The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  ‘I don’t know what I admire most about you,’ said Herr von Crudenius, the military attaché of an allied power, as they sped towards the embassy shortly afterwards in von Klumm’s car, whilst the assembled populace broke into cheers. ‘You do make the choice difficult for your admirers. Is it the masterly rhetoric of your speech before the House of Representatives today, the ready wit of your riposte to the chimney sweep, or the remarkable tact with which you immediately suppressed the publication of your riposte.’

  ‘A matter of routine, my dear Crudenius, nothing more. Of course, not routine in the pejorative sense, with its connotations of a heartless lack of scruple. There is no point in my running myself down unnecessarily, not that I’m the most modest person in the country, anyway. What I mean is that it’s something one learns, one becomes accustomed to, just as one becomes accustomed to everything. Nineteen-twentieths of our life consists of blind, unthinking habit.’

  ‘That is precisely what you said just now in parliament, Baron Klumm. Your courage took my breath away. At the very beginning you forfeited the approval of the conservative-nationalist group by speaking out against any policy of national prestige, and at the end you threw down the gauntlet to the so-called progressive parties by your praise of the maintenance of traditional values.’

  ‘Not praise,’ interrupted von Klumm, whose intelligent features bore not the slightest trace of mental exhaustion, such as might have been expected after a strenuous five-hour session. ‘I praised nothing, I merely stated the facts; stated them, if you insist, with a certain regret. I have, as you are well aware, a fanatical love for objective facts and established truths. I feel responsible for the well-being of the empire, responsible, in the fullest sense of the word, before my own conscience. As a responsible person, I must pursue a path of the most down-toearth political realism, and I am a declared enemy of all ideologies, whether they come from the right or from the left, whether they rattle a jingoistic sword or wave an idealistic olive branch. To tell you the truth, my dear Crudenius, in my view it is people who hawk ideologies, utopias, irresponsible visions who are the worst, indeed, the only enemies of mankind,’

  The attaché laughed. ‘And when you think of it, that is the kind of people you are dealing with all the time, my poor chap. That man on the steps, and all those “men of the people” inside to whom you had to explain the true moral dignity of warfare: is it not, at bottom, always one and the same enemy you have to deal with? Woolly-headed idealism, getting everything the wrong way round, against sound common sense?’

  ‘You are just the kind of person I could happily trust to write my biography,’ said the minister, not without a hint of irony. ‘You know the way my mind works, so to speak. With one reservation, perhaps: I have no liking for your trade,’ and he pointed to the betasselled hilt of Crudenius’ sabre. ‘Although today I said some things that might suggest I have, I said them because they had to be said. Nor do I have any liking for this war, that has lasted for twenty years already.’

  ‘But you said that people had become accustomed to it, provoking a storm of indignation from the Social Democrats.’

  ‘I said it because it is true, an undeniable fact. You have the proof: every year those very same socialists approve our war-credits without quibbling. But there’s still a difference between being accustomed to something and liking it, isn’t there? There are bad habits as well, and I have no compunction in describing this state of permanent warfare as Europe’s bad habit. But who can seriously dispute the fact that we have managed to make war one of our so-called “instinctive functions”? It is no surprise; most of the generation at present in positions of responsibility were mere schoolboys when the war began. We have grown up with war and will doubtless come to our ends before it does. Young people today have no idea what “peace” means; they have never experienced it, it is a myth to them. Of course, strictly speaking, peace has never existed, and it is my firm conviction that it never will. All that we had was an absence of war, a state of mutual hostility and deep antipathy between the states, papered over by commercial hypocrisy and cleverly drawn-up treaties. This was very well portrayed at the time by a writer who was already mature when the war broke out and was therefore able to compare conditions both before and after from personal experience; I am referring, of course, to Max Scheler, whom I have had put on the school curriculum. According to him, the difference between covert and open warfare, which merely discloses the hatred already existing, is not all that significant. On that point I am in complete agreement with him. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain why we endure it so well and how we have managed to integrate it so completely into the social fabric. It is just that war has always existed, since the world began. War is the natural condition of mankind, only its outward form changes. Just look around you, my dear Crudenius. Does this busy street, the crush outside the theatre, the throng all round and inside the department stores look abnormal? After having overcome some initial disruption, which appears child’s play to us today, the economic machinery is in perfect working order. Exports have vanished but the internal market has developed. And with what success you can tell by the unheard-of dividends our companies are yielding. The material destruction is more than compensated for by the spur to our native inventiveness and the exploitation of new raw materials. We are approaching the ideal of a closed economy as proclaimed by Fichte. The transformation of professional life was as radical as it was smooth. Man is the warrior, woman is trained for all kinds of civilian work, along with the old and those unfit for service. Of course, there is no one who regrets more than I do the fact that each year thousands of young men must die defending our frontiers, but did no one ever die in the so-called peace? We have put into effect many sensible measures which people before the war considered a pipe-dream: dynamic initiatives to encourage population growth, an expanding network of state child-care, the abolition of monogamy, programmed leave for soldiers for the purposes of reproduction, land reform, detached houses, hostels for war veterans, garden towns, et cetera, et cetera. And the result of all this is that the population is showing an even higher annual rate of increase than ever before, and that the general level of health is constantly rising. As a consequence of the drop in infant mortality the number of deaths per year, including all military losses, has even shown a decline, albeit a very small decline, in absolute terms compared to the pre-war period. Those are statistical facts. Nowadays we are raising people, so to speak, whereas in earlier times the state, one cannot understand why, supported measures which were downright anti-people, such as the preservation of large estates and tax concessions to unhygienic production methods.’

  ‘But then how do you explain the general dissatisfaction? There is a rumble of discontent going round the world, dull but unmistakable, that finds expression in embarrassing scenes like that this afternoon.”

  ‘Being accustomed to something is not the same as being happy with it. Didn’t I say that before? People have become used to the most dreadful conditions because they have no choice, but that does not mean they are happy with them. We have even become accustomed to death. Don’t laugh; I’m serious. As a race, as the genus humanum, we have become indifferent to death. And yet when you think of it by yourself, as an individual, the thought of dying is terrible, unthinkable even, the notion that from a particular moment onward you will not feel, not think, not exist any more, not temporarily, but simply for all eternity. What will it be like inside our heads an hour after death? And five hundred thousand years after? What you must remember is that this horrifically long state of non-being is certain for each one of us, inescapable, not merely a nasty misfortune which we might avoid if we are lucky. It is this absolute, unconditional certitude of death which is the most horrible thing about the whole affair.’

  The young officer flushed with emotion. ‘I thank you, Herr von Klumm. Oh, what a debt of gratitude I owe you, since you have befriended me in this alien city! You have made a human being of me. Without you
I could not go on living.’

  ‘You have just become accustomed to me, my friend. Everything is a matter of habit.’

  ‘No. I love you. You are my only support,’ replied Crudenius passionately. ‘It was hard for me, harder than you can imagine, to be torn from my home, torn from my parents, whom I respect, from the company of my friends, and brought here to a court that is, let us be open about it, stiff and ceremonial and whose language I can hardly understand. You have often laughed at me for my sentimentality …’

  ‘Yes; and I still do today. The world is the same all over, the modern world, at least. Everywhere you will find sleeping-cars, bathrooms, underground railways, concrete, asphalt, jazz, the same elegant ladies’ dresses, even the same perfumes. Modern man can find things he is used to everywhere. Apart from latitude and longitude, I can see no difference at all between the great cities of today.’

  ‘But there must be between peoples, otherwise there wouldn’t be this war.’

  The minister twisted in his seat in mock horror. ‘Oh dear me! Is that the result of all the lectures on realism I have been giving you for the last few months? Have even you fallen for clichés such as the different character of the nations, the different genius of the races? If I have made any significant contribution, however modest, to history, it is in my protest against such suggestions. You must come to understand that the inevitability of war is based not on the differences between nations – which I do allow, though in microscopic degrees that are of no account – but on the ineluctable similarity of all nations. Because their needs for survival are identical, it is in their nature to compete for space, for the opportunity to develop. The simple truth is that like needs come into conflict, and will do so until the earth evolves several surfaces, one above the other like organ keyboards, until there are as many earths as there are nations. In the distant future every nation will require the whole of the earth’s surface for itself. And that distant future will come all the more quickly, the better and stronger the nation is, the more powerful its development, the greater its sense of moral responsibility. And along comes some poor devil demanding vehemently that I should “grant justice to our enemies.” I do, I do, and I always have done. Do you imagine I approve of the dreadful, jingoistic, obscene language the popular press uses against our enemies? Of course, as a means of making sure the nation does not slacken in its efforts, it is indispensable, just as mines and flame-throwers are indispensable, and one wouldn’t describe those as particularly nice. But it really is naive to assume that we in the government actually think what we get the papers to write about “barbarians” and “hypocrites”. No, we are fair; we fully recognise the enemy’s qualities, and the justice of their claims. But our fairness also leads us, without hatred or rancour, to a clear recognition of the fact that we have good qualities and justice on our side as well, that, as ill luck would have it, there is not one justice in the world, but two, several indeed; that our real, material interests (and they are what count, not some figments of the imagination) collide with the equally real material interests of the enemy, that the nations must fight because, and for as long as, they must breathe. It is just the same as a chimney: however fair and good-natured it is, it has no choice but to pour out soot. Are there really people so short-sighted that they cannot see that, cannot see the whole, real, irrefutable tragedy of human existence? I must also say that anyone who does not accept that is not a good Christian. As Luther says, the very clay from which we are formed is sinful. The essence of humanity is lust, original sin, and it seems very superficial to me to blame the wretched condition of mankind on transitory errors by the government, or on individuals’ dishonesty, narrow-mindedness or megalomania, instead of on this darkness underlying all human life, even the most benevolent and best-intentioned. Let us look reality squarely in the face! The man of the church can renounce the whole world at one fell swoop, but that is not possible for the statesman, whose task it is to direct the worldly affairs of this world. He may desire to be just as good a Christian as the unworldly ascetic, but there is one thing he must be clear about: his policies can never be directed towards abolishing war, nor human suffering and misery in general, but only towards – what shall I call it? – improving the organisation of our misery. That is the most he can hope to achieve.’

  They had reached the ambassadorial palace. His companion took his leave. ‘I must say,’ was the minister’s final comment, ‘that it was precisely the war which taught me this true, this deadly earnest Christianity, this sublime religion of suffering. By the way, you’re coming round after ten for bridge, aren’t you? The fair Gabrielle will be there, and I’ve invited your Nannette as well.’

  In the ministry there was a long queue of officials waiting to make their reports. After sessions in parliament, Baron von Klumm, whose industry and meticulous attention to detail were proverbial, used to make up for wasted time, as he put it, and at such times he would often work without rest until late into the night. So on that evening as well there was a constant stream of advisers and clerks, telephone calls and dictation. A delegation from the annexed territories was admitted and presented their petitions and requests. The minister made a note of a number of books and pamphlets which were mentioned in the course of the audience. Even though it was nine o’clock, he sent the messenger to the ministry library and then, in the car on his way home, immersed himself in one of the recommended books, that dealt with the most abstruse financial and currency questions.

  Gabrielle, a ballet-dancer with the Court Opera, was already waiting with the other guests in the baron’s private residence; the whole company was charmed at her lack of inhibition in assuming the role of lady of the house. The company was decidedly mixed: actors who needed no encouragement to play their part in the entertainment by recounting more or less spicy anecdotes, a few provincial governors, wrapped up in their eternal hunting stories, two or three ironic conversationalists from the diplomatic corps and a Jewish writer, who was the first to get drunk, at which he indulged in revolutionary speeches, to the great amusement of the rest. Nannette, a cabaret singer who obviously came from the lower classes and had not yet been “discovered”, delighted the military attaché with her lively dialect, which he found bewitchingly natural, although each expression had to be transposed into the standard language, which he then, just for himself and ignored by the rest, translated into his own mother tongue and indulged in reminiscences of the fields and peasant girls of home. His diffidence, the result of this dawdle through the byways of sentimentality, was dispersed by a brisk observation from the minister, and the cards soothed all passions. Gabrielle, for whom there was always a suite of rooms ready in the villa, had long since retired to bed when the last guests, supported by sleepy lackeys, crunched their way over smashed champagne glasses to the door.

  Baron von Klumm had his valet make a cold compress for his forehead. He intended to do a little more work before going to Gabrielle. Throughout the dinner his mind had been occupied with ideas suggested by the book on economics; it was one of his major characteristics anyway, always to be brim-full of important matters, even in the midst of shallow entertainment. He sat down at his desk. As was appropriate for a genuine bachelor residence, his study was spacious and centrally positioned. It was more of a hall than a room and with its four windows took up most of the first floor façade. Its three high walls, covered from floor to ceiling with books and files, disappeared into the darkness, and from the windows, through which came the howl of the night wind, the snow-covered, moonlit range of nearby mountains could be seen.

  ‘You’ve let some snow in, Peter.’ The baron pointed to a lumpy, shining white patch on the parquet floor.

  His servant gave an uncomprehending shrug of the shoulders, tugged at the window handles to show that they were all shut, then quickly produced a rag and gave the floor a wipe at the place the baron was still indicating with his finger, though with the hurt expression of one who has been given an eccentrically elaborate task
and is only doing it out of good will.

  Then he left.

  The minister began to read, but was soon disturbed by a soft, crunching noise. Was he still treading on broken glass? He looked up. To his great astonishment the white patch in the room, which, moreover, lay beyond the strip of moonlight in the shadow of a cupboard, had grown into a regular mound, indeed, it was still rising visibly, like a mushroom sprouting at unnatural speed. No, that wasn’t a patch of snow, it was moving. Suddenly he recognised it. It was a human head.

  It took a mere second for the baron to recover his composure, seize the revolver he always carried with him and fire a shot at the head. ‘I didn’t realise there were trapdoors in the house.’ He fired again. Six shots, then the revolver was empty.

  The shots obviously missed the head, but produced a different, quite unexpected effect.

  ‘Ah, that’s it,’ cried an ungainly voice, thick with phlegm and half asleep, and with one jerk the whole, very long form of the apparition, like a tautly inflated gas balloon, floated up into the room all at once but without, remarkably, causing any further damage to the floor. It was an imposing, white-haired old gentleman who rose before the minister, his eyes closed and his arms pressed against his sides. The liberating force suddenly seemed to weaken, so that the feet and calves of the strange being remained below floor level, without this fact particularly disconcerting either the apparition itself or its audience.

  Beneath his cold compress the baron’s hair was trying to stand on end. He fell back into his armchair; all strength, indeed all sensation, had drained from his legs so that he felt as if he had an iron hoop round his hips, pinning him in a sitting, or half-lying position, incapable of moving a muscle. However, he was not the man to take a ghostly apparition, or, more likely, some silly practical joke, lying down. He automatically sought for a conversational opening, but the only thing to cross his lips was a small amount of spittle followed by a gurgling and babbling, not unlike a baby’s first attempts at articulation. Finally he managed to produce some recognisable sounds, ‘You are – ?’