Fear of Mirrors Read online

They understood that the revolt had been crushed when a new flood of exiles passed through the village, which was once again in Austrian hands. The five Ls weren’t living in Essen or Manchester or Lille, though even there, despite the presence of trade unions and reformers, they might have been impatient with the pace of change. Pidvocholesk was a central European peasant village on the margins of two mighty empires, and eighty per cent of its inhabitants were Jews. They had initially greeted the news from St Petersburg with unconcealed delight, but had soon reverted to their normal mood of cautious pessimism.

  One sunny day in March 1906, when the snow was beginning to melt, a diminutive man in his early thirties with horn-rimmed spectacles and tired eyes came to Pidvocholesk. He was a Pole. His name was Adam. He had spent many years in the Tsar’s prisons. All he wanted was a rest. Ludwik befriended him and Adam was admitted as an honorary member of the five Ls’ secret society.

  He would join them for long walks by the riverside. He would listen to their chatter. The village girls were a central theme, closely related to crude gossip concerning the rabbi and other village notables. This was followed by a comparison of parental atrocities.

  Adam was a patient listener. He smiled a great deal, asked a few questions, but volunteered nothing. It was only when they began to question him that they realized how different his life had been compared to theirs. Adam’s story moved them. Then he began to question them, and events that they took for granted soon appeared in a different light. Pogroms, for instance.

  Ludwik told Adam of how, some years ago, he had accompanied his father to an uncle’s wedding in a neighbouring village. Pidvocholesk was almost entirely Jewish and usually under Austrian rule. It felt safe. But his uncle lived in Russia. The main street of the village where he lived was like a ravine. Jewish houses and shops on one side and everyone else on the other. As Ludwik spoke his voice grew hoarse as he recalled the fear he had felt on that cold, autumn night. It was the Sabbath. Candles had been left burning, and as they walked down the street the windows in Jewish houses were framed in a magical soft glow.

  He described the congregation as it left the synagogue. Old men with bent backs, lowered heads and gaping caftans. Others, like Ludwik, were young, but trying hard to walk like men. Some of the old ones must have smelt danger for at one stage, and for no apparent reason, they all fell silent.

  Suddenly, without warning, a group of peasants led by priests ambushed them. Ludwik remembered the whips, sickles, scythes and sticks falling out of the sky on their heads like bitter rain. An old Jew in his sixties felt the whip wielded by a strong young peasant with a moustache. Ludwik described a face disfigured by hatred, the eyes glazed over as if something had possessed them. It had: the old Christian hatred of the Jew as a monster from Hell, sent by the Devil to kill Christ and persecute the godly through trade and plunder.

  Ludwik’s father had grabbed him by the hand and they ran and ran and ran till they had left the evil far behind. In their rush to escape punishment they had not even noticed another group rushing into Jewish houses and setting them alight with the Sabbath candles. It was a small pogrom. Only two Jews died that night. As they walked the twelve miles to Pidvocholesk, Ludwik’s father told him not to worry. Things were much worse in Lemberg and Kiev.

  Ludwik and his friends, inspired by Adam, were determined to escape from Pidvocholesk. They had all done well at school. Their families had managed to raise enough money to send them to the university in Vienna. The year was 1911.

  Freddy, Levy and Larin studied medicine. Ludwik, despite the strong objection of his parents, who wanted him to become a lawyer, was studying German literature, raving about Heine and writing poetry. Schmelka Livitsky was a mathematician, but spent most of his time playing the violin.

  At first they met every evening to exchange experiences, talk about home, complain about how expensive everything was and feel sorry for themselves. Apart from Livitsky, none of them could afford tailored clothes, and they attracted attention when they were huddled round a cafe table noisily drinking their coffee and speaking Yiddish. They were all quick to detect imagined slights. They wanted to outgrow their provincialism overnight.

  After the first few weeks their meetings became less frequent. They were working hard and beginning to find new friends. Soon their contact with each other became limited to waving at each other across tables in their favourite coffee houses.

  Ludwik was bewitched by Vienna. He was caught up in the amazing whirl of history. Everything appeared to have its opposite. The anti-Semitic Social Christians were being confronted by the Socialists. Schoenberg had unleashed his ultra-modernist fusillades against the Viennese waltz and a musical establishment happily buried in the past. Freud was challenging medical orthodoxy.

  Ludwik was excited. He could not then see that what he was witnessing was nothing less than the disintegration of the old order. Unlike their English and French counterparts, the Austrian bourgeois elite had been unable either to fuse with or destroy their aristocracy. Instead it fell on its knees and sought to mimic its betters. The Emperor’s authority was unchallenged, except from below: protofascists on the one side and socialists on the other.

  Unable fully to comprehend the dynamics of this world, Ludwik sought refuge in the cultural section of the Viennese press. He was attracted to the feuilleton style and its leading practitioners. These were guys who specialized in cultivating their personal feelings and making the readers feel they were getting insights into the true nature of reality. Ludwik was impressed. The literary tone appealed to him greatly, as did the narcissism.

  Ludwik often thought of home. He missed his mother and her meat dumplings. He missed the little pastries his Aunt Galina used to bake for special days, and he even missed his father’s bantering tone. Late at night, all alone in his tiny room, he would sit and write what he thought were clever letters to impress his parents, mimicking the style of the feuilletonists.

  The flippancy and false tone depressed his parents. Ludwik’s father was a private tutor who earned a little money teaching music to the children of the Polish gentry. His mother made bread and cheesecakes for the Pidvocholesk bakery. Both had worked hard to send their favourite son to Vienna. Ludwik’s brother, in sharp contrast, had been apprenticed to a watchmaker uncle in Warsaw and was doing well.

  How long this would have gone on and where the five Ls would have ended I do not know. Two things happened to end their obsessive self-contemplation and push them in the direction of reality. The first was Krystina. The second was the outbreak of the First World War.

  Krystina entered their lives in the summer of 1913. The month was June, the days were long, the sky was blue and the nights were balmy. Freddy had sighted her one evening on the pavement where they were sipping iced lemon drinks. His attempts to engage her in conversation had failed miserably. Ludwik had noticed she was reading a pamphlet by Kautsky. He had walked up to her and asked if he could borrow it for the evening. This approach had been more successful. She agreed to join their table, but insisted on paying for her own tea.

  She was a few years older than them and possessed a fierce and combative intelligence. She was also very beautiful, but in a distant sort of a way, and she disliked flattery. She had grown up in Warsaw, but had studied philosophy in Berlin and attended the study classes organized by the German Social Democratic Party. When she returned home she had become a Socialist and joined the underground Polish party. Her authority had been conferred by the four months she had spent in prison. All this she told them, but every attempt to question her about her personal life failed. She never talked to them about her parents or her lovers. They were not even sure if Krystina was her real name.

  They all fell in love with her. Yes, even Ludwik, though later, when his wife Lisa questioned him about Krystina, he used to protest a bit too vigorously and say: ‘Of course I love her. How could one not? But I’m not in love with her. A very big difference.’

  One evening after they had been atten
ding her study classes for a few months, Krystina recruited them all to the cause of international socialism. It’s amazing how quickly she changed their perception of Vienna and the world. She had taught them not to accept life as it was, but to fight against every outrage with their fists. In her book, there was no such thing as accomplished facts. Everything could and should be changed.

  The five boys from Pidvocholesk were now a clandestine cell of the Polish Socialist Party in exile. Krystina’s tiny room had become their true university. Not that she encouraged them in any way to give up their academic careers. The working-class movement needed doctors to treat poor patients free of charge. This meant that three of the Ls were fine.

  Krystina realized that Ludwik was a gifted linguist. She persuaded him to abandon German literature and study the details of the German, English, Russian, French, Spanish and Italian languages. She wanted him to appreciate the nuance of each language, and for this he insisted that he must read the literature produced by the different cultures. For several months he could be sighted at his favourite cafes absorbed in European novels.

  They had never met a woman like her. She was fighting for a better world and had subordinated everything else in her life to achieve that goal. She taught them the meaning of commitment to a set of ideals. She had brought a sense of drama into their lives, made them feel that they were not simply individuals, but actors with a part to play on the stage of history. How grandiloquent this all sounds now as we look at the world today, but it was not always thus and this is something your generation wants to forget. Krystina had altered the way they saw the world, forced them to reflect on the need to change the human condition. She transformed their vision forever.

  It was she who gave them their new identities. ‘My five Ls’, she used to call them, and they willingly became five fingers of her hand. It was undoubtedly her strong personality that pushed the five Ls towards the revolution. The social disintegration caused by the First World War did the rest.

  Think of it, Karl. Each one married to his time. Working patiently for the world revolution. In Galicia the choice had always been limited. Emperor or Tsar? Krystina pointed them towards a new horizon. In her room in Vienna they used to wonder whether it was all talk, whether Krystina’s utopian vision could ever be fulfilled. Ludwik had witnessed pogroms. He doubted whether the oppressed could ever be united under one banner. Those poor Polish and Russian peasants had been so easily incited to kill Jews and burn their homes. Could they really emancipate themselves? It would require a miracle to wrench them away from the deferential stupor in which they lay engulfed.

  Krystina would listen patiently and smile. Ludwik was expressing the very same doubts that had plagued her a few years ago. Even as they argued, they heard excited shouts in the streets. News had arrived from Sarajevo. The heir to the Austrian throne had been assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Who could have thought then, my dearest Karl, that our century of wars and revolutions would begin and end with Sarajevo?

  With the outbreak of war, Ludwik’s uncertainties evaporated. Krystina’s position was clear from the very first day. She felt no need to consult a higher authority. This was a war in which it would be criminal to take sides. Neither Tsar nor Kaiser. The European powers were fighting each other to determine who would dominate the rest of the world and using their workers as cannon fodder. Krystina wanted all the workers’ parties to call a Europe-wide general strike against the war. She did not want British workers to kill or be killed by their German counterparts. ‘Workers have no country!’ she had shouted with shining eyes at the new converts.

  At first, the Ls were not convinced. For them, the Russian Tsar was the greater evil. A German victory would aid the democrats, free Poland and other Russian colonies and … Krystina became very angry. Why should they exchange one ruler for another? True freedom meant the end of all the monarchies and their empires. They argued for several days. Krystina won the argument.

  What finally convinced the Ls was the sight of Krystina weeping over a copy of Die Neue Zeit. The German Social Democrats had voted in the Bundestag for war credits. Only Liebknecht had voted against. The war hysteria had gripped the workers and their party had been too weak to swim against the stream. Perhaps, Ludwik had suggested tentatively to calm her down, this meant that German workers did have a fatherland. But the dark look that greeted this heresy forced an immediate retreat. Ludwik was influenced by people rather than ideas, and his philosophy would always reflect this. The realization would from now on dominate his existence.

  Their choice meant that they had to leave Vienna immediately since a general mobilization had been decreed. Krystina took them to Warsaw.

  _______________

  *Party of Democratic Socialism, which is the reincarnated version of the former ruling Communist Party of East Germany.

  †The German Social Democratic Party.

  *Democratic Republic of Germany: the formal name of the old East Germany.

  Two

  LET MY FATHER LUDWIK and his friends wait awhile. Krystina is training them in the arts of political warfare and I will return to them soon, but there is something else worrying me, keeping me awake at nights.

  More than anything else, I want to repair our relationship, bring some laughter back into our lives. I can see where the danger lies. Unspoken bitternesses and unresolved tensions have become lodged within us both. I want to find an antidote to this poison. I hope you agree, Karl.

  Even as I write, it seems ridiculous to go so far back into the past instead of coming to terms with more recent histories. I mean your mother’s decision to leave us, for which you have always blamed me. Perhaps if she had stayed and I had left, you might have censured her instead, though that would have been equally unjustified.

  Everything seemed to go wrong after the death of your grandmother Gertrude. Your mother and I found we had less and less to say to each other. With our apartment empty I noticed her absences much more and began to feel that she had lost interest in me. She was spending more and more time in her clinic. Then one day while I was having coffee with Klaus Winter, he said something he shouldn’t have said. You remember Klaus, don’t you? He was a very old friend of Gertrude and was weeping a great deal at her funeral. He’s the one who bought you a pair of jeans from the other Berlin on your fourteenth birthday.

  Klaus told me quite casually that he had seen Helge with a friend at a concert two days ago and asked why I had not been present. The point being, Karl, that not only had Helge not told me she was going to a concert, she had explicitly said that she couldn’t attend a meeting of our Forum that same night because of a patient, whose condition was such that his appointment could not be cancelled. Why had she lied?

  I left Klaus Winter stranded in the hotel where we were meeting and rushed home. I was crazy with jealousy. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, you were out with your friends. When your mother returned I confronted her with the facts. To my amazement she smiled and called me pathetic. I hit her. I felt ashamed immediately afterwards. I pleaded to be forgiven. She did not speak, but walked slowly into our bedroom and began to remove her clothes from the cupboard. I was paralysed. I could neither say or do anything to stop her. I sat silently on the bed as she continued to collect her belongings and then pack them in her faded green pre-war suitcase, which had once belonged to her grandmother. I remembered the day I had brought her home after our wedding and carried this same suitcase into our bedroom.

  ‘I did not lie to you, Vlady. I never have. The man with me at the concert was a patient and it was part of his treatment. Your reaction is a symptom of your own guilt-ridden mind. I’m going. We’ll talk next week when you’re calmer, and then we’ll both talk to Karl. Tell him I’ve gone to Leipzig to see my mother. And if you want Evelyne to move in, I have no objection.’

  That’s all she said as she walked out of our home. I wanted to scream, to run after her, to drag her back, to fall on my knees and plead with her to stay and give our re
lationship a last chance, but I did nothing except shed a few silent tears as she walked away.

  Perhaps something inside me told me it was no use. We had grown apart and nothing, not even you, Karl, could bring us back together again. The rest you know. She came back and I broke away from Evelyne. The big break came much later and for reasons we both understand.

  Helge was wrong about Evelyne. If I’d confessed to her, she would have been angry, but she would have understood. She found out by accident – a stupid letter from Evelyne to me which I should have destroyed. A letter in which she argued that the female orgasm was a male invention and that I should not despair at my inability to satisfy her. I only kept the letter because it amused me. Your mother read it differently and ascribed powers to Evelyne which that young woman, alas, never possessed. I suppose I should begin at the beginning.

  This may come as a surprise to you, Karl, but I was a popular lecturer at Humboldt. Comparative literature is a field that permits a great deal of creativity in its teaching. Evelyne was one of the students in my special seminars on Russian literature.

  I used to, for instance, talk of Gogol reading extracts from Dead Souls to Pushkin and the students would then write an imaginary dialogue between the two men. Evelyne was quick-witted. We were all smiling at her clever dialogue till it reached a surreal stage. She was allergic to the prevailing orthodoxy and, as her imagined exchange neared the end, she had included some savage references to Honecker and the Politburo. Everyone looked at me. I did not comment, but moved on to the next student.

  I had never spoken to her after my classes. Our relationship had been restricted to regular and sympathetic eye contact and the occasional smile, especially when a student trying hard to move upwards in the party hierarchy posed a particularly uninspired question.

  That same week it was my fiftieth birthday. Helge had organized a party. To my surprise, Evelyne showed up with a few of her university friends, none of whom had been invited. Helge welcomed them all.