A Stranger in My Own Country

  There are many dreams that can be triggered by the idea of ‘refuge’, such as the one where one of our children gets out through a door that has been carelessly left open, and where we only manage to get him back again after much fighting and searching and braving many dangers. And then there’s the dream where we are besieged in our refuge by Hitler’s men, and we are left with no choice but to blow up all the emergency exits,

  (7.X.44.) the passageways collapse, and now we really are cut off from the world outside, living forgotten and abandoned in the bowels of the earth. But when a long period of time has passed, many months later, we set to work to clear one of the passageways with shovels. We face immense difficulties and hardships; the earth caves in, large boulders, too heavy for us to lift, block our path, and the main problem is always: where are we going to put the spoil? We have to sacrifice one room after another, we are living on top of each other in an increasingly confined space, and it’s still a long way to the exit. Then disaster strikes and I am buried by falling earth, Suse and the children work frantically to dig me out. But for a long time after that I lie ill, and just can’t seem to recover properly. How long have we been living down here? Years and years! What is the world like outside now? Peaceful? Has the thousand-year Reich finally collapsed? We look into each other’s faces, which have become so pale and translucent, and only when I compare how we look with the coloured pictures of people in books do I realize how much we have changed. And then the day finally comes when we reach the exit. We are standing in our cellar, but the broken window has been replaced, there are no more rustling leaves underfoot, the spiders have been banished, and the shelves have been filled again with neatly organized supplies. We look into each other’s faces, and take each other by the hand: ‘How my heart is pounding!’

  ‘Mine too!’

  ‘Does this mean peace?!’

  ‘New life in our old house!’

  ‘Quiet! Listen!’

  And we can clearly hear a child crying upstairs. We stand there, tears welling up in our eyes. A child is crying, children are being born again, not in order to be torn to pieces in hideous wars, but for the sake of a better future! But we dare not go upstairs, we retreat back down to our refuge. We look at each other. We’ve become so scared over the years! We’re afraid of the people who have endured all the things that we fled from. We’re afraid of the bright daylight, the loud laughter, a harsh word. We’re afraid of the gaze of other people: even to each other we look like ghosts now. If it was just ourselves, we would remain in this self-imposed isolation. But we have to think of the children – children whose nerves, like ours, have become stretched thin as gossamer, whose ears would flinch at every loud noise, whose eyes would be dazzled by the daylight.

  But then one day there we are, outside in the garden of our house, with our children. It is a very dull morning, at the start of summer, before sunrise. The strangers living in the house, our house, are still asleep. The children are really enjoying being outside in the open air, every flower, every blade of grass excites them and prompts a hundred questions. The birds are stirring, and in our shed a cow moos. More excitement, more questions! And then all of a sudden, close to where I am standing, the door from the house onto the veranda is pushed open, and a tall, slim woman is standing in the doorway. She looks at us, hesitantly, questioningly. Suse and I get up and walk towards her. We look at each other. We see a look of horrified astonishment spread across her face, we must look very different, and move very differently, from the normal human population. I try to speak, I want to ask what I already know, I just want to say: ‘It’s peacetime again, isn’t it?’ But all that comes out of my throat are strange, distorted sounds, suddenly I break into sobs, tears well from my eyes, I am weeping, all I can do is weep. The woman is leaning back, her body pressed against the doorframe, her hand is laid on her heart and her eyes are wide open and staring. ‘I know’, she whispers. ‘I know who you are. You are the buried ones that people talk about round here. You are the ones who were buried alive, and now you have risen from the dead!’ She stares at us again. ‘It’s you’, she says again. ‘I can tell by looking at you. Buried alive. How could you do it? How could you do that to your children?’ Suddenly she turns round and picks up a large bowl from the table on the veranda, which is piled high with red cherries. She calls out in a loud voice: ‘Come here, children! I’ve got some cherries here. Cherries for you to eat!’ And our children, ignoring us completely, run straight past us to this unknown woman.

  Among the many dreams that I dream at night during this time of war, which would fill more than one stout volume if I were to relate them in detail, is one that I should at least mention briefly, because it is so different from the ones I have recounted so far. Our underground refuge features in this dream too, but in addition to the rooms I’ve already described there is another passageway, a long passageway lined with cells, proper prison cells. When we move into our refuge they are all empty, but gradually they fill up. By a combination of guile and brute force I manage to capture all my worst enemies and lock them up in these cells, starting of course with mayor Stork and his wife, but also including quite a few others who became my enemies, such as the small farmer Mechthal. I lock them all up, and to all my other occupations I now add that of jailer. I keep them there year after year, nobody ever speaks to them, all they ever hear is the sound of their own voice. I feed them, dressed in a long, dark robe and with a black mask over my face. And I see how the engrained brutality of mayor Stork starts to break down, how this pitiful scrap of a human being now stands naked before me in all his wretchedness. I hear him screaming and crying, praying and cursing. I have made a gramophone recording, and the record catalogues every villainous deed of his known to me: listening at the window of Mrs Schote, his cowardly victory, dodging war service, withholding ration cards, denying people new shoes – there is so much to list that one record actually isn’t large enough. On many days I put this record on, and the litany of all his crimes is relayed through the microphone in his cell day and night, night and day, until he begins to scream in agony, rant and rave, beat the walls of his cell and bang his head against the steel door. But when he wakes from his dazed state, the gramophone is still playing the same record, he has no more tears, all that’s left to him is despair. He sits there, silent and stupefied, occasionally raising his forefinger and nodding, and sometimes laughing quietly to himself. That’s how I deal with him, that’s my way of preempting divine retribution, which is far too lenient. His wife, on the other hand, I feed up with all manner of fattening foods, I stuff her and force-feed her the way one stuffs and force-feeds a goose, and I get her to the point where this once-mercurial woman just sits in her bed like a lump of fat, virtually immobilized, and unable to think of anything except food. And then I put the couple together in the same cell and watch the burning hatred erupt between them, between the greedy, overfed woman, who begrudges her jaundiced little husband every mouthful, and the half-broken liar, constantly pestered by his scheming, self-satisfied wife. This too is one of my dreams. But I’m ashamed of it really, which is why I have related it here – precisely because I am ashamed of it.

  But what does it all signify? Is it just the pathetic attempt of a weakling who can’t handle everyday life to escape into a world of dreams? I fight my corner stoutly enough by day, I don’t avoid confrontations. They often cost me a lot of nervous energy, and I hate them – but I stand my ground. No, this is no cowardly flight on my part. But it is like an island, to which I return in the evening in my boat after a hard day’s work, and where I can be alone with myself and those who are dear to me. I never felt so strongly as I did under Hitler’s rule that when a man’s very survival is constantly under threat, he needs somewhere to escape to with his hopes and dreams. An inner certainty that one day the evil enemy will have lost the game is not enough to get us through the worst of times. Because we need strength each day to endure the constant little stings and torments of everyday life, we
have to have something that gives us this new strength one day at a time. A distant certainty is good – but also distant. My dream of a refuge deep in the bowels of the earth takes me away from my enemies each day, and strengthens me for the day to come. I was alone, and down here, twenty metres below ground, I’m out of reach. Here the banned books line the shelves, the walls are hung with degenerate art, and traitorous thoughts run through my brain – free from interference! Here is the source of my strength, which no Nazi can violate!

  Unfortunately it is not the case that this source flows freely every day. Some days it seems to be blocked, and it’s no use summoning up my old plans; they have faded, they no longer work. I rack my brains for new ideas, but to no purpose – nothing comes to me. I lie in bed at night, inconsolable, it’s hard to get to sleep, the following day is almost unbearable. Then all of a sudden, maybe weeks later, my refuge is open and waiting for me again.

  Separate entry: It took two days longer than I expected to hear whether my visit to Mahlendorf would come to anything or not. The chief prosecutor could not be reached. During that time I carried on working as before. My heart is more at peace again. I knew that if this way of smuggling the MS out of the building myself were to fail, there were two other ways. Admittedly not ways I would freely choose, because then the MS would pass through the hands of other people, and would remain in the hands of other people for some time. But at least it would be away from this closely guarded building, where it poses a constant threat to our lives. But none of that is necessary now: the chief prosecutor has granted permission. Tomorrow I shall be going home with the senior nurse. Someone has already called ahead, they are expecting me. At long last I’ll be able to eat my fill again of food that I enjoy. I’ll be able to walk in the bright autumn sun, which is shining today too. People will stare at me. I shall smile, I shall be carrying the MS on my person, and I shall hide it away in a safe place. Until the end of the war. It’s a strange thing: sometimes, as I write these lines, it feels as if the war really is over already, as if I am writing this in retrospect, in a time of peace. Yet the last two nights, and yesterday lunchtime, the airraid siren sounded again. Through the bars of my window I watched large formations of aircraft heading for Berlin in the sunny skies: there bombs were falling, houses were collapsing or going up in flames, people were running for their lives and suffering terrible torments – while I carry on writing, as if in peacetime. And tomorrow I shall get the MS to a place of safety.

  Of course, I regret that I was not able to complete it. Another ten days, or maybe just a week, and I would have finished the chapter about the war and the one about my trip to France. But I can’t let this favourable opportunity slip. It won’t come again. And once I get back here safely, I won’t be writing any more. There’ll be time for that later. I’ve written the worst of it out of my system: the old hatred of the Nazis is still there, but it doesn’t hurt so much. And if this whole work is a sorry failure, without merit or interest, what harm is done? I’ve unburdened my soul! In twenty-four hours we’ll have the rail journey behind us, the senior nurse and I (a good job they didn’t pick a police officer as my escort) will be walking along the shore of the lake towards Mahlendorf. My naturally suspicious nature keeps telling me there may still be some danger lurking somewhere: an unannounced inspection, someone telling me to hand over the MS before my trip. But my rational mind tells me this is just my paranoia speaking. I have just packed up my dirty laundry in my suitcase to take with me. The senior nurse – the strictest in the building – stood by and watched me. I held up an envelope, in which I had placed the letters I had received in prison and already attended to, and said: ‘These are old letters, Mr Holst. Do you want to look through them? It’s not as if I’m trying to smuggle anything out!’

  ‘And I wouldn’t expect you to!’ replied the senior nurse, leaving me to put the letters into my suitcase without examining them.

  On our last excursion in peacetime, through the villages clustered around their loudspeakers, through the peaceful fields, meadows and forests, we didn’t drive into the centre of Berlin. We were going to fetch our son, who was in a sanatorium on the northern outskirts of the city, to which he had been evacuated by a doctor of our acquaintance.166 We drove up to the front of the sanatorium, nobody came out to welcome us, and we climbed the steps: no son rushed to meet us. We entered the large office. There were a lot of people sitting or standing around. Our son glanced across at us, nodded and then carried on listening. The doctor shook hands with us briefly and offered my wife a chair. We were all listening now. We heard the Führer’s voice issuing from the microphone: German troops have entered Poland . . . etc., etc. (check with Ibeth167 and see what Horkenbach has to say168). And then the same old spiel about the shameful Treaty of Versailles, the just demands, the madness of the Corridor, and how Danzig is a German city.169 How nauseating it was even back then, this empty claptrap that never spelled out the real reason! And how meaningless it has since become! Who cares about the Corridor and Danzig today? Today the very survival of the German nation is at stake! We have sacrificed ten times more people than the entire population of Danzig, we have had hundreds of times more houses reduced to rubble than make up the whole of Danzig. How this war, just by virtue of the fact that it has lasted five years now, has unmasked the lies of that idiot! How the real reasons have emerged more and more clearly: Hitler’s insatiable hunger for power, his unbridled need to dominate others, his craving for everything that is good and lovely in this world, which, despite his best efforts, he cannot destroy! We stood by the radio in silence. What the others were thinking, I have no idea. A few women and an older girl were in tears. One young thing appeared bored by it all. A woman in the corner was scribbling furiously in her shorthand book; I fear she was not transcribing the Führer’s speech, but writing a letter to her beloved. We kept on hearing the word ‘war’ coming out of the loudspeaker – ‘war’, ‘war’, ‘military involvement’, and more war . . . I looked at my boy, he was nine years old. I gave this war at least four years (and I was mocked constantly for this prediction during the first two years of the war). My son would be fourteen, fifteen years old by the time this war ended. In all probability he would hardly be aware that it was happening. (Back then nobody had any notion of the terrible air raids to come.) And how is it looking now? The war has just entered its sixth year, and the boy has already been digging trenches out East. Next year he has to leave grammar school and serve as an anti-aircraft gunner somewhere (carrying on with school lessons in his spare time – officially!). No indeed, the war will not spare him. The little town where his school is situated has been targeted by American bombers. Miraculously his grammar school, the largest building in the place, has escaped unscathed. But for how long? How we have learned to endure the constant fear for the safety of our nearest and dearest, getting up with it in the morning and going to bed with it at night! How we have changed! And how the boy has changed! War has come to seem like a normal way of life for him (even if he doesn’t like it) – but for his father it is still something to be rebelled against at every turn.

  The Führer has spoken. Solemn silence – then the German national anthem followed by the Nazi Party anthem, the Horst Wessel Song. ‘Raise high the flag, close tight the ranks, SA marches on . . .’ Silence. The doctor has quickly turned down the volume knob on the loudspeaker to mute the sound. He glances at the people around him, and I do the same: quite a few of them are sporting Party badges in their buttonholes. ‘Another incorrigible chancer’, I think to myself. ‘They’ll take it out on you for not letting the Horst Wessel Song play out to the end when war was declared.’ And I smile at him. It’s the same doctor who shares my view that Germany would be better off as a British mandated territory. Incorrigibly rash, and incorrigibly true-hearted. He whispers to me: ‘All the same, I hope we win. The German soldier . . .’ Incorrigibly true-hearted? Incorrigibly German. This furor teutonicus that seizes even the best of men when the call to arms comes! Po
or, incorrigible Germans!