Circles of Time (41 page)
Authors: Phillip Rock
Martin reached into his coat for a cigar, his fingers touching a small envelope which contained the lapel pin. He drew it out and handed it to Werner. “This was caught up in your handkerchief. A gold swastika.”
“Oh, that.” Werner took the envelope and slipped it into his pocket. “One of my party badges.”
“Do you belong to many parties, Werner?”
“Noâbut I contribute money to several, both left and right wing. I can't afford not to do thatâthe pendulum has swung too many times during the past couple of years. It's cheap insurance to keep from being branded as an enemy of whatever faction comes out on top.”
“The National Socialistsâthey're nothing but a hate group as far as I can see. Pure rabble-rousing with no political aim at all.”
“It would seem that wayâif one merely listened to the speeches or read their little paper. They direct their message to the middle class and the unemployedâanti-Jew, anticapitalist, anti-Republic, pro-army, and pro-Bavarian. But most of that is pure rhetoric. The people are so numbed by events, they need strong words to shake them out of their lethargy. I find Herr Hitler, the true head of the party, to be an interesting man with a pragmatic approach to life. He may scream in the beer halls about how the capitalists are joining with the Jews to ruin the country, but he comes to me, the biggest capitalist he has ever met, and asks for money. Rhetoric, Martin, pure rhetoric. Rabble-rousing is merely a means to a finer and more noble goal.”
“Which is?”
“Why, what we
all
want. A strong and revitalized Germany.”
“You seem to be very impressed by this man.”
“I am, Martin. I am. Goering introduced me to himâbrought him up to the villa last year. I'd heard of him, of course; everyone in Munich had heard of him even though he's virtually unknown outside Bavaria. I thought he would be just another swaggering ex-soldier trying to organize all the roaming Freikorps gangs into another private army, but I was wrong. He's a shy, soft-spoken man. Not well educated, but surprisingly well read. A genuine soldier, too. Iron Cross First Class. And merely a corporal, mind you, not one of those insufferable Junker officers. He earned his decoration the hard way with the List Regiment. Wounded on the Somme and again at Ypres. I recognized the type instantlyâa good, faithful, reliable noncom who did his duty and never bitched about it. I had several like him in the grenadiers. We hit it off instantly.”
“And you gave him enough money to buy the
Beobachter.
”
“I have no idea what my money was used for then, nor what it is used for now. That's none of my business.” He reached across the seat and patted Martin on the knee. “But enough political talk, Martin. Smell the pines. Inhale that zephyr of wine from the Tyrol. Tomorrow we'll drive to Starnberger See and go sailing.”
Werner's villa in the pine forests above the gorge of the Isar was a small, baroque palace built by King Ludwig II in the misguided hope that Lola Montez would live there. She refused, and the place became only one of many ornate and expensive structures that the poor mad king scattered across Bavaria to remain unoccupied until after his death.
It was not a happy home. The conclusion seemed obvious to Martin as he sipped a martini cocktail before dinner. Certainly all the elements for happiness were presentâthe beautiful and gracious wife; the two lovely sons, aged eight and six; the frolicking dogs and doting servantsâbut the strain between Werner and Carin shadowed it all. It was as present and real as the constant wind that came down from the distant peaks and moaned in chill streams through the pines.
“You seem to live separate lives,” Martin remarked as he sat in Werner's study late that evening. “Carin has her section of the villa and you have yours. It's none of my business, of course.”
“You have a right to comment, and I appreciate your concern,” Werner said. “The truth of the matter is that if I had not turned Catholic in order to marry Carin, we would be divorced by now. So, we have an arrangement of sorts. I split my life between Bavaria and Berlin. It is better for the children to remain here with their mother.” He gazed into the crackling fire. “But there is no need for that to mar your sojourn. This is a heavenly place, Martin. Treat these woods and mountainsâthe riverâthe lakesâas an oasis of order, tranquillity, and peace.”
O
N THE FINAL
night of his stay, Martin sat in bed in his spacious but drafty room. His cigars and a crystal decanter of whiskey on the table beside his bed. A fire burned in the massive stone fireplace and the wind sighed under the eaves beyond the tall, leaded-glass windows. He was writing in his journal for the first time in over a week.
           Â
Sunday night, May 24, 1923. Observations and reflections. Bad Isar, Bavaria.
            Werner was quite wrong. There are no oases of tranquillity left. There are only places of great scenic beauty that impart an illusion of contentment on the viewer. Bavaria, like almost every other place I know, is haunted by the past and dismayed by the future. I have never felt the impact of the war as strongly as I did the other day when I drove with Carin and the children up to Garmisch. Those magnificent mountains ⦠the meadows and wildflowers. When we stopped the car in the little village of Oberau, we could hear cowbells far off across meadows and the bleating of sheep.
            The children, Max and Josef, held each other by the hand and ran off across the fields. Carin and I walked through the village, past the rococo church. In front of the church there stands a wooden display case with glass doors. In the case are the snapshots or class portraits of dozens of young men from the district who went to war and never came back. For some there were no photos, and in place of a picture, their names have been printed and pinned to the backing. And the sun falls on this depository of dead youth. And the wind blows and the cowbells clang softly in the valleys and sheep roam the high meadows, but the boys are dead and some of the warmth is gone from the sun.
            Carin married Werner in the spring of 1915. They had known each other since they were children. Carin's father, Count Urfeld of Wurttemberg, owned the largest bank in south Germany and had financed many of the Rilke projects for Frederick Ernst. They were married in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Stuttgart and honeymooned in Innsbruck. Max was conceived thenâJosef late in 1916 when Werner was given leave after the battle of the Somme. The night when little Josef was destined for the world was the last night Werner and Carin slept togetherâhis decision, not hers.
            Well, that is another tiny tragedy of the war, it seems to me. One that will never appear in any statistics regarding casualties. The war changed men, sometimes drastically. It warped and seared the soul as well as the body. Werner, when he finally got out of the hospital, felt that his body had betrayed him. His body, Carin told me, became an obscenity to him. The little excrement bag taped to his side. The terrible scars running from rib to crotch. When Carin wanted to go to bed with him, he sneered at her, saying that only a whore would sleep with a man who smelled of shit. And so a hand grenade tossed into a trench alters more than a soldier's life.
            But the rift between Werner and Carin developed in other ways beside sexâor the lack of itâin their marriage. She does not like Werner's political meanderings, nor the assorted people who come to the villa in quest of backing. She especially does not like Hitler and the National Socialists. She does not like virulent anti-Semitism and made it quite clear to Hermann Goering one night at dinner that she would not permit such talk in her house. Goering, apparently, told this to Hitler, and when he comes to the villa he never says a word about the Jews or tells one Jewish joke.
            I find Adolf Hitler to be pretty much the way Werner described him. Shy, polite, constantly watching his manners, a bit awed by the signs of wealth he finds at the villa. Rather acting like a village postman who, for some unaccountable reason, has been invited to tea at the manor. They tell me he's a fiery, almost hypnotic speaker in front of a crowd; but at the dinner table, or after dinner in Werner's study, he talks in a monotone, skipping from one subject to the next, rambling on and onâa mélange of theoretical platitudes and patriotic fervor.
            I found him interesting only when we discussed the war. Werner told him that I had been a war correspondent on the Somme, and he was interested in knowing what events I had covered there. He had been at Pozieres and Bazentin Wood, and both of us had witnessed a tank attack in September which the German artillery had smashedâ“Thank God for our wonderful gunners,” Hitler said with a laugh, “or we'd have been crushed like toads.” He had then, and still retains, an admiration and respect for the Tommies, but his hatred of the French is intense. He can't speak of them without trembling with suppressed rage.
            I can understand Carin's dislikeânot so much for the man, but the quasi-military aspects of his party. It's unusual for a political movementâif indeed that's what it isâto gather about it so many martial trappings. I asked Hitler about that, and he told me that the vast number of ex-soldiers who had formed into Freikorps groups to fight the Communists felt more comfortable in a military atmosphere. These men had been welded into a common body, the Kampfbund, or into a sort of praetorian guard, the Sturmalteilung, formed to protect political meetings from interruption by Red Front rowdies. A vast store of military uniforms that had been destined for German troops in Tanganyika had been acquired. The pale brown shirts and forage hats gave the National Socialists a distinct airâthat plus the swastika armbands. “It makes a man feel important to march with his fellows in a smart uniform and under a banner that is a symbol of a cause.
            Hitler appears to be a fervid believer in symbols and slogans. On the swastika flagsâthe
backenkrause
black on the flags, set in a white circle surrounded by redâhe has emblazoned the words “Deutschland Erwache!” A noble and patriotic sentiment, but the only storm troopers I have seen were marching through the Hofgarten in Munich chanting,
“Death to the Jews!”
            Werner dismisses that as a sop to those virulent anti-Semitic Russian émigrés who contribute large sums to the party. Carin doesn't believe it and neither do I.
            The wind blows. A soft rain falls. And high in the mountains, locked in a wooden box at Oberau, are the fair and pleasant faces of the dead.
H
E FLEW BACK
to Berlin with Werner. Neither man felt like conducting a shouted conversation over the racket of the engine. They sat across from each other, staring out through opposite sides of the aircraft. When they landed at Tempelhof, they shook hands, Werner looking both somber and uncomfortable.
“I feel I owe you an apology, Martin.”
“And why's that?”
“First of all, I should have told you about Carin and me before you flew down to discover it for yourself. And secondly, it was wrong to expose you to political friends of whom you most obviously do not approve.”
“Look, Werner, there was no reason for you to tell me about Carin. If I'd lacked a reporter's eye and ear, I wouldn't have known anything was wrong between the two of you. And as for your politics ⦠well, that's your business, not mine. I just don't like what Herr Hitler is selling. There's enough hatred in this country. It crackles through the air like electricity. Why add to it?”
Werner's smile was cryptic. “There's an old saying in the Tyrol: âOnly a storm can clear the air.'” He made a point of scowling at his wristwatch. “I'm late for an appointment in Lichtenberg, but I'll be glad to drop you off at the Bristol.”
“No ⦠no, go ahead. I'll take a taxi.”
“Thank you, Martin, you are most thoughtful.” He glanced toward his Benz, which was bumping across the field toward them. “You really should go back to England. This is not a land you will ever understand.”
That was not quite true, Martin was thinking as the rattletrap taxi carried him toward the center of the city. He felt, in some ways, that he understood Germany better than Werner did. He had the advantage of objectivity, of standing off from a distance and observing dispassionately the varied elements in flux. The revolutionary struggle ⦠brown shirts and red shirts ⦠monarchistsâSocialistsâCommunistsârepublican democracy. Weimar to Munich to Berlin. The struggle to meld a nation out of millions of fragments. He watched some women hurrying across Zimmerstrasse against the traffic, bulging shopping bags in their hands. Bags stuffed not with food but with marks to buy food. Tens of thousands of marks to perhaps buy some turnips and a little bread.
Messages had piled up since he'd been gone. He took the bundle from the desk clerk and sorted through them as he walked to the elevator. There was a note from Uncle Paul:
Martin, Cabled Kingsford in NY before I left. Told him you'd take the “Kingsford shilling” again, but only as roving correspondent at double what he was paying before. Leave things to your uncle.
The cablegram had had its effect, because there was a cable from Scott Kingsford:
Dear Martin. Stop. Delighted by news from Paul Rilke. Stop. Roving correspondent it is. Stop. Salary will negotiate. Stop.
Martin smiled and shoved the message into his pocket.