by Jeza Belle
2024 (The Presence Collection)
Jeza Belle´s powerful historical novel opens in Nazi-occupied Germany, with Josef and his lover Lucas huddling in a train on their way to a concentration camp. Some other prisoners are soon thrown into their car to join them--Jews, gypsies, bolsheviks, and other human beings considered undesirable within the Third Reich´s vision of an "ideal society"--and Josef instinctively tries to help one of them, a young boy. But he is shocked and saddened to be rejected by the youth´s father, who sees the pink triangle he and his lover Lucas wear over their breast. Long before it was reclaimed in the 1980s by ACT UP during the AIDS epidemic, this symbol created by the Nazis to mark prisoners as being homosexual becomes Josef´s scarlet letter, one initially met with loathing or suspicion by SS officers and fellow prisoners alike.
After this startling opening, Blood Rouge goes back in time, chronicling the events which led Josef to this moment. A gay teen who enjoys trying on his mother´s heels and smelling her perfume, he unsuccessfully attempts to avoid both the bullying from his stepbrother Marteen as well as the wrath of his stepfather, Herr Fuchs, who beats him with a belt when he discovers Josef privately wearing a fur coat at his store. Just when the reader thinks it cannot get worse, it does: soon after, Josef is brutally assaulted by Tielo while Marteen and their friends look on. When Josef tells his mother what happened, not only does she refuse to believe him, she holds her son responsible, and ultimately throws her own flesh and blood out onto the street. In Belle´s novel, fear and selfishness are the distinguishing features of the characters in Josef´s world.
This all changes when he meets Lucas and his sister Anke, who take in our wayward and penniless hero. Through their compassion and care, Josef is able to forge a new home with a chosen family that actually loves him. He puts his sewing and tailoring skills to use by assisting Anke with her small business at home. And through his romantic relationship with Lucas, he eventually learns how to do more than accept his sexual and gender identities--Josef learns to celebrate them.
A significant turning point comes when Josef accompanies his lover to a "doll bar" where Lucas plays piano, an underground cabaret where people can gather safely for a drink, community, and enjoy performances by some wonderful drag queens. Immediately entranced, Josef meets the charismatic and sassy Miss Sauerkraut, who quickly becomes Josef´s drag mother, and nurtures her transformation into die Blaue Blume ("the blue flower"). This will prove to be key not only in Josef´s personal empowerment, but also in their transition into being a role-model within her community before and after her arrival to the concentration camp.
Belle is masterful at providing details in Blood Rouge which evoke the time and place of Berlin during the late 1930s to early 1940s. There is a specific reference to the aftermath of Kristallnacht ("night of broken glass") in early November 1938, but frequently Belle puts the reader into the story through the taste of foods, the texture of fabrics, or the sound of music playing from Lucas´ piano.
During some of the middle chapters of the novel, Josef´s shock and surprise at the growing threats by the growing power of the Nazis may sometimes seem confusing for their naivetè. For example, in one episode he witnesses a group of soldiers tear an infant from the hands of its Jewish mother, then vomit after he sees them throw the child to the ground and stomp on its helpless body with their boots. Josef´s visceral reaction makes sense and is believable, but why doesn`t he share the news of this episode to anyone else aftewards, like Anke and her Jewish fiancè? Why does he resist his lover´s repeated pleas to leave the city in the search for safety?
But by the end of the novel, I conclude that Belle is seeking to do something other here than "just" a historical telling of this story, and its impact on the LGBTQ+ community. Blood Rouge is also a spiritual story, and Josef becomes an almost holy figure who extends compassion to others even as he also bears unimaginable suffering. By the end of the tale, he inspires others with his example--of dignified resistance, of gentleness in the face of brutality, and love in a place filled with so much hatred and selfishness. This is a beautiful and cathartic book, and one I highly recommend.
J goes in pre-drag make-up to a recital that L is doing with some Upperclass people. He seems so naive, when getting a negative response. Doesn´t he yet know the dangers? Then, one morning before dawn, Anke comes to inform them that the gestapo know about J, and that they find him to be "an unsavory" sort. And still, J seems angry about this "charade" (I find this reaction hard to believe). While J´s valor is admirable, it also seems naive--as well as a little selfish. What about the dangers to others around him? J seems to be "stuck" in the illogicality of discrimination, versus the cold hard fact of it.
J steals a woman´s garment from a store as an act of "defiance", when he runs into his mother for the 1st time in 3 years. But instead of wanting him home because she loves & misses him, she just wants practical help because her husband and his son Marteen were taken away by the Nazis because they´re Jewish & she needs help running the store. J is disgusted with her, tosses her some coins, and leaves to sing at the cabaret against L´s wishes. But J holds firm to sing "one more tune," before they travel to safety in Dusseldorf.
Just as J is finishing her defiant song, though, the door to the Red Pig explodes. Nazi stormtroopers burst in, arrest J & L
Part III
(we are now back at the beginning of the novel on the way to Dachau)
Dachau concentration camp, hell. At first, J thinks he is going to be exterminated, but then he is temporarily "saved" because he has sewing skills
In their cell, they discover a young boy, hiding. They learn more about the camp through him, as well as get a margin of protection from his father Rabbi Horowitz, when he & the other prisoners return. Those with the pink triangles are not treated as well by the other prisoners.
The following morning, J & L meet Carl, "the Kapo", a sadistic prisoner in charge of their division. He has a dog pee on some of the prisoners, and during breakfast J runs into his stepbrother Marteen, and gives him food. M apologizes for being so cruel before, and after eating falls down dead.
First day in the sewing factory, J is behind but makes up the quota (?), and meets Alma, a Belgium woman who smiles as an "act of resistance." J continues to be an almost saintly figure, giving food to L when he returns to the barracks, after giving his breakfast to M that morning..
As J is learning the stories of the others at the camp,, he is summoned to the SS officer, and discovers it is Tielo! He wants J to perform sexual favors for him, in exchange for keeping L safe & alive. One night, he is used at the officer´s private quarters, and J hesitates too long to use a gun on Tielo. Later, J finally tells L about the situation with Tielo.
Finally, J stages a trap against Tielo, timing an encounter at the same time a General was coming for an inspection. He dies, but he dresses in drag before his final execution publicly. In the epilogue, we learn that L lives
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