The Sins of the Father Page 7

  There was, again, a hesitation as to what language should be spoken. Franz and Becky habitually conversed in English; so of course did Becky and her mother. Nell and Eli nowadays usually spoke English too, so that was really the language of their household. On the other hand, Franz spoke German with his father, and chiefly Spanish with his mother. Spanish would have been the neutral language, and was indeed that in which Franz’s father greeted them, apologising to Nell for the poor quality of his English.

  “I learned it at school,” he said, “and then had little cause to use it for a long time, and now, when I am compelled to speak it, I do so, I think, with an American accent which you might dislike.”

  “Oh no,” she said in German, “Franz has a slight American accent, which I find very pleasing. “

  They went through to the dining room. There were the two old pederasts, picking over their Wiener schnitzel in preparation for their Sousa, and, as before, darting timid glances at Franz, who was, again, uneasily conscious of their direction and import. And there was also this week a family party, celebrating, it seemed, a birthday, for, very soon after Franz’s father had ushered his guests to the corner table he had reserved, a large cake was brought to the other party and greeted with loud hand-clapping and cheers.

  Franz’s father had ordered champagne, which was already on ice. Eli alone declined it, expressing a preference for a still wine, which was immediately ordered.

  “I very rarely drink champagne myself,” Franz’s father said, “certainly not French champagne, which I cannot often afford, but I thought it appropriate to the occasion. But we have a very nice hock here, on which we pride ourselves, and between you and me, Doctor, it is a better wine than this fizzy stuff.”

  They occupied themselves with the menu, which was short.

  “We eat so many steaks at the site,” Franz’s father said, “that I am always eager to eat something different on my rare visits to the city. I can recommend the goulash, it’s always well spiced.”

  Nell and Becky obediently followed his advice. Eli ordered a steak, which Nell would have to cut up for him. Franz had a steak too. They talked for a little about the wedding. They were agreed that it was desirable that Franz and Becky both finish their course at the University.

  “Nevertheless,” Rudi said, “there is no absolute reason why they should not be married while still students. I’m told it is quite common now. One doesn’t wish to be old-fashioned. What do you think, Doctor? You know more about university matters than I. Is it your opinion that early marriage disturbs study?”

  “I know no more than the next man about these matters.”

  “Besides,” Nell said, “it’s impossible to generalise.”

  She couldn’t understand why she had felt uneasy. Franz’s father was an ordinary little man, nice, eager to please, rather dull she thought. Well, that mightn’t be fair. This wasn’t the sort of encounter at which you were expected to scintillate. She asked him about his work.

  “Building a bridge,” he said, “well, it’s always an interesting challenge. One feels one is doing something worthwhile, at least. Of course, in this country, the quality of labour is the problem. The inflation, also, it adds unpredictably to the cost of the project. It’s impossible to remain within the original estimate. Of course, that is allowed for in the contract.”

  The strains of Sousa came from the next room: “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. Eli wrinkled his nose.

  “I’m quite of your opinion,” Rudi said, “empty tedious stuff.”

  “I suppose it’s harmless. I don’t care for military music. And as you say it’s tedious.”

  “I’ve always-liked a brass band,” Nell said, “and it’s cheerful.” She waggled her fork in time to the music.

  “Well,” Rudi said, “I suppose it is pleasant trivia, but we men look for the sublime in music, don’t we, Doctor?”

  “They tell me you are an enthusiast for Brahms.”

  “Now that is music.”

  “Unfortunately one can’t tell a man’s character from the music he likes. I love Brahms myself.” Eli took a piece of bread from the basket and mopped up the gravy on his plate. Rudi did the same.

  “I’ve been told,” he said, “that to eat in this manner, as we are both doing, is a sign that you have been really hungry. So we are alike there too, Doctor.”

  “You can’t be surprised that I have known extreme hunger,” Eli said. “How long have you lived in Argentina?”

  “Seventeen years, no eighteen … a long time. With all its faults I have come to think of it as my country. Germany seems a long way distant. To tell the truth I sometimes catch myself thinking in Spanish now. But my Spanish is very poor – I mean grammatically. It is the vulgar Spanish of work camps and illiterate labourers.”

  “Quite so,” Eli pushed his plate aside. “And why did you decide to come here?”

  “Oh, I made a mistake. I thought Germany was finished. I looked round after the war at the piles of rubble and the people’s faces, and I said to myself, ‘That’s it, kaputt, there’s no future here. It’s no place to bring up my family’ – which, as events have shown, ‘the German miracle’ as they call it, was wrong. Nevertheless, since young Franz has turned out here as he has, I can’t regret it. Do you ever think,” he turned to Nell, “do you ever think of the strange workings of Fate? Consider: the diversity of background, the concatenation of circumstances, the sheer, as we interpret it, series of accidents, that have been necessary to bring these two young people together, and now we look at them” – he raised his glass to each, to Becky, who was smiling with the happiness of her certainty that this meeting to which she had looked forward with such apprehension was rolling along with the ease and comfort of a luxurious motor-car, to Franz, who leaned over to place his hand on Becky’s and give it a little squeeze – “yes, we look at these dear children,” Rudi resumed, “well, not exactly children, we don’t wish to insult you by calling you children – nevertheless that is how we must think of you – and what are the words that come irresistibly into our mouths? That they are made for each other. Yes? Isn’t it so? Isn’t it extraordinary to think of all that has been necessary, sometimes painfully necessary, let’s not forget that, and yet the culmination, the end result, as they say, of it all is something so sublimely right? Isn’t it, Doctor, like the working out of the great themes of a symphony?”

  Eli sniffed. “Chance,” he said, “nothing but chance. Life is a series of random happenings. Isn’t that what the physicists tell us now?”

  “Ah, but man is a pattern-making animal. From these apparently random happenings, it is our instinct to create significant shapes. Isn’t that so? Again, I return to the image of a symphony.”

  “Which comes to a resolution of its themes? Very well, but this is imposed on events by the intelligence.”

  “Or extracted from them?”

  “And, tell me, I am interested,” Eli said, “do you find such a pattern in your own personal history?”

  “In my intellectual development, certainly. But this is conversation for another occasion, too serious perhaps for our present celebrations.” He turned to Becky. “I am very anxious to get to know my new, or rather prospective, daughter-in-law. What are your principal interests, my dear?”

  “Oh, nothing much, the usual things.”

  “Come,” he said, “you are a modern girl, even in Argentina, which is not a modern country. You have your ambitions, you don’t see yourself as a hausfrau, I think?”

  “Well, not exactly, and Franz doesn’t see me like that either.”

  “Good. Excellent,” Rudi smiled. It was a thin smile, a smile with a nervous authority behind it. He was in charge of the situation. He teased her, complimented Nell, made a little unmemorable joke. He was like a conductor; they all followed his lead. The waiter brought them pudding, the Club speciality again, that concoction of fruit, pastry and cream. Rudi said, “I judge a girl by her ability to eat at least two helpings of this. I
’m sure you won’t let me down.”

  Over coffee, Eli asked him what part of Germany he came from.

  “Oh, I am a Saxon. Yes,” he smiled, “I know what they say, a stupid Saxon. My father was an official in the postal service, but he had the good fortune to marry a girl from the Rhineland, so that I perhaps escaped something of the dull muddiness of the Saxons. But of course I have inherited some valuable qualities from my Saxon forefathers: persistence, I think, a refusal to give up.”

  Franz and Becky made their excuses. There was a concert they had tickets for. They left with good wishes and smiles and the feeling that the lunch had been more of a success than they dared hope. When they got into Franz’s little car, they kissed, in relief and self-congratulation.

  Rudi lit a thin black cheroot. He remarked that details of the wedding would, he supposed, be for Nell and Ilse to arrange. “Always remember only that you may rely on my co-operation. I am sure it is all going to be a splendid success.” He began to talk of Argentina’s problems, speculating, as everyone did, on the prospects of stemming the inflation; then apologised for his presumption in doing so in the presence of “a real economist, even an expert, if I may say so, in such matters.”

  Eli lifted his head, directed his blind gaze at him.

  “It doesn’t trouble you,” he said, “that I am a Jew?”

  Rudi waved his cigar.

  “I find that all out of date,” he said. “Yes, I confess to having once had a prejudice in that direction, as was common, but, now, let us say, I have learned better.”

  “That is kind of you,” Eli said.

  Nell held her breath, tried to think of a means of redirecting the conversation, failed, as Rudi said, “Come, let us be honest with each other, Herr Professor. I know what you want to know. Was I a Nazi?” He smiled, as if calling Nell to admire his boldness. “But of course I was. There. You would not believe me if I said otherwise.” He sat back, like a child pleased to have given the correct answer to a catch question, or like an alcoholic who has refused a drink.

  “Yes,” he said, “I don’t mind admitting that I saw Hitler as our Man of Destiny. But you yourself, I think, worked with Schacht in the Reichsbank, and the success of your work there contributed, did it not, to the high regard in which the Fuehrer was increasingly held?”

  “God forgive me, yes.”

  “Precisely. God forgive you. All of us Germans who survived have need of forgiveness. We went astray, horribly astray, and we did so, did we not, on account of our idealism?”

  FOUR

  Kinsky once suggested that Eli’s blindness was psychosomatic. That was too simple, even naive, an explanation, life, apart from other considerations, rarely working out so neatly. Yet there was of course an uncanny neatness to it – as he understood himself. He had been wilfully blind in the Thirties, and the pressure of denying his blindness had contributed to that isolation which his physical blindness at last confirmed. He had for a quarter of a century or more resisted the temptation of introspection, resisted that other temptation of indulging his guilt, had maintained, if ever the matter was raised, that he had been right to work with Schacht for Germany’s economic recovery – even at the price of bolstering Hitler. Without prosperity,” he would say, “there is no possibility of civilised politics.” His had been indeed a form of idealism, and in conversation, in the middle Thirties, at least as late as 1937, he had even been prepared to grant to individual Nazis credit for being imbued with the same sort of idealism themselves – as Rudi still claimed. They had formed their opinions, Eli would say, in reaction to the moral disintegration of Weimar, which itself expressed its nature in the disintegration of the currency. Nell had heard these arguments too often. Now, when they no longer spoke of serious matters, scarcely could be said to converse at all in this bleak winter of their marriage, she wondered if he still rehearsed them over and over again in frozen solitude. Was his addiction to Brahms in some curious way an attempt to claim that everything he had thought and done could be reconciled, as indeed Rudi had asserted, into a satisfying symphonic pattern, that mystery could be accommodated, inconsistencies reconciled?

  Kinsky came to see them that evening. He was eager to hear how the lunch had gone. Nell was pleased to see him. His arrival would break the enveloping silence. “I think it went all right,” she whispered to him in the kitchen before admitting him to the living room where Eli sat smoking, sliding his hand along the cat’s back, listening to sounds from the street, listening harder, she feared, to voices from the past. She made coffee, brought in a cake: Kinsky had always had a sweet tooth.

  “Well,” Eli said, “a father’s consent is, I understand, out of date.”

  “Darling, it was in our time too,” Nell said, exasperated. He paid her no attention.

  “It’s odd,” he said to Kinsky, “how relieved I was to hear him confess to having been a Nazi. I wouldn’t have believed him if he had denied it. Well, I said to myself, at least I understand you. That’s a basis.”

  “But you are troubled, old friend,” Kinsky said.

  “Why should I be? In this new life in the New World, isn’t it natural that my daughter should choose without reference to the past? A past which survives only in one’s own head?”

  “Of course,” Kinsky said, “nobody now believes that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children.”

  He took a forkful of coffee cake, sipped coffee. There came to Nell an incongruous picture: Kinsky with his head shaved, his shoddy prison suit emblazoned with the pink triangle, slurping thin vegetable soup, hot water through which vegetables had been strained: the same man, the same life.

  “What does the man do at his bridge?” Eli said.

  “Oh, he’s an engineer, I gather. Not the top man. A functionary, doubtless efficient.”

  “And protected?”

  “If he needs protection still, undoubtedly yes.”

  It was growing dark. They had none of them thought to switch on the electric light. Eli puffed at his cigar, withdrawing into contemplation. The telephone rang. Nell answered it. It was Ilse, also anxious to learn how the meeting had gone. Nell spoke in a light, cheerful manner. Ilse was relieved. Nell understood how her happiness too was bound up in the happiness of her son and their daughter. Ilse laughed: “Oh it is so good to hear you speak like this, my dear. We must have lunch together, to make plans. Tomorrow? Why not? Excellent. Will you come here? I am so happy.”

  “That was Ilse. She had been worrying. You know, I think she has become really fond of Becky, for the child’s own sake as well as on account of Franz’s happiness.”

  “Of course she is,” Kinsky said. “How could she fail to? Becky is such a sweet child, always has been. And so intelligent. Ilse’s not intelligent herself, of course, but Becky is sufficiently intelligent not to make her uncomfortable. She has tact. This is an excellent cake, as always, my dear. May I have another slice, please?”

  Eli said, “All the same, there’s something wrong.”

  “What?”

  But at that moment the door opened and Franz and Becky entered. The atmosphere changed: they glowed with youth and love. They carried hope in their eyes and their every movement. Even Eli sensed it. Becky kissed him, and he smiled. They had gone, after the concert, to the cinema at the University Film Club: a revival of Sunset Boulevard. “You never saw anything like it,” she said, “like Scott Fitzgerald gone crazy.”

  During that night, Nell felt Eli turn over, heard him mutter, “I won’t believe it.”

  When she taxed him with it in the morning, he said he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I must have been speaking in my sleep.”

  “Are you sure,” she said, “there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

  He paused: “Nothing.”

  As soon as Nell had gone for lunch with Ilse, Eli made some telephone calls. At last he obtained the number he wanted and dialled it. He was asked to hold, then Franz’s father came on to the telep
hone.

  “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  “I wanted to thank you first for the lunch yesterday.”

  “Not at all. It was a pleasure to meet you and your gracious lady. Not to speak of your charming daughter. I quite understand my son’s feeling for her.”

  “There is something else,” Eli said. “It may not seem important to you, but it is something you said. You remarked that you had inherited a quality from your Saxon forefathers. Now I have forgotten what it was, and I have reached a stage in life when little things, like such acts of forgetfulness, irritate me, perhaps unreasonably. Would you mind repeating it?”

  “My dear chap, what could I have said? Let me think. Ah yes, persistence, a refusal to give up. We Saxons, you know, are like old dogs that have got hold of a bone, and won’t let it go, however mangy.”

  “Thank you,” Eli said. “You will, I am afraid, find all this very stupid. But you can’t imagine, until it happens, how painful the process of ageing can be. And how humiliating.”

  “Not at all. I’m delighted to have been able to put your mind so easily to rest. And, if I may say so, I observed no sign of any diminution of your faculties.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Oh, I have long known your reputation, and admired your work, in so far, that is, as a poor engineer can understand its more rarefied flights.”

  “I see,” Eli said. “I had wondered – I tend to an uncertainty about such matters, owing to my blindness – I had wondered if we had met before.”

  He held his breath, imagined, in the pause that followed, a pause as long perhaps as it might take a man to draw on a cigarette and expel the smoke, that he felt a similar intake of breath shudder along the telephone wires from the works hut far to the north where Rudi sat sweating in a work-shirt, the telephone damp in his hand; he imagined calculation.