The World as I Found It (87 page)

Sitting up higher on the beach, in quite a different element, Wittgenstein was watching Russell and the boy, feeling the same pangs but keeping them well hidden. Truly, Wittgenstein felt a little queer being alone at a beach among these family people, without even Max there as a buffer. And for the Moores and Russell, it
was
rather queer to see Wittgenstein in such a setting — to see him partake of something purely pleasurable and without purpose. Remembering Wittgenstein's prudishness in Norway, Moore was correct in his prediction that he would not bathe, but to his amazement and Russell's, Wittgenstein did go barefoot, rolling his trousers above the knees. Free from the
Viva
and now Max as well, Wittgenstein did seem more relaxed, in his way. Digging his feet into the crusty sand and working it through his toes, he talked to Dorothy for some time. And later, he took John and Kate exploring, happy to lose himself in the sun's drumming heat. He didn't at all mind their calling him Ludwig. Like an abnormally bright child, he answered their questions, but in his answer he always sought to subtly recast the question, returning it like a piece of sourdough in the hope that they might use it to make something more.

As for Moore, it wasn't long before the waves coaxed him into the water. Not since the reading parties of their undergraduate days had Moore and Russell seen each other in bathing dress. It was a bit of a shock as the clothes came off, to be subjected to the harsh mirror of one's contemporaries. The two men tried to seem natural about it, but there it was — old man's skin, all tucked and puckered and flabby white, hanging off them like filets of haddock. Oh, God, they thought, it had really happened. They were old. Then came the poking, the joking. Not much different, humm? jested Moore in his ancient black woolen one-piece. Not much, said Russell, immodestly sliding his thumbs down the latex belly band of his very moderne black trunks.

The two men walked down to the skiffles where the children were playing in the sand. Moore didn't want to intrude. Russell was telling the children about the Spanish Armada as Moore waded out into the deeper water. Behind him, Moore was aware of Dorothy, perched like a nesting bird on the beach in her beige bathing suit. All that morning he had been aware of her, floating up in him like a water beacon. He swam out a short way and rolled over; spat and closed his eyes. His lungs swelled and contracted. The water rocked. Forever it rocked and rocked, and he became even more forcibly aware of Dorothy's presence, beaming down on him like strong sunshine. It had been so long since he had floated, but what he had lost of his former buoyancy he had gained in perspective. Without Dorothy, Moore knew, he would not be floating so confidently. Oh, he might be wading, might be standing much diminished in the shoals, staring at his white legs, bent and foreshortened in the water. But, no, he would not be floating.

Intimacy is like a stream within a stream: there is the tantalizing life without, a numinous loom with its light and air and vast trees; and there is the rich, dark, mutual life whose language and nuances are quite invisible to those standing on the periphery. This had been the case the day before. Moore had seen that something was bothering Dorothy when she returned from her birdwatching. He had still felt her unease at dinner, but it was only later, when they were in bed, that Dorothy revealed what it was about. With her binoculars, Dorothy had seen Max and Lily that afternoon. She said she had started to call to them, but then she saw the blanket under Max's arm and thought better of it.

I don't know why I looked at all, she said. Oh, I stopped looking immediately once I saw what they were up to. I'm sure you think I'm a horrid peeping Tom, but it's true.

Moore assured her that there was no cause for shame. Curiosity was natural — very natural. Even as they were discussing this under the covers, they could hear another opera playing in the next room. They still didn't know who it was in there, but Dorothy had her theories. In his reserved way, even Moore was getting curious. He was even more curious when he went down the hall to wash and smelled strong perfume — a cloying, almost swampy fragrance. He couldn't get it out of his head. All that night, the music seemed to continue; in Moore's imagination the perfume all but soaked through the walls, filling him with crowded dreams.

Moore always relieved himself in the early morning, and when he blundered down the hall, half asleep, he smelled the perfume even more strongly. He was sitting on the toilet, waiting for his cramped bladder to unknot, when he heard a door creak open. Moore froze on the seat, his heart pounding. He heard whispers, then slow steps picking down the hall and down the stairs.

The voice and footsteps were unmistakably Russell's, and as Moore sat there the whole sorry situation suddenly became clear to him. He took no pleasure in it. He would have put it right out of his mind had it not been for Dorothy's complaints about his reticence. So he told her about it. Told her for intimacy's sake — to repay her for her own secret.

Ironically, then, Russell's ill fortune had become Moore's good fortune. All that morning Dorothy had been especially frisky and affectionate, grateful for this confidence he had conferred on her. Life is bad. Life is good. How does one ever decide which version is truer or the more pervasive? Moore's face was now a mask on the surface of the ocean. His legs were fluttering, and his hands were undulating at his sides. Only as much is learned as is forgotten. One swam off just far enough to discern the shore — just far enough that one could say that one had seen it floating there, one's wife and life given sensuous shape on the shore. Moore slipped out just far enough to see this, and once he had seen it, he knew, at this stage of his life, that he need venture out no farther. No, Dorothy had no cause for worry this time. Moore didn't stay out long.

I
N SEPTEMBER OF
1938, six months after the
Anschluss
, Gretl's butler Frick came to her, his face white with panic as he told her about an SS
Sturmscharführer
who was waiting downstairs to speak to her.

Gretl thought it odd that the SS would send only one man: when the SS came, they typically came in force. Gretl knew this not only from friends who had fled or gone into hiding but from her own experience a few weeks before, after her ex-maid had reported her to the Gestapo as a Jew harborer. Ever since, Gretl had been expecting a call in the night, and now she thought they had finally come to arrest her — perhaps they figured a
Sturmscharführer
was more than enough for one old lady.

Having more or less prepared herself for this, Gretl only hoped the Nazis would spare Mining and poor Frick, who had been so brave and loyal about staying when all her other servants had given notice. The loss of her house staff had been a heavy blow, but under the circumstances Gretl could hardly blame them for leaving. All over Vienna servants were leaving good situations, while their former employers were hastily departing for worse ones. Most of Gretl's eleven servants had gone with regret, many of them tearfully, but all had left in fear, taking with them Gretl's resigned blessings and a generous severance. Knowing that their mistress would not dare report them under the circumstances, several of Gretl's newer servants, including the maid who reported her, had even left with a little something extra, stuffing their bags with silver, food, clothes and other booty, no doubt figuring that Frau Stonborough would not need these things where she was going.

Arriving with a six-man SS contingent, the Gestapo inspector who had come that first night was a mild-faced man with thinning hair who might have sold insurance in his former life. Dressed in a dark suit with a swastika armband, he was not in the least imposing or sinister; if anything, he was quite matter-of-fact as he opened his briefcase and produced blood papers for Gretl and Mining.

Gretl still had her health, but Mining was now hugely overweight and ailing, with arthritis, a bad heart and a left arm that had swollen twice the size of her right following the removal, two years before, of her cancerous left breast. Ever since Rolf's death from leukemia four years before, Mining had been living with Gretl, and she was now Gretl's greatest worry: Gretl thought her sister would have a coronary right there when the SS came through the front door with rifles and drawn pistols.

Panting like a stricken animal, Mining just stood there, white-faced and staring, holding her fat dimpled arm. Gretl wasn't doing so well either. She felt the blood slowly draining from her head. It was late, very late, and she remembered hearing how the SS made their arrests late like this, when people were asleep and thus more docile and confused. The ploy worked. Gretl's mind was quite blank with fear, and her legs were weak, but she felt she must remain standing or else relinquish all control. She grasped the table. The Gestapo inspector was reading some idiotic charge against the Reich, and her right leg was falling asleep. Then her left leg began to tremble, and she looked at the SS troopers, thinking of what they say about dogs — how even the most vicious dogs are fine until they sense the fear that gets their blood up.

Gretl felt fear now. It was like death by exposure, starting in the legs, then traveling up the spine until it addles the brain, making one dizzy and desperate for sleep.
Stop it
, she told herself, telling herself that she must think not only for herself but for her poor sister. With her fleshy bulk sustained by this now feeble heart, Mining looked ready to topple over.

Liebste, Mining, es macht nichts, setz Dich hin
, said Gretl oversweetly, begging her to sit. But no sooner had Gretl said this in an effort to somehow ease the situation than she looked again at the young, black-gloved SS men blocking the door with their rifles, their peaked caps and black suits luminescent with a meaningless sorcery of braid and insignia. They were like leashed dogs, she thought, they were like lean and hungry Dobermans, hungry to snap and roust
den Juden
from her house.
Mining
, Gretl said more forcefully. Mining, darling … please sit down while I speak to these men.

It seemed that her only recourse was to resort to a forlorn and absurd kindness, as if mere breeding would show, or matter, at such a time, much less suggest to these men that they should follow her kind example. Trying to fight paralysis or sleep, Gretl found all kinds of delaying, distancing questions coursing through her mind. This was the part that no one had been able to prepare her for. In all the times she had heard people describe this now familiar experience, no one had been able to properly convey the shock that would hit her, much less the silly things she was liable to say. In her shock that night, she did not know, or did not want to admit, that for the first time in her life, she was powerless — an old nobody. She was freezing to death and didn't quite believe it; in her powerlessness, she was being sucked down, yet she still fought it like death, focusing on her sister's fear so as to ward off her own, saying as to a child,
Mining, listen to me. You must sit down
…

But Mining only managed a confused, stricken look, and in that moment Gretl saw her big sister reduced to the mute dependency of a child. Cradling her heavy left arm like an infant over the nonexistent breast, Mining looked at her, then more indignantly at the inspector, and squeaked hysterically, I'm very sorry —
I'm sorry but I will have to sit!
And then there was Gretl's jarring panic as her sister blundered back, collapsing into a slender chair that made a sickening crack as Mining's heavy, varicose legs gave way.

The perspicacious inspector clearly viewed himself as a scalpel, not a meat cleaver; he was visibly discomfited by this unpleasant scene. Please, Frau Stonborough, he insisted. Please, both you ladies must sit and rest yourselves.

But with Mining's tumble, Gretl's fear turned to rage. In her contempt for this imbecile, Gretl thanked him with an edge of sarcasm, obstinately saying that she preferred to stand,
danke
. The inspector felt her contempt — he was all too conscious of that gulf of class she represented — but instead of taking offense, he took even greater pains to show that he was not some party thug, that he was indeed a man of discernment and civility. It was really quite pathetic. The inspector's manner was one of ceremonious disappointment as he explained to Gretl, in the most muted tones possible, that the Reich was prepared to treat her and her sister
as Gentiles
, but that as bona fide friends of the Reich they could not break the law by harboring those of Jewish blood. The inspector said this on a hopeful note, assuming, naturally, that the two women would find it a profound relief. But Gretl was not relieved. Suddenly she was furious, telling him in the prickly voice she used on recalcitrant tradesmen that she was a Jew and did not wish the Reich to consider her anything
but
a Jew.

At this, the inspector glanced with vexation at his men — the woman was obviously mad — and repeated, as if it were an incontrovertible scientific fact, that she was nonetheless a Gentile; her blood papers were quite clear on that point. At Gretl's remark, meanwhile, Mining had pulled herself up from her seat. Her eyes were swimming. Gretl could see exactly what she was saying.
Are you mad?
Mining was asking.
Do you think that, as a Wittgenstein, you can say
anything? Mining hadn't forgotten the facts. She hadn't forgotten the people lined up outside the consulates, frantically seeking permission to emigrate. Nor had she forgotten those already interned in SS camps, or murdered. Many had committed suicide in the first violent days of the
Anschluss
, when shops were wrecked and Jews were attacked by roving mobs. On the Kärntnerstrasse and Graben, down streets of smashed and boarded-up storefronts with
Jude
scrawled in white paint, Jews had been forced to get on their hands and knees to scour the paving stones. No one had been spared. Even rabbis and decorated war veterans had been publicly humiliated. With their own beards, Hassidic Jews were forced to symbolically scour the stones while the mobs howled and the fun-loving SS men prodded them with their riding crops or rode them piggyback by their earlocks.