I ran the water in the tub and took off my clothes and had a hot bath. Half-floating in the hot green water, I contemplated my navel like a yogi trying to forget the world. Pale navel I loved beside the Shalimar. For a few minutes I almost dozed. The telephone put an end to that.
I wrapped a towel around me and left a trail of water across my livingroom carpet and caught the telephone on the fourth ring. “Hello.”
The answer was very low but I recognized Alec’s voice. “Listen, Bob. I think I’ve found what I was looking for in Schneider’s office. Now get this–”
“Where are you?”
“M E Dic office. Don’t ask questions. I think there’s somebody in the building. Get this.” He spelt it. “T A I L L O U R. Write it down.”
I put down the receiver, took a pencil and an envelope out of the breast pocket of the coat on the chesterfield, and wrote it down. Taillour. When I went back to the phone, the free signal was buzzing. I hung up and the buzzing went on in my head.
I called the university number and asked for the Middle English Dictionary office.
The operator said, “There will be nobody there at this time of night, but I’ll ring it if you wish.”
She rang four times and nobody answered.
I gave myself a few swipes with the towel and put on my clothes again. On the way out I passed the telephone stand by the living room door and saw the envelope on which I had written Alec’s word. I picked it up and looked at it. Taillour. There were two clicks in my brain like a billiard carom. ‘Taillour’ was a Middle English spelling of tailor. The German word for tailor is Schneider.
So what? It was a roundabout way of telling me what I already knew, that Alec had something on Schneider.
Two smudged words on the envelope caught my eye. It was postmarked Kirkland Lake, Ontario. What the hell? I had had no letters from Kirkland Lake. Then I noticed that the envelope had not been opened: it must have been one of the letters I had picked up in the English office when I went there to get the flashlight.
I looked at the address:
Dr. Robert Branch,
English Department …
The black script shimmied under my eyes like highly trained fleas. It was Ruth Esch’s handwriting. I looked at the postmark again. September 20. To-day was September 22. Or was it the twenty-third? I looked at the clock on the mantel. No, not midnight yet.
I ripped open the envelope and saw the signature “Ruth” and started to read. It was a long letter but I read it standing up. I forgot to sit down.
The letter said:
Dear Robert Branch:
I know you must be the Bob Branch I knew because you are a professor of English as you said you were going to be, and took your first degree in 1934.
Please don’t expect a coherent letter. My nerves have been shaken, and I’m so excited. For a long time I felt like an old woman and now I’m feeling young again. I am in Canada, and I’m coming to the United States. I have been appointed to teach in your university. Isn’t that a remarkable coincidence? It will be so good to see an old friend again.
Dr. Herman Schneider, the head of your German Department, but of course you must know him – and oh, Bob, he has been so kind to me! – sent me a university catalogue. Just to-day I was looking through it, and I found your name in it. And you are a professor already! You are advancing very rapidly.
This is frightfully confused, isn’t it? I haven’t done any writing for so long. For months I hadn’t even any paper to write on. I made up things in my head and forgot them again. You know, I almost forgot my English when I was in prison. But during the last few weeks in England and Canada, it’s been coming back again.
What a mooncalf you must think me! Here I’m chattering away and I haven’t told you anything. But I sat down to write to you as soon as I came upon your name. I should have waited a little.
I wrote the above nonsense in the morning just after I found your name in the catalogue. It’s terribly silly but I’m going to let it stand. At least it shows I still have some spontaneity of feeling – for a long time I thought I had no feeling left. Does it seem strange to you that anyone should be proud of possessing human feelings? It is not strange in Germany. But I’m talking cryptically like a heroine in melodrama.
I’m feeling more composed now, and I wish to tell you what has happened, so that you will know what to expect when we meet again. To think that I shall see you and Dr. Schneider in a few days!
Perhaps it will revive painful memories in you, but I must tell you these things. I wrote you letters from Köln, but they could never have reached you. I know my father intercepted some of them, for he tore them up before my eyes. But I’m wandering again. I must begin at the beginning.
You have not forgotten that terrible night in München when you and Dr. Wiener were attacked on the street. One of the four SS men who attacked you was my brother Carl. I can make no excuses for Carl. He was – I hope he is no longer – a fool and a knave. But perhaps I can explain him partly. My father is no better. Sometimes I have thought that all Germany was populated by fools and knaves. It is not true, but there is much truth in it.
Once my brother was a fine student and a liberal, a leader in the Youth Movement. But Hitler took over the Youth Movement and Carl went with it. He never had a strong character and the Nazis caught him young and made him an officer and corrupted him. He became a Nazi and a Jew-baiter long before I met you, and I refused to see him any more.
Carl was stationed in München when you were there in 1937. My father set him spying on me because I was a disgrace to the family. I had dropped the “von” from my name. I had been a pupil of Dr. Schneider, who had been forced to leave his chair at München on account of his liberal opinions. I had been removed from my lectorship at the Institut. It was even said that I consorted with Jews and democrats and revolutionaries. My father was afraid that the Nazis might make him suffer if I got into trouble, that the sins of the children would be visited upon the fathers. But he dared not speak to the Gestapo directly. Accordingly, he sent Carl after me.
You know part of what happened then. The three SS hoodlums knocked you senseless. Carl told me later that you were forced to leave the country, but I never learned what happened to Dr. Wiener. They kidnapped me, and Carl took me by automobile to my father in Köln.
My father locked me up in one of his houses in Köln with a servant to guard me. He said I must stay there until I came to my senses. I remained locked up in the house for four years, but I did not come to my senses. I tried to escape many times. Only when I tried to escape was I mistreated. I had books to read, and writing-materials, but I could not send the letters I wrote and I could not leave the house except to walk in the courtyard under guard.
It sounds like a story of the Middle Ages, doesn’t it? The cruel father and the girl shut up in the tower. But there are worse things than that in the Dark Ages of my country. My lot was really an easy one. I fared better than some of my friends. Do you remember Franz? Years after it happened, I heard that he was concentrated and gradually cut into little pieces over a period of weeks until he died. He died but he did not speak of his friends. Many of them are still active in Austria and Bayern. Their time is coming soon, when the Gestapo will be the underground and the honest men that are left will walk in the open air and speak their thoughts.
I told you I would never leave Germany until the Nazi insanity was over. I never would have left if I could have done anything at all. But as the years went by, I came to feel as powerless as a mummy or a ghost. I could see the Rhine far off through the barred windows of my room and the barge-trains moving up and down on the river, but not once in four years could I get so far as to dip my hands in the water. I was shut up in a dim old house in Köln, while Austria and Czechoslovakia were swallowed up and Poland and France fell and Germany invaded Russia and decency was blotted out in Europe.