Finale

Walter Grossmann was a gaunt man whose hand at his first meeting with Jay on Monday trembled slightly and who looked as though he needed a good night’s sleep. But he made an effort to put on a brave face as he confided to Jay that the timing of his visit could not have been more opportune. He said that, as a matter of fact, in view of their smooth cooperation in the matter of the Polish bicycle factory a few years ago, he and his remaining partners had been thinking of contacting the Bank of Ontario, of whose unusually robust financial stability they were well informed.

Jay assured him he would convey this message to his superiors immediately. At his second meeting the following Thursday he was able to request Herr Grossmann to put forward a specific plan, including a tour d’horizon of the bank’s operations in eastern Europe, as a basis of discussion. Jay went as far as to say that he was confident such a plan would be well received in Toronto. He would be happy to stay in Frankfurt to conduct the negotiations with him and his partners on behalf of his bank as long as necessary.

In the sporting goods store in Bockenheim where the flamboyant Romanian Cella Lubescu sold tennis equipment, the football department was run by young Stefan Jordan, the grandson of Doctor Reinhold Jordan, a class mate of Teddy Adorno’s who had died eight years earlier. Throughout Adorno’s stay in the United States, until his return to Europe in 1949, they had exchanged letters — during the war via friends in Switzerland. At that time Doctor Jordan was the chief surgeon at the Municipal Hospital. Adorno was a celebrity in Frankfurt and Stefan was interested in his grandfather’s correspondence with him.

Cella and Stefan were good friends. When Cella mentioned Hans Kielmann’s search for information about Hermann Geisel, Stefan thought that must be the man whom Adorno had occasionally mentioned in his letters.

One of the last communications Doctor Jordan received from Adorno before his return to Frankfurt was a letter written a week after Hanni’s death:

The death of Hanni Geisel last week was a severe blow. I saw a good deal of her, off and on, in the last few years and was always enlivened by her positive outlook on the world. Thomas Mann said of her that she had an “intelligent heart,” one of his many oddly mannered expressions. But I think I know what he meant. Also, I admired her intuitive understanding of music. I believe at one time she was quite a respectable violinist.

I had known her and her husband quite well when I was a graduate student and incipient music critic in the nineteen-twenties and was often invited to their Saturday déjeuners, where I met a lot of bright people. The ones who were not so bright I have forgotten. But these occasions were particularly memorable because the man who influenced me most at the time, the journalist and film historian Erwin Herzberg, was a frequent guest. A few years later I saw a great deal of him in the United States. I am sure you know that he made his name on the international scene with his book From Fritz Lang to Leni Riefenstahl, which he wrote in New York.

In the summer of 1927, during the International Exhibition of Music, there was a great deal of frowning and shaking of heads over Hanni Geisel’s open love affair with Erwin, which went on for several weeks. In this, as in so many other respects, the Geisels were truly modern — just as they unreservedly espoused the cause of modern music, some of which they liked, some which left them puzzled. The idea of an open marriage between two people — usually members of the intelligentsia — who were devoted to each other, was then quite new in Frankfurt. Of course this kind of arrangement worked particularly well if the third party — this “Hausfreund,” this “friend of the house” — was a member of the same social set, and if great care was taken that no children would be hurt. My guess is that the concept has survived the Nazi period and the war, and probably even spread to the non-intelligentsia — but you would know more about that than I.

If I were a novelist I would invent the dialogue that must have taken place between them along the following lines:

“It’s happened again,” Hanni confided to her husband when the first symptoms appeared. “You know, the Kurt Simonsky inflammation.”

Kurt Simonsky was a previous lover.

“Do you want another vacation?” Hermann asked. “On the same terms as last time?”

“That would be nice, Hermann. Yes, please.”

“Application granted.”

And he gave her a loving kiss on the forehead.

The day after they received their copies of Teddy Adorno’s heart-warming revelations, Jay, Hans, Nicola and Gisela met for a pre-dinner beer at the Roland Bar on the Kaiserstrasse.

“May I congratulate you on your choice of grandparents, Gisela,” Jay said, raising his glass to her. “Obviously, they were marvellous people.”

“Thank you. I accept the compliment. I wish I had known them.”

Jay turned to Hans.

“I came to Frankfurt on a business trip. And what did I find, thanks to you? The makings of a bestseller!”

“And a hit movie,” Nicola added.

“I shall contact my lawyer first thing in the morning,” Gisela said. “I will ask him to negotiate my share of the box office right away.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Hans,” Nicola said, laughing. “You said yourself Gisela likes money.”

“True,” Hans responded. “I think we’ll appoint Jay our money manager. How long are you staying in Frankfurt?”

“I will drag out the negotiations with the Littmann Bank as long as possible. After that, who knows?”

“Ask your bosses to make you their man in Frankfurt,” Hans demanded.

“Good idea,” Gisela said “We need Canadians.”

“And one more thing — it’s most important.” Hoping for the greatest possible theatrical effect, Nicola rose from her seat and raised her glass. “I think we should drink to the Hausfreund Erwin Herzberg. We must never forget that you can’t have a triangle without a Hausfreund.”

Finis