by Stephen Fry
“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah, right. Absolutely. They’re at my house in Newnham, I was just on my way to go print it out.”
“To go print it out? Is this whole country turning American? Very well, then. Go and print it out. I shall expect it this afternoon. Minus sensationalist drivel, if we please.”
Back at the house in Newnham, after a doomed search for Oily-Moily CDs and tapes, I sat down and had me a breakfast of fried bacon, not very famous Scotch pancakes, fried eggs (over easy) drenched in a full quarter pint of Vermont maple syrup.
Burping contentedly with this happy combination of flavors, I went to my study and switched on the computer.
Das Meisterwerk was there. With corrections. All properly done. I started to read it and gave up, frantic with boredom, after the second paragraph. A thought struck me and I switched to my Web browser.
Once the ppp connection was open, I tapped out http://www.princeton.edu and hunted through the opening page for a directory of students. I came across something calling itself spigot and found the page http://www.princeton.edu/~spigot/pguide/students.html.
I tried searching for Burns and, aside from an unexciting list of library books covering the Scottish poet, I got no further.
Jane wasn’t there either, but then she could hardly have settled in yet. I closed the connection and thought for a while, feeling suddenly rather alone and empty.
Above me I saw the line of books I had used for my thesis. Endless studies of Nazism, academic periodicals on nineteenth-century Austro-Hungary, a thick edition of Mein Kampf, bristling with Post-it notes. The photograph of Adolf Hitler on the front cover of Alan Bullock’s biography stared at me.
I looked back at it.
“Somehow, mein fine Führer,” I said to him, “I let you live. What does that make me? And somehow, because of you, Rudolf Gloder never rose to prominence. What did you do to him? Did he perish in the Night of the Long Knives? Did he turn up with you at that meeting of the puny little German Workers’ Party in the backroom of the Munich brewery? Was he about to speak when you rose to your feet and stole his thunder? Did he creep away, ambitions frustrated? Perhaps you never met him at all. Oh no, you were in the same regiment in the first war, weren’t you? Maybe you got him killed somehow. Maybe that was it. But if you knew, if you had the faintest idea with what loathing your name is spoken all over the world, what would that do to you? Would you laugh? Or would you protest? Do they play television programs for you in hell and make you see how history defeated you? Are you forced to watch films and read books in which all your ideas and all your glory are shown for the vulgar, repulsive drivel they were? Or are you waiting, waiting for another one of you to rise up like vomit? I’m sick of you. Sick of Gloder who never was. Sick of the lot of you. Sick of history. History sucks. It sucks.”
I slammed the book facedown and picked up the phone.
“What’s the number for international inquiries, please?”
Jane did not, in truth, sound overjoyed to hear from me. On the other hand she didn’t sound too pissed off either. Just faintly bored and faintly amused, as usual.
“It wouldn’t occur to you, of course, that it’s six o’clock in the morning over here, would it?”
“Oh, bugger. I’m sorry, hun. I clean forgot. Shall I call back later?”
“Well now that I’m up, I might as well talk to you. I suppose you wrung this number out of Donald, did you?”
“No, no. Donald was staunch. He would have laid down his life to protect you. You know that. I found it out all by myself.”
“Oh. What a clever little Puppy we are.”
“So, you enjoying yourself then?”
“Is that why you rang me, to ask that?”
“I miss you, that’s all. I’m lonely.”
“Oh, Pup, please don’t work on me. Not over the phone.”
“Sorry. No, really I rang to ask if you could do me a favor.”
“Is it money?”
“Money? No of course it’s not money! When have I ever asked you for money?”
“In chronological order, or order of magnitude?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I want you to look up a junior-year student for me.”
“You want me to do what?”
“His name is Steve Burns. I thought he was in Dickinson House, but he’s not listed on the Web page. He breakfasts pretty regularly at PJ’s Pancake House on Nassau, and sometimes goes to the A and B for the odd glass of Sam Adams.”
“Pup, you’re not telling me you know Princeton? I thought that when you went to Austria last year it was the first time you’d ever been anywhere more exciting than Inverness.”
“Oh, I know stuff,” I said airily. “You’d be amazed at what I know. Oh, and if you happen by PJ’s yourself, you might give a message to Jo-Beth. She waitresses there. You might let her know that Ronnie Cain has got the hots for her, but she’s to look out. He’s got crabs. Crabs and a tiny dick. Mind you tell her that.”
“Pup, have you been drinking?”
“Drinking? Me?”
“It was Suicide Sunday yesterday, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me you went to the Seraph party.”
“I might have looked in, yes . . .”
“And drank one glass of vodka punch and then threw up all over the lawn just like last week. You go back to bed at once, Pup. By the way, have you finished your thesis yet?”
“All done,” I said, and as I spoke, my hand went to the mouse by the keyboard and I dragged the Meisterwerk file to the trash can. “All finished and done and dusted and done.” I went to the Special Menu and selected “Empty Wastebasket.”
The Wastebasket contains 1 item. It uses 956K of disk space. Are you sure you want to permanently remove it?
“Oh yes,” I said, clicking “Okay.” “All done and dusted. No question.”
“You are drunk. I’ll call you sometime. Just remember, Pup. Stay off the vodka.”
I replaced the receiver and looked at the screen.
Well. That was that. A nerd from the computing department could always rescue it if I changed my mind.
But I didn’t think that I would change my mind.
I picked up the telephone again and dialed.
“Angus Fraser-Stuart.”
“Oh, hello Dr. Fraser-Stuart. It’s Michael Young here.”
“How may I serve?”
“That thesis of mine . . .”
“You have the corrections for me?”
“Well, I know now that you weren’t really doing it justice.”
“Your pardon, sir?”
“Do you still have it?”
“The original? I believe so, yes. In a desk somewhere. Wherefore do we ask?”
“Well I wonder, if it isn’t too much bother, if you could take it out and have a look at it.”
He tutted and dropped the phone and I could hear drawers opening, and in the background, strange gamelan music plinking, plonking and plunking away.
“I have it before me. What new thing am I supposed to see in it? Are there historical brilliances written in the margin in invisible ink that have only now emerged? What?”
“I’m sorry, I should have asked you to do this weeks ago . . .”
“Do what, young Young? My time is not wholly without value.”
“If you take the first twenty-four pages . . .”
“First twenty-four pages . . . yes. Done. Now what? Set them to music?
“No. What I want you to do is to roll them up very, very tightly until it forms a tube. Then I want you to take that tube and push it right up your fat, vain, complacent arse and keep it there for a week. I think that way you’ll appreciate it more. Good afternoon.”
I dropped the receiver onto its cradle and giggled for a while.
The phone rang. I let it ring. I wa
s busy at the computer. Typing out the lyrics of an Oily-Moily number.
Maybe I could make my fortune in rock and roll. It was possible. Anything was possible.
After fifteen minutes or so, I got up and wandered from room to room.
I had always loved this little house. Handy for Grantchester Meadows and the long grass, but not too far from the center of things, that’s how I’d always thought of it. Yet now it felt miles from anywhere.
Or maybe I felt miles from anywhere. What was wrong with me? What was the hole in the middle of me? What was missing?
I heard the letter flap open and close and heard something slap onto the doormat. I went through to investigate.
Only the Cambridge Evening News, I saw, peering down. I must remember to cancel that, I told myself. No point wasting money.
I stood at the kitchen table and started to clear away the breakfast things. Was this going to be it, then? A lifetime of clearing away one’s own breakfast plates? Place settings for one. Dishwasher set to “Economy wash,” vacuum stopper for the wine bottle, sleeping in the middle of the bed.
Suddenly a little goblin popped into my head and began to dance.
No . . . it wasn’t possible. I shook my head.
The goblin, unconcerned, continued his jig.
Look, I said to myself. I’m not even going to give this demonic little sprite the satisfaction of going through and checking. It’s not possible. It is not possible. So there.
The goblin’s sharp heels began to cause me pain.
Oh, all right, damn it. I’ll show you. It’s nothing. Nothing.
I stamped through to the hall, furious with myself for giving in. I bent down, picked up the paper and returned to the kitchen.
It’s nothing, I said. It’ll be absolutely nothing.
I put the paper down on the table, still not daring to check. But anything to silence that damned persistent goblin.
amnesia victim admitted to addenbrooke’s
I really do not know why I am bothering with this, I said to myself. I mean it’s pathetic. Obviously just some sad old wino wanting a bed for the night. Why I should even bother . . .
A student from St. John’s College was admitted to Addenbrooke’s Hospital last night, after he was found by Cambridge police wandering around the marketplace in a confused state during the early hours of yesterday morning. He was found to be completely sober, but with no idea of who he was. Drug tests proved negative. The unique aspect of the case is that, while the student (who has not been named until his family have been contacted) is a known undergraduate of St. John’s and comes from Yorkshire, he was speaking in what one observer called “a completely flawless American accent.” A spokesman for Addenbrooke’s said this morning . . .
I flew to the phone book.
“Addenbrooke’s Hospital?”
“The student!” I said breathlessly. “The student who came in last night. The amnesiac. I need to speak to him.”
“Are you a friend of his?”
“Yes,” I said. “A good friend.”
“Putting you through . . .”
“Butterworth Ward.”
“The student,” I said. “Can I speak to him? The amnesiac.”
“Are you a friend of his?”
“Yes!” I nearly shouted. “I’m his best friend.”
“And what is your name, please?”
“Young. Can I speak to him?”
“I’m afraid he discharged himself a few hours ago.”
“What?”
“And if you really are his best friend, and you see him, could you persuade him to readmit himself? He is in need of care. You can call the—”
I didn’t listen to the rest.
I grabbed my keys and ran to the hallway.
It was so simple. I knew what it was that I wanted.
So simple. The whole rushing tornado of history funneled to a single point that stood like an infinitely sharpened pencil hovering over the page of the present. The point was so simple.
It was love. There just wasn’t anything else. All the rage and fury and violence and wind of the whirlpool, sucking up so much hope and hurling so many lives apart, in its center it reached down towards now and towards love.
I remembered a story that Leo had told me once. About a father and son, prisoners in Auschwitz, toward the end. They had each agreed, miserable as the rations were, that they would eat only half the food they were given. The rest they would hoard and hide somewhere for the moment they knew might be coming, the moment of the death march into Germany.
One evening the son returned from labor and his father called him to his side.
“My son,” he said. “I have done something very dreadful. The food we have been hoarding . . .”
“What about it?” said his son, alarmed.
“A couple arrived yesterday. They had managed somehow to smuggle in a prayer book. They gave me the prayer book in exchange for the food.”
And do you know what the son did? He hugged his father to him and they wept with love. And that night, which was Passover, as the father and son read from the book, their whole room celebrated a Seder together.
I don’t know why I remembered that as I hurried to the hallway. I could have remembered stories where sons killed their fathers for a drink of water. Not every story that matters is a weepy, religious tale of goodness shining out in the dark.
It just reminded me of that point. That simple point to which history tends despite its violence, despite itself.
Now. Love. That’s all there was.
In the past it had been fun for me, but no more. That was history. Maybe it wouldn’t last, maybe it wouldn’t work. But that was the future.
Now. Love.
I had opened the door and was about to charge from the house when I heard the phone ringing.
I stood there for ten seconds undecided.
It could be the hospital. Probably just calling me back using Caller ID. Should I answer it?
Maybe he’s found out my number, though? It wouldn’t be that hard. It could be him . . . it might be him.
I raced back to the study and snatched up the phone.
“Yes?” I panted. “Is that you?”
“It most certainly is me,” said Fraser-Stuart.
“Oh, go fuck yourself in chocolate,” I bellowed and slammed the phone down, disgusted.
“In chocolate?” said a voice behind me. “You are so weird, Mikey.”
I spun round. He looked a little pale and tired. The hair was longer of course and I noted the beginnings of a small goatee-style beard.
“The door was open,” he said apologetically.
I stared at him.
“Well, Mikey? Aren’t you gonna say anything?”
I approached him cautiously, afraid that at any moment he might disappear, that the tide that had flung him towards me would reach out and pull him back.
“So where’s the Mardi Gras?” he said. “The bookstores? What are we waiting for? Give me some Ecstasy and let’s get out there and dance.”
THE BEGINNING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Real historians will know that Hans Mend, Ernst Schmidt, Ignaz Westenkirchner, Hugo Gutmann et al. all fought on the Western Front alongside Gefreiter Hitler during the Great War. Only Rudolf Gloder is an invention. Colonel Baligand and the rest were real. The details of the life and career of SS Dr. Bauer are closely based on those of his mentor, the real-life doctor Johannes Paul Kremer, who was captured by the British and did keep a diary of his three months at Auschwitz, horrific extracts from which can be read in that astonishing and terrifying testament to Hannah Arendt’s view of “the banality of evil,” Those Were the Days.
Gloder’s introduction to the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei exactly matches that of Adolf Hitler’s
fateful visit on 12th September, 1919, to the Sternecker Brewery in Munich, where he heard the same speakers Gloder hears in the novel and rose, at the same time, to his feet to address the tiny gathering that was to become the nucleus of the Nazi Party.
A bibliography would be out of place here, but I would recommend to anyone Professor Alan Bullock’s definitive Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Daniel Goldhagen’s brilliant Hitler’s Willing Executioners as well as the above mentioned Those Were the Days.
If I have made geographical or technical errors in describing Princeton, a place I spent three happy months two years ago, then I have the somewhat slippery excuse that the Princeton described in Making History is a Princeton that dwells in an alternate reality.
My gratitude as always to my friend and publisher Sue Freestone at Hutchinson, to Anthony Goff, to Lorraine Hamilton and, as always, to two Jos and a colleague.
—SJF