The Light and the Dark (31 page)

He took me on a tour under the great grey buildings; lights twinkled behind the office windows; the shops and cafés were full, people jostled us on the pavements, the air was frosty and electric; an aeroplane zoomed invisibly overhead, above the even pall of cloud. We walked past the offices of the Friedrichstrasse and the Wilhelmstrasse; the rooms were a blaze of light. Roy was only speaking to tell me what the places were. He showed me Schäder’s ministry, a heavy nineteenth century mansion. Official motor cars went hurtling by, their horns playing an excited tune.

We came to the Linden. The trees were bare, but the road was alive with cars and the pavements crammed with men and women hurrying past. Roy stopped for a moment and looked down the great street. He broke his silence.

“It has great power,” he said. “Don’t you feel that it has great power?”

He spoke with extreme force. As he spoke, I knew for sure what I had already suspected: he had brought me to Berlin to convert me.

For the rest of that morning we argued, walking under the steely sky through the harsh, busy streets. We had never had an argument before – now it was painful, passionate, often bitter. We knew each other’s language, each of us knew all the experience the other could command, it was incomparably more piercing than arguing with a stranger.

When once we began, we could not leave it all day; on and off we came back to the difference between us. Most of the passion and bitterness was on my side. I was not reasonable that day, either as we walked the streets or sat in his high cold rooms. I kept breaking out with incredulity and rancour. We were still talking violently, when it was ten o’clock and time to leave for the Adlon.

He seemed to be using his gifts, his imagination, his penetrating insight, his clear eyes, for a purpose that I detested. He had not wanted me to become absorbed in the rag tag and bobtail of the Knesebeckstrasse. He loved them, but it was not that part of Germany he wanted me to see. They did not talk politics, except to grumble passively at laws and taxes which impinged on them; the only political remarks on the night I arrived were a few diatribes against the régime by the school teacher, who was as usual opinionated, hot-headed and somewhat half-baked. Roy warned her to be careful outside the house. There was an asinine endearingness about her.

Roy wanted me to see the revolution. That day he made his case for it, in a temper that was better than mine, though even his was sometimes sharp; sometimes he put in mischievous digs, as though anxious to lighten my mood. He had set out to convince me that the Nazis had history on their side.

The future would be in German hands. There would be great suffering on the way, they might end in a society as dreadful as the worst of this present one: but there was a chance – perhaps a better chance than any other – that in time, perhaps in our life time, they would create a brilliant civilisation.

“If they succeed,” said Roy, “everyone will forget the black spots. In history success is the only virtue.”

He knew how to use the assumptions that all our political friends made at that period. He had not lived in the climate of “fellow travellers” for nothing. Francis Getliffe, like many other scientists, had moved near to the communist line: we had all been affected by that climate of thought. Men needed to plan on a superhuman scale, said Roy with a hint of the devil quoting scripture; Europe must be one, so that men could plan wide and deep enough; soon the world must be one. How could it become one except by force? Who had both the force and the will? No price was too high to pay, to see the world made one. “It won’t be made one by reason. Men never give up jobs and power unless they must.”

Only the Germans or Russians could do it. They had both got energy set free, through a new set of men seizing power. “They’ve got the energy of a revolution. It comes from very deep.” They had both done dreadful things with it, for men in power always did dreadful things. But the Promethean force might do something wonderful. “Either of them might. I’ve told you before, the truth lies at both extremes,” said Roy. “But I’ll back these people. They’re slightly crazy, of course. All revolutionaries are slightly crazy. That’s why they are revolutionaries. A good solid well-adjusted man like Arthur Brown just couldn’t be one. I’m not sure that you could. But I could, Lewis. If I’d been born here, I should have been.”

Not many people had the nature to be revolutionaries, said Roy. And those who had, felt dished when they had won their revolution and then could not keep their own jobs. Like the old Bolsheviks. Like Röhm. The Nazis had collected an astonishing crowd of bosses – some horrible, some intensely able, some wild with all the turbulent depth of the German heart. “That’s why something may come of them,” said Roy. “They may be crazy, but they’re not commonplace men. You won’t believe it, but one or two of them are good.
Good
, I tell you.”

It was that fantastic human mixture that had taken hold of him. They were men of flesh and bone. They were human. He said one needed to choose between them and the Russians. He had made his choice. Communism was the most dry and sterile of human creeds – “no illustrations, no capital letters. Life is more mixed than that. Life is richer than that. It’s darker than the communists think. They’re optimistic children. Life is darker than they think, but it’s also richer. You know it is. Think of their books. They’re the most sterile and thinnest you’ve ever seen.” Roy talked of our communist friends. “They’re shallow. They can’t feel anything except moral indignation. They’re not human. Lewis, I can’t get on with them any more.”

Inflamed by anxiety and anger, I accused him of being perverse and self-destructive: of being intoxicated by the Wagnerian passion for death; of losing all his sense through meeting, for the first time, men surgent with a common purpose: of being seduced by his liking for Germany, by the ordinary human liking for people one has lived among for long.

“This isn’t the time to fool yourself,” I cried. “If ever there was a time to keep your head–”

“Are you keeping yours?” said Roy quietly. He pointed to the mirror behind us. His face was sombre, mine was white with anger. I had lost my temper altogether. I accused him of being overwhelmed by his success in Berlin, by the flattery and attentions.

“Not fair,” said Roy. “You’ve forgotten that you used to know me. Haven’t you?”

Out of doors, as we walked to the Adlon, the night was sullen. The mercury-vapour lamps shone livid on the streets and on the lowering clouds. We made our way beneath them, and I recovered myself a little. Partly from policy: it was not good to let a man like Schäder see us shaken. But much more because of that remark of Roy’s: “You used to know me”. He had said it without a trace of reproach. Deeper than any quarrel, we knew each other. Walking in the frosty night, I felt a pang of intolerable sorrow.

At the hotel, we were shown into a private room, warm, glowing, soft-carpeted, the table glittering with linen, silver, and glass. Houston Eggar had decided that the party would not harm his prospects; he gave us his tough, cheerful greeting, and talked to us and Joan in a manner that was masculine, assertive, anxious to make an impression, both on the niece of Lord Boscastle and on a comely woman. He had also noted me down as potentially useful – not useful enough to make him fix a lunch during my remaining days in Berlin, but quite worth his trouble to say with matey heartiness that we must “get together soon”. I had a soft spot for Eggar. There was something very simple and humble about his constant, untiring, matter-of-fact ambitiousness. Incidentally, he was only a counsellor at forty-five: he had still to make up for lost time.

Joan said to Roy: “Are you better? You look very tired.”

“Just so,” said Roy. “Through listening to Lewis. He gets more eloquent.”

“You shouldn’t have got up. It’s stupid of you.”

“He could talk to me in bed.”

Joan laughed. His solemn expression had always melted her. For the moment, she was happy to be near him, on any terms.

Servants flung open the door, and Schäder and Ammatter came in. Roy introduced each of us: Schäder spoke good English, though his accent was strange: in an efficient, workmanlike and courteous fashion, he discovered exactly how much German we each possessed.

“We shall speak English then,” said Schäder. “Perhaps we find difficulties. Then Roy shall translate and help us.”

This left Ammatter out of the conversation for most of the dinner. But he accepted the position in a flood of what appeared to be voluble and deferential compliments. It was interesting to notice his excessive deference to Schäder. Ammatter was, as I had seen in Cambridge, a tricky, round-faced, cunning, fluid-natured man, very much on the make. But I was familiar with academic persons on the make, and I thought that, even allowing for his temperament, his obsequiousness before official power marked a real difference in tradition. At the college, Roy and I were used to eminent politicians and civil servants coming down for the weekend; the connection in England between colleges such as ours and the official world was very close; perhaps because it was so close, the visitors did not receive elaborate respect, but instead were liable to be snubbed caustically by old Winslow.

Ammatter made up unashamedly to Schäder, who took very little notice of him. Schäder said that it was late, asked us whether, as soon as we had finished a first drink, we would not like to begin dinner. He took Joan to the table, and I watched him stoop over her chair: he had come into more power than the rest of us had ever dreamed of. I might not meet again anyone who possessed such power.

He was, as Roy had said, in the early thirties. His face was lined and mature, but he still looked young. His forehead was square, furrowed and massive, and there was nearly a straight line from temple to chin, so that the whole of his unusual, strong, intelligent face made up a triangle. His hair was curly, untidy in a youthful fashion; he seemed tough and muscular. It was the kind of physical make-up one does not often find in “intellectual” people, though I knew one or two business men who gave the same impression of vigour, alertness and activity.

As he presided over the dinner, his manners were pleasant, sometimes rather over-elaborate. He was the son of a bank clerk and in his rush to power he had, as it were, invented a form of manners for himself. And he showed one aching cavity of a man who had worked unremittingly hard, who had attained great responsibility early, who had never had time to play. He was getting married in a month, and he talked about it with the naïve exaggerated trenchancy of a very young man. He was a little afraid.

I thought that he knew nothing of women. It flashed out once that he envied Roy his loves. As a rule, his attitude to Roy was comradely, half-contemptuous, half-admiring. He had a kind of amused wonder that Roy showed no taste for place or glory. With pressing friendliness, he wanted Roy to cut a figure in the limelight. If nowhere else, then he should get all the academic honours – and Schäder asked Ammatter sharply when the university would do something for Roy.

Dinner went on. Schäder passed some elaborate compliments to Joan: he was interested, hotly interested like a young man, in her feeling for Roy. Then he called himself back to duty, and addressed me: “Roy has told me, Mr Eliot, that you are what we call a social democrat?”

“Yes.”

Schäder was regarding me intently with large eyes in which there showed abnormally little white: they were eyes dominating, pertinacious, astute. He grinned.

“We found here that the social democrats gave us little trouble. We thought they were nice harmless people.”

“Yes,” I said. “We noticed that.”

Roy spoke to Schäder.

“Don’t think that Eliot is always orthodox and harmless. His politics are the only burgerlich thing about him. I can never understand why he should be such an old burger about politics. Safe in the middle of the road.”

“I am sure,” said Schäder with firm politeness, “that I shall find much in common with Mr Eliot.”

It was clear that I had to do the talking. Eggar was too cautious to enter the contest; he made an attempt to steer us away to placid subjects, such as the Davis Cup. Roy gave him a smile of extreme diablerie, as though whispering the letters “CMG”. It was left to me to stand against Schäder, and in fact I was glad to. It was a relief after the day with Roy. I was completely in control of my temper now. Joan was an ally, backing me up staunchly at each turn of the conflict. I had never felt her approve of me before.

First Schäder tried me out by reflecting on the machinery of government. What did I think about the way governments must develop – not morally, that should not enter between us, said Schäder, but technically? Did I realise the difference that organised science must mean? Two hundred years ago determined citizens with muskets were almost as good as the King’s armies. Now the apparatus is so much more complex. A central government which can rely on its armed forces is able to stay in power forever. “So far as I can see, Mr Eliot, revolution is impossible from now on – unless it starts among those who hold the power. Will you tell me if I am wrong?”

I thought he was right, appallingly right: it was one of the sinister facts of the twentieth century scene. He went on to tell me his views about what the central government could and must control, and how it must operate. He knew it inside out; there was no more sign of the young man unaccustomed to society, timid with women; he was a born manager of men, and he had already had years of experience. Although he was a minister, he did much work that in England would have been done by his permanent secretary: as a matter of fact, he seemed to do a considerable amount of actual executive work, which in an English department would never have reached the higher civil servants, let alone the minister. It had its disadvantages, but I thought it gave him a closer feel of his job. He ran his department rather as an acquaintance of mine, a gifted English industrialist, ran his business. It was the general practice of the régime; sometimes it made for confusion, particularly (as Schäder straightforwardly admitted) when the party officials he had introduced as his own staff got across the old, regular, German civil service. He made another admission: they were finding it hard to collect enough men who could be trained into administrators, high or low. “That may set a limit to the work a government can do, Mr Eliot. And we are an efficient race. If you plan your society, you will find this difficulty much greater – for you educate such a small fraction of your population. Also, forgive me, I do not think you are very efficient.”