The Only Poet (30 page)

‘What a lovely colour you have, Elisaveta,' said the Director, handing her a glass of spirits.

‘Yes,' said the editor's wife, ‘and we know it's all natural. We have no cosmetics now. Tell us, Elisaveta, how is it done?'

‘Bending over an oven!' laughed Elisaveta.

‘But none of us have anything to put in our ovens,' said the Director, ‘so that raises another question.'

They were poor jokes, these people would have been ashamed to make them in the old days. But they served. Everybody moved through warmth, they spoke and held their heads as if the Director still had the theatre he had spent his life in making, as if the actor and the dramatists could still fill the loving and attentive air of the theatre with what in their breasts longed to be out there; as if the editor's office were not given over to his enemies; as if the wives were sure that none would come to their houses by night in lorries.

There was a great ohing and ahing when the goose was brought in, and much laughter when Nils told them they could eat up Egon's bird with an easy conscience, and not think guiltily of those they had left at home, for he also was a dramatist and a peasant had brought him a goose too, and he had had it cooked, so that each guest could take away a slice or two for his family. And there was a great deal of joking about the affinity between geese and dramatists.

Then when the wine was poured out, the men had much amusement in guessing the vintage, which was easy, and then the year, which was more difficult, while the women mocked them for their solemnity over what, after all, was meant to be swallowed.

It was at that point in the meal when the door was flung open and the Nazi major came in. He stood on the threshold and stared at them. Egon and Nils rose to their feet, but with quick movements of their hands bade the others remain seated.

‘Heil Hitler!'
said the major.

There was a silence. They all thought of the dead boys and felt ashamed as they murmured
‘Heil Hitler!'
but it was not worth suffering for such a little thing.

‘Who are these people,' the major asked Egon, ‘and why are they here?'

‘They are my friends,' said Egon. ‘They are here to have their Sunday dinner with me, as they often did before you and your people invaded our country.' He indicated the spread table, his guests, with their fine heads, the delicate glasses holding wine, the polished silver candlesticks. ‘This is how we lived before you came.'

The major did not answer for a moment. He looked about him with a steady, absorbed gaze as if he were trying to take away what he saw with his eyes. Then he shouted: ‘I have come to warn you that if you have gathered together in protest against today's disciplinary action, you do so at your peril. In the past we have been too gentle with your people, you intellectuals who refuse to collaborate with the New Order. But after today there will be no more forbearance.'

His voice stopped suddenly. His hungry eyes, his pale, angry, resolute, and perplexed eyes stared ahead of him. The guests stirred on their chairs. The Director licked his dry lips and put out his hand for his glass, but stopped when it was halfway to his lips, fearing to offend the intruder. He looked as if he were about to propose a toast, and the editor picked up his glass and held it likewise, and murmured so softly that only those who sat about the table could hear it: ‘To the ten young men.' Then all the other guests raised their glasses and Egon and Nils too bent down and found theirs.

The gentle movement, which seemed concerted and yet surely could not have been, startled the major. ‘Stand up!' he cried, as if in fear. ‘Stand up!' They all stood up. More than ever they looked simply like people drinking a toast, not like threatened people, nor yet like defiant people.

It was the actor's wife, her whispered words merely a faint pulse of sound not to be heard save by stretched senses, who said again, ‘To our ten young men.' They all raised their glasses to their lips, halting them before their breasts according to the custom of their country.

‘What are you doing? What are you doing?' shouted the major, striding into the room.

Egon explained wearily, ‘My friends were about to drink a toast. When you told them to stand up, they naturally continued.'

‘To whom is the toast?' shouted the major.

‘To some other friends,' said Egon. ‘You must excuse us, Major. This was a great city for friendship before you came.'

Rage flamed in the major's face. ‘Why do such people as you continually reproach us? We came here to protect you from the British, we came here to bring you prosperity by giving you full rights in the New Order. And we are your brothers, our people and your people are Nordic Aryans.'

Around the table all stood with their heads down, looking at the heeltaps of their toast.

‘We have discovered the way of living which is right for mankind,' cried the major, ‘and we are trying to share our discovery with you, and you will not accept the gift.'

Around the table all shifted from foot to foot, still looking down at their glasses.

‘But tomorrow,' cried the major, his voice rising, ‘it shall be different.'

The door crashed behind him. At the table all sat down again. They laughed, as people do who see somebody behaving in a way which betokens him their inferior, but who are not naturally unkind. Nevertheless, there was a chill wonder in the centre of their laughter, for they knew that tomorrow it would indeed be different, perhaps by the considerable difference that lies between life and death.

‘Thanks be to God,' said the editor's wife, who had two chins and was as plump as a pigeon, ‘he did not stay so long that the gravy grew cold,' and she polished her plate with a crust. The others broke into affectionate jeers and teasing, then Elisaveta told them there was something else to come, and there were many exclamations of surprise, the party forming again into what it had been, but harder, more impregnable.

When she and Johanna brought in the sweet they had made the day before of bottled fruit and sago flour, the sweet which was the unvalued standby in the town before the Germans came and took everything away, they clapped and cheered so that it was heard outside on the quay; and they were not sure that there were not some soldiers among those who came and peered through the windows. But they did not turn their heads to look.

‘That German,' said Nils, taking his seat after he had been around the table pouring out some sweet French wine to drink with the fruit-pudding, ‘said that he and his kind had discovered the way of living that is right for mankind. That means they believe they could draw a picture of God's mind, and another picture of man's mind. What blasphemy! For we know almost nothing.'

Egon put down his spoon and fork. ‘I am not with you there. I think we can draw a picture of God's mind, and it is not like the picture that he drew, and the Major is wrong and we are right.'

‘No,' said Nils, ‘that is why it was written in the Tables of the Law, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the water under the earth.'”

‘But I have read the reason for that commandment somewhere,' said one of the guests, ‘and it was an attempt of the Jewish priesthood in the time of Moses to shepherd the faithful away from the competitive religions of the day, which practised an attractive form of idolatry.'

‘Yes, yes, that was the reason in the first place,' said Nils, ‘but it has survived, like the rest of the commandments, because Moses had an eternal mind, and his thoughts have meaning upon meaning on which the centuries have hardly time enough to ponder. For me that commandment means that man must never pretend to have accomplished that task which will be unfinished so long as he himself exists. He was set upon earth in order that he may acquaint himself with reality, which is an impossible task, since reality creates itself anew as fast as the learner learns. It cannot be achieved until the end of the earth, the death of the stars; and until then a man lies if he says that he has learnt his lesson and can make a graven image of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Little sketches we can make, but that is all, and they are worthless unless we know that they are worthless, that we as yet lack the knowledge to make them true images. It seems to me that a man's work is dead and a man's soul is ideas, if he does not make this admission that all sacred truth is still veiled, for this relationship between us and a mystery is what constitutes life. Why need we go on living if all is known? Why do we love life so if it is not that it enchants us with its magnificence of undisclosed secrets?'

Egon said, ‘I would not agree with you. One wants to live because life is agreeable!'

‘Today,' said Nils, ‘I have a good opportunity of pointing out to you that quite often it is not.'

Egon smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘And as for man's mind, we know enough to say we know all.'

‘Yes,' said someone, ‘since Freud has shown us the way we are justified in saying we know all.'

‘I feel,' said Nils, ‘that our experience during the last few months has transcended all the experience of our previous lives.'

‘What you mean,' said Egon, ‘is that we have adhered to our principles, and that we have been happy in doing so.'

‘No,' said Nils, ‘I have thought thoughts and felt passions which were unknown to me before. I have learnt many things about my own nature which had before been hidden from me.'

Some of the guests said, ‘Yes, I know what you mean,' and one said: ‘No, one is what one always has been,' and the others were silent.

‘Yes,' said Nils, ‘one is always what one has always been, and what one always will be. But what is that? And how extraordinary it is that we should be here at all on this earth, which spins about in space, incommunicado, knowing nothing of other stars or of the limits of space! And how extraordinary it is that being alive makes other things, trees and flowers and fish! And how extraordinary it is that anything should exist at all! I thought these things when I was a little boy, and then I was distracted by immediate problems. Now they come back to me, and I remember the words of the Bible “– for I speak of a mystery”.'

‘But Saint Paul used them when he was speaking of marriage,' said one of the dramatists, smiling, ‘and there is nothing more ordinary than marriage.'

‘There you prove my case,' said Nils, ‘for there is nothing more ordinary than marriage, yet it is a mystery.'

A stir ran about the table, and they all smiled, a troubled and reflective smile. Some of the husbands and wives were happy, some were not.

‘No,' said Egon firmly, ‘it is something very reasonable. Reasonable and beautiful.'

One or two of the guests laughed aloud, the rest were silent. The editor's wife wiped her mouth and said, ‘Are not all marriages happy since the Germans came? A stick is something to lean on, whether it is straight or crooked.'

‘Yes, yes,' said the guests, nodding their heads.

‘Then there is something mysterious about marriage,' said Nils, ‘as mysterious as the action of the molecules that make a stick solid and not liquid.'

‘Oh, you mean mysterious in that sense,' said Egon.

Nils's hands made an exasperated flutter and Elisaveta rose and pushed back her chair, saying, ‘And now I must go out to the kitchen, for our hosts are giving us coffee, real coffee and some real milk!' At which the company clapped their hands, and the editor said, ‘Ah, they have sold themselves to the Nazis. You can see. There's everything here.'

When all the guests had gone home they called in Johanna and thanked her for preparing the feast. Elisaveta stood up, stretched herself and yawned, looking at herself in a mirror. She was still slender, it would be years before she looked old. ‘Oh, dear, I would have liked that party to go on for ever,' she said. ‘It was fun. But now I must go and help Johanna wash the dishes.'

‘And we must go upstairs and get on with our piece of work,' said Egon. ‘Have you thought of anything, Nils?'

‘Yes, I have it all in my head,' said Nils.

‘Then we had better go upstairs at once,' said Egon. ‘The printers will be here early this evening.'

‘I will say goodbye now,' said Elisaveta, ‘so that I won't disturb you when I have finished. Goodbye, dear Egon and dear Nils. And thank you for all the good food and all the good wine, and the lovely gay party. It…'

She had been about to say that it had made them forget what was happening outside, but that was not true. The gaiety of the party had existed inside the terror of the day, enfolded by it.

‘Elisaveta,' said Egon, ‘we must say goodbye. A real goodbye. You must not come back here. It will not be safe.'

‘Please do as we say, Elisaveta,' said Nils. ‘It would be a heavy burden on us if we were to bring suffering on you. And you must be here when David comes back.'

She thought, ‘But I am going to David. Why should he come back here, where there will be nothing?' But in order not to burden them, she opened her arms to them and raised her face for their kisses.

‘Goodbye, Elisaveta,' they said.

‘Goodbye, my dear, dear friends,' she answered. She stood in the hall and watched the two men go up the wide, wooden stairs and bending over the banisters of the landing to kiss their hands to her before they passed out of sight, and then went to wash the dishes.

That evening she burned everything in her apartment which she did not want to fall into the hands of strangers. She made up her best silver spoon and china into brown-paper parcels and marked them with the names of her closest friends, and left them with her neighbours. She burned all of David's letters quite without regret, for she felt she would not need them much longer. Then she went to bed and slept well, and woke up early the next morning. She emptied all her little stock of sugar into her cup of coffee and had it sticky-sweet, as she liked it but had never dared have it for fear of growing fat.