was slurred but he managed nevertheless to pronounce “put an end to my life” with something approaching solemnity.
“Yes, well, shouldn’t you be getting a move on? The weather’s fine and the sea’s calm. Not bad weather for killing yourself.”
I stood up. He looked like a dog which had just been kicked.
“How could you say that? How could you say that to me?” The couples at the next table put their heads together. I guessed what they were whispering when I saw their expressions. But what did they know? What experience did they have of boys like this?
I knew what sort of person I had been sitting with. I knew the type.
12
Franz Himmelfarb owned two factories, one in Berlin, the other in Düsseldorf. He also owned a book shop which stocked antiquarian and rare books, an abattoir, a partnership in a newspaper, and a firm selling umbrellas and sunshades.
“Of course they’re rich,” said Mrs. Brown. “They’re Jewish.”
Jakob had little interest in his father’s business and seldom mentioned it.
“The only difference between an umbrella and a sunshade is the color,” he once said. “No doubt Father would be delighted if the Lord were to invent something new for people to shelter from.”
I never met his parents but judging from photographs Jakob was the image of his father. Yet he had his mother’s mouth—a beautiful woman with large eyes and wavy hair. I once asked him about their religion.
“They have assimilated,” he answered, smiling. “They have the same representative to the Almighty as you—old Luther.”
As for himself, he said he believed in the sun, moon and stars.
His doctoral thesis was on Blake’s poetry.
I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool.
Go! put off Holiness,
And put on Intellect.
How impressive it sounded when he quoted it. The Great War was the result of stupidity and misunderstanding, he explained, not wickedness, treachery or cunning. “Wretched fools,” he said of the Continental heads of state, “cockerels who competed to see who could crow loudest on their dunghills until they could no longer avoid clashing.” And that’s how it had always been—since history began—though ignorant historians did their utmost to define the lunacy in terms of good and evil.
We were sitting out on the veranda under a blue tarpaulin which we had hung over it shortly after our arrival. It began to rain but we remained dry and unconcerned under the canvas, watching the drops forming rivulets along the gutters in the road, and the dusk falling silently over the valley. Jakob leaned back in his chair, the song of his typewriter silenced, the hare which I had bought that morning cooking in a pot on the primitive stove. We feared nothing under that blue canopy, nothing whatsoever. Wars and battles belonged to history and there was little danger of them being repeated here.
Steam rose from the earth after the rain. He put his arms around me, his eyes large and brown, his fingers long and tender on my breasts.
“Out here?” I asked.
“Show him the way,” he whispered.
“Here?”
“Stroke him . . . Show him the way . . .”
Brown eyes, I think, though sometimes I seem to see other eyes staring at me when I try to remember him. Sometimes all I can see is his silhouette in my mind. Sometimes just his beret with no face under it. Then I become afraid and sit up in bed with a jerk. “Anthony,” I call, but have forgotten what I meant to say to him by the time he comes to me with the sleep still in his eyes.
It was a warm spring. We generally sat outside on the veranda in the late afternoon, waiting for dusk to fall on the day’s efforts. I remember once hearing laughter carried to us from somewhere in the valley. This was at the end of May. We both listened as the wind wafted it over to us in intermittent waves which were sometimes difficult to pick up. It was like listening to a tune from a hurdy-gurdy man
“Yes, well, shouldn’t you be getting a move on? The weather’s fine and the sea’s calm. Not bad weather for killing yourself.”
I stood up. He looked like a dog which had just been kicked.
“How could you say that? How could you say that to me?” The couples at the next table put their heads together. I guessed what they were whispering when I saw their expressions. But what did they know? What experience did they have of boys like this?
I knew what sort of person I had been sitting with. I knew the type.
12
Franz Himmelfarb owned two factories, one in Berlin, the other in Düsseldorf. He also owned a book shop which stocked antiquarian and rare books, an abattoir, a partnership in a newspaper, and a firm selling umbrellas and sunshades.
“Of course they’re rich,” said Mrs. Brown. “They’re Jewish.”
Jakob had little interest in his father’s business and seldom mentioned it.
“The only difference between an umbrella and a sunshade is the color,” he once said. “No doubt Father would be delighted if the Lord were to invent something new for people to shelter from.”
I never met his parents but judging from photographs Jakob was the image of his father. Yet he had his mother’s mouth—a beautiful woman with large eyes and wavy hair. I once asked him about their religion.
“They have assimilated,” he answered, smiling. “They have the same representative to the Almighty as you—old Luther.”
As for himself, he said he believed in the sun, moon and stars.
His doctoral thesis was on Blake’s poetry.
I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool.
Go! put off Holiness,
And put on Intellect.
How impressive it sounded when he quoted it. The Great War was the result of stupidity and misunderstanding, he explained, not wickedness, treachery or cunning. “Wretched fools,” he said of the Continental heads of state, “cockerels who competed to see who could crow loudest on their dunghills until they could no longer avoid clashing.” And that’s how it had always been—since history began—though ignorant historians did their utmost to define the lunacy in terms of good and evil.
We were sitting out on the veranda under a blue tarpaulin which we had hung over it shortly after our arrival. It began to rain but we remained dry and unconcerned under the canvas, watching the drops forming rivulets along the gutters in the road, and the dusk falling silently over the valley. Jakob leaned back in his chair, the song of his typewriter silenced, the hare which I had bought that morning cooking in a pot on the primitive stove. We feared nothing under that blue canopy, nothing whatsoever. Wars and battles belonged to history and there was little danger of them being repeated here.
Steam rose from the earth after the rain. He put his arms around me, his eyes large and brown, his fingers long and tender on my breasts.
“Out here?” I asked.
“Show him the way,” he whispered.
“Here?”
“Stroke him . . . Show him the way . . .”
Brown eyes, I think, though sometimes I seem to see other eyes staring at me when I try to remember him. Sometimes all I can see is his silhouette in my mind. Sometimes just his beret with no face under it. Then I become afraid and sit up in bed with a jerk. “Anthony,” I call, but have forgotten what I meant to say to him by the time he comes to me with the sleep still in his eyes.
It was a warm spring. We generally sat outside on the veranda in the late afternoon, waiting for dusk to fall on the day’s efforts. I remember once hearing laughter carried to us from somewhere in the valley. This was at the end of May. We both listened as the wind wafted it over to us in intermittent waves which were sometimes difficult to pick up. It was like listening to a tune from a hurdy-gurdy man
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