by Colm Toibin
Over meals, he noticed that Erika had grown brighter and was filled with plans and possibilities. As he and Katia grew silent, Erika, since she had British citizenship, spoke of what she might do once they were in London, how she might join some propaganda unit or work as a reporter.
“I might even join the British Army.”
“I am not sure you can just join the British Army,” Katia said.
“Now that there is war, I am certain I can.”
“What would you do in the British Army?” Thomas asked.
“I would work in some area to do with information and disinformation,” Erika said.
It struck Thomas that, until now, Erika had been generally unsure what she might do at all in the future. Her days as an actress were over; she was not really a writer. While she had published books about the evils of the Nazi system, they had not sold well and had caused some people to suspect her of being a Communist. Her time as a public speaker in America had been exhausting. Now, however, with war declared, there would be a need for clever young women. All of the skills Erika had—her energy, her knowledge of German, her command of English, her commitment to democracy and the fact that she was single and not actually attached to Auden in any real way—would mean that she would now be in demand. The realization of that made her eyes brighter and her voice louder.
Only in the reaches of the night did Thomas fully consider what would happen to them were they to be actually stranded in Sweden. If Hitler could so easily take Czechoslovakia and invade Poland, it would not be long before he and his generals looked towards Scandinavia. Were they to invade, Thomas Mann would be high on the list of those to be detained and repatriated to Germany. No one would be able to intervene on his behalf. He saw his name in the American newspapers and imagined the appeals to the Germans to furnish information about his whereabouts. He foresaw writers signing a petition for his release. He had signed such petitions himself. He knew how worthy their intentions were and how ineffective most of them proved to be.
It was essential then that they leave Sweden. But all the flights were either full or grounded or no information about booking was available. The diplomat was not returning his calls. An appeal to the Swedish Academy as a Nobel Prize winner had been met with silence. He was not sure that his daily telegram to Agnes Meyer was even leaving the hotel. There had been no reply from the Knopfs either. The staff at the front desk barely looked up when he approached.
One day when the phone in his room rang before lunch, he presumed that it was Katia or Erika to let him know that it would soon be time to eat. When he heard a woman’s voice in heavily accented English asking for him by name, he presumed it was someone from the hotel, whose staff had the habit of calling to ask if he wanted his room cleaned or his bed made.
Thus it took him a moment to realize that Agnes Meyer was speaking on a clear line from Washington.
“I don’t know why you have not replied to my telegrams,” she said, switching to German, having discovered that she was talking to him.
“I have received no telegrams.”
“I have been informed otherwise by the hotel.”
“The hotel has not delivered any telegrams to me.”
“This has been most difficult. Most difficult. I had to deal with the Swedish authorities both here in the embassy and in Stockholm and then I had to use up valuable contacts among the higher echelons of the British diplomatic service. My husband is exasperated and wonders what you are doing in Europe.”
“We need to leave.”
“Leave? You need to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. As soon as you get a call, there will be a car to take you to the airport in Malmö and then you will fly to London and you must make your own way to Southampton. I will have a berth booked for you on the SS Washington. I have been in touch with the management of the shipping company. You will have to pay when you arrive at Southampton. The booking is for first class. But don’t expect any comfort.”
“I am most grateful to you.”
“And come and see me the second you arrive in America. Do not continue ignoring me.”
“I can assure you that I have not been ignoring you. Will we get a call from the Swedish authorities about the flight to London? Do you know the name of the person who will call?”
“I found a diplomat. And he assures me you will get a call. I did not bother him by asking about the details of who would actually make the call.”
“So I should wait in my room?”
“You should be ready to go at a moment’s notice. As I said, this has been most frustrating.”
“We are very grateful.”
“Indeed.”
“Do you have a number or a name I can call if we don’t hear from anybody?”
“Are you doubting me?”
“As I said, I am grateful.”
“Pack, then, and tell your wife and daughter to pack too. Don’t think anyone will wait patiently for you. Those days are over. I have told them that your visas are in order. Is your daughter still married to that Englishman, the poet?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Advise her to stay married to him. At least until she arrives safely in America.”
He did not respond to this. Her tone made him remember why he had been avoiding Agnes Meyer.
“Do not miss this flight,” she said.
“We will not. I will let my wife know immediately.”
“And come and see me, as I said.”
“I will do that.”
* * *
Early the next morning they waited with their luggage in the lobby as they had been told to do by a caller from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. When a young official arrived and saw all their suitcases, he shook his head.
“These will have to be sent on,” he said. “We can allow you only the bare minimum.”
When Katia remonstrated with him, the official turned away from her and spoke to Erika.
“If you want to board this plane to London, you must store this luggage. I cannot keep the car waiting. You have ten minutes to organize that or you will miss the flight.”
They went through their suitcases, removing items that were deemed fully necessary for the journey. Thomas already had a book of Hugo Wolf’s letters and a biography of Nietzsche and all his notebooks in a large briefcase. Katia packed some of his shirts and underclothes in a case with some of her own clothes and shoes. Several times, as the official looked on, Erika had to reopen suitcases to find some item she insisted was indispensable. Only when her father assured her that his publisher would be certain to send on their luggage did she close the cases and stand up with one small bag in her hand.
Thomas and Katia went to the front desk asking to have their luggage stored and were told they would have to wait for the manager to see what could be done as the storeroom was full to the brim with suitcases belonging to guests who had departed over the previous week. When Thomas produced a large banknote, he was coldly informed by the tall Swede working at the desk that they did not accept money in this way and that Herr Mann should wait for the manager as he had been told to do.
The young official was becoming more and more impatient.
“I need you to get into the car,” he said. “We must go to the airport.”
Thomas was told that the luggage could not simply be left in the lobby. They would have to make some arrangement with the manager, as the staff had no authority to accept luggage for storage by departing guests.
Katia insisted that Thomas and Erika and the official go to the car, whose engine was running. They should take all the hand luggage with them. She would find the manager, she said.
They sat silently in the car as the official said that if Frau Mann did not soon join them, then she would be left behind. It would not be easy to get her a seat on another flight.
“My mother is looking for the manager,” Erika said.
“Your mother is putting the journey in jeopardy,” the official said.
“The manager, who was of course there all the time, actually said: ‘There are too many people like you staying in this hotel.’ And when I informed him that my husband had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he shrugged. I did not know that there were people like that in Sweden. I left our address and Bermann’s name and told him that the king of Sweden will hold him personally responsible if a single item of our luggage goes missing.”
By then the car was already moving. Thomas nudged Erika at the mention of the king of Sweden, but he did not look at her or smile.
From the front passenger seat, the official addressed the three in the back.
“I have been told to inform you that because the plane will fly over German territory for some of the journey, it will be forced to fly low. This brings dangers and risks.”
“Why will it fly low?” Erika asked.
“That is a condition that the Germans have imposed. Yesterday, a German plane flew alongside this flight.”
“Do we have a choice?” Katia asked. “I mean, can the plane take some other route?”
“I’m afraid not. Not if you want to leave Sweden now. The plane will land in Amsterdam for refueling, but no one will get on or off.”
* * *
Once on board the plane, Katia insisted on sitting at the window seat and said that Thomas and Erika should take aisle seats.
“I am an ordinary-looking middle-aged lady and of no interest to anyone,” she said. “Could you two bury your heads in books, but not in a way that makes either of you appear in any way conspicuous?”
The plane was full, with passengers trying to stuff their belongings in the overhead compartments. When one woman screamed that her suitcase would not fit, she was told that it would have to be abandoned. When she began to argue with the flight attendant, other passengers warned her that she was delaying the takeoff.
Eventually, with a great sweep, she opened her case, took out a pair of shoes and a bottle of perfume and some clothes and threw them on her seat.
“Take all the rest and do as you please with it,” she said dramatically. “I will be traveling with only the underclothes I am wearing, if that is what you want.”
“Let us hope that lady is not crossing the Atlantic with us,” Katia said.
The propellers had begun to turn even before the doors were closed. Thomas believed that if one more day had passed it would have been too late. They had not asked if the Germans had a list of passengers, but such a list would not be hard to acquire, or indeed it would not be too difficult for someone with Nazi sympathies on the Swedish side to alert the Germans to his presence on the plane. A good number of officials must know he was traveling.
As the plane flew out of Malmö, it struck him that if he were ever to contemplate prayer, now would be a good time to do so. But since he did not pray, then he would read his book. He would continue reading with fierce concentration, he thought, until they reached London.
Only once, when the plane suddenly dipped for a moment, did he allow himself to tremble. He reached across the aisle towards Erika, who held his hand. When he caught Katia’s eye, she motioned to him that he should keep his head down, return to his reading.
The anxiety he was going through, he recognized, had been shared by many others. And they had not been lucky enough to be spirited by a government official from a luxury hotel to a plane flying west. They had no one to call on. What he was feeling was only a pale shadow of their terror.
The plane started its descent and Erika went towards the cockpit. Thomas watched her questioning the attendant. Soon she returned to reassure them that they were close to Amsterdam and well out of German airspace. The plane would stay on the tarmac at Amsterdam for less than an hour.
Passport control in London went smoothly, but when they arrived at customs, the official asked Thomas to open his briefcase, calling two of his colleagues over. Erika and Katia began to speak, but they were instructed to be silent. The men studied his two books first, flicking through the pages, and then set about examining the notebooks and the pages of handwriting.
“My husband is a writer,” Katia said.
Ignoring her, the officials whispered to one another before taking the contents of the briefcase and Thomas’s passport to an inner room. As they stood waiting, the hall emptied out.
“I hope that lady with only one set of underclothes will eventually find happiness,” Katia said.
Thomas looked at Erika and they both laughed, their laughter causing Katia to become more solemn.
“It is no small matter,” she said. “I think the experience of being deprived like that may have marked her for life.”
By the time the three officials emerged from the inner office, Katia had joined in the laughter, which Thomas now sought to control.
“We must ask you, sir, what the writing in these notebooks and pages contains.”
“It is a novel I am attempting to complete.”
“In German?”
“Yes, I write in German.”
One of the officials opened a page of the notebook and asked him to translate it.
“My daughter is a better translator than I am.”
“But you wrote this, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need you to translate it.”
Thomas slowly began to translate.
“What does it mean, sir?”
“It is from a novel I am writing about the German poet Goethe.”
“And when was the last time you were in Germany?”
“1933.”
“And where are you going now?”
“Southampton,” Katia said, “and then America. We have our visas here and we will miss the boat if we have any further delays.”
When the customs men found a map that Thomas had drawn of a room, with a table in the center and names hastily scribbled around the oblong outline of the table, they grew concerned.
“It is for my novel,” Thomas said. “It is a sketch of the dining room in Goethe’s house. See, this is his name here, and these are the other people at his table. This was in the early nineteenth century.”
“How do you know who was at his table?” one of them asked.
“I do not. I am imagining where they sat so that I can imagine their conversation.”
One of the officials looked at the map, concerned, turning it around as though it might be of some strategic importance.
“He is a novelist,” his colleague said.
“A novelist who draws maps,” another interjected and then smiled.
“There is a bus to Waterloo,” the official who appeared to be in charge said. “And then you get the train from there to Southampton.”
“And you have nice weather for the journey,” the other added, as he smiled and waved them towards the exit.
* * *
Thomas was surprised by the sense of peace and plenty that he observed from the bus as it wound through the English countryside. It was greener than he had expected, the roads narrower, the sky bluer, the late afternoon heat more intense. In the distance, he saw a farmhouse. Even the modest houses on the side of the road, or in the few villages through which they passed, exuded ease and freshness. Nothing seemed too old, or worn. When they approached London itself, however, he marveled at the extent of the suburbs, the dismal rows of houses, the small shops. This felt even more foreign to him somehow than Princeton or New York. He was glad that he did not have to settle here. Perhaps it would be different in the grand squares and the big shopping streets, he thought, but they would have time to see nothing, just find the train for Southampton once they reached Waterloo Station.
It was strange traveling without luggage. There was a freedom in alighting from the bus without having to supervise the moving of all their suitcases to the train. He felt also a lightness in himself, as though he had been released from school for the summer, and was prevented from smiling and making jokes as they e
ntered the station only by the expressions of determination on the faces of Katia and Erika.
As he waited while Katia and Erika purchased train tickets Thomas saw that people were carrying gas masks, many displaying them prominently over their shoulder. England was at war. He studied each person who passed, trying to see if he could find in their faces some sign that freedom and democracy did indeed matter to them. These people here had decided, practically without dissent, to resist Hitler, to live in permanent danger.
Soon, he thought, they would know real fear. Their cities would be bombed; their sons would die in uniform. All he could do was watch them. There was nothing he could tell them about Germany that they did not know or feel. He was a double outsider, a German exile on his way back to America.
* * *
When they went to the office in the port at Southampton, they were informed that the SS Washington would be days late. They should find a hotel, they were told. As they walked through the warm evening, with seagulls overhead crying out as though in panic at their very presence, Katia said that they would now be able to make contact with Michael and his fiancée, and encourage them to cross the Atlantic as soon as possible, and perhaps they would be able to speak to Monika and her husband to let them know that they should follow suit as soon as their visas were issued.
In the morning, having convinced the hotel to move a desk into Thomas’s room so that he could work, Katia and Erika ventured out to visit the shops of Southampton, hoping to buy new suitcases and at least enough clothes for the journey. When they returned, Thomas could hear their laughter as they ascended the narrow stairs.
They had bought the suitcases and some clothes and underclothes and shoes. In each shop, she said, they explained immediately to the shopkeeper that they were fleeing from Germany, and not only the shopkeeper but other customers had been very kind. They had bought newspapers and told him that Goering had made an offer of peace that the British government had summarily rejected. Everyone they met, Katia said, supported the government.
“One woman even approached us in the street saying that they would free Germany just like they did in the last war. I hardly knew what to say to her, so I told her I was very grateful.”
