‘To be deceived by appearance and superstition was not for me. Luigi Barzini, trustworthy witness, told me that an unknown man in a Roman crowd saw Mussolini’s motorized chariot halted. He stepped forward and told the pothouse dictator, ‘Death after victory over France. Death from strangers.’ The Duce was never the same man thereafter. Squeezing fantasies from dwindling vision, mesmerized by Hitler, his pupil, he had decided for war, which his fears and apathy made his disaster certain.’
While we stood on the Lake’s margin and, gross with fantasies and superstition, I awaited the knightly sword to descend for the white hand protruding from water. He brooded, before saying, ‘A long shot from Arabia, a trumpet call from the Rhine, return from Elba, a howl from a Bavarian beer cellar … by such disasters men live and, scarcely knowing it, die.’
Contemplating the nebulous banks opposite, he must have been sure of my admiration and loyalty.
He said, as if remembering a tune, ‘Magna est Veritas et Praevilabit. A sacred text faulty in its premises and would not have rescued me from consequences of the Plot.’
A small breeze cobbled the water, gulls criss-crossed above their shadows. Again in nonsensical qualms, I thought of death by drowning, untraced murders, then, even more ludicrously, of the English Princes in the Tower. I moved more apart. Could he hold some clue to the hushed Rose Room. My own submissiveness unnerved me, like a stammer. My very face, usually obstinate under untidy hair, must have weakened, with the sham power of a pugilist in decline.
At last turning away, indicating the road, the Herr General sighed. ‘You may not realize my relish for teasing. My concession to … I really do not know.’ His laugh, youthful, was itself a tease. ‘I once had a grudge against the Japanese consul at Riga. He had commended me as a Jew-baiter, while unaware that I knew sufficient of his private life that would have dismayed his family and entertained his masters. At my hint of this, he tripped over his tongue, to accede to my proposal to pass me five thousand visas, which I then distributed to anti-Nazi Jews and gentiles. By special arrangement, they crossed Russia to the Shanghai International Settlement.’
It did not occur to me to doubt these assertions, delivered like commonplaces. But a worry touched the strongly moulded face, frayed less by age but by impatience or spirit. Still calm, his next words lost some ring.
‘My motive? Merely, I fear, to make an Asiatic menial look foolish. Yet you will surely agree that if an action, a book, a painting has any value an analytical précis does not suffice.’
This dissatisfied him and he moved ahead, perhaps seeking the more convincing. Catching up, I made some remark, empty, stupidly deferential, but was inwardly cautious, as if fearing a false step on to an escalator. Quickening pace, he said no more until reaching his car. Beside it, under the pillars, he looked smaller, older, leaning on the black, opulent machine as if for support. Its glitter matched not him but his clothes. In no haste to drive either to the Manor or to some further destination, he reverted to defensiveness, against criticism I was incapable of inflicting.
‘Life cannot be passed in remorse and laments. Nostalgia cannot reclaim Eden or tie up in Ithaca. More often, it creates the Gorgon, lets Medusa speak. We must nail down the years and stride forward. Few of us can bear much scrutiny. Not only Spengler but Tolstoy taught that, with rare exceptions, martyrs and the tormented are tyrants. Tolstoy, at least, spoke with some authority, being one himself. Today, I am apt to hear that in both world wars the real victor was Germany, by fortitude and resilience extracting assets from defeat. You and I, Erich, are both …’
What we were, he did not explain. The afternoon had chilled, thickening over the sun. I had stood thus with Alex, both reluctant to relinquish a cheerful day.
The Herr General’s affability appeared more than ever calculated, that of a capable scientist during an experiment interesting but not crucial.
‘I myself, Erich, am no genuine moral victor. I once authorized the torture of a Polish sniper. And why? To wring out information that saved several thousand lives. Legally, it entitled me to a hanging. Morally … Well! You may think I agonized over my decision. But I did not. The matter was ice clear.’ His wryness was perfunctory. ‘There was no alternative. I felt very little. German officers, Polish partisans, they create souls, then spoil them. Distillation of bravado, often worse. I leave souls to others and content myself with the job in hand. Signing in so as not to be signed off. Genius, seeking a break-out, die Aufbruch, understands that judge and victim can be the same. Actually, I have found few unwilling to be victims. Prey to fashions, Herr Omnes yet enjoys regulations, respectable desires, cosiness. So you and I must treat him like a favourite dog – you remember poor dear Caspar – tenderly but not forgetting the muzzle. I should add that I much respect the Jewish gentleman who betrayed to the world the Israeli nuclear reactor and weaponry at Dimona and Israel’s industrial espionage and deals with Pretoria and Washington. I also refused a substantial bribe from the ill-bred bullies in Baghdad. Some Russian, French and UN lordlings were less scrupulous. Friendship with your mother made me reflect that, while English and Americans trusted to luck, Germans were Macbeths, over-respectful to Fate, which often wears one face too many. Like a whore.’
We were solitary under the thick pillars, the air hung with pungent damp, the Manor in and out of mist, enclosed by Forest and its secret lives. The dead were around, I remained in uncertain paralysis, as if seeing a footprint almost but not quite human.
With some brusqueness, as though I had impertinently interrupted, he said, ‘Your mother was English in many things but not in her intuitive and engaging disregard of what lesser imaginations consider reality. I reproach myself for not having been more effective in restraining that charming but careless tongue.’
‘But my father …’
He shook aside my sudden urgency. My heightened nerves gave his head under shadowy branches an impression of antlers. ‘My dear boy …’ One hand on the car handle, he was enquiring, as if concerned for my choice of cigar or liqueur, yet with an uncharacteristic complacency, approaching a smirk. His deep voice affected surprise, as he asked whom, in truth, I thought my father was.
7
The week had cloyed and died. National flags were sodden, wind blew litter down pavements. Mass elation had descended to the industrious and businesslike, the onus of reconstruction, maybe retribution. Discontent began.
Barely aware of events, my thoughts were shapes without edge, vague, slippery. Only the Gulf dispersed mental upheavals, fantasies of breathless races, to win which would be fatal. Chasms lurked beneath obdurate silence. Pahlen’s dry, pointed face changed to a frozen Alpine peak. Not assassins, but Loki stalked, his grin transforming life to mirthless jokes. Without despair, exhilaration, hope, I had no clear emotions, though could too easily ascribe my more unpleasant traits – irritability with the aged and slow, prolonged introspection – to the Herr General’s salesman’s fluency, High Folk humour. In all, he was superior, lacking priggishness, grabbing opportunities with some style. I remembered an old German tale of a giant without a heart.
Some current beneath ice was grateful affection for the quiet gentleman, despised by the Herr General as impractical, whom I would always acknowledge as Father. Shy, unpossessive, more lonely that I had supposed, he had loved me.
Some words of Mother’s, spoken to herself, but audible, then puzzling, were now painfully comprehensible, ‘Where is the man I thought I had married?’ My impulse was to seek solace alone, by cliff and wave, though, involuntarily, I blurted a little to Eeva. Sensible, no-nonsense, asking few questions, she was like a new colleague in a firm small but solvent. We preserved considerable formality. It helped that, to her artists, journalists, students, I was the Cold War Hercules, Voice of Estonia. I appreciated her stride, moderate laughter, disdain of emotional wiles, her backing. ‘I see in my sky, Erich, that you will be prominent amongst us.’
Spring was launched in fanfare of green and pink, eagerness of birds an
d lovers, radiant water, good humour in shops, bars, Viru street markets. Shadowed by tall, weathered frontages and towers, the populace, competitive, agog for the main chance, was also generous.
Gradually, my confusion abated. Eeva’s predictions were confirmed by a government offer as senior consultant to the Education Ministry. ‘That will be the earthworks,’ Eeva pronounced, more complimentary than it sounded. Less clear cut was the Herr General’s invitation to lunch at Independence, the new international restaurant near Parliament, frequented by diplomats, politicians, carteliers. Despite conflicting responses, I did not consider refusal.
Independence was no ménage of sawdust, spittoons, high stools. A long vaulted space, ashine with gilt and glass, candelabra, a spread, central chandelier, was filled with the ‘maggot developers’, as Eeva’s group called them, fast-talking, swilling, choking, at crimson tables, reflected in sham-baroque, false-gold mirrors, their frames glutted with sickly cupids and trumpets, aspirant European millionaires receding into an infinity of multinational enterprise, advertising deals, idyllic prospectuses, equivocal handshakes, punning on Baltic freedom in hectic ostentation, a hurry to gobble the wild-boar stew, grilled pork, mounts of tiered, creamy pastry, explosive draughts of Rhenish wine, goblets of raw spirit, upheaval of pleasurable expectations.
The row of mirrors briefly detained me: invitations to vanity lightly smeared by my plain jacket and gimcrack trousers, at odds with the polished hair, glistening suits, artist-designed ties. Hamlet, I guessed, must have cherished a mirror, Lady Macbeth spied from bright surfaces. The sheen of electric lamps, cutlery, the latest shirt was fumed by cigars, heavy breath, liquor.
The head waiter, rotund Storm Prince, braided, sashed, waylaid me with the suave hostility of a traffic cop, offended by my disobligation to wear a tie, until mention of my host startled him almost into parade attention. The name was passport to eternity. He drew breath, he bent, he melted, escorting me down the resplendent avenue of tables, his formal coat wagging behind like a horse’s tail, to the best station of all, beneath a plastic Gothic canopy, with blue, cushioned chairs, perquisite of republican royalty, in a recess windowed with a view of sumptuous gardens, astir with pink-and-white blossom, like daintily torn coloured umbrellas.
The Herr General awaited me, in full regimentals: dark, double-breasted suit, cold blue tie, his air of authority reinforced by a half-circle of waiters, satraps awaiting his nod. My own award was a cursory handshake, delivered without him rising, then permission to be seated, before announcing, as if from a court circular, that he had allowed himself the privilege of ordering the luncheon. Then he frowned, not at me but at the sound of pager, which at once ceased.
Though courses were finely cooked, deftly served, I barely noticed them, though drinking imprudently.
He resumed advice, brusque apologetics, confidential asides as though we had never parted. His eyes, caught between the sunlit window and artificial glare, were watchful, perhaps expecting me to escape. Eeva would have distrusted him on sight. To the voracious feeders, I must merely have been his tame aide or stand-in.
‘We may both be vain, Erich. Neither of us is conceited. Politics, minefield, enforce continuous readjustments, Umsturze. My soul is not tormented nor my zest abated. We are not mentally deranged because our grandmothers ate rats in 1917 or from failing to save a plough-boy from a watermill wheel.’
He murmured to a waiter, lifted a hand twinkling with a chunky ring. His words, measured as a thesis, yet reached me intermittently, as if in a damaged movie, for, eating well, he was constantly ordering different wines, while drinking sparingly with connoisseur’s appreciation, leaving me to gulp unmanneredly.
‘Life’, he was saying, ‘is susceptible to false moves, for which we must pay but can also be set to work. Imprisoned at Kharkov, I studied books on the Chechenets, those Ingush peoples of North Caucasus, and indeed contributed an article, doubtless long superseded, not for inaccuracy but from policy, for the Soviet Encyclopaedia. In 1941, encouraged by the Reich Abwehr, they attempted revolt, led by a young, very passable poet, Kharsam Israelov. Misjudging the Pact, mistiming their plan, they suffered. Survivors were dispatched east, to hard labour. Fatally hard. This was not my concern, but their customs, language, art had interest, and I was regretful when changed circumstances provided offers from the KGB – many German scientists were already suitably, and gainfully, employed. After the war, I eventually graduated to a commission from the Washington State Department. I was one of the first to realize that Stalin’s agents had given, or sold, him the date of the Normandy landings. Thus he could win salient Berlin approaches, outfacing the Allies. We were all tardy in discovering the top Soviet dupes in England, though I knew and respected Professor Blunt, despite his rather unwelcoming manner. He needed someone, not myself, to share his fears. He reminded me of a deep-sea diver, highly skilled but uncertain of his locale. His witticisms were like Nero’s, shrewd but not funny. He despised cowards, but may have been one. Very profitably for myself, we discussed Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Disappointing for him, I fear.’
Profitably was two-faced. His arrogance, his complacency, was stretching me tight, though he might now suspect loss of my fidelity. To call him Father would nauseate. The UN, the EU, must clamour for his like: he would not end decrepit in some Terre Gaste, one of the lonely in the dead, vengeful centre of a ruined self. Simultaneously, he had much that I wished to know. This would be my chance, only chance, of hearing it. My first question gratified him; he raised his glass, perhaps to me, perhaps not.
‘Goering? A Thor with hammer mislaid. He had drug-addict’s vision in which things were both real and unreal. In a world dangerously balanced on a hill. Insane but not clinically so. His physique confirmed Einstein’s discovery that the more swiftly an object travels the heavier it becomes. He always demanded everything at once. Women, jewels, dogs, but all he saw was himself, from different angles. Millions always excited him. Millions of marks, animals, casualties, like a child who promises Mama a million kisses. He had few hopes of the war, shrewdly quailing from the risks but fearing his employer more. He became the star actor-dramatist, forgetting his lines, improvising wildly, but with the requisite tone and gestures to lull the audience. A sleepwalker. Massive but not grown-up. A sponge, sucking in offices, gifts, uniforms, cocaine, praise, swelling into a soggy mess, eventually squeezed into nothing.’
He was silent. I waited, but he had not ceased. ‘His study was a veritable Valhalla, the framed text on his football-field of a desk belied the founder of the Gestapo. Whoever injures Animals injures German sentiments. I was surprised by his inordinate desire for Cranachs, though for art, as art, he felt almost nothing. He would stand staring at stolen masterpieces, footmen’s nudes, flashy junk, as if they were identical. Possession, not value, was his mania, unceasing, while the Reich he had sworn to defend crashed around him. He mistook dire warnings for rich promises, inhabiting opera.’
Not appearing to notice my inability to enquire further, he glanced outside at tinted blossom, blue sky. ‘An Englishman, Mr Ruskin, advised an artist, hypothetical genius, that were someone to fall dead, his business would not be to help him but to note the colour of his lips. The Reichsmarschall would have done neither. He would have tripped, in haste to step over the body. He was very much the Grand Huntsman. He once, rather wistfully, confessed his hankering for Cretan bullfights, dangerous but usually bloodless. He thought the bull symbolized earthquake, destructive but magnificent. By mastering the bull, the performer, more dancer than butcher, could tempt yet master the earthquake and achieve stature. Hermann both shrank from earthquake and was thrilled by it. At Nuremburg he regained reality, after so much sloth and absurdity, a fraudulent horse-dealer, though occasionally …’
His voice dropped. He did not finish but shed his small-arms trainer’s poise for another, very slightly attempting to ingratiate. ‘He could be like you, when, years ago, resenting an order to go outdoors, you blamed not your parents but your ov
ercoat. I wonder now whether our New Europe will render obsolete such as he. A rather grubby astrologer, from Hamburg, Herr Wulf, warned that he might, to his disadvantage, die.’
He was balancing a frown against a heap of well-grained rice, with engineer’s precision. I wished that Nadja could have been with me, with scholarly questions about Herr Wulf’s qualifications.
‘You must have met Hitler?’
‘Never. We might not have suited each other. One may need to summon the plumber, pay him more than well but go no further. He had read sufficiently to start interesting topics – mountaineering, Catharism, Roman slavery, race, Shakespeare, Venice – but was woefully inadequate to contribute anything of value. I dare say this compares well enough with the conversation in the Kremlin, the Elysée, Downing Street, but it would lose itself in dogmatic rant. If anyone is to monopolize proceedings I prefer it to be myself. But in the latest Reich the war is unmentionable. The old put up shutters, declaring they were somewhere else; the young merely shrug and attend to their own well-being. Politics, you know more than most, massages short memories. And, most of the world …’ refilling my glass, disregarding his own, treating most of the world to a forbearing sigh, ‘still inhabits the mental dimension represented by Herr Wulf.’
Wine placed me in an uneasy complicity. The hum and clink were tireless, waiters moved as if on rollers, women’s laughs were like fountains.
The lines on his face deepened. His voice, very steady, was determined to please.
‘There was some notion of arraigning me at Nuremburg, but I knew too much. Disagreeable facts about the Soviet invasion of Finland, the Pact, British plans to invade Norway before Hitler. British behaviour to the Shah and Farouk. American occupation of Iceland and its luring Japan into the war. Today, I move between intelligent, scarcely élitist groups scattered throughout the Weltwirtschaft. I like to think we are in part kin with the Stoics, so honoured in your old home, recognizing each other not by passports, language, tribal emblems – the Flag, ah, the Flag! – but by values, manner, allusions, appropriate to this new Roman Empire and its satellites. You might agree that one test of the coming century is whether it will consider history relevant. The old empires decayed, not through war, a secondary cause, but from governments becoming too remote from the governed. Charging more, giving less. Possibly, though not probably, technology, having abolished distance, will render my diagnosis outdated.’
Secret Protocols Page 39
