Fear of Mirrors. Tariq Ali
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I am shuddering as I write this, Karl. It was a horrible day. Our relationship was probably doomed, but Stolen Kisses sealed its fate. She took the painting with her when she left, informing me that though the subject made her nauseous she really liked the composition and had become good friends with Leyla.
There are times in life when a single setback encourages another, like a small, dislodged rock triggers an avalanche. A month later I met Klaus Winter for lunch and he informed me that the State Security was getting regular and detailed reports from the leadership meetings of our Forum for German Democracy. He repeated verbatim remarks that had been attributed to me. His report was completely accurate. That was when Winter told me that he was a senior figure in Foreign Intelligence and that Gertrude, your grandmother, and he had both worked for Soviet Military Intelligence since the late twenties. After the Second World War they had been assigned to the DDR intelligence services.
I was thunderstruck, Karl. I had no idea that Gertrude was still involved in all that stuff. She had left no trace of it in her papers. I did not let Winter see the effect of the blow he had dealt me. Gertrude had encouraged the formation of our Forum. She had actually helped me write our founding document. She had attended some of our meetings. I had discussed our innermost secrets with her, including a plan to steal documents from the Politburo, since one of our supporters worked in that building.
As I walked away from Winter’s apartment, I wondered how much Gertrude had told Winter. Everything? Nothing? A few bits and pieces? In which case why had they not arrested us and disbanded the Forum? They could have done it very easily. Perhaps they had reported directly to Moscow and the men around Gorbachev had counselled them to let us grow.
I wanted answers, but before I was ready to confront Winter I had to discover the real Gertrude and the ghosts that had possessed her. She was dead. I had to piece together the disparate strands that had made up her life. How had it interrelated with that of Ludwik? When did she first meet Winter and where? And who was she in the first place? Her life was now beginning to haunt me.
I remember, not long before she died, you asking her whether she had any photographs of her family. I used to ask her that when I was a child and she would shake her head quickly and change the subject. When you asked her, she began to cry. Do you remember? Do you know why, Karl? Because she had left home in such a state that all relations between her and the family were broken.
Gertrude’s parents were third-generation German Jews. Her grandfather, who had done well in the tea and caviar trade, had built a large mansion in Schwaben, then a fashionable Munich suburb. Most of those old houses have long since been destroyed. Not by the war, but by developers.
Gertrude’s father was a greatly respected physician. Her mother led a life of leisure. Neither of them was religious. If anything, young Gertie and her brother Heinrich learned about religion from their cook and the two maids, all of whom were good Catholics.
Her childhood was happy. She would talk sometimes of the big garden at the end of which was a little gate that led to a small forest where she and Heinrich used to pick wild strawberries every summer. There was an old cedar tree and a swing. She used to delight in pushing Heinrich higher and higher till he was screaming, half in fear and half delight. The maid would rush from the house and rescue the little boy.
They were brought up like any other Germans of their class and generation. At the gymnasium she was punished for her insolence for refusing to accept the casual anti-Semitism of her history teacher. The head of the gymnasium wrote a strong letter to her father. Dr Meyer refused to take the matter seriously.
‘They are ignorant, Gertie,’ her father would tell her. ‘To show anger is to come down to their level. You must learn to control yourself.’
‘If he is ignorant,’ she responded, ‘why is he permitted to teach us history?’
Her father would smile and finger his beard, but could not reply. When she recalled all this her eyes would light up. It was the first time she had won an argument.
‘I have no answer to your question, Gertie. May I simply recommend that you learn what they teach, pass your exams and prepare to enter the university. Do you think I could have become a physician if I had responded to every insult or curse? Anti-Semitism is strongly rooted in their culture. They imbibed it with Christianity. Luther made that side of it only worse, but it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing at all.’
Gertie did pass her exams, but during her very first year at the University of Munich she fell in love with a fellow-student with the name of David Stein. There is a photograph of them as students, which I found as I was going through her papers a few months ago.
He was of medium height, with a shock of dark red hair and twinkling eyes. The son of a railway worker, he was a rarity at the university and the object of a great deal of prejudice. A Jew, and from a poor family.
Gertie was impressed by his remarkable self-confidence and his ability to rise above the jibes to which he was continuously subjected. This might seem strange to you, Karl, but don’t forget that the German universities were the strongholds of reaction. Long before Hitler became Chancellor, his ideas had already triumphed in the universities.
Stein was a brilliant mathematician and Gertie always felt that if she had not distracted him, he would have easily reached the pinnacle of his profession. Perhaps, but had fate not intervened in the shape of your grandmother, he might just as easily have ended up in Auschwitz.
The two of them became inseparable. Slowly they began to explore each other’s emotions and bodies. Together they flouted Jewish orthodoxy. Gertie’s household may have been secular in every way, but the kitchen was never defiled by pig meat. David’s parents were staunch atheists. They were both active in the Social Democratic Party. Here too, the old taboo against pork was strictly observed.
David and Gertie cemented their love by walking into a non-Jewish butcher’s shop and buying some cooked ham. They walked to the old Jewish cemetery, sat on the grave of David’s grandfather and consumed the ham. Once they had finished, they appealed to the Creator to prove his existence by striking them dead. The sky remained still. The excitement proved too much for Gertie. She vomited in the street, but as David helped to clean her mouth they both began to laugh. They had cured themselves of all superstitions forever. It was only after this episode that David had dragged her off to meet his parents.
The Steins lived in a two-room basement with a tiny kitchen. A fading portrait of Eduard Bernstein was pinned to the wall. How times change, Karl. In those days Bernstein was regarded as the father of revisionist thought. A turncoat. A reactionary who had made his peace with the class enemy. Twenty years ago, this view was still widely held. Read a few of his essays now, Karl, and compare them to the speeches you write for your new Social Democratic masters. Bernstein now seems to be a die-hard, a dinosaur no less! Of course, times have changed. Why do I keep forgetting this fact?
Next to Bernstein’s portrait was a framed sepia-tinted photograph of David’s father and six other men, all of them dressed in their Sunday best, with watch-chains proudly displayed. This was the executive of the Munich railway workers’ union. Gertie was awed by David’s father. She became a regular visitor. The only subject of conversation in the kitchen was socialist politics. David’s father was one of the local leaders of the SDP, but he was entirely devoid of self-importance. He spoke softly and was always prepared to listen to his political opponents, whose numbers were growing within the railway workers’ union.
It was 1918. Germany had been dismembered by the Allies. Lenin and Trotsky were in power in Petrograd and Moscow. Ferment was sweeping through Europe. The Kaiser had been toppled and the Prussian Junkers were talking to Social Democrats, seeing them as the only way to avoid the German revolution.
Finally the day came when Gertie felt she had to take David home. If they were going to get married she had to introduce him to her parents. Aware of the polar contrast between the two households, she was dreading the occasion. Gertie’s parents did not even attempt to conceal their shock. David’s twinkling, intelligent eyes made no impact on them. They were horrified at the thought of their daughter marrying a penniless pauper, whose parents were probably recent arrivals from the steel.