Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor Von Rezzori Page B

flags, the black of death and the red of foaming blood and the gold of blissfully dreamt promise…. Verily, I confess myself deeply moved: who am I that I may live to witness such things! A young German, still wet behind the ears, if I may be permitted to express it thus, not yet a stripling, but still a lad—and already he is gaily garbed in the costume of the Wars of Liberation, of the epigones of the Sturm und Drang , of the constantly redreamed and ever-abortive German Revolution! I sense a German yearning here, in the mother country of Rumanian voivodes, between the Prut and the Seret rivers, surrounded by Rumanians, Ruthenians, Poles, and Galician Jews. And one is proudly heedless of any possibility that one might look ridiculous in a disguise suggesting Puss in Boots—how beautiful, too, this fidelity to the folk wealth of German fairy tales! … No, no, one need not be ashamed; one is right in every respect. Even this Kingdom of Rumania in which one lives today is still a slip and a shoot of the Great Reich—after all, this realm is ruled by a monarch from the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a German prince…. Permit me to utter my unqualified admiration for such a candid expression of belief, one that sweeps aside any petty qualms of political tact! Nothing strikes me as more solemnly German than the steadfastness of this attempt, here of all places, to maintain the proper tone against Herr Uncle’s eardrum-killing deviations while one roars Lieder to Frau Aunt’s nimble-fingered piano-playing! “Oh, Ancient and Fraternal Splendor”! “The God Who Let Such Iron Grow”! Surely one is pierced by the same holy thrills that must have throbbed in the hearts of those who first sang those songs, those young Germans three or four generations ago, who in the songs recognized one another as brethren, and recognized the nation in the community of brethren, and saw in the nation the promise of freedom…. But, certainly, one also senses in these songs the pain and bitterness, the gloomy defiance and yearning, that afflict all emotionally exuberant youth. One recognizes oneself, presumably; one sees oneself in the spring tempests of this mood; one is probably uneasy with the sense that the burgeoning florescence could perish all too easily under a new frost. One also senses the martyrdom, the gallows humor in one’s realization of frailty, the revolt in the defiant “Nevertheless!” and the shriek of despair…. Yes, indeed, that is what it is, over and over: youth infects youth, and experiences itself as disease, as both foaming life and suffering; it sings its experience out into the world and foments the same rebellion in kindred souls. Everywhere and over and over, the yearning for the uniting, soul-uplifting, liberating flag…. If one were to be so kind as to visit me in the wretched chamber assigned as my abode thanks to the noble-mindedness of our host and hostess, then I would take the liberty of producing a small object from my modest collection: nothing more than a tiny piece of clay, baked and glazed a turquoise color—albeit several thousand years old, from the earliest days of Egypt. This ordinary thing has the shape of a T-square: one long and one very short side—a tau , as we know, of course…. Well, to make a long story short, it is the hieroglyph for the notion of god—the first abstract depiction ever of divinity…. And originally, it was nothing more than the likeness of a pole with a whisk of straw tied to it and moving in the wind—the first flag, as it were ….”
    I sensed rather than grasped the perfidy in this speech. Still, the reference to being wet behind the ears and above all the image of Puss in Boots stuck in my mind, festered. I am certain it was Stiassny’s allusion to my ludicrous bedizenment that aroused me.
    One bright day, wearing my getup, plus the doddering rubber boots, with the fox