The Sins of the Father

by Allan Massie

  “I’m sorry for you, Franz,” she said, “but it seems necessary to me.”

  “A moment ago you wanted to quit yourself of responsibility. You did, darling. I don’t hate it, I fear it. There are two kinds of nostalgia; there is the kind in which we are indulging now, with Piaf and the gypsies, which does no harm because it’s no more than relaxation, and there’s the other kind. We Jews are nostalgic for suffering, we can never have enough of it.”

  “Do you mean that for Jews my father’s trial is a sort of self-indulgence?”

  Luke jumped to his feet. He crossed the room and opened the window.

  “Come here, Franz.”

  A scent of lemons and oranges hung on the night air. The lights of the city extended far away, but beyond the lights, the moon rose behind a black density of mountains. Luke waved towards them.

  “Beyond that, the desert. But we can’t even smell it.”

  He was perhaps a little drunk. Later, they drank more, and Franz slept there on a couch.

  Franz puzzled over Rachel’s claim that Luke hated his father’s trial. It didn’t make sense to him. He could not see that Luke felt the past as his own personal albatross, a curse hung round the neck of Israel. The Holocaust might in his view quite properly disturb their sleep, that was to put it with absurd mildness, for nightmare was inescapably the inheritance of his generation, yet he had formed the opinion that it should be kept as something private. Otherwise nothing could stop the Jews from perpetually presenting themselves as a special case, deserving of special treatment, demanding it indeed as a right; and as long as that was so, they would never be admitted as an equal partner to the family of nations.

  Franz, however, had more immediate worries. There was first his father and his father’s state of mind. He was disturbed by the humour Rudi brought to the whole business of his defence. “Of course,” he said, “when it comes to the trial itself, I shall fight my corner. Like a mad dog, if that’s the way they want it. But you must see, son, that it’s a charade. All the essential decisions were taken, the judgements made, the verdicts delivered and even the sentences determined, almost twenty years ago. You can’t therefore expect me to take this farrago of legality seriously. I know what will happen to me, and, believe me, I am quite prepared. My only regret is the embarrassment it will cause you.”

  His choice of the word “embarrassment” was cruel. Rudi was no longer like himself. He was a fool of an actor, a comedian, whose performance threatened to be celluloid-perfect, smooth as Warner Brothers might have made it.

  Franz sighed. He moved about his room, which was itself a species of cell. There was nothing for him to do. He was superfluous. There was scarcely even a walk-on part for him. He had imagined that he would offer aid and comfort to his father. There had been something heroic in the part he had assigned to himself. Without in any way condoning the monstrous crimes of the regime, without compromising his own integrity, he would nevertheless uphold the sacred obligations of family, and, in doing so, reinforce indeed that same integrity. And, instead, he wasn’t needed. The play would proceed without him. If he had a privileged seat in the orchestra stalls, that wasn’t at all what he had wanted. Quite the reverse: to be that sort of spectator was worse than not being there at all.

  Yet he couldn’t leave, even though Rudi had suggested that he should. “There’s nothing for you here except what you don’t need,” he said. “I gambled on being able to construct some sort of meaningful family life for us, and it has failed. You should go back to Argentina.” The terrible thing was that he couldn’t be sure that Rudi didn’t mean it.

  He confessed to Rachel that he had shrunk all his life from the responsibility of being German.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Rachel poured him coffee from an Italian machine.

  “I have never faced up to what the Germans did.”

  She smiled.

  “Well, perhaps if you are only beginning to think about it, it’s natural that you should feel as you do. I wish Luke was here. He puts things so much better than I can. My grandfather, I must tell you, was the Oberjude of a town in Poland. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” she mimicked him. “Of course… how easily you say that. He was a physician, with honorary degrees from half a dozen universities, including Leipzig. As the Oberjude he was head of the council responsible for the administration of the ghetto. The principle on which they worked was one of co-operation with the Nazis. My grandfather was much exercised with the problem of how to make the ghetto workshops function efficiently. If they did so, you see, they were of value to the German war effort and so the worst would be postponed, though of course if the Germans won the war, it would nevertheless happen. But the thing was to keep the future away, at a distance. Then his brother, also a physician, was shot one day in 1941, on a street in the ghetto. His offence was failure to remove his hat in the presence of a policeman, as required in the orders which the Jewish Council had ratified. But even after this, my grandfather continued to work to make everything function smoothly. He resisted the idea of resistance. He was not religious, and I do not think he had faith in anything but science. He even despised socialism. Before the war he greatly admired Germany. He said he felt at home there. I am told he once said, ‘Whether the German people become drunk on victory or are overcome by the agony of defeat, I, with my mark of Cain, will be the first to face danger and suffer punishment.’ He was murdered of course. He didn’t even reach Auschwitz.”

  She leaned forward. Her long hair, black with a sheen of blue, hung loose.

  “Why did you bring flowers?”

  There was a wave, natural as the line of the hills, in her hair, which brushed against the dense mass of dark red carnations.

  “Are you the sort of boy who was brought up to bring flowers? Or was it spontaneous? Tell me about your mother.”

  “No,” he said, “tell me about yours.”

  “Oh, my mother, she was all right. She married my father before the war, and he had a cousin in New York, and they got a visa, and did well, he’s a doctor of medicine too, and they agitated for ‘Second Front Now’, and then after the war did less well, because of their political affiliations, and then they came to Israel in ’49. It’s a success story. He was a member of the Knesset, till he got cancer.”

  “You don’t like them.”

  “I never said that… Besides in Israel, everyone adores their parents, they’re so lucky to have them, didn’t you know?”

  It was late afternoon. Franz had come back to say thank you. If there had been a concierge, he would have left the flowers and a note with her. But Rachel had insisted he come in, have some coffee.

  “Have you seen your father today?”

  “Yes. For half an hour.”

  The terrible thing was that he hadn’t been able to find anything to say. He had been more conscious of a bluebottle buzzing than of the remarks that had dropped from his father’s lips.

  “It must be difficult for you. Have you been besieged by the press?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m surprised. You will be.”

  “Do you know Saul Birnbaum?”

  “Only by reputation and what Luke says.”

  “Is he good?”

  “He’s Israel’s most flamboyant lawyer. You didn’t tell me about your mother.”

  “Mamma? She’s married to an Argentinian General. Mamma’s like a cat. She seeks out comfort.”

  “Do you think she knew?”

  “Knew what?”

  “About your father?”

  “My stepfather could be head of Internal Security, and Mamma would still shop at Harrods – that’s the big department store in Buenos Aires, named after the one in London – and give dinner parties.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “Bitter? No, I think she’s very sensible.”

  She lit another cigarette.

  “I must go,” he sai
d.

  “No, don’t. There’s no need to.” She looked round the sitting room which hadn’t been tidied from the night before: the cushions were crushed, the ashtrays unemptied, flies buzzed in the dregs of wine, records lay out of their sleeves, and the couch on which Franz had slept still bore the signs of his occupancy, though he had rolled up the sleeping bag and folded the blanket.

  She said, “You could come to the market with me if you like, and stay to supper. Luke would be pleased. Come on,” she tossed her hair back and smiled at him, “you can’t have anything to do.”

  “All right,” he said, “thank you. You’re being very kind. I don’t understand it.”

  “Like Luke says, we’re all Eichmann’s children. Think of me as a sister.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, but I will. Do you mind if we go by my hotel to pick up any mail?”

  The envelope with the Argentinian stamp contained four closely typed sheets on copy paper, and a single page in Becky’s round and open script, which would have led a graphologist, he had sometimes thought, to attribute a greater degree of assurance to her than she possessed. It was partly her lack of assurance that he loved, or rather her brave assumption of an assurance that she did not own. But perhaps a graphologist would be more subtle. He pressed the sheet of writing paper to his cheek.

  Dear Franz,

  I know that’s not how a love letter is supposed to begin, but endearments embarrass me, you know that. Got your letter from London and don’t know what to say. Can’t write to you directly about things. Things are pretty bloody here, Mummy not speaking to Daddy. Kinsky is my only support, but there’s something creepy about him now. Went to see your mother yesterday and it seemed to me she was pretending all the time that nothing had happened. Anyway, since I can’t write directly to you about what I feel, I’m sending you a copy of something I wrote for myself. Alexis sends love, she’s a support too of course.

  Love, Becky.

  He turned to the enclosed typescript pages.

  My first thought was, this can’t be happening to me. Maybe that’s what everyone thinks when things happen to them. For two days I watched a spider make a web. It fascinated me, and then Gaby screamed at me and tore the web away. “Do you think they’re going to rape us?” she kept saying.

  But when we were set free – and I still don’t know how that happened – one day the door was just left open and we ran out into a yard full of moulting hens – and I learned what had been happening and who F’s father was, it was then that I felt really as if I had been raped. Gaby – I don’t know what she felt – but she behaved as if it had all been nothing more than a terrible liberty. But I knew differently.

  So I got home and I couldn’t bear to see Franz, not after I knew. It was Alexis who got me to change my mind. And that was strange, because she let me see that F had wanted to sleep with her (stupid euphemism) and I realised that this had been an escape from complication for him. Well, I can understand that. Alexis is very sexy, and I love her, she’s my best friend, maybe, but you can’t take her seriously. I think it’s because she’s American. But when Franz and I did meet, we couldn’t speak. When he touched me, I shivered. That’s Jewish flesh you’re touching, I said, but not aloud. Up till now I’ve never bothered about the Jewish side of me. There was the odd incident at the Country Club and at school, but I’m C. of E., Mummy saw to that.

  Mummy? Why did she marry Daddy? Kinsky says they adored each other. Kinsky says, you can’t imagine what energy, what style, what panache he had when he was young. He was glamorous, Kinsky says.

  But they don’t get on now. I knew that, even before this.

  I didn’t mean to write in this silly schoolgirlish way. I meant this to be a sort of Credo, an attempt to sort things out. Instead it’s more like automatic writing. I imagine myself on a psychiatrist’s couch and just spouting.

  So: let’s start again. I have been badly brought up, and that’s Mummy’s fault. She’s tried to make me into a safe English girl, in Argentina of all places, where you are surrounded by men who despise women. (I don’t think Daddy despises women, but I’m not sure. If I had been a boy, I bet he would have talked to me about the past. Now I realise he has never ever done that.)

  It was the nice English girl who met Franz and fell in love with him. Hopelessly, I thought at first, especially when kind friends told me he was queer. (If you ever read this, Franz, you don’t need to worry. I’ve put that suspicion away long ago. Well, I would have had to, wouldn’t I?) But I’m not going to write about you, Franz, here. Not yet. Do we have a life together? I don’t know.

  Franz’s hand jerked, knocking the glass to the pavement where it shattered. He got down on his knees, collecting the larger pieces. Then a sheet of paper floated off the table. He seized it in mid-air; “But I’m not going to write about you, Franz, here. Not yet.” Her hair tickled his cheek, he thrust his hand up the cotton skirt, her tongue slid into his mouth. The waiter bustled towards him with a dustpan and brush. Franz ordered another beer. The waiter hesitated before complying, perhaps wondering if he was drunk, after the broken glass. Rudi told him he occupied himself with chess problems, “and playing the games of the Masters”.

  The trouble is, I realise, that I don’t know anything. My upbringing has been too successful. So I’ve been reading, in an attempt to catch up. It’s absurd that I should have to catch up. I’ve seen the photographs of Belsen and the other camps, well everybody has. And all I said was: Horrible. But I haven’t been reading history: I know the facts, or enough of them. Did you know that Hitler said, “The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror.” Well, they got it. The really horrible thing is that he may be right. Won’t the trial of Franz’s father give everybody a thrill of horror all over again?

  Or take this: Jung treated three young girls, for hysteria, I think. They confessed that when they were approaching puberty they had had revolting dreams about their mother. They dreamt of her as a witch and also as a wild beast. It didn’t make sense to them: she was beautiful and kind and a wonderful mother. Years later she went mad, and then moved on all fours barking like a dog or growling.

  I don’t know why that sticks in my mind. I don’t know why anything sticks in my mind.

  I read over all this and said to myself, you must stop being a coward. Daddy is always quoting Nietzsche: “Since God is dead, all is permitted.” I have never known whether he does so ironically, or whether he really believes it. So I went to him and asked him.

  At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “There’s no irony. And Nietzsche wasn’t advocating a programme. He was merely recording what he observed. When people no longer believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. That’s a fact. Even nihilism is a something, not nothing.”

  “Mummy says you informed on Franz’s father.”

  He stretched out his blind hand and sought me. The nails bit into my shoulder.

  “It has required courage to ask that. The answer is, I was compelled to. By something which the Nazis set out to kill. Conscience. You could say I gave Franz’s father the opportunity to rediscover conscience.”

  When I charged him with caring nothing for my happiness, he withdrew his hand.

  “You’re too old to play Juliet,” he said.

  I had lunch with Gaby and Luis yesterday. We went to the Polo Club as usual. How can I write “as usual”, when nothing was as it used to be? But that’s not true. Everything was the same, only different. Luis has changed. He no longer teases Gaby, and, not being teased, she behaves, suddenly, like the middle-aged woman she will be within a few years of their marriage. I can already see her worrying about the servant problem, and eating too many sweet cakes and talking about going on a diet. As for Luis, he was so polite to me that conversation froze. “Who would have thought,” he said, “that Franz had such a heredity?” I could see him wondering about me. Was he really wise to associate with someone of my background? Hadn’t
the whole friendship been a mistake? I made an excuse and left early.

  I couldn’t bear to go home, to enter that silence. And I found I was frightened in the streets. It seemed that every man who looked at me knew what had happened to Gaby and me, or thought he did, and so I was soiled. I wondered if Gaby felt like that. Even when we were in the loo at the Club she only made conversation about her latest make-up. A young Army officer stopped me, and began to speak. It was as if my Spanish had deserted me, I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He ordered me to undress, or that’s what I thought, but I knew it couldn’t be true, even while I was horrified and believed it with one half of my mind. And then I realised it was Ramón with whom I used to go dancing and that he was making a joke about his being in military dress. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he said, and I understood that, and he took my arm and led me into a café, and bought me a brandy. “It’s terrible what has happened to you, Rebecca,” he said. “Believe me, I feel for you,” and then I dissolved into floods.

  “I’m so confused,” I said, and he was so nice, he didn’t even seem embarrassed. All the same, after he had escorted me to Kinsky’s gallery, he was relieved to be able to get rid of me. That’s the effect I have on people now.

  Kinsky fusses over me like an old woman. I think he thinks of himself as my aunt. He is so different from Daddy that it’s hard to believe they can be friends. He kept telling me not to do anything rash, that I needed time to come to terms with him. That’s when I said, “Perhaps I should go to Israel.”

  I hadn’t thought of it before. As soon as I spoke, it seemed the natural unavoidable thing to do. Kinsky stroked my arm. There was a photograph of Franz on his desk. I picked it up. He had been taken unawares. His mouth was a little open – perhaps he was speaking – and he had that vulnerable little boy look that sometimes excites me and at other times makes me want to kick him. Or maybe both at the same time. “You’re in love with him too,” I said to Kinsky.