God of Hunger Read online

  ‘You do not mean that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Hitler!

  ‘What about Hitler? I thought that you said you were interested in history. Don’t you know that when he came to power he gave the Germans hope and betterment talked of all over Europe. Of course there was evil. But you must have the maturity to grasp that Germany, in the early thirties, was the great hope for all who wished for a modern life. Everything fashionable came out of Germany. Her products and designs were desirable beyond the avant garde. Fashion in all things came from Berlin. Even the music. We danced to the tango on German radio. There was so much energy and passion evident in German life. Yes it went horribly wrong, but do not underestimate how at first we all admired Hitlerism. The slogan of an ‘awakening Germany’ was a slogan which affected us because the new life of the Germans gave a lift to life in Poland. And please know that the closest followers of German fashion were our Jewish middle class. They set the tone for all forward looking Poles, who, by the thirties knew enough about Stalin not to find him at all attractive. Quite unlike Hitler. ….

  I find it rather strange that he continues to be seen only as Satan. There is hardly a day that passes without there being something bad on the radio or television or in the papers about him as simply an evil man. Surely we know of his other aspects!

  Even I can tell you that there is not much that distinguishes him from many men of his age and circumstances. He was a patriot, loyal to the virtues, as he and many others saw them, of the Germanic empires of his day.

  As a soldier in the German Army, during the First World War, he was an extremely dutiful NCO; he loved discipline and ceremonial. He took the war seriously. He was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. In November 1918 when defeat had been announced he was in a state of psychological collapse and talked incessantly of ‘revenge’. By 1919 he was employed by the Army as a spy. His assignments concerned left wing organizations and his specific task was reporting on, and even causing, riots so that the army could intervene; he was an agent provocateur. It was in this role that he found a most important talent; his ability to speak in public.

  His talent coincided with the introduction of the microphone; another technological success for which Germans were admired.

  Hitler was most admired for his phenomenal dynamism and apparent self-confidence; all who knew him were impressed by his almost unshakeable confidence -100% in public.

  Also remarkable was his ability to change his mood to suit his audience, yet remaining the master.

  Asserting himself over all; it was a case of “Hitler uber alles”.

  There was more to explain his supremacy over the German masses. They felt themselves to have failed, as a people. Something which Hitler so well understood.

  After all Hitler was a failure in so many ways, never commissioned, never accepted to the Academy of Art, even though his landscapes were as good as the sketches produced by the young Leonardo, ...He was spurned at many elections. But in the end he got to the top by promising to make the failed Germany a success. He appealed to enough Germans to assure himself of power. He did not have to seize it. He was given it. By promising to help the masses and by placating the rich; the German elite believed him to be a good vehicle to perpetuate their control.

  Once in power - helped also by a reasonably honest election - Hitler kept his side of the bargain. He got Germany going. However bad his economic policies are said to be, by 1936 the truth is that he succeeded in giving the Germans a semblance of prosperity. This was no mean achievement. Was he just a successful opportunist or was he guided by principle? Both I think. He believed in purity of race and in Germany as a great power; these principles were, in his mind, linked.

  As they were in the minds of millions of his countrymen.

  So why did he fail to achieve his aims? He attempted too much. He overreached himself.

  War was his great mistake.

  And it was Hitler who decided on war. No one else. And he got as near as any previous man of war to conquering Europe. Nearly winning a European war against all comers.

  Silly man. He took most of what he wanted without war. Right up to Munich he was in the ascendant ….. But enough of this. You know the history which follows better than me.”

  “Thank you Mrs, W. I wish that were so. I think that you are well ahead of me. So. Lets move on to the approach of war. When, if at all, were you aware of the possibility of war? In that last year of peace were you attuned to the possibility of a German or Soviet invasion?’

  “In trying to reply, I am trying to recall the impressions of an impressionable young woman, a girl, at a very impressionable age. It was the politics of the grown ups which came into my mind.

  ‘We, they, were all very aware of the threat of invasion, from Germany. But, as I have said, not Russia. That dreadful possibility did not enter our thoughts after Pilsudski died in 1935. He never forgot to warn us. But we forgot. But war with Hitler was very much in our minds.

  I believed it would destroy our lives but that Poland would endure. I remember standing on the balcony of the last official residence we occupied by the castle in Trembowla. The balcony was very long, across eight bedrooms. Each bedroom’s windows were open to allow an airing. I stood by my window and remember being swathed by the light net curtains as they blew in the breeze. It was a typical August night. Warm and quite calm with the scent of gardens and fields and woods in the night air. It was the night of the full moon. All was delicately lit. And I saw a vision. All my friends walked past my window. They were walking to their death.’

  Long pause.

  “It must have been soon after that when your suffering began?”

  “Yes, 17 September, 1939.’

  “Please go back to that tragic day.”

  ‘Yes. … Yes.

  ‘It is difficult to recall a day when emotions ran so high. We never believed such a thing was ever possible. To such an extent that in all the chaos we thought that the Good Lord had shown mercy in sending the Red Army to help us defeat the Germans in the West. To help defend our country. To be honest, I never saw a German soldier on this piece of our land. So when the Soviet army marched in we were not at all sure of their intention. Slowly it dawned on us. Each day brought a new shock.”

  “You and your family were arrested.”

  “Yes my father was arrested. It was a fortnight after the beginning of the Soviet occupation. My father was held in his office. He was surrounded by politruks who were trying to extract from him information about his district. Meanwhile we were warned by a Ukrainian friend to move out of the residence; my mother, my grandmother and myself. We went to sleep at our chauffeur’s home.

  In the morning somebody knocked on the door. It was a messenger from my father’s office. He handed my mother a set of keys in a leather case. I had my eyes fixed on her face and saw an expression of great shock. The messenger said something she already understood: “These are a message from your husband. He wants you to know that he has been arrested.’

  “And I assume that you were next. Your mother and yourself?”

  ‘And my Grandmother.’

  “Please describe the circumstances.”

  “Yes I shall. But first I have to mention tat after my father’s detention we women were constantly on the move. Having to find shelter wherever we could. It was not easy to get a roof over our heads. Ours was a small town and, though friendly towards us, people were reluctant to take us in. Eventually a woman took us in, providing two rooms. One for us and one for our official chauffer who had served my father loyally for a long time. Any way, there we were, in our cramped quarters when, on the thirteenth of April, 1940, yes it was past midnight so it was the thirteenth, we were startled by a loud bangs on the door. The sounds awoke me from the deepest sleep into the sudden realization that something terrible was about to happen. I immediately knew that this was the deportation we had long feared. …”

  “Excuse me if that was the case,
did you think of escaping Trembowla?”

  “Escape was never an option. Run where? To cross over into Nazi occupied territory to the west? Never.”

  “What of the south?”

  “You mean Romania? Yes my father was offered the opportunity of escape. By General Sikorski himself. He, like the government, passed through my father’s district. He asked for petrol, … fuel stores were in my father’s care, … for the vehicles carrying himself and his entourage. My father refused to join the convoy south. He simply told Sikorski that he would not abandon his office nor his family. You must go to the Sikorski Museum and see the note I gave to Mrs. Oppman, the archivist. My father’s response to Sikorski’s offer is on the record.

  He was not a man to let us down, nor his district. I have often reflected on my father’s reply to the man who became our leader in exile. I fully understood his refusal to cut and run. I remember him in tears at the last review of troops in August 1939. “We have still so much to do’, he sobbed quietly after the parade. My father was a hero. My hero. A quiet spoken servant of his country right to the end. To leave his post was not his way. So that is why we simply waited for fate to overtake us.’ That was the last phrase on tape. And one that had already stuck most firmly in Marisha’s mind. Often surfacing during lulls at high powered meetings.

  Daudi

  Marisha’s next public function was to cover the visit to London by Czeslaw Milosz. He had won new acclaim with the Nobel Prize in Literature. She hoped to ask the great man about aspects of Polish culture which had interested her in earnest ever since her visit to Penrhos.

  Before meeting Milosz she read several essays by T.S. Eliot.

  In 1948, the year when the King of Sweden gave him the Nobel Prize and the King of England the Order of Merit and two years after the publication of The Dark Side of the Moon, a book to which he supplied the preface, he published his Notes towards the Definition of Culture. Here, as in his preface, he insisted that ‘culture is the creation of society as a whole; it is that which makes it a society ; it is important to remember that we should not consider the upper levels as possessing more culture than the lower but representing a more conscious culture and a greater specialization of culture. The higher level of culture must be thought of both valuable in itself and as enriching the lower levels: thus the movement of culture would proceed in a kind of cycle, each class nourishing the others.”

  The next problem T.S. Eliot tackled in this slim volume was the transmission of culture from one generation to the next and he stated, simply, that this was the function of the family. Less simply ‘it is the function of the superior members and superior families to preserve the group culture, as it is the function of the producers to alter it.’

  Marisha was unimpressed. Of family she had little knowledge or experience. As for the aristocracy, how national culture fared in their absence was a question she had already given some consideration and about which she kept an open mind. But of one thing she was certain when assessing genocide, namely, that Soviet policies in Poland were incomparably milder than Nazi policies. The Germans were out to annihilate the nation; Jew and Gentile. Of the ultimate fate of the untermensch there could be little doubt. The Kremlin, on the other hand, sought the elimination of any opposition to Sovietization. Stalin and his henchman Hrustczov had no doubts that it was the intelligentsia, which included all intellectuals, property owners, churchmen, and all state officials and their families, which had to be destroyed in order to remodel Polish society. As to the consequences of such destruction? Marisha allowed T.S. Eliot the last word.

  Commenting on revolutionary France he wrote:

  “And here we may remark that when a dominant class, however badly it has performed its function, is forcibly removed, its function is not wholly taken over by any other.’ And Poland? ‘There are some grounds for believing that the elimination of an upper class at a more developed stage can be a disaster for a country: and most certainly when the removal is due to the intervention of another nation.’

  *

  Of culture and its associated social ramifications Marisha was to hear a lot more of in the course of her work; especially in her many contacts with what were being referred to in the media as ‘the chattering classes.’

  She did not learn much more from Milosz than she now already knew, but mention of meeting him boosted her reputation amongst the chatterers.

  *

  Tiring of the culture show in London and finally wanting to slough off her skin as the chameleon she was expected to emulate at sensitive meetings, Marisha flew to Dar-es-Salaam, seeking Jozef.

  There was no one there to ask about him. Or no one she thought should even know he existed. She went to Songea where his family had their business, but again nothing. No one even remembered the family let alone Jozef. Her last throw was to try Kongwa where he had been to school. And there she spoke to Mr. Patel who revealed as much as he knew. It did not surprise him that people in Dar-es Salaam and Songea were different or indifferent.

  He explained to her that the Teacher’s, Mwalimu’s, policies of tribal admixture and displacement meant an ethnic transformation on a national scale. No one was where they had been. But he certainly knew of Jozef and told her the tale of the great slaughter and of his escape in the family’s Peugeot. He knew something of the Selous Scouts from letters he had received from family members in Zambia and Zimbabwe and suggested she fly to Harare to discover what had happened. “If you see him please tell him that I consider myself lucky to have lost my pick up and to have kept my thing.” “What thing?” she asked. “Oh, he will tell you if you find him.”

  *

  In Salisbury, now Harare, Marisha booked into the prestigious Meikles Hotel. This had remained the last watering hole where the white tribe could still exercise exclusivity through the power of the purse. It was only ministers and their entourage who could afford the prices charged. And even they, after the first exercise of privilege preferred to drink amongst their own kind.

  By conversing at the bar Marisha gathered up the sequence of events in Jozef’s life after his raid on Kongwa.

  Jozef’s Scouts had decided to risk driving through the border post at Kapiri Mposhi. It seemed that the safer trek home through the bush was decided against in favour of the convenience which was Mr. Patel’s scrap heap.

  But a trap had been set and the Peugeot was raked by machine gun fire. From the front of the car, only the driver escaped and it was not Jozef. He was killed. The two in the back were, like the driver, wounded. They were in jail in Harare and were at the mercy of the President, no longer Comrade, Mugabe. He refused amnesty and threatened execution. It is likely that they will remain prisoners for the rest of their lives remembered only by the scattered remnants of the once proudest detachment in Ian Smith’s detached state.

  The driver who got away was in South Africa. Last time anyone had heard of him, was that he worked as a security guard in Capetown for a time until he topped himself. His name always raised a laugh. Why was that?

  “Well, Ma’am, after the raid he returned to a hero’s welcome. Smithy decorated him with the highest order for bravery, the Rhodesia Star. It was in fact the last such ceremony before the end. But it did wonders for morale. In the melee of fame he took to drink and would sit here at this bar and if he took against the appearance of any guest, especially posh women, he would give them the brown eye.’

  “What is the ‘brown eye’?”

  ‘Well ma’am, to put it politely, we have all got one but normally keep it hidden. He was a nutter and offended to the point of being barred. That was the end really. He got a job on the railways but was too troubled to pass exams for a post beyond fireman and when, with defeat, such jobs were the first to be given to Afs, he went south. With everybody else who could not make it here. It was sad ma’am, because these people constitute what is now referred to as ‘white trash’.”