'Yes,' said Bret sardonically. 'And you have yet to mention the German-born Karl Marx.'
For a moment I thought von Munte was going to reply seriously to the joke and make a fool of himself, but he'd lived amid signals, innuendoes, and half-truths long enough to recognize the joke for what it was. He smiled.
'Can there ever be lasting peace in Europe?' said Bret wearily. 'Now, if I'm to believe my ears, you say Germany still has territorial aspirations.' For Bret it was all a game, but poor old von Munte could not play it.
'For our own provinces,' said von Munte stolidly.
'For Poland and pieces of Russia,' said Bret. 'You'd better be clear on that.'
Silas poured more of his precious Chateau Palmer in a gesture of placation for all concerned. 'You're from Pomerania, aren't you, Walter?' It was an invitation to talk rather than a real question, for by now Silas knew every last detail of von Munte's family history.
'I was born in Falkenburg. My father had a big estate there.'
'That's near the Baltic,' said Bret, feigning interest to make what he considered a measure of reconciliation.
' Pomerania,' said von Munte. 'Do you know it, Bernard?' he asked me, because I was the closest person there to being a fellow-countryman.
'Yes,' I said. 'Many lakes and hills. They call it Pomeranian Switzerland, don't they?'
'Not any longer.'
'A beautiful place,' I said. 'But as I remember it, damned cold, Walter.'
'You must go in the summer,' said von Munte. 'It's one of the most enchanting places in the world.' I looked at Frau Doktor von Munte. I had the feeling that the move to the West was a disappointment for her. Her English was poor and she keenly felt the social disadvantage she suffered as a refugee. With the talk of Pomerania she brightened and tried to follow the conversation.
'You've been back?' Silas asked.
'Yes, my wife and I went there about ten years ago. It was foolish. One should never go back.'
'Tell us about it,' said Silas.
At first it seemed as if the memories were too painful for von Munte to recount, but after a pause he told us about his trip. 'There is something nightmarish about going back to your homeland and finding that it's occupied exclusively by foreigners. It was the most curious experience I've ever had – to write "birthplace Falkenburg" and then "destination Zlocieniec".'
'The same place, now given a Polish name,' said Frank Harrington. 'But you must have been prepared for that.'
'I was prepared in my mind but not in my heart,' said von Munte. He turned to his wife and repeated this in rapid German. She nodded dolefully.
'The train connection from Berlin was never good,' von Munte went on. 'Even before the war we had to change twice. This time we went by bus. I tried to borrow a car, but it was not possible. The bus was convenient. We went to Neustettin, my wife's home town. We had difficulty finding the house in which she'd lived as a child.'
'Couldn't you ask for directions?' said Frank.
'Neither of us speaks much Polish,' said von Munte. 'Also, my wife had lived in Hermann-Göring-Strasse and I did not care to ask the way there.' He smiled. 'But we found it eventually. In the street where she lived as a girl we even found an old German woman who remembered my wife's family. It was a remarkable stroke of luck, for there are only a handful of Germans still living there.'
'And in Falkenburg?' said Silas.
'Ah, in my beloved Zlocieniec, Stalin was more thorough. We could find no one there who spoke German. I was born in a house in the country, right on the lake. We went to the nearest village and the priest tried to help us, but there were no records. He even lent me a bicycle so that I could go out to the house, but it had completely disappeared. The buildings have all been destroyed and the area has been made into a forest. The only remains I could recognize were a couple of farm buildings a long way distant from the site of the house where I was born. The priest promised to write if he found out any more, but he never did.'
'And you never went back again?' asked Silas.
'We planned to return, but things happened in Poland. The big demonstrations for free trade unions and the creation of Solidarity was reported in our East German newspapers as being the work of reactionary elements supported by western fascists. Very few people were prepared to even comment on the Polish crisis. And most of the people who did talk about it said that such 'troubles', by upsetting the Russians, made conditions worse for us East Germans and other peoples in the Eastern Bloc. Poles became unpopular and no one went there. It was as if Poland ceased to exist as a next-door neighbour and became some land far away on the other side of the world.'
'Eat up,' said Silas. 'We're keeping you from your lunch, Walter.'
But soon von Munte took up the same subject again. It was as if he had to convert us to his point of view. He had to remove our misunderstandings. 'It was the occupation zones that created the archetype German for you,' he said. 'Now the French think all Germans are chattering Rhinelanders, the Americans think we are all beer-swilling Bavarians, the British think we are all icy Westphalians, and the Russians think we are all cloddish Saxons.'
'The Russians,' I said, having downed two generous glasses of Silas's magnificent wine as well as a few aperitifs, 'think you are all brutal Prussians.'
He nodded sadly. 'Yes, Saupreiss,' he said, using the Bavarian dialect word for Prussian swine. 'Perhaps you are right.'
After lunch the other guests divided into those who played billiards and those who preferred to sit huddled round the blazing log fire in the drawing room. My children were watching TV with Mrs Porter.
Silas, giving me a chance to speak privately with von Munte, took us to the conservatory to which, at this time of year, he had moved his house plants. It was a huge glass palace, resting against the side of the house, its framework gracefully curved, its floor formed of beautiful old decorative tiles. In these cold months the whole place was crammed full of prehensile-looking greenery of every shape and size. It seemed too cold in there for such plants to flourish, but Silas said they didn't need heat so much as light. 'With me,' I told him, 'it's exactly the opposite.'
He smiled as if he'd heard the joke before, which he had because I told it to him every time he trapped me into one of these chats amid his turnip tops. But Silas liked the conservatory, and if he liked it, everyone else had to like it too. He seemed not to feel the cold. He was jacketless, with bright red braces visible under his unbuttoned waistcoat. Walter von Munte was wearing a black suit of the, kind that was uniform for a German government official in the service of the Kaiser. His face was grey and lined and his whitening hair cropped short. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them on a silk handkerchief. Seated on the big wicker seat under the large and leafy plants the old man looked like some ancient studio portrait.
'Young Bernard has a question for you, Walter,' said Silas. He had a bottle of Madeira with him and three glasses. He put them on the table and poured a measure of the amber-coloured wine for each of us, then lowered his weight onto a cast-iron garden chair. He sat between us, positioned like a referee.
'It is not good for me,' said von Munte, but he took the glass and looked at the colour of it and sniffed it appreciatively.
'It's not good for anyone,' said Silas cheerfully, sipping his carefully measured portion. 'It's not supposed to be good for you. The doctor cut me down to one bottle per month last year.' He drank. 'This year he told me to cut it out altogether.'
'Then you are disobeying orders,' said von Munte.
'I got myself another doctor,' said Silas. 'We live in a capitalist society over here, Walter. I can afford to get myself a doctor who says it's okay to smoke and drink.' He laughed and sipped a little more of his, Madeira. 'Cossart 1926, bottled fifty years later. Not the finest Madeira I've ever encountered, but not at all bad, eh?' He didn't wait for our response, but selected a cigar from the box he'd brought under his arm. 'Try that,' he said, offering the cigar to me. 'That's an Upmann grand corona, one of the best cigars you can smoke and just right for this time of day. Walter, what about one of those petits that you enjoyed last night?'