by Colm Toibin
Thomas nodded.
“Your son Michael is in London with his fiancée, and they have visas for the United States. I believe he is a viola player and I can probably help to find him work in some American orchestra. Your daughter and her Hungarian husband are in London and I can assure you that their visas will come through very soon. But your son Golo is in Switzerland, and your brother and his second wife are in France, and they do not have visas?”
“That is all correct. You have a marvelous memory.”
“I can get a visa for Golo without any difficulty. You’ll have to sign forms to say that you will be fully responsible for him financially. That’s all. As long as he remains unmarried.”
“I will convey that to him.”
“With your brother, we can get him a contract with Warner Brothers. Once that is signed, then we can deal with the visa question.”
“Has Warner Brothers agreed to offer him a contract?”
“Didn’t your brother write The Blue Angel?”
“He wrote the novel on which the film was based.”
“In that case, Warner Brothers will see him as an asset. For a one-year contract at least.”
“Are you sure this can be arranged?”
“Have I ever failed you?”
She folded her arms and smiled in satisfaction.
“Now join me in the drawing room, where we will have coffee served.”
In the drawing room she sat close to him on the sofa. The folder was on her lap.
“I know you will want a check. Everyone who comes here wants a check. Who is it for?”
“There are many writers who need help.”
“I can write one check to cover them all. I will write it in your name and you can imburse the neediest.”
“Some of them are in real danger.”
“Please do not ask for anything else on this visit. The check will be sent to your room later.”
“I am truly very grateful to you.”
“In the New Year, I think you should go on a lecture tour. I can make contacts for you, but the essential thing is that you don’t call on the administration to declare war on Germany. That is what you must not do. America is not at war. You can talk about anything you like, but the president does not want you stirring people up. He has an election to win next year. So he wants you to be silent on America entering the war.”
“The president? How do you know that?”
“Eugene and I know him. And that is how he feels. And, once more, can I ask you to remind your daughter of that too? People here associate me with you and I am blamed for every word she utters. And utter she does! She is a tremendous utterer.”
“She has her own opinions.”
“Does she ever see that husband of hers?”
“She is in New York.”
“New York is the source of all trouble. My husband often says that. People here disapprove of your daughter, even more than they do her brother.”
“They are both committed.”
Agnes sighed in exasperation.
“I think they have made that plain.”
She sipped her coffee.
“Is all that agreed?” she asked.
* * *
Thomas behaved impeccably at Elisabeth’s wedding in November. He shook Borgese’s hand and kissed the bride in full view of those who attended the service in the church on the Princeton campus.
The only irritant had been Auden, who had written a poem for the occasion that Thomas had scarcely understood, and then after the ceremony, while walking with Thomas back to the house on Stockton Street, had remarked, as they spotted Klaus ahead of them: “For an author, sons are an embarrassment. It must be as if characters in one of your novels had come to life. You know, I rather like Klaus, but some people call him the Subordinate Klaus, but that is too cruel, far too cruel.”
Thomas was not quite sure what this meant, but he avoided Auden for the rest of the day.
Katia had warned Erika to be kind to Elisabeth and say nothing that would cause even the slightest offense. Erika had told her parents that a friend of hers had seen Elisabeth in New York dining with a man whom the friend presumed was the man she was soon to marry.
“It was all candles and whispering and romance,” Erika said. “Until my friend went over to congratulate them and found that the man was none other than Hermann Broch. They were most upset at being seen together. Elisabeth obviously likes elderly émigré writers. If she had just stayed at home with her father, who is chief among them, then she could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“She is in love with Borgese,” Katia had said. “I am sure your friend was entirely mistaken.”
For Christmas, Thomas had asked that Elisabeth and her husband be placed on the attic floor of the house so that he would not have to encounter Borgese in the corridor near his bedroom.
On the first morning, lying in bed, he heard Borgese in a room above clearing his throat loudly and coughing, and then a tap being turned on. He realized that the bathroom assigned to the newly married couple was the one directly above his own bedroom. At first, it was just the noise of the tap, but soon the unmistakable sound of a man urinating into a toilet bowl and doing so with some vehemence and at some length came to him through the floorboards.
The image of Borgese feeling free in this regard nauseated him. Even when he heard the toilet being flushed, he could not get the picture out of his mind of Borgese standing in his night attire urinating. His own sons, he thought, had always been discreet in the bathroom. This Italian, it seemed, was only too ready to make his presence felt.
On the second morning of their stay, when Thomas was in his study, Borgese knocked on the door and came in to have, as he said, a little chat with Thomas, adding that he was at a loose end since the women had gone shopping. He asked Thomas if he would like tea. Thomas wondered what he should do.
In the four hours before lunch, going back over a period of thirty-five years, he had remained fully undisturbed in his study. Now this man was sitting on the chair opposite him, asking him again if he wanted tea and then inquiring casually if his work was progressing as planned, as though Thomas’s writing were something that could benefit from such a query. When Thomas did not reply to either question, Borgese took up a book from the table and began to flick through the pages.
“What do you think will happen in France?” Borgese asked him.
“I have no idea,” Thomas said, barely looking up.
“I think the Germans will wait to invade until the spring or early summer. But invade they will. Mark my words. Invade they will. And they will get through.”
Thomas glanced up at him sharply.
“Who has told you this?” he asked.
“It is a feeling I have,” Borgese said. “But I am sure I am right.”
As Thomas studied Borgese, it struck him that Elisabeth must really be well tired of him by now. He wished she and her mother and Erika would return from shopping so that this old man could be quickly ejected from his study and told never to return.
* * *
On Christmas Eve, as the table was being prepared for supper, he heard Erika talking loudly to Klaus on the phone in the hallway.
“You must go to Penn Station now and be on the next train. I will be at Princeton Junction waiting. No, the next train! I don’t care who you are with. You can miss supper, but you must be here for the opening of the presents. I have bought your presents for you. That’s what I said I would do. They are all wrapped. You don’t have to worry. Klaus, I said now!”
When the phone rang again a few moments later, he heard Erika telling Klaus once more she would be at the train to meet him and he must not worry about missing supper.
As time for supper came near, and the family got ready, the house was quiet and the smells from the kitchen wafted through the rooms. Approaching the drawing room, Thomas heard the sound of someone moving within. Katia was standing with her back to him at the Christmas tree. She was g
ently rearranging the decorations, and then bending down to make the piles of presents assembled under the tree more orderly. She did not realize he was watching her. He knew that the news that Klaus was arriving after supper and would be with them the next day had come as a relief to her.
He thought of clearing his throat or making some sound, but he decided instead to withdraw, to go to his study until he was called to the table. Katia would, he thought, be more content alone like this. He would talk to her later, when the night was over. He would put the good champagne he had been saving in the refrigerator. The two of them would, he hoped, raise a quiet glass to each other at the end of the night, when everyone else had finally gone to bed.
Chapter 12 Princeton, 1940
When the telephone rang, no one answered it. Katia and Gret had taken Frido, just six weeks old, for a walk. Michael had found three young musicians in Princeton and had taken his viola with him to meet them. And the woman who came to cook and clean had not arrived yet. When the ringing continued, Thomas went to answer, but it rang out before he got there.
Calls often came from the university, asking him to attend dinners or receptions. Katia had a special way of dealing with such requests. Among their own people, only Klaus in New York, Elisabeth in Chicago, Agnes Meyer in Washington and the Knopfs in New York had the Princeton telephone number. They could, he thought, always call again.
Before lunch, he was upstairs changing his shoes when the phone rang once more; he heard Katia answering it. He listened as she intoned the number in her best, most studied accent in English. Then she did not say anything for a while. Suddenly he heard her issue a loud gasp before she repeated several times: “Who are you? How do you know this?”
By the time he reached her, Michael and Gret were already by her side. When he tried to speak, Katia brushed him away with her hand.
“Where are you phoning from?” she asked the caller.
“I have never heard of that newspaper,” she then said. “I have never been in Toronto. I am a German woman and I live in Princeton.”
When Michael moved to take the receiver from her, his mother ignored him.
“Yes, my daughter is Mrs. Lányi, yes, Mrs. Monika Lányi. Yes, her husband is Mr. Jenö Lányi. Could you speak more slowly?”
She gasped again.
“The City of Benares? Yes, that is the ship. But we have firm news that it set out safely. It is going to Quebec.”
Impatiently, she motioned to the others to step farther away from her.
“But we have had no news of that. Someone would have contacted us if anything had happened.”
She listened intently to the reply.
“Can I ask you to tell me something clearly,” she said more loudly. “If you do not know, say so. Is my daughter alive?”
She took in what was said carefully, nodding her head. She looked gravely at Thomas.
“Is her husband alive?”
Thomas watched the expression on Katia’s face harden.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
She became irritated with the caller.
“What are you saying? Do I have any comment? Are you asking me if I have any comment? No, I have no comment, and no, my husband has no comment either. No, he is not here.”
Thomas could hear the voice of the caller still speaking as Katia put the receiver down.
“A man from a newspaper in Toronto,” she said. “Monika is alive. The boat was torpedoed. Monika was in the water for a long time. But he is dead, her Jenö is dead.”
“Did the ship sink?” Michael asked.
“What do you think happened? Monika’s ship was torpedoed by the Germans. We should have made her take the journey earlier when it would have been safer.”
“But she is safe,” Gret said.
“That is what the man says,” Katia replied. “But Jenö has drowned. In the middle of the Atlantic. The man was certain about it. He knew their names.”
“Why has no one else phoned?” Michael asked.
“Because the news is fresh. It won’t be fresh for long and then the phone will ring forever.”
She moved toward Thomas and stood beside him.
“How strange it is that we are not prepared for this,” she said. “How strange that we are surprised.”
They should telephone Elisabeth immediately, Katia added, to let her know the news before someone else called her. Erika should be sent a telegram in London asking her to help her sister in whatever way she could, although they were not sure whether Monika had been taken to Canada or had been returned to England.
When asked what to do about Klaus, Katia sighed. They had not heard from him in some time. She had phoned the hotel in New York where Klaus had been staying but was told that he had left. Thomas suggested that she try to contact him using Auden’s address.
When Michael left to send the telegrams, Thomas and Katia decided to get some air. They would call Elisabeth later.
They walked in the grounds of the university in the soft autumn weather.
“Imagine being in the middle of the ocean,” Katia said, “holding on to a plank for twelve hours. Imagine seeing your husband sinking in front of you and not coming up again.”
“Is that what the Canadian told you?”
“That is what he said. I will never get it out of my mind. How will Monika ever recover from that?”
“We should have taken her with us when we sailed from Southampton.”
“She had no visa for the U.S.”
“I presumed that once the ship sailed, she was safe. I actually felt relieved.”
Katia stopped for a moment and bowed her head.
“That is how I felt too. And how foolish it was!”
In the morning there was a reply from Erika saying that Monika would be taken to Scotland and Erika would locate her there and see that she was being well looked after. The telegram added that she did not know where Klaus was. Before lunchtime, there was a telegram from Auden saying that he would seek to contact Klaus.
Elisabeth phoned a number of times during the day and spoke to her mother and her father.
Each time the phone rang, all of them became alert to the possibility of news and listened closely from doorways. Although the news that Monika had been on the ship had appeared in the newspapers, no one from Princeton called them or came to the house. It was as if they had brought the war with them to this peaceful university town.
Before dinner, as they gathered in the sitting room, Michael asked them if he could play something. He introduced it as the viola part of a slow movement from a quartet by Arnold Schoenberg. As he began to play, Thomas thought, it sounded like a set of cries pitted against a much more implacable sound, a sound that he could barely manage to listen to, it was so intense.
* * *
A few days later a telegram arrived from Erika in London: “Monika recovering. Will stay in Scotland. Weak. Klaus safe in New York. Sad.”
“I presume she means that Monika is weak and Klaus is sad,” Michael said.
Within an hour another cable had arrived, this time from Golo.
“Sailing on Nea Hellas from Lisbon to New York on 3 October. With Heinrich and Nelly and the Werfels. Varian a star.”
“Who are the Werfels?” Michael asked.
“Alma Mahler is married to Franz Werfel. He is her third husband,” Thomas said.
“She will be marvelous company,” Katia said. “Better, I imagine, than Nelly. I was hoping Nelly would have found some other refuge.”
“I presume that the Werfels will have somewhere to go once they arrive,” Thomas said.
“I presume that too,” Katia said.
“Who is Varian the star?” Michael asked.
“He is Varian Fry from the Emergency Rescue Committee,” Thomas said. “He has done all the work to get them out. He is a most extraordinary young man. Even Agnes Meyer praises his efficiency and his cunning.”
Thomas glanced at Katia and realized that she was having the sam
e thoughts. Since the Germans were attacking transatlantic shipping, then they could also direct their malice against whatever ship Golo and Heinrich and Nelly traveled on. It made a difference, he supposed, that the City of Benares had been on its way to Canada. The Germans would feel less ready, he felt, to attack a ship on its way to New York. But the sinking of Monika’s ship made the Atlantic seem more dangerous. The sigh of relief that Golo and the others were safe would have to wait until they had actually arrived in New York Harbor and disembarked. He hoped that Golo had not heard that Monika had been on the City of Benares.
* * *
They decided to go to New York and stay in the Bedford for a night before meeting Golo, Heinrich and Nelly from the ship and taking them to Princeton.
When Thomas said that he wanted to arrive by lunchtime, Katia expressed surprise that he was ready to break his morning work schedule.
“I want to buy some records,” he said.
“Add something to surprise me,” she said.
“Give me a clue.”
“Haydn, maybe,” she said. “Some quartets or his piano music. That would be nice, and they do no harm.”
“Is that why you want them?”
She smiled.
“They remind me of summer.”
“I felt ice in the wind today,” Thomas said, “and thought it would be good to live somewhere warmer.”
“Michael and Gret and the baby are moving to the west coast. And Heinrich will be in Los Angeles.”
“And Nelly?” Thomas asked.
“Do not mention Nelly. I dread the thought of sharing a roof with her.”
After lunch at the Bedford, Thomas made his way alone by taxi downtown, instructing the driver to let him off at Sixth Avenue so that he could walk the few streets to the store. In Princeton, he was generally on his guard, aware that he would be noticed and recognized everywhere. Here, however, in these narrow streets that reminded him of some European city, he could let his gaze linger freely on anyone at all. While most of those he passed were preoccupied and distant, eventually, he knew, he would see some young man coming towards him and, catching his eye for a second, become unafraid to look at him directly and deeply, not disguising his interest.