Read The Song Before It Is Sung Online
Authors: Justin Cartwright
The Song Before It Is Sung
THE SONG
BEFORE IT IS SUNG
JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT
For Penny, Rufus and Serge
Where is the song before it is sung?
- Alexander Herzen
Contents
AS CONRAD SENIOR flies towards Berlin, he is thinking about thoughts; so many thoughts piled up, such a quantity of half-remembered
knowledge, so many emotions brought up from the well to spill out: the unrolling of history - a river into which you can't
step twice, a collection of biographies end to end, a hilltop to survey the surrounding plains and so on - but also, more
so, the anxieties prompted by the spooling of time and the awareness of its unstoppable nature; and random thoughts — Einstein
buying a vanilla ice cream sprinkled with chocolate when he first landed in New York - the bank's accusations, sexual encounters,
the relation between friendship and envy (La Rochefoucauld), the aromas of bread rising, randomness, the softness of a horse's
muzzle (excepting the fishing-line hairs), the smell of books, the deep peace of libraries, the idea of patriotism, the scent
of Greek hillsides, the significance of landscape, the strange deceptions of painting, the persistence of religious belief,
the races of people, the love of animals, the power of music (
I can suck as much melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs),
the unknowability of another's mind, the idea of progress, the ever-presence of the poor, the truths of mathematics, the language
of policemen, the hypocrisies of small talk, the obsession with self, the sickly miasma of money, the yearning for simplification,
states of mind, regional accents, underwear, the nature of understanding, the isolation of dictators, personal hygiene, displays
of food in shops, attachment to a lover's topography, cross-wiring in the brain, celebrity, the truths of art, the roof of
the world, cowardice . . .
And the garrotting of Axel von Gottberg.
This is one of the mysteries of consciousness, Conrad thinks, the difference between the thoughts you bid come to you and
the ones that come anyway, sometimes as a blessing, also as a curse.
For nearly three years, Conrad has been thinking about Axel von Gottberg. Von Gottberg was garrotted on the orders of Hitler
in August 1944. He was thirty-five years old, and looked, although not in profile, like him, with thinning hair and a longish,
northern-European face. Northern-European hair is inclined to throw in the towel early. Thoughts of von Gottberg visit him
at any hour of the day, without warning.
Actually, Conrad is aware that he is not thinking full-blown thoughts, but highlights, like the trailers at his local cinema
complex; these thoughts are presenting themselves to him in a chaotic pageant. It is in the nature of air travel with its
barely suppressed claustrophobia and its sexual speculation and dulled sense of movement that thoughts seem to be provoked
to go on the exuberant march. (You can only think about thoughts, or consciousness, in metaphors.)
When he thinks of Axel von Gottberg, Conrad sees him as he was at his trial. There he is, standing in a capacious suit before
the People's Court with his hands folded in front of him. This could be to prevent the trousers falling down, as the prisoners
are not allowed belts and appear to have been given clothes from a second-hand store. The defendants are mostly aristocratic
and the idea is to bring them down a peg or two, to make them accountable to the ordinary people, so that they can be hanged
in clear conscience.
The film, which was commissioned by the State Film Superintendent, Hans Hinkel, to show what a fine National Socialist the
judge Roland Freisler was, and what wretched traitors the accused were, is beautifully lit. It is as though the windows of
the court are admitting a soft, warm light, a Dutch light, containing the texture of paint, to coat the defendant, the judge
himself, and the upstanding members of the public, who, in contrast to the decadents on trial, are mostly uniformed. The unintended
effect of this is to make von Gottberg look heroic. Von Gottberg speaks calmly about his career in the Foreign Service and
politely deflects Freisler's criticism about his failure to join the Army and about his education at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship:
'An English scholarship,' says Freisler. 'But candidates chosen in Germany,' says von Gottberg.
Freisler's clinching remarks are that four years at Oxford and a lot of time hanging about in the Romanisches Café on the
Kurfürstendamm are the ideal preparation for a traitor. As Freisler names this particular sink of decadence - the true voice
of Nazism speaking against intellectuals - von Gottberg stands, balding head inclined. The scene doesn't make much linguistic
sense because in the finished film each defendant in the trial of the 20 July 1944 plotters is edited in such a way as to
give Freisler the last word, but still von Gottberg's calmness and composure are striking. He knows that he is facing certain
death, because this is not a trial but a lynching: even before the court has sat, it has been announced that the defendants
are traitors who will hang, in Hitler's own words, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. Hitler has said that this is an authentic
German blood-revenge. He sets great store by the authentically Teutonic.
Freisler's only job is to discredit the defendants. Like his leader, he is prone to rages. He says the word
Schweinehund
at one stage which, until he heard it in Freisler's mouth, Conrad thought was an invention of British and American war-films.
And it adds to the unreality that Freisler looks as though he has been pulled in by a desperate casting director. He models
his hand gestures on the Führer's and contorts his face dramatically. Even some Nazis are embarrassed by his behaviour, but
Hitler says that Freisler is their Vyshinsky.
Although the defendants' replies and interjections are edited, it is known that most of them were brave in the face of death.
One, when asked why he joined the plot, said that he regarded Hitler as the instrument of all evil in the world. Another urged
Freisler to get on with the hanging or he would be hanged by the Allies first. In fact Freisler is crushed by falling masonry
a few months later when a bomb falls on the People's Court.
Von Gottberg, in this glimpse of him, remains polite, even resigned. He has done his best to demonstrate that there is such
a thing as a good German. Perhaps he is too composed, too controlled: he is the only defendant not immediately strung up on
a thin cord attached to meat-hooks in Berlin-Plotzensee Prison. He is kept for interrogation for another eleven days because
he has high-level contacts with the outside world that some Nazis believe they can use to save themselves. When Hitler hears
of the plan to keep him alive, he falls into a screaming rage, which in German is called a
Tobsuchtsanfall,
and orders his immediate death. Von Gottberg is hanged and his children, a boy of three, a girl of two and a girl of nine
months, are taken away from their mother to an orphanage where the boy dies of diphtheria. Von Gottberg's wife is imprisoned.
Hitler calls this
Sippenhaft,
another ancient German custom, of revenging yourself on the relatives of the person who has done you wrong.
Conrad finds it difficult to imagine how someone who has walked the same streets as he has, who has known the soft wet light
of an Oxford winter, who has drunk at the Eagle and Child with E.A. Mendel — where he drank with Mendel fifty years later
- could have ended up in front of Freisler, in a trial so unreal and so mad and so vicious that it points to something unimaginable
about human nature. Certainly unimaginable in the low-roofed, hop-steeped Eagle and Child, which has been known to generations
as the Bird and Baby. He is aware that his interest in von Gottberg, what Francine calls his morbid interest, owes a lot to
the fact that von Gottberg was an Oxford man, a Rhodes Scholar, as he was. Rhodes Scholarships, despite the questionable character
of their founder, confer a sense of destiny. Did von Gottberg believe in his destiny? Did he get the scholarship because he
had a sense of destiny, or did getting the scholarship cause him to think he had a destiny?
Conrad knows that his own destiny has not yet been made manifest. It may never be. It may anyway be no more than to be assailed
by thoughts. He has a friend, Osric, who thinks about sports all day: his thoughts range over the selection of teams, the
policy of coaches, the role of luck and of mental toughness. It is this friend's duty to have an opinion on sports. He doesn't,
of course, cover all sports, but the ones he loves need his constant attention. He has a particular interest in Russian women's
tennis, but this, Conrad thinks, is not entirely high-minded: Osric imagines himself having sex with these coltish women.
In fact when they bend over to receive serve, and arrange their thighs nervously, it is difficult not to imagine such a thing.
But generally as regards sport his friend is high-minded: no less than a philosopher grappling with ethical problems and problems
of perception, he feels obliged to add his opinion to all the others that nobody listens to. In this respect at least he is
more like a philosopher than he realises.
I am troubled by the accumulation of thoughts, particularly by the half-dead aspect of them, like leaves in autumn, still
there in outline but lacking life, Conrad thinks. In my thirty-sixth year they seem already to be piling up and I see no way
of disposing of them.
The stewardess brings drinks on a trolley. Stewardesses — it is believed — are sexually avid. This woman is excessively friendly,
chirping in a high girlish voice,
Bloody Mary, with Worcester sauce, yes, spicy? Nice one.
Her features move about in pursuance of a little personal drama as she prepares his Bloody Mary: it looks as though her cheeks
and eyes and lips are all directly attached by wires, like puppets, to the emotional centres of her brain. Maybe this trip
to Berlin, which he can't afford, will clear away the dead material.
Nice and spicy you said yes? Here we go sir.
How many meaningless conversations have we had? How many pointless exchanges?
He drinks the Bloody Mary deeply; he feels the vodka, and its advertised spiciness, warming him. He doesn't usually drink
in the morning, but he has a sense of well-being, because he will be fulfilling some of the promise E.A. Mendel saw in him
fifteen years ago. He will be paying back a debt, the nagging debt of being cherished by Mendel. When Mendel left him his
papers and letters three years ago, he wanted Conrad to understand that for nearly sixty years he had felt guilty about his
repudiation of von Gottberg, his friend, when he went back to Germany:
Dear Conrad, I leave you my papers and my letters relating to Axel von Gottberg. You may be surprised; you may even wonder
what to do with them. It is true that you were not my most brilliant student, but I think, my dear boy, that you are the most
human. You know that I took a position against Axel, and you know the reasons why, but perhaps you don't know that many people
blamed me in some way for his death. It has been a terrible burden to live with this.
In these papers you will find every letter he wrote to me, and copies of my replies and letters to him, as well as many other
papers and cuttings and so on. You will also find letters his friends wrote to me and various other references to him.
The truth is, Axel was a man of courage and action while I was a man who loved libraries and enjoyed gossip.
It may be that if I hadn't warned my friends in America and here about Axel's notion of himself as a world-historical figure
—
he believed to the end that he had some sort of dialogue with Churchill — the Allies would have given more support to the
July plotters. And it may be that Axel would have been spared his appalling death.
Did you know that a film was made not only of the trial — there's a copy of it in the Imperial War Museum - but also of the
hangings?
This film was made expressly for Hitler's benefit. It is believed to be lost.
While he was alive Mendel had never once suggested that he wanted Conrad to have these papers. He knew that Conrad's years
since leaving Oxford had not gone smoothly — so perhaps he was offering him a way of establishing himself, a post-mortem gift.
But he had made no suggestions about how Conrad should apply his advanced human qualities to the question. Three years ago,
when he first read the papers, Conrad saw an opportunity. This, he thought, is the sort of thing television will go for. And
then he imagined a play, the final meeting of von Gottberg and Mendel in All Souls in 1939, just before war was declared:
von Gottberg tries to justify himself to his friend and also he tries to explain how important it is to save Germany and Europe
from the Nazis and the communists. Mendel is sceptical, but affectionate. Mendel's own account of this last meeting is in
the form of three letters to friends. In each letter he gives a slightly different telling, but essentially he regards von
Gottberg as a dangerous fantasist, with a taste for high-level intrigue, who sees himself as a man with a destiny, the agent
of history. The idea that history has agents is deeply repugnant to Mendel. It runs contrary to everything he believes about
personal responsibility. It lies at the heart of fascism and all other forms of totalitarianism.
Conrad had a modest book contract but he has long ago spent the advance. Neither the play nor the documentary has been taken
up despite many lunches, most of which he has had to pay for himself. And his editor at the paper — he's only freelance, not
staff — thinks that he is wasting his time. Actually she thinks he is losing his grip, and becoming obsessed. And it is true
that he thinks von Gottberg, at thirty-five, looks just like him. This trip to Berlin to meet an unreliable informant who
claims to know the whereabouts of some film may be one indulgence too many for his editor. He has to produce an article on
Berlin's boutique hotels and chic restaurants to justify it; she has given him a modest allowance in cash. And now he thinks
of women in positions of power, and the strange coolness they cultivate as an antidote to the more womanly qualities, which
he has always appreciated, unlike so many of his friends. The publisher's editor who gave him the advance to edit and collate
Mendel's von Gottberg papers always asked him how he saw the marketing pitch. She had enormous success, so far unrepeated,
with a book on dating for the over-thirties. She was terrified of being dragged down by this book into a donnish, male, old-world
morass. She feared that she would be tainted by nose-hair and cluttered rooms and obsolete male scents. Women in positions
of power lack the confidence to follow their own instincts, he thinks.