The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  Suddenly the crowd split apart to make way for a sombre group of workers to pass between them.

  There were about two hundred of them, marching in rows of four, sombre of countenance and resolute, looking neither to the right nor to the left. They marched in total silence: not a cry, not a sound.

  They were all dressed in shabby threadbare working clothes, but the rifles on their shoulders were brand new, their barrels as shiny as if they had just been polished. They looked as if they had been freshly issued from some arsenal that morning.

  On they went, with heavy resounding steps, marching southwards in the direction of Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate, marching towards their destiny, silent and serious.

  And as they passed by, the gaping crowd fell silent too, as if even they could hear above their heads the rush of wings as the Angel of Death flew over them.

  As I continued on my way I met two more such groups.

  It was fascinating to be allowed this sight of a revolution in the making. I would have loved to have had more information and, with the writer’s eternal curiosity, badly wanted to stop and ask questions as to what was happening. But I needed to hurry to finish my task. Still, I should mention that the people around me all seemed friendly.

  In that part of Berlin there are many streets that spread out star-shaped from the Reichsrath, all starting from the axle of the windows of the palace. I had intended to use one of these on my way to the embassy, but as I reached the corner I was stopped and warned that it was impossible to pass that way because ‘those scoundrels’ were firing their machine-guns there. ‘Don’t go that way!’ they said.

  I thanked them for their kindness and then reflected that it was possibly my Methuselah hat, so old and battered that it had removed any suspicious hint of the prosperous middle class from my appearance.

  Accordingly I made a wide detour by crossing the bridge over the Spree and plunging deep into the Moabit district before recrossing the river by the other bridge at the Busch circus. And so I finally got behind the Reichsrath to the Danish Embassy.

  Count Moltke, the ambassador, was at home and received me at once. I knew him well from the time, eighteen years before, when he had been one of the junior secretaries at the embassy, and we had spent many merry evenings together. Even though he was now an ambassador he had not changed at all. He came forward to greet me with just the same eager smile and simple kindly, gentlemanly manner.

  He was much amused at the irony of my finding myself in Berlin and being obliged to make my way to Denmark by taxi, and immediately gave orders for my visa to be prepared. While the necessary formalities were being completed, we had a pleasant talk.

  Outside the noise of gunfire grew louder, and now, from quite close by, there was shouting too. It sounded like a bayonet charge in the trenches.

  In fact this was the day on which the Spartacists attacked the parliament building and, perhaps for the sake of variety, had chosen to do it from the Tiergarten side. And so, with my usual unfailing instinct, I had managed to drop myself right in the middle of it all – just where ‘something was going on’!

  Moltke most kindly made me stay with him until the fighting died down; and so we went on talking until some degree of peace seemed to have returned to the streets.

  ***

  It was already one o’clock by the time I had reached the other side of Friedrichstrasse and out to the Tempelhofeld. I had managed to hobble there in a good old-fashioned Berlin droschke, which I had been lucky to catch. As the old nag trotted calmly through the city I could imagine him muttering to himself: ‘I’ve seen things much odder than this!’ As it was, he never hurried nor seemed in the least unnerved.

  The taxi, fully loaded, was already waiting, and so we set off at once.

  We were filled with joy, not because of the seats, which were execrable, but simply because we were on our way at last.

  The car was a small, old-fashioned, closed taxi. Our luggage was piled high on the roof and on the seat beside the driver. Inside there were two folding seats – one also piled high with luggage, while on the other perched Andorján. On the back seat I sat with Mrs Andorján. On my lap was a travelling bag and a rolled and strapped plaid rug. On Mrs Andorján’s lap was a basket and, on top of that, the dog Lolotte. Until that moment I had not noticed how grossly fat the dog was; she was like a hippopotamus in that tightly packed space.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon when we finally took to the road.

  When we first started I was disconcerted to see that we were not heading north, where our destination lay, but driving further and further towards the west. On and on we went, further and further from the road to Strelitz, where we would have been going, passing along little-used streets in the wrong direction!

  As far as I could tell by peering round our mountains of baggage, we seemed to be somewhere in Charlottenburg, as indeed we were, for in a few moments we drove past the royal palace there. The suddenly we turned north, still by way of narrow deserted side streets.

  At first I had wondered if our man was not just driving at random, but Andorján had assured me that he had already agreed to these detours, for otherwise we might not have been able to get out of the city.

  Their strategy proved right and soon gave us proof of what an intelligent driver we had. Taking always deserted side-streets he would turn off the moment he saw three or four men standing about, turning left or right and doubling back to rejoin his route further on. He repeated this manoeuvre God knows how many times without a flicker of hesitation. In this way we zigzagged across the city suburbs for about two hours before we were able to join the highway north.

  A couple of times some sinister-looking men tried to bar our way – on one occasion even grabbing at the car door – but our driver just cursed them in the best Treptow manner (Berlin’s most colourful dialect!) and put his foot down, leaving them behind as we sped on.

  This was when nemesis caught up with Lolotte. The moment those men came to the car window she started to bark – and what a slapping her fat back then got from her frightened mistress! This was no little satisfaction to me.

  It was a great relief when we finally found ourselves out in the open country with fields and woodlands on either side of the road.

  Finally night fell, the ink-black darkness of a January night, a darkness to cloak the fugitives’ flight.

  ***

  We motored on like this for a long time, sometimes managing to doze off in spite of the discomfort.

  For a long time nothing untoward happened.

  Then, suddenly, we stopped. We were surrounded by moving lights, some of which were directed at the inside of the car. All around were soldiers in battledress and tin helmets. An officer stepped up and asked for identification.

  When our passports were returned to us he asked where we had come from.

  ‘From Berlin,’ we replied.

  He then declared we could go no further, and when we asked why, since our visas were in order, he replied: ‘The Berlin Police Department’s certificate of residence is missing. This confirms the length of your stay. You should have reported your arrival and your departure. That is the law!’

  We tried to explain that there was a revolution going on in Berlin and that even if police headquarters was still standing, the chief commissioner’s office was under siege and no one not bent on suicide could have got anywhere near it.

  None of this interested him. It was as if nothing we had said had even penetrated his head!

  ‘Laut Verordnung müssen Sie sich das Polizeiattest verschaffen!’ – ‘It is clearly ordered that you must produce the Police certificate!’ From this he would not budge and repeated his demand that we return at once Berlin to obtain the necessary certificate.

  The obduracy of this officer in his determination to apply the letter of the law put us in a hellish position from which we were saved only by a tremendous bluff on the part of Andorján. He said he knew all about this Verordnung but
that, according to its text, he had not been bound to declare his presence to the police since he was the new Hungarian government’s ambassador to Copenhagen.

  Upon this the officer stood back aghast, totally unable to remember what the Verordnung had said about diplomats, and began to falter. Andorján at once said menacingly that if we were not let through immediately he would at once send a dispatch to his government from where they stood!

  The risk was too great for the German, who stood back and saluted.

  All this took place at Neu-Strelitz. It was then about 8 p.m., and we were a hundred kilometres or so from Berlin.

  Our original plan had been to have dinner there, but now we did not dare stop and give time for the officer to start thinking for himself. So we rushed on into the night.

  ***

  Again it was a long, long road and it was about one o’clock when we finally arrived at Warnemünde.

  It was pitch dark, and everything was closed. Hoping we might find somewhere to eat we drove straight to the harbour, but all we found here was a wooden hut that served as the port office. After much banging on the door some sort of night watchman stumbled out.

  He ushered us into an ugly, freezing-cold room whose walls were of coarse planking, and after much discussion finally sold us some German sausage and some hardboiled eggs for an outrageous price and then left.

  We lay down on some benches and very soon, despite nearly fifteen degrees of frost, fell into a deep sleep.

  ***

  Now followed the most energetic morning of our journey.

  Quite early we received the most dreadful news, really horrible news! Lolotte would not be allowed to enter Denmark, at least not until after forty days of quarantine. Not one moment less!

  Our consternation can only be imagined, so much so that to this day my pen is unable to describe the happenings of that morning. The three of us – but not the dog, who remained calm: calmer and indeed friendlier than we had ever known her – became like the inhabitants of an anthill, swarming about in every direction.

  Hither and thither we ran, holding discussions with the frontier police, customs officials and the port commander, all of them suspicious of these dangerous smugglers. It was all in vain. What we asked was impossible! Then we went to see the director of the Dog Pound, who turned out to be the same night watchman who had sold us two hardboiled eggs for such an exaggerated price the night before and who said that travellers to Copenhagen often left their dogs with him.

  It was then that I noticed that he agreed to take care of Lolotte with oddly suspicious relish, and that when he stroked the animal’s fat back it was with flashing eyes and much licking of lips. Clearly, he would cheerfully have eaten poor Lolotte the very next day. I had heard that in Germany fat dogs were considered a delicacy, and indeed I remembered having seen notices in butchers’ shops which read MORGEN WIRD EIN FETTER HUND GESCHLACHTET! – ‘Tomorrow we will be killing a well-fattened dog!’

  Mrs Andorján was on the point of accepting this strange dog-lover’s offer when I intervened. Even though I thought Lolotte a mannerless beast, I could not wish her a sad end in a hot oven, so I drew Mrs Adorján’s attention to her pet’s likely fate in the man’s kitchen. So appalled was Mrs Andorján at this unhappy prospect that after an explosion of grief she decided she would rather poison poor old Lolotte on the spot and so save her from the roasting pan.

  Her husband accepted this solution with no little joy and ran at once to find a veterinary. He came back later with the news that a veterinary was on his way equipped with a syringe and strychnine at the ready.

  In the event his help was not needed. By the time Andorján came back I had found another solution. Moved by poor Mrs Andorján’s tears and lamentations, I swore that somehow I would find a way to save Lolotte.

  It was a bold plan, but it worked. We wrapped the animal in the English blanket that I always carried loose when travelling, strapped it well with a luggage strap until, as the blanket was fairly thin, it looked like any other rolled-up travelling rug. Luckily, the dog was so sausage-shaped and her legs so short that they did not protrude. Then I carried her onto the ship like that.

  When we boarded no one bothered to have my rug unfastened and so I crept down at once to the lowest possible cabin, opened a small slit for her nose so that she would not suffocate, but kept her well strapped in until we were able to let her out in the Danish train.

  Mercifully she did not bark, not even once. And this is the true story of how Lolotte was saved.

  ***

  It seemed a long time before the ship started to shudder and then smoothly glided out of the German harbour. I went up on deck to find that the sea was calm, as smooth as oil, and from its silken surface came occasional flashes of silver.

  On deck I found some twenty or thirty soldiers, dressed in dark-grey uniforms, standing or strolling about, some of them gazing eastwards towards the commercial docks. They were all French officers, and in their brand-new uniforms, there was nothing to show that they were newly-released prisoners of war. They looked well nourished, had a good healthy colour and talked loudly among themselves with shining eyes and a proud happy mien.

  Seeing them there was completely unexpected and struck in me a most painful note. Until that moment I had only seen the men of a defeated nation, exhausted, strained to desperation by desperate struggles, whose manner and bearing reflected only the pain of their country’s decay, no matter what their background or their loyalties. Now, for the first time, I met some of the victors.

  The sheer toughness of the French, which in the past had been stupidly underrated by so many people, and especially by the Germans, had just been demonstrated in a world war. Personally I had always believed in it, but until this moment I had never seen so strikingly evident that Gallic self-esteem which not only characterized their disdain for everyone else but also strengthened the national characteristics of daredevilry and self-sacrifice which are one of the French nation’s most marked qualities. It is not a particularly sympathetic quality, but it carries with it great force. As they stood there, so jaunty and defiant, with legs arrogantly thrust forward from the hip, all this passion radiated from them. Their very stance was witness to the flaming patriotism that had helped the nation to wait silently for nearly half a century so as to prepare themselves for the moment of revanche – revenge37.

  ‘Y penser toujours, n’en parler jamais!’ had been the motto of the whole nation. It had been there deep inside men engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, and there whenever the common soldiers, the French poilus, perhaps subconsciously aware of their own weakness, felt the need of some extra boost to morale: some drug to give them endurance beyond their natural strength. This passion, too, would inflame their cruelty and the joy in wreaking pitiless vengeance, just as, after the chase, the dogs prepare to tear apart the prey they have just hunted to death.

  And suddenly all these thoughts were made manifest in song. From far away came the sound of the ‘Marseillaise’.

  Two large troopships had just put to sea, and as they left the quayside, the singing started up. On board were two thousand French soldiers, also ex-prisoners of war, who had just started their journey home; and, as the sound of their voices reached us, the officers began to sing as well.

  Never again have I heard that anthem sung as the soldiers sang it that day, singing triumphantly, with such boldness, defiance and so much joy in victory, that as the men, leaving the German sand-dunes behind them, were beginning their glorious and momentous journey homewards, their song took wings.

  It sounded quite different from those occasions when we normally heard it – at concerts or other festive occasions. To begin with, it was far faster, with a quicker rhythm and with the words somehow broken up so that sometimes it seemed as if we were hearing two versions simultaneously: one drawn out and the other contracted. It was like a fanfare of trumpets: all embracing, merry, boastful and exaggerated. Here was the very essence of French blague mixed with w
hat the Italians call the ‘furia francese’.

  ‘…le jour de gloire est … arrivé!’ – how true it was for them!

  I went back inside the ship. It was better there, for no outside sound penetrated those portholes so firmly secured against the waves. All one could hear was the asthmatic breathing of the steam engines and the grinding of metal plates.

  When we got further out to sea, the waves grew stronger, smashing themselves against the hull, and then one could hear the water on deck draining away with the rhythm of the waves.

  The eternal indifference of nature to man throbbed relentlessly against the ship’s sides. Cut by the churning propeller, the water soon became smooth, clean and virginal once more, just as if that manmade monster had never sliced it apart – that element that could carry so much passion, so much joy … and so much sorrow.

  Notes

  36. Now the site of Berlin’s principal airport.

  37. Revenge, that is, for their defeat by Prussia in 1870.

  Chapter Seven

  A big disappointment awaited me in Copenhagen, for there I learned that Esmé Howard was no longer in Stockholm. He had left two days before for Paris to join the discussions of the ‘Grande Cinq’, that committee of the five principal victorious allies at which President Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George were to redraw the map of Europe into that which we know today.

  With this news my whole plan went up in smoke.

  I knew that Howard would have received me even though, from the English point of view, I was still an enemy alien; and he would have listened to what I had to tell him because he was an intelligent and broad-minded man.

  Now it had become impossible for me to reach him since he was already in Paris, and I would never be allowed to get there.