It must be conceded that, in her brutally succinct way, Mrs. Schweigert did throw light on much of the background. She explained the obscure business of the “Fenians,” or at least contributed to the explanation—and when we bear in mind that at the end of March 1940 Leni actually took the trouble to go and see Erhard’s mother and talk to her about heather in Schleswig-Holstein, furthermore that, according to Miss van Doorn’s statement, she was prepared—even in Lotte Hoyser’s opinion prepared—to take the initiative, and if we think back to her experience in the heather under that starry summer sky—we are justified in concluding, even objectively, that she was toying with the idea of visiting Erhard up north and finding fulfillment with him in the heather; and even if we objectivize the botanical and climatological conditions and come to the conclusion that any such plan was doomed on account of damp and cold, the fact remains that in March, according to the Au.’s experience at least, certain parts of the heath in Schleswig-Holstein are actually, if only for a short time, warm and dry.
Finally, after repeated urgings, Margret was induced to admit that Leni had asked her for advice as to how one went about getting together with a man; and when Margret referred her to her parents’ spacious and often undisturbed seven-room apartment, which caused Margret, not Leni, to blush, Leni shook her head; when she was finally referred to her own room in that apartment, a room she could lock and to which she need admit no one, Leni again shook her head; and when Margret, becoming impatient, then pointed out with considerable bluntness that there were after all such things as hotels, Leni reminded her of her misadventure (still quite recent) with the young architect and expressed a notion that Margret was reluctant to pass on, “as Leni’s most intimate communication to date,” the notion that “it” must and should not happen “in bed” but out of doors. “In the open, in the open. This whole business of going to bed together is not what I’m looking for.” Leni conceded that, when two people happened to be married, the bed would at times be unavoidable. Only: with Erhard, she didn’t want to go to bed the very first time. She was all set to go to Flensburg but changed her mind and decided to wait until May—so her rendezvous with Erhard remained a Utopia thwarted by military history. Or did it? No one knows for sure.
Judging by the statements of all family and nonfamily witnesses, the year from April 1940 to June 1941 merits but one description: grim. Leni lost not only her good spirits but her talkativeness, even her appetite. Her pleasure in driving vanishes for a time, her delight in flying—she flew with her father and Lotte Hoyser three times to Berlin—vanishes. Once a week only does she get into her car and drive the few miles to Sister Rahel. Sometimes she stayed there quite some time; nothing is known of her conversations with Rahel, not even via B.H.T., who after May 1941 sees no more of Rahel in the antiquarian bookstore and—presumably from lethargy or lack of imagination—never thinks of going to see her. A huge convent orchard in summer, in fall, in the winter of 1940–41, a girl, eighteen and a half, who now wears nothing but black, whose sole product of external secretion is a complex one: tears. Because of the arrival only a few weeks later of the news of the death of Wilhelm Hoyser, Lotte’s husband, the circle of weepers is widened by old Hoyser, his wife (then still living), by Lotte and her five-year-old son Werner; whether the youngest son, Kurt, then still in his mother’s womb, cries too, no one ever knew.
Since the Au. neither is in a position to meditate on tears nor considers himself suited to do so, information on the origin of tears, their chemical and physical composition, can best be obtained from a handy reference work. The seven-volume encyclopedia put out by a controversial publisher, 1966 edition, gives the following information on tears:
“Tears, Lat. lacrimae, the fluid secreted by the T.-glands that moistens the conjunctiva, protects the eye from desiccation, and continuously washes small foreign bodies out of the eye; it” (probably the fluid. Au.’s note.) “flows into the inner corner of the eye and thence out through the nasolacrimal duct. Irritation (inflammation, foreign bodies) or emotional stimulus increases the flow of T. (weeping).” Under Weeping we read in the same reference work: “Weeping—like Laughter, form of expression in time of crisis, i.e., of grief, emotion, anger, or happiness; psychologically” (italics are not the Au.’s), “an attempt at mental or emotional release. Accompanied by the secretion of tears, by sobbing or convulsive heavings, is related to the sympathetic nervous system and the brainstem. Takes the form of compulsive W. and uncontrollable W.-spasms in general depression, manic-depressive-illness, multiple sclerosis.”
Since potentially interested readers of these simple facts may break out into that which is indicated by and might like to have this reflex explained, we shall now, in order to obviate the necessity of acquiring an encyclopedia, or even of consulting one, quote the paragraph in question:
“Laughter, anthropologically” (none of the italics, including those to follow, are the Au.’s), “a physically resonant expression of emotional reaction to situations of crisis Weeping Philosophically, L. of the sage, smile of the Buddha, the Mona Lisa, from a sense of confidence in Being. Psychologically, mimic expressive movement indicating joy, mirth, amusement. In the form of childlike, blasé, ironical, emotional, relieving, despairing, spiteful, coquettish L., reflects values of attitude and character. Pathologically, in diseases of the nervous system and in psychoses, compulsive L. in the form of laughing fits, sardonic L. accompanied by facial distortion, and hysterical L. in the form of laughing spasms. Socially, L. is infectious (ideomotor activity prompted by imagination).”
Now that we are obliged to enter upon a more or less emotional and, inevitably, tragic phase, it is no doubt advisable to complete our definition of concepts: there is no explanation for the concept of Happiness in this encyclopedia: between Happenstance and Happy Warrior all we could find was Happy Hunting Ground, but Bliss was there, defined as the “quintessence of perfect and lasting fulfillment of life; sought instinctively by every human being, depending on whatever it is in which he seeks this ultimate fulfillment, on the choice that determines the entire content of his life; according to Christian doctrine, true B. is to be found only in eternal Beatitude.”
“Beatitude, the state, free of all pain or guilt, of everlasting and perfectly fulfilled happiness, anticipated by all religions as the purpose and object of human history. In the Cath. doctrine, primarily the B. of God in the infin. possession by Himself of His perfect Being; secondly, the B. of Man (& Angel) in communion with God through charismatically granted participation in His beatifying life, a participation that begins in temporal life as intimacy with Christ (Divine bliss) and is perfected in eternal B. with Resurrection and eschatolog. transformation of all reality. According to Prot. belief, perfect union with God’s Will, the true destiny of Man, his salvation and his redemption.”
Now that T. and W., L. and B., have been sufficiently defined, and we know where to look up the definition whenever we need these tools, it is not necessary for this report to concern itself for long with the description of emotional states, it being enough to point to their definition in the encylopedia as occasion arises and to refer to them merely by the suitable abbreviation of each. Since T., L., and W. are to be expected in crisis situations only, it might be appropriate at this point to congratulate all those who proceed through life crisis-less, crisis-free, or merely crisis-resistant, who have never shed a T., have been spared W., have never wept for someone else, and have refrained from L. where it was against regulations. A toast to all those whose conjunctiva have never been summoned into action, who have survived all vicissitudes dry-eyed, and who have never used their T.-ducts. A toast, too, to those who have their brainstems firmly under control and, in a state of perpetual confidence in Being, have never had to laugh or smile from any sense of Being other than that of wisdom. Three cheers for Buddha and the Mona Lisa, who were so utterly confident in their Being.
Since Pain is also due to occur, the pertinent paragraph, instead of being quoted here in t
oto, will be edited so as to allow only one crucial sentence to appear here: “The degree of sensitivity to P. varies with the individual, chiefly because to physical P. is later associated the experience of mental or spiritual P. Both together result in subjective P.”
Because Leni and all those affected not only felt P. but suffered, let us, in order to complete our set of referents, quickly quote the operative sentence in the encyclopedia that deals with Suffering. It (S.) “is felt by a person with a severity proportionate to his quality of life and to the sensitivity of his nature.” One thing is certain: in the case of all those associated with the Gruyten and Hoyser families, including Marja van Doorn, who was linked equally with both families, rather important aspects of the quality of life must have been seriously affected. In Leni’s case, alarming signs appeared: she lost weight, acquired among outsiders the reputation of being a crybaby; her magnificent hair, while it did not exactly fall out, lost its luster, and not even Marja’s fabulous inventiveness with soups, in the production of which even her eyes were constantly T.-filled—she paraded her whole rich gamut of soups before Leni and procured the very freshest of fresh rolls—nothing could remedy Leni’s lack of appetite. Photos from that time, taken secretly by one of her father’s employees and later found in Marja’s possession, show Leni looking downright peaked, pale from P. and S., totally debilitated by W. and T., without even a suggestion of the rudiments of L. Was it possible that Lotte Hoyser had not been quite so right after all in disputing Leni’s widowhood, and that at some deeper level, hidden from Lotte, Leni had indeed been a widow and not only platonically? Be that as it may, Leni’s subjective P. must have been quite considerable. Nor was it any less in the case of the others. Now her father did not merely lapse into brooding, melancholy set in, and (according to the information of those who had dealings with him) he “lost interest.” Since old Hoyser was equally broken, and even Lotte (according to her own information) “hadn’t been herself for ages,” and Mrs. Gruyten, now gradually fading away, kept to her bedroom anyway, “now and again swallowing a few spoonfuls of soup and half a slice of toast” (M.v.D.), an explanation for the fact that the business not only continued to flourish but actually expanded is the one offered by old Hoyser, which sounds more or less plausible: “It had such a sound basis and was so well organized, and the auditors, the architectural and construction experts, who had been engaged by Hubert, were so loyal, that it simply continued to run of its own momentum, at least for the year when Hubert was a complete washout, and myself too. But the main thing was: the hour of the old-timers had struck—there were a few hundred of them by that time, and they took charge of the business!”
The subject now becomes too delicate for us to choose Lotte Hoyser as witness for an unexplained period in the life of Gruyten, Sr.: we must reluctantly forgo her wonderfully dry, pregnant manner of speaking.
For, to use a rather fashionable expression, during the ensuing year (which must be calculated from April 1940 to roughly June 1941) she was his “constant companion.” He may also have been her constant companion, for both were in need of the consolation that in the end it seems they did not find.
They traveled around, the pregnant widow with the melancholy man who did not read the file on the misfortune that had befallen his son and his nephew but merely had Lotte and Hoffgau give him the gist of it; a man who from time to time would mutter to himself “Shit on Germany,” ostensibly traveling from construction site to construction site, from hotel to hotel, in reality not casting so much as a single glance anywhere at the drawings, accounts, files, or construction sites. He travels by train and by car, or by plane, pathetically pampering the five-year-old Werner Hoyser who today, at thirty-five, lives in a smart self-owned apartment full of modern furniture, is enthusiastic about Andy Warhol, and could “kick himself in the arse” for not having bought soon enough; he is a pop fan, a sex fan, and the owner of a betting office; he clearly remembers long walks by the beaches of Scheveningen, Mers les Bains, Boulogne, and that “Grandpa Gruyten’s” hands used to shake and Lotte used to cry; he remembers construction sites, T-beams, workmen in “funny clothes” (probably prisoners. Au.). From time to time Gruyten, who no longer lets Lotte out of his sight, stays home for a few weeks, sits at his wife’s bedside, relieving Leni and trying desperately to do what Leni is trying to do: read something Irish to his wife, fairy tales, legends, ballads—but with no more success than Leni; Mrs. Gruyten wearily shakes her head, smiles. Old Hoyser, who seems to have got over his P. more quickly and by September has already stopped shedding T., is “going to the office again,” at intervals hearing himself asked the astonishing question: “Hasn’t the business gone to the dogs yet?” No. It is even continuing to improve: his old-timers stand firm, their ranks are unbroken.
Is this man Gruyten already worn out at forty-one? Can’t he come to terms with the death of his son, while all around him the sons of others are dying en masse without those others being broken? Is he beginning to read books? Yes. One. He digs out a prayer book from the year 1913 that was given to him at his First Communion and “seeks consolation in religion” (“which he never had,” Hoyser, Sr.). The only result of this reading is that he starts giving money away, “scads of it,” as Hoyser and his daughter-in-law Lotte both testify, and the van Doorn woman too, who instead of “scads” says “wads” (“He gave me wads of it too, so I bought back my parents’ little farm and a bit of land”)—he goes to churches but can never stand being in there longer than “a minute or two” (Lotte). He “looked seventy” while his wife, who had just turned thirty-nine, “looked sixty” (van Doorn). He kisses his wife, sometimes kisses Leni, never Lotte.
Is decline setting in? His former family doctor, a Dr. Windlen, aged eighty, who has long since risen above the myth of professional secrecy, sitting in his old-fashioned apartment where remnants of his practice—white cabinets, white chairs—are still to be seen, wholly engrossed in unmasking as idolatry the fashionable craze for medication, maintains that Gruyten had been “as fit as a fiddle; all the tests, every single one, were negative—liver, heart, kidneys, blood, urine—besides, the fellow hardly smoked at all, maybe a cigar a day, and drank maybe a bottle of wine a week. Gruyten a sick man? Not on your life—I tell you, he knew what was what, he knew what he was doing. The fact that people say he sometimes looked seventy proves nothing—psychically and morally, mind you, he had been terribly injured, but organically: no. The only thing he remembered from the Bible was: ‘Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,’ and that affects a person’s disposition.”
Is Leni devoting as much attention as ever to the products of her digestion? Probably not. She visits Rahel more often, even talks about it. “Strange goings-on,” as Margret testifies. “I didn’t believe a word of it, and then one day I went along and saw it was true. Haruspica no longer had any specific job, she wasn’t even a ‘toilet attendant.’ And was only allowed in the church when the choir wasn’t singing or a service wasn’t going on. She didn’t even have her wee little room any more, she was cooped up in the attic in a tiny closet where they used to keep brooms and brushes, cleaning materials and dusters, and you know what she asked us both for? Cigarettes! I didn’t smoke in those days, but Leni gave her a few, and she lighted one right away and inhaled deeply; then she nipped off the end—I’ve often seen people nip the end off a cigarette, but the way she could do it! It was perfect, the work of an expert, like people do in the clink or in hospital in the john, she took her scissors and very carefully snipped off the burning end and poked around in it to see if there wasn’t a shred of tobacco in there—and all into an empty matchbox. And all the time she kept murmuring: ‘The Lord is nigh, the Lord is nigh, He is at hand.’ It didn’t sound crazy, or ironical, the way she said it, it sounded serious—she certainly wasn’t nuts, just a bit scruffy, as if she weren’t being given quite enough soap. I didn’t go again: to tell the truth, I was scared—my nerves were all shot anyway, what with the boy being dead
and his cousin too; when Schlömer was away I used to hang around the soldiers’ bars and then go off with one or another; I was finished, though I was only nineteen—and that business with the nun, I just couldn’t bear to see it, she was caged like a mouse left to die, you could tell; she was more wizened than ever, she took a big bite out of the bread Lotte had taken her and kept saying to me: ‘Margret, stop it now, stop it.’ ‘Stop what?’ I asked. ‘What you’re doing.’ I didn’t have the guts any more, I couldn’t take it, my nerves were shot—Leni, of course, went on visiting her for years. She used to say funny things like: ‘Why don’t they just finish me off instead of hiding me?’ And to Leni she kept saying: ‘For God’s sake, you’ve got to live—live, I tell you, do you hear?’—and Leni would cry. She was very fond of her. Well, later on it all came out [“What?”] that she was Jewish and that the Order hadn’t even registered her, simply acted as if she’d disappeared during a transfer, they hid her, but they didn’t give her much to eat. Because, you see, she didn’t have any ration cards, yet they had that orchard, and the pigs they fattened. No, my nerves couldn’t take it. Like a little shriveled-up old mouse she was, cooped up in there—and the only reason they let Leni see her was that she was so determined, and because they knew how naive she was. She just thought the nun was being disciplined. Right to the end, Leni never bothered to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews anyway. And even if she had known, and had known how dangerous it was, she would’ve said: ‘So what?’ and would have gone on visiting her, I swear it. Leni had courage—she still has. It was terrible to hear the nun say: ‘The Lord is nigh, the Lord is nigh,’ and to see her look toward the door as if He were just coming in, that very instant—that scared me, but not Leni—she would look toward the door, expectantly—as if it wouldn’t surprise her to see the Lord come walking in. But by that time it was early 1941, I already had a job at the military hospital, and she looked at me then and said: ‘It’s not only what you’re doing that’s not good, what you’re taking is worse, how long have you been taking it?’ And I said: ‘Two weeks.’ And she said: ‘Then there’s still time.’ And I said: ‘No, I’ll never give it up now.’ Morphine, of course—didn’t you know, or didn’t you at least suspect?”
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