I suddenly took fright; Beatrice was opening her pocketbook and taking out her cosmetics. It seemed the worst psychological moment to blow pepper into the Consul’s eyes. But before I could give Beatrice a warning with my foot, she had already begun to put on her makeup, all the while smiling at the Führer’s representative. Why, of course! She was now sitting there as a German woman, and German women no longer wore makeup. That’s exactly why she was applying makeup.
I told the man that we weren’t interested in returning to the homeland. I would go back to the River Niers only after the whole mob of Nazis and their Führer had gone to the devil. We wanted to go to Switzerland. “That’s absurd! How in heaven’s name…?” He refused to stamp our passports. “What? Insult the Führer and then demand a passport stamp? Not on your life!” He asked us if we didn’t feel ashamed, if we didn’t know how to behave in his presence and under his protection. If we had disagreements with the New Order, he said, we should keep those to ourselves, seeing as we were German citizens and thus wards of the glorious Führer. This was strong language. The two of us, wards of a criminal, a Professor Többen-type murderer? I stood up, grabbed our passports, pointed to the larger-than-life photo of the Führer and asked Beatrice if she wished to continue living under the protection of that man. Neither of us wanted that, and so I slapped both of the brown documents on the Consul’s desk, and we abruptly left. I had just canceled our citizenship. We were free again.
We were still rushing through the front yard of the villa when we heard footsteps behind us. The Consul grabbed my shoulder and stuttered, “This is madness! Don’t you realize that if you are caught without papers you will be immediately shot?” He stuffed our passports into my inside coat pocket. I calmly replied that since we already knew that we were to be liquidated, it didn’t matter much where and how that was going to happen.—
“Well then just go away! Heil Hitler!”
It was of course our fervent desire to leave this inhospitable place, but — had our kind friend put his stamp in our passports? I thumbed through them — nothing! The Consul went back into his house, and we followed him. Without the stamps, our journey to Canossa would have been senseless. Upstairs again: he’s back behind his desk, we’re sitting on the chairs. Another tirade. Pepper at the ready, a life-and-death tug-of-war. New accusations. An amplified list of our transgressions, followed by further threats. I: “And the stamps?” He: was it true that I had a caricature of the Führer hanging on the wall of my study, a horrible misrepresentation of the features of the heaven-sent Redeemer of the Nation, a thing that I put up there to show my Spanish friends and make insulting comments on? I denied this. I said it was a lie that there was any such caricature hanging on the wall of my study. The Consuclass="underline" such insolence! I was a liar on top of everything else. He had evidence and witnesses. He named some names.
The Consul was purple with rage. I quieted him down by saying that what he was taking as a political matter was for me purely a question of philology, since by training I was in fact a philologist, albeit a failed one. The incident under discussion revolved around the difference between “have” and “had”—that is, around the verb “to have” and its conjugation. I unfortunately no longer owned the caricature, I told him. It was stuck to the wall, and when we moved it got torn. Egg-white is a strong kind of glue. Thus I once “had” the drawing, but I no longer “have” it. I begged his pardon for my linguistic fastidiousness. With a smile, I handed him our passports. Still in a rage, he banged down his stamp in both of them and told us to beware: the Deutschland would let us take all our possessions with us, whereas the British would allow us only to take hand-baggage on board — small suitcases, a box… He added that if the police stopped us and identified us as the two Barceló Street residents on the liquidation list, we were to appeal to the German Consulate. For a period of 24 hours he would guarantee our lives in the name of the magnanimous Führer, whose loyal servant I would no doubt become in due time. Not a hair on our heads would be harmed; the Führer was in need of heads. Considering the circumstances, this was a fine compliment — the finest that a clairvoyant Consul could offer to two documented heads that had not yet rolled in the name of the Führer, and that would not roll in the Führer’s name for the next twenty-four hours. We could only hope that no one noticed that our heads were steaming with anger. Our knees felt like jelly as we walked through the consulate yard for the fourth time.
We were now officially stamped for our escape. This was bureaucratic lunacy. The English, such a great power on the high seas, were miserable pencil-pushers on dry land.
We could stay alive for 24 hours, but by the end of that grace period we would be safely aboard ship. What lay behind us were three months of shuttling between Génova and Palma visiting friends and then going to the harbor. We had smuggled eyewitness reports and letters without realizing that we were ourselves scheduled to be shot.
Pause for a council of war. I recovered my composure and tossed Beatrice’s peppered powder box into a ditch. Beatrice was shivering so violently that I feared she might misuse the box and blind herself. But what now? We should go separately, one of us to Génova to pack our little bundles, the other to our apartment in the city to do what was necessary, especially to pick up my Tombs of the Huns manuscript. Beatrice volunteered for the latter chore. If she was stopped by the gendarmes, as a woman she would be a more effective protection against our premature death than I would be with my episcopal letter of recommendation. But first we had to go to the English Consulate.
There they put our names on the international list of refugees. Then we learned that the destroyer due to arrive at Mallorca that very evening had changed its course. There would be another ship. “When?” They couldn’t tell us exactly — maybe tomorrow, but it could be several days. We were asked to stay in contact with the consulate — call them three times a day or come in person. We turned numb. We were living outside the city in Génova without a telephone, we had no more money, and they were after us. Had the German Consul paid us the prescribed 200 marks refugee allowance? “No.” “Sorry.” This meant that for the British our case was closed.
But it was only logicaclass="underline" whoever rejects the Führer’s bribe for returning to the homeland mustn’t expect him to offer some grudge money.
We had to change our plans. We must stay together. Taking all possible measures for our security, we went to our city apartment. The concierges told us that someone had repeatedly come asking for me. Apparently I was on some search list. Well, I said, I was busy both day and night — interpreting for the Falange.
The clumps of wax at our apartment door were undisturbed. We locked ourselves in and, in a fit of panic that I have never been able to understand, I took the manuscript of my brainless Huns and began thinking how to give it an anti-heroic burial. This book, which depicted the outbreak of mass insanity in my home town, was about to fall victim to another form of insanity. Certain that we would be staying on the island for some time yet, we figured that if I were caught with the manuscript I would surely be shot.
Our apartment had no stove. Should we start a fire on the terrace? The smoke would alarm the Blue House. That left only the toilet. I tore the pages to shreds, tore the shreds to smaller shreds, and sent my creation chapter by chapter to the same destination that no doubt some of my readers would have chosen for it. I tore up the pages and pulled the chain, tore again and pulled again, with ever greater intervals in between tearing and pulling, since the cistern on our roof was almost empty, and the bowl was filling up more and more slowly. Desperate as I was, this afforded me a certain pleasure at my own downfall. In between page-tearings and chain-pullings I read through a few passages, made some editing and deleting, and then once more pulled the chain. This game of cowardly egotism lasted a full three hours. If my opus was to go the way of all sewage, it at least ought to go in print-ready condition.