The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  He went into the drawing room and looked through the records. The phonograph satisfied him only when he could play music that he had already heard in live performance. He remembered, in the early years of his marriage, being taken by the Pringsheims to see Leo Slezak in Lohengrin. He found one aria from the opera, “In fernem Land,” sung by Slezak. He remembered his father-in-law applauding too loudly when Slezak had sung it at the opera house in Munich, causing those around them to glare.

  It was the yearning in the voice that made him think about what could now so easily be lost. And a feeling too of a striving towards light or knowledge in what Wagner had written, something tentative and unsure, but focused too, reaching out into the spirit.

  He bowed his head. The war now being threatened, he thought, was not caused by a misunderstanding. It was not as though the representatives of all the parties could meet and slowly find common ground. The other countries hated Germany and wanted it defeated. That would be the cause of war, he thought. And Germany had become powerful not only in its military might and its industry but in its deepening sense of its own soul, the intensity of its somber self-interrogation. He listened to the aria conclude and saw that no one outside Germany would ever understand what it meant to be in this room now, and what strength and solace this music gave to those under its spell.

  The next morning, as he went into the city center, people who had read his books came up to him to shake his hand as though he were somehow one of their leaders. Already, men in uniform marched in the streets. In a café, when some soldiers came in, he noticed how young they were, and fresh, and how polite they were to the staff. They moved with dignity and tact, making sure that they did not disturb him as he read his newspaper.

  He tried to write something about what war might mean for Germany, but, as the afternoon wore on, he realized that he should return to Bad Tölz. He found Katia openly distressed at the prospect of war. Over supper, she asked him about the builders and the bathroom. He did not tell her about his evening alone with the poetry and the music, or that he had started an essay on the war.

  In the morning, he found Gähler standing belligerently at the door of his shop.

  “I have all the papers for you. Germany will declare war today. That much is clear. It is a proud moment for our nation.”

  He spoke with such certainty that Thomas recoiled from him.

  “It is right to be nervous,” Gähler went on. “War cannot be taken lightly, although there are some who seem to think so.”

  He looked at Thomas accusingly. Thomas wondered if there was something in one of his books that had offended the newsagent.

  “Am I right in thinking that you are the brother of one Heinrich Mann?”

  Thomas nodded as Gähler went into the shop and returned with a left-wing Berlin newspaper from two days earlier.

  “This sort of thing will have to be censored,” he said.

  Heinrich’s article began by insisting that there was no such thing as victory in a war. There were only casualties, only the dead and injured. He went on to bemoan the rise of military spending in Germany and the lack of spending on things that might improve people’s lives. The article ended by stating that if the Kaiser could not pull back from war, then the German people should make their priorities clear.

  “Sedition,” Gähler said. “A stab in the back. He should be arrested.”

  “My brother is an internationalist,” Thomas said.

  “He is an enemy of the people.”

  “Yes, it might be best if he remained silent until the war is won.”

  Gähler looked at him sharply to make sure that he was not speaking in jest.

  “I had a brother and all this was to be his,” Gähler said.

  He pointed to the small shop as though it were an estate in the countryside.

  “And I was to work on a pig farm. But then he decided to go to America. No one ever knew why. We had one postcard from him. Nothing else. So that is why I am standing here. We all have brothers.”

  * * *

  It seemed almost natural that Thomas himself would be declared unfit for active service, as would Heinrich, as, indeed, would Gähler. But his brother Viktor, at twenty-four, was signed up, as was Katia’s brother Heinz.

  In Bad Tölz, Thomas found that Gähler had been repeating remarks he had made in support of the war. One day, as he and Katia were on the main street, a passing group of middle-aged men saluted him. One of them moved forward to tell him that Germany needed writers like him in this time of crisis. When they heard this, the others cheered.

  “What did he mean?” Katia asked.

  “I think he means he is glad that I am not Heinrich.”

  When Thomas and Katia came to Munich from Bad Tölz to attend the wedding of Viktor, who wanted to marry before he went to the front, he found a lightness in the air, a kind of joy. In the train, which was overcrowded, soldiers who were seated immediately stood up if a civilian appeared. Many civilians, including Thomas himself, insisted that, no, the soldiers should take the seats. One soldier, standing on a bench, addressed the carriage.

  “We are in the service of Germany. That is what our uniform means. We wish to stand rather than sit to show our determination to serve.”

  The other men in uniform cheered, as the civilians applauded. Thomas found that he had tears in his eyes.

  At the restrained wedding ceremony, his mother told him that Heinrich had met a Czech actress and was also planning to marry.

  “She is called Mimi, which I think is a lovely name.”

  Thomas did not respond.

  “I didn’t read that article he wrote,” his mother continued, “but my neighbors did. This is the time for us all to pull together. I am so proud of Viktor.”

  Lula and her husband drank too much, Löhr telling Katia to advise her father to invest in war bonds.

  “It would be a good way of putting paid to any suspicion that he might not support the war.”

  “Why would he not support the war?” Katia asked.

  “Is he not Jewish? Or was his father not Jewish?”

  * * *

  Katia became an expert on the black market. She developed a network of suppliers and a knowledge of what was available. She said that she could tell how the war was proceeding by the price of eggs, but then her theory was disproved when eggs could not be bought at all, even at exorbitant prices.

  Erika and Klaus were under strict orders not to sing any songs or make any comments on the war, even in the privacy of the house.

  “They are sending disobedient little boys to the front,” Thomas said.

  “Indeed they are,” Katia said.

  The distance between Thomas’s study and the living quarters of the house became longer, he thought, in the first few months of the war. He banned children even from the corridor outside. And Klaus Pringsheim visited more freely. He played the piano, amused the children and kept the conversation light, but he always managed to insert some barbed remark about the war effort or a speech made by a military leader. Thomas was careful never to get into an argument with him. Soon, if his brother-in-law was in the house, he did not join the company at all.

  In his study, Thomas could return to the books he loved. In the confusion created by the war, however, he could no longer work on the novel about the sanatorium. Instead, he struggled with the article about the meaning of the war for Germany and its culture. He wished sometimes that he knew more, not having read any political philosophy and having a sketchy knowledge of German philosophy.

  Since his marriage, he had remained within the family circle, avoiding other writers and literary gatherings. Katia would keep an eye out for anyone who was trying to win his friendship and deal with them suspiciously. Nothing lowered his spirits more than a writer wishing to discuss what might be done for his career.

  A few times in the year before the war when he was approached by the writer Ernst Bertram, he thought it was because of Death in Venice. Perhaps Bertram, who was
homosexual, believed that Thomas was a kindred spirit. And then he thought that Bertram was seeking advancement. But Bertram, it turned out, was interested in Germany and in philosophy. He had read widely and had many strong opinions. He did not want anything from Thomas other than his attention.

  Bertram’s references, as he discussed current events, were lofty. He seldom made a point without quoting Nietzsche; he could refer to Bismarck and Metternich as much as Plato and Machiavelli. He was precise when he mentioned a source; he could almost summon up the number of the page on which a certain line had appeared.

  Katia did not warm to Bertram.

  “He is very interested in you,” she said. “More than is necessary. Sometimes, he is like a large dog looking for approval, his tongue hanging out. And at other times I think he has plans to run away with you.”

  “To where?”

  “Valhalla,” she said.

  “He knows a great deal.”

  “Yes, and he knows how to be polite, and then he averts his eyes. But he only averts them from me. I think he is interested in male friendship. He is too Germanic!”

  “Is there something wrong with that?”

  “I would imagine so!”

  Slowly, Bertram became a regular visitor to the house, getting to know the children and the servants. He was the only one allowed into Thomas’s study if he chanced to call in the morning.

  Bertram spoke of Germany’s destiny, the deep roots that culture had in her soil, the way in which German music expressed and uplifted the German spirit. Gradually, instead of discussing the work of Nietzsche, about whom Bertram was writing a treatise, they began to discuss Germany’s singularity, how her very cultural strength caused her neighbors to isolate her. The only solution to this, Bertram believed, was war. Once the war was won, then Germany could exert her influence throughout Europe.

  Thomas agreed that the operas of Wagner or the writings of Nietzsche, in all their excitement and sense of longing, were manifestations of the German spirit, a spirit that was all the more palpable and forceful for being unsettled, irrational and filled with internal strife. When Bertram responded by insisting that the German belief in soul could never be easily content with simple democracy, Thomas found himself nodding.

  Bertram made no secret of the fact that he had a male partner; he managed to intimate that they even shared a bed. Sometimes, when he spoke, Thomas found himself wondering what this ungainly man would look like naked. He must wake in the morning with this other man beside him. Thomas pictured their thin hairy legs entwined, their lips kissing. The image fascinated him, but it also made him recoil. He would not get much pleasure from sleeping with Ernst Bertram.

  Thomas thought that he might write a short book about Germany and the war. Gradually, the projected volume became longer and more ambitious. While he had always involved Katia in his novels and stories, reading sections aloud to her when completed, Thomas could not so easily discuss this political book with her, nor indeed read to her from it.

  “Can you imagine if Klaus and Golo were old enough to be in the war and we were here waiting each day for news of them?” she asked. “And all because of some idea.”

  * * *

  When their fifth child, Elisabeth, was born, it was natural that Ernst Bertram be asked to be her godfather. By then, he was the only friend that Thomas had.

  As he followed the progress of the war and published a number of articles supporting the German struggle, Thomas got comfort from being part of a movement that included workers as much as businessmen, and people from all parts of Germany. How could he have persisted in writing a novel when all the values he cared about were under threat from countries that included Russia, a half-civilized police state, and France, still nourishing itself on the poisoned dreams of its eighteenth-century revolution?

  The war, he wrote, would rid Europe of corruption. Germany was warlike out of morality, not out of vanity or glory-seeking or imperialism. Germany would emerge freer and better than it was. But if Germany were to be defeated, he warned, Europe would never have peace or rest. Only Germany’s victory, he wrote, could guarantee the peace of Europe.

  It pleased him, once this article was published, to receive letters from soldiers at the front to say how much his words had inspired them. And then, encouraged by Bertram, he worked hard to finish the book he had been planning. It was to be called Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man.

  * * *

  Before the war, Thomas had viewed Heinrich’s internationalism as a result of his living too long in Italy and France. Now, as German fatalities increased, Thomas presumed that his brother would become less nonchalant about the threats to Germany and discard his cosmopolitan airs.

  When Thomas went to visit his mother in Polling, he discovered that she had written to Heinrich asking him to stop speaking out against his fatherland. The war, Thomas saw, had put new life into his mother’s eyes. She walked about the village, detaining anyone she saw to discuss Germany’s progress. She would shout patriotic slogans.

  “Everyone stops me to know how my son is doing. And they are asking about Viktor, poor little Viktor. Before it was all Heinrich and Thomas. But now it is the soldier in the family. I go for a walk twice a day, or three times, or more. And everyone tells me to be strong. So I am being strong.”

  Late in 1915, Heinrich published an essay invoking Zola as a novelist who had, during the Dreyfus case, attempted to alert his fellow countrymen to a wrong that was being committed. Clearly, he was comparing himself to the French novelist.

  It was not the argument in the article that offended Thomas. It was the second sentence: “A creator only reaches manhood relatively late in life—it is those who appear natural and worldly-wise in their early twenties who are destined soon to dry up.”

  He showed the article to Katia.

  “This is a personal attack on me. I won fame in my twenties. He is referring to me.”

  “But you haven’t dried up.”

  He was afraid to argue that not even Death in Venice had achieved the same success as his first book, and Heinrich was mocking him for that.

  When Bertram came, he felt freer to rail against his brother.

  “He has never forgiven me for the fame I won with that book, or for marrying a rich woman, or for setting up house while he grew involved in a series of failed relationships, not marrying until now.”

  “He is like all so-called socialists,” Bertram said. “Filled with bitterness.”

  * * *

  Late one afternoon, when Thomas went to see his mother in Polling, the light had already begun to fade. She was sitting in the semidarkness when he entered her living room.

  “Who is it?” she called out.

  “Tommy,” he replied.

  As he closed the door behind him, she was in full flight.

  “Oh, Tommy? Well, I agree with you that he is like a little general directing the war. Soon he will barge into Belgium with a bugle! How did he become so bellicose? I told that wife of his that he would have to calm down. And she just looked at me! You know, I never warmed to Katia Pringsheim. I much prefer your Mimi.”

  “Mother, this is Tommy.”

  She turned and peered at him.

  “Oh, so it is!” she said.

  In Munich, when he told Lula what had happened, she laughed.

  “Your mother loves both of you. With Heinrich, she is Rosa Luxemburg. With you, she is Hindenburg. With me, she talks about pincushions and chintz coverings.”

  * * *

  While Katia managed to have some relationship with Mimi, Heinrich’s new wife, exchanging messages and gifts, the brothers cut each other off. Thomas noted, with disgust, how the Zola article won Heinrich supporters, made him into a courageous public figure, so-called, one of the few brave enough to speak the truth about the war.

  Most of Heinrich’s early books were out of print. And none of them had ever sold in any numbers. Now, a ten-volume edition of Heinrich Mann’s work, with each volume also comi
ng out in a cheap paperbound book, was displayed in the shops. Heinrich’s opposition to the war had moved him from obscurity to a sort of literary fame.

  Even when Mimi gave birth to a girl, Thomas did not contact his brother. Heinrich’s apartment in Leopoldstrasse, he heard, was a haven for those interested in pacifism and new political ideas. On the other side of the Isar river, Thomas’s social life was confined to visits from Ernst Bertram. He still could not write any fiction. His book on the war was increasingly labored in its tone, with many emendations and redraftings.

  Slowly, it became known that the differences between the two brothers, now that they were openly political, had become more intense. While Heinrich developed a following among young, left-wing activists, Thomas found himself the object of casual deprecation even among those who had been his avid readers. Since much opinion was censored, it was difficult to write openly about the war. Offering views in print, instead, on the relative merits of the Mann brothers came to be an indirect, but powerful, way for writers and journalists to make their position on the war clear.

  When they were alone together, Thomas and Katia did not discuss the war, but once they were in the company of her parents and her brothers, Katia in stray remarks let Thomas know that she believed Germany would lose the war and that she did not feel loyal, in any case, to the German cause. She spoke with certainty, but also a sort of lightness and insouciance, so that he could not argue with her.

  “It is our duty to love Germany, but it is also our duty to read Goethe’s Faust, part one and part two,” she said. “And all that duty is too much for me. I love my husband and children. I love my family. That takes all my energy. I suppose that makes me a very bad person and people should avoid me.”

  Thomas became silent not only at the Pringsheims’, but in his own house, at his own table. The children, especially Klaus, were noisy and disruptive. Unlike the years before the war, when Thomas would come to the table content with the morning’s work, sure about what he was doing, ready to make jokes and pay attention to the children, he found it difficult not to spend the meals insisting that Klaus, now ten, should conduct himself as befitted a boy of his age or ruling that Golo would get no dessert for one whole week if he did not answer his mother when she spoke to him.