Stories (19 page)

Doctor Schröder paused, fixed them with the glare of his eyes, and said: “I wish to tell you that I, too, was wounded; perhaps you have not noticed. I was wounded on the Russian front. My life was despaired of. But I was saved by the skill of our doctors. My entire face is a witness to the magnificent skill of our German doctors.”

The British couple hastened to express their surprise and congratulations. Oddly enough, they felt a lessened obligation toward compassion because of Doctor Schröder’s grotesque and touching belief that his face was nearly normal enough to be unnoticed. He said that the surface of his face had burned off
when a tank beside him had exploded into pieces, showering him with oil. He had fought for three years with the glorious armies of his country all over the Ukraine. He spoke like a survivor from the Grande Armée to fellow admirers of “The Other,” inviting and expecting interested congratulation. “Those Russians,” he said, “are savages. Barbarians. No one would believe the atrocities they committed. Unless you had seen it with your own eyes, you would not believe the brutality the Russians are capable of.”

The British couple, now depressed into silence, and even past the point where they could allow their eyes to meet in ironical support of each other, sat watching the languidly revolving dancers.

Doctor Schröder said insistently, “Do you know that those Russians would shoot at our soldiers as they walked through the streets of a village? An ordinary Russian peasant, if he got the chance, would slaughter one of our soldiers? And even the women—I can tell you cases of Russian women murdering our soldiers after pretending to be buddies with them.”

Mary and Hamish kept their peace and wondered how Doctor Schröder had described to himself the mass executions, the hangings, the atrocities of the German Army in Russia. They did not wonder long, for he said, “We were forced to defend ourselves. Yes, I can tell you that we had to defend ourselves against the savagery of those people. The Russians are monsters.”

Mary Parrish roused herself to say, “Not such monsters, perhaps, as the Jews?” And she tried to catch and hold the fanatic eyes of their host with her own. He said, “Ah, yes, we had many enemies.” His eyes, moving fast from Hamish’s face to Mary’s, paused and wavered. It occurred to him perhaps that they were not entirely in accordance with him. For a second his ugly, blistered mouth twisted in what might have been doubt. He said politely, “Of course, our Führer went too far in his zeal against our enemies. But he understood the needs of our country.”

“It is the fate of great men,” said Hamish, in the quick sarcastic voice that was the nearest he ever got to expressed anger, “to be misunderstood by the small-minded.”

Doctor Schröder was now unmistakably in doubt. He was silent, examining their faces with his eyes, into which all the
expression of his scarred face was concentrated, while they suffered the inner diminishment and confusion that happen when the assumptions on which one bases one’s life are attacked. They were thinking dubiously that this was the voice of madness. They were thinking that they knew no one in Britain who would describe it as anything else. They were thinking that they were both essentially, self-consciously, of that element in their nation dedicated to not being insular, to not falling into the errors of complacency; and they were, at this moment, feeling something of the despair that people like them had felt ten, fifteen years ago, watching the tides of madness rise while the reasonable and the decent averted their eyes. At the same time, they were feeling an extraordinary but undeniable reluctance to face the fact that Doctor Schröder might represent any more than himself. No, they were assuring themselves, this unfortunate man is simply a cripple, scarred mentally as well as physically, a bit of salvage from the last war.

At this moment the music again stopped, and there was an irregular clapping all over the room; clearly there was to be a turn that the people there knew and expected.

Standing beside the piano was a small, smiling man who nodded greetings to the guests. He was dark, quick-eyed, with an agreeable face that the British couple instinctively described as “civilised.” He nodded to the pianist, who began to improvise an accompaniment to his act; he was half-singing, half-talking the verse of a song or ballad about a certain general whose name the British couple did not recognise. The accompaniment was a steady, military-sounding thump-thump against which the right hand wove fragments of Deutschland Uber Alles and the Horst Wessel Song. The refrain was: “And now he sits in Bonn.”

The next verse was about an admiral, also now sitting in Bonn.

The British couple understood that the song consisted of the histories of a dozen loyal German militarists who had been over-zealous in their devotion to their Führer; had been sentenced by the Allied courts of justice to various terms of imprisonment, or to death; “and now they sat in Bonn.”

All that was fair enough. It sounded like a satire on Allied policy in Germany, which—so both these conscientious people
knew and deplored—tended to be over-generous to the ex-murderers of the Nazi regime. What could be more heartening than to find their own view expressed there, in this comfortable resort of the German rich? And what more surprising?

They looked at Doctor Schröder and saw his eyes gleaming with pleasure. They looked back at the urbane, ironical little singer, who was performing with the assurance of one who knows himself to be perfectly at one with his audience, and understood that this was the type of ballad adroitly evolved to meet the needs of an occupied people forced to express themselves under the noses of a conqueror. True that the American Army was not here, in this room, this evening; but even if they had been, what possible exception could they have taken to the words of this song?

It was a long ballad, and when it was ended there was very little applause. Singer and audience exchanged with each other smiles of discreet understanding, and the little man bowed this way and that. He then straightened himself, looked at the British couple, and bowed to them. It was as if the room caught its breath. Only when they looked at Doctor Schröder’s face, which showed all the malicious delight of a child who had thumbed his nose behind teacher’s back, did they understand what a demonstration of angry defiance that bow had been. And they understood, with a sinking of the heart, the depths of furious revengeful humiliation which made such a very slight gesture so extremely satisfying to these rich burgesses, who merely glanced discreetly, smiling slightly, at these conquerors in their midst—conquerors who were so much shabbier than they were, so much more worn and tired—and turned away, exchanging glances of satisfaction, to their batteries of gleaming glasses filled with wine and with beer.

And now Mary and Hamish felt that this demonstration, which presumably Doctor Schröder had shared in, perhaps even invited, released them from any obligation to him; and they looked at him with open dislike, indicating that they wished to leave.

Besides, the waiter stood beside them, showing an open insolence that was being observed and admired by the handsome matron and her husband and her son; the girl was, as usual, dreaming some dream of her own and not looking at anyone in particular. The waiter bent over them, put his hands
on their still half-filled glasses, and asked what they would have.

Hamish and Mary promptly drank what remained of their beer and rose. Doctor Schröder rose with them. His whole knobby, ugly body showed agitation and concern. Surely they weren’t going? Surely, when the evening was just beginning, and very soon they would have the privilege of hearing again the talented singer who had just retired, but only for a short interval. Did they realise that he was a famous artist from M——, a man who nightly sang to crammed audiences, who was engaged by the management of this hotel, alas, only for two short weeks of the winter season?

This was either the most accomplished insolence or another manifestation of Doctor Schröder’s craziness. For a moment the British couple wondered if they had made a mistake and had misunderstood the singer’s meaning. But one glance around the faces of the people at the near tables was enough: each face expressed a discreetly hidden smile of satisfaction at the rout of the enemy—routed by the singer, and by the waiter, their willing servant who was nevertheless at this moment exchanging democratic grins of pleasure with the handsome matron.

Doctor Schröder was mad, and that was all there was to it. He both delighted in the little demonstration of hostility and, in some involved way of his own, wanted them to delight in it—probably out of brotherly love for him. And now he was quite genuinely agitated and hurt because they were going.

The British couple went out, past the smiling band, past the conscious waiter, while Doctor Schröder followed. They went down the iced steps of the hotel and stopped by the legless man, who was still rooted in the snow like a plant, where Hamish gave him all the change he had, which amounted to the price of another round of drinks had they stayed in the big warm room.

Doctor Schröder watched this and said at once, with indignant reproach, “You should not do this. It is not expected. Such people should be locked away.” All his suspicion had returned; they must, obviously, be rich, and they had been lying to him.

Mary and Hamish went without speaking down the snow-soft street, through a faint fall of white snow; and Doctor
Schröder came striding behind them, breathing heavily. When they reached the door of the little house where they had a room, he ran around them and stood facing them, saying hurriedly, “And so I shall see you tomorrow at the autobus, nine-thirty.”

“We will get in touch with you,” said Hamish politely, which, since they did not know his address, and had not asked for it, was as good as dismissing him.

Doctor Schröder leaned toward them, examining their faces with his gleaming, suspicious eyes. He said, “I will attend you in the morning,” and left them.

They let themselves in and ascended the shallow wooden stairs to their room in silence. The room was low and comfortable, gleaming with well-polished wood. There was an old-fashioned rose-patterned jug and basin on the washstand and an enormous bed laden with thick eiderdowns. A great, shining, blue-tiled stove filled half a wall. Their landlady had left a note pinned to one of the fat pillows, demanding politely that they should leave, in their turn, a note for her outside their door, saying at what hour they wished to receive their breakfast tray. She was the widow of the pastor. She now lived by letting this room to the summer and winter visitors. She knew this couple were not married because she had had, by regulation, to take down particulars from their passports. She had said nothing of any disapproval she might have felt. The gods of the tourist trade must not be offended by any personal prejudice she might hold; and she must have prejudices, surely, as the widow of a man of God, even against a couple so obviously respectable as this one?

Mary said, “I wish she’d turn us out in a fit of moral indignation. I wish someone would have a fit of moral indignation about something, instead of everything simmering and festering in the background.”

To which he replied, with the calm of a practical man, “We will get up extremely early and leave this valley before our friend Doctor Fascist can see us. I don’t think I could bear to exchange even one more word with him.” He wrote a short note to the widow of the pastor, demanding breakfast for seven o’clock; left it outside the door; and, thus well-organised, invited Mary to come to bed and stop worrying.

They got into bed and lay side by side. This was not a night when their arms could hold any comfort for each other. This
was a night when they were not a couple, they were two people. Their dead were in the room with them—if Lise, his wife, could be called dead. For how were they to know? War above all breeds a knowledge of the fantastic, and neither of them heard one of the extraordinary and impossible stories of escape, coincidence, and survival without thinking: Perhaps Lise is alive somewhere after all. And the possible aliveness of Hamish’s dead wife had kept alive the image of the very young medical student who, being a medical student, had no right to risk himself in the air at all; but who had in fact taken wing out of his furious misery and anger because of the Nazis and had crashed in flames a year later. These two, the pretty and vivacious Lise and the gallant and crusading airman, stood by the enormous, eiderdown-weighted bed and said softly: You must include us, you must include us.

And so it was a long time before Mary and Hamish slept.

Both awoke again in the night, aware of the snow-sheen on the windowpanes, listening to the soft noises of the big porcelain stove which sounded as if there were a contented animal breathing beside them in the room. Now they thought that they were leaving this valley because, out of some weakness of character apparently inherent in both of them, they had put themselves in a position where, if they took a room higher up the valley, it would have to be a room chosen for them by Doctor Schröder, since they could not bring themselves to be finally rude to him because of that scarred face of his.

No, they preferred to conclude that Doctor Schröder summed up in his personality and being everything they hated in this country, Germany, the great catalyst and mirror of Europe: summed it up and presented it to them direct and unambiguously, in such a way that they must reject or accept it.

Yet how could they do either? For to meet Doctor Schröder at all made it inevitable that these two serious and conscience-driven people must lie awake and think: One nation is not very different from another…. (For if one did not take one’s stand on this proposition where did one end?) And therefore it followed that they must think: What in Britain corresponds to Doctor Schröder? What unpleasant forces are this moment simmering in the sewers of our national soul that might explode suddenly into shapes like Doctor Schröder? Well, then? And what deplorable depths of complacency there must be in
us both that we should feel so superior to Doctor Schröder—that we should wish only that he might be pushed out of sight somewhere, like a corpse in a house full of living people; or masked like a bad smell; or exorcised like an evil spirit?