Target Area

The grim young men in the blue uniforms,
professionally laconic, charting, over the intercom,
the soundings of the channel of death, have carried
another basket of eggs to Fräulein Fehmer —
I do not know, of course, whether she got them.

Fräulein Fehmer,
thirty-five years ago, when I was at school,
taught the piano
in a little music room, one of a row of little music rooms
that lived in the dark passage under the stair
leading to the Lower Fourth;
every music room
distinguished by the name of a great musician;
every music room
pouring out a jingle of private harmony
in a jangling discord with the private harmonies of its neighbors.
Fräulein Fehmer was stiffly built,
with a strong square face, lionish, slightly blunted,
as though the hand of the potter had given a gentle
push to the damp clay; she wore eyeglasses,
and a shawl round her shoulders in cold weather; her hair
was straight and dark, combed back over a pad;
she had strong square hands, grasping the keys easily
from middle C to the major third over the octave,
blunt finger-tips and wide flat knuckles; she used
a rather unorthodox
and very powerful action of the whole forearm,
so that the wires sang under her touch like bells.
When she started you on a new piece, she always inscribed
the date neatly above it; when you made mistakes,
stumbling feverishly among the accidentals,
she would say, “Na, na!” in a strong, tart, rebuking
voice. She must be getting an old woman now,
if the grim young men in the blue uniforms
have not canceled time for her.

Fräulein Fehmer’s music room
was named “Chopin,” after her favorite composer; once or twice in the school year
we were invited to hear her give a recital
of Chopin, after supper. We did not grudge seating the Hall
for Fräulein Fehmer; we recognized that her playing
was unlike that of the other music mistresses;
no doubt they played well, but Fräulein Fehmer’s playing
was music. There is a particular Nocturne
that I cannot hear to this day without thinking of her;
when it is rendered
by celebrated musicians over the ether
I see the red-brick walls, the games trophies,
the rush-bottomed chairs, the row of aspidistras
that garnished the edge of the platform, and Fräulein Fehmer,
gowned in an unbecoming dark-blue silk,
lifting the song from the strings with a squaring of her strong shoulders;
the notes on the wireless are only the imperfect echo
of that performance. Memory and association
count for much, but there is no nostalgic glamour
about my memories; I was timid of Fräulein Fehmer,
and I was not happy at school; I am sure I am right in thinking
that as a pianist she was exceptional.

Some years before the war —
this war, I mean — I suddenly had a letter
from Fräulein Fehmer, dated from Frankfurt-am-Main.
In the same pointed script that used to adorn my music books
she said she remembered England with much affection;
she had heard that I was a writer; she should like to read
something that I had written — would I send her a copy
for old sake’s sake? it cost more than she could afford
to order a book from England; times were hard;
it was very hard indeed for musicians to live
in Germany nowadays; “of course,” she added,
“I am an ardent Nazi.”

She used to wear
a shawl, as I have said, when the weather was pinching. Memory
tells me it was gray. Hitler rose to power
on the despair of the middle classes. I sent her books, and she thanked me;
for a time we exchanged polite greetings at Christmas.

Last night our bombers
were out in very great strength over Germany;
Fraulein Fchmer was in the target area.

There are so many things that one does not know —
what, for example, becomes of aging women
whose skill is rooted in the wrong memories
when death puts on his harness (he bears arms —
a cross cramponee, sable); it may be
that ardent Nazis are not encouraged to play
Polish music.

Tell me, Fräulein Fehmer,
were you playing Chopin when the bombs went down over Warsaw,
or did the Nocturne ring out for the last time
on the last night of August?

How much of your pittance, tapped by the tinkling hammers,
arduously, out of long stretches of common time,
went up in reek and smoke behind Paul’s Churchyard?
Did your gray shawl perish in Russia, frozen
to the aching bone it wrapped, that fearful winter
when the dead stiffened as they fell, in the ghastly road from Moscow?
When the great Lancasters,
roaring out of England, making the sky boil like a caldron,
stooped at last upon Frankfurt from the blackness between the stars,
did the old, heartbreaking melody cry to you
Poland’s agony through the crashing anger of England?
Did we strike you, perhaps, quickly,
tossing the soul out through rent ribs or merciful
splitting of the skull? Or did you
find yourself suddenly awake at midnight,
peering from the blankets, fumbling for your glasses, to see
by flare-light and fire-light
the unexpected precipice by the bedside,
the piano shattered aslant, with all its music
coiling out of it in a tangle of metallic entrails,
dust, books, ashes, splintered wood, old photographs,
the sordid indecency of bathroom furniture
laid open to the sky? Or are you, I wonder,
still waiting the personal assault, the particular outrage,
expiating the world’s sin in a passion of nightly expectation
till the unbearable is reiterated
and the promise fulfilled?

The death sent out
returns; I have filled the bombs, loaded the bomb racks,
built the planes, equipped
the laconic grim young men in the blue uniforms;
for this you learned to play Chopin and I to write,
that we might exchange these messages and these replies.
Neither of us can stop what is happening now,
nor would if we could; the discord of private harmonies
must be resolved in the deafening cataract of calamity;
the first to cry “Halt!” utters a cry of defeat,
and makes a breach in the dam, through which the water
floods over the house-tops.

This I write
with the same hand that wrote the books I sent you,
knowing that we are responsible for what we do,
knowing that all men stand convicted of blood
in the High Court, the judge with the accused.
The solidarity of mankind is a solidarity in guilt,
and all our virtues stand in need of forgiveness,
being deadly.

Chopin and the old School Hall
were out last night over Germany, in very great strength,
taking messages to Fräulein Fehmer.