Therefore Choose (8 page)

“Let me get some clean glasses,” said Anna.

She jumped up quickly, as if eager to escape. After a while she returned with three fresh glasses, put one at each place, and sat down again.

“Here,” said Werner.

“Just a half a glass,” said Anna.

“For you, Herr Schmidt?”

“Half a glass for me too.”

“To match the Fräulein,” said Werner.

He poured himself a full glass, sat down, and took two or three mouthfuls as if experimentally.

“There,” he said. “Well up to the standard of the French wine, I think. Wouldn't you say?”

George took a sip. “It is good,” he said.

“I think it's so much better, really,” said Werner.

“The wine?”

“We have moved to a new topic. I mean, what you are doing. You two.”

“I see.”

“Indulging in sexual intercourse before marriage. So much better.”

Neither George nor Anna spoke.

“It is absurd, is it not, to wait until one is married? It never mattered to aristocrats, who take advantage of their serving maids. Why should it matter to educated people?”

“You are trying to provoke,” said Anna.

“If you think biologically, how could one make a commitment, which is a social matter, before sexual consummation, which is biological?”

“Why do you say biological?”

“That is what it is, is it not? Or perhaps I should be more blunt. Because the German is always blunt. That is the part we have to play in the drama of Europe. The French is obsessed with food and flirtation, the Dutch is gloomy, the English is perfidious, the German is blunt.”

“And the Belgians like chocolate,” said Anna.

“Be direct,” said Werner. “That is best. Use the proper medical term. Copulation. No. Coitus. Better still. It has the Latinate sound beloved of the medical profession.”

“Shall we next hear about eructation and flatulence?” said Anna.

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“Latinate sounds. Are you speaking generally or about us?”

“Generally, of course. We are conversing.”

He took another mouthful of wine.

“One needs to take things in order.”

“Come on,” George said. “Why are you talking like this?”

“Conversation, ethics, sociology … And we should not neglect the medical. We can progress, if you please, towards consequences for health, because as a first priority society must be healthy. The first priority: not to allow the entry of any contaminating influences. Or we can, if you please, progress towards the literary because often, in the literary, once coitus is performed, outside the confines of marriage I mean, certain consequences are to be expected.”

“Shall we all go out tomorrow?” said Anna. “We can take a picnic. If the weather is nice we can walk by the river.”

“No,” said Werner. “I speak in the English way once more. I shall say what we shall do, then we shall do it. We shall undertake an adventure.”

“We shall?”

George and Anna waited to hear what the adventure would be.

“You borrow some bicycles,” said Werner to Anna. “You can do that, can't you? We cycle to the Wannsee. Through the Grunewald woods. It will be most romantic.”

“I have my own bicycle. Where would I get two others?” said Anna.

“I am sure you can,” said Werner.

A plan was made.

It was late when Werner said he was going.

“I'll walk with you to the S-Bahn.”

“I'll walk to the Zoologischer Garten.”

“I'll come with you to the main road then.”

“As you wish.”

They descended the big staircase: Werner first, George following.

“Perfidious Albion,” said Werner as they reached the front door.

“What did you say?”

“You know very well.”

They walked in silence along the quiet side street.

“I'm sorry,” said George.

As they reached the main road, Werner said abruptly, “I'll leave you here. Good night. Thank you for dinner.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” said George.

George got back to the flat to find Anna clearing up, washing dishes.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“No, I am sorry,” said George. “It's my fault. It has come as a shock to him. I should have written to him while he was in Konstanz. A long letter, explaining things.”

“It is my fault,” she said. “I have known him longer than you.”

“Was there anything between you?”

“Not on my part. But now I wonder. I am not very observant. I should observe more carefully. I should be more careful.”

“We should have thought more.”

“I think Werner is shy with women, when it comes to, how do you say? A relationship. He probably feels bad. We press his face in it.”

“I thought it would be nice for him, now that he is back in Berlin. I thought we would be able to welcome him. He does not find his parents easy. Not his father, at least.”

“You think we should not be together?” she said.

“I don't think that, not at all.”

“Now your friendship with Werner is spoiled. One can see it is very important to you. Important to both of you.”

“I think he feels excluded. I think that's the problem. I will spend time with him before I go back.”

Anna was able to borrow bicycles
, and next morning the three rode through the Grunewald Forest, pedals whirling, amid flashes of light through the trees. It was farther than they thought, but, at last, on the Kleine Wannsee, they found a beach, laid down their bicycles with some sense of relief from the unaccustomed exercise, and sat in the sunshine. With trees behind them, they looked out across a calm strait of water. A rowing boat inched across the scene. The occupants could be made out, figures without faces, the one who rowed moving as if by clockwork.

“This is where my relative Heinrich came,” said Anna. “One hundred and twenty-five years ago. With Henriette Vogel, with whom he was deeply in love.”

“They came to commit suicide,” said Werner.

“Right here?” George said, looking round.

“Not far away,” said Anna. “Heinrich has a tombstone, over there.”

“It's a morbid subject,” said Werner.

“Not at all,” said Anna. “Much of Heinrich's literary work was about misunderstandings between people. It is an important theme, the misunderstanding.”

“It is not misunderstanding that is at issue,” said Werner. “The issue is not epistemic. Between people, it is not about knowledge but intention, so if there is any such word, it's misintention.”

“Heinrich felt that Henriette understood him,” said Anna. “He felt he understood her completely.”

“Mutual understanding,” George said to Werner. “The problem you want to do your thesis on.”

“Either it is easier than one thinks, or it is insoluble,” said Werner.

“How should one approach it?” said George.

“I'll start, I think, with Hegel. Identity in difference. And Husserl — understand the workings of the mind.”

“‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments …'” said George.

“What's that?” said Werner.

“A Shakespeare sonnet. ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.'”

“I do not know it.”

George was delighted to know something that Werner did not.

“Cousin Heinrich wanted to meet someone with whom he could establish complete understanding,” said Anna. “The marriage of true minds. Then they could die together. A kind of perfection.”

“Now it's Cousin Heinrich?” said Werner.

Anna continued. “Henriette was ill with cancer. She told Heinrich that she wanted to die with him. He was very moved. More important than wanting to live with him. On their last day, just near here, they spent several hours sitting together: talking, writing letters, drinking wine. Heinrich wrote that he was blissfully happy.”

“It seems strange to me,” George said.

“That is because you are from the other side of that patch of shallow and stormy water that you call the North Sea, from that side where it is difficult to understand the Romantic Geist,” said Werner.

“Perhaps he understands it better than we do,” said Anna.

“Do you understand it?” said Werner.

“Death as a kind of perfection?' said George. “I don't know. I'm going to be a doctor.”

“For most people,” said Anna, “death just happens.”

George said, “You mean for someone who believes in literature, that death can be something you choose?”

“Maybe you are right,” said Anna. “It is morbid.”

After a pause during which no one spoke, she said, “If one were to die, would this not be a good place?”

They hired a rowing boat. George sat in the bow. Werner took the oars and rowed slowly out as Anna, on the stern seat, shut her eyes and turned her face to the sky. It was a day George remembered vividly: the light, the dappled water, Anna with her face to the sun, Werner at the oars. They were together. Had they achieved that? Did everyone feel included?

Anna said she had to spend more time at the magazine: every day until two or three in the afternoon. George spent the mornings with Werner. Many of the afternoons the three spent together. They went to some of the events at the new Olympic Stadium. They saw Jesse Owens beat Lutz Long in the final of the long jump. By that time in Berlin, some measures of previous years had been reversed. The signs proclaiming that certain shops were Jewish, so that they could be shunned, had been removed. Some people said the authorities did not want to give a bad impression to visitors to the Games. Others said it was a moderation, and that the government had recognized its excesses and was being reasonable, as governments generally are.

The three went to see Leni Riefenstahl's film about the Nuremberg rally. Werner had seen it before, but Anna and George had not.

“You should see it before you go back to your umbrellas and fish and chips,” Werner said. “You'll find it interesting.”

The film had come out the year before. Within two years after he had come to power, Hitler had established himself completely. No longer a mere chancellor, he became the living embodiment of the German people. He was them and they were him. The opening sequences of the film were of Hitler arriving at Nuremberg by plane. The shot was very accomplished. It showed the shadow of the plane sliding gracefully over the city. In the next sequence every person in the cinema was with Hitler as he stood in his open car, looking over his shoulder, catching the eyes of cheering people who lined the route four or five thick. Then the audience went beyond being with Hitler: they became him, just as he had become the German people. Something was happening: a sense of purpose, of enthusiasm, of youth, of hope for the future.

As the three walked together after the film, Werner said, “It stirs something in me. It resonates with something true in us.”

“I suppose a rally is all right for the faithful,” said George. “But wheeling out people like Robert Ley is a bit much, isn't it? Shouldn't he be disciplined for using his position to appropriate more motor cars and houses than anyone could possibly want?”

“Probably he is a bad apple,” said Werner. “For some reason we don't understand, it must be difficult for Hitler to dismiss him.”

“And all the other fonctionnaires? They made the second half of the film pretty boring.”

“I don't want to listen to the airing of political sentiments,” said Werner. “But when you listen to Hitler you know he is a good person.”

George did not say anything.

“Hitler has made it completely clear he doesn't want war; nobody in Germany wants war. But we do want to be strong. If you read history, you see very soon that nations that are weak get attacked. Imagine a herd of deer, surrounded by wolves. Which deer gets attacked? It's the slowest one, the one with a limp. Any nation that is weak invites aggression. We want to make sure that doesn't happen. That is all.”

Nobody spoke.

“We are not just a people who were tripped up at the beginning of the century and have been through terrible economic problems,” said Werner. “There's something in us by which minds can join, pull together.”

George wondered if this would be part of Werner's thesis, the joining of German minds. He thought about making a joke about how people's arms must ache from constantly being held out at forty-five degrees, like railway signals.

“Why does Hitler wear a military uniform?” said Anna. “Those flags and martial music. Labourers marching with spades on their shoulders as if they were rifles.”

“They like parades,” George said.

“You underestimate it,” said Anna. “That Riefenstahl is clever. She works with juxtapositions. She juxtaposes the airplane's shadow with the church spires. Think about it in the way people in the Moscow Linguistic Circle would think about it. The airplane emerges from the clouds, like something in a Wagner opera. It represents modernity. Its shadow slides smoothly and beautifully across churches and traditional buildings of the town. Not just any town: the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, which was the First German Reich. She's clever.”