by P. G. Glynn
Marta was shocked by Ludwig’s new lifestyle … and by his loyalties. Could he not see that that obnoxious man he kept calling his leader was, in fact, a tin-pot tyrant whose policies posed a grave threat to the East? The fool could obviously not see … and was now so pro-German that, listening to him on his increasingly rare trips home from Munich, one could easily be led to believe that the world began and ended in Germany. Nobody with an ounce of sense could view the vulgar little corporal as cause for subservience, yet Ludwig seemed subservient to the point of nausea. And even when it was pointed out to him, he couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that if Hitler intended grabbing living-space in the East that had to be bad for Czechoslovakia, not to mention dear little Austria! The despot was so hungry for power that he wouldn’t even stop there. It was only a stone’s throw from Berlin to Poland and from Vienna to Hungary … after which Hitler would be unstoppable. As for the Fuehrer’s attitude to Jews, this didn’t bear contemplation, especially given Ludwig’s lifelong hatred of all things Jewish. These days Marta often wished she could wash her hands of him.
She saw danger ahead for the Bergers – grave danger – not least in the fact that Otto was as opposed to Hitler’s regime as Ludwig was committed to it. Where would the brothers’ enmity end? She had begun to fear for the future: a future that could see Adolf Hitler invading and taking over Czechoslovakia … and brother turning on brother, with Otto somehow in Ludwig’s power. Or was she being over-imaginative? Marta rather doubted it and increasingly felt old and impotent. Oh, for some peace as her life drew to its close … oh, for some relief from all her worries! But with Hitler on the horizon there could be no peace, no relief … and now there were even problems with the family businesses.
The textile industry was in a state of flux and J.A. Berger & Sons had been forced for the first time to resort to an overdraft. This in itself was disturbing and what Antonin would have said was anybody’s guess. But Marta was sure that Franz’s management was not at fault, for the complexities were widespread. The Republic’s trade boom of the early ’twenties had totally reversed – and it didn’t need a genius to see (with hindsight at least) how wrong Dr Alois Rasin had been, back in 1922, when as Finance Minister he put the prestige of the koruna ahead of sound financial policy by borrowing disadvantageously in New York and London. He did that after the collapse of the German, Austrian and Hungarian currencies, when capital was transferred to Czechoslovakia for safety. Dr Rasin had since been shot by a revolutionary (a fitting end for him!) but not before he had plunged his country into chaos, with unemployment and bankruptcies still echoing from his actions. It was a sad reflection on him that with the crown standing at almost twenty Swiss centimes the textile industry now depended largely upon the banks.
Marta saw a saving grace in President Thomas Masaryk, whose strength of character had shone forth from his first message to the nation after his return from ignominy: ‘We have created our State, and that will determine the political status of our Germans, who originally came to this country as emigrants and colonists’. Here was a man who would certainly stand up to Hitler and who would fight to the end for all that he believed in. The only question was whether – against such an unscrupulous antagonist – he could win. It was essential to believe that he could – and would – for unless he did life as lived here in Schloss Berger would change forever and Hugo would be heir to nothing.
Marta’s convictions caused her at times to feel something akin to loathing for Ludwig. After all she had done for him he was now doing this! She could not forgive his shortsightedness nor his aggression toward Otto, which was so divisive within the family. No true son of hers could listen to, let alone follow, a man who had vowed to ‘cleanse’ Germany of Jewry by the erection of gallows where Jews would be left to hang until they stank. Ludwig’s behaviour was true to past form but beneath contempt and there was no imagining a future should Hitler and his NSDA Party rise to power. Already a twin movement – the DNSAP – had been formed in Czechoslovakia, so in the event of Hitler winning power Jews would probably be no safer here than in Germany. It was small comfort that the wearing of Nazi uniforms was banned here and that the regime was not recognised officially. Mama was sure that Ludwig wore his uniform while abroad and that he was cause for shame within the family. Yes, he was unworthy to be a Berger! When he was next in Herrlichbach she must talk to him further …
+++++
Ludwig was surprised when Mama came to his suite within minutes of his arrival. And he was shocked to see that she had aged considerably … and that she seemed angry. He was still more shocked when, instead of greeting him, she said: “So, you’re home again! You continue to regard Schloss Berger as your home, do you?”
“Of course I do, Mama,” he said, involuntarily clicking his heels together as he did when addressing Hitler. “Where else would my home be?”
Sitting uninvited in the big chair he usually occupied, by the window – beyond which the sun was starting to set over the mountains – Marta said wearily: “You appear more and more to be favouring Germany.”
“Ah, I see … you are accusing me of neglecting my family!”
“No, Ludwig, you don’t see. Sit down, please. My neck will soon have a crick in it, unless you sit.” Once he was seated in the slightly smaller chair Lenka had long ago regarded as hers, Marta asked him: “Are you still married?”
Finding her demeanour, and her mode of questioning, most odd he answered stiffly: “Natuerlich!”
“To Lenka?”
Perhaps Mama had taken leave of her senses. He said condescendingly: “Yes. Who else could I possibly be married to?”
“You speak of her so seldom that I wondered whether you had divorced her and married … Adolf Hitler. If you aren’t married to him, why are you so tied to his apron strings?”
“That’s an unfair accusation! Adolf doesn’t wear an apron … and I’m not tied to him, except of my own free will.”
“You’re telling me that you actually choose to be one of his lackeys?”
“I am not a lackey. I am … ”
“Yes, Ludwig … what exactly are you?”
He had never known Mama to be like this before. She was so cold … so remote. He must show her that he had standing with Hitler … that he was highly prized by him. “I am,” he said, puffing himself out proudly, “my Fuehrer’s Adviser on Czechoslovakia.”
“So you’re a spy now, betraying your country – and your family – for the sake of a meaningless title?”
“I don’t spy, Mama … I … ”
“ … tell Hitler things which shouldn’t be told to him?” she butted in. “Whether you recognise it or not, Ludwig, that is spying. What else do you do for your Nazi master? Is it true that you’ve been milking our Company profits in order to fund his despicable activities?”
“I haven’t been milking anything,” he protested. “Who has told you this? I have only given what’s rightfully mine to give.”
She’d been guessing. Now, her worst fears realised, she queried: “Rightfully yours, Ludwig? You assume too much. Nothing is yours by right … nothing belonging to the Bergers, that is. There’s something I should say, but I’ve kept this hidden in my heart so long that I hardly know how to say it. I’d prefer to keep it hidden … and shall, for as much longer as I can manage.” Mama sadly turned her face away from the traitor Ludwig had become and, gazing at the scene beyond her window, said to him: “See how the sun is setting? If you continue on your present path, mark my words, the sun will set forever on our Czechoslovakia. Another country will emerge, but it won’t be our beloved homeland, and you’ll have been instrumental in that. Will you be proud of yourself, I wonder, when all European Jews are dead and when Germany has reached so far into the East that we can no longer call ourselves Bohemians?”
Mama had been talking in riddles – riddles that had filled him with an inexplicable chill – but now she was speaking in an understandable language for which Ludwig had an answer. Leaning forw
ard eagerly in his chair he told her: “That will be cause for pride, Mama, because we shall then be in a position to call ourselves Germans. Believe me, there’s no better race on earth – or won’t be, once Hitler has done his work. It is because of propaganda in the newspapers that you have a distorted view of him. If only you’d pay attention to me, instead of to what you read – and hear from others who are as misinformed as you are – you’d know that Hitler is a man like no other. He will win power and when he does we shall all have our Utopia. He will be the making of Germany … and ultimately of Czechoslovakia. You are quite wrong in thinking that we stand to lose anything. We have nothing to lose but everything to gain under him. It might not have been desirable once to be a German – but under Hitler it is! How can I make you see this?”
“You can’t,” Marta said, shaking her head, “any more than I seem able to make you see the extent of your folly, for you and I, Ludwig, stand on opposite sides of a deep chasm. I cannot cross to your side … but if you came to your senses you could cross to mine, where I stand beside the Steins and all our other Jewish friends who, if your Fuehrer comes to power, will perish.”
“That’s dangerous talk, Mama. I must warn you not to speak as a friend of Jewry.”
“You are warning me?”
“Only for the sake of your safety. Under Hitler no Jew - and no friend of a Jew – will be safe.”
“If that isn’t enough to wake you up there’s nothing left, at present, for me to say.”
+++++
Otto had been against sending Hugo away to school at an early age but, after the shocking discovery that Lenka had all along been to blame for Carla’s death, Marie had insisted on it. So off Hugo had gone to Prague, since Otto had hardly been in a position to argue that the castle was a safe place.
Still to this day he went goose-pimply when he remembered Hugo’s close shave. And the worst part of it was that if anything had happened to his son – then, or earlier – Otto would have been indirectly to blame. For unlike Marie, he had known about the incident on the balcony. So he should have known better than to accept Onkel Emil’s guilt without question … and should have questioned it. Why had he not thought to do so? Probably because he had never been in the habit of thinking, preferring to let others think for him. He was now ashamed of such behaviour … and had become a thinker.
He had also, to his own astonishment, become a political animal. Never before had he felt any interest in politics but now he was interested … and had his brother to thank for that. Since Ludwig had started wearing Nazi jackboots and strutting around like a cock among a bevy of hens, Otto had deemed it necessary to sit up and take notice. Observing that Ludwig spoke of his leader with unmistakable ardour Otto had asked him early on whether he and Hitler shared a sexual bond. His perfectly reasonable query had met with such fury that Otto, after remarking that he’d heard Hitler was something of a deviant, had raised his glass saying ‘Down with the NSDA Party … down with deviants … and down with the DNSAP!’ Ludwig had seemed subsequently to be suffering from apoplexy … and Otto had seen plenty of fun ahead for him with his brother. Marie said it was solely thanks to Mama’s presence that Ludwig had not killed him there and then and perhaps she was correct. But Mama was still present and Otto was still not dead, so he intended to continue enjoying himself.
He enjoyed telling known Henleinists that Konrad Henlein and his Sudeten German Party were just Hitler’s Czechoslovakian puppets – and he could hardly be expected to stay silent on the subject of his love for all things Jewish, could he? No, he couldn’t – not even for Marie.
He asked her now, as they strolled with Anna in the castle grounds, where the air was heavy with the scent of wisteria: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’ve become a windbag.”
“I have?”
“And it’s a trait you share, it seems to me, with the majority of Europe’s Diet-members. So why not either become a politician and fight Hitler and your brother officially, or learn to keep your tongue under lock and key?”
“I can’t think how I’ve caused such a question,” Otto said in mock astonishment, “when all I suggested was a visit to Hugo to see how he’s getting on at school.”
“I didn’t hear him suggest that,” Marie observed, “did you, Anna?”
“If I hadn’t suggested it yet, I was about to,” said Otto. “Let’s go to Prague tomorrow.”
“So that you can air the views there that you’ve just been airing in Austria, as well as – constantly – here in Bohemia? That has become such a habit that half the time you obviously don’t even realise you’re doing it. But it has to stop, Otto, before Hugo’s fatherless and I’m a widow.”
“Such solemnity doesn’t sit well on you.”
“Someone has to knock some sense into your head … and there’s Hugo to consider, too.”
“His prospective fatherlessness, you mean?”
“Be serious, Otto! I’m speaking now of Hugo’s safety. We sent him away to school so that he was not at risk from your mad relatives, but because of your feud with Ludwig he’s still at risk. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that whereas you’ve always had the upper hand you no longer have it? Ludwig now has powerful allies and shouldn’t be trifled with. Your boyhood games are over, Otto, and it’s high time you grew up – if not for your own sake or mine, then for your son’s. I can’t stress too much that you must start taking your brother seriously … and stop taunting him.”
“I haven’t taunted him since luncheon.”
Marie glared, responding: “And now he has gone back to Munich seething over the fact that you described both him and Hitler as lunatics … ”
“A most apt description. Are you suggesting something’s wrong with it?”
“I’m … crikey … !”
She had stopped in her tracks and turned the colour of alabaster. Anna and Otto asked together: “Whatever’s the matter?”
Marie was back in the attic … back in that moment when, with Carla in her arms, a bizarre figure in an oversized Dragoon uniform jumped up from a trunk shouting ‘Avast!’ Frozen in her time-warp she again heard Onkel Emil warn that the German leader was a lunatic and that Germany was not a friend, but an enemy. She also heard, as if the words were still fresh on his lips: ‘Tell them that history will show old Emil knows things nobody else seems to know.’
“He knew then, already!” she said.
“Who knew what?” asked a bewildered Otto.
“Onkel Emil – oh, my God, he was a prophet! And we locked him up, throwing away the key.”
“A prophet?” Otto queried incredulously.
“Yes … I’ve just remembered that back when Carla had her little lifespan he told me about Hitler … saying that he was to be feared here in Czechoslovakia and that … that nothing would be as it had been. It was true that he knew things nobody else knew. Yet we just saw him as an old buffoon – and a dangerous one at that. How could we have treated him so shabbily – and how can you now doubt that Ludwig must be taken seriously?”
39
Hugo was glad to be home in Herrlichbach. He hated school and preferred living in the country to living in a big city – even one as interesting as Prague, which Lukas Paloucky said was awash with history. Lukas wanted to be a historian and was always talking about the Romanesque period at the turn of the tenth century and about Prague’s architectural treasures from the Romanesque-Gothic and the Renaissance-Baroque epochs. A lot of what he said went over Hugo’s head but Lukas was a good friend.
They had been friends ever since Hugo was first sent away to school at the age of six and was so homesick for Schloss Berger and Bobo and Helga that he had not known how to cope. Lukas had told him, though, that homesickness was an opportunity for growth and that Hugo was lucky to suffer from it, since he would grow and become a more rounded human being than without that experience. For quite a while Hugo had kept looking at his reflection to see whether he was tall and round y
et. By the time it occurred to him that he had taken Lukas rather too literally he was over his initial homesickness.
But the missing was never-ending … and he often wondered whether Mama ever missed him. Hugo knew that it was she who had insisted on boarding school and he found this hard to forgive. With Tante Lenka living in Munich it was ridiculous for him to have been banished – and as for having to stay banished now that he was of an age when he was well able to take care of himself …
It rankled that Mama would never have sent Carla off to Prague and that if she could have swapped him for the child in the coffin she would have done so. Hugo felt as if he had lived his whole life in his sister’s shadow.
And he still had bad memories of Tante Lenka thinking he was his sister. Sometimes he had nightmares about knocking on his aunt’s door and seeing her breasts and the hair between her legs, which often turned into the hair on Carla’s head. In his worst dreams she caught him and kept squeezing his neck … and he would then experience something he believed to be death.
Lukas even saw that as advantageous, for he said that most people never knew how it felt to be dead until they were dead and then it was too late for the knowledge to be of any benefit. Hugo didn’t feel that he benefited but, equally, he had never known his friend to be wrong. And when Lukas came down a bit from the lofty heights of scholarship he was fun to explore Prague with. They had explored Faust’s house, peering into its nooks and crannies and picturing the learned doctor mixing his magic potions … surmising the while about the mysterious circumstances in which he had died, after selling his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge, youth and magical power.
Lukas said that the manner of his death had probably been more than he bargained for but had refused to elaborate and Hugo had not pressed him, fearing to hear something diabolical. As much as almost anything during their explorations Hugo liked standing on Wenceslas Square watching the world revolve round him, or crossing the many old bridges spanning the Vltava river, especially the towered and turreted Charles Bridge, or watching the extraordinary Astronomical Clock strike the hour in Old Town Square. In mediaeval times, according to Lukas, people believed that the clock actually created the passing hours as well as recording them and Hugo could understand that, having often watched the Twelve Apostles parade through the little windows and past the angel who, with the skeleton, stood guard over the two great dials set high in the Town Hall Tower. The bit he liked best was when, at the end, Death rang his bell as a warning. It was odd that he liked it, since the doleful sound gave him the shivers.
