A British professor of cultural sciences at Cambridge University said that the fundament of unified Europe was Christianity, and today we were seeing this single unifying factor disappearing both at a socio-political level and from individual behaviour.
At that point Professor Erhart had leaped to his feet and —
No, he said, he didn’t want any dessert. He finished his bottle of wine, paid and left. He had been prepared for everything, but not everything in caricature. He was in contact with colleagues in various countries with whom he could hold productive discussions, there were plenty of initiatives, foundations and N.G.O.s who, he could assume, understood what Europe was about. He corresponded with them, followed their blogs. But far too little seeped into the consciousness of the general public. And thus he had placed great hope in this “New Pact” think tank, which had a direct link to the president of the European Commission. So close to power. Evidently, however, the only thing so close to power was a bubble, as vacuous as a soap bubble, and yet indestructible – if you stuck a needle in it didn’t burst; it only floated buoyantly upwards. He tripped. Almost. He steadied himself. Brussels cobbles. People sat on the terraces of cafés, blinking in the setting sun. A juggler kept four, six, eight, eight! balls in the air. The accordion player. Erhart tossed a coin into his hat and he played “Junge, komm bald wieder!” Tourists took photographs with selfie sticks outside the church. Erhart crossed the square, but rather than go back to his hotel he turned into rue Sainte-Catherine. He wandered aimlessly, glancing occasionally into shop windows, but all he ever saw was his pallid face with the large black-rimmed spectacles and the white hair that stood up from his head as if he’d been electrified. Entering rue des Poissoniers he noticed a coffee house on the corner, Café Kafka. How apt, he thought, and went in for a glass of wine. Now he was well and truly tiddly. He had always liked a drink, but usually to celebrate, not out of frustration. He had only ordered the bottle of Chablis because he’d heard somewhere that you drink Chablis with oysters. His wife had known things like that. Trudi. If she were still alive he would call her and she’d say, You’ve got to do better tomorrow. You have a vision. Don’t insult the others! Just try to explain to them your vision.
He paid and moved on. Crossing boulevard Anspach he noticed an old shopfront to his left, which looked like an elegant jeweller’s, and made for it – why? He didn’t need any jewellery. Trudi was dead. And she had never cared for it anyway. It was pure veneer. The sign above the shop read: “mystical bodies”. He peered in through the window. Needles and pins with tiny stones at one end, drawings – what was this? Eventually he realised that this was where you could get piercings and tattoos.
He went in. A young man was sitting at a large, empty desk, the sort you might imagine would grace the office of a president.
Erhart greeted him and said he would like a tattoo. He found the situation so surreal, and yet as vivid as an intense dream. He had thought that tattoo artists were themselves always tattooed from head to toe, but this boy didn’t have one, at least not one that was visible.
You want . . .
Yes, Erhart said, taking off his jacket and stretching out his arm towards the boy. I want twelve five-pointed stars here, on this . . . on this blue patch.
That’s a bruise.
Yes.
And you want me to tattoo stars on it?
Yes, please.
Why?
Don’t you think it looks like Europe?
What?
Look! This here is the Iberian peninsula, and this little protrusion is quite clearly the boot, don’t you think?
Italy?
Yes. And where it frays there, that’s Greece. Surely you can see that.
With a bit of imagination, yes. But the proportions aren’t right, it’s, no, that’s not Europe, it’s a distorted picture. Whatever, it’s going to heal – at least for your sake I hope it will.
In this mark I see Europe. And now I want the stars to go with it. How much would it cost?
No. I’m not going to do it. The blood vessels are damaged, capillaries burst, I’m not going to stick a needle in there, I can’t really see what I’m doing. I wouldn’t touch your arm. And in a few weeks’ time it’ll have vanished anyway. So you’d have the stars, but not the reason for having them.
So no stars for a vanishing Europe?
Sorry, man, I’m not doing it.
Nobody in the Ark could have imagined the violent storm the Jubilee Project would unleash in the Commission, even though the storm had announced itself in precisely the way major storms do: with an eerie silence.
To begin with, Eurostat had delivered the goods. Their answer was thorough, full of figures, but not helpful.
Statists! Bohumil had said in German to Martin with a shrug.
You mean statisticians!
Yes.
Purged of its tables of figures, its formulae and graphics, what Eurostat was saying left Martin so astounded that he read the paper three times over, then stared at it in disbelief for an hour. Essentially what the Eurostat expert had written meant that, in all statistics-based projections, the individual was a confounding variable, Martin thought. You could read the information thus: with his unfathomable will, God ultimately renders all available statistical data relating to human beings obsolete.
They knew how many ninety-year-old men and women were alive in Europe today. And they knew that the gap in life expectancy between women and men closed as people got older. These days, ninety-year-old women still had an average of four years left to live, men another three and three-quarters. The number of Holocaust survivors in 1945 could only be estimated. There were no figures relating to the ratio of men to women. But assuming that the differing life expectancies of men and women aligned as people got older, any projection of the life expectancy of Holocaust survivors without any differentiation between the sexes, to find out how many might still be alive today, must fail because life expectancy differed between countries and the distribution of survivors amongst these countries was unknown. It makes a difference whether a Holocaust survivor lives in Germany, Poland, Russia, Israel or the U.S.A. It was also necessary to take into account whether the individual was well off or lived below the poverty threshold. In 2005 (see note) an Israeli demographer estimated that 40 per cent of Holocaust survivors were living at or below the poverty threshold. These people had undoubtedly been dealt the worst hands, tempting one to assume that none of them were still alive today, although this could not be proved because another statistic suggested the opposite: people who have suffered long periods of hunger in their youth had a greater life expectancy, and in old age too were better able to brace themselves physically against deprivation than those who had never experienced such a physiological pressure to adapt. It should be noted, however, that not only Holocaust survivors, but large sections of the civilian population suffered epidemic hunger in areas affected by, or occupied during, the war, which was why no formula existed for exclusively calculating the life expectancy and probable numbers of Holocaust survivors still living today.
Now the Eurostat expert returned to the aforementioned life expectancy of ninety-year-olds today: “If we start with the assumption that the youngest of the Holocaust survivors still alive was born in 1929 – for they had to be at least sixteen years of age for admission into a camp; anyone younger was sent straight to the gas chambers – then, on the basis of life expectancy statistics, we know that there must be a certain number of survivors. But even if we knew the precise figure, we would not be able to say whether the statistic applies to them, i.e. whether they correspond to the statistical mean. All of them must be over ninety, which means that theoretically they have an average life expectancy of between three and three-quarters and four years. It is possible, however, that within a year 100 per cent of the unknown total of survivors will be dead or all 100 per cent could still be alive. Both are within the deviation range.” Then came the sentence which now danced before Martin’s eyes, as
if it were printed in capital letters: “THIS IS NO LONGER STATISTICS, IT IS DESTINY!”
Martin forwarded the Eurostat information to Xeno with some accompanying remarks. He suggested leaving open for the time being the question of whether they should put as many Holocaust survivors as possible (so far as they could be accounted for) at the centre of the Jubilee celebrations or just a small, representative group (individuals from different countries), or even a single representative. What was crucial at this initial stage was to win general acceptance for the idea; the Jubilee should be perceived as an opportunity to show the wider European public that the Commission was not merely the “guardian of the treaties of the Union” (as it said on the Commission’s website), but more importantly the guardian of the greater and broader vow that a breach of European civilisation such as Auschwitz would never occur again. This “eternity clause”, Martin wrote, had to be presented as the actual beating heart of the Commission to make it not only an abstract “bureaucracy”, but a “moral authority”. The presentation of the final testimonials of the Holocaust could forge the necessary emotional connection of the public to the Commission’s work. Ultimately the Commission’s poor profile was down to the fact that it was seen as the apparatus of a mere economic community, which stood for an economic policy that was being rejected by ever greater numbers of people. Now there needed to be a permanent reminder of the fundamental European idea, in the words of Jean Monnet: “All our efforts are the lessons of our historical experience: nationalism leads to racism and war, and with dire logic to Auschwitz.”
For this reason the first Commission president, Walter Hallstein from Germany, gave his inaugural speech in Auschwitz. Later this idea was taken up by Commission presidents Jacques Delors and Roman Prodi. The new president, too, spoke at Auschwitz at the liberation commemoration on 27 January and declared that “the economic integration of nations is not an end in itself merely to generate economic growth, but a prerequisite for the more profound purpose of the European project: to thwart in the future national wilfulness and ultimately nationalism, which leads to resentment and aggression against others, to the division of Europe and ultimately to Auschwitz.”
Martin concluded his e-mail to Xeno with the strong recommendation that the project should not be financed by the E.U. budget, but that the money should come exclusively from the coffers of the Commission itself. This would avoid the need for any agreement with the Council or Parliament (involving predictably lengthy negotiations and what would turn out to be unproductive compromises) and in the end the image boost would be exclusively to the benefit of the Commission.
Xeno informed Mrs Atkinson and asked for her consent that the project should be financed exclusively from the Commission’s budget. Mrs Atkinson had other worries, however. A few days earlier a rumour had been doing the rounds on social media that the Commission, bribed by lobbyists for the big pharmaceuticals, was planning to impose a ban on homeopathy. Within a day, one and a half million e-mails of protest had come in from all over Europe, almost crashing the Commission’s server. The German tabloid newspaper, BILD, published the false report as its lead story, the headline – tempered by a question mark – in huge letters: “Bonkers Brussels Bureaucrats?” The Sun, Kronenzeitung, Blesk, A Hola, even El País, France Soir and – although not on the cover – Libération reported the story too. Each of these hysterical articles concluded with an appeal to protest to the Commission against the corporations and their lobbyists. Mrs Atkinson sat at her desk, wringing her hands in despair. Her long, slender fingers were cold and blue. She kneaded, pressed and massaged them as she pondered how she might counter this nonsense effectively. A press release with an emphatic denial had been printed only by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and this had led to another shitstorm on social media: everyone knew which major pharmaceutical companies had their headquarters in Switzerland. Mrs Atkinson wondered why newspapers that could hardly be described as anti-capitalist rags were appealing with such relish for a campaign against the big corporations, gunning especially for the European Commission, which itself was locked in battle against the un- bridled power of large corporations. After all, only recently the Commission had dished out fines to Microsoft and Amazon that totalled more than a billion euros.
Mrs Atkinson was an economist by training, not a specialist in communications, even though this was now her field of work. She had applied for the job to improve the Commission’s image; she had planned an offensive, but had been on the back foot ever since. The Commission president had asked to see her about this homeopathy story: did she have a plan, how could the damage to the Commission’s reputation be curtailed and its achievements better communicated?
Yes, of course.
And when would they be able to see the fruits of this plan?
For the time being she couldn’t say.
To err on the side of caution he would only call a plan a plan if there was the realistic likelihood of a desired outcome which could be verified rapidly.
Yes, Sir.
She kneaded her hands. She couldn’t take Fenia Xenopoulou’s idea any further just now. But she was grateful for her commitment and would certainly be able to help in the medium or longer term. “I agree to the financing from the Commission budget,” she wrote back, “but I would like a precise costing and a tally of the necessary resources, including staff. Go ahead!”
Now Xeno gave Martin the O.K. Please prepare a “note” by tomorrow for the Inter-Service Consultation. With the anticipated level of funding required, a schedule, all necessary resources, including staff, and the desired contribution from other Directorates-General.
Afterwards she dutifully searched amongst the papers on her desk, the side table and on the shelf for the novel she hadn’t picked up for at least three weeks – the president’s favourite. At last she had been given an appointment by his office; the timing was good. Now she had something she could show him: a project with which she would place culture, the wallflower within the Commission, at the centre of public awareness. Anybody who could pull this off – and surely the president would realise this – ought to secure a better position in the Commission. And ideally in the D.-G. TRADE, where she could work alongside Fridsch. On the other hand was it such a good idea to work so closely with the man she . . . what? She hesitated even to think of the word “love”. And first he would have to learn to overcome a certain professional distance. During their recent dinner at the Italian restaurant he had been polite and friendly in the way you were with acquaintances or valued colleagues, but when they slept together afterwards he had ended up weeping. It’s just sweat, he’d said, wiping the tears from his face, but she was certain they had been tears of happiness and emotion.
She found the book. Although she knew what she had to discuss with the president, it wouldn’t hurt to get in the mood by reading his favourite novel.
She leafed through the pages at random, then began to read . . . and gasped in shock when she encountered this sentence: “Once she called a cosmetician so she could try out different types of make-up for the time when she would be lying in a coffin, mourned by her weeping lover.” What shocked Xeno was that she could picture herself in this situation right now: lying in a coffin, immaculately made-up, with a smile that can be conjured only by the thought of one’s lover as one enters eternity. And Fridsch . . .
Eight
“Get in trouble, good trouble!”
BLUE LIGHTS WERE flashing all around the Pietà, and above it an emergency helicopter circled. More and more people, men and women, young, old, children, poured onto the scene, some stopped in horror and stared, but most began to run, they ran towards the police officers who stood in a row across the carriageway, their arms outstretched. Stop! Stay where you are! The police tried to prevent people moving forwards and closed off the motorway to allow the emergency helicopter to land, but the swelling mass charged at them and past them as well as past the police cars parked across the lanes. These people didn’t understand the sit
uation, they couldn’t see the injured, didn’t care about the wrecked cars, all they could think about was that the authorities were trying to stop them and send them back, perhaps they thought the emergency helicopter was a police or military chopper, a forlorn yet threatening gesture by the Austrian border police who couldn’t stop them, they had already crossed the Hungarian–Austrian border, they had come this far, they wanted to head on to Germany, nothing was going to stop them now.
Journalists were already there too, filming and taking photographs and getting in the way. And the image of the Pietà in the midst of all this chaos would speed around the world: the woman in black with a headscarf, sitting on a suitcase, the man in a business suit lying across her lap. On her face the rain like tears. She supported his head with her right hand, her left was stretched upwards, her head thrown back, she gazed at the sky and in the photograph it appeared as if the woman in the headscarf were levelling a desperate accusation at heaven. She looked up at the helicopter.
This woman had been the first to realise that the man needed to be stabilised.
Pulling her suitcase behind her, she had heard the crash, the bang, something that sounded like an explosion. Without understanding anything, she had seen people scatter before her, leap to the side, screaming, and all of a sudden she was standing beside the wreck, hanging from which was a groaning man.
The man was Florian Susman.
People had been walking towards him on the motorway, police cars with flashing lights and sirens had driven past and stopped a short distance beyond. By that stage he had been driving at a crawl, and then he put his foot fully on the brake and stopped the car. He switched on the hazard lights. He had seen a policeman approaching, brandishing a glowstick. The policeman was perhaps no more than twenty metres away when he screamed, screamed in a way that for a split second – which was also a moment of eternity – Florian saw nothing but this screaming, through the wet windscreen he saw the policeman’s gaping mouth as if in close-up, zoomed in and grotesquely distorted. The policeman dived to one side.
The Capital Page 21
