I would sometimes hear the sound of firing in the streets; sometimes see the lorries going past with the men hanging on like the claws of crabs. Once there was a column of people with banners going past and they were shouting 'Out! Out!': later there was a column with banners containing slogans of the other side going past and they were shouting 'Out!' I would think — But where are the people dying in the streets? Or are they being kept like a score, as in a game of cards.
My father stayed in the apartment for a few days; then he was needed at the university. The young man and the girl had moved on to another hiding-place. Some of my mother's friends would come to the door now and then and there would be whispered consultations in the hallway; they would sit for a short while on the chair on which Rosa Luxemburg had sat. I thought — They are like tops that have been whipped up by Rosa Luxemburg, and are now running down.
Once a day Magda or Helga or my mother would go out to try to get food; they would have to queue in streets where there was the sound of firing. When they came back they would rest in the
chair in the hallway, and we would gather round: I thought — Perhaps tops are kept spinning by the sound of firing.
I tried to talk with my mother. She would sit with her back to me at her desk in the drawing-room or at the table in the kitchen. I would say 'But what is happening?'
She said 'It will not be a defeat. It will be a victory.'
'But where is Rosa Luxemburg?'
'In hiding.'
'How will it be a victory?'
'In the end, it will be a victory.'
I imagined Rosa Luxemburg crouched like a small hawk at the top of someone's airing cupboard.
Then there was an evening when there were more than the usual comings and goings at the door of our apartment. My father had come home; he went to join in whatever was happening. I sat on my own in my room. I was often on my own in my room at this time; I used to plan how, if the gangs from the street came to get me, I would climb out of the window and up the ventilation area in the centre of the building. But then what should I do — fly above rooftops? This particular evening, after the more than usual comings and goings in the hallway, there were just the sounds of my father talking quietly to my mother and my mother crying; then my mother began to make a noise like howling. I went out of my room and along the passage. My mother was sitting on the chair in the hallway and my father was standing over her. My mother was hitting him with her fists. I said, as I so often said, 'What's happened?'
My father said 'They've found Rosa Luxemburg.'
My mother said 'They've killed her.'
My father said 'Come to bed.'
My mother said to my father 'You killed her!'
I thought — Do you mean my father's thoughts, like arrows, went right round the universe -
My father said 'You go to bed.'
I said 'Me?'
My father said 'Yes.'
I thought — But I don't think you've killed her!
My father sat up with my mother most of that night. Sometimes she became calm; sometimes she cried and shouted. It did not seem that anything my father said made any difference to my mother. I
sat in my room and listened. I thought — You mean, my mother doesn't want to see what it is she herself has been doing?
The next morning details came through about what had happened — or what people thought must have happened — to Rosa Luxemburg. She had been found hiding in someone's house by one of the right-wing gangs roaming the streets; she had been taken to the Eden Hotel to be interrogated; then the gang had said they were going to hand her over to the police. On the way out of the hotel she had been hit on the head by a rifle butt; she had been pushed into a car half dead. In the car she had probably been shot, and her body had been dumped in a canal. The official story put out was that on the way to the police station the car had been stopped by a mob and Rosa Luxemburg had been dragged from it and lynched. No one bothered to try to believe this. But with her death the revolution was effectively over. Her body was recovered some months later from the canal. A few of her followers continued to imagine that she must still be alive, and that the whole story was a ruse so that she could remain in hiding and eventually emerge.
My father said to my mother 'There is a sense, you see, in which something like that might be true.'
My mother said 'What sense?'
My father said 'She always knew that that sort of revolution wouldn't work. Now she can become a symbol.'
My mother said 'You and your symbols!'
My father said 'Unconsciously, she might have known this.'
My mother said 'I don't want to hear about your unconscious!'
My mother used to sit in the chair in the hallway in which Rosa Luxemburg had sat. I thought — She is waiting for Rosa Luxemburg to have gone right round the universe and to come back in through that doorway.
Later that winter my father took to going for long walks on his own; there were no more civilians with rifles in the streets; occasionally there were soldiers. I thought — My father is looking for his own way out of whatever predicament we might be trapped in.
My mother for a while spent much of the time in bed. She would lie on her back with her hands above the bedclothes and her fingers intertwining as if they groped through a grating. I sometimes sat with her. I wanted to say — It is all right! Then — But are you not where and as you want to be?
She once said 'Your father is a good man! I am so sorry!'
I wanted to say — What are you sorry about?
She said 'You know, Rosa Luxemburg was very grateful to your father. I mean, that night, when the two students stayed in the apartment.'
I said 'Then why don't you say so?'
She said 'Your father has never loved me. He loves you.'
I thought — You are trapped, all laced up, like your relations in the country: you don't want to make yourself lovable!
In the spring — I was doing lessons with Miss Henne again; my mother had begun to go out to work in a soup-kitchen in one of the poorest districts of Berlin — in the spring my father sometimes took me with him on his walks. We would go to the Tiergarten; we would look in at the zoo where there were a few sad animals in cages; suddenly there was blossom on the trees. I thought — But of course we will get out of our predicament! The high point for my father and me in our walks was to go and have tea in the Adlon Hotel — this being the meeting-place for rich and cosmopolitan Berlin, also for the French, English and American officers of the Allied Commission who were overseeing the peace terms being imposed on Germany. These Allied officers were elegant and languid; they had bright belts and boots and even hair that seemed polished; they stood in groups with the sort of vision, I hoped, that would tumble back like cannon balls on their own heads. Occasionally they were joined by one or two of their Prussian counterparts who were elegant in something of the same way except that their hair, like that of my father, was brushed upwards at the back, so that it was as if they might take off like fireworks. But there were also in the hotel groups of a kind that I had not seen before: these were short, rather orange-faced men who seemed to be slightly too big for their clothes; who were like drops of oil or ointment on the point of touching a surface and spreading. They sat round tables with their heads facing inwards: with them sometimes were women of a kind I also had not seen before — younger or at least made up to seem younger than the men; they perched on the arms of chairs and smoked cigarettes and kicked up their feet with pointed shoes. It was as if they might puncture the surface of the men so that there would be oil or ointment, spreading.