He then visited the historic castle, three hundred rooms, more than fifty alone in the Gundlach Wing, to meet the heir apparent — tall, blond, round-faced, slightly jittery head movements, but merrily sparkling eyes, a keen sense of humor, a malicious, black humor — and to meet the Jewish conspirators: a movie weasel, very imaginative, eccentric, plucked as a child in Buchenwald from the breast of his mother, who had starved to death, brought to an orphanage in Reims, outstanding pupil at the lycée, then the École Normale, assistant director to all the kingpins of the nouvelle vague, now production head of a new, evidently serious company; yes, and she, first impression of her wonderfully free, radiantly happy laughter (“I can be so happy when I’m happy!” she once said about herself rapturously)—
the luncheon with the prince’s father in the Loitpurg Wing; behind the thronelike seat of the old prince a gigantic canvas darkened like smoked meerschaum: a knight in armor lying in a landscape full of mountains, castles, cities, hamlets, a landscape filled with huntable creatures; growing from his genitals like a weathered oak the family tree of the princely house, the coat of arms clustered like cherries, hanging in the branches, row for row, generation for generation, heavenward … the old prince speaking only with him, the new guest, the heir apparent quite openly amused at the movie weasel’s deliciously unabashed, occasionally even insolent behavior toward his father, at times it gets critical, he expects the old prince to order the whipper-snapper to leave the table, but an iron upbringing keeps the situation under control even in the most precarious moments, only the old prince for his part becomes quite bluntly suggestive: after speaking in detail of family history, he shifts to the Holy Roman Empire, pointing out the catastrophic influence, which historians have as yet inadequately recognized and which is still to be investigated, that the emancipation of the Jews exerted upon the decay of the Reich: the Austrian Tolerance Edict of 1782 was suicidal, one need go only a bit further to see how the Jews profited from the dissolution of the old Empire, the further recognition of their civil rights step by step—1808, under King Jerome (“Well, typical!”) of Westphalia; 1814, in Prussia; and by 1850 complete equality there (“Krauts, it stands to reason!”); then the foul play of Bismarck’s founding of the German Empire under Jewish patronage: “According to the Imperial Law of 1869, all still extant limitations of civil and civic rights are hereby declared null and void ….”
he knows all this, has known it by heart since childhood: if he shuts his eyes, he might think he was at home; even the voices, the diction, the unembarrassed smacking of lips while eating are the same … and he is ashamed when the heir apparent takes up the threat with merrily sparkling eyes and explains the family tree on the wall to him and to the movie weasel, to his personal guests, and begins a simple arithmetical calculation:
“Now every last one of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on, nicht wahr? As a child, I once figured out that since our family tree goes back thirty-five generations, that would make quite a number of forebears: a total of thirty-three billion, five hundred thirty-six million, five hundred thirty-eight thousand, one hundred sixty-eight people — the very opposite of this painting, where we all spring from one single man and spread out into an oak tree. If we keep counting back, let’s say sixty generations — which would reach all the way back to the birth of Christ, then the number of ancestors would run into the trillions. But until the eighteenth century, the population of Europe totaled hardly more than some hundred fifty million — am I wrong, Papi? Please correct me if I’m not making sense! — So every single one of them must be our ancestor, thousands of times over. And the Jews of Heidelberg were exempted from persecution by the Inquisition because they could prove by their tombstones that they had not been in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion, they had already been in Heidelberg at that time, they had come with the Romans—nicht wahr, Papi? — so our veins must be carrying at least the blood of all the Jews who were living in Europe back then ….”
he envies this son for his courage, his independence, his freedom toward his father: he himself would never have had the nerve as a young man. He admires the young prince’s hardness against himself: the young prince drags one leg, the result of childhood polio; the physician, having little hope of saving him without serious paralysis and atrophy, suggested a transfusion of his own blood, which, because of his constant dealings with polio victims, had presumably developed good antitoxins and would therefore strengthen the child’s blood against the pathogens, but the prince’s mother strenuously protested: commoner’s blood in her son’s veins, and a Jewish commoner’s to boot — she would not suffer it even with the risk of seeing her child crippled ….
he becomes a friend of the young prince, lives in the Gundlach Wing; in the evenings, they drink very heavily, the movie weasel the most, but holds his drinks badly, reels through the vaults of the arsenal, and flaps his arms in a kind of bat dance, singing, “They see their death in us, the princes and the dukes and counts! The descendants of the knights fear us — We are the worm in their family tree — Ha, I am the angel of death for the master caste, the master race, the death of all masters — I am the Malakhamoves of the self-styled masters ….”
and she laughs her beautifully free laugh, throws back her head with its chestnut-red curls — he does not know what she is doing here, what function she has in the film project they are tinkering with — anyhow eighty percent of all film projects are cloud-cuckoo-land — she might be the costume designer — anyway she is very beautiful, no better reason for her presence ….
and the heir apparent, who makes a point of drinking his guests under the table, lets his wicked eyes sparkle and says to him, “Congratulations. You have charmed my father completely” (they are using the familiar form by now, have begun their third bottle of whiskey); “Poor Papi is totally isolated: he’s had a falling-out with the family, he can’t stand other aristocrats, he can’t go about with the philistines, as he calls them; what he lacks are perfect toadies, he must be very grateful to you ….”
and he himself is silent to this perfidy, merely exchanges an ironic glance with her: it is the first glance of rapport between them—
then the heir apparent, beads of sweat on his forehead, with the first signs of difficulty in speaking, expatiates on his family’s anti-Semitism, tells about a grandmother in the Lützelburg line who could not be moved to set foot in a Jewish house — a refusal that might involve occasional problems in Berlin during the 1870s; once, however, it could not be avoided, and she went, eating her way through a pompous dinner without uttering a syllable to the host, next to whom she had been seated, she did not even perceive the hostess; on the way home, she was asked by her husband, “Well, it wasn’t all that bad, all in all?” She cheerfully shook her head: “No, because I had a clever idea. I paid for the food. I pushed the money under the plate before leaving the table.”
whereupon he got up, saying: “I believe it’s time for me to go.” And, turning to her, “For you too? If you like, I’ll accompany you back to town.”
he held out his hand and she took it: they went away, hand in hand—
and now they are once again facing the young prince, more than three years have passed — naturally, the heir apparent had sent a gigantic bouquet of roses with profound apologies for his inexcusable drunkenness (“I knew it: he is the most chivalrous man I know. Once, I felt sick during a meal, I was horribly embarrassed in front of the old man, but I couldn’t help it anymore, I barely managed to get to the dining-room door, and there I had to vomit — and he, the young one, put his arm around me and said, ‘You’re perfectly right. One can’t really eat what the cook expects us to put up with these days! …’ And once, we were strolling in the park, and Jacques, whom you call the movie weasel, had drunk too much again and had to pee just when the old man came along. Naturally, the old man pretended not to notice anything, but his scorn was so tangible I became dizzy — and the son instantly stood next to Jacques and peed too …”) — they saw the young prince, the chivalrous man, less and less after their marriage, and lately it had been a good while; now his attitude makes it plain (these crowned heads have an astonishing way of expressing themselves without words) that he is informed about their quarreling, and also approves of their mutual reinventings, as something he has always believed and articulated, his forte is his knowledge of human beings. They run into one another in a theater lobby, she is wearing a black dress, her only adornment an emerald brooch which he gave her at the birth of the child, and the young prince compliments her on it—“It is a very early present from my husband,” she says meaningfully, and the prince returns the smile and says, “Oh, and the stone is genuine?”