But where have all the fathers gone?
Scott! As the boy flashes past on his bicycle down the road curving round the castle to the village and gone. Helmut the young Baron in Lederhosen and brown shirt who bicycles all the way to München and says komm mal her I’ll show you something walking hand in hand into den Alten Peter for a frail skeletal nun in a glass case. Heilige Munditia. Patronin der alleinstehenden Frauen. Corpus Sanctae Munditiae Martyris. She looks a bit like Mutti sehr grauenhaft nicht wahr? I like her. But natürlich you will never need to turn to her will you. French girls never stand alone besides I’ll marry you when I grow up. Says Helmut the young boy Baron who yesterday climbed the cherry-tree in the garden of the Schloss and down again with a felt-feathered hat full of cherries stuffed into two mouths that spit the stones and dark-stained kiss first time ever as he fumbling unbuttons the dirndl top begging only to see the small bare breasts now unsupported by the tight corsage unbuttoned, his hand pushing up the fresh white blouse only to see and touch a little under the cherry-tree. Ich hab noch nie ein französisches Mädchen geküsst. As if at fifteen he had collected nationalities or kissed a whole Bund Deutscher Mädel begging only to see if they too have breasts comparing measuring perhaps weighing found wanting a little with Grüss Gott and gone.
Yes yes of course we understand but one does one’s job, also, as an instrument. Had you thought of that? Everything comes with practice. Love loyalty change of zone speed rash enthusiasm in the precision of translation bluffing a little with a dictionary hidden in the drawer to hide the fact that General Patton sweeps through Bavaria into Bohemia out of which Wallenstein drove the Saxons and stops, waiting for the Russians to arrive and divide the spoils into old principalities and powers with eardrums blocked from any voice offering anything not ordered half-desired feared or longed for. Ask him please what happened to the statistics of bomb-damage per town per night which his department looked after. He says he doesn’t remember exactly sir. Ask him again, he must remember unless as boss he deserted the sinking ship. He says sir that he thinks they may have obeyed his orders and evacuated all the files from Berlin to Jena. What! Jena sir. They would. In the Russian Zone. What crass stupidity didn’t they see the way things damn. Do you believe him? Yes, sir. Test him ask him why Jena what kind of thinking lay behind that decision. He says sir that we should have joined forces together against the Russians that every German secretly wanted that and yes well we have not come here to find out what every German secretly wanted. Or yes well if every German had openly declared what he now says he secretly wanted we’d have a very different Europe and this interrogation would not take place. But then such conversations never quite occur in such frank facile terms expressing falsely something there no doubt through the bluffing of the mouthpiece to prevent any true exchange of thought love desire or mere curiosity under the cherry-tree outside the Schloss posh dining-club for officers in grey-blue dark olive-green and khaki who smooch around with glamour girls in grey-blue dark olive khaki thoughtfully provided by the allies to stop fraternisation in slow fox-trot to a slow fox-trot band of accordeon-violin-piano-drums and gonna-make-a-senni-menn-al journey. Gonna set ma heart at ease. Gonna make a senni-mennal journey. To renoo ole me-e-mo-ries. You can’t bring her in sir. No fraternisation here. Fraternisation! My dear fellow I’ve only just met her give me a chance. That makes no difference sir. Right, well, thanks for putting ideas into my innocent head we’ll fraternise elsewhere won’t we Fräulein my sweet? According to the legislation into effect you may not sentimentalise ole memories out of the non-existent country. Somewhere in Bayern still however die Heilige Munditia the skeletal nun lies in some dark cellar safely evacuated out of the Alte Peter Patronin der alleinstehenden Frauen undamaged unconcerned.
Everything comes with practice. Seeing the war from the enemy point of view for instance and the damage done by the V1’s, by the V2’s on Deptford or Gravesend some shot down in mid-air and the first list of casualties in Normandy although the enemy lost more. Catching colds in open jeeps and getting smuggled to this party or that given by the Royal Air Force in Hanover or the American Army Intelligence in Hoechst with Flight Lieutenant This and Captain That who hoots pedestrians off the street impatiently, and sometimes with Siegfried to a slow fox-trot band in Schloss Dies or Schloss Das unless Dustbin full of ex-high officials who can help reconstruct the history of devastation Dorf by Dorf day by day from the enemy point of view which positively grovels and I must say I enjoy that. In a requisitioned flat the English Captain says I like eating in the Officers’ Mess at Headquarters the I. G. Farben building you know and bitteschön they say to not a single thank you and hat’s geschmeckt? But Captain excuse me German waiters have said bitteschön since time immemorial and hat’s geschmeckt. What, with OUR food? My dear mamselle don’t you defend the swines that occupied your country AND you didn’t defend it then what would you have done without us to liberate you so now you jolly well occupy them and enjoy seeing them grovel positively grovel all the more so because they have no food and live in cellars on the black market while we occupy their few remaining flats, and serve ’em right they serve us, we help ourselves to anything we may find for a change such as this, look, Schiller, Goethe, nicely bound editions as he slides the glass-front left to right along the low bookshelf varnished in dark brown I think I’ll liberate these. I like German culture. But they belong to the owner of the flat you can’t just take my dear young lady, I’ll liberate you if you go on defending the swinish Hun why, no wonder you frogs all collaborated.
Kein Eintritt. Bright girl, she translates brilliantly don’t you think? Says the new Boss in Paris new department of simultaneous interpreters for the advancement of cold wars hot peace intercontinental missiles. Meaning come live with me and adorn my gracious Regency London house with your charming French accent or cuisine your German super-lithe Fleissigkeit as well as your elegant cosmopolitan ways.
Such conversations however never quite occur in such dishonest terms expressing falsely something there no doubt in the bluffing of the mouthpiece in order to belong perhaps, to acquire a change of nationality unless of zones lying forgotten under layers of thickening sensibilities or to prevent any true exchange of cultural curiosities under the cherry-tree in Rothenburg gem-city undamaged by a miracle between the sheets and the tumbled eiderdown dein Bein dein Brust dein belly oh Christ and hats geschmeckt amid the central heating and the wood-panelling on account of mulieris simulationis all the way along the Romantische Strasse from the cherry-tree near Nürnberg to the war-crimes revealed in Bavaria where all good things come from nowadays our good government for example began here as you know. Grüss Gott and gone and hat’s geschmeckt? Und haben Sie noch einen Wunsch?
You must forgive these questions Fräulein but in view of your French upbringing we must make sure of your undivided loyalty let us see now until the age of kissing the boy Baron at that age one has no loyalties. Ja-ja ich verstehe. And I assume you have not heard at all from your mother in France now how do you feel about that? Man muss? Do you feel so impersonal Fräulein about das Heimatland? About das Vaterland? Translate and comment on the gender of ma douce amour die Heimat nearly always represented as feminine Athena for example Rome Germania Marianne Albion depending on the time the place and whether some languages divide their genders into animate or inanimate while others less primitive into andraic and metandraic which covers objects animals of both sexes and women. Mais la langue peut se contenter de l’opposition de quelque chose avec rien, the unmarked masculine for example deriving from the marked feminine by subtraction, by an absence which signifies eine Abwesenheit die etwas bedeutet. And where has all that absence gone? Non si ricorda esattamente into what rectangles of agriculture brush-stroke size, the forest-blobs the metallic lakes the thin white lines along the pimples cancerous growths that make up an abstract study of some desolate goddess or god perhaps aghast at the catastrophe she or he has provoked as the dark handsome Viennese leans across from the left to photograph the Rhine yellow from der Luft and gone the Tour Eiffel für die Kinder with a tip of nose in the foreground to prevent any true exchange of thoughts above the close breath and the pressurised excitation saying in der luft gibts keine Grenzen. Ah but airports have frontiers still. And travel-talk ensues with Herr Helmut von Irgendetwas who travels in textiles as others travel in simultaneous interpretation. You will find your life-jacket under your seat. To inflate jacket pull red toggle (1). To top up, blow into the mouthpiece (2), obeying the innumerable instructions that translate time speed height mild desire into locality and channel and the slow descent into old matter.