The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (58 page)

Das erste Deutsche Reich. Und später it expanded further, into the Northern Marches and the March of Austria, peacefully into Pomerania and beyond as I shall tell you next week. And later still the great emperor Friedrich Barbarossa went far down into Italy and eventually established, by the marriage of his son Henry to Constance of Sicily, the
Hohenstaufen
dynasty right down here. But the popes put a stop to that. As they always did, from Henry IV’s brave penance in mid-winter to Barbarossa’s meeting with Alexander III in Venice on July 24th 1177, commemorated by three red marble slabs in the porch of St. Mark’s where the Emperor knelt to receive the kiss of peace, conceding however, no point of vital substance. But the popes have no power today. France and England have, backed of course by America. I want you now to compare even this map with the modern map. You can see how das deutsche Volk virile numerous and brave has suffered at the hands of the European powers and now no longer has enough Lebensraum.

The Lebensraum in orange looks enormous, as big as FRANKreich bigger than ENGland all the way to Wien like a wolf turned eastwards with its open jaw on Poland in dark lilac and Bohemia no Czechoslovakia the SUDETENland also in pale pink between its chin and breast. But paler than the pink baby of was ENGland gehört. Dänemark gives it violet ears perked up quite high in wild anticipation. The orange breast of the wolf touches the frilly top of Italy’s purple boot which faces the other way however, kicking Sicily like a triangular football.

Two thirds of the way down the squarish green shape of FRANKreich not far from the frilly top of the purple boot lies Lyon, somewhere in which stands the big square black school where Mlle Levert professeur d’histoire talks of la grande différence entre l’Allemagne de Barbarossa et la faible fédération de 350 petits états après le Traité de
Westphalie
. Le pouvoir de l’empereur devint une ombre, même parmi les princes allemands. Il y avait eu en Europe une seule religion. Maintenant il y en avait trois. La France grandit de ces différences. Du moins, jusqu’au dix-neuvième siècle, quand l’Allemagne a renouvelé ses folles ambitions. But Mlle Levert looks cold and distant not so nice as young Madame Ribloux de l’Ecole Primaire who points to the map and says voici Lyon, à travers laquelle coulent deux rivières, le Rhône et la Saône. Et comme on dit toujours à Lyon, il y a aussi la troisième rivière, le Beaujolais.

— Où qu’elle coule, la troisième rivière maman?

— Où qu’elle coule? Où as-tu appris à parler le français comme ça?

— Où coule-t-elle?

— Quoi?

— La belle Jolaise.

— Mais tu radotes! Tu en as de ces idées. Tout à fait comme ton père, j’sais pas ce que j’vais faire avec toi.

— Maman.

— Oui?

— Tu m’aimes?

— Mais bien sûr ma poupée.

— Autant que moi j’t’aime?

— Plus.

— Moi j’t’aime grand comme le ciel.

— Eh bien moi aussi.

— Mais tu as dis plus.

— Hé bien oui, plus. Tiens, plus haut que le ciel, le ciel a ses hauteurs tu sais. Allons, reste tranquille ma chérie, fais tes devoirs.

— Et papa?

— Quoi papa?

— Tu crois qu’il m’aime?

— Ah ça ton père j’sais pas où il a fichu le camp.

Il a fichu le camp somewhere en Allemagne where I shall send you for a year with your tante Frieda later, quand tu auras quinze ans and you’ll have done more German at school by then. For my sins you have a German name and you might as well learn la langue boche it will come in useful when you grow up. I never believed in denying your heritage after all I married him and besides, as I said to my mother when she objected—which of course made me all the more determined—we must forgive and forget, it won’t happen again. If she hadn’t objected I wouldn’t have married him probably, oh yes I had others after me, a nice French boy Jules and then you’d have turned out quite different. Remind me not to object to any crétin you want to marry when you grow up it’ll only throw you into his arms. And besides, le salaud je l’aimais. Well, you’ll understand all these things when you grow up into a grande-personne ma chérie, et maintenant que tu as quinze ans, I’ve packed all your
prettiest
dresses into a great big trunk, and your German
grammar
, and some of your Comtesse de Ségur favourites so that you don’t forget your French.

— Oh maman il y a longtemps que je ne lis plus la Comtesse de Ségur pour qui me prends-tu?

— Ah? Trop tard, I put them at the bottom never mind you may like to re-read them. Your train leaves tomorrow at eight, change at Frankfort for Nuremberg, just cross the same platform you won’t have any luggage except a small suitcase and you won’t get lost will you and don’t talk to any strange men, or in fact to anyone at all tu entends? And you will go to Mass every Sunday in Nuremberg, your uncle has promised to drive you there after or before their own service in the village church, Calvinist of course or do I mean Lutheran? Protestant anyway. Your father didn’t—oh well, that doesn’t matter now. You will go won’t you, you know what the devil does to children who commit mortal sins. And you must remember to say three Je-vous-salue-Marie and one
Notre-Père
every morning, and again every night when you go to bed.

— Oui maman.

— And when you come back you’ll speak fluent German and sail through your bachot at seventeen if you keep up your French and Latin at school there which your tante Frieda assures me you will. Now don’t cry, I’ve done everything to bring you up properly and equip you so that you can earn your living well and not go through what I had to. Women have a hard time these days when left alone to cope. In the old days they had large families to go back to or convents or something but now they have to go out into the world unequipped and the world lines up against them. Allons ma chérie don’t cry I’ll write to you every week and you’ll write to me, everything you do and all the new things you’ll see, why, in no time at all you’ll get used to it, you’ll even enjoy it. Your father had a lot of charm you know and comes of a very good family whatever one may say about his people in general. But good Germans exist I assure you and you’ll make a lot of nice new friends at school, and in the village. And you know, you’ll live in a castle. With a moat and drawbridge.

The drawbridge never draws and grass grows in the moat around the plain square Schloss, more like a house than a castle, but with an inner courtyard into which the small Opel drives bumping over the drawbridge until it comes to a
standstill
. The Baron steely-haired and stern but not like a vraie grande-personne at all on account of dirty leather shorts thick green woollen socks a grey jacket with green tabs on the collar and the feathered felt hat tossed over the small suitcase on the back seat gets out walks round the car opens the door and clicks his big brown shoes with mock perhaps solemnity and Willkommen Liebchen ah, here comes your aunt, gaunt, skeletal down the stone stairs that spiral like the sandy hair scraped back to a high coil and cold grey eyes. Willkommen Liebchen du sprichst ein bisschen deutsch nicht wahr? Gut. Wir müssen von Anfang an nur deutsch sprechen, weil obwohl wir natürlich französisch und englisch können du sollst hier doch deutsch lernen nicht wahr? Meet your cousin Helmut you will get on well together I know. My daughter and her husband and baby live on the ground floor you will meet them later. How pale you look. Come in.

How pale he looks, der Baron, dead on his bed surrounded with wreaths and tributes, brought back in state from the Sudetenland by train and then from Nürnberg on a
gun-carriage
drawn by four motorbikes in escort having burst a blood-vessel while addressing a meeting but why Tante Frieda? Why?

— Schweinehunde! Kommunisten! Sozialdemokraten! Homosexuelle Juden! Here my child you behold a hero, the first hero and victim in a long line to come no doubt. Das Wehrkreiskommando has given him full military honours as an ex-tank captain in the Great War and hero of the hour. You will understand these things later my child, but
remember
now, your uncle did his duty only his duty as a Party Member. Nothing more. And all for those filthy Bohemians—no, I must not give way. O mein lieber Helmut. You will attend the funeral at my side, Liebchen, as the only representative of his poor brother your father, who went off to Russia in a mad weak moment, always so foolish and headstrong your father. In a black dirndl over your white blouse, I’ll get Emma to make one up for you quickly, she has your
measurements
hasn’t she or have you filled out since she made this blue one? Yes it does look a bit tight. Run up to her room and tell her. O mein lieber Helmut.

The first hero and victim lies in a long line to come on all sides Jewish German Polish Dutch French Greek Serbian Russian English virile brave hard-working for the Vaterland mother-country patrie according to the climate height of aircraft speed of conquest pride fear ignorance gnawing guilt wonder at these questions Fräulein but how did you come to stay in Germany at all at the beginning of the emergency? Your mother no doubt awaited you anxiously and the
government
made all provisions for repatriation of aliens. Or did you not regard yourself as alien? So you had appendicitis? Could you not have returned to France for the operation? Peritonitis. And complications. In the Krankenhaus at Nürnberg. Ah well. But you would have returned if you could? You regard yourself as French? Your father, ah! Yes, well we need not probe further into that, nobody blames you Fräulein and we have evidence that he has since died, purged we may say, by our charming neighbours. Gut. So you had a year in Freiburg? Who paid, die Baronin? A scholarship. So you feel you owe something to the German Reich surely. But why did you study French? France had already become our ally then and you must have realised it could hardly come in very useful for the war effort. And Provençal, Mediaeval French? Fräulein we need guns not butter. Well, to get a degree Herr Oberstleutnant, after the war of course, besides, one had the choice Herr Oberstleutnant, if the government did not wish one to pursue such studies they could have changed the syllabus. But in its wisdom—Ja-ja, quite so, the war will not last much longer, and what had you intended to pursue? After the war of course. Well, er, Middle High German.
Mittel
hoch? Yes, Hartmann von Aue for example or Wolfram’s Parzifal. Ah, Parzifal, ja der Fuehrer likes that too. You see Herr Oberstleutnant one should know the sources and not deny what our great culture owes to France, at least at the time. Und jetzt auch, Fräulein und jetzt auch, we have never denied the Kultur of that great country indeed, Feldmarschall Goering has made a particular point of honouring it.
Meanwhile
you must face the Dienstverpflichtung. Pity you did not study English, much more useful at this stage. You have? Ein bisschen. No qualifications. You will. Gut-gut. Well we can draft you into the Censorship until you do, you realise of course you would get much better pay with an extra language, English especially. Well now, I assume you have not heard at all from your mother in France? Now how do you feel about that? Man muss? Do you feel so impersonal Fräulein about das Vaterland die Heimat mother-country patrie according to the presentation of a tactical withdrawal but strategic gain or vice versa read daily from the enemy point of view which says that England has lost many battles but never a war forgetting a little one called The Hundred Years lost despite Crécy Agincourt not to mention the American War of Independence und so weiter in the
Presseüberwachungsabteilung
Ausland (PA), Auslandspresseländergruppe Nord, Auslandspresseüberwachungsländergruppenreferatsleiter or for short Referat England (RE) housed in a requisitioned brothel Pommernstrasse Berlin with on the desk fat files labelled Geheime Reichssache and on the wall the poster of a wall patterned in huge ears and FEIND HÖRT MIT.

Feind hört mit everywhere all the time und man hört den Feind all day in drumming headlines and all night rumbling in the distant dark way up, the dark sliced through by searchlights converging on the dark sliced through by flak like red lightning in the dark sliced through by the falling scream with which the load excreted by the Feind speeds down and lands with distant thuds, closer crunches or a very close crash exploding into scarlet flames and flaring up the distant dark way up beyond the AA roof unless perhaps the shelter door.

— So you work in the AA?

Achtung Feind-hört-mit ya.

— A-A, A-A, A-A.

— Du Schmutzling-Witzling.

Such an old joke too everyone makes it the baby on its pot A-A and Vati-papa-ton-père so foolish and headstrong your father in a mad weak moment saying A-A elle a fait son A-A everyone makes it dans ses culottes sie stinkt was für ein kleines Schwein hast du mir da geboren. Yes well I wish you would joke sometimes and not act so solemn, so damned self-contained and secretive, like a ruddy geheime Reichssache. You should let up a little and come out with me instead of working half the night at your stupid old books. Yes, I know, you want to sit for your degree in silly old Freiburg. And what about the war? Meaning what about me and my desires. You think only of yourself, your interests, your future. Zukunft, du lieber Gott es gibt keine, we live from day to day and probably die tomorrow ich liebe dich don’t you love me even a little?

The same question everywhere goes unanswered on crowded trains to Nürnberg for Urlaub or elsewhere in dark streets after cinemas in dim-lit restaurants canteens according to the partner unless Johann in the office who has organisiert a tin of beef he brings into your little room later begging only to see and touch a little or a mere mad weak moment of flattering attraction boredom fatigue enthusiasm for Horst Heinrich Hans Hartmann Friedrich Konrad Rudolf in
grey-green
with yellow tabs on the collar grey-blue with red tabs on the collar holding you closely in their arms or eating drinking making merry cheering up our brave boys for which you must pay duty also to the customs that splendid officers commissioned or non-commissioned have of coming up into your little room just for a goodnight drink I promise and unbuttoning your white blouse pushing up your pullover fondling you all over underneath your skirt o du, geheime Reichssache demanding unconditional surrender Endsieg um Gottes Willen let me make love to you tomorrow I go away. To Africa to the Russian Front to Greece to Crete to Sicily to Norway in a pride of conquest and Organisieren. I shall die for my country and you won’t even love me a little. To Nürnberg for Urlaub on crowded trains don’t talk to any strange men will you or to anyone at all on smelly trains that stop three hours in the middle of nowhere at night slowly growing up growing away from those who willy-nilly have harboured a half-Feind in their midst growing away with Hans met in Berlin then stationed in München komm mal her hand in hand into den Alten Peter half destroyed already warum? Warum hast du mich hergebracht? I hate seeing damaged churches. Because, because, I wanted to show you something, someone, die Patronin der alleinstehenden Frauen. But she has vanished. Die Patronin der—du, eine alleinstehende Frau? Niemals. Except I hope until I come back and marry you and if you have a child just contact my parents, net? Growing away, growing up slowly, retarded frigid evidently even in Rothenburg gem-city as yet undamaged between the sheet and the tumbled sheeted
eiderdown
surrounded by the ice-cold air despite the wood-
pannelling
kein Kohlenklau says the host with a smirk but you have enough heat between you I imagine nicht wahr on the Romantische Strasse with Hans in grey-green and yellow tabs who goes off to the Russian Front tomorrow and does get killed. Grüss Gott and gone.