Aladdin's Problem Page 2

  We heard his voice; no one saw him, but everyone trembled. He was the tamer; we were the beast.

  After that mental preparation, field duty was truly relaxing for us. The captain was satisfied — it all went like clockwork; Stellmann was an outstanding sergeant.

  14

  Thinking back, I wonder why I simply did not remain standing when he threw us to the ground. It was dark; he would not have seen me. All of us could have remained standing until he had shouted himself hoarse; then the whole fuss would have been over and done with. But things are not that simple.

  Aside from that, I had nothing against the drill per se; this may be a rudimentary memory. There are moments of universal consent, when everything works.

  My ancestors also achieved a thing or two in that respect, especially during the Baroque period. After all, running a gauntlet is no piece of cake. But there was something else next to it, below it, and above it, which, at least in hindsight, mellows if not sanctions the suffering. It was part of the era; this is proved by buildings and artworks — from songs and paintings to handicrafts: pewter, silver, porcelain. These things still comfort us today in sounds and sights; plus the free thought of the great systems to the point of self-irony. Once, at the mounting of the guard at Potsdam, Frederick the Great, "Old Fritz," asked one of the generals: "Do you notice something?" The general had no answer, and the old king said: "There are so many of them and so few of us." Perhaps that was the day on which James Boswell, a Scottish liberal, indeed an anarch, was thrilled by the spectacle.

  Compared with their uniforms, which the ladies also liked so much, ours are ugly and gray. We live in times that are unworthy of an artwork; we suffer without apology. Nothing will remain but the sound of Sheol. Today, coercion is still approved. Yet, at the same time, grief grows, spreading all the way to the Africans, and my melancholy takes part in it.

  15

  Needless to say, I racked my brain about how to get rid of my tormentor. A war was out of the question (it automatically solves many problems). I pictured us marching out, to the accompaniment of music, and reaching the front. As soon as we fanned out in the skirmish line, I would kill Stellmann. This was a delight — you have to know your enemy. But there was no chance of war, although everyone was talking about it; besides, in case of war, the men on the army list stay behind in the orderly room. They are the least expendable.

  Naturally, I also thought about deserting; but there were snags. The borders were almost impassable, and many obstacles had to be overcome before you reached the mine belt. Only choice men were detailed there as guards. At the very least, you had to find a buddy — but who could be trusted? Anyone might be an agent. I rejected the idea; I'm not one for foolhardiness.

  Aside from that, the word "desertion" does not sound appealing to me. I am backward in such matters — not, of course, because I would honor contracts made with atheists. Even atheists do not renounce an oath of allegiance, although they may have another word for it. I was indifferent to that, but not to my self-respect. Finally, I could shoot myself at the rifle range or while cleaning my gun. Stellmann, no doubt, would have labeled this a self-mutilation, and he would not have been mistaken. Self-mutilation is regarded as second only to suicide, the acme of desertion. That is why there are extremely shameful rules for interring suicides. Who does not know the night of sorrow? Tossing and turning on my straw pallet, I became a shadow of my former self Physical destruction was preceded by moral destruction. In the end, such a case inevitably calls for prayer.

  16

  I cannot judge whether it helped. In any case, there was a turn of events, whatever may have led to it.

  Escalading was one of our captain's obsessions; no exercise went by without our being driven across a series of obstacles. The captain stood there with a stopwatch. We leaped over hurdles and ditches, clambered up scaling ladders, squeezed underneath barbed wire. At last came the escalade wall; it was high. That morning, I had made good time. Normally, you climb down the other side using only your hands; I wanted to do something extra, so I jumped down. The result was a broken leg; the medical orderlies had to carry me away.

  When they x-rayed me at the hospital, they found a spiral fracture. I underwent several operations; I had to spend three months lying flat on my back, until the medical corps captain said: "The reserve can retire; your hitch is over."

  17

  Accident suffered during service; that was a good discharge, almost a pass key. Limping with my cane through the garden of the convalescent home, I pondered my prospects. It was fall, the asters were still blossoming, the October sun was shining.

  If we get into a difficult situation, say, prison, we have to resign ourselves. Even better, we can derive some benefit from it. Our situation can then function as a step towards our self-realization. The same is true of successes: we should not take them for granted. They can always be trumped.

  Whenever Bertha and I played checkers during the evenings of our first year of marriage (that was later), she would sometimes say: "You're cunning — you turn every windmill into something to tilt at."

  The same applied here. When I returned to my company in regard to my discharge, I had already forged my plan. Stellmann stood at the barracks entrance; I hobbled past him with my cane and saluted — not with my hand at my forehead, but with an exact turn of my head. He crossed his arms and glared at me.

  Inside, I reported to the captain; he allowed me to sit. He said: "My dear B., we have to part, I'm sorry. I'll miss you; there's more to you than I heard from the sergeant. But you know: duty is duty. In any case, good luck in your future endeavors."

  I rose to my feet and stood at attention: "Sir, may I request permission to remain in the army — I am still fit for service."

  This had never happened before; I was tilting at a windmill.

  18

  Word about my zeal had spread quickly: the colonel received me benevolently. I was a shining example. Like some of the older officers, he had once served "King and Country." He enjoyed being addressed in the third person, albeit only privately. He pointed out to me that, after his head, an infantryman is dependent on his legs.

  "Sir, if I may respond: I believe it makes no difference in a tank or an airplane."

  He liked that; he patted me on the back and rang up the doctor. I was thoroughly reexamined and then detailed to the military academy. Needless to say, I had to undergo tests, but there was nothing negative in my background. Good marks, no criminal record. Stellmann had once put me in the guardhouse, but that can happen. It was not raked up until later. Above all: I was politically sound.

  19

  One can capitalize on a leg injury as need be. It sometimes improves, sometimes gets worse — depending on circumstances, especially the weather. I benefited from it at the military academy; I wore it like a decoration. They were considerate toward me, especially for drills and field duty. I made up for this in the theoretical courses. I followed the instruction attentively, occasionally asking a question — the kind that instructors like. I did this not just in order to score with them, but also because I grow all the more interested in power the higher the level on which it is manifested.

  The general spiritualization now emerging is also expressed in tactics. It is astounding to see how inventiveness grows in nature and in technology when existence is at stake. This applies to both defense and pursuit. For every missile, an anti-missile is devised. At times, it all looks like sheer bragadoccio. This could lead to a stalemate or else to the moment when the opponent says, "I give up," if he does not knock over the chessboard and ruin the game.

  Darwin did not go that far; in this context, one is better off with Cuvier's theory of catastrophes.

  20

  So much for tactics; those are mental games. The same holds for "Morale," which was taught as the second major subject. In this respect, I was fortunate in having studied social theories from early on. I had been inspired to do so by the fate of my family. As I grew up
and tried to form an opinion, Socialism was not merely an academic subject for me; I read its major works — often until late at night. Incidentally, I also memorized. poetry, which was quite out of fashion.

  It behooves instructors to define and categorize exploitation. An indispensable tool in this regard is a knowledge of history, which most theoreticians are weak in, nay, often lack. They are trapped in the present; this leads to adulteration, even falsification.

  Exploitation is inevitable; without it, no state, no society, indeed, no mosquito can exist. It is endured and tolerated for centuries, often barely noticed. It can become anonymous; one is exploited no longer by princes, but by ideas; slaves and masters exchange faces.

  I do not wish to get into that. The important thing in teaching is to assign evil to the past, to the unenlightened times, and, in the present, to the enemy. The exploiter is not the enemy; rather, the enemy is the exploiter.

  The instruction examination took place on a Saturday. I was quizzed only once; I had the instruction company in front of me and the faculty of the military academy behind me. The topic was the American War between the States. I stuck to the assigned readings, but, almost imperceptibly, went a little beyond them. This is a good spice, but one to be used sparingly.

  21

  "What good does it do the sugar-cane slave if he is put to work on the assembly line? He remains a Negro; he has been pulled out of nature — and now he is controlled by Taylor's system. We must regard every war as progress — that is to say, as progress only within the capitalist system. The exploitation remains; it is more refined. From our point of view, progress is the attainment of a new level of consciousness. "

  So much for my self-quotation. I had said: "The exploitation remains," but not, "It remains under all circumstances." Nevertheless, it could stimulate in this respect. The objective analysis of the enemy includes a great deal of self-criticism. Incidentally, I had ventured into this diversion not with a pedagogical goal, but for my own pleasure.

  My speech was applauded, and the things I had left out also brought me success. After the commander had praised me, one of the officers came up to me: "I liked what you said about the Yankees; I'd like to pursue it personally with you." He invited me over that evening.

  22

  This officer, a Pole, was a young captain; he had served in the Foreign Armies division and had then been assigned the post of instructor at the military academy. He was a native of Stettin (Szczecin), and his last name was Muller; his parents had made sure to give him a good first name.

  At the outset, we addressed each other respectively as "Captain" and "Cadet Sergeant" (which I had become in the meantime), then as Jagello and Friedrich. Jagello had a typical horseman's build: broad shoulders and hips, narrow waist, elegant movements. Ever since the cavalry dismounted, switching partly to the air force and partly to the tanks, the old categories are no longer recognizable. Nevertheless, they can be guessed at, somewhat like the signs of the zodiac. Your choice of regiment was not mere chance: it depended on whether you preferred riding light or heavy horses, fighting with the sword, the epee, the lance, or, like the dragoons, with the rifle. This was contingent on both physique and character. Dragoons had made a name for themselves in Oldenburg, cuirassiers in Mecklenburg, hussars in Hungary, and uhlans in Poland.

  In these terms, Jagello was an uhlans Some armies assigned the uhlans to the light cavalry, and others to the heavy cavalry; they are not as lighthearted as the hussars, or as solid as the cuirassiers, whom the prince preferred as his bodyguards.

  A Pole is inconceivable without a horse; his love for horses exceeds even the Hungarian's. To his detriment, he persisted in this love too long. Military history contains the account of a final attack, in which Polish lancers rode out against tanks.

  23

  This passion may explain why superiors ignored minor irregularities in Jagello's uniform. It was gray like all the others, but somewhat daring in its cut and cloth. While riding, even when on duty, he wore boots with a silver trimming. He took part in horse races, even abroad; this was encouraged and liked. A railroad car for carrying the horses to Nice presented no difficulties.

  Jagello's features were regular and nicely chiseled the kind of face that used to be called aristocratic. It would have been pale had his duties not taken him outdoors so frequently. Although a night worker, he had already exercised two horses by reveille: one in the manège and one in the countryside.

  He said: "Riding is indispensable if you want to be in command. For the sake of our reflexes, we also ought to include tennis in the duty roster. If I were a writer, I would start the day with books and pictures — I reserve my nights for them."

  He was, indeed, well read, not just for an officer. It was a mystery to me where he got the time. He was especially familiar with Russian literature; here, he had a preference for Western European motifs, say, Turgeniev's nihilistic Bazarov or Chekhov's stories. Once, at his prompting, the students of the military academy staged Gogol's Inspector General.

  He was almost professionally obliged to have a thorough knowledge of history, it was part of his stock-intrade. Here too, he knew how to combine business with pleasure, namely, by reading journals and memoirs; he said they brought the fine structure into the skeleton. When we met, he was reading Helbig's Russian Minions.

  24

  Encountering a man with a literary and historical background was a godsend in those surroundings. One timidly touches a key and hears something that one scarcely hoped to hear: the sound. This is followed by an — almost imperceptible — smile of collusion. That was how it began, and it evolved into almost perfect harmony. We played through problems — such as: "Was Raskolnikov right when he thought of himself as Napoleon?" And: "To what degree does Napoleon exist in each of us?"

  I have Jagello to thank for straightening me out in regard to some ofmy doubts. For example, I was plagued by the question of why we were serving — indeed zealously a system that we both found repulsive, and why we enthusiastically supported the development of weapons that would eventually blow us up too — that was the peak of schizophrenia. Jagello said:

  "Schizophrenia is a trademark of subalterns, hence it is universal. They stay on the plain, they cannot change their spots. Raskolnikov was schizophrenic; he was both Napoleon and a starving student. Had he kept his knowledge to himself, he would have gone very far. Instead, he murdered the usurer. He was already wearing inside himself the chain in which he was sent to Siberia."

  In contrast, Dostoevsky had performed and solved the experiment on a higher stratum. The usurer was killed here too, but the action remained in a spiritual space.

  This stratum was the crucial one. You could descend to the plain, you could leave it to its own devices, you could enjoy it as a spectacle or interfere.

  I could not quite go along with that; for after all, sooner or later, you have to take sides and you become vulnerable, as the gods themselves do in Homer. However, conversing with Jagello was fruitful for me, even if we did not reach an agreement — or perhaps precisely at those times.

  Jagello used to protect himself with quotations; for this topic, he removed a well-thumbed book from the shelf. I thought it was the Iliad — it was The Birth of Tragedy. He read: "The problem of science cannot be perceived on the ground of science.... Science has to be seen with the eyes of the artist." In this regard, we were of the same opinion —just as both of us believed that we would be redeemed either by the poet or by fire.

  25

  Usually, we were still talking when it grew dark. The room was smoky; the samovar steamed on the table. Jagello loved strong tea. He loved cigarettes with long tips; often, he would take only a few puffs — he never inhaled. He would say: "There are vices that cancel one another out. When I smoke heavily, it affects my stomach. I prevent this by drinking a lot of tea."

  While people may become very intimate, even among brothers, there are still taboos. We avoided them after recognizing them. One day, when there
had been another rumpus in the Sejm, I found Jagello absorbed in his newspaper. He said: "It's so ridiculous that they can't overcome their fiasco."

  I replied: "And yet with Pomerania, they have one of the richest soils, where prosperity was at home."

  I had tried to express myself neutrally, but Jagello was obviously disgruntled. This was a wound for him — and for me too. The difference was that for him Poland, and for me Pomerania, were not yet lost. Our friendship was put to a test, which it survived.

  When we travel today, not only in Europe, but also in faraway countries, we feel that a brother lies under the ground. He calls to us, and we have to restrain ourselves like the sons of Korah in Psalm 88: "Prayer in great tribulation and imminent mortal danger."

  26

  Spring had come. Our nights grew longer and longer; sometimes, when we separated, day was already dawning toward us. Our work did not suffer — on the contrary: we became as alert as if we had been trained in abstracting. I was allowed to accompany him on his early-morning rides.

  Jagello's friendship also brought a change in my career. At the end of the military-school year, I became a lieutenant; Jagello was also promoted — he was now the youngest staff officer, and he was posted as attaché to the Berlin embassy. From there, he requested me as his assistant. This presented no difficulty; the Foreign Service offices were generously staffed. There were no qualms about my reliability or my qualifications; no one objected.