7 Wednesday, August 13, 1970 1957-58 The evening’s 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 one’s tale of being the other’s 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 Brigitte’s rehearsing, he did not have a script; he would have had to compose, or improvise, his dialogue for the scene. The miraculous coincidence of Hanna’s 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 Nili’s 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 somebody’s part, must have lain dormant until it was reawakened by Miki’s 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 Ora’s 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 Hanna’s 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 lover’s skills that Brigitte appreciated so much, the ones that made her call out, “You’re 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 I’m 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 it’s made.” “So I’m like a sausage to you? Good. That makes us even, because sometimes, when I’m not quite awake, you’re 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 Kammerspiele’s 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 year’s 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 isn’t 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! That’s unusual with actresses. Even Ida, who has been married for thirty years, didn’t take her husband’s name, except during the Nazi era, when she couldn’t work as an actress, and she had to be Ida Sara Heyde. That’s 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, aren’t you?” Miki nodded. “I thought so,” Braune went on, “from the spelling of your family name. Then you know that it’s 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. That’s 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 journalist’s 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 don’t 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 master’s examinations, and then I’ll 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 you’re 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.” *      *     * Brigitte’s 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 hotel’s 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. “I’ve 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 I’ll 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?” “I’ve 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, “It’s 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.” “I’m 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, that’s true.” “Is there anything at all that you can tell our audience about it?” “Only that it’s 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. He’s 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 don’t necessarily tell each other everything, but we don’t 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. “She’s quite a diplomat, your wife,” Hanna remarked. “Yes,” Miki agreed, “better than some ambassadors I have interviewed.” “You’re 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 Dürrenmatt’s An Angel Comes to Babylon, though he hadn’t liked the play so much – “I don’t 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 Tüngel’s 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! McCarthy’s 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. “That’s great! Now, there’s 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, we’ll talk about it, and I could show it to M-M. On the other hand, don’t think that there’s no room in the MoPo for serious, reflective writing. But in any case don’t 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 Kant’s 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 Miki’s main goal was to take advantage of the outstanding historians who taught at Hamburg, especially Fischer and Zechlin. Fischer’s 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 Germany’s 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 Germany’s responsibility for Hitler’s war could do so only if, like Meinecke, they saw it as a one-of-a-kind aberration, and Fischer’s 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 master’s 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 master’s examination there in the following winter semester – his ninth – then he would need to begin the process by submitting his master’s 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 Jürgen’s 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 didn’t 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?” “It’s not what you did. It’s 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, “I’ll have to talk to mother about this.” *      *     * As soon as they got home, Miki called Billung’s 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 wasn’t 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. It’s 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 Billung’s desire to save his clients money. “All right,” he said, “let me come back the following Sunday.” “Let’s 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.” Miki’s 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 Saturday’s dinner so that they could leave for the airport together. *      *     * The fact that, during the Christmas period the Kammerspiele’s 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 Helga’s 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 master’s thesis, just barely, in time. Classes in Hamburg did not resume until the Monday following New Year’s, 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 don’t smoke… I mean Brigitte doesn’t smoke. Maggie smokes. So, when I’m being Maggie, I smoke. You know what Ida tells us: ‘Don’t play roles, play people.’” “But when I kiss you, I want to kiss Brigitte, not Maggie.” “Don’t 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, don’t you?” He could not deny that he did. Nor could he deny that she had made amazing progress under Ida Ehre’s 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 didn’t 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 Ida’s 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 wasn’t 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 hour’s 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 didn’t 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 Arafat’s 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 master’s 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 Leon’s 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 Ehre’s, and the mere knowledge of her lines would not allow her to take a week’s 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, Franco’s 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. ETA’s activity, which began with theorizing and went on to symbolic protest by destroying infrastructure and Spanish symbols, and by displaying Basque flags (forbidden in Franco’s 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 day’s 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 Brigitte’s 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…