I stole a glance at spirited, argumentative Gerda, across the white-clothed table between Frau Dieffenbach and her schoolboy brother Gunter. She sat submissively sipping her hock which, like indignation, turned her a delightful pink. Her father continued in English, 'Of course, it wasn't all hard work. We had our student clubs, with their coloured caps and regalia and all that. There was a good seasoning to our young lives of _saufen and raufen.'_
I could imagine the portly, jovial doctor drinking, if not duelling. He had learned my language while 'enjoying the hospitality of Old England', as he put it. He had sailed as surgeon aboard Admiral von Spee's cruiser Gneisenau, which on December 28 1914 had the bad luck to encounter Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee's squadron of battle-cruisers, when the Germans arrived to raid the British radio station on the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. The Gneisenau, the Scharnhorst and two more German cruisers were swiftly at the bottom, with their Admiral, woo of his men, and his two sons. Dr Dieffenbach was lucky. He was picked up by _HMS Inflexible,_ and spent the rest of the war practising among his fellow prisoners in a camp of huts near Oxford.
He resumed in German, 'We had to pass in surgery and medicine, though the attitude lingered since the Wars of Liberation that the physician was learned, the surgeon a mere butcher of men. And Germany was as riddled with charlatans as a leper with sores. We doctors had to form the…what would you call it, my dear chappie?' he interjected in English, using the awful expression from his days of captivity. _'Gesellschaft fьr Bekдmpfung der Kurpfushertums?'_
'The Anti-Quack Society, I suppose.'
He added gloomily, 'Well, since the War they seem to be flourishing better than ever.
Dr Dieffenbach was a product of the golden age of German medicine, which produced Hermann von Helmholtz, the descendant of William Penn, who invented the ophthalmoscope to reveal the retina of the human eye. Karl Thiersch, who perfected the paper-thin skin graft. Albert Frдnkel of Berlin, who discovered the cause of pneumonia. And the indefatigable Rudolf Virchow, pathologist, anthropologist and politician, who relaid the Berlin drains, studied tattooing and stood up to Bismarck. It was the age when German doctors, unlike German lawyers, interested themselves in history, philosophy and literature, and there were two orchestras exclusively of doctors in Berlin. It was the age which finished that weekend. The Nazis could not decapitate Albert Frдnkel because he had died in 1916, so during that summer they decapitated his bust.
I remarked in German that my host shared the same university as Professor Domagk.
'Oh yes, he was at Kiel after the War. He grew interested very early on in the natural defences of the body against infection, and how they might be reinforced-by some drug, for instance.' He took a mouthful of the straw-coloured wine, smacking his fleshy lips. 'Then Domagk moved to Greifswald University. That would be about 1922. Next, to Minster, to follow his same line of research. After that, Professor Hцrlein, head of I G Farben pharmaceuticals here in Elberfeld-' Dr Dieffenbach jerked his head in the direction of the factory-' discovered Domagk. Exactly as a talent scout in America discovers the latest film star.'
Frau Dieffenbach, as tall as Gerda, so fair and pale she seemed to me almost transparent, broke into our conversation with, 'Perhaps we've seen the end of the quack doctors. Standards will begin to improve all round now that Herr Hitler has got the power he wanted.'
Dr Dieffenbach nodded vigorously, prodding his napkin the firmer into his butterfly collar. 'People will have to start behaving themselves, and acting with some sense of responsibility. We've had enough of this stupid fighting between bosses and workers, between one political party and another. Herr Hitler gives us the chance, perhaps the last chance, of putting our country first instead of tearing it to pieces. And Herr Hitler achieved his full powers perfectly legally and within the constitution, mark you,' he continued in my direction. 'Despite all the spine-chilling stories put about by his enemies, of Storm Troopers seizing the Reich with their fists and boots. What happened in the Kroll Opera House last Thursday could have happened in your own House of Commons in London, Herr Elgar. Which you may already know to be an institution greatly admired by every thinking person in Germany.'
I acknowledged the compliment. The Mother of Parliaments certainly enjoyed the admiration of Adolf Hitler, who confessed warmly in _Mein Kampf, 'The dignity with which the Lower House there fulfilled its tasks impressed me immensely.'_ Sir Charles Barry's buildings beside the Thames incited his wilder enthusiasm, the sculpture and paintings thrust into its 1200 niches striking the Fьhrer as the British Empire's Hall of Fame. It was unfortunate that the British House of Commons was later burnt down on his orders, as the German one had just been on Hermann Gцring's.
'There was nothing constitutional in the slightest in Herr Hitler seizing full powers.' All four of us turned a startled glance at Gerda. She made this remark staring straight ahead, pinker than ever, fingers gripping the stem of her wine glass. 'It was a put-up job. Many more than 94 deputies would have voted against him, if they hadn't been frightened for their lives.'
Her father was scowling, unsure whether to be amused or affronted. 'My dear child, Hitler was dealing with Communists, not some debating society. Force must be met with force.'
'They're all tarred with the same brush, Communists or Nazis,' Gerda said quickly, looking frightened at herself. 'They're the ignorant led by the unscrupulous.'
'Let me tell you that the Communists wouldn't give a second thought to turning their guns on people like us, if Hitler weren't there to protect us.' He leant towards her, red-faced and angry. Her mother sat upright, looking shocked. Her little brother resumed eating industriously. 'How can you say a thing like that? As a German?'
'The Communists are Germans like us,' Gerda persisted.
'If you want your life directed from Moscow, you had better live it elsewhere than this house.'
She fell silent, staring at the tablecloth, knuckles so white against the glass that I feared she would break the stem.
Her father contemptuously blew out his lips. But he continued in a milder tone, 'Who would you rely on to defend us against the Communists, Frдulein? The Socialists wear the same red shirts, washed out. As for the Catholic parties, you might as well expect a ladies' sewing circle to round up a band of Sicilian brigands. We've seen enough of politicians dancing to tunes played outside our own frontiers. Hitler has taken full powers only to set Germany free.'
There was another silence, apart from the noise of Gunter eating. I hoped for her own sake that Gerda would hold her tongue, but she said quietly, 'Free from what?'
Dr Dieffenbach held up a stubby forefinger, angry again. 'Listen to me. You are too intelligent to misconstrue the truth, so I will assume that you have not read the newspapers very carefully. Herr Hitler has been granted full powers by the Reichstag. Correct! But hardly a blank cheque. It is to be for a strictly limited period of four years. And Herr Hitler has given his solemn promise that these powers will be used most sparingly. He has promised equally that the rights of the Church shall be respected. And the right of every State which composes the Reich. And above all, the rights of the President. Surely you could have foreseen Herr Hitler's respect for the presidency, from the photographs in the newspapers? When the two men-soldier in uniform, politician in frock coat-shook a solemn handshake in the Garrison Church at Potsdam last month, there were tears in Hitler's eyes as well as Hindenburg's.'
The brief life of the new Reichstag had begun with a theatrical excursion. Its rightful home a burnt-out shell, it had assembled above the remains of Frederick the Great. Everything had been organized by Dr Goebbels. The old Field-Marshal appeared gloriously in uniform, with Pikelhaube and a constellation of medals. Hitler, hardly a regular churchgoer, looked like a dyspeptic shopwalker.
Dr Dieffenbach unexpectedly extended the arm of friendship in my direction. 'The enemies of Germany are no longer the compatriots of Herr Elgar. What has Hitler already said? Why, that our natural ally in Europe is England! Had
the old politicians renounced to England the colonies and the seas, and spared her the edge of competition from our industry, England would have in her businesslike way given us a free hand in Russia. There would have been no bloody war. No English soldier would lie under the soil of France. Our enemies today are not even the French. They are so-called Germans. Jews, profiteers, debauchers, criminals. You'll soon see, Herr Hitler will set them an honest job of work, cleaning up their own filth.'
'I'll tell on you, I'll tell on you!' Gunter screeched out gleefully, pointing a finger vigorously at his sister, his mouth full of potato. 'Herr Esmarch at school said we were to report anyone at home who said anything against Hitler.'
'We've talked enough politics for one meal,' said Frau Dieffenbach hastily. 'It's not polite before Herr Elgar. The political goings-on inside other countries are always wearisome. Who is really interested in the details of quarrels in other families? The fact that they are quarrelling is doubtless interesting, but the causes are generally trivial and the arguments deployed always deadly dull.'
We all accepted this comforting parallel gratefully. Dr Dieffenbach grunted and poured himself some more wine. He turned the talk to safe, professional subjects, recounting at length the last meeting of the Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher and Arzte-the Congress of German Scientists and Physicians, the oldest of such societies in a country much given to lofty philosophical discussion of Nature's simple mechanics.
That night I went to Gerda's bedroom.
There were three rooms in the attic. One was shared by the pair of maids, the other two up a short stair for Gerda and myself. The wall between us was so thin that we lived in an acoustic intimacy which sometimes kept me hotly awake in the freezing darkness. I could hear the squeak of her cupboard opening, the scrape of coathangers with her heavy serge clothes along the rail-a most exciting sound, creating a vision of her in stockings and underwear, though an inaccurate and flattering one, my knowledge of these garments coming perforce from ladies' dress shop windows. My students today would think me unenterprising at not broaching the intimacy of that inch or two's lath and plaster, but in 1933 the bridal dress took firm precedence over the nightdress. I was anyway terrified at rousing with creaking boards the maids, or more horrifyingly Dr Dieffenbach himself.
That Sunday night I heard her light snap out, her bed creak, I could imagine hearing her breathing and the soft rustle of her limbs It grew towards one o'clock. Impulsively I crept from my door, tremblingly I opened hers.
She was not asleep, because she sat up at once in her black iron bed like a hospital cot, her feather-stuffed coverlet pulled round her chin
She whispered calmly, 'You mustn't.'
I left the door ajar. I sat on the edge of her bed in my brown flannel striped pyjamas from Marks and Spencers. I saw that she wore a white nightgown of some heavy material which covered her from neck to wrist as chastely as a surplice. I whispered back, 'I admired you tonight. The way you stood up for yourself.'
She said nothing for a moment. I noticed how her eyes shone in the faint light from the window above the bed. We were seldom in such proximity even fully dressed. But neither of us touched the other. She still smelt of household soap. 'You shouldn't have come into my room.'
I started shaking, less through emotion than because it was very cold. 'I couldn't go to sleep. I had to tell you.'
She shrugged her narrow shoulders under the white nightgown. I wanted to confess my yearning for her night after night, but I feared she would be affronted, or think me stupid. I had little practical experience of women. 'I shouldn't have contradicted my father.'
'I frequently contradict mine.'
'No, it wasn't right.'
'Of course it was right,' I told her in an urgent whisper. 'The Nazis are nothing but out-of-work clerks and penniless students, with a sprinkling of ruffians and criminals. Anyone can see that. And who is Hitler? Not a man of education and culture, like Papen. He's nothing but a corporal who managed to get himself decorated with the Iron Cross, as he's continually reminding everyone.'
'I should never have questioned my father's views. Especially like that, in front of my mother and Gunter.'
'Why shouldn't you?' I whispered more furiously. 'You're not a child. You're a grown woman who's entitled to her own opinions. Your parents are proud enough of your being a schoolteacher, they can hardly object to your claiming a mind of your own.'
'You don't understand.' She shook her head, her hair appearing pure white in two plaits over her shoulders. 'If I argue with my father, it makes it hard for him to preserve proper discipline, to keep order in the house.'
'To keep order?' It was a mystifying conception. I said, 'Would you like to come to the cinema again?'
'You're always asking. Perhaps next month.'
'Or go dancing?' I suggested daringly.
'I can't dance. Not a step.'
'Neither can I, in fact.'
'Why are you never serious with me?'
'With my prospects in life I can't afford to be serious with women. I can only afford flirtation.'
'You forget that I have my self-respect.'
'You mean your self-distrust?'
She responded to this only, 'Someone might hear us. That would be terrible.'
'Next Sunday I'll take you to the Zoo for tea.'
'I'll see.'
'Promise?' I urged.
'I'll have to ask Mama.'
I made to kiss her, she tipped her cheek, and I dodged on to her mouth.
'Mister Jim, no!' she protested under her breath.
'You are so beautiful, Gerda, just like Marlene Dietrich.'
I saw from the shade of a smile in the darkness that she took the compliment seriously. I stayed where I was. She whispered fiercely, 'You must go.'
I quoted the old Viennese saying, _Ich leibe dich, and du schlдfst'-_I love you and you sleep.
The words made her draw in her breath, as though I had cut her. 'You shouldn't speak of such serious things.'
'Come to England with me one day.'
'Now you're telling fairy tales.'
'I'm not. The War's been over fifteen years. The people of Europe must soon get tired of shouting names at one another across their frontiers. Who outside a madhouse could want another war?'
'One day, perhaps.' She repeated wearily, 'Perhaps.'
I went back to bed. The chaste excursion had so drained me that I fell asleep at once.
9
Shared intimacy between a man and a woman can be fully recalled by a glance held a second more than necessary. But Gerda never hinted that my intrusion into her bedroom was more than a dream. A month went by. We were walking towards the Schwebebahn on our way to work, at eight in the morning of the last Friday in April. She said abruptly, 'You were quite right about Hitler that night. About him being only a jumped-up corporal. Why, he isn't even German! He's an Austrian peasant from Braunau am Inn, everyone knows that.'
'I thought he was from Vienna?'
'He was only a vagabond there, shouting his mouth off that the Army hadn't lost the war, but been stabbed in the back by the civilians-'
'Which to his mind consisted only of Socialists, Communists and Jews-'
'Exactly. Anyone would have imagined him to have fought the war as a general. He picked up a following in the gutter, and wouldn't be throwing his weight about today if the Munich policemen had shot a little straighter ten years ago.'
She was talking of the famous Beer Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923, by then written with illuminated letters in Nazi mythology. It had been a squalid affair. Hitler had marched with General Ludendorff at the head of his Storm Troopers on the Munich War Ministry. Within half an hour, he had sixteen of his followers dead, Ludendorff arrested and himself cringing on the cobblestones. As a final indignity, the badly wounded Hermann Gцring was succoured in a nearby Jewish bank.
'We've all the natural resources we need to make us rich and powerful again, any of my schoolchildren could tell you th
at.' We had passed the Zoo, where I had in the end taken her for tea, and were hurrying up the wooden steps to the platform. She was in her discouraging black serge, with black lisle stockings and a big black leather bag. 'But Hitler's a braggart just like the Kaiser, and he'll get us into the same trouble, you mark my words. Teutomania is too expensive a luxury these days.'
'A braggart? I've heard him called a second Martin Luther.'
'Oh, Martin Luther! He was a disastrous failure. He never settled our religious differences and united our country, like your Tudor Kings and Queens. He divided it the more. Don't forget that I am a Catholic, Mister.'_
We reached the platform. 'Anyway, I shall have to support the Nazis,' she continued more soberly. 'I'm a schoolteacher, I'm employed by the State. If I'm thought unreliable politically I shall never see promotion, more likely I'll find myself dismissed. That's how everyone sees the situation at school. Though to tell the truth, most of the teachers needed little encouragement to become the wildest enthusiasts for Herr Hitler. And perhaps he won't turn out as bad as he seems. You've heard one of our German proverbs-Nothing is served as hot as it's cooked?'
'Yes. Almost everybody seems to be applying it to Hitler.'
'Well, what odds does it make?' she added resignedly. 'I'll raise my arm as the Nazis march past like everyone else. A good many heathens and sinners bow to the altar in church. Who wants to lose a job these days?'
We both became aware in the same instant of a young man staring at us. He was pale with a line of black moustache, in a dark suit, well-pressed but threadbare, and a curly-brimmed trilby, perhaps a clerk or a shop assistant. I was frightened by the hostility of his eyes. It was before, but not long before, everyone in Germany had to be careful what they said, indoors or out. But it was common knowledge that sharp words shot bravely against the Nazis were arrows which could provoke artillery. Doubtless the shabby fellow had no interest in us, or was reflecting on a morning row with his wife or had a hangover. But we instinctively stayed silent until the linked pair of cars slid into the station on their monorail. It was Rider's lasting bounty that every German grew suspicious of the next.
THE INVISIBLE VICTORY Page 6