Castle Gripsholm Read online

  Passauer Strasse 8/9

  8 June

  Dear Herr Tucholsky,

  Many thanks for your letter of June 2. We have made a note of your request. For the time being, though, another matter.

  As you know, we have been publishing mainly political books recently. Quite enough of your time and energy has gone on them. Now I think it’s time we did something for belles lettres again. Don’t you have anything in that line? What would you say to a short love story? Give it some thought. I’ll keep the price down, and print ten thousand copies to start with. Wherever I go, my bookseller friends tell me how popular this kind of book is. So how about it?

  We still have 46 Reichsmarks in royalties for you – where would you like them sent?

     Best wishes,

     Yours

     [enormous flourish] Ernst Rowohlt

  10 June

  Dear Herr Rowohlt,

  Thank you for your letter of the 8th.

  A love story, . . . but, my dear master, how could I possibly? Love in the present climate? Are you in love? Is anyone in love these days?

  I’d rather write a little summer story.

  It’s not a straightforward business. You know I don’t like bothering the public with my personal life, so that can be ruled out. Besides, there isn’t a woman I don’t betray with my typewriter, which makes my life thoroughly unromantic. And am I supposed to dream up this story? Only businessmen have any imagination – when they can’t pay their bills. They can be very imaginative. The likes of us . . .

  Unless I give people the stuff their fantasies are made of (‘The Countess gathered up the folds of her silver gown, did not so much as look at the Count, and fell headlong down the castle steps’), all that’s left is the problem of marriage as indoor gymnastics, ‘the human angle’ and all that stuff we so despise. And where is it to come from, unless you steal it from Villon?

  While we’re on the subject of poetry . . . how is it that in paragraph 9 of our contract you stipulate that 15% of all copies have no royalties payable on them? I know you’d never send out that many review copies! So that’s why your authors are worked to the bone. No wonder you’re drinking champagne on velvet cushions, while we lot sip weak beer on wooden benches. But that’s the way it goes.

  I always knew I was a credit to you. But being 46 Marks in credit that really is thrilling news. Please send it to the old address as usual. And by the way, I’m going on holiday next week.

     Best wishes,

     Yours,

     Tucholsky

  Ernst Rowohlt Publishers

  Berlin W50

  Passauer Strasse 8/9

  12 June

  Dear Herr Tucholsky,

  Thank you very much for your letter of the 10th inst.

  As for the 15% of copies without royalties, they are – and this is the honest truth – my only way of making any money. My dear Tucholsky, if you could see our accounts, you would know things are not easy for a poor publisher. Without that 15%, I couldn’t exist; I would simply starve. And you wouldn’t want that.

  You should think about that summer story idea of yours.

  As well as politics and current affairs, people want something they can give to their girlfriends. You can’t imagine how big the demand is. I was thinking of a little novella, not too long, say 20,000 words, tender, paperback, gently ironic, and with a full-colour cover. You can make the contents as candid as you like and as a concession, I might even be prepared to go down to 14% without royalties.

  What do you think of our new season’s catalogue?

  I wish you an enjoyable holiday, and am,

     with all best wishes,

     Yours

     [enormous flourish] Ernst Rowohlt

  15 June

  Dear Herr Rowohlt,

  Gulbransson has sketched you to the life in the new catalogue: ‘quietly thinking beside the stream’ – and reeling in the fat fish! The bait of 14% of copies without royalties isn’t tasty enough: 12% would be more tempting. Just think about that for a bit, and give your hard publisher’s heart a little nudge. I can’t guarantee inspiration at 14% – the Muse starts at 12%

  As I write this, I’ve already got one foot on the train. I’m leaving in an hour, for Sweden. I shan’t do any work on this holiday; I just want to look at trees and have a proper rest for a change.

  We can think about our project again when I get back. But, in the meantime, let me send you my best regards and wish you a good summer! And don’t forget: 12%!

     Best wishes,

     Your faithful Tucholsky.

  Signed – sealed – stamped. It was exactly ten past eight. The train from Berlin to Copenhagen was leaving at twenty past nine. We were off to collect the Princess.

  2

  She had a deep contralto voice; her name was Lydia.

  Karlchen and Jakopp referred to every woman that any of us was involved with as ‘the Princess’, in order to honour whoever was her princely consort. So for the moment she was the Princess. But no other woman would ever be accorded the title again.

  She wasn’t a real princess at all.

  In fact, she was something which contains every nuance you can possibly imagine: she was a secretary. She was the secretary of a monstrously fat boss; I had seen him once and found him horrible, and between him and Lydia . . . but no! That only happens in novels. Between him and Lydia there was a peculiar relationship: affection, nervous sufferance and trust on the one side; and affection, antipathy and suffering nerves on the other. She was his secretary. He affected the title ‘Generalkonsul’, but actually he dealt in soap. There were always packages of it lying about the office, which at least gave the fat man some excuse for his greasy hands.

  In a fit of noble magnanimity, the Generalkonsul had allowed her five weeks off; he was going to Abbazia. He had left the night before – may he rest easy in his wagon-lit! His brother-in-law was in the office, and there was a replacement for Lydia. But what did I care about his soap? I cared about Lydia.

  There she was in front of her house, with her suitcases.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Well, look who it isn’t!’ or words to that effect, said the Princess, to the utter astonishment of the taxi-driver, who clearly thought she was speaking Manchurian. But it was Missingsch.

  Missingsch is what comes out when a Platt German from the North wants to speak proper High German. It slithers about on the carefully wax-polished stairs of German grammar, before falling flat on its face in its beloved Platt. Lydia came from Rostock, and she knew the idiom to perfection. There’s nothing rustic about it – it’s much more subtle. The proper German in it sounds like scorn and caricature, as though a peasant had gone out to plough his fields in a top hat and tails. And then Platt has all the humour of the North Germans: their good-natured debunking when someone comes on a bit strong, their lively sense of fun when they recognise pretentiousness – and they do recognise it, quite infallibly. Lydia could talk like that when the occasion arose. And here was such as occasion.

  ‘I can’t get over it, you haven’t overslept!’ she said, and, firmly and unhurriedly, set about helping me and the driver. We loaded up.

  ‘Here, take the dachshund!’ The dachshund was a fat hand-bag, elongated to the point of whimsy. How punctual she was! There was a hint of powder on the side of her nose. We drove off.

  ‘Frau Kremser advised me,’ Lydia began, ‘to take my fur and plenty of warm coats – because there isn’t any summer in Sweden, Frau Kremser said. It’s always winter there. I hope it’s not true!’ Frau Kremser was housekeeper to the Princess, chambermaid, charlady and Keeper of the Great Seal. Her attitude to me, even after all this time, was still one of quiet and implacable suspicion – the woman had sound instincts. ‘Tell me . . . is it really that cold up there?’

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘When people think about Sweden, they think: Swedish punch, awfully cold
, Ivar Kreuger, match-boxes, awfully cold, blonde women and awfully cold. It’s not that cold at all.’

  ‘Well, how cold is it, then?’

  ‘Women are so pedantic,’ I said.

  ‘All except you!’ said Lydia.

  ‘I’m not a woman.’

  ‘But you’re pedantic!’

  ‘Now excuse me,’ I said, ‘but there is a logical flaw here. It must be determined whether, pro primo . . .’

  ‘Give Lydia a kiss!’ the lady said.

  I did so, while the driver wobbled his head about, because he could see us reflected in his windscreen. The cab stopped where all the better class of stories begin: at the station.

  3

  It turned out that porter no. 47 came from Warnemünde, so there was no end of exuberant chatter between him and Lydia, until, worried about the time, I interrupted the idyllic reminiscences of the two compatriots.

  ‘Is the porter coming with us, then? Perhaps you could continue your conversation on the train . . .’

  ‘Don’t get so steamed up, silly!’ said the Princess. The porter agreed.

  ‘There’s plenty of time yet,’ he said.

  Overruled, I shut up, and the two started an animated discussion as to whether Karl Düsig was still living by ‘the River’ – you know, Düsig – Naah! the old rascal! Yes, my goodness, he was still living there! And had just produced another baby: the man was seventy-eight years old, and as I stood there at the luggage registration office, I felt quite extraordinarily envious of him. It was his sixteenth. But now there were only eight minutes till the train was due to leave, and . . .

  ‘Do you want the papers, Lydia?’ No, she didn’t. She had brought something to read with her. Neither of us suffered from that peculiar disease of finding yourself at a station and suddenly buying a couple of pounds of newsprint, when you can be pretty sure in advance it will be tripe.

  And so we got the papers.

  Alone in our compartment, we set off via Copenhagen to Sweden. But for the moment, we were still in Brandenburg.

  ‘How do you like the scenery, Peter?’ asked the Princess. Among other things, we had settled on the name Peter – God only knows why.

  The scenery? It was a bright, windy June day – quite cool, and the landscape looked clean and tidy – it was waiting for summer and saying, I am bare.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the scenery . . .’

  ‘Now, for my money, you really could say something a bit more profound,’ she said. ‘For instance, this landscape is like frozen poetry, or it reminds me of Fiume, only the flora there is more Catholic – something like that.’

  ‘I’m not Viennese,’ I said.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she said. And we travelled on.

  The Princess slept. I was thinking quietly to myself.

  The Princess often accused me of saying, ‘It’s so nice that you’re there!’ to every woman I was in love with, and she meant every one. Which was an awful lie, because sometimes I would say or think, ‘It’s so nice that you’re there . . . and not here!’ But when it was Lydia who was sitting next to me like this, I would say it and mean it. Why?

  Because. In the first place . . . I don’t know. We knew only this: one of the profoundest German sayings is about two people who ‘can’t stand the smell of each other’. We could, and that, if it lasts, already counts for a lot. She was everything to me: mistress, comic opera, mother and friend. What I was to her I could never discover.

  And then there was her deep voice. Once I woke her up in the middle of the night, and when she woke with a start, I said, ‘Say something!’

  ‘You idiot!’ she said, and fell asleep smiling. But I had heard her voice, I had heard that wonderful contralto voice.

  And thirdly there was her Missingsch. Some people think Platt German is ugly and don’t like it, but I’ve always loved it; my father spoke it as correctly as if it had been High German – Platt, ‘the more nearly perfect of the two sisters’, as Klaus Groth called it. Platt German is a mixture of everything: rough and tender, funny and sincere, clear, sober and, above all, it can be beautifully drunk. The Princess turned it into High German as it suited her – in fact there are hundreds of different sorts of Missingsch, from Friesland to Hamburg and across to Pomerania; every village speaks it differently. Philologically, it’s difficult to grasp, but you can grasp it with your heart. That’s what the Princess spoke – but not all the time! That would have been intolerable. Only sometimes, for a change, when she happened to feel like it, did she speak Missingsch: she used it for things that really mattered to her, and then she spoke it with a strong Berlin colouring. But she still spoke Platt sometimes, or that halfway Platt, Missingsch.

  I’ll never forget the time when we were first getting to know each other. I was having tea with her, and cutting the discreetly ridiculous figure of a man courting – we do make right idiots of ourselves. I was making calf’s eyes at her and talking literature; she smiled. I told jokes, and lit up all the department-store windows of my heart. We talked about love. It was like a fight in Bavaria – when they fight, they begin with talking about it.

  When I had explained everything to her, and my knowledge was not inconsiderable – I was very proud of the risqué things I’d dared to say, and of how I’d managed to present it all so precisely and with such burning clarity, so that really the time had now come to say: ‘Yes, well how about it?’ – then the Princess gave me a long look and said,

  ‘What a sophisticated young man!’

  And that did it. It wasn’t till much later that I recovered again, still laughing, with nothing to show for my erotic baptism. But love had something to show for itself.

  The train stopped.

  The Princess sat up and opened her eyes. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘It looks like Stolp or Stargard – something with “St” at any rate,’ I replied.

  ‘And what does it look like?’ she inquired.

  ‘It looks . . .’ I said, and gazed out over the little brick houses and the gloomy station, ‘it looks like the sort of place where sadistic non-commissioned officers are born. Shall we have lunch here?’ The Princess immediately shut her eyes. ‘Or we can eat in the dining-car, they’ve got one on the train.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘in the dining-car, the waiters are always infected by the speed of the train, and everything’s such a rush. I’ve got a tummy that likes to take its time . . .’

  ‘All right. By the way, what are you reading?’

  ‘For the last two hours, I’ve been asleep, sitting on a fashionable novel. It’s the only part of the body you can read it with.’ She closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘Look at that . . . that woman! Isn’t she misogynist!’

  ‘Isn’t she what?’

  ‘Misogynist . . . doesn’t that mean stunted? No, I mixed it up with pygmies; they are those people who live up trees, aren’t they?’ After this performance, she dropped off again, and we travelled for a long, long time. As far as Warnemünde.

  There was ‘the River’. That’s what they called the Warne here. Or didn’t it have another name . . . Peene, Swine, Dievenow? It didn’t say. For the sake of simplicity, Karlchen, Jakopp and I had decided to endow every town with a river of the corresponding name: Gleiwitz on the Gleiwe, Bitterfeld on the Bitter, and so on.

  There was a group of almost identical little houses down by the River, with the wind blowing round them, and looking so cosy. The masts of sailboats pierced the grey air, and loaded barges wallowed in the still water.

  ‘Look, here’s Warnemünde!’

  ‘Now, I reckon I know a whole lot more about it than you do. Good Lord! That’s the River, that’s where I grew up, so to speak! Karl Düsig lives there, and old Wiesendörpsch, and that nice little house, that’s where Kröger the decorator lives, such a nice man, there isn’t a nicer man in the whole world. And that’s Senator Egger’s house, “Three Limes”. And look – that old house with the pretty baroque gables – that one’s haunted!’


  ‘In Platt?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re a cynic, aren’t you! Do you suppose the Warnemünde ghosts go around with High German accents? No, there has to be propriety and order, even in the fourth dimension . . .! And . . .’ Crash! The train gave a jolt. We fell on top of one another. She went on, and told me about every single house on the River, as far as you could see.

  ‘There – that’s the house where old Frau Brüshaber lived, she used to get terribly upset when I got a better report-card than her grandchildren; they were such creeps . . . she said if old Wiedow, the headmaster, had crawled up her ass, then she’d shit him straight into the Baltic! And this house used to belong to old Laufmüller. Haven’t you read about him in your history-books? He was always at odds with the powers-that-be, which at the time meant District President von der Decken, Ludwig von der Decken. To annoy him, Laufmüller bought this mangy old dog and called him “Ludwig”, and whenever von der Decken appeared, Laufmüller, with a broad grin on his face, would call his dog, “Heel, Ludwig, heel!” The District President used to get livid. What with all that going on, we didn’t have a revolution here in 1918. Huh.’

  ‘And is Herr Müller still alive?’ I asked.

  ‘Lord, no, he’s been dead for ages. He wanted to be buried at the roadside, with his head directly underneath the road.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well . . . so that he could go on looking up the girls’ skirts as long as possible . . . Here’s the customs!’

  The customs. A man entered the compartment and politely enquired whether we . . . and we said no, we hadn’t. And then he went away again.

  ‘Can you see the point of that?’ asked Lydia.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘it’s just a game and a religion, the cult of the fatherland, which happens to be a blind spot of mine. I mean, look – this business with fatherlands and so on, they can only play that game for as long as they have enemies and frontiers. Otherwise, you’d never know where one stopped and the other began. You couldn’t have that now, could you . . .?’ The Princess opined that you couldn’t. We were rolled onto the ferry.