Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  On 12th September, at ten in the evening, the doorbell of our apartment rang. I opened the door. Two burly individuals with berets entered. ‘Police. You’re under arrest.’

  ‘Under arrest–why?’

  ‘You’ll see soon enough. Take a blanket, some linen and provisions for two days. But quick! Quick! We don’t have any time.’

  Quarter of an hour later I was standing on the street, in pitch darkness, holding my bundle and flanked by my two guardians. They took me to the police station in Rue Lecourbe.

  The brigadier demanded to see my identity card. I had the audacity to enquire as to the grounds of my arrest.

  The great man appeared initially to have been struck dumb by my cheek; but in the end he condescended to give an explanation. ‘Why have you been arrested? You must take that up with Monsieur Hitler. You are an Austrian, a ressortissant hitlérien (a subject of Hitler). That’s why you are being locked up. Is that clear enough for you?’

  I attempted to protest, objecting that it was grotesque to hold Hitler’s victims responsible for Hitler, instead of…

  This met a less than favourable reception. The brigadier thumped the table furiously with his fist and roared: ‘Pas d’histoires! Germany shouldn’t have declared war, that’s all. Take him away!’ And I was taken to a cell where I spent the rest of the night in the company of several pickpockets and burglars, who, I have to say, showed markedly more understanding of my situation than the brigadier.

  At eight in the morning a minibus arrived; two policemen got in with me, and they took me to the Stade de Colombes, the assembly point for ‘enemy aliens’. Here there was already a fight underway between refugees and genuine ‘subjects of Hitler’. The latter had started singing the Horst Wessel* song, to which the former had responded with the Marseillaise. This was too much for the ‘Comrades of the People’ of Hitler (and of his pimp, Horst Wessel), who proceeded to attack the Jews. On this occasion, however, the Jews were able to defend themselves.

  Only after this incident did the camp command take the trouble to separate the two categories of ressortissants hitlériens, at least physically.

  Around midday I was taken before a captain, who told me simply: ‘You may go home.’

  Only one who has experienced what it means to be imprisoned can say what it means to be free again. Blissfully–deliriously–happy, I leapt into a taxi (there were still a few in those days), so as to be home again as quickly as possible.

  From my wife I learned that Benjamin Crémieux and Crucy had interceded for me ‘with a higher authority’. This contact was the reason for my release: other ‘enemy aliens’ of my kind–Austrian and Czech refugees–still remained in captivity.

  On the next day another man in a beret appeared at my door. All friendly smiles, this time; and the man presented me with an invitation to the Prefecture of Police. There a higher official revealed to me that it had been decided, on the grounds of my services to France, to allow me to remain at home indefinitely. A note to that effect was entered on my identity card, which the official handed back to me with the words: ‘This is a very special favour that you are being accorded.’ He even shook my hand as we parted.

  I do not believe that any of my ‘services to France’ would have helped much, without contacts.

  In view of my age and the state of my health, there was no question of active military service, though I had immediately enrolled myself in the ‘Austrian Legion’.4 Crucy and Crémieux exerted themselves to have me employed by the propaganda department; and to that purpose an elegant file was deposited at the Hotel Continental, where they had their headquarters. I was assured that my valuable services would definitely be employed, at the appropriate moment. I would just have to be patient for a little.

  And so I was patient–throughout the whole of the ‘Drôle de Guerre’.

  6

  The ‘Drôle de Guerre’

  A GHOSTLY TRAGICOMEDY; a state of war whose lethargy (one is almost tempted to say, euphoria), hidden behind a façade of lying phrases and slogans, followed on perfectly from the prewar politics of ‘Pas d’histoires’.

  It was a state reminiscent of those deceptive periods of remission sometimes experienced by the terminally ill–periods in which the patient apparently feels well, is full of confidence, takes the doctor’s assurances at face value, makes plans–in short, is totally unaware of his true condition. Until one day comes the final crisis, bringing in its wake a swift and inexorable death.

  The very fact that this despicable phrase ‘Drôle de Guerre’–phoney war–could be used at all was a shocking symptom of the dissolution that held sway between September 1939 and June 1940, in an atmosphere of carefree frivolity and gay rodomontades.

  Well, yes, of course: we were at war. Somewhere or other there were the daily tears, the suffering, the death, the prayers wrung from the very heart. These would be the unavoidable side-effects of war. All very sad, of course.

  But, given that one had to have a war, didn’t this war–if you were very honest about it–have its good side, too? The ‘artists of life’, the débrouillards, were given their first real opportunity to display their talents; and, while others fell on the field of honour, these fellows at home asserted themselves ever more effectively in the field of business and profit. Wasn’t the War a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for countless individuals to walk away with honours, titles and profits? Every last soldier in this army of self-enrichment carried a marshall’s baton in his knapsack.5

  Sorrow, bloodshed, death. Yes–somewhere. A long way away. Back here, in Paris, the War was the inspiration for a thousand delightful, original, and at the same time patriotic, innovations–in haute couture; in the jewellery trade; in luxury goods in general. Identity tags, for example, like those worn by our brave men on the front so as to be identifiable in case of their death–but adapted for the ladies in Paris: in gold or platinum and studded with jewels. Or there were charming miniature sub-machine guns and tanks that hung from ‘good-luck bracelets’; shoes which were based on uniform; evening outfits in matching combinations of blue, white and red; expensive ‘Musette’ handbags; distinctive leather cases for gas masks, etc., etc.

  These Roxanes of the Drôle de Guerre would have needed a new Rostand, with a new Cyrano de Bergerac, to give them their full due.

  The War also provided an excellent excuse for all kinds of galas, parties and functions, organised in the name of charity: they became practically a patriotic duty. And more than that: the War was a sort of admonition to pleasure, a sexual stimulus to seize the moment. The uncertainty of the morrow provided an atmosphere of romantic gloom in which certain inhibitions could be swept aside.

  ‘Il faut se serrer les coudes’–we must stick close together–was the watchword. And so that is precisely what people did: stuck close together, at dinner- and supper-parties, in the cosy intimacy provided by windows veiled in accordance with the défense passive. Housewives who thought highly of themselves had even transformed the cellar space belonging to their apartments into tastefully decked-out boudoirs abris, underground ‘cosy corners’ where, in the case of an alert, you could enjoy all the appurtenances of drinks cabinet and cocktail shaker, ready to prepare the Drôle de Guerre cocktails. This défense passive certainly had its attractive side.

  Theatres, too, revue bars and nightclubs–as well as those houses which offered the other, more secret pleasures–all did very well out of it. They did record business.

  As for those who had opted for voluntary ‘evacuation’ right at the beginning of the War–those who had a chateau or a place in the country, or perhaps just accommodating relatives–well, for them the War was just a splendid opportunity to grant themselves an indefinite holiday.

  And then there was that élite that could afford to stay in a luxury hotel by the sea or in the mountains for the duration. Cannes, Nice, Biarritz, Chamonix–all had an unprecedented season. The society world–as well as the demi-monde, and indeed the nouveau-riche underworld�
�had set up their headquarters in the various palaces, and communiqués from this army’s front were published with appropriate respect in the daily newspapers. Those other warriors, on that other front, would have been able to follow to the last detail which individual was undergoing the tourmente on the Côte d’Azur, which on the Côte d’Argent, or in the Alps–each of them draining his cup of sorrow in draughts of champagne.

  Because officially, of course, we were in the middle of the tourmente–we were in the thick of it. This was the constant theme, repeated daily in the newspapers with a thousand variations; confirmed by the radio; and shrilled by the orators of every party. And yet, at the same time, the propaganda was using every opportunity to inject the masses with the narcotic: ‘Nous vaincrons, parce que nous sommes les plus forts.’

  We shall win, because we are stronger. Because–this was the truth didactically expounded by every leading article, radio talk, military authority, by every possible type of expert–because we are, in a clear mathematical sense, superior to the enemy in every respect. Here–just look at this, please… and they would proceed to a triumphant deployment of figures, calculations, demonstrations, statistics. It was not just deception by words–what one might call the metaphysical side of propaganda. No: here we had the lies of a pseudo-science; the whole apparatus of an apparently exact methodology of proof and falsifiability was brought into play. The rational bourrage de crânes6 had become a kind of encyclopedic science, which had usurped all other branches of science and whose apparently objective method of reasoning reached its conclusion in the irrefutable logical proposition already mentioned: We shall win, because we are stronger.

  Moreover, this certainty was given support by another circumstance. Although we were in the middle of the tourmente–the horrors of war–the communiqués almost every day ended with the comforting phrase ‘rien de spécial à signaler’. Nothing special to report.

  And, after all, what could happen to France, barricaded as she was by her impenetrable Maginot Line?

  True, the soldiers on the front line might not have been too well equipped. There were all too frequent requests to families for blankets, linen and woollens. That was regrettable, the pundits admitted, but not of fundamental significance. In fact, it was rather encouraging that the men complained not only of cold but also of boredom: the clearest proof, surely, that the Germans did not dare to attack the Maginot Line.

  And so the weeks went by; and the weeks turned to months. The tourmente gradually became no more than a conventional, tired phrase. It was used rather in the way that one says ‘terrible’ when one hears of a stranger’s misfortune, which, a few moments later, one has forgotten.

  There was not much in the way of serious privations–although there were great sacrifices, it is true, in particular Parisian circles. There was the newspaper write-up, for example, by a very well-known female novelist, of a sensational première mounted with highly patriotic intentions in the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs; a write-up which she used to give a particularly stirring account of how, at the end of the performance, ladies dressed in the absolute latest chic suffered in silence the terrible provocation of having to wait in the middle of the street, in the pouring rain, for one of Paris’ ever rarer taxis; or even that of taking the metro or the bus like any plebeian.

  The tourmente–the ‘storm’–was now hardly distinguishable from a state of total calm. There were always, of course, the messengers of doom: those who were not comfortable with this ‘peace within war’; those who were uneasy about the brooding calm of the Nazi Monster. These were dismissed as defeatists. They were tedious troublemakers, disrupting the peace of the Drôle de Guerre. Here, too, the watchword was: ‘pas d’histoires!’

  The enslavement of those countries already occupied by the Germans, the atrocities committed by their troops at every brutal step; these gave rise to retaliation–at most–in the press and on the radio, in the form of patriotic expressions of indignation. But behind these official statements, the attitude was one of somnolence. This is how one of the few voices in the wilderness put it to me in that period (in tones of bitter resignation): ‘How would you expect us to be bothered about the fate of others? If the enemy march through the Porte Maillot in Paris tomorrow, then people at the Porte de Versailles will still say: “How does that affect us? Thank God, it’s still a long way from the Porte Maillot to the Porte de Versailles.”’

  The tormenting question ‘What are Hitler’s intentions?’ had achieved the status of a challenging brainteaser, which virtuoso players delighted in solving afresh each day–the solution being always one of universal comfort and consolation. Whatever the variations, the basic result was, naturally, always the same: ‘Nothing can happen to us. To others, maybe. But not to us.’

  And so it went on until, in May 1940, the true situation could no longer be concealed from the country; and the idyll of the Drôle de Guerre came to a sudden and terrible end.

  It is not necessary for me to go over the actual events. One by one, like the messengers in the Book of Job, came the series of blows which were to lead to the end–an end which was all the more dreadful after the false security of that ‘rien à signaler’.

  The myth of the impermeability of the Maginot Line: collapsed like a house of cards. Belgian refugees who had managed to make their way to Paris, with terrible stories to tell. (Their appearance alone told volumes.) And the Germans over the border–in France.

  Step by step, step by step they advanced. They advanced with mechanical consistency. The rousing extract from the Marseillaise which was used by French radio to punctuate its broadcasts began to sound like a ghastly parody.

  The people of Paris, usually so open and voluble, had become suddenly taciturn and reserved. It was as if everyone was afraid to express his thoughts aloud. Life went on–as the saying is–and on the surface nothing had changed. But already everything had a death-mark inscribed upon it: so far nothing had changed. But for how much longer?

  ‘But’–this was the line from the official organs of mendacity–‘all is not yet lost.’ The most brilliant army in the world had not yet engaged in the decisive battle. Generals such as Weygand* still spoke of the ‘last quarter of an hour’, which would be decisive; of salvation, of victory in that last quarter of an hour. Let one just think of France’s situation in the corresponding phase of the First World War: it was far, far more critical. And what had happened then? The miracle of the Marne.

  On every such occasion, since Joan of Arc, France had been granted a miracle in her hour of need. It followed–according to the logic of the exponents of this theory–that a miracle could not possibly fail to occur on this occasion too. And the more desperate the situation, the greater the certainty with which this coming miracle was to be relied upon in the strategic analysis. Eventually this miracle actually lost its miraculous character altogether, as the unknowable acquired the status of an infallible secret weapon, manufactured in some kind of metaphysical munitions factory, whose overwhelming superiority would, at the very last moment, magically transform disaster into a Great Victory.

  But a miracle would not be a miracle if it always arrived on time. And on this occasion it was not going to be pressed. It refused to do its business. Meanwhile, the disaster ran its course–sped up, indeed, to a manic pace by the encouragement and collaboration of the traitors, great and small, who had, in spite of all warnings and entreaties on the part of isolated patriots, been left in peace until it was too late.

  Which is why refugees were then put behind bars.

  The full extent of the internal contribution to the débâcle of France will perhaps never be known; of all the underground acts of treachery which helped to deliver the noble land into the hands of the German cutthroats.

  One of the most shattering side effects of the débâcle was the Exodus.

  7

  Paris, ghost of an enchanted city

  YOU SHOULD NOT IMAGINE that the Exodus–that dreadful convulsion of massed humanity i
n flight–was an event which began at one particular moment. It started almost imperceptibly, then gathered momentum day by day, hour by hour, before finally breaking into a chaos of frenzied activity, which was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the Germans in Paris.

  But even in the very last days before their arrival, this furious panic of the Exodus was only visible in those streets which led, directly or indirectly, to the gateways of the city. In the areas of the city set back from those major arteries, the phenomenon manifested itself in a picture so contrasting with that panic that it seemed like a hallucination. You felt like rubbing your eyes.

  A different, abnormal, unfamiliar Paris was before you. An incomprehensible Paris, even. A city wearing a relaxed, dreamy expression in the delightful June sun. The buildings, with their shops closed and their blinds down, seemed to be enjoying a lazy nap. An air of pleasant lethargy hung about the streets, the parks, the squares. In front of the door to an apartment block sat the concierge, blinking at the children who were playing in the middle of the road, undisturbed by vehicles. On the pavement you would occasionally see an isolated passer-by. Paris–Paris the mercurial, Paris overflowing with life, packed with energy and activity–now stretched itself out and lay down, giving itself up to the sweet delight of doing nothing. Walking down these streets, you felt you were in an enchanted city.

  But it did not take long before your consciousness of the merciless reality returned. The spell was broken; a shiver went down the spine, even in the heat of the June day.

  The enchanted peace was actually just Fear taking a breath.

  The quiet was more intense than the most piercing yell; the stillness more painful than a scream of despair. It was a kind of desolation that reminded you of a room from which the body of a loved one has just been taken out. Everything is still in its place; nothing has been moved; the clock on the wall ticks on, the same as before; and yet the whole room is filled with a suffocating emptiness. Though there is no visible sign of it, death pervades the room completely.