Good People (25 page)

During the months when he wasn't working, just sitting at home doing nothing, Clarissa would declare that his great day was to come—Milton was a small station on his journey, and in a few years, when he looked back, he wouldn't understand why he had shut himself away like a leper. Without Clarissa, whose sweetness and inexhaustible faith brightened his afternoon hours, he would have plunged into despair. She told him he had all the virtues of Siegfried, and whatever he did he would succeed. Thomas could be an architect, or an author, or a film producer, possessed of both creative and business acumen. She could see him in Babelsberg, surrounded by actors…

Twenty minutes later he was ready. His mind was entirely given over to the conference room in the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse. He didn't approach Clarissa again but waved to her. She gave him an astonished look that immediately became an enthusiastic smile, as if she understood that this day had a single focus. ‘Siegfried,' she called, ‘take them by storm!' He imagined that he heard mockery in her voice.

He went downstairs, offered the concierge a spirited greeting and stepped into the street, giving himself over to the warm summer breeze. A car from the Foreign Office was waiting for him, a gesture from von Weizsäcker.

‘Herr Heiselberg, good morning,' the driver said.

‘Good morning,' he said, and slid into the back seat. From nowhere the memory of his father telling him about a job offer in Russia pounced on him. It was an autumn day in 1922. He had returned from the
university and was waiting for his father in Wagner's café. He appeared unshaven in a raincoat with frayed cuffs. Without preliminaries he informed Thomas that he was joining a small group of engineers, technicians and workers from the Junkers plant who were to help set up an aeroplane factory near Moscow. His father had despised Communists all his life, but he was pleased about the coming trip. The idea that, just a few years after the horrible war, in which his best friends were killed, he would build warplanes for the Russians was an abomination to him, but since Germany had signed a treaty with the Bolsheviks he had given up trying to understand his government. The offer he had received meant a promotion and a higher salary; in addition, he would be away for some time, and perhaps, when he returned, he and Marlene could patch up their marriage.

Wagner served them vanilla ice-cream, and said hello. Thomas nodded, and his father said something in a soft voice. Then they drank coffee, and Thomas taught his father a few sentences in Russian: ‘I want a bowl of borscht', ‘My son will manage big companies in Germany one day', ‘They say that Saint Petersburg is the most beautiful city in Europe.' Thomas suddenly saw Frau Stein looking at them shamelessly through the parlour window of their house. When they parted, his father reminded him that he still expected him to join the German University Ring,
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and Thomas told him that he wouldn't wander around the campus shouting, ‘Wake up, Germany!' like an idiot, and anyway he wasn't a political man.

His father travelled to Russia and wrote only a few letters home to Thomas and his mother. A year passed; it turned out that the factory was making Junkers bleed money, and the company decided to transfer ownership of it to the Soviet government. His father came back to work in the factory in Dessau and a few months later he was fired. He went from one miserably paid job to another, and adamantly refused Thomas's offers of support. He joined the National Socialist Party and spent most

of his time with his new friends. Thomas's mother and Frau Stein said that the man had finally returned to his true home among the riffraff.

At his father's funeral, in 1930, Thomas was surrounded by several dozen Brownshirts, who delivered heartfelt eulogies praising his devotion to the community and his loyalty to his friends (he asked to be buried next to Horst Wessel, his young friend who had been murdered by the Communists). Thomas felt comforted that, contrary to the way he had imagined him, his father had at the end of his life been a vigorous man with lots of friends. He thanked the eulogisers for the affection they had shown his father. At the end of the funeral they all sang a medley of party songs celebrating the life of Johannes Heiselberg.

The participants seated themselves around a mahogany table. Before each lay a folder containing a copy of the pamphlet, a sheaf of fine paper and two sharpened pencils. In von Weizsäcker's short welcoming speech, he emphasised that the event was a kind of conversation, whose purpose was to generate original ideas in the event ‘that Germany indeed is forced to fight against Poland' (the man tried to register a note of caution). He then invited Thomas to speak.

Within a few minutes he sensed that those present—including the opponents of the model, whom he identified immediately—were impressed by the scope and style of his lecture. He allowed himself to indulge in amused irony, and cited historical anecdotes. He felt as if nothing would give him more satisfaction than the opportunity to give the lecture again. When he finished, the participants pounded the table to express their appreciation, but the moment the pounding died down the representative of Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, asked for the floor.

‘With all due respect,' he said emphatically, ‘to our honourable master of disciplines and his fascinating speech, the fourth chapter in his document, which deals with the history of the Polish people, is scandalous. Sir, you write as if these people have a past at all. It's as clear as day that
these backward Slavs have no dynasty. That's a fiction spread by lying, base propaganda. There's no such thing as a “Polish national”.'

‘All the Slavs are a single nation,' said another voice from the end of the table.

Rudolf Hess's representative declared that he shared this view and added that the fourth chapter aroused resentment in the party as well; he even recommended reprinting the pamphlet without it. ‘We must not destroy the valuable science of history, which was born here in Germany, with meaningless legends. With your permission, I would like to quote what Herr Hess, the party chairman, said to me: “There are true nations with historical roots, and every proper historian will present evidence of the direct connection between the Aryan German and the ancient Nordic race and the Teutonic knights.” Whereas, according to the Foreign Office's model, four monkeys can decide tomorrow that they are descendants of Julius Caesar and claim Rome. The Slavs aren't worthy of all this profound research, and there's no need to understand anything about their mentality in order to deal with them with an iron fist.'

‘Gentlemen,' Thomas answered, grateful to Weller and to von Weizsäcker for preparing him for this attack, ‘your comments are entirely constructive, and I share your opinion. I regret to say, however, that they are not useful. The fourth chapter is a comprehensive study of how the Pole himself constructs his identity and his views of his past, and it makes no difference at all whether historical research shows that the state called Poland is in fact the kind of hokum that has been put about during the past two centuries. Allow me to offer you an analogy: suppose someone wants to buy a company. First, he will examine its balance sheet. Then he will inquire about how confident its owner is in its future. That's because a man who believes that his company is his whole world will negotiate differently from a man who believes that any company is coin of the realm, even if the first man made only a small contribution to the company and the second devoted the best years of his life to it.'

A silence fell on the room, and Thomas heard mainly the breathing
of Weller and Schnurre. A quick glance at Weller's face was sufficient—it revealed his desire to disown Thomas and at the same time to rescue him. Thomas understood that his analogy had not gone down well, and it might have strengthened the hand of his opponents who were aware of his open admiration of capitalism, his connections with the Americans, his late adhesion to the party and perhaps also the strange story about the Jewish housekeeper. (Weller had made him aware of all these recriminations, as well as his own response, in which he commended the purity of the late Herr Heiselberg's morals and his loyalty to the party.) Here was his first lesson, Thomas noted to himself: never use examples from the business world.

‘The degree to which a Pole is willing to fight to the death and aggravate our lives is not connected to historical truth,' Weller finally intervened, ‘but rests on the whole structure of his beliefs. Therefore, for the purposes of the discussion, there is a Polish national.'

The representative from the Ministry of Justice supported Weller's remarks. ‘History teaches us,' he added smugly, ‘that both fools and wise men fight in the name of their faith, and a fool fights no worse than a wise man.'

A young doctor from the Department of Eugenic Research in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute inquired about the scientific background of the sixth chapter, which dealt with the Polish race. ‘Why didn't you consult experts on the subject, such as Hans Günther or Robert Ritter?' he demanded. ‘Why is no representative of the Rosenberg Institute present?'

Weller replied that the writings and advice of all the experts on Poland were fed into the model, along with extensive research literature, and original material based on interviews with thousands of Poles. ‘The model presented by the Foreign Office is the most comprehensive one in Germany today,' he concluded.

Then it was the turn of Bruno Beger, representing the Department of Race and Settlement (Weller had in confidence told Thomas that this department was considering the mass deportation of Poles), who had been filled with rage when he read about the work of the
archaeological centre in Poland. ‘It's bad enough that those idiots are looking for the roots of the Slavic peoples,' he protested, ‘and spend whole days in their gloomy churches gaping at altars, but to establish a research centre? To look for the roots of some Slavic nation in our own German regions?'

Thomas liked the look of Bruno Beger. He moved with the ease of a man who expected people to acknowledge his excellence without any effort on his part. It was rumoured that the Ministry of Propaganda wanted to use his picture on posters exhibiting the perfect Nordic man.

‘Tomorrow their scientists will decide that they're the true Nordics, and that we're Mongols,' called out the doctor from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

‘Hence the model's strong recommendation is that, immediately after taking Warsaw, we will close the National Museum on Aleje Jerozolimskie, as well as the Archaeology Museum in Łazienki Park,' Thomas said. ‘I wish to call your attention to the chapter entitled “Excavation Madness, the Strengthening of Nationalism”. In the last few decades the Poles have been digging everywhere to collect evidence about their national history. Every week they discover some jewel. Just last October they held a great ceremony in Warsaw and displayed a new part of the old city wall. Therefore our practical proposal is to add every Pole who has ever been engaged in archaeology to the list of the intelligentsia.'

‘Gentlemen,' said Weller. ‘Please pay attention to the fact that their empire already existed in the Middle Ages. I refer you to the chapter on Polish literature and especially to the pages covering the historical novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, rather inferior books that every Polish child reads. And what are they about? The victories of their empire, of course, especially over the Teutonic Knights. In general, it is impossible to deny that the Poles have true achievements they can cling to, like the conquest of Moscow, for example. That is to say, in addition to the military campaign we can expect a campaign that we might call “cultural-historical”.'

‘Moreover, the chapter entitled “Ardent Francophilia” discusses
French influence on the Poles,' Thomas added, noting to himself that Weller was now defending the ideas in the model as if they were the fruit of his own mind. ‘This is expressed in the Polish conception of democracy, as well as in little snippets of life: the way Polish women imitate French women in dress, manners and even in sexual behaviour, or in the boarding-school romances so beloved of Polish girls.'

‘So what if some young Zosia enjoys reading risqué novels, even though the priest has forbidden it? How is that supposed to influence the Reich's policy in Poland?' asked Bruno Beger, who then looked impatiently at his watch.

‘Sir, if you read the chapter to the end, perhaps you will find your answer,' Thomas answered. ‘We are concerned about all sorts of scenarios. For example, assuming that we manage to defeat the priests, we must anticipate local identification with the French Republic, through which democratic sentiment and fierce loyalty to a kind of Polish identity might grow stronger. The model analyses Poland as it is today, and its recommendations should be taken into consideration when setting the Reich's policy. If we explain, for example, why it isn't possible to deport hundreds of thousands of Poles to the east, we expect to be heard out. From the moment our policy is set, the flexibility of the model will, however, enable us to propose practical solutions.'

Beger was impressed by this crushing answer.

Does this upstart understand who he's taken on? Thomas said to himself with exhilaration, a man who used to demand soaring prices for partnerships in Milton branches that only existed in his imagination!

At lunch, while the guests gathered around refreshments on KPM plates handpainted with white lilies, Weller sat next to Thomas and whispered to him that he was worried about the fact that Wolfram Sievers, from the Research and Teaching Society of the Ancestral Heritage, had attacked the model in an irate letter to the Foreign Minister, claiming that it was leading the research into the history of the Aryan race as compared with other races; it wasn't possible for some nonentity to come along and declare himself to be an expert on the Poles.

‘Scientific insults from the Society of the Ancestral Heritage are a great compliment,' Thomas answered arrogantly. ‘Between you and me, Weller, what is a discipline if not the stretching or shrinking of knowledge according to the spirit of the age? To plunder the African continent, English science determined that the Negroes were quarter human, and the French and the Belgians divided the Negroes in the same village into “white people of colour”, “black-skinned Europeans”, and “inferior Negroes”. American science reached the same conclusions, by the way. Tell me what your needs are, and I'll tailor a discipline for you.'