It was argued by some that finesse was not required. After all, everyone would ultimately be selected. Whether early or late. So that meant that no special grace attached to avoiding the primary selection. But all of this was to ignore the vital necessity of smooth organisation. How to keep large numbers moving? It required co-operation, organisation, calm and obedience. Far better then the aids to tranquillity. The little houses with their white painted wooden fences that stood before the treatment centres, the air of orderliness – indeed, one might advance the paradox that the greater the chaos, the more was quiet order needed.
Before then you had the unnecessarily upsetting procedure of allowing girls, often Slav girls, to whisper what lay ahead, even as they stripped brooches, rings from those arriving. You could see how this disconcerted them. They would sniff the air as if there was something to smell. And they would look up into the night sky and go berserk. It reminded you of an escape from a slaughterhouse when demented calves run bellowing into the street and must be caught and restrained, often with what looks like unnecessary force.
It was a secret. You knew that. Because everyone knew it. There was no safer way of keeping a secret than to make sure that everyone knew it – but never spoke of it, because, after all, it was a secret and one kept a secret.
To be sent left was to go very quickly. Perhaps no more than ten minutes would elapse between choice and treatment. So the crowds had to be kept moving. With thousands of problems arriving all the time, of every one thousand five hundred, on the bad days, up to twelve hundred could go left, at the flick of a thumb. Often those on duty would whistle. A little Chopin waltz one remembers as having been much favoured. The cries went out all the time for ‘doctors’ and ‘twins’ and the Red Cross vehicles waited, their engines turning over, exhausts sending up a little blue smoke into the cold night air.
The Red Cross vehicles and the white coats you wore had a consoling effect. Newly arrived problems yearned for medical succour. From the moment of arrival doctors were vital at all stages from the first selection through to the solution. A doctor would be briefed on the policies which helped to determine the difference between those who went left and right. A doctor would make the choice as the fresh batches arrived: he would, of course, ride the Red Cross car to the ramp where the train stood; he would assess the nature and number of the treatments required; he would have to complete forms after the event; and finally he would be present for the necessary extractions which procedure laid down should always follow the treatments.
As things became more complicated, sometimes one yearned for the old days. In the old days there had been a true air of orderliness. And it was kinder both for the new arrivals and for the supervising officials. One was human, after all. One strove for clarity, for a sense of direction, for careful but not noisy control. A big door opened into the undressing area where there were seats. Each seat had a number. There were even tickets for clothes left behind. The notices were large and easy to read, since often those in the cleansing area were not in their first prime and, in any event, their spectacles would have been removed for safekeeping. They would be directed, those selected, in notices written in several languages, towards the showers. The cleanliness of the place was amazing. It gleamed like a mirror. Not a speck of dust was to be found. One thought of this as being in the best scientific tradition. To remain efficient under the worst conditions – and the ash was everywhere – is a form of scientific integrity. Is it not? One would like to think so.
But still things became ever more problematical. Staff struggled valiantly to be both humane and efficient. The questions most discussed by personnel of all ranks and expertise. How were you to handle the increasing numbers? What limit should be set? And, as it seemed likely, no upper limits were to be permitted, how was one to keep the process running smoothly? How to avoid a backlog when literally thousands of problems remained, naked and unaddressed? And the machinery broke down. Difficulties in keeping up standards of hygiene can easily be imagined.
Expertise, accomplishments, these were the governing factors of your life at that time. Even the non-qualified members of the administration realised this and they would make suggestions, often very useful ones, such as ways of keeping the ovens at a regular temperature, despite wild fluctuations in the numbers being treated. There was a modesty about these people that one deeply admired. They would preface their ideas with disclaimers: ‘As a mere non-specialist, I stand correction, but it seems to me that the substitute of human fat for benzene would be a useful step.’
Complications. And, to be sure, exactly the same question of qualifications applied during the selections at the ramp. Only trained medical people were to be involved. Surely? And someone had put forward the argument, quite clearly: if you were not a doctor it meant you were technically ill-equipped to do this sort of work. One protested. Dentists did not perform appendicectomies. Nor, therefore, should anthropologists perform these selections.
One’s point was taken and one was transferred without ado to the anthropological section on Block Ten.
Long ago and far away. Why then does one continue to dream? To dream, specifically, of Leon Garfinkel who must be dead now these many years. It happened one morning that one saw him in a work detail of what must be described as something like marching skeletons. There was always something terribly dispiriting about a work detail marching past with military rigour when most of its men were barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Those with some spirit threw out their thin and bony chests and flung up their arms and looked almost jaunty. This had the advantage of distracting attention from the slow members of the detail who drooped, their bony nakedness compounded by sagging, swinging scrotums.
But there was Garfinkel! Dear old Garfinkel, from Leipzig! How many long hikes had one taken with Leon as a young man, the two of them dressed in parkas, shorts and rucksacks, as they travelled the Eastern territories of the Volhynian Germans. Wandervögel – wandering birds – making a good ten miles a day on a couple of apples, orange juice and a slab of chocolate. Interviewing the peasants near Woeadimir and Rozyyszcze about such matters as their use of folk costume. Dear Leon, with his dark eyes and quick bright manner, was by far the best at getting unwilling peasants to answer one’s questionnaires about communal politics. What days they were! And, later at Leipzig, Leon had been by far the most brilliant student of his generation. His thesis: ‘The Linguistic Shifts in the Terminology of Sorbian Bee-keepers’ drew from no less an eminence than Professor Reche the accolade – ‘masterful’.
Suddenly there! Marching naked across the compound in a company of Mussulmans. It provoked the huge and headlong feeling: ‘This cannot be!’ You were determined to find and save the friend of your youth, that delightful boy and comrade of the Wandervögel days.
But it wasn’t easy. It meant visiting all the blocks and there putting the same question: ‘Where is Leon Garfinkel?’ Alas, the men on the blocks were debilitated or stubborn or stupid, for not a soul appeared to know him. Instead they said things like: ‘There is no Leon Garfinkel here.’ Or worse, they liked to joke and say: ‘We are all called Leon Garfinkel here.’ Or they were just deliberately unhelpful and vague and replied: ‘Garfinkel is a very common name. Why waste your time?’ Or they asked the most nonsensical questions, such as – ‘Did the Garfinkel you are searching for have boils on his abdomen?’ Everyone knew perfectly well that all men in the condition of those marching skeletons were likely to have boils on their bodies, scars and scabies…
The puzzlement you had felt was explained by a fat, bearded Capo, as you were leaving one of the blocks: ‘For God’s sake, doctor, do you really think anyone will answer you when you walk into the blocks calling for Garfinkel? What do you think they imagine you want with him? You being a doctor, from Block Ten?’
How was one to explain to the likes of that Capo that the missing Garfinkel had merely been a friend of one’s youth. How was one to explain, indeed, that one was not that kind
of doctor? It seemed to be widely understood that if one worked in any capacity in Block Ten then one was one of those doctors.
And so they went these dreams. They took on the form of an unfolding discussion with someone he could not see. He did not invite them. He did not understand them. And yes, he was quite certain that in the morning he did not remember them. All he knew was that he awoke about four, always about four, and lay there listening, as he did now, to the steady drip of rain in the laburnums and felt glad to be English.
And so to breakfast. And sitting there, toying with an egg, feeding it not into his ear but in very small and neat movements straight into his mouth, sat Max Montfalcon in the early morning listening politely to Lady Divina warning about the latest ozone depletion.
‘Blame the Americans! The gases that we send up into the atmosphere eat away at the ozone ceiling over our heads. What do we have to do to convince them? With our fridges and foam, our air conditioners and our motor-cars, we are making war on ourselves!’ She lifted a bird-like claw, clutching a piece of toast and waved it over her head. The toast flew in an arc and hit Major Bobbno who was sitting opposite her, in the middle of the forehead. ‘Nice shot, son!’ said the Major.
He retrieved the piece of toast and ate it approvingly. ‘The army needs lads like you.’
Max propped his Fowler against the salt cellars. He always did when talk got round to the environment.
‘Look,’ said Night Matron, ‘Mr Montfalcon is reading his Bible again. What is the lesson this morning?’
‘Camouflage,’ Max said. ‘The great thing about Fowler is that he loves plain speaking. He’s very down on people who say “one”’ when they mean “I”. He has a name for it. He calls it “the False First-personal One”. What he does is to show up how the disguise is exposed the moment you begin to mix the “I” and “one”.’
‘Give us a “for-instance”’ cried Beryl the Beard, who was very interested in disguises.
‘Certainly.’ Max turned to pages 402 and 403 and gave out the following: ‘Fowler says in a rather wonderful example of the false first-personal one – “I had known in the small circle of one’s personal friends quite a number of Jews who … ”’
‘So have I,’ said Major Bobbno. ‘For some reason I never understood, the Irish battalions were full of ’em.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Joy of Passing
How do you catch a mouse? Especially if you’re not very quick on your pins. Cunning helps. And craft. First set and bait your trap. Then watch your mouse very carefully. Watch him as he visits the bedsides of departing elders. Watch him as he sets out for meetings of the Stroke Club and the Ballroom Dancing Sessions. Try a variety of little temptations by way of experiment. Keep an eye on him. Keep all your eyes on him. But remember, you’re an old man, living on the second floor of a not very distinguished old-age home in North London. The authorities have taken to keeping you under electronic surveillance. But he is a fleet young rodent. Not only is he quicker on his pins than you, but he has four to your two. And you have a limited means of assaying which bait the rodent is likely to take and even fewer ways of knowing which will prove to be the definitive solution. For it must be lethal, your stratagem. We’re not pissing around here. These old English houses are sadly prone to vermin. Serenity House is no exception. Switch on the lights late at night in a kitchen and scurry, scurry go the little feet, carrying off the last of your supper, your final fragments, the remains of your life. The plague, you remind yourself, was spread by rats. What do you do? Well, driven beyond endurance, you call in the exterminator.
Time was running out. It had come to the ears of the elders that Mr Fox was contemplating the unthinkable. He was planning to sell out. This was the reason behind his series of trips to Cologne. Max had learnt of it from Edgar the chiropodist. The information came to Edgar via his cousin who knew a woman in Bruges who happened to be travelling in Cologne. There she met a man who mentioned to her that he was negotiating with an Englishman over the sale of a premier London eventide refuge. He represented an outfit called Age Without Frontiers.
At first the term ‘Englishman’ had fooled a few people. Edgar was removing a rather painful splinter from Max’s left foot when he divulged this information. ‘What have we been doing to ourselves, Mr M?’
‘Chased a thief down the stairs in my pyjamas,’ Max growled. ‘He got away.’
‘My cousin’s friend from Bruges worked out that this man in Cologne didn’t understand the difference between an Englishman and a Welshman. We can expect to see a further blurring of regional differences as more and more countries merge their identities in the Euro Smog.’
‘In the man from Cologne, what we’ve got is a prime example of German arrogance: England’s full of Englishmen. That’s an end to the matter,’ said Max. ‘I do not intend to live under a German regime. Of course, I can only speak for myself in this. But I’ll be very surprised if there aren’t great misgivings right through the house.’
And he was quite right. A small delegation from the Stroke Club had put the elders’ worries clearly: ‘We won’t be living off black bread and sauerkraut, Mr Fox. The elders think it’s only right that you should come clean about the future of Serenity House. They ask if you have a hidden agenda?’
Mr Fox reacted angrily. He had not attempted to deny the charge. He had lifted his sharp chin, pursed his lips and said he would be issuing a full statement at the appropriate time.
It appeared on the noticeboard a few days later:
It is with particular pleasure that I can tell all staff and elders that Serenity House is to enter into a loose association with the Cologne-based enterprise Age Without Frontiers.
Since certain regrettable rumours are circulating in the House, let me make it clear what our new association will not give rise to:
– changes in dietary arrangements;
– arrivals of numbers of German elders;
– alterations in timetables (the so-called ‘German work-plan’);
– faceless bureaucrats in faraway Cologne deciding how British elders should spend the evenings of their lives;
– increasing numbers of German staff.
As I am sure all staff and guests will know, I abhor the negative and so am delighted to confirm some of the benefits to which our new partnership will give rise:
– considerable advantages in the management of day-to-day expenses (food, bedding, drugs and equipment) through the practice of economies of scale, especially in the funerary and cremation fields;
– considerable economic clout in an increasingly competitive age-market via the benefits of our partnership with similar eventide refuges in over a dozen countries across Europe;
– the assurance of local autonomy of each of the Houses owned by Age Without Frontiers; and the right to continue to enjoy their own beliefs, diets, customs, creeds, last rites, etc.;
– the possibility (and I do believe this is a real first!) for elders to move freely between Houses in all member countries. Spending, say, the winter months in the Spanish House, spring in Greece, and autumn in our very fine House in the French Alps. In each of our refuges elders will enjoy full residence rights as well as access to all amenities including Stroke Clubs, Ballroom Dancing, Foot Care, Funeral Clubs, etc. Freedom of movement and abode would be guaranteed in an Eventide Charter and elders taking up residence in one of our other houses would not have to convert their own currency but would make use of a monetary unit specific to the refuges in the scheme. Though still in its early stages, a name has been put forward for this special currency: the ‘Wisdom’. Thus a member would carry her stock of Wisdoms between different Houses, exchanging them for goods and services.
It should have gone down wonderfully well. It was meant well. But within a few days the first signs of revolt were to be seen when graffiti, written in a shaky scrawl, began appearing on the walls of Serenity House: COLOONE-ISATION? NEIN!
‘Very funny,’ snapped Mr Fox
and ordered out Imelda with sponge and bucket to remove all traces of the offending message.
‘I find the German reference particularly insulting,’ Mr Fox told Night Matron. ‘When will people begin to realise that making Germany the scapegoat won’t solve our problems? Any more than the Americans will get places by blaming everything on the Japanese.’
The trouble did not end there. For his part Max kept well out of it. Except, that is, for a discussion with Edgar the chiropodist about the unionising tendencies of the Weimar Government of Gustav Stresemann in the late twenties. ‘The German and French were talking about forming an association even then; Stresemann and the French foreign minister were as thick as thieves.’
‘Was this after the evacuation of the Rhineland?’
‘Indeed it was. Nineteen thirty or so. By closer economic union, the Germans hoped for commercial stability and larger markets.’
‘And the French no doubt hoped to lock Germany into political federation?’ Edgar shot back. ‘What else is new?’
Max nodded. ‘From Weimar to the Treaty of Maastricht. Nothing has changed. It was and is a German racket.’
The Stroke Club meeting was packed. Even the three sleepers were there and special arrangements were made to accommodate the Five Incontinents with little Imelda on catheter patrol. The Reverend Alistair woke up for long enough to say that the Bible clearly stated that tribe did not prostrate itself before opposing tribe any more than lion lay down with the lamb. Josh Malherbe said that back in his wine importing days his relations with Bordeaux had been very strong. But it was a far cry from keeping good business ties to rushing headlong into the arms of a German holding company. Major Bobbno said he had fought Germans in two wars and the only language Gerry understood was having his balls nailed to the wall and he appealed to Brigadier Montfalcon to back him up. Max did not respond. He sat in his Gazelle, his hands under his Kumfee Thermalux cover, and thought about ways of killing mice.
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