“Lies, lies,” muttered Alfred. “Lies, lies, lies!”
“This man von Wied might be called the Father of Lies. The arch-liar. Not that there hadn’t been lies before. Von Hess admits that there was tampering with historical facts even in Hitler’s lifetime. And he says, very justly, I think, that there is not the whole width of the Empire between the falsification of history and its destruction. Von Hess was all for telling the whole truth about the history of Germany and the history of the rest of the world. For, says he, surely, apart from any question of right and wrong, the truth is sufficiently glorious? But von Wied thought not, and he was willing to have his own great work destroyed so long as it was accompanied to the pyre by the other records of mankind.”
“Didn’t they even keep his?” asked Alfred in some astonishment.
“No. But I think some of it is incorporated in the Hitler Bible. Why, how can you keep a book which proves a man is God, or that advocates the destruction of records of other civilisations? It simply proves those things were there, and that Hitler was not always divine. There was plenty of Memory in von Wied’s book. He screamed and snarled and foamed at it, so says von Hess, but it was still there. Not dead yet. Well, this book exactly caught the feeling of the nation at the time.”
“In spite of the part about the women?”
“Because of the part about the women. I don’t mean only because of that, but von Wied’s theories about women were wildly popular with a large section of the men. You see, the lunatic vanity of the Germans was concentrated really in the males among them. The women hadn’t beaten the world and made the Empire. They had only borne the children, and that was no more than any English woman or Russian woman could do. And these proud soldiers, the great-grandsons of the men who really made the Empire, were beginning to feel very strongly that it was beneath the dignity of a German man to have to risk rejection by a mere woman, to have to allow women to wound him in his most sensitive part, his vanity, without the remedy of a duel. They wanted all women to be at their will like the women of a conquered nation. So in reality the Reduction of Women was not started by von Wied. It had begun already. Rapes were extraordinarily common compared with what they had been even fifty years before, and the sentences for rape were getting lighter and lighter. Von Wied’s theory was that the rejection-right of women was an insult to Manhood, that family life was an insult to Manhood, and that it was the wickedest possible folly to allow an animal (for women were nothing more than that) to have complete control over human beings at their tenderest and most impressionable period, their infancy. He said that the boys must be taken away at the very dawn of consciousness and before memory came to endure. At a year old, he said. We now give the women six months longer than that. He also held the theory that the beauty of women was an insult to Manhood, as giving them (some of them) an enormous and disgusting sexual power over men. He said, though, that this beauty was not real (for he would allow women no redeeming qualities whatever) but a sham made by long hair and a mysterious half-revealing half-concealing form of dress. He advocated shaven heads for women and a kind of dress that could conceal nothing and have nothing mysterious or graceful about it. They must dress all in one colour, a dirty-brown (as they do now), and must be, after the age of sixteen, completely submissive, not only to the father of their children, but to any and every man, for such was the will of the Lord Hitler, through his humble mouthpiece Rupprecht von Wied. He said there must be no love, only lust or a desire to beget sons, and that a sexual preference for one woman over another, except in so far as one might be stronger and healthier, was a weakness and wholly unmanly. The whole pattern of women’s lives was to be changed and made to fit in with the new German Manhood, the first civilised manhood of the world.”
“And what did the women do?” Alfred asked.
“What they always do. Once they were convinced that men really wanted them to be animals and ugly and completely submissive and give up their boy children for ever at the age of one year they threw themselves into the new pattern with a conscious enthusiasm that knew no bounds. They shaved their heads till they bled, they rejoiced in their hideous uniforms as a young Knight might rejoice in his Robe of Ceremony, they pulled out their front teeth until they were forbidden for reasons of health, and they gave up their baby sons with the same heroism with which they had been used to give their grown sons to war.”
“They don’t do that now,” Alfred said, frowning.
“They cannot be enthusiastic about anything now,” said the Knight. “It is not a new way of pleasing men, it is just part of their lives. They thought, those poor little typically feminine idiots, that if they did all that men told them to do cheerfully and willingly, that men would somehow, in the face of all logic, love them still more. They could not see that they were helping to kill love. What woman now would ever dream that a man could love her as he loves his friends? But those women, aware of a growing irritation with them among men, passionately hoped to soothe and please them by their sacrifice of beauty and their right of choice and rejection, and their acceptance of animal status. Women are nothing, except an incarnate desire to please men; why should they fail in their nature that time more than any other?”
Alfred shook his head.
“There’s something wrong somewhere,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what it is yet. I’ll have to think it out. Go on, sir. But I see I shall have to think about women seriously. I never knew they were important before.”
“As long as we can’t all be exploded, they certainly are. They’re not important in themselves, of course. But I must go back a bit. When von Hess read this terrific farrago of lies and catastrophic nonsense and realised what a tremendous hold it almost immediately obtained over the ordinary Germans he was uneasy. When serious discussions of the book started among the Knights, he was frightened. When the subject was put down for debate at the Council of the Inner Ten, he was appalled. For he knew Germany could do it. Could destroy all records of the truth. With German patience and German thoroughness they could, once they had made up their minds to do it, rout out and burn every book in the Empire, even if it took them a hundred years. Well, he always opposed the idea, at every Knights’ discussion, and for some time several of the Inner Ten were with him, and der Fuehrer as well. But meanwhile the enthusiasm for von Wied in the country at large was getting quite hysterical. More and more people every day were shrieking and screaming for Memory to be destroyed and their dark inside panic to be allayed. There were even whispers that von Wied ought to be der Fuehrer, seeing that he was the first man who recognised openly what everybody knew inside themselves, that Hitler was divine, and that the world, the real human world, was born in His Explosion. So the Inner Knights one by one went over to the von Wied party, and at last der Fuehrer went too. Von Hess was desperate. On such a serious matter there must be unanimity among the Inner Knights, but he knew that if he opposed too long he would be murdered. Yet he made one last effort to save Truth. He was above himself, he says. He argued, he pleaded, he raged, he says he even wept. He went on talking almost for a whole night. But he made no impression. The whole weight of Germany was against him. Inside the Council Hall there were the nine Knights and der Fuehrer, with grim set faces, listening to him still courteously, but quite immovable; outside there was the rest of Germany, Knights, Nazis, and women, all fallen into a hysteria of rage and fear and desire to destroy as universal and as potent as if some physical enemy had invaded the very soil of Holy Germany. And above this storm, riding it like God on a whirlwind, was the little mean figure of von Wied, a small dark cripple (so says von Hess) without manhood, stability, or even physical courage. Von Wied outside, being hailed as the Prophet, the Apostle, the Deliverer, the Voice of Hitler, even the Voice of God. Von Hess inside, defeated. The Knights rose at last and shouted him down, and der Fuehrer closed the Council, adjourning it to the next evening. Von Hess saluted and went out. He got into his car and drove home here, not actually to this house, his
castle was up on the hill there, to the south of the landing-ground. It was summer, and beginning to get light. On the way he saw what he thought was a dead body lying by the side of the road. He stopped his driver and got out to investigate. It was the naked body of a woman, young, he thought, but the face was so mangled he could hardly tell. The eyes were torn out and the nostrils slit up. The hair had all been pulled out, leaving nothing but a ghastly red skull-cap of blood. The body was covered with innumerable stabs and cuts that looked as if they had been made with a pen-knife. The nipples had been cut off. Von Hess was no more squeamish than a good German ought to be, but he says he felt a little sick. However, that might have been fatigue after the effort of the night. He hoped that this untidy corpse was the work of some solitary sex maniac, but his hope was very faint. Next day he learned that it was the body of a girl who had laughed at a band of the new “von Wied Women”, a pretty young girl who didn’t mind Hitler being God but couldn’t see why women should be ugly. That was the temper of Germany in hysteria. If the women were like that, how would the men bear opposition in their blown-up pride of conquest? But von Hess was hardly conscious of physical danger. He was too despairing. He says, ‘I cannot waste this precious parchment in describing my sensations. I was in the blackest despair known to man, for I couldn’t think what to do.’
“When the morning was far advanced a Knight brought him a message from der Fuehrer in Munich, warning him, without any threats, that he must at once cease his opposition to the von Wied plan. But still he didn’t know what to do, except go on opposing and be quietly murdered. Not till he was almost in the Council Hall that evening did his idea come to him. He says, ‘I never have been anything but a rather stupid man. My brain is slow, the Knights elected me to the Inner Ten, I think, for reasons of character.’ But once he had his idea he was not slow. He made instantaneous and humble submission before the Knights and der Fuehrer; he said that he had been mad before not to see the beauty and holiness and truly German simplicity and strength of the von Wied plan. He acknowledged Hitler as God. He begged that his own collection of books (a fairish library, he says) might have the honour of being burnt at once for Hitler’s sake. None of the Knights believed in this sudden conversion. They thought he was afraid for his skin. They were astonished and disgusted even though they were relieved at the collapse of the opposition. And here I think we may know that there have been men of honour in Germany, Alfred, for this Knight, my ancestor, bore this imputation of cowardice all the rest of his life for the sake of Truth. He even refused to challenge a Knight, a personal friend of von Wied’s, who a little later accused him almost openly of having given way to save himself. He wanted them to think him a coward. He also at this Council prayed der Fuehrer formally to be excused from further attendance at Council on the score of age and ill-health. A Knight cannot resign from the Inner Ten, but he can, if der Fuehrer allows it, be permanently excused from attendance. Von Hess says, ‘I was not young, nearly sixty, but as healthy as a youth. However, der Fuehrer granted my plea.’ They also promptly accepted his offer of his books, and because he had not succeeded quite in averting suspicion, because they did not quite think him only a coward, a small party of ordinary Knights was sent straight back with him to his castle to see the books put all in one room, and the doors and windows sealed. But before he left the Council Hall for the last time, he agreed to the adoption of the von Wied plan, and it was passed unanimously. He had to stay for the discussion of ways and means that followed, but he sat like a man ashamed, with his head down, taking no part unless he had to vote. At last he could go home with his escort of Knights, and it was then that one of them, the friend of von Wied, insulted him. He swallowed it like a little boy who has been over-bragging and daren’t make his boast good. He knew from the contemptuous look in the eyes of the other men that his disgrace was complete. It would not be made public among the Knights, owing to the peculiar circumstances, but it would get round. He would be known as ‘von Hess the Coward’. He would be let alone. He left home and went to England, where he bought a large sheep farm on Romney Marsh in Kent. Do you know it, Alfred?”
“No, sir. What did he go to England for?”
“It’s a good place for sheep, and he wanted to be out of Germany. He let it be known that he was going to experiment with sheep-breeding. That was natural enough, he had always been a bit of an agricultural expert. What he wanted to do actually was to learn to make parchment. He didn’t dare to buy it, though it was used for certain things, Knights’ Commissions, and so on. Before he left Germany he saw his sons, Arnold, Kaspar, Friedrich, and Waldemar, and told them that he was in private disgrace with der Fuehrer, but that he had done nothing of which he himself was ashamed. He did not tell them what had happened, but he laid on them his strictest command that none of them should fight duels on his behalf, no matter what they heard. They all swore to obey him. If all his sons were killed, you see, there would be no one he could trust with his book. He also instructed Arnold (a good lad, he says, not very intelligent) to buy for him secretly a book on the technique of parchment-making, and a supply of some special kind of ink. He thought Arnold was just intelligent enough to do this without making a mistake. When he had them he was to bring them to his father in England. When von Hess had the book on parchment-making he settled down to breed sheep and kill some of them and make the leaves of his book out of their skins. In Romney Marsh. It’s a queer flat green place, Alfred, below the level of the sea, misty and damp, but curiously beautiful. Von Hess wastes two whole lines of writing on his precious parchment saying it was beautiful and that its beauty made him sometimes happy. I know it is. I went there to look. It’s a very great contrast to this part of Germany. He lived there for two years making parchment leaves, with much hard work and many deplorable failures. Nearly all his labourers and servants were English, he had but one Nazi lad, a faithful lout, one gathers, who had gone with him from Germany. This youth helped him with the making of the parchment. He didn’t know what it was for, but the Knight had told him to hold his tongue and not brag about. He would, von Hess says, have had it torn out rather than say anything. As for the Englishmen, they took no notice. They worked for him, very lazily, so he says, Alfred, but in good enough temper and without inquisitiveness. No one came to see him, except his sons. His wife (that’s the woman he permanently lived with) was dead, long before all this trouble. No Knight on duty in England or travelling there ever came to his sheep-farm in Romney Marsh. He says, wasting more precious sheepskin, ‘I was so lonely that I began to understand about God. Not Hitler, not the god of the Germans, but about God, whatever God is, but I never could hold the understanding together. It came and went like the best part of the sunsets.’”
“Oh,” said Alfred. “Oh, there is something there. Yes, like the best part of the sunsets. And not to be able to hold it together. Sir, this von Hess, he knew something.”
The Knight said, “Great men, in their loneliness, might touch one another. Even though one was German and one English. Well, when he had made what he thought would be enough parchment leaves for his very scanty knowledge he sold his sheep-farm and moved slowly up through England, buying a little paper here and a little there on which to make the notes for his book, but never getting enough at a time to cause any remark. The Nazi boy, Johann Leder, drove his car; he had no other retinue at all. He slept at common English hostels, but this caused no surprise among the Knights who became aware of his travels. It was only disgraced von Hess, the Coward; naturally he would not care to go to the Knights’ houses and Tables. He went far into the north, to the Island of Skye in Scotland, and there he settled down in a tiny house, a mere hovel, to write his book. His German estates had not been sequestrated; he could have afforded to buy himself a castle, but he no longer wanted anything but a room, a table, his special ink and some food. He planned and re-planned, made notes in tiny writing with pencil on his little supply of ordinary paper, and cudgelled his memory until it sometimes threatened to fa
il him altogether, and he fell into fits of panic and despair. You see, he must be certain of everything he put down, it must be well arranged, and it must be concise. Yet he knew nothing of the making of books, and had never written anything in his life except one or two papers on agricultural matters and private letters. After two years of this kind of concentration and planning he thought he had pinned down everything he could remember about the history of human beings, and had it arranged so that totally ignorant men could understand it. So he started to write it down in the parchment book, very slowly, making each letter with the utmost care to save space and yet leave the writing legible. And when he had written about half he found his eyesight was failing.”
“Oh,” Alfred breathed. “Oh, sir.”
“Yes. He did not dare to go anywhere to have his eyes looked at. He had never worn spectacles, and the doctor, when he knew who this Knight was, might wonder why sheep-farming and hiding his shame in the Highlands of Scotland should affect his eyes so badly. Arnold bought spectacles in Germany and brought his father a selection, in fact for several years when any of his sons came to visit him they brought various powers of lenses for him to try. But they none of them knew what he was doing, for when they were there he locked his room and did nothing. He says he thinks Johann Leder knew, and indeed the lad must have unless he was a half-wit, but he said nothing to anyone. So with his spectacles von Hess got on again fairly well, but he grew blinder and blinder, and could do less and less every day. But his writing never grew less beautiful and clear: by will-power, it seems, he kept it small and even and well-formed. And in five years he had put down all the contents of his notes, and his book was finished. There were just a few leaves left at the end, but he says it was not his blindness that prevented him filling them up, but that he had nothing more to write that was certainly true. Then he sent for Arnold and told him about the book. I often have imagined him, perhaps on a fine summer evening—for the date at the end of the book is June 6th (that is the month we now call Himmler) —sitting there at the door perhaps of his little house, with his spectacles on his nose and his eyes peering, hardly able to see the expression in Arnold’s eyes, and wholly unable to see the beauty of Skye at sunset. I have been there; I fancied a certain little house on the west side of the island was his. And he would perhaps be still in his Knight’s tunic, very shabby and faded, with the golden swastikas on the collar that showed he was of the Inner Ring. Or it might have been inside the house by a fire in one of those incessant soaking mists that make that climate so trying for nine months of the year. Well, wet or fine, outside or in, he managed to make Arnold understand. Come here again, Alfred.”
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