1
Twelve million displaced persons were on the move, south and west, as the Red Armies lunged through Prussian Junkerdom, massed tanks and planes racing the Western Allies to Berlin. But the Führer still resisted, and the Wehrmacht had counter-attacked in the west. Throughout eastern Germany the Russians were said to be shooting all captives, with more women and children fearing rape than since the Thirty Years War. Ragnarok had demolished Ergriffenheit, enchantment with god-leaders.
Charnal lights covered that spring. Scraps of newsprint transmitted Heinrich Himmler’s elegy to the SS: ‘And what will history say of us? Petty minds bent on revenge will bequeath a false perverted version of things great and good, the deeds I have done for Germany.’
Once a tourist village encircled by thick woods, Meinnenberg possessed a summer camp of chalets, cafés, jazzy pavilions, a pool now dense with slime. A few picnic tables still supported faded, rainbow-tinted umbrellas, incongruously cheerful amid an amalgam of hostel, lazar-house, hide-out, camp, established and supervised, perforce irregularly, by the Swedish Red Cross, occasionally by the SS.
The woods had been crushed to fill makeshift stoves, shelters, latrines, anything to assist and protect the constant intake of German peasants and deserters, enigmatic Balts, Mongoloid Russian renegades turned bandit, tramps with faces locked into fear and suspicion, gypsies, townsfolk once neatly respectable, now twitching idiotically from air-raids, several Lutherans and Lithuanian Catholics. Another New Order, New Europe. Many of us would have been disposed of as Untermenschen by a Reich that had overtaken the Germania of scholars, songsters, princes. I had very quickly learnt of the SS Night and Fog directive, obeying the Führer’s command to eliminate life unworthy of Life.
One man, scarred, interminably coughing, had crept from von Paulus’s army, joined Russian commandos, deserted them. ‘At Stalingrad, early on, we saw a wide, grey mist on the earth, streaming towards us. Rats!’
The sky had narrowed, lost all luminosity. Day and night merged in common crisis. Outside the stockade I had already trodden on stiffened, rancid, sodden flesh and been surprised at my indifference: tallowy face, eyes sunk in blood and dust. No more. Life was less valued than a packing case, delivery of lard, theft of bacon or string. Amongst the sick and hopeless, some women, haggard, heads gleaming, shaven for hygiene, viciously sought red fungus and old book covers to tint their parched faces. In its way, Resistance.
On my second day, unremarked, neither welcome nor unwelcome, I saw another head, thick with a dim glitter which suddenly stirred, quivering with lice.
I could relate only to myself. The Manor was irretrievable, my parents only vapour and bones. I was attuned not to tennis and books but to deaths, the threats from others’ ill temper, moroseness, hunger. At this time, in this abyss, I could have signed damning papers unread, found excuses for the inexcusable, like some devious Public Prosecutor, a Fouquier-Tinville. Only one certainty prevented absolute surrender to filth and savagery: that I was fatefully protected, like the youngest son to whom birds speak, wise old men nod and for whom the princess waits.
Little could be guessed from clothes and manners. Uniforms had been discarded in panic, almost all were ragged, some absurdly distinguished by a gaudy sash, feathered hat, belt, stolen in some raid or by clumsily hacked clogs, heavy but soundless in the clotted mud.
Germans mostly avoided each other, some suspected of SS credentials. Two Czechs boasted that with the collapse of a Polish gaol they had gladly massacred SS guards and Jewish kaputs. One child, almost naked, with scared, unblinking eyes, could only repeat, ‘I’m far away.’
Help from any outside administration being spasmodic, all at first appeared anarchic but eventually, as I scoured for food, committed small thefts of straw and biscuit, I recognized a skeleton authority of a few men and women, the Ten Per Cent Factor, always seeking to find former nurses, carpenters, bakers, cooks from those who arrived daily, replacing the dead.
Under putty sky, within derelict but crowded shacks, stench, hubbub, the half-throb of sterile vagabondage and want, greyness dominated. Pure colours surfaced only in recall of brilliant water, radiant trees, scented flowers. Green was lost in summers that had neglected this desolate outpost: lawn, billiard table, a green evening gown, were as if forbidden. Yellow was maggoty, blue deathly, crimson neither glowed nor swaggered but spilt from the dead and wounded.When, years ahead, Nadja said that Van Gogh identified thirty-seven shades of black in Hals’ art, I thought of Meinnenberg and the elimination of colours once serene.
For several days I wandered haphazardly through the camp and the broken village, scrounging, sleeping on straw, trusting none, my farmyard attire not concealing health and youth, both perilous here, like cleanliness, restraint, an educated voice. Securing place at a communal table, I could hear only braggarts, possible spies, scroungers like myself, together with the pleading, the impotent good-natured, the inert, while children, skinny from malnutrition, begged, played tag, pimped, fingered their loins invitingly. Too many were orphans, were shrewd, grasping, wary, eyes over-bright or almost extinct.
Older folk, first to vanish, prayed, in a whining sort of way, but expecting little.
The most obviously powerful figure was Vello, ogreish, Latvian, from whom I first thought I must seek protection, though was then deterred by his entourage, brutalized men and girls, better fed than most, wild-haired, ready to pounce.
To steady myself, I whispered, ‘Great Wrath. French Terror. Stalingrad.’
Meals somehow appeared, mostly from determined women. Barging for the tables, we gulped down messes of hare, squirrel, parsnip, hay-like bread, unidentifiable birds. Vello was the most acclaimed provider, a professional poacher, mottled by drink, face strung with broken veins and bald as a wrestler. With his pack, nicknamed the Acrobats, he raided farms and orchards, ambushed lorries for military stores, liquor, medical supplies, pillaged fields and barns for straw, tools, frost-bitten potatoes. Beholden to none, he was reputed to have stamped on a dying girl for a tin of tobacco. An accusation possibly unjust.
After my three requisite days in the Underworld, a voice addressed me. ‘Perhaps you will care to help in our labours.’
Gently, even tentatively, uttered in a formal German distinct from the rough dialects and polyglot rumbles, not demanding but enquiring, the speaker was in long, clean overalls and carrying a hoe. Almost alone, he had contrived to shave. A pale, ovalled face beneath hair light and thinning, ‘Hanoverian blue’ eyes, an indeterminate smile. Slender but not famished, neither young nor old but a singular mixture of each, and a veneer of improbable humour.
At my confusion, his smile was more candid. ‘People are good enough to call me Wilfrid.’
Yes, his German was excellent, his nationality more questionable. Possibly Hungarian, Slav, Jewish. Whether I had ever met a Jew was doubtful. I imagined Jews as wily, exotic, with powers not readily assessable.Whatever the truth, this individual could not be easily envisaged as shouting ‘Fatherland’ with strident fervour.
His consideration drew me out of the human debris of so much Meinnenberg. By professional expertise of fluke of personality he unofficially manipulated the group attempting rudimentary organization. He led in encouraging, soothing, mediating and, foremost of hazards, treating with Vello and establishing a precarious Mutual Assistance truce.
Vello and the Acrobats occupied an old barn, respectfully or jeeringly called Wolf’s Lair, after Hitler’s overrun Eastern HQ. From there they bargained with the main group, offering the hares, crows, the rare morphine tablet. Wilfrid’s reserved cordiality, residue of a vanished, probably cosmopolitan élite, must have bemused the primitive, superstitious Latvian, darkly cautious of anything outside his own simplicities. He was often unseen for many days, ‘on patrol’. He scowled at hygiene precautions, rations, restraint, yet reluctantly forced his thugs to, in some measure, concede to them. Before Wilfrid’s arrival he had ruled undisputed, denying food to babies and the sick. Behind his inarticulate brutishness might lurk deep grievance or hatred, which, should outside relief be delayed too long, might have violent ending. For the younger he induced not only fear but a Dantonesque audace, the chance of a break-out from privation and uncertainty, which the patience, industry, professional skills of Wilfrid’s cabal did not.
At public meetings called to remedy some crisis or dilemma, Wilfrid, with unemphatic sincerity genuine or assumed, would praise Vello’s delivery of provisions, his enterprise, his independence, though privately commenting that the man would play football with his own head.
Telephones and newspapers were lacking, the SS had long gone, the Swedes failed to appear, but from almost exhausted radios we heard that the Russians had taken Budapest, a follow-up army had crossed the Oder and Himmler, at last, and perhaps maliciously, allowed a military command, had been defeated on the Vistula. Savage SS resistance at Breslau, after the hanging of the Burgomeister, was crumbling. Zhukov and Vasilevsky were poised to capture Berlin, rumour insisting that Stalin, Comrade Marshal, was himself hurrying for the kill. The Reichsmarschall was said to be rallying whatever remained of the Reich. ‘Our Hermann’, several were overheard enthusing. Americans were rampaging through France, British and Canadians regaining Holland. The Herr General’s friend, Bernadotte, now prominent in the Swedish Red Cross, was apparently involved in peace preliminaries. Of the Führer, only speculation, often ribald or obscene.
More immediate were symptoms of typhus and diphtheria, and mouths were rotting from scurvy, dropping from swollen gums. Dark patches discoloured hands and necks. Survival required the abnormal: selfishness, altruism, apathy, animal need to keep one move ahead. A harassed Polish doctor spoke of more violence, over a jug of milk, a single pfennig, an empty aspirin bottle; a boy had died, fighting for a girl raddled by sickness.
The White Rose had no presence here, and sexual desires poisoned thought. In a climax of nerves, shortages or Russian arrival, Vello would probably resume power. Evidently, belief was vital for survival, for, the same doctor assured me, Christians, communists and other zealots lasted longer than the disillusioned and faithless. Without politics or religion, unpleasantly naked, I could put trust only in Wilfrid.
He managed by persuasive improvisations rather than direct orders or appeals to good sense and public spirit and had lately recruited, without dissent, a Waffen SS colonel on the run, almost tenderly capable with adolescent thieves. Old hatreds, political antagonisms had to be suspended to avert total disarray, people allowed to cherish or forget pasts best kept hidden.
Wilfrid advised me to step carefully, observe, take stock. Stalwart-looking men could slump into drooling infantilism. ‘Would you like to spin my top?’ a hunched figure croaked, holding a mouldy turnip, from a swing he was too weak to move. Another, with beard long as a rhubarb stick, extended a claw-like hand. ‘Young man, in my thesis on the Romantic Inheritance …’ then relapsing to babble.
Wilfrid began lending me books, of which he had a surprising store. This, once again, made me conscious of a protection scarcely supernatural yet as random and undeserved as Calvinist predestination. Chance, luck, coincidence, though evident, appeared to obey no human rules or, if they did, rules not yet evident. The books were passports to escape from unremitting shouts, grumbles, wails, slithery whispers. I could enter solid mercantile towns, gabled mansions leaning confidentially together over cobbled lanes; family prayers and music, a child racing from a demon and finding it grinning on the bed; handsome lovers and sad wives.
Wilfrid’s activities suggested virtuosity without genius, but, washed up in dissolution and torment, many could have thought that dictators’ genius had intoxicated, then ruined them. They craved either the miraculous or a plate of meat. At all times, however, he possessed a singular calm, a distinction of manner and behaviour, treating alike the hostile and disruptive, the helpful and admiring, as acquaintance of unusual attractions. Already I could not imagine him haggling or counting the change, though sometimes allowing himself a rueful smile, as at a poor joke. He achieved some mastery by seeking no votes, expecting no privilege: the mastery was informal yet certain, its consequences unforeseeable. It made the Acrobats’ conquistador strength slightly absurd, archaic as flintlock or harquebus. He might have been guest conductor of a barely trained orchestra. Unlike Vello, he lacked coercive powers but, by a glance, apologetic gesture or laugh, could trap the aggressive or lazy into joining him to repair a table, clean a latrine, erect a tent. A handshake, grumble, outright compliance he accepted as a favour graciously awarded, inadequately earned. He eased the alarm caused by a huge, unexplained heap of earth appearing overnight and blocking the main gate, by murmuring that extravagance was the prerogative of moles. Complaints, threats he studied with the seriousness due to guests always welcome but apt to prolong their visit.
Once, in a voice like a rusty saw, Vello had demanded that ‘certain ones’ should be denied the cheese he had ‘salvaged’, Wilfrid mildly remonstrated, unconcernedly proposing that the entire cheese-ration be denied to everyone save Vello himself, in gratitude and to fortify him for further public-spirited enterprise. Many laughed, some applauded, the bruiser stood puzzled, calculating, then, accepting the acclaim for himself almost, but not quite, smiled, then stamped away, leaving the cheese to be distributed in the usual manner.
I doubtless exaggerated Wilfrid’s merits, overlooking his failures, though, in Europe, 1945, anything was believable, drastic changes of fortune commonplace, even the miraculous might become typical. To encourage or reprove, he might feign incomprehension of the workings of a stolen watch, the meaning of some dialect, some obscenity, the identity of a coin dubiously acquired, the explanations, patiently endured, establishing a relationship. On his feet for hours, he seldom showed fatigue, as he stooped to examine some nauseating pile, as if it were not only interesting but refreshing, or stepped over filth without seeming to notice it, while, beneath his overalls, remaining almost debonair in blue linen tunic and well-pressed trousers. I would move alongside him, amongst fetid cabins, shelters constructed from branches, rotten coats, Red Cross blankets and the tinted umbrellas of forgotten summers. Constantly pausing, greeted by waves, frowns, small coughs or with smouldering resentment, he would praise, comfort, enquire, promise, salute an urchin squatting beneath another umbrella. On such occasions he could look younger than he probably was, an illusion strengthened by his delight at an ancient jest or picturesque curse. His laugh could be noisy, adolescent, his smile much older, subtle, not altogether trustworthy.
‘We live,’ he was anxious to subdue any hint of superiority, ‘in comedy. You might say farce. Trapdoors, caricaturing mirrors, straightforward deceit.’ As so often, he seemed about to reveal something further, though always holding back.
2
Adopted on to Wilfrid’s staff, I first worked in the sorry hospital, an old sports pavilion, fumbling with bandages, misapplying a syringe, diffidently stroking a Latvian girl lamenting not her dead baby but a stolen bracelet, itself useful currency in a barter economy, flesh the highest asset. One discovery was of peasant mothers refusing to wash infants’ hands lest they become thieves. This, Wilfrid at last said, very apologetic, did not markedly justify my presence, and he then requested, as a favour, that I should try my hand, no, tax my patience, at teaching. ‘It might amuse you …’
Several volunteers gave lessons in a dilapidated summer-house, ill-attended yet oddly resilient. Wilfrid himself gave language instruction, in German, French, more rarely English, sometimes attending other classes like a pupil, sitting on packing-case or floor with others of all ages, curious, care-nothing, at times eager.
I began awkwardly, to a circle of adults and children, some prepared to jeer, disrupt, slink away. I read aloud or recited half-remembered poems, anecdotes, flakes of history, inviting questions, often insolent, over-simple: did angels fart; was Jesus left-handed; were Greenlanders green? Later, I encouraged them to speak, about personal habits, memories, Utopian fancies, factual accounts of work, trees, wheels. I found myself accepted, less for this than from making a football, irregularly sphered, from tarred strings and broken boot-soles.Wilfrid did not stimulate me by disclosing Tolstoy’s confession that, when seeing school children, dirty, ragged but sometimes angelic, he was filled with restlessness and terror, as though at people drowning. I saw no angels, only the scrawny, suspicious, puzzled, some as if already drowned, staring and indecipherable. Nevertheless, numbers increased. Wilfrid was appreciative. ‘But tell them more stories.’ Some I had less to teach words than help recover them. Speech could be dangerous.
I, too, was learning. These children and parents would once have known gardens, hotels, steamboats, mountains, had dreamt of becoming foresters, naturalists, pirates, doctors. Like my new associates, I myself expected little, so gained more.
Stories sufficed to rouse the listless and moribund. Stories of Forest Uncle and Margarita-Who-Grieves, of the Nail in the Sky and Heimdall’s nine mothers, stories of magic pipers and children’s crusades. Nothing sounded extraordinary or incredible to such a class. I ransacked memories for anecdotes, however ludicrous, of Catherine and Potemkin, Hamlet and Gotz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand. I told them of Pahlen and the crazed Tsar. Old and young enjoyed lurid distortions of the French Revolution: Danton rallying the thousands, Charlotte Corday carefully selecting a knife, the Queen, still young but grey and haggard, trussed in a cart while the crowd screamed insults, and apologizing to the executioner for stumbling on his foot. They were silenced, until some laughed, by Andersen’s tale of the widow boasting that her son would be a king: the boy joined the 1848 revolutionaries invading the palace and was killed, his body lying bleeding on the satin, gold, lilies of the throne of France.
Once Wilfrid joined them, sitting beneath me on the floor, while I struggled to make them feel part of history, in a seamless Europe, linked to Bretons crouching in woods, the unlucky victimized by the Law of Suspects. Terror swirling in narrowing circles, profiteers fatly toasting success.
With Wilfrid I ventured no familiarity, no slang of intimacy. Like the Herr General, he was saviour from the unknowable, though himself seldom lacking words, enjoying questions as if sincerely expecting useful responses. ‘Tell me, Erich, after your French experiences … you made us feel you had witnessed them … Would you say that we, too, are endangered by innocent rogues?’
Inexperienced, gullible, needing a hero, I marvelled at his refusal to be discouraged by disappointments and let-downs, his façade of accepting setbacks as minor pleasantries necessary for experiments unreliable as surgery under siege conditions. I myself was too easily hurt by ruffian contempt, tyro mistakes, accidents, by the constant swindles and cruelties. As if brooding over something more important, Wilfrid would relieve me by suggesting I accompany him to settle a dispute, tend some suppurating gash – a tactful gesture for which I was not always grateful.
His office-bedroom-committee-room had several cupboards filled with books, a folio of Picasso drawings, another of those by himself, of woodland pools, classical streets, a horse, not startling or exceptional but apt. Here suggestions, mishaps, achievements were discussed, inquests held and, thanks to the enigmatic Vello, wine enjoyed. Women were the more talkative, also the more dependable, as we perched or lay under a cracked glass dome, between blotched murals of Riviera beaches, flowery waves, trim bodies, pointillistic sunlight. It was a bright refuge in a shantytown slum. More books were stacked on planks and under the bed, itself set on rough logs. A small granite Bodhisattva sat, rather smug, between bound Beethoven scores. Children contrived to bring dusty sunflowers, plantain leaves, even bundles of grass, which Wilfrid arranged as precisely as he might gifts from Aladdin, reminiscent of Mother receiving exquisite roses, cool lilies, lyrics of hothouse or the most sumptuous Reval florist. I heard that Vello, as though in grudging attempt at humour in riposte to Wilfrid’s own, had once dumped on the table what was a treasure trove here, a large casket of cigarettes, knowing of course that he never smoked. For this token of brigandage two Acrobats had died fighting the van driver. A girl, dirty mouth thick with malice, then told me she had seen my ghost.
After one wearisome day, when I brought him a report of the imminent capture of Berlin, which he heard in disconcerting silence, I lingered, flinching from a return to the stink of urine, famished dogs, illness. As if from the air, he produced a dusty bottle, nodded as if I had consented to join him, handed me a full glass, pouring himself another, though giving it only an occasional sip, to keep me in countenance. Reaching for a book, he read me, ‘A thrice-wise speech sleeps in a foolish ear’, looking across at me for criticism that of course did not come. ‘Would you not say, Erich, that, in whatever disguise, Dionysus has driven us here, tempting us beyond ourselves. From ecstatic delirium down to literal earth? But, in our own sort of freedom, unappetizing save to philosophers of an unenviable school and to self-wounding poets, we should surely give ear to the opportunities offered by poor, unimaginative, suffering Pentheus.’
That I did not recognize the allusion he affected not to notice, and at once refilled my glass, which I had hurriedly emptied through nervousness.
‘As you know, the Chinese respect the concept of sha, a current of destructive energy invading human affairs, a cousin, sometimes closer, of feng-shui. It roams at will, upsetting our plans, relationships, pride. It need not, I suppose, always travel far to do so.’ His small smile suggested a joke withheld only to titillate. ‘Sha is fallible …’ Pale, one eyebrow raised, oblivious to the outside rowdiness, he lifted his glass, laid it down. ‘It must move only straight forward. Like Romans, like the Little Caesars around us, engineering their own collapse. The Chinese, you remember, were more imaginative, building in criss-crosses, very crookedly, to avoid the unexpected. The irregular and sensitive could thus outwit the vigorous but undeviating sha.’
Was any of this true, or mere intellectual fooling, so often, the Herr General had said, the play of the second-rate? I could not decide but would always associate serenity with the complex simplicity of Chinese art. I would have thought Wilfrid’s personality sublime, had not Father once said that this word was usually followed by something foolish. I easily saw him in a kimono, fondling porcelain, examining the methodical entanglement within a Hangchow carpet, writing tiny odes to chrysanthemums and cassia trees, on ivory-coloured parchment, while, unobtrusively, governing a province. Physically, too, he had the near transparency of delicate jade, giving and receiving light. He could scarcely be impervious to suffering and fear but had, at whatever cost, relinquished his natural talents, themselves opaque and, from grotesque experiences, developed what he called ataraxia, emotional tranquillity. Reserved, he was never aloof, he delighted in the unforeseen: Vello’s cigarettes, a notoriously unpleasant child offering to walk with him, a girl, deeply withdrawn, possibly autistic, starting to dance, frantic, joyless but eager for attention.
Nodding at the squat, smiling figurine, he said, ‘That fellow would say that whoever fails to discriminate might as well be dead.’
A spade recalled Greg’s gritty farm, then the White Rose. Had Wilfrid heard of it? Unsurprised, he looked serious, then explaining that a White Rose was the emblem of Munich students, executed for attempting to rouse their fellows, who betrayed them, against the war.
Of the Herr General, I said nothing. Confused by loyalties, obligations, ignorance, I felt a risk in confiding these to anyone. Nor, for the moment, did this matter, as the Reich, in titanic explosions, reeled towards nowhere and the Gutter King poisoned his dog, his wife, then himself.
Amongst the Meinnenberg horde, this evoked no hysteria, only a stillness prolonged for hours, until from a tinny gramophone pre-war dance music began, weirdly shattering the uncanny hush.
Passen Sei, Mai auf, O Donna Clara,
Ich küsse, Ihre Hand, Madame,
Blume von Hawaii.
By evening, under the few oil-lamps, people collected in small, murmuring groups, some in pitiful attempt at ‘best clothes’, broken shoes replacing clouts, a frayed hat, several very soiled velvet jackets. They moved slowly, often halting, posing as if in a studio, their exchanges quiet, often incoherent. They were already having to confront the unknown but also, the Polish doctor maintained, quailing at homelessness, official inquiries, debt, nothingness. Freedom could renew not Terror but private terrors. The Führer had piped his children into the mountain, transformed them to rats, sent them home, where adults waited with axe and knife.
Throughout Germany, fallen gauleiters must be attempting to render themselves invisible or, like Fouquier-Tinvilles, pleading blamelessness, begging to join the victors.
At Meinnenberg, a few signatures, some formal ceremonies for the moment ended nothing. Disease, scuffles, whimpers, rumours continued. In the haze of uncertainty and foreboding, some derelicts, though actually standing, appeared to be crouching. A number, indeed, had knelt in prayer, clutching wispy hopes. Vello loomed for an instant, angered by his own indecision, incapable of assessing the prevailing mood, then stalking back to his Wolf’s Lair.
Wilfrid displayed neither elation nor alarm, remaining the young-old Baldur with pale blue eyes, small smiles running in and out of a face smooth, as if polished. ‘So the one-legged no longer leads the dance. He, too, is at rest, if not, perhaps, at peace.’ His smile was complemented by ‘perhaps’, a favourite word.
Through a crackling transistor we all heard the new Führer, Grand Admiral Dönitz, appealing for national cohesion. No mention of the Reichsmarschall.
By the following week an order had arrived, crusted with unexplained initials, ordering us to await instructions. A general cleansing began, not for peace celebrations but for a wedding. On the day two dazed-looking Balts emerged, no longer youthful whatever their age, in tinsel finery, behaving to each other like strangers, a priest of unknown or no denomination officiating in a black overcoat too large for him. The groom had volunteered for the triumphant Wehrmacht, deserting when victories ceased. A drab procession formed, the bride mimed tears and protests, like an untidy puppet, attendants emitted calls in what Wilfrid considered Mordvin speech, which we were not ready to query, some gleeful, others ribald or as if warning. People desultorily waved rags dyed red, green, white, a carpenter interpreting these as traditional symbols of marriage. The priest mumbled, a hymn began, its melody famous throughout Europe, so that most responded, in a medley of tongues. Women placated the bride, rearranged her hair-ribbons, waved a small cross as if repelling unseen dangers. Wilfrid was invited to hand over gifts piled on a table: a tarnished brooch, a heap of potatoes, a broken comb, a purse, probably empty, a glass stopper, painted box, bronze oak-leaf, tattered, last-century fan, a bicycle saddle. With a fortitude I admired without envying, he kissed the lumpish bride, then shook hands with her man, presented a small parcel, while the pair were raucously acclaimed ‘Your Brilliances’. A mouth-organ began, then dancing, the performers jumping rather than gliding, as if soil had become too hot. Unwilling to suffer embarrassment, I did not join them, while noting that Wilfrid, competently though without fervour or jumping, passed a few steps with the bride, then bowed over her hand and was gone, a stage illusionist completing his act by vanishing into darkened air. The night was reported ending with the couple leaping naked over tongs laid between two fires, a ritual that might have reduced Wilfrid’s serenity to the sublime.
Expectations rapidly worsened. More refugees discovered us, bringing tales of Russians raping the very slaves they had liberated before storming Berlin. In the telepathy of drama we heard of abducted children killed, then sold on the black market as veal, unnerving me with hopes that Mother had died before being abandoned by friends who so amused her. The Herr General must have long perished at the Eastern Front.
Meinnenberg was in abeyance, ignored by the Russians, by Dönitz, and presumably unknown to the Allies. Newcomers were inclining more to Vello and his food supplies than to Wilfrid’s busybody committee. The Acrobats paraded their virile attractions and bribed more children to steal and spy. One woman howled that they had stolen her daughter, Friedl, bawling at those asserting that she had needed no compulsion. All agreed, however, that she had disappeared into Wolf’s Lair.What should be done?
I was more agitated by what might be done to myself. Nothing gracious could be expected from Russians to a German Balt, but Mother’s name might help me with the British, said to have reached Leipzig and Erfurt. The Estonian revolt, proclaiming independence, had been bloodily crushed by the Russians.
There was now, I thought, alarming likelihood of three victorious powers conflicting over Berlin. As for Friedl, I knew her slightly. She had once wandered into my class, giving me only a suggestive wink then only ostentatious yawns, daring me to rebuke or swear, though I was more tempted to strangle her.
In the inevitable discussions, we were nervy and quarrelsome. Some argued that she was a vicious young whore, best left to her natural associates. Others blamed the mother. I myself kept silent, though uncomfortable. An Austrian engineer, man of action, proposed a mass assault on Wolf’s Lair, which, incidentally rescuing Friedl, would, by eliminating a violent and irresponsible faction, ingratiate us with the Red Cross and any eventual liberators. A nurse objected that Friedl would be the first to suffer and that, more righteously, we should parley with Vello, flatter him into at least some compromise, the nature of which she did not reveal. Tacitly, I felt that in such an assault I myself, not the wretched Friedl, might be the first to suffer.
Midway down the table, Wilfrid also had not spoken, always disliking to appear managerial, usurping what was best left to others, an attitude condemned by his detractors as unctuously hypocritical. When at last appealed to, he was not indecisive but irritatingly reflective, thus evasive, though inducing a welcome quiet.
‘Assault? The war, has it not, made us, civilized Europeans that we are, ponder the extent to which government can be trusted with force. Quite a number of us, by now, are questioning the validity of authority itself. We are not unique in facing a moral dilemma that has perplexed the greatest minds, whether to behave badly on behalf of the greater good. Plato, Goethe, gave answers, some of them unpleasing.’
He made a wry half-shrug, acknowledging allusions pedagogic, in poor taste. Few of us had actually perceived a moral dilemma, though a practical solution was imperative. The brutal and barely sane deserved scant sympathy, Friedl only a mite more.
We might yet be stalled here many weeks, at the mercy of the Acrobats and weathercock Vello. Wilfrid said no more, majority vote opted for surrender of the girl in return for – nobody was quite sure. A handwritten testimonial of Vello’s uprightness, for presentation to officialdom? A feast to honour the Acrobats, though, as someone observed, they themselves must provide the food? Even Vello’s portrait to be undertaken by a decorator who was also an effective artist, a projection less absurd than it might appear. Such as Vello could be susceptible to an appeal to vanity, as they were to tunes, dancing, liquor.
Wilfrid did not vote, and we dispersed, conscious of having manufactured a formula, liberal but unlikely to achieve anything. He, I suspected, thought the same, while gazing as if into himself.
Next day I escaped a growing clamour and found him contemplating a crucifix of corded twigs given him by a querulous old woman, in reproach, reverence or as a talisman to repel devils. It made me feel both impatient and vaguely guilty. Seeing this, Wilfrid looked surprised, as though I had doubted the validity, not of government but of the alphabet or magnetism.
‘I tend to think Christianity is best honed down to three words, in, I think, St John: God is Spirit. Exactly. Though …’ he changed from austere commandant to teasing Hermes, ‘you may care to remind me of much the same uttered rather earlier, I seem to remember, by Xenophanes. Spirit is not, on evidence, all-powerful. Not God Almighty, but God Patient. It does not need praise or worship, only human co-operation. Even here, it flickers, never quite vanishes, is visible at work, on the dying, a croak attempting to be a song …’
His smile barely a twitch, he handled the crucifix as he might rare porcelain, his voice now fatigued, like his pallor and drooping shoulders.
‘One sees, of course, people praying, but too often this is wheedling, a trespass on human dignity. In Hebrew, you remember,’ – a trace of amusement showed he knew that I did not – ‘prayer is better understood not as a plea but as self-ramification, relating one’s needs to one’s deserts and, I suppose, to those of others. So, not useless hesitations but techniques to restore self-assurance, which, if not overcoming hell, at least softening its impact.’
Rebelliously, I thought of Friedl, sacrificed in Wolf’s Lair and lost his next remark, until recalled by his sudden emphasis. ‘We, or at least I, know little of Jesus. A few months recalled with doubtful accuracy. Much is surely mythical, but in that, would you not say, is its credibility. Myth distils the essence, refines attitudes, sheds the topical or makes topical the past. Patterns standing the test of time. Therein lies not eternal life, for myself, if not, perhaps, for you, but life eternal, spirit eternal.’
He spread hands, apparently bored with propositions he considered drearily platitudinous. ‘Jesus’ comments may be cryptic, playful, paradoxical, untranslatable, sometimes mischievous … I see him as something of a comedian … at times bleak. But they linger. His opinion of our trouble over this girl might have sounded sardonic, indifferent, even callous. Or very simple, the wisdom of the wise booby, mystical ignoramus. The Saviour who outwits Attila and outlives Tamerlane, forgets the world is round and stands it on its head, reverses the rules, mocks the merely possible.’
He had resumed the playfulness ascribed to Jesus. ‘Meister Eckhart defines the mystic as one who, having stared into the heart of the sun, sees the sun in everything.’
As usual, he qualified any suggestion of the sententious by self-deprecation, equivalent of a wink. ‘Not everyone would agree. If they did, there would be less politics. And, dear Lord, fewer potatoes!’
Almost intimate, we moved to the window, and, for the first time, I realized myself the taller. I had always, in so many ways, looked up to him. Soon an old creature with alligator teeth loped past, using his stick as a crutch. Creakily, he bowed to Wilfrid in a way conforming to Wilfrid’s conception of Jesus, sardonic, mischievous, antagonistic to rules and suggestions. Other figures shuffled after him, and a woman’s voice called angrily to a child.
‘What’s that, Kurt? Are you hungry?’
‘No, I’m hungry.’
Several youths, Acrobats by nature, heads together, plotting, sniggering, complaining, clustered at the pump. Or bargained for the girl, meek behind them, jug in hand. ‘She looks’, Wilfrid said, ‘almost virginal. Rare though not inspiring. Well, the sadness and mad hopes of the young! I once met a Malayan girl with an impressive-sounding name that, in the vernacular, meant “my Father wanted a boy”!’
He was meditative, then returned to his chair. ‘It’s been said, too often, that a young face resembles a rose. You might prefer a heliotrope. But any flower, even wild by the roadside, refutes the zealot instructing us to refrain from feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, in order to hasten the end of the system and gain absolute power. Absolution for the unforgivable. Instead, you and, more problematically, myself, are learning to love the unlovable. As for little Friedl, unworthy of troubadours and lyricists … our companions, brave, loyal, unselfish, reliable, nevertheless contemplate what they call mass assault. The ancients symbolized our problem as the Gordian Knot. Alexander, in his greatness, or because of his greatness, lacked patience. He died young, you remember. An imbecilic treatment of life.’
The message I imperfectly understood, though it must counsel restraint. But then what? High thoughts, well-adjusted patience, would not unlock Wolf’s Lair or withstand the Russians.
Before I left him he selected a book from a neat pile, sought a particular page, then, as settling the matter beyond dispute, read out: ‘You’ve seen anger flare, two boys huddled into a ball of what was mere hate, and roll upon the ground … But now you know how such things get forgotten, for there, before you, stands the bowl of roses.’
3
Though the war was surely ending, a German advance in Bavaria was rumoured. I cursed Friedl. A little scared, at a loss, I was over-strained: spots in my eyes, unhealed scratches, coughs. The one-sided talk with Wilfrid rankled, I rebelled against his habit of uttering the controversial as if it were a truth clear to all but the wilful. At such times he was not Xenophanes but Robespierre, overclean, ineffable, not quite human, or a clever professor enjoying giving unexpected answers to questions routine or not always asked.
Vello ignored us, chances of a deal receded. From Wolf’s Lair a scream, whether or not faked, was heard at night, like tearing calico. Again, we must wait on Wilfrid.
He was refreshed, at ease, and, overalls removed, almost smart in trim blue jacket, well-washed open green shirt. ‘I have often thought that shabby compromise is an arrangement unjustly maligned. It may be possible for me to reach it.’
Protests were strenuous. ‘Wilfrid, you can’t …’ But he could and was already leaving, passing through the camp with his habitual nods, small greetings, enquiries, making for the gates, at which, trailing behind, we had, at his brief order, to remain, the crowd around us whispering, nervous.
He reached the barn, huge, patchily thatched, rotten, a woman gripped my hand as the door opened, then slammed, the sound like a gun-shot. ‘It’s a rat warren,’ the woman breathed as he disappeared.
Throughout the long afternoon, under a sun round and yellow, like a poster, the crowd swelled, now subdued, now muttering. Some thought that Wilfrid had deserted us, would ride with Vello to seek the British and their General Monty. In myth, so recommended by Wilfrid, there could be wordless desire for the downfall of the beloved – Baldur, Achilles, Caesar. People, oppressed by tensions and the warm, sickly air, sank into hopelessness. Once a stir passed over like a breeze as Vello appeared at the door, surveying us, his stare, bludgeon nose, twisted mouth, his metal belt, his fists, compressed into the stiffness of pine or gallows.
Trained on the barn door, we were held together by fantasies of the upshot. Purple melodrama has its truth, paring the moment to death or deliverance, the abject or proud, sunlight or midnight. Several, fainting, praying or in hangdog nothingness, were on their knees. Moments slouched by or ceased altogether, as in other tales, when the lord lies wounded, crops wither, dancers’ feet, harpists’ fingers, drinkers’ hands, freeze. Heavy as Hindenburg, the atmosphere was about to split when Friedl suddenly slid out quietly, faintly, as if through a crack in the great door, one cheek bruised, eyes looking nowhere, but head and shoulders defiant, demanding credit, until she half ran to a side-gate, the crowd parting, then enclosing her.
Shamed by my own inactivity, I had scarcely thought of her. The barn remained fixed in its very lack of commotion, its morgue isolation, until, neither unobtrusive nor histrionic, Wilfrid walked out, his smile large, barely natural – the Pole said later he had rubbed himself with air – and, in a general gasp, we saw he was wearing an Egyptian tarboosh, red, tasselled, jaunty. He could as well have sported a cap and bells and painted stick, for a comic dance. Feeling we should applaud, we did nothing, overtaken by relief, astonishment, sensations of unreality. He would of course explain nothing, never mention it, the incident was as personal as confessional or medical examination. He might have done no more than told them a story, implausible but adroit. It might one day supply me a larger story of my own, written not from knowledge but ignorance, bending, colouring, or spoiling language, striving not for the sublime but the unusual.
On 7 May 1945 we heard very distant bells. General Jodl had signed unconditional surrender, then was allowed to address his captors, his troops, the world:
In this war, which has lasted more than five years, the German people and armed forces have achieved and suffered more than perhaps any other people in any other place. I can only hope that the victors will treat them generously.