Not I (22 page)

Hardly had the street door closed behind the two Hitler Youth leaders when my father raced up the stairs to calm my mother. She was standing in the door as if paralyzed and only said, “This time you’ve gone too far!” My father put his arm around her and admitted he had forgotten himself for a moment. But first the Nazis had stolen his profession and his income, now they were attacking his sons and Sunday itself. One had to show these people that there was a limit. “They know none,” said my mother in an expressionless voice. It was all the
more important, objected my father, to point it out to them. It wasn’t he who had gone too far, but the Hitler rascals. It was virtually the definition of a Nazi that he was someone who always went too far.

To everyone’s astonishment this incident had no consequences. Except that two days later Fengler, the block warden, called and warned my father in front of the whole family—we were just sitting at table—“Behave yourself! You’re not alone in the world! Will you finally realize that? And, after all, membership in the Hitler Youth is the law!” My mother told my father to remain seated, and accompanied the hated block warden to the door. “My husband isn’t usually like that,” she said, making an effort to be friendly. “But on Sunday we go to church. We won’t let anyone stop us doing that!”

At the supper table Fengler’s visit brought us back to the incident again. My father was at once angry and amused: “National community—my goodness! I feel disgust, nothing else!” After the unbelievable things that had been imposed by law—the exclusion of all Jews from the liberal professions, even doctors and pharmacists, the termination of all telephone connections, and the “yellow star”—now, he said, the man in the street was taking a hand and thinking up ever new forms of harassment for the authorities.
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Jews were no longer allowed to sit on
park benches or to “pollute the good air of German forests by walking in them.” They were no longer allowed to subscribe to newspapers and magazines, and Dr. Meyer, who had until recently ridden a Wanderer bicycle, had had to hand it in, along with his typewriter; Jews were also not allowed to keep pets such as dogs, cats, canaries, or hamsters. When a Jewish friend of Hans Hausdorf wanted to buy flowers for the grave of his wife, who had died recently, the sales assistant snapped at him that flowers were a decoration of a German character. Jews had no claim to them. He should get out. And Germans themselves had to answer the question of the marriage registrar, whether they were ready to pledge themselves for life, not, as had been usual for generations, with a simple “Yes,” but with a “Yes, Heil Hitler!” What on earth had become of the country?

At the end of March my brothers and I began our farewell calls. With the help of a friend of my parents it had been possible to place us in a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg, whose pupils also took classes at one of the city’s two municipal Gymnasiums. I called on the Gans family by Treptow Park and walked once with Gerd Donner through his quarter behind Görlitz Station: shabby, dark streets, where big cakes of plaster had fallen from the facades of the houses. Around us there were yelling brats; handcarts with potatoes, chopped wood, and other small goods were being hauled along; bawling children leaned against the walls of some houses as if they had been dumped there, and in one entry-way boys were trying to drag a stubborn billy goat out
onto the pavement. I took my leave of the parents of my Karlshorst classmates and from Father Wittenbrink, who made me promise to write regularly. I called on Dr. Körner, the senior physician of Karlshorst Hospital, who was one of my parents’ close friends and whose son had for a long time shared a desk with me, and also on Gerd Schülke and Ursel Hanschmann. Wolfgang thought it all very overdone and remarked, “What’s the point of it all? We’re not going to a penal colony! Or are we going into exile?” “In part, yes!” I replied. On the day before our departure I went to see Dr. Meyer.

When he opened the door of the apartment, he stood in front of me wearing, as always, the light suit with a brightly colored neckerchief, and this time he had a circular summer hat on as well. From the hallway came a smell of cabbage soup, poverty, and old age. As he greeted me a smile passed over his features, which could often appear frozen. He said no more than “Come in!” and went ahead of me into the library. There was already tea on the side table. Dr. Meyer had even got biscuits from somewhere. He asked how my parents were, my siblings and friends, then asked me to avoid political topics, and suggested I read him some of his favorite poems. While I was reading one he was already choosing the next: I still remember that I began with Goethe’s “Welcome and Farewell,” then his “I Think of You” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” followed by Schiller’s “Nenia,” and after that I read some verses by Heine, Lenau, and Chamisso. When I wanted to go on with Stefan George, Dr. Meyer abruptly
asked me to stop; he was not in the right mood.
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After a few sips of tea, he said it had probably not been a good idea for me to drop by. He was distracted and was asking himself countless things to which he had no answer.

I made a remark about the future, to which no one has an answer, but Dr. Meyer went on talking without paying attention to what I had said. The worst thing was that the great poets, from whom I had read something just now, bore some of the blame for his misfortune: Goethe and Schiller and all the rest … How often had he—when his wife was alive—considered emigrating and been close to making the decision to leave? But then trust in the culture of the Germans had always won out … A nation, they said, that had produced Goethe and Schiller and Lessing, Bach, Mozart, and so many others, would simply be incapable of barbarism. Griping at the Jews, prejudice, there had always been that, they thought. But not violent persecution. They wouldn’t do anything to us … “Well!” he interrupted himself. “You know how mistaken we were …”

Then came one of many pauses. His wife—Dr. Meyer resumed his train of thought—had been cleverer than him. Unlike her, he had adopted the admired Germans’ credulity and political naïveté. Men were just blockheads. But now it was too late to moan. We should stop lamenting! So, he said, with an audible change of register in his voice: he envied me. For example, because I could travel to any place I wanted; because the opera houses were open to me; and, above all, because reading
Buddenbrooks
was still before me. I should know that hardly anything in life was comparable to the pleasure of reading a book like that for the first time. We sipped awkwardly at our teacups. After a few minutes Dr. Meyer stood up determinedly and put his arm around my shoulders: “It’s better you go now!” When we had come to the apartment door, I tried to think what I could say to him, but felt paralyzed and involuntarily remembered my father’s words that at times like these one should avoid all pathos.

Back in Karlshorst I could already hear at the entrance from the street Frau Bicking singing in her wailing tremolo that she was going to dance into heaven with someone, where she (as she went on singing with hardly a break) would do like the swallows and build a nest with her dearest. But in a moment she was back to her favorite song, according to which everything happened long, long ago.
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Frau Dölle, who so much liked to play
the stool pigeon, asked me whether “Old Bicking’s yowling could still be considered singing or whether it was a nuisance already.” Since she didn’t expect an answer from me, she said she would let the crazy old woman go on warbling just one more time, adding, while pointing at the ceiling several times with her broom: “But everything has to stop sometime!” And finally: “Soon, soon is the time!,” imitating old Bicking’s yowling.

My parents were shocked by my report about the visit to Dr. Meyer, and my mother interrupted me to ask what could be done to help. When she insisted on the support of my father’s group of friends, he shook his head vigorously: he had urged emigration after the boycott of Jewish shops and businesses in April 1933, then after the Nürnberg Laws of 1935, and again and again up to Kristallnacht, when the halfway favorable point had already passed.
¹⁷
But no one had wanted to listen to him. Everyone had mentioned countless reasons for staying, and he had even been accused of wanting, just like the Nazis, to make Germany
Judenfrei
—free of Jews. After he had calmed down, he nevertheless promised to do whatever was possible to help his friend.

The following morning Albert Tinz dropped by. He said a few words to my mother, then went into the living room where the piano was, sat on the stool, and, after a mighty sequence of chords, led in to an improvised
andantino, which charmingly blended some melodies from my mother’s favorite Schubert songs, from “Night and Dreams” to “The Carrier Pigeon.” Then he played one of the early Beethoven sonatas, which was also one of my mother’s favorite pieces, and after he had waited, eyes closed, for the last note to fade away, he said, “Once again, what I always say is don’t drag things out, even when they are sentimental! Otherwise you just end up blowing at cinders. Without passion there’s nothing! Not even a pianissimo! No music at all!” The small man with the artfully twirled-up hair rose and said that he had really had no great success here, except for me. Perhaps someday we would understand where all music began and ended. That would make him happy, and he wasn’t giving up hope. After these words he shook his mane of hair and, as always, hurried out.

The last person to whom, together with my brothers, I said goodbye was old Katlewski. We came upon him beside the herb garden and, when he asked whether we were really leaving tonight, we answered as if with one voice, “Yes, at twelve past eight!” Since we were saying goodbye, he was, for once, going to be generous, he said, and tell a joke just like that, without the usual urging. “But as always, not a word to anyone … Well, how does it start? So there’s one of these guys from People’s Welfare
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collecting money and he’s shouting, ‘Come
on, people! Everybody gives a dime! Everybody’s got that much, national comrades! Don’t be shy! It can even be a nickel! Come on! Do it now!’ And as he’s taking in the money there’s a man standing there with both hands in his pockets who says calmly, ‘Not givin’ nothin!’ And when the guy from People’s Welfare replies, ‘What d’you mean? Giving nothing! Come on!’ the other says, ‘Because I’m not a national comrade!’ Says the one collecting money, ‘That’s crazy! Not a national comrade? Have you ever heard the like of that?—And why, if I may ask?’ The one questioned grins and says, ‘Why? Because I’m a Jew!’ For a moment the guy from People’s Welfare is quite dumbfounded. Then he says, ‘A Jew are you? A Jew—anyone can say that!’ ”

We laughed out loud, but Old Kat put his finger to his lips and warned us once again: “Don’t repeat it! You remember! As always!” And at the very end he wanted to tell us another “bommot,” which was really fresh, just from yesterday. “Hitler,” an old Socialist friend had confided in him, “is such a brazen liar that even the opposite of what he says is untrue.” Then he took his leave with “Take care, lads! It was really good with you! With each of you!” He turned on his heel and left.

At school the only teacher to whom I did not say goodbye with some degree of courtesy was Dr. Appelt. At the end of his last class, which he concluded with a relieved reference to my departure, I walked about three yards toward him and bowed very slightly, which was supposed to be ironic, but ended up only as somewhat stiff. At any rate, I did not give him my hand.

In the evening the family accompanied us to Anhalt Station. The train was already there. When our luggage had been stowed away and we were exchanging farewells on the platform, none of us had the feeling that a period of his life was over. My father called each of his sons in turn and walked with him along the platform to the end of the glass roof. He was a proper teacher, after all, said Winfried, and couldn’t help it. We would get a few encouraging—or at worst admonishing—words. No schoolmaster misses such an opportunity. In fact, we were each sent on our way with a kind of rule of life. To me my father said that he often divided people into those who asked questions and those who answered them. The Nazis, for example, were the kind of people who always had the answer to every question. I should take care always to remain someone who asks questions.

A little later, with bursts of steam, and to the accompaniment of shouts and the waving of handkerchiefs, the train started to move off. The times—given the plunge in 1933, the uncertainties and countless worries—had made things difficult for my father, as for my mother. For us, however, they had been happy years, on the one hand because our parents had let us feel their fears as little as possible; on the other, I told myself later, probably because such fears, if they have anything like a happy ending, not only detract from life, but also make it more dense and complete.

1
The Breslau Eleven was the German national soccer team, which defeated Denmark at Breslau in Silesia (today: Wroclaw in Poland); Fest recites the names of the players on that team.

2
This is an early indication of a barter economy which began to replace the official money economy. Farmers needed feed for their pigs, such as potato peels, while city dwellers needed fuel for their stoves, such as wood—in addition to the traditional coal at the time.

3
An anti-English song composed in 1939 to verses written in 1914 by the popular German writer Hermann Löns.—Trans.

4
Both the so-called England song and the one extolling the charms of a flower and girl named Erika were soldiers’ songs much played on the radio stations during the war and sung by young and old. Heinz Rühmann was a universally beloved German comic actor of stage and screen who turned in some memorable performances in character roles after the war.