7
Wednesday, August 13, 1970
1957-58
The evenings extended love play which
included, among other activities, a simulation of eating pudding without a
spoon left him, despite the physical pleasures, strangely unsatisfied, and he
had a restless night, if not altogether a sleepless one. His spells of sleep
were punctuated by brief dreams dominated by a youthful, dark female image that
shifted continuously between Ora (he decided that he would call her Ora until
he knew who she really was) and the sixteen-year-old Nili of his memories,
without ever fully becoming one or the other.
He realized that his
subconscious was comparing them. Other than the dark hair and complexion and
the big brown eyes, the resemblance between them was slight, just enough to
fool him into swallowing the ones tale of being the others daughter. And the
one of him, Miki Wilner, being the father.
For the four days that he
believed Ora to be his child, he had thought about how to tell Brigitte about
it. He had, in a sense, been rehearsing for a part: that of a married man who
has a bastard child by another woman. There are many such parts in dramatic
literature. But, unlike Brigittes rehearsing, he did not have a script; he
would have had to compose, or improvise, his dialogue for the scene.
The miraculous coincidence of
Hannas visit, like a dea ex machina, changed all that. Now there
remained only questions: Why? And who?
Why did Ora, whoever she was,
play such a prank on him? And who put her up to it?
Clearly, it must have been
someone who knew about his relationship with Nili. That could be any one of
hundreds of people, from Refadim or any of the kibbutzim that shared the high
school. During the few months that the relationship lasted, it flouted two
taboos in being both exclusive and public they were seen holding hands at
school! and, especially in view of Nilis status as the uncrowned beauty
queen, it must have raised plenty of animosity, which could only have been
intensified by his sudden departure. And this animosity, on somebodys part,
must have lain dormant until it was reawakened by Mikis sudden appearance,
through the Hebrew version of his book, as a gadfly in Israeli politics.
But then there was the
substance of the hoax. Were it not for Hanna, the only practical way for him to
check Oras claim would have been to go to Israel.
This meant that someone
wanted him to go there again, but under circumstances very different from those
of his round of talks, the year before, when he was being scouted by Ora. This
time he would have gone on a personal quest, preoccupied and distracted. Who
could that someone be?
For a split second the
thought entered his mind that it might be Nili. But the thought quickly
vanished when he remembered that, of all the people who might be behind the
plot, Nili seemed to be the only one still in contact with Hanna, and probably
knew about her trip to Germany.
Besides, such a machination
would be uncharacteristic of Nili, either the one of whom he had gleaned an
impression from Hannas account or the one whom he remembered. She was always
quite straightforward and not the least devious. In their love play she told
him exactly what she wanted, without coyness. It was with her guidance that he
developed some of the lovers skills that Brigitte appreciated so much, the
ones that made her call out, Youre the best, Miki! It could not have been a
literal superlative, of course, only a figurative one, since Brigitte had not
had the experience needed for such a comparison, except with some groping high-school
boys before she met him, and possibly during his time in Israel.
He remembered how Nili would
guide his hand under her skirt so that he would, with the help of her
wriggling, pull down her underpants while gently, slowly caressing her buttocks
and thighs.
The memory made him feel the
need to resort to another of his skills, this one specific to Brigitte: that of
waking her from peaceful sleep to a mood that was receptive to a quick but
happy union, during which she would enjoy the pleasures of love before her
bladder could claim her attention. (Brigitte, to be sure, had similar tricks of
her own.) He knew that when she was ready for such a union she would exclaim,
in a stage whisper, Let me have the sausage already.
But this time the task of
getting her into the mood was proving thankless, and he soon knew why: the
moisture that his fingers were feeling was not the daily juice of desire but
the overdue monthly blood.
* * *
As in the preceding year in Frankfurt, the late summer and
early autumn in Hamburg found the Wilners following very different schedules.
Brigitte began, almost immediately, making acquaintance with the ensemble of
the Kammerspiele, learning the repertory, and getting technique lessons from
Ida Ehre, as well as from the other great actresses of her company, such as
Hilde Krahl, Marianne Wischmann, and the veteran comedienne Grethe Weiser.
Miki, on the other hand, had a good two months before the beginning of the
academic year. He used the time, as before, in setting up their household in
a small apartment in a building some three hundred meters away from the outer
Alster, in a neighborhood that had survived the destruction of the war and in
expanding his culinary skills.
He discovered that, untypically
for Germany, sausage did not play a major part in Hamburg cuisine. Even at the
kind of street stand that elsewhere would sell bratwurst or wieners, here one
would buy matjes or other herring. Since he and Brigitte both loved sausages
(and did not particularly care for herring), he would have to buy them in their
neighborhood meat shop and prepare the dishes himself.
He was making a dinner
composed of three different kinds of bratwurst Coburger, Kulmbacher and
Würzburger one afternoon when Brigitte came home from a rehearsal session of Mother
Courage, which was to be the opening play of the season and in which she
was to play the prostitute Yvette Pottier.
Breathlessly, even before
greeting him, she asked rhetorically, Do you know what I learned today? I was
watching a scene that Im not in, with Hilde Krahl as Kattrin, and I saw how
she used her hands to express feelings while keeping her face still
He put down his cooking
implements and approached her. He kissed her gently and said, Good day,
darling.
Oh, forgive me, she said
with a smile of embarrassment, but I was feeling so excited
I understand, he said, but
I want to see your acting without knowing what went into it, only what comes
out of you, just as I like to eat sausage without necessarily knowing how its
made.
So Im like a sausage to
you? Good. That makes us even, because sometimes, when Im not quite awake,
youre just a sausage to me.
I know that, he said, and
they kissed again. They had no plans to go out that evening; it would be an
evening of sausages.
A few weeks later was the
opening night of the season, which would commemorate the tenth anniversary of
the Kammerspieles founding. Miki, of course, was in attendance, and could not
help noticing how effectively Hilde Krahl (whom he had heretofore seen only in
films, most recently Night of Decision) used gesticulation, with almost
no facial expression, to express emotion, in contrast to the overflowing
verbiage of Ida Ehre as Mother Courage, showing perhaps more feeling than
Brecht had intended (all to the better, Miki thought). He wondered if he would
have noticed it if Brigitte had not told him.
Brigitte, as Yvette, appeared
only in the third scene. Her costume, makeup and wig were such that he could
barely recognize her, and her acting was far more stylized and grotesque than
he had ever seen, but he could sense the magnetic effect that her presence had
on the audience.
At the post-performance
party, the relatively unknown except for the previous years television films
Brigitte, looking her stunning self, drew the attention of most of the men
present, even away from Hilde Krahl, who was a famous star and, at forty, still
quite beautiful.
Miki looked around at those
present. He recognized the former (and perhaps future, since new elections were
to be held shortly) mayor, the seventy-year-old social democrat Max Brauer
(who, he had heard, had been helpful in the creation of the Kammerspiele), and
the editor-in-chief of the MoPo, the not-quite-so-old social democrat
Heinrich Braune, who in his youth had written scripts for silent films of
leftist propaganda, and had later been a film critic.
The two older men had just
finished a chat in Plattdeutsch and took leave from each other with a
handshake. Braune passed near Miki and smiled at him. Miki smiled back and
said, Good evening, Herr Braune. I am a loyal reader of your paper.
Good. Loyalty is what is
needed these days, Braune replied. You vote SPD, I hope.
Yes.
Good. We need old Max back
in office. Look, Sieveking isnt even here. And who are you, my young
gentleman?
I am the husband of Brigitte
Wilner, over there
Oh, that beautiful young
woman! You are a lucky man, but you must be careful
He laughed. But you must
have name of your own!
As a matter of fact, I do. I
am Michael Wilner.
You have the same name as
you wife! Thats unusual with actresses. Even Ida, who has been married for
thirty years, didnt take her husbands name, except during the Nazi era, when
she couldnt work as an actress, and she had to be Ida Sara Heyde. Thats him,
by the way, being introduced to your wife
He pointed at a man whom Ida was
just introducing to Brigitte. Doctor Bernhard Heyde, a gynecologist.
Tell me something, that as a
journalist you probably know. Why is there bad blood between Ida and the
Real-Film people?
Braune laughed again. You
know about that! So much for the legend that Jews always stick together. You
are a Jew, arent you? Miki nodded. I thought so, Braune went on, from the
spelling of your family name. Then you know that its a legend. You see, Walter
Koppel, who is one of the two Real-Film partners, was at the Fuhlsbüttel
concentration camp with Ida, but the good Doctor Heyde knew Himmler personally
they had gone to school together and wrote him a letter, so that she was
released. Koppel never forgave her. Thats why you never see any of the
Kammerspiele actors in Real-Film productions, not even stars like Hilde Krahl
and Grethe Weiser. Not even Gustaf Gründgens!
What about Käutner?
Good question. He dropped
his connection with Ida, professionally at least, when he went to work for
Real-Film, but he has worked only with Trebitsch, not Koppel. And there are
rumors that the two may be separating. Trebitsch wants to go mainly into television,
but Koppel likes the image of himself as a Hollywood studio head, a sort of
Goldwyn on the Elbe. Braune laughed. Gossip, gossip, he said, the
journalists curse. Tell me about yourself, Herr Wilner. Do you have a
profession, or are you still studying?
I am still studying. Very
practical matters: philosophy, literature, and history. And I dont intend to
be a teacher.
Have you thought of being a
journalist?
Yes. I have thought of many
things, but this is certainly one of them.
You have the curiosity for
it, and a good university education is no handicap. How much study time do you
have left?
I will do two semesters here
in Hamburg, then I will go back to Göttingen for the final masters
examinations, and then Ill just have to write my doctoral dissertation, but I
can do that here in Hamburg.
I could give you an
internship at the MoPo whenever youre ready. We, and I mean the German
press, could use someone with your abilities and especially your background,
which I would like to learn more about. I think, he said after looking past
Miki, that you are about to be introduced to Ida and Doctor Heyde. Perhaps you
can introduce me to the beautiful Frau Wilner. He made the last remark in a
loud voice, so that Brigitte, who was approaching them with Ida and her
husband, could hear him. But, and he lowered his voice again, come to the MoPo
for an interview.
* * *
Brigittes interview was due to air a little after eleven,
and she had to be at the studio an hour beforehand. He had consequently
arranged with Hanna, by telephone, that he would meet her for coffee at half
past ten, after dropping off Brigitte, and that they would watch the interview
together in the hotels television lounge. Brigitte would later join them for lunch.
By the time Miki got to the
Vier Jahreszeiten, Hanna had already come back from a brisk walk around the
Inner Alster and was waiting for him in the lounge.
Ive decided to go back to
Israel to try to clear up this matter, he said after their greeting.
When? she asked.
When are you going back? he
asked in return.
Sunday.
Then Ill try to go back
with you. How are you flying?
Lufthansa to Vienna, then El
Al.
I will see if I can go on
the same flight.
He ordered coffee and
Franzbrötchen, the Hamburg version of brioche. When she heard him order, she
asked him, in Hebrew this time (perhaps because she did not want the waitress
to understand), How did you know I would want Franzbrötchen?
Ive been here long enough
to know Hamburgers, he answered.
They continued chatting in
Hebrew, seemingly unaware of the change in language, until Hanna noticed that
the hour of eleven was approaching and said, in German, Its almost time to
see your beautiful wife. And, after five minutes of news, the television
hostess greeted her guest.
Welcome back to our program, Brigitte Wilner.
Im always glad to be here.
My original intention in having you here was to ask you about the new
series that you will be starring in, but I have been told that it is to remain
a secret until the official announcement.
Yes, thats true.
Is there anything at all that you can tell our audience about it?
Only that its a coproduction with France, and much of it will be shot
in and around Paris.
Are you looking forward to going on location?
Yes and no. I enjoy being in different places, but I like it when my
husband is with me, and he cannot always come with me.
Your husband, Michael Wilner, the author of the international
bestseller, The Long Seventh Day?
Yes, that one. Hes the only husband I have ever had.
Does he know about your series?
No more than you know.
Do you mean that you have secrets from him?
Professional secrets, if you want to call them that, yes, of course,
just as a lawyer would not discuss professional matters with his spouse.
No personal secrets, then?
We dont necessarily tell each other everything, but we dont
deliberately hide anything personal from each other.
Brigitte Wilner, we here in Hamburg are quite proud of the fact that you
have chosen, along with many other great actors and actresses, to make your
home with us here. I am looking forward to having you on our program again.
And I am looking forward to coming back.
Tschüss.
Tschüss.
As the camera panned away
from her, Brigitte gave the audience a dazzling smile.
Shes quite a diplomat, your
wife, Hanna remarked.
Yes, Miki agreed, better
than some ambassadors I have interviewed.
Youre a lucky man, she
said.
Yes, that I am, he said,
struggling mightily to expel from his mind the thought brought up by the
visit of Ora of the element that just possibly might be missing from his
happiness
* * *
When Miki finally called Heinrich Braune for the promised
interview, it took Braune a while to remember who Michael Wilner was, until
Miki presented himself as the husband of Brigitte Wilner. Then Braune laughed,
and suddenly remembered all about the young man he had met at the Kammerspiele
opening-night party. He readily invited Miki to join him for lunch, two days
hence, at a little restaurant near the Press House, the monumental Nazi-era
clinker-brick building in the Counting-House Quarter in which the MoPo
had its headquarters, along with Die Zeit, Der Spiegel and Stern.
Braune began by asking Miki
to tell his lovely wife how much he had liked her as the girl Kurrubi in
Dürrenmatts An Angel Comes to Babylon, though he hadnt liked the play
so much I dont like all that glorification of beggars, he remarked and
Miki said that of course he would do so. He then told Braune that he had
thought things over and that a career in journalism really appealed to him, but
perhaps not of the kind that was practiced at a daily newspaper; he was not one
for daily deadlines, he said. Weekly ones, then? Braune asked. That was more
his rhythm, Miki said; he would like to write opinion pieces, and even
reportage, but with time to reflect. For example, he added, like the writing in
Die Zeit.
The mention of the weekly
brought out, once again, the gossip journalist in Braune. He filled Miki in on
the vicious political infighting that had been going on among its collaborators
almost since the founding, but especially during the right-winger Tüngels
tenure as editor-in-chief, when the Countess it was the first time that Miki
heard Marion Countess Dönhoff, whose articles on America he had found so
enlightening, called simply the Countess resigned from the staff, and when
Tüngel fired M-M (the reference was to Josef Müller-Marein) for writing an
article criticizing McCarthy. Imagine, Braune said, this was already after
those hearings in Washington! McCarthys anti-Communism blinded him! I once
believed that no one could be more anti-Communist than we social democrats, but
McCarthy, and his supporters such as Tüngel
He had to pause for breath.
He reminds me of a Ukrainian
waitress I met in New York shortly after those hearings, Miki said.
Thats great! Now, theres
an article you can write: German editors and Ukrainian waitresses. But
seriously, now that Tüngel is out, the Countess is back, and M-M is
editor-in-chief, Die Zeit has a future. When you have had time to
reflect he laughed write something, give it to me, well talk about it,
and I could show it to M-M. On the other hand, dont think that theres no room
in the MoPo for serious, reflective writing. But in any case dont
hurry: you have to finish your studies first.
And, in fact, the winter
semester had just begun.
Miki had perused the list of classes
in German literature, and found nothing that whetted his appetite; he would
limit himself, that semester, to philosophy and history. He noticed, though,
that the newly hired Prof. Dr. Erich Klohse would be giving a lecture course on
Faust. He wondered what had happened between Klohse and the charming
Margot Wallmann.
The lectures by Weizsäcker,
an introduction to the philosophy of science, seemed tentative at first. During
his years in Göttingen, the eminent physicist had done research at the Max Planck
Institute and held an honorary professorship at the university, but his
lecturing had been either to physics students on the philosophical aspects of
their science or to the general university community on the relationship
between science and the world, and in particular on the social responsibility
of scientists. But teaching philosophy students who were already familiar with
the fundamentals and the jargon of their discipline was something new for him,
and it took him a while to adjust to the fact that he did not need to explain
Kants epistemology when relating it to quantum mechanics, or the meaning
of theodicy when talking about
Leibniz. What made his lectures appealing was his humorous, warm and humanistic
approach to the subject. His description of the game of checkers that he had
played against an electronic brain was quite comical.
But Mikis main goal was to
take advantage of the outstanding historians who taught at Hamburg, especially
Fischer and Zechlin. Fischers specialty was the influence of the Lutheran
Church on German politics, but in the course of his research he seemed to have
come to the conviction that the outbreak of the First World War was driven by
Germanys imperialist expansionism as represented by the Chancellor von Bethmann
Hollweg, and he spoke of it liberally amidst his lectures.
This thesis, though not yet
published, was becoming known to other German historians and was not well
received by them. It seemed as if even those who could accept Germanys
responsibility for Hitlers war could do so only if, like Meinecke, they saw it
as a one-of-a-kind aberration, and Fischers thesis gave the impression that
warmongering imperialism was somehow endemic to Germany.
Zechlin, whose specialty was
maritime and overseas history, was one of those opposing Fischer, and he often
veered from his topic to express veiled attacks on his colleague.
Miki found himself drawn far
more to the lectures by the less eminent Hubert Lappe, on the history of Europe
after the French Revolution. The seminar by Niemann on the history of
nationalism helped him clarify his own sense of nationality. The seminar by
Müller-Wenden on the Coalition Wars helped him place the personalities he was
most interested in, Goethe and Schelling, in a historical context. He was
beginning to form an idea for his masters thesis, and perhaps eventually his
doctoral dissertation, in which he would combine all three of his specialty
areas: philosophy, literature and history.
Midway in the semester he was
reminded that, according to Göttingen regulations, if he wanted to take his
masters examination there in the following winter semester his ninth then
he would need to begin the process by submitting his masters thesis proposal
in December; the thesis would be due in June. He immediately wrote Witte to ask
if a study of the concept of human freedom as understood by German
intellectuals of the Napoleonic era would be a good thesis subject. In short
order he received an approving reply.
One day, when he mentioned to
Brigitte a lecture by Fischer having to do with the Lutheran Church, she said,
Speaking of the Church, I just got a letter from Renate. And she read it to
him.
The letter was addressed to
Brigitte only, and had no mention of Miki. Its gist was that, as Renate watched
her newborn daughter being baptized as Elisabeth Barbara Maria all names from
Jürgens family she had the sudden revelation, coming from above, that
baptism was what she herself needed. Now that she had received it, she felt the
peace that only a true Christian can feel. And now she and Jürgen, who already
was baptized, were united in Christ.
I never knew that she didnt
feel at peace, Brigitte remarked after a silence that allowed Miki to absorb
the message.
Are you kidding? With you as
her sister?
What did I ever do to her?
Its not what you did. Its
what you are: more beautiful, cleverer, kinder. Life with you must have been
hard for her.
Brigitte seemed stunned by
his observation. After pondering it in silence, she said, Ill have to talk to
mother about this.
* * *
As soon as they got home, Miki called Billungs office.
This is Michael Wilner, he said, as usual. May I speak to Doctor Billung,
please? And Billung, as usual, was immediately available. Do you remember,
Miki asked, when I told you a few days ago that I wasnt traveling anywhere?
Of course I remember, and I
imagined that you would soon change your mind. All right, then: where and
when?
To Tel Aviv, and as soon as
possible. Ideally, next Sunday, and if possible, via Vienna, just like my
friend Hanna Korn.
That means Lufthansa and El
Al. And when would you be returning?
Can that be left open?
Of course it can be, but it
would be much more expensive. Its more practical to set a return date, and
change it if necessary.
The additional expense was
not really a problem for Miki any more, but he appreciated Billungs desire to
save his clients money. All right, he said, let me come back the following
Sunday.
Lets see: Hamburg to Tel
Aviv, going on the sixteenth, returning on the twenty-third. Any preference for
class?
Tourist going, first
returning.
All right, let me see what I
can do for you, Dr. Wilner. I will call you back as soon as I find out.
Mikis private line rang half
an hour later.
Dr. Wilner? Billung
speaking. I have the flights more or less on the dates that you wanted, but
from Vienna to Tel Aviv it will have to be first class going as well, and
return will be by Swissair via Zurich, on Monday the twenty-fourth. How does it
sound?
It sounds quite good, Miki
said. In fact, it was rather tight: he would be leaving for Göttingen the day
after his return, the same day that Brigitte would be going to Frankfurt and
then Paris for publicity for her mysterious new series.
All right. I will call you
back tomorrow morning to confirm.
The Lufthansa flight out of
Hamburg that would connect with the midmorning flight out of Vienna would
depart at seven in the morning. It occurred to Miki that it would be far more
convenient if Hanna stayed at the house after Saturdays dinner so that they
could leave for the airport together.
* * *
The fact that, during the Christmas period the
Kammerspieles stage was occupied by a production of The Christmas Story
(a semi-Marxist reading of Dickens A Christmas Carol), with no part for
Brigitte, made it possible for the Wilners to spend the time in Bad Harzburg.
Brigitte had hoped that Renate and Jürgen would also be there, but it seemed
that little Elisabeth was sickly and they would rather stay at home for the
holidays.
Miki had some doubts about
the reason for their absence, though he did not voice them. He wondered if the
real reason might be decidedly non-Christian atmosphere of Helgas house, made
even more so by the presence of a Jew.
Christmas Day that year was
Wednesday, and while there were no more classes that week, offices at Göttingen
were still open on Monday. Miki was thus able to take care of the formalities
for his masters thesis, just barely, in time. Classes in Hamburg did not
resume until the Monday following New Years, but Brigitte had to be back at
the theater on Friday to begin rehearsals for a new production, the German
premiere of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by the American playwright Tennessee
Williams. Their combined vacation was therefore barely ten days long, but the
newly fallen snow in the Harz made it well worthwhile.
When Miki came home from his
last lecture of the semester, he found Brigitte seated at the table, reading a
slim book probably a script and smoking a cigarette.
Since when do you smoke? he
asked her.
I dont smoke
I mean
Brigitte doesnt smoke. Maggie smokes. So, when Im being Maggie, I smoke. You
know what Ida tells us: Dont play roles, play people.
But when I kiss you, I want
to kiss Brigitte, not Maggie.
Dont worry, sweetheart. I
will play Maggie as someone who uses plenty of Odol, or whatever Americans call
their mouthwash
Listerine.
before she kisses her
husband. And you enjoy our play-acting, dont you?
He could not deny that he
did. Nor could he deny that she had made amazing progress under Ida Ehres
tutelage. The February-to-April break between the winter and summer semesters
coincided with the peak of the theater season. During that period at the
Kammerspiele, the pieces that had played in repertory during the preceding
months would be repeated, and Miki made a point of seeing once again the ones
with Brigitte.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
also opened during this time. Miki found that Brigitte, as Maggie, seemed fully
on the level of Ida as Big Mama.
During that time, Brigitte
received an offer from Bavaria Film, newly privatized with capital from several
banks, and ready to embark on the resumption of major feature productions. She
was invited to Munich for talks, and assured that the work would be monetarily
highly interesting.
The offer presented a
problem, for there was a quality that Brigitte Wilner shared with her husband:
an antipathy for anything Bavarian, be it BMW, Löwenbräu beer, lederhosen, or
dirndl dresses, a costume that she refused to wear under any circumstances; she
swore that she would turn down any part that called for it.
For Miki, the dislike
extended to Bayern Munich, who had just surprisingly won the German Cup after a
quick rise from the second division. And, while it was never clear to him
whether Brigitte had acquired the sentiment from him or developed it on her
own, he had no doubt about its origin in his own mind. It was the first time he
traveled to Bavaria, to visit Leon in the resort town of Bad Reichenhall, when he
discovered that the natives sounded exactly like Axel Hemme.
Hemme disappeared after the
war, and no one seemed to know much about his origin, even whether he was a
Reich German or a Sudeten German. But if he was the latter, then he must have
been from the part of Bohemia that adjoins Bavaria. Or else, he purposely
cultivated a Bavarian accent like that of his commander-in-chief, Himmler.
It was not so much the
Bavarian dialect, which sometimes sounded more like Yiddish than German, that
bothered Miki; what made his teeth gnash was standard German spoken with a
Bavarian accent, which was the way Hemme had bellowed his commands, both to the
SS troops that he commanded and the Jews over whose lives he ruled.
And yet, when Brigitte said
that she could not possibly act in a Bavarian film, Miki cautioned her against
too hasty a decision. She had her career to think about, he said. But Brigitte
insisted that her career meant nothing if she didnt enjoy it. And then she
told him something unexpected: for all that she had been learning of her craft
at the Kammerspiele, she was getting tired of Idas predilection for modern
problem plays and her antipathy toward what she called mere entertainment.
Brigitte missed parts into which she would not have to sink her whole being,
body and soul, but which would be simply fun to do. And she thought that she
had found a solution for her dilemma: since Miki was due back in Göttingen in
the autumn for his examinations and the beginning of his dissertation work, she
would apply to join a new theater company that had just been formed there, one
that had a far more varied repertory than the Kammerspiele.
Miki then confessed that he
had heard about the upcoming formation of the company from Professor Witte when
they were in Frankfurt, but he had not told her because she had already
received the offer from Ida Ehre and he did not want to create a conflict.
Thank you, Brigitte said with a smile, and he wasnt sure if the gratitude
was ironic or genuine; one never knew with an actress like her. But she went
on: Hilde Krahl had told her that Filmaufbau, which was based in Göttingen, not
only had no prejudice against Kammerspiele actors (Hilde had made Night of
Decision there), but was far more likely to take a chance on relatively
unknown actors than Real-Film, which kept trotting out stars of the Nazi era
like Zarah Leander, Marika Rökk and Heinz Rühmann. And, she concluded giddily,
Göttingen was only an hours drive from Bad Harzburg!
If you drive like a maniac,
Miki thought but did not say. The fact that Göttingen was also only two hours
from Frankfurt-Eckenheim no longer seemed important, though Brigitte would
certainly want to see her little niece at some point.
* * *
By now he had barely four days in which to whip his essay into
editable shape before leaving for Israel on what would probably be a wild-goose
chase. Paeschke had given him additional leeway with respect to time, as
befitted his status as the author of an international bestseller, but he didnt
want to abuse the privilege.
He now had nine and a half
pages. Once he had finished discussing postmodern fanatical nationalism, which
would be another couple of pages, he would get to what he really wanted to
write about, which was Palestine as a crucible of fanaticism. He wanted to use
Yasir Arafats refusal to honor the Israel-Egypt truce as indicative of a
specific kind of fanaticism, which was neither strictly oppositionist nor
strictly nationalist but more than either one of these, and for which he needed
to find a descriptive term. He would call it rejectionist.
He hoped that by Saturday
afternoon he would have the necessary fifteen or sixteen pages done, perhaps
even a few more, and that Monday morning Frau Schmidt or Brigitte would mail
the whole package for him to Stuttgart.
But before resuming his
writing, he would need to do some reviewing of details. He had a scrapbook in
which he kept clippings of magazine and newspaper articles about the
ever-changing array of Palestinian nationalist movements, and his own notes
related to the subject. This afternoon, he thought, would be a good time to do
a little reading.
* * *
In June the Wilners were finalizing their plans for their
move to Göttingen, which would take place in August. Miki managed to find an
apartment for them when he went there to submit his masters thesis. On his
return he found waiting for him a letter from Leon, written, for the first
time, in English, and very correct English at that. The letter was handwritten,
but the style lacked the idiosyncrasies that characterized Leons writing,
whether in Yiddish or in French, and Miki suspected that perhaps a secretary
had written it for him to copy in his own hand.
The gist of the letter was
that Leon would be coming to London on business some time in September, and
that Miki and Brigitte were invited to join him there, with all expenses to be
paid (defrayed was the word used by Leon) by him.
For Brigitte it would, of
course, be out of the question to take time off when she would already be fully
engaged in rehearsals at the Junges Theater. Although, in the season premiere,
she would once again be playing Yvette Pottier in Mother Courage, it
would be a very different production from Ida Ehres, and the mere knowledge of
her lines would not allow her to take a weeks vacation just before the
opening.
But there would be no reason
for Miki, once he had taken his final written examinations, to forgo the double
opportunity of seeing his uncle again after four years and of getting to know
London, which he promised Brigitte to explore so that he could be her guide
when they went there together, perhaps in a year or two.
* * *
After dinner he went back to his study, while Brigitte
reclined on the living-room sofa, reading her script. She was doing it rather
passively, with none of the energy and passion with which he had observed her
in the garden on Sunday. As always during the first days of her period, she was
tired.
He also felt tired, and did
not feel like writing any more that evening. He would read over what he had
written and do some mental editing.
But when came to the last
paragraph he remembered that Negroes had not been the only ones to form ethnic
liberation movements in America. When he was there the year before he had
learned about the Brown Berets in Los Angeles and the Young Lords in Chicago
and New York. If he were to dig into the matter he would probably find more
groups of this sort, but these were enough as examples.
The Negro
groups have been emulated by those representing other ethnic groups, such as
the Puerto Ricans in New York and Chicago (the Young Lords) and the
Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) in the Southwest (the Brown Berets).
Now that he had
begun page 11, the desire to fill it came over him again. He also felt eager to
get back to the familiar ground of Europe.
In Western
Europe the rule is, in principle, that a nation is defined by territory, not
ethnicity. There are, to my knowledge, two exceptions that prove the rule.
One of them is the Basque
nation in Spain (and to a lesser extent in France), as represented by the
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which was founded in 1895 by Sabino Arana and
is now in exile. Arana was a reactionary right-wing Catholic with a mystical
belief in the superiority of the Basque race, and it is one of the ironies of
history that his movement came into conflict with another reactionary
right-wing movement with a Catholic ideology and a racist tinge, Francos
Movimiento Nacional (formerly the Falange).
If the PNV is a movement
in the modern mold, then its postmodern outgrowth is ETA (Basque Land and
Liberty), founded about ten years ago. From the outset it rejected the
Catholicism of the PNV and about five years ago it openly adopted a
Marxist-Leninist posture.
ETAs activity, which began
with theorizing and went on to symbolic protest by destroying infrastructure
and Spanish symbols, and by displaying Basque flags (forbidden in Francos
regime), has increasingly been turning to violent action, with the first
planned assassination that of a police official in San Sebastián carried
out just two years ago. And such action is very unlikely to stop, even if the
Franco dictatorship comes to an end as it surely must and is replaced by a
republic or a constitutional monarchy in which the Basque Land regains the
political and cultural autonomy that it enjoyed in the pre-Franco republic.
For, if this were to happen, then the autonomous government would be dominated,
as it was in the 1930s, by the bourgeoisie of the PNV, and that would be
intolerable to ETA.
It was time to
go on to page 12. The feeling of fatigue had vanished.
The other
ethnic exception to the Western European rule concerns the Catholics of
Northern Ireland.
Irish nationalism in the
nineteenth century was a traditional territorial independence movement that
sought self-government ranging from home rule to full sovereignty for the
island of Ireland. The goal was achieved, through both political and armed
struggle, in the twentieth century with the Home Rule Act of 1914, the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, and the proclamation of the Republic of Ireland in
1949. But Great Britain kept the six northern counties, in which the majority
wanted to remain united with it, as a part of the United Kingdom (which is now
called of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). In so doing, Great Britain
followed what in practice if not in theory was the equivalent of the principle
of national self-determination as applied in Central and Eastern Europe
according to the Treaty of Versailles. The unionist majority was in fact
composed of Protestants and the nationalist minority of Catholics, but these
seemingly religious labels are in reality ethnic ones. The Catholics are the
descendants of the indigenous Irish population, while the Protestants are those
of British settlers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The religious
difference has only been a factor in keeping the two groups apart by preventing
a significant amount of intermarriage.
Catholic nationalism in
Northern Ireland has been turning into a fanatical movement of the postmodern
variety with the violent events of the last two years, as the modern
nationalist movement led by the Nationalist Party (the successor of the
nineteenth-century Home Rule League and the turn-of-the-century Irish
Parliamentary Party) has been disintegrating. The movement is now led
politically by the party called Sinn Féin, which has moved from a Roman
Catholic to a socialist orientation, and which is associated with a
paramilitary movement called the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
He had twelve
pages done. He had made up for the preceding days writing hiatus. It was a
quarter to eleven. He felt tired again, nay, sleepy. Brigitte was, almost
certainly, already asleep. It was time to join her.
As he was tiptoeing up the
stairs, a thought struck him: is there a psychological predisposition, whether
due to nature or to nurture, to fanaticism?
Once he was stretched out in
bed, lulled by the soothing sound of Brigittes measured breathing, he recalled
references to fanatical minds scattered in various philosophical writings he
had read as a student. From the seminar on materialist philosophy he remembered
Offray de la Mettrie defining the fanatical mind as one that believes what he
reads in bad pamphlets. He also remembered that Cassirer, writing about Kant,
said something about fanatical minds being opposed to Kant. He also remembered
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