Juggling Tales

In the Cube

BY BARBARA MEYER

Nico patted his forehead, trying not to disturb his makeup, and ducked his handkerchief. His fingers zittered over the belt, fitted with small baskets, that contained his equipment. He couldn't drop anything this time. This was one test he dare not fail.

The stage was a billow of blue smoke that rose from noisy drinkers below, drinkers whose brass bars and swastikas shown against precise wool uniforms. Munich seemed far from the front tonight.

Without words, Nico had to depend on the musicians to follow his lead. His scarred throat, his claimed muteness put him almost beyond suspicion. Almost.

He fell into the familiar rhythm. Two balls, a third, then a fourth, he accelerated until his hands were flying. No point in searching the crowd for that one face, no way to tell that face from any other Nazi's. Nico would have to be patient.

There was intermittent clapping when he threw the balls high in the air and caught them in the small baskets on his belt. This was one routine he could have done in his sleep, except that he got little sleep any more.

The trio of broad, curved knives he left for his flashy finale. They should please this group, he thought, who knew guns and gas and bombs so intimately.

He took the obligatory bow and left the stage. They could go to hell with their applause. He had performed well enough to keep the job, he was sure. The real show would be later.

Without changing from his garish harlequin costume, Nico wandered out into the cabaret with its maze of tiny tables. One of his duties was to watch for possible .flash points, to defuse arguments with humor or sleight of hand. Clubs like Der Kessel didn't muscle SS officers.

Near the bar Nico stood looking at faces, alternately tossing two cubes in one hand. They were soft, stitched together at the edges. They looked alike, but he could feel the difference.

"Nicolas," said someone at the table next to him, "Guten Abend."

Nico caught both cubes, but in his confusion, he almost spoke. The voice was one he was not likely to forget. He bowed slightly to his cousin, touching his lips with a finger. "You don't speak?" Rolf smiled unsympathetically.

"Someone told me you'd gotten shot."

No surprise, Nico thought, that Rolf had avoided the word, "wounded." Ever the dandy, he looked deadly smart in his beribboned uniform, his shiny black boots. Colonel Stolz.

Rolf turned to his gray-clad companions. "Military exemption," he said, motioning toward Nico, who was not going to write out a corrective statement. Rolf had always hated him, had hated his father, Klaus von Tauben, more.

"General von Tauben was killed on the Russian front?" Rolf asked, making the man's efforts sound like treachery.  "My sympathies."                            

All Nico could do was nod yes, but while his eyes were downcast, he took in the other three officers at the table. Two were glassy-eyed, but the third gazed directly up at him, unsmiling but sober. "My Uncle Siegfried was a juggler," the third officer said. "Of course, he was a politician, too, which made it a natural combination." He looked devilishly around at the other three, who roared at his little joke.

It was time for Nico to give them a wan smile and take his leave. He nodded toward Rolf, who looked at him through slits. Rolf, who could find any excuse to have him rounded up and shot before his work had even begun.

Instinctively Nico reached into the front basket at his waist for the all-important cube. Yes, he breathed relief, it was still there.

But as he stepped back, someone bumped his elbow. The cube flipped out of his hand, landed on the floor, and rolled to a stop at the tip of Rolf's boot.

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