Эрнст Юнгер - A German Officer in Occupied Paris - The War Journals, 1941-1945

On what slave ships do such images occur to us?

In the night I lay anxious in the dark for a long time, counting the seconds and then counting them again. Then came a horrible morning in the barracks yard of Vincennes. I was like someone who is very thirsty: during a break, I slaked my thirst with the foamy freshness of white blossom clusters up against the fortress wall. When I see the blossoms spreading out so peacefully in the sunlight, their serenity seems infinitely deep. I feel that they speak to me in words and sentences that are sweet and comforting, and I am always seized with pain because no sound from any of them can penetrate my ears. We are summoned, but we do not know where to.

At midday the colonel arrived with Captain Höll, who will be staying here for a while and is supposed to paint a portrait of me. I was with him in the evening in the area around the Madeleine and bought gifts for Perpetua. [6] Perpetua: E. J.’s pseudonym for his wife, Grethe. See Glossary of Proper Names for pseudonyms and nicknames. In the shop of a Negro; conversations about cola nuts and white rum. It was a strange afternoon and confirmed my opinion that it is we who control experience; the world provides us with the means. We are endowed with a certain kind of power that activates the appropriate objects. Thus, if we are males, women will appear. Or, when we are children, presents are showered upon us. And when we are pious—

At noon my company took over guard duty in the Hotel Continental. Before that, mounted guard duty on Avenue Wagram. I had my company perform the drill that we had been practicing for a month and then pass the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in parade step. We went by the monument to Clémenceau, who had clearly foreseen these things. I nodded to him, as though to a prophet.

The night was troubled, even turbulent, as more than forty men who had been detained by patrols on the streets or in bars and hotels were brought before me. These were mostly cases of inebriation or soldiers without leave who had been picked up in the little hôtels de passe [brothels]. The prostitutes they had been enjoying themselves with were brought along too. After brief interrogations, I entered them all in the large incident log and then had them confined in little cells that had been built on the first floor in great numbers, like bathing cabins. Anyone who had slept with a “companion” was first disinfected. Breakfast was doled out in the morning, and then the whole group was brought to a disciplinary judge in the same building for sentencing. Along with one of the wagonloads that had been picked up on Montmartre, there was a little eighteen-year-old prostitute who stood at attention just like the soldiers. Because this little person was especially cheerful and showed bon moral [morale], I had her sit and chat with us in the guardroom. By doing so, I was keeping her like a pet canary in this depressing place.

In the morning in the Hotel Continental as an associate justice on a military tribunal. Three cases. The first involved a drunken driver who had knocked over a gas lamppost with his car. A second before, he had “seen something dart across street.” Four weeks confinement under close guard. When asked if he had any response to the sentence:

“I am surprised that the sentence is so lenient.”

Then a second driver who came to blows with four of his shipmates in a bar and passively resisted arrest: sentenced to forty-three days in military jail. During the cross-examination one of the sailors said, “he rarely sets foot on land,” to characterize the sobriety of a crewmate. He also differentiated between strong inebriation, “a big trip,” and simple tipsiness, “a little trip.”

Finally, a corporal who went berserk in front of the Metro station Jean Jaurès, attacked several pedestrians, and stabbed people with his bayonet until he was arrested by the military patrol. Postponement because several of those involved did not appear, probably out of fear.

In this last case, the perpetrator’s fury was evident in the hearing. The proceedings had to be patched together from bits and pieces, leaving a series of gaps. The differences between the testimony of the French witnesses and the translation by the interpreter were informative. The method revealed a person as a sensory organ, receiving and transmitting. This practice shows how much gets changed and lost in the process.

In the evening in the Ritz with Count Podewils, whom I met for the first time today, although I have been corresponding with him and his wife for years. He brought First Lieutenant Grüninger along with him, who reminded me of characters from Ardinghello . Höll joined us. Colonel Speidel, chief of the General Staff of the Supreme Military Command, showed up late for a moment.

The morning visit. Two friends in silk costumes stand in front of a table made of mother-of-pearl and ivory. They have a folder with colored etchings open in front of them and are viewing the pictures through lorgnettes. The room is colorful, splendid, cheerful. I notice especially the rich intarsia in the table. Yet there’s also something unusual about it. When I take a closer look, I discover a woman kneeling beneath it. Her heavy silk dress, delicately powdered face, colorful hat with feathers, blend so perfectly with the furniture that the concealed woman reminds me of one of those butterflies camouflaged to resemble the blossom it perches on. I now become aware of the mood of terror underlying the cheerfulness of the room that streams with morning light, and I realize that this puzzling figure is frozen with fear. The enigmatic nature of the scene was latent in the title: it was not only about the visitor but also about his wife, the female visitor who was all too lovely and all too near.

Called on Höll in the afternoon on the fifth story of a house on Rue de Montreuil. There three of us raised several glasses, first to his model, Madeleine, then to a magnificent rainbow over the roofs of Vincennes where it formed a double arch of happiness.

Conversations related to the girl’s profession; she was an entraîneuse , whose job it was to lead clients to a nightclub. She was no beauty but education, a good background, and clearly also good nature would be superfluous to this job. There was a sick mother to be provided for and other things like that. As usual with types like her, I am moved by the mixture of superficiality and melancholy. Thus, we navigate toward destruction on ships festooned with garlands. This artificial enhancement that helps to disintegrate these middle-class lives merits closer inspection. In the final analysis, this is the last stage of a more general decline. Money holds one of the supreme secrets. If I place a coin on the table and receive a piece of bread for it, this act reflects not only the order of the state but also the universe. It would be worth researching to what extent numismatics, in the higher sense, gets expressed in the symbols stamped on the coins. My contact with Höll does me good and has pulled me back from the brink of those dangerous thoughts that have engulfed me since the beginning of the year. I reached a low point in February when I refused nourishment for a week and in every sense drew down the capital I had accumulated in the past. My situation is that of a man who dwells in the desert between a demon and a corpse. The demon urges him to action; the corpse, to sympathy. In life it has often been the artistically gifted person who came to my aid during such crises. He distributes the treasures of the world.