Flight Without End

XXV

Tunda had a few letters of introduction from his brother and from acquaintances. He paid calls.

They were calls of the most tedious nature. There were learned and semi-learned men, worthy, but with a worth adulterated by wit. There were men with smooth, old, well-preserved faces and carefully brushed grey beards which still showed the marks of the comb. These men, holders of public offices, were professors or authors or presidents of humanitarian or so-called cultural associations. For thirty years they had had little else to do than to keep up appearances. They were distinguished from their German colleagues by their precise, rounded, polished gestures and their polite manner of speech.

Tunda got to know the President Marcel de K. He lived in a Parisian suburb, in a villa which he left only two or three times a year to attend special ceremonial sessions of the Academy.

He assured Tunda of his love for Germany.

‘Mr President,’ said Tunda, ‘you do me great honour in assuring me, a private person, of your esteemed love for Germany. But I am hardly in a position to accept your cordial assurances. I am not a public servant, not even a private one. I would find it embarrassing if I were asked to tell you what my occupation was. I returned from Russia not long ago, and have barely had time to look around in Germany. I spent two weeks in Berlin and stayed only a little longer with my brother in the town of X. on the Rhine. I did not even have time to find my bearings in Austria, my home country.’

He had caused the venerable old gentleman a certain embarrassment. So he added: ‘However, I could tell you about Siberia, if that interests you.’

They spoke of Russia. The President had the impression that the shooting was still going on in St Petersburg.

Tunda came to realize that the President’s refined tastes permitted him every kind of ignorance. He had the right to know absolutely nothing. France gave him everything he needed: mountains, sea, mystery, clarity, nature, art, science, revolution, religion, history, pleasure, grace and tragedy, beauty, wit, satire, enlightenment and reaction.

Tunda regarded the old gentleman with the pure delight experienced by some people when they stroll in a well-kept garden. He contemplated his elderly regular features, on which sorrow had acted with discretion; disappointments lay in predetermined furrows; the minor pleasures of life had left a fine, clear brightness in the eyes; round the thin, sharp lips and wide mouth the beard was spread in its silver repose; the head had lost only so much hair as was necessary to display a fine, intelligent, distinguished forehead. What an elder! No one could be more entitled to the name of President than he.

Tunda had adopted the habit of mistrusting beauty. Thus, initially, he did not believe a single word the President said, not even the most insignificant. When, for instance, he related how, twenty years before, he had taken some Minister or other aside in the Chamber of Deputies, in order to tell him the truth in private, Tunda took this for an exaggeration, an indulgence of his old age. For the truths M. de K. had to tell could have been uttered in public without fear of possible consequences.

But after he had conversed with this friendly gentleman three or four times, he began to suspect that the old man in no wise exaggerated. He did not overstate the facts, merely the degree and dangers of his truthfulness. That which, with a certain frisson, he called the truth, was an equivocal, almost a ridiculous, aspect of the truth. He certainly did not consciously exaggerate. If he expressed some commonplace, oft-repeated remark of abysmal banality about Germany, it was no thoughtless repetition in his mouth, but something like a polite discovery. Time and time again he relived the experiences of the past. When he said paternally: ‘I value your society, my dear young man,’ Tunda was compelled to feel himself really singled out. In this circumspect mouth, because of the slow movements of the tongue, every phrase acquired its old and original meaning. And it was plain that the old gentleman had to see a Minister in private in order to be able to tell him: ‘I have clearly noted the double meaning of your speech.’

Tunda learned from this man’s example that an important aspect of a distinguished bearing is fear of exaggeration (even the unadorned truth is an exaggeration) and a faith in the aptness and the appropriateness of tried and tested phrases. For him any new turn of phrase overstepped the mark.

At the worthy President’s he made the acquaintance of a number of persons: the editor of an ‘important’ newspaper; his colleagues; a woman to whose relations with a Minister allusions were made; a nobleman who hailed from the Rhine and had relatives in ruined castles in France, Italy and Austria. He was one of those aristocrats who publish magazines in order to prove themselves worthy of their illustrious names by means of a species of creative activity. They have not yet come to terms with the accepted impotence of the aristocracy, and while they allay their appetites at the tables of their successors, the industrialists, they never for a moment forget that they adorn these tables at the same time. Because, unlike many of their fellows, they do not even possess the ability to distinguish themselves as factory directors or personnel managers in coal-mining areas, they busy themselves with politics. And because they can no longer hope to increase their possessions through war, they indulge in the politics of peace. Moreover, the particular charm of the man under discussion lay in the fact that he was in favour of a dictatorship, of the iron hand. He looked forward to a united Europe under the dominion of a Pope with the temporal power of a dictator, or something of the kind. When he spoke, he placed his hands together so that the fingertips touched; he must at some time have learnt this habit of making steeples out of hands from a priest. He spoke with the persuasive, soft and sonorous voice of a professional hypnotist and clothed sober statements with a mystic radiance. Beyond that, he readily made himself out to be a poor devil — even this can be an attraction in good society.

The wives of rich manufacturers, who always think themselves misunderstood, but have little opportunity to acquire close contact with literature — because literary men can on occasion be quite dangerous — surrender willingly to aristocrats with literary leanings, where the female soul finds everything it needs: understanding, tenderness, nobility, a dash of bohemianism. This man not only ate at the tables of the industrialists, he slept in their beds. In the irregular intervals between, he published his magazine. He had collaborators in every camp; for even honourable men exist who take an interest in the peace of Europe.

As, for example, the diplomat who was employed at the French Embassy in Berlin, and had staked his career on a Franco-German entente. He had lived in Germany for years and cordially hated it. But what could this hate avail against self-love? Every step towards the so-called rapprochement was counted in his favour, he achieved results against his will, he was a specialist in Germanophilia.

More honest, but more ignorant, too, was the lady with the connections. Apart from a friendly face and a statuesque figure, she possessed only as much intellect as was required for a newspaper article or a discussion with a German Minister.

At solemn moments they all spoke of a community of European culture. Once Tunda asked:

‘Do you think you could manage to tell me precisely what constitutes this culture which you claim to defend, even though it is in no way threatened from outside?’

‘Religion!’ said the President, who never went to church.

‘Morality,’ said the lady, whose irregular associations were common knowledge.

‘Art,’ said the diplomat, who had never looked at a picture since his schooldays.

‘The European idea,’ said someone by the name of Rappaport — diplomatically, because he was in every way a gentleman.

The aristocrat, however, contented himself with the remark: ‘Just read my magazine!’

‘You want,’ said Tunda, ‘to uphold a European community, but you must first establish it. For this community does not exist, otherwise it would already know how to maintain itself. All in all, it seems to me very doubtful whether anyone can establish anything at all. And who would attack this culture anyway, even if it did exist? Official Bolshevism, perhaps? Even though Russia wants it, too?’

‘But may want to destroy it here — especially here — in order to be the sole possessor,’ exclaimed M. Rappaport.

‘Before that happens, it will probably have succumbed to another war.’

‘That is exactly what we are seeking to prevent,’ several persons said simultaneously.

‘And wasn’t that what you wanted in 1914, too? But when war broke out, you went to Switzerland and published journals, while here they were shooting conscientious objectors. You certainly have the means to buy a ticket to Zurich at the right moment, and the right contacts to obtain a valid passport. But do the people? A workman, even in peacetime, must wait three days for a visa. It’s only the call-up papers that arrive on time.’

‘You are a pessimist,’ said the benevolent President.

At that moment a gentleman, already known to Tunda, entered the room. It was M. de V., who had just returned from an American tour. He was still a secretary, though no longer with the lawyer but with an eminent politician.

He had never expected, he said, that Tunda would really ever come to Paris. And what a happy chance that brought them together at his old and dear friend’s — as he felt he could well call the President!

Then the secretary began to talk about America.

He was a ‘born raconteur’. He took as his starting point some vivid and exaggerated situation, and proceeded from personal experiences to conditions in general. He raised and lowered his voice, he related the essentials very softly so that he might drown non-essentials with a loud voice. He gave detailed descriptions of the traffic in the streets and the efficient hotels. He ridiculed the Americans. He described stage productions with malice. He made intimate innuendoes about the women. Each time he tugged at the trouser creases at his knees; from a distance it looked like a young girl shyly pulling at her apron. The secretary was unquestionably a sympathetic person. But the effect of his sudden return from America was that the benevolent old President no longer invited Tunda so frequently, and no longer addressed him as ‘Dear Sir’ but as ‘Sir’.