10 Saturday, August 15, 1970 1960-61 He woke up early that morning, and got out of bed and went downstairs while Brigitte slept. He thought of getting back to his essay, but could not focus his mind on its subject matter. The relaxed feeling that he had gone to bed with, after the evening’s nightclubbing, was gone. Being without a passport – if only temporarily, as he believed – gave him the strange sensation of being a man without a country. He had, of course, been technically stateless while he was a displaced person, but at that time he was a fervent Zionist and believed that the Land of Israel was his country. But living in Israel drained the Zionism out of his system, and after his return to Bad Harzburg and into Brigitte Bechmeyer’s arms, it did not take long for him to feel that Germany, or at least West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, was his homeland, and that he was, at least in the western sense according to Seipel, a German, if not – as his English friend Helen had suggested – a Germanian, which he had translated into Deutschländer. But now he had no document in his immediate possession that identified him as any of these. Since having a passport exempted him from the legal obligation to have an identity card, he had not bothered to acquire one. Then he remembered – how could he have forgotten? – that he had in his possession a receipt for his temporarily confiscated passport, with its number and his personal data, signed by a Kriminalkommissar Stracke in Stuttgart and countersigned and stamped in Miki’s presence by Kriminalmeister Benzinger. It was something that he could, as Benzinger told him, present as an identity document if required to do so. He felt relieved, but not enough to get back to writing. He stepped outside to get the MoPo that had been introduced through the slot in the gate. Back in his study, he browsed through the paper, but did not find much to interest him. He heard Frau Schmidt’s first footsteps, and thought that it might be time to finish planning, with her, the evening’s dinner. *      *     * Helmut and Margot quickly found that one of the interests that they had in common, and that their previous spouses had not shared, was going out to music and dance clubs. Such clubs were now proliferating in St. Pauli, on the Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit, and while the district’s famous brothels were not being displaced, they were no longer its only attraction. The first time that Helmut and Margot went out as a couple, it was to the Indra Club, the oldest of the lot, and there they heard a brand-new English skiffle band billed as The Beatles. They went back to hear them time and again, and urged their friends to join them. They continued to do so after the Indra Club was closed by police and The Beatles moved to the Kaiserkeller. But all that autumn the Wilners were busy. In September, while Brigitte Wilner was working on The House of Birds, Michael Wilner’s Human Freedom in the German Mind from the Enlightenment to the Present appeared as a book, published by Lehndorff, a small publishing house that specialized in doctoral dissertations. To ensure the publication Miki had agreed to buy one hundred copies, of which he submitted the requisite number to the dean of the faculty, to the members of his dissertation committee and to the university library. He also sent copies to university libraries in West Germany, Austria and German Switzerland, to some of the scholars whose work he had cited (including, with dedications, Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt), to Braune and a few other staff members at MoPo, and to Leon. He thought of sending a copy to Hanna Kidron (whom he cited with gratitude on his acknowledgments page), but the idea of renewing any sort of contact with the kibbutz that he had left under such unpleasant circumstances filled him with an anxiety that still resonated in the pit of his stomach, and he did not do it. Regarding the staff of Die Zeit, Margot suggested that he bring the dedicated copies in person to the Press House. She also named the people to whom the book should be given, including M-M but not the Countess, who would not be there, as she was spending one of her habitual three-week vacations on the island of Ischia in Italy. When he arrived, he was directed to the conference room, where Margot had arranged a surprise party for him, and the people present were precisely the intended recipients of the book. There was a banner reading “Dr. Wilner,” and Müller-Marein made a short and humorous speech in which he welcomed him under his new title. The only reviews that the book received were brief ones in academic journals, and they were almost exclusively by historians. Most of them were quite critical of the notion that political freedom was not present in the nineteenth-century German mind. Miki realized that he had neglected to specify in his introduction that by “the German mind” he meant the minds of poets and philosophers, not those of jurists and politicians of the sort associated with the liberal revolution of 1848, precisely the ones that the critics of his book cited as counterexamples. He felt peeved that Professor Kuhnstein, the historian on his dissertation committee, had not warned him against such a misreading, but at this point he did not really care. As far as he knew, his academic career was over. *      *     * He would do all the shopping himself, he decided, and he would do it the old-fashioned way, with meat from the butcher shop, vegetables from the vegetable store, bread from the bakery. As a rule he enjoyed supermarket shopping, and resented the German resistance to self-service that had condemned supermarkets to failure when they were first introduced. But on this day the traditional form of shopping would be another welcome distraction. Brigitte told him over breakfast that she did not feel like driving into the city on that warm day, lest she arrive at the studio coated in sweat, and that she would rather take the train and then a taxi. “Then I’ll take you to the station before I go shopping,” Miki said, “since you would get sweaty walking there. What time will you be finished?” “Probably around four,” she answered. “Then I can come and get you, since I don’t need to put the meat in the oven until half five.” “Don’t bother, darling,” she said, “I can come back the same way. It may not be exactly at four.” “Then at least call me from the station and I’ll pick you up. I don’t think you will feel like walking in your dress shoes.” “All right, I’ll call you unless it’s exactly at half five. By the way, aren’t you going into Hamburg to pick up Hanna?” “Yes, but that will be around noon, when she checks out.” After he dropped Brigitte off at the Blankenese station, he parked his car and began making the rounds of the business district. It was feeling quite warm already, and he decided to make the butcher shop his last call. He was going to make a stuffed breast of veal, so that what he needed to get at the bakery, besides the bread for the table, was some stale bread cubes for the stuffing; he knew that the baker usually kept a supply of those just for such a purpose. The stuffing would also include some chopped ham, of which there was enough at home, as well as a combination of mushrooms, shallots, and parsley. At the vegetable store he found not only white mushrooms but also some nice freshly picked wild ceps and chanterelles. He wondered if the flavors of the last two might clash, but the storekeeper assured him that they would blend together just fine – she had often combined them in her own cooking – so that he got some of each, not only for the stuffing but to serve them sautéed as a side dish, with green beans and carrots. He also got some new potatoes that Frau Schmidt would cook in her special way, and some cucumber, tomatoes and an assortment of small lettuces for the salad. As the butcher was boning the breast of veal and cutting the pocket for the stuffing, he suggested to Miki that the finely cut-up bones and gristle would make an attractive garnish on the baked breast. Miki, who had never cooked this dish before, remembered that he had seen it so served in restaurants, and accepted the suggestion, though it was not mentioned in the cookbook recipe that he had read. He asked the butcher if he had any more suggestions, and the butcher gave him a rambling description of how his wife prepared the dish. The guests were due at six o’clock. Helmut and Margot were very punctual people, and Miki suspected that so was Max Schwab. He therefore calculated that if the roasting was completed at that time, then Frau Schmidt could make the sauce with the drippings after the guests arrived, while they were having drinks and appetizers. *      *     * By the time The House of Birds was released, its title had been changed in postproduction to The Songbird House, to better reflect the fact that several of the characters, all members of the same family, were singers. A key element of the plot was that Brigitte’s character, named Lola, was considered too pretty to be taken seriously as a singer, even by the conductor who was her love interest, until a blind musician gave his favorable judgment of her talent. The triteness of the plot was overcome by the cleverness of the dialogue and the imaginative cinematography, and the film was generally well reviewed, with unanimous praise for Brigitte on her beauty, her acting and her singing. The front pages of the newspapers that carried the reviews bore banner headlines reading “Eichmann Trial Begins in Jerusalem.” But Miki, having already contributed some printed words about the matter, felt curiously detached from the looming trial. He told Margot that not only would he not want to cover it – as Müller-Marein and the Countess had suggested – but that in all likelihood he would not write about it at all while it went on. He had philosophical reservations about it, he told her: was it really right that crimes committed in Germany and Poland should be tried in Israel? Did the State of Israel really have the legal and moral standing to represent the victims of those crimes, if only the Jewish ones? He, for one, did not feel represented by Israel in his desire for retribution for the loss of his family. Eichmann had, moreover, been turned from a man into a symbol, and symbolic retribution did not interest him. The man that he wanted to see punished was named Axel Hemme. But he would write about the trial once it was over, or, better yet, once Eichmann was dead, which Miki was sure would happen soon enough. A few days later Brigitte told him that The Songbird House would be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, not in the prize competition but with the purpose of finding international distribution, and that Brigitte’s presence would be necessary for that purpose. “If that happens,” Miki said, “then you will be dubbed in French and Spanish and…;” “I’ll do my own French,” Brigitte said laughing, and proceeded to recite some lines from the film in a spontaneous and quite fluent French translation, “but for Spanish, I don’t know.” She repeated the French lines with what she thought might be a Spanish accent and the addition of vowels to the words. “I’ll have to teach you Spanish,” Miki said. He then called Margot to tell her that he would rather report on the Cannes Festival than on the Jerusalem trial. “And do you expect Die Zeit to pay your expenses?” Margot asked. “No, thanks,” he said, “I’ll go undercover as Brigitte Wilner’s companion.” “By the way,” Margot said, “The Beatles are back, this time at the Top Ten Club.” “We’ll try to join you, but I can’t promise.” Before leaving for Cannes Miki contributed an article on the Bay of Pigs invasion, based on what he could glean from the often-conflicting news reports (some of which reflected the American position and others the Cuban one). Sophia Loren and Silvia Pinal were the stars of the festival that year, and, on seeing them in the flesh, Miki had to admit to himself for the first time that perhaps there were women in this world whose beauty matched Brigitte’s. Of course had no doubt that if he were faced, in fairy-tale fashion, with a choice among these women, he would choose Brigitte. Somehow the presence of the other beauties gave him a better understanding of her appeal. She was a blue-eyed blonde, to be sure, but not particularly German-looking, whatever that meant; her tawny skin, her face, her expression, her manner had more in common with those dark, earthy, sensuous Latin women than with her fellow Germans. The French newspapers did not devote nearly as much space to the Eichmann trial as the German ones; their pages were dominated by events in Algeria. The generals’ putsch in Algiers had just taken place, and though it was quickly put down by De Gaulle, right-wing elements associated with the generals had formed themselves into the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète – referred to in the press as OAS – and were carrying out terrorist attacks in both Algeria and France against those they regarded as traitors to the cause of Algérie française. The most balanced coverage of world events that Miki could find while in Cannes was in the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. It was there that he read about the first rumors that Ulbricht was planning to erect a wall separating East and West Berlin, and about the burgeoning election campaign in West Germany, in which Willy Brandt was the SPD’s candidate for the chancellorship. The paper pointed out that, for the first time in German history, such a candidate had actually been nominated by his party, in the American fashion, rather than the candidacy being automatically assumed by the party’s parliamentary leader. The fleeting impression of American newspapers that he had received during his brief stay in New York seven years before – that there is a sharp division, easily discernible in style, between news reporting and opinion – was confirmed, all the more so since he was now a journalist. The Trib, as he heard Americans call it, was available in their hotel, and he made a point of reading it every day. He was also fascinated by the newspaper’s coverage of events in America, which at that time were dominated by the freedom rides, actions in which volunteers – Negro and White, many of them university students – rode public buses into southern states. Their purpose was to test the previous year’s Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in interstate transportation facilities, including bus stations and railroad terminals. The rides followed the previous year’s sit-ins, with some of the same participants, and constituted the next step in the emerging movement for civil rights in the United States. This, Miki felt, was a subject that he could sink his teeth into, though perhaps not before taking another, longer trip to the United States. He, too, had been a victim of racism, and while being a Jew might not qualify as a racial category in American terms, discrimination and segregation and oppression on the basis of any ethnic trait amounted to the same thing. The reading, along with jotting down sketches for future articles, provided a pleasant relief from the cloying frenzy of Cannes. In the end, the festival’s odd mix of true art (as exemplified by Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana, of which Silvia Pinal was the star and which shared the Golden Palm with a strange French film called Une aussi longue absence) with commercialism, pretense and politics left Miki with a feeling of distaste, as though he had gorged on an overly rich layer cake. It was good for an article or two, but, should Brigitte ever be called to go there again, he would not accompany her. Brigitte, for her part, shared his feelings. No foreign deals were secured for The Songbird House; it was judged too German – a judgment that struck Miki as ironic in view of his reflections about Brigitte. She, however, felt relieved. She also told Miki that she had been approached by an important Italian producer with a part in a film that he was preparing, in which her voice would be dubbed in Italian, and that her response had been No, grazie! But on their last night in Cannes, at a dinner party with assorted actors, directors, producers and other film-industry types from various countries, Brigitte received another offer, this time from a French producer sitting – not by accident – next to her. It was not a starring role but an important one, and not only did it seem interesting, but she would be speaking in both German and French in her own voice. When she said that she was interested, the producer asked for the name of her agent, and when she told him that she had no agent, he seemed astonished. “Vous n’avez pas d’agent!” he exclaimed, but Miki, overhearing their conversation in fragments, misheard agent as argent, and found it curious that the producer thought that Brigitte had no money. But by then he had had too much wine for it to matter. *      *     * When he entered the lobby of the Vier Jahreszeiten, Hanna was already waiting for him, her suitcase beside her. He had called her the previous evening to tell her that he would not be flying to Israel with her, but that she was still welcome to stay at the house and he would gladly take her to the airport the following morning. She had taken the news of the confiscation of his passport in stride, but regretted not being able to make the return journey with him. She was grateful for the opportunity to visit Blankenese, where she had not been since her teenage years. “I would love to take a walk around the Steps Quarter,” she said as they were driving along the Elbchaussee. “Is it still as picturesque as it used to be?” “Yes,” he replied, “it’s been very well preserved.” “Good. You know, for you it may be too hot to take a walk, but for someone like me, who lived in the Negev for thirty-five years, it’s just warm enough. I’m sure you have work to do.” “You’re right. I have to make dinner.” “You cook! That’s wonderful.” “It’s a hobby. We do have a housekeeper.” “Of course,” Hanna said with a laugh. “I can’t quite imagine your wife as a housewife, though I’m sure she could play one quite well on television.” “Yes, she has done that.” When they reached the house and Miki parked his car inside the gate, Hanna said, “I believe I know this house. I think I once came to a birthday party here, when I was a girl.” “That’s possible,” Miki said. “The original owners were Jews.” But when he told her the name she did not recognize it. “It must have been a friend of a friend,” she concluded. Miki took her suitcase and led her inside. The first thing Hanna noticed was the grand piano in the living room. “Do you still play the piano?” she asked him. “A little,” he said. “It’s another hobby.” “Will you play for us tonight?” she asked as he led her upstairs to her guest room. “If there is overwhelming demand. I would rather accompany Brigitte in some Broadway songs – she does them beautifully – but that’s up to her.” He gave Hanna a set of keys and said, “Make yourself comfortable, and take your walk whenever you feel like it. Do you remember how to get to the Steps Quarter?” “As if I had been there yesterday. I walk along the Blankeneser Landstrasse towards the station, and then turn right towards the Elbe. Right?” “Right,” he said, and left her in the room to go downstairs into the kitchen. Frau Schmidt was not back yet. He opened the refrigerator and began taking things out. *      *     * Back in Hamburg, Brigitte asked among her fellow actors for a talent agency, and found that in Hamburg there was really only one that mattered, HKA. They were quite happy to sign her up as a client, and assigned her to Hertha Goldschmidt, known as Hetty, a middle-aged half-Jewish woman who had spent the Nazi years in California and learned the tricks of the trade in Hollywood. She was one of the firm’s partners, and the assignment was practically by default, since her specialty was artists who were based in Hamburg and did not work for Real-Film. Hetty, like Ida Ehre, did not get along well with Walter Koppel. The relationship between agent and client got off to a rough start when Brigitte told Hetty of her turndown of the Italian producer, and Hetty responded peevishly. “If you pardon my frankness,” she said, “that was stupid. As they say in America, Italian cinema these days is where it’s at, baby. Look at all the people who have worked with Fellini and Antonioni and Visconti: Maria Schell, Jeanne Moreau, Anouk Aimée, Anita Ekberg – they’ve all been dubbed, and it’s helped them become international stars!” “Good for them,” Brigitte rejoined, “but my voice is a part of who I am, just like my eyes and…; and my legs. I speak English and French very well, and I know a little Italian, and I am good with accents. I can learn enough Italian to speak my own lines, if necessary.” “You don’t understand, darling. The Italians dub even their own people, if necessary. If Sophia Loren plays a part that doesn’t call for a Roman or a Neapolitan accent, then she gets dubbed by some stage actress.” “If you pardon my frankness,” Brigitte said, “I think that that is stupid. If someone writes a screenplay with a part for a German woman who speaks Italian with an accent, I’ll take it.” “I see. And what will you say if a finished film is dubbed in its entirety, as they do in Spain, where Franco uses dubbing as a form of censorship?” “Nothing. By then my work is finished, and the matter is out of my hands.” “All right,” Hetty said, her tone suddenly turning cheerfully soft, “I think we can work together. You have principles and you think about things logically. Now let’s talk about that French offer.” Hetty proved her mettle by negotiating a contract for Brigitte that would pay her, even after the deduction of the agent’s fee, some 8,000 marks more than the original offer. Even more importantly, the contract included a provision for something called residuals that had recently been introduced in Hollywood. It meant that there would be additional payments, somewhat like royalties, when the film was shown on television. The shooting schedule would not be too difficult. Studio work would take three separate weeks in Paris, about a month apart, with location work in Lorraine in between. The film would be titled La Grande paix and its action took place just before, during and after the First World War, which the French still called La Grande Guerre. Brigitte would play a German woman in love with a Frenchman. Still, for Brigitte and Miki the separations, though never longer than eight to ten days at a time, would be the longest they had experienced since their marriage. Miki would hardly be able to spend any time with her in France. Writing about French affairs was something that Müller-Marein reserved for himself, and since Miki had declined to cover the Eichmann trial, he would be writing editorials and editing other writers’ work until something came up that the senior editors thought should be assigned to him, unless he came up with something first. When the new American president, John F. Kennedy, announced the formation of an organization to be called the Peace Corps, in which young people – university students or recent graduates – would serve as volunteers in foreign countries, Miki wrote an article speculating about its prospects. His judgment was mostly favorable, in the face of a rather skeptical reception by most other analysts; his only concern was about the naiveté that young Americans might bring to their task. Writing about America was the Countess’s specialty, but she approved the article, judging that the subject required a young person’s point of view. He now thought that, once the program was put into action, it would behoove him to follow it and write about its progress. On returning from Cannes Miki had noticed that the New York Herald Tribune could be found at newsstands in the center of Hamburg, and he began to read it regularly. The Peace Corps, it seemed, was being organized from the top, with a director (the President’s brother-in-law) and a high-level staff coming first, while the deployment of volunteers would not start until August. Miki would have to wait until then before continuing with the subject. Meanwhile, the freedom rides continued with a violent crescendo. The paper reproduced photographs from Life showing the beatings inflicted on the riders. He decided to write something about the freedom rides and their significance without waiting for his return trip to America. He tried to imagine something that European Jews in the 1930s might have done that was comparable. If Nazi Germany was the South, could Jews who were citizens of, say, France or Great Britain have ridden there and openly flouted the Nuremberg laws? Of course not, he concluded. Such defiance can be effective only under a regime that is, at least formally and however imperfectly, a democracy. He showed a sketch of the article to Margot, wondering once again how the Countess would feel about someone besides her writing about American matters. Marion Dönhoff was away at the time, but Margot checked with Theo Sommer, the political editor who was the staff member closest to the Countess (and, it was rumored, her two-decades-younger lover). Theo did not think that the noble lady would have any objections, since her interest was in high-echelon politics and academia – her American friends were the likes of George Kennan, the noted diplomat, and Henry Kissinger, a professor at Harvard – and not grassroots movements or popular culture. Miki finally wrote the article in the form a fantasy, titled A Freedom Ride into Nazi Germany. He also wrote, with Müller-Marein’s permission, an articles about the Cannes festival lightheartedly asking why no West German feature films, directors or actors ever won awards there (Helmut Käutner’s The Last Bridge, which in 1954 shared an international prize with eight other films, was an Austrian production). Miki speculated that perhaps this was payback for Germans’ traditional preference for Nice over Cannes. *      *     * With the roast prepared, he finally felt ready to get back to the essay. He had not written anything since he was interrupted by Billung’s call two days before, but the situation had changed. He would write as much as he could this afternoon, and finish on Sunday, since he was not going to Israel. But he would be in Stuttgart on Monday, and unless he was placed under arrest, he could go to the Merkur offices and deliver the typescript there himself. He looked at the last paragraph he had typed and realized that the moment of truth had come. There is one place, however, where a postmodern radical nationalist movement not only disputes a state’s monopoly of violence, but rejects the state’s very existence. To characterize this form of fanaticism we need a descriptive adjective, and I have chosen to adapt an English term, “rejectionist.” That place is, or course, the area historically known as Palestine, and the state in question is Israel. Israel is, as we know, a Jewish state. But in what sense? Well, in the same sense that, for example, Iran is a Persian state (though it has non-Persian citizens such as Azeris, Kurds and Baluchis), or, to bring it closer to home, in the same sense that West Germany, East Germany and Austria are German states, though each one has a small minority of indigenous citizens who are not members of the German nation, that is, they are not ethnic Germans: Danes, Sorbs and Slovenes. (I wrote a number of years ago that such citizens of Germany could be called “Germanians” in English or “Deutschländer” in German.) And, to give a final but highly relevant example, in the same sense that Israel’s neighbors are Arab states (both Egypt and Syria have “Arab Republic” as a part of their official names), though they may be home to indigenous non-Arab citizens: Copts and Nubians in Egypt, Kurds and Assyrians in Syria, and so on. There were a few lines left on the paper, but he knew that the next paragraph would be a long one, so began another page. In other words, Israel is simply a national state in the Central and Eastern European mold, which is also valid for many Asian states: it has a majority ethnic or cultural nation that gives the state its primary character, alongside citizens who belong to minority nationalities (and who enjoy, at least on paper, full civil and cultural rights comparable to those of minority nationalities in Central and Eastern Europe). This national state is quite different from the nation-state of Western Europe (and the overseas lands that were settled by Western Europeans), in which the nation is defined by citizenship. Thus Luxembourg and Switzerland also have majority populations that are ethnically German, but they are not German states; a Luxembourger belongs only to the Luxembourg nation, and a Swiss – whatever language he may speak – to the Swiss nation. The French Swiss, the Italian Swiss and the Romansh Swiss are not minority nationalities; they are simply Swiss who happen to use languages different from that of the majority. The “rejectionism” that is specific to Israel is generally known as anti-Zionism. What next? He would begin by citing Jewish anti-Zionism, both the religious kind and the kind represented by advocates of a binational state. Then he could proceed to the various movements making up the Palestine Liberation Organization. He heard the key turning in the lock of the front door. Was it Hanna or Brigitte? As the door opened, he heard the voices of both of them, carrying on a friendly chat punctuated by laughter. They must have met along the way. He had done enough writing for that day. It was time to attend to other matters. Besides, he thought as he turned off the typewriter, the conversation at the dinner party, and especially Hanna and Max, might give him ideas for the conclusion of the essay. He turned the typewriter off. He got up and stretched. The women’s voices faded. Brigitte had obviously led Hanna into the garden. *      *     * Brigitte was still in France when the construction of the Berlin Wall began. The event was covered by the Countess in person, accompanied by Theo Sommer, with whom she rushed to Berlin on the first available flight out of Hamburg. The next day the Eichmann trial ended, and Miki began to reflect on it in writing on the basis of his collection of reports that he had clipped from the Herald Tribune. He was not interested in Eichmann himself, or even in the minutiae of the trial itself, but in the worldwide image that it produced of the fate of the Jews in Nazi Europe. He found out in his reading that none other than Hannah Arendt had been engaged by the literary magazine The New Yorker to cover the trial. To see the trial under that great Jewish philosopher’s critical lantern would be priceless, he thought. He called the library of the American consulate and found that copies of the magazine could be found there, and he took a walk along the Alster – it was only about twenty minutes from their apartment house – to the consulate building with the intention of reading the reports. The experience proved a frustrating one. He began looking through the issues of The New Yorker beginning about two weeks after the start of the trial, but found that the magazine had no real table of contents, only a listing about three centimeters high that had such titles as Books, Letter from London, Letter from Paris or A Reporter at Large with their corresponding page numbers but with no authors listed. He looked through four or five issues and found no Letter from Jerusalem. He tried the articles written by the “Reporters at Large,” but there too no author’s name was shown before the very end of the article, and in order to find it he had to leaf through endless pages of advertising. He did not find Hannah Arendt’s name. The librarian behind the desk, a pleasant-looking redhead in her forties, seemed to sense his frustration. She asked him in excellent German, with only the barest trace of an American – or perhaps Irish – accent, if there was anything that she could help him with. He told her that he was looking for Hannah Arendt’s reports on the Eichmann trial. “As far as I know,” the librarian said, “Hannah Arendt was not actually reporting on the trial, the way a reporter would. She’s not a journalist, after all. I understand that she attended it and will write a series of essays on it when it’s all over.” “That’s too bad,” Miki said in English. The woman laughed. “If you want reports,” she said in German, “we have Time and Newsweek.” “Thank you,” Miki said. “That would be nice.” Time’s coverage of the Eichmann trial was remarkably well balanced. In the very first article there was a lengthy quotation from Die Zeit’s editorial – Miki did not remember who had written it – about Germans’ mixed feelings of shame and guilt. It was also reported that “Jewry itself was divided on the case, and the pros and cons filled pages of the Israeli press. To many, the trial seemed vitally necessary to educate the younger generation of both Israel and Germany. But other Jews were deeply disturbed by the illegal kidnap-arrest of Eichmann in Argentina. Many were shocked that Eichmann had found it impossible to recruit ex-Nazi colleagues to serve as defense witnesses. Reason: the Israeli government had refused to promise that they themselves would not be arrested if they set foot on Israeli soil.” In the following issue there was a story that stunned Miki, one that had not been reported in the German press at all, and that he seemed to have missed in the Herald-Tribune: the arrest on espionage charges of Israel Beer, the very man that Miki had, five years earlier, suspected of such activity Subsequent articles on the trial continued reporting on both German and Israeli ambivalence, and gave a vivid portrait of Eichmann himself: “a thin, balding man of 55 who looked more like a bank clerk than a butcher…; On the job, he exemplified the characteristic that Germans call Kadavergehorsam…; Adolf Eichmann but for his glass cage might have been a minor court bureaucrat during the first eight weeks of his trial…; Bureaucrat Eichmann had performed meticulously; anything outside routine offended him…;” All this was in stark contrast with Eichmann’s portrayal by the prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, as “more evil than Hitler.” There were some inaccuracies, to be sure. Miki was startled to come across a reference to the Belsen extermination camp, but it soon became clear to him that what was meant was Belzec. Obviously, the reporter had misheard. It also seemed strange to see Yom Hashoah, ‘the day of the calamity,’ which had been established in Israel two years before in order to commemorate the victims of Nazism, referred to as the Day of the Holocaust. Miki wondered if the Holocaust was in the future going to be the standard English word for the experience that he had lived through. Was he, then, a Holocaust survivor? It didn’t make sense to him; a holocaust, in its traditional meaning, would have no survivors. There was more news about Israel Beer as well: that everything that he had told about his life before coming to Israel, including his record in the Spanish Civil War, had been a lie; that Miki’s hunch that Beer had given the Soviets advance information about the Sinai campaign – and, presumably, the coordinated Franco-British attack on Suez – had probably been correct; that he had needed money because of an affair with a much younger woman with expensive tastes; and that he was not circumcised. “Stunned Israelis could only wonder,” the article concluded, “if it were possible that the man known as Dr. Israel Beer was not even a Jew.” *      *     * The dinner party was balanced not only by gender, but also by the fact that three of the six diners were Jews and the other three were not. Miki could not remember being, since he had become a German citizen, at another gathering in Germany at which half the attendees were Jews. Not only Jews: all three had spent a significant length of time in Israel (or, in Max Schwab’s case, in pre-Israel Palestine). Nor was this unimportant, since he was going to tell them about the events of the past week of his life – the Ora incident and the summons to Stuttgart – and at least one of the two was still a resident of Israel He was curious, before the conversation started, about which group he would identify with more, should the need for such an identification arise: with his age group, in which he was the only Jew, or with his fellow Jews, who were of another generation. Or does it matter? he asked himself. Max arrived a few minutes before six o’clock. Brigitte and Hanna were still chatting in the garden, and Miki had gone over all the serving details with Frau Schmidt, so that he decided to take advantage of a moment alone with Max. “I may have another book project,” Miki said after an exchange of greetings. “I am writing an essay for Merkur that I’m calling ‘Postmodern Fanatics’…;” “I love the title,” Max said. “It’s almost done,” Miki continued. “I’ll send you a copy of the draft when it’s finished. I’m in the midst of strange business that I’ll tell you about at the dinner table, but when that’s over I can get to work on padding it, with your help, of course.” Brigitte and Hanna came in from the garden, still laughing. But at some point, Miki realized, Hanna must have gone upstairs to change, because she was now wearing a dress – a sleeveless bluish-gray frock – and not the habitual blouse and slacks that she had on when she went on her walk. Brigitte had also changed from the dress she had worn to the studio to a skirt and blouse. “So,” Miki addressed them, “have you told each other everything that you know about me?” Brigitte looked at Hanna. “About him?” she said. Hanna laughed, and Brigitte turned toward Miki. “It never occurred to us,” she said. “Your name never crossed our lips,” Hanna seconded, and both women burst out laughing again. “Do you understand women?” Miki asked Max. “Perfectly,” Max said. “I just reverse whatever they say. ‘Yes’ means ‘no,’ ‘no’ means ‘yes’…;” “This is just what they call sexism in America,” Hanna said. “Then I’m a sexist,” Max said. “I’ve been many an ‘ist’ in my life, an atheist, a Communist, a Zionist, even an onanist, so you can add ‘sexist’ to my ‘ist’ list.” The doorbell rang, and Miki pushed the button to open the gate for Margot and Helmut. He wondered if the verbal sparring between Hanna and Max was indicative of an attraction, and if it would continue at the dinner table. The Danish teak dining set that the Wilners had bought for their Blankenese house included a round table with a diameter of 1.4 meters that could comfortably if cozily seat six and that could be extended with up to three 70-centimeter leaves so that it could seat twelve. There were consequently twelve matching chairs with padded seats and backs. Normally, only four were kept around the table while the other eight were stored in the basement. This time Miki brought up two of the extra chairs. They had not made any arrangements for the seating, but, as was their habit whenever they entertained, Miki and Brigitte sat across from each other. Hanna and Margot spontaneously sat down flanking Miki, and the other men took the remaining seats so that Helmut, as usual, faced Margot and Max faced Hanna. Whether it was from the effect of sitting between two beautiful young women and across from an attractive older one, or of the pre-dinner schnapps that Brigitte had offered to the assembly but that Max had been the only one to accept, his volubility at the table was greater than Miki had ever witnessed. As soon as they sat down, he began by continuing to expand his ‘ist’ list. “Also a hedonist, a violinist – once upon a time I played professionally, for a short time – and, naturally, my wife calls me an egoist,” he said. This was not the first time that Miki heard Max Schwab refer to “his wife,” though he had never seen any evidence that Max actually had one. But the references had not piqued Miki’s curiosity enough to make him pursue the subject. “And where is your wife, Herr Schwab?” Margot asked pertly as Frau Schmidt began serving the appetizers while Miki poured the wine. Max seemed unprepared for the question. “She…; she is in New York,” he said. “We haven’t lived together for many years.” “But she still calls you an egoist,” Brigitte said with an ironic half-smile. “I…; I should have put that in the past tense.” “What about ‘Zionist’?” Hanna asked. “Is that also in the past tense?” “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Max said. “I left Palestine before it was Israel, but I remained a Zionist, until I went back to visit a few years later when it was already Israel. And then, the moment I stepped off the gangplank in Haifa, poof! My Zionism evaporated.” “Would you call yourself an anti-Zionist?” Miki asked. “No,” Max said, “that implies being against Zionism, or against the very existence of Israel, which of course I’m not. I just think that, since Israel is there, a state like any other, Zionism is obsolete.” Miki wanted to ask Max to expand on his notion of anti-Zionism, but he could see that Hanna was gathering her thoughts to prepare a retort, and he decided to bide his time. “I beg your pardon,” Hanna said, “but I don’t think that Israel is a state like any other.” Max would not let her go on. “Because it is surrounded by enemies who want to destroy it?” he asked rhetorically in a defiant tone. “Yes,” Hanna began, “and also…;” “So look at what Israel does: it follows the American saying Do unto others before they do unto you.” It seemed curious to Miki that in this exchange it was Max, not Hanna, who came across like the stereotypical aggressive Israeli. “Do you blame them?” Helmut asked. “No, of course not. I would do the same, but that’s what I mean by its being a state like any other.” “Let’s get back to Zionism for a moment,” Margot said. “As our friend Miki has so eloquently written in his book, to the Arabs Zionism is still very much a reality.” “Yes,” Max said, “but to them it’s just a code word to avoid saying Israel.” “There is more to it than that,” Miki said. “They don’t actually avoid saying it, they say – and I quote the Palestinian National Covenant, which I’ve been rereading recently – that ‘Israel is the tool of the Zionist movement.’” “I know,” Max said with a laugh, “they think that there still is a Zionist movement.” “But Max is right,” Hanna said just as Frau Schmidt set the platter with the neatly sliced roast and its accompaniments in the center of the table. “For the most part they say ‘the Zionist entity’ when they mean Israel.” Having diplomatically disarmed Max with her concession, she finally felt free to go on while Frau Schmidt gathered up the salad plates and the forks that were left on them, producing a gentle clatter. “And ‘anti-Zionist’ is therefore just another way of saying ‘anti-Israel.’ But, at least from the point of view of those of us who live in Israel, it seems that here in the West anti-Zionism is becoming a mask for a new anti-Semitism. I remember reading that even Martin Luther King said something like that.” “Yes,” Miki said, “he said When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism. But that applies only to non-Jews. What about Jewish anti-Zionists?” Hanna smiled just as she filled her plate with the main course – being the guest of honor, she was the first to do so – and passed the serving utensils to Helmut. “Oh yes,” she said while pouring the gravy on her roast, “we have those in Jerusalem. It was a shock for me when I moved there!” “Tell us about them,” Margot said. “They are called Haredim, which means ‘those who fear.’ In other words, they are ultra-religious. If you drive a car through their neighborhood on the Sabbath, they will stone it. If they see a woman in short sleeves, they will shout ‘Whore!’ at her.” “Has it happened to you?” Brigitte asked. She had just received the utensils from Helmut and was serving herself. “Yes,” Hanna said. “Only once, because I didn’t know about it. What’s more, they don’t shout it in Hebrew but in Yiddish; they say prietze. They refuse to speak Hebrew, because it’s the holy tongue, and can be used only for prayer and study. And a Jewish state can be brought about only by the Messiah.” She took her first bite of the breast of veal and turned to Miki. “I’m sorry to change the subject,” she said, “but this is absolutely delicious.” “Yes, it really is,” Helmut confirmed, “but Margot and I are familiar with Miki’s wonderful cooking.” “Thank you,” Miki said. “But weren’t we talking about the Messiah?” Everyone laughed. “They aren’t all quite like this,” Hanna said. “Some of the Haredim, the more practical-minded ones, have accepted Israel in fact if not in theory. They have a political party, they work for the state, they even speak Hebrew…;” “So they call you a whore in Hebrew!” Brigitte said just before taking her first forkful, which she did with an expression of utter delectation, closing her lips around the fork lasciviously and pulling it out with a flourish. Hanna was now busy eating and replied only by nodding with a smile. “When I lived in Jerusalem,” Max said while serving himself, “before there was an Israel, they were all anti-Zionists.” Looking at the food on his plate and passing the utensils to Margot, he added, “Enough about Israel. Let’s see if I can get our host to write a cookbook next.” “I’ve been trying for years,” said Margot. “I like to think,” Miki said, “that at least some of the ideas that I write about are original. But my recipes are not.” “Do you think Paul Bocuse’s recipes are original?” Max said. “He probably learned most of them from Fernand Point, who learned them from someone else, and so on.” “But they all added something original to them. I don’t bother with that. This breast of veal,” Miki said as he finally took his first morsel, “which really is delicious, was made approximately as my butcher recommended, based on his wife’s recipe, and who knows where she got it from.” From that point on the conversation served only as punctuation for the main activity of eating. When they were about halfway through with the main course, Miki suddenly remembered something. “Now that we’re no longer starving,” he said, “would you all do me a favor and look up from your plates at the camera over there.” He had mounted his Leica on a tripod that was discreetly lurking in a corner beside the piano, about six meters away. He had previously set the focus, aperture and shutter speed, and he had so placed the chairs around the table that no one’s head obscured any other’s. “Frau Schmidt, please,” he said in a loud voice. Frau Schmidt, who had performed this service before, sneaked in, snapped the time release, and walked right out. Miki counted down from five, and the flash went off just after he shouted, in English, cheese! After dessert, washed down with port, Helmut recited a humorous monologue from a comedy that Miki did not know. During the performance Miki noticed that Margot was whispering to Brigitte, whose wordless response, expressed only with her face, showed that the information had affected her deeply. Lastly Brigitte, accompanied by Miki, sang a medley of Broadway songs, beginning with I only have eyes for you and ending with Always true to you in my fashion, first in English and then in German. As the evening drew to an end, Miki realized that no opportunity had come up for telling his guests about his personal predicament. He didn’t mind. It had been an enjoyable, cheerful dinner party, made all the more so by Max’s boisterous character. And, knowing that he needed to get up early in order to drive Hanna to the airport, neither he nor Brigitte made any attempt to draw it out. As soon as the guests had left, Hanna exchanged farewells with Brigitte and went to her room to finish her packing. In particular, the dress she was wearing needed to be packed away. Miki and Brigitte chatted briefly with Frau Schmidt, who insisted on doing the dishes right there and then, since she would be taking Sunday off. It was not even ten o’clock yet, but neither Miki nor Brigitte could think of a reason for not going up to bed. As they were walking up the stairs, Brigitte said, “Margot told me something that she didn’t want to announce in front of people that she didn’t know. Well, she knows Max, but not that well.” “I noticed,” Miki said. “What was it?” “I’ll tell you after I come out of the bathroom.” As he was brushing his teeth, Miki tried to guess what Margot’s announcement might have been about. Were she and Helmut finally getting married? Then it would not have been her announcement alone. He could come up with nothing else. “Margot thinks she is pregnant,” Brigitte said on coming into the bedroom. Miki was already undressing. “She’ll tell me more when we have lunch together on Thursday.” “Really!” He didn’t know what else to say. “She and Helmut have been trying for years,” Brigitte said as she began to undress without the least trace of the seduction that was so characteristic of her movements during her bloodless times. “Didn’t you know that?” “No,” Miki said. “Neither of them ever told me.” “Perhaps they thought that it might make you envious. With me, they know perfectly well that it wouldn’t.” “Why would they think that of me?” he asked. “Perhaps because you’ve never been so clear about not wanting children as I have. To them, I mean,” she added with a smile as she slipped under the lightweight comforter that covered their bed in summer. “And to you?” he asked, snuggling up to her. She kissed him lightly and smiled enigmatically as she turned off the light. “Good night,” she said.