A Small Town In Germany

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by A Small Town in Germany [lit]


  'Peter.' Turner gently pointed into the tiny alley. His hand was shaking but his eye was quite steady. A shadow? A guard taking up his post?

  'I wouldn't point any more if I was you,' de Lisle whispered. 'They might misunderstand you.'

  But in that moment, no one paid them any heed, for Karfeld was all they saw.

  'Der Klaus!' the crowd was calling. 'Der Klaus is here!' Wave to him, children; der Klaus, the magic man, has walked all the way to Bonn on stilts of German pine.

  'He is very English, der Klaus,' he heard de Lisle murmur. 'Although he hates our guts.'

  He was such a little man up there. They said he was tall; and it would have been easy enough, with so much artifice, to raise him a toot or so, but he seemed to wish to be diminished, as if to emphasise that great truths are found in humble mouths; for Karfeld was a humble man, and English in his diffidence. And Karfeld was a nervous man too, bothered by his spec­tacles, which he had not had time to clean, apparently, in these busy days, for now he took them off and polished them as if he did not know he was observed: it is the others who make the ceremony, he was telling them, before he had said a word; it is you and I who know why we are here.

  Let us pray.

  'The lights are too bright for him,' someone said. 'They should reduce the lights.'

  He was one of them, this isolated Doctor; a good deal of brain power no doubt, a good deal above the ears, but still one of them at the end of it, ready to step down at any time from that high place if someone better came along. And not at all a politician. Quite without ambition, in fact, for he had only yesterday promised to stand down in favour of Halbach if that was the people's will. The crowd whispered its concern. Karfeld looks tired, he looks fresh; he looks well; Karfeld looks ill, older, younger, taller, shorter... It is said he is retiring; no, he will give up his factory and work full time on politics. He cannot afford it; he is a millionaire.

  Quietly he began speaking.

  No one introduced him, he did not say his name. The note of music which announced his coming had no companions, for Klaus Karfeld is alone up there, quite alone, and no music can console him. Karfeld is not a Bonn windbag; he is one of us for all his intellect: Klaus Karfeld, doctor and citizen, a decent man decently concerned about the fate of Germany, is obliged, out of a sense of honour, to address a few friends. It was so softly, so unobtrusively done, that to Turner it seemed that the whole massive gathering actually inclined its ear in order to save Karfeld the pain of raising his voice.

  Afterwards, Turner could not say how much he had under­stood, nor how he had understood so much. He had the impression, at first, that Karfeld's interest was purely historical. The talk was of the origin of war and Turner caught the old catch-words of the old religion: Versailles, chaos, depression and encirclement; the mistakes that had been made by states­men on both sides, for Germans cannot shirk their own res­ponsibilities. There followed a small tribute to the casualties of unreason: too many people died, Karfeld said, and too few knew the cause. It must never happen again, Karfeld knew: he had brought back more than wounds from Stalingrad: he had brought back memories, indelible memories, of human misery, mutilation and betrayal...

  He has indeed, they whispered, the poor Klaus. He has suffered for us all.

  There was no rhetoric still. You and I, Karfeld was saying, have learnt the lessons of history; you and I can look on these things with detachment: it must never happen again. There were those, it was true, who saw the battles of fourteen and thirty-nine as part of a continuing crusade against the enemies of a German heritage, but Karfeld - he wished it to be known to all his friends - Klaus Karfeld was not, altogether, of this school.

  'Alan.' It was de Lisle's voice, steady as a captain's. Turner followed his gaze.

  A flutter, a movement of people, the passing of a message? Something was stirring on the balcony. He saw Tilsit, the Gen­eral, incline his soldier's head and Halbach the student leader whisper in his ear, saw Meyer-Lothringen leaning forward over the filigree rail, listening to someone below him. A policeman? A plain clothes man? He saw the glint of spectacles and the patient surgeon's face as Siebkron rose and vanished; and all was still again except for Karfeld, academic and man of reason, who was talking about today.

  Today, he said, as never before, Germany was the plaything of her allies. They had bought her, now they were selling her. This was a fact, Karfeld said, he would not deal in theory. There were too many theories in Bonn already, he explained, and he did not propose to add to the confusion. This was fact, and it was necessary, if painful, to debate among good and reasonable friends how Germany's allies had achieved this strange state of affairs. Germany was rich, after all: richer than France, and richer than Italy. Richer than England, he added casually, but we must not be rude to the English for the English won the war after all, and were a people of uncommon gifts. His voice remained wonderfully reasonable as he recited all the English gifts: their mini-skirts, their pop singers, their Rhine Army that sat in London, their Empire that was falling apart, their national deficit... without these English gifts, Europe would surely fail. Karfeld had always said so.

  Here they laughed; it was a warming, angry laugh, and Kar­feld, shocked and perhaps the tiniest fraction disappointed that these beloved sinners, whom God had appointed him in his humility to instruct, should fall to laughing in the temple; Karfeld waited patiently until it died.

  How then, if Germany was so rich, if she possessed the largest standing army in Europe, and could dominate the so-called Common Market, how was it possible for her to be sold in public places like a whore?

  Leaning back in the pulpit, he removed his spectacles and made a cautious, pacifying gesture of the hand, for there were noises now of protest and indignation, and Karfeld quite clearly did not care for this at all. We must try to resolve this question in a pious, reasonable and wholly intellectual manner, he warned, without emotion and without rancour, as befits good friends! It was a plump, round hand and it might have been webbed, for he never separated his fingers, but used the whole fist singly like a club.

  In seeking, then, a rational explanation for this curious ­and, for Germans at least, highly relevant - historical fact, objectivity was essential. In the first place - the fist shot upward again - we had had twelve years of Nazism and thirty-five years of anti-Nazism. Karfeld did not understand what was so very wrong about Nazism that it should be punished eternally with the whole world's hostility. The Nazis had persecuted the Jews: and that was wrong. He wished to go on record as saying it was wrong. Just as he condemned Oliver Cromwell for his treatment of the Irish, the United States for their treatment of the blacks and for their campaigns of genocide against the Red Indians and the yellow peril of South East Asia; just as he condemned the Church for its persecution of heretics, and the British for the bombing of Dresden, so he condemned Hitler for what he had done to the Jews; and for importing that British invention, so successful in the Boer War: the con­centration camp.

  Directly in front of him Turner saw the young detective's hand softly feel for the partition of his leather coat; he heard again the little crackle of the radio. Once more he strained his eyes, scanning the crowd, the balcony, the alleys; once more he searched the doorways and the windows; and there was nothing. Nothing but the sentinels posted along the roof­tops and the militia waiting in their vans; nothing but a count­less throng of silent men and women, motionless as God's anointed before the Presence of the Word.

  Let us examine, Karfeld suggested - since it will help us to arrive at a logical and objective solution to the many questions which presently assail us - let us examine what happened after the war. After the war, Karfeld explained, it was only just that the Germans should be treated as criminals; and, because the Germans had practised racism, that their sons and grandsons should be treated as criminals too. But, because the Allies were kind people, and good people, they would go some way towards rehabilitating the Germans: as a very special treat, they would admit th
em to Nato.

  The Germans were shy at first; they did not want to rearm, many people had had enough of war. Karfeld himself belonged to that category: the lessons of Stalingrad were like acid in the young man's memory. But the Allies were deter­mined as well as kind. The Germans should provide the army, and the British and the Americans and the French would command it... And the Dutch... And the Norwegians... And the Portuguese; and any other foreign general who cared to command the vanquished:

  'Why: we might even have had African generals command­ing the Bundeswehr!'

  A few - they belonged to the front, to that protective ring of leather-coated men beneath the scaffold - a few started laughing, but he quelled them at once.

  'Listen! ' he told them. 'My friends, you must listen! That is what we deserved! We lost the war! We persecuted the Jews! We were not fit to command! Only to pay!' Their anger gradually subsided. 'That,' he explained, 'is why we pay for the British Army as well. And that is why they let us into Nato.'

  'Alan!'

  'I have seen them.'

  Two grey buses were parked beside the pharmacy. A flood­light touched their dull coachwork, and was moved away. The windows were quite black, sealed from inside.

  And we were grateful, Karfeld continued. Grateful to be admitted to such an exclusive club. Of course we were. The club did not exist; its members did not like us; the fees were very high; and as the Germans were still children they must not play with weapons which might damage their enemies; but we were grateful all the same, because we were Germans and had lost the war.

  Once more the indignant murmur rose, but he scotched it again with a terse movement of his hand. 'We want no emotion here,' he reminded them. 'We are dealing with facts!'

  High up, on a tiny ledge, a mother held her baby. 'Look down,' she was whispering. 'You will not see his like again.' In the whole square, nothing moved; the heads were still, staring with cavernous eyes.

  To emphasise his great impartiality, Karfeld once more drew back in the pulpit and, taking all his time, tilted his spectacles a little and examined the pages before him. This done, he hesitated, peered doubtfully downwards at the faces nearest him and deliberated, unsure how far he could expect his flock to follow what he was about to say.

  What then was the function of the Germans in this distin­guished club? He would put it this way. He would state the formula first and afterwards he would give one or two simple examples of the method by which it could be applied. The function of the Germans in Nato was briefly this: to be docile towards the West and hostile towards the East; to recognise that even among the victorious Allies there were good victors and bad victors...

  Again the laughter rose and fell. Der Klaus, they whispered, der Klaus knows how to make a joke; what a club that Nato is. Nato, the Market, it's all a cheat, it's all the same; they are applying the same principles to the Market which they applied to Nato. Klaus has told us so and that is why the Germans must stay away from Brussels. It is just another trap, it is. encirclement all over again...

  'That's Lésère,' de Lisle murmured.

  A small, greying man who obscurely reminded Turner of a bus conductor had joined them on the steps and was writing contentedly in his notebook.

  'The French counsellor. Big chum of Karfeld's.'

  About to return his gaze to the scaffold, Turner happened to look into the side street; and thus he saw for the first time the mad, dark, tiny army that waited for the signal.

  Directly across the square, assembled in the unlit side street, the silent concourse of men waited. They carried banners that were not quite black in the twilight and there stood before them, Turner was certain there stood before them, the rem­nants of a military band. The oblique arclights glinted on a trumpet, caught the laced panels of the drum. At its head stood a solitary figure; his arm, raised like a conductor's, held them motionless.

  Again the radio crackled, but the words were drowned in laughter as Karfeld made another joke; a harsh joke, enough to raise their anger, a reference to the decay of England and the person of the monarch. The tone was new and hard: a light blow on their backs, brisker, a purposeful caress, promis­ing the sting to come, tracing like a whip's end the little vertebrae of their political resentment. So England, with her allies, had re-educated the Germans. And who better quali­fied? After all, Churchill had let the savages into Berlin; Truman had dropped atom bombs on undefended cities; between them they had made a ruin of Europe: who better qualified, then, to teach the Germans the meaning of civi­lisation?

  In the alley, nothing had stirred. The leader's arm was still raised before the little band as he waited for the signal to begin the music.

  'It's the Socialists,' de Lisle breathed. 'They're staging a counter-demonstration. Who the devil let them in?'

  So the Allies set to work: the Germans must be taught how to behave. It was wrong to kill the Jews, they explained; kill the Communists instead. It was wrong to attack Russia, they explained; but we will protect you if the Russians attack you. It was wrong to fight for your borders, they explained; but we support your claims for the territories of the East.

  'We all know that kind of support!' Karfeld held out his hands, palms upwards. 'Here you are, my dear, here you are! You can borrow my umbrella as long as you like; until it rains!' Was it Turner's imagination or did he detect, in this piece of theatre, a hint of that wheedling tone which once in German music-halls traditionally denoted the Jew? They began to laugh, but again he silenced them.

  In the alley, the conductor's arm was still raised. Will he never tire, Turner wondered, of that gruesome salute?

  'They'll be murdered,' de Lisle insisted. 'The crowd will murder them!'

  'And so, my friends, this is what happened. Our victors in all their purity, and all their wisdom, taught us the meaning of democracy. Hurray for democracy. Democracy is like Christ; there is nothing you cannot do in the name of democracy.

  'Praschko,' Turner declared quietly, 'Praschko wrote that for him.'

  'He writes a lot of his stuff,' de Lisle said.

  'Democracy is shooting Negroes in America and giving them gold beds in Africa! Democracy is to run a colonial empire, to fight in Vietnam and to attack Cuba; democracy is to visit your conscience on the Germans! Democracy is to know that whatever you do, you will never, never be as bad as the Germans!' He had raised his voice to give the sign, the sign the band expected. Once more Turner looked across the crowd into the alley, saw the white hand, white as a napkin, fall lazily in the lamplight, glimpsed the white face of Siebkron himself as he quickly relinquished his place of command and withdrew into the shadow of the pavement, saw the first head turn in front of him, then a second, as he himself heard it also: the distant sound of music, of a percussion band, and men's voices singing; saw Karfeld peer over the pulpit and call to someone beneath him; saw him draw back into the furthest recess while he continued speaking, and heard, as Karfeld assumed his sudden tone of indignation, heard through all Karfeld's new anger and his high-pitched exhortation, through all the conjuration, the abuse and the encouragement, the unmistakable note of fear.

  'The Sozis!' the young detective cried, far out across the crowd. His heels were together and his leather shoulders drawn well back and he bellowed through cupped hands. 'The Sozis are in the alley! The Socialists are attacking us!'

  'It's a diversion,' Turner said, quite matter of fact. 'Sieb­kron's staging a diversion.' To lure him out, he thought; to lure out Leo and make him chance his hand. And here's the music to drown the shot, he added to himself, as the Marseillaise began. It's all set up to make him have a go.

  No one moved at first. The opening strains were barely audible; little, irrelevant notes played by a child on a mouth organ. And the singing which accompanied it was no more than the male chant from a Yorkshire pub on a Saturday night, remote and unconfident, proceeding from mouths unused to music; and to begin with the crowd really ignored it, because of its interest in Karfeld.

  But Karfeld had hear
d the music, and it quickened him remarkably.

  'I am an old man!' he shouted. 'Soon I shall be an old man. What will you say to yourselves, young men, when you wake in the morning? What will you say when you look at the American whore that is Bonn? You will say this: how long, young men, can we live without honour? You will look at your Government and say; you will look at the Sozis and say: must we follow even a dog because it is in office?'

  He quoted Lear, Turner thought absurdly, and the flood­lights were extinguished at one turn, at one black fall of the curtain: deep darkness filled the square, and with it, the louder singing of the Marseillaise. He detected the acrid smell of pitch carried on the night air, as in countless places the sparks flickered and wheeled away; he heard the whispered call and the whispered answer, he heard the order passed from mouth to mouth in hasty conspiracy. The singing and the music rose to a roar, picked up suddenly and quite deliberately by the loudspeakers: a mad, monstrous, plebeian, unsubtle roar, amplified and distorted almost beyond recognition, deafening and maddening.

  Yes, Turner repeated to himself with Saxon clarity, that is what I would do if I were Siebkron. I would create this diversion, rouse the crowd, and make enough noise to provoke him into shooting. The music boomed still louder. He saw the policeman turn and face him and the young detective hold up a hand in warning. 'Stay here, please, Mister Bradfield! Mister Turner, stay here please!' The crowd was whispering excitedly; all round them they heard the sibilant, greedy hiss.

  'Hands out of pockets, please!'

  Torches were lit all round them; someone had given the signal. They rose like wild hopes gilding the sullen faces with belief, making mad dreams of their prosaic features, setting into their dull eyes the devotion of apostles. The little band was advancing into the square; it could not have been more than twenty strong, and the army that marched in its wake was ragged and undecided, but now their music was everywhere, a Socialist terror magnified by Siebkron's loudspeakers.

 

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