And I learned to love among the flowers.…
The last verse is sung fairly often and is heard in four different variations on the tape, once even in Beat rhythm.
As we see, Leni treats otherwise hallowed texts with a good deal of freedom; depending on her mood, she combines elements of both music and text:
The voice of the free-born Rhine—kyrieleis
And I learned to love among the flowers—kyrieleis
Break ye the tyrants’ yoke—kyrieleis
My vows are to be unchaste and poor—kyrieleis
As a girl I had an affair with the sky—kyrieleis
Superb, violet, he loves me with man-love—kyrieleis
Ancestral marble turned to gray—kyrieleis
Till it is expressed the way I mean it, the secret of my soul—kyrieleis
So we see that Leni, beyond being merely occupied, is productively occupied.
Without lapsing into any misplaced symbolism, Rahel gave Leni, who was invariably alarmed when confronted with the evidence of womanhood, a detailed explanation of the process of sexual intercourse, without the slightest necessity for Leni or her to blush: such explanations, of course, had to remain secret, for Rahel was clearly exceeding her authority. Perhaps this explains why Leni blushed so violently and angrily when a year and a half later during her official sex-education course she was fobbed off with “strawberries and whipped cream.” Nor did Rahel hesitate to apply the term “classical architecture” to the various shapes of bowel movements (B.H.T.).
It was also during her very first month at boarding school that Leni found another friend for life, that Margret Zeist whose reputation as a “hussy” had preceded her; the well-nigh unmanageable daughter of extremely pious parents who were no more able “to cope with her” than any of her former teachers had been. Margret was always cheerful, was considered “full of fun,” a dark-haired little person who, compared with Leni, seemed downright garrulous. It was Rahel who, while inspecting Margret’s skin (shoulders and upper arms), discovered after two weeks that the girl was carrying on with men. Since Margret is the sole witness to these events, a certain caution may be advisable here; personally, however, the Au. gained an impression of absolute credibility on Margret’s part.
In Margret’s opinion, Rahel found this out not only with her “almost infallible chemical instinct” but also by assessing the physical condition of her skin, of which Rahel later maintained, in a private conversation with Margret, that it “had radiated a tenderness both received and given,” whereupon—to Margret’s credit—Margret blushed, not for the first and far from the last time in her life. Moreover, she admitted that at night she used to let herself out of the convent by a method she could not divulge and meet the village boys, not the men. Men turned her off, she said, because they stank, she knew this from her experience with a man, in fact with the very teacher who had claimed to be unable to cope with her. “Oh,” she added in her dry, Rhenish intonation, “he managed to cope with me all right.” Boys, she said, of her own age, that was what she liked, men stank—and—she candidly added—it was so wonderful the way the boys enjoyed themselves, some of them shouted for joy—so she would too, besides it wasn’t good for the boys to “do it alone”; the point was, it gave her, Margret, pleasure to give them pleasure—and it must be noted here that for the first time we see Rahel bursting into tears: “It was just terrible, the way she cried, and I got scared, and now, lying here, forty-eight years old and with syphilis and God knows what else, now at last I know why she cried so terribly” (Margret in the hospital). Rahel, after her tears had dried up—which, according to Margret, must have taken quite a while—looked at her thoughtfully, without any hostility, and said: “Yes, you’re a fille de joie all right.” “An allusion which at the time, of course, I didn’t understand” (Margret). She had to promise—and solemnly at that—not to lead Leni onto similar paths, nor to divulge to her how she let herself out of the school; although Leni was among those marked out for the bestowal of much joy, she was not a fille de joie. And Margret swore she would not, kept her word too, and “anyway Leni was never in any danger of that, she knew what she wanted.” And besides, Rahel was right, it was a skin that was loved with such tenderness and desired so intensely, especially the skin of her breast, and it had been quite incredible, all the things the boys had done with it. Asked by Rahel whether she had carried on with one or many, Margret blushed for the second time in twenty minutes and said—again in her flat, dry, Rhenish intonation: “Only with one at a time.” And once again Rahel had wept, murmuring that it wasn’t good, what Margret was doing, not good at all and could only end in disaster.
After that, Margaret’s stay in boarding school did not last long; it all came out, what she was doing with the boys in the village (most of them altar boys), there was trouble with the boys’ parents, with the priest, with the girls’ parents, there was an investigation of the case at which Margret and all the boys refused to testify—Margret had to leave school at the end of her first year. For Leni there remained: a friend for life who later was often to prove her worth in situations that were dicey if not extremely dangerous.
One year later, not in the least embittered but with a still unsatisfied curiosity, Leni joined the labor force: as an apprentice (official designation: junior clerk) in the office of her father, at whose urgent request she became a member of that Nazi organization for girls in the uniform of which she even (may God forgive her) managed to look nice. Leni—it must be said—attended the “den evenings” without enthusiasm—and it must also be added, before misunderstandings arise, that Leni had no conception whatever, not the slightest, of the political dimensions of Nazism; she did not like the brown uniforms at all—the Storm Troopers’ uniform was particularly distasteful to her, and those who feel able to some degree to put themselves in her place in terms of her scatalogical interests and of her scatalogical training at the hands of Sister Rahel will know, or at least suspect, why she found this brown so exceedingly unpleasant. Her half-hearted attendance at the “den evenings,” which she finally dropped because from September 1939 on she was working in her father’s business as a “war-essential” employee, had other reasons: she found the whole atmosphere there too redolent of convent piety, for the group to which she was assigned had been “commandeered” by a strong-minded young Catholic woman whose intention it was to infiltrate “this business,” and who, after making sure—without due thoroughness, unfortunately—that the twelve girls in her charge were trustworthy—restructured whole evenings by devoting them to the singing of songs to the Virgin Mary, meditations on the Rosary, etc. Now Leni, as can be imagined, had nothing against songs to the Virgin Mary, nothing against the Rosary, etc., the only thing was—at this point in time she was barely seventeen—that after two and a half years of painfully endured convent-school piety she was not all that interested, and she found it boring. Needless to say, the infiltration attempts on the part of the young lady—one Gretel Mareike—did not pass unnoticed, she was denounced by a girl—one Paula Schmitz—Leni was even called as a witness, remained (duly coached by Gretel Mareike’s father) steadfast, denied without batting an eyelid (as did ten of the twelve girls, incidentally) that they had sung songs to the Virgin Mary, with the result that Gretal Mareike was spared considerable suffering; what she was not spared was two months’ Gestapo arrest and interrogation, which was “more than enough for her”—and that was all she ever said about it (condensed from several conversations with Marja van Doorn).
By now it is the summer of 1939. Leni enters upon the most talkative period of her life, one that will last for a year and three quarters. She is known as a beauty, obtains her driver’s license by special authority, enjoys driving, plays tennis, accompanies her father to conventions and on business trips. Leni is waiting for a man “whom she means to love; to whom she can give herself unreservedly,” for whom she is already “dreaming up daring caresses—he is to find joy in me and I in him” (Margret). Leni n
ever misses an opportunity to go dancing, this summer she likes to sit on terraces, drink iced coffee, and play a little at being the “society woman.” There are some startling photos of her from this period: she could still apply for the title of “most German girl in the city,” in the district, in fact—perhaps even in the province, or that political-historical-geographical entity that has become known as the German Reich. She could have appeared as a saint (also as Mary Magdalene) in a miracle play, modeled for an advertisement for face cream, perhaps could even have acted in movies; her eyes are now quite dark, almost black, she wears her thick blond hair as described on this page, and not even the brief Gestapo interrogation and the fact that Gretel Mareike has spent two months in detention have substantially impaired her self-confidence.
Because she feels that not even Rahel has told her enough about the biological differences between men and women, she does some intensive research on the subject. She thumbs through encyclopedias, with not much result, ransacks—with just as little result—her father’s and mother’s libraries; sometimes she goes to see Rahel on Sunday afternoons, taking long walks with her through the convent grounds and entreating her for information. After some hesitation Rahel relents and explains, once again without the slightest necessity for either of them to blush, further details that she had withheld two years earlier: the instrument of male sexuality, its stimulation and stimulability, with all the attendant consequences and pleasures; and since Leni asks for illustrated material on the subject and Rahel refuses to give it to her, saying it is not good to look at pictures of it, Leni telephones a book dealer for advice, speaking (quite unnecessarily) in a disguised voice, and is directed to the “Civic Health Museum,” where under “Sex Life” the main displays consist of venereal diseases: starting with ordinary clap and proceeding by way of soft chancre to “Spanish collar” and covering every phase of syphilis, all naturalistically displayed by true-to-life colored plaster models, Leni learns of the existence of this unwholesome world—and is infuriated; not that she was prudish, what made her so angry was the fact that in this museum sex and venereal disease appeared to be regarded as identical; this pessimistic naturalism enraged her no less than the symbolism of her religious instructor. The Health Museum seemed to her a variation of the “strawberries and whipped cream” (witness Margret, who—blushing again—refused to contribute personally to Leni’s enlightenment).
Now the impression may have been given that Leni’s interests were confined to a wholesome and healthy world. Not at all: her materialistically sensual concretism went so far that she began to be less brusque in declining the numerous advances to which she was exposed, and she finally yielded to the ardent entreaties of a young architect from her father’s office whom she found agreeable, and consented to a rendezvous. Weekend, summertime, a luxury hotel on the Rhine, dancing on the terrace in the evening, she blond, he blond, she seventeen, he twenty-three, both healthy—surely there will be a happy ending or at least a happy night—but nothing came of it; after the second dance Leni left the hotel, paid for the unused single room where she had hastily unpacked her housecoat (= bathrobe) and toilet articles, and went to see Margret, whom she told that during the very first dance she had felt that “the fellow” did not have “tender hands,” and that a certain fleeting sense of being in love had instantly evaporated.
At this point there is a distinct feeling that the reader, thus far fairly patient, is becoming impatient and wondering to himself: For God’s sake, is this Leni girl supposed to be perfect? Answer: almost. Other readers—depending on their ideological point of departure—will put the question differently: For God’s sake, what kind of dirty-minded hussy is this Leni? Answer: She isn’t one at all. She is merely waiting for “the right man,” who fails to appear; she continues to be pestered, invited for dates and weekend trips, never feels shocked, merely pestered; even the most embarrassing propositions—often phrased with considerable coarseness—that are sometimes whispered in her ear arouse no indignation, she merely shakes her head. She loves wearing pretty clothes, swims, rows, plays tennis, even her sleep is not restless, and “it was a real treat to watch her enjoy her breakfast—I tell you, it was just a treat the way she ate her two fresh rolls, two slices of black bread, her soft-boiled egg, a bit of honey, and sometimes a slice of ham—and the coffee, really hot, with hot milk and sugar—I tell you, you really should’ve seen it because it was a treat—a daily treat, to watch that girl enjoy her food” (Marja van Doorn).
She also likes going to movies, “so she could have a little cry in the dark in peace” (quotation via Marja van Doorn). A movie such as Unshackled Hands, for instance, makes two of her handkerchiefs so damp that Marja mistakenly assumed Leni had caught cold at the movie. A movie such as Rasputin, Demon Lover, leaves her completely cold, as does The Battle Hymn of Leuthen or Hot Blood. “After movies like that” (Marja van Doorn), “not only were her hankies not damp, they looked as if they had just been ironed, that’s how dry they were.” The Girl from Fanö, on the other hand, drew tears from her, but not quite as much as Unshackled Hands.
She gets to know her brother, whom so far she has rarely seen; he is two years older than she, was only eight when he went to the boarding school where he remained for eleven years. Most of his school vacations have been utilized to further his education: trips to Italy, France, England, Austria, Spain, because his parents were so keen on turning him into what in fact he was turned into: “a truly well-educated young man.” Again according to M.v.D., young Heinrich Gruyten’s mother regarded “her own background as too low-class,” and since she herself, brought up and educated in France by nuns, retained a certain “nervous and at times excessive sensitivity” throughout her life, we may assume her to have wanted something similar for her son. On the basis of available information she seems to have succeeded.
We must devote a short time to this Heinrich Gruyten, who for twelve years, like a disembodied spirit; like a god almost, a blend of the young Goethe and the young Winckelmann with a touch of Novalis, lived a life apart from his family, occasionally—some four times in eleven years—making an appearance at home, and of whom all Leni knew thus far was that he “is so sweet, so terribly sweet and nice.” True, this is not much and does sound rather like her First Communion; and since not even M.v.D. has much more than Leni to say about him (“Very well educated, beautiful manners, but never proud, never”), and since Margret saw him only twice officially in 1939, when she was invited to the Gruytens’ for coffee, and once more—unofficially—in 1940, one rather chilly April night, the night before Heinrich was sent off as a tank gunner to conquer Denmark for the aforesaid German Reich, Margret, in view of Leni’s reticence and M.v.D.’s lack of knowledge, remains the sole nonclerical witness.
This reporter feels awkward about describing the circumstances under which he obtained information on Heinrich from a woman of barely fifty who is suffering from venereal disease. All Margret’s remarks have been typed verbatim from a tape, they have not been doctored. Well, let us begin: Margret became quite ecstatic, her face (already considerably disfigured) taking on a look of childlike fervor as she started right off by saying: “Yes, I loved that man. I really did love him.” Asked whether he had loved her too, she shook her head, not as if to say No, rather as if to express doubt, certainly not—as is attested here under oath—in any affectation of martyrdom. “Dark hair, you know, and light eyes, and—oh, I don’t know—noble-looking, yes that’s it, noble. He had no idea of the extent of his charm, and for him I’d have literally walked the streets, literally, so he could read books, or whatever else it was he learned besides how to read books and judge churches, study chorales, listen to music—Latin, Greek—and all about architecture; well, he was like Leni—a dark version of her, and I loved him. Twice I was there in the afternoon for coffee and saw him—in August ’39; and on April 7, 1940, he phoned me—I was already married to that rich guy I’d hooked—he phoned me, and I went to him at once, to Flensburg, and when
I got there I found the men had been confined to barracks, and it was cold outside; so I must have got there on the eighth. They were quartered in a school, everything packed so they could leave that night, whether they flew or went by ship—I don’t know. Confined to barracks. No one knew, and no one ever found out, that I was with him, neither Leni nor her parents nor anyone else. He got out of the building in spite of the orders to remain inside. Over the wall of the girls’ john into the school playground. No hotel room, not even one in a rooming house. The only place open was a bar, in we went, and a girl let us have her room in exchange for all the money I had on me, two hundred marks, and my ruby ring, and all his money, a hundred and twenty, and a gold cigarette case. He loved me, I loved him—and it made no difference that the room and all that was so tarty. Makes no difference, makes no difference at all. Yes” (the tape was carefully monitored twice to see if Margret had actually used the present tense: makes no difference, makes no difference at all. Objective conclusion: she did). “Well, and soon after that he was dead. What a crazy, crazy waste.” When asked how the surprising word “waste” had occurred to her in this context, Margret replies (typed verbatim from the tape): “Well you see, all that education, all those good looks, all that masculine vigor—and twenty years old, how many times, how many times might we—could we—have made love, and not only in tarts’ rooms like that one, but out of doors, once it got warmer—and it was all so pointless—waste, that’s what I call it.”
Since Margret, Leni, and M.v.D. all persist in what amounted to an iconolatrous attitude toward Heinrich G., some rather more objective information was sought here too: it was obtainable only from two parchment-skinned Jesuit fathers, both over seventy, both seated in studies that were impregnated with pipe smoke, editing manuscripts which, although for two different periodicals, dealt with similar subjects (Opening to the Left or to the Right?), one a Frenchman, the other a German (possibly a Swiss), the first with graying fair hair, the second with graying black hair; both wise, benign, shrewd, humane, both exclaiming as soon as they were asked: “Ah yes, Heinrich, the Gruyten boy!” (identical wording, including grammatical and syntactical details, even punctuation, since the Frenchman also spoke in German), both put down their pipes, leaned back in their chairs, pushed aside the manuscripts, shook their heads, then, pregnant with memories, nodded their heads, sighed deeply, and began to speak: at this point total identity ends and a merely partial one begins. Since one of them had to be consulted in Rome, the other near Freiburg, preparatory telephone calls over lengthy distances in order to arrange appointments had been unavoidable, and the result was considerable expense which, it must be said, did not eventually pay off, aside from the “human value” of such encounters, a value that might be gained at much less expense. For these two fathers did no more than contribute to an enhanced idolization of the deceased Heinrich G.: one of them, the Frenchman, said: “He was so German, so German and so noble.” The other one said: “He was so noble, so noble and so German.” In order to simplify our report, the two men, for as long as we require them, will be called J.[esuit]I and J.II. J.I: “We haven’t had another such intelligent and gifted student in the past twenty-five years.” J.II: “For the past twenty-eight years we’ve not had another such gifted and intelligent pupil.” J.I: “There was a potential Kleist in that boy.” J.II: “In that boy there was a potential Hölderlin.” J.I: “We never tried to win him for the priesthood.” J.II: “No attempts were made to win him for the Order.” J.I: “It would have been a waste anyway.” J.II: “Even those of the brothers who thought only of the Order refused to try such a thing.” Asked about scholastic achievements, J.I said: “Oh well, he simply got an A in everything, even in phys. ed., but there was nothing boring about it, and every one of his teachers—every single one—dreaded the moment when a choice of career would have to be faced.” J.II: “Well, needless to say his marks were very good all the way through. Later on we created a special category for him: Excellent. But what career could he have taken up? That was what frightened us all!” J.I: “He might have become a diplomat, a cabinet minister, an architect, or a jurist—in any case, a poet.” J.II: “A great teacher, a great artist, and—inevitably and always, a poet.” J.I: “There was only one thing he was not fitted for, one thing he was too good for: any kind of army.” J.II: “Only not a soldier, not that.” J.I: “And that’s what he became.” J.II: “And that’s what they turned him into.”
Group Portrait With Lady Page 6
