Mr. Mani (12 page)

—No, no, it's not a mountain, Grandmother. You were born on the plains of Holstein, and so you think that every hill is a mountain. It's really just a little hill, believe me. Mountains don't look like that, and here, on this island, there are some real ones...

—Step by pleasurable step we'll do our best to reach that round summit that you can see so clearly from here.

—Exactly.

—Exactly.

—Yes, the visibility is magnificent today, Grandmother. I don't know if you can begin to appreciate the extent of the view that you'll have. It's as if the windows of the world have been especially scrubbed for you, and the island rinsed with clear wine, and even the clouds washed down with the finest suds! Because up in our moldy north you never see more than half of the visible world, and here you'll see the other half, and maybe more. We couldn't get over this glorious weather all morning. Just see how clear the sky is, everyone kept telling me, it's in honor of your grandmother Sauchon...

—Everyone knows. Everyone is thrilled by your visit. Our commanding officer, Bruno Schmelling, is even thinking of giving a little banquet tonight in your honor ... in honor of the good old, little old Germany...

—Of course he's expecting you. But meanwhile, Grandmother, please, we mustn't miss a minute of this most magnificent, this best time of day. Our leisurely climb will take us to five stations, five observation points from which I'll tell you my story in the order and way it should be told, because nothing can be safe or sensible without order, isn't that what you always used to say? Well, I subscribe to that wholeheartedly, which means we don't have much time, only a few hours, of which we mustn't waste a minute in small talk or childhood reminiscences. We've got to get straight to the point and to all of the difficult questions, because it's perfectly true, Grandmother, that I've hardly been in touch for three years, hardly written to you, never taken a single leave, even though I knew how I was hurting you and Mother, because I was afraid that if I left this island I'd never come back. Who knows, perhaps deep down I did it just to lure you here, Grandmother, to this place that soon, yes, indeed, we will all have to leave without ever having bothered to understand it despite our great enthusiasm for it in the beginning. And you can see that I succeeded, because here you are! In fact, Grandmother, believe it or not, from the unforgettable moment that the most delicious news of your arrival first reached me over the wireless, I've done nothing but plan this visit! I've even written and learned all my lines by heart, ha ha ... why, I couldn't fall asleep all night long...

—That's quite all right. No one's short of sleep here. We hibernated the whole first winter, and I'm still withdrawing sleep from that account.

—I've put on weight? Perhaps ... it's certainly true that ... after all, until recently things couldn't have been more peaceful here. The local inhabitants were friendly, the British pulled back to their great North African desert and dug in there, the Russians were falling apart—there was no one to make any trouble. And the air here gives you an appetite...

—Yes, Grandmother. First it was Stalingrad that gave us a bit of a jolt. Then came the invasion of Italy, and now it's the landing on that beach in France ... what's it called?

—Exactly, that's it. So you see, as remote and peaceful as it is here, we're waking up little by little. Shall we start out?

—No, it's absolutely necessary. Please, Grandmother, I'm sure it is. I'm not trying to get away with anything. I'm ready to answer all your questions, and with that dreadful old honesty of ours. You know your grandson: would he insist on this hike if he thought it was possible to get to the bottom of things without a view of them from on top? Because it's not just a view, Grandmother, it's a character in my story. And we'd better hurry before it starts getting dark. Not that we're frightened of the dark, you and I—it's just that lately there are all kinds of hostile elements around and we have orders not to go out after dark in groups smaller than five ... and a quintet, Grandmother, no matter how you count us, is more than the two of us will ever be...

—Yes, it gets dark quickly here. Don't forget how far south you've come, Grandmother. In fact, this is the southernmost point of the Reich, and here, at thirty-five latitude, the twilight is quick and insubstantial. None of your soulful, copper-colored, everlasting sunsets in the bogs and woods of Schlesing that at first I was so desperately homesick for. How I missed our merry little hunter's lodge!

—Burned?

—And the little bridge? No, don't tell me ... I don't want to know...

—But why did they have to bomb them? Well, what does it matter ... we'll rebuild them...

—Of course I do. How could I not believe it? But enough! Come, Grandmother, let's start out. Everything is ready. It's a good, gentle path, a little winding, to be sure, but with an easy grade. I checked it again this morning, trying to see it through your eyes and judge it by your capacity. I even took a shovel to fill in the rough parts, and pulled out some weeds, and made three special steps, and chose our rest stops. An hour's walk, Grandmother, and we'll be at the top, and there's a bench up there in an old Turkish outpost that you can sit on pretty comfortably—it's protected from the winds if there are any, but there won't be—and look out at the sunset ... See, I've even got a binoculars for you in this knapsack. You yourself said how clear the air is, the view on a day like this is too good to miss. Just imagine, Grandmother, if it wasn't you but old Opapa Sauchon who had the good fortune to be here—don't you think he'd jump to his feet, all eighty-three years of him, and be up that hill in no time? Do you think he'd miss a chance for a panoramic and strategic view of the place where our Europe was born? Think of it that way, Grandmother. Tell yourself it's for Grandfather and try being his eyes...

—Thank you. Thank you, most wonderful Grandmother...

—Yes, Europa. The young maiden. Together with Zeus...

—Easy does it. Yes, I know. I've even tied a rope around my waist and made a loop you can easily hold onto to make sure you don't slip. Oh, someone will yet write about you—if, that is, anyone will want to write about us at all—and tell how, at the age of seventy-four, Frau Andrea Sauchon, the widow of the hero of the Battle of the Baltic, reached the southernmost point of the Thousand-Year Reich—which won't last a thousand years but may hold out a thousand days, although I'm afraid that each day will be worse than the one before it—and skipped right up a hill by the airport to look down on the Gulf of Heraklion...

—Sunglasses? Of course.

—I have a canteen.

—Yes. It's loaded.

—You won't be needing it.

—All right, we'll take this coat. But let me carry it.

—No, there's nothing crazy about it, you'll see...

—Things have gotten much worse this past month. Everyone listens to the BBC. It's reached the point that you sometimes think that the very earth is broadcasting in English under your feet. Not that the British are in any hurry to get here. Why should they be? If they wait long enough, we'll leave by ourselves...

—Just to shed more blood, Grandmother? What for? There's been enough bloodshed here already. Three years ago seven thousand German soldiers lost their lives on this island, and now you want more? No...

—But defend it how, Grandmother? A man sitting naked on his front porch couldn't be more of a sitting duck than we are. Every little fishing boat that you see down there in the harbor is spying for the enemy. Every little boy playing ball near our headquarters is a secret agent...

—Exactly.

—Every boat ... never mind...

—That little one down there too. Why not? Anything is possible...

—It could be. The local inhabitants are trying to give themselves a clean bill of health to make up for their three years of cozying up to us. Before we've made a move, the English already know about it on Cyprus. Which is why, Grandmother, as you can see down there, no, over there...

—Exactly. They're trundling your little plane off the runway and covering it with branches. Not that it will do any good, because the fishing boats are already signaling each other, and in an hour from now all of Cyprus will know that someone important has arrived in Crete, although the description of her will cause great confusion, ha ha ... What can be the military purpose of such a grandmother? They'll have to call a staff meeting of all their brigadiers to decide what countersteps to take...

—No, I'm not exaggerating. I still can't get over their bringing you here. A whole lot of people risked their lives to fly you over the flaming Reich. It's one more proof of the legend of Opapa, which burns more brightly than ever as night falls. Who knows, Grandmother, maybe someone on the general staff thought that if you were flown over the front you might remember some old battle plan of Opapa Sauchon's, some secret stratagem he worked out thirty years ago that might stem the tide of the rout we're beginning to see all around us...

—No, it's not a name that rings a bell with people my age. But as soon as Schmelling heard you were coming, why, he was so tickled pink that he couldn't stop screaming at me for never telling him...

—Not a word.

—I didn't want to. Since landing on this island I've even stopped dropping hints about the grand estate that may be mine one day...

—I'm not complaining, Grandmother. You know perfectly well...

—I simply didn't want to arouse any military expectations that could only end in disappointment or embarrassment since the day I left the storm troopers and was posted to this garrison ... and anyway ... but look over there, no, more to the right, that's it, Grandmother, look! That's the sea over there on the horizon.

—Come stand where I am.

—You can lean on me.

—That's it ... over there ... that bit of horizon down there, which will soon light up like a red, glowing heart. Well, then, it was out of that very heart, Grandmother, that we came swooping down three years ago behind the sun, pushing its rays in front of us to blind the British, who were just sitting down to high tea. Yes, through that pinkish aperture slipped fifty airplanes all at once that have since become a legend, making the Australian lookout who was sitting here waiting for the sunset wipe the lenses of his binoculars and wonder why they weren't getting any cleaner, because suddenly he saw a whole lot of bright little dots. Who but a dedicated suicide pilot could have thought that such a fantastic operation was possible?

—No, Grandmother, we didn't think so either—that is, the handful of us who could or wanted to think at all. I'm not talking about that pack of young wolves that has been convinced since ‘36 that the whole universe is a playground in which it can kick the globe around like a football. If you had parachuted them into Calcutta to take the English high command there, they would have done it as blithely as they charged into Poland and Holland. But we, I mean the handful of us who still could and wanted to think a bit, sat huddled under our helmets, looking down in horror at the smooth water racing beneath us while asking ourselves what demonic power could be taking us to this strange, distant island if not the wish to see the best of us slaughtered on a self-propelled altar of grandeur and thus scare the wits not only out of the world but out of Germany too. Suddenly, Grandmother, I began to shake with sheer sorrow for my life that was about to be shot right out of the sky. I thought, yes, Grandmother, I thought of Uncle Egon and even envied him for having managed to be dead already...

—Yes, I did think of him, Grandmother, and it so upset me to imagine the fresh sorrow awaiting you that the stretcher strapped to my body began to twitch, and our battalion commander, Oberst Thomas Stanzler, a most wonderful and much looked-up-to man who was sitting across from me with his helmet in his hand, a ray of sunlight from a porthole falling on his bald head, smiled a bit because he must have seen the vibrations, laid a pitying hand on me, and said, “You, Private Bruner,” he said, “look like some strange kind of bird, like Icarus who tried flying over Crete. But don't forget, Bruner, that your wings are made of steel and won't melt in the sun like his...” And then, Grandmother, I thought of that story, and my eyes filled with tears of gratitude to our knowledgeable battalion commander, who was soon to be mortally wounded, for having taken the trouble to remind me of the myth of Daedalus and his son, which made me think of that old tutor you once brought me...

—Koch ... right you are, Grandmother, Gustav Koch ... that old classicist with his stories of Greece and Rome...

—Exactly. Exactly.

—Of course I remember him.

—No, I was not too young to understand. He was the first to call for casting the rusty anchor of German history back into that sea you see down there, because there, he used to say, was the warm, true, blue womb of the German genius. Be more careful, Egon, he would shout at me when I mixed up all those mythical characters, those are your own ancestors, our poor Europe was born from them, if only the Teutonic tribes had pressed on to Greece fifteen hundred years ago instead of stopping in Rome, damn its soul!...

—Don't you remember how he sometimes used to swear?

—You mean he taught Uncle Egon too? How fantastic...

—True. And so all at once, Grandmother, in that growling, pitching airplane that was losing altitude now, all bundled up with my parachute and my knapsack and my stretcher and my rifle, with my helmet down over my ears, and my glasses, which I was too stupid to stick deep in some pocket, tied to a shoelace around my neck, I suddenly lost all fear and had an actual attack of ecstasy, as if savoring the real taste of war for the first time, Grandmother, and I actually became a physical link in old Koch's rusty anchor chain that had been flung over the Alps with such marvelous force onto the heads of our mythical ancestors, stirring the moss of black forests and the fumes of Hunnish swamps into those warm waves until the Teutonic dreams haunting us found their meaning in the sculptured white marble of Hellas ... And so, when the red light went on, and the bell rang, and the dispatching sergeant began to bark, and the whole pack of wolves jumped to its feet with a great shout and put a bullet in the barrels of its schmeissers and disappeared one by one through the hatch with its legs out, I shouted as loud as I could too, Grandmother, I shouted for old Gustav Koch, that grade school classicist, and I went whooshing out into the space that you're looking at right now...