by David Lodge
Only Germans frequented the place. You could tell from their clothes, their picnic food, the bottles of wine. And the flies. There were never any flies in the American places in Heidelberg, not even at the riverside swimming pool. Rudolf was gone a long time, and Timothy couldn’t pick him out among the splashing throng in the water. He suddenly felt very isolated. Supposing Rudolf had gone off and left him, for a joke? Supposing he had drowned . . .? Timothy imagined himself sitting there with the two bicycles, as the shadows lengthened, tongue-tied and impotent. He would never be able to find his way back to Heidelberg alone.
Two young girls in swimsuits spread their towels on the grass not far from where he was sitting and sat down. They had broad, freckled peasant faces and long blonde hair in heavy plaits. He guessed they were about fifteen, though their breasts were well-developed, bobbing to and fro under what looked like hand-knitted woollen costumes. After a while he became uneasily aware that they were watching him. Every time he glanced in their direction he caught the flicker of an eye, a head belatedly turned aside, knuckles raised to stifle a giggle. They must have sensed that he was a stranger, and set themselves to make fun of him. At any moment they might say something to him, and what would he do then? He strained his eyes for a sight of Rudolf.
At last he came, carrying his wet costume and a bottle of mineral water in his one hand. Timothy wondered what his stump looked like when he was stripped for swimming, but was glad he had not had to see for himself. A damp cigarette dangled from Rudolf’s lips, and waggled as he spoke.
– I am sorry to be a long time, but the swimming was so good. You must be hungry.
By arrangement, Rudolf had brought rolls and butter in his saddlebag, and Timothy some goodies from the P.X., tins of ham and frankfurters, and a little tube of mustard, like toothpaste. This last item seemed to throw the two young girls into throes of hilarity.
– You have made an impression, Rudolf observed.
– What’s got into them? I’ve done nothing except sit here.
– You are sexy for them, said Rudolf disconcertingly. Your pale face and dark hair and eyes are unusual here.
– Good Lord, said Timothy, blushing, but not displeased.
Rudolf called something in German to the girls. They snatched up their towels and fled, giggling, their puppy-fat buttocks wagging.
– Silly geeses, said Rudolf, with a shrug. It is better without them, no?
– Yes, said Timothy, though he felt a certain regret as well as relief at their departure.
Rudolf, his meal finished, lay back on the grass. Timothy remained upright, propped on his locked arms.
– Rudolf, what was it like in the war in Germany? he said. He added: You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.
– You must know that I was ten years only when the war started, Rudolf said. We lived in Munich, then. It was far from all the fighting. Out of range of your bombers for a long time. Naturally I was very excited by all the German victories. My father belonged to the Party, and had a safe job at home because of his medical category. At school they told us of the glorious German mission: to lead Europe, to resist the menace of Bolshevism. I joined the Jungvolk, naturally, swore to give up my life for Him at ten years. There was a picture of Him in every classroom.
As Rudolf went on, Timothy noticed that he never referred to Hitler by name, only as He or Him.
– Then the war began to go badly. The victories we were promised never happened. More and more young men were drafted, and everyone knew somebody who had been killed or wounded somewhere. Especially in Russia. I remember the fall of Stalingrad. Even He could not pretend that was a victory. There were four days of National Mourning. Cinemas and theatres were closed. Flags at half-mast. Solemn music on the radio. I think that was the first time I began to wonder why we had started the war. You see, we had been told that the Russian people welcomed our troops as liberators.
– Then a little while after, there was the Scholl affair – you know? No? Well, these two students at the University, Munich University, Hans and Sophie Scholl, they were brother and sister. They were organizing anti-Nazi propaganda among the students – those students who were left. I found one of their pamphlets in a trash-can, and brought it home. My father was frightened and beat me. Then someone betrayed the Scholls to the Gestapo. They were hanged, naturally.
– At fourteen years you were supposed to join the Hitler Youth. I said I didn’t want to and I had a great fight with my father. I joined in the end, of course. It was dangerous not to. But there were many like me. Naturally there were some fanatics who couldn’t wait to get into uniform. You had to be careful what you said. But most of us hoped that the war would be over before we were drafted. But we were not so lucky. Our last chance was when they tried to kill Him in the July Plot. You know about that?
– Yes, said Timothy, Vince – Mr. Vernon told me.
– I was called up at sixteen. Thank God they sent us west not east. We were supposed to be reserve troops, miles behind the front line. But the American break-out from Avranches took us by surprise.
– How were you captured?
– I knew nothing about it. I was unconscious from my wound. When I woke up I was afraid I was in a German hospital. Then a doctor said something in English and I was happy. I knew I would survive the war.
– It must seem strange, thinking of it now?
– Yes. What were you doing that summer, Timothy?
– I was in the country, a place called Blyfield.
– That sounds nice.
– There wasn’t much to do. I used to chase butterflies.
Rudolf gave a little grunt of amusement.
– I was in the Blitz, though, said Timothy defensively. I was in a shelter and the house it belonged to was hit by a bomb. A little girl I used to play with was killed, and her mother.
It all came back to him suddenly, and it was as if a cloud had passed over the sun. Jill and Auntie Nora, killed in the garden. And Uncle Jack afterwards, shot down over Germany. He felt a sudden coldness towards Rudolf. Not that he was to blame personally: but it seemed a kind of betrayal of the dead to be, to be . . . well, too easy and friendly with a German. Surely if two countries hated each other enough to kill each other in hundreds and thousands, the hate ought to last a bit longer than six years?
As soon as he had formulated the question in his mind he saw that there could be another answer. If the hate was so short-lived, then perhaps the war itself had been pointless. But Hitler had to be stopped – even Rudolf admitted that. But then, to listen to Rudolf, you would think the Germans had hated Hitler as much as the British. But that couldn’t be true, surely. It couldn’t have been just one man who was responsible – there must have been plenty of others willing to do what he told them. Like the people who ran the camps. That alone must have taken quite a lot of people as wicked as Hitler.
– Did you know about the Jews? he asked recklessly.
Rudolf smiled wryly.
– Ah, that is, what do the Americans call it, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Every German of a certain age lives in fear of it.
– Because they did know?
– Know what? That is the problem. Of course we knew that something nasty was happening to the Jews, believe nobody who tells you different. But most of us didn’t know how nasty. And it was dangerous to ask questions.
– But if some people had asked . . .
Rudolf shrugged.
– I am not excusing. I am trying to explain. We lived in fear. If you cannot understand, that is lucky for you.
Something Don had said to him came into Timothy’s head: History is the verdict of the lucky on the unlucky, of those who weren’t there on those who were. Historians are so goddam smug.
Rudolf stood up and stretched.
– It is time to go. Are you rested?
– Yes, said Timothy, getting to his feet. Your parents – what happened to them?
– They survived, Rud
olf said. You will meet them this afternoon.
– This afternoon? He was gripped by a sudden panic.
– Yes, they live not far from here. They will give us coffee.
Rudolf’s parents lived in a small hamlet which they approached by a cart track, bumping slowly over the sunbaked ruts and potholes. The air was oppressively still and silent, disturbed only by the buzzing of flies and the scuffling of chickens in the dust of the village square – a half-cobbled, irregular open space with a pump in the middle. A small barefooted boy put his bucket down to stare at them as they dismounted. Timothy was aware of other curious glances, from behind window panes, and from shadowy doorways. He felt depressed and uneasy, and wished himself away from the place.
The silence was broken by a small mongrel bitch that came darting out of somewhere and began barking and snapping at them. An old woman scuttled out of one of the cottages and began to beat the animal savagely with the flat of her hand. It yelped and whined, dragging its belly in the dirt. Rudolf spoke to the woman in German and she straightened up with a final kick at the dog. Timothy heard the word Englisch, and saw the old woman shooting curious, furtive glances at him. The small boy maintained his fixed, watchful stance. Timothy had never felt so far from home.
They wheeled their bicycles down a narrow lane, smelling of honeysuckle and dung, to reach the cottage where Rudolf’s parents lived. It was small and dark, overcrowded with heavy furniture, but pleasantly cool after the heat of the sun. Rudolf’s mother welcomed them, kissing her son on both cheeks and shaking hands with Timothy, and led them into the parlour. She was a plump, grey-haired woman with rosy cheeks and ill-fitting false teeth. She nodded her head all the time during conversation, like a doll on the back shelf of a car.
– My father is working in the garden, said Rudolf. Shall we go out to him?
Timothy followed with a certain trepidation. From Rudolf’s remarks about his childhood he had constructed a rather sinister image of the father. When they turned round behind the cottage into the garden, and saw him, dressed in singlet and trousers, squatting on the ground with his back towards them, attending to some plants, Timothy’s heart missed a beat: the broad, muscle-bound shoulders, the bumpy, shaven, iron-grey skull, instantly recalled the brutal-faced man he had encountered at the drinking fountain near the castle in Heidelberg.
– Vater! Rudolf called.
Timothy almost flinched as he stood up and turned to face them. But it was not the face he feared. It was a rather melancholy, gentle face, an aged, sunken replica of Rudolf’s own, lined and burnt by the sun. For all that, he was an ex-Nazi, the first certified specimen Timothy had met, and he experienced a slight queasiness as they shook hands, the old man wiping his own on a handkerchief first and evidently apologizing for their earthiness. He tried a few words of English on Timothy, about the heat, about Heidelberg, then led them round the garden, Rudolf commenting volubly and translating for Timothy, who made inarticulate noises of admiration and approval. They went back into the house, where Rudolf’s mother had prepared coffee and cakes. The father left them for a moment and reappeared, wearing a shirt and carrying a bottle from which he poured Timothy a tiny glass of some transparent liquor. Timothy took a sip which burned his throat and made him choke. Rudolf and his father laughed, but the mother looked concerned and brought him a glass of water. He declined it politely, fearing that it had come from the village pump.
After half an hour he was impatient to be gone. He did not understand the conversation and had no real wish to. Jokes were made in German, laughed at, and handed to him in translation, like slices of cake, so that he could contribute his belated smile. Noticing, perhaps, that he was bored, Rudolf’s father beckoned Timothy over to a large cabinet radio which stood in one corner of the room.
– My father asks if you would like to listen to the B.B.C., Rudolf explained. It is a very powerful set. Ten valves. My father is very proud of it.
The set began to hum as it warmed up. Then, through a crackle of static, faint, but quite audible, there came the sound of a very English voice:
. . . bowls, and Edrich pushes it away on the leg side, Stewart comes in quickly from mid-wicket, and there’s no run. That’s the end of Bedser’s seventh over of this spell and his third maiden . . .
– Cricket! Timothy exclaimed.
Rudolf’s father looked puzzled.
– Krick? he seemed to say.
Rudolf laughed.
– He thinks you mean Krieg: war.
– No, not war. Cricket, the game.
– I know it, I have seen them playing in Cornwall.
Rudolf explained to his father, who smiled and nodded. His mother also nodded, more vigorously than ever, as if her head was about to topple off her shoulders. He had a momentary impression of being in a room full of animated dolls, like the carved figures on German clocks, all madly nodding.
– You wish to listen? Rudolf asked him.
– Please. It’s Surrey and Middlesex. I support Surrey.
So for the rest of their stay he was happily absolved from social intercourse. He sat beside the radio, in the strange German room, with the unintelligible German conversation going on around him, connected by a thin thread of sound to the place he belonged to, from which he had set out – was it only two weeks ago? He remembered going past the Oval on the bus, and seeing the overnight score. It was as if he had been cast far out into deep waters, then, to drift and swim as best he could among strange currents; and now, in the furthest, strangest place he had reached, he felt an unexpected, reassuring tug on the rope. How sane and secure and familiar it was, the commentator’s voice: relaxed, good-humoured, knowledgeable, finding significance in the tiniest detail.
. . . and I think that Laker – yes. Laker is going round the wicket now. He’s marking out his run, and Compton is taking fresh guard. And this should he very interesting. I should say that Laker’s going to try and drop the ball on that spot where he got one to lift and turn quite sharply just now – and, yes, Compton is going down the wicket to have a look at it . . .
Timothy bent his head over the set as the voice faded momentarily on the airwaves. Rudolf, listening attentively to his father, caught his eye and flashed a brief smile.
– I hope it was not too dull for you, said Rudolf, as they cycled away from the village, the small boy still staring after them.
– No, I enjoyed it. It was great, hearing the cricket.
– It is good that you see a German home, no? You must not come to Germany and meet only Americans.
– Oh yes, absolutely.
Timothy spoke sincerely. Now that the visit was behind them and they were headed back to familiar territory, he felt a glow of righteousness at having braved the German interior to mingle with the natives.
– Your parents are very nice, he said politely.
– Thank you. They are also very sad.
Rudolf proceeded to tell him something of his parents’ fortunes as they cycled side by side. His father had been a local government official in Munich. At the end of the war he had lost his job and his pension because of his connections with the Party. They had moved from Munich to this village to be near Rudolf, on whom they were totally dependent. There had been two other sons, older than Rudolf: one had been drowned in a U-boat, sunk in the Atlantic; the other had been taken prisoner in Russia and never heard of since.
– It is a very poor, dull life for them here, said Rudolf. But the cottage is cheap.
From Rudolf’s account of his wartime childhood earlier that day, Timothy had cast him as an enlightened rebel against a compromised and corrupt father; but Rudolf surprised him by his vehement defence of his father.
– It is not fair, you understand. The little men suffer while the big ones go free. There are many high-up Nazis in positions of power today. In government, in business, in the universities. Men with records much worse than my father. Some were sent to prison at Nuremberg, but now the Americans are releasing them in crowds, and
they are better off than my father, who was no criminal.
– What did he do exactly? Timothy felt he was treading on thin ice, but an irresistible curiosity egged him on.
– He worked in the Rathaus of Munich, the Town Hall you would say. He worked in the taxation department. Then one day – it was in 1943 – he was transferred to the Rationing Department, and it happened that he had to stamp the ration books for the prisoners in Dachau. After the war it was told that most of the ration books belonged to dead men. I know my father never guessed that was the fact, whatever else he may have known. I remember him worrying about the black market in rations in the city. I can’t understand where the food is coming from, he would say. He was an honest man. But after the war, no one believed him.
– Can’t he appeal, or something?
– He is too proud. Sometimes I think of writing to the authorities. They are getting easier about such matters. But then he would have to answer questions and so on. It would bring back unhappy memories, and perhaps nothing would come of it in the end.
– Why don’t you ask Vince, Mr. Vernon, about it?
– Miss Young’s friend?
– He deals with that sort of thing in his work.
– Does he? I did not know.
– He might be able to help.
– Yes, said Rudolf thoughtfully. He seems very friendly, I must say. He always gives me a smile as he passes my office at Fichte Haus.
– ’Course, I don’t know if he could do anything. It was just an idea, said Timothy, having sudden doubts. What was Rudolf’s father to Vince, or to himself for that matter? What on earth was he doing, trying to help an ex-Nazi get his pension? A queer world. He pedalled on in silence for a while.
– I’m afraid I have brought you too far, said Rudolf.
– No, it’s all right. I cycle a lot in England. It must be tiring for you, though, riding one-handed.
– I am used to it. But it would be fine to have a car, no? Like Mr. Vernon’s Mercedes. That is quite a car.
– It’s terrific. I went to Baden in it last weekend.