The Fox in the Attic (17 page)

Walther had begun his harangue with the soup, asking Augustine how many seats the Socialists held in the new British parliament elected last winter. From stopping his ears inadequately when at Mellton Augustine had a vague idea the Socialists had temporarily outstripped the Liberals who had suckled them, but that was the most he knew. He tried to convey without downright rudeness that he neither knew nor cared; such things were none of his business.

Walther looked incredulous. “Ah!” he said earnestly: “Their leader, that Macdonald: he's a jail-bird, isn't he? How can you trust him? England ought to take warning by what happened
here
!”

And so the tale began.

Five years ago, on the night of November 7th, 1918—almost the actual eve of the war's ending—Walther and some fellow-members of the Bavarian parliament had met in the blacked-out Park Hotel. Bavaria had reluctantly to make certain constitutional changes (such as instituting the formal responsibility of the royal ministry to parliament) as a gesture to the American, Wilson: so these legislators had met to discuss the next day's necessary measures. Most of the Center Party deputies were there, except those away with the army or stricken by 'flu.

Another problem they had discussed was the coming demobilisation. But everything was already taped, it seemed: the plans were ready and the men would go straight into jobs, so his friend Heinrich von Aretin assured the company. Industry would need all the labor it could get, in the switch to peace-production. But then someone (said Walther) casually mentioned a socialist mass-meeting happening out on the Teresienwiese Sportsground that very hour ... Eisner, the demagogue from Berlin, was addressing them ... and Gansdorfer, the blind farmer ...“Hetzpropaganda.” But it seemed that too was taped: the police were confident, and Auer (one of the Socialists' own leaders) was assuring everybody there'd be no sort of rumpus. Indeed only Aretin had seemed even faintly anxious: “How little even
we
knew then of the unscrupulous Socialist mentality!” said Walther pointedly. “You are aware what happened, of course?”

“What?” asked Augustine, half polite, half curious. To Augustine, who elected to ignore public events anyway, the events of 1918 already seemed centuries ago—lost in the mists of time; but even now Walther could hardly pronounce
Eisner
's name in a normal voice—the rabblerousing animal Eisner, from Berlin, with his straggling beard and floppy black hat like a seedy professor of pianoforte ... marching into the city that night with lorry-loads of all the hooligans of Munich at his heels! It was red revolution, of course ...

“They tore off my uniform in the Odeonsplatz,” said Walther. “I was lucky to get home safely in borrowed mufti, I can tell you! And the dear old King chased from his bed: Bavaria is to be a republic, forsooth, after a thousand years of Wittelsbach rule! And Ei ... that Kurt Ei ... Ei ...
Eisner
, with a gang of Galician Jews like himself for his cabinet—lunatics, lamp-lighters, jail-birds, Judases ...”

Having reached this surprising (but in fact literally truthful) peroration Walther had to pause for the moment for breath and for his blood to cool; and Franz at once slipped into the breach, speaking suavely and rapidly, hoping to head him off: “The careful demobilisation-plans—torn up, of course. No one any more did what he was told. Even years afterwards ... Papa, do you remember how we found a gang of deserters
still
living in the forest years afterwards, when we were out with the Bristows? you were shooting particularly well that day,” he added cunningly.

As the conversation seemed now to be taking a turn towards sport Augustine pricked up his ears. But it all sounded very un-English. Indeed he soon jumped to the conclusion that here in Germany people shot wild-boar, roe-deer, foxes and wandering cats indiscriminately, from platforms built high among the trees like an Indian tiger-shoot.

Augustine in turn tried to describe the hides which at home he used to dig in the half-frozen tidelands: waterlogged mudholes where he was happy to crouch for hours waiting for the honking of the wild geese in the dawning half-light.

But the dinner-table talk of gentlemen ought to be on serious subjects, not sport! Walther was itching to get back to politics. The bolshevik danger was after all world-wide and Augustine's indifference truly alarming.

A few polite inquiries about Augustine's journey soon gave Walther his cue, for he learned that Augustine had spent last night at the Bayrischer-Hof. “I hope,” said Walther, “they made you more comfortable than they made me, the last time
I
was a guest there?” An almost audible sigh and a shifting in their chairs went round the table. Franz's diversion had failed! Papa was off again. “That of course was February 1919—the time when Toni had just shot the animal Eisner; whereupon the Red Guards ...”

“You ought to meet our joint eminent kinsman, Count Toni Arco-Valley,” Franz told Augustine, desperately. “He's been in prison of course for the last four years or more, but I'm sure Papa could get you a pass ...”

“The Red Guards arrested me,” Walther swept on, frowning at Franz. “They dragged me—your Bayrischer-Hof Hotel was their headquarters in those days, four years and nine months ago, and I was locked up there with the others: six of us, innocent hostages. They told us we should all be slaughtered at Eisner's funeral—a human sacrifice on their hero's pyre!”

“
Prison
, did you say?” Augustine asked Franz: “The chap who actually shot Thingummy only
prison
? How didn't he get killed?”

“Toni
was
killed,” Walther said coldly, resenting the interruptions more and more: “Or so they thought: five bullets instantly in his neck and mouth, kicked halfacross the street ... but to return to myself in the Bayrischer-Hof ...”

But Cousin Adèle was clearing her throat rather like a clock that is going to strike, and now she spoke for the first time: “Toni counted the bullets as they hit him,” she said, speaking English slowly and distinctly but without expression, her eyes on Augustine: “They were using his own revolver, and he tried to remember how many shots were left in it.”

“In the Bayrischer-Hof ...”

“One bullet knocked over a wisdom-tooth,” Adèle persisted. “His throat was full of blood. He was choking, and they were kicking; but he dared not move because if they knew he was not yet dead they would have tore him in pieces and suddenly he very much wanted to live.” She was crumbling a piece of bread nervously as she went on: “They dragged him into the courtyard of the Ministerium and there left him as dead; but not before he heard someone say that Eisner was dead first, and he rejoice. After a time a bandage was put round his neck but presently again someone tore it off.”

“Then the police picked him up,” said Walther resignedly, “and Sauerbruch, the great throat-surgeon ... but that
Toni
of all people should have done it! A boy of twenty nobody had ever looked at twice!”

Instantly memories of his own twentyishness at Oxford flashed across Augustine's mind and he recalled touchy old Asquith's visit to the Union.
Shooting
politicians! In England it was inconceivable. “Was it a conspiracy?” he asked: “Was he detailed for the job?”

“No conspiracy—just Toni,” said Adèle, her brow puckered.

“There were people he told,” said Walther, “but they never dreamt of talking him seriously.”

“Such as, he told the maid in his flat to run a specially hot bath because he was going to kill Eisner that morning,” said Adèle. “Then, as he waited in the street for Eisner to pass, a friend stopped and asked him to dinner. ‘Sorry!' say Toni, ‘I shall be engaged—I'm going to shoot Eisner.' His friend looked only a little startled.”

“Eisner left the ministry on his way to parliament and passed Toni quite slowly, with a crowd following him,” said Walther. “I understand that Toni carried a map to hide his revolver.”

“Eisner's staff were close all round that awful man!” said Adèle. Then her voice went suddenly gruff: “Toni kept saying to himself ‘I must be brave, I must not shoot any innocent man—only Eisner!' Then at two meters' range he shot him; and a second later comes the beginning of to be shot himself.”

To end the long ensuing pause Augustine asked Walther how he had escaped “being slaughtered on Eisner's pyre.” He was told the police had somehow got hold of the hostages and transferred them to Stadelheim Jail: “There we had quite a welcome—‘
Prosit, Servus!
' And lanky Poehner—later he was Chief Commissioner of Police for Munich, but then he was the prison governor at Stadelheim and he did his best for us, every privilege. As well as myself there was General Fasbender, Fritz Pappenheim, Lehmann the publisher, Buttman, Bissing and both the Aretins—all the élite of Munich! We had
most
interesting talks. It was far worse for our poor wives, without news except rumors that we'd been shot already.” The look of love and reverence with which he now glanced at Adèle astonished Augustine on so middle-aged a face: “Ah, she was the heroine then!—My Adelie, my Sunshine!”

At that the expression on Adèle's faded sandy features scarcely altered but a faint flush mounted half way up her neck. Even Walther had never known the lengths she went to, that awful time, less than five years ago. The twins had been babies then, scarcely weaned ... and all—for what?

But already Walther had begun to laugh: “Ha! Heini Aretin—that was very funny! Somehow his wife got news of his danger sent to Haidenburg—smuggled a note to the village priest in a prayerbook. Whereon the Haidenburg innkeeper comes to Munich, barges his way with his big shoulders into the so-called ‘Central Council,' bangs his fist on the minister's desk and says he can't have his brewer shot or where's he to get his beer?—Heini owns the Allersbach brewery, you know. After that they decided to let us go. They saw that anyhow Poehner would never let them kill us.”

Walther was drinking the Tyrolean wine copiously (it came from his last bin, broached in Augustine's honor) and his neck had begun to sweat.

Augustine's own head was getting a little dizzy. All this—it was straight from the horse's mouth indubitably, but it sounded so unreal! The sort of thing which happened to people in “history,” not people today, not
real
people. Anyway it was surely over now ... well—if only those crazy vindictive Frenchmen in the Ruhr ...

Meanwhile Walther rambled on with great seriousness and much emphasis. Eisner had seized power in November 1918: but his “Red Guards” (Walther related) were sailors from the Kiel mutiny, Russian ex-prisoners and such-like riff-raff: their maraudings hardly endeared Eisner to the peasants, and he had little following outside Munich itself and industrial towns like Augsburg. Thus, after a few months of office, in the January Bavarian elections he had only won three seats! But he intended to cling to power. For as long as the could he prevented the new parliament from meeting; and then, for its opening session, prepared a second
coup-d'état
: he packed the public gallery with his armed communists. He was on his way to that very session when he was killed.

Proceedings began—but where was Eisner? Then the news of his death reached the Chamber. Instantly a fusillade from the gunmen planted in the gallery: two members killed outright, Auer wounded, the blind Gansdorfer escaping down a drainpipe.

The Munich mob went mad. Walther's own arrest ... the Red Reign of Terror: March, April ...

Then May Day 1919 at last, the blessed Day of Liberation! At long last General von Epp's valiant forces from outside advanced on Munich to free it from Bolshevism. At that point Walther turned a beaming gaze on his son: “Our brave young Franz here ...” But Franz at once put on so glittering a frown that his father looked non-plussed, and began to mumble: “Von Epp enters the city ... the dear white-and-blue flag again! Bavaria a republic still, alas—but decent people in control: von Kahr, Premier ...”

Just then Augustine's brain having long stopped listening gave an unexpected and uncomfortable lurch. He pushed his wine glass resolutely from him: this wine was too potent, the people across the table were beginning to slide past like a procession starting off. So he chose that passing girl opposite for an experiment: fixed his eyes resolutely on her and with a big effort willed her to a halt.

That crystal and yet unfathomable face of hers was like a still pool ... Augustine found himself acutely wishing his eyes could pierce its baffling surface, could discern the silent thoughts that must all this while be gliding to and fro in the lucid maiden mind beneath, like little fish ... but no, not the flick of a tail could he descry tonight, not a freckled flank, not a fin!

Girls' minds ... Of course, when they
know
you're watching they'll deliberately send all the little tiddlers in them dimpling to the surface, start fretted rings of ripples which meet and cross and render everything opaque! But in unsuspecting tranquillity like this they're transparent ... or so at least they should be.

Girls' clear minds ... In tranquillity like this how lovely they often are to watch! First, a whitish motion, deep in the bottom-darkness: an irised shadow on the shining gravel ... then suddenly, poised beautiful and unwitting in the lens-clear medium, that whole dappled finny back of some big thought—as blue as lead ...

But
this
girl's mind? Here surely it must be that the thoughts swum altogether too deep: lurking in the darkness of some unnatural shadow, perhaps, hiding in some deep pit.

While Walther's mind?
Hoo-hoo!
Just old dry bones shaken endlessly under one's nose in a worn-out basket that cried “Look! Look!”

Augustine just managed not to hiccup—but indubitably he was now more than a little drunk.