He had replied that he was in the middle of finishing his autobiography.
“That’s good,” Roth had said approvingly, “tell your readers about what our world was once like, be a witness to your times, we must be witnesses. An autobiography, that’s good.”
“You’re in the right place for that.”
“You’ve always kept me in a special place in your heart. You’ve always been there for… I’m happy to go on my journey now that I know that my wife, my little lost one, is finally able to sleep in peace.”
After that, dawn had arrived.
Now that he’d woken up, he pondered Friederike Roth’s destiny. Married to Roth and a schizophrenic, she’d been hunted down by the Gestapo, who after looking for her in Berlin, had finally tracked her down in Munich, after someone blew the whistle on her. The exile community had related how the Gestapo had surprised her in a tiny deserted flat, huddled up, having lost all faculties of speech, in a room plunged in darkness. The SS had grabbed her by the wrists and, since she’d clung to herself tightly, emitting long frightened, demented cries, they had pistol-whipped her and dragged her broken body out while a faint breath of life still coursed through it. They had led her to a truck where they’d kept other madmen, some of whom were howling, while others were immured behind a wall of silence. The truck had driven into the middle of the woods, right up to a magnificent building on the outskirts of Linz, the psychiatric hospital of Linz, an establishment that had been renowned in the late 1920s. Mrs Roth had woken up in a room filled with dozens of other mentally ill patients. In the midst of terrified cries, they had come to collect her, as well as other tortured souls. They had led Mrs Roth into a bare room and under the Nazi policy “Aktion T4”, which aimed to eliminate patients suffering with mental illnesses, they had administered an injection of strychnine. Friederike Roth had been murdered.
Zweig rose and gave one last thought to his friend. At least he’d been spared all of this.
They had purchased tickets for Rio. The train would leave Petrópolis at ten o’clock. They would reach Rio in time for lunch. They waited on the small station’s deserted platform. Stefan was wearing his beige suit, while Lotte wore a pale-blue cotton dress. He was carrying a bulky folder under his arm. He looked worriedly around him.
“No one’s going to steal anything from you, you know,” she said mockingly.
Her comment cheered him up for a few seconds, then he reverted to a sombre disposition. Two adolescents were crossing the platform just a few metres ahead of him. He took three steps back and clenched the folder tightly.
“You’re not running any risks. Who’s going to steal a manuscript? People barely have enough to eat.”
It was a joke, but she knew how important the manuscript was to him. She understood his fear of losing it. In a way, it was as if he were holding his life in his hands. The book spoke of a world that didn’t exist any more outside the memories of a few people. That world had been annihilated. Who else would have been able to tell the story of that defunct era? Who would have the genius to bring its splendour back to life? He was the last, the only one who could pass this light on to future generations. This book was almost a relic.
She was intimately acquainted with each and every sentence. Some phrases had been etched into her soul: “So I ask my memories to speak and choose for me, and give at least some faint reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark.” She had read all his books. He had never before written anything as beautiful and profound, or as silvery and sad.
She was the one who had typed up each page on her old Remington. She had typed out the title, The World of Yesterday. He was still dithering over the title. He thought about calling it Lost Generation, Memoirs of a European or My Three Lives. They had worked for six months on that book. She thought “they” because, yes, she’d had a role in its shaping. Stefan would draft it in his notebooks, whose loose leaves she would then type up. He would reread the pages, make his corrections and scrawl endless additions in the margins. She would then retype the corrected text.
She said: “It’s good as it is, it’s perfect, there’s nothing left to change, it’s your best book yet.”
He went back to work, spent whole days and nights correcting the text. He worked tirelessly and never seemed satisfied after reading each version. No, he would explain, that isn’t worthy of what I experienced. The trick is to describe both the light and the shadows, war and peace, the grandeur and the decadence. He wrecked his health writing that book, and slightly lost his mind over it too.
He had begun work on his memoirs in New York, but had felt incapable of remembering each episode of his life and then piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. He’d usually had a number of notes at his disposal and worked in libraries. But he had nothing that might help jog his memory. He had then thought of seeing Friderike again. Worse still, he had chosen to up sticks and leave town so as to rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife. Stefan and Lotte had left New York and relocated to a sad, dingy hotel in the town of Ossining, for the sole reason that Friderike lived in the vicinity. Stefan would leave their hotel room each morning and go to meet his ex-wife. He excused himself by blaming his failing memory. He was forced to draw from the well of his ex-wife’s memories. He would leave in the morning and come back in the evening. Nothing carnal went on between them, Lotte knew that. It was even worse than that. Picturing him by her side as they walked hand in hand down the road of their radiant past was more terrible than the thought of them sharing a bed. The following day she’d worn her eyes out staring at her Remington and experienced the same dread as if she’d witnessed them embracing. Friderike knew everything, remembered everything. There had only ever been one Mrs Zweig and this book would stand as a testament to that until the end of time. Lotte didn’t belong to the world of yesterday. That book was her coffin, and she’d even nailed the planks together. Stefan and Friderike had known each other for thirty years—by contrast, what did the few years he and Lotte had spent together really amount to? Friderike von Winternitz had witnessed all of his moments of glory, his triumphs, the rapturous welcomes he’d received in Berlin, Paris and Rome. Friderike was the one who’d known the gates of Viennese palaces, the staircases adorned with flowers, the sound of violins, of orchestras, valets in their red livery, the dresses cut of pink tulle, the flamboyant hairstyles, the lacy shawls, the velour ribbons, wrists weighed down by bracelets, the opening bars of music and the intoxicating dances, fine pearls hung round necks, the sophisticated dishes that were served, boudoirs where suitors whispered words of love while mazurkas played in the background, small salons and great excitement, palaces in Switzerland and trips in first class, private theatre boxes that were both peaceful and curtained off by dusky red curtains, the hours of great successes, the immortal moment of the initial thrills, the magic cast by the first laurels. Friderike was the one who’d savoured the honours, the sweet words of praise, seen the future throw open its doors, the marble palaces, the proud palominos galloping through the cool evening breeze. Lotte instead had been dealt the bottomless pits of despair, the terror-stricken visions, the path of exile, third-class compartments, the shabby bungalows and the rattling carriages pulled by donkeys. She had teetered between indifference on the one hand and despair on the other. The worst had been saved for last: five years after Stefan and Friderike had divorced, here he was running after her again. Reliving what they’d already experienced.
Would that one of those adolescents stole that manuscript of his! Lotte’s name hadn’t appeared even once throughout the book’s four hundred pages. There had only been a single entry in his journal:
Wednesday, 6th September 1939: We had a quick breakfast, I shaved, then came the wedding, officiated with least amount of fuss, only a simple vow: I hereby take L.A. as my lawful wedded wife.
Thursday, 7th September: A whole host of small affairs to put in order.
She stared at him as he clutched the manuscript to his chest. He was still
holding Friderike in his arms. A metallic rattle on the other side of the platform. A whistle blow resounded. A swirl of black smoke. The train came to a stop. They climbed into the second carriage. She sat down in front of him and saw him cast his gaze about, no doubt to reassure himself that the adolescents hadn’t followed him. The train left the platform. He placed the precious package on his knees, then he held his hand out to his wife. His grip effaced the memory of Friderike Maria von Winternitz.
She stood up and went to stand by the window. The suburbs of the Imperial City had a desolate splendour to them thanks to those large mansions, which were utterly deserted at this time of year. Farther on, they passed by a few villas overrun by tropical vegetation, then some huts where half-naked children were busy playing. They entered a forest. Lotte shut her eyes and took a deep breath of the air coming in through the window. It was impregnated with the perfume of bananas, mangoes and rosebay. She opened her eyes on a vast plain, in the middle of which was a lake bathed in light. They pressed on, cradled by the hacking cough of the machines. A ruined church rose above the rugged boulders. The train descended into a valley. Struck by vertigo, Lotte sat back down.
He hadn’t even flinched. His face, as well as his body, seemed frozen exactly as it had been when she had left him a few moments earlier. His eyes were fixed on the compartment door, while his hands were still holding the folder on top of his knees. Slowly, his head began to nod and his eyelids started to shut. His parted lips partially revealed a toothless mouth. All that travelling had ravaged his teeth. That was the other reason for their trip to Rio. The man who had once been a Viennese dandy would soon be fitted with a steel jaw. He hadn’t wanted her to accompany him to the dentist’s. He had said he didn’t need her to hold his hand when the drill sank into his jaw. He still had his pride after all, despite being an old man. “You’re not even sixty yet,” she had retorted. “I’ll come! I’ve followed you to the ends of the earth, I might as well go with you to the dentist’s.” He had given in in the end. She had whispered in his ear:
“I would follow you to the depths of hell.”
The movement of the train tipped his head against the window. Lotte was scared that the contact with the glass might wake him up. She took off her jacket, folded it and slid it against his cheek. She examined his face. No, he hadn’t aged. He still looked impeccably stylish and effortlessly aristocratic. His hair was like that of a forty-year-old. His brown moustache gave his face a flirtatious edge, adding to his natural elegance. She wondered how he must have looked aged twenty. She’d never paid attention to young men. She’d only ever liked mature men. Truth be told, she hadn’t ever loved anyone except him. There he was now, sleeping like a baby. She would never have children. He felt too old to become a father. He also refused to bring a new life into this hostile world. His other wife hadn’t cared much about that as she’d already had two daughters from a previous marriage.
Lotte had resigned herself in the end. Would her health have allowed her to become a mother? “You’ll die in childbirth,” the doctors had warned. She didn’t want to die in childbirth. She didn’t want to die at all. That’s why she had followed him, all the way to the end of the world. So he could protect her. He gave her the feeling he knew where he was going. He had the gift of seeing into the future. He’d known when to leave Austria and when to leave England. He was equipped with a sixth sense, he knew the bleak horizons towards which the world was headed. He knew how to decide where they should run away to.
He opened his eyelids and suddenly straightened himself up. He asked her whether he’d dozed off. He sounded irked. She told him he hadn’t. Stefan leant towards her, looked her right in the eye and told her they would be happy here. But he kept pursing his lips. Those words were devoid of any real joy, lightness or reassurance. He wanted to dispel the effect his words had left behind, whereupon she felt the incandescent warmth of his fingers in the hollow of her hand. He asked her if she doubted him. Did she think he was lying to her?
“I believe you,” she said, “I will always believe you.”
“Good,” he said. He wanted her to forgive his mood swings and bouts of melancholy. He hadn’t been able to repress the feelings of horror that continually assailed him.
“I know,” she murmured.
From time to time, his soul seemed impenetrable to the light. Everything was pervaded by shadows and suffering. He found himself in a dark wood whose trees had turned into bodies.
“You’re not walking alone any more, I’m right here beside you in the middle of that forest and I’m holding your hand.”
She had to forgive him. Some days, everything exuded a heavy weariness as life woke up in the middle of a vanished past. Could she understand that? There was nothing she couldn’t understand. He was deaf to the sound of mellow birdsong, the promise of a coming springtime, or even the heralding of a new day. The spark of life was missing. Time stood still, the stream of hours and minutes had come to a halt on that morning of 6th March 1934 when he’d left Austria. The giant clock of Vienna’s railway station had come to a stop. Time had frozen. He felt as if he’d been cast off to the other side of the world. She understood that, didn’t she? He had been given everything only for it to have been taken away. Needless to say, he didn’t have the right to wallow in that state of mind, or feel sorry for himself. He was privileged. Most of his friends didn’t have imaginary demons snapping at their heels. Their demons were very real, and those demons had sworn to vanquish them as well as all their nearest and dearest. He didn’t have the right to throw in the towel.
“Of course you have the right to,” she said, “you don’t have a warrior’s insensitivity. You feel things more deeply. You’re a writer.”
He knew he had to look strong in front of the legions of the weak-willed, but his strength abandoned him. He was being seduced by the void.
“You only need to rest, to relax a little. You’re going to recover your health here.”
He forced a faint smile.
“Look over there, look outside,” she exclaimed.
It was the most breathtaking panorama. The horizon opened up. Earth, water and fire filled an immensity of space. The sky stretched into a gigantic arc. Bright-green ranges of hills sloped down to valleys seemingly teeming with life. The jungle wrapped its tentacles around little white houses. Nestled under the shade of palm trees, an agglomeration of huts was wedged in between various paths. All of a sudden, Rio came into view: a horde of skyscrapers perched in the middle of a row of palaces and avant-garde architecture. The city was enveloped by the foamy arm of the ocean, dotted by green islets, ocean liners and sailing boats. To the right was Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado, which stood guard over that world of giants. Everything was limitless and illuminated. The more the train forged ahead, the more the contours of the world seemed to widen. Beauty had been bequeathed to each corner of the world, and far from being overwhelmed by such magnificence, man in his haughtiness thrived in it.
He broke the silence. Sounding gloomy, he asked her if she thought the tooth-pulling was going to hurt.
She didn’t reply.
They hailed the first taxi in front of the station and climbed in. Lotte gave the driver the name of the hotel where they were expected.
“The Copacabana?” the taxi driver said. “That’s the prettiest place in the world!”
They cut through alleyways, then took to a highway ruled by a state of constant restlessness. “You’d think we were in New York!” Lotte exclaimed. She rolled the window down. He cried out, telling her to be careful since the air simply had to be saturated with dust and dirt.
“I’m afraid of nothing here!” she exclaimed.
He envied her high spirits and thought that she was right, one had to live day by day and dispel the belief that tomorrow would be worse than yesterday. To recognize the fact that they were safe. Nobody would come looking for them here. The taxi crawled along a street lined with shops and luxury hotels. His eyes fell on a sign be
aring the name Alberto Stern. He couldn’t spot any notices calling for murder on the window, nor any saying “Juden” or “Raus!”. There was no poster denouncing a Jewish conspiracy on the walls, no caricatures of pot-bellied, hook-nosed bankers with pockets bursting full of money.
“Where are you from?” the taxi driver asked.
Lotte replied that they’d arrived the previous month on a ship from the United States.
“Are you Americans?”
“No.”
“You don’t look like you are. We love all strangers here, except for Americans. The Americans think they’re at home everywhere they go… You’re Europeans, that much is clear, you’re clearly people of fine taste. We love elegance, don’t let the dirty streets fool you. Brazilians are a great people… And you, which tribe do you belong to? You have a German accent. We’ve had plenty of Germans here in the past few years. Those Germans are really nice. They fit in quickly. They were paupers when they first arrived, but within the space of ten years they’ve bought up half of Rio. So much the better, it’ll be good for business. I believe in the economy. Whole boatfuls of Germans come ashore every day. I’m all for it. I go to the docks every day at eight o’clock on the dot and wait. A single family will earn my keep for the day. Although, between you and me, they’re not as generous as they used to be. One might say the good times have come to an end. Boats and people’s pockets don’t seem as full as they used to be. So, are you Germans?… Austrians maybe? That’s also good… One of my customers told me that Austria didn’t exist any more, that it had become just another German province. I’m not into politics. The Germans wanted Hitler, nobody forced them. Brazil might also benefit by being ruled by someone with an iron fist. President Vargas is the right man for the job. Vargas will never let the communists get to Rio. We have a saying here, ‘We’ve got room for Jews, but not for communists.’ Are you communists? Whether you’re Jewish or not doesn’t bother me. Look at our Redeemer up on that hill over there, he belonged to the tribe of Israel. He watches over us. In any case, we’ve got room for all the world’s poor; and from what I’ve been hearing on the news, it sounds like the world’s poor are mostly Jews at the moment. Between you and me—and I say this because you don’t strike me as Jewish—what goes around, comes around! Before all this, the Jews had all the wealth in the world. The tables have turned. When all is said and done, they’ll come out the other side one day. They’ve honed their survival instincts. The only problem is that there’s so many of them here now, and they occupy such positions of influence, that thanks to the grudge they’ve got against Hitler, they might very well drag us into the war. Look at what they’re doing in America—they’re always knocking on Roosevelt’s door and they’ll wind up winning the American people over to their cause, even though Americans are pacifists. Pacifists to a fault I should add. Look where the French wound up thanks to Blum. Those German bastards marched right through the Arc de Triomphe! Blum clearly couldn’t stand a chance against Hitler. Jews are good at business and making fine speeches, but put a gun in their hands and they’re clueless. Have you seen the newsreels of German troops in Paris? Without taking sides, I must admit they looked rather great, and, after all, the French might benefit from being taken down a peg or two. So long as those Yids don’t drag us into the war—otherwise I won’t see them as friends any more. Hitler’s done nothing to me, quite the opposite in fact, he’s been good for business. The war’s got nothing to do with us. Let the Jews go and fight if they want to, the boats are waiting in the docks, ready to sail for Germany. They can stay provided they only want to swim in the bay. There’s no such thing as racism here in Rio. We’ve already got Indians, so we can cope with the Jews. All they need to understand is that each has to keep to his own, look at the Indians, they stay put in the favelas, you’ll never see one of them at the Hotel Copacabana. Well, there we have it. You know, my job would be a lot less cheerful if I didn’t have people like you to talk to.”
The Last Days Page 5