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PARTISAN REVIEW
the Czechs toward any number of defenseless minorities? One might
in fact argue that Poland provoked Germany into the invasion of
1939, for instance, by way of her intransigence in the early 1920s–
insisting upon mythical rights against the Germans, and invading
German territory by force; invading Lithuania as well, and the
Ukraine, and even Russia- in a grotesque attempt to consolidate a
little empire. Did anyone in America know? Did anyone want to
know? Truth isn't very popular these days.
If the Germans became outlaws, Philip says, who could prove
that, following the catastrophic Treaty of Versailles, they were not
forced into an outlaw mentality: which is to say- outside, beyond,
beneath
the law? Perhaps Hitler was no more than the Scourge of
God.
Cecilia protests faintly, scarcely knowing what to say. Her field
of training is art history, particularly nineteenth-century American
art; it is probably insulting to Philip for her to attempt to argue with
him. Quoting statistics, referring to treaties, invasions, acts of
parliament, acts of duplicity and vengeance of which Cecilia, frankly,
has never heard ("to understand Hitler's Reich, and by extension
present-day Germany, you have to understand Bismarck's 'siege
mentality' of the 1880s"), Philip makes Cecilia appear to be some–
thing of a fool. What has triggered this episode? Merely the sight of
those eight or ten black soldiers by the Hammer Hotel? Cecilia is so
upset she drinks several glasses of wine quickly, fighting the impulse
to tell Philip that she doesn't care for his facts, his precious History,
if they contradict what she wants to believe.
Finally she makes the point that not all Germans are racially
prejudiced, as he'd said ("Now Cecilia of course I didn't say
that")
-what of the two young German girls who were with the soldiers
by the hotel? They all appeared to be getting on very well together.
Philip shifts uneasily in his seat- they are sitting now in a dim,
smoke-hazy cocktail lounge in the Mainzer Hof, as a way of post–
poning the awkwardness of returning to their own hotel and their
separate rooms- and makes an effort to smile at Cecilia, as if to
soften his words: "Those 'girls,' Cecilia, were obviously prostitutes.
No other German women would go anywhere near those men, I
assure you ."
It throws you back upon yourself, the starveling little core ofyourself-
so
a friend of Cecilia's once told her, lying in a hospital bed, having
been nearly killed in an automobile accident. He meant the sudden–
ness of violence; its eerie physicality; the fact that, as creatures with
spiritual pretensions, we do after all inhabit bodies.
