Reading Rilke

She glances at him as he explains the reason for his request, but her mind keeps shying off at a tangent. He seems to have no inkling of the images taking up defensive positions behind her eyes.

"My daughter lives with her mother now in Germany. They have migrated too. But in any case I have always admired the classics of German literature and music. The German philosophers, also, are very dear to me…"

An eight-year-old girl in a different, distant Germany is afraid of what hunger is doing to her. She wishes she could forget what she's been taught. That it's wrong to show weakness. Wrong to steal. German children do not show weakness, because they belong to a superior race.

If she were not a German child, it would not be wrong to go out to the countryside, to enter other people's fields, where there might be some nuts lying under the walnut trees, something to stop the gnawing hunger. She wouldn't let pride stop her from knocking on a farmhouse door to beg a glass of milk, a crust of bread. If she were an English child, for instance. English children, French children, Russian children could do that sort of thing. This helps to explain why the English, the French, the Russians, are going to lose the war, as the school director reminds her and her classmates daily.

"…just make coffee first," she hears herself saying, moving blindly towards her small  galley for refuge. But there is no wall she can hide behind, just a row of cupboards topped by a bench. She is as exposed as an eight-year-old girl on the streets of Berlin in 1945.

"It's the pronunciation. I have problems with the pronunciation," he is saying. "But  when I try to learn a new language, I want most of all to hear the poetry composed in that language. That is why I ask you to read Rilke for me. If you don't mind."

Why should she mind? Why should it be so difficult to read her own language? The war had ended more than fifty years ago. But how had it ended for her, and when? She has heard it said by people who weren't there that not all the soldiers who "liberated" Berlin were barbarians. Everybody who had been there then knew otherwise, and in case they were in any doubt, the radio kept reminding them. How could one forget such things?… Besides, she had seen them with her own eyes, the armies of the east, looking and sounding like wild beasts - hungry, haggard, angry, unshaven, and terrifying in their foreignness. They were nothing like the German soldiers she had seen parading, with their immaculate uniforms and sense of discipline. That was how civilised people looked!…  She has read that the German invaders of Russia behaved worse than beasts, but one of her uncles was with them, and he was no beast…
 
"So I have chosen three poems from Rilke. If you will let me record you reading them, I can listen and learn from your pronunciation."

Two hands are not enough to protect you from seeing and hearing. You have to choose whether to cover your eyes or your ears.

"Which poems have you chosen?" The answer is immaterial, but she must play for time to compose herself.

If she closes her eyes tightly, she can put her hands over her ears, but two small hands cannot shut out the rumble and vibration of tanks, the sound of boots on the cobblestones, the screams of fleeing women and children. (German women and children, who must at all times show their strength. But who now instead show terror, anguish.) She hears the brutes speaking. The voices of beasts of prey. They are as desperately hungry as the old women and children. And they are winning the war.

"We shall drink the coffee, then I will read."

How many years had it been before the rich smell of coffee returned? Probably, the Americans had brought it. Her parents would drink it as if receiving a sacrament, inhaling the aroma with half-closed eyes, briefly transported to a time when there had been no need for the unnatural silence between them.

"Have you ever been to Germany?"

"No, but I hope I will go one day. To see my daughter, if she remembers me."

"But why learn German? What is your purpose?"

"In Russia, we believe that culture is carried in language, and that to be educated, you must know other languages and literatures, especially those of Europe: France, Germany, England, Italy… I study these to educate myself, and for the pleasure, yes, the profound pleasure it brings me."

She knows with certainty that nothing could have induced her to learn Russian. She had simply been caught off guard when asked to do this favour for a friend of a friend. But even now, she would be hard put to find a convincing excuse to refuse.

"So - we should begin."

They move a little closer under the circle of light cast by the standard lamp, the grey head and the dark-haired, younger one.

"Ah! 'Der Panther'. Everybody knows 'Der Panther'." It is a poem about a caged panther, pacing to and fro behind the bars which impinge on his vision, at the same time as they limit his freedom of movement, his entire life.
               
Strange, therefore, he thinks, since the poem is so well known, that she should stumble slightly on the second-last line. He should have given her more time to ready herself, but he had assumed she'd need no preparation.

Strange, she thinks, that her eyes should blur the familiar words. For a fleeting moment she felt she had changed places with the panther.

               Wearied by interminable bars,
               his vision comprehends nothing beyond.

But she has a check-up with the optometrist every year. Long ago, in Germany, she was told that her poor eyesight was due to wartime food shortages. Critical vitamin deficiencies, they said, in the developmental phase.

Reading the next poem, "Die Erblindende" - "Going Blind" - about a woman losing her vision, her throat seems to open to allow her voice to pass unimpeded. The light glints fleetingly on the thick, owlish lenses she wears, as her involuntary glance flickers over him. His face is suffused with pleasure at having so dear a wish granted. To find a reader for Rilke's words in a country where he knows almost nobody…

His evident pleasure seems to ignite a corresponding spark in her as she reads the lines:

             upon her eyes, made luminous by joy,
             light moved as on the surface of a pool.

His final request is for "Archaische Torso Apollos". "An Archaic Torso of Apollo". Predictably, she thinks. But reads with unexpected warmth. After the last line has entered the tiny microphone she sits with the open book on her lap, still resonating with the words. Exactly like an instrument as the last note fades into silence, he thinks.

The last words of this poem have become a commonplace: You must change your life. (Du muЯt dein Lebe дndern.) And yet they had the power to move her when she uttered them just now. Strange.

The moment passes, and she shuts the book, but her face is soft, reflective, luminous.

He stands to leave. She looks him in the eye for the first time. "I never realised what a pleasure it can be to read the poems aloud. From now on, I will always do so. Thank you for making me see this."

Her initial reluctance to read the poems aloud to him still puzzles him, but he sees that she is indeed moved. No doubt the poems hold pleasant memories for her, he thinks. He steps lightly into the night, the mini-CD with the live poems nestled in his breast-pocket.