Death in Rome (13 page)

He sat at the bottom end of the dining-room table in the hostel for travelling priests, bathed in a dirty brown penumbra, because the window opened on to a small courtyard, and the curtains were drawn too, so that there was gloom, gloom barely lightened by a few weak electric bulbs, which gave the daylight its tinge of brown. All of them, they looked tired, as though they'd been travelling all night or making a rough crossing, but they'd all spent the night in the hostel, sleeping or waking, lying in their beds, sleeping or waking, and, sleeping or waking, they were proud to be in Rome, the capital of Christendom. Some had already been to early-morning Mass, and now returned to breakfast, which was included in the price, and lacked savour, like breakfast in all seminaries, hospitals and educational establishments everywhere, coffee like dishwater, jam that was without colour and without fruit, an old dry loaf, and they choked it down and pored over their travel guides and wrote out lists of addresses of places they wanted to visit or to which they had introductions, and the head of the hostel asked Adolf whether he would like to take part in a tour of the city, all places of worship would be included, the graves of the martyrs, the places of illumination, the paths of visitations, and the Holy Father was to meet the participants, but Adolf declined, thank you, he preferred to be alone. They were priests, they had been ordained, the bishop had called out their names, they had replied, '
Adsum
,' and the bishop had then asked the archdeacon, 'Do you know whether they are worthy?' and the archdeacon had replied, 'Inasmuch as human frailty may be sure, I know and affirm that they are worthy of the burden of office.' Whereupon the bishop had called out, 'Deo
gratias,'
and they had become priests; they were anointed, they swore obedience to the bishop and his successors, they acquired the power of absolution: '
Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quorum remiseris peccata
,
remittuntur
eis, et
quorum retinueris, retenta sunt
.' He himself was not yet a priest, he was just a deacon, he was one step below them, they were his superiors, he watched them as they ate their bread, as they made their plans for the day, how they might spend it usefully in Rome, and he asked himself whether God had chosen them, whether God had sent them, ambitious ravens and shy scarecrows, and he doubted it, because then why hadn't God done more, why didn't his servants do more to oppose the world's unhappy course? Adolf had come to them out of great unhappiness, and since it seemed to him that even as a priest he would hardly be able to prevent fresh misery, and he doubted that a pharisee's smug indifference was for him, he asked himself whether he really felt a vocation, if that was what the others felt. He could find no reply, just as he could find no reply to the question whether he should see his mother and confront his father; maybe he did love his parents, or he felt duty-bound to love them, perhaps as a priest it was his particular duty to love them, or again perhaps not, perhaps a priest had to love all men equally. His parents had given him life, but his soul he owed to God, and it wasn't for God's sake that his parents had given him life, not to serve God, not to obey God's commandment; they had given him life out of lust, because they were concupiscent, or out of carelessness or simply because they had wanted a child, or because it was the fashion in the Third Reich to have children, because the Führer loved children, or perhaps it was all of these, lust, carelessness, the wish for offspring and the Führer's favour. And yet God had been in attendance, invisible and unacknowledged, because there is no begetting without a miracle, and even the drunk who rapes the maid by the side of the road breeds by God's inscrutable plan, but Adolf the deacon asked, 'Why why why?' And in the hostel's twilight of dull joylessness and sour devotion Christ did not appear to him, and he was unable to ask him as Peter did, 'Lord, whither goest Thou?'

They had packed all the picnic things into the car, bread, cold roast, some pheasant, fruit and wine. They were off to Monte Cassino, not to the monastery, but the battlefield. They had got together with other Germans, veterans of the battles, who would guide them, but they were getting behindhand, because they still had to go and see Judejahn first, they wanted to invite him along, too. He surely wouldn't be indifferent to the battlefield, it would be a way of bringing them closer, their enthusiasm for certain shared ideals, their victors' pride even after a lost battle, but Eva, the crucial person in all this, was making trouble, she refused to participate, refused to attend the reunion, refused to go along on the expedition; she wanted to stay in her room, the room at the back with all the kitchen noise and kitchen smells, or she wanted to return to Germany, to go and live in a tiny room there, and they were furious and pleaded with her, 'Why won't you see him, what's he going to think?' and she couldn't tell them, they who had made their peace and lived for the day, made their peace with collapse, betrayal and robbery, she couldn't explain to them that the marriage contract between herself and Judejahn was so inextricably bound up with the Third Reich, had only lived in this one faith, only been fed from this one source, that the bond was broken, it had ended automatically with Hitler's death, with the passing of the Reich, with foreign troops on German soil mocking the Führer's vision and promises. Whoever didn't understand that, whoever didn't find it inconceivable that one might think and feel in any other way, couldn't be told it, it was better to keep silent and not to insult one's own grief. She wasn't at fault, and nor was Judejahn either, neither of them was at fault in what had happened and what couldn't now be mended, but they both inevitably shared the guilt of every survivor. Eva had borne this guilt, not guilt for building the road that had led to ruin, but guilt at having outlived her salvation, that never left her, and she feared that Judejahn would now have to pick up the burden of mere existence and share it with her, and she didn't want that, she still saw him as blameless, a hero in Valhalla, but a portion of the guilt was given to each living person, and the letter from Judejahn, the news of his survival, had shocked rather than delighted her. But who was there she could tell that to, to whom could she show her dismay? Her son was her enemy. He was her bitterest enemy, if the word bitter means anything, and if she had been religious, she would have cursed him. But he was the religious one, and as a heathen she had no curse at her disposal, as a heathen she was deprived, she didn't believe in curses, or the withdrawal of blessings, she believed in the life of the race, and for anyone who trespassed against that there was only death. But she couldn't kill him. She no longer had the power. She could only forget him. Forgetting took time, and she was trying to forget him, but now Judejahn's appearance reminded her of everything, all collapse, all defeat, all severance, and she didn't want to see Judejahn. She stayed in the hotel, and she felt she was being scourged.

In the car to Judejahn's hotel, with Dietrich at the wheel, the Pfaffraths were thinking: We can't tell him, we'll have to break it to him gently, she's crazy, and no wonder after everything she's been through, we did what we could, we have nothing to reproach ourselves for, no one can blame us, we stood by her, Judejahn will see that, we brought her here, and now Judejahn will have to decide what will happen. Dietrich was thinking: He's staying at a far better hotel than we are, he must be rolling. At the Teutonic castle I was envious of Adolf because his father had so much more clout than mine, I wonder if he still does, more than my father. How did he slip through the enemy net, how did he get away, and is he still the same, will he make a bid for power, will he fight, and is it the right moment to throw in my lot with him, or is it still too risky? And Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath said: 'Perhaps it was a little premature to think of his return. Perhaps he should wait another year or two for things to sort themselves out. We'll get our sovereignty, we'll get a new army. You have to hand it to the people in Bonn, they haven't let us down. We're not out of the woods yet, but once the army's in place perhaps then the time will have come for truly nationalist forces to take over, and deal with the traitors.' 'We'll deal with them, all right,' said Dietrich. He grimaced and clutched the steering-wheel. He almost ran over a gentleman with a diplomat's rolled umbrella crossing the street at the Porta Pinciana, evidently, and to his evident peril, a believer in reason.

He received them in his dressing-gown, having rubbed himself down with alcohol and splashed a fragrant hair tonic over his grey bristles, and he looked like an old and unsuccessful boxer getting into the ring one last time for a hefty purse. They were bewildered by the luxury surrounding him. They stood there like beggars, like poor relations, the way they had always stood in front of him, and he felt it too, it was all nicely calculated, and they saw the silk-covered walls, felt the thick carpets underfoot, his suitcases impressed them, and on his bed they spotted the apogee of wealth and the stamp of arrogant independence in the form of a large mangy tomcat. 'That's Benito,' Judejahn introduced him, and he was pleased at their puzzlement and their concealed alarm. Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath felt nauseated by the animal, but he didn't let it show; it was as though the black stallions in his dream of Lützow's bold hunt had been transformed into this mangy torn. Judejahn didn't ask after Eva. He saw through the Pfaffraths. He narrowed his eyelids to wicked piggy little eyes, he dropped his head like a ram's—his opponent would be advised to beware of the old pro. Up until now Eva had been the poor relation, and the Pfaffraths her benefactors; that couldn't be tolerated any longer. Judejahn decided to put Eva under his protection. He would get hold of some money, Eva was to buy herself a house, she should be independent. When the Pfaffraths started speaking about Eva, Judejahn told them to forget it. He would see to everything himself; he gestured sweepingly, dictatorially. He expressed no wish to see Eva. He understood her. He could see why she hadn't come, and he approved. They couldn't see each other, couldn't look into each other's eyes, not with the Pfaffraths looking on, those rats who had understood nothing at all, but perhaps Judejahn could see Eva secretly, like a sad secret mistress he was afraid of seeing. But then he laid himself open, failed to cover himself, he asked after Adolf, and Dietrich blurted out that Adolf had entered the priesthood, and that was like a punch in the throat. Judejahn reeled, his face twisted, he grew pale and then red, his brow and his cheeks purpled, his veins stood out, he was apoplectic, he clutched at his throat, and then there broke from him a deluge of oaths, a torrent of obscenities, he flooded them with ordure, yelled at them, the craven, conformist, greedy Pfaffraths, who stood there trembling, too terrified to move, like tame pigs faced by a wild boar. He blamed them, blamed them for betrayal, for defeat, for breach of promise, desertion and capitulation, for fraternization with the enemy, they shat their pants, they were lickspittles, collaborators, arse-lickers, they had dragged their carcasses to Canossa, lame dogs whimpering at the thought of Hell and in front of the priests, they had probably come to Rome to kiss the Pope's feet, to receive absolution, but history would condemn them, Germany would damn them, cast them out, the family deserved its fate, the Führer had seen that himself, the Führer had come to lead a cowardly people, a rotten tribe, that was his tragedy. And they listened, the Oberbürgermeister listened, his wife, Anna, Dietrich, they hung on his every word, in silence, quaking, but they hung on his lips, it was like olden days, the great Judejahn spoke, the big chief ranted, and they submitted, yes, they felt good, they felt pleasured to the quick, a lustful shearing in their bellies and their genitals, they worshipped him. He stopped. He was exhausted; previously, he wouldn't have been exhausted; previously such outbursts gave him strength. There was sweat in his bristles, sweat dampened the silk pyjamas he had on under his dressing-gown; his face was still as red as a cock's comb. But he knew how to take a punch, he didn't go down, soon he'd pulled himself round again. He slapped his thighs, laughed, what a joke, what a fantastic joke, he should have sent a few more priests to heaven, since he'd gone and supplied the Church with a new one. And then he went and poured himself a cognac, knocked it back, he offered them one too, but only Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath would join him, Dietrich excused himself saying he had to drive, restraint that only produced a contemptuous laugh from Judejahn. 'What's the matter with our kids?' he cried. Then something seemed to occur to him, something amusing, and he went over to the bed and from Benito's claws he took away the Italian newspaper which the hotel had delivered with his breakfast that morning. Judejahn had leafed through it, uncomprehendingly looking at the pictures and at the captions under the pictures, and so doing had come upon his nephew Siegfried, whom he could barely remember, but he thought it was probably his nephew, Siegfried Pfaffrath. And so he held the picture up to Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, mocking and incensed, and because he had misunderstood the text accompanying it, he said his brother-in-law's son had turned out to be a violinist, which admittedly wasn't as bad as being a priest, but it was bad enough, it was a violation of the family traditions, it went against background and the training of the Teutonic school. And so Judejahn had his little revenge. Pfaffrath took the newspaper, he was shaken by this unexpected attack, and he said Siegfried wasn't a violinist at all, he was a composer, and then he regretted saying so, because it really didn't matter to Judejahn whether a fellow scraped at a fiddle in a café or wrote concerti, it was an unmanly occupation in either case, a dodgy way of life. Pfaffrath could understand Judejahn's way of thinking, but he himself had a different reaction when he saw his son's picture in the Roman newspaper, perhaps he felt reminded of his bookshelf, the edition of Goethe and the life of Wagner, he felt proud of Siegfried, proud of his progeny, and he passed the newspaper on to Anna, who clucked like a mother duck when her little duckling scuttles into its world, jumps into the pond, takes to the water and swims, and Dietrich peered over her shoulder, saw his brother and muttered, 'Incredible,' which could be taken to be an expression of astonishment, or admiration, or then again of disgust. And thus Judejahn remained compromised by his own devout offspring, whereas the Pfaffraths actually seemed to feel pride in their fiddler- or composer-boy, although of course it wasn't apparent what opinions Siegfried had, what his vices were, what squalor he might inhabit, in unpatriotic or Jewish company, or how he had managed to secure the publicity in the paper. Judejahn stalked across the room in his dressing-gown, like a boxer pacing the ring in protest against an unjust decision. He flatly refused to accompany them to Monte Cassino. What did he care about battlefields, he mocked, all quiet and at peace, where the blood had drained away into the soil, where the bodies were buried, and plants grew and donkeys grazed, and wretched tourists swarmed round the donkey paddock. What was the battle of Monte Cassino anyway, compared to the battle for Berlin! The battle for Berlin was not over yet, nor would it be, it was still being fought; it was being fought in the soul and in the air, he wanted to say, but Judejahn had forgotten the legend of the battle of Chalons, which little Gottlieb had learned at school. He remembered something about heavenly forces, but he didn't think of ghosts, they didn't exist, nor of the dead, who did exist, but they didn't fight, they were dead, and so they must be pilots, and of course pilots fought in the air, and in the end they would fight with new weapons, with the force of the atom, because Berlin had not fallen. 'Do you believe in war?' Pfaffrath asked Judejahn. And Judejahn said he always believed in war, what else was there to believe in. Pfaffrath too believed in a new war, it had to come, justice demanded it, but Pfaffrath didn't think the time was yet ripe for it, he didn't think a war at this stage was in Germany's interest, he thought the odds were too unfavourable, but he didn't dare say so to Judejahn, lest his brother-in-law might think him a coward. 'Will you come back, then?' he asked, and Judejahn said he was always at war, always fighting for Germany. And then he put on an absurd piece of play-acting for their benefit: he rang the diplomatic representation of the country in whose service he stood, and, in a mixture of French, English and Arabic, he ordered the official car, every bit as though he were giving tyrannical commands, and was deciding war or peace in the Middle East. Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath and Anna his wife did not notice that little Gottlieb was up to his tricks again, they were awed by the greatness of their brother-in-law, but Dietrich Pfaffrath winced: he couldn't decipher the words, but he suddenly had a feeling that his uncle's great days were over once and for all, and that Judejahn was now nothing better than an adventurer with uncertain prospects and shady backing. 'Careful,' said a voice inside him, Judejahn might damage his career, but Dietrich would have loved to march behind Judejahn, in a conspicuous place of trust, of course, if ever Judejahn unfurled his standard and issued his call to the nation. But for the moment there were jobs going in the Federal Republic, jobs that Dietrich would get if he passed his exams. Not until Dietrich is unemployed, without a car to play with, lying on the scrapheap of the academic proletariat, only when there is an economic crisis, will Dietrich march blindly behind any false flag, will he advance righteously to any false war.