Therefore Choose (12 page)

Next day, a Saturday, George and Anna had breakfast with his mother. He suggested that he'd take Anna for a walk on the embankment, and then visit St. Paul's. The day was cold but bright, without much wind. When they reached the river, the tide was ebbing, and they watched the difficulty that tugs were having pulling their barges upstream.

“We could live in London,” said George. “There are parts of Bloomsbury that aren't expensive.”

“I'm not being coy,” she said. “Is that the right word? When I talked to you about living together, it was something I thought. Something I thought in a particular way at that time.”

“Are you saying that moment is past?”

“You think we should get together on some other basis, but not the one I talked about?”

“Why not? Things unfold.”

“In those days, we came to a certain moment,” said Anna. “We decided. We took one direction rather than another.”

“When I'm qualified,” George said, “it will be easier for both of us. I could move to Berlin.”

“I think still you do not understand.”

“I don't think I do.”

“It's an observation I have made. When two people come close to each other, they reach a point. In front of them they see a bridge towards the future. They decide whether to cross together. Otherwise they keep each other always at a certain distance.”

“And that is what we did?”

“Sometimes just one person sees the bridge. That person has to say something, or do something, or refuse to do something. Then the other can cross. They can both cross together.”

“That was our bridge?”

“I had a friend, she is a friend still. Not long after she started living with someone I also knew, he went to bed with someone else. He said it was not important to him. He said it did not matter.”

“And she said?”

“She said, ‘I'm not going to make a scene. It's up to you. If you want to live with me, that is the last time. You decide.'”

“And he did decide?”

“He did.”

“Which way?”

“That is not the point of the story.”

“The point is that people reach such moments?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“They decide to be with the other person, whatever happens.”

“If you like.”

“What would you call it?”

“You don't recognize this. Is that what you're saying? It is foreign. You think it is some kind of German romanticism.”

“I can almost reach it, not quite.”

“You think I'm a bit mad, like my distant cousin.”

“Heinrich von Kleist. When I came back to London, I read some of his stories, and I read about him. He had a breakdown when he read Kant and realized that there is no way to distinguish what is true from what one believes to be true although it's not.”

“English pragmatism. You think a mere philosophical paradox should not cause a breakdown.”

“There he was, writing all these stories of misunderstanding.”

“You think we misunderstand each other?”

“My father …” said George. “Perhaps it was an accident, but really I believe he committed suicide. If I had not left him, so that he walked off on that path on his own … I could have prevented it.”

“Are you saying that this experience remains with you in some form? Are you saying it has made you tentative?”

“I should have continued to do what I was doing, which was to go along with my father. Instead, I followed an impulse of my own, to go back.”

“You decided something.”

“You asked me to decide. Now I wonder whether I decided in the wrong way. I think perhaps I should have kept going along with you, stayed with you in Berlin.”

“You think the situation is like the one with your father. You think you might have left me to a terrible fate, on my own in Germany.”

“Don't be angry at me, but you do seem to make it difficult. I don't understand why you won't simply say, ‘We want to be together. Let's work out how best to do it.'”

“I didn't say that. But we seem to be doing it, nonetheless. The English way, to muddle along. Perhaps that is what we have decided.”

“And then I wonder whether, if you really loved me, why you wouldn't come over here to live with me.”

“But here we are.”

“Is your offer still open?”

“If I said, ‘Yes,' does that mean you would come back now, to Berlin, with me?”

“I don't know.”

“Exactly.”

“Why not come here, to England? We could live here.”

“I don't think I can leave Berlin.”

George thought, If we wait until the summer, we shall be able to see how things are turning out in Germany. Perhaps everyone has been worrying too much about a war. It won't be long before I'm qualified, and if things are not bad there, I could say, Yes.

At the beginning of January Anna went back to Berlin, and in the middle of February George invited Bernardette out.

He started to like her a lot, and the third time they went out, at the end of the evening, he kissed her, tentatively but definitely. She kissed him back, in an affectionate way.

“I'm sorry, George,” she said. “You're a nice boy, but the timing's not good, not good for me at all just now.”

“I shouldn't have done that.”

“I don't know why you say so. I found it rather satisfactory. Do I look offended?”

“No … I shouldn't. I have an attachment myself. I'm sorry.”

“An attachment.”

“I'm not sure. Not in this country.”

“You're looking for a bit of naughtiness?”

“That's not it … I don't know.”

“Perhaps in the future some time. But we can be friends.”

Her affection was able to overcome his awkwardness, and they did remain friends.

In March, Anna wrote,
Perhaps what we are doing suits us both, writing, with visits every half year. Perhaps it expresses a certain truth about us. Keeping each other close. Keeping each other at a distance.

George wrote back,
When I'm finished training, that's called getting qualified, I shall have to do house jobs, that is all: six months as a house surgeon and six months as a house physician. It's still a kind of training, like an apprenticeship. But after that I' ll be registered, an independent doctor. I can go wherever I like, to Germany, anywhere. Or there is perhaps another possibility. Perhaps I could do my house jobs in a hospital in Berlin.

And so they wrote. Less frequently, George and Werner exchanged letters. George looked forward to his summer visit to Berlin.

On April 28, 1937, the following appeared in
The Times
:

THE TRAGEDY OF GUERNICA

TOWN DESTROYED IN AIR ATTACK

EYEWITNESS'S ACCOUNT BILBAO, APRIL, 27

From Our Special Correspondent

Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of the open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers and Heinkel fighters, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000 lb downward and it is calculated more than 3,000 aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields.…

At 2 a.m. today, when I visited the town, the whole of it was a horrible sight flaming from end to end.…

Destruction, thought George. German warplanes. German rearmament.

In the summer of 1937, George travelled to visit Anna. Werner also came to Berlin, and the three of them spent some time together, almost as if nothing had happened since they'd cycled to the Wannsee a year earlier.

George also spent time alone with Werner when he was in Berlin. Werner talked about his thesis, about the progress he'd made. He had become very interested in a philosopher called Martin Heidegger.

“Are you still working on the question of how minds can meet?” George asked.

“That question is still present, but somewhat in the background, at least for the time being. There are more fundamental issues.”

George no longer experienced the intense interest that Werner used to take in him. We don't seem as close, he thought. Or am I imagining it? He remembered how angry Werner had been with the realization that Anna and he were having an affair. He remembered the terrible dinner that Anna and he had hoped would be welcoming. He remembered Werner drinking a great deal: Bull's Blood.

But Werner had seemed to get over his anger, and he seemed pleased now to see George. Perhaps, George thought, being in England for a year was something like a holiday for him. Now he's surrounded by German scholarship again. He's immersed himself in that.

Of the people at Trinity, the one with whom George kept up most was Peter, who was now at the Board of Trade. They'd meet for a meal sometimes, and from time to time Cambridge people would have parties, to which George and Peter would both go.