by Colm Toibin
He had made the great compromise. As he sat, perfectly washed and shaved, in his grand house, in his suit and tie, his family all around, his books arranged on the shelves in his study with the same respect for order as his thoughts and his response to life, he could have been a businessman.
He bowed his head. For one moment, the players faltered; Michael had come in too early. Thomas looked up as Michael stopped playing and waited for a signal from the lead violinist and then gently brought his instrument in, letting the sound go under the sound the violin made, like a backdrop for the drama. Just then, he noticed that Gret had come into the room and taken Nelly’s seat.
When all four players got ready to play the notes that lifted the quartet out of plaintive reverie into something close to song, Michael looked at Golo, who nodded to him in appreciation. His timing in this section was perfect.
On a few occasions in his own books, Thomas thought, he had risen above the ordinary world from which the work emerged. The death of Hanno in Buddenbrooks, for example, or the quality of the desire described in Death in Venice, or the séance scenes in The Magic Mountain. Maybe in other parts of other books too. But he did not think so. He had let dry humor and social settings dominate his writing; he was afraid of what might take over if he did not exercise caution and control.
He could imagine decency, but that was hardly a virtue in a time that had grown sinister. He could imagine humanism, but that made no difference in a time that exalted the will of the crowd. He could imagine a frail intelligence, but that meant little in a time that honored brute strength. As the slow movement came gravely to an end, he realized that, if he could summon the courage, he would have to entertain evil in a book, he would have to open the door to what was darkly outside his own comprehension.
There were two men that he did not become and he might make a book from them if he could conjure up their spirits properly. One was himself without his talent, without his ambition, but with the same sensibility. Someone fully at ease in a German democracy. A man who liked chamber music, lyric poetry, domestic quietness, gradual reform. A man, all conscience, who would have stayed in Germany even as Germany became barbaric, living a fearful life as an internal exile.
The other man was someone who did not know caution, whose imagination was as fiery and uncompromising as his sexual appetite, a man who destroyed those who loved him, who sought to make an art that was austere and contemptuous of all tradition, an art as dangerous as the world coming into shape. A man who had been brushed by demons, whose talent was the result of a pact with demons.
What would happen if these two men met? What energy would then emerge? What sort of book would that be? What sort of music would surface from that?
He must, he knew, stop thinking about books he might write and characters he might invent. He was aware from experience that listening to music with any intensity brought emotions that he could not harness, intentions that he could not carry out. Often, since they had moved into the new house, ideas for novels and stories came to him as he listened to Schubert or Brahms. When he stood up to go to his study immediately afterwards, he was sure that the idea could be transformed into something solid, only for it to dissolve once he was sitting at his desk with a pen in his hand.
Music made him unstable. But as he followed the short movement with its lovely march beats and dance beats, and then the final movement with its lack of hesitancy, its flowing elegance, he felt that the two men he had imagined, the two shadow versions of who he was, would not leave him, as other such imaginings had left him. They would fit into what he had already been dreaming of, his book about a composer who, like Faust, formed a pact with the devil.
As the quartet was close to the end, he forced himself to listen, and do nothing else. No musings on character or on novels! Just the sound, its rhythms held by the viola and cello and then interrupted by the two violinists, who darted in and out of each other’s orbit as though the other two musicians did not exist. Now Michael started to play the viola with more and more confidence, determined, it seemed, that his sound would not merely be an undertone, even if it could not dominate against the high emotion coming from the violins, which were now playing with ferocious zeal.
If music could evoke feelings that allowed for chaos as much as order or resolution, Thomas thought, and since this quartet left space for the romantic soul to swoon or bow its head in sorrow, then what would the music that led to the German catastrophe sound like? It would not be war music, or marching music. It would not need drums. It could be sweeter than that, more sly and silky. What happened in Germany would need a music not only somber but slippery and ambiguous, with a parody of seriousness, alert to the idea that it was not only desire for territory or riches that gave rise to this mockery of culture that was Germany now. It was the very culture itself, he thought, the actual culture that had formed him and people like him, that contained the seeds of its own destruction. The culture had proved defenseless and useless against pressure. And the music, the romantic music, in all the heightened emotion it unleashed, had helped to nourish a raw mindlessness that had now become brutality.
His own confused state when he listened to music was a kind of panic; the music was a way of absolving him from remaining rational. In creating confusion, it inspired him. Its untrustworthy sound gave rise to the conditions in which he could work. For others, including some who now ruled Germany, it stirred emotions that were savage.
He listened as the musicians began to speed up under the direction of the lead violinist, who was smiling, goading the others to follow him, to play more loudly, to soften, then come back in with more force.
As the players drew near the final stretch, he felt the excitement of having been taken out of time and also a resolve that on this occasion the thoughts and ideas that came to him would mean something, would fill a space that he had been quietly creating. For a split second as the playing ended, he was sure that he had it, he saw the scene, his composer in a house in Polling, the place where his mother had died, but then it faded as he stood up with the others to applaud the quartet, who bowed in unison, making clear that this final gesture, like their playing, had been rehearsed.
Chapter 14 Washington, 1942
Eleanor Roosevelt led them briskly along a corridor.
“Some of this is not to my taste, but I am not allowed to spend money on unnecessary redecoration.”
Thomas noticed that she addressed Katia more directly than him. He had been told that the president might be able to see him, but since Mrs. Roosevelt had not mentioned the meeting, he deduced that it had been canceled or postponed. That morning, there was news of the Russian counteroffensive at Stalingrad against the German Sixth Army. He wondered if Roosevelt was not devoting his full attention to the outcome.
They were to have tea with Mrs. Roosevelt, even though they had just had breakfast in the house of Agnes and Eugene Meyer, where they were staying.
“I wish,” Eleanor said when they were seated in a small side room, “that we had all listened to you when you warned us that force would have to be met with force.”
Thomas did not want to interrupt her to say that he never issued any such warning. It struck him that she was trying to flatter him by pretending that he had been prescient about the threat that Hitler posed.
“We really want you,” Mrs. Roosevelt went on, “to continue making those broadcasts that are relayed into Germany. You have been a beacon of hope. When I was in London, it was talked about. They are so happy to have you involved, and so are we. They were more than impressed that you agreed to do them even when Hitler was in the ascendant.”
Katia asked Mrs. Roosevelt about her involvement in the war effort.
“I have to be careful,” she said. “In wartime, you cannot criticize a sitting president, but you can attack his wife. I have had to retreat. I thought my journey to England would be helpful. I liked the king and the queen, they are so dedicated, but I found Churchill very difficult to talk to. My main interest w
as to meet as many ordinary people as possible and our troops.”
“You are much admired,” Katia said.
“So many of our young men are now seeing England for the first time. It will, I hope, stay with them all of their lives.”
Eleanor shook her head in sadness. Thomas could see that she had refrained from adding that this would be the case only with the ones who survived the war.
“We will win the war,” she continued. “I am sure we will win the war, no matter what the cost. Soon we must begin to concentrate on winning the peace.”
She glanced at Katia, who responded by smiling in assent. Thomas wondered if something important were happening at this very moment in the Oval Office, something that was keeping the president from seeing them.
“When we met before,” Eleanor said, “we were all so awed by your husband, by his great humanity, and his books, that I’m afraid we did not pay you enough attention.”
She addressed Katia as though she were a teacher dealing with a student.
“And now I discover that you are a marvel, a real marvel. And I am longing to hear all you said last night, but I want to hear it from you personally rather than secondhand on the telephone from Agnes Meyer.”
“She telephoned you?” Katia asked.
“She calls once a day and I take her call once a week,” Mrs. Roosevelt replied.
“Yes, she calls my husband too.”
It struck Thomas for a moment that he now had a chance to ask the First Lady if she could do anything for Mimi and Goschi. Even though he believed that it was too late, the very act of asking might result in new information or even some reassurance that would console Heinrich.
When he told Mrs. Roosevelt about them, she looked concerned.
“Are they Jewish?” she asked.
Thomas nodded.
“The news is not good,” she said. “Not good for anyone. It is why we must…”
She stopped. There was a catch in her voice.
“There is nothing I can do. I am sorry. I did what I could before the war broke out, but I can do no more now. We have to hope.”
In the silence, Thomas knew that it would be best maybe to keep the news from Heinrich that Eleanor Roosevelt did not think there was anything she could do for Mimi and Goschi. He bowed his head.
* * *
Their visit with the Meyers had not begun well the previous evening. While their house in Crescent Place was grand and imposing, some of the walls were very thin indeed. Prior to dinner, he and Katia heard most of the heated argument between Agnes and her husband. It was about some letter that had not appeared in the Washington Post despite his assurances that it would be published in that day’s issue.
“Someday I will leave you and then there will be sorrow!” Agnes roared several times. “Then what a fool you are you will come to know!”
“I think she is translating from the German,” Katia said.
“She does this when she is excited,” Thomas replied.
“She is excited now,” Katia said.
At dinner there was a senator who stated categorically, as soon as he was introduced to Thomas and Katia, that he did not support America’s involvement in the war. When Thomas smiled coldly and shrugged, making it plain that he could not be bothered to become involved in an argument with a nonentity, the man scowled. Thomas could not think why this politician had been invited or why he had come, but he presumed that Washington must be a lonely place, especially for senators with limited social skills and political views that were obsolete.
Then there was a man whom Agnes introduced to him as Alan Bird. He worked, she said, at the German desk of the State Department. His clear blue eyes and the square set of his jaw, the neatness of his dress that bordered on the military, interested Thomas, but when he realized that he was staring too much at the man, he switched his focus to the man’s wife, who seemed startled by the attention, saying that she wished she had more time to read, but it was hard with young children.
The other guests included a very glamorous and confident-looking elderly woman who wrote a syndicated column and was, Agnes said, one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s staunchest supporters. They were soon joined by a poet, meek in manners, who was translating Brecht’s poetry for a small press. The poet’s wife was a tall, formidable-looking woman whose antecedents were obviously Scandinavian. She told Thomas that she had read all of his novels and followed his speeches.
“You will save Europe,” she said. “Yes, you will be the one.”
Eugene Meyer sat sullenly at one end of the table while Agnes sat imperiously at the other. The row with her husband seemed to have made Agnes eager for further argument, and even before the first course was served she set about provoking her guests.
“Do you all not agree,” she asked, “that people who opposed Hitler too early might have missed the chance to have real and steady influence in Germany?”
Thomas glanced at Katia, who had her head down. He decided to pretend he had not heard Agnes and was relieved when no one at all responded to her question.
Thomas wished that Agnes had briefed him on Alan Bird. If the man had not been strategically placed opposite him, then he gave the impression that he had. He watched Thomas closely, suspiciously. It occurred to Thomas that he would be wise tonight not to be goaded by Agnes into expressing any opinion at all. He would endeavor to remain silent or react with amusement and diffidence to whatever Agnes had to say.
“I often ask myself if the war could not have been prevented,” she said. “And I am not alone in that. I mean by true vision when the clouds showed signs of darkening.”
The senator signaled to the waiter that he would like a second helping of the soup. He had tucked his napkin into the neck of his shirt. He made a single, loud sound, a clear warning that he had something emphatic to say, and then spooned some soup into his mouth. Having swallowed it, he looked up, the table waiting for him to speak.
“We did ourselves no good over there in that last war,” he said. “And we will do ourselves no good over there now. It’s not our dogfight. We have our own struggle, especially against that awful woman. She will bring the country down.”
The man from the State Department glanced at Thomas, who tried to look as though he did not understand that the senator was referring to Eleanor Roosevelt.
“She does nothing but good,” the columnist said.
As the second course was served, Agnes attempted to find other topics that might create controversy at the table, but even the senator and the columnist, who appeared to know each other well, were tired of sparring. Eugene did not speak at all. The poet also stayed silent. His wife, several times, when there was a gap in the conversation, mentioned the name of one of Thomas’s books and went into a kind of swoon.
“They did not merely change my life,” she said. “They taught me how to live.”
“After the war, of course,” Agnes said, “there will have to be huge investment in Germany. That’s when America will have to spend money, real money.”
“I do not think that would be desirable or possible,” Katia interjected.
“Well, it will certainly be possible and I believe it will also be desirable,” Agnes replied.
“Yes, I agree,” the columnist said. “From the rubble, something will emerge, and all, I hope, with America’s help.”
“I have heard enough,” the senator said. “Where I live, no one wants to give a cent to Germans at peace or at war. It’s not our war. And there’s no guarantee we will win it.”
“But of course a new Germany will have to be created,” Agnes said, ignoring the senator. “And we may even have someone in the company who will be the first president of a new Germany.”
“We do not want Germany to be built again,” Katia said.
“Why not, my dear?” Agnes asked.
“The German people voted for Hitler,” Katia said, “and the thugs around him. They are supporting the Nazis. They oversee the cruelty. It is not simply tha
t there is a group of barbarians at the top. The whole country, and Austria too, is barbarous. And the barbarity is not new. The anti-Semitism is not new. It is part of Germany.”
“But what about Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Beethoven?” Agnes asked.
“That is what disgusts me,” Katia said. “The Nazi leaders listen to the same music as we do, look at the same paintings, read the same poetry. But it makes them feel that they represent some higher civilization. And that means no one is safe from them, least of all the Jews.”
“But surely the Jews—” the poet started to say.
“Don’t tell me about the Jews, if you don’t mind,” Katia interrupted.
“I wasn’t aware that you yourself—” Agnes began.
“Were you not, Mrs. Meyer?” Katia again cut in.
Thomas had never seen Katia become heated like this in the company of strangers. Nor had he ever heard her claim her own Jewishness in public in such an open and defiant way. Her English was more fluent than normal; her command of the language suggested that she had actually prepared what she was going to say.
He noticed Alan Bird fixing his attention on Katia as Agnes asked her, in the event of an Allied victory, what might be done with a defeated Germany.
“Suppress it,” Katia said. “The very thought of it makes me shiver.”
“But will you and your husband not return there if Germany is defeated?” Alan Bird asked.
“The war will never be over for us. We will never live in Germany again. The idea of mingling with Germans who complied, who stood quietly by, or who took part, is horrifying.”
“But aren’t you German as much as they are?”
“The thought that I ever might have been German fills me with shame.”
“But do you not feel—?” Agnes began.
“I feel pity for my parents. That is what I feel. Everything they owned taken from them. Reduced to paupers. Their children all fled. My father was stripped naked at the Swiss border. But they were lucky. They had old friends who helped them, including a rich Swiss family who rescued them, but also old friends whose names are now among the great dishonored Germans.”
