‘I can conceive,’ said Franz, ‘that under certain circumstances a political speech may be just as important as Parsifal. A good politician can be as important as a good musician. A priest he certainly is not. A concert-hall is no more a temple of art than a meeting-house is a temple of politics.’
‘You have lost your European outlook,’ said the conductor softly and soothingly, like a nerve specialist. ‘Unfortunately, similar views have already affected a large part of Germany. They emanate from Berlin. But here, on the Rhine, there are still a few old bastions of the established bourgeois culture. Our traditions extend from antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Humanistic period, the Renaissance, German Romanticism …’
‘Is this European culture?’ asked Franz, pointing to the Buddhas, the cushions, the deep wide sofas, the oriental carpets.
‘It seems to me that you’ve borrowed from other sources as well. Tonight, your guests danced some negro dances which are probably not to be found in Parsifal. I can’t understand how you can still speak of German culture. Where is it? In the way the women dress? The manufacturer you had here today, has he got European culture? As a matter of fact, I liked him better than the others because he despises all of you. This ancient culture of yours has developed a thousand holes. You plug the holes by borrowing from Asia, Africa, America. But, the holes go on growing. You retain the European uniform, the dinner-jacket and pale complexion, but you dwell in mosques and Indian temples. If I were you, I should wear a burnous.’
‘We make a few concessions,’ said the conductor, ‘nothing more. The world has grown smaller; Africa, Asia and America are nearer to us. Foreign customs have been adopted in all ages and become a part of culture.’
‘But where is the culture of which you would have them become a part? You have only the trappings of an ancient culture. Are the students with their ill-fitting coloured caps ancient German culture? Or your station, whose greatest miracle is that trains arrive there and depart again? Are you looking for culture in your wine-cellars, where they sing “A Rhenish Maiden” when they’re tight and dance the Charleston when they’re sober? Or do you find ancient culture in the cosy gabled roofs that house your workers — not artisans or goldsmiths or watch-makers, not master-singers but proletarians, who live in the pits and are at home in electric lifts but not among your unreadable Gothic script? That’s just a masquerade, not reality! You never get out of your fancy-dress! Today I saw a fireman in his glittering uniform pushing a pram. There was no fire anywhere, all was peaceful. Was it a children’s nurse who had dressed up as a fireman, or a fireman who wanted to play at being a children’s nurse? There were students wearing cloth caps and townsfolk wearing students’ paper caps. Was it the students or the townsfolk who were in disguise? Then I saw a few young people in velvet caps, with sailors’ trousers; I asked a waiter, who informed me that this was an old form of carpenters’ dress. Is that correct? Do they make coffins and cradles with velvet caps on their heads? Do people still roam the high-roads with bundles when there are hardly any high-roads left, only motor-cars and aeroplanes?’
‘You’ve seen a lot in one day,’ said the complaisant conductor. ‘I never walk in the streets.’
‘Why not? Doesn’t it interest you? Because you’re a high priest of art, doesn’t it suit you to mingle with the people? Are you satisfied among your fonts and pictures and among your ancient culture? Do you learn everything from the newspapers?’
‘I don’t read any newspapers!’ smiled the conductor. ‘I only read about musical matters.’
‘Why, even in the Cadet School I knew more about the world than you!’ said Franz. ‘We’ve never spoken to each other the whole of our lives, and now we’ve nothing better to do than to discuss politics as if we had met in a railway carriage.’
‘So you didn’t even travel by sleeping-car?’ exclaimed the conductor, deeply moved.
It soon became evident that, once they had passed beyond generalities, they had nothing to say to each other.
Nothing occurred even to the complaisant conductor.
Finally he decided to ask:
‘Have you any news of Irene?’
‘She must have got married,’ said Franz.
‘I’ve heard she lives in Paris,’ said George.
Then they went to bed.
XXI
From time to time the conductor visited some larger or smaller nearby town on the Rhine, stayed away for a few days, and returned pale and in need of recuperation.
‘Poor George, he has to have a change of air,’ said Klara.
‘I need relaxation,’ said the conductor.
His excursions, as soon emerged, were for amorous purposes. He was like a bird which hops from branch to branch, and pours forth a little song from each. The young girls in the ancient centres of culture venerate the high-priests of art, together with boxers and gymnasts. In this they differ from their sisters in the larger cities, where barbarism is indigenous.
The conductor’s marriage resembled a still lake over which blew a constant cool breeze. The child swam merrily between father and mother, as if between two harbours. She was never ill, she never even had whooping-cough. She did not cry. She was not moody. She had imbibed her mother’s placid unintoxicating milk and formed her character correspondingly. She was the very model of a little girl. She played with dolls made from sponges with which she could be washed at the same time. She said Papa and Mama and referred to all adults as aunt and uncle with an equal friendliness.
In the conductor’s house one ate a lot of vegetables and eggs, cream and fruit, and many desserts that tasted of paper. One drank wholesome table-wines and rose from table as light as an air-balloon. All the same, the conductor slept after meals, he lay down on his sofa, yet it seemed as if he was not asleep but had merely withdrawn to be alone with his private culture.
One made and received a few calls.
Within the town, itself a cultural centre, there were also houses which were smaller cultural centres. There were artists who lived in studios and played the bohemian. There was a lawyer who invited Christian fellow-citizens for the Jewish festivals, and so established an oecumenical atmosphere, at least in the higher spheres. There was a Christian designer who made his living out of Jewish ornamentation and traced the family trees of all the old Rhenish families for the appropriate fee. There was a stamp-collector who, every few weeks, organized exhibitions of his best specimens together with festivities which, now and then, resulted in a marriage. There were descendants of the old poets of the second Romantic school, who had interesting unpublished letters to show. There was a live lyric poet of repute who lived in a small room in a museum, and an old professor who sat all day in a church tower and operated the famous carillon which is mentioned in Baedeker. There was an old churchyard where the students from the Art School would spend entire mornings in order to portray the picturesque gravestones in their sketchbooks. There were a few historic old fountains which the municipality had collected one day and brought together as a single group in the city park, because it was convenient and because there was already a war-memorial there erected in 1920 and a Bismarck oak, dating from 1872 and surrounded by barbed wire, which rustled throughout the summer. There were also many owners of bicycles, which were known as the little man’s motor-car.
In the end, the esteem enjoyed by the conductor extended itself to Franz, who was occasionally called on to recount his Siberian experience. To the fifty quarto pages he added a further thirty. He had already invented a miscellany of adventures; it was a simple matter for him to become a renowned Siberian expert.