The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  She pulled a letter from the file.

  “As I said, we were Germans until—”

  “Until you were not,” she said.

  He stood up.

  “We’ll have to schedule another meeting,” she said. “Now, will you be at the same address?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same phone number?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how long this will take. Make sure that you do not change address or phone number. We may need to see you at very short notice.”

  He tried to look distant and proud, but also sad and offended, as he waited for her to let him know that he could leave.

  “In future, you are Czech,” she said. “Czech. Czech. Czech. And your wife is the same. You don’t write the word ‘German’ down anywhere. The best thing might be to go back to the very beginning and simply put these forms in the bin. Now let me see if we have duplicate forms.”

  She left the room again.

  He found that he was shaking with rage.

  “No, of course we don’t,” she said when she came back. “Of course we don’t! I’ll have to put in a request for them. So I will be in touch with you. But I have to warn you that if you fill in forms incorrectly another time and then sign them, it will be a very serious problem. Immigration does not take kindly to this. You could be on the next boat back to Czechoslovakia.”

  He was about to tell her that Czechoslovakia was, in fact, landlocked until he realized what a great story this would make for Katia and for Elisabeth, and indeed for one or two of his colleagues. He had to concentrate to stop himself from laughing.

  “I presume you see the gravity of this?”

  He nodded.

  She started to look through the file again.

  He was not sure whether he should go or stay. He stood there awkwardly. When she looked up at him, she frowned.

  He bowed to her and left, thinking that he should walk more slowly as he passed the swimming pool on his way home. Even a single sound from one of the swimmers or a splash of water would be enough to offer him consolation.

  * * *

  On the morning that Klaus and Erika were to arrive he asked Katia what train they were taking.

  “I think they are coming by car,” she said.

  “They are driving?”

  “They are getting a driver.”

  He smiled at their extravagance. Despite the fact that they had no money, he did not suppose that public transport would do for them. Erika was worse than Klaus, he thought.

  When he heard a car pulling into the drive, he was at the front window in time to see Katia paying the driver in cash. He watched Klaus getting out of the car slowly, like someone who was in pain. As Katia and Erika busied themselves removing the luggage, Klaus stood idly by.

  Thomas moved back from the window, and retreated to his study.

  Within a short time, Erika knocked on his door. Since he had become used to Elisabeth’s shy and tactful presence, Erika’s forthright way of entering, closing the door behind her and making herself at home in his armchair was amusing, almost refreshing.

  She immediately wanted to know about the book he was writing and asked to see the opening chapter. As he rummaged among his papers, she raised the subject of Elisabeth’s engagement to Borgese.

  “I asked Elisabeth about it just now and she simply turned and walked out of the room.”

  “She has made up her mind,” he said.

  He handed her a sheaf of papers and she looked through the pages.

  “Your handwriting has not improved. I am the only one who knows how to read what you write.”

  “The Knopfs have found me a typist,” he said, “but she makes terrible mistakes.”

  Erika was already reading the opening page.

  “You are a magnificent old magician. But you know what I am going to say now?”

  “Yes, my darling, I do.”

  “You will have to write a novel set in the present, if only so that it can tell us about the future.”

  “I can make no sense of the present. It is all confusion. I know nothing about the future.”

  “Write about the confusion.”

  “After this, I have another Old Testament book to write.”

  “Start taking notes for a novel about the years in Munich when everything led to his rise, but when few of us noticed. You were there.”

  “I was busy watching my children growing up.”

  “My dear father, none of us saw you much, except at meals. So you must have been doing something else. Why don’t you write a novel about my mother’s family?”

  “I know nothing about them.”

  “No, but you watched them.”

  At supper, when he asked where Klaus was, Katia and Erika gave each other an uneasy look.

  “He is not well,” Katia said.

  “Perhaps he was out late in New York?” Thomas asked.

  “We were seeing old friends,” Erika said, “and there is talk of a new magazine. But he has not been well.”

  “He will be better by the time the journalist from Life magazine comes and the photographer,” Katia said. “He knows he has to be better by then. So he is getting some rest.”

  “Yes, to prepare for the feature article about our happy and united family,” Elisabeth said drily.

  “We will all smile,” Thomas said. “It is the least we can do.”

  “Is Borgese an American citizen?” Erika asked Elisabeth.

  “Yes,” Elisabeth replied.

  “Wonderful. I met him at some conference years ago. If I had thought of it, I would have married him myself,” Erika said, “and then you could have married Auden.”

  “I didn’t want to marry Auden,” Elisabeth said gravely.

  “Neither did I,” Erika said, “but he will be here to have his photograph taken as a member of our happy family. O Lord, if only they knew!”

  “I am sure we are as happy as any other family,” Katia said.

  As Erika glanced at Thomas, they both managed a surreptitious laugh.

  Thomas was glad Erika was home, but, by her very restlessness at the table and then in the sitting room afterwards, he was aware that she would not be with them for long. She had come, he supposed, to see them, but also to get money for some journey or project, and to make him feel guilty for not being more intensely involved in the anti-fascist movement. Once all that had been completed, she would set out again. It struck him for a moment that he would like to go with her, leave Katia and Elisabeth here in the quietness of Princeton. He would enjoy traveling with his daughter, basking in the glow of her energy, staying up late with her and being with new people.

  But he knew that this urge would pass. Soon he would long for his last hour alone in the study and then his solitary bed.

  * * *

  In the night, Klaus woke them all by knocking over a piece of furniture in his room in the attic and then stumbling clumsily down the stairs. Thomas listened as Katia remonstrated with him. He got out of bed only when Klaus began to shout at his mother, and then at Erika as she intervened.

  “I’m just going downstairs to get a sandwich because I am hungry,” he said. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

  “The fuss is that these floors are thin and you have woken the entire household,” Katia replied.

  “Is it my fault the house is badly built? Is that another thing I have done?”

  “Klaus, get your sandwich,” Erika said sternly, “and then go quietly upstairs to bed.”

  “I didn’t want to come here at all,” he said. “I’m not a child, you know.”

  “You are a child, my love,” Erika said, almost unpleasantly. “You are an unruly youth. So be quiet and let us all sleep.”

  Thomas returned to bed but did not sleep. He asked himself what might have happened to Klaus and Erika if Hitler had not come to power. There was a moment, he remembered, when they were in their late teens and the war was over, when both of them see
med to match the very time they lived in, in their open bisexuality, in their flair for publicity and notoriety, in their tireless enthusiasm for fame.

  They had regularly come back to the house in Munich, much as they did now, exhausted and excited, filled with strong opinions and a zest for the next adventure that made him envious.

  If Germany had remained stable and hospitable to such difference and restlessness, would they have thrived, he wondered. Even in their late teens, they were both outside his control. Klaus barely acknowledged his existence in those years when he was publishing his own first books and articles, and Erika treated him as old-fashioned and staid, too conservative and pessimistic. Klaus spent more time with his uncle Heinrich, whom he admired greatly.

  His two eldest children had only returned into his orbit now, Thomas thought, because they were short of money, but perhaps they also needed to know that there would be a refuge for them should everything in their own world fall apart.

  They were living outside their own language, outside their own country. In Amsterdam and Paris, it had been easy, but once their novelty value wore off in America, the country would not embrace them further, he was sure of that. The freedoms they supported, the vehemence of their politics, would be frowned upon.

  They were in their thirties now. They could no longer be written about as the fiercely talented young Manns, but rather as people who had failed to make a substantial mark in the world, who wanted the world to pay them a homage that they did not quite merit. As the danger of Hitler became more apparent, Klaus and Erika would seem tedious as they carried a banner saying “I told you so.” Soon, he was certain, no one would have much interest in what these two former wunderkinder had to say.

  * * *

  On the day that the reporter and photographer were due, it was agreed that Auden and his friend Isherwood would come to lunch in Princeton with the family before the interview and the photographs. Klaus and Erika would collect them by car at Princeton Junction railway station.

  When Erika returned alone her father was in the hallway.

  “Where are our visitors?” he asked.

  “They have gone for a swim,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “In the Princeton pool. Auden says he gets the train down here from time to time to use the pool and Klaus says he knows it too. When I asked if they had their swimsuits, they assured me that they did. But I’m sure Klaus did not.”

  “Perhaps they will borrow swimsuits,” he said.

  “That is hardly hygienic.”

  “I understand that hygiene is not high among your husband’s priorities. I know he has many other good qualities, but not that, I think.”

  When lunch was ready, the three men had still not arrived. For a time, Thomas and Katia and their two daughters sat at the table waiting, but soon they moved into the large-windowed drawing room.

  “The people from Life will be here immediately after lunch,” Katia said. “I have had some woman from the president’s office calling twice a day about arrangements. It really will not do for Klaus and Auden to be late.”

  “You had someone on from Roosevelt’s office?” Erika asked. “How exciting!”

  “No, don’t be silly,” Katia replied. “The president is the president of Princeton. He is much more important than the mere president of the United States. It seems that the university wants to gain as much publicity as possible from our presence here.”

  “Before they return us to Czechoslovakia,” Thomas said.

  “By boat,” Erika added.

  When Klaus finally appeared with their two guests, all three were out of breath and almost giddy.

  Thomas studied the poet now, noting how much he resembled one of those lean dogs one saw in the Bavarian countryside, russet-colored, watchful, always on the verge of pleading for some food or mildly barking as a way of drawing attention to himself.

  He smiled at Auden and shook his hand, and then bowed to Auden’s friend Isherwood.

  “Sorry we are late,” Klaus said. “We needed some exercise.”

  “I am a new man,” Isherwood said, “after my swim. Ready to take on the world.”

  Auden was peering around the room as though some of the objects in it would soon belong to him.

  “It is always marvelous to see the different types of boys,” he said.

  “That would be a good first line for a poem,” Isherwood said. “An alexandrine.”

  “No, the stresses in ‘marvelous’ would not fit at all,” Auden replied.

  What Thomas noticed over lunch was how relaxed the two Englishmen were. They must go out to lunch quite often, he thought, or perhaps they believed they were back in one of their famous public schools. Klaus, on the other hand, was jittery and nervous, leaving the table several times, attempting when he returned to tell Auden about his plans for a new international literary magazine that would have an anti-fascist agenda.

  He wanted to know if Auden knew Virginia Woolf well enough to ask her to contribute to the first issue.

  “Know her? Do I know the Virgin Queen?” Auden asked.

  “I wanted top-notch writers for the first issue.”

  “In that case,” Isherwood interjected, “just write to her at Virginia Woolf, England. I mean, there couldn’t be two of her.”

  “Can you imagine,” Auden asked, “if we found other versions of her writing for the weeklies? Where would it end?”

  “You don’t admire her?” Erika asked.

  “Oh, on the contrary, I rather do!” Auden said and then started imitating a woman’s high-pitched English accent: “She would get the flowers herself, Mrs. Walloway, because her maid Letitia would have her work cut out for her. Oh, yes she would! What a day, as fresh as the curl-fold of the waves, all those waves, flowing untidily, as untidily as cabbages, with all their unnecessary leaves, lying raw and unplucked in the fields, the fields strangely silent and queerly humming in all their dark, sweet, sweeping, vertiginous verticality or, wondered Mrs. Walloway greenly, should that be horizontality? Oh yes, I really admire her.”

  “Did you write that or did she?” Elisabeth asked.

  “I am being unfair,” Auden replied. “Mrs. Woolf would be perfect for an anti-fascist magazine. In fact, I cannot think of anyone who would be more perfect. You know, I do really admire her.”

  Klaus had put his knife and fork down and was busy once more trying to get Auden to listen to him. It was clear to Thomas that Auden did not take Klaus seriously.

  “I mean, an essay from her would be splendid. And there must be some young English writers we could ask. And then some international ones.”

  “Yes, international,” Auden said.

  “We could launch it in New York and London at the same time.”

  “It would all be in English?” Katia asked.

  “We could also do a French edition,” Klaus said. “And maybe an edition in Dutch. I have friends in Amsterdam.”

  “Oh, don’t be so daft,” Auden said.

  Thomas thought it was time to change the subject.

  “Do you know Princeton?” he asked Auden.

  “Only the pool,” Auden said. “I like the pool.”

  Thomas was not ready to be mocked at his own table.

  “It would perhaps be best if you did not tell the journalist from Life about the pool. He will be here soon. So discretion might be advisable.”

  He took in Auden witheringly.

  “Is there something wrong with the pool?” Elisabeth asked.

  “It is a normal swimming pool,” Thomas said, “of which the Princeton authorities are justly proud.”

  He glared at Auden, daring him to contradict.

  “Muhammad here and I,” Auden said pointing to Isherwood, “were discussing something on the train and I did want to ask about it. We think there are three important German novelists, Musil, Döblin and our host. Are they all friends?”

  “No,” Erika said. “They are all different.”

  “Enemies,
then?” Auden asked.

  Thomas was certain that he was being ridiculed. He let his gaze wander to a spot in the garden.

  “We just wondered,” Isherwood said.

  “Once my husband has that look on his face, you may wonder all you like,” Katia said.

  “We saw Michael in London,” Klaus interrupted. “He has developed an intense dislike for Hitler. A real, personal dislike.”

  “He is not in favor of Hitler at all, then?” Auden asked.

  “Any special reason?” Isherwood inquired, looking at Auden, seeking his approval.

  “Yes,” Klaus said. “He told us that throughout his childhood he promised himself that he would go to America at the earliest opportunity in order to get as far away as possible from his father, and now, because of Hitler, when he finally makes it to America, his father is already here. And will be waiting for him at the dock.”

  Klaus began to splutter and laugh.

  Thomas was about to inform the table that he was paying not only Michael’s fare but that of his fiancée, and also arranging their visas, but instead he looked stonily down the table at his wife, who raised her eyes to heaven in exasperation as Klaus started some other story.

  After lunch, as they waited for the reporter and photographer, Isherwood approached him and began to speak in German. Thomas listened to him for a while, concluding that Isherwood’s way of speaking German would be perfect for anyone trying to learn English. He simply took all the structures of the English sentence and put in German words instead of the English ones, pronouncing these words in a pained manner. Despite his lack of height, he was not short of confidence.

  It occurred to Thomas that since 1933 he had not often felt free to be very rude to anyone. Part of the daily grind of exile was that it was necessary to do a great deal of smiling and to say very little. He saw no reason, however, not to be rude now. He was in his own house and there was something so insolent about this little Englishman that he thought required a response.

  “I’m afraid I cannot hear you at all,” he said in German.

  “Oh, do you have problems with your hearing?” Isherwood asked.

  “None. None whatsoever.”