The Last Days (2 page)

When the trunk was finally empty, he felt a touch bemused when face to face with the humble stack of books. Rather
pathetically
, he groped around the bottom of the box, searching for other books that his eyes hadn’t been able to spot. His hand came up empty.

He heard Lotte’s voice coming from the veranda. It had the gift of pulling him from the threshold of despair. She had rescued him from depression right from their first meeting in London in 1934, the early days of his exile. Elizabeth Charlotte Altmann’s eyes betrayed a penchant for indulgence which his life no longer accorded him. As soon as he’d seen her face, something had become very clear. Instead of the usual bolt of lightning, a blessing had fallen from the heavens and landed right next to him. Hitler could go ahead and invade Europe and become the master of the universe, what did he care? Even today, when nothing seemed to shake him out of his macabre mood, his companion’s mere
appearance
served to instil in him the hope that the world might one day come back to its senses—and that he would live to see it. Neatly arranged, the books took up two shelves. Something to do with how they were aligned annoyed him. He reached for a book that was leaning slightly to one side and straightened it. He took a step back
and examined the results, shook his head, grabbed another book and consigned it to a lower shelf. He smiled approvingly, then his face clouded over and he pulled two books from the bottom shelf and placed them on the one above. At which point, he plucked two volumes from the middle of the first shelf and placed each at either end. Then he pulled out another, put it on top of the bookcase, and then put it back. Lotte looked at him without batting an eyelid, though an ironic smile could be detected at the corner of her lips. The process went on for a further ten minutes. Each time he examined the results and seemed satisfied, he went back to work. It was as though he were playing a game of chess with his bookshelf, using the books as pawns. It looked as if the game would never end. Did he have a specific idea of how the books should be arranged? For a moment, Lotte thought her husband had lost his mind. She kept her distance, deciding not to intervene. Who could claim to have hung on to his sanity in those days? A second later, he moved another book, stopped, then turned around, neither looking at her nor uttering a single word. His face was marked by a profound helplessness and untold sadness, dispelling the cheerfulness the task at hand had lent it. He walked around the room in circles, then his shadow melted into the corridor’s penumbra. She heard the bedroom door shut and the bedsprings creak under the weight of his body. After that, she heard nothing at all.

His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He recalled the countless shelves of books that had lined the walls of his house in Salzburg. They looked distinguished, their value was inestimable. Their presence inspired a feeling of tranquillity. When he would turn his head and look out of the window of his lounge in Kapuzinerberg, he could see the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden just across the border, where the man who was menacing humanity made his home. The books had been like a bulwark against him.

The vast legions of his literary masters, a myriad of books covering entire walls, all of which were annotated and whose pages were worn and a little yellowed—works by Tolstoy, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Hölderlin, Schiller, Goethe and Kleist. There was an entire army of autographed books by dear friends of his, such as Rilke, Schnitzler, Freud, Romain Rolland, Jakob Wassermann and Alfred Döblin, all the greatest writers central Europe had to offer, all the talents that had emerged during the interwar years. Then there were his own books, which he kept slightly out of sight, but which were his pride and joy since they were the only fruits his life had borne. Having remained childless, he considered them his own flesh and blood. Then there were the rows of handwritten originals and typescripts. He had owned almost four thousand of them. They ranged from little notes scrawled on bits of paper all the way to letters from Rilke and Goethe’s manuscripts. His most prized piece had been Beethoven’s journal—that genius’s record of his youth penned in his own hand, for which he’d paid its weight in gold at the beginning of the 1920s, and which was now part of the booty the Gestapo had confiscated and distributed among various Nazi officials. Yes, Beethoven’s manuscript was now in Goering’s hands! Goering, who it was said was an admirer of the Jew Zweig’s work. He pictured Goering leafing through
Fear
.

Happily, he had been able to safeguard the original score of Mozart’s
Das Veilchen
. It had crossed the ocean with him. Mozart’s eyes and hands had lain on these pages. How often had he attended recitals of this song, to which Goethe’s words had been set? He began to hum that tune and its lyrics. It was the first time he’d sung in ages. The spirit of the old Austria had survived in this place. Mozart watched over him.

His entire life rested upon these shelves. It was framed by its planks.

Nothing was left of the books that he’d kept in his Salzburg house. The people who had written them, those that were still alive, were now scattered throughout the world, fleeing wherever they could, hounded and miserable, penniless and devoid of inspiration, no longer able to tell their stories. Who could start a novel in those times, or weave a more solid and dramatic plot than that which was already being written? Hitler was the author of millions of unsurpassable tragedies. Literature had found its true master.

He pondered over the ridiculous direction his destiny as a writer had taken. Now he only wrote in order to be translated—into English, thanks to that good-hearted Ben Huebsch at Viking Press, and into Portuguese, by Abrahão Koogan. For nearly a decade now, German publishing houses had stopped printing works by Jews—not even Insel Verlag, to whom he’d been steadfastly loyal. He wrote using the language of a people who had outlawed him. Could one be a writer if he weren’t read in his own language? Was he still alive even though he was unable to write about his times?

He had been the most widely read author in the world, even though he was convinced that he was far less talented than Thomas Mann, or Schnitzler, or Rilke, or, of course, even Joseph Roth—and he didn’t believe a single word of what Freud had said when he’d claimed to prefer his work over Dostoevsky’s. He was aware of his weak points, was irked by his novellas’ repetitive plots, that limited technique of storytelling that he seemed unable to get away from—or the irremediably tragic way in which his heroes and heroines achieved their destiny either through madness or death. He had sold sixty million books. He had been translated into almost thirty languages, from Russian and Chinese all the way to Sanskrit. His biographies could be found in libraries all over France, Russia, the United States and Argentina. Crowds
rushed to see films adapted from his stories. He had written
librettos
for Richard Strauss. His
Jeremiah
at the Burgtheater had been highly acclaimed. Five hundred theatres had staged productions of his
Volpone
. He had delivered the keynote eulogy in memory of Rilke, his friend, at the Staatstheater in Munich, presided over the opening of the Tolstoy House Museum in Moscow and preached the sermon at Freud’s funeral in London. He had encouraged Herman Hesse’s first literary efforts, and, were it not for not for his help, Joseph Roth might never have climbed out of the pit of his despair and written
The Radetzky March.
The great Einstein himself had asked to meet with him. He cherished his memory of their dinner at a Berlin restaurant in June 1930, where the scientist had confessed to owning all of his books.

His books haunted him. Their characters—Mrs C. and Dr B., Christine and Ferdinand, Irene, Roland and Edgar—lived on in his spirit. He thought about their fate. The sight of bonfires being kindled in the squares of each German town on that menacing night of 10th May 1933 flashed past his eyes once again. With those crowds huddling around those blazing fires one might have thought one were back in the Middle Ages. The Reich that wanted to last for a thousand years had instead turned the clock back to the year 1000. Once night had fallen and the bonfire was glowing, the ghastly street party had got under way as German youths, cheered on by the crowd, had thrown books into the pyre. The flames had climbed all the way to the sky and the ashes had scattered into the night. The heroes of his novels had been burnt to a crisp.

The sound of Lotte’s footsteps in the corridor stopped the train of his dark thoughts in its tracks. Did he want to come and take his seat at the dinner table? Mrs Banfield had asked the kitchen to prepare a Brazilian speciality in their honour. Lotte headed
to the window, explaining how one shouldn’t sit in the dark. She opened the blinds to their fullest. A wave of light spread through the room. He told Lotte the journey had given him an appetite.

The housekeeper had set the table out on the veranda. In the sky, the seams between night and day had blurred. The air was cooler. Lotte rose from her chair to look for a shawl. They started eating. In her sweet husky voice, she said:

“You know, I think we can finally hang those Rembrandt etchings of yours. They will look splendid in the salon.”

Alongside his Mozart score, he had also been able to bring two little etchings signed by the master himself. All of his other Rembrandts, as well as his Klimts, his Schieles, his Munch, his Kokoschkas and his little Renoir, were now undoubtedly hanging on the walls of Goering’s house. He contemplated that enchanted, timeless landscape outside, banishing the ghosts that haunted his spirit, if only for a few seconds. The distant echo of military marches was supplanted by the sound of animal calls—monkeys, he assumed. In the eight years since he’d fled from Salzburg, he’d been searching for peace. Yet every time he’d set down his suitcases, the ground had crumbled beneath his feet. Everywhere he went, the war had caught up with him. He hoped it would never get past those hills. He had found the ideal spot for his eternal rest.

“You can finally get down to work on your
Balzac
.”

He nodded. The time had come.

Now that he was here, he felt ready. That biography of Balzac he’d begun writing in London was to be his masterpiece. It had to be important, bulky, and would put paid to those criticisms regarding his style. His friends—Klaus Mann, Ernst Weiss, the late lamented Ernst—had never spared him, accusing him of plagiarism and dilettantism. His
Balzac
, however, would command
respect; it would be more meticulous than
Marie Antoinette
and more ambitious than
Mary Stuart
. It would stand as a testament to his work ethic and unwavering discipline. It would erase all trace of his mediocre and laughable
Stendhal. Balzac
would be his finest achievement. The novelist had been both his mentor and model. Balzac’s industriousness and rich abundance of
characters
fascinated him. He had already written the first part of the book, which dealt with the French writer’s life, in London. Yet he wanted to give this book a different spin. He aspired towards an exhaustive examination of Balzac’s work, its structure, its essence, something that would encompass the entirety of
The Human Comedy
and remain a useful reference to it. During his five years in London, he had accumulated an incredible wealth of material. Alas, he hadn’t been able to find room for it in his baggage. Thousands of files and notes, without which he could not continue his work, were gathering dust in a box on the other side of the world. His friend Ben Huebsch had assured him that this precious package would before long leave London, and that a transatlantic ship would deliver it to Rio soon enough. Though he never usually prayed, he began pleading with the Heavens that the ship might reach safe harbour. The
Balzac
had become his reason for being.

“You’re wrong,” Lotte said, “you’ve got nothing to prove. No one stands your equal. Your
Balzac
isn’t the only thing you have. Here I am, right by your side. Am I not worth living for?”

He acquiesced. Yes, she was more important to him than anything else. She was worth more than all the books he had written and those yet to come, more than all the novels that had ever been published. She planted a kiss on his hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She explained that they were of joy, caused by the happiness she felt at seeing the two of them together in a
house far from the reach of men, all alone. Perhaps it had been their destiny all along to be forced onto the path of exile so that they might find one another, far from barbarians and their oaths, sheltered behind a mountain range and buffered by a vast ocean.

He would have loved to believe in destiny, to think that this voyage had been guided by a higher will. Yet he had never believed in God. He felt as though he’d left the keys to his fate in the lock of his house in Salzburg.

On the morning of the second day, a beam of light cut through the bedroom blinds and curtains. He partly opened his eyelids. Whereas he had usually needed a few minutes before mustering his energies in the past, he got out of bed immediately. The housekeeper, a friendly young lady whom Mrs Banfield had put at their disposal, made him some coffee, and he drank it sitting on the veranda. Although he had stopped dreaming long ago, it was so bright outside that he seemed to have slipped into reverie.

Lotte got up not long after him. When she came out onto the veranda, the sun cast a beam of light on her. She said she’d been woken up by the sound of birdsong: a primeval sort of choir, the likes of which she’d never heard before. “A tropical symphony,” she said, smiling. His thoughts drifted to his friend Toscanini when he’d conducted
Pastoral
in Monte Carlo in 1934. But he didn’t linger on these memories. He wanted to make a clean break with the past. Petrópolis had to clear all that dross and nostalgia from his mind.

Lotte had slept well. Her face said it all. Up until that point, the miles they’d travelled had seriously compromised her health. Her condition had worsened in the past few months. The ocean
crossing had hollowed her cheeks, damaged her eyesight and chapped her lips. Lotte’s heart hadn’t coped well with London weather. After they’d left Britain, Lotte’s lungs had rejected the New York air during their stopover in that city. That was part of the reason they’d headed farther south. The first time they’d gone to Brazil, a year earlier, the weather in Petrópolis’s hilly heights had proved restorative. It was as if they’d gone to the Austrian Alps, to Semmering, Baden or some other spa town.