Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

I could have gone back to Rumania or somewhere else. But I felt that, at last, I should do something properly. I had wasted so much time, never finishing — if you could say I had ever seriously begun — my studies. Also, there was promise in the air, even if the appearance in Vienna of the great Führer of the now Greater Germany had turned out to be sort of a flop. His voice blared through the loudspeakers, over the heads of some million ecstatic listeners who were crammed together in a compact mass that covered the Heldenplatz. But the voice was choked by emotion (or by the rhythmic uproar of some million voices’ “ Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! ”) and could only stutter, “I–I—I–I—I am just so happy!” In spite of all that, as I say, there seemed to be born a new reality, clearer, more transparent, more energetic, more dynamic. It felt as if the fresh mountain air of Styria were blowing through Vienna. Then several divisions of the German Army came down the Danube, in marching blocks that were even more solid, more resolute, more dangerous, in their silence and gray metallic hats, than the ones on the night of Anschluss . After that, German civilians swarmed in and took everything into their administering hands. They filled that mountain air with their snotty Berlin slang and, to our utmost surprise, cynically mocked the great Führer and the Nazi Party, so that the Austrians had to take over the task of enthusiastic confirmation that everything was wonderful, really great, marvelous — particularly my aunts, who had now interrupted their Anschluss with the world beyond and entirely devoted themselves to the Nazi Women’s Union. Mr. Malik, I learned, not only had become the leader of his department at the Styria Motor Company (which very soon united with a German company and disappeared) but also was a Sturmbannführer of the SS — a very mighty position, so I had better make friends with him and stop saying that his real name was Schweingruber. Old Marie, for whose senile eyes the victorious symbol “SS” read “44,” insisted that he would be made a colonel of the 44th Regiment of the Imperial Infantry, which, as a young girl, she had very much admired. My grandmother shut herself in her rooms and received nobody. Coming back from Mass, she had been laughed at and shouted at in the open street, and nearly manhandled, by a handful of young rowdies who were forcing a group of Jews to wash slogans for the Schuschnigg regime off the wall of a house. Among those Jews, my grandmother recognized a physician who had once cured one of my aunts of a painful otitis media, and she interfered, attacking the young rowdies with her umbrella and shouting that this was going too far. Only the interference of Sturmbannführer Guru Malik saved her from serious trouble.

As for Minka, she was in despair. Of course, I had seen her immediately after the first big events. We were together a few days later when Anschluss was officially declared, in an impressive ceremony that we followed on the radio. And there was a rather embarrassing moment when, for the first time, we heard the “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles” and she burst into tears. “Listen, old girl,” I said to her, “it’s not all that bad. It’s just the first letting out of an old hatred that will soon calm down. Don’t be afraid. It appears they really want to build discipline and order.”

She turned to me and shouted, “Don’t you realize, you imbecile, that it’s the ‘Gott Erhalte,’ our old Imperial Austrian anthem, composed by our Haydn, that they’ve embezzled for their dirty anthem of Greater Germany? Why, it’s a breach of … troth!”

Troth. She must have used it quite unconsciously, without a second thought as to the word’s immeasurable profundity. This made me rather pensive for a couple of days. She was right: an incredible breach of troth was taking place all around us, but which troth was actually being broken? One already sensed that the faith, the pure enthusiasm with which this transformation had been yearned for and then greeted, was being betrayed. Troth itself was betrayed, I thought. For instance, the troth to the old empire. This Reich had no more to do with my dream of the Holy Roman Empire than with the glorious dream of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy. But I was soon tired of brooding about it. After all, I was a Rumanian, and even if I had been an Austrian, how could I have prevented what all the other Austrians obviously welcomed? I felt frightfully sorry for Minka and all our friends, but it was not my fault that they happened to be Jews, and in the event that they got into serious trouble I could use my connections with the SS to help them out again.

These connections were by no means limited to Sturmbannführer Malik. I had run into my old schoolmate Oskar Koloman again, and this time he looked prim and tidy, in a splendid black uniform, with the insignia of an even higher rank than that of Sturmbannführer. “Heil , Arnulf,” he greeted me. “How is it you’re in civilian clothes? Don’t you want to join us?”

“I am Rumanian, you know.”

“That means nothing. You were born an Austrian. Sooner or later, all German-speaking people will come home to the Reich. I can easily arrange for you to change your nationality.”

“I’ll think it over,” I said. “Thank you anyhow.”

“You were a fairly good skater, and not bad at horseback riding, as I recall. We need sporting types, you know. We have some excellent horses at the Mounted SS. Come and ride them, if you want. What are you doing otherwise?”

“Well, I’m trying to get on with architecture. But it bores me stiff.”

“You see! Studying bored me, too. That’s why I amused myself blowing up a telephone booth. It cost me three years, all right, but look what I’ve become now. Not bad, hey? You can have the same if you want. But tell me”—he looked at me mistrustfully—“don’t you have contact with Jews? I remember that dark girl you were with when we met again for the first time.”

“Oh, she’s a Turk,” I said, and laughed.

“A Turk. I understand.” He laughed, too. “However, a Jewess is no Jew, and a Turkish girl even less. I do understand, you old swine. Now, don’t be a fool, and come riding one of these days?”

I did. They had excellent horses. I rode one that had belonged to the Rothschilds, and was very good indeed. The cavalrymen were fantastic yokels. They clicked their heels and threw up their arms and shouted “ Heil Hitler! ” every time they saw me. Sometimes I had the impression they did not take it seriously themselves, because they tried so hard to do it seriously. On the whole, they seemed quite harmless, happy with their uniforms and their obsolete importance. Oskar, in order to avoid silly questions about my riding there without being a member of the SS (also, perhaps, in order to give himself an air of clandestine importance), had told them that I was a Rumanian engaged in some special intelligence work, and I did nothing to destroy this legend, so I was treated as if I were the bearer of top secrets that would soon enable Adolf Hitler to unite the Carpathians with the Styrian Alps. I knew I could certainly count on Oskar, because, in a drunken moment, he had confessed to me that his group of Austrian Nazis had been deceived by the men of the Reich. He and his friends had not at all wanted Anschluss but a separate Nazi Austria under their own leader, Dr. Rintelen. The next day, he came to me and implored me never to mention what he had told me. I grasped his arm and said, “Well, Oskar, after all, we have always been friends. Let’s not fuss about how reliable we are,” whereupon he grasped my arm and said, “Arnulf, I always knew you were a fine fellow, though you sometimes”—and here he laughed heartily—“have a trifle too much to do with the Turks. However, I would very much like to meet that Turkish girl of yours. She has something that appeals to my particular taste. If you don’t mind.”