Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  MILAN–PARIS: Two journalists meet. Both are war veterans. One is the bull-headed editor of a national Italian newspaper, not yet quite forty years old. The other is an American newspaperman who has just hiked over the Alps with his wife (and a friend) on a kind of second honeymoon. Both believe in their destiny as great men. Both believe in the importance of having experienced war. Both love Italy, or at least their idea of Italy. Both know the power of words.

  Mussolini sits behind a grand desk, lazily fondling the ears of a wolfhound puppy, and assessing the absurdly healthy-looking American who has come to pay him a visit. Then he languidly opens his big mouth and begins to talk very slowly to make sure his Italian is understood. ‘We are not out to oppose any Italian government’, Benito explains, with a hint of menace, ‘but we have force enough to overthrow any government that might try to oppose or destroy us.’ It is only a few weeks since several thousand blackshirts marched into Bologna and briefly occupied the city to force Rome to remove the region’s top civil servant, considered unfriendly to the Fascists. ‘The whole business’, writes Hemingway, ‘has the quiet and peaceful look of a three-year-old playing with a live Mills bomb.’

  Later, with Hadley accompanying him, Ernest returns to the front line of 1918, to the place where he was wounded, the place that made him a hero for a while. Nothing is as he remembers it. The signs still say Fossalta, but to Hemingway the town which he passed through fifty times or more in his few months at the front line is now unrecognisable: ‘All the shattered tragic dignity of the wrecked town was gone.’ Instead of ruins, which might have conveyed to his wife the drama and pathos of what had happened nearby, they find ‘a new, smug, hideous collection of plaster houses’. Even the people are new: there are migrants from Naples and Sicily living here now. ‘I was here during the war’, he tells a young woman, by way of explanation for the unlikely presence of a couple of American tourists. ‘So were many others’, she replies flatly.

  Crestfallen, Ernest returns to Paris. ‘Chasing yesterdays is a bum show’, he advises the readers of Toronto’s finest newspaper, ‘and if you have to prove it, go back to your old front’. Gertrude Stein has a name for Hemingway and his type, the men who experienced the intensity of war and now feel that nothing else quite matches it, who carry around with them a secret anger. It is a phrase she picked up from the owner of a Parisian garage where her Ford was being fixed. ‘That’s what you are, that’s what you all are,’ she tells Ernest, ‘you’re all a lost generation’.

  GORKI: A small room, simply furnished: a bed, a desk, a chair, a Persian rug on the floor. Two tall trees shade the room. A mosquito net prevents the flies from getting in. For two weeks, the patient hardly moves. He tries to read but, at first, finds that all the letters flow together. Mostly he rests. Newspapers are strictly banned. There are no visitors from the Kremlin to bother him–these too are banned. Still, Vladimir’s mind cannot be kept completely free of political concerns. He asks about the ongoing show trial–tickets are only issued to reliable Communist Party members–of his political enemies, the Socialist Revolutionaries, just a month after the trial of the Moscow clergy ended. He asks about the harvest. Is there a threat from the locusts? He is made to drink carrot juice for his health.

  In June the patient is moved back into the big house at the estate on a stretcher. He sits on the veranda in the sun. After a few days more he starts to feel mobile again, wandering from one balcony to another around the house. This will improve his digestion, he says. Vladimir asks that chairs be placed at regular intervals so that he can make it to one if he feels another spasm coming on (he calls these ‘snakes’). He makes a joke of it. Question: ‘When will the Commissar for such-and-such a department be assured of not falling?’ Answer: ‘When he is sitting in an armchair’. He starts reading a book about the artificial cultivation of mushrooms and asks why they are not doing more of it at Gorki.

  Vladimir’s sister Maria bans the playing of the piano so as not to jangle her sick brother’s nerves.

  MUNICH–BERLIN–LEIPZIG–KIEL: In late June, Adolf begins his deferred jail sentence for breaking up a Bavarian political meeting last year.

  The same day in Berlin men in leather coats shoot up the car of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau as he drives to work. A grenade finishes the job. The murderers are members of the Organisation Consul terrorist cell which killed Erzberger last year, who dislike Rathenau’s reparations policy and believe their prey to be one of the latter-day Elders of Zion. They escape on foot. Two are eventually tracked down to a medieval fortress outside Leipzig, where they are killed in a police siege. The driver of the getaway car is turned in by a family member and sent for trial.

  Germany reels. Is there any end to the upheavals the country must go through? The Rhineland is occupied by foreign powers, the question of reparations hangs over the country’s future, stability is threatened from Communists and putschists of all stripes. There are tumultuous scenes in the Reichstag. Conservatives and nationalists are held responsible for Rathenau’s murder by having so vehemently condemned his policy on reparations. That very evening, the Chancellor invokes a special provision of the German constitution–Article 48–to push through emergency security measures. ‘Rising terror and nihilism, frequently cloaked in the mantle of national sentiment, must no longer be looked upon with indulgence’, he declares. ‘We cannot go on as we did before.’

  Rathenau’s murder has wide implications. There is concern in Moscow that it may affect relations with Russia. Vladimir manages to hear of the murder despite the ban on newspapers at Gorki. (‘Well, did Rathenau slip?’ he slyly asks one of his interlocutors, unwilling to be drawn into a conversation about Germany.) After a period of relative stability, the German mark crashes against the American dollar. Rathenau’s picture appears on the front page of the New York Times above reports of a royalist coup in the works. In Germany, university lectures are cancelled. There is one exception. In Heidelberg, the anti-relativist and anti-Semite Philipp Lenard decides to carry on as before in protest at the overreaction to a traitor’s death. He is nearly thrown into the Neckar river as a result.

  At Rathenau’s funeral, held in the Reichstag, his mother sits on a red brocade throne in what used to be the Hohenzollern royal box. After a short oration, the coffin is carried out past a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm–it is said some republicans wanted it covered in black cloth during the ceremony–and then raced by motorised hearse to the cemetery to prevent a riot breaking out around the German parliament. Albert Einstein is prominent amongst the mourners. Sympathy marches are organised in cities across Germany.

  Rumours circulate of further assassination lists. The name Einstein is said to be near the top. After the funeral, Albert goes to see a play by Ernst Toller, and laments how far Germany has fallen: ‘O, people of poets and thinkers, what has become of you!’ He cancels public-speaking engagements, including at a prominent gathering of German scientists in Leipzig. Right-wing newspapers accuse him of running away, either because he is worried about being unmasked as a fraud or simply to create yet more media attention. ‘The Fugitive Relativity’, runs one headline. Einstein blames it all on the English and their damned eclipse expedition in 1919 for having made him so famous in the first place.

  ‘Where will this dangerous mental derangement lead us?’ he asks a friend.

  DUBLIN–LONDON: An Irish constitution–approved in London–is published in Ireland, and an election held the same day. The treaty side wins.

  But before the final tally is announced, news comes in from London which may change everything. An Irish-born retired field marshal in the British army–much hated by the IRA as a security adviser to Belfast–is assassinated on the steps of his London home on his return from unveiling a memorial to the dead of the Great War. The killers wave down a taxi to try to escape the scene. A shoot-out follows in the streets of Belgravia, near where Michael Collins stayed while negotiating the treaty last year. Both men give false names when arrested, though their
true identities are soon uncovered. Both served in the British army in the war. One lost a leg below the knee. In France, they fought for freedom, they explain. Yet that same freedom has not been given to Ireland.

  ‘I do not approve, but I must not pretend to misunderstand’, declares Éamon de Valera. The Irish Times mourns the loss of a great Irishman in Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. ‘Our whole country ought to be in mourning’, write its editors. Such an act can only further estrange north and south. ‘It may provoke reprisals and counter-reprisals, until not only Belfast, but the whole country, runs with bloodshed.’

  There is shock and panic in the British capital. Some believe that Collins, through weakness or intent, must bear the blame. But suspicion falls most heavily on the rebels in Dublin’s Four Courts–the republicans who reject the treaty and want no Free State.

  London demands immediate action be taken by the Irish government to dislodge the rebels, warning it will send in its own troops to do the job if not.

  NEW YORK: Shuffle Along is coming to the end of its run in New York, after five hundred performances, and everyone wants a piece of its success. The fashion for black revues–or ‘Negro Revues’ as the newspapers call them–is spreading. In June, Strut, Miss Lizzie opens at the Times Square Theatre, a two-act musical entertainment (written by two white composers) that ‘glorifies the creole beauty’.

  In July, Josephine Baker turns sixteen–which makes it legal for the twice-married chorus girl to work in the state of New York–and Shuffle Along goes on a nationwide tour, with Josephine as one of the show’s chief attractions, even if most people are more likely to remember her funny-girl antics than her name.

  DUBLIN: Waving her credentials from an American newspaper, the intrepid Clare Sheridan talks her way into the Four Courts. Inside, she notes a Rolls-Royce armoured car on which someone has painted the words ‘The Mutineer’. The rebels are young. They have no proper uniforms. They do not stand a chance.

  She interviews their leader. He arranges bullets on the table in front of him while he replies to her questions, clearly uncertain whether he should be talking to her at all. The republic is the only true cause, he says. The oath to the British Crown cannot be stomached. ‘Irishmen will walk into English jails with their heads high,’ he declares, ‘but they never can hold their heads high as subjects of a British colony.’ He calls Michael Collins an opportunist and a bully.

  Guns open fire on the Four Courts the next morning, early Wednesday. It is not a very determined attack. Collins hopes the bombardment will persuade the anti-treaty IRA men to leave; he does not want to kill them all. Chunks of stone masonry crash down into the streets. Gunshots echo through Dublin. It is like 1916 again, but it is Irish fighting Irish now. Free State artillery pieces (borrowed from the British army) fire shells filled with shrapnel. Occasionally, they overshoot their target and the shells explode further afield. The British encourage the Irish to hurry up. Churchill offers British aeroplanes–painted in the colours of the Free State–to finish the job.

  By Friday, the Four Courts are empty. The archive holding Ireland’s public records going back centuries is lost to fire. Pockets of resistance remain in Dublin’s central quarter. Several hotels are occupied. O’Connell Street becomes a battleground. De Valera joins the rebels, taking his oath of service just as he did six years ago. Provisional government soldiers slowly close the net. By the time the fighting stops, several dozen Irish have been killed–civilians, too–and civil war is beyond recall. Éamon de Valera–professor, prisoner, President and now fugitive again–escapes in a Red Cross ambulance.

  DOORN: The Kaiser’s secret female correspondent comes to stay at Huis Doorn. Within a matter of days, Princess Hermine and Wilhelm are engaged.

  One of the Kaiser’s sons warns his father that his remaining supporters in Germany will not look kindly upon remarriage so soon and suggests he think again before things are made public. (In response, Wilhelm calls him a good-for-nothing bum.) The Kaiser’s daughter comes to Doorn to discuss what she calls ‘The Subject’. She is convinced that her father has deluded himself and that Hermine will leave him as soon as she gets bored–which, she judges, won’t be long.

  The Kaiser will not be put off. For once, he tells himself, he is not going to be told what to do. ‘I’ve given everything to the German people: my crown, my freedom, and yes, my wife’, Wilhelm complains to his adjutant. ‘My sacrifices stop with matters of the heart.’ A wedding in November is planned. Affairs will be kept under wraps till then.

  ISTANBUL: In the Ottoman capital, there is anxiety amongst the Sultan’s supporters about his future, and squabbles amongst European diplomats over what to do should Mustafa Kemal and the nationalists lunge for Istanbul itself.

  The French and Italians want a deal. Only the British seem willing to resist the rising star, their presence strengthened by the arrival of HMS King George V, the battleship on which Kaiser Wilhelm once hoisted the flag in celebration of Anglo-German friendship before the war.

  Fearing they are about to be deserted, the Greeks threaten their British allies that they will occupy Istanbul themselves if necessary. The British Ambassador’s wife is outraged: ‘The cheek of them!’

  Diplomats scurry around to give another chance to negotiation between Kemal and the Greeks. Venice is suggested as the venue for a peace conference, or perhaps the Italian-held island of Rhodes. It could even be held aboard a British naval ship. Time is short. The Turks will not wait for ever.

  ACROSS SOUTHERN IRELAND: The fight moves out of Dublin and into the countryside. Michael Collins makes himself commander-in-chief of the Free State forces. He dons an army uniform and races around the country inspecting the troops and barking orders as he tries to end the conflict before it gets any worse. There can be no winners in such a war. The best end is a quick one.

  ‘Of all things, it has come to this’, he writes to an old friend, with whom he once jousted for the heart of Kitty, and who has now sided with the republicans against the government. ‘You are walking under false colours’, he continues, begging the recipient to change his mind.

  The people are supporting the government. In much of the south, the republicans melt away. In Cork, they go out in an orgy of destruction and burning.

  MOSCOW: For the inhabitants of the Kremlin, there is a strange absence over the summer months.

  In place of the usual avalanche of telephone calls and memorandums and letters there is silence from the office of Vladimir Lenin. It is unprecedented. For some, it is not entirely unwelcome. But the absence of the leader slowly turns into a scramble for power. Émigré papers speculate as to the true state of the dictator’s health. Some write of his ‘retirement’. A deputy has taken over temporary duties of chairing the Sovnarkom, the cabinet. The Politburo is meeting without Lenin for the first time in years.

  It is natural to have ideas about where this all might lead. The scheming has already begun. A bloc is formed that tries to sideline Trotsky. Stalin is its chief organiser, but not yet its leader.

  OCCUPIED RHINELAND, GERMANY: Clare Sheridan discovers it is bloody hard to get a square meal in the Rhineland these days.

  In the town of Aachen, under occupation by Belgian forces since 1918, she is told that there is no milk to be had. (The delivery of cows to France as war reparations-in-kind is blamed.) In Cologne, it is the British who are in charge, but the café along the way still has nothing to offer in the way of proper sustenance. In Koblenz, the Americans rule the roost, and here it is alcohol that is unobtainable. (Local children, Clare notes, have picked up the American word ‘swank’, which well describes the shiny new US Army uniforms compared to those of the clapped-out British.) In Wiesbaden, where Rhineland separatists tried to proclaim their own independent state in 1919–with the rumoured backing of Paris–it is French soldiers who are in control. A bevy of tourists have followed in their wake, taking advantage of the fall in the value of the German mark.

  To a person carrying foreign currency Ge
rmany is cheap–if you can find what you want, of course. Clare buys a pair of fine leather gloves for the princely sum of half a dollar. Germans with any money spend it as soon as they can. Who knows what it might be worth tomorrow?

  FRINTON-ON-SEA, ESSEX, ENGLAND: August is bittersweet for Clementine.

  One year since little Marigold Churchill fell ill and died, and only a few months until her and Winston’s next child is due to be born. Clementine is still just about able to chase her elder children around the garden of the house they have rented for the summer holidays. The sea is not far away. The children compete in a tennis tournament at the local club. Winston is away in France–he tries to resist the casino at Biarritz and fails–but will be back before the end of the month, no doubt with plans for new sandcastles, as is his general inclination when on the beach.

  ‘I feel quite excited about the arrival of a new kitten’, Clementine writes to her husband: ‘darling, I hope it will be like you.’ Winston, in between corresponding with Michael Collins and Chaim Weizmann, recalls the awful sadness of the year before: ‘A gaping wound whenever one touches it and removes the bandages and plasters of daily life.’

  He, too, looks forward to ‘a new darling kitten to cherish’.

  GORKI: When the patient is feeling a little better, the doctors allow him into the garden to examine the flowers. He is deeply offended when one of the medical staff looking after him suggests he might be up to a game of draughts–but only with bad players. ‘They think I’m a fool’, he complains.