Winnie and Wolf by A. N. Wilson

Author:A. N. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466893726
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Parsifal

One very cold winter morning in the winter of 1933–34 I took the bus to the nearest stop at the bottom of the Green Hill. I wasn’t averse from riding my bike in the snow, quite the opposite, but after a skid on the ice the rear wheel needed replacing and I’d left it with the menders the previous afternoon. I don’t know what impulse made me take the bus. I hardly ever took buses – our town is too small, really, to make such journeys necessary, unless you live in the sprawling working-class suburbs beyond and want to get to the centre, or to one of the outlying villages. Anyway – it is simpler perhaps to believe that Fate made me change my habits and take the bus.

It was fairly crowded at that hour of the morning, and there was a good fug of steamed windows and cigarette smoke as everyone chattered happily. But at a certain stop along the line a young oik wearing the brown shirt and swastika armband of the SA got on board. Though he was alone he had that vacant stupid look on his face which addicts of violence, often exhibitionists, wear: ‘Look at me, while I kick someone’s face in.’ An expression that carries with it defiance: ‘Any objections? If I kick this human face? Objections? Anyone?’

Winnie had often complained to Wolf about the street bullyism of the local SA lads, while having a personal fondness – I’ll talk about this a little later – for Ernst Röhm, the actual leader of the SA, that private Nazi army which had been so important a part of their personal mythology in early days. Now that Wolf was Chancellor, right-hand man to old General von Hindenburg and in cahoots with the regular army, the semi-, or actually criminal activities of the street army were a liability to him. Many thought he should wind it up, but it would have lost him many loyal supporters in the Party and the more his personal power grew – it was already approaching Napoleonic heights – the stronger grew his persecution mania and the certainty that Party colleagues were plotting his downfall.

The SA oik in the bus, with his nerdish peaked cap and BO, was an unimpressive person. Cigarette in mouth, he moved down the crowded bus until he was standing quite near me and then asked me, ‘You wanna seat?’

I didn’t know what he meant and made some dithering remark to the effect that I was OK standing, but that should the crowd thin out I’d sit down.

‘’Ere – you!’ I realized to my horror that he was addressing an old lady sitting just beneath us. With sausage fingers he pushed her hat askew and prodded her bony shoulders. ‘Didn’t you ’ear the gentleman?’

The old lady looked up, her face tautened with fear.

‘An Aryan wants to sit down,’ said the oik. ‘So stand up – yid.’

I protested that I did not want the old lady’s seat.

‘What’s the matter? You a yid too?’

I was reduced to a stupid incoherence by this question.

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