And they resumed their old life.
15
In Zürich Friedrich began to keep a proper diary. I reproduce below those of its passages that seem to me important.
From Friedrich’s diary:
‘I met R. again today. He was the same as ever. He spoke to me as if we had parted only yesterday. I remembered exactly our last conversation before my departure to Russia. But naturally he had forgotten it. It’s thanks to him that I decided to write this diary. “What?” he said, “you’re not keeping notes? Wrong! First it is a manifestation of individuality. Pencil in hand, a sheet of white paper in front of me. From a small piece of paper, not to mention a large sheet, there emanates a stillness and a solitude. A desert could not be more tranquil. Sit down with an empty notebook in a noisy café — you are at once alone. Second, it’s practical, because there are various things one shouldn’t forget. Third, a diary is a safeguard against the all too hectic activity to which our calling condemns us, as it were. It helps us to distance events. Fourth, I write because Savelli would despise it as bourgeois sentimentality if he knew about it.”
‘I, too, have a natural propensity for things that Savelli terms bourgeois sentimentality. I have met him again. Not a word about Siberia. Not a word about my escape. Only: “Berzejev tells me things have gone very well for you.” And it seemed for a moment as if I ought to demand pardon because I had been arrested. For the first time I have become really convinced that he hates me, at those times when he does not despise me too greatly. He repeated to me what Berzejev had already said: it would have been better if we had both remained in Russia. There was more to do there. I could not restrain myself from telling him that Russia was not, in fact, my home. “So much the worse!” he replied. It was a striking demonstration of nationalism. At that moment I felt like a European, as it were, just as R. terms himself. He means the great European traditions: Humanism, the Catholic Church, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Socialism. He said recently that Socialism was a concern of the West and that it would be as foolish to speak of Socialism in Russia as of Christianity to Hottentots. R. might be my older brother. We probably have more in common than qualities alone. It seems to me that we share a similar destiny. We are both sceptics. We both hate the same things. We want the Revolution for the same reasons. We are both cruel. It is laid down that we shall prepare a revolution but probably not experience its victorious outcome. I cannot believe, any more than he, that anything in the world will change except nomenclature. We hate society, personally, privately, because it happens not to please us. We hate the fat and bloody cosiness in which it lives and dies. Had we been born in a previous century we should have been reactionaries, possibly priests, lawyers, aides-de-camp, anonymous secretaries in a European court. We ought both to have been born in an age when extraordinary men could still determine their own fate, while average men remained insignificant.
‘A week ago I took the place of the correspondent of a Danish radical newspaper. My duties are to take an interest in society, politics, the theatre; and I believe that I do my work well. “You have,” says R., who secured me this job as a correspondent, “the first quality of a journalist: you are curious.”
‘The deserters who live here are not to be distinguished from the pacifists. None of those fortunate enough to have crossed the frontier admits that he fled from a private love for life. As if love for life needed any excuse! It is an attribute of the middle classes to conceal the simple necessities of nature behind complicated ideals. The men of past times might lose their life in a stupid duel. But they died for their personal honour and did not deny for a moment that life was dear to them. The men of today, at least most of the men now to be found in neutral countries, allege that they are the victims of their convictions.
‘I am interested above all in those who have come to Switzerland with the permission of their own countries. In fact, one can learn most from them. They come here to spy on the pacifists of their own countries and to make official propaganda for their ideals. There are two living in our boarding-house, a German and a Frenchman. The German’s name, ostensibly, is Dr Schleicher, the Frenchman’s Bernardin. That they sit at my table for breakfast is due to the naïvety of our landlady. The landlady believes that the two have something in common because of their pacifist ideas, and find pleasure in eating at the same table, two poor victims of their fatherlands. Instead of which, each is the paid spy of his country. Dr Schleicher is a decent, easygoing man. He gets up late, goes to the toilet in slippers and dressing-gown, and stays there a very long time. He wears glasses, which make his eyes friendly, his broad face even broader, and which lie like a second gold-rimmed glassy smile over the permanent natural smile of his cheeks. Whenever I go by his door I hear a machine clattering. He is a naïve spy, who believes one to be convinced that he is not writing reports for his superiors, but typing love-letters. Bernardin is a man in his forties. He has the solemn sombre elegance of a provincial Frenchman who looks every day as if he were going to a funeral; only the cheerful expression with which he awaits his meals softens his solemnity. His shoes are always shiny and often covered by dark-grey spats, his trousers are always creased, his jacket looks as if it had just come from the tailor, his high stiff collar is always white and glossy. He continually strokes his small black moustache, which emphasizes the brownish-red of his cheeks, with two thoughtful fingers. He wears small bow-ties, as if in a conscious demonstration against the heavy silk knitted neckties of Dr Schleicher. Neither says a word to the other. They acknowledge each other smilingly and silently when they sit down and when they get up. They know about each other. Only the Frenchman writes his reports by hand, and it is quiet when one passes his door.
‘Yesterday the German and the Frenchman conversed for the first time. They very nearly did not come to eat at all. They remained together for a long time after everyone was ready, they drank coffee and smoked. I was curious as usual. I know Dr Schleicher from the café, we have a mutual acquaintance, Dr Gold. This Dr Gold has not yet decided which side to take among the warring countries. He has lived a long time in Germany and in France and, from fear that one of the two countries might possibly win and that he might learn of it too late, he remains neutral. He sometimes sits at Dr Schleicher’s table, sometimes at Bernardin’s. He is on good terms with both. He reports on the one to the other. From fear that one day both might turn on him, he has been trying for months to bring them together. Yesterday he finally succeeded. He told me the course of events as follows: “Unfortunately, it occurred to me yesterday,” said Dr Gold, “to say to Dr Schleicher that Bernardin had been wanting for a long time to make his acquaintance. And then I discovered that they sit together at table every day. I was in despair. If I were not as adept as I am, I should have blamed myself. But with my innate aplomb, I replied coolly: ‘Then he cannot know with whom he has the honour of sitting at table.’ And Dr Schleicher believed it. Only he happens to find Bernardin extremely uncongenial, and not only on grounds of nationality. And now I made my second mistake. ‘He is, after all, a man of the law,’ I said to Schleicher, ‘a pleasant man in civilian life. But the war goes to the heads of these people.’ ‘What? A lawyer?’ asks Schleicher. ‘But I too am a lawyer.’ At that moment in came Bernardin and Schleicher was the first to greet him, all smiles. At last I’ve brought them together. And what do you know! In half an hour the two were as thick as thieves. They talked only of pupils and teachers!”