9
Friday,
August 14, 1970
1959-60
The call came a little after nine oclock,
and it was from the BGS official with whom he had spoken the day before, and
who this time identified himself clearly as Lieutenant Wackel. I misinformed you
yesterday, he said. It is not the Hamburg police that is interested in you,
but the Baden-Württemberg police. One of their detectives is on his way to
Hamburg to talk to you. It would be appreciated if you were available to be
contacted until he gets here.
Of course, Herr Leutnant. I
will give you another telephone number, which is connected to an answerer, and
you can leave me a message there if I dont pick up the telephone on this
line.
Thank you, Herr Wilner, the
lieutenant said. You will hear from us without delay.
Baden-Württemberg! So perhaps
it did have something to do with the murdered Axel Hemme! What else could it
be? He had written about Hemme, the real Hemme of the SS, in his reporting of
the Auschwitz trials, so that his connection with him was known. Perhaps it had
to do with identifying the body. But was that so urgent that his trip had to be
blocked?
Brigitte was at the studio,
and Frau Schmidt had the morning and early afternoon off, visiting with her son
Klaus. Before she had left, Miki met with her to plan for the next days dinner
party.
It had been arranged a few
weeks before, before the Wilners Norderney vacation, as a routine social
get-together with Helmut and Margot. Since Margot and Miki no longer worked
together, and Brigitte had not worked with Helmut in several years, such
gatherings had become an indispensable means of maintaining the friendship.
Hannas arrival, and her
scheduled departure for Israel on Sunday, made it natural to include her, and
in order to keep the company even, Max Schwab was invited as well.
When Miki decided to leave for Israel with
Hanna, the dinner would be a kind of farewell party for him and Hanna; now it
seemed as it would be for Hanna only.
He did not feel like sitting
in the house, alone, waiting for a call from the police, so that he decided to
go out for a bicycle ride. Since that spring, he used the bicycle that Brigitte
had given him for his thirty-fifth birthday to take rides around Blankenese and
its neighboring communities, and these rides took the place of the walks that
he liked to take around the Outer Alster, whenever he felt the need to be
alone, when they were living in central Hamburg. He still missed those walks,
because there were invariably other walkers in the area, and their presence
made him feel comfortable alone but not isolated. He did not get the same
comfort from the rare other bicyclists, mostly adolescents, who might cross his
path in Blankenese.
But the weather was lovely. A
northwesterly breeze was blowing from the general direction of the North Sea,
but not over the Elbe, so that he was spared the industrial aroma of the river
that was ever the source of Hamburgs prosperity. He was able, for most of the
ride, to keep his mind off his predicament and on his work. Specifically, he
was reviewing what he remembered of Ortega y Gassets and Le Bons notions of
masses and crowds, respectively.
When he returned home, an
hour later, there already was a message on his answering machine. It was from
Wackel, and it was an order couched as a request to present himself at BGS
headquarters at three in the afternoon, with his passport. The last part of the
order with your passport was expressed quite emphatically.
* * *
As the winter semester got underway, Miki found renewed
time and energy to go on with his dissertation work. Somehow the conundrum that
had plagued him during the preceding months solved itself when he came to the
realization that the kind of freedom that he had in mind, essentially political
freedom the liberté that the French Revolutionaries placed alongside égalité
and fraternité, the liberty that the American Revolutionaries
placed alongside life and the pursuit of happiness and that Mill
wrote his great essay on was not a part of German thinking until the
twentieth century, as when, for example, Rosa Luxemburg proclaimed that
freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter. If Heidegger and Jaspers
thought that they found it in Kant or Schelling, they were wrong. What
Schelling, Goethe and their ilk had in mind was a more metaphysical or perhaps
theological kind of freedom, in keeping with the German way of seeing things.
Fichte, Hegel and Schelling alike related freedom to necessity, defining it as
doing all that nature demands (Fichte), as the union with necessity
(Schelling), as the truth of necessity (Hegel). Even such later thinkers as
Feuerbach, Engels and Nietzsche, atheists all, could not break the bonds of
this conception. It seemed to Miki that Freedom and the German Mind might
be a good title for the dissertation, though it would certainly need a more
scholarly-sounding subtitle.
During his meanderings
through nineteenth-century literature, as Witte had urged him to do, Miki came
across the collected writings of Friedrich Gerstäcker, best known as the author
of adventure novels with exotic locales the Americas, the South Seas,
Australia that had inspired those of Karl May. Unlike the sedentary May, who
almost never left his native Saxony, Gerstäcker was a compulsive world traveler
who also wrote insightful and fascinating reports of his travels. Only a few of
his narratives take place in Germany; one of them is a little romantic story,
titled Germelshausen, about a village that comes to life for one day
every century, just like the one in the American musical film Brigadoon
that Miki and Brigitte had seen a few years before.
In the course of his first
journey, as a young man in his twenties, Gerstäcker lived for six years in the
United States, wandering across New York State, the Middle West and the South.
He was a keen observer of human inequality, not only in the slave states of the
South he wrote sympathetically about the ravages of slavery, and in
particular slave auctions, several years before Uncle Toms Cabin but
also in the free states of North and, later, in colonial societies such as
the Dutch East Indies.
But, though he occasionally
wrote of being Americanized, he remained forever German. His longing for his
homeland never left him, and he lived among Germans whenever he could find
them. And his notion of freedom was the romantically poetic German one: Free,
I was free, he wrote. The feeling of complete independence rose in my breast
again, high and happy. No longer did I envy the birds whose southward flight I
had longingly observed a short time before. I, too, was free like them and
willing to use my loosened wings. And what occasioned this feeling of freedom?
Losing his business in New York, leaving his possessions behind, and setting
out for Niagara.
Miki included his reflections
on Gerstäcker as a short chapter in his dissertation in order to show, in part,
that his consideration of German literature was not limited to the classics but
included popular writings as well..
Brigitte, during this time,
was constantly busy. The party for her twenty-fifth birthday the first one to
follow their pact of five years before was given by the cast and crew of Goose-Liesel,
and while Miki was of course invited, he found that he did not really know how
to celebrate the way show people did, despite Brigittes best efforts to
include him in the fun and games.
While the shooting was going
on, she would come home in time for dinner, and share with him some but not
many details of the work. The main one, the one that would be used in their
love-play in bed, was that her male counterpart, in each of the tree episodes,
was a student named Hans. For her part, she was named Liesel, but she was,
respectively, a prostitute, a student, and a secretary.
For the part of Hans, Thiele
was originally going to cast three different actors, but in the course of
auditions it became clear to him that Helmut Finke, a young actor from Hamburg
whom Brigitte had already known at the Kammerspiele, could do all three parts
better than any of the others. Miki had met Helmut at the party, and had found
him to be the only one with whom he could have an adult conversation. Brigitte
suggested inviting Helmut to dinner some time, before he went back to Hamburg,
where his wife, who was also an actress, was doing television work.
Even before the wrap,
Brigitte became busy at the Deutsches Theater, work that took up her afternoons
and evenings. And so there turned out to be only one opportunity for Helmut to
visit, but the dinner conversation was so pleasant that they were left with no
doubt that, once the Wilners were living in Hamburg, they would all be friends.
After the wrap, in the course
of postproduction, she still had to go back to the studio for work on some
special effects that involved her.
By early December Miki knew
that he had his dissertation well in hand, with the first draft almost
complete, and that he would be able to formally submit the finished product
soon after lectures resumed in January.
His final examination, known at Göttingen as the Rigorosum, could
then take place, if everything went well, in February or March.
After a vigorous bout of
cutting and pasting, he had a final draft ready for the typist. It was quite
short by dissertation standards, barely two hundred double-spaced pages. By
then Miki understood enough about typesetting to know that when Human
Freedom in the German Mind from the Enlightenment to the Present was
published as a book, as the university required before he could be called
doctor, it would be a slim volume of one hundred fifty pages.
As he was leaving Wittes
office after handing him the finished typescript, on a Friday afternoon, he
noticed an announcement by the universitys Esperanto club that it would
present a concert in honor of L. L. Zamenhofs one-hundredth birthday (koncerto
en honoro de la centa naskiĝtago de Doktoro Esperanto). He thought
about it as he walked home, and by the time he got there he had an article
ready to type.
Language and the Polish
Jew
With the occasion of the
one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, there is no doubt
that a great many articles will be written about Esperanto: about its potential
for realizing its creators hope expressed in the name of the language for
the peaceful coexistence of peoples by means of a common language; about
whether it is easier (as Zamenhof had intended) or more difficult to learn than
other possible international languages, natural or artificial; about the
broader significance in human affairs of a supranational language; and other
weighty issues.
My own interest in
Esperanto is limited. I studied it briefly from a self-study book, mastered its
fundamentals, and laid it aside. The fascination that natural languages, living
and dead, have always held for me is simply not there.
For me, the anniversary is
a stimulus for reflection on a different, though related, subject: the peculiar
relationship that we Polish Jews and Zamenhof was one of us have with
language.
Writing we Polish
Jews gave him a strange feeling of self-satisfaction. He wondered if there was
anyone else writing in Germany who could use that phrase.
First of all, there is no one language that we call our own. It
is not unusual to hear, within a single group of Polish Jews holding a
conversation, for the language to shift, seemingly at random, between Yiddish,
Polish and Hebrew, with some German or Russian (depending in part on which
region of Poland the group originates in) making a not infrequent appearance.
The same can be said of
Polish Jews who have made their mark in literature.
Julian Tuwim and Bruno Schulz wrote in Polish. Scholem Asch began
by writing in Hebrew and changed to Yiddish.
The Israeli novelist S. Y. Agnon, on the other hand, began in Yiddish
before turning to Hebrew, though he also edited The Book of Polish Jews
in German. And I am not even including those who were born as Polish Jews but
were educated outside Poland, such as the Russian poet Ossip Mandelstamm, the
French novelist Romain Gary, and, with all due modesty, the writer of these
lines.
I should probably explain
that by Polish Jews I mean those Jews who lived in the pre-partition Kingdom
of Poland, which included not only Greater Poland and Lesser Poland but also
Ruthenia or Red Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia, regions that are now in the
Soviet Union. The Jewish inhabitants of this territory can be said to have
formed, at least in the vague eighteenth-century sense, a nation (recall that
the Portuguese Jews of Bordeaux called themselves la nation juive portugaise),
endowed with self-government (by the Vaad Arba Aratzot or Council of
Four Lands) and with a common culture that was fostered by great mobility
between the various parts of the territory. One can extend the definition even
further, to include the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which formed a joint state
with Poland (known as the Commonwealth of the Two Nations) and whose Jews
(commonly known as Litvaks) were governed by their own council, but they shared
most of their culture and linguistic predilections with those of Poland. The
Lithuanian language played almost no role among them, since the language of the
Lithuanian nobility was Polish (as famously exemplified by the poet Adam
Mickiewicz), and most of the Jews contact with non-Jews was with members of
that class.
To the extent, then, that
we Polish Jews can be called a nation, Fichtes dictum that where there
is a language there is a nation, and vice versa, simply does not apply to us.
Like religion in North America, language is among us a matter of individual
choice, both with regard to everyday conversation in which case the choice
may depend on the conversation partners
and to its use as the medium of expression by a writer or public
speaker.
Now that I am, in every respect
except the strictly ethnic one, a German, I find that, when I regard my fellow
Germans from a linguistic perspective, I identify more with those who speak
both High German and a regional dialect (specifically Plattdeutsch) than with
those who, like my wife, have the former as their one and only native language.
True, I tell myself, there is something comfortable about not needing to make a
decision, if only an unconscious one, about which language to use with ones
fellow citizens. But having a multiplicity of languages in ones brain from the
outset gives us a kind of freedom, and I am one of those who prefer freedom to
comfort.
He sent the
article to Margot, but the reply came from Braune, and it had some sentences in
Plattdeutsch mixed into it. He congratulated Herr Wilner, whom he hoped soon to
be addressing as Dr. Wilner, on presenting for a change a Jewish point of
view on something having nothing to do with the Nazi regime, and expressed
pride in having him as a collaborator on the Morgenpost.
* * *
The detective from Baden-Württemberg was introduced to him
as Kriminalmeister Benzinger, from the State Criminal Office in Stuttgart. He
was there to confiscate Michael Wilners passport, which he would take back
with him to Stuttgart, and to ensure that Herr Wilner presented himself at said
office on Monday morning. If Herr Wilner were to take the night train on Sunday
evening, someone would meet him at the station in Stuttgart.
But, Herr Kriminalmeister,
Miki protested, I have no identity card other than my passport. In America I
can use my drivers license as an identity card, but here in Germany
I know about identity
cards, the policeman said with a supercilious smile. Dont you think that the
police knows what to do in such cases? I will give you a receipt for your
confiscated passport, which will contain all the necessary data and which can
be used as a temporary identity document. Now, the passport please.
All the necessary data
would not include a photograph, so that the temporary identity document could
not really be the equivalent of an official identity card. But Miki did not
feel like arguing.
Benzinger seemed to be about
Mikis age, obviously too young to have been a policeman in the Nazi era, but
his manner was Gestapo-like enough to make Miki shudder. Perhaps, he thought,
this mans father was a Gestapo man, and the son learned his behavior from him.
Miki handed his passport to
Benzinger, who opened it to the photo page, looked up at Miki and down again
just like a border policeman, and took his time reading the scant information
contained in the document. He took a form out of his briefcase and with an
old-fashioned fountain pen began to copy the information onto it. Born in
Poland, he said aloud to himself. Nineteen hundred thirty-five. A few more
strokes of the pen. Hamburg-Blankenese. When he was finished copying he
signed the form with a flourish, turned it around towards Miki, who was sitting
across from him, and said, Now, would you please sign here, as he handed him
the fountain pen. There were some lines of print above the signature line, no
doubt an agreement to abide by the rules and regulations governing the use of
the document, but Miki was not given the time to read them. With the signing
ceremony over, the detective placed the pen in a special compartment of his
briefcase, Mikis passport in another, and from yet another compartment
extracted a rubber stamp and an inkpad. He stamped the document with a measure
of pomp and gave it to Miki.
All right, Herr Doktor
Wilner, he said as he stood up. Monday morning in Stuttgart. Miki also stood
up, and Benzinger reached his hand out to him, for the first time. Good-bye.
All the hopes that Miki had
harbored of finding out why he was wanted by the police in Stuttgart had
vanished. Benzinger, obviously, would not say or do anything other than what he
was ordered. In fact, he probably did not even know anything about the case.
So, Miki said to himself as
he walked out of the BGS building to his parking space, for the next three
nights, two-and-a-half days, I wont know whats going on.
Clouds of memories from the
Nazi era began to gather in his mind, but he determined to chase them away. He
would distract himself, he decided.
* * *
The financing and distribution deals that Role Thiele had
arranged for Goose-Liesel made it possible for Brigitte to be paid a
large portion of her fee even before the opening, and the Wilners were suddenly
flush with money. Im following a family tradition on my fathers side:
marrying rich women, Miki joked. It was true that his mothers father had been
a wealthy merchant, and Leons business success was perhaps due to an inherited
talent. Whether the tradition went back more than one generation, Miki did not
know.
And it was not only
Brigittes pay that made them prosperous. Leon sent Miki, as a combined present
for his twenty-fifth birthday which he and Brigitte made a point of
celebrating, though only with an intimate dinner and an exchange of presents
and his doctorate, a money order for five thousand Canadian dollars. This was
worth over twenty thousand marks, almost half of Brigittes salary, and enough
for Miki to pay, at least for the time being, his share of their henceforth
considerably higher living expenses.
Rolf Thiele, besides being a
brilliant screenwriter, director and producer, proved to be a master of
publicity as well. The fortuitous timing of Mikis Rigorosum which he
passed summa cum laude, after receiving a mere cum laude on the dissertation
itself, no doubt due to its brevity two weeks before the scheduled premiere
of Goose-Liesel made it possible for the kissing ceremony to be a part
of the films advertising campaign. Miki was photographed kissing both the
statue and Brigitte in all of her Liesel costumes, and the photographs found
their way into newspapers and magazines throughout the German-speaking world.
By this time, he had already
settled into the part that he would now be playing for years to come: that of
the spouse of a film star.
He had found an apartment for
them in the same neighborhood as before, near the Alster, but significantly
larger, and with more modern appointments, including a laundry room with an
electric washing machine and dryer, and in the kitchen an electric dishwasher,
all made by Miele.
At the time of their move, just before the premiere, they did not
have nearly enough furnishings to fill the place, but the shopping expedition
would have to wait until the hubbub around the film, the photo sessions and
press conferences and interviews, would die down.
The film turned out to be, in
fact, a star vehicle for Brigitte Wilner. The script was clever, provoking much
audience laughter, but emotionally superficial. The art direction, showing
Göttingen during the Kaiser era, at the start of the Nazi era and in the
present, was competently done. The special effects, allowing the bronze statue
of a ten-year-old girl to be transformed into each of Brigittes incarnations
as a ripe beauty in her twenties, were excellent. The direction showed Horst
Schmiedes inexperience: he was unable to impose a unified style of performance
on the cast, and the acting by the secondary characters ranged from
matter-of-fact to highly theatrical. And while each of the three eras depicted
were well differentiated by the music, the costumes and other props such as
cars and telephones, the task of creating a distinct period feel for each era
seemed to have been beyond Schmiedes powers.
After the showing, there was
polite applause for the film, and more of the same for Horst Schmiede when he
was asked to rise. It was better for Helmut Finke, but the presenter knew what
he was doing when he saved Brigitte for last: she received a standing ovation
that lasted ten minutes.
The reviews confirmed the
reception. The film was described, mostly, as enjoyable but simple-minded, and
the screenplay was characterized as not being on a level expected from the same
Rolf Thiele who had written The Girl Rosemarie and Labyrinth.
Brigitte, on the other hand, received unanimous raves. Several reviewers
compared her to Liselotte Pulver and Nadja Tiller, if not favorably than at
least as a worthy rival. Brigittes portrayal of the prostitute in the first
episode led one critic to speculate that perhaps Rolf Thiele had been too hasty
in making The Girl Rosemarie. Brigitte Wilner would have been not
merely very good, as Nadja Tiller undoubtedly was, but perfect, he concluded.
Only one review, in the MoPo,
made mention of the lovely waltz tune, sung wordless during the transformations
from statue to woman and reprised with words during the final credits, and of
the fact that it was sung by Brigitte Wilner.
While Brigitte, in robe and
reading glasses, was scanning the clippings of the reviews which Schmiede,
acting once again as Thieles assistant, had sent her over the remains of
their room-service breakfast, Miki was seated at the desk of their room at the
Hotel Atlantic, busily tapping away at his Olivetti. Elvis Presleys recent
return from Germany to America had given him the idea for an article that he
titled Germanys Loss, and he hoped to have a draft ready to show to
Margot at the lunch date that they had scheduled for that day.
He had not seen Margot in
four years, but the correspondence that they had maintained over the past one
and a half let him feel that he was meeting a close friend. And so it was,
though her appearance surprised him. He had expected her, as a married
professional woman, to look more elegant than she had as a student, when she
favored wool skirts and flat-heeled shoes. But she arrived in the restaurant
wearing Mustang jeans, with a leather vest over a black long-sleeved V-necked
T-shirt, and looking even more like a student than before. But her curly brown
hair, warm smile and hearty laughter were just as he had remembered them.
Is this the style in Hamburg
now? he asked her after their greeting.
Not yet, she said with a
laugh, but it soon will be. Were in the sixties now!
And?
You know what Macmillan said
about the wind of change? He was talking about Africa, but changes are
also happening in Europe and America. And you, Michael Wilner, are here to
write about them!
Even changes in fashion? he
asked after the waiter had taken their orders.
Why not? Your wife is a film
star now, and she will be what in English is called a trendsetter, so
you will have a chance to observe the changes first-hand.
Is Elvis Presleys going
back to America such a change?
Absolutely.
Well, then I have already
written about it. And he handed her the typescript. She looked at the title,
scanned the first paragraph and laughed. This is fabulous. Keep it up.
What about political
changes? he asked her.
She reflected for a moment.
You know, the MoPo is still an SPD paper, and since the Godesberg
Program one could say that there is a party line.
But I like the Godesberg
Program! he protested.
Yes, but the people who
wrote it are all of our parents generation, or even older, and there are things
between the lines that people our age probably dont understand. Braune is of
that generation, and I dont think he is ready for political opinion from
people like us.
No wonder the SPD is in the
opposition, Miki remarked.
Thats exactly what I think,
Margot said with a smile. It needs some young, or at least younger, blood.
Their lunch arrived:
bratwurst for Miki, herring for Margot.
Do you mean someone like
Willy Brandt? Miki asked.
Sure, or even our own Helmut
Schmidt.
* * *
When Miki got home, Brigitte was already back from the
studio, looking comfortable in jeans, sandals and a navy-blue tee-shirt as she
was sitting on the sofa, reading a magazine. But her hair was done up in what
he called her Minna von Barnhelm style, and what she called her incognito
style. He wondered if the series she was preparing for took place in the
eighteenth century.
When she saw him she removed
her glasses and put them and the magazine down on the coffee table, got up and
ran towards him. Putting her arms around him, she asked, Well? What have you
found out?
Nothing, he said after
kissing her. I have to go to Stuttgart Sunday night, and I wont know anything
till Monday morning.
Poor Miki, she said,
letting him go.
Lets go out and have fun,
he said. We havent been in St. Pauli in a long time. Not since the Star-Club
closed.
All right, she said. Let
me change.
No, dont change. You look
just right as you are.
But I have to look like
Brigitte Wilner, she said, pronouncing her name in an exaggerated dramatic
tone.
But you already have you
hair in your incognito style.
Grow up, darling, she said
with a laugh. Its been ten years since Brigitte Wilner could go out
incognito. Now, Michael Wilner, on the other hand
What about him?
Hes been a celebrity
for only two years, so perhaps
But seriously, at the very least I have to
change shirts. I need to wear something more clinging and low-cut.
But thats unfair, he
protested. Youll get me excited, and then
This sort of discussion between
them was not new. Only the details, and the jokes, changed from one time to
another. But this time it was not as lighthearted as usual. They were not going
out simply to have fun, but for the sake of distraction from the tension that
held Miki in its grip.
* * *
For some reason the reception accorded to Goose-Liesel
was, for the most part, much friendlier away from Hamburg. In Frankfurt and
Cologne, in Munich and Stuttgart, even in Zurich and Vienna, critics and public
greeted the film warmly. Only in West Berlin were they as cool as in Hamburg.
Brigitte had to make personal
appearances for the films publicity in all those cities, and on occasion
when an accompanist was available to sing the theme song, which was becoming
known as the Goose-Liesel Song. A recording of the song (the version
with words) was released on a 45-rpm disk, with the instrumental version on the
B-side, and became a minor hit.
It was not until May, when
the films box-office success was assured, that she and Miki found the necessary
time to furnish their apartment in a style that, on the one hand, Brigittes
status required and, on the other hand, made it comfortable for guests from
different walks of life.
The size of the apartment
also meant that a cleaning woman, a young Serbian named Milena, had to be hired
to come in twice a week to do housecleaning and laundry. Miki continued to act
as the cook, buying cookbooks and experimenting, cautiously at first, with new
recipes. But, as his confidence grew, and as he no longer felt confined to
economical ingredients, he found himself paying less and less attention to the
details of the recipes and using his imagination more and more. Brigitte seemed
to have no problem with his newfound culinary adventurousness.
For their first dinner party,
Brigitte and Miki agreed to invite their respective best friends and their
spouses: Helmut Finke and his wife, the actress Christine Baumann; and Margot
Klohse-Wallmann and her husband, Dr. Erich Klohse. The main dish was pheasant
with foie gras.
At dinner, a lively
conversation went on among Brigitte, Miki, Helmut and Margot, who were all in
their mid-twenties and interested in the world around them. At the same time a
private conversation took place between Erich and Christine, who happened to
sit next to each other. Erich Klohse was over thirty and had not been outside
the university world in well over a decade. Christine had begun acting in
teenage parts on television when she was fifteen and now, at twenty-one, was
still doing so. Neither of them knew much of the world outside the one they
worked in, and they were each fascinated to discover the others world, though
it was also clear that Klohse was not immune to Christines physical charms.
Margot was an attractive woman, and he had no doubt known other attractive
female students before her, but a glamorous young actress in a revealing
evening gown was something new for him.
Something about the dinner
perhaps the foie gras, Brigitte later joked proved to be sexually stimulating
to both Brigitte and Miki, and after the guests left they rushed to bed,
leaving the cleanup for the morning, that is, for Milena. As he was kissing his
beautiful wife, Mikis mind could not keep out flashes of Margots brown curls
or Christines generously displayed bosom, but as he felt them with his hand
and mouth he remembered that no woman had hair that was silkier, or breasts
that were shapelier, than Brigitte Wilner.
In the morning Miki commented
on the surprising rapport between Christine and Erich Klohse.
Thats nothing, Brigitte
replied. By now theyve already forgotten about each other and theyre back in
their own little worlds. But Helmut and Margot, thats another matter. I could
see sparks flying.
Really? Miki tried not to
sound shocked, but it came through nonetheless. He had already come to terms
with the fact that in such matters Brigitte was far more perceptive than he.
Dont be shocked. Margot is
a very desirable woman. I think you were a little bit in love with her yourself,
when you were in that class with her in Göttingen.
Thats ridiculous, Miki
protested. I could never be in love with anyone but you. He wondered what
signals he might have given off when he talked to Brigitte about Margot, and
could not help feeling annoyed with himself.
When I say a little bit in
love, Brigitte said, I dont mean in love, just slightly infatuated,
nothing that would threaten what you and I have. It happens to me all the time.
I couldnt kiss a man passionately on the stage or on the set if I didnt feel
something, but I have it under control. Its a part of my work
or am I getting
into sausage-making?
No, this isnt about
technique, its about feelings.
You know, sweetheart, that
in my work one cannot always draw the line, especially if one studied with Ida
Ehre. Mastery of feelings, thats what its all about, she likes to say. And,
by the way, its a part of your work too. Being married is work is something
else she likes to say.
But what about Helmut and
Christine? Shes beautiful.
A beautiful child, Brigitte
said. Theyre married only because she got pregnant when they had a fling a
couple of years ago. After they married she had a miscarriage. He admitted to
me that they were still married because she was making a lot of money and he
was a struggling actor, but now, after Goose-Liesel, this is changing.
Now, Brigitte went on without giving Miki a chance to absorb all the
information, do you think Margot is in love with her professor?
I dont know, Miki admitted.
We corresponded quite a bit during our last year in Göttingen, but she never
said anything about her personal life. I told you that I was quite surprised
when I found out that my editor would be named Margot Klohse-Wallmann.
I think Helmut and Margot
would make a great couple, Brigitte said with a mischievous smile.
I think you ought to play a
marriage counselor, he said with a laugh.
And you, my darling Miki,
she said as she took his hands and caressed them, are doing a very good job of
playing a career counselor. Maybe you can be my agent! Thiele told me that the
idea for Goose-Liesel came from you.
I had asked him not to tell
you.
Well, as they say in
Hollywood, thats show business, she said. But I think Ill wait till
Im a little older to play a marriage counselor, dont you think? Would people
trust a twenty-five-year-old marriage counselor?
Probably not, just as they
dont seem to trust a twenty-five-year-old political commentator. But when you
turn thirty Ill suggest it again.
A few days later Margot
called Miki at home to arrange another lunch meeting.
After telling him how much
she enjoyed the dinner party he wondered if her enthusiastic manner was her
natural way of expressing such things, or if it had something to do with
meeting Helmut she announced somewhat secretively that she had some important
news. Ive been offered a job at Die Zeit, she said, and Id like to
take you with me.
Does Braune know? Miki
asked.
Not yet. But Ive talked
with M-M and the Countess, and they would be happy to have you. And you would
be free to write about politics they were quite clear about that with no
party line to follow. What do you think?
Its like a dream come
true, he said. May I tell Brigitte?
Of course, Margot said.
Brigitte just signed a
contract for two films yesterday, and, by the way, Helmut will be in one of
them. We should probably have another party to celebrate, for the four of us.
Then lets make it just the
four of us! Margot said excitedly and laughed.
Brigitte had been right, Miki
thought.
* * *
In the end he was thankful that Brigitte had followed her
own counsel and put on a different shirt, besides replacing her flat-heeled sandals
with wedge-heeled ones. The sight of the lovely, perfectly rounded tops of her
breasts, whether peering at him across the restaurant table or swaying on the
dance floor, was satisfying in itself, even when, as this evening, it did not
presage deeper satisfaction later in the night.
The other diners at the
restaurant were discreet and did not let on that they were in the presence of a
film star. If they looked at her, it was only for a moment.
It was different at the
clubs, where the guests normal inhibitions were loosened by alcohol, and
Brigitte was the object of intense, if friendly, staring. Groups of people
whispered about them, and Miki realized that he, too, was gossiped about.
There was no doubt that they
were a celebrity couple, something like a small-scale very small-scale
version of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe.
But Miki noticed that only a
fraction of the club guests seemed to recognize them. As they walked past the
tables on their way in and out, he noticed that those who paid them no
attention, for the most part, spoke English with varying accents. The clubs of
St. Pauli seemed to be overrun with Anglo-Saxon tourists to an unprecedented
degree. In a flash he understood why.
You know, he said to
Brigitte as they were leaving their third and last club of the night, since
the Beatles breakup their fans seem to be making a pilgrimage to the place
where they got their start.
I think youre right, she
said. I wonder if the people who named this place Sankt Pauli imagined that
someday it would be a place of pilgrimage.
Yes, to worship Saint Paul,
Saint John, Saint George and Saint Ringo.
Why not? Do you remember
when we visited New Orleans, and at the St. Louis cathedral I said that I was
there to worship Saint Louis Armstrong?
And do you remember what the
first Beatles record had on it?
When the Saints Go
Marching In, she said, as they both laughed uproariously, and pointed
across the street. We heard them sing it right there at the Star-Club.
They saw themselves as future
saints. This district should be renamed as Sankt PauliJohannisGeorgiiRingo.
No, better yet, Ringonis.
Ringonis?
Yes, thats the correct
Latin genitive of Ringo.
When it comes to Latin Ill
have to take your word for it. But I like the sound of Ringonis. It has a
nice ring to it.
They were still laughing when
they reached the parking lot of the fish market, where Mikis car was parked.
As he went to the passenger door to open it for Brigitte, he noticed that the
car next to his bore a Stuttgart license plate. It was the first time since
they left home for their night out that Stuttgart was on his mind. The thought
did not bother him one bit.
* * *
By August, Helmut and Margot had separated from their
respective spouses, and begun living together in an apartment not far from the
Wilners. Margot took advantage of her change of employment to become even
before the divorce Margot Wallmann once again, and as such she appeared on
the masthead of Die Zeit as associate editor.
Miki found out that Die
Zeit had taken on another Polish Jew as a collaborator: Marcel Reich, who
had recently escaped from Poland and called himself Reich-Ranicki, would be its
literary critic. But R-R, as Miki and Margot referred to him, would remain in
Frankfurt and would not be a member of the editorial staff.
Brigitte, meanwhile, found
out that, in the wake of Goose-Liesels success, Rolf Thiele had no
trouble finding backing for another independent production with a starring role
for her and in which he would participate behind the scenes but which he not
personally direct or produce (the Hollywood term executive producer was
not used in Germany), while he was preparing to write and direct an Austrian
production of Lulu starring (yet again) Nadja Tiller. Its tentative title
was The House of Birds and it would be shot in and around Hamburg, with
location work in the Schleswig-Holstein countryside. She would start work at
the end of August.
Miki had just written his
first article dealing with the Nazi past. It was twice a long as his usual
output, and it discussed, with some irony, the recently resolved dispute
between Israel and Argentina over the legality of Eichmanns capture.
Müller-Marein decided to split it and to run it in two consecutive issues.
The Wilners now had a little
over a week with no obligations. They looked at each other at the dinner table
and said, almost in unison, Lets go to Norderney!
When Miki called their
favorite hotel to make a reservation, he was told that it was being renovated,
and would not reopen till the following season. Once again they had to settle
for a place that was not the one of their romantic memory now eight years in
the past but once again they had a passionately beautiful time together.
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