The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  Often, however, his efforts to be strict failed him. He still did tricks at the table and had worn a wizard costume to a party that he attended with Erika and Klaus. A few days later, he had come to Klaus’s room when the boy was having a nightmare about a man who carried his own head under his arm. Thomas had told Klaus not to look at the man, but to tell him in no uncertain terms that his father was a famous magician, and he had said that a child’s bedroom was no place for him and that he should be ashamed of himself. He made Klaus repeat this several times.

  The next morning at breakfast, Klaus told his mother that his father had magic powers and knew the right words to banish a ghost.

  “Papa is a magician,” he said.

  “He is the Magician!” Erika repeated.

  From being a joke, or a way of cheering the table up, the new sobriquet for their father stuck. Erika encouraged all visitors to join her in giving her father this new name.

  * * *

  As the war was waged, Thomas continued to monitor Heinrich’s articles. His brother, he saw, did not often write directly about the conflict. Instead, he shared his views on the French Second Empire, leaving enough space for his readers to understand the connections between France then and Germany now. But as the antiwar movement grew, Thomas observed his brother becoming braver. Heinrich agreed, for example, to take part in a meeting of antiwar socialists in Munich, insisting that war was nothing to enthuse over, it did not civilize, it did not cleanse, it did not make anything true or just, and it did not make people more brotherly.

  Thomas studied each phrase in the newspaper report, believing that the word “brotherly” referred specifically to him. He knew that anyone reading what Heinrich had written would recognize that it was part of their feud.

  * * *

  When the war ended, the conversations at the table centered on Katia’s continued search for food and her worry about her parents.

  “For some reason,” she said, “eggs are plentiful, but I can’t get flour. And the only fresh vegetable I can get is spinach.”

  “And we hate spinach,” Erika said.

  “And I hate eggs and flour,” Klaus added.

  Klaus Pringsheim explained when he came to Poschingerstrasse that he was trying to form an orchestra made up of returned soldiers.

  “Some of them I trained with. They were talented musicians. And now most of them have shaking hands and lungs that are destroyed. I don’t know how they will live. I thought they were lucky to survive, but I don’t think that now.”

  He warned Thomas and Katia to be vigilant on the streets.

  “A group of young men placed themselves at our street corner two days ago. They were dressed like peasants and they had a cart of apples. When they saw my father on his way home from the university, one of them threw an apple at him and hit him on the side of the head.”

  Erika began to laugh.

  “Did he eat the apple?” she asked.

  “No, my mother threw it in the garbage and then she telephoned the police. By which time, having gone out into the street, I discovered that the apple throwers were not peasants at all but socialists and this is their way of showing that they can do what they like.”

  “Did they throw any apples at you?” Thomas asked.

  “They don’t know who I am, but you should look out,” Klaus Pringsheim said. “And you won’t get any help from the police, who told my mother to get private security if she was worried about her safety. And I understand from one of my fellow musicians that the apple throwers will soon be very well armed and will no longer need to throw apples.”

  “If they are armed,” Thomas said, “then they will be dealt with.”

  “There is no one to deal with them,” Klaus said. “In a moment, they could take over the city. That is what losing the war has meant. The police are useless.”

  “We want to put the whole war behind us,” Katia said. “That man Ernst Bertram called a few days ago. He had a bloodthirsty look on his face. And I drove him from the door.”

  She looked around the table defiantly. Thomas had wondered why Bertram had not been in touch and thought that he should try to contact him by telephone or write to him.

  He planned, when the meal was over, to remonstrate with Katia, but she went to bed early and he found himself alone in his study looking around at the shelves for a book that might give him comfort.

  The war was lost. His own book was finished and would soon come out in a changed Germany. While as recently as six months earlier there had still been a sense of patriotism and even national fervor, now there was nothing except talk of the wounded and the dead. The newspapers reported on rationing and supplies. The Kaiser was gone, but no one was sure what would replace him. Germany was now a republic, but that, Thomas thought, was a joke.

  It was not a night for poetry. Nor did he want to look at any of the philosophy books with which he had been busy. No words by any German would help. If Bertram came, Thomas would like to ask him why this war had been waged since it was so easily lost. And he would want to know what Germany should be proud of now.

  If, on the other hand, Heinrich were to appear, he would ask him if Germany was now to be like other places, living under the control of the victorious powers. What would it mean now to write in German, to work in a study whose walls were lined with the great German books, to sit in the evenings listening to German music on the phonograph?

  He thought about the young men dressed as peasants throwing apples at wealthy burghers. Was this what it had come to? Parody, futility, foolishness? Was this what the great project that was Germany would finally mean?

  * * *

  Erika and Klaus continued to take an interest in each day’s news. When the first elections after the war were taking place, they were delighted at the idea that women could vote for the first time, seeing it as another opportunity to display a general lack of respect for their elders at mealtimes. Erika, when Julia came from Polling, said that she heard that all married women would vote the same way as their husbands.

  “They might promise they will, my little one,” Katia said, “but the vote is secret. Except my grandmother, who has announced publicly how she will vote.”

  “How will you vote?” Klaus asked his own grandmother.

  “I will vote wisely,” Julia said.

  “And the Magician?”

  For the first time in months, Thomas laughed.

  “I will vote the same way as your mother and she will vote wisely also.”

  “What will the result be?” Klaus asked his father.

  Before Thomas had time to respond, Katia interjected.

  “Germany will become a democracy,” she said.

  “But what about the socialists?” Klaus asked.

  “They will take part in a democracy,” Katia replied firmly.

  “Is Herr Bertram a socialist?” Klaus asked.

  “No, he is not,” Katia replied.

  “I am a socialist,” Klaus said. “And so is Erika.”

  “Onto the barricades, both of you, then,” Thomas replied. “There is plenty of space.”

  “They are very young for talk of barricades,” Julia said.

  “Golo is an anarchist,” Klaus said.

  “I am not!” Golo shouted.

  “Klaus, sit up straight,” Thomas said, “or leave the table.”

  “You know, I never liked that Kaiser,” Julia said. “I will like the new people better, I’m sure, as long as they are not telling me that all people are equal. I have learned very little in my life but my views can be trusted on the inferiority of many, including people who think very highly of themselves.”

  “The working class is going to take over,” Klaus said.

  “Who told you that?” Julia asked.

  “Our uncle Klaus.”

  “I am sure he is singularly ill-informed,” Julia responded.

  “The Magician agrees with you,” Erika said.

  “Erika, be quiet!” Katia said.


  “What cause are you supporting?” Julia asked Thomas. “It is so hard to know. I meet people who ask me.”

  “I am for Germany,” Thomas said. “All of Germany.”

  When he looked over, Katia was shaking her head.

  * * *

  He had planned Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man as an intervention in a debate. By the time it was published, however, the debate had moved on. While some reviews were unpleasant, few bothered to go into any detail on why they disliked the book. Heinrich’s new novel, on the other hand, was acclaimed.

  The family’s dining room table had become a battlefield since Erika and Klaus had discovered that their parents did not see eye to eye on political developments. Erika had taken to contacting Klaus Pringsheim by phone for news, and going down into the kitchen when deliveries were being made to inquire about what was really happening in the streets of Munich.

  “In Lübeck when I was growing up,” Thomas said, “a thirteen-year-old girl and her twelve-year-old brother were silent until they were spoken to.”

  “This is the twentieth century,” Klaus said.

  “And there is going to be a revolution in Munich,” Erika added.

  One evening, as Thomas sat in his study, Katia came to ask him if he remembered a young writer called Kurt Eisner.

  “He is a friend of Heinrich’s,” Thomas said. “One of those fellows who used to get arrested for handing out badly printed seditious pamphlets.”

  “In the kitchen,” Katia said, “they are saying that he has started a revolution.”

  “Did he write something?”

  “He has taken control of the city.”

  Within a few days, the servants had stopped coming and Katia found it impossible to get any food at all on the black market. Erika and Klaus were banned from even approaching the telephone, but they still managed to follow rumors and speculation.

  “It is Soviet-style,” Erika said.

  “Do you know what that means?” Thomas asked.

  “They shoot rich people,” Klaus said.

  “They will drag them out of their houses,” Golo added.

  “But where have you heard all of this?”

  “Everybody knows it,” Erika said.

  Thomas was shocked when Kurt Eisner was shot by a right-wing extremist. He felt that Heinrich must be putting himself in danger when he delivered Eisner’s funeral oration.

  Katia discovered that Hans, their chauffeur, usually had the most accurate information. One morning, she came into Thomas’s study with two names on a piece of paper.

  “These two have taken over,” she said. “They run everything now. But they don’t run supplies, because I cannot get flour and there is no milk to be had. The woman I used to get milk from has been warned.”

  “Show me the names,” Thomas said.

  He laughed when he saw that she had noted down the names of Ernst Toller and Erich Mühsam.

  “They are poets,” he said. “They sit in cafés.”

  “They are on the Central Council,” she said. “If you want anything, you go to them.”

  Later that day, Klaus Pringsheim arrived to visit.

  “I had to take a circuitous route,” he said, “as there are poets manning blockades and they are ferociously frightening.”

  “You should have stayed home,” Katia said.

  “Home is unbearable. Father has been threatened. They have explained that he will eventually have to hand over his house and his paintings, but just now they want the numbers of his Swiss bank accounts.”

  “I hope he has refused,” Thomas said.

  “He is in shock. My mother recognized one of the boys and let out a most fearful shout at him. He is from a family of intellectuals, she says. She informed him that there would be consequences if he did not leave.”

  “What did he do?” Katia asked.

  “He pointed a gun at her and said he wanted no further nonsense from her. That is when I slipped out. I tried to look like a servant. I thought we were going to be shot en masse like the Romanovs. We would be a cause célèbre.”

  * * *

  Since they had started hearing news of the revolution in Munich, Thomas had not ventured out. But when he discovered that both of Katia’s parents could make their way freely across the city to his door, he did wonder if this revolution was real. His father-in-law’s love for the sound of his own voice had, he saw, been much enhanced by the uprising.

  “They preach the equality of man, and that means they hate anyone who is not like themselves,” Alfred said. “And what they want is for us all to live in one room and spend our time serving our servants. Well, we don’t want that and our servants don’t either.”

  “Well, most of them don’t,” Klaus Pringsheim interrupted.

  “I think we should all keep our voices down,” Katia said.

  “That will come soon enough,” her father continued. “But before I am silenced, can I draw your attention to the so-called minister for finance in the new brave, illegal government of Bavaria? He has announced that he does not believe in money. He wants all money abolished! And Dr. Lipp, who is in charge of foreign affairs, is a certified lunatic. I think we should quake in our boots at the thought of these people running Munich. I am indignant that this group of pests has not been arrested and locked away. Thank God for Switzerland, that is what I say. Take me there now!”

  “Perhaps we should keep our indignation in reserve,” Katia said.

  “Indeed,” Thomas said. “We might need it before long.”

  When Erika came into the room, her grandparents rose to hug her, but she stood back.

  “I have been told that there is a curfew and if you don’t leave now you will be arrested.”

  The Pringsheims seemed amazed at how solemn she was. She looked at them as though she had some control over their destiny. Even Klaus Pringsheim, Thomas saw, was reduced to silence.

  It took Thomas a while to accept that there was a new and functioning government in Munich and that it consisted of poets and dreamers and friends of Heinrich’s. He was comforted by the news that no equivalent revolts had happened successfully in other German cities. This meant that the army might see the quelling of this uprising as a way of restoring its own tainted honor.

  Sometimes he was sure that all they would have to do was wait. Bavaria was Catholic as well as conservative. It would not quietly accept a group of atheist diehards running things. Also, he believed that while Germany had lost the war, it had not thrown away the ability to mount a measured and strategic attack on anyone who took power in this strange, shocked interlude that came in the war’s aftermath. But maybe, on the other hand, they had been fatally demoralized by defeat.

  He wished that the state would take action before the poets and their friends had time to realize that they would soon face execution or long prison sentences. Since these leaders of the revolution were still being viewed as absurd by men like his father-in-law, such mockery was likely, Thomas thought, to make them very dangerous if they felt an urgent need to be taken seriously.

  When, at last, an attack by state troops was actually threatened, the rebels took hostages from prominent upper-middle-class families. Because Thomas had sold the summer house at Bad Tölz, he had no choice but to remain in Poschingerstrasse, but he discontinued his afternoon walk and did not draw attention to himself in any way.

  Katia, he knew, had spoken to Erika and Klaus and warned them not to consort with the servants or telephone their uncle Klaus or spread rumors of any sort. Since the schools had been closed, they were to attend to their lessons under their mother’s close supervision.

  In some way, however, they found out that men like their father were being arrested and houses like theirs were being ransacked. While they were afraid to be openly disobedient, Golo, whom Katia had not thought of threatening, was found moving about the house shouting: “We are all going to be shot!”

  There must be some among the leaders, Thomas thought, who knew about the feu
d between himself and his brother. He was lucky that hardly anyone had read his book, as armed men wandered the city in search of those who willfully supported the ruling class in word or in deed.

  As troops finally prepared to enter the city to end the revolution, rumors came via Hans that the insurgents were summarily shooting some of their hostages. The Mann family and their servants kept away from the windows. Thomas spent as much time as he could in his study. Were the revolution to prevail, then his father-in-law’s predictions would be borne out and the family would have to take what they could and make their way to the Swiss border. They would be lucky to escape.

  He came close to banging the table with rage as it struck him how little he would actually care for Germany if it were to become a center for disaffection and revolution and mayhem. He cared more, he realized, for himself and his property. This uprising had reduced him to becoming bourgeois; up to then he had merely lived with the trappings.

  None of his neighbors came to the house, nor did he visit those who lived close by. He was a man without a country. Germany came to seem like a character in a novel that attracted too much heat and should be dispensed with. He imagined being dragged from the house by armed, myopic, tubercular poets, all the more determined and savage because of their interest in beauty. In those days, he was sure, the prison cells would be full and there would be young men fired up with enthusiasm and they would be left to handle the prisoners. It would not be long before they began to take some of their captives out to be shot. He shuddered at the thought of being in captivity, waking in the dawn to the sound of the names of those to be executed being read.