The Wooden Shepherdess (51 page)

The louder the Führer declaimed, the louder had sung the canaries. Paganuzzi was perched on that hard wooden bench, he recalled; and as Hitler strode back and forth had been forced to keep turning his head to and fro like somebody watching a tennis-match. But at this point Hitler had turned and faced him: “Remember that this is the decadent France of 1934, not the France of 1914!” And let Paganuzzi make no mistake: the degenerate Jewish democracy masquerading today as Imperial Britain had no more spunk left in it than France or the USA They knew how defenseless their island was in these days of the bomber and the submarine....

Reminiscently Paganuzzi massaged his Wimbledon Neck as he strolled in the twilight now, recalling how Hitler had started his back-and-forth pacing again while dubbing the British Empire a tree-load of over-ripe pears which would drop at the first breath of wind: “If
I
don't gather them, Russia will. Even left to itself it could hardly survive to the second half of the Century.”

Here Paganuzzi had tried to demur that the end of the British Empire was hardly to German advantage: a far-flung empire like hers was a source of weakness rather than strength. Today Britain knew she had neither the wealth nor the men to police half the world and fight in Europe as well; but once their Eastern Empire was gone they'd stop worrying over the Japanese, and be that much more of a factor in Europe to reckon with....

“There speaks an ignorant fool!” the Führer had shouted, thumping that bench so hard that it tingled poor Paganuzzi's bottom—and even the loudest canary had faltered a trill or two. “Nations which cease being able and willing to hold down others by force soon forget how to govern themselves. With her whole raison-d'être in World History gone, a putrescent Great Britain will soon disappear off the map as even a minor power.”

“Perhaps ... in some twenty or thirty years. But now” (waving his pocket-diary) “isn't this still the Year 1934—or is my little book here mistaken?”

“You
jest
?”

“Far from it, Mein Führer! I merely point out that what we have to deal with today is the Britain of 1934, still (if she chooses to act) the greatest Power on Earth; and that what we possess today is no more than the fledgling Wehrmacht of 1934.”

“Exactly! Re-armament's now reached a point where it can't any longer be hidden: the next stages need the Versailles Powers' agreement. That's why there has to be no provocation just now, no shred of excuse for British or French interference by force until I am ready to meet it with force. To gain the agreement I need I am ready to sign any treaty—to guarantee frontiers, make non-aggression pacts and alliances,
anything
leaving me free to go on re-arming at will!” Once again he had halted, addressing his hearer direct: “Why refuse, merely because some day some solemn promise may have to be broken?” He put his arm round Paganuzzi's neck and playfully pinched his ear: “
Why not
commit perjury six times a day—eh, little man?”

Then he took hold of both Paganuzzi's shoulders and stared in his eyes till they—tactfully—dropped: “My friend, it is only to you I confide my innermost thoughts. They are not for the rank-and-file of the Party, nor even their leaders. But
you
, as a Business Man, have to understand this: I, Adolf Hitler, can claim no right to a private conscience which interferes with the greatness of Germany! That is the moral burden I lay on myself....”

A tear had stood in his eye, and he even choked back a sob as he paused for a solemn moment—then stole a quick glance at the cuckoo-clock and barked, “Go back to Saarbrucken! Tell those hot-headed zealots ... what was the phrase I used? Ah, yes: tell them they have to “soft-pedal a bit till the quarry is safe in the bag.” Knox must have no excuse to call in the French—do you understand?”

He then turned away, the interview at an end, just as somebody brought in a big black cloth to silence at least the birds for the night....

*

The scents of the forest are always strongest at dusk; and the first few stars were appearing as Paganuzzi paused to drink in the oncoming night while reflecting again on the scene he had just rehearsed in his head.

“Those belittling overtones in the way that I spun this yarn to myself: were they wholly fair, or was my own amour-propre playing tricks with my memory?” Herr Paganuzzi frowned: God knows that the hardest of tasks for the clever man is paying due homage to genius.

“Genius?” Perhaps; but those innermost thoughts of the Führer were hardly impressive. Everyone knows that treaties are seldom kept much longer than keeping them pays; but why attempt to erect dishonesty into a principle? Surely because he assumes that all businessmen are dishonest—and I am a businessman: so that this was bound to find welcoming ears when poured into mine....

Perhaps it's the same with all Hitler's innermost thoughts: they are always whatever that man imagines his hearers are thinking themselves, so that hearing the Führer confide in you comes to no more than seeing yourself distorted in Hitler's unflattering mirror: in fact, you see nothing of Hitler's own mind at all.

If indeed any such thing exists! For that makes the whole nature of Hitler's “greatness” merely a preternatural empathy, turning him into a caricature of yourself whoever you are—and even, however many you are: an incarnate caricature of the whole German Nation. “And that” (as Euclid would say) “is absurd.” Or at least confusing, because it implies that the more you believe in Hitler's this-sort-of-greatness the less you believe in Hitler's intrinsic existence—and, damn it, we know he exists!

For one has to admit his mysterious gravitational pull.—Like you moon up there, the amazing tides which that force personalized as his “will” can raise among men are proof-positive Hitler exists....

But now Paganuzzi had reached his inn and demanded a bath.

Ten days later Polly arrived at Victoria Station.

Warned by Mme Leblanc, the “adequate escort” she'd had to wait for (an Indian Civilian's leathery widow) had taken charge of Polly's passport and tickets as well as her own: had bribed the ticket-inspector to lock their compartment door, and had never allowed her slippery prisoner out of her sight for a moment except when Polly wanted to wash her hands—and even then she had waited outside till Polly emerged. Only while crossing the Channel was any respite allowed, since Polly was hardly likely to want to swim.

Yet Polly had shown not the slightest signs of any wish to escape. As if in a daze she had taken it all with an icy politeness, a passive non-resistance as if she couldn't care less: she had sat in her corner seat all the time, reading Zane Grey—except in the restaurant car, where she ate like a wolf.

In London they spent the night at Brown's Hotel. Gilbert was due at a crucial conference somewhere and hadn't got time, so Augustine it was who came to collect his niece. In Brown's Hotel she didn't look much like a schoolgirl—and even less like a penitent: dressed in the height of expensive good taste, her slender and graceful figure looked almost grown-up. It was only her starry-eyed little face which still had a childish look as she greeted without any vestige of warmth the uncle she used to adore.

Handing her over, the escort almost seemed to expect a signed receipt for the package safely delivered; and Augustine indeed had to meet a whacking bill for expenses (a bill which left the leathery widow sufficient margin to pay for a visit to Harvey Nichols before retiring to Kew).

It was roughly a decade since once before Augustine had driven alone with Polly from London to Dorset. Staines and Basing-stoke, Stockbridge, Salisbury, out at last on the beautiful Dorset downs.... His Bentley's purring organ-like roar.... All these were much the same; but instead of that much-loved caroling woolen ball that had bounced around on the seat beside him, all he had now was an alien lackadaisical nymph who answered him only in grunts. She read Zane Grey all the time, never once looking out at the places they passed.

Just before getting to Mellton he stopped the car to read her the Riot Act: “Look here, Polly,” he said, “Pull yourself together! Me you can treat how you like, but you can't go meeting your mother like this. Snap out of it!” Polly lifted her eyes for a moment only, and then returned to Zane Grey. Firmly he took the book out of her hands: “I intend stopping here till you've had a good cry. You'll feel better after it.”

“Then we stop here all night,” said Polly: “I haven't the slightest desire to cry.” She surveyed the familiar Dorset lane with distaste: “I'm glad to be home again.... I suppose. Give me back my book.”

She was still reading Zane Grey (though without taking in one word) when they reached the front door—but then, how would Peter or James or John have responded, if only a short while after witnessing Christ's Transfiguration, someone had tried to make him “snap out of it?”

Mary was less upset than Augustine by Polly's zombie behavior: at Polly's age she had felt for a Latin Mistress almost exactly what Polly felt for the Führer of Germany. Hitlers or Latin Mistresses, what's the odds? If a rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose a pash-is-a-pash-is-a-pash.... So without one word about Polly's escapade and expulsion she kissed her daughter goodnight and sent her up to her room.

When Polly was gone, “I suppose she's now lighting candles in front of her Hitler Ikonastasis,” grumbled Augustine bitterly. “Mary, I'm not so sure we were right after all to shield the child from all contact with Christianity. Even a God young girls are encouraged to dwell on the torturing of and imagine they eat seems somehow healthier.”

Mary smiled to herself: “Poor Augustine is jealous-as-hell of Hitler,” she thought. “No idol takes kindly to being supplanted.”

Augustine chuckled. “The sheep to be eating the Shepherd for once! It's a bit of a change of role....”

Because of his Christian upbringing, saying this kind of thing still made him feel a bit like a naughty small boy scrawling rude words on a wall.

*

But when Polly got to her room she had barely glanced at her Hitler icons: the photographs looked so insipid and posed compared with the Real Thing.

Instead she leaned from her window and gazed at the moon in a halo of luminous haze which extinguished the nearer stars. It was brilliant, and verging on full. She stared at those shadows across it which look like a face, but which Gusting (for this had been back in the days when she still called him that) had told her were mountains and plains. Mountains, and “seas without any water in them” he'd said. He told her about the telescope he himself had made as a boy, and how clearly it showed ring-craters of dead volcanoes: night after night he had mapped them, picked out by the “dawn” on the moving line which divided the lit from the darkened part of the orb. He had taught her some of their names (“Copernicus with its rays” was once she remembered suddenly). Also that rift, like a knife-cut many miles deep and hundreds of miles in length: “the Valley of ... something” (was it “the Alps?”).

Of course she'd believed all he said. But then as now, looking up at that shining disc with the naked eye, it was hard to believe there was nothing mystic about it. Merely another world like our own—yet not like our own, because it had neither water nor air. No life, just a desert hotter than any Sahara by day and colder than any Greenland by night.

No
life
on it.... That meant no possible Polly up there—in which case, what was it for? Was it there just to shine on this one particular night when she chanced to look out of the window—to flood this one particular Dorset garden with silver, exciting her dog to howl and the frogs to croak and keeping the screech-owls awake?

No ... for as Polly had gazed at the moon she was moved by a deeper thought: the moon's skyline had nothing to do with her! That moon had been there forever, the same and unchanging, whatever might happen on Earth. Since before the Evolution of Man.... Since even before she was born!

That gave rise to a further stupendous thought: it would shine there the same even when Polly was dead. Even when she was no more (that unthinkable kind of time) the moon would be there just the same....

The light was so bright that her eyes were beginning to water. She wiped it away with her hand because now she felt sure she could read in that very light the answers to all those ultimate questions she'd tried to read in the face of Hitler. The answers which no philosopher—not since the Dawn of Time—has been able to put into words, she could read them all now in the face of the moon: what the Universe meant, and why Polly existed.... Even if (like other sages) she couldn't yet quite put the Answers she brimmed with in words, that could wait till tomorrow: already tonight she was greater and wiser than anyone else in the World!

—All the same, once in her pajamas, she went to the secret place where she kept that worn three-legged old teddy bear which she counted on still to keep away bogies; and fell asleep with it tightly clutched to her breast. Next morning, when Susan and Gillie crept in to jump on her stomach and wake her that way, the bear was still there. But, alas, no longer the Key to the Universe: somehow that seemed to have taken wings in the night.

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Copyright © 1973 by Richard Hughes

Introduction copyright © 2000 by Hilary Mantel

All rights reserved.

Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of Richard Hughes

First Published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus 1973

Cover photograph: Francesca Woodman, detail from 
McDowell Colony, Summer 1980; 
courtesy of Betty and George Woodman

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows: