‘So much for Dr Gold. He soon left me, as busy as ever. He talks breathlessly, almost panting, and always on the go. What’s more, he whispers. And he takes care that everyone around sees how diligent he is in retailing secrets. He is continually being greeted and continually responding. He knows all the pacifists. He is a regular contributor to European Peace. Berzejev calls him the “freemason” in the jaunty manner in which he confuses freemasons with pacifists. The great extent of his stupidity is astonishing, combined as it is with a knowledge of literature, languages and countries, insignificant people and so-called personalities. He is credulous and takes every piece of information seriously, and considers everything he is told important. Obviously, he must be credulous to be able to tell another person anything with conviction.
‘What is extraordinary and incomprehensible is the readiness of everyone to listen to him. But that seems to be a feature of most gregarious natures; they accept information from people as if from newspapers, as if the sound of a voice, the expression of a face and the character of the narrator were not much more important than what they have to say, as if his look might never have given the lie to his lips.
‘Dr Schleicher and Bernardin are now always seen together. They evidently do not suspect that, in such proximity, they constitute a striking phenomenon, even for wartime Zürich. Beside Bernardin’s ceremonial black, which gives him a resemblance to the manager of a large department store, Dr Schleicher’s blond brightness suggests a sunny carefree holiday. The gold frame of his spectacles, the glittering glass, the sand-coloured overcoat, his tan shoes, his light-brown trousers, his brown bowler-hat and his pale face diffuse a lustre visible at a distance, and when he walks towards one he is like a stray piece of the sun, whereas the dark Bernardin at his side appears like a sort of long and narrow ray of darkness. They have gradually become the object of joking remarks even among the pacifists, whose surveillance has brought them here. But both the German and the Frenchman seem to feel the common nature of their calling more strongly than their difference of nationality. I have heard that the German teaches French and the Frenchman German. The governments of the belligerent states seem to regard a knowledge of the enemy’s language as an adequate qualification for espionage and diplomacy. R. tells me that there is a shortage of spies, as there is of guns and bread and sugar, and that the employment of a legal official in secret diplomacy and in the press corps roughly corresponds to the employment of a Home Guard unit at the front.
‘Every day one sees new faces. Again and again new refugees. The longer the war lasts, the stronger becomes the army of convinced or chance pacifists. Switzerland could deploy an immense foreign legion to defend its neutrality.
‘Favourable news from Russia. A strike in Moscow, twenty-six factories at a standstill in the Ukraine. From Comrade P. a report that he has made every preparation to break through the front, as he calls it, and get to Russia. He asks for equipment. Someone must go and take it to him. I would gladly go. No one has money for the journey. Nothing can be sent by post because of the censorship. Tomorrow I shall go again to L. to fetch the equipment.
‘I was with L. yesterday, for the third time now. Plainly, things are worse and worse for him. He is ill at the moment, wears a thick coloured shawl round his neck and refuses to go to bed although he has been two weeks in an unheated room. He lodges with a decent chap whose respectability does not restrain him from punctually collecting the rent. T. was at L.’s. They were discussing an article that G. had just submitted. “He can’t get away from metaphysics,” complained L. “Why is he always on about God!” This was with not the least pleasure in blasphemy, such as I have often noticed with convinced atheists. Chaikin, for example, lived on terms of permanent hostility with God, and assumed an expression of sneering anxiety when he said the words: heaven, priest, church, God. When Berzejev jeers he looks like a boy who has lied to the catechists. He assumes an artful expression and reminds me of a street urchin who has pressed the knob of an electric doorbell to make a fool of the porter. It is as if he supposes that, because the door stays shut, there is really no porter there. I have also heard T. talk about religion. He treats God as an entrepreneur and a being with a mundane interest in the preservation of the existing order. However, scorn, like infantile jeers and serious antagonism, still seem to me to be confirmation of the existence of God. But L. scours out heaven with one little word so that one can almost hear its great emptiness. It is as if he had removed the clapper from a bell so that it swings soundlessly and without echo, still metal and yet the shadow of a bell. L. has the gift of removing obstacles with one hand, of opening vistas. He does not readily admit the possibility of surprises. “We must reckon with obstacles,” he said, “but not with those that we cannot foresee. If we once allow ourselves to make allowances for incalculable contingencies, we shall lapse into the complacency that prevents us from wanting to see even those that are probable. We live on the earth. Our understanding is terrestrial. Supernatural forces do not intervene in earthly affairs. So why should we cudgel our brains over them! Only the possible exists on earth. And everything possible can be taken into account.”
‘L.’s secret lies in this deliberate limitation. I do not believe that he experiences emotion, hate, anger or love. He resembles a minor official. He has deliberately disciplined himself to inconspicuousness, and has probably used as much effort to this end as others do, for instance, to develop a significant profile. He lives in the cold. He suffers illness and want as an example to us. And the only affecting thing about him is his incognito. His beard is like an intentionally superfluous prolongation of his physiognomy. His skull is broad and white. His cheekbones are broad like his skull and his beard forms the black apex of a ghostly pale heart which has eyes and can see.
‘I was in Vienna for two days. I travelled with our material and with L.’s commissions to P., on the eve of his “breakthrough”. Otherwise I saw no one. I tried to speak to Grünhut. The Madame, as he always calls the midwife, told me with almost maternal pride that Grünhut really was rehabilitated. “Now he will at least have a beautiful death,” she said, the handkerchief that a woman of her sort always has at hand in the same mysterious way that a bourgeois woman always mislays hers, already covering her eyes and with a soft sob in her voice. “The good Doctor!” “Perhaps he may still come back,” I said in a slightly thoughtless attempt to comfort her. It became apparent that I had offered quite the wrong kind of comfort. “When anyone is as far away as he is,” said the midwife, “they never come back. Besides I’ve let the room. Polish Jews live there now. Refugees.” She uttered this word with a spiteful glassy brightness. “Dirty types, they don’t join up, the man is quite free and both sons are unarmed Home Guards. I shall have to go on raising their rent. Don’t you agree? Everything gets dearer and these people earn a lot of money!” In order not to have to listen to her further, I resorted to the death sentence she had passed on Grünhut. “You can safely keep the refugees,” I said. “Grünhut will certainly perish.” She produced the handkerchief once more. In wartime tears can also be an expression of hope.
‘I have not written to Hilde. I have thought of her continually and haven’t for a moment wanted to see her. If I had not undertaken to be sincere at all costs as soon as I sat down alone in front of this paper, shame would have prevented me from writing down that I have been to the photographer’s show-case where a large portrait of Hilde had been on display for some time. It is not there any more. A lieutenant, in colour, now hangs in the window.