The Phoenix Land (14 page)

I had already been warned of this in Budapest, and it caused me a lot of worry. Where should I put all those Swedish
banknotes
? In the soles of my shoes? But even during the war this had been a well-known subterfuge – and many people had lost
everything by trying it. What about the lining of my jacket? But surely banknotes would crackle if the customs men ran their hand over me? In the seat of my trousers? There wasn’t much room there, and it would surely look odd if it were too bulky?

Finally I discovered in a chest in which I used to store my old clothes, an ancient top hat, a real Methuselah of a hat. Some twenty years before it had been made for riding from an
exceptionally
hard felt and had a large brim. Inside there was a wide leather band to ensure that it sat well on the head, while at the back it had once had a ring to which a string could be tied so as to attach it to the lapel of one’s coat. The ring had disappeared and in its place was a sizable hole.

I used to wear it when foxhunting at Zsuk and at least a couple of times it saved my life when I had a bad fall. It had braved thorny hedges and more than once had been severely damaged. Now it was purple with age, and its silk binding was in shreds. Not even a beggar would have touched it.

I took this weather-beaten old hat, which no one would
suspect
belonged to anyone with money, embedded my Swedish crown notes in the wide leather sweatband inside it and put my faith in its continuing to render me good service.

In Salzburg we were separated. Mrs Andorján, with the dog Lolotte, who counted as female, was ushered into the place for women, while Andorján and I took our places in a queue of male travellers.

One by one they let us through.

We then found ourselves in a strange corridor run up from wooden planking which changed direction every two or three metres and led finally to a box-like enclosure where each suspect traveller (and all travellers were suspect) was let in on his own. This was the place set aside for the
Leibes-visitation
, and here one had to undress, even to taking off one’s shoes and socks.
Everything
was searched by hand, and they even felt under one’s shirt.

I endured all this quite calmly. There are moments when one feels quite alone and needs a friend, but on that day I knew they would find nothing on me. My decrepit ancient hat was outside, hung on a carelessly protruding nail in the corridor. I had
absolutely no fears that anybody would take it, for there was no one in the world who could possibly have wanted it.

I was twice searched in that labyrinth of odd twists and
corners
before we finally found ourselves safely outside on German soil, the Methuselah hat now proudly on my head. Throughout my travels it served me with honour, and with it I crossed the German border three more times before I finally reached The Hague.

There I bought myself a new hat, but I still mourned my old Methuselah, whose last office had been to serve me so well.

It was a long way from the border post at Salzburg to Berlin. Sometimes, for quite a stretch at a time, we would be ten people in a compartment meant for six – and then Lolotte had to be kept on someone’s lap. All the same, we arrived in the afternoon of the following day and drove from the Leipziger Banhof to the Hotel Bristol in a heavily overloaded cab.

The streets were crowded. In double rows men in civilian clothes were marching, every tenth man or so carrying a placard saying
NIEDER MIT EBERT
– ‘Down with Ebert’ – or
HOCH SPARTAKUS
– ‘Up with Spartacus’, while on the other side of the street a similar procession carrying boards saying
HOCH EBETI
and
NIEDER MIT SPARTAKUS
, as well as others saying
NIEDER MIT LIEBKHECHT
, all very neatly written.

The two demonstrations passed each other peacefully and in good order on opposite sides of the street. Between them the cabbies drove their vehicles quite indifferent to what was going on. Occasionally one group would let out a cheer, and sometimes the other then did the same. Then, well drilled, one side would call out
‘Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!’
before the other responded with
‘Nieder! Nieder! Nieder!’
Then they would all fall silent and go on marching without any signs of emotion.

It all seemed a most peaceful demonstration, carried out with typical German discipline.

Only when we drove down the Wilhelmstrasse, past the Chancery and in front the Prussian Foreign Ministry, did we see anything to suggest that the situation was as serious as it was in
reality. In all the doorways to those two buildings stood soldiers in steel helmets armed with machine guns.

And then, later in the tree-lined Unter den Linden, we met again only those apparently peaceful demonstrators with their banners.

We did not know it then, but we had arrived in Berlin on the first day of the Spartacist Rising.

Chapter Six

We managed to find rooms at the Hotel Bristol. Our windows were on the front side, and from time to time while we unpacked and made them tidy, we would glance out over the tree-lined Unter den Linden. We were on the third or fourth floor, and so one could see for quite a distance. Clearly in view were the Greek columns of the Brandenburg Gate, and at one side, further away in the grey distance, was the statue of Frederick the Great in the square in front of the imperial palace. The street was full of people strolling about, walking, talking, gazing around or just loitering on the sidewalk. There were hardly any cars to be seen and people crisscrossed the street, walking in all directions, only dispersing for a moment when one of the well-behaved groups of demonstrators marched by brandishing their party slogans. The demonstrators still occasionally let out a disciplined shout, but it seemed to raise no echo from the passers-by.

I do not remember having seen any armed civilians that
afternoon
. The crowd, gaping and staring, gave a somewhat merry impression as if the Berliners preferred to be amused by
everything
that was going on and, although from our windows above one could not hear what they were saying, I am sure they were making fun of it, thinking it all something of a lark –
ulkig
, as they would say in Berlin.

Towards evening it quietened down; at least we thought it did, and so we busied ourselves planning the next stage of our
journey
and decided to get our visas in the morning. There were no alarming signs in the hotel. Quite a number of foreigners were dining there, the hall-porter was saluting the guests with his habitual elegance, the waiters were serving dinner with their unusual false deference – although, no doubt, once back in the
kitchen there was no more talk about veal chops or fried scabbard-fish. There they would surely be discussing the events of the last two days, how the Ebert government had dismissed Eichenau, the Chief of Police who had refused to give up his place in the Cabinet but who had gone so far as to arm the Spartacist revolutionaries. And maybe, too, they whispered among themselves that Radek, the envoy of Soviet Russia, had arrived in Berlin on the first of the month – and that if he were there it wasn’t for nothing.

Foreigners just passing through knew nothing of all this, so we planned our trip in peace and went to bed. We awoke the
following
morning to the sound of gunfire. At first it was sporadic, and far away. The Unter den Linden was again crowded with people, but they were neither so quiet, nor so merry, as they had been on the previous day. Now they were curious … but frightened too. Some distance away a black mob was gathering, and later we heard that the offices of the Socialist newspaper
Vorwärts
had been attacked and burned down. Towards midday a wave of fear swept through the crowd, and everyone ran like madmen into the neighbouring side streets, or dived into doorways. In a few moments there was no one to be seen in the street. Then a few urchins raced by shouting ‘
Es wird geschossen!
’ – ‘They’re
shooting
!’ The strange thing was that these street-boys did not even try to hide but ran on screaming towards the imperial palace. Then there were a few moments of calm before machine-gun fire was heard from beside the Brandenburg Gate. We could hear well the sound of the bullets hitting some advertising placards and the metal reflectors of the streetlights, also the paving and kerbs of the sidewalks. All of this we could observe in comfort, and also in safety since the pillars beside our windows protected us. The shooting lasted only a few moments; then there was silence, and the public filtered slowly back into the street. In a short while everything was just the same as it had been; people stood about as before, gazed around and walked to and fro, every bit as if sudden death had not swept past them a moment before.

This happened more than once, including the urchins; and this same pattern was repeated many times during the first days of our stay. Shouts that there was shooting would start up
somewhere, and everyone would run to take shelter; then they would all return with the unquenched curiosity and the
indolence
natural to the city-dweller. Slowly the crowd grew smaller, but the picture remained the same, that day and the next. These days were so similar that it is now difficult to recall the exact chronology of what happened. As foreigners we could not tell the reason for these sudden showers of bullets and did not really care, and so it was not long before we became as accustomed to them as we were to showers in April. We used to say, ‘We’d better wait a bit, they’re still shooting!’ or, ‘Now we can go, it’s stopped’, just as one might have said about rain. We lost half a day like this. By the time we had learned the pattern of shooting it was too late to go out and get our visas, and so we lost precious time when we should already have been on our way.

It was afternoon when I went first to the Swedish Embassy. Knowing Berlin well from the past I went on foot, not only because it was not far to go but also because I thought it would be interesting to see more than we could glean from the
puppet-show
we observed from the windows of the hotel. Only Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse and Pariser-Platz had anything warlike about them. The park of the Tiergarten (which
contained
the Zoo) was as lovely and peaceful as on any other day. The beautifully tended lawns were as green as ever, and here and there were scattered some lemon-yellow leaves that had fallen from the lime trees. They were like golden coins. Blackbirds and titmice whirled playfully about, woodpeckers were tapping away, and sparrows settled impertinently on the marble statues and behaved in their usual disrespectful way.

I walked along Tiergartenstrasse and found it deserted. It was easy then to fancy myself back in the past – in 1900 and 1901 – when I had stayed there for some two years. Then I had lived not far from the park and in this very street I had often seen Emperor Wilhelm’s carriage as he was driven swiftly from Potsdam to the capital, drawn by four magnificent Hungarian dapple-greys. They went like the wind. With heads held high, proudly, with a tremendous clatter of hoofs, they dashed by, appearing for a second at some turning and then, in the twinkling of an eye,
disappearing
at the next.

Even then I almost expected to see him racing by. Those
wonderful
dapple-greys! Where, I wondered, were they now?

Walking on, I arrived at the start of Siegesallee, and there I glanced at that row of marble statues of the Electors, which look as if they have been cast in molten wax, so repulsively smooth, shiny and greasy do they seem. Wilhelm II had thought to glorify himself by erecting them. There were about thirty, and the
unveiling
of each one had provided an unrivalled opportunity for
delivering
some
schneidisch
– spirited – oration with which the poor man had thought he would boost his popularity but which, on the contrary, by their unerring tactlessness, only served to dismay even his most fervent admirers. I was present on one of those
occasions
. The emperor’s corrosive voice was unforgettable, as he declaimed his speech with disagreeable attempts at pathos and far too many words. Disagreeable, too, were all those run-of-the-mill Lohengrin costumes, silver armour, gilded helmet, box-leather thigh-boots, marshal’s baton and, indeed, anything else which had a martial air. Standing there, with a belligerent expression on his face and festooned with the ribbons and chains of countless orders, he gave the impression of having borrowed it all to conceal the peace-loving middle-class soul he really was. At every parade I ever saw him attend I had the impression that, standing there in front of the soldiers of the most renowned and virile army and bodyguard in the world, he was the only one whose face did not fit.

I went on my way, filled with these and similar thoughts, until I reached the Swedish Embassy.

The ambassador, Baron Essen, received me warmly. He
promised
any help and support I might need but said I would have to return on the following day to collect my passport since the
consulate
office was closed for the afternoon, which meant that it could not be stamped before the morning.

I also heard from him that there was likely to be some
difficulty
about the trains because already on that day only one or two lines were expected to be functioning. It seemed that a good part of the suburbs had already been taken by the Spartacist rebels. ‘We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow,’ he said as we parted.

It was dark by the time I got back to the hotel, as I had to make a long detour to avoid the blocked streets. Still I managed it fairly
easily. If I remember rightly it was then that I saw they were building barricades outside the Leipziger Bahnhof, but it is
possible
that that was on the following day.

On the morning of 7 January the gunfire started early. It sounded as if most it was coming from the city centre where, we heard at midday, the Communists had seized the town hall. From then on the awesome noise of firing came closer and closer.

The rear entrance to the hotel gave onto Behrenstrasse, which I had been planning to use on my way to the Swedish Embassy. Unfortunately there were guards there who would not let me go through to Wilhelmstrasse, which was on my route, because there was fierce fighting near the palace of the Chancellery just by the corner of Behrenstrasse. Machine guns were cracking away, and later that evening we learned why; the Spartacist men had taken the Hotel Kaiserhof and from its windows had been firing across the street at the Chancellery and at the Foreign Office next door. They met fierce opposition, and soon the Kaiserhof had been retaken by government troops.

Eventually I managed to reach Friedrichstrasse, where one could pass without any danger and where the solid blocks of the intervening buildings deadened the sound so effectively that one could almost believe that one was taking a walk in a quiet
peaceful
city. Most of the shops there were open.

After an extended detour I finally reached Baron Essen, who, as he handed me my passport, was able to tell me about the
current
state of affairs, which he saw as critical. No trains were
leaving
the city. The Görlitz Bahnhof and the Schlesischer had both been taken by the insurgents and reduced to ruins, and it could well be that this was true of the other stations too. The Ebert government were expecting guns from Spandau, but so far they had not arrived. The government’s control of order in the city was uncertain since some of the police were already openly changing sides and joining up with Liebknecht’s troops. By the following day it was quite likely that the Spartacist rebels would have become the masters, and from them it would only be a short step to the Soviet Russians.

We talked about all these agreeable possibilities sitting in deep armchairs in a wide window embrasure from which one could
see the wonderful trees and lakes in the former deer park. What marvellous silence reigned there under those centuries-old oak trees! We could gaze along the wide avenues, now deep in shadow, where Frederick the Great had hunted the deer. And on the flat surfaces of the lakes we could just catch glimpses, in the fading light, of dark brown patches made by those flights of wild duck that still bred there.

From time to time, as we sat there talking, we would fall silent gazing over that wonderful landscape – but our hearts were still troubled by the worries of the day.

After one such pause Baron Essen had turned to me. Speaking without emphasis, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world, he had then said: ‘If there should be trouble, I will take you with my embassy staff to Stockholm. I know that if the Communists come to power, I am certain to be recalled; but you, you could not get out on your own!’

I thanked him warmly for his generous offer, which was all the more touching as we had met for the first time only the day before.

Once again I had to make a wide detour to reach the hotel, and when I got there I found it ringed with gunfire, which had now moved up from the city centre to around the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz.