90
PARTISAN REVIEW
source of the stories she had told
LIS.
We had felt protected on that visit by
her early memories of Vienna.
Nothing like that had cloaked me on my first visit to Germany. I had
been one of a group of writers invited by two foundations, American and
German, to spend two weeks in several German cities. We were to meet
German writers and artists and politicians. All these people had been cordial,
some of then very appealing.
An
editor of a weekly had asked me to con–
tribute an occasional "letter fTom New York" about cultural events, which
his
people would translate. But I had felt that most of the cordiality was quite
deliberate. Now I had another grant from the American foundation to visit
German theaters and film studios. 1 had asked for it almost as a challenge to
my chilled fascination. This time Laura came with me. She wasn't eager. But
neither of us wanted me to have the experience, twice , of another country
without her. We had shared all our travels and could share recollections. As
much for reasons of marriage as any other, this time she came along.
In 1967, when my plane landed in Hamburg, 1 was trembling. I could
see my hands tremble. 1 had arrived in the country where it had all hap–
pened.
If
it had been twenty-five years earlier, I would have been taken
from the airport to the ovens. Now, in 1971, as our plane landed in Frank–
furt,
I was calmer, tense but calmer. I remembered the trembling four years
earlier, but I thought of what had happened on that trip, the fj-iends I had
made. Now I felt, somewhat uncomfortably, more easy.
German came to our eyes and ears as we moved through the terminal
building. I had studied German in high school and college, and I suffered still
from the illusion that I was always on the edge of really understanding it
because I could still pick up some phrases. We went out of the terminal to the
sidewalk. I was tussling with two heavy bags. A taxi pulled up promptly with
a young, long-haired driver. "Look," I said to Laura, "the hippies are driving
cabs here, too." Out stepped a young woman in slacks, six feet tall, who
swung my two bags like powder putts into the trunk.
We drove to our hotel. "Well," said Laura wonderingly, "here I am in
Germany . Where is everybody? No Germans?" The streets were almost
empty, the shops were shut. It was Monday morning. I asked the driver
about it in German. She replied in English but used a German name for the
holiday. I looked it up in my pocket dictionary. Whit Monday. Two nudges
before we even reached our hotel. Brunnhilde driving a taxi. Germany, the
land of the economic miracle, closing down on a business day for a religious
holiday.
We were to be in Germany for five weeks. We were going to six
West German cities and would finish in West Berlin. A friend of ours, an
American long resident in West Berlin, knew our itinerary. Just before we
