Group Portrait with Lady (9 page)

The first letter, dated October 10, 1939, two days after the end of the war in Poland, has neither salutation nor conclusion and is composed in a clearly legible, unusually agreeable and intelligent handwriting that would be worthy of a better topic. The letter reads:

“The ruling principle is that no more suffering is to be inflicted on the enemy than is required for the attainment of the military objective.

“The following are
prohibited:

Letter 2: dated December 13, 1939. “The good soldier behaves toward his superior in an unaffected, willing, helpful, and attentive manner.
Unaffected
behavior is shown by naturalness, alertness, and cheerful performance of duty. For the attainment of
willing, helpful
, and
attentive
behavior, note the following examples: Should his superior enter the room and ask for a man who is temporarily absent, the soldier should not confine his answer to the negative but should go in search of the man
in question. Should his superior drop an object, the subordinate should pick it up for him (however, when on parade, only on demand). Should the subordinate notice that his superior wishes to light a cigar, he should hand him a lighted match. Should his superior leave the room, the subordinate should open the door for him and close it quietly behind him. The helpful and attentive soldier should assist his superior in putting on his topcoat and belt, entering or leaving an automobile, and mounting or dismounting from a horse.
Exaggerated helpfulness
and exaggerated attentiveness are unsoldierly (‘eye service’); a soldier should avoid giving any such impression. Nor should he entertain such irregular ideas as offering gifts or issuing invitations to his superior.”

Letter 3: dated January 14, 1940: “To perform
ablutions
the body is stripped to the waist. The soldier washes himself with cold water. The use of soap is a measure of cleanliness. To be washed daily: hands (several times!), face, neck, ears, chest, and armpits. Fingernails are to be cleaned with a nail cleaner (not a knife). Hair is to be worn as short as possible. It is to be combed to one side and parted. Poodle-cuts are unsoldierly (see illustration).” (The illustration was not attached to the letter. Au.’s note.) “If necessary, the soldier is to shave daily. He must appear freshly shaven: for sentry duty, for inspections, when reporting to superior officers, and on special occasions.

“After each washing the body is to be dried
forthwith
(the skin to be rubbed until red), otherwise the soldier will catch cold, and in cold air the skin will become chapped. Face towels and hand towels are to be kept separate.”

Leni seldom talks about her brother; she knew him so little, has and had not much more to say about him than that she used to be “scared of him because he was so terribly well educated” and “then was surprised to find him so terribly, terribly nice” (confirmed by M.v.D.).

M.v.D. herself admits to having been shy of him, although he was “terribly nice” to her too. He would even help her bring up coal and potatoes from the cellar, did not mind helping her with the dishes, etc., “and yet—there was something about him, you know—something about him—well, it was just something, maybe—well, something very noble—and in this he was even like Leni.” That “even” is really worthy of a detailed commentary, from which the Au. will abstain.

“Noble,” “German,” “awfully, awfully nice,” “terribly nice”—does this amount to much? The answer has to be: No. We are left with a miniature, not a portrait. And were it not for that night with Marget in the upstairs room of a Flensburg bar and the only guaranteed direct quotation (Dirt, etc.), and were it not for the letters and finally the end: found guilty, at barely twenty-one, with his cousin, of desertion and treason (contacts with Danes) and “attempted disposal of military equipment” (an antitank cannon)—there would be little left but the recollections of two pipe-smoking, parchment-skinned, all but yellowed Jesuits, “a flower, a flower still blooming in Margret’s heart,” and that terrible year of mourning, 1940–41. So Margret may be allowed to have the definitive word on him (tape): “I told him he should just go off, simply go off with me, we would’ve managed all right, even if I’d had to walk the streets—but he didn’t want to desert his cousin, he said his cousin would be done for without him, and where could we go anyway. And all that tarty stuff around us, those ghastly pink lamps and plush and pink junk and dirty pictures and so on, it
was
disgusting, I must say. He didn’t cry either—and what happened? O God, that flower’s still blooming inside me—and
even if he’d lived to be seventy, or eighty, I’d still have loved him with all my heart, and what did they feed him: the Western world. With the whole Western world in his stomach, that’s how he died—Golgotha, the Acropolis, the Capitol [hysterical laughter]—and the Bamberg Rider thrown in for good measure. It was for that kind of crap that a wonderful boy like that lived. For that kind of crap.”

Leni, asked about her brother when someone notices the photo on the wall, always turns cool, almost ladylike, uttering no more than the unexpected remark: “He has been resting for thirty years in Danish soil.”

Needless to say, Margret’s secret has been kept: neither the Jesuits nor Leni nor M.v.D. were ever told about it; the Au. is merely wondering whether to persuade Margret to tell Leni about it herself some day: it might be a small consolation to Leni to know that before his death her brother had spent the night with the eighteen-year-old Margret. Leni would probably smile, and a smile would do her good. The Au. has no evidence of H.’s poetic gifts other than the above-quoted texts, which may perhaps be allowed to pass as early examples of concrete poetry.

In order that we may finally get to the background, we must now approach a personality on whom the Au. is reluctant to focus—reluctant because, although there are plenty of photos of this person extant, and numerous witnesses (more than for Leni), the fact remains that, because or in spite of these numerous witnesses, an indistinct picture emerges: Leni’s father, Hubert Gruyten, who died in 1949 at the age of forty-nine. Apart from those directly associated with him—e.g., M.v.D., Hoyser, Lotte Hoyser, Leni, Leni’s parents-in-law, her brother-in-law—it was possible to trace twenty-two persons who had known him in the most varied situations and of whom the majority had worked with him: one as his superior, most of them under him. Eighteen persons from the building trade, four civil servants: architects and lawyers, a retired prison official. Since all save one of the persons worked under him, technicians, draftsmen, statisticians, planners, with ages ranging today from forty-five to eighty, perhaps it would be best to listen to them first after supplying the reader with the bare idea concerning Gruyten himself.

Hubert Gruyten, born 1899, a mason by trade, served for one year in World War I (“as a private, and without enthusiasm,”
testimony of Hoyser, Sr.), advanced briefly after the war to the position of foreman, in 1919 married (“above his station”) Leni’s mother, the daughter of an architect in a fairly senior government position (superintendent of construction); part of Helene Barkel’s dowry was a pile of now worthless shares in the Turkish Railways, but the principal item was a solidly built apartment house with a good address, the very one, in fact, in which Leni was later born. Moreover, it was she who discovered “what he had in him” (Hoyser, Sr.), persuaded him to study for a degree in structural engineering, three years which old Gruyten greatly disliked hearing described as his “student years”; his wife loved to speak of life during “those student days” as “hard but beautiful,” which embarrassed Gruyten; it was clear that he did not see himself as a student. From 1924 to 1929, after completing his studies, he was much in demand as a construction manager, even for major projects (not without the aid of his father-in-law); in 1929 he founded a contracting business, until 1933 sailed pretty close to bankruptcy, in 1933 began to operate on a large scale, reached the pinnacle of his success early in 1943, then spent two years, until the end of the war, in jail or doing forced labor, returned home in 1945, rid of all ambition, and was content to get together a small team of plasterers with which, until his death in 1949, he “managed quite well to keep his head above water” (Leni). He also worked as a “wrecker” (Leni).

When witnesses outside the family are asked about the probable motivation behind his business ambition, it is this very ambition that some dispute and others describe as “one of his basic traits”; twelve dispute the ambition, ten argue the case for “basic trait.” They
all
dispute what even a man of Hoyser’s age disputes: that he had had even the slightest talent as an
architect; he is not even credited by anyone with having any talent as a “building man” in general terms. What he does seem to have been, and this nobody disputes, is: a good organizer and coordinator who, even when he employed nearly ten thousand workers, “always knew exactly what was going on and where” (Hoyser). It is worth noting that, of the twenty-two nonfamily witnesses, five (two from the “no ambition” party, three from the “basic trait” party) defined him, independently of one another, as a “brooder.” When asked what prompted them to this surprising definition, three said simply: “Oh well, a brooder, you know—a brooder’s a brooder, that’s all.” Only two, on being asked what he might have brooded on, deigned to give additional information. Mr. Heinken, a retired chief superintendent of construction now living in the country where he raises flowers and bees (and curiously enough expressed, unasked, his hatred of chickens—into every other sentence he wove the remark “I hate chickens”), declared Gruyten’s brooding to be “a clear case of brooding on existence—if you ask me: an existential brooder, forever in conflict with some moral problem that cut clear across his path.” The second one, Kern the statistician, aged about fifty and still very active in his profession, now in the service of the Federal Government, put it this way: “Well, we all regarded him as being a very vital sort of man, and undoubtedly that’s what he was, and since I myself am not even the least bit vital” (an admission that, although not requested, was apposite. Au.), “I naturally respected and admired him, above all—he came from a very simple background, you know—for the way he negotiated with, you might even say, bossed around, the most prominent people, and how he always knew the ropes, but often, very often, when I had to go to his office—and I had to go there very often—he would be sitting at his desk, staring into space, brooding, if you ask me, just plain brooding, and he wasn’t brooding over business; it was because of him that I started thinking how unjust we unvital people are toward vital people.”

Finally, old Hoyser, when queried about the “brooder,” looked up in surprise and said: “The idea would never have occurred to me, but now that you mention it I must say: not only is there some truth to it, it’s the very word. I was Hubert’s godfather, after all, he was my cousin, you know; in the years after the war” (meaning World War I. Au.) “I helped him a bit, and later he helped me in the most generous way. When he founded his business he took me in at once, although I was well on in my thirties; I became his head bookkeeper, his manager, later on his partner—well, he didn’t laugh very often, that’s true, and there was more than a touch of the gambler about him, there was a lot. And when disaster struck I didn’t know why he had done it, maybe the word ‘brooder’ is one explanation for it. Only” (spiteful laughter) “what he did later with our Lotte, there wasn’t much brooding about that.”

Not a single one of the twenty-two surviving former co-workers disputed that G. was generous, “easy to get along with, matter-of-fact, but easy.”

One sentence, uttered by G. in 1932 when he was close to bankruptcy, may be regarded as authentic since it has been confirmed by two independently questioned witnesses. It must have been a few weeks after the fall of the Brüning government. M.v.D. quotes the sentence as follows: “I can smell concrete, my lads, billions of tons of cement, I can smell fortifications and barracks,” while Hoyser only quotes the sentence in the following form: “I can smell fortifications and barracks, my lads, barracks for at least two million soldiers. If we can hold out for another six months, we’ll have it made.”

In view of the copious information available on Gruyten, Sr., it is impossible to name each individual informant here. It may be taken for granted that no effort has been spared to obtain reasonably objective information on a subsidiary character who is important in terms of background only.

In dealing with Marja van Doorn, a certain caution is advisable where G., Sr. is concerned; since she was (is) approximately his age and came from the same village, it is not impossible that she was in love with him, or at least had cast an eye in his direction and is prejudiced. In any event, at the age of nineteen she came as household help to the home of the young bridegroom Gruyten, who six months previously had aroused the passions of Helene Barkel, just turned seventeen, at an architects’ ball to which Helene’s father had invited G.; whether his passion for her was equally aroused cannot be established with certainty; whether it was right for such a newly married couple to take in a nineteen-year-old country girl whom everyone credited with a vitality that was as unbroken as it was unbreakable may be doubtful. What is not doubtful is that almost all of Marja’s statements about Leni’s mother tend to be negative, while she sees Leni’s father in an unfailingly iconolatrous light, something like the light of a little everlasting oil lamp, a wax or electric candle or a neon tube, in front of a picture of the Sacred Heart or Saint Joseph. From a few statements made by Miss van Doorn one is free to assume that under certain circumstances she would even have been prepared to enter into an adulterous relationship with Hubert Gruyten. Her remark, for example, that from 1927 on the marriage had “begun to fall apart,” but that she had been prepared to give him everything that his wife no longer could or would give him, must surely be taken as a fairly clear hint, and when such a hint is reinforced by the additional remark—made, admittedly, almost under her breath—“in those days I was still a young woman, mind you,” the clarity leaves nothing to be desired. When asked point-blank whether such a hint was meant to imply that the intimacy regarded as the focal point of conjugal relations had come to an end, Miss van Doorn said in her disconcertingly direct way, “yes, that’s what I mean,” and
what was then expressed in her still expressive brown eyes—mutely, needless to say—prompts the Au. to assume that she had acquired this knowledge not merely as an observer of family life but also as keeper of the bed linen. On being then asked whether she believed that Gruyten had “sought consolation elsewhere,” she responded with an emphatic and conclusive No, adding—the Au. is almost sure he heard a suppressed sob in her voice—“He lived like a monk, like a monk, but without being one.”