BOOK REVIEW : ‘Cabaret’ Revisited in Wartime Berlin Tale

If a hauntingly familiar refrain seems to accompany this tale of wartime Berlin, it’s undoubtedly because the author produced the musical “Cabaret” and has drawn upon so many of the same sources that the book is virtually a sequel.

Though his narrator was also the impresario of a nightclub patronized by the SS, the novel begins after Daniel Saporta has been hidden in an attic for two years. He’s sustained by his faithful former employee Lohmann, who brings him news of the war and whatever food he has managed to scavenge. So far, no end to the ordeal is in sight, and Saporta has accepted the fact that his “enforced residence would not be terminated by some fortuitous event.” Resigned to that grim probability, he starts the journal--partly to stave off madness, partly to explain his life.

The son of a prosperous spice merchant in Damascus, Saporta had grown up in the narrow world of that city’s Jewish enclave.

While the references to Saporta’s Damascus boyhood are brief, these sporadic glimpses into that hermetic society are the most absorbing portions of the book, easily worth a volume of their own. The rich material is used here chiefly for contrast with Saporta’s current wretchedness, forming a literary chiaroscuro composed of the bright idyllic boyhood, the dark past and the bleak present.

These frequent shifts in mood and time are managed by the simple device of printing Saporta’s journal in italics; his reminiscences in standard type. As in life, one thing leads to another, the isolation of his new circumstances stimulating his memory.

When Daniel was 17, his father sent him to Berlin to live with a business associate and learn other aspects of the international spice trade. As an au pair in Herr Landau’s spacious Berlin apartment, the clever but provincial Syrian boy was expected to acquire a European polish.

Precocious in every way, Daniel has barely settled in the Landau household when he is seduced by Frau Landau. His virtuous upbringing forgotten, he so loses himself in sensuality that his work deteriorates drastically. When the Landaus’ nursemaid becomes pregnant by another, Daniel is the logical scapegoat. Long aware of his wife’s infidelities, Herr Landau seizes the chance to rid himself of her latest favorite.

Thrown abruptly out of the house by the enraged Landau, Daniel can choose only between returning to Damascus in disgrace or remaining in Berlin to live by his wits. Full of youthful bravura, he manages to acquire a decaying nightclub, redecorating it in an exotic style designed to attract Berlin’s jaded public.

With the help of new acquaintances, he imports Middle Eastern dancers and becomes the proprietor of a thriving enterprise. When his clientele of lecherous burghers is supplanted by Nazi officers, Daniel is rapidly drawn into their dangerous orbit, uneasily catering to their eccentric, depraved tastes.

By the time the journal begins, he has long since changed his name to Salazar, an expedient he adopted as soon as it became obvious that a Spanish Catholic had a far better chance of surviving in Hitler’s Germany than a Sephardic Jew. The transition came easily, since his first language was Ladino, the archaic Spanish dialect of many Middle-Eastern Jewish communities. Equipped with a Spanish passport and identity papers, he masquerades for nearly a decade.

In his rapid transformation from apprentice spice merchant to cabaret owner, Daniel arouses the interest of a British espionage agent, who persuades him to use the nightclub to help the anti-Nazi Resistance. Though at first the assignments are easily fulfilled, the demands escalate, and Daniel finds himself embroiled in increasingly perilous missions, a Yugoslavian episode giving the book an eerie relevance. Eventually Daniel becomes so involved that he sacrifices his fiancee to the cause, a decision that continues to torment him during his years in hiding.

“Cafe Berlin” represents a recent development in Holocaust literature, a progression in which horror serves as background for a standard espionage tale. Because Nebenzal combines these elements with particular sensitivity, the novel succeeds both as memoir and thriller. Though an egregious, sentimental epilogue dilutes the ultimate impact, “Cafe Berlin” maintains its fascination until that last disconcerting page.

CAFE BERLIN By Harold Nebenzal Overlook Press $22.95; 290 pages