Unity (22 page)
Authors: Michael Arditti
I'm simply repeating what I've read. I didn't visit Germany myself until shortly after the collapse of the Wall.
M.S. We saw that there was still fascism in England. And it was not only your football hooligans. With Wolfram and Mahmoud, we went to the East End. We looked at the sites of the battles between your Left and your Right during the 1930s. There was a strike of the dustbins. Heaps of rubbish were all over the streets (I still have the smell in my nose). Wolfram said that it was surreal â like a painting of Dali. We went into a pub.
L.M. Not Liesl. Liesl went back to the hotel.
M.S. Women were forbidden. It was a place for your gay machos. I found it very amusing.
L.M. You were pleased for once to say ânein' and to mean it.
M.S. It was early in the night but it was full like a sardine-box. An old room with lots of wood and a big mirror with
advertisements
for beer.
I know the sort. It's as though the masculinity of the image were designed to offset the effeminacy of gazing at it.
M.S. I am remembering now. The name was something German.
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We told ourselves when we walked in that we were welcome. But we were not. Not at all. At the bar stood three or four men who dressed like the
Wehrmacht
and wore swastikas. We were shocked. In Germany, this is completely illegal.
L.M. Two years ago, a friend of us, Dieter â naturally, you spoke with him! â he was arrested in Munich when he came out of a gay disco and called for a taxi. He lifted his right arm like this and the police said that he made the Hitler greeting. It was a joke, but not for Dieter. The police would like to arrest Dieter because he is Dieter: because he goes to a disco where men can be like Dieter. But they cannot. So they arrest him because he makes a greeting that he did not make. That is how seriously we consider it here.
M.S. But, in England, you have the freedom of speech and the freedom of fascism. Wolfram wanted to talk to the men. He wanted to ask them if they knew that, under the Nazis, they wore a very different badge. But we showed him that it was not so clever. I said that we should now leave, but Wolfram said that it was like leaving the world to the fascists. So they stayed and I came home to Liesl. The next thing we heard was that Wolfram and Mahmoud were attacked as they went to the subway. I wonder still if it was the men from the pub because they hit only Mahmoud. Wolfram said later that he can walk with his boyfriend down any street in Germany but in England he is spitted on and kicked. But, wait, it becomes worse. After he left the hospital, Mahmoud visited the police to make a complaint. They did not say sorry. Instead, they asked him many
questions
about why he was here, about his passport, about his friendship with Wolfram. They stripped off all his clothes and made jokes about his penis.
Why? Was it a peculiar shape?
L.M. It was big. It was brown. That was enough.
I'd like to apologise on the policemen's behalf. Though it doesn't carry the weight of the President apologising for the fate of the Indians or the Pope for that of the Jews, I still want to put it on record. I'm not suggesting that the British are blameless. I know my history. But, while we may have founded concentration camps in the Boer War, we didn't gas the inmates.
M.S. All we say to you is that Felicity realised what Germans of my age realised when we were very young: we are all cut from the same wood. I have a memory of your great actor, Sir Bamforth, who spoke to us of the three signs that shamed him through his life: âClosed to Chinese and dogs' in the 1920s Shanghai; âBeware of Jews and pickpockets' in the 1930s Berlin; âNo blacks or Irish' in the 1950s London.
But Felicity wouldn't have been allowed into an East End leather bar.
M.S. No, my friend, you do not understand me. It was not
necessary
. She could see for herself in her own home. You come to Munich to meet us and, to tell the truth, we are very glad. But did you visit her house? Did you speak to her parents?
I stayed with them several times when I was a student and, since then, I've come across them once or twice. I did write to them about this inquiry but I've received no reply.
Â
(At this point, there is a gap in the transcript where the cassette needed to be replaced. To the best of my recollection, nothing of import was said. Manfred and Liesl talked about the journey to
Leicestershire and complained about the inn where they stayed. They attacked the backwardness of England based largely on the lack of mixer taps: a subject unlikely to have exercised Felicity.)
M.S. We made Unity's house in the house of Felicity's uncle â not the uncle who was killed but another one.
L.M. And her mother and her father. They lived all together like they were childrens. It was a very beautiful house. Perfect for the 1930s. For the 1830s too. So few changes happened.
M.S. Heike said âI must do nothing. It is all done for me.' And do you remember the old lady?
L.M. The
Grossmutter
?
M.S. The
Haushälterin
.
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She was very nervous next to
Mahmoud
. She saw only one black man before in her life. An American in the War.
L.M. No, you make mistakes. She went to London only one time in her life during the War.
M.S. No, no. She went to London only one time in her life before the War. She saw only one black man in her life during the War.
L.M. Perhaps yes. Mahmoud stayed with Wolfram in the house. They did not let him pack his own bag when he left. I never saw him so angry. âWhy don't they just ask me what I steal?' he cried.
No. You â he â have it all wrong. It's old-style country house hospitality.
L.M. It was such a crazy house. I also would throw a bomb if I lived there.
Â
(There follows a rapid exchange in German which is unintelligible on the tape).
L.M. Tell him about the uncle. The baron. The one who showed you his sex toys.
M.S. He had a room where women were not allowed. It was full with sculptures and objects and drawings. And each time he picked something up, he said âThis is very rare. This is even more rare. This is the only one of its kind.' Like everything else in this house, the porno was only good because it was old.
Perversity authenticated by history: that would make a fair
definition
of the British upper class.
L.M. Every meal that we ate there, he had the same white pudding in the same bowl. We have a phrase about masters who start to look like their dogs. I think that he looked like his pudding. It is no wonder that his wife was mad.
M.S. It is no wonder that his niece became mad.
L.M. She was the whole day with her horses, making their shoes and singing her G & S. All of us asked: what is this G & S?
Gilbert and Sullivan. Another nineteenth-century tradition, I'm afraid. They don't travel.
L.M. They make the perfect English music: big tunes and little passion.
M.S. And they must not be mixed up with G & T.
L.M. Tart's drink!
M.S. Naturally! Each time she was asked if she wanted a drink, she answered âI think I'll have a G & T.' And the other one, Felicity's father, said each time âTart's drink.' âTart's drink,' not into his beard but out loud.
L.M. And do you remember the mother? Always in the garden. Always cutting the bushes as if she tries to hold back Nature.
M.S. It was very deceiving how someone could be so polite and also so rude. You told her your name and, right now, she
tried to put you in place. âAre you one of the Frankfurt von Stückls?' she asked.
L.M. For me it was worse. âI met a Martins in Venice once. A steel-maker but still a gentleman. Are you any relation of him?'
It's as though, ever since Queen Victoria placed her children on all the thrones of Europe, the whole world could be found inside an English address book.
M.S. Or else you do not exist.
She terrified Luke, not to mention me.
M.S. The most terrifying one was Felicity's father. If you want to find Felicity, you must look first at him. I wrote down some of the things he said.
(He picks up an old exercise book.)
I was asked to write an article about the shooting in England for
Der Spiegel
. But, when the film was stopped, the article was also. These are just small notes, but they are good notes. He liked to talk about Europe.
L.M. He liked to talk about England, but he thought that it was more accepted the other way round.
M.S. He hated Europe. He hated the EU or what it was then, the EWG.
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Great Britain was not long a member. âIt is a
sell-out
to big business,' he said. âHas the nation which civilised the world â the nation of Shakespeare and Churchill and Conan Doyle â been reduced to competition?'
L.M. That is the father who speaks â not Manfred.
Yes, I realise. And, if I may say so, it's an excellent imitation.
You've captured him to a T.
M.S. Excuse me?
Perfectly
.
M.S. âThe Europeans are asking us to sacrifice our history. Where does the heart ⦠the soul of a nation lie if not in its history? You Germans don't have a history so you substitute race. The Americans don't have a history so they substitute money. The French and Italians have a history but it's so ignorant â¦' No.
Moment. Kannst Du dieses Wort entzissern?
L.M. Ignominious.
M.S. Naturally. âThe French and Italians have a history but it's so ignominious that they substitute art. But we British have a history and it's one of which we can be proud.' When somebody said that the country voted to belong to Europe, he stared at him as if he was mad. âTake a look across the Atlantic. Voting only elects the leader who tells the loudest lies.' He wanted to push back the clock and not to your nineteenth but to your thirteenth and fourteenth century, when all the persons were as one. He spoke to us of his grandfather dancing around a May-tree with his workers. But it was too hard to understand because, as I wrote here, he began to cry.
Too many memories.
L.M. Too much whiskies.
I really don't think we should overemphasise the role of Felicity's family. They were throwbacks. She used to treat them as jokes.
L.M. No. She suffered from him. It was clear for us to see. He talked to us because we were Germans, so he thought we must feel the same.
M.S. He said that the worst thing about the Nazis was what they did to the Jews. Naturally, we thought. We can agree to that. The whole world can agree to that. So why does he mention it? But he didn't mean the camps. Listen, I have found it here. âThe thing for which I can never forgive Hitler is that he made it quite impossible to express one's dislike of the Chosen People. Not as individuals but for what they stand.
Everything is international now. Everything is money. A cheque book is the only passport anybody needs.'
L.M. He never spoke of the Jews but always âthe Chosen People'.
M.S. When someone â I have it in my mind that it was your friend Luke â said that Hitler did far worse things against the Jews, against six million of them to be exact, he shook the head as if it was vulgar to mention figures.
L.M. As if he took a chair before a woman.
M.S. As if he passed around the wine after dinner in the wrong way.
L.M. And they had many friends with similar thinking. We discovered them when they came to the ball. Felicity told Wolfram that he could use them as extras. Wolfram was pleased. He thought that the scene would have more truth. But it had too much truth. The friends of Felicity had the same politics as the friends of Unity before the War. Their heads had not changed any more than their houses.
M.S. And they were happy to speak out loud words that, in Germany, we would not even whisper. Why? Was it because they believed that our heads â our thirty-year-old heads â were also forty years older? Or was it because they did not care what any other persons thought?
It's odd. Although I met quite a lot of people when I stayed with Felicity, I don't remember anyone expressing remotely contentious views.
L.M. There was one man â do you remember, darling? â who wanted to keep silent and who was very angry when Felicity made fun of him. He belonged to a secret party who swore an oath to an ancient king, oh hundreds of years before, because he threw the Jews out from England.
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She asked him to tell us about it and he shouted back at her and suddenly everything became cold. Later, she tried to make a joke of it. She said that they were a group of stiff old men who wanted to be back in the Boy Scouts. So they dressed in clothes half way between your Yeomen of the Guards and the Ku-Klux Klan. They stood in a circle and carried swords and sang prayers and pretended they were in the Middle Ages.
I've never heard of it.
M.S. It is a secret. That is why he was so angry when she talked of it to us.
Yes, but most secret societies are exposed at some stage. There's always a defector ready to spill the beans.
M.S. Felicity was speaking as if it was some harmless old
institute
like your Queen Mother. But it was much more. When we asked her how she could stay close to someone who thought like this, she looked at us with big eyes. âBut I knew him all my life,' she said. âI grew up with his daughters.' We began to understand at last. This is England where to believe in anything â even in God â is bad manners. Fascism is just a bit more extreme. Anyway, you must never condemn a person because he has disrespectful politics. Sure he is still a perfect gentleman where it counts: he is a good shoot; he sits good on a horse; he owns a good cellar. This is why I say to you that, if you want to know what she did in Munich, you must know what she did in England. After all, who was the first one who was killed by her bomb? Her uncle.