Not only the Jews were glad to see the back of Sergei Andreyovitch, though he said farewell to me with the most touching tenderness, even risking a comradely squeeze of the hand just before he climbed into the transport.
In retrospect Seryozha’s period as hut commandant was almost like a holiday. My new interviews with Sturmführer Schnauben began again soon after the officer’s return from leave. He used the Gestapo building near the main gate, which he said was quieter. We were less likely to be interrupted. He was in a somewhat different mood. He told me how much he had missed our conversations.
‘I find you an inspiration, Pyatnitski. Your guardian angel still protects you.’ He had been in Berlin. I had the impression he had spoken to someone there about my case. Perhaps after all Kolya, not Mrs Cornelius, was that ‘guardian angel’.
For all that, I lived in perpetual fear of Schnauben turning against me or being replaced by some other SS officer who would reclassify me as a Jew.
Schnauben had brought some new gramophone records back with him. Bach remained his favourite composer. He was particularly fond of a recording of the St John Passion. This was miserable for me. Bach has always seemed irredeemably insane. Yet I had to pretend to appreciate his taste. I do not believe I really deceived him.
‘Neither the Jew nor the Spaniard ever had any true affinity for the Baroque,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you are, after all, a Russian.’
Sometimes I found it impossible to follow his logic, hard as I tried. I did not know if he was joking. Later he claimed he was sure I was American, after all. I lacked any sense of irony. That made him certain I could not be either Jewish or Russian.
Russian blood meant nothing to these people. They despised it. Anyone who was not German was a subhuman whose chief function was to work and die for the Reich. They took their lead from the teachings of the Americans and the British, who for so long had been obsessed with racial definitions. The Reich based their blood laws firmly on those of Mississippi and Alabama. They produced a hodgepodge of poorly conceived legislation which they never really refined.
In recent years I have given much thought to creating a world in which the different races could live in harmony. I have drawn maps showing where the Arabs would live, where we would place the Negroes, what lands should be granted to the Slavs and so on. But as usual no one has listened to me, and we continue to have chaos. The stupidest British mistake was to listen to the Zionists who demanded Palestine as a homeland. The government should have given them Hampstead Garden Suburb where they would have been welcomed and allowed to set up their kibbutzes and their socialist welfare state and not have had so far to travel. They could have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land a mere bus ride away. The Arabs would have been content. There would have been only peace in the region.
Sturmführer Schnauben was interested in my plans for the reorganisation of the British Empire after the war. He would listen with fascination while I explained what was to be done. I honestly believe his respect for my intellect helped keep me alive during those terrible years. He did what he had to do to survive. I have never blamed him.
Ich unterwerfe michl Ich unterwerfe mich! Ich unterwerfe mich dem Tod. Wiedergeburt des Ego. Oh, Jerusalem. Oh, Schönheit! Verwaiste Knochen. Liebling. Glück und Elend. So ja mit kleinen Vögeln. Vögel füllen die Brust. Vögel picken innen, singen für die Freiheit. Mein Imperium, eine Seele. Vögel sterben in mir. Einer nach dem anderen.
My flying cities transport us to new worlds, where strong, healthy people give birth to a wholesome race living by Christ’s laws.
For I am the way and the truth, said Our Saviour. Follow me, He said. Follow me.
A silence had fallen over Germany.
FIFTY-ONE
German materialism, French eroticism, Roman superstition, English and American greed. What can counter these influences? Only Russian spirituality. And of all Slavs, the Cossacks are the truest Russians. We worshipped our tsar-batiushka. Just as the Jews have done in Palestine, my ancestors established their khutora whenever it was possible to reclaim land from the Tatars. Some true Cossacks rode with the German forces but most of those were merely Great Russians claiming Cossack blood in order to get out of the POW camps. I am sure there were few true Cossacks fought for the Germans, though this did not stop Stalin from killing so many. Not that I hated all Germans, even during my years in Dachau. I had the library, at least until it became distasteful to me. I began to forget my Russian roots and believe, because I only had Goethe and his compatriots to comfort me, that German was the finest language for expressing human metaphysics and spirituality.
I think the Sturmführer got the idea for our orchestra and choir from me. He would play me Bach and Beethoven on his gramophone. Beethoven I did not mind, though I preferred, of course, Tchaikovsky. The orchestra soon broke up and we were again reduced to gramophone records. Yet I do not think I could have survived in those early months without music. Today everything is drowned out by the thump-thump of Negro drums, the angry repetitions of the jungle we hoped to conquer but which somehow is conquering us. I had seen that schloss as a place of God, a fortress of civilisation, whose family represented all that was admirable and exemplary in German civilisation, yet Mussolini had known better. Today I understand they sell pizza from a kiosk in the grounds and in summer rock-and-roll bands offer concerts to the crowds of soft-faced children whose only knowledge of German culture is the frankfurter and the hamburger.
The Cornelius girl is proud of her new BMW motorcycle. One ride on the pillion was enough for me. German ideas were the ruin of Russia but Russia, through the Holy Church, can still be the salvation of Europe. Rome has failed her. The proof is everywhere. The proof is manifest. Les donneurs de sérénades. Je respire enfin. Les petites fetnmes. Il est très joli, très sublime. Moi? Je suis un monstre. Appréhendez vous? Non. Non. Non. La sexualité. C’est fini. C’est dangereux pour les enfants? Ah oui, mais je suis un celebrant. I do not lack intellect, only education. And for that I am forced to blame Germany. Another year or two and my schooling would have been complete. Simplicissimus himself was never as unfortunate. May I touch her? It is all I wish to do. Either she is real or I am. C’est impossible pour les deux. All I wished to do was purchase some furniture. Violento, those colorados. Wie spät ist es? Hören Sie sie singen? Sie will nach Wienfahren. Wirfahren zusammen ins Gebirge. Ein Flugzeug? Die Sonne geht spät unter. Dunkle Wolken. Stürmisch. That weather! Yet it is the summers I remember best. If you have never heard marching in a city you could not imagine it. It begins as a kind of rustling sound, like a breeze in autumn trees, then it develops into a rhythmic banging, as sticks pop in a fire, then as if boys beat on dustbins until it takes on a mechanical, deafening quality, not like any human sound at all, but overwhelming your senses. A voice sounds like a loud fault in an engine. When it stops, you want to vomit. I heard that sound in London when the Boys Brigade practised for Armistice Day, reminding me that the British and Germans were not so different. For a while I had an inferior copy of Grimmelshausen, actually in my locker, but that was either confiscated or stolen, I forget.