had known.
What would he say now? What advice would he give? (Klaus ordered a pastis and wondered as he poured water in and watched the liquid turn cloudy…)
“So you really think that you’ve come to the end, dear boy? Aren’t you curious about tomorrow? To see what it will bring? Is your appreciation of life’s comedy quite exhausted? Oh yes, you say it is, but are you sure? Give life another chance. We shall all be a long time in the grave…”
He opened his notebook again: “ ‘Who speaks of victory?’ wrote Rilke. ‘To survive is enough.’ ”
The train for Nice which he should have taken to catch the Paris express pulled out of the station.
VI
The Twenties when every day was an adventure expired, ushering in the brown years. When had they started thinking emigration might be necessary? There was no precise moment. The idea crept up on them like river mist, and as chilling. They were after all Germans, thoroughly German, deep-rooted, despite the Magician’s Brazilian-born mother and Mielein’s Jewish ancestry. But her family, like countless others, were Germans first, Jews second. It was a couple of generations since they had frequented the synagogue. Nevertheless it was Mielein who first aired the question, aired it gently, almost as if she had been proposing that they go for a picnic by the lake.
They were sitting in the garden drinking tea from the Meissen cups that were part of a set she had inherited from an aunt. It was a soft afternoon, the sun still warm but a hint of autumn chill in the air. She drew a wrap around her and said, in what was little more than a sigh, so soft was her voice, “If only this would last, Klauschen… If only.”
Then she was silent and seemed to be listening, her sweet face troubled but alert, as if the horns of the Wild Hunt were sounding in the woods.
“Don’t tell your father, my dear,” she said, “let it be our secret. He still has confidence in the German people.”
Was that before or after he delivered his “Address to the Germans” at the Beethoven-Saal in Berlin – October, 1930, Klaus thought. In that discourse he appealed to the bourgeoisie to make its peace with labour and socialism, with indeed the Social Democratic Party, in order to avoid what he called the Nazi calamity. Hardly had he said this, than a journalist wearing dark glasses leaped to his feet, obedient to Dr Goebbels’ instruction to start “a little something at the Beethoven-Saal”, and denounced Thomas Mann as a “liar, traitor and enemy of the German race…”
Well, the journalist (and pornographer) Arnolt Bronnen, author of a biography of the Nazi martyr, the pimp Horst Wessel, had something to prove, poor wretch.
Klaus found himself smiling at the memory, precisely because it was so disgusting and so typical of the scum that was rising to the top. For someone had put it about that Bronnen was really Bronner – and everyone knows, don’t they? – that Bronner is a Jewish name Indeed, yes, Bronnen accepted that; his name had been Bronner before he changed it and Herr Bronner had indeed been a filthy Jew. However his wife, Frau Bronner, who was not at all Jewish, had cuckolded him and Arnolt was the child of that liaison and his true biological father was one hundred per cent Aryan, an upstanding representative of the Herrenvolk. It was perfect and perfectly shameless. Perhaps, Klaus thought, Goebbels himself had given him these lines.
And then there was Ricki, high-strung, adorable Ricki, with his charming terrier that wore a tinkling bell round its neck.
“It’s Belshazzar’s Feast,” Ricki cried. “The writing is on the wall. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin . Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting. That’s Jehovah’s message to Germany. Everything is lost, we’re done for, doomed, the whole lot of us… The Nazis will come and swallow up my little dog and Erika’s sports car and your books, Klaus – they’ll burn them, don’t doubt it, and my
What would he say now? What advice would he give? (Klaus ordered a pastis and wondered as he poured water in and watched the liquid turn cloudy…)
“So you really think that you’ve come to the end, dear boy? Aren’t you curious about tomorrow? To see what it will bring? Is your appreciation of life’s comedy quite exhausted? Oh yes, you say it is, but are you sure? Give life another chance. We shall all be a long time in the grave…”
He opened his notebook again: “ ‘Who speaks of victory?’ wrote Rilke. ‘To survive is enough.’ ”
The train for Nice which he should have taken to catch the Paris express pulled out of the station.
VI
The Twenties when every day was an adventure expired, ushering in the brown years. When had they started thinking emigration might be necessary? There was no precise moment. The idea crept up on them like river mist, and as chilling. They were after all Germans, thoroughly German, deep-rooted, despite the Magician’s Brazilian-born mother and Mielein’s Jewish ancestry. But her family, like countless others, were Germans first, Jews second. It was a couple of generations since they had frequented the synagogue. Nevertheless it was Mielein who first aired the question, aired it gently, almost as if she had been proposing that they go for a picnic by the lake.
They were sitting in the garden drinking tea from the Meissen cups that were part of a set she had inherited from an aunt. It was a soft afternoon, the sun still warm but a hint of autumn chill in the air. She drew a wrap around her and said, in what was little more than a sigh, so soft was her voice, “If only this would last, Klauschen… If only.”
Then she was silent and seemed to be listening, her sweet face troubled but alert, as if the horns of the Wild Hunt were sounding in the woods.
“Don’t tell your father, my dear,” she said, “let it be our secret. He still has confidence in the German people.”
Was that before or after he delivered his “Address to the Germans” at the Beethoven-Saal in Berlin – October, 1930, Klaus thought. In that discourse he appealed to the bourgeoisie to make its peace with labour and socialism, with indeed the Social Democratic Party, in order to avoid what he called the Nazi calamity. Hardly had he said this, than a journalist wearing dark glasses leaped to his feet, obedient to Dr Goebbels’ instruction to start “a little something at the Beethoven-Saal”, and denounced Thomas Mann as a “liar, traitor and enemy of the German race…”
Well, the journalist (and pornographer) Arnolt Bronnen, author of a biography of the Nazi martyr, the pimp Horst Wessel, had something to prove, poor wretch.
Klaus found himself smiling at the memory, precisely because it was so disgusting and so typical of the scum that was rising to the top. For someone had put it about that Bronnen was really Bronner – and everyone knows, don’t they? – that Bronner is a Jewish name Indeed, yes, Bronnen accepted that; his name had been Bronner before he changed it and Herr Bronner had indeed been a filthy Jew. However his wife, Frau Bronner, who was not at all Jewish, had cuckolded him and Arnolt was the child of that liaison and his true biological father was one hundred per cent Aryan, an upstanding representative of the Herrenvolk. It was perfect and perfectly shameless. Perhaps, Klaus thought, Goebbels himself had given him these lines.
And then there was Ricki, high-strung, adorable Ricki, with his charming terrier that wore a tinkling bell round its neck.
“It’s Belshazzar’s Feast,” Ricki cried. “The writing is on the wall. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin . Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting. That’s Jehovah’s message to Germany. Everything is lost, we’re done for, doomed, the whole lot of us… The Nazis will come and swallow up my little dog and Erika’s sports car and your books, Klaus – they’ll burn them, don’t doubt it, and my
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