by Gee, Maurice
‘The files are interesting,’ Moser said, very dry.
I told him yes, I had read them too, Willi’s and mine, and von Schaukel’s and Hoch’s (the enemy), but had not looked at his because I felt it should stay private.
‘I have not your finer feelings,’ he said.
‘But there’s nothing in Willi’s about me.’
‘Ah, you did not look far enough. There are other files. They deal with the detention camps.’ He went to another room and came back with a sheaf of photocopies. ‘You will not like it, Josef. I did not like it either. But I was not surprised. I thought he was up to something like this.’
The copies were from ‘Secret file, part 2: Commandant’s file’. The first sheet Moser showed me was a letter to the commandant: ‘I have to thank you for your letter of the 15th inst. enclosing the list of German and Austrian internees prepared by Gauss. This will form an interesting record and may be of use in other ways. Would you kindly thank Gauss for what he has done.’ It was signed by someone called Wilson, for the Director, Security Intelligence.
Next came a list, and I recognised the names; and of course went straight to mine: ‘Mandl, Josef. Austrian Jew. 5, B.’ I looked at Moser for an explanation.
‘See, here I am,’ he said. ‘I am a German Jew. 3, C. And Willi, look at Willi, he does not leave himself out: German. 5, A.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Here is the key.’ He handed me another sheet, and I reproduce it from memory:
1 – active Nazi
2 – Nazi sympathiser
3 – opportunist
4 – indifferent
5 – anti-Nazi
6 – German nationalist
A – intellectual
B – average mentality
C – low mentality
D – sub-normal
‘You see,’ Moser said, ‘you are an anti-Nazi Austrian Jew of average mentality.’
‘And you,’ I said, working it out.
‘An opportunist German Jew of low mentality.’
‘What is Willi?’
‘He is an anti-Nazi German intellectual.’
We laughed. ‘So,’ I said, ‘now I know, I’m only average.’
‘And I, at least, am not sub-normal,’ Moser said.
‘Opportunist?’ I said.
‘Oh, that is not the worst. I did not know that Willi had such a vocabulary. Look here.’
He handed me the rest of the papers and I saw what he meant: fanatic, twister, double dealer, coward, liar, neurotic, cosmopolitan, religious crank, snob, sexual pervert, cheat, and more. Moser was the twister, Hoch the sexual pervert, and I the snob (among other things).
I find snob a hard word. I repudiate the charge, and I think my mentality is better than average too. I do not recognise myself in Willi’s paragraphs: ‘Mandl is good-natured and well-meaning but lacks intelligence and strength of will. He is easily led. Politically he is naive, mistaking the wish for the deed. In Vienna he was a member of Stalinist anti-Trotskyist youth groups, but is ruled by self-interest and will betray his so-called beliefs for personal advantage.’ And so on for half a page. This is not me – but I see Willi behind the lines and I laugh at him and say, That’s the stuff, Willi.
He must have worked hard at these little biographies. Someone from the commandant’s office helped him with his English. I rather like his final advice that I am no danger to New Zealand’s security and should not be deported after the war. ‘Mandl will become a good New Zealander,’ Willi says. After all the bad things he had written he must have enjoyed telling them where I belonged.
I make no judgement. All this seems of a piece with Willi. I knew that he believed he was stooping down to me. I can, if I try, find an argument for him: he was getting the Nazis – and he certainly got them, wanted deportation for the lot – and sacrificed his followers so as not to seem partisan. But I don’t try. I don’t need to argue for Willi. I love him, that is all. Without knowing him I would be less than I am.
Moser, who was not a follower, not a friend, comes out worse than me, but he laughs too.
‘Think of it, I gave him twenty-five pounds.’
I won’t start visiting the National Archives. Instead I will play bowls. I won’t try to change Kenny and turn him into healthier ways. What he does is base, I believe. He has no work, even though he puts in long hours. I will keep on hoping that he comes to see it for himself; and that, one day, he will understand what he did to Julie and, if it’s possible, know her again. I will try to stay away from down there and live up here, in the country of the natural affections, where I have been both uneasy and at home. At home with Nancy. With everyone else I’ve had to keep renewing my visa. How I wish it had been my native land.
Moser became restless at the end of my visit. He wanted me gone, and I found the reason when his grand-daughter came in. He did not mean to share the girl with me. She was in her school uniform and, I thought, might have been Avis Greenough, who taught me my vocabulary.
‘Josef is just going,’ Moser said.
‘Oh,’ she said, a happy girl, ‘I don’t mind making lunch for two.’
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘mine is waiting for me.’ I said goodbye and promised to call again, and the girl, showing me to the door, whispered, ‘Please do. He’s got no friends in Wellington.’
She loves him, but no more than Elizabeth loves me; and, perhaps, than Julie loves me, her Grandpa Joe.
She digs, bending her back. She digs like a navvy. Elizabeth does the fine work, planting the seedlings and the seeds. When they come inside Julie will dance to her African music, which I’m tired of now but pleased to hear – hear her feet stepping on the floor. Her hyacinths are withered, but that means nothing, they’re only flowers. When she kisses me she does it properly, with no finger in between. In a little while she is running me down to bowls in her pink car. I am looking forward to that. She drives fast. We’ll whip down the top road as though we’re in a Ferrari and pull up at the green with a screech of tyres. That will make Clive and Dennis stare.
I won, though only just. Afterwards Clive asked us home for a glass of beer. He lives only two doors down from the club. I never knew that. It’s next door to the house where I lived in the back yard in a lean-to shed. The lean-to is gone and so is Wilf White’s garden. There are flats built there, two storeys high. Housewives at their dishes watch us play. Clive lives in a back yard too, in a caravan, which he keeps as neat as a matchbox, spick and span, all with one arm. His daughter waved at us from the house as we went by. He has three daughters, he told me, and a dozen grandchildren scattered here and there. A great-grandson too. We congratulated each other, although silently for Dennis’s sake. He has only his faith and his cigarettes.
I telephoned Julie and told her where to find me. We drank beer from Clive’s tiny fridge, and talked a bit of this and that: three old men sitting together. I’ve an idea, though, that when I left Clive and Dennis were on the edge of politics and religion. Perhaps I’ll share those arguments next time. There’s a thing or two that I can say.
Julie called and drove me home.
Elizabeth is baking bread.
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ISBN: 978-1-74-228793-5