The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  “Who told him that I was planning a Faust novel?”

  “I did,” Erika said.

  “Maybe the quietness here will do him good,” Katia said. “And Golo is so well-balanced that he might have a good influence on Klaus.”

  “Golo? Well-balanced?” Erika asked and laughed.

  “Oh dear. Is he taking morphine too?” Katia asked. “Or is it incest?”

  “He is in love with a librarian that he met when he was in Princeton,” Erika said.

  “Isn’t that nice?” Katia asked. “They were always very kind, the librarians in Princeton. Did we ever meet her?”

  “Him,” Erika said.

  “Him?” Katia asked.

  “Him,” Erika repeated.

  “I asked him about those letters from Princeton,” Katia said. “But he told me they were about library books that were overdue.”

  Thomas noticed that Erika’s cheeks were flushed. She was enjoying telling them all this news. He was tempted to reveal to her that he was fully aware that she was in Los Angeles not only to see her parents but because she was having an affair with Bruno Walter, a married man just a year younger than her father.

  This information came to him courtesy of Elisabeth in Chicago. He had formed the habit of phoning his youngest daughter, who was pregnant with her first child, on a Saturday evening. The rule was that they could only stay for fifteen minutes on the line. He realized that Elisabeth was also in regular touch with the rest of the family, even Klaus, although, as far as he was aware, she did not know about the interview with the police.

  Elisabeth and he spoke with a frankness that was made easier, it seemed, because of the distance between Los Angeles and Chicago. However, she told him most things with the strict agreement that they would not be shared with Katia. Elisabeth also confided in her mother, to whom she wrote regularly. Katia thus found out some things about her children that Thomas, up to then, had presumed secret.

  When Elisabeth told him about Erika and Bruno Walter, Thomas thought at first that she was mistaken and that perhaps Erika was having an affair with one of Walter’s daughters, who were friends of hers.

  “No, it’s the father,” Elisabeth said.

  “I didn’t think she liked men,” Thomas replied.

  “She likes Bruno Walter. She is the second of your daughters to like a man close to you in age. Be flattered!”

  “And Monika?”

  “Gerontophilia appears to have escaped her up to now.”

  “And how is your marriage?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Would you tell me if it were not?”

  “I tell you everything, but you must not say anything to my mother about Erika. She will think she has been a failure as a mother. Three homosexuals, or two homosexuals and one bisexual. Two daughters who enjoy the company of old men. And then there is Monika.”

  “And Michael,” Thomas said.

  “Yes, the normal one.”

  “He bears grudges.”

  “So he should. You were never kind to him.”

  “Neither were you. How often does Erika see Bruno Walter?”

  “When she can.”

  “Does his wife know?”

  “Yes. But no one else knows.”

  “You are sure this is true? I really thought Erika preferred women.”

  “So she does. But she has made an exception for the famous conductor.”

  Thomas watched Erika now, posing as the voice of sanity within the family, and felt further tempted to ask her if there was any news from her own love life. But he could not betray Elisabeth. That evening, he smiled as he saw Erika asking her mother for the keys of the car, saying that she had to see friends who lived on the east side of the city. He saw how stylish she looked and how she had put her hair in an elegant chignon.

  He had to stand up and quickly leave the room to stop himself calling after her: “Think of me as he holds you in his arms.” When he got to his study, he could not control his laughter.

  * * *

  As 1941 wore on, Thomas began to work on a new speech that he might give on a lecture tour, a speech that would include the tone of high idealism that he had been using in other talks he gave, but that might also become more pointed, more personal and more political. He liked the idea that his task was to spread a higher kind of propaganda, but as the argument raged over the possible American involvement in the war, Erika insisted that he needed to be more direct, and this view was shared, in quieter voices, by Golo and Katia.

  By September, Roosevelt, after the sinking of American ships in the Atlantic by German U-boats, had come close to declaring a naval war against Germany, only to be vehemently attacked by Charles Lindbergh, who spoke of the warmongering of the English, the Jews and Roosevelt. Thomas determined that he would never mention Lindbergh by name, nor Roosevelt. But he would let the audience know that, speaking as a German, as a democrat, as a friend of America and an admirer of its freedoms, he believed that the world now looked to America.

  He wrote the speech out in German and had it translated and then, with help from a young woman whom Katia had found, he started to work on delivery in English, speaking slowly, trying to pronounce words clearly.

  After the first few cities, he had to make rules. He was not to be welcomed with fanfare at the railway station but to be discreetly taken to a car, his name not to be anywhere visible. At the beginning, he wondered if the crowds would come to see any Nobel Prize winner at all, but gradually he came to understand that his audience was political and well-informed. They read newspapers every day; they read books. And they understood that they needed to know more about the crisis in Europe.

  By the beginning of November, when he spoke in Chicago, he was managing to make fewer mistakes in pronunciation. Also, he realized, as the audiences grew bigger, how much was at stake not only for democracy itself, but for himself and other German exiles. If America entered the war, there would be a movement to have all Germans interned. He needed to make clear that he represented a significant German opposition to Hitler, a large group in America whose loyalty in any war would wholeheartedly be to America.

  In Chicago, he and Katia stayed in a hotel, agreeing to have lunch with Elisabeth and Borgese downtown on the day of his speech and then go home with them to see Angelica, Elisabeth’s baby daughter.

  Over lunch, Borgese informed him that Thomas would need to be cautious in Chicago as there was much anti-German feeling.

  “People don’t even want to hear attacks on Hitler. They don’t want to hear his name at all. So if you denounce him you will win no friends, and of course if you don’t denounce him you will make people feel that all Germans are in this together.”

  “I am sure the Magician will know exactly what to say,” Elisabeth interjected.

  “Rather you than me,” Borgese said.

  Angelica, in her cot, had no interest in the visitors until Katia produced a large box and signaled to her that she could help open it. She responded with an intent that made them all laugh.

  “She has the family lack of patience,” Thomas said.

  “Your family, not mine!” Katia replied.

  “Nor my family either,” Borgese said.

  Thomas glanced up at Borgese, wondering for a moment at what his family had to do with this.

  In the car back to the hotel, Thomas turned to Katia.

  “Do you think the child will continue to resemble her mother more than her father?”

  “I am sure she will,” Katia said. “Let’s all pray that she will.”

  In the hour before the organizers came to collect him, Thomas went over the speech. The words that were difficult to pronounce he had marked, with a phonetic spelling in the margin. As the time approached, Katia came to his room to make sure that his tie was straight and his shoes suitably polished.

  He was warned that the audience was much larger than they had planned for. They would try to find space for everybody.

  Outside, there was chaos
, with long lines and people shoving and shouting. When a few recognized him, they started to cheer, and the cheer was then taken up by all the people outside. He lifted his hat and waved and then went inside.

  He knew the effect that his opening could have on an audience. He had tried it first in Iowa and then in Indianapolis. At the beginning, partly because of the money he was being paid, he felt fraudulent. He did not represent any group. There was nothing he could promise his audience. But, as the tour went on, he found the crowd became responsive, sometimes silent, other times emotional, if he used certain words or expressed strong opinions about the Nazis.

  As always, the introduction was too long and too effusive. The man at the microphone roared out that the greatest living man of letters was about to address the crowd. And then he said it again, gesturing to the audience that they should cheer in approval. But finally, the microphone was his.

  “We are told that much divides us, but one thing unites us. In America now, there is one word that stands for many other words. It is at the core of the American achievement; it is at the core of American influence in the world. That word is ‘freedom’! Freedom! In Germany now, freedom has been replaced by murder, by threats, by large-scale prisons, by attacks on the Jewish population. But like all storms, this one will pass, and in the morning, when the wind has died down, Germans will once more cry out the word, the word that knows no borders and no limits. And that word will be ‘freedom.’ We cry out for freedom now, and there will come a time when our cry will be heard, when freedom will once more prevail.”

  He stopped and took in the crowd, which had fallen completely silent.

  “I am one of the many Germans who has known fear and who has sought freedom in America. Just as Germans learned to fear Hitler and his henchmen, the whole world, the free world, has reason to fear the Nazis too. Fear is a natural response to violence and terror. But soon our fear will become our defiance, will be replaced by our courage, by our determination. Because there is a second word that matters to us now, a word worth fighting for, a word that unites Americans with free people all over the world. That word is ‘democracy.’ Democracy!”

  He shouted the word and knew that the response would be instant cheering and applause.

  “I am here not to tell you of the dark times that are ahead, of the struggle. I am here to tell you of the coming victory of democracy. I am here to represent the human spirit, and I stand proudly in Chicago as I invoke the sanctity of the human spirit, as I invoke freedom, as I invoke democracy, as I tell you that democracy will return to Germany as a river flows towards the sea, because democracy is in our spirit. It is not a gift, something that can be given or taken away. It is as essential to our well-being as food or water.

  “I stand here not merely as a writer, or as a refugee from the most ruthless dictatorship that history has known, I stand here as a man and I speak to the men and women here about the dignity we share, the inner light that shines in each of us, and the rights we have, and the rights that we, as humans, have struggled for, rights that we deserve. I stand here because I believe that these rights will be returned to Germany. The Nazis cannot last. They cannot last. They must not last. They will not last.”

  At the final use of the word “last,” the crowd were on their feet.

  * * *

  In New York, he had a meeting in a private room at his hotel with Agnes Meyer, who had traveled from Washington to see him. He knew that she was still intending to write a book about him and his work and he did not look forward to discussing it with her. Nor did he want to discuss his lectures with her. Since their content and the size of the audiences had been widely reported, he presumed that she would have opinions on what he should include in future and what he should leave out. He was determined that she would not dictate to him what he should and should not say.

  “Now, I will need your acceptance in writing,” she said, as soon as they were sitting down.

  “My acceptance?”

  “You will be offered the position of consultant in Germanic literature at the Library of Congress, at a salary of four thousand, eight hundred dollars a year, plus one thousand dollars for an annual lecture. You will be required to live in Washington for two weeks of every year.”

  “How has this come about?”

  “I have been working quietly to make sure that, when war is declared, there will be no support for action against Germans in America. It is essential that this appointment happens before war is declared. You can hardly intern a consultant to the Library of Congress as an enemy alien. And you can hardly intern others like the consultant and not intern him. It is a small thing compared to your lectures, which are seen as the essence of good sense in very powerful places. ‘High-minded and helpful’ were the words he used.”

  “Who said that?”

  “It was said in confidence, but I would not report it were the speaker not in the most important office.”

  “So I should expect a letter?”

  “Yes, but I need your acceptance now, so let us go and have it typed. War could break out at any moment and I want this in place before then.”

  * * *

  Thomas was in his bedroom in the rented house in Los Angeles, which they were soon to leave, when news came of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Since Golo normally never came to his bedroom door, he knew something serious had occurred. Downstairs, they found Katia and Monika sitting by the radio. Over the next three days, they waited for war to be declared against Germany.

  On the second night, as they were preparing to leave the supper table, Monika said something in passing about her dead husband. Until now, she had not spoken about him without bursting into tears, but this time when she said his name she smiled.

  “What was he like?” Golo asked. “I have wanted to ask you this for so long, but none of us wanted to upset you.”

  “Jenö was a scholar,” Monika said. “I saw him one morning in Florence in both the Uffizi and the Pitti. And then in the afternoon when I went to the Brancacci he was there too. And he had noticed me each time, and that is how we met.”

  “He was writing about Italian art?” Golo asked.

  “That was his subject,” Monika replied. “He could remember the smallest detail in a painting or a piece of sculpture. But that is all lost now. It doesn’t matter anymore what he could remember.”

  “I wish we could have known him,” Erika said.

  “If he had lived,” Monika went on, “he might be here now. His book on Italian sculpture might even be finished. All of you would admire him.”

  Monika looked around the table, at her parents and at Erika and Golo.

  “When I see you going for walks, Golo,” she continued, “I often think that Jenö might join you, because you could talk about books. Even the Magician would have liked Jenö.”

  “I can only regret not knowing him,” Thomas said.

  For a second, Thomas thought Monika was going to cry, but she took a deep breath and lowered her voice.

  “I cannot imagine what it was like for him to die like that. But I know that he would love to have lived. He would love to be here now, knowing that America was going to join the war.”

  Katia and Erika embraced Monika, as Thomas and Golo watched.

  “I don’t know why he was drowned and I was saved. No one will ever be able to explain that to me.”

  * * *

  Two months later, once they had moved to Pacific Palisades, Klaus came from New York. Thomas and Katia met him at Union Station and drove him to the new house, which he appeared barely to notice. Even when Katia said that this would be their last refuge, he did not respond. Like his sister, Klaus was in his mid-thirties now. But unlike her, he seemed worn out. His hair was thinning. All the brightness had left his eyes.

  The real change, however, was in how Erika reacted to him. She could hardly look at her brother. At the table, she spoke about her application to work for the BBC and her plans to cover the war. A few times, when Klaus started to
offer some opinion about the war, she turned to him, interrupting: “Ask us, Klaus. Don’t tell us. Monika lost her husband in the war. I have been in London. Your father is kept well-informed by the administration. We know about the war. Someone like you, living with artists and writers and God knows who else in New York, cannot know what we know. So please don’t tell us about the war!”

  When they were in their late teens and early twenties and flying high, Thomas remembered, Erika and Klaus would dominate the family table on their visits home. Now Golo and Monika watched silently as Erika alone dominated the table. Thomas noticed Klaus giving in to her, offering opinions that might win her approval. But when her brother began to explain how he believed that now more than ever culture, especially literature, was an essential weapon in the battle against fascism, Erika cut him short.

  “We have heard this before, Klaus.”

  “That is because it cannot be said enough.”

  “The best weapons against fascism are weapons,” she said. “Real weapons.”

  She glanced at her father, seeking his agreement. Thomas did not want to encourage her to continue, but he also did not want to get involved in an argument with her.

  Erika said she was going out, adding that she would be with her friends until quite late. When Klaus asked her if she could drop him off at an address nearby, Thomas saw the expression on Katia’s face darken.

  “I can drop you off,” Erika said. “But you will have to make your own way home.”

  “Where are you going?” Klaus asked her.

  “To spend time with friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “People you would not know.”

  She said this in a tone completely dismissive. Thomas could see the hurt look on Klaus’s face.

  Later, Katia came into his room.

  “As if Klaus were not in bad enough shape,” she said. “Erika is determined to make little of him in front of all of us.”

  “Where are they both going?” he asked.

  “Klaus has a friend who is in some hotel nearby.”