3 Saturday, August 8, 1970 1953-54 After breakfast he accompanied Brigitte to the garage and kissed her before she drove off to her meeting. A minute after the gate closed behind her he heard the intercom buzzer, and the muffled voice of Frau Schmidt as she answered it. He was just reentering the house. “It’s the young lady, Herr Doktor,” she said. “Let her in, please. I just have to go upstairs for a moment.” He went up in order to fetch his camera. He was going to take the film that morning to Albers’ photo shop for processing. He heard the front door open and shut. When he went downstairs, his camera slung over his shoulder, the girl was there. “Hello,” he said in English. “Shalom,” she said and went on in Hebrew. “Are you Michael Wilner who was called Miki in Kibbutz Refadim?” “Yes, and I am still called that,” he said with a laugh. “I am Ora,” she said, reaching out her hand. He took her hand. “Ora who?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, breaking the handshake. “I want to know if you remember Nili.” “Nili Osher?” “Yes.” “Of course I remember. I remember everyone I knew there.” “Do you remember the last time you saw her?” “Of course. Just before I left, in June 1952.” “I was born on the eleventh of March 1953,” she said with a smile. She really was very pretty when she smiled. His first response to hearing her birthdate was to calculate that she was seventeen. By what he remembered of female university students, from his own student days and from the invited lectures that he had recently been giving, he would have given her at least twenty, as had Frau Schmidt, whose daughter Ingrid was that age. Only after a few seconds did the meaning of the date hit him personally. “Are you Nili’s daughter?” he asked. She continued to smile, saying nothing. He, too, remained silent for a while. “Am I your father?” he finally asked. “I have a mom and dad,” she said, sounding like a little girl. “They adopted me when I was a baby,” she went on, now sounding very adult. “I always knew I was adopted. They are much older than the parents of my friends and I don’t look at all like either one of them, but it never mattered. They are modest people, they own a little grocery store in Jerusalem, and they work hard, but they always had money for whatever I needed, or whatever I wanted, even if I didn’t need it: clothes – and I’ve always liked pretty clothes, even when I was a little girl – and shoes and books and a bicycle and cosmetics and trips and so on. At first it seemed normal, but when I got into high school I noticed that most other kids couldn’t afford the things that I took for granted. I began to wonder, but not too much.” She paused. He wondered why she was telling him all that. “Come and sit down,” he said, pointing in the direction of the breakfast room. “Would you like some juice?” “Sure,” she said. He called out to Frau Schmidt, asking her to bring two glasses of orange juice. When she did so, he said to Ora, “Fresh juice, from Israeli oranges.” She took a long sip of juice. “Let me go on,” she said. “Last year, on my sixteenth birthday, I came home from school, and my parents were there – they had closed the store for the afternoon – with a guest, a very beautiful, very elegant lady, wearing the kind of clothes that one never saw in Israel. ‘Shalom, Ora,’ she said to me, and suddenly all became clear to me. ‘I am Nili,’ she said, ‘or rather I was Nili,’ and she told me what her name was.” “What is her name?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t think she would want me to tell you that.” “All right,” he said. “So I said to her, ‘You are my natural mother, aren’t you?’ and I went to shake her hand. She held my hand for a long time, then both hands, and then she said, ‘These are your parents. They raised you. I gave you life, yes, but I had to leave you. I see that I left you in good hands. I was very young, only sixteen, just as you are now, so you’ll understand.’ I said, ‘I understand.’ She said, ‘I’m very happy to see you, what a lovely young woman you’ve grown up to be,’ etcetera etcetera.” “What did she tell you about herself?” “That she was living in London, and she wanted me to spend the summer with her. I was thrilled. London! Mary Quant! The Beatles! The Rolling Stones! I looked at my parents to see if they approved, but it had all already been arranged. So I spent last summer in London with Nili, and I had a wonderful time. She knows a lot of important people, and I got to go to parties and to clubs, and I got to meet… But you don’t want to know whom I met. One day we were walking by a bookstore, and there in the window was a book called ‘The Long Seventh Day’ by Michael Wilner, and Nili pointed at it and said, ‘Do you see that name? We called him Miki.’ I asked her why she was telling me that, and she said ‘Can you guess?’ So I guessed.” She paused for another draft of juice. He, meanwhile, had been sipping his slowly. “When I read that your book was coming out in Israel and you were going to give lectures, I followed you around. I wasn’t ready to approach you yet. But this summer I’m traveling around Europe with my boyfriend – he’s older and has already finished his military service – and when we made our plan I insisted that we make a stop in Hamburg, for as long as it took.” “Where are you staying?” “We were staying at the youth hostel, but now that I’ve met you, we’re ready to go on.” “I don’t know what to tell you…” he said, realizing that she had not asked him any question about him. “I know,” she said, “I should have written you to prepare you…” “No,” he said, “this way it’s more… more dramatic, the way it would be in an old-fashioned novel. But I would like to have a chance to get to know you, and for you to get to know me, and my wife…” “I hear that your wife is a famous actress here in Germany.” “Yes.” “I saw her driving out. She looks like Brigitte Bardot.” “I know.” “Anyway,” she said, “it will have to be another time. My boyfriend is waiting for me at the station.” “Which one?” “The little station, here in… how do you say it… Blankenese, the one that is one kilometer from here. We’re going to Copenhagen today.” “Let me give you a lift to the station,” he said. He had a pretext ready in case she declined the offer – the errand to the photo shop, which was near the station – but she accepted readily, asking only to use the bathroom before leaving. Since Frau Schmidt was cleaning the one downstairs, he led her to the one in the upstairs hallway. “What a beautiful house!” she said as they came down the stairs. “The book that you saw in London helped pay for it. Did you read it?” “Some parts,” she said. “But I borrowed it, I didn’t buy it, so I didn’t help you to buy the house.” He laughed. “It’s the American edition that brought the money.” “But doesn’t your wife make a lot of money as an actress?” “Yes, but when it came to buying a house we wanted us both to contribute equally.” “That’s nice,” he said. Just before they got into his car, he remembered his camera. “May I have a picture to remember you by?” “Sure,” she said, and she flashed her lovely smile, squinting slightly from the sun in her face, as he snapped. Along the way she said, “It’s beautiful here, but I’m curious how a Jew like you can be happy in Germany.” “I am not a Jew like me,” he said, trying not to sound defensive. “I’m just me, who happens to be a Jew.” “But you went through the Shoah…” “Precisely,” he said just as they reached the station plaza. “Maybe some day I’ll get a chance to tell you more about myself.” “Yes,” she said, “I would like that, too. We will be coming through Hamburg again, so give me your telephone number, and I will call you.” He hesitated. Which number should he give her? The one for the answering machine or the one for his private line? He was reluctant to give the latter to anyone he didn’t know and trust. But if she called the answering machine and if she was staying at a youth hostel then there might not be a number where he could call her back. She was a stranger, true, but she was also his flesh and blood; he was experiencing the realization of that fact almost as a physical sensation. He fished a slip of paper from the glove compartment, wrote his private number on it, and gave it to her. She smiled and put it in her jeans pocket. “Good-by!” she said as she stepped out of the car and began walking toward the station. He looked up to see if anyone was obviously waiting for her, but saw no one. “Have a good journey,” he called after her. She turned and smiled again, and kept walking. He turned his car around. *      *     * With Brigitte away in Hanover, he had a chance to get closer to his fellow Oberprimaner (while the school did not officially use the traditional Latin designations of the grades, pupils used them among themselves). He had first met most of them when he began attending the school in the ninth grade, but he had not had much contact with them since becoming close with Brigitte. Among his classmates when he began school, one of the first – after Brigitte – to make an impression on him was a girl named Ulla. What struck him about her was her extreme thinness. Her breasts seemed – unless she stuffed her brassiere, as he suspected she might – to be of normal fullness, but the rest of her body, from her face to her calves, reminded him of the walking cadavers who had peopled the concentration camp and who were called Mussulmans, except that the skin that covered her bones seemed quite healthy. The triangular shape of her bony face was actually attractive, and if it had been paired with a normal body she might even have been pretty, but as she was he found her appearance repulsive. As the new school year began, he began to have more conversations with fellow pupils who had expressed curiosity about his past as a concentration-camp survivor, which he neither hid nor flaunted. The nuanced, sometimes humorous way in which he talked about it made them comfortable, and even open to talking frankly about their parents’ involvement with the Nazi regime. Among his best friends were a boy named Bernd and a girl named Karin, who had been boyfriend and girlfriend since the tenth grade. They, in turn, formed part of a circle that included Ulla. He was surprised by how flirtatious she was, and even more so by how responsive the boys were to her flirting. He felt uncomfortable in her presence, and therefore he generally refrained from joining the conversation groups in which she took part. Her laughter was loud, and her presence in a group could be detected a good distance away. The autumn vacation, in the second part of October, was his first chance to spend some time with Brigitte other than her one-or-two-day home visits. He stayed with her in Hanover, in the apartment she shared with fellow students at the Academy, but the communal setting – which reminded him of the kibbutz – and her lack of free time, due to readings and rehearsals, did not leave much room or time for the kind of intimacy he craved. On returning to Bad Harzburg, he noticed a distinct change in Ulla; she was no longer the bony presence that he had come to avoid. Her calves were still thin, but there seemed to be flesh on her hips, waist and sides. When he saw Bernd and Karin walking together after school, he approached them. “Ulla is looking different,” he said. Bernd and Karin exchanged smiles. “How so?” asked Karin. “Well, a little fuller,” Miki said. “It seems she lost a game of Vatican roulette,” Bernd said. Miki had no idea of what that meant. “What’s that?” he asked. “You know,” Karin explained, “the calendar method, that the Pope recommends.” “You mean Knaus-Ogino?” “Yes,” said Karin, “that’s the technical name.” “Then why is it called Vatican roulette?” Miki asked. “It isn’t very reliable,” Bernd said. “Especially if one is like Ulla,” Karin filled in, “with irregular periods.” Miki had to think for a moment. “So,” he asked, “is she pregnant? Is that why she looks different?” Bernd and Karin smiled at each other and nodded to Miki. They had reached the intersection where Karin would turn to go home. She gave Bernd a quick kiss and said “Tschüss!” as she rounded the corner. As the boys continued on the main street, Bernd asked Miki, “Have you ever played it?” “Once,” Miki said. “It was the girl’s idea.” “Did anything happen?” “I don’t know,” said Miki. “It was when I was in Israel, about a year and a half ago.” “And you haven’t heard anything from her? Then I think you’re safe.” “Does anyone know who Ulla’s… I mean who the father is?” “I think Karin knows, but she hasn’t told me yet.” “So, will Ulla have an abortion?” “No, she can’t. She’s Catholic. That’s why it’s called Vatican roulette.” *      *     * He parked his car directly in front of the photo shop. Fräulein Albers, the owner’s spinsterish daughter, was running the shop that morning, and she promised Miki that the developing and printing would be done in three quarters of an hour, if he wanted just one 9-by-13-centimeter print of each negative. He agreed, and decided to wait for it. There was a café across the street from the shop, but he first walked to the station and looked around to see if Ora was still there; she was gone. He returned to the café, went inside to order coffee, picked up the café’s copy of the Morgenpost, and sat down at a sidewalk table. It was now almost ten o’clock. Brigitte would, in all likelihood, be having her mid-morning coffee at her meeting, perhaps this very minute. He began to leaf through the paper. He had already glanced at the headlines at home, and so he immediately turned to the Germany/World Panorama section and searched for a Stuttgart dateline. He quickly found it. 7 August. In the matter of the murdered Axel Hemme, a resident of the village of Unterriexingen, police authorities have determined that the victim, a refugee from the former Sudetenland, is not the same as the onetime SS officer Axel Hemme, who disappeared from sight after the Second World War and has not been located. The Stuttgart State’s Attorney’s Office has, however, not ruled out that the act may be a revenge killing based on a case of mistaken identity, and has announced that one line of the investigation would proceed on that basis. That’s a relief, he thought. There will be no need to call Wehrle, at least not right away. Passing to the sports section, he saw an item that caught his attention: it was reported that Uwe Seeler – the great Uwe, the hero of Hamburg, but also Miki’s friend – would shortly be announcing his retirement from the West German national team. To be sure, in the World Cup that had recently ended, as well as in the Bundesliga season, he had been upstaged by that prancing Bavarian, Gerd Müller, but as a sportsman in the true sense of the word Uwe had no peer. He relived his memory of that night in June, when the semifinal between the West German and Italian teams was played – in the afternoon – in Mexico City, and he watched the match in a bar in Venice because it was night there and Brigitte, who had just finished shooting a film, was exhausted – she was having her period – and needed to sleep. Italy had scored an early goal and kept the lead despite relentless attacks by the Germans, who were clearly in better physical condition, until Schnellinger equalized the score in the ninetieth minute. He expected groans of disappointment from the Italians in the bar, but what he heard to his amazement was applause and the comment ‘E ben meritato, ‘It’s well deserved.’ That display of sportsmanship was to him, personally, the highlight of the game and indeed of the entire tournament. The overtime – in which Müller scored two goals but the Italians managed three, earning the right to be blasted by Pelé and Company in the final – was an anticlimax. But Uwe’s sincere embrace of the Italian captain after the final whistle was also something to remember. He checked the time; the photos would not be ready for another twenty minutes. He had run out of distractions. He could no longer block from his mind the fact that he was, in some strange sense that he had not yet come to fathom, a father, and had been one for seventeen years, eighteen if gestation was included. Animal species have various patterns of reproduction, he thought. Some have monogamous couples that tend to their offspring together; there are even some in which only the father does so. In yet others, the alpha male rules over a harem of females, and the young are under his charge as well. But in most, the act of fertilization is a random one, and the biological father has no connection with his progeny. In mankind, all of these patterns are present. Most societies have developed a cultural preference for monogamy, but… Stop philosophizing, Doctor Wilner, he told himself. Look at yourself! Well, he was in a monogamous pairing, but one that, as he knew and accepted from the outset, was to produce no issue. Such an arrangement, he was sure, was uniquely human. But he had also taken part in what was little more than a random mating, driven solely by biological urges. Or had it really been that? He and Nili had been, during those last few months, going out with each other exclusively, flouting the code of their adolescent community. On his part, the biological urge had been the only factor, since he had never stopped loving Brigitte. But what about Nili? What had motivated her to play Vatican roulette, as Bernd had called it, on that farewell occasion? Or had she lied to him, and intended to have a child? If so, why? As a means of getting away from the kibbutz, where she no longer fitted in? At the time, he remembered, he was expected to come back to Refadim. What if he had returned to find a pregnant Nili? But kibbutz policy in such cases was to provide an abortion. Why, then, did Nili have her baby? Did she leave the kibbutz? There was some investigating to be done. And Nili had not made things easier by changing her identity. So now he had two unrelated mysteries to solve: Axel Hemme and Nili Osher. The forty-five minutes were up. Fräulein Albers was just placing the prints in the envelope as he walked into the shop. He paid and thanked her, and, as he walked out, he looked at the last three photos he had taken. He liked the one of Ora; it conveyed enough of her personality that Brigitte would get a sense of her by looking at it. Regarding the ones he had taken of Brigitte on the bed, she had been right; the fraction of a second that he had spent on focusing had cut down the spontaneity of her pose. He would look into getting a Pentax or a Nikkor. During his drive home he imagined several scenarios for telling Brigitte about Ora; each one began with showing her the photo. At home, seated at his desk, he looked at the rest of his photos, and was pleased with them on the whole. He then looked at his mail, and decided to open the envelope from Wegner first. The envelope contained only one letter. It was from Israel, and the sender was H. Korn, with a post-office box in Jerusalem. He opened it nonchalantly, and was surprised to see that it was in German, and written in the old German script that only older people still used. It was written on both sides of one sheet, and when he turned to the second page, he was startled at seeing the signature. It was Hanna. He read the letter slowly. 4th July, 1970 Dear Michael, I will try to keep this letter short, and limited to facts. As you will see, we will soon have an opportunity to exchange feelings, views and opinions. First, some facts about me. When I reached the age of sixty-two and the time to retire from teaching, I decided to make a complete break with the kibbutz and move to Jerusalem. I have, for a number of years, been growing ever more dismayed (all right, I am writing about feelings after all) with the rightward drift of Mapam and of the Kibbutz Artzi, especially after Mapam joined in the expansionist policy represented by Golda Meir and her friends. I have also decided to reclaim my original name. Now, about you. When you wrote me that you were not coming back to Israel, I of course informed the school, and the school informed Refadim. The reaction was as though you had committed high treason. Your name was wiped from the collective memory, and I would have been guilty by association if I had replied to your letter. You must remember that Stalin was not only still alive in the flesh, but his spirit still hovered over the kibbutz; the news from Prague and Moscow was just beginning to come in, and it took a while to digest. When, many years later, you were becoming known as a writer, any mention of you in Al Hamishmar would be like something that Pravda might write about Trotsky. But on my occasional visits to Jerusalem I would sometimes look at a copy of Ha’olam Hazeh, and there I got a very different impression of you. I began to feel a certain pride (feelings again!) in having contributed to the wisdom that I saw in you. I happened to be in Jerusalem when your book “The Long Seventh Day” came out in Hebrew, and a friend lent me a copy. To say that I was impressed is a great understatement. I ordered a copy of the German original sent to me in care of my Jerusalem friend, and once again I felt proud. I began to sympathize with your point of view about Israel and its neighbors, and this was what led to my eventual leaving of the kibbutz. The last result of the changes that I have undergone is that I feel once again ready to visit my hometown, Hamburg. I will be arriving on the 11th of August, and I will be staying at the good old Vier Jahreszeiten; my travel agent, Joseph Lauer, is very clever and got me an excellent rate. I am very much looking forward to seeing you again, and to meeting your beautiful and famous wife. Hanna The eleventh of August! he exclaimed inwardly, almost out loud. Only three days from today! How will I be able to contact her? He looked again at the date of the letter; it was July fourth. Had she delayed mailing it? A glance at the postmark on the envelope told him she had not: it was 6.7.70. Clearly, the letter had sat on someone’s desk at Wegner’s for almost a month. It struck him with blinding force that Hanna could give him information about Nili. It was not that he expected Hanna to remember all of her old students, but no one could forget a girl as striking as Nili Osher. How could he get in touch with her? No telephone number was given. Besides, she might not be in Israel any more; her clever travel agent might have arranged a trip for her that included other places in Europe besides Hamburg. The travel agent! He would try to find out if there is a listing in some directory for a travel agent named Joseph Lauer, so that he could contact him in order to find out Hanna’s itinerary. But this was Saturday; any office in Israel that might give him such information would be closed. He would like to be there when she arrived, but where? Would she be coming by plane or by train? If by train, then the most convenient station for the hotel would be Dammtor and not Hauptbahnhof, and as a native Hamburger she was sure to know that, but people forget things. Besides, he did not know where she would be coming from, nor what time. And she might be flying in… He would call Israel information tomorrow and find out if there is a listing for a travel agent named Lauer in Jerusalem. If not, he would call the Israeli travel agents’ association and get the name of Lauer’s agency It seemed to him that his past was pressing upon him like some sort of three-jawed vise – there must be such a tool, he thought – with Hemme, Nili (in the form of Ora) and Hanna each coming from a different direction, like the dreams that beset him when he slept in what had been Renate’s bed. *      *     * During his thirteenth-grade year at the high school, Hanna was on his mind a lot. There was disappointment over her not having replied to his letters, but there was also the sense that much of what he was being taught in preparation for the Abitur, especially in German and in history, he had already learned from Hanna. And not only in substance, but in style as well. As far as he knew, none of his teachers was a graduate of Hamburg University. Perhaps, he speculated, there was a certain style or spirit that was common to the universities of northern Germany in the late twenties and early thirties. In Hamburg, as Hanna had told him, the spirit had been informed by the presence of the many Jews who were there from the founding: Cassirer, Aby Warburg, William Stern, Erwin Panofsky. It was their influence, she further told him, that stimulated her and her fellow students to think for themselves, to challenge established authority, even to argue with their professors. She thought that it might have been their Jewish background, with its tradition of questioning, that kept them from turning into the hallowed German stereotype of the authoritarian Herr Professor. Miki wondered if that influence had spread across the Lüneburg Heath to Göttingen, and if any of its spirit had survived the Nazi years. Most of all, he wondered if he would find an academic environment similar to what Hanna had described to him. But what if it turned out otherwise? Would he look for it at another university? Of course not. Göttingen would be it. He could not be at a place that was not a short train ride away from where Brigitte was. *      *     * Brigitte came home a little before noon. She took a quick look at the photos that Miki presented her (he had previously removed the one of Ora and placed it in a desk drawer), smiled approvingly, and said that while the meeting had been successful – she would do the series – it had been tense, and she would need to do twenty minutes of yoga before she could be good company again. “I have a lot to tell you,” he said. “Give me a preview,” she said. He told her briefly about the letter from Hanna, and about his desire to contact the Israeli travel agent. He had already decided to postpone, for now, telling her about Ora, until after he had spoken with Hanna. “Maybe Billung can help,” she said. “That’s brilliant!” he said. Paul Billung, their travel agent, was a veteran of the business, into which he had been born; he had inherited his agency from his father. “Go ahead, call him while I get myself refreshed,” she said as she kicked off her high-heeled shoes, stepped into the slippers that were waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, and went up. “This is Michael Wilner,” he said to the young woman who answered the telephone at the Billung agency. “May I speak to Doctor Billung, please?” Paul Billung had obtained a doctorate in geography before taking over his father’s business, and liked the fact acknowledged. “Of course, Herr Doktor, here he is.” And then Paul Billung’s voice said, “Good day, Doctor Wilner. So, where and when are we traveling this time?” “This is not about my travel. I need your help. I need to contact a travel agent in Israel. Do you have a list of them?” “Yes, but not complete. What is this agent’s name?” “Lauer, in Jerusalem.” “Joseph Lauer?” “Yes.” “I know him very well. He grew up in Hamburg, you know.” It made sense that Hanna would use a fellow Hamburger as her travel agent. “He learned his business from my father, before he moved to Palestine, and we still work together.” “Do you happen to have his private telephone number? Today is the Sabbath, and I wouldn’t be able to reach him at his agency today.” “No,” Billung laughed, “we are not that close. But what is this about? Perhaps I can help.” “Well, he made travel arrangements for someone I know, and I would like to contact that person. He arranged for her to stay at the Vier Jahreszeiten here in Hamburg.” “If he did that, it was probably – no, certainly – through me. What is this person’s name?” “Hanna Korn.” “Let me see. Yes, Frau Hanna Korn, arriving on Tuesday from Vienna.” So she was probably in Vienna at that moment. “At seventeen hours, on Lufthansa.” “You wouldn’t happen to know where she’s staying in Vienna?” “I don’t have that information, but if I know Lauer, he puts up his clients at the Josefshof.” “Thank you, Dr. Billung, you help has been invaluable.” “It’s my pleasure, Dr. Wilner. And let me give you Lauer’s agency telephone number.” He did so. “You can call him tomorrow,” he added, “since Sunday in Israel… but you know that already. By the way, if you didn’t know Israel so well, then your arrangements when you travel there would probably have been made by Lauer.” “What an amazing coincidence. Well, thank you again, Dr. Billung.” He opened the drawer and sneaked another look at the picture of Ora. He tried to see if there was anything in the girl’s face that seemed connected to the image he had of himself, but she remained a stranger. He pondered the seeming lack of resemblance when he heard Brigitte’s footsteps on the stairs. He replaced the photo and closed the drawer. “So, did Billung help?” Brigitte asked. “More than you can imagine.” “Don’t underestimate my imagination,” she said with a laugh. “You’re right,” he laughed back at her, “I should never do that. Let me just tell you that I know exactly when she’s arriving, and probably where she is right now.” “And where is that?” “In Vienna, at the Hotel Josefshof.” “I know that place,” she said. “It’s in the theater district, and I stayed there once when I played at the Josefstadt. Billung booked it for me. Don’t you remember? You called me there.” Billung had, in fact, for years been booking Brigitte’s travel whenever it was related to personal engagements that had been arranged by her agent, Hetty Goldschmidt, and only in the last few years did Miki entrust his own travel arrangements to him. At first he let him book his flights but continued to reserve his own hotel rooms, until the time that a hotel in Rome, which had been highly recommended by an acquaintance who had previously stayed there (and by the Michelin guide as well), turned out to be a dump. From then on, whenever his destinations were fixed in advance, he let Billung book his hotels. In Israel, however, he needed to move around freely, and continued to make his own arrangements. “Of course I remember,” he said. “It was when I was in Israel with Leon. I called you there to wish you a happy birthday and to let you know about his death. And I missed seeing you in The Glass Menagerie.” “It’s a lovely old place,” she said, “but with creaky floors.” She took a few steps toward him, her throat making a convincing creaking sound with each one. He laughed again. “So, are you going to call her?” “Yes, darling,” he said. She went out for a walk in the garden. *      *     * While there were direct trains between Bad Harzburg and Hanover, by way of Hildesheim, they were the kind that stopped at every station, and it often seemed more convenient to take a train to Braunschweig, on the historic line that was opened in 1843 by the duke of the time – the main streets of Bad Harzburg are still named for the dukes of Brunswick – and then take the express, or else to take one to Kreiensen and continue to Hanover on one that was coming from Göttingen, as Miki would be doing the following year. He got to memorize the departure and arrival times of these trains, and became so expert at reading timetables that Helga and her friends and acquaintances anointed him as their private travel agent. On his nineteenth birthday Brigitte told him that, on the advice of a fellow student at the Academy, she had gone to see to see a gynecologist named Dr. Krause, who specialized in dysmenorrhea and who found a treatment for hers, so that her periods were no longer painful. But when Miki asked her if this meant that they would no longer need to abstain during those times she told him without further explanation that no, the monthly times of abstinence would continue. Shortly thereafter he received a letter from Leon, inviting him to visit him and Fela in Montreal; Leon would foot all the expenses. After a thorough study of maps and timetables that he found in the municipal library, Miki made his own arrangements for that trip: he would take the Gripsholm, which had just been taken over by the North German Lloyd (and, as he found out once he was aboard, would shortly be rechristened as the Berlin), from Bremerhaven to Halifax, and continue by a Canadian National Railways train to Montreal. His return would be by a New York Central train to New York, then aboard the Liberté (which had once been the Bremen) to Le Havre, and finally back by train to Hanover by way of Paris (where Brigitte would join him), Brussels and Cologne. Neither of them had ever been in these places, and they would make stopovers there. He went to Hamburg with his brand-new West German passport to get the necessary visas from the consulates. He had lived in Hamburg some years before, in a home for Jewish DP children in a villa in Blankenese while Leon was in a spa in the Alps, but Brigitte, who went with him, had not been there before. She fell in love with the city, and vowed that some day she would live there. “In a villa in Blankenese, of course,” Miki said. “Why not?” she seconded. *      *     * Frau Hanna Korn was indeed staying at the Josefshof, but was out sightseeing, and would probably not be back until late that night, since she was due to attend a concert that evening. He was about to leave his private number for her to call back, but realized that if she did so at a time when Brigitte was near him, he would not be able to ask her the questions about Nili that he was so anxious to have answered. He therefore left his answering-machine number, insisting that the number could be called at any time of day or night, and the message that, in any case, he would meet her at the airport upon her arrival. It was only then that he remembered that the morning’s distractions had kept him from listening to the messages that had gathered on the magnetic tape during the week. When he rewound the tape and began to play it, it turned out that there were, as usual, some confused messages from callers who, unfamiliar with the new invention, left some apologetic words and – despite clear instructions, in Miki’s voice, on the outgoing message – no callback number. There were three meaningful messages. One was from Paeschke, asking him for an idea of when a first draft of the essay would be ready, so that they would know its expected length and be able to plan an issue around it, if necessary. Another was from the University of Göttingen, reminding him that he was to give the lecture inaugurating the new academic year two months hence, and requesting that he meet with the rector, as previously agreed, on August 25th. The third caller did not identify himself, but clearly addressed Michael Wilner and left a number for him to call. Miki did not recognize the area code right away, but he wrote the number down for future reference – he did not usually respond to anonymous calls but this one struck him as strangely ominous – and, after rewinding the tape, walked out to the garden to join Brigitte. Thinking about when to tell her about Ora was foremost on his mind. But when he joined her he only asked how the meeting had gone. It turned out that preparations for the series had gone further than she had believed. Directors, writers and costars had already agreed, tentatively, during the week of their vacation. “Why tentatively?” he asked. “Well…” she said, putting on a falsely modest smile. “Because it all depends on you?” She smiled again to confirm his surmise. She really is a star, he thought. “So,” he asked, “is it a done deal?” “Pretty much. I already have a working script, and some preproduction work, here in Hamburg at NDR, starts on Tuesday. But I still can’t tell you much about it until ARD holds a press conference, on the 25th.” “That’s when I have a meeting in Göttingen!” “Well, I will have to be in Frankfurt for the press conference. We can take the train together as far as Göttingen. And then, if you watch television there, you’ll find out.” “So what can you tell me now? Will there be location work?” “Yes, mainly in and around Paris. It’s a coproduction with French Television.” He wanted to know more – whether it would be made in both a German and a French version, for example – but held his tongue. The anxiety about telling her about Ora was beginning to fade, and he felt an urge to get back to work. He did so, right after lunch, when Brigitte went back to the garden to begin reading her script. *      *     * During her first year at the Academy, Brigitte did not perform in any plays; she and her fellow first-year students only practiced scenes, all from the classics. In the first semester, it was two-character scenes: the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, the asp scene from Antony and Cleopatra (in which she played Charmian rather than the queen), the rose scene from Emilia Galotti, the Hamlet-Ophelia scene following the soliloquy. In the second semester, it was scenes with two or three others, such as the garden scene from Faust I and the letter scene from Minna von Barnhelm (with Brigitte, for a change, as the maid Franciska rather than as Minna). Miki attended the all the performances of these scenes, sometimes coming into Hanover only for a few hours in order to do so. In the course of seeing her on stage, he became so impressed with Brigitte’s comic talent that at one point he told her, “I am more than your lover, I am your fan!” He had seen her in Minna von Barnhelm, which after all was a comedy. But when in the balcony scene, in which there was no physical balcony, Brigitte came out, she leaned over an imaginary railing and pantomimed holding on to it to keep from falling down, making the audience of students laugh heartily. And in the Faust scene, in which the part of Mephistopheles is clearly written as comical, it was Brigitte’s interpretation that brought out the humorous side of Gretchen, reducing Faust to a straight man. During his train ride back to Bad Harzburg after seeing that scene, he began to think that perhaps Goethe had intended Faust as a comedy all along. In thirteenth-grade English, the book that he was reading at the time was Ulysses, and he found it almost as funny as Don Quixote. It occurred to him that a number of the world’s most revered works of literature were comedies, starting with the one that Dante frankly called a comedy, or perhaps even with the Odyssey. He might write a paper on that some day. Miki was not alone in being impressed by Brigitte. She impressed her teachers enough that one of them, who directed a touring company during a summer, offered her – on the recommendation of the director of the Norderney company, a friend of his – her first professional engagement, in Minna von Barnhelm. Brigitte knew her lines, of course, but this production was quite different from the previous one. It was in relatively modern dress; the action had been transposed from the Seven Years’ War to the First World War, because, in the director’s opinion, it was the last period when the aristocratic values represented in the play – honor, fidelity to one’s superiors – still mattered. But when Brigitte, at her pro-forma audition, presented a photograph of herself in rococo costume and with her hair sporting the ringlets, the director insisted that she keep that hairstyle. At the time when Miki went to Bremerhaven in order to sail on the Gripsholm, Brigitte was already in rehearsals, and could not accompany him. He attended a rehearsal the night before he left, and noticed the lack of rapport between Brigitte and the actor playing Tellheim. In contrast to the vibrant performance he had seen two years before, this time her comic gifts did not seem to find an outlet. He knew, of course, that it was unfair to compare an early rehearsal with a finished play, but he felt anxious. He had high hopes for his beloved’s future, and wanted her professional debut to be successful. He told her of his anxiety at their farewell at the Hanover station, but she merely said, “Don’t worry, darling.” And she handed him a magazine. He looked at it when he sat down in his compartment, after the train began to move and after he had finished waving at her through the window. It was obviously a women’s fashion magazine, bearing on its cover the photograph of a prim-looking young woman who resembled Audrey Hepburn – perhaps it was Audrey Hepburn – wearing a cloche hat and white gloves. But the magazine’s title was Brigitte! Was that why she had given it to him? He could think of no other reason; why in the world would he be interested in the kind of fashion featured there? The magazine, he noticed by looking at the issue number, had begun appearing only recently. But he also noticed that one of the pages had a paper clip attached to it, and when he opened the magazine to that page, he found an article on hair styling, with photographs of models displaying various styles, and one of those models was none other than his Brigitte in her Minna style. No names were given, of course. *      *     * He looked at what he had typed on the sheet in the typewriter. To the right, on the desk, was La rebelión de las masas, with paper clips on the pages containing lines that he would quote. He had not bothered acquiring the German translation, which was first published in 1936. He would translate as he went along. The formation of modern mass movements was observed at first hand by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (La rebelión de las masas, The Revolt of the Masses). As regards the kind of person who could join such a movement – an hombre-masa or ‘mass-man’ – Ortega has this to say: The mass-man that this volume deals with has emerged everywhere, a rapidly made type of man who is put together only on a few poor abstractions and who therefore is identical from one end of Europe to the other. To him is due the sad aspect of asphyxiating monotony that life throughout the continent is taking on. This mass-man is the man who was previously emptied of his own history, with no past inside him, and hence docile to all the disciplines that are called “international.” More than a man, he is only a shell of a man constituted by mere idola fori; he lacks an “inside,” an inexorable and inalienable intimacy of his own, a self that cannot be revoked. This is why he is always available to pretend to be anything. He has only appetites, he believes that he has only rights and no obligations: he is the man without the noblesse that obliges – sine nobilitate – snob. Another end of a page. Another sheet quickly inserted. As regards the mass movements that such a man could join, Ortega’s judgment is as follows: Anyone can notice that, for years now, “strange things” have started happening in Europe. To give a concrete example of these strange things, I will name certain political movements, such as syndicalism and fascism. It must not be said that they seem strange simply because they are new. The enthusiasm for novelty is so inbred in the European as to have produced the most restless history of any that are known. What is strange about these new facts must therefore not be attributed to what is new about them, but to the bizarre aspect of these novelties. Under the banners of syndicalism and fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who wants neither to give reasons nor to have reason on his side, but who simply shows himself as resolved to impose his opinions. Here is what is new: the right to have no reason, the reason of unreason. And further: To have an idea is to believe that one possesses its reasons and, therefore, to believe that there exists a reason, a world of intelligible truths. To form ideas or opinions is the same thing as to appeal to such an authority, to submit to it, to accept its code and its sentence, to believe, therefore, that the superior form of living together is the dialogue in which the reason of our ideas is discussed. But the mass-man would feel lost if he accepted discussion, and he instinctively rejects the obligation of obeying that higher authority that is outside him. [...] All the normal dealings are suppressed and one proceeds directly to the imposition of one’s wishes. That’s enough quotes, he thought. It’s time for some reflection. The more we come to understand Ortega’s analysis of mass behavior, the less likely it appears that a mass movement is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for the development of group fanaticism. What Ortega saw, in fact, is in many ways the opposite of the fanatic analyzed by Hoffer. Far from being an expression of deep-seated beliefs, for the mass-man it is the “imposition of one’s wishes” that matters, not the ideas underlying it. And such ideas as form a mass movement’s credo are shallow. They are formed by the propaganda that is fed to the mass. He had changed sheets, machinelike, in the middle of the last paragraph. I need to elaborate, he thought as he looked at the blank paper below it. He penciled in the number 3 on the bottom of the page he had just taken out, and put the numbers 1 and 2 on the ones that were lying face down to the left of the typewriter. It is really only in the twentieth century that the mass media that can, consistently and reliably, deliver such propaganda to masses on a large scale have developed. The media that can do so – what in the terminology of the Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media, in German translation Magical Channels) are the “hot” media – are mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, the radio, and film. McLuhan includes books in this category, and, exceptionally, a book may have sufficient circulation to be a mass medium in this sense. (An example of such an exception is Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which made abolitionism into a mass movement and helped fuel the American Secession War.) He stopped typing and reached for the French book on his desk, perused it quickly to refresh his memory, and resumed. At this point, it is valuable to point to a distinction between mass and crowd. The title of Gustave Le Bon’s La psychologie des foules has been translated into German as The Psychology of the Masses, but Le Bon’s book dates from the nineteenth century, before the creation of the modern mass phenomenon, and the crowd as he defines it is quite different from Ortega’s mass. It is compact rather than dispersed, and it can develop a personality of its own, unlike the amorphous quality of the mass. A crowd can be stirred into action, including violent action, by a fiery speech delivered to it, for example Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, or a sermon that might lead the congregation of a church to carry out a pogrom. In past centuries, such a sermon might have to be repeated over and over to many crowds in order to form a mass movement (as for example Peter the Hermit’s preaching that led to the People’s Crusade). Now, looking at it from the other perspective, we observe that a member of a fanatical group – be it an extreme religious sect, a nationalist terrorist organization, or even a gang of football hooligans – has characteristics that in many ways are the opposite of those of the hombre-masa. He was at the end of page 4. He began another, not certain if it would begin a new paragraph. That would be decided in the course of editing. His beliefs, in his mind, have come to him from a higher source – a deity, a leader, the destiny of having been born in Liverpool – and not from the fact that everybody else has them. He wears his extreme convictions proudly, and does not try to smooth them so as to make them blend in. This was as good a place as any to stop. He put the number 4 on the sheet he had taken out and placed it face down on top of the others.