thought — But what if my mother and I have changed; and on to some different level. I found that I did not want to tell her about how my two lowland salamanders seemed suddenly to have produced one highland salamander; perhaps this was after all a thing that one should not talk about too much.
trinket, bedspread, pair of boots, ancestral ornament — anything saved and hidden might suddenly become life-giving (was this like your so-called 'gene-pool'?). Of course, many Schieber were Jews — how practised at this sort of thing had Jews become over the years! — their tribal identity having been maintained indeed by their response to a hostile environment. Or was it that other people for their own protection (not survival!) were apt to notice only the Schieber that happened to be Jews? Certainly Jews, as usual, took no trouble to disguise themselves. There was still the question, yes — was all this exposure, immolation, necessary for survival?
There would come to our apartment in Berlin two of my mother's relations from the provinces — Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob. They would arrive with their suitcases and long black coats and trilby hats and beards. I would hope — Might they not after all be taken to be people just out to buy a train ticket? They would open their suitcases in the halclass="underline" there would be vegetables and butter and eggs and perhaps a chicken or two: my mother would greet them but then retire to her room: well how does a good Communist maintain her dignity under the necessity of capitalist manipulation? My father and Magda usually did the bargaining. They would hand over a sheet or a blanket, perhaps, from the store in the linen cupboard; a few books; an heirloom that had come from my mother's family anyway. And so we stayed alive. Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob would sit side by side on the sofa in the sitting-room like primeval images that had come floating across the sea in canoes. I would think — But, still, should not survivors, saviours, be more secret? Otherwise how easy it is for people to want to kill them! There are such opportunities for envy in the business of salvation: is this why it seems to go hand in hand with ruination?
There were in fact outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the streets of Berlin at this time. I had not noticed overt manifestations of it before — it had seemed no more than an oddity among the sophisticates of the university or of the Adlon Hotel. But it was now being said that Jews were taking over property cheaply from non-Jewish families who were hungry: Jewish shops were broken into and goods were looted. Of course there is envy of those who can adapt and look after their own kind on the part of those who cannot. (How would you put it? That there is hostility to mutants not only from the environment but, if the environment changes, from those who do not change?) Defence forces were organised by
Jews; a looter was shot and killed. I thought — Good. Then — But is it not the sign of a survivor to be different from those who are not?
I said to my father 'Would it not have been better if, from the beginning, Jews had remained secret?'
He said 'Then how could they have been agents of salvation?'
I said 'But people do not imitate them.'
He said 'I mean, perhaps they had to be scattered; to spread.'
I thought — You mean, what it is they spread still remains secret?
My father tried to explain about the inflation — about the postwar reparation payments that Germany was supposed to be making to France and England and America. The payments themselves were not affected by the inflation because they were in terms of gold; but it was the cost of them that was said to be causing the inflation in Germany. My father said 'But also the inflation might be a way of Germans saying to the French and English and Americans "Look, it makes no sense if this is what happens when you press us for payments: you will get nothing more from us if we are ruined.
I said to my father 'But can't they just announce this?'
My father said 'But then they would seem to be plotting; they wouldn't seem to be helpless.'
I said 'So it's a game.'
My father said 'But one of the rules is you can't call it a game.'
I thought — So some things, yes, do have to remain secret.
The inflation, in fact, ended more suddenly than it had begun. For a week or so there was no paper money of any value at all (there was a joke — a billion-mark note was the cheapest form of lavatory paper) then one day there were new clean banknotes with eight or nine noughts knocked off. And these were accepted. I said to my father 'But how can money be stabilised, or whatever it is called, just by knocking eight or nine noughts off?'
He said 'Well, just as it might suit people to have chaos for a time, so it usually suits them suddenly to stop.'
I said 'Why?'
He said 'They get bored.'
I said 'No one controls it.'
He said 'No, no one controls it.' Then — 'I think one can have a feel of it.'
I said 'But not talk about it.'
He said'No.'
I thought — You mean, one might influence it if one has a feel of it?
Then — We are like agents in occupied territory.
I was not having much contact with my mother at this time: she had moved out of our apartment except at weekends and was staying in a room in the east side of Berlin where she worked at one of the Communist Party offices. I thought — She is a fighter: fighters do not want to remain secret; fighters often die. Then — It is more straightforward, of course, to have an instinct to die?
Every now and then I would become slightly ill again at this time; I would spend a few days in bed. I would think — When I do imagine I understand things, it is as if a white light is coming down: indeed it seems difficult sometimes to stay alive.
My father would come and sit on the edge of my bed and talk to me. He once said 'As a matter of fact there is an old Jewish tradition that the real saviours of the world — those who stop the human race from destroying itself- are very few; perhaps no more than seven, seven just men, and they do remain secret! They are not known even to each other; perhaps in this guise they are hardly known to themselves.'