After Midnight (12 page)

Indeed, the life Liska’s been living for some time must be a great trial to her. Algin talks of nothing but politics. He has lost any interest in admiring Liska and kissing her. The National Socialists burned Algin’s book. Algin has to write stories which Liska thinks are stupid. All of a sudden he’s ceased to be a wonderful writer. As a matter of fact Algin himself often says the stuff he’s writing these days is stupid, dreadful, but it still annoys him no end when Liska says so. And now he is coming to think it’s not so stupid after all, for he has taken to expressing himself poetically on the subject of Nature and the love for his homeland which arises from it, and he has Betty Raff to admire him.

The Count lay in his fair maid’s bed …

Heini is drinking. Everybody else is tired, but this is the time of day when he is liveliest. Words roll out of his mouth, words come pounding out of his mouth, he sends waves of words rippling over the table. “I’m telling you again, Breslauer, disease is your element, disease is your native land. And you’ll find disease all over the world, there’ll be disease around as long as you live. Don’t you tell me you think wandering around the Taunus more interesting than wandering kidneys and cancerous tumours. And don’t you tell me doctors are motivated by a love for humanity, either. Most good doctors don’t care much about helping people. Disease is what they care about. Good thing too. That’s the only way they really
can
help people. What use would a surgeon be if his hands were shaking with sympathy? A sensitive doctor’s a bad doctor. Thank God you usually confine your sickening sentimentality to the pub, Breslauer. Same as your
colleague, that surgeon, what’s his name? Kunitzer, that’s it. Where’s he nowadays? England? Bully for England. He’s the right sort. Sober and cold as a modern refrigerator in his professional attitude. Remember when you took me to the hospital and Kunitzer was demonstrating the removal of an appendix? Going to take it out in three or four minutes, he was planning to set a world record for removing an appendix, have an appendectomy event in the Olympic Games.

“Remember the nurses fluttering about that operating theatre like white doves? And everything shiny, white and hard and bright. And that wretched little piece of humanity lying on the operating table. An elderly, unemployed bookkeeper. Body all thin, grey skin looked dead already. And a careworn look about his belly, and feet with their crooked toes sticking up in a worried sort of way. But his face was peaceful. Wouldn’t have looked any different dead from the way he looked under anaesthetic, face grave and clear under a network of worry lines. That quiet, motionless net of wrinkles was like a veil of comfort. And it struck me as a cruel outrage to go saving a man at peace. Saving him for a wretched, unpeaceful life. He was as good as dead, my own hand would have trembled for fear of bringing him back to life.

“But out in the clean, red-tiled corridor we saw a woman sitting on a bench as we passed, grey little mouse of a woman with dark, scared eyes. She was muttering softly, praying at breakneck speed, as if she had to say all the hundred thousand unsaid prayers of her life in a single minute. Soft, rushing eddies of prayer coming out of her. ‘It’ll be all right,’ said Kunitzer’s assistant, hefty, blond, beer-drinking sort of fellow, full of the joys of life. He stopped the grey eddy of prayer with his podgy pink hand, just touched the
mousy woman’s poor little shoulder with that hand and the mouse looked as if God himself had appeared before her, and all she lacked was the strength to fall on her knees. A smile trembled on her prayed-out lips. God went on. And we were among the accompanying host of angels, remember, Breslauer? Along with a few more folk, authorities interested in the setting of surgical records.

“And the woman started praying again behind us, remember? Maybe she had more faith in prayers than in God. If I’d been a doctor my hand would have shaken for fear I couldn’t answer her prayers.

“Kunitzer’s hand didn’t shake, though. The woman’s prayers were answered. The peaceful man was saved for further tribulations. And Kunitzer went striding down the red-tiled corridor cloaked in annoyance. The operation had lasted three minutes too long, wasn’t a world record after all.”

6

ALGIN HAS JOINED US. HE IS SITTING THERE, pale and gloomy, his eyes dark caverns, his pale hands lying on the table. He has had another letter from the Reich Chamber of Literature. There’s going to be another purge of writers, and Algin will probably get eliminated. He might yet save himself by writing a long poem about the Führer, something he has been most reluctant to do so far. But even that might be dangerous. Because National Socialist writers might take exception to his daring to write about the Führer without being an old campaigner for the cause. Similarly, he daren’t write a Nazi novel, because it wouldn’t be fitting. However, if he doesn’t write a Nazi novel that makes him undesirable. People still like reading his books, people still want to print them, and that’s not right either.

“Might as well do away with oneself,” says Algin.

“Got ten marks, have you, Algin?” says Heini. “Thanks, Algin. Who knows how much longer you’ll have anything? That’s not a bad idea of yours, doing yourself in, you should put it into practice. You once had talent, you were successful. Your life’s a poor, shabby thing now. You made ridiculous concessions. For love of your wife and your silly apartment and your furniture and so on, you hobnobbed with people you considered inferior, wrote things that go
against your feelings and your conscience. A poor sort of literary man you are.

“So now you’re thinking of writing a historical novel, are you? It’ll be the work of a eunuch, Algin. A writer in the act of writing must fear neither his own words nor anything else in the world. A writer who is afraid is no true writer.

“Apart from all that, though, you’re superfluous now. This dictatorship has made Germany a perfect country, and a perfect country doesn’t need writers. There’s no literature in Paradise. Can’t have writers without imperfection around them, can’t have poets. The purest of lyric poets needs to yearn for perfection. Once you’ve got perfection, poetry stops. Once criticism’s no longer possible, you have to keep quiet. What are you going to write about God in Paradise? What are you going to write about the angels’ wings? Cut too short this season, worn too long? They’re neither one nor the other. Perfection renders words unnecessary. You write and speak to communicate your thoughts, we write and speak to communicate with each other. Perfect unity among mankind means silence. Every word is war, whether it means strife or peace. As long as there are words in the world there’ll be wars. And when there are no wars left the word will fall victim to eternal peace as well. Better do yourself in, Algin, because you’re living in Paradise, and when there’s nothing left to criticize the writer’s lost his livelihood. So do yourself in, or learn the harp and play the music of the spheres.”

“I will, too,” says Algin, “I
will
do myself in. But there are others I must do away with first. Got to do away with someone lower than myself. Got to find him, got to look for him.” Algin is drunk himself; what on I don’t know. Betty Raff will comfort him when he gets home. Perhaps he’ll do
her
in.

Fat, cosy Herr Manderscheid is looking anxious. “Who’s that?” he asks. A girl is fluttering past our table, slightly unsteady, colourful and light as a peacock’s feather, waving to Heini, and Heini waves back. “Want to meet the lady, Manderscheid? She’s a good girl, she’s established her proof of Aryanism, she’s a member of the Reich Chamber of Brothels, lives in the same boarding house as me.”

The Count lay in his fair maid’s bed …

“You knew I lived in a low-class area, did you, Manderscheid? In about the most dismal low-class area of Frankfurt. In a gloomy backwater of a street behind the station. Breslauer once came to see me, spent half an hour there, suffered from severe melancholia for two weeks afterwards. The stairs are dark, narrow and damp, make me think of sinister fairytales whenever I climb them, dreams of robbers and witches. The room’s a real nightmare. Just the sight of the pale wallpaper with its muddled flower pattern is discouraging. There’s an old bathtub of cracked, greyish-white enamel where there ought to be a table, and a big wooden board laid across it which is a raw, pale colour. My bed’s a kind of raised tomb, narrow metal bedstead, foot and head like prison bars, musty, grey, cold sheets. And there’s a picture of the Führer over the bed, our little National Socialist ray of sunshine, calculated to bring light into the darkest room, warm it in a nice homely way. All the rooms in the boarding house are the same. Maybe you’d like to indulge your senses there some time, Manderscheid?

“The landlady’s a Baroness. Baroness von Freysen. Fine woman. Sight of her’s enough to freeze the blood in the veins of the strongest man alive. I have to get very, very drunk before I dare go home and face her. I slept with her once by mistake, that’s many years ago, she’s never forgotten it,
though. Means I can live at her place on credit. That woman has a grateful disposition. Apart from the picture of the Führer, there’s a tolerably conservative-cum-revolutionary atmosphere about the place, you get left in peace. Mind you, I could still have credit at a grand place like the Frankfurter Hof hotel, on account of the old days, but if I went to live there it might make people envious, Manderscheid here or someone else would denounce me for running down the government. We are living in the time of the greatest German denunciation movement ever, you see. Everyone has to keep an eye on everyone else. Everyone’s got power over everyone else. Everyone can get everyone else locked up. There aren’t many can withstand the temptation to make use of that kind of power. The noblest instincts of the German nation have been aroused, and they’re being tenderly cultivated.

“All right, don’t get agitated, Manderscheid, I didn’t mean to insult you. You’ll make up tomorrow for what you’ve left undone today. You’ve got a family. A family man gets timid, can’t afford to be a man of principle too, not these days. There are a good few see their families as just the moral excuse they want for apathy and crawling. You gave me twenty marks a little while back, Manderscheid, so I can buy you another glass of beer. Drink up!”

The café’s getting emptier now, but it is no quieter. The fat, cheerful proprietor with his beer belly is standing beside us. “Evening, ladies and gentlemen, see you soon, good night,
Heil
Hitler,” he says to his customers as they go out, adding, to Heini, “Well, never know who you may be speaking to, do you, or what they happen to like?”

“The
Stürmer
, new edition just out, the
Stinging Nettle
and the
Illustrated Observer
for sale.”

Oh lord, I was hoping we could go home at last, and here comes the man who sells the
Stürmer
, the character Heini likes to engage in conversation, asking him ideological questions about World Outlook. The
Stürmer
man is about forty, fair and pale and tired, and bursting with zeal. He beavers away investigating all sort of Jewish secrets; he’s always discovering something new.

Breslauer doesn’t like it when Heini calls the
Stürmer
man over, he is sliding back and forth on his seat in his uneasiness, and his eyes flicker. “Calm down, Breslauer,” says Heini, “don’t you worry, the man has wonderfully well-developed instincts, his blood speaks loud and clear. Anyone can see you’re Jewish—anyone except our friend from the
Stürmer
.”

Blue clouds of smoke fill the air, almost enough to smother you. The proprietor is switching off lights at the back of the café, the waiters are beginning to empty ashtrays and bang them down again on the tables in a busy, unwelcoming way. Toni tenderly wraps his guitar in black oilcloth and finishes the end of his drink.

The
Stürmer
man has found out something new about Jews and Freemasons, to the effect that our five and ten pfennig coins have a sinister connection with Judaism and thus with Freemasonry. The fact is that the stalks of the ears of corn on the backs of those coins form a kind of Star of David. I can never understand the
Stürmer
man’s explanations. He says he can now divulge that he is on the track of a shocking conspiracy. “Amazing,” says Heini, “I’d never have thought of a thing like that. What an intelligent person you are, what a very intelligent person!”

The
Stürmer
man is delighted. He looks at Heini and our whole party with as much love and gratitude as if he were
ready to risk his life rescuing every one of us from a burning house. “Oh, I’m only a very simple, uneducated man, ladies and gentlemen, but I’ve educated myself out of the
Stürmer
, you see. But for the
Stürmer
I’d never have known about the terrible dangers threatening our magnificent Aryan destiny. I’d have been blind to the whole Jewish question. I will say this, though, it’s in my nature to have a deeply inquiring mind. I get it from my stars. I hope you won’t think me immodest when I tell you I was born under Leo.” And the
Stürmer
man falls silent.

“Good heavens!” says Heini. “Why, then you share a birth month with this gentleman.” And he indicates Breslauer.

“I knew it,” says the
Stürmer
man. “I felt it at once—I sensed it! Give me your hand, sir.” Breslauer shakes hands, looking embarrassed. The
Stürmer
man is all emotional. “I can tell, just from the look of you, that
you
have a deeply inquiring mind too,” he says. “You will understand me. When two Leos meet, anywhere in the world, they’re like brothers. I’ll tell you something, as another Leo—something I haven’t told a living soul before. Do you mind if I sit down for a minute, ladies and gentlemen?”

The
Stürmer
man sits down beside Breslauer and offers to buy him a beer—“No, really, I insist!”

So Breslauer and the
Stürmer
man raise their glasses and drink to those born under the sign of the Lion.