up. So there’s this rift between us. On innocent excursions— sightseeing, shopping, grabbing a bite to eat—we stick together. On serious business, we’re on our own.

On this trip he can’t shoo them away. Coffee shop waitresses, dog-walking matrons, Royal Navy Wrens, a Bonjour-Paris tour-guide. The bosomy lady who makes our bed. The less he cares, the more they do.

The more I care… But today I resolved to change all that. I’ll be out most of tomorrow, I tell him as I flip the light.

The fuck you will, he yawns.

CHAPTER 3

It’s Wagram with a W. I arrive at the station early, in time for a quick cup in one of those funny little shops. Sophie should see me now, a chip on my shoulder and a loaf under each arm. They’re wrapped in white tissue and I’m planning to share them.

I’m twenty-one, an ocean from home and about to date a gorgeous European. And did I mention that it’s Paris? Already the air carries the scent of the city, a mélange of good wine, strong coffee and bad tobacco. It’s August, they say, and the A-team’s on holiday. Well the scrubs do just fine, I get a nod and bonjour wherever I go. I’d bonjour back if I could and clue them in:

At least once in this life, I would say, every young guy on a morning like this, his arms full of bread and his head full of hope, should wait at the station Wagram. But for how long? Am I early or is she late? Has she forgotten or simply changed her mind? After a while I start to walk off.

But which way? Logical as mid-Manhattan a moment ago, Paris seems as senseless as William south of Wall. I don’t recognize a thing except…my name! The girl in the distance is hazy but the handbag’s distinct.

I hadn’t finished with the children, she explains.

I look at her. You’re sort of a nursemaid, aren’t you?

You don’t know what is an au-pair? Well in the kaserne, I suppose, it’s not so surprising. Kaserne is German for barracks.

To reach Wagram we’ve crossed the river. Now we head the other way, toward the great boulevard and famous arch. In the shade of a cafe umbrella, we pause to make our plans.

Enough of La Louvre, she declares. La Gioconda is tired of us as we are of her. And her framed and lighted colleagues feel the same. Besides, I know a better place.

In whispery French, she tells the waiter what she wants. Much louder I’m afraid, I order the same thing in English.

Do you know the croissant? she wonders.

Not really, I’ve only just met the strudel.

Then tell me your opinion.

It’s delicious, the crust, the apple, the sprinkled sugar…

I mean Germany, she frowns. What do you think of my country? For me it’s very important.

Not what we expected, the black-and-white wasteland in the newsreels, recovering from the last war and bracing for a new one. Just the opposite, rich farmlands, snug hamlets, busy people.

Things are better now but still far from perfect. We Germans have problems to solve and fences to mend. But the past weighs heavily and each of us feels it. As you’ve probably noticed yourself when you leave the kaserne… If they ever let you out!

"Of course. When we’re not in the field or preparing to go, we can’t get downtown fast enough. Most everyone speaks English and we’re learning a little Dutch. In fact some of us are Dutch, guys who enlisted to speed their citizenship…

Back at Dix, a Dortmund buddy sent Mom a gift, one of those little hummels the ladies seem to love.

I don’t really care for them.

"They are kind of syrupy. I’m for the old steins, the ones with the fancy lids and schmaltzy sayings. A place I know has the best. It’s run by two sisters down by the river, chubby redheads and really nice. There’s no name or street address, not even a landmark to follow. We call it the Weinstube.

It’s not a GI joint, ordinary folks go there. Old people and couples with kids. You don’t need a menu because everything’s good. I’m for the bratwurst and sauerkraut and an ice-cold Roth. There’s even a juke box that plays sweet stuff, ‘Paloma’ and ‘Sorento.’ Not a lot of junk.

Coffee’s served and Liesl pops a sugar cube. You sound homesick, Aaron. Just remember, it’s only a small part of your life."

I’m okay. Even won a prize for marksmanship, eight bulls from the 300-yard-line. There’s only eight rounds in a clip you know.

Oh.

The range is a bummer. It’s always wet and muddy and smells of boiled eggs. Guard duty’s no picnic either, one reveille after the other. But KP’s the worst, seventeen exhausting hours in the cruddy messhall. Would you believe that married guys who live off-post don’t pull it? What a crock! …Jeez, I don’t even have a girlfriend.

We’re kind of quiet after that, Liesl popping sugar cubes and me re-stirring my coffee. Even so I can’t help asking, Do you have a boyfriend, Liesl?

No, she says simply.

The Arch is an island surrounded by traffic. It takes valor to reach the shrine of valor and it’s bigger than you think. Much bigger than