Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  5

  Shooting down come the Stukas, straight down, Polish streets spreading out before them like bloodstains, then bombs fall; flames take wing; people scream and run right into the machine-guns. The Stukas soar, disdaining now those crooked blackened ruins which foemen deserve, their bridges brokenly dangling in rivers.

  6

  His pale, alert, immobile face watches the victory parade, his eyes like a bird’s. Wagner had steam machines and colored lights at Bayreuth; he has the many-plumed smoke of ruined Warsaw. And all is as it was before—the same long columns of listeners at Party rallies, long squares of people, mobile barracks drawn up to hear him shouting, warning and exhorting his children of all ages. In come the Gestapo, drawing up new lists of names, confiscating old ones. In Austria they’d accompanied their sleepwalker’s voice less obviously, in much the same way that the Wagnerian orchestra lurks in the darkness past the Schalldeckel. They arrested three-quarters of a million people in Vienna on the first day of reunification, but softly. In Poland they need not be soft. They’re backed by all good Germans, down to the last heil-smiling ladies and girls, each of whom agrees with him that his foreign adventures had better be, in his own terrifying phrase, sealed in blood. They seek themselves in the sleepwalker’s pale mute face, his wrist clasping wrist as he endures the honors on his fiftieth birthday, sipping at the rasping static of an infinite cheer.

  7

  On 23.07.40 he meets Kubizek at Bayreuth. Kubizek’s his old friend from his student days (if we grant that he ever had a friend). Rejected twice for artistic studies, the sleepwalker had stolen away from the unfated other boy to become a tramp. Years he’d spent then imprisoned within the Schalldeckel! His life had supplied him with no indications of scale whatsoever; he could have been a giant or a dwarf depending on the size of the trees in the painted backdrop where the aliens, solid people, applauded far above his head. But then came a magic drumbeat; and suddenly our sleepwalker became one of the soldiers waving from the troop trains of 1914, and very soon he found himself desperately running through sharp-angled trenches, fleeing the gas bombs against which the handkerchiefs tied over their mouths could do far less than Gunnar’s harp. Kubizek might have admired him then, for he’d distinguished himself, but . . . Well, now that he’s the Führer he need be ashamed of nothing anymore. Troops are waving from the trains again. A huge swastika has overhung him ever since he became legal dictator.

  He’s already promised to support the artistic studies of Kubizek’s children at the expense of the state. He’s taken a very kind interest, yes, he has. He’s even sent Kubizek tickets to the Ring.

  Of those four operas, “Das Rheingold” is his favorite. (The dwarfs are starving Jewish children with weary old faces, and men with pipestem arms.) Could it be his fondness for the music which enthralls him too deeply to remember Kubizek here? Actually he’s very interested in the directing. Next comes “Die Walküre,” where at the Magic Fire music, the self-willed, virginal heroine gets safely walled to sleep by searchlights like the flames inside the skeletons of French and Belgian houses, where weeping, gesturing neighbors bury the dead in deep craters. The sleepwalker has already noted Kubizek’s frantic applause during the “Ride of the Valkyries” (a stunning, chilling, remorseless hymn to war, which thanks to the subterranean architecture gets necessarily softened and diffused a little at Bayreuth). Wanting to re-ignite the friendship, he thinks to invite him up to his private box, but just then Frau Goebbels and her husband make a scene about some infidelity . . . Now it’s already time for “Siegfried,” which he wishes to enjoy almost alone with Speer, so that they can whisper in each other’s ears about new buildings.

  At last, during the first intermission of “Götterdämmerung,” he finds time for the meeting. He dreads it; he wishes he’d never been persuaded into it by his own sentimentality. He has no time for such nonentities as August Kubizek.

  Shyly, Kubizek congratulates him on conquering France. He replies: And here I have to stand by and watch the war robbing me of my best years . . . We’re getting old, Kubizek.—Kubizek bows and nods, not knowing what to say.

  And yet, the sleepwalker says, and yet, this . . . You remember how we used to stand for hours on end for Wagner, because we could not afford to sit? You remember how “Götterdämmerung” made us weep?

  Yes, my Führer . . .

  It’s like a bath in steel, I tell you. After Wagner, I feel hardened and refreshed . . .

  He returns to his box to sit rapturous until the end of the final act, when the devoted woman sets everything she loves on fire, and buildings collapse like sand castles, windowed facades slowly falling to the street, becoming dust and broken glass.

  Kubizek in his humbler box remembers how when they were youths together the sleepwalker once wrote a Hymn to the Beloved to a tall and slender fairhaired girl named Stephanie Jansten, but never ever spoke to her. (That is exactly how our ancient heroes fell in love, too. Siegfried and Gunnar hadn’t even laid eyes on the princesses they pined for.) O yes, fairhaired! Why, she was as blonde as the smoke which now rises up from all the synagogues! Sometimes the sleepwalker had been resolved on suicide; this mood lasted for hours on end, but the trouble was that Stephanie must be ready to die with him.

  To the stage comes torchlight, wavering columns of light. When the sleepwalker shouts, they shout and thunder, their arms flashing up and down while his stiff boys bang drums. The sleepwalker speaks, or Siegfried sings; it matters not to the rigidly attentive faces. Light gleams on the side of his face.

  8

  In 1941 he attacks his ally Russia. War on all fronts! Now Germany’s safely surrounded by a wall of fire! How long will it take to reduce that empire to a smear beneath his boot? Three weeks, probably, but in this world exactitude sometimes fails. At Bayreuth, for example, the “Rheingold” has been performed in two-and-a-quarter hours, but occasionally it can take as long as three.

  For this Russian campaign he selects a snippet of Liszt’s Preludes to be played on the radio as a victory fanfare.

  9

  The sleepwalker charmingly smiles as with both his hands he clasps the wrist of Wagner’s granddaughter Verena.

  Yes, Uncle Wolf, she murmurs. I will give orders that no one is to disturb you.

  He enters his private box at the rear wall. He gazes down across the empty seats, which resemble the keyboard of an immense typewriter upon which he might compose any musical score he pleases.

  I will not allow this war to hinder my objectives, he whispers to himself. Russia will not die. Russia is coming at him like the dragon-worm which will rise up at the end of the world, bearing corpses in its claws. The aliens have tricked him, as he always knew they would. But he’s raised the goblet of promise. He must continue on.

  10

  Another weakling, another little shirker requests permission to report. The sleepwalker gazes at him with angry eyes.

  The shirker complains about certain extreme measures. What a gallows-raven he is! He croaks and croaks. (In the Ring, don’t even gods have to trick the dwarfish Jewish capitalist and even rob him in order to save the world?) The sleepwalker stares him down, but the shirker will not dwindle. Where’s Keitel? Where’s Jodl? Someone should show him out! On the conference room table there at Wolf’s Lair, the shirker lays out photographs of hungry street-crowds in the Warsaw Ghetto, of children’s faces like weeping skulls, pale, immobile bodies on the pavement, skinny, pale people lying in crowds on hay mattresses.

  A typist gasps.

  The sleepwalker whirls to kiss her hand.—Never mind, child, he comforts her. She smiles, rushes from the room.

  The shirker whines on and on. He’s sure that this matter was never brought to the Führer’s attention before. Of course the Jews are our misfortune, but this . . .

  And the sleepwalker? He flicks at one of the photographs with his thumb-nail. The mouth tightens.

  11

  Another general insists on disturbing him with bad news of the Ru
ssian advance. He says that conditions are degenerating along the entire front.

  Well, let them degenerate! he rages. All the better for me!

  Yes, my Führer. But our own troops are freezing to death. Just yesterday I saw—

  The sleepwalker covers his ears.—Perhaps I’m too sensitive, he replies.

  12

  The workers have gathered before him into rectangular armies. Swastika standards begin marching in file down a long well of futurity. They shout; he waits, expressionless and dour. Long before the first Blood Purge of 1934 they’d seen him striding up to the dais of destiny, standing atop an immense dais with a swastika on the wall nearest his feet. Now they must all be conscripted, their factories to become still another front. He needs gold rings and henchmen.

  He speaks of spiritual matters. Only they can save his grey cathedrals and greatcoats from the Russian Jews, who return to life no matter how many of them he burns. The workers must build new breastworks. Aren’t they all answerable to the war dead? Even women will have to labor now, in spite of all his principles. Emergencies require extreme measures. Didn’t Siegmund mate with his own sister to save the blood of their race?

  And the workers listen. They honor his sacrifice. They will not bereave him of his war. Like the crowd at the Opera House, they offer him “stormy applause.” At his drumbeat comes the gorgeous flash of ten thousand spades raised upon the Labor Front. In his honor, German women have strung buntings upon their gingerbread houses. Soon enemy bombs will tumble upon them, and he’ll turn away, his face milkily shining by torchlight.

  13

  He always attends the first cycle at Bayreuth every year. This time again he comes early. At Bayreuth the stage is roofless like bombarded Stalingrad. The sleepwalker paces unyieldingly in his private box, brooding down the fan-shaped tiers of empty seats. He strokes the Corinthian columns. He unbuttons the collar of his shirt. He can almost hear the breathing of Verena Wagner outside. The Schalldeckel gapes before him: music’s open grave. Like the bridegroom who longs to meet his bride beneath the linen sheets, he craves this hollow of secret repose. Only there can he hoard himself safe from the others whom he must ever watch with turning head. His magic renews itself there; he sleeps without dreaming.

  And so he descends into the Schalldeckel. The old floorboards creak beneath his jackbooted tread. Coldheartedly nervous, he grips his sweaty forelock, gibbering softly to himself, wondering where to rest. But this time, beyond the darkness he spies the flickering fires of forecourts! Call him not afraid. He’s the blond against the dark. But it’s so dark, just as it once was during the previous World War when he was young and blinded by poison gas . . . He strides blindly forward. Don’t his own soldiers hunker down to run through tunnels in the ruins even though flashes of Russian rocket-light and snakes of flame pursue them?

  The flames lunge up. A tall woman stands ahead. He scarcely comes up to her knees. The pupils of her eyes resemble sparks from the spearpoints of Valkyries. Jealously mistrusting, he halts, mistrusting, his own eyes glaring like twin red rings.

  She clenches her fist. Then he knows he’s on trial. Momentarily he awakes, staring candidly at her with his wide, piercing eyes. He could win her over if he put his mind to it. He thrusts his head back, speaks from the chin. He’s somber, godlike, expressionless. Dreaming an answer to what she hasn’t yet said, he tells her that in the operas, Wotan’s noblest striving is for his own supplanting. He doesn’t care if he loses the war, if he can only keep the Jews from getting back the magic ring.

  Why, then, it’s well for you, she replies.

  What do they name you?

  Laugh-at-Wailing.

  Who gave you birth?

  Fire’s my father. Doom is my mother called.

  And why do you await me here?

  To tell you what you’ve always known—that you were born guilty and overmastered, that the nothingness you burn for refuses to receive you, that olden treasures grow corrupted at your touch.

  The sleepwalker screams: It’s all treason! Now I know why my Russian offensive’s failed! That’s my justification. If I was fated, then how was I to blame? You Jewish bitches have opposed me at every step, but do you think I care? Go ahead; stab me in the back; I’ll annihilate you; I’ll exterminate you all! You think you’re immortal, but I’ll test you with every poisoned acid there is! I’ve always been too lenient. Well, that’s about to change. I’ll have you broken without mercy; I know what it takes; I’ll wear you down . . .

  But Laugh-at-Wailing answers with a chuckle like a rattle of futurity, like bones jiggling inside a procession of pale coffins across the scorched earth of liberated Auschwitz.

  I won’t give up! cries the sleepwalker. I don’t care if it’s useless!

  The Valkyrie stands silent.

  So then, in a pleading tone, he whispers: Why did you make me? I never wanted to be made . . .

  For propaganda, of course. It’s all in your own book. How can we persuade others to be good, without evil we can point to?

  Mercurially calming himelf, he smiles and remarks: You might as well have spared yourself the trouble. What did you think I’d do—walk sheepishly to the gallows? Do you think I’ve never been judged before?

  I don’t need opinions, little man.

  And you truly believe I’ll deviate one hair’s breadth from the course I’ve laid out for myself? You think you can goad me into doing anything more extreme than I would do in any case? Are you so hopeful? Why, then, it’s well for you.

  He withdraws, escorted almost into the light by goblins like Russian tanks scuttering across ruins. He’s in a panic. He rushes home to Berlin, where he can closet himself with Speer and gaze down at the Grand Avenue of postwar Berlin, modeled at one to one thousand scale. Speer’s cabinetmakers have built the new Opera House at one to fifty scale, and over here there’ll be a cinema for the masses. Every edifice will be the same height.

  With deferential formality, Speer asks his opinion on some aspect of the Central Railroad Station. Carefully, the sleepwalker tries out the Valkyrie’s phrase: I don’t need opinions. I already see everything.

  Speer stares woodenly. The sleepwalker feels inspired.

  14

  And now what? The inclined arm replicated a millionfold, the knife-edge hand, the shouting voices of his echoers, his chin-strapped orators, all sing out to stand firm. Germany lies obediently below him, like an aerial view of fields, a corduroy of bodies who soon will fight in Russia, shivering, warmed only by the pain of their own wounds. His swastika banners are grassblades in an infinite meadow of war. Up standards! Sieg Heil! He’s guarded by grimy soldiers with deep-sunk eyes. Comes the great battle between Siegmund and Hunding; the Nibelungs fight on in the burning hall; then long lines of gravediggers are carting corpses two by two to the open pit; down the chute they go; then we paper them over, and add a sprinkle of dirt, hastily so that we will not get into even more trouble with the Germans who have dressed us in the striped uniforms and pale wrinkles of concentration camp inmates and who are even now building our doom out of squat towers and barbed wire.

  15

  Italy falls, but the sleepwalker knows how to save her from the Jews. Parachutes as beautiful as white flowers bloom upon the skies which he’s now capturing. Black columns of smoke have translated the beaches of Normandy into the stage darkness after an intermission. In the next act he must sing of retreating German troops, of dead horses and throttled light. The inky moustache in his grey face, the black, gaping mouth, and above all the raised hands of him suck new blood down the marching orchard-lanes of swastika standards. Before him, beyond his warriors hunched under their caps, he seems to see a plain of faces and lights. Where might it be? Increasingly golden, this country draws him on beyond himself. Now he comprehends in his soul why Gunnar and Hogni could not resist the Hunnish invitation: Although it meant doom and sister-woe, at least they’d win that brilliant if sinister moment of light when they drew near their foemen’s forecourts. Fu
turity shone like a flame-flicker reflected on gold foil. They knew they’d be greeted by raised arms and by faces, faces more pale and numerous than raindrops. The sleepwalker mutters, as he did on the eve of the Russian campaign: The world will hold its breath . . .

  16

  Soothed by solid rows of columns marching alongside the seats at Bayreuth, he fingers the acanthus scrolls. He helps Verena Wagner and her mother with gifts of munificent gold. Soon his Ring will begin again. He’ll watch it from start to finish, without fail. He always keeps his promises.

  17

  A horizontal salute from Hitler in the clouds! The sleepwalker dreams his face away from the long line of German prisoners of war so ragged and dirty, who march off to Soviet Arctic prisons, their jaws bound up in blankets and rags. Meanwhile, his own lines of slave workers march feebly past ruined apartments and railroad sidings. His dreams are shriveling and scorching. His henchmen have given over running across each other’s corpses in Africa. Shells and flames, tanks in snow, ice-maned horses, siege guns echoing in the wind, all these assault his dreams as the Russian Frost-Giants come west.

  18

  Now he dwells within walls of smoke. Flames rush up his staircases; chandeliers transform themselves into scorched spiders. The light excites him. In the distance he can see electric glows of barbed wire. To fight the Jews, his henchmen have built many a city of factories in the snow whose long alleys of barbed wire are signposted by frozen, snowy corpses with outstretched arms. Heaps of jawbones, mountains of pliers mark the spots where his vassals extract gold teeth from the living and the dead. Lives blow away like waves of sand. If he can only dream this dream a little longer, they’ll all be safely up the chimney. But where are his muscled heroes with their swords? Are they all dead? Snowy Russian tanks breast bluish flames and bluish snow to conquer Auschwitz, where more than seven tons of human hair await transshipment. A parade of skinny, desiccated corpses comes forth to tell lies and inspire new Jewish conspiracies.