I would say to my father 'But is this true?'
My father said 'Mathematically, it seems to be true.'
'But is it really?'
'Ah, what is really!'
I would think — But together, might not my father and I get beyond the backs of our heads in our airship?
Sometimes when my father and I had our arms around one another sitting like this my mother would put her head round the door of his study and say 'Are you coming?'
My father would say 'Coming where?'
To supper.'
4 Ah yes, supper.'
Then my mother would perhaps advance into the room and say 'What have you two been doing?'
Talking.'
'It didn't sound like talking to me!'
Thinking then.'
'Do you have to sit like that when you think?'
And I would think — Oh do let us get through, yes, into some other dimension!
It was such conversations I had with my father that seemed relevant to the evening when the group of people round Rosa Luxemburg had been in our apartment (they being like the people on the vast and lonely plain) and when the young man and the girl stayed for supper.
My mother had gone to argue with Magda in the kitchen. Helga was banging plates down on the sideboard in the dining-room. My father had said to the girl, who was quite pretty, 'What is your subject?' The girl had said 'Physics.' My father had said Then we will have a lot to talk about!' And I had wondered why my father was not talking more to me.
My father said to the young man 'What do you do?'
The young man said 'My subject is philosophy but at the moment I am occupied in politics.'
My father said, as he so often said, 'Ah.'
During supper my father sat at the head of the table: I sat on one side of him and the young man sat on the other: the girl sat next to the young man. I remember the atmosphere, the style, of this supper quite well — perhaps because it was almost the first time I had been allowed up so late; out of deference, I suppose, to the tensions of the evening. Whoever remembers the exact words of conversations? but I imagine I can recreate the style, the attitudes, of my father.
He said to the girl 'What do you know of the theories of Professor Einstein?'
The girl, who had a scraping voice that did not go with her soft squashed face, said 'I understand they have not been verified.'
My father said 'What do you think might count as verification?'
The girl said 'I understand verification is unlikely.'
My father turned to the young man who had small steel pince-nez from which a black ribbon hung down. My father said 'And what is the opinion of a philosopher or a politician on these matters?'
The young man said 'I think these are matters for scientists and mathematicians.'
My father said 'Should not a philosopher have ideas or opinions about what might be called reality?'
The young man said 'It is the job of philosophers to clarify concepts. It is the job of scientists to uncover facts.'
My father said 'But are not concepts seen to be of the same nature as facts?'
The young man said 'And it is the job of politicians to separate practical sense from nonsense, which is the tool of exploitation.'
My father said 'I see.' He used to say 'I see' when he was disappointed; this was slightly different from when he said 'Ah!'
At some such moment in this conversation my mother came in; she banged plates about with Helga or Magda at the sideboard. She said 'It might make more sense to talk about the practical difficulties of getting the materials for this soup.'
The young man said 'Indeed.'
The girl said 'I'm sorry.'
My mother said 'It is not your fault.'
My father raised his eyebrows; he seemed to be hoping he might take off, as if he were a rocket.
My mother sat down at the other end of the table. Helga handed round the soup. After a time my mother said 'Some people do not seem to realise that even at this moment there are people being killed in the streets.'
My father picked up his napkin, put it down, looked at the girl, looked at the young man, looked at me. I thought — Well, you did not put your arms around me: what am I supposed to do alone in our airship?
Then my father said to my mother 'But haven't you been looking forward to the time when people would be killed in the streets? Haven't you said that the revolution could not come until there were people being killed in the streets?'
My mother said 'That is an insult!' She banged her knife and fork down on the table.
I thought I might now join in by saying — But didn't you want
my father to protect this young man and the girl by saying that they were two of his students at the university?
My mother went out of the room. We could hear her talking, or crying, with Magda in the kitchen.
The girl said to my father 'Don't you care?'
My father raised his eyebrows; gazed at a corner of the ceiling.
The young man said 'In my opinion, the scientific reality is that there is this repression of the masses.'
My father said 'I see.'
After a time the girl said 'Excuse me, I will go and see if your wife is all right.' She left the room.
We sat at the table and drank our soup — my father, the young man with pince-nez and myself. I thought — Oh yes, our various visions, like arrows, are going out and coming crashing round on to the backs of our own heads.
Then — But it is true that my mother must have had difficulty in getting the materials for the soup?
After a time the young man said 'But the masses have the real power according to the iron laws of history.'
My father said 'Then for God's sake join them.'
The young man stood up and bowed, and went out — presumably to join my mother and the girl and Helga and Magda in the kitchen.
I thought — So now, yes, my father and I are alone in our airship.
My father sat staring at a corner of the ceiling. I thought — But it is all right, it is all right, even if there are things one does not understand and cannot say: is not this what you have taught me?
Eventually a bed was made for the young man in the drawing-room; the girl was to sleep on the floor of my room.
Sometime during the night people did in fact come knocking at the door of our apartment; I heard my father going to answer the door; he was calm, authoritative; after a time the people who had knocked went away. What my father had said was that there was no one in the apartment except his family and servants; he could give his assurance on this point on the authority of his position at the university. I was in my bed with the girl beside me on a mattress on the floor. I was thinking — Well what does one understand? What is truth? What is authority? What is caring for others, in this lonely business of our airship?
It was a day or two after this, I think, that the revolution of the left-wing extremists that had been simmering came to the boil in Berlin:
this was the second week in January 1919. The eruption of the left wing brought out the right-wing extremists; there were gangs in caps and thick dark suits running through the streets; gangs in makeshift uniforms clanking about in lorries. I saw comparatively little of this; for a week I was not allowed out of the apartment. I would stand at the window and look down. What I understood vaguely at the time and in more detail later was that the left-wing extremists, or Spartacists as they were called, had emerged with rifles and machine-guns; had attacked, and taken over, three or four newspaper offices (this might have seemed apt to my childish vision, since I saw their business as being to do with the banging about of bits of paper). There was sporadic shooting, a few hundred deaths, a failure in storming government buildings. Railway stations and the Telegraph Office were occupied: but all this was being done not so much by the workers as by people who had said that it should be being done by the workers — in accordance with the iron laws of history. Workers for the most part stayed at home. And the right-wing gangs took time off from their clattering in lorries to retire to cellars and drink beer — and to wait for the time perhaps when they could re-emerge and deal with the left-wing extremists who in the end would have to emerge from the newspaper offices without even having had any beer.