Goebbels awoke, nodding with approval.Only yesterday. He'd issued a communiqué about overwhelming success in Stalingrad and had gone out for a little air. The man had appeared from nowhere, dark skinned, Mediterranean, gesturing towards a box, the front a frame of grey tinted glass, a mysterious impermeable window.
"Ask the box a question."
Why had he not called for guards? He was after all Reichsminister for Propaganda.
The man added, "An answer only you would know. Speak clearly."
Was this a command? Goebbels spoke clearly as ordered: "The subject of my thesis at Heidelberg." He had had his records at university destroyed; then, his Aryan purity had been less pronounced.
His question was spelt out in luminescent scripted German seemingly within the glass. The answer, similarly displayed, said, "Wilhelm von Schütz, dramatist."
The man smiled faintly. "The machine is not limited. Ask about a present concern."
One in particular, huge and worrying. "Eventual German casualties at Stalingrad?"
No pause in the unfolding script. "Total Axis dead, wounded, missing and captured: 800,000."
Unnecessary to ask if this added up to a defeat. More urgent questions arose: "Does this machine exist?
"It will."
"In German hands?"
“No.”
The man coughed discreetly. “I will leave you, Herr Reichsminister. Keep the machine. The battery has some life left.”
Goebbels sensed the machine’s power - how best to use it for the Reich? Priorities! Yet to use such power safely he himself needed to be... invulnerable. He said, “Machine! Anne-Sophie Wasserman, Reydt, near Mönchen-Gladbach...”
Already a response. “Where you were born, Herr Reichsminister. Two things: she still lives, her ethnic background is what you fear.”
Now he addressed the guard, told him to find a sledge-hammer.
The pillow felt soft. Just a nighttime fantasy but the correct decision nevertheless.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou are such a good writer. Those few words had me spell-bound, told a complete story. Then it filled my head with so many questions and what-ifs.
ReplyDeleteGood writing, sir.
(Deleted original to correct the spelling of one word.)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA thought provoking, well compressed little story posing wider questions, especially the unexpected adverse effects of hopefully favourable scientific discovery .
ReplyDeleteHitler probably knew about Goebbels' background, but as far as it went, G was so good at his job a blind eye may have been turned - just speculation from me. Perhaps G should have been more concerned with the presumed impregnability of the Enigma machine.
ReplyDelete
My first comment deleted to alter position of one comma.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you, but responding to your brother's posts sometimes makes me hypervigilant about errors: like submitting an essay to a really tough professor. Just saying. :)
DeleteThe Crow - he knows full well. If you say it one way he will suggest another. and vice versa if you use his way first. You are lucky - I have endured for 78 years now. Having said all that I can’t begin to evaluate the valuable lessons and education I have received.
ReplyDeleteI've 'known him only through his blog, but I, too, have learned things of much value which have added to my life's education. Same with visiting your site, as well.
DeleteI, too, have gained much from RR's acerbic and witty comments. That's why I come back for more. (I suppose it is the masochist in me!) - he won't like that hyphen or the last exclamation mark, I'll warrant!
ReplyDeleteCrow/Sir Hugh: So what have we here? A surreptitious babble between the pair of you, as if you were reminiscing about passing your driving tests or querying a first date that may or may not have succeeded. How should I join in?
ReplyDeleteDuring most of the Tone Deaf/Works Well years I would have invoked something written, poetic and very Hampstead but these days the instinct is towards music - Du holde Kunst (The charming art), as Schubert calls it. To others this must seem like more pretentiousness but I think I can afford to take the risk. For better or for worse I hear music from the inside these days. I always knew what it could do, now, on rare occasions, I can make it do those things for me. Music doesn't struggle along, the Apassionata sonata or, for that matter, a couple of lines from P. Simon:
There were three men down
And the season lost
And the tarpaulin was rolled
Upon the winter frost
get to the very heart, immediately and with force. Since we cannot unite in song we may grasp at what music offers. The three of us need something like The Credo that appears in the settings of the Mass that composers - many of them distinctly un-Christian - are drawn to. Credo is the "I believe" bit. I'll do my best in words (alas), not semi-quavers, and you can modify it afterwards. Or disagree entirely.
A blog is a contract - with ourselves - to fill space. But with what? We're talking Credo here, so forget abstractions like aspiration, sorrow, joy and anger. Let's be specific about what does happen. Here's my guess.
First and by far the biggest percentage, an intermittent record of our life. Then a qualitative assessment of that life. For a change of pace - a rant. A tiny, usually timid, toe in the water re. world events. Unforgivably banal phrases and greetings related to the calendar. A recommendation; it could be a cake recipe, a book, a regime for physical improvement. As age takes an ever tighter grip comparisons between then and now. As comments drop way, more and more desperate attempts to be contrary. A tendency towards photos which absolve us from prose. Then links to what others have written. Longer and longer periods of nothing much happening. The silence of the cybergrave beckons.You get the idea.
What's missing? The shocking way we ignore our greatest asset, our brain. It's much more than a camera, a recording machine and a file cabinet. All day long it does unique things - it time-travels, indulges in wicked opinion, yearns futilely, re-writes our personality, acts seditiously. And we push this stuff to one side.
Best of all the brain imagines. My Credo, becoming stronger by the day such that I hear faint references to the great Johann Sebastian, is a belief in the redemptive power of the imagination. Flirting with the unexpected, risking the unpredictable.
As a sideline I'll issue corrections in a lordly way. Oh, you noticed that.
Avus: You came late to the party. Pick out anything that seems edible.
Huzzah! Now that's a right proper response to a reader's comment! I'm at work right now, but I'll be back later today to make further comments...probably with lots of typos and ungrammatical phrasing and punctuation.
ReplyDeleteOne quick note: what music has become for you, art - no, artful arrangements of color, whether naturally occurring or laid out by human hand, have become for me. But I am losing my sight (a temporary problem, I hope), so perhaps I am subconsciously drinking in color whilst I can, instead of sound. (Serious cataracts make it illegal for me to drive at the moment - not that that stops me from going to the grocery or to work, mind.)
One thing I often feel, reading your comments section: how pleasant it is to have a sibling, to joust and banter with someone known so very long.
ReplyDeleteOh, clever piece, of course!
Crow: "Cataracts... for the moment." I do hope this means a solution is imminent. Back in 2014, unable to wait, I went "private" (ie, I paid) and it was all done very quickly. That was one eye. For the second eye I went NHS (ie, it was free) and had to wait three months. It was the same surgeon both times. Writing this I bethought myself, searched "cataract" in my blog posts, found lots of mentions which didn't surprise me, also found a number of comments by you. So you know all about this and what's on offer. My wishes for you are transmitted urgently.
ReplyDeleteWhen I referred to music I should have been more specific. Of course I meant singing, even more specifically, being taught to sing. I am now in my third year and realise I have spent a whole heap of money on lessons. Never have I parted with cash more happily. I reflect often on this new lease of life and I conclude that it's the discipline I appreciate most. A shared bond with all the singing pros I've admired - there is no escaping the repetition and the tiny twists of detail. Who do I sing for? - myself. Given it's such a noisy activity, the pleasures are remarkably intimate.
Marly: Sibling banter - well yes. But at a low level compared with the tough minded, highly individual women who've responded, many from North America. I was re-reading a post in which I explored dealing with sexual encounters in fiction, definitely a case that less is more. The subject widened out in the comments and I was delighted by the high-spirited and uninhibited way the subject was taken up. Almost all by women. I also felt flattered even if I wasn't entitled.
I realise that you are cavilling at the content of the average blog post and advocating more use of the imagination and promotion of higher flown discussion thus capitalising on the boundless attributes of the human brain. That is fine for you, and I suppose in my own modest way I occasionally include a post, or part of a post, that goes vaguely in that direction, but I am not motivated enough to live permanently at that level - I need regular doses of Strictly Come Dancing, Flog It, and Countryfile , and very occasionally Classic FM switched on as background music, and reading the BBC News page on-line.
ReplyDeleteAlthough my last post was a factual account of a walk it did lead to a wider discussion including references to The Brontes, the aristocracy, the poor standard of writing by university graduates, and fancy nomenclature, and although not at the level you are, dare I say, demanding, that does give me some fulfilment, but whether or not it is enough to retard the atrophying of my brain I am not sure.
Sir Hugh: Perhaps I should have said quite simply: Why not use your imagination? Create stuff don't just list it. Thus if Strictly Come Dancing is vital to your existence weave it into the plodding
ReplyDeleteThose brain activities: are they beyond you? Do you not time-travel? Plot the downfall of your personal villains? These are experiences often triggered by the walk you're doing. Legitimate material
Two minutes ago this re-comment was twice as long. Now I'm done.
Robbie ... were you in a previous life a denizen of the 'germanisch' regions? I'm thinking back to that brilliant short story about the toilet lady ... let me put down my Bierche' and re-read the story and the comments ... dusk is falling here and my eyes are blurring.
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): When the Berlin Wall fell it was a death-knell for writers of spy fiction. Not to be able to set stories in divided Germany was an enormous disadvantage. Like being deprived of a state of mind. I sort of acknowledged it at the time but in those days I wasn't writing fiction. Two Homelands, the story you mention, brought the situation home to me and I was able to make use of the East/West divide retrospectively.
ReplyDeleteThis present story dropped into my mind by accident. I am not - like a whole host of Brits - endlessly obsessed by WW2 and I was astonished to find myself writing about Goebbels. On reflection I rather wish I could have achieved the same effect writing about Willy Brandt or Helmut Schmidt. A complete nonsense of course, how could I equate political evil with political goodness? I reflected further; decided that what appealed to me was a certain seriousness I sense in Germany. Very hard to explain, only by example. Two years ago we (VR, Occasional Speeder and me) went to the Cologne Christmas Market and I made it my mission to question as many Germans as possible - did they regard the UK's Brexit decision a tragedy for the UK? All said yes; none showed the slightest surprise at my asking this in public places. I have to say the sense of loss became even more poignant.
How am I able to bring in Goebbels? But then, Goebbels was German and there was a pre-Nazi period; he studied at Heidelberg University and wrote a thesis about that obscure dramatist. Am I wrong to imagine that pre-Nazi Goebbels was or, at least, might have been briefly "serious"? I hope not. If I am I ask for Germany's forgiveness. It is, after all, just a work of the imagination, not a political statement.