Kaputt (35 page)

The Minister of Romania, Noti Constantinidu, who had spent his best years in Italy and wanted to end his days in Rome in Panama Street, spoke about the Roman summer, the voices of the fountains in the deserted squares, the fiery heat at noon and, while he talked, he shivered in the dazzling light of the northern night and gazed at his white hands that seemed like discarded wax hands lying on the tablecloth of pale blue satin. Constantinidu had returned the day before from Mikkeli, Marshal Mannerheim's headquarters, where he had gone to convey a high decoration bestowed on the Marshal by young King Michael of Romania.

"Since I last saw you," Constantinidu had said to the Marshal, "you have lost twenty years; the summer has brought you the gift of youth."

"Summer?" Mannerheim had replied. "There are ten months of winter in Finland and two without summer." The conversation lingered on Marshal Mannerheim, on the clash between his "decadent" tastes and his regal manner and appearance, on the immense prestige he enjoyed among the people and in the army, on the hardships that the war was thrusting on the Finnish people during that terrible first winter of war. Countess Mannerheim remarked that in Finland the cold does not blow down from the North, but breaks in from the East. "Although Lapland is beyond the Arctic Circle," she added, "the cold is much less bitter there than in the Volga region."

"That's a new angle on the everlasting Eastern question," said de Foxá.

"Do you think there still is an Eastern question for Europe?" asked the Minister of Turkey. "I share Philip Guedalla's opinion— for the Western people the entire Eastern question has by now been reduced to finding out what the Turks think of the Western question."

De Foxá mentioned that in the morning he had met the United States Minister, Arthur Schoenfeld, who was extremely vexed with Philip Guedalla because of his last book,
Men of War,
published in London, a copy of which he had found at Stockmann's bookshop. The English author in his chapter on the Turks made the statement that the barbarian invasions in ancient days had always come to Europe from the East simply because they could not come from anywhere else before America had been discovered.

"The barbarian invasions have always come to Turkey from the West," said Agah Aksel, "as far back as the days of Homer."

"Did the Turks already exist in Homeric days?" asked Colette Constantinidu.

"There are Turkish carpets," replied Agah Aksel, "that are much older than the
Iliad."

A few days previously we had visited Dinu Cantemir, who lived in Brunnsparken, opposite the British Legation, in the beautiful house of the Linders, to admire his collection of china and oriental carpets. While Dinu Cantemir's hand was drawing in the air for me the genealogical tree of his finest specimens of Dresden and while Bengt von Torne, standing under the portrait of a famous Linder beauty, spoke to Mircea Berindey and Titu Michailescu about the paintings of Gallen Kallela, the Ministers of Turkey and of Romania, kneeling in the middle of the room, wrangled about two small, sixteenth-century Turkish ritual carpets that Cantemir had spread on the floor. In one of them two squares and two diamond-shaped oblongs were alternately woven in rose, violet and green,- in the other there were four squares in pink, blue and gold of a clearly Persian inspiration. The Minister of Turkey extolled the supremely beautiful combination of the tints in the one carpet—the most difficult design he had ever seen,- the Minister of Romania praised the almost feminine delicacy of the shades resembling an old Persian miniature in the other carpet.

"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Constantinidu, raising his voice.

"I stake my word of honor that you are wrong," replied Agah Aksel in an angry tone. They were both kneeling, gesticulating and waving their arms as if they were worshiping in the Turkish manner. Continuing the argument, they finally sat down opposite one another, their legs crossed, on the two carpets. Agah Aksel said, "People have never been fair to the Turks."

Aksel continued, "Some day there will only be a few carpets left of the great Turkish civilization. We are a heroic and unfortunate people. All our misfortunes arise from our centuries-old tolerance. If we had been less tolerant, we might, perhaps, have subdued all of Christendom."

I asked him what the word "tolerance" meant in Turkish.

"We have always been generous toward the conquered people," replied Agah Aksel.

"I cannot understand," said de Foxá, "why the Turks did not become Christians. It would have simplified things."

"You are right," replied Agah Aksel, "if we had become Christians, we still would be in Budapest and, perhaps, in Vienna today."

"The Nazis are in Vienna today," said Constantinidu.

"If they will become Christians, they will stay there," said Agah Aksel.

"The greatest problem of modern days is still the religious problem," said Bengt von Törne.
"On ne peut pas tuer le dieu—
God cannot be killed." And he told us what had occurred a little time ago in Turku, the Finnish city on the Gulf of Bothnia. A Soviet parachutist who had dropped near the city was captured and locked up in the Turku prison. He was about thirty years old, a workman in a factory in Kharkov and a fervid communist. Being of a thoughtful turn of mind, he seemed not only interested in but also well informed about many subjects, particularly ethics. He was obviously better read than most
udarniki
or
stakhanovtzi.
In his cell the prisoner read extensively, choosing books on religious subjects that the governor of the prison, who was interested in so strange and complex a human specimen, allowed him to take out of his private library. Naturally, the prisoner was a materialist and an atheist.

After a time he was given work as a mechanic in the prison factory. One day he asked to have a talk with a clergyman. A young Lutheran pastor, highly esteemed for his learning and piety, and famous as a preacher, went to the prison and was taken into the cell of the Soviet paratrooper. For nearly two hours the two men were locked up together alone in the cell. At the end of this long talk, when the pastor rose to leave, the prisoner placed his hands on the pastor's shoulders and, after a moment of hesitation, embraced him. Later, these details were printed in the Turku papers.

A few weeks went by, and the prisoner, who for days had appeared to be tortured by secret and painful thoughts, asked again to be allowed to see the pastor, who went to the prison and, as on the previous occasion, was locked up with the communist in his cell. About half an hour went by, when a jailer walking outside heard a shriek and a call for help. He unlocked the cell and saw the prisoner standing against the wall and the pastor lying at his feet in a pool of blood. Before he died, the pastor revealed that at the end of their conversation the prisoner had embraced him and, while his arms were around him, had stabbed him in the back with a sharp iron file. In the course of the trial the murderer declared during his examination that he had killed the pastor because his communist and atheist mind was troubled by the weight of the clergyman's reasonings. He was sentenced to death and shot.

"He had tried," concluded Bengt von Törne, "to kill God in the pastor."

The story of that murder, which appeared in all the Finnish papers, had deeply stirred public opinion. Lieutenant Gummerus, the son of a former Minister of Finland in Rome told me that the commander of the firing squad, a Turku officer who was a friend of his, had been greatly impressed by the murderer's serenity.

"He had made peace with his conscience," said de Foxá.

"But this is horrible!" exclaimed Countess Mannerheim. "How can anyone conceive of the idea of killing God?"

"The entire modern world is trying to kill God," said Agah Aksel. "God's very existence is in peril in the modern consciousness."

"Is it true of the Moslem consciousness?" asked Cantemir.

"Yes, unfortunately, also in the Moslem consciousness. Not because we are near to communist Russia, but because the murder of God is in the air,- it is an element of modern civilization."

"The modern state," said Constantinidu, "deludes itself into thinking that it can protect God's life simply with police measures."

"It's not only God's life. The modern state deludes itself that it can protect its own existence," said de Foxá. "Take Spain as an example. The only way to turn out Franco is to kill God, and the attempts on God's life in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona are too numerous to count. Never a day goes by that someone does not fire a pistol at Him." He told us that the day before he had found a very recent Spanish book in Stockmann's bookshop and, opening it on the first page, he had read the first line: "God, that lunatic of genius..."

"What is significant about the Turku murder," said Bengt von Törne, "is not so much that a Russian communist has killed a clergyman, but that Karl Marx is trying to kill God. It is a typically Marxist crime."

"We must have the courage to admit that the modern world is more willing to accept
Das Kapital
than the Gospels," said Constantinidu.

"This applies to the Koran also," said Agah Aksel. "It is surprising to see how easily the Mohammedan youth accepts communism. The Mohammedan youth in the eastern republics of the U.S.S.R. gives up Mohammed for Marx without resistance. What will the Islamic world be without the Koran?"

"The Catholic Church," said de Foxá, "has given evidence of being able to exist without the Gospels."

"Some day there may be communism without Marx. At any rate that's what many Englishmen hope for," said Cantemir. "For many Englishmen the ideal is the Marx
Kapital
in a 'blue book' version."

"The English," said Agah Aksel, "have no reasons to fear communism. For them the problem is to win the class war on the same field where they won the battle of Waterloo—on the playing-field of Eton."

Countess Mannerheim mentioned that a few days previously when the German Minister von Blücher in talking with some colleagues had appeared to be very concerned about the communist threat to Great Britain, Count Adam de Moltke-Hieutfeldt, Secretary of the Danish Legation, had answered, "Don't worry, Britons never will be Slavs."

"Englishmen," said de Foxá, "have the great gift of stripping every problem of all superfluous elements and of laying bare even the most serious and complex problems. We shall see communism," he added, "strolling naked through the streets of Great Britain, just as Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry."

It was about two in the morning. The cold was intense and the metallic light entering through the wide-open window turned the faces of the guests so livid that I begged de Foxá to have the window closed and the lights turned on. We all looked like corpses; nothing looks more like a dead body than a man dressed for the evening in full daylight, or a made-up, bare-shouldered young woman whose jewels glitter in the sun. We sat around the rich table like the dead attending a funeral banquet in Hades. The servants closed the windows and turned on the lights, and something warm, intimate and secret entered the room. The wine sparkled in the glasses, our faces were suffused with the color of blood, eyes shone merrily, and our voices once again became warm and deep, like the voices of living people. Suddenly we heard the long wail of the alert, followed at once by the barrage of anti-aircraft guns. The mellow beelike hum of the Soviet planes came from over the sea.

"This may seem funny," said Constantinidu in a calm voice, "but I am frightened."

"I'm frightened, too," said de Foxá, "and it is not in the least funny."

No one stirred. We heard the deep dull crashes of the explosions; the walls shook. A glass in front of Colette Constantinidu cracked with a faint tinkle. At a sign from de Foxá a servant again opened the window. We could see the Soviet planes, maybe a hundred of them, flying low above the roofs of the city like large insects with transparent wings.

"The strangest thing about these luminous nights of the North," said Mircea Berindey in his tired Romanian accent, "is that nocturnal gestures, thoughts, sentiments, objects that are born only in the secrecy of darkness, and that the night jealously guards and protects in its dark bosom, can be seen in full daylight." Turning toward Madame Slörn, he added, "Look, this is a nocturnal face."

Pale, her lips faintly trembling, her white eyelids quivering, Madame Slörn smiled, lowering her head. Madame Slörn was born in Greece, her face is diaphanous, her eyes black, her brow lofty and pure, and there is an antique gentleness in her smile and her gestures. She has owl's eyes, the eyes of Pallas, with white delicate quivering eyelids.

"I like being afraid," said Madame Slörn.

From time to time a deep silence blended with the rumble of guns, the crash of bombs and the hum of engines. During those sudden streaks of silence we could hear the birds singing.

"The railway station is in flames," said Agah Aksel who sat facing the window.

The Elanto stores were also on fire. It was cold. The ladies had wrapped themselves in their furs; the icy nocturnal sun shone through the trees of the park. Far away, toward Soumenlinna, a dog was barking.

PART FOUR
The Birds

XI. The Glass Eye

PRINCESS Louise von Preussen, a niece of Kaiser Wilhelm II— Prince Joachim Hohenzollern, her father, now dead for some years, had been a younger brother of the Crown Prince—and Ilse were to meet me that evening at the Potsdam station. "We shall bicycle over from Litzensee," Ilse had phoned.

It was a damp, warm spring evening. When I got off the Berlin train a light drizzle was scattering silvery dust into the air. The houses at the end of the square looked as though they were made of aluminum. Officers and soldiers stood in groups on the sidewalks before the station.

As I was gazing at a propaganda poster of the
Leibesstandart
Adolf Hitler stuck up on the wall of the station—on the poster two SS men armed with tommy guns, their faces clean shaven and clear-cut, their foreheads concealed under large steel helmets, a cold cruel glint in their gray eyes, stood out sharply against a landscape of blazing houses, charred trees and guns sunk in mud up to the wheel hubs—I felt a hand touch my arm. "Good evening," said Ilse. Her cheeks were flushed by the long bicycle ride, her hair was ruffled by the wind. "Louise is waiting for us outside," she said. "She is watching the bicycles." Then she smiled and added, "She is very sad, poor child. Be nice to her."