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Authors: Susanna Moore
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behaving badly to Cuba, then quickly dismissed the idea. Inéz did not take sides. Suddenly, Don Jaime thrust a hand in her direction, interrupting her and compelling her at last to look at him. She waited—we all waited—but Don Jaime was silent.
I’d noticed Professor Wasselmann eyeing Maria Milde’s plate of uneaten food for some time (he was a little drunk), and without thinking, perhaps because Don Jaime was making me nervous, I reached across him to exchange Fräulein Milde’s plate for the professor’s empty plate. To my relief, Fräulein Milde behaved as if it had been her idea, beaming with condescension as the professor whisked the last of her potatoes into his mouth.
The officer (Maria Milde, perhaps in explanation of his rudeness, had announced that he was a Battenberg prince) lit a cigarette with a silver field lighter. Smoke streaming from his mouth, he leaned across the table. “Our Führer,” he said in English, “does not take kindly to princes of the blood like myself in the field, and he would deny us our ancient and honored privilege of dying in battle. Sons of noble families are forbidden to serve at the front, but I have thought of nothingbut war since I was a boy. I have been trained for nothing else. Dreamed of nothing else. The Führer has robbed my life of all meaning, while he talks aloud to the portrait of Frederick the Great he keeps at his side.” He pushed back his chair and strode from the table, Maria Milde following him anxiously with her eyes, as Caspar hurried to open the door for him. Don Jaime jumped to his feet and rushed around the table to take the officer’s empty chair, and Inéz, at last, turned to him with a smile, causing Don Jaime to fall back in his chair.
I knew that Felix did not like political talk at the table, but there was little he could do to prevent it. He looked ill at ease, which wasn’t like him. He was inclined to indulge the comfort of others, if only to alleviate his boredom. His politeness, I’d come to realize, served, among other things, to afford him the distance that he preferred and even required. As Kreck carried an apple tart to the table, a young, pleasant-looking couple who I assumed were newlyweds, so intent were they on each other, arrived with shy apologies and sat in two chairs alongside Dorothea. Kreck told me later that they were the children of Felix’s boyhood music teacher, who’d been arrested in Regensburg in November. Felix had arranged for them to travel to Algiers with the exit visas that his friend in the Foreign Office had obtained for him and Dorothea, should they ever need them.
Maria Milde leaned toward Don Jaime. “In my experience,” she said as if imparting a secret, “it is the Dutch and the Norwegians who hate us the most. The French, as I’m sure you know, like us the very best.”
To my relief, I heard Felix’s familiar cultivated voice. “In 1918, when I was twenty years old, I was so ashamed of ourcountry that my father’s death at the Somme was in some ways a relief. If he had survived, I would have held him, along with my uncles and the rest of his generation, responsible for the horror of the war. In those days, we schoolboys no longer trusted our elders who, in any talk of the reasons for our country’s shame, always avoided the truth by claiming that there was nothing they could have done to stop it.” He paused. “When I was older, I realized that schoolboys in England and France and Turkey must have felt just as I did. Some now say that our friends in France yearn for a quick German victory simply because they cannot bear the responsibility of another million killed in battle. We are in the same position as those men we once blamed, only it is we who are at fault, we who are making the same mistakes as our fathers so that our country can bring about another fatal catastrophe. And what is one to do? To leave Germany is inconceivable. All we can know for certain is that the abyss awaits
I’d noticed Professor Wasselmann eyeing Maria Milde’s plate of uneaten food for some time (he was a little drunk), and without thinking, perhaps because Don Jaime was making me nervous, I reached across him to exchange Fräulein Milde’s plate for the professor’s empty plate. To my relief, Fräulein Milde behaved as if it had been her idea, beaming with condescension as the professor whisked the last of her potatoes into his mouth.
The officer (Maria Milde, perhaps in explanation of his rudeness, had announced that he was a Battenberg prince) lit a cigarette with a silver field lighter. Smoke streaming from his mouth, he leaned across the table. “Our Führer,” he said in English, “does not take kindly to princes of the blood like myself in the field, and he would deny us our ancient and honored privilege of dying in battle. Sons of noble families are forbidden to serve at the front, but I have thought of nothingbut war since I was a boy. I have been trained for nothing else. Dreamed of nothing else. The Führer has robbed my life of all meaning, while he talks aloud to the portrait of Frederick the Great he keeps at his side.” He pushed back his chair and strode from the table, Maria Milde following him anxiously with her eyes, as Caspar hurried to open the door for him. Don Jaime jumped to his feet and rushed around the table to take the officer’s empty chair, and Inéz, at last, turned to him with a smile, causing Don Jaime to fall back in his chair.
I knew that Felix did not like political talk at the table, but there was little he could do to prevent it. He looked ill at ease, which wasn’t like him. He was inclined to indulge the comfort of others, if only to alleviate his boredom. His politeness, I’d come to realize, served, among other things, to afford him the distance that he preferred and even required. As Kreck carried an apple tart to the table, a young, pleasant-looking couple who I assumed were newlyweds, so intent were they on each other, arrived with shy apologies and sat in two chairs alongside Dorothea. Kreck told me later that they were the children of Felix’s boyhood music teacher, who’d been arrested in Regensburg in November. Felix had arranged for them to travel to Algiers with the exit visas that his friend in the Foreign Office had obtained for him and Dorothea, should they ever need them.
Maria Milde leaned toward Don Jaime. “In my experience,” she said as if imparting a secret, “it is the Dutch and the Norwegians who hate us the most. The French, as I’m sure you know, like us the very best.”
To my relief, I heard Felix’s familiar cultivated voice. “In 1918, when I was twenty years old, I was so ashamed of ourcountry that my father’s death at the Somme was in some ways a relief. If he had survived, I would have held him, along with my uncles and the rest of his generation, responsible for the horror of the war. In those days, we schoolboys no longer trusted our elders who, in any talk of the reasons for our country’s shame, always avoided the truth by claiming that there was nothing they could have done to stop it.” He paused. “When I was older, I realized that schoolboys in England and France and Turkey must have felt just as I did. Some now say that our friends in France yearn for a quick German victory simply because they cannot bear the responsibility of another million killed in battle. We are in the same position as those men we once blamed, only it is we who are at fault, we who are making the same mistakes as our fathers so that our country can bring about another fatal catastrophe. And what is one to do? To leave Germany is inconceivable. All we can know for certain is that the abyss awaits
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