10
His fear had been unfounded: memory did not become feeling, remained formula. It did not disintegrate into bliss or grief and did not strike fear in the heart. The heart was not involved. There he had stood, in the evening twilight, between the guest house and the Abbey, where now stood the heap of violet, hard-fired bricks. And beside him had stood General Otto Kösters, whose feeble-mindedness had been coined into a single formula: field of fire. Captain Faehmel, First Lieutenant Schrit, and the two cadet officers, Kanders and Hochbret. Their faces deadly serious, they had convinced Field-of-Fire Otto that it was imperative not to be inconsistent, even when confronted by such venerable buildings; and when other officers lodged a protest, when tearful murderers spoke soulfully up in defense of cultural heritage which had to be saved, when one of them would utter the evil phrase ‘high treason’—no one could argue so sharply, so fluently or logically as Schrit, who put the case for demolition to the General in these persuasive words: ‘And if undertaken only as an example, to show we still believe in victory, General, such painful sacrifice would make quite clear to the people and the army that we still do believe in victory,’ and back came the old, proverbial answer: ‘I have made my decision; blow it up, gentlemen. With victory at stake, we may spare not even our own sacred cultural monuments. Go to it, then, gentlemen.’ All saluted and clicked their heels.
Had he ever been twenty-nine, ever been a captain, ever stood on that spot with Field-of-Fire Otto? Where now the new Abbot was smiling and welcoming his father:
“We’re so glad, Your Excellency, it’s such a pleasure to have you visit us again; I’m very happy to meet your son. And Joseph is almost an old friend of ours already, aren’t you, Joseph? The fortunes of our Abbey have always been linked with the fortunes of the Faehmel family—and Joseph has even, if I may inject a personal note—Joseph has even been struck by Cupid’s arrow in these precincts. Look, Doctor Faehmel, nowadays young people don’t even blush when you talk about such things; Miss Ruth and Miss Marianne, I’m sorry, I have to exclude you from the tour.”
The young girls giggled. Hadn’t Mother and Josephine and even Edith giggled on that same spot when they were excluded from the tour? All you had to do in the snapshot albums was replace the heads and change the styles.
“Yes, we’ve already moved into the cloister,” said the Abbot. “This is the apple of our eye, the library—round here, please, the infirmary, unoccupied at present, I’m glad to say.…”
Never had he here gone from point to point with his chalk, writing his secret combinations of XYZ on the walls, the code for nothingness which only Schrit, Hochbret and Kanders knew how to decipher. Smell of mortar, smell of fresh paint, freshly planed wood.
“Yes, this here was saved from destruction thanks to your grandson’s—your son’s alertness. The picture of the Last Supper, here in the Refectory. We know perfectly well it’s no great work of art—you’ll forgive me that observation, Your Excellency—but even the work of this school of painters is beginning to be rare, and we’ve always felt a responsibility to tradition. I must admit that even today I’m delighted by these painters’ fidelity to detail—look here, how lovingly and carefully he has painted the feet of St. John and St. Peter, here the feet of an old man, there the feet of a young man. Accuracy of detail.”
No, no one had sung How weary, weary these old bones in this place. No solstitial fire. Only a dream. A distinguished gentleman in his early forties, the son of a distinguished father, the father of a vigorous, very intelligent son who was smilingly making the rounds with the rest even though the whole undertaking seemed to bore him very much. Whenever he turned to Joseph he saw only a friendly, somewhat tired smile on his face.
“As you know, not even the farm buildings were spared. We rebuilt them first since it seemed they were the practical requisites for a successful new start. Here’s the cow barn. We milk with electricity, of course. You’re smiling—I’m quite sure our Holy Father Benedict would have had no objections to electrical milking. May I offer you some refreshment? A token of welcome—our celebrated bread and butter and honey. You may not be aware that every Abbot, when he dies or retires, leaves this word with his successor: Don’t forget the Faehmel family. You really do belong to our cloister family—oh, there are the young ladies again. Of course, here they’re allowed again.”
Bread and butter, wine and honey on simple wooden boards; Joseph had one arm round his sister, and the other round Marianne. A blond head between the two dark heads.
“You’ll do us the honor of coming to the consecration? The Chancellor and the Cabinet have accepted, a few foreign dignitaries will be there, and it would be a great pleasure for us to be able to welcome all the Faehmel family as our guests. My official speech will be made not in the spirit of indictment but of reconciliation; of reconciliation also with those powers who, in their blind passion, destroyed our home. But not, of course, reconciliation with those destructive powers which once again are threatening our culture. May I, then, extend our invitation to you, here and now, with our sincere hope that you will do us this honor?”
‘I won’t come to the consecration,’ thought Robert, ‘for I’m not reconciled. Not reconciled with the powers guilty of Ferdi’s death, or with the ones that caused Edith to die and St. Severin’s to be spared. I’m not reconciled, not reconciled either to myself or to the spirit of reconciliation which you in your official speech will proclaim. Blind passion did not destroy your home, hatred destroyed it, which was not blind and does not as yet repent. Should I confess it was I who did it? I’d have to inflict pain on my father, although he is not guilty, and perhaps on my son, although he is not guilty either, and on you, Reverend Father, although you, too, are not guilty; just who is guilty, then? I am not reconciled to a world in which a gesture or a word misunderstood can cost a life.’ And aloud he said, “Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give me great pleasure to attend your ceremony.”
‘I won’t come, Reverend Father,’ thought the old man, ‘for I’d only stand here as a monument to myself, not as what I am: an old man who this very morning gave his secretary the assignment to spit on his monument. Don’t be shocked, Reverend Father; I’m not reconciled with my son Otto who was my son no longer, only my son’s husk, and I can’t celebrate my reconciliation to a building, even if I did build it myself. We shan’t be missed at the solemnities. The Chancellor, the Cabinet members, the foreign dignitaries and the high ecclesiastical dignitaries will undoubtedly fill the gap in worthy style. Was it you, Robert, and were you afraid to tell me? It was your look and the way you acted during the tour that told me so. Well, it doesn’t affect me—perhaps you were thinking of that boy whose name I never learned, the one who pushed your little slips of paper through our letter box—and of the waiter called Groll, and the lambs no one shepherded, not even we. So let’s not celebrate any reconciliation. Sorry, Reverend Father, you’ll have to make the best of it, you won’t miss us. Hang up a plaque: Built by Heinrich Faehmel in 1908, in his twenty-ninth year; destroyed by Robert Faehmel, in 1945, in his twenty-ninth year—and what will you do, Joseph, when you’re thirty? Will you take over your father’s architectural estimates office? Will you build or destroy—formulas are more effective than mortar. Strengthen your heart with hymns, Reverend Father, and consider carefully whether you are truly reconciled to the spirit which destroyed the monastery.’
“Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give us great pleasure to attend your ceremony,” said the old man.
Cool air was already rising from the meadows and lowlands, and the dry beet leaves were becoming damp and dark, promising riches. Behind the steering wheel to the left was Joseph’s blond head, and to the right the dark heads of the two girls. The car glided quietly toward the city; was someone out there singing the song, “We’ve harvested the wheat”? It couldn’t be true, any more than St. Severin’s slender tower on the horizon; Marianne was the first to speak:
“Aren’t you going through Doderingen?”
“No, Grandfather wanted to drive through Denklingen.”
“I thought we were going the shortest way to town?”
“If we get to town at six, it’ll be early enough,” said Ruth. “We don’t need more than an hour to change.”
The young people’s voices sounded muffled, like people buried in underground caverns whispering hopeful words to each other: Look, there’s light. You’re mistaken. No, really, I can see light. Where? But can’t you hear them tapping, it’s the rescue team. I don’t hear a thing.
It’s wrong to get formulas free, put secrets into words, transpose memories into feeling. Feelings can even kill such good hard things as love and hate. Had there really been a captain called Robert Faehmel, who knew the jargon of the casino so well, did all the right things so perfectly, so dutifully invited the senior officer’s wife to dance, was so good at proposing toasts in his incisive voice: I give you a toast, in honor of our beloved German people. Champagne, ordnance. Billiards. Red-green, white-green. White-green. And one evening someone was standing opposite him, holding the billiard cue in his hand, smiling and saying, ‘Schrit, lieutenant, as you see, a demolition expert like yourself, Captain, defending Western Culture with dynamite.’ Schrit had carried no mixed soul about in his breast; he had been able to wait and save his strength, hadn’t needed again and again to remobilize heart and feeling, was not one to get drunk on tragedy. He had made a vow to blow up only German bridges and only German buildings, and not destroy so much as a pane of glass in whatever Russian hut. We waited and played billiards and never talked more than we had to—and finally we came upon it lying there in the spring sunshine, the great prey we had waited for so long: St. Anthony’s. And on the horizon the prey that would escape us: St. Severin’s.
“Don’t drive so fast,” Marianne said quietly.
“Sorry,” said Joseph.
“Tell me, what are we doing here in Denklingen?”
“Grandfather wants to come here,” said Joseph.
“No, Joseph,” said Ruth, “don’t drive into the avenue, didn’t you see the signboard: ‘Residents Only’? Or maybe you’re one?”
The grand delegation, husband, son, grandchildren and granddaughter-in-law to be, got out at the bewitched castle.
“No, no,” said Ruth, “I’m going to wait out here. Please let me.”
In the evenings when I sit in the living room with Father, Grandmother could be there. I read and he drinks wine and fumbles in his card indexes, laying the postcard-size prints out in front of him, as if playing solitaire. Father, always correct, tie never loose, waistcoat never unbuttoned, never relaxing into paternal joviality. Restrained and solicitous. ‘Do you need books, clothes, money for the journey? Aren’t you bored, child? Would you rather go out? To the theater, to the cinema, out dancing? I’d be glad to take you. Or would you prefer to ask in your school friends for coffee again, up on the roof garden, now the weather’s so fine?’ And before going to bed, the evening walks, round the block, up Modest Street to the Modest Gate, then down Station Street to the station. ‘Can you smell the far-off places, child?’ And on through the underpass, past St. Severin’s and the Prince Heinrich Hotel. ‘Gretz has forgotten to wash the bloodstains off the pavement.’ Boar’s blood turned hard and black. ‘It’s half-past nine, child, time to go to bed now. Good night.’ A kiss on the forehead. Always kind, always correct. ‘Would you rather we hired a housekeeper, or aren’t you tired of restaurant food yet? Frankly, I don’t much like strangers in the house.’ Breakfast. Tea, rolls, milk. A kiss on the forehead and, sometimes, in a very low voice, ‘Child, child’—‘what is it, Father?’ ‘Come on, we’re going away.’ ‘What, now, right now?’ ‘Yes, let school be for today and tomorrow, we’re not going far. Just to Amsterdam. It’s a lovely city, child, and the people are quiet and very kind—you only have to get to know them.’ ‘Do you know them?’ ‘Yes, I know them. It’s so nice walking along in the evenings by the canals.’ ‘Glass. Glass. Stillness. Do you hear how quiet the people are here? Nowhere are they as noisy as at home, always bawling and shouting and boasting. Would it bore you if I went and played billiards? Come along if it amuses you.’
I never understood the fascination with which old and young men alike watched him play, when he stood there, amidst the cigar smoke, a glass of beer near him on the edge of the table, and played billiards, billiards. Did they really use the familiar “thou” with him, or was it just a peculiarity of Dutch speech that it sounded like “thou” when they spoke to him? They did know his first name. They rolled the R of Robert like a hard piece of candy on the tongue. Silence. So much glass by the canals. My name is Ruth, half-orphan, my mother was twenty-four when she died. I was three, and when I think of her, I think of seventeen or of two thousand years. Twenty-four is a figure that doesn’t suit her; it should rather be something under eighteen or over eighty. She always looked to me like Grandmother’s sister. I know that big, well-guarded secret, that Grandmother’s crazy, and I don’t want to see her so long as she’s like that. Her craziness is a lie, grief behind thick walls, I know it, I get drunk on it sometimes myself and swim away in a lie. The house at the rear, No. 8 Modest Street, inhabited by ghosts. Love and Intrigue, Grandfather built the monastery, Father blew it up, and Joseph has rebuilt it. All right with me; you’ll be disappointed how little it upsets me. I saw them bringing the dead out of the cellars, and Joseph tried to convince me they were sick, and only being taken to the hospital, but does one simply throw the sick onto trucks like sacks? And I saw Krott, the teacher, sneaking into the classroom during recess and stealing Konrad Gretz’s sandwiches out of his desk, and I saw Krott’s face and was scared to death, and prayed, ‘Please God don’t let him find me here, please, please,’ because I knew he would kill me if he found me. I was standing behind the blackboard looking for my barrette, and he could have seen my legs, but God had mercy and Krott didn’t notice me. I saw his face, and I also saw how he bit into the bread, then went out. Anyone who has looked into faces like that doesn’t get upset any more about blown-up abbeys. And then the scene afterwards, when Konrad Gretz discovered his loss and Krott exhorted us all to be honest: ‘Now children, be honest. I’ll give you a quarter of an hour, and the culprit will have to have owned up, or else’—eight minutes more, seven minutes more, six,—and I looked at him, and he caught my eye, and bore down on me, ‘Ruth, Ruth,’ he yelled. ‘You? Was it you?’ I shook my head and began to cry, because I was scared to death again. And he said, ‘Good heavens, Ruth, tell the truth.’ I wanted to say yes, but then he would have seen that I knew, and I shook my head through the tears; four more minutes, three, two, one, time. ‘You’re a bunch of damnable thieves, a gang of liars. For punishment you can write out “I must not steal” two hundred times.’ You and your abbeys. I’ve had to keep more awful secrets than that and stuck out being scared to death. They threw them on the trucks like sacks.
Why did they have to treat that nice Abbot so coolly? What did he do, did he kill somebody or steal a sandwich from someone? Konrad Gretz had enough to eat, liver paté and herb-flavored butter on white bread. What devil suddenly possessed the teacher’s gentle, reasonable face? Murder was crouched between his eyes and nose, nose and mouth, between his ears. They threw the bodies onto the trucks like sacks, and I enjoyed it when Father scoffed at the mayor in front of the big wall map, when he drew marks with his black chalk and said, ‘Get rid of it, blow it up.’ I love him; I don’t love him any the less now that I know about it. Has Joseph at least left his cigarettes in the car? And I also saw how the man handed over his wedding ring for two cigarettes—how many would he have wanted for his daughter, and how many for his wife? The price list was written on his face: ten, twenty, he’d have been ready to discuss it. They’re all ready to do business. I’m sorry, Father, but I still like the taste of the honey and bread and butter, even after I know who did it. We’ll go on playing father and daughter. Precise as a ritual dance. After the refreshments, there should have come the walk up Cossack’s Hill: Joseph, Marianne and me far ahead, and Grandfather behind, like every Saturday.
‘Are you all right, Grandfather?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Aren’t we walking too fast?’
‘No, don’t worry, children. I wonder if I could sit down a little, or do you think it’s too damp?’
‘The sand’s dry as dust, Grandfather, and it’s still quite warm, don’t worry, you can sit down; here, give me your arm.’
‘Of course, Grandfather, light yourself a cigar; we’ll see to it nothing happens.’
Luckily Joseph has left his cigarettes in the car, and the lighter works, too. Grandfather gave me such pretty dresses and sweaters, much prettier than those from Father whose taste is old-fashioned. Easy to see Grandfather understands something about girls and women. I don’t want to understand Grandmother, I don’t want to; her craziness is a lie. She wouldn’t give us anything to eat, and I was glad when she’d gone and we were given more. Maybe you’re right, maybe she was great and still is, but I don’t want to know about greatness. One white-bread sandwich with liver paté and herb-flavored butter nearly cost me my life. Let her come back again and sit with us in the evenings, but please don’t give her the key to the kitchen, please don’t. I’ve seen hunger on the teacher’s face and I’m scared of it. Dear God, always give them something to eat, always, so the horribleness won’t ever come back on their faces. It’s a harmless Mr. Krott who gets into his little car Sundays and drives his family out to St. Anthony’s to attend High Mass. Today is how many Sundays after Pentecost, how many Sundays after Epiphany, after Easter? A dear man with a dear wife and two dear little children, ‘Look, Ruth, hasn’t our little Frankie grown?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Krott, your little Frankie’s grown.’ And I never think any more about my life hanging by a thread. No. And I also wrote out very nicely two hundred times, ‘I must not steal.’ And of course I don’t say no when Konrad Gretz gives a party; they have wonderful paté de foie gras with herb-flavored butter and white bread, and when someone treads on your toes or spills your glass of wine they don’t say, ‘Entschuldigen Sie bitte,’ and they don’t say, ‘Excusez moi,’ they say, ‘Sorry.’
The grass by the roadside ditch is warm, and Joseph’s cigarette has a spicy smell, and I still liked the taste of bread and honey after I learned it was Father who blew the Abbey sky-high; Denklingen is lovely back there in the evening sun. They ought to hurry, we’ll need at least half an hour to change.