A rumble of mirth enabled him to calculate our mood and when to reach his curtain lines. ‘We have not allowed much attention to the paradoxes of authority, and its use of the Lie. Only saints, anarchists and the sluggish actually reject authority with, I suspect, all the authority they can muster. I myself, like most of us, respect authority, have occasionally had to use it, without appetite and to small effect. My own exemplar is Cincinnatus, whom the Founding Fathers adopted as an American. Given power, he does a difficult job, then unobtrusively retires. A lesson to Europe.’
The response was muted, at some possible allusion to de Gaulle, but he acknowledged it without dismay or annoyance but with the enjoyment of a conjurer about to produce a favourite trick, without flourish but successfully.
‘I will give you another example, doubtless better known. John Rabe.’ Trapped off-guard, assuming an over-sophisticated joke, a few laughed knowingly, the rest left puzzled or blank: Malraux, failing the test, shrugged, sought his green bag, Trilling glanced at me enquiringly, and I examined the floor.
Modest, Wilfrid was scarcely disclaiming his own authority. ‘It would be easy to offer some reputation honoured and undisputed: Helmuth von Moltke, Pastor Bonhöffer, Regine Karlin, Mlle Weil, Herr Nansen’s father. However…’ – pronounced more heavily, this, like ‘but’, had a speck of grit – ‘though on their achievements, authority at its most selfless, any new Europe must rest. Permit me to broaden the matter. To reach back to 1937. The sack of Nanking. Thousands raped, murdered, tortured with brutal refinements, on a scale not then paralleled within memory. This was halted by one man, by personal courage and authority, by John Rabe. One of our time’s grand gestures. And who was he?’ Yet again he stopped, enjoying the tease. ‘Theologian? Quaker? First Violinist? No, Heaven preserve us, he was a convinced, a pure – if you will forgive the word – National Socialist. He believed in all that we should not believe, yet even in Mao’s China he is revered as a saviour. In him, not in any Führer or Generalissimo, is our difficulty, the self divided by what Charles Dickens called the attractions of repulsion. That we can cherish several contradictions simultaneously. This is fearsome as plague or truncheons and fostered by obedience and the microphone – not, at this very moment, at its most obedient. Did not Faust lament the two rival souls within his breast? We ourselves may resolve – a Resolution. We may even, with one soul, publish no less than a communiqué…’ – the mild sarcasm was another trick of the trade, the performance meticulously prepared, with its chatty flippancy, the dandyesque humour – ‘but with another soul we will disown it. Exquisite hopes, detailed plans, can be unconscious of the creative flaws, riven psyche, scarcely credible energies, of a Rabe. Genius attempts it, and there is much genius amongst us, but genius tends to despise government and hold its nose at committees. I myself am guilty of much that I deplore. A guest in Paris, where Zola once spoke out, I can remind you of Gautier saying that one can journey through one’s own times, yet not see them. European Reconstruction is splendidly visible, but somewhere, overlooked, outside, is the arsonist, the joker, the irreconcilable, the exhibitionist, apt to be romanticized by literature, cinema, by folklore, into the Good Terrorist – as, you may judge, I have romanticized Rabe. And here I am, interminable, keeping better speakers waiting, with no Resolution, no Communiqué, unable to split atoms, write a poem, libel Miss Garbo. Bien entendu.’
I supposed he had finished, but he was being handed a note from Golo Mann, which he lifted in acknowledgement, while examining us for signs of exhaustion, dissatisfaction, a meaning glance from the chairman, and had actually stepped back, until protests recalled him. At any instant, brilliant lights would sweep over us, but they remained withheld. The ceiling had vanished, no winged Hermes would snigger cynical improprieties, no Mirabeau thunder wild words, no bronzed epitaphs clatter from on high. Instead, Wilfrid probably ending with a joke, not uproarious, not very amusing.
‘How I have meandered! I have refused to love my enemies, queried religion, obeised myself to history, exalted a man with appalling views and apache behaviour and, I dare say, have mis-quoted Gautier. I will now commit one further iniquity. Unfashionable though it is in current literature, I enjoy stories, and, with your permission – should you refuse, I will shuffle away without grievance – I will tell you one. Your gaiety may not be a hurricane, your applause scanty, but I promise you my story is short, merest trifle. A children’s story.’
My disquiet rushed back, my body winced at one stanza too many, maladroit whimsicality. ‘Wilfrid’s come!’ Some legend of Mickey Rooney or Astaire’s father, a variation of a pied piper or children lost in a forest. ‘They tasted delicious.’ Could he only remind himself that people could no longer be shocked, though some might still dread being alone!
Dimmed, twilit, his colleagues submerged in shadows, Wilfrid was anonymous in all but his voice. ‘Some of us deny the reality of evil, some the notion of free will. I like to believe them mistaken. Free will may, of course, be negligible, but it is more useful, more engaging, to act on the hypothesis that it exists. As for the other, my story, my very short story which I maintain I have freely chosen to tell you…’ Faces strained forward for the treat, my own nerve was paralysed. ‘Let us imagine a green hill in summer. A benevolent sun, playful breeze, innocent grass. Some buildings behind a metal fence and tall gates, polished, hygienic, conforming to all regulations yet known. A village street, respectable citizens, a pastor, children with balloons, footballs, bags of sweets. And a little railway station, a nursery of delight, with colourful flowerpots, a flag, a board pasted “Welcome”, officials braided as archdukes. Had a band been available, it would have played Mozart. Now a train arrives, carriages open and, behold, more children. An operetta? Let us see. The small travellers are herded out. They are timid, perhaps hungry. On the streets, the grown-ups are silent, but their offspring, the home team, are shouting. But what? Are we hearing aright? Surely we are mistaken. But listen. “Up in smoke,” they cry, “on Death Hill.” More officials are rounding up the unhappy newcomers, badly dressed wraiths. The village children change their tune, they are friendly, almost flirting, holding out their gifts, the balloons, footballs, sweets. How delightful! The parents stout with family pride. Still hesitant, the strangers are lured through the gates, to Grandmother Wolf, the Demon Magician and his puff of smoke.’
He was as if issuing a company report, unemotional, glossing over the failure of dividends and with the shareholders absent. ‘We need not condemn those children, though I am disposed to rebuke them. As for the adults, the worthless mayor and godless pastor, you have your own thoughts. Perhaps we should be born fully dressed and without parents!’
He surveyed us, distinguishable only from the gleam of the microphone and a thin light from the window. ‘Goethe – how we conscript him to back our briefs – submitted that only the spectator has a conscience. Can this really be true?’
The Conference induced my own chimeras, of accompanying Malraux to Mexico or Cambodia, following Trilling around respectful universities, even, like Golda Meier, addressing a nation. More lasting were images of those children at Malthausen, Odd Nansen’s ‘Mussulmen’, skeletal splinters, sockets more visible than eyes, boned elbows unnaturally slanted, moving blindly, all thoughts burnt out, pushed by impulse and hunger, attached to nothingness.
More substantial outcomes were still nebulous. The Conference had been summarized as another step towards European unity, a comedy of bourgeois self-regard, a CIA conspiracy, a chance to interview celebrities.