Not only the Jews were glad to see the back of Sergei Andreyovitch, though he said farewell to me with the most touching tenderness, even risking a comradely squeeze of the hand just before he climbed into the transport.
In retrospect Seryozha’s period as hut commandant was almost like a holiday. My new interviews with Sturmführer Schnauben began again soon after the officer’s return from leave. He used the Gestapo building near the main gate, which he said was quieter. We were less likely to be interrupted. He was in a somewhat different mood. He told me how much he had missed our conversations.
‘I find you an inspiration, Pyatnitski. Your guardian angel still protects you.’ He had been in Berlin. I had the impression he had spoken to someone there about my case. Perhaps after all Kolya, not Mrs Cornelius, was that ‘guardian angel’.
For all that, I lived in perpetual fear of Schnauben turning against me or being replaced by some other SS officer who would reclassify me as a Jew.
Schnauben had brought some new gramophone records back with him. Bach remained his favourite composer. He was particularly fond of a recording of the St John Passion. This was miserable for me. Bach has always seemed irredeemably insane. Yet I had to pretend to appreciate his taste. I do not believe I really deceived him.
‘Neither the Jew nor the Spaniard ever had any true affinity for the Baroque,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you are, after all, a Russian.’
Sometimes I found it impossible to follow his logic, hard as I tried. I did not know if he was joking. Later he claimed he was sure I was American, after all. I lacked any sense of irony. That made him certain I could not be either Jewish or Russian.
Russian blood meant nothing to these people. They despised it. Anyone who was not German was a subhuman whose chief function was to work and die for the Reich. They took their lead from the teachings of the Americans and the British, who for so long had been obsessed with racial definitions. The Reich based their blood laws firmly on those of Mississippi and Alabama. They produced a hodgepodge of poorly conceived legislation which they never really refined.
In recent years I have given much thought to creating a world in which the different races could live in harmony. I have drawn maps showing where the Arabs would live, where we would place the Negroes, what lands should be granted to the Slavs and so on. But as usual no one has listened to me, and we continue to have chaos. The stupidest British mistake was to listen to the Zionists who demanded Palestine as a homeland. The government should have given them Hampstead Garden Suburb where they would have been welcomed and allowed to set up their kibbutzes and their socialist welfare state and not have had so far to travel. They could have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land a mere bus ride away. The Arabs would have been content. There would have been only peace in the region.
Sturmführer Schnauben was interested in my plans for the reorganisation of the British Empire after the war. He would listen with fascination while I explained what was to be done. I honestly believe his respect for my intellect helped keep me alive during those terrible years. He did what he had to do to survive. I have never blamed him.
Ich unterwerfe michl Ich unterwerfe mich! Ich unterwerfe mich dem Tod. Wiedergeburt des Ego. Oh, Jerusalem. Oh, Schönheit! Verwaiste Knochen. Liebling. Glück und Elend. So ja mit kleinen Vögeln. Vögel füllen die Brust. Vögel picken innen, singen für die Freiheit. Mein Imperium, eine Seele. Vögel sterben in mir. Einer nach dem anderen.
My flying cities transport us to new worlds, where strong, healthy people give birth to a wholesome race living by Christ’s laws.
For I am the way and the truth, said Our Saviour. Follow me, He said. Follow me.
My ship is called The One True Path.
My ship is called The Guiding Light.
My ship is called The Paradise Found.
A silence had fallen over Germany.
* * * *
FIFTY-ONE
German materialism, French eroticism, Roman superstition, English and American greed. What can counter these influences? Only Russian spirituality. And of all Slavs, the Cossacks are the truest Russians. We worshipped our tsar-batiushka. Just as the Jews have done in Palestine, my ancestors established their khutora whenever it was possible to reclaim land from the Tatars. Some true Cossacks rode with the German forces but most of those were merely Great Russians claiming Cossack blood in order to get out of the POW camps. I am sure there were few true Cossacks fought for the Germans, though this did not stop Stalin from killing so many. Not that I hated all Germans, even during my years in Dachau. I had the library, at least until it became distasteful to me. I began to forget my Russian roots and believe, because I only had Goethe and his compatriots to comfort me, that German was the finest language for expressing human metaphysics and spirituality.
I think the Sturmführer got the idea for our orchestra and choir from me. He would play me Bach and Beethoven on his gramophone. Beethoven I did not mind, though I preferred, of course, Tchaikovsky. The orchestra soon broke up and we were again reduced to gramophone records. Yet I do not think I could have survived in those early months without music. Today everything is drowned out by the thump-thump of Negro drums, the angry repetitions of the jungle we hoped to conquer but which somehow is conquering us. I had seen that schloss as a place of God, a fortress of civilisation, whose family represented all that was admirable and exemplary in German civilisation, yet Mussolini had known better. Today I understand they sell pizza from a kiosk in the grounds and in summer rock-and-roll bands offer concerts to the crowds of soft-faced children whose only knowledge of German culture is the frankfurter and the hamburger.
The Cornelius girl is proud of her new BMW motorcycle. One ride on the pillion was enough for me. German ideas were the ruin of Russia but Russia, through the Holy Church, can still be the salvation of Europe. Rome has failed her. The proof is everywhere. The proof is manifest. Les donneurs de sérénades. Je respire enfin. Les petites fetnmes. Il est très joli, très sublime. Moi? Je suis un monstre. Appréhendez vous? Non. Non. Non. La sexualité. C’est fini. C’est dangereux pour les enfants? Ah oui, mais je suis un celebrant. I do not lack intellect, only education. And for that I am forced to blame Germany. Another year or two and my schooling would have been complete. Simplicissimus himself was never as unfortunate. May I touch her? It is all I wish to do. Either she is real or I am. C’est impossible pour les deux. All I wished to do was purchase some furniture. Violento, those colorados. Wie spät ist es? Hören Sie sie singen? Sie will nach Wienfahren. Wirfahren zusammen ins Gebirge. Ein Flugzeug? Die Sonne geht spät unter. Dunkle Wolken. Stürmisch. That weather! Yet it is the summers I remember best. If you have never heard marching in a city you could not imagine it. It begins as a kind of rustling sound, like a breeze in autumn trees, then it develops into a rhythmic banging, as sticks pop in a fire, then as if boys beat on dustbins until it takes on a mechanical, deafening quality, not like any human sound at all, but overwhelming your senses. A voice sounds like a loud fault in an engine. When it stops, you want to vomit. I heard that sound in London when the Boys Brigade practised for Armistice Day, reminding me that the British and Germans were not so different. For a while I had an inferior copy of Grimmelshausen, actually in my locker, but that was either confiscated or stolen, I forget.
I am not one of those. Jenseits von Gut und Böse? Hier liegt Dynamit indeed. For me there was no Erlosung. Schnauben made that clear. He insisted I hear and absorb this message. And was he wrong? I still do not know. Spengler said he understood all too well. If we continued on the road to materialism and relied increasingly on technology, China must inevitably come to rule the world. ‘That is the reason for the difference between the Chinese and our friends the Japs,’ he told me.
Quelling my panic, I continued to stand at attention.
‘There is nothing more effective than the Japanese war machine,’ he insisted. ‘It will conquer Asia.’ Of course, he was wrong. Their machines have conquered Europe and America. Von
Morgen bis Mitternacht we must struggle against this, he said. But he wronged me. I could never join his Maschinenstürmer no matter what the inducement. I gave the Sphinx the correct answer. Some of us prefer to answer the questions anyway. Some of us would remain silent until death. I do not have this English habit of talking about everything. They have no dignity. They will never have even a glimpse of paradise. Furcht und Elend is their only future. No one has ever accused me of lacking Innigkeit. The rain on those old cobbled Munich streets smelled sweet as a wheatfield with the dawn dew still upon it and I breathed in the distant air, remembering those cobbles in Kiev, yellow Kiev, gold and full of raw gems. Then came the Stahlgewitter. I fled down the long tunnel which ultimately took me to America, then to Africa, Europe and finally to England. How was this Verwandlung accomplished? Das Urteil ist yours. I was fated to become the organ-grinder’s monkey. They say it is nonsense that the Jews controlled everything, but while they did not own every newspaper (the Jew Pork Times) or every film studio (Jew Knighted Artistes) consider the books they did publish, the movie-plays they did write. Yet I still do not say I agreed with Hitler. The trouble is, of course, that the propaganda against him was inaccurate and absurd so that all his critics were discredited. These Americans are no different. They all believe in flying saucers. As a result nobody wished to build mein Flügelhotel, which would make its way round the world landing at exotic cities and picturesque landscapes then fly my visitors home again. Das einfache Leben! But they said I was mad. I had nothing to do with flying saucers or for that matter cups or plates.
But even in the depths of the ancient forests where sunlight slants between tall trunks, there is a waterfall and a pool where a dragon drinks. That dragon guards a treasure which can only be won by a hero with a magic sword. Bathe in the dragon’s blood, sang the bird, and you will be for ever invincible, only beware the linden leaves. And, of course, it was a falling leaf which was to be my ruin. Seryozha had changed for the worse. I did not like him any better. He had shown me a cartoon by Bakst. He said it was of himself. Those beautiful leaves, all mellow. Autumn is my favourite time of year. It was surprising to find him there. He had read Proust in prison, he said. ‘From my hundred and first week,’ he said. ‘It was relatively civilised. Then they sent me here. But you? Why would you be in Dachau? Now, I mean.’ It was my lot to be for ever ‘Category C’. It gave me no real status. Mosley looked down on me, I know, even on the Isle of Man, where I was for a short time. To be ‘Category C’ was to be a nonentity. At the time I was upset. Later, I came again to appreciate the anonymity. I wrote an article for the News Chronicle concerning the virtues of Cossack arranged marriages but I heard nothing from them. They, too, were clearly prejudiced against class C internees.
They have no idea what it means to be a refugee, beginning one life after another, constantly settling, constantly forced to move on, unable to speak one’s own language, save to other refugees. It was even worse for me since I despised so many Russians — Trotskyists and left-wingers of every stripe who had wheedled their way into the confidence of the BBC and the Foreign Service. Reduced to a number. They do not realise it. I had no number in Dachau. Or rather the number often changed. No imprinted number. Five. A finif. A fin. Quarter of a pound. And even at full stretch all I am is an obscure dinosaur. If only I had been permitted by history to retain my own, noble name. But they would not have been realistic. Not in this day and age.
They keep looking back. Their happiest memories are mixed up with sunken munitions ships, blazing buildings, fragmented planes and grey balloons. The crash of bombs reminds them of their former glory days.
Germany is the custodian of human culture, Seryozha says. We are the bastion against the degenerate Red, the corrupted democrat, the aggressive conservative. We are the only genuine radicals and guardians of culture and German culture is the highest of all.
They formed us into a team and made us pull the great water-filled roller around the streets of the camp, levelling them, making all tidy, so that the stretch between the poplars looked like a French avenue. I heard the Dachaulied on the wireless when I was living in Paddington; some youth choir, I thought they said, or possibly émigrés. They were singing a song about Dachau some priest had written.
I cannot forget that Christian priest and the barbed-wire crown they forced him to make and wear, the big beam he carried, the Jews they made spit at him. I never worked on the plantation which the SS said was for our food, but they sold it in the town. Yet it brought, if the wind was right, a smell of growing green, of some small memory of rural paradise. I met a prisoner who had once counted butterflies for a living. He was some sort of scholar and came in for especially cruel treatment from the guards which was why I took pains to disguise my origins. I told them I had been a mechanic and that got me privileges working on the SS and Gestapo cars.
Schnauben asked my opinion.
‘I have never been interested in abstraction,’ I said. ‘I am a practical engineer.’
He made a mouth. ‘Hier liegt Dynamit.’
‘What?’ I was afraid he would accuse me of some kind of sabotage, of being an arsonist. ’I’m no fire-starter. Fire is far too volatile. You never know what it’s going to do. As for explosives . . .’
He seemed amused and bored at the same time. ‘Just a sort of joke,’ he said.
I laughed appropriately.
‘You had better go to the library,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you another pass. Get something out for me, too.’
During that period, before I developed a loathing for literature, I read a good deal, almost all in German. There were a few political books but mostly poetry, non-fiction and novels. I reported the political books, although it had not been my intention to expose the librarian, a Catholic, who was dismissed and replaced by a monarchist. I read Der Totenwolf and other books by Ernst Wiechert which were there in several different editions, and that is where I found Grimmelshausen, but I longed for something in English, to remind me of my boyhood. Sexton Blake, needless to say, was not a favourite of the Nazis. Otto Wenninger was another author I found interesting. I admired him for his philosophy and read Geschlecht und Charakter more than once. Of the classics, I suppose Tieck was my favourite. Mein Kampf, which I pretended to like, was boring; either too obvious or too obscure, and thoroughly long-winded. I found that it revived unwanted memories. They terrified me. I lived in fear of a day when, by unlucky chance, Hitler put two and two together. Karl May and Charles Sealsfeld, whose Nathan, der Squatter-Regulator struck an especially familiar note with me, continued to be great favourites. I was astonished to learn later that this Austrian Augustinian monk had travelled under several aliases in America and elsewhere. Another man of the cloth I enjoyed was Johan Klepper, who brought me a certain amount of solace, also. Many of the others I forget and my reading was suddenly terminated when an SS guard found me with a copy of a play called Sladek, der Schwarze Reichswehrmann. I do not remember the authors name, but apparently he was proscribed. Even when my privileges were given back to me, I found I had not only lost my taste for reading, I despised the activity.
* * * *
FIFTY-TWO
Abraham, Premier Grand immolateur de ta propre humanité: ou ton couteau a-t-il touché ton fds plein de confiance? Antique Sumer, Sumer adorée, ruis-selante de pern. Renie le Juif et tu renieras ton passé. Dans quel coin mésopotamien de l’univers Dieu naquit-Il pour avoir abandonné jusqu’ à Sa divinité, Sa pureté, en laissatit mourir Son propre fils? Illustre Abraham: procréateur fanatique du Mythe sacrificateur. Le fanatique renie l’univers, n’y voit que cruauté, et singe misérablement cette prétendue cruauté qui, en fait, n’est que sublime équilibre. Ich liabe keine Wahl gehabt. Ich wurde gezwungen, ihren Richtlinien zuzustimmen. Ich beharrte darauf, ich war nicht jüdisch. Ich erklärte alles. Sie lehnten, mich zu sehr ab. Schliesslich hatte ich keine Wahl ausser mit ihnen übereinzustimmen. Sie hätten mich getötet. Sie töten mich schon.
It is winter again. Wi
th nostalgia we look back to the earlier days of the camp. Those who have boots are aristocrats. Those who do not have boots develop gangrene in the snow. Their feet grow black and swell and rot. They limp and hobble through the slush. They will die of poisoned blood if not of the cold itself, but few wish to be taken to the Revier. It is gaining an unsavoury reputation. The Lagerarzt is not known for his kindness.
The guards make jokes about us. When a transport comes in, they throw boots out into the assembly yard. This is against camp rules, but camp rules are increasingly ignored. The guards are as mad as the inmates. They watch the prisoners scramble and squabble for the boots like ducks over bread.
Few of us now see the horror on the faces of the fresh arrivals. Why should their approval concern us? We are Lagerfliegen. They will soon become like us. We crave the approval of the guards, of our captains. Once I longed for books and took every chance to visit the library. Now I loathe them. A reading man is not an invisible man.