Unity (11 page)

It was clear that his loss of control embarrassed him far more than his war record. He insisted that Helmuth did not believe what he said but was simply looking for a means to attack him, in the way that his brother spent every summer working in an Israeli ‘camp’ (I was sure that he chose the word deliberately). ‘He has a
first-class degree in engineering and he picks oranges. Why? For the same reason that this one brought a Jewish girl to the house. They want to punish me.’ Helmuth, provoked beyond endurance, pointed to us. ‘No, other people want to punish their parents. Her mother refused to let her wear make-up … his father wouldn’t let him drive his car. But you were attached to a squad that killed thousands of Jews.’

As if on cue, a nun slid in and said that she was sure we wouldn’t wish to tire Herr Wissmannn. Helmuth shrugged, as though his father’s condition were of no consequence. We exchanged a perfunctory farewell, leaving the old man so
crumpled
that, in spite of myself, I felt a surge of sympathy. And … well you know me: just an ordinary semi-sensitive bloke. What I fail to understand is how, if I felt compassion for him, a guilty old man, he could have felt none for the hundreds of innocent people, old and young, men and women, whom he’d seen tortured and shot and bludgeoned to death. More than just a loss – even a collective loss – of humanity, this must have been a deliberate rejection. Everything I’ve seen in the course of an admittedly short life has convinced me that people have a natural sympathy – a human sympathy – for one another, independent of personal considerations like friendship or love. At worst, it springs from the fear of what we might suffer in another’s place. At best, it
constitutes
an innate moral code.

You even find it, however warped, in Hitler. Many people are perplexed by his love of animals. Here was a man who passed a law on the most humane way to cook a lobster
49
at the same time as he prepared for the annihilation of an entire race. I, however, find it understandable … almost inevitable. Human beings are
not built to hate. Anyone who hates others as fervently as Hitler did, must find a commensurate source of love. So let’s hear a woof for Wolf.
50

As for morality being written by the victors, we must guard against that at any cost or we’ll all find ourselves living by the gospel of Coca Cola. I’m convinced that the only viable morality in a world that is shrinking and a universe that’s expanding is one that is based on the sacredness … or, if that sounds too pompous, the inviolability of every human life.

Please let me know what you think, or I shall be reduced to sitting in the
Marienplatz
talking to myself. I tried to discuss it with Fliss but she took an extraordinarily hard line and said that what I called sympathy was mere sentimentality, whereas true sympathy was based on an understanding of class oppression … She never ceases either to amaze or to worry me. Do you suppose that I should warn her against her friendship with Geraldine? I thought that it was a female solidarity thing, not a revolutionary cell.

It’s time for me to stop. I’ve tried your patience long enough. Besides, I have another letter to write. Do I hear the words ‘glutton for punishment’? Believe me, it’s quite the reverse. I’m dreading putting pen to paper. It’s to my father – and not one of those jolly
liebfraumilch
and
lederhosen
letters that are passed wordlessly across the breakfast table, but a declaration of intent. I’m sure that you must have been bored rigid by all my complaints of how rarely he touched – let alone, kissed – me (or Tim or Derek) when we were kids. I used to blame it on the English taboo against all physical contact between men unless there’s a ball in play. But, just before I came here, my mother, in a rare
acknowledgement
of my father’s existence, told me that ‘his trouble’ (it’s
always ‘his trouble’) sprang from his having been one of the first soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen. It seared him for life.
51

He wouldn’t speak about it to anyone, not even to her –
especially
not to her, since it would have brought it too close to home, and domesticity was his one remaining ideal. Nor would he have dreamt of seeking professional help (they didn’t have therapy where he came from; they had beer). So he locked it inside himself and carried on with his life. As soon as he had the chance, he left England for what he trusted would be a cleaner, less corrupt world. But he couldn’t leave the memories … the memories that have been brought alive for me by the horror branded on those
fresh-faced
American soldiers, suddenly forced to accept that no, they weren’t in Kansas any more. He married, only to grow estranged from his wife; he had three sons to whom he failed to relate; and his new world proved to be just as corrupt as the old. His only comfort was his collection of rare insects, so lovingly assembled and preserved … and painfully abandoned when we fled. I don’t know what it is that’s welling up in me: whether it’s sympathy or sentimentality or something more personal, but I do know that I have to write to him. I need to tell him that I understand what it must have been like for a young man, not much older than I am now, to have lifted the stone on that verminous world. I want him to know that there is finally someone he can talk to. Me.

In the meantime, I send you all my most potent wishes,

Ever your devoted pal,

Luke.

Goldener Anker Hotel,

8580 Bayreuth,

Opernstrasse 6,

West Germany

23rd Sept 1977

Dear Michael,

Bowing to popular demand, I’m typing this letter!

Thank you for yours etc. It was great to hear your news and views. You’re so right about all the Americans searching for their roots in Ireland being driven by ‘nostalgie de la peat’. I may borrow the phrase if you don’t mind. Beware of writers bearing notebooks! What a coincidence that you should have seen Dora at Chichester this summer. I’d have thought her a tad too
mature
(admit it; I’m learning!) for the part. Didn’t the original Marguerite die in her twenties?
52
I was intrigued that you thought her a little too buttoned up ‘both literally and metaphorically’ to play a prostitute (I have no trouble with your writing. Ouch!) To my mind, she’s more broderie anglaise than French knickers. But then she herself defined a star as someone who didn’t have to take off her clothes even when she was playing a stripper.

Without doubt, she’s my favourite actress in the cast – always excepting Fliss, of course. It’s to do with the dry wit and the
willingness
to laugh at herself. She told me the other day – she always talks so unguardedly – that, for a woman who’s no longer
twenty-nine
, she doesn’t do too badly for men. ‘You must have inner beauty,’ I replied, knowing, the moment I’d opened my mouth, that I’d said the wrong thing. ‘No, dear,’ she countered sharply, ‘not even inner niceness.’ She’s been married twice: the first time to a novelist and the second to a playwright, which she claims has
given her an unwarranted reputation as an intellectual. The first husband was a monster who used to hit her. The second was a sweetie who – and I quote – ‘never raised a hand to me. Sadly, he never raised anything else either.’
53
Do you think that’s true or just a good line? She’s been in so many well-made plays that she talks in dialogue. And there’s more. On husband number one: ‘I divorced him twenty years ago but I still carry round the papers. Whenever I feel depressed, I take them out to read.’ She remains married to husband number two – ‘although not in the eyes of the Pope’ (a joke that’s lost on me). She claims that there’s no point in an official separation because her astrologer has told her that someone close to her is about to die and she assumes that it must be him.

There’s no love lost between her and Geraldine. They loathed each other on sight when they appeared as mother and daughter in
The Nesting-box
, during one of Dora’s rare excursions to
Hollywood
. ‘I came back to London and played Medea – with a vengeance.’
54
She finds no virtue in anything that Geraldine does from her espousal of politics to her rejection of publicity. ‘The moment I hear an actress talk about the need to respect her privacy, I know that she must have something to hide.’ She professes, somewhat implausibly, to be shocked by the scale of Geraldine’s sex life. ‘I’m no slouch, but she makes me feel like a bookshop next door to a public library.’ I relayed this to Fliss (big mistake), who retorted ‘In that case, it must be an antiquarian bookshop where the merchandise is mouldy and there hasn’t been a customer for years.’

I should have known better than to say anything that might be construed as a slur on her precious Geraldine. They’ve become as thick as – not thieves – student anarchists in Tsarist Russia. Fliss has even been reading some essays on revolutionary theory that Geraldine gave her. Fliss …the woman who used to maintain that theories were for people with spots! She admitted that she was finding them heavy-going but dismissed my suggestion that that was a deliberate ploy by writers anxious to conceal their lack of ideas. So I hit below the belt (can you do that to a woman, or is the foul conveyed in the punch itself?), saying that it could hardly help her portrayal of Unity for her to devote herself to opinions at the opposite end of the political scale. ‘When Geraldine played Heidi,’ she snapped, ‘she didn’t spend the evenings in Beverly Hills tending her goats.’

Gramsci one; Stanislavski nil.

Filming must be taking its toll. I know how we used to scoff whenever we read a story of another tortured star.
55
But seeing it at first-hand has made me circumspect. It’s not the money or the glamour or the adulation that sets actors apart from the rest of us; it’s all the time that they have for introspection. A few intense moments in front of the camera are followed by hours of enforced inactivity. Take yesterday. We came to Bayreuth to shoot one of the most populous scenes in the film. Fliss, Geraldine, Sir Hallam and practically the entire English community in Munich (including Brian Howard) were rubbing epaulettes with the Nazi top brass at the Festival. By eight o’clock in the morning, hordes of extras were milling around in evening dress. The stars were all made up with nowhere to go but their trailer, where they waited for the next twelve hours. At the end of which, with the light
already fading, they drove in a convoy up the Green Hill, temporarily reverted to its Third Reich name of Adolf-
Hitler-strasse
, and climbed the opera house steps.

Watching them put back the clock was at once fascinating and alarming. All the usual problems of dressing an outside set were exacerbated by the German law forbidding displays of Nazi insignia. But the official permits were duly presented and the crew worked through the night, removing and masking telephone wires, lamp-posts and parking meters. The local fire brigade was on hand to provide rain (so much for my
EXT: BAYREUTH. SUNSHINE
). At six o’clock when I arrived, the cameraman on the crane had turned blue and was having to be revived with regular nips of brandy. In spite of the cold and the hour, a large crowd had gathered. Prominent among them was a group of local lads who proceeded to play a very noisy game of football. Apparently, this was a ploy and one to which the unit manager was wise. He carried a supply of petty cash solely for the purpose of bribes. The boys, however, grumbled that we gave them far less than the Americans who had shot a documentary here in June.

What I didn’t find out until later was that they were promised a bonus at the end of the day to keep the bystanders quiet and away from the filming. But, after a succession of complaints from outraged members of the public who had been punched while waiting patiently for autographs and a doctor who had been knocked to the ground while walking his dog, the boys were paid off. I can’t have been the only one who made a connection with the SS guards walking aimlessly nearby.

Swastikas flew from flag-poles and armed soldiers lined the street for the first time since the War. I longed to know what memories they brought back for our most eminent spectator, Winifred Wagner. Was she recalling how she had allowed the Festival to be commandeered by Hitler? Did she regret having been on the wrong side or simply on the losing one? Did she
disown her former connections or was she another Diana Mosley, holding court in her Paris pavilion extolling Hitler’s wit and charm? It was Winifred who, on Hitler’s instructions, nursed Unity when she contracted pneumonia at Bayreuth. Her patient described her as ‘such a nice motherly person’, a tribute that was not reciprocated (‘she wasn’t interesting enough to me’). She stood all day silently watching. When one of the grips offered her a chair, she waved him away. She was the English friend of the Führer who had survived.
56
And, when I was finally introduced to her – having sworn to say nothing contentious – and felt her cold Tudor eyes on my face, I understood why.

Question: Why are writers like policemen?

Answer: Because they are compromised by the company they keep.

The transformation proved to be too real for one observer who crept up on an SS guard – in reality, a Munich drama student. He declared himself elated by what had been done to the town. He had never thought he would live to see Bayreuth restored to its former glory. It was clear that there was still hope for Germany while it produced such outstanding young men. At first, the student was too shocked to reply, but he rapidly recovered and thrust aside the proffered hand. At this, the man appeared to wake up to what he had said and slipped away into the crowd. I didn’t see him but I understand that he was both well-dressed and
well-spoken
, prompting speculation that he was either a banker, a lawyer or, quite preposterously, the Mayor. The student tore off his jacket and nothing (not even the cold) would induce him to put it back on. One of the opera-goers was conscripted to take his place in the line.