Clifford's Blues by John A. Williams

tropics, understand?” (I’m not as old as Hohenberg, but I can say that lovers I had who were Protestants were not as vicious as Catholics. I don’t know why.) We all laughed, but we were still watching the windows.
    Then someone asked, in that voice they used back home when asking such questions, “Which, Hohenberg, was the best?”
    He said, “There is no such thing as best. I know you would like to hear that the Jewish ladies are best, but that’s not so, anymore than African ladies or Spanish ladies are best, or any other ladies. You were not listening to me. Fucking is basic. It is the one thing the richest and the poorest can do alike, the blackest and the whitest. The prick goes, or should go, in the same place and is received by that place. Do you know of people who fuck in the armpits? Tell me these people. Where do they live? What are they called?” (Amen , I thought, Amen.) “You would like to hear that black ladies are best? There were for me differences, but that did not make the ladies better or best, and I tell you that, blessed or cursed with my affliction, I searched with utmost diligence for the puss that would lay low that ailing prick of mine. More than the ladies, I remember the places where I had them—the country beside haystacks, in the Grünewald, a Schrebgarten, Freienwald” (he was, then, I thought, from Berlin), “beside Lake Como, in the sweet grass of the Transylvanian Alps, the plaster-and-fresh-croissant smell of a room in the Latin Quarter of Paris, the wind-squeezed compartment of the Milan-Berlin Express, the Bois de Boulogne—oh, I remember the places.”
    I could tell they were getting bored with him because he wasn’t really talking about fucking, so they started to leave, slipping out the door one at a time or in twos. Through the window I could see that they walked differently outside than they had in here. I guess we all did that. Then they were all gone, even Werner, and I was alone.
    The next time I looked up, at the sound of the door opening, Menno Becker was creeping across the floor. “I haven’t been able to get away,” he said. I told him I didn’t think he’d tried hard enough. He said they’d been watching him very closely. I asked why, had they caught him with someone else? He shook his head in very slow and soft movements. “There’re so many Witnesses coming in now, and all this is such a shock. Someone has to talk to them. I talk and they watch. They tell me if I’m not careful, I’ll be in the Prisoner Company with a target painted on my back.” He was motionless; the sun came in through the windows and shone on his face. The light seemed to gather right around him.
    I kept on working. I told him I had met Nyassa, and he said he was a nice man, but very sad, as he had a right to be. Menno worked with him, since Nyassa had scientific training and he’d had none. Not that Nyassa’s training was like a real doctor’s. I told him I’d missed him, just told him right out. Hadn’t Werner told him when I was in the canteen? He said he could do nothing at those times. I told him I was tired of hearing that, and what made him think his neck was more precious than mine? And he stood right there, like a cow about to be clubbed. Right then I felt I had the pat hand. It was almost like playing in a joint when you knew everyone was feeling good enough to get on the floor when you hit the chords for the opening of “Body and Soul” or “Stardust.” You made them get up and two-step, foxtrot, or whatever. You had power over them.
    All this time, from the corner of my eyes, I’d been watching the windows. Nothing moving. “C’mere,” I said, and I pulled him behind the counter and into the room where I stayed and let him know that I didn’t give a damn just then about Karlsohn or anyone else. The wooden building smelled of sap