Klaus by Allan Massie Read Free Book Online Page A

“Why are you young people so bent on self-destruction. Look outside, at the blue sky and the mountains. Isn’t life beautiful? Isn’t it good?” Perhaps he actually spoke these words, didn’t merely look them. Klaus couldn’t remember if he himself had put them in the mouth of the good doctor who, however, recommended that he go to a sanatorium in Hungary, in a town called – delicious irony – Siesta.
    Klaus assented. The truth was that for the first time in his life he was frightened, really afraid. This was absurd. After all, didn’t he often dream of death, and wasn’t he, by agreeing to go to the sanatorium, running away from what he deep down most desired? Yet there was sufficient reason. It was 1937, and to will death now would be a sort of desertion. Two things gave meaning to his life: writing and the struggle against the Brown Plague, a struggle which, admittedly, he carried on only in words. So, yes, he would check in (as the Americans said) to the sanatorium and force himself to go on living.
    But first he had gone to Prague because the Czech President Benes had had the courage to defy the Nazis and offer passports to the entire Mann family, stateless since their German ones had been withdrawn. (Well, not to Erika, who was in no need of one, on account of her mariage blanc to Wystan Auden which made her British. Klaus had first proposed on her behalf to Chris, but he had said no because he saw marriage as a prop of what he called “the heterosexual dictatorship” and in any case his boy-friend Heinz would be hurt and wouldn’t understand. So he “passed the buck” to Wystan who, like the English gentleman he was, consented, even though, unlike Chris, he had never met Erika. Years later, in America, someone asked the Magician who Chris was. “Family pimp,” he replied).
    It was in recognition of the Magician’s status that the Czech offer was made. Well, this was one time when Klaus wasn’t in the least reluctant to cling to his father’s coat-tails! He went to Prague and had an interview with the President himself, whom he found to be lively, intelligent and professorial. Their conversation had been almost entirely political, and therefore bleak. They both knew that while times were bad, worse lay ahead.
    He had to wait in Budapest, where he stayed in a palace owned by a friend, the Baron Lazi von Hatvany, twice exiled from his own country for his liberal views, first by Reds, then by the quasi-Fascist dictatorship of Admiral Horthy. Now Lazi, permitted to return, didn’t know how long his reprieve would last. Klaus had interviews with doctors, one of whom, Klopstock, had been a close friend of Kafka and had indeed held him in his arms as he died. Klopstock liked to speak about literature, but then, after giving Klaus a physical examination, asked him: “So why do you drug?”
    “Because I wanted to die. I am attracted to death.”
    “You said ‘wanted’ – past tense. So you no longer want to die and are ready to undergo the cure – disintoxication. It’s painful, you know.”
    “What isn’t?” Klaus might have said, but he only nodded his head.
    “You have a reason to live now?”
    “I don’t know. I hope so.”
    But in truth there was another reason, beside the political struggle to which he was committed, though he did not dare express it. Did not dare because he couldn’t yet believe in it.
    At a restaurant, the Hungaria, with Lazi Hatvany and his wife, Jolan, and son Klari, he was introduced to a young American. No, that wasn’t right. It was a pick-up, though later they argued as to which of them had made the approach. Not that it mattered. The boy was blond, green-eyed, smooth sunburnt face. In his journal that night Klaus wrote, cagily, of “the little Curtis, pretty kid, a bit affected, pleased with himself.” And why not? He had a lot to be pleased with, and even the first exchange of glances showed him willing. He set out to impress. “I’ve just come from the