by Ernst Jünger
His astonishing gift accompanied him in his profession. One is liable to underestimate its advantages, but a good memory for names, for example, is an asset in many fields. We have a direct influence, a personal power, over people whom we know by name, especially in the great world of affairs. Human beings set great value on their names. I was, in this respect, always too definitely guided by my emotions. I knew the names of people I liked or disliked, but forgot those of others or confused them, which is more embarrassing still. Fillmor surprised even people he had never seen before—telephone operators, for instance—by addressing them by their names, thereby giving them the impression that they were his equals.
No one could match his ability to deal with time, space, and facts. His mind must have looked like a control panel. He mastered positions like a blindfolded chessplayer who simultaneously engages in fifty games and is capable of calling up from memory one after another of the chessboards and the position of every single piece. Thus, at any moment, he was informed about military potentialities and reserves, and knew what was possible and which the shortest route to take. He had what is nowadays called “genius,” a talent which has universal approval. Moreover, except for an ambition that didn’t aim at flashy display, he was almost without passion. He wished only to set forces in motion; he craved only the power of control.
Since Fillmor had no idiosyncrasies and always knew what was possible, he survived effortlessly all the changes in political climate and governments. The waves which beat others down lifted him up. Men like him were always needed by monarchies, republics, and dictatorships of any kind. While I had become a specialist, in order to be only just tolerated, he was the indispensable expert. Those who gain power quickly often remind us of brigands who requisition a locomotive only to discover they can’t run it. While they are standing about helplessly, experts like Fillmor arrive and show them how to operate the levers. One sound of the whistle and all the unmoving wheels begin to turn again. On minds like Fillmor’s rest the pure continuity, the uninterrupted functioning, of power; without them revolutions would come to nothing, remaining a mixture of crimes and meaningless talk.
It stands to reason that Fillmor’s old comrades regarded him as a renegade, while he considered them to be fools. There was probably a good deal of optical illusion in this attitude, since Fillmor stood firm; he remained true to himself as a prototype of the Zeitgeist by which all were moved, but the changes did not touch his integrity. A fixed star of dogged persistence must have influenced him as well. I sometimes thought of Talleyrand or Bernadotte in connection with Fillmor, but he lacked their charm and zest for life. He did not even keep a good table; I know because he sometimes invited his old comrades to dinner, in order to “cultivate the tradition.” On these occasions all those who were down on their luck flocked together and let him stuff them with doctored wines and American horrors. This was all he did, and the man who really needed help would have done better to go to Twinnings.
From all this one may conclude that Fillmor was a man without any imagination, since the person who always knows what is possible doesn’t occupy himself with the absurd or the impossible—which had been my mistake: even as a child I had never been satisfied with the menu of the day; I had always looked for the impossible. All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell. Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space.
My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable were in fashion. There were many days when I had the impression of meeting only prison wardens—wardens, moreover, who voluntarily crowd to these positions, are satisfied with them and enjoy them. “Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Middle; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed”—we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again after five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole and mention their relationship to another monster; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end. In this mountain range of narrow-mindedness, Fillmor was one of the highest peaks.
For a long time, I could also be counted among the admirers of this kind of briskly disposing intelligence. I even admit I had expected much from it, particularly during the years when I was employed as a tank inspector. My attitude may seem that of a man who finds himself coveting a doubtful post because he sees a former comrade in the glare of celebrity. I rest my case. Fillmor had gone from triumph to triumph and had now published his memoirs. Since he calculated everything, this publication was undoubtedly intended to usher in a new phase in his career. In our day, a successful general, a high commander on the winning side, stands the best chance of becoming top dog in industry or politics. This is one of the paradoxes of an age that is unfavorably disposed toward the soldier.
If Zapparoni had spent his morning studying this fellow’s memoirs, it was certainly no sheer pastime. What kind of judgment was I meant to pass on this book? The problem was the following――
X
At the very beginning, Zapparoni had been struck by a passage dealing with the start of the era of world wars. Fillmor mentioned the initial great losses, which he attributed partly to the inexperience of the troops and partly to the fact that the enemy had first shown white flags and then, when the soldiers had abandoned precautions and approached without cover, they had opened fire. Zapparoni wanted me to tell him whether I had witnessed similar occurrences and if this was a customary stratagem in war.
His question suited me; I had weighed it in my mind before. Evidently Zapparoni intended, after the unfortunate first words of welcome, to turn the conversation toward a field in which he knew I was on solid ground. This was not a bad start.
White flags? Well, they can be counted among the rumors which always turn up soon after the opening of hostilities. In part, they are inventions of journalists whose task consists in painting the opposite side black, but there is a grain of truth to them.
In a garrison under attack, the will to resist is not so uniformly distributed as it appears to the attacker. When the situation becomes threatening, cells begin to form—some groups will want to defend their position at any cost, others will regard the cause as lost. Therefore situations can arise in which the attacking troops are alternately lulled into security by signs of surrender and then are fired upon. They suffer the effect, without recognizing the diversity of the impulse, and they confuse juxtaposed with consecutive action. They necessarily conclude that they have been lured into a trap. It’s an inevitable optical illusion. Objectively seen, they have engaged in a dangerous affair, without using sufficient caution. It’s much the same when we cut ourselves on a double-edged knife and then hurl it in anger against the wall. The person who acts is responsible for the acted-upon—not the other way round. The fault lies with the attacker. The commander who allowed his men to advance imprudently hadn’t mastered his business. He had maneuvers in his head.
With an occasional kindly nod, Zapparoni listened to my comments.
“Not bad, even though all too human—and it’s good that you find a remedy at once. Heaven protect us against such intrigues. The Field Marshal does not indulge in such circumstantial considerations.”
He laughed contentedly and then went on.
“If I have understood you, the situation is somewhat as follows: Let’s suppose I am negotiating with a business rival —a firm. I drive these people into a corner—and they make me a favorable offer. I make my arrangements, provide liquid a
ssets, and make reserves available. At the very moment when the agreement is due to be signed, I am notified that I have negotiated with a subsidiary company and that the principal firm has no obligation whatsoever. Meanwhile the market has recovered and they have hawked my offer around. Now the whole deal has to begin all over again.”
After a short pause he continued: “This sort of maneuver happens not infrequently. Perhaps I negotiated with partners who overstepped their authority, or maybe they decided to shelve the whole matter in order to worm a better offer out of me later. Or perhaps the agreement was made when all the participants were up to their necks in trouble. Meanwhile the market revives and they try to back out.”
He looked at me with a worried expression and shook his head.
“Is it my duty to brood over the things that go on behind the scenes? I was allowed to take for granted that the man with whom I negotiated had authorization to sign. I had losses; I wasted time and incurred expense. Now I have other worries. Who is liable for redress?”
I didn’t know what he was driving at; and Zapparoni, in whose voice was an almost threatening note, gave me no time to think about an answer, but began asking me one question after another.
“Whom would you hold liable in my case?”
“In the first place, the firm.”
“And if that didn’t work?”
“The partner who signed.”
“You see, it’s quite obvious. One thinks much more clearly when money is at stake. That’s one of the good things about money.”
He leaned back comfortably in his chair, looking at me with a twinkle in his eyes: “And how many of the fellows did you dispose of when you caught them?”
Damn it—it looked as if I was the one who had been caught. Memories of past hells woke up in me, memories one would like to forget.
Zapparoni did not wait for my answer. He said: “I should suppose that only a few got off. And rightly so. In these cases everyone is responsible for everyone else, and stakes his life on it.”
I had the impression that the conversation was changing more and more into a cross-examination: “Now, if you hold one of the partners accountable—shouldn’t those who waved the white flag also have to face the consequences?”
“It seems obvious.”
“Do you really mean that? Wouldn’t it be more to the point first of all to dispose of those who have been caught red-handed?”
“I must admit that.”
“In practice, then, it looks as if in the first heat of anger one neither discriminates nor hesitates.”
“Unfortunately you are right.”
There was a moment of silence. The sun shone hotly onto the terrace, and only the hum of the bees which pastured on the flowerbeds could be heard. I felt that in this question-and-answer game I was being driven onto a plane whose significance I did not understand. So many pitfalls existed that I was not even able to judge whether I was falling into them. Perhaps the signs were wrong. At last Zapparoni took up the thread again.
“I have faced you with three decisions. You have decided in favor of none, and in each case have given me an indefinite answer.”
“I thought you wished to discuss the legal position with me.”
“Is it your opinion that every position is a legal position?”
“No, but every position has its legal aspect as well.”
“Quite right. But this legality can become unimportant; you’ll realize that when you have to deal with contentious people. Besides, any position has both a social and a military aspect, as well as a pure position of weight, and much else. But enough of this. It would lead too far—to the atomic weights of power and law, to the squaring of the moral circle—it is not our problem. Incidentally—even your theoretical opinion on the case is unsatisfactory.”
Zapparoni said all this not sharply but in rather a kind tone. Then he took up in detail the statements I had made at the beginning of our talk. They were absurd, he said; if you put yourself into the totality of the situation, you’d discover that they would benefit your opponent. Did I really mean that the affair, described by Fillmor as a perfidious trick of the enemy, was a question of optical illusion? Wasn’t it rather that the attacker was confronted by a number of groups, who acted according to different principles yet without cunning, without malicious connivance? He, Zapparoni, would show me how this might at least be possible.
What if the attack in the open field should fail? Would those groups, who had shown the white flag, insist on surrender? On the contrary, they would be very quick to take up arms again, and a feeling of triumph would run high all along the line. Here their unity would become manifest—I am quite certain of it. A defeated force tends to fall apart; a victorious one feels and acts homogeneously. Nobody wants to remain with the vanquished; everyone goes to the victor.
Only in regard to the tactical procedure, the double-edged knife, was Zapparoni willing to agree with me. One must expect anything from one’s opponent, he said; it was perfectly obvious that you had to approach him with caution. When Fillmor accused his opponent of treacherous behavior, it was an effective pedagogical simplification, which the troops and the public would immediately understand, while my presentation was academic.
“Did you follow the debate on the Army Bill? They intend to fleece us again of monstrous sums of money for medieval equipment, fit only for boy scouts. Even horses, dogs, and pigeons are listed on the budget. Well, at least the Field Marshal clearly knows why he has to look around for a new occupation.”
And so he struck his initial note again. I had not followed the debate in the Chamber of Deputies. I had not followed these debates even in my good days. I preferred reading Herodotus—or, when I was bored, Vehse’s Court Chronicles. In the newspapers I used to skim over the headlines, the news, and the magazine supplement, sparing myself the rest. Lately, under the pressure of circumstances, I lacked the time, money and inclination even for these. At most I studied the want ads pasted up on billboards. After all, nothing is more dated than yesterday’s newspaper. Besides, I was exclusively occupied with thinking up ways and means of eluding my creditors. This was more important to me than politics.
In any case, I wasn’t eager to hear Zapparoni’s opinion of the army. Very likely he thought of it as a department of his factory, where teams of scientists and engineers worked in overalls—a company of non-horsemen and vegetarians with sets of false teeth who loved to press buttons—and where a half-witted mathematician could cause more damage in a second than Frederick the Great in his three Silesian campaigns. In those days people like Fillmor had not yet become field marshals; they would sooner have appointed a half-crazy man, like Blücher, if his heart was in the right place. The head still remained a servant. But here, on the terrace, I was worried by more than retrospective glances into the historical past.
My introduction had not been successful—there could be no doubt about that. Zapparoni had led me into expressing my opinions, and then had walked around them like a gardener around a tree, detecting its bare branches. Our session had resembled a critique over some superannuated army captain, when all the participants of the military board, with the exception of the captain himself, know from the start that he will never be promoted to major. Leaving such a session, you ask yourself why the whole performance has been put on at all. The joke was that Zapparoni should actually have held my opinion, and I his. Instead of which he had exposed me as a liberal windbag.
Zapparoni rose to his feet; I was sure he would now dismiss me. But to my surprise he granted me a respite. He pointed toward a thatched roof, whose gable emerged out of the foliage at the bottom of the garden.
“I still have a few things to do, Mr. Richard. Perhaps you will wait there for me. You won’t be bored. It is a pleasant spot.”
He gave me a kindly nod, as if we had finished a stimulating conversation which he was hoping to resume later. I descended the stairs to the garden, surprised and perplexed about the length of time he had given m
e. Probably it was a whim of his. The interrogation had been a strain and I was exhausted. Glad that it was over, I walked down the path with the feeling we have when, at an examination, we hear the bell announcing recess.
At the first bend of the path I turned around. Zapparoni was still standing on the terrace, looking after me. He waved to me and called: “Beware of the bees!”
XI
In the house and on the terrace a kind of temporal slow motion had prevailed. It was a sensation comparable to that of walking through old clearings in a forest. One might be living in the early nineteenth or even in the eighteenth century. The masonry, the paneling, the textiles, the pictures and books—everything gave evidence of solid craftsmanship. One sensed the old measurements: the foot, the ell, the inch, the rod. One felt that light and fire, bed and board were still managed in the old way; one sensed the luxury of human care.