The Manuscript

By Paul D. Richter

March 10, l938, the evening before the Anschluss, two young scholars meet in a Viennese Rathskeller and discuss their work. A manuscript changes hands. They agree to meet again in three days. This meeting never takes place. The next day the manuscript disappears and the two young men are lost in the fog of war—one to flee, the other to die

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483528786

Book preview

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ONE

Everything came easily to Martin Giles. At an early age he came to understand that the appearance of an easy natural brilliance, given by the ability to produce intelligent, imaginative work with little or no apparent effort, made a strong impression on others and resulted in great rewards. Consequently, he worked very hard at making it appear that everything he did was the result of no effort at all on his part. This got Martin Giles into the best high school New York City had to offer and, ultimately with a full tuition scholarship and an additional bursary, to the best Ivy League university in the country.

Martin Giles was an avid reader and he learned much from the books he read; from them he learned how to comport himself as a person with a history and background far different from the one he had. His favorite authors were Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and from them he learned how to emulate style and class. He learned how to dress, what to drink, how to order in a restaurant and how to be and look like the young gentleman he wished to be taken for by his Ivy League companions. This, he hoped, would remove forever the traces of his lower class origins and childhood in the Bronx.

Not being a fool Martin Giles, born Morris Goldstein, knew that he would never be taken for a true son of the upper classes. But his style, his natural abilities as a student, and, above all, his determination to succeed in some realm of social and cultural value overcame the snobbishness so prevalent among the other students, and he was, to a degree, accepted into their circle.

Martin Giles had long sensed that his true vocation lied in scholarly and academic work. He was bright, articulate, and a terrifying adversary in debate. His ability to research an area and find fault in previous works brought him high marks from his teachers and fellow students. He became aware of the fact that there was a mine to be exploited in the academy in the way of grants, bursaries and high, well-paid, greatly respected and socially honored classless positions. His ambition was to make a name for himself with a brilliant career, and the subject of his choice was one which lay at the very center of the arts and humanities, one which he was beginning to exhibit a talent: Philosophy.

Giles pictured himself some day seated at high table or its American equivalent, enjoying all the perks of a successful academic career; good food, good wine, witty conversation, bright attractive students, the respect and admiration of all around him, and the awe of his old friends in The Bronx whom he had already left so far behind he could barely recall their names.

He decided not to pursue a doctorate in the States and chose the classier route of a B.Phil. from Oxford. He applied for and received a Rhodes scholarship and took his degree at Oxford as a student at Magdalene College. Before leaving to take up his scholarship he studied everything he could to learn about proper dress, eating habits, sports interests; anything which might prevent his committing a faux pas.

His efforts at Oxford paid off, and Giles graduated with a first in Philosophy and was granted a generous bursary to spend time in Vienna at the seminars and lectures then being conducted by the members of the Wienergruppe, the leading figures in the newly emerging area of logical-empirical philosophy. The expectation was that having absorbed the new ideas being enunciated in Vienna, he would write the definitive work on the subject. Giles had managed to convince everyone that he was the genius who would, eventually, produce the major work of his generation. He reveled in the status he had attained, yet there were moments when the high expectations his mentors and fellow student had of him were troubling.

Martin Giles’ first year in Vienna was a wunderjahre for him. The lectures were exhilarating, the city lovely beyond anything he had previously experienced, the parks, the restaurants, and the museums were all new additions to his growing worldliness. He adopted European dress, and European manners. He was becoming cosmopolitan. He had entered the egalitarian world of culture and the mind, where one’s entry into the higher circles was based not on breeding, but on merit. He assimilated completely into this new world. He found that his reputation as a brilliant, promising young philosopher had preceded him, and the doors of the most honored and renowned members of his chosen profession were open to him. He was offered the opportunity to choose a mentor from among the most distinguished members of the Wienergruppe—one who would meet and discuss his work with him. It was clear that much was expected from him.

Giles eagerly attended the lectures and the seminars each morning and spent each afternoon organizing his notes and working on his manuscript which was to be, he hoped along with his mentor, the definitive account of the new philosophical ideas along with a resolution of several nagging and persistent problems which threatened to undercut the entire foundation upon which these new ideas rested. He was immensely flattered by the respect and expectations being accorded him though uneasy with the promise he now felt he must fulfill.

Giles had little difficulty in organizing his notes into a coherent philosophical narrative which he presented clearly and accurately in the various colloquia. Exposition was his strong point along with his incisive critical abilities. But when it came to the heart of the matter, reconciling the various anomalies, contradictions and question-begging claims within the main thrust of the movement, Giles found himself in as much of a quandary as all the others. The work he accomplished was that of a superior, clear-headed, articulate student who had paid close attention to his teachers. This clearly was not what was expected of him.

Each morning Giles would conscientiously attend the lecture or seminar scheduled. After a quick lunch he would return to his rooms and work through the afternoon trying to assimilate what he had recorded that day into the growing manuscript he was preparing. He kept running across more and more difficulties, problems which needed to be resolved, smoothed out. The more he worked the more frustrated he became. He could feel the limits of his abilities and his intelligence in much the way one can feel the limits of one’s physical strength.

Each afternoon, after struggling with his problems, Giles would dress and walk out into the city trying to clear his head, to forget about his task, hoping to find companionship. Generally, he would end up dining alone, though occasionally he would find an interesting dinner companion.

This routine continued until a sudden, explosive occurrence scattered everyone in the city. On March 11, 1938, the German army entered Austria and occupied the city of Vienna. Giles, like many others, saw that there was no further purpose to remaining in Austria, and hastily left that day, leaving everything he owned behind in a footlocker.

TWO

Upon leaving Vienna, Giles made what was meant to be a short stop at Oxford to touch base with some friends and teachers. But it turned out to be a prolonged stay. When he arrived he was greeted with great interest and respect. Everyone wanted the news from Vienna, not about the Anschluss but about the new philosophical developments. Giles was invited to present papers and lectures on the new ideas, and eventually was asked to remain as a fellow without teaching assignments, as long as he needed to complete what everyone expected would be a magnum opus: the definitive work systematizing the ideas of the Wienergruppe and plugging the flaws which troubled everyone—flaws which were seen as annoying but persistent glitches in what otherwise was a beautiful and total system of scientific philosophy.

Giles, for his part, was overjoyed at the attention being given to him. He was praised for his clear presentation of the views of the senior members of the Wienergruppe; Cranach and Schlagel couldn’t have done better themselves—no, they couldn’t have done nearly as well. Giles was equally able in defending the views of the Gruppe against attacks, so much so that his quick and often nasty retorts became feared. His reputation grew, and with it the expectations for his own as yet unfinished system.

As anticipation for his magnum opus grew and the rewards given to support him in this work increased, Giles found it increasingly difficult to focus on the work everyone awaited. More and more he took refuge in physical activity, exerting himself each day to the point of exhaustion to escape the blank page which awaited him in his typewriter. He was, therefore, thankful when England declared war on Germany and he found respite in military service.

Giles had what the Brits call a ‘good war’. He entered the army as a commissioned officer and applied for field duty after his initial training. However, in recognition of his intelligence, he was seconded to a special service group, and spent the war planning and controlling special operations involving clandestine behind-the-lines espionage and sabotage. He was himself a participant in several such operations, one of which involved the assassination of an uncovered double agent. His work in the situation was careful, impeccably planned and executed in such a way that the enemy had no idea as to what had happened. It was made to look like the result of a chance dispute in a tavern involving violent consequences.

After he was demobilized, a number of English and American universities competed for him, each upping their offer in order to recruit him. Finally, he was offered a full professorship at Hudson University in New York City with a handsome salary and minimal teaching duties. They wanted, they said, the future definer of logico-empirical philosophy and were willing to pay the price. Giles was the youngest man ever to be given a full professorship at that university. He was, as yet unpublished, rewarded by a self-confident faculty sure of their own judgment.

Almost as soon as he took up his new post, Giles felt himself back in the same straight-jacket from which he had been so mercifully released by the war. The feeling was familiar. He could have, was offered, and took, anything he wanted. All they wanted in return was a philosophical masterpiece, one which he felt, though could not bring himself consciously to acknowledge, he might not be capable of delivering.

Giles continued to intimidate any would-be detractors with his sharp tongue and biting wit. As a commentator on the work of others he was devastating and readers of papers feared being opposed by him at colloquia. But, feared as he was for his scathing critiques, his biting, sarcastic, even snarling responses, he was aware of talk behind his back, of his being seen as an aging wunderkind; where, everyone wondered, was this great work that Giles had promised and traded on? No one, Giles knew, would dare confront him face to face with this - they feared taking him on as an enemy, for he could be vindictive, and woe to anyone publishing a book or article on any subject that Martin Giles chose to review and trash.

Again Giles took refuge in physical activity and his threatening intellect was reinforced by a muscular body, one which everyone knew was also trained in martial arts. He shaved his head and flexed his muscles and comported himself as the ubermensch he wished others to believe him to be. But inside he was frightened—frightened that sooner or later, if he did not produce what was expected of him, he would become a ridiculous figure, feared and intimidating but secretly ridiculed and ignored as irrelevant.

As this situation worsened it fed back into itself, increasingly paralyzing Giles until he became unable to concentrate, found fault in everything he tried to write, became blocked. It was at this moment that the most felicitous happening of Giles’ life occurred: the foot-locker containing all the effects he had left behind in his landlady’s attic in Vienna fifteen years earlier, arrived.

THREE

Saul Levy’s war was not the same war as that of Martin Giles. Levy’s war was the other war waged by the Nazis-the war against the Jews, and for Saul Levy, as indeed for anyone else involved in that war, it was not a good war.

The day following the Anschluss, Levy was caught in a spot street check and found to have a proscribed philosophy book in his possession. Upon examination of his papers he was also found to be a Jew. The Nazis, faced with the puzzle of detaining him as a political undesirable or as a Jew, opted for the latter, more heinous crime. From that moment until his release from Auschwitz by the Allies, Levy was, in one form or other, a slave of his Nazi captors.

Life for Levy became a series of moves from one camp to another, all of them until the last adjunct to some German munitions factory for which he was forced to work under extremely harsh conditions, sustained by the minimal food, clothing and shelter required for existence and work, constantly under the watchful and brutal supervision of his masters.

As the war moved to a climax Levy was transferred to the death camp at Auschwitz where, due to his relative youth and remaining strength, he was assigned the duty of transferring corpses of Jews from the annihilation showers to the carts which would transport them to a mass grave. The work was onerous, the guards insistent and punitive. The Nazis were making a desperate effort to cover their tracks before the inevitable entrance of the allied armies.

Each night Levy would return to his barracks too exhausted to do anything but lie on his bunk alongside three other sweaty, smelly prisoners, and hope for releasing sleep.

On one such night a group of new inmates were brought into the barracks and a young, haggard-looking young man took his place alongside Levy, a place which had until that day been occupied by another young man, who was now lying on his way to a mass grave. This new young man introduced himself to Levy and then began to scribble something in a notebook he pulled out of his trousers. Levy was astonished, both to see someone engaged in something other than trying to rest and not think, and also because this young man had a notebook and a pencil with which to write.

Levy asked about this, tentatively because he feared a trap. The young man seemed honest though somewhat haughty, and told him that he had been given the notebook as a gift from a Nazi officer. Levy’s expression clearly indicated that he was confused by this, and the young man went on to tell him that he had been used as a lover by a Nazi officer who was now being disciplined for some offense. Before being taken away, he gave the young man the notebook as a keepsake.

Over the course of the next few days Levy learned that this young man had been in Vienna before the war and that he had studied philosophy. Levy then remembered him at the Wienergruppe lectures. The notes he was scribbling in his book were attempts at recording some of the thoughts he had before his arrest and some comments he now had to make about them.

After Levy told him about himself and his own history they began to have discussions at night, after the exhausting day’s work, on subjects of mutual interest. Levy began to feel alive once more, and began to have some hope for himself, his future, and that of his new friend. He found this new friend to be aloof, somewhat private, more than a bit patronizing, but he retained one important quality: a refusal to be dehumanized. He kept his connection with the rest of his life and acted as if his present circumstances were an annoying inconvenience,