31 May 2013 14:30:45
Colonel Lewis Morgan arrives in this world of shattered buildings and broken spirits charged with overseeing the reconstruction in the British zone. He has an idealistic, forgiving nature, seeing the Germans as a people crushed first by Hitler, then by the allied pounding of their cities. When he requisitions a fine home on the banks of the Elbe, he allows its owner, former architect Herr Lubert, and his daughter to remain in residence. It is a decision that baffles most and shocks some, not least Lewis's wife Rachael. She arrives later, still deep in grief for the loss of her eldest son, killed by a stray bomb that had "hurled her across the floor of the sitting room like a rag doll". Perhaps because she has witnessed her son's death she is more deeply affected than her husband by the sufferings of the local people. They are still pulling bodies from the rubble – on one occasion, Pompeii-like, two embracing skeletons are discovered.
Nevertheless, with British resolve, Rachael accepts the situation, so long as the Germans remain in their part of the house and don't "fraternise" – a word that puzzles her surviving son Edmund when he reads a guidebook on how to deal with the population. "Don't try to be kind – this is regarded as weakness. Keep Germans in their place. Don't show hatred: the Germans will be flattered." Rachael's interpretation of German character is even less forgiving – "When all is said and done, Germans are bad." Thankfully, Edmund is a repository of innocent wonder and trustingness, and ignores all the advice in his book.
It soon becomes apparent that the house on the Elbe is to be a site where prejudices will be tested, emotions awakened and viewpoints altered. It is akin to Hamlet's Elsinore – oppressive, claustrophobic, haunted by shadows and suspicions. Lubert's family mirrors the Morgans. The father lost his wife in a raid and is in prolonged mourning. The daughter, Freda, 15 years old and pigtailed, is a seething mass of resentment, as if all the energy of the fallen regime had taken up residence in her body. She does exercises using The Magic Mountain as a counterweight ("You should try Shakespeare, or perhaps the Atlas," her father remarks). She flashes her knickers as a sign of dominance at innocent Edmund, and, like an animal marking its territory, delivers a chamberpot full of hot piss into his room.
Gradually, the house does its work. Lewis and Rachael's sexual standoff turns her increasingly towards the dignified and civilised Lubert. But is he as white as he seems? On the wall there is the outline of a painting that has been removed, and one of Rachael's gossipy English friends suggests it was a portrait of the Führer. "You think all this comes without compromise?" she says of the grandly furnished house. When Lewis is sent away to the archipelago of Heligoland to work on the destruction of munitions, he almost knowingly allows Lubert and Rachael the space needed to indulge their increasing fascination for each other. As even Freda begins to soften towards Edmund, it seems possible that the house can be a true site of reconciliation. But there are further levels of loyalty and betrayal to negotiate before anything approaching a resolution can be reached.
The strength of this novel lies in its superb management of the various lines of narrative tension, alongside a painfully clear portrait of Germany in defeat, conjuring surprise after surprise as it shows how the forces of politics and history penetrate even the most intimate moments of its characters' emotional lives. By the end of the novel they seem as exposed as those embracing skeletons, and the new Germany is glimpsed, just visible beyond the interminable piles of rubble.
