The handsome count held his ground. “We have come to talk about Stefan George.”
“Indeed we have,” said another man onstage, a muscular-looking fellow whose snow-white tunic gave him the look of a medieval squire. “And has not George himself foretold the coming of a ‘leader with his völkisch banner’—”
“George does not use this term in a crude racialist sense.”
“— and warned us to seek the company only of the superior breed of men? And does not your own sect, mein Graf, open its meetings with the words ‘Leave the temple of foreign gods’? Surely these commandments are identical: to eschew what is alien to the German folk-soul, and instead to join with others of our own kind to forge a ‘new nobility’— saving your feelings, sir, I'm simply quoting George here—' whose warrant no longer derives from crown or escutcheon.' “
The young count gave a slight, mocking bow. “I'm sure we're all impressed by your aspirations to nobility, Herr Gruppenführer. And I certainly shall not embarrass you by correcting your quaint misimpression of the dj.1.11, which, after all, it is not your business to comprehend. But I assure you, no one would be more surprised than George himself to hear that in all these passages, he was really talking about—what was it again?—the German folk-soul.”
Laughter ensued, but the other man kept his composure. “What, then, mein Graf, do you make of the Master's call to heed ‘germ and breeding in every waking movement of your tribe’?”
“It is more to our point here,” the Wandervogel broke in, “to heed George's deeper message: ‘The new salvation will come only through a new kind of love.’ Here is the clue, gentlemen, to what superior breed of men the poet was thinking of. It is a question not of blood, but of beauty. Beauty of spirit as well as body. This is stated explicitly in The Seventh Ring, when the Master tells us, the greatest service one can render the Volk is to bring forth one's own deepest loveliness. Only then may one understand what it means to ‘bind oneself in a circle closed by love.’ “
Ingo glanced at Anton, who was sitting raptly, nodding now and then in agreement.
“George speaks here,” the man went on, “of the love of friends and of male youth—the love extolled by Socrates and Hölderlin, by Shakespeare in his sonnets, and not least by the Master himself, in his many poems to young Maximin. This love that is higher than mere reproductive lust, and infinitely more spiritual, indeed more sacred, than the crude libidinousness which is of such fascination to certain psychoanalytic types—I say this with all respect to our friend from Berlin.”
The assistant professor glowered. Count von Stauffenberg sat down. A smatter of applause came from the group of boys on Ingo's right, but this was not enough to silence the burly fellow in the white shirt.
“Very good, gentlemen. If you wish to speak of Friend-love, let's do so in plain German. It hardly does the poet honor to make him out to be weak or naïve, in either political or sexual matters. The Master knows perfectly well what is entailed when we set out to create a New Reich. In the first place, the Old Reich must be got rid of. Yes, I'm speaking of the sickness that is Weimar—but more than that, the gross distortions of our Kultur that have transpired since the year 1849. You know what I am talking about, my good gentlemen, and so naturally does Stefan George. I say this as an admirer of the poet! As one of you, in blood and spirit! George has instructed us to look back to the noble Athenians—but what does that mean, exactly? It means harking back to a time when our community was ruled rightly, by a peerage of strong men, a brotherly elite. Not this enfeebled, modern, bastardized, cosmopolitan ‘society’ wherein women enslave us by the tyranny of the womb and Jews wrap us in chains of usury and priests heap upon us an intolerable burden of guilt!”
There was a stirring in the meadow, but Ingo couldn't figure out what prompted it—agreement, repulsion, surprise? Maybe a bit of everything.
The burly man strode back and forth, flexing his arms powerfully, as if to clinch the argument by sheer physical force. “George challenges us to find the strength within ourselves, not merely to cast off such un-German accretions, but to destroy them, utterly and forever! We are to ascend from the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah to the ‘aeries of dread birds.’ We are to become as gods. Not the weak and forgiving god of the desert people— no, the fierce and avenging gods of the North! We are bound in a circle of love, yes—for our comrades, our brothers within the circle. Toward those outside, it is correct, in fact it is necessary, to feel otherwise. We must feel—here I am sure the Count will understand me—the cold, steel-hard sureness of our own superiority.
“Friend-love is noble: on that we can agree. But it is noble precisely because it strengthens and purifies us. By withholding our seed, we deprive women of their power to weaken and distract us. By preserving German blood in its full vigor and potency, we avoid the racial morbidity that has weakened other nations of the West. And by consorting only with other young men of a good type—except insofar, of course, when in due time we must choose a proper candidate to bear and raise our healthy progeny—we avoid the danger of odious corruption by all that is foreign or unwholesome, all that is unworthy of our tribe. That is the message of Stefan George. And I can say quite firmly, gentlemen, that any full and honest reading of the text will bear me out.”
That was not the last word. One thing Ingo was learning about this movement was that no word, however loud or cutting or resolutely spoken, could ever be the last. There were too many viewpoints, each more eccentric or alarming than the last. After a while you felt dazed by it all; you longed for a bit of straight, Yankee-style talk. Sit down and shut up. That's nuts. Pass the mustard.
It was funny, in a way. Ingo had waited so long to find this place. Yet now that he'd arrived, he was ready to move on. He was tempted to slip away and join the boys swimming around the pier. They were still at it—you could hear splashing and laughter from that direction—though the sun had drifted lower and the chill of a mountain evening crept in on the lengthening shadows.
What held him back, of course, was Anton, sitting there upright and alert, attending to each little speech and every question and retort, not all of them polite, from the audience. His brown hair, pulled back behind his ears, gave him an elfin look, and his skin had taken on olive tones in the yellowing light. There was something quirky about his face, something not quite perfectly arranged or matched-up. Whatever it was, it suited him, like some stray adornment—a scarf, say, or a hat—that shouldn't have looked right with the rest of his outfit, only it did.
Anton must have felt himself being stared at. He turned to look Ingo straight in the eyes. His own eyes were round and dark, almost childlike in their unguardedness. Most of his attention was still directed toward the stage, though he freed up enough of it to give Ingo a warm, happy smile. Then back to the stage again, the smile still on his lips.
You could have read any number of things into that smile, as you apparently could read practically anything into Stefan George, if you wanted to. But Ingo was enough of a Catholic to believe that only one reading could be correct. And he hoped, fervently, his own reading was true.
The program finally broke into smaller disputations that floated off in many directions, fading like sparks in the sky after a fireworks display. Ingo and Anton joined the general drift back through the meadow. The sun had dropped behind the mountain now and people were starting fires, singing songs, laughing together, enjoying their citizenship in this strange, makeshift republic.
What happens next? Ingo wondered if there was some kind of script that just came to you, without effort, the way your lines pop into your head at the last moment in a school play, even when you think you've forgotten them. Or do you have to ad-lib your way through? Does Anton know?
Anton, at least, was talking—chattering away, excited by the debate, playing parts of it back, commenting on this or that speaker, agreeing or disagreeing with points Ingo could hardly remember having been made. Ingo offered scant response but Anton did not seem to min
d. It was pleasant to listen to his voice, which was still boyish and seemed to come largely from the upper part of his throat, the long slender neck. Sometimes he gestured with hands that, like the neck, were long and smooth and faintly tinged with olive. Ingo could not recall ever, at any point in his life, having actually noticed someone's hands. Well… perhaps when Timmy Nye, his scouting mentor, showed him how to tie a clove hitch.
“Oh, look”— Anton's fingers pressed lightly on his forearm—” there's that horrible man again.”
He was looking at a little knot of people some dozen paces off, marching through the field behind the burly man in the white tunic, the racial hygiene fellow: half a dozen kids all dressed in the same medieval-style clothing, all jabbering breathlessly. All but one. Close by the leader, occupying a place of honor at his side, was the most flawless boy who had ever walked the Earth.
He was perhaps sixteen, an archetype stamped in flesh: the Teutonic boy-god, fair-skinned Baldur, eyes bluer than cobalt, hair paler than spun gold, limbs more cleanly sculpted than Donatello's David—quite a bit less beefy than Michelangelo's—and each feature the epitome of its type and in perfect harmony with every other. Even his movements were those of a being who knows himself to be finer than merely human. He walked beside the Gruppenführer yet set his own course, changed directions when it suited him. The others didn't care, they were being festive, they must have thought they'd won the George debate. Only the snow-blond boy seemed to have a destination, and whatever it was he kept it to himself. From his companions, he remained as distant as any star.
Ingo could not wrench his eyes away. He found the boy terrifying. Ice-cold in his beauty. Cruel in his aloofness. Repulsive in his knowledge of his own perfection.
For an instant those cerulean eyes brushed over him. They paused just perceptibly, as though by their limitless power they were lifting Ingo for inspection, then tossing him back to the dreary realm of mortals. The eyes clicked a notch sideways and repeated the procedure with Anton. Then they were gone.
The group altered course, heading off on a side trail into the forest. Within moments they were lost from sight.
Only then could Ingo regain his equilibrium, blinking like someone just emerged from a hypnotic trance. The whole incident, if you could call it that, had lasted, what—fi fteen or twenty seconds? Anton had seen nothing. He was still talking, something about the Jungdeutscher Orden. Still warm, still real, still fully human.
Ingo felt a surge of emotion he could not have named—or rather, that the obvious name would have done nothing to clarify—and in that moment, before thought could interfere, he placed a hand on Anton's back. The hand moved slightly, as if of its own accord, along the bumpy ridge of the spine. Anton did not react except for a pause between words— “very right-wing, very…threatening, I think”— but after that, somehow, he was walking closer, near enough for Ingo to get a physical sense, just short of actual touch, of his body inside the floppy clothes.
What happens now?
Whatever it might be, Ingo felt it pushing outward from his breast, a pressure demanding release.
Then Anton decided the matter, absolutely. He stopped walking and turned to face Ingo, an odd sort of firmness in his expression. “It is time for me to go back,” he said. “Past time, actually. I am staying at the hostel in Vockerode, a few kilometers' hiking from here. If I tarry longer, there will be no dinner. So I must say ‘until later.’ “
Ingo felt as though the air had been sucked clean out of him. But he could think of no grounds on which to object. He could hardly invite Anton up to the campsite for dinner. For starters he wasn't sure he could even find the campsite, not with evening coming on. And what would they eat? Martina was no more cook than Ingo; thus far they'd scraped along on food scavenged from the Gasthaus in Kassel, mostly hard bread wrapped in one of Ingo's undershirts. Hardly a meal to offer a guest.
But still. The disappointment was so sharp, so sudden and painful, Ingo feared for one dangerous, wobbly instant that tears were about to form in his eyes.
Anton must have seen it. His expression did not change, but he stepped closer and took both of Ingo's hands in his own. “I hope we can meet again tomorrow.” His breath smelled of sunshine on fresh-mown hay. “I'm afraid today I have done too much talking. I have hardly given you a chance to tell me about yourself, about your life in America. But tomorrow … perhaps, if you are willing, we could meet again on the trail there? Where we met before?”
Ingo said something, he did not know what, he would never remember. Evidently it was enough.
Anton took half a step back, then a full step forward, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “We shall be friends, then,” he said, backing away again.
Sure, friends, okay, thought Ingo, foundering, well beyond his depth. Whatever the hell “friends” means. He guessed he would find out tomorrow.
In the meantime he watched Anton striding confidently down his separate trail, the long legs bending rhythmically and the narrow haunches twitching under the weight of that thin, slightly awkward, miraculous body. Ingo realized he was hungry—Christ, he was starving—but that was nothing. On the whole, he felt like a million bucks.
He must have ambled for some time with no thought of where he was headed, eyes down among wild thyme, tufted grasses, soft German soil. When he raised his head, the day had passed into twilight, Dämmerung, that in-between stage where your vision plays tricks on you.
He had been following a path through sparse woodland, mostly birches that gleamed white like pillars in a crumbling temple. Since Charlemagne—Karl the Great, as he was known around here—the Germans had identified themselves with ancient Rome, or more exactly with a misty, romanticized vision of empire, Reichtum, and all its glories. Even their countryside seemed to reflect this, both the landscape and the lens of art and legend through which it was apprehended. These smooth-worn hills, haunted forests, weathered rocks, waters that housed fallen goddesses, mountains beneath which bearded emperors slept—everything spoke of some lost grandeur, a hidden but still palpable subterrain of the German soul. The Holy Reich was dormant but not dead. Frederick Red-Beard might wake and gallop down at the head of his wild legions, more wolf than man now, sweeping all modernity aside. At the Dämmerung, on the magic mountain, you could believe such things. You could think you glimpsed those risen knights, bloody crusaders who sang love songs and observed the niceties of Lieblingsminne when not slashing infidel heads off.
There, just now, in the clearing ahead. What were those white figures flickering through the shadows?
A chill ran the length of Ingo's spine. Not for the first time today, he felt in danger of losing his mental competence. He wanted to turn and flee, but that would have granted the hallucination a claim upon reality. So he pressed ahead, facing the ghosts of the past as every stouthearted German must do.
As he entered the clearing he saw that the spirits were only human—of course, who could have doubted it?— and were in fact none other than the young men in white tunics, the Gruppenführer and his pack, their number grown to a dozen or so. They were gathered into a huddle or a circle, as if enacting some esoteric rite, and why shouldn't they? It was a natural part of the Middle Ages fantasy—Grail quests and hidden castles, blood-oaths sworn at sunset.
Only by degrees did Ingo realize that it was some kind of fight or struggle—an asymmetric affair, like the aftermath of a hunt, the stag in its death throes, lashing out dangerously, the hunters circling, vying for the honor of dealing the coup de grâce. Ingo tried to pick out the boy-god among the others but the darkness was too heavy now. They were just pale figures, more or less human, with something else in their midst, darker, nearly indiscernible on the ground. Moving, though. Rolling or crawling, fighting wretchedly to live.
One of the boys struck a match and held the flame to a stack of small branches, forest debris that appeared to have been hastily thrown into a pile. The newborn fire leapt up and the light spread itself around the clearin
g, though at first this only made it more difficult to see, for outside the flickering circle all was thrown into blackness.
At last, coming very near the flames, the hunters dragged their prey, which was writhing and bucking in a final burst of strength. Ingo glimpsed filthy, blood-streaked limbs and—what, surely not a baseball jersey?
The victim was no beast of the woods. It was a scrawny kid. A kid whose clothing was torn and hair tangled with leaves. He was smaller than the boys who held him, yet fought them with crazed ferocity.
“Bring him into the light here,” the Gruppenführer commanded.
Half-seen hands thrust the prisoner forward. He landed face-first, rolled a bit, started to rise, but his captors were on him immediately, pulling his arms back, someone grabbing him around the neck. After a few moments the victim gave up his struggle; it was all he could do now to breathe. His face was red and his eyes seemed to bulge; still you could see a glint of defiance there. The kid had guts, even if all his strength was gone.
A new figure stepped forward, and to Ingo's surprise this was no boy but a full-grown man, thirty at the very least. He wore not a white tunic but a khaki suit with many pockets and a wide-brimmed hat, as though just back from safari.
“Yes, that is he,” the man said, after a quick glance at the prisoner, his voice high-pitched and pompous. “That is the little Jew who took my papers. Be sure to turn out his pockets when you're done with him. Though I suspect by now he has passed the documents to his confederates. They work in groups, you know—the actual term is cells. We are dealing here with a hive-culture, such as one finds among insects.” He gave a short nod, then turned away and stepped quickly into the shadows.
To Ingo, who could barely take in what was happening here—here, at the very center of modern Germany—the man appeared simply to vanish.
“Filthy pest!” the Gruppenführer spat in the boy's face. “Give back what you stole or I will kill you this minute, I swear I will.”
Another Green World Page 16