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'forty-five I saw lots of Japanese POWs in Irkutsk and there wasn't a single
good-looking man among them."
"Prisoners of war are never good-looking," the pensioner interrupted
superciliously, as though revealing some profound psychological truth behind
her ethnographical observation and thus disposing of the modest value of the
observation itself.
"I don't see why..." the woman began, but the old man in tussore silk
raised his finger and she fell silent.
"However, Japan is at the same time a major source of potential
aggression," he said, "because she is tied up with America through banking
capital."
"If you ask me, they're all a lot of scoundrels in America, except for
about ten per cent," the woman responded and, noticing the old man touching
his beads, herself began to finger her necklace.
"A country of enormous wealth," the pensioner proclaimed thoughtfully,
and propped his elbows on the table, two sharp, uncompromising elbows
outlined through the wide sleeves of his tussore tunic.
"Dupont's daughter," he began, but the thought of the educational level
of his audience made him pause. "Do you know who Dupont is?"
The woman looked confused. "Oh yes, that one..."
"Dupont is a multi-millionaire," the old man declared harshly. "And
compared with a multi-millionaire a millionaire is considered a mere
beggar."
"Good heavens," the woman sighed.
"Well," the pensioner continued, "Dupont's daughter came to a reception
wearing diamonds worth ten million dollars. Now I suppose you'll ask why no
one robbed her?"
The old man leaned back, as though offering time and space for the
widest conjecture.
"Why?" the woman asked, still overawed by the wealth of the
multi-millionaires.
"Because she was guarded by fifty detectives disguised as distinguished
foreign guests, " the pensioner concluded triumphantly, and sipped at his
Borzhomi from the small tumbler.
"Now they've published Admiral Nelson's private correspondence," the
woman remarked. "A man can write all sorts of things to a woman..."
"I know," the old man interrupted sternly. "But that's the English."
"It's a shame anyhow," said the woman.
"Vivian Leigh," the pensioner continued, "tried to save the admiral's
honour but she failed."
"I know," said the woman, "she's dead, isn't she?"
"Yes," the old man affirmed. "She died of tuberculosis because she
wasn't allowed to have any sex life. When a person has tuberculosis or
cancer," holding the beads in one hand he bent down two fingers on the
other, "all sex life is categorically forbidden!"
This sounded like some kind of mild warning. The old man glanced
sideways at the woman, trying to sense her attitude to the matter.
"I know," the woman said, not allowing him to sense anything.
"Vissarion Belinsky also died of tuberculosis," the old man recalled
suddenly.
"Tolstoy is my favourite writer."
"It depends which Tolstoy," he corrected her. "There were three of
them."
"Leo Tolstoy, of course," she replied.
"Anna Karenina," he remarked, "is the greatest family novel of all
times and all nations."
"But why was she so jealous in her love of Vronsky?!" the woman
exclaimed, as if she had been sorrowing over this for years. "That's such a
terrible thing. Quite unendurable."
A crowd of holiday-makers had left the beach and was drifting lazily up
the street. The foreign women among them in their short beach robes seemed
particularly long-legged. A few years ago they had not been allowed to walk
into town in such attire; now apparently is was tolerated. My new
acquaintance reappeared.
"They seem to be very late," he said without any special regret.
I poured out some more champagne.
"That's German punctuality for you," I said.
"German punctuality is very much exaggerated," he replied. We drank. He
took an apple from the dish and bit into it vigourously.
"So it was the primitive mentality of the police that saved you?" I
reminded him when he had swallowed his bite of apple.
"Yes," he nodded, and went on, "the Gestapo turned the whole
philosophical faculty upside down but for some reason they left us alone.
They decided it must have been the work of students whose line of study
would enable them to compare Hegel's style with Hitler's. One day all the
students of the philosophical faculty had their lecture notes confiscated,
although we had printed our pamphlets in block capitals. Two of the students
refused to surrender their notes and were taken straight from the university
to the Gestapo."
"What did they do to them?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied, allowing his asymmetrical face to break into a
sardonic smile. "Released them the next day with profound apologies. These
brave fellows had influence in high places. One of them had an uncle who
worked in Goebbels' office, or pretty near it. Admittedly, while they were
finding this out, they gave him a nice..." He paused and made an eloquent
gesture with his fist.
"A black-eye," I suggested.
"Yes, a black-eye," he repeated the expression that had evaded him with
some pleasure. "And he went about for a whole week with that black-eye, very
proud of it. Actually that was one of the typical things about the Reich--a
return to primitive tribal relationships."
"Was this deliberate or part of the logic of the regime?"
"Both, I think," he replied after a pause. "The Reich bosses tried to
pick their men on a local as well as a family basis. Sharing the same
accent, the same memories of a certain part of the country and so on
provided them with a substitute for what educated people call spiritual
affinity. And then, of course, there was the system of the invisible
hostage. Our family, for instance, lived in constant fear because of
mother's brother. He had been a Social-Democrat, arrested in thirty-four.
For several years we were able to correspond with him, then out letters
started coming hack stamped 'adressat unbekannt', meaning that the person
they were addressed to was no longer there. We told mother he must have been
moved to another camp where correspondence was not allowed, but my father
and I suspected that he had been killed. And after the war we learned that
he had been."
"Tell me," I said. "wasn't this a handicap for you while you were at
college or at work?"
"Not directly," he said slowly, speaking between pauses, "but one
always had a feeling of uncertainty or even guilt. It's a difficult kind of
feeling to express in words. You have to experience it in reality. It seemed
to get stronger, then tail off, then come on again. But it never disappeared
altogether. A kind of inferiority complex towards the state--that's how I
could define that particular condition."
"You put it very clearly," I said and poured out the rest of the
champagne. Whether it was the drink or the precision of his definition I am
not sure, but I did envisage very clearly the condition he had described.
"To give you an even better idea, I'll tell you about something that
happened to myself," he said and, smacking his lips, placed his empty glass
on the table. He was certainly enjoying the champagne.
"What about another bottle?" I suggested.
"Fine," he said, "but you must let me pay for it."
"That would be contrary to our custom." I said, swelling with pride in
my own generosity.
I held up the empty bottle for the waitress to see. She was watching a
workman crouched beside the barrel where the ice-cream was kept. He was
breaking up a large lump of ice wrapped in wet sackcloth. The waitress
nodded and turned unwillingly to the bar. My companion offered me a
cigarette and lit one himself.
The pensioner was still talking to the woman at his table. I listened
again.
"Churchill," he declared sententiously, "recognised no other drink
except Armenian brandy and Georgian Borzhomi."
"Wasn't he afraid they'd take their revenge on him?" said the woman,
nodding at the bottle of Borzhomi.
"No," the pensioner replied blandly. "Stalin had promised him. And you
know how Stalin kept his word?"
"Of course," said the woman.
"I wonder," the German remarked, "what is the popular local wine here?"
"I have read the Stalin-Churchill correspondence," the pensioner said.
"It's an extremely rare book."
"At the moment," I said, still listening to the conversation at the
next table, "Isabella is the favourite."
"You couldn't lend it to me to read, could you?" the woman asked.
"Never heard of it," said my companion after some reflection.
"No, I cannot, my dear," the pensioner replied more gently, to soften
the refusal. "But I can let you have some other rare book. I've been
collecting rare books ever since I retired."
"It's a local peasant wine." I said. "It happens to be in fashion at
the moment."
The German nodded.
"Have you got Woman in White?"
"Of course," the pensioner nodded. "I have all the rare books. "
"Lend it to me. I read fast," she said.
"I can't lend you Woman in White, but you can have any of my other rare
books."
"But why can't you lend me Woman in White?" she asked bitterly.
"Not because I don't trust you but because someone else has it at
present," said the old man.
"Fashion is a remarkable thing," my companion observed suddenly,
stubbing out his cigarette on the side of the ash-tray. "In the 'twenties
there used to be a popular film actor who made himself up to look exactly
like Hitler."
"How do you mean?"
"He either sensed or foresaw the kind of looks that would appeal to the
lower middle classes as a whole. And a few years later the image he had
created turned up in the real person of Adolph Hitler."
"That's very interesting," I said.
The waitress came up with a fresh bottle of champagne. Instead of
allowing her to uncork it, I took the cool wet bottle myself. She cleared
away the empty ice-cream dishes.
I removed the foil from the neck of the bottle and, holding down the
white polythene cork with one hand unfastened the wire with the other. The
cork pressed up against my hand with all the force of a strong, living
creature. I released the air gradually, then poured out the champagne. As I
tipped the bottle a wisp of vapour rose from the neck.
We each drank a full glass. The new bottle was even cooler and tasted
better still.
"After I had graduated," he said, still replacing his glass on the
table in the same firm, deliberate manner, "I was accepted by the institute
of the famous Professor Hartz. In those days I was considered a young and
promising physicist and they put me in a group engaged in theoretical
studies. The scientists at our institute led a rather secluded existence and
tried to cut themselves off as much as possible from the life around them.
But this was becoming more and more difficult, if only because one might
easily be killed any day by the American bombing. In 1943 several districts
in our town were bombed so badly that even the medieval enthusiasts could
not pass them off as picturesque ruins. More and more cripples from the
Eastern Front kept appearing in the town, and more and more tormented
women's and children's faces, but Goebbels' propaganda went on proclaiming
victory, in which by this time no one, in our circle at least, had any
belief whatever.
"One Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting in my room reading a novel of
pre-Nazi days, I heard the voices of my wife and someone else, a man, coming
from the next room. My wife's voice sounded worried. She opened the door and
looked anxiously into my room.
" 'There's someone to see you,' she said, and stood aside to admit a
person who was a complete stranger to me.
" 'You're wanted at the institute,' he said after a brief greeting.
'It's for an urgent conference.'
" 'Why didn't they ring me up?' I asked, watching him closely. He must
be some new man from the administrative side, I decided.
" 'You can probably guess,' he said significantly.
" 'But why on Sunday?' my wife protested.
" 'We don't discuss orders from our superiors,' he retorted with a
shrug.
"By that time we were used to the police making a great show of
vigilance around our institute. There was nothing we could do about it. You
had only to ring from one room to another to speak to a colleague about some
problem connected with our work and the line would go dead. This was
regarded as a means of protecting us against any leakage of information.
Now, apparently, they had decided to inform us of top-secret conferences by
their own official messengers.
" 'I'll be ready in a minute,' I said, and began changing.
" 'Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee?' my wife suggested. I could
still feel the alarm in her voice.
" 'Very well,' I replied, and nodded to reassure her.
" 'Thank you,' the man said, and sat down in an armchair, glancing out
of the corner of his eye at the bookshelves. My wife left the room.
" 'I am from the Gestapo,' the man informed me when he had heard the
door close behind my wife in the next room. He said this in a toneless voice
as if trying to contain the explosive force of his statement as far as
possible.
"I felt my fingers instantly go numb and fumbled helplessly to button
my shirt. By a great effort of will I managed to overcome their rigidity and
guide the buttons into place, and then adjust my neck-tie. To this day I
remember those few seconds of suffocating silence, the deafening rustle of
my starched shirt, the sudden irritation with my wife for always using just
that little bit too much starch in the washing and--most surprising of
all!--the sense of embarrassment at having to do something so disrespectful
as change my clothes in this stranger's presence, while all the time the
underlying thought behind these sensations was that I must not hurry, must
not show any sign of alarm.
" 'Well, what can I do for you?' I asked him at last.
" 'I am sure it's something quite trivial,' he said without the
slightest expression in his voice, apparently still listening for any sounds
in the other room. The sound of a door opening told us that my wife was
bringing the coffee.
"We looked at each other and he understood my silent inquiry at once.
" 'No need to cause anxiety,' he said, and gave me a significant
glance. I nodded as cheerfully as I could. I had to show that I had nothing
to be afraid of and was confident of getting home soon. I slipped a marker
into the novel I had been reading closed it briskly and dropped it on the
table. If he had been watching my behaviour, this gesture should have told
him that I expected to return to my book that evening.
" 'We have decided we had better go right away,' he said rising, when
my wife appeared in the doorway with a steaming tray.
" 'It can't be as urgent as all that.' I protested.
"I took a cup of coffee and drank it standing, in a few searing gulps.
He also sipped a little coffee. My wife was still disturbed. She realised
that while she had been out of the room I must have elicited some more
definite information from my visitor and she looked inquiringly into my
eyes. I gave no answer to her glance. She looked at him but he remained even
more inscrutable. There was something indefinably odd about him. Perhaps it
was the oddness of the insurance agent. His dark-blue mackintosh gave him a
rather sombre elegance.
" 'But you'll be back for dinner?' she asked, when I had returned the
cup to the tray. It was still four hours till dinner time.
" 'Of course,' I said, and looked at him. He nodded, either to confirm
what I had said or in approval of my taking up his game.
"When we had left and the house was some distance behind us, he halted
and said, 'I'll go on ahead and you'll follow.'
" 'At what distance?' I asked, marvelling at my own readiness to live
according to their instructions.
" 'About twenty paces,' he said. 'I'll wait for you at the entrance. '
" 'All right,' I said, and he walked on ahead of me. There were two
weak spots in my biography--the fate of my uncle and the pamphlets. I
realised they must know all about my uncle. But how much did they know about
the pamphlets? Six years had passed since then. But for them there was no
statute of limitations and they never forgave anything. Surely none of the
others had let it out? I had told only one other person, an old
school-friend of mine. I trusted him as much as I trusted myself. But
perhaps one of the others had, like myself, confided in a friend and that
friend had betrayed him? But if they knew something, why did they not arrest
me straightaway? Turning all this over in my mind, I walked on in the wake
of my escort. He seemed to be in no hurry. In his slouch hat and dark-blue
mackintosh he now looked more like a street lounger.
"The Gestapo office was situated in an old mansion surrounded by tall
plane trees. On one side it looked over a field, where some schoolboys were
playing football. Several bicycles lay gleaming in the grass. It was strange
to see these lads and hear their excited voices so near this sinister
building whose purpose was common knowledge in the town. The pavement on
this side of the street was almost deserted. People preferred to keep to the
other side. I followed my escort down a dimly lit corridor. There was no
guard on the door. My escort stopped and waited for me at a pass-office
window. When he saw me approaching, he caught the duty officer's eye and
nodded in my direction. The duty officer was speaking on the phone. He
glanced at me and put down the receiver.
"There was a cup of tea on his desk with a crushed slice of lemon
floating in it. He stirred it with a spoon and sipped. We walked on down the
corridor, at the end of which I could make out the iron cage of a lift. We
entered the lift. He slammed the iron door and pressed a button. The lift
stopped on the third floor.
"We came out of the lift and walked down a long corridor lit by dim
electric bulbs, then turned down a side corridor and into another and at
last, when I thought the corridors would never end, we halted at a door
padded with black leather, or some kind of material that looked like black
leather.
"My escort nodded to me to wait, took off his hat and opened the door a
little. But even before he opened it, he and his dark-blue mackintosh seemed
to melt into the black background of the door. This corridor like all the
others was poorly lighted.
"Five minutes later the door opened again and I saw the pale blob of my
escort's face in the blackness of the door. The blob nodded and I entered
the room.
"It was a large, well lighted room with windows looking out over the
field where the boys were still playing football. I had not expected to find
myself on this side of the building. It may have been pure coincidence but
at the time I was sure they had deliberately confused my sense of direction.
The large desk was bare save for an inkstand, an open folder and a pile of
clean notepaper. Behind it sat a man of about thirty with a narrow,
carefully shaven face. We greeted each other and he extended his hand to me
over the desk.
" 'Won't you sit down,' he said, and nodded to an armchair. I sat down.
He spent a minute or so rather casually leafing through the contents of the
file that lay in front of him. The desk was very wide and it was quite
impossible to read what he was looking at. But I was certain that the file
was about me.
" 'Have you been at the institute long?' he asked, still thumbing the
pages casually. I replied briefly, quite sure that he knew far more about me
than his question indicated. He turned a few more pages.
" 'In what department?' he asked. I named my department and he nodded,
still examining the file as though seeking confirmation of what I had told
him.
" 'How do they feel at the institute about the war against Russia?' he
asked, and this time he raised his head.
" 'Like the whole German people,' I said.
"A faint expression of boredom appeared in his dark, almond-shaped
eyes.
" 'Could you be more specific?'
" 'Scientists are not very interested in politics, you know,' I said.
" 'Unfortunately,' he nodded pompously and, putting on a more dignified
air, added suddenly, 'Do you know that the Führer himself finds time to take
an interest in the work of your institute?'
"A glassy look came into his eyes and for a second his whole appearance
bore a distant resemblance to Hitler.
" 'Yes, I do,' I said.
"The institute authorities had often told us confidentially about this
and made it clear that in response to this exceptional interest on the part
of the Führer we should display exceptional zeal in our work.
" 'But the Führer is not the only person who is interested in your
work,' he continued after a generous pause, in which I was granted time to
enjoy the pleasant side of the matter. 'The enemies of the Reich are also
interested.'
"The glassy look reappeared in his eyes and he again resembled the
Führer, this time in expressing ruthlessness towards the Reich's enemies.
"I shrugged. This was a relief. Apparently he did not know about my
escapade at the university. He went back to the file, leafed through it,
then stopped suddenly and began to read a page with raised eyebrows. The
tension grew inside me again. He did know, after all.
" 'Your uncle seems to have been a Social-Democrat?' he queried, as
though he had quite by chance discovered a slight blemish in my intellectual
background. Even the way he said 'your uncle' seemed to express contempt
for, rather than hatred of, the Social-Democrats.
" 'Yes, he is,' I said.
" 'Where is he now?' he asked, making no attempt to conceal the falsity
in his voice. I told him the whole story, which he knew perfectly well
already.
" 'There you are, you see,' he nodded, and his tone seemed to indicate
that this was the inevitable outcome of such hopelessly obsolete patriarchal
convictions. But I was wrong. His tone indicated something quite different.
" 'There you are,' he repeated. 'We trust you, but what is your
response?'
" 'I trust you too,' I said, as firmly as I could.
"He nodded. 'Yes, I know you are a patriot, even though your uncle was
a Social-Democrat.'
" 'Was?' I could not help repeating, and felt a sudden stab of pain in
the chest. We had kept hope alive in spite of everything. Apparently the
Gestapo man had said more than he intended. Or was he merely pretending to
have done so?
" 'Was and still is,' he corrected himself, but this sounded even more
hopeless. 'I know you are a patriot,' he repeated, 'but the time has come
for you to show your patriotism in practice.'
" 'What have you in mind?' I asked. The hand leafing through the file
stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke an unopened page. He seemed
scarcely able to resist the pleasure of turning it. Once again I had a
suspicion that he knew something about those pamphlets.
" 'Help us in our work,' he said simply, and looked into my eyes.
"I had never expected this. My face must have expressed either fright
or revulsion.
" 'You won't have to come here,' he added quickly. 'One of our people
will meet you about once a month and you will tell him...'
" 'Tell him what?' I interrupted.
" 'The attitude of scientists, instances of hostile or subversive
statements,' he said evenly. 'We need relevant information, not
surveillance. You know how much importance is attached to your institute.'
"He sounded like a doctor persuading a patient to take the prescribed
medicines.
"His dark, almond-shaped eyes were watching me steadily. The skin on
his clean-shaven, bluish face was so taut that it looked as if any grimace,
any private expression would cause him pain by pinching the already
overstrained skin. He therefore tried to maintain only one expression on his
face that was in line with the general direction of his service.
" 'If it were a matter of any hostile statements,' I said,
involuntarily bringing my own voice and face in line with this general
direction, 'I would consider it my duty to bring them to your notice in any
case.'
"As soon as I began to say this the faint expression of boredom again
appeared in his eyes and I suddenly realised that all this was to him merely
a long familiar form of refusal.
" 'Bearing in mind the fact that we are at war,' I added, to make it
sound more convincing. This had eased the situation. It was not the first
time they had heard a refusal.
" 'Yes, of course,' he said expressionlessly, and reached out for the
telephone as it began to ring.
" 'Yes,' he said, and a voice grated in the receiver. 'Yes,' he
repeated from time to time as the voice went on. His monosyllabic replies
sounded impressive and I sensed that he was playing the high official for my
benefit.
" 'He's bluffing,' he said suddenly into the receiver, and I gave an
involuntary start. 'Here, in my room,' he added. 'Come over.'
"All this time he must have been talking about me over the phone. This
fisher of my soul now rose to his feet, took a bundle of keys out of his
pocket and walked over to a safe and, as he did so, another man entered the
room. I felt instinctively that this must be the person who had just been
speaking on the phone. He glanced at me with a kind of casual curiosity, and
I decided that they had not been talking about me.
"The first Gestapo man opened his safe and bent forward to look inside.
I caught a glimpse of several rows of mousy-coloured files standing tightly
packed on the shelves. He hooked two fingers into one of them and pried it
out. The file actually seemed to resist and at the last moment, as it
reluctantly gave in, emitted a kind of squeal, like the cry of a captured
animal.
"The files were so tightly packed that the row closed again at once, as
though nothing had been removed. The other man took the file and silently
left the room.
" 'So you don't want to co-operate with us?' said my interrogator,
resuming his seat. His hand again glided to the unopened page and stroked
it.
" 'Hardly that,' I said, feeling my eyes drawn irresistibly to the page
that was quivering under his hand.
" 'Or is it your uncle's principles that forbid it?' he asked. I felt
the spring of annoyance within him begin to tighten. And all of a sudden I
realised that the main thing now was not to show him that it was normal
human decency that prevented me from having any connection with him.
" 'Principles have nothing to do with it,' I said. 'It's simply that
every job demands a sense of vocation.'
" 'You should try. Perhaps you have the right one,' he said. The spring
had slackened a little.
" 'No,' I said, after a little reflection. 'I am no good at hiding my
thoughts. I am far too talkative.'
" 'Is that a hereditary defect?'
" 'No,' I said, 'just part of my character.'
" 'By the way, what was this incident at the university?' he asked
suddenly, raising his head. I had not noticed him turn the page.
" 'What incident?' I asked, feeling a dryness in my throat.
" 'Shall I remind you?' he asked, pointing to the page.
" 'I don't remember any incident,' I said, and braced myself.
"We eyed each other for several long seconds. If he knows, I thought, I
have nothing to lose. And if he doesn't know this is still the only way to
act.
" 'Very well,' he said suddenly, drawing a clean sheet from the pile of
paper and placing it before me. 'Put it all down on paper.'
" 'Put what down?'
" 'That you refuse to help the Reich,' he said.
"So he doesn't know, I thought, feeling renewed strength. He knows that
there was some such incident while I was studying but nothing more. And now
I took a quiet pleasure in estimating the extent of his knowledge.
" 'I'm not refusing,' I said, pushing the sheet gently aside.
" 'So you agree, then?'
" 'I am quite prepared to carry out my duty to my country but without
these formalities,' I said, trying to choose the mildest possible
expressions. The pamphlet danger seemed to have passed, but I was afraid he
might bring it up again. At the moment when he had asked me straight out, I
had been almost certain that he had no precise knowledge, but now that the
danger seemed to have passed I was even more afraid to return to this dark
spot. Instinctively I was trying to get as far away from it as possible and
I sensed that this could only be done at the price of some concession. He
can only be diverted by the chance of a breakthrough somewhere else, I
thought.
" 'No,' he said, and a rather sentimental note crept into his voice,
'you'd better put it down honestly in black and white that you refuse to
perform your patriotic duty.'
" 'I'll think it over,' I said.
" 'Yes, of course you must,' he said amicably and, opening a drawer,
took out a cigarette and lighted it. 'Have a smoke?' he suggested.
" 'Yes,' I said.
"He produced an open packet from his drawer and offered it to me. I
took a cigarette, and then noticed that his own cigarette was from another,
more expensive packet. I almost laughed in his face as he offered me a
light. Even in this, apparently, he had to feel his superiority.
"I was silent and so was he. I was supposed to be thinking things over.
Silence was to my advantage.
" 'You should bear in mind,' he recalled suddenly, 'that our service
has not done away with material incentives.'
" 'In what sense?' I asked. This was subject worth developing. I had to
impress upon him that I was moving in his direction.
" 'We don't pay too badly,' he said.
" 'How much?' I asked with deliberate arrogance. I had to show him that
he had succeeded in overcoming what they would call my weak-kneed
intellectual scruples. A flicker of resentment appeared in his eyes--this
was an insult to the firm. Perhaps I had gone too far.
" 'That would depend on the fruitfulness of your work,' he said. Yes,
fruitfulness--that was the word he used.
"I shook my head regretfully, as if I had been considering my budget.
'No,' I said. 'They don't pay me too badly at the institute.'
" 'But in time we shall be able to provide you with a good flat,' he
said in some alarm. Now we were bargaining.
" 'I have a good flat already,' I said.
" 'We'll give you a flat in a district that has the best air-raid
shelter in the city,' he promised, and looked out of the window. 'The
American gangsters of the air have no mercy even on women and children.
Under these conditions we have to look after our personnel.'
"That was a typical sample of national-socialist logic. The Americans
were bombing women and children, so there had to be special protection for
Gestapo men. Altogether this dangerous game lasted for about three hours.
The essence of it was that I had to display a readiness to join them but at
the last moment I must appear to be held back by a purely self-centred
attitude of caution or some other consideration far removed from ordinary
standards of human decency. At one point he nearly cornered me by pointing
out with a fair degree of logic that I was actually working for
national-socialism as it was, and my attempt to avoid any direct commitment
was merely a refusal to face the facts. However, I managed to evade the
issue. This tragic problem had been discussed often enough in our own
circle, which was naturally a very narrow and trusted one. History had
granted our generation no right of choice and to demand any more of us than
ordinary decency would have been unrealistic."
My companion broke off and lapsed into deep thought. I poured out more
champagne and we again emptied our glasses.
"Do you rule out the idea of heroism?" I asked involuntarily.
"No," he replied quickly. "Heroism is something I would compare with
genius, moral genius."
"And what is the conclusion from that?" I asked.
"I believe that heroism always implies a supreme act of reason,
practical action, but a scientist who refused to work for Hitler would not
make his protest heard further than the nearest Gestapo office."
"But one doesn't have to give a direct refusal," I said.
"An indirect refusal would be pointless. Nobody would understand such a
gesture and there would always be someone else to fill the gap when the
person in question was eventually removed, if there was a gap to fill."
"All right," I said. "But even if no one notices his removal, he can
still refuse for the sake of his own conscience, can he not?"
"I don't know," he said, and gave me a rather strange look. "I have
never heard of such a case. That's far too abstract, too maximalist.
Something out of The Karamazov Brothers... But I know that in your country
you take a different view of heroism too."
"We believe that heroism can be inculcated," I replied with some relief
at getting back to a less complex subject. I had begun to think that he was
misunderstanding me.
"I don't think so," he shook his head. "Under our conditions, the
conditions of fascism, it would have been quite wrong and even harmful to
ask a person, particularly a scientist, to offer heroic resistance to the
regime. If you put the issue that way--either heroic resistance to fascism
or complete involvement in it--what you are doing, as a friend of mine once
remarked, is to completely disarm people morally. There were some scientists
who at first condemned our conciliatory tactics, then gave up the whole
thing and concentrated on making a career. Say what you like, but common
decency is a great thing."
"But common decency could not defeat the regime?"
"Of course, not."
"Then where's the solution?"
"In this case the solution was provided by the Red Army," he said, and
his asymmetrical face broke into a smile.
"But if Hitler had been more careful and not attacked us?"
"He could have chosen a different time, but that's not the point. The
point is that the very victories he achieved in such feverish haste were the
result of the corruption of a regime which even without the Red Army could
not have lasted more than two or three generations. But that was just the
situation in which what I call decency would have acquired even greater
significance as a means of preserving the nation's moral fibre for a more or
less opportune historical moment."
"We are getting away from the subject," I said. "What happened to you
after that?"
"Well, to put it briefly," he resumed, lighting another cigarette, "the
hunt for my soul lasted about three hours, in the course of which he left
the room and returned several times. In the end we both got tired and he
suddenly marched me off to someone I took to be his boss. We entered a huge
waiting room with a middle-aged woman, a rather plump brunette, sitting at a
desk loaded with telephones. Three other people were waiting in the room and
I recognised one of them as the man who had come in for the file. The woman
was speaking on the telephone. She was talking to her daughter. Apparently
the girl had just come home from a picnic and was pouring out an excited
story. I could feel that even at some distance from the phone. It was rather
strange to hear such things in a place like this. Then a bell rang on the
desk.
" 'All right, that's enough for now,' I heard the woman say as she put
down the receiver. She stood up and walked quickly into the office. The four
Gestapo men drew themselves up respectfully. Two minutes later she
reappeared.
" 'Go inside,' she said and, as she went back to her desk, gave me a
look that set my nerves on edge. Only a woman can give you that kind of
look. Such a vicious look, I mean. No, there was none of the hatred or
contempt that I could expect at any moment from those other four. That look
of hers consisted of a feline curiosity in my guts on the one hand, and
complete confidence in her master, on the other. It may have been the effect
of fatigue, but I actually felt as if my guts might at any moment rise into
my throat.
"We went into the office. It was an even more luxurious chamber with an
even bigger desk loaded with telephones of various colours, and an inkstand
shaped like the ruins of an old castle. A big man, who looked rather like
the manager of a flourishing restaurant, was sitting at the desk. He was
darkhaired and wore a fawn suit with a flamboyant necktie.
"He offered no one a seat and we remained standing by the door. The
three men from the waiting room, closer to the desk, and I with my escort a
little further away.
" 'So he can't make up his mind?' the chief boomed thunderously,
staring at me with astonished eyes. 'A promising young scientist and he
won't co-operate with us? I just can't believe it!' he exclaimed, and
suddenly rose to his full, impressive height.
"His astonished eyes seemed to implore me to deny this false and
perhaps even maliciously invented information that his assistants had
supplied. As soon as he spoke, I realised he was aping Goering. This was a
fashion among functionaries of the Reich in those days. Each of them chose
for himself the mask of one of the leaders.
" 'And this at a time when hordes of Asians are hurling themselves at
the sacred soil of Germany, at a time when gangsters of the air are bombing
innocent children to death!' He motioned towards the window and to the field
beyond where the children were still playing football. They must have been
different children by this time, but it seemed to me that both the field and
the children had been cultivated specially by the Gestapo for purposes of
illustration.
" 'I am not refusing,' I began, but he interrupted me.
" 'Do you hear that? Didn't I tell you?' he exclaimed. He seemed about
to jump on the desk in his enthusiasm. But his tone changed soon enough when
he addressed his assistants. 'So you failed to explain to him where his duty
lies. You couldn't find the key that exists for every German heart.'
"He looked at me with his bovine eyes and I could see that he was
asking for my consent not so much for me to work for them but as a boost to
his pedagogical prestige. Let us both put these incompetent devils to shame,
he seemed to be suggesting--the murderous clown.
" 'You see, it's like this...' I began, sensing that this pedagogical
process was going to cost me dear. But just at that moment, to my good
fortune, the door opened. He glared at the door like an infuriated bull. It
was the secretary.
" 'Berlin,' she said softly, and nodded towards one of the telephones.
"He seized the receiver, and it was immediately obvious that we had all
vanished from the face of the earth and even he, as he bent over the phone,
had correspondingly diminished in stature.
"We withdrew silently to the waiting room, and from the waiting room
into the corridor. The secretary ignored us completely.
"I returned with the fisher of my soul to his office. I felt that he
was utterly fed up with me. I also sensed that both he and his colleagues
were at heart glad that their chief had failed in his pedagogical efforts.
My man made no further attempt to argue with me.
"He signed my permission to leave, wrote a telephone dawn on a slip of
paper, and said, 'If you make up your mind, ring this number.'
" 'All right,' I said, and left the room. I don't remember how I found
my way home. As I walked through the streets I felt the kind of weakness and
pleasure that one experiences on first getting up after a long illness. When
I was sure that no one was following me, I tore up the slip of paper and
threw it into a refuse bin, though for some reason I still tried to remember
the number.
"The next day I did not telephone, of course. But every day after that
I lived in a state of constant suspense. One evening when I came home from
work my wife said that the phone had rung but, when she had answered it,
someone had put the receiver down at the other end. A few days later I
myself answered the phone and again there was no reply, or rather I heard
someone carefully replace the receiver. Or perhaps it was my imagination.
"I didn't know what to think. In the street and in buses I began to
have the impression that there was a detective's eye upon me.
"At the entrance to the institute I would feel nervous if the guard on
duty took more than usual interest in my pass.
"Two or three months went by. One day an old school friend of mine rang
up. He was now a well-known criminal lawyer and lived in Berlin. As usual we
agreed to meet for a walk in town and then go back to my house for dinner.
My wife was delighted. His company always had a good effect on me and now I
particularly needed something to liven me up.
"He was a witty talker, rather frivolous, but always a good friend.
Whenever he visited us from Berlin he would bring with him a whole
collection of anecdotes that gave us a better idea of what was going on in
the Reich than any other type of information.
"On this occasion he rang off with his usual 'Heil Hitler, thank you
for your attention', referring to the fact that all hotel telephones were
monitored. For the first time in all these weeks I found myself smiling
broadly. I, too, was convinced that my telephone was being tapped.
"My friend and I had similar views on everything that was happening in
Germany. Incidentally, he was the only person I had told about my student
escapade.
" 'I don't believe the Reich is going to last a thousand years but
it'll last quite long enough for our generation,' he would say when we
talked about it. Like everyone with a gift for humour he was a pessimist.
During the past year the information from the Eastern Front had made it look
as if he had overrated the Reich's potential. When I had told him this
during his previous visit, he had disagreed.
" 'On the contrary,' he had exclaimed. 'I underrated the extent of
Hitler's madness.'
"We met in the lounge of his hotel. As soon as we were out in the
street and at a safe distance, I said, 'Well, start away. Hitler goes into
an air-raid shelter and there...'
" 'My God!' he exclaimed. 'Only night watchmen tell that kind of story
nowadays. The latest thing is the carpet-eater series. '
" 'What's that?' I asked.
" 'Listen,' he said, and started on one story after another. Their
general theme was that Hitler, on hearing the news of fresh defeats on the
Eastern Front, would throw himself on the floor of his study and bite the
carpet. We passed several blocks and he was still relating stories from what
seemed a quite inexhaustible series. The last one he told, which was far
from the best, has engraved itself on my memory.
"Hitler goes into a shop to buy a new carpet. 'Shall I wrap it up for
you, or do you wish to gnaw it on the premises?' asks the salesman.
"He had just told this story, when my Gestapo man appeared round the
corner coming towards me. In my confusion I could not make up my mind
whether to greet him or not. At the last moment I realised that this would
he the wrong thing to do, but then I noticed that my friend and he had
nodded to each other.
"We walked on. My mind was in a whirl. He went on talking but I could
not understand a word. His voice seemed to come from far away. Feverish
thoughts raced through my head. He was working for the Gestapo. They had
called him as a witness. I should be shot.
"And yet I still clung to the hope that the Gestapo man was merely a
chance acquaintance of his. Perhaps they had met in connection with one of
his cases. He had often told me that the Gestapo interfered in political and
criminal trials alike.
"But how could I find out? The realisation came to me in a flash. It
was quite simple. I must ask him straight out. If they had met by chance he
would say who he was, but if they had a secret connection he would, of
course, invent something.
" 'By the way, who was that you nodded to?' I asked a few minutes
later. Oh God, how much depended on his answer. How I would have hugged him
if only he had told me the whole truth!
" 'Oh, just someone I happen to know,' he replied with studied
indifference. I felt his momentary hesitation and all the rest seemed to
good-looking man among them."
"Prisoners of war are never good-looking," the pensioner interrupted
superciliously, as though revealing some profound psychological truth behind
her ethnographical observation and thus disposing of the modest value of the
observation itself.
"I don't see why..." the woman began, but the old man in tussore silk
raised his finger and she fell silent.
"However, Japan is at the same time a major source of potential
aggression," he said, "because she is tied up with America through banking
capital."
"If you ask me, they're all a lot of scoundrels in America, except for
about ten per cent," the woman responded and, noticing the old man touching
his beads, herself began to finger her necklace.
"A country of enormous wealth," the pensioner proclaimed thoughtfully,
and propped his elbows on the table, two sharp, uncompromising elbows
outlined through the wide sleeves of his tussore tunic.
"Dupont's daughter," he began, but the thought of the educational level
of his audience made him pause. "Do you know who Dupont is?"
The woman looked confused. "Oh yes, that one..."
"Dupont is a multi-millionaire," the old man declared harshly. "And
compared with a multi-millionaire a millionaire is considered a mere
beggar."
"Good heavens," the woman sighed.
"Well," the pensioner continued, "Dupont's daughter came to a reception
wearing diamonds worth ten million dollars. Now I suppose you'll ask why no
one robbed her?"
The old man leaned back, as though offering time and space for the
widest conjecture.
"Why?" the woman asked, still overawed by the wealth of the
multi-millionaires.
"Because she was guarded by fifty detectives disguised as distinguished
foreign guests, " the pensioner concluded triumphantly, and sipped at his
Borzhomi from the small tumbler.
"Now they've published Admiral Nelson's private correspondence," the
woman remarked. "A man can write all sorts of things to a woman..."
"I know," the old man interrupted sternly. "But that's the English."
"It's a shame anyhow," said the woman.
"Vivian Leigh," the pensioner continued, "tried to save the admiral's
honour but she failed."
"I know," said the woman, "she's dead, isn't she?"
"Yes," the old man affirmed. "She died of tuberculosis because she
wasn't allowed to have any sex life. When a person has tuberculosis or
cancer," holding the beads in one hand he bent down two fingers on the
other, "all sex life is categorically forbidden!"
This sounded like some kind of mild warning. The old man glanced
sideways at the woman, trying to sense her attitude to the matter.
"I know," the woman said, not allowing him to sense anything.
"Vissarion Belinsky also died of tuberculosis," the old man recalled
suddenly.
"Tolstoy is my favourite writer."
"It depends which Tolstoy," he corrected her. "There were three of
them."
"Leo Tolstoy, of course," she replied.
"Anna Karenina," he remarked, "is the greatest family novel of all
times and all nations."
"But why was she so jealous in her love of Vronsky?!" the woman
exclaimed, as if she had been sorrowing over this for years. "That's such a
terrible thing. Quite unendurable."
A crowd of holiday-makers had left the beach and was drifting lazily up
the street. The foreign women among them in their short beach robes seemed
particularly long-legged. A few years ago they had not been allowed to walk
into town in such attire; now apparently is was tolerated. My new
acquaintance reappeared.
"They seem to be very late," he said without any special regret.
I poured out some more champagne.
"That's German punctuality for you," I said.
"German punctuality is very much exaggerated," he replied. We drank. He
took an apple from the dish and bit into it vigourously.
"So it was the primitive mentality of the police that saved you?" I
reminded him when he had swallowed his bite of apple.
"Yes," he nodded, and went on, "the Gestapo turned the whole
philosophical faculty upside down but for some reason they left us alone.
They decided it must have been the work of students whose line of study
would enable them to compare Hegel's style with Hitler's. One day all the
students of the philosophical faculty had their lecture notes confiscated,
although we had printed our pamphlets in block capitals. Two of the students
refused to surrender their notes and were taken straight from the university
to the Gestapo."
"What did they do to them?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied, allowing his asymmetrical face to break into a
sardonic smile. "Released them the next day with profound apologies. These
brave fellows had influence in high places. One of them had an uncle who
worked in Goebbels' office, or pretty near it. Admittedly, while they were
finding this out, they gave him a nice..." He paused and made an eloquent
gesture with his fist.
"A black-eye," I suggested.
"Yes, a black-eye," he repeated the expression that had evaded him with
some pleasure. "And he went about for a whole week with that black-eye, very
proud of it. Actually that was one of the typical things about the Reich--a
return to primitive tribal relationships."
"Was this deliberate or part of the logic of the regime?"
"Both, I think," he replied after a pause. "The Reich bosses tried to
pick their men on a local as well as a family basis. Sharing the same
accent, the same memories of a certain part of the country and so on
provided them with a substitute for what educated people call spiritual
affinity. And then, of course, there was the system of the invisible
hostage. Our family, for instance, lived in constant fear because of
mother's brother. He had been a Social-Democrat, arrested in thirty-four.
For several years we were able to correspond with him, then out letters
started coming hack stamped 'adressat unbekannt', meaning that the person
they were addressed to was no longer there. We told mother he must have been
moved to another camp where correspondence was not allowed, but my father
and I suspected that he had been killed. And after the war we learned that
he had been."
"Tell me," I said. "wasn't this a handicap for you while you were at
college or at work?"
"Not directly," he said slowly, speaking between pauses, "but one
always had a feeling of uncertainty or even guilt. It's a difficult kind of
feeling to express in words. You have to experience it in reality. It seemed
to get stronger, then tail off, then come on again. But it never disappeared
altogether. A kind of inferiority complex towards the state--that's how I
could define that particular condition."
"You put it very clearly," I said and poured out the rest of the
champagne. Whether it was the drink or the precision of his definition I am
not sure, but I did envisage very clearly the condition he had described.
"To give you an even better idea, I'll tell you about something that
happened to myself," he said and, smacking his lips, placed his empty glass
on the table. He was certainly enjoying the champagne.
"What about another bottle?" I suggested.
"Fine," he said, "but you must let me pay for it."
"That would be contrary to our custom." I said, swelling with pride in
my own generosity.
I held up the empty bottle for the waitress to see. She was watching a
workman crouched beside the barrel where the ice-cream was kept. He was
breaking up a large lump of ice wrapped in wet sackcloth. The waitress
nodded and turned unwillingly to the bar. My companion offered me a
cigarette and lit one himself.
The pensioner was still talking to the woman at his table. I listened
again.
"Churchill," he declared sententiously, "recognised no other drink
except Armenian brandy and Georgian Borzhomi."
"Wasn't he afraid they'd take their revenge on him?" said the woman,
nodding at the bottle of Borzhomi.
"No," the pensioner replied blandly. "Stalin had promised him. And you
know how Stalin kept his word?"
"Of course," said the woman.
"I wonder," the German remarked, "what is the popular local wine here?"
"I have read the Stalin-Churchill correspondence," the pensioner said.
"It's an extremely rare book."
"At the moment," I said, still listening to the conversation at the
next table, "Isabella is the favourite."
"You couldn't lend it to me to read, could you?" the woman asked.
"Never heard of it," said my companion after some reflection.
"No, I cannot, my dear," the pensioner replied more gently, to soften
the refusal. "But I can let you have some other rare book. I've been
collecting rare books ever since I retired."
"It's a local peasant wine." I said. "It happens to be in fashion at
the moment."
The German nodded.
"Have you got Woman in White?"
"Of course," the pensioner nodded. "I have all the rare books. "
"Lend it to me. I read fast," she said.
"I can't lend you Woman in White, but you can have any of my other rare
books."
"But why can't you lend me Woman in White?" she asked bitterly.
"Not because I don't trust you but because someone else has it at
present," said the old man.
"Fashion is a remarkable thing," my companion observed suddenly,
stubbing out his cigarette on the side of the ash-tray. "In the 'twenties
there used to be a popular film actor who made himself up to look exactly
like Hitler."
"How do you mean?"
"He either sensed or foresaw the kind of looks that would appeal to the
lower middle classes as a whole. And a few years later the image he had
created turned up in the real person of Adolph Hitler."
"That's very interesting," I said.
The waitress came up with a fresh bottle of champagne. Instead of
allowing her to uncork it, I took the cool wet bottle myself. She cleared
away the empty ice-cream dishes.
I removed the foil from the neck of the bottle and, holding down the
white polythene cork with one hand unfastened the wire with the other. The
cork pressed up against my hand with all the force of a strong, living
creature. I released the air gradually, then poured out the champagne. As I
tipped the bottle a wisp of vapour rose from the neck.
We each drank a full glass. The new bottle was even cooler and tasted
better still.
"After I had graduated," he said, still replacing his glass on the
table in the same firm, deliberate manner, "I was accepted by the institute
of the famous Professor Hartz. In those days I was considered a young and
promising physicist and they put me in a group engaged in theoretical
studies. The scientists at our institute led a rather secluded existence and
tried to cut themselves off as much as possible from the life around them.
But this was becoming more and more difficult, if only because one might
easily be killed any day by the American bombing. In 1943 several districts
in our town were bombed so badly that even the medieval enthusiasts could
not pass them off as picturesque ruins. More and more cripples from the
Eastern Front kept appearing in the town, and more and more tormented
women's and children's faces, but Goebbels' propaganda went on proclaiming
victory, in which by this time no one, in our circle at least, had any
belief whatever.
"One Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting in my room reading a novel of
pre-Nazi days, I heard the voices of my wife and someone else, a man, coming
from the next room. My wife's voice sounded worried. She opened the door and
looked anxiously into my room.
" 'There's someone to see you,' she said, and stood aside to admit a
person who was a complete stranger to me.
" 'You're wanted at the institute,' he said after a brief greeting.
'It's for an urgent conference.'
" 'Why didn't they ring me up?' I asked, watching him closely. He must
be some new man from the administrative side, I decided.
" 'You can probably guess,' he said significantly.
" 'But why on Sunday?' my wife protested.
" 'We don't discuss orders from our superiors,' he retorted with a
shrug.
"By that time we were used to the police making a great show of
vigilance around our institute. There was nothing we could do about it. You
had only to ring from one room to another to speak to a colleague about some
problem connected with our work and the line would go dead. This was
regarded as a means of protecting us against any leakage of information.
Now, apparently, they had decided to inform us of top-secret conferences by
their own official messengers.
" 'I'll be ready in a minute,' I said, and began changing.
" 'Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee?' my wife suggested. I could
still feel the alarm in her voice.
" 'Very well,' I replied, and nodded to reassure her.
" 'Thank you,' the man said, and sat down in an armchair, glancing out
of the corner of his eye at the bookshelves. My wife left the room.
" 'I am from the Gestapo,' the man informed me when he had heard the
door close behind my wife in the next room. He said this in a toneless voice
as if trying to contain the explosive force of his statement as far as
possible.
"I felt my fingers instantly go numb and fumbled helplessly to button
my shirt. By a great effort of will I managed to overcome their rigidity and
guide the buttons into place, and then adjust my neck-tie. To this day I
remember those few seconds of suffocating silence, the deafening rustle of
my starched shirt, the sudden irritation with my wife for always using just
that little bit too much starch in the washing and--most surprising of
all!--the sense of embarrassment at having to do something so disrespectful
as change my clothes in this stranger's presence, while all the time the
underlying thought behind these sensations was that I must not hurry, must
not show any sign of alarm.
" 'Well, what can I do for you?' I asked him at last.
" 'I am sure it's something quite trivial,' he said without the
slightest expression in his voice, apparently still listening for any sounds
in the other room. The sound of a door opening told us that my wife was
bringing the coffee.
"We looked at each other and he understood my silent inquiry at once.
" 'No need to cause anxiety,' he said, and gave me a significant
glance. I nodded as cheerfully as I could. I had to show that I had nothing
to be afraid of and was confident of getting home soon. I slipped a marker
into the novel I had been reading closed it briskly and dropped it on the
table. If he had been watching my behaviour, this gesture should have told
him that I expected to return to my book that evening.
" 'We have decided we had better go right away,' he said rising, when
my wife appeared in the doorway with a steaming tray.
" 'It can't be as urgent as all that.' I protested.
"I took a cup of coffee and drank it standing, in a few searing gulps.
He also sipped a little coffee. My wife was still disturbed. She realised
that while she had been out of the room I must have elicited some more
definite information from my visitor and she looked inquiringly into my
eyes. I gave no answer to her glance. She looked at him but he remained even
more inscrutable. There was something indefinably odd about him. Perhaps it
was the oddness of the insurance agent. His dark-blue mackintosh gave him a
rather sombre elegance.
" 'But you'll be back for dinner?' she asked, when I had returned the
cup to the tray. It was still four hours till dinner time.
" 'Of course,' I said, and looked at him. He nodded, either to confirm
what I had said or in approval of my taking up his game.
"When we had left and the house was some distance behind us, he halted
and said, 'I'll go on ahead and you'll follow.'
" 'At what distance?' I asked, marvelling at my own readiness to live
according to their instructions.
" 'About twenty paces,' he said. 'I'll wait for you at the entrance. '
" 'All right,' I said, and he walked on ahead of me. There were two
weak spots in my biography--the fate of my uncle and the pamphlets. I
realised they must know all about my uncle. But how much did they know about
the pamphlets? Six years had passed since then. But for them there was no
statute of limitations and they never forgave anything. Surely none of the
others had let it out? I had told only one other person, an old
school-friend of mine. I trusted him as much as I trusted myself. But
perhaps one of the others had, like myself, confided in a friend and that
friend had betrayed him? But if they knew something, why did they not arrest
me straightaway? Turning all this over in my mind, I walked on in the wake
of my escort. He seemed to be in no hurry. In his slouch hat and dark-blue
mackintosh he now looked more like a street lounger.
"The Gestapo office was situated in an old mansion surrounded by tall
plane trees. On one side it looked over a field, where some schoolboys were
playing football. Several bicycles lay gleaming in the grass. It was strange
to see these lads and hear their excited voices so near this sinister
building whose purpose was common knowledge in the town. The pavement on
this side of the street was almost deserted. People preferred to keep to the
other side. I followed my escort down a dimly lit corridor. There was no
guard on the door. My escort stopped and waited for me at a pass-office
window. When he saw me approaching, he caught the duty officer's eye and
nodded in my direction. The duty officer was speaking on the phone. He
glanced at me and put down the receiver.
"There was a cup of tea on his desk with a crushed slice of lemon
floating in it. He stirred it with a spoon and sipped. We walked on down the
corridor, at the end of which I could make out the iron cage of a lift. We
entered the lift. He slammed the iron door and pressed a button. The lift
stopped on the third floor.
"We came out of the lift and walked down a long corridor lit by dim
electric bulbs, then turned down a side corridor and into another and at
last, when I thought the corridors would never end, we halted at a door
padded with black leather, or some kind of material that looked like black
leather.
"My escort nodded to me to wait, took off his hat and opened the door a
little. But even before he opened it, he and his dark-blue mackintosh seemed
to melt into the black background of the door. This corridor like all the
others was poorly lighted.
"Five minutes later the door opened again and I saw the pale blob of my
escort's face in the blackness of the door. The blob nodded and I entered
the room.
"It was a large, well lighted room with windows looking out over the
field where the boys were still playing football. I had not expected to find
myself on this side of the building. It may have been pure coincidence but
at the time I was sure they had deliberately confused my sense of direction.
The large desk was bare save for an inkstand, an open folder and a pile of
clean notepaper. Behind it sat a man of about thirty with a narrow,
carefully shaven face. We greeted each other and he extended his hand to me
over the desk.
" 'Won't you sit down,' he said, and nodded to an armchair. I sat down.
He spent a minute or so rather casually leafing through the contents of the
file that lay in front of him. The desk was very wide and it was quite
impossible to read what he was looking at. But I was certain that the file
was about me.
" 'Have you been at the institute long?' he asked, still thumbing the
pages casually. I replied briefly, quite sure that he knew far more about me
than his question indicated. He turned a few more pages.
" 'In what department?' he asked. I named my department and he nodded,
still examining the file as though seeking confirmation of what I had told
him.
" 'How do they feel at the institute about the war against Russia?' he
asked, and this time he raised his head.
" 'Like the whole German people,' I said.
"A faint expression of boredom appeared in his dark, almond-shaped
eyes.
" 'Could you be more specific?'
" 'Scientists are not very interested in politics, you know,' I said.
" 'Unfortunately,' he nodded pompously and, putting on a more dignified
air, added suddenly, 'Do you know that the Führer himself finds time to take
an interest in the work of your institute?'
"A glassy look came into his eyes and for a second his whole appearance
bore a distant resemblance to Hitler.
" 'Yes, I do,' I said.
"The institute authorities had often told us confidentially about this
and made it clear that in response to this exceptional interest on the part
of the Führer we should display exceptional zeal in our work.
" 'But the Führer is not the only person who is interested in your
work,' he continued after a generous pause, in which I was granted time to
enjoy the pleasant side of the matter. 'The enemies of the Reich are also
interested.'
"The glassy look reappeared in his eyes and he again resembled the
Führer, this time in expressing ruthlessness towards the Reich's enemies.
"I shrugged. This was a relief. Apparently he did not know about my
escapade at the university. He went back to the file, leafed through it,
then stopped suddenly and began to read a page with raised eyebrows. The
tension grew inside me again. He did know, after all.
" 'Your uncle seems to have been a Social-Democrat?' he queried, as
though he had quite by chance discovered a slight blemish in my intellectual
background. Even the way he said 'your uncle' seemed to express contempt
for, rather than hatred of, the Social-Democrats.
" 'Yes, he is,' I said.
" 'Where is he now?' he asked, making no attempt to conceal the falsity
in his voice. I told him the whole story, which he knew perfectly well
already.
" 'There you are, you see,' he nodded, and his tone seemed to indicate
that this was the inevitable outcome of such hopelessly obsolete patriarchal
convictions. But I was wrong. His tone indicated something quite different.
" 'There you are,' he repeated. 'We trust you, but what is your
response?'
" 'I trust you too,' I said, as firmly as I could.
"He nodded. 'Yes, I know you are a patriot, even though your uncle was
a Social-Democrat.'
" 'Was?' I could not help repeating, and felt a sudden stab of pain in
the chest. We had kept hope alive in spite of everything. Apparently the
Gestapo man had said more than he intended. Or was he merely pretending to
have done so?
" 'Was and still is,' he corrected himself, but this sounded even more
hopeless. 'I know you are a patriot,' he repeated, 'but the time has come
for you to show your patriotism in practice.'
" 'What have you in mind?' I asked. The hand leafing through the file
stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke an unopened page. He seemed
scarcely able to resist the pleasure of turning it. Once again I had a
suspicion that he knew something about those pamphlets.
" 'Help us in our work,' he said simply, and looked into my eyes.
"I had never expected this. My face must have expressed either fright
or revulsion.
" 'You won't have to come here,' he added quickly. 'One of our people
will meet you about once a month and you will tell him...'
" 'Tell him what?' I interrupted.
" 'The attitude of scientists, instances of hostile or subversive
statements,' he said evenly. 'We need relevant information, not
surveillance. You know how much importance is attached to your institute.'
"He sounded like a doctor persuading a patient to take the prescribed
medicines.
"His dark, almond-shaped eyes were watching me steadily. The skin on
his clean-shaven, bluish face was so taut that it looked as if any grimace,
any private expression would cause him pain by pinching the already
overstrained skin. He therefore tried to maintain only one expression on his
face that was in line with the general direction of his service.
" 'If it were a matter of any hostile statements,' I said,
involuntarily bringing my own voice and face in line with this general
direction, 'I would consider it my duty to bring them to your notice in any
case.'
"As soon as I began to say this the faint expression of boredom again
appeared in his eyes and I suddenly realised that all this was to him merely
a long familiar form of refusal.
" 'Bearing in mind the fact that we are at war,' I added, to make it
sound more convincing. This had eased the situation. It was not the first
time they had heard a refusal.
" 'Yes, of course,' he said expressionlessly, and reached out for the
telephone as it began to ring.
" 'Yes,' he said, and a voice grated in the receiver. 'Yes,' he
repeated from time to time as the voice went on. His monosyllabic replies
sounded impressive and I sensed that he was playing the high official for my
benefit.
" 'He's bluffing,' he said suddenly into the receiver, and I gave an
involuntary start. 'Here, in my room,' he added. 'Come over.'
"All this time he must have been talking about me over the phone. This
fisher of my soul now rose to his feet, took a bundle of keys out of his
pocket and walked over to a safe and, as he did so, another man entered the
room. I felt instinctively that this must be the person who had just been
speaking on the phone. He glanced at me with a kind of casual curiosity, and
I decided that they had not been talking about me.
"The first Gestapo man opened his safe and bent forward to look inside.
I caught a glimpse of several rows of mousy-coloured files standing tightly
packed on the shelves. He hooked two fingers into one of them and pried it
out. The file actually seemed to resist and at the last moment, as it
reluctantly gave in, emitted a kind of squeal, like the cry of a captured
animal.
"The files were so tightly packed that the row closed again at once, as
though nothing had been removed. The other man took the file and silently
left the room.
" 'So you don't want to co-operate with us?' said my interrogator,
resuming his seat. His hand again glided to the unopened page and stroked
it.
" 'Hardly that,' I said, feeling my eyes drawn irresistibly to the page
that was quivering under his hand.
" 'Or is it your uncle's principles that forbid it?' he asked. I felt
the spring of annoyance within him begin to tighten. And all of a sudden I
realised that the main thing now was not to show him that it was normal
human decency that prevented me from having any connection with him.
" 'Principles have nothing to do with it,' I said. 'It's simply that
every job demands a sense of vocation.'
" 'You should try. Perhaps you have the right one,' he said. The spring
had slackened a little.
" 'No,' I said, after a little reflection. 'I am no good at hiding my
thoughts. I am far too talkative.'
" 'Is that a hereditary defect?'
" 'No,' I said, 'just part of my character.'
" 'By the way, what was this incident at the university?' he asked
suddenly, raising his head. I had not noticed him turn the page.
" 'What incident?' I asked, feeling a dryness in my throat.
" 'Shall I remind you?' he asked, pointing to the page.
" 'I don't remember any incident,' I said, and braced myself.
"We eyed each other for several long seconds. If he knows, I thought, I
have nothing to lose. And if he doesn't know this is still the only way to
act.
" 'Very well,' he said suddenly, drawing a clean sheet from the pile of
paper and placing it before me. 'Put it all down on paper.'
" 'Put what down?'
" 'That you refuse to help the Reich,' he said.
"So he doesn't know, I thought, feeling renewed strength. He knows that
there was some such incident while I was studying but nothing more. And now
I took a quiet pleasure in estimating the extent of his knowledge.
" 'I'm not refusing,' I said, pushing the sheet gently aside.
" 'So you agree, then?'
" 'I am quite prepared to carry out my duty to my country but without
these formalities,' I said, trying to choose the mildest possible
expressions. The pamphlet danger seemed to have passed, but I was afraid he
might bring it up again. At the moment when he had asked me straight out, I
had been almost certain that he had no precise knowledge, but now that the
danger seemed to have passed I was even more afraid to return to this dark
spot. Instinctively I was trying to get as far away from it as possible and
I sensed that this could only be done at the price of some concession. He
can only be diverted by the chance of a breakthrough somewhere else, I
thought.
" 'No,' he said, and a rather sentimental note crept into his voice,
'you'd better put it down honestly in black and white that you refuse to
perform your patriotic duty.'
" 'I'll think it over,' I said.
" 'Yes, of course you must,' he said amicably and, opening a drawer,
took out a cigarette and lighted it. 'Have a smoke?' he suggested.
" 'Yes,' I said.
"He produced an open packet from his drawer and offered it to me. I
took a cigarette, and then noticed that his own cigarette was from another,
more expensive packet. I almost laughed in his face as he offered me a
light. Even in this, apparently, he had to feel his superiority.
"I was silent and so was he. I was supposed to be thinking things over.
Silence was to my advantage.
" 'You should bear in mind,' he recalled suddenly, 'that our service
has not done away with material incentives.'
" 'In what sense?' I asked. This was subject worth developing. I had to
impress upon him that I was moving in his direction.
" 'We don't pay too badly,' he said.
" 'How much?' I asked with deliberate arrogance. I had to show him that
he had succeeded in overcoming what they would call my weak-kneed
intellectual scruples. A flicker of resentment appeared in his eyes--this
was an insult to the firm. Perhaps I had gone too far.
" 'That would depend on the fruitfulness of your work,' he said. Yes,
fruitfulness--that was the word he used.
"I shook my head regretfully, as if I had been considering my budget.
'No,' I said. 'They don't pay me too badly at the institute.'
" 'But in time we shall be able to provide you with a good flat,' he
said in some alarm. Now we were bargaining.
" 'I have a good flat already,' I said.
" 'We'll give you a flat in a district that has the best air-raid
shelter in the city,' he promised, and looked out of the window. 'The
American gangsters of the air have no mercy even on women and children.
Under these conditions we have to look after our personnel.'
"That was a typical sample of national-socialist logic. The Americans
were bombing women and children, so there had to be special protection for
Gestapo men. Altogether this dangerous game lasted for about three hours.
The essence of it was that I had to display a readiness to join them but at
the last moment I must appear to be held back by a purely self-centred
attitude of caution or some other consideration far removed from ordinary
standards of human decency. At one point he nearly cornered me by pointing
out with a fair degree of logic that I was actually working for
national-socialism as it was, and my attempt to avoid any direct commitment
was merely a refusal to face the facts. However, I managed to evade the
issue. This tragic problem had been discussed often enough in our own
circle, which was naturally a very narrow and trusted one. History had
granted our generation no right of choice and to demand any more of us than
ordinary decency would have been unrealistic."
My companion broke off and lapsed into deep thought. I poured out more
champagne and we again emptied our glasses.
"Do you rule out the idea of heroism?" I asked involuntarily.
"No," he replied quickly. "Heroism is something I would compare with
genius, moral genius."
"And what is the conclusion from that?" I asked.
"I believe that heroism always implies a supreme act of reason,
practical action, but a scientist who refused to work for Hitler would not
make his protest heard further than the nearest Gestapo office."
"But one doesn't have to give a direct refusal," I said.
"An indirect refusal would be pointless. Nobody would understand such a
gesture and there would always be someone else to fill the gap when the
person in question was eventually removed, if there was a gap to fill."
"All right," I said. "But even if no one notices his removal, he can
still refuse for the sake of his own conscience, can he not?"
"I don't know," he said, and gave me a rather strange look. "I have
never heard of such a case. That's far too abstract, too maximalist.
Something out of The Karamazov Brothers... But I know that in your country
you take a different view of heroism too."
"We believe that heroism can be inculcated," I replied with some relief
at getting back to a less complex subject. I had begun to think that he was
misunderstanding me.
"I don't think so," he shook his head. "Under our conditions, the
conditions of fascism, it would have been quite wrong and even harmful to
ask a person, particularly a scientist, to offer heroic resistance to the
regime. If you put the issue that way--either heroic resistance to fascism
or complete involvement in it--what you are doing, as a friend of mine once
remarked, is to completely disarm people morally. There were some scientists
who at first condemned our conciliatory tactics, then gave up the whole
thing and concentrated on making a career. Say what you like, but common
decency is a great thing."
"But common decency could not defeat the regime?"
"Of course, not."
"Then where's the solution?"
"In this case the solution was provided by the Red Army," he said, and
his asymmetrical face broke into a smile.
"But if Hitler had been more careful and not attacked us?"
"He could have chosen a different time, but that's not the point. The
point is that the very victories he achieved in such feverish haste were the
result of the corruption of a regime which even without the Red Army could
not have lasted more than two or three generations. But that was just the
situation in which what I call decency would have acquired even greater
significance as a means of preserving the nation's moral fibre for a more or
less opportune historical moment."
"We are getting away from the subject," I said. "What happened to you
after that?"
"Well, to put it briefly," he resumed, lighting another cigarette, "the
hunt for my soul lasted about three hours, in the course of which he left
the room and returned several times. In the end we both got tired and he
suddenly marched me off to someone I took to be his boss. We entered a huge
waiting room with a middle-aged woman, a rather plump brunette, sitting at a
desk loaded with telephones. Three other people were waiting in the room and
I recognised one of them as the man who had come in for the file. The woman
was speaking on the telephone. She was talking to her daughter. Apparently
the girl had just come home from a picnic and was pouring out an excited
story. I could feel that even at some distance from the phone. It was rather
strange to hear such things in a place like this. Then a bell rang on the
desk.
" 'All right, that's enough for now,' I heard the woman say as she put
down the receiver. She stood up and walked quickly into the office. The four
Gestapo men drew themselves up respectfully. Two minutes later she
reappeared.
" 'Go inside,' she said and, as she went back to her desk, gave me a
look that set my nerves on edge. Only a woman can give you that kind of
look. Such a vicious look, I mean. No, there was none of the hatred or
contempt that I could expect at any moment from those other four. That look
of hers consisted of a feline curiosity in my guts on the one hand, and
complete confidence in her master, on the other. It may have been the effect
of fatigue, but I actually felt as if my guts might at any moment rise into
my throat.
"We went into the office. It was an even more luxurious chamber with an
even bigger desk loaded with telephones of various colours, and an inkstand
shaped like the ruins of an old castle. A big man, who looked rather like
the manager of a flourishing restaurant, was sitting at the desk. He was
darkhaired and wore a fawn suit with a flamboyant necktie.
"He offered no one a seat and we remained standing by the door. The
three men from the waiting room, closer to the desk, and I with my escort a
little further away.
" 'So he can't make up his mind?' the chief boomed thunderously,
staring at me with astonished eyes. 'A promising young scientist and he
won't co-operate with us? I just can't believe it!' he exclaimed, and
suddenly rose to his full, impressive height.
"His astonished eyes seemed to implore me to deny this false and
perhaps even maliciously invented information that his assistants had
supplied. As soon as he spoke, I realised he was aping Goering. This was a
fashion among functionaries of the Reich in those days. Each of them chose
for himself the mask of one of the leaders.
" 'And this at a time when hordes of Asians are hurling themselves at
the sacred soil of Germany, at a time when gangsters of the air are bombing
innocent children to death!' He motioned towards the window and to the field
beyond where the children were still playing football. They must have been
different children by this time, but it seemed to me that both the field and
the children had been cultivated specially by the Gestapo for purposes of
illustration.
" 'I am not refusing,' I began, but he interrupted me.
" 'Do you hear that? Didn't I tell you?' he exclaimed. He seemed about
to jump on the desk in his enthusiasm. But his tone changed soon enough when
he addressed his assistants. 'So you failed to explain to him where his duty
lies. You couldn't find the key that exists for every German heart.'
"He looked at me with his bovine eyes and I could see that he was
asking for my consent not so much for me to work for them but as a boost to
his pedagogical prestige. Let us both put these incompetent devils to shame,
he seemed to be suggesting--the murderous clown.
" 'You see, it's like this...' I began, sensing that this pedagogical
process was going to cost me dear. But just at that moment, to my good
fortune, the door opened. He glared at the door like an infuriated bull. It
was the secretary.
" 'Berlin,' she said softly, and nodded towards one of the telephones.
"He seized the receiver, and it was immediately obvious that we had all
vanished from the face of the earth and even he, as he bent over the phone,
had correspondingly diminished in stature.
"We withdrew silently to the waiting room, and from the waiting room
into the corridor. The secretary ignored us completely.
"I returned with the fisher of my soul to his office. I felt that he
was utterly fed up with me. I also sensed that both he and his colleagues
were at heart glad that their chief had failed in his pedagogical efforts.
My man made no further attempt to argue with me.
"He signed my permission to leave, wrote a telephone dawn on a slip of
paper, and said, 'If you make up your mind, ring this number.'
" 'All right,' I said, and left the room. I don't remember how I found
my way home. As I walked through the streets I felt the kind of weakness and
pleasure that one experiences on first getting up after a long illness. When
I was sure that no one was following me, I tore up the slip of paper and
threw it into a refuse bin, though for some reason I still tried to remember
the number.
"The next day I did not telephone, of course. But every day after that
I lived in a state of constant suspense. One evening when I came home from
work my wife said that the phone had rung but, when she had answered it,
someone had put the receiver down at the other end. A few days later I
myself answered the phone and again there was no reply, or rather I heard
someone carefully replace the receiver. Or perhaps it was my imagination.
"I didn't know what to think. In the street and in buses I began to
have the impression that there was a detective's eye upon me.
"At the entrance to the institute I would feel nervous if the guard on
duty took more than usual interest in my pass.
"Two or three months went by. One day an old school friend of mine rang
up. He was now a well-known criminal lawyer and lived in Berlin. As usual we
agreed to meet for a walk in town and then go back to my house for dinner.
My wife was delighted. His company always had a good effect on me and now I
particularly needed something to liven me up.
"He was a witty talker, rather frivolous, but always a good friend.
Whenever he visited us from Berlin he would bring with him a whole
collection of anecdotes that gave us a better idea of what was going on in
the Reich than any other type of information.
"On this occasion he rang off with his usual 'Heil Hitler, thank you
for your attention', referring to the fact that all hotel telephones were
monitored. For the first time in all these weeks I found myself smiling
broadly. I, too, was convinced that my telephone was being tapped.
"My friend and I had similar views on everything that was happening in
Germany. Incidentally, he was the only person I had told about my student
escapade.
" 'I don't believe the Reich is going to last a thousand years but
it'll last quite long enough for our generation,' he would say when we
talked about it. Like everyone with a gift for humour he was a pessimist.
During the past year the information from the Eastern Front had made it look
as if he had overrated the Reich's potential. When I had told him this
during his previous visit, he had disagreed.
" 'On the contrary,' he had exclaimed. 'I underrated the extent of
Hitler's madness.'
"We met in the lounge of his hotel. As soon as we were out in the
street and at a safe distance, I said, 'Well, start away. Hitler goes into
an air-raid shelter and there...'
" 'My God!' he exclaimed. 'Only night watchmen tell that kind of story
nowadays. The latest thing is the carpet-eater series. '
" 'What's that?' I asked.
" 'Listen,' he said, and started on one story after another. Their
general theme was that Hitler, on hearing the news of fresh defeats on the
Eastern Front, would throw himself on the floor of his study and bite the
carpet. We passed several blocks and he was still relating stories from what
seemed a quite inexhaustible series. The last one he told, which was far
from the best, has engraved itself on my memory.
"Hitler goes into a shop to buy a new carpet. 'Shall I wrap it up for
you, or do you wish to gnaw it on the premises?' asks the salesman.
"He had just told this story, when my Gestapo man appeared round the
corner coming towards me. In my confusion I could not make up my mind
whether to greet him or not. At the last moment I realised that this would
he the wrong thing to do, but then I noticed that my friend and he had
nodded to each other.
"We walked on. My mind was in a whirl. He went on talking but I could
not understand a word. His voice seemed to come from far away. Feverish
thoughts raced through my head. He was working for the Gestapo. They had
called him as a witness. I should be shot.
"And yet I still clung to the hope that the Gestapo man was merely a
chance acquaintance of his. Perhaps they had met in connection with one of
his cases. He had often told me that the Gestapo interfered in political and
criminal trials alike.
"But how could I find out? The realisation came to me in a flash. It
was quite simple. I must ask him straight out. If they had met by chance he
would say who he was, but if they had a secret connection he would, of
course, invent something.
" 'By the way, who was that you nodded to?' I asked a few minutes
later. Oh God, how much depended on his answer. How I would have hugged him
if only he had told me the whole truth!
" 'Oh, just someone I happen to know,' he replied with studied
indifference. I felt his momentary hesitation and all the rest seemed to