Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Throughout Germany, fallen gauleiters must be attempting to render themselves invisible or, like Fouquier-Tinvilles, pleading blamelessness, begging to join the victors.

At Meinnenberg, a few signatures, some formal ceremonies for the moment ended nothing. Disease, scuffles, whimpers, rumours continued. In the haze of uncertainty and foreboding, some derelicts, though actually standing, appeared to be crouching. A number, indeed, had knelt in prayer, clutching wispy hopes. Vello loomed for an instant, angered by his own indecision, incapable of assessing the prevailing mood, then stalking back to his Wolf’s Lair.

Wilfrid displayed neither elation nor alarm, remaining the young-old Baldur with pale blue eyes, small smiles running in and out of a face smooth, as if polished. ‘So the one-legged no longer leads the dance. He, too, is at rest, if not, perhaps, at peace.’ His smile was complemented by ‘perhaps’, a favourite word.

Through a crackling transistor we all heard the new Führer, Grand Admiral Dönitz, appealing for national cohesion. No mention of the Reichsmarschall.

By the following week an order had arrived, crusted with unexplained initials, ordering us to await instructions. A general cleansing began, not for peace celebrations but for a wedding. On the day two dazed-looking Balts emerged, no longer youthful whatever their age, in tinsel finery, behaving to each other like strangers, a priest of unknown or no denomination officiating in a black overcoat too large for him. The groom had volunteered for the triumphant Wehrmacht , deserting when victories ceased. A drab procession formed, the bride mimed tears and protests, like an untidy puppet, attendants emitted calls in what Wilfrid considered Mordvin speech, which we were not ready to query, some gleeful, others ribald or as if warning. People desultorily waved rags dyed red, green, white, a carpenter interpreting these as traditional symbols of marriage. The priest mumbled, a hymn began, its melody famous throughout Europe, so that most responded, in a medley of tongues. Women placated the bride, rearranged her hair-ribbons, waved a small cross as if repelling unseen dangers. Wilfrid was invited to hand over gifts piled on a table: a tarnished brooch, a heap of potatoes, a broken comb, a purse, probably empty, a glass stopper, painted box, bronze oak-leaf, tattered, last-century fan, a bicycle saddle. With a fortitude I admired without envying, he kissed the lumpish bride, then shook hands with her man, presented a small parcel, while the pair were raucously acclaimed ‘Your Brilliances’. A mouth-organ began, then dancing, the performers jumping rather than gliding, as if soil had become too hot. Unwilling to suffer embarrassment, I did not join them, while noting that Wilfrid, competently though without fervour or jumping, passed a few steps with the bride, then bowed over her hand and was gone, a stage illusionist completing his act by vanishing into darkened air. The night was reported ending with the couple leaping naked over tongs laid between two fires, a ritual that might have reduced Wilfrid’s serenity to the sublime.

Expectations rapidly worsened. More refugees discovered us, bringing tales of Russians raping the very slaves they had liberated before storming Berlin. In the telepathy of drama we heard of abducted children killed, then sold on the black market as veal, unnerving me with hopes that Mother had died before being abandoned by friends who so amused her. The Herr General must have long perished at the Eastern Front.

Meinnenberg was in abeyance, ignored by the Russians, by Dönitz, and presumably unknown to the Allies. Newcomers were inclining more to Vello and his food supplies than to Wilfrid’s busybody committee. The Acrobats paraded their virile attractions and bribed more children to steal and spy. One woman howled that they had stolen her daughter, Friedl, bawling at those asserting that she had needed no compulsion. All agreed, however, that she had disappeared into Wolf’s Lair.What should be done?

I was more agitated by what might be done to myself. Nothing gracious could be expected from Russians to a German Balt, but Mother’s name might help me with the British, said to have reached Leipzig and Erfurt. The Estonian revolt, proclaiming independence, had been bloodily crushed by the Russians.

There was now, I thought, alarming likelihood of three victorious powers conflicting over Berlin. As for Friedl, I knew her slightly. She had once wandered into my class, giving me only a suggestive wink then only ostentatious yawns, daring me to rebuke or swear, though I was more tempted to strangle her.

In the inevitable discussions, we were nervy and quarrelsome. Some argued that she was a vicious young whore, best left to her natural associates. Others blamed the mother. I myself kept silent, though uncomfortable. An Austrian engineer, man of action, proposed a mass assault on Wolf’s Lair, which, incidentally rescuing Friedl, would, by eliminating a violent and irresponsible faction, ingratiate us with the Red Cross and any eventual liberators. A nurse objected that Friedl would be the first to suffer and that, more righteously, we should parley with Vello, flatter him into at least some compromise, the nature of which she did not reveal. Tacitly, I felt that in such an assault I myself, not the wretched Friedl, might be the first to suffer.

Midway down the table, Wilfrid also had not spoken, always disliking to appear managerial, usurping what was best left to others, an attitude condemned by his detractors as unctuously hypocritical. When at last appealed to, he was not indecisive but irritatingly reflective, thus evasive, though inducing a welcome quiet.

‘Assault? The war, has it not, made us, civilized Europeans that we are, ponder the extent to which government can be trusted with force. Quite a number of us, by now, are questioning the validity of authority itself. We are not unique in facing a moral dilemma that has perplexed the greatest minds, whether to behave badly on behalf of the greater good. Plato, Goethe, gave answers, some of them unpleasing.’

He made a wry half-shrug, acknowledging allusions pedagogic, in poor taste. Few of us had actually perceived a moral dilemma, though a practical solution was imperative. The brutal and barely sane deserved scant sympathy, Friedl only a mite more.

We might yet be stalled here many weeks, at the mercy of the Acrobats and weathercock Vello. Wilfrid said no more, majority vote opted for surrender of the girl in return for – nobody was quite sure. A handwritten testimonial of Vello’s uprightness, for presentation to officialdom? A feast to honour the Acrobats, though, as someone observed, they themselves must provide the food? Even Vello’s portrait to be undertaken by a decorator who was also an effective artist, a projection less absurd than it might appear. Such as Vello could be susceptible to an appeal to vanity, as they were to tunes, dancing, liquor.

Wilfrid did not vote, and we dispersed, conscious of having manufactured a formula, liberal but unlikely to achieve anything. He, I suspected, thought the same, while gazing as if into himself.

Next day I escaped a growing clamour and found him contemplating a crucifix of corded twigs given him by a querulous old woman, in reproach, reverence or as a talisman to repel devils. It made me feel both impatient and vaguely guilty. Seeing this, Wilfrid looked surprised, as though I had doubted the validity, not of government but of the alphabet or magnetism.

‘I tend to think Christianity is best honed down to three words, in, I think, St John: God is Spirit. Exactly. Though…’ he changed from austere commandant to teasing Hermes, ‘you may care to remind me of much the same uttered rather earlier, I seem to remember, by Xenophanes. Spirit is not, on evidence, all-powerful. Not God Almighty, but God Patient. It does not need praise or worship, only human co-operation. Even here, it flickers, never quite vanishes, is visible at work, on the dying, a croak attempting to be a song…’