We had reached the Chinese pavilion. A mandarin under his parasol sat enthroned at the top of the cupola, which was trimmed with a blue-and-gold canopy supported by gilt columns in the shape of palm trees. I glanced inside: a round room, Oriental paintings. Outside, at the foot of each palm tree, sat exotic figures, also gilded. “A real folie,” I commented. “That’s what the great used to dream of. It’s a little ridiculous.”—“No more than the mad fantasies of the powerful today,” she replied calmly. “I like this century a lot. It’s the only one of which you can at least say it wasn’t a century of faith.”—“From Watteau to Robespierre,” I retorted ironically. She made a face: “Robespierre is already the nineteenth. He’s almost a German romantic. Do you still like that French music as much as you used to—Rameau, Forqueray, Couperin?” I felt my face darken: her question had suddenly reminded me of Yakov, the little Jewish pianist from Zhitomir. “Yes,” I answered finally. “But I haven’t had a chance to listen to them for a long time now.”—“Berndt plays them now and then. Especially Rameau. He says it’s not bad, that there are some things that are almost as good as Bach, for the keyboard.”—“That’s what I think too.” I had had almost the same conversation with Yakov. I didn’t say anything more. We had come to the edge of the park; we turned around and then, by common consent, headed off toward the Friedenskirche and the exit. “And you?” I asked. “Are you happy, in your Pomeranian hideout?”—“Yes. I’m happy.”—“You don’t get bored? You must feel a little lonely sometimes.” She looked at me again, for a long time, before replying: “I don’t need anything.” This statement chilled me. We took a bus to the train station. Waiting for the train, I went and bought the Völkische Beobachter; Una laughed when she saw me come back with it. “Why are you laughing?”—“I was thinking about one of Berndt’s jokes. He calls the VB the Verblödungsblatt, the Mindless Rag.” I scowled: “He should be careful about what he says.”—“Don’t worry. He’s not an idiot, and his friends are intelligent men.”—“I wasn’t worried. I was warning you, that’s all.” I looked at the front page: the English had bombed Cologne again, causing many civilian deaths. I showed her the article: “Those Luftmörder really have no shame,” I said. “They say they’re defending freedom and they kill women and children.”—“We’re killing women and children too,” she replied gently. Her words made me ashamed, but immediately my shame turned into anger: “We’re killing our enemies, to defend our country.”—“They’re defending their country too.”—“They’re killing innocent civilians!” I was turning red, but she remained calm. “The people you were executing—you didn’t catch them all with weapons in their hands. You too have killed children.” Rage was suffocating me, I didn’t know how to explain to her; the difference seemed obvious to me, but she was acting stubborn and pretending not to see it. “You’re calling me a murderer!” I shouted. She took my hand: “No, I’m not. Calm down.” I calmed down and went out to smoke; then we got on the train. As on the way down, she watched the Grunewald go by, and as I watched her I shifted, slowly at first, then vertiginously, into the memory of our last meeting. It was in 1934, just after our twenty-first birthday. I had finally won my freedom, I had announced to my mother that I was leaving France; on my way back to Germany, I made a detour through Zurich; I rented a room in a little hotel and went to find Una, who was studying there. She seemed surprised to see me: but she already knew about the scene in Paris, with Moreau and our mother, and about my decision. I took her out to dinner at a modest, quiet restaurant. She was happy in Zurich, she told me, she had friends, Jung was a magnificent man. These last words made my hackles rise, it must have been something in her tone, but I didn’t say anything. “And you?” she asked me. I revealed my hopes to her then, my enrollment in Kiel, my joining the NSDAP too (I had done so during my second trip to Germany, in 1932). She listened to me as she drank her wine; I drank too, but more slowly. “I’m not sure I share your enthusiasm for this Hitler,” she commented. “He seems a neurotic to me, full of unresolved complexes, frustrations, and dangerous resentments.”—“How can you say that!” I launched into a long tirade. But she frowned, withdrew into herself. I stopped as she poured herself another glass, and I took her hand on the checkered tablecloth. “Una. It’s what I want to do, it’s what I have to do. Our father was German. My future is in Germany, not with the corrupt bourgeoisie of France.”—“You may be right. But I’m afraid you’ll lose your soul with those men.” I flushed with anger and struck the table. “Una!” It was the first time I had raised my voice with her. Her glass tipped over from the blow, rolled, and smashed at her feet, bursting into a puddle of red wine. A waiter hurried over with a broom and Una, who until then had kept her eyes lowered, raised them to me. Her gaze was clear, almost transparent. “You know,” I said, “I’ve finally read Proust. You remember this passage?” I recited, my throat tight: “This glass will be, as in the Temple, the symbol of our indestructible union.” She waved her hand. “No, no. Max, you don’t understand anything, you’ve never understood anything.” She was red, she must have drunk a lot. “You’ve always taken things too seriously. They were games, children’s games. We were children.” My eyes, my throat swelled up. I made an effort to control my voice. “You’re wrong, Una. You’re the one who never understood anything.” She drank some more. “You have to grow up, Max.” It had been seven years then since we were apart. “Never,” I said, “never.” And I kept that promise, even if she never thanked me for it.
In the train from Potsdam, I watched her, dominated by a feeling of loss, as if I had sunk and had never come back to the surface. And what was she thinking about? Her face hadn’t changed since that night in Zurich, it had simply filled out a little; but it remained closed to me, inaccessible; behind it, there was another life. We passed between the elegant residences in Charlottenburg; then came the zoo and the Tiergarten. “You know,” I said, “since I got to Berlin I haven’t even been to the zoo yet.”—“But you used to like zoos.”—“Yes. I should go for a walk there.” We got out at the Lehrter Hauptbahnhof and I took a taxi to accompany her to the Wilhelmplatz. “Do you want to have dinner with me?” I asked her in front of the entrance to the Kaiserhof. “Yes,” she replied, “but now I have to go see Berndt.” We agreed to meet in two hours, and I went back to my hotel to bathe and change. I felt exhausted. Her words were confused with my memories, my memories with my dreams, and my dreams with my most insane thoughts. I remembered her cruel Shakespeare quotation: so had she too joined our mother’s camp? It was undoubtedly the influence of her husband, the Baltic baron. I said to myself with rage: She should have remained a virgin, like me. The incoherence of this thought made me burst out laughing, a long crazy laughter; at the same time I wanted to cry. At the appointed time, I was at the Kaiserhof. Una joined me in the lobby, among the comfortable square armchairs and little potted palm trees; she wore the same clothes as in the afternoon. “Berndt is resting,” she said. She too felt tired and we decided to stay and eat at the hotel. Ever since the restaurants had reopened, a new directive from Goebbels enjoined them to offer customers