No longer can I bear with the ruined god , betrayed and beaten by his own magic .sx Calling on powers best left unsummoned , he took human beings apart - and then he put them back together again .sx For a while it worked ( there was redemption ) ; and while it worked he and I were one , on the banks of the Vistula .sx He put us back together .sx But of course you shouldn't be doing any of this kind of thing with human beings .sx .. The party is over .sx He lies there in the peeling pyramid of the attic bedroom , on his cot shaped like a gutter .sx A damp pink pillow is twisted in his fists .sx I'll always be here .sx But he's on his own .sx 7 .sx She loves me , she loves me not .sx THE WORLD HAS stopped making sense again , and Odilo forgets everything again ( which is probably just as well ) , and the war is over now ( and it seems pretty clear to me that we lost it ) , and life goes on for a little while .sx Odilo is innocent .sx His dreams are innocent , purged of menace and sickness .sx Oh , sure , he quivers on slippery poles as tall as the moon is high , and lopes nude down tunnels while alarm-clocks sound , etc - but there are no worrying resonances .sx And , as against that , his sleep savours many vulgar triumphs with treasure chests and locks of hair and sleeping beauties .sx And toilet bowls .sx The tutelary spirit of these dreams is no longer the man in the white coat and the black boots :sx it is a woman , a woman the size and shape of a galleon's sail , who can forgive him everything .sx My hunch is that this woman is his mother , and I'm anxious to know when she's going to show up .sx Odilo is innocent .sx Odilo is , it turns out , innocent , emotional , popular , and stupid .sx Also potent .sx He has no power whatever , of course , and does his stuff in the Reserve Medical Corps with impeccable ovinity .sx But he's potent .sx Ask little Herta , who will defeatedly attest to it .sx She can barely walk .sx National Socialism is nothing more than applied biology .sx Odilo is a doctor :sx a biological soldier .sx So this two-year orgy we're having must form part of his personal campaign .sx He's on active service ; he smells powder ; he's going over the top for the baby .sx Yes , they still want one , even though Eva was such a disappointment .sx When Odilo has Herta on the bed , splayed and buckled , with her ankles on either side of the headboard , it's as if he's trying to kill something rather than create it .sx But we all know by now that violence creates , here on earth .sx Never before have we been so potent , not even in New York when we were combing nurses out of our hair .sx Herta sometimes looks as though she could do with the odd impotent interlude .sx But there aren't any .sx What made the difference , I wonder ?sx After Schloss Hartheim , which seemed to go on for ever , the three of us moved out of her parent's house and came down here to Munich and its Alpine air .sx Away from Herta's childhood room , away from the angels on the walls that used to watch over her .sx Here , in our apartment , we have a skeleton watching over us , made of white wood , and anatomical drawings loud with ginger meat .sx The German girl is a natural girl .sx She comes just as she is .sx With no makeup and hairy legs .sx This is okay by Odilo .sx In fact he forbids the use of cosmetics , even soap ; and as for her hair and down , her crackling armpits , her upper locks and lower wreath - Herta , I suspect , could be woollier than any yak and still keep Odilo happy .sx He calls her his Schimpanse :sx his chimpanzee .sx I have too say that I'm mad about her too .sx Herta's body gossips with youth .sx Her ears are like cookies , her teeth are like candy .sx Her flesh is as taut as the flesh of an olive .sx At first she wasn't so keen , always complaining of tiredness or soreness or emotional unease ; but these days , as Odilo says again and again to all his friends ( and the compliment , I think , is pitched decorously high ) , she bangs like a shithouse door in a gale .sx Herta is so small that it seems natural to be quite strict with her .sx She is eighteen .sx And getting smaller all the time .sx One mustn't give in to pessimism , and it's pointless to look too far ahead , but in a couple of years she won't even be legal .sx It's very sweet .sx Now that the wedding nears , Odilo is altogether gentler .sx He has stopped having tantrums .sx No longer is his chimpanzee required to do the housework naked , and on all fours .sx Herta responds with gratitude , and with an apparently unbounded tenderness , never seen before .sx .. Erotic rapture , it transpires , is in a sense a reptilian condition .sx The higher mind , the soul , the princes of the faculties - they absent themselves .sx And so too , most emphatically , does the reptile brain .sx Let me think about it .sx When human and reptile brains get together , they want to do harm from a position of safety .sx But when it's just their bodies , they seem to want to do good , and close up , with maximum risk to the self .sx I don't know .sx I'm still there , in their bed , and I like it ; but the oozy ecstasy belongs to Odilo , that glistening lizard , and to Herta , that glistening lizardess , in their world of succulent slime , where no words are necessary :sx you just croak and hum .sx .. Their love life is steadily divesting itself of all irregularities .sx For instance , they used to play a kind of game ( about twice a week , or rather more often if Odilo put his foot down ) , where she must lie still and show no sign of life , throughout .sx Similarly , he used to take a healthy interest in his wife's bowel movements , as is meet .sx But that's all behind him now .sx When she weeps and sulks he dries her tears with kisses , and not with a punch in the breasts .sx And nowadays she hardly cries at all :sx the wedding is only weeks away .sx Less and less often , though still pretty regularly ( say most nights ) , Odilo quits his pact of reptiles and , with enthusiasm , seeks his herds of friends :sx their strength in musky numbers , their heat of hide and stall .sx We shout and we drool , with the distorted faces of babies ; individually we have no power or courage , but together we form a glowing mass .sx Often the night's play begins with us going out and helping Jews .sx Odilo , Herta and I are officially on our honeymoon now but in fact we're going nowhere .sx Except back to Berlin , for the wedding .sx My position on the Jews has always been without ambiguity .sx I like them .sx I am , I would say , one of nature's philo-Semites .sx It's their eyes I particularly admire .sx That glossy , heated look .sx An exoticism that points towards the transcendent - who knows ?sx Anyway , why talk about their qualities ?sx I am childless ; but the Jews are my children and I love them as a parent should , which is to say that I don't love them for their qualities ( remarkable as these seem to me to be , naturally ) , and only wish them to exist , and to flourish , and to have their right to life and love .sx I remember names and faces , names I heard called at dawn gatherings in town squares , or by empty fuel pits and anti-tank ditches , or under the light of policemen's bonfires , or in waiting zones , in train stations , in green fields at night .sx And names I saw on printed lists , quotas , manifests .sx Lonka and Mania , and Zonka and Netka , Liebish , Feigele , Aizik , Yaacov , Motl , and Matla , and Zipora , and Margalit .sx Back from Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz , from Ravensbr u ck , from Mauthausen , Natzweiler and Theresienstadt , from Buchenwald and Belsen and Majdanek , from Belzec , from Chelmno , from Treblinka , from Sobibor .sx The sick smile that Odilo sported throughout his wedding day seems , in retrospect , all too appropriate .sx I kept seeing this leer of his , the leer of a wary yokel , reflected in the numerous little mirrors set around Herta's marriage crown ( traditional :sx to ward off evil spirits , and so on) .sx Yes , his smile was a good commentary on the occasion ; ditto the painfully explosive backslaps delivered by his many new menfriends .sx How else should a person look , while , in the course of a single ceremony , he kisses everything goodbye - just blows it all away in a prodigal storm of confetti and rice ?sx She gave me the wreath of myrtle , the saffron and cinnamon , the bread , the butter , and the rest of it .sx And I gave her all my power .sx We switched our rings from the fourth finger of the left hand to the fourth finger of the right .sx They said it was an auspicious marriage moon :sx it was rising .sx But I could see that the moon above my head was really on the wane .sx Hence the unbearable blows to back and shoulder .sx Hence the coprophagic smile .sx Hence Herta's triumphal laughter .sx She delightedly moves back into her parent's house , and lies there , among golden-winged angels .sx And Odilo ?sx Where are our parents , for Christ's sake ?sx Suddenly I'm in a five-floor boarding-house , turbid with cabbage and gymshoes , sharing an attic with Rolf and Reinhard and R u diger and Rudolph , and living a nightmare , an Alpdruck , of towel-fights and text-books and jokes about courtship and corpses .sx That's right :sx I'm at med school .sx In the New Germany too , and feeling rather jumpy and furtive along with everybody else .sx Even the streets are like a dorm these days , with much peer-group pressure and unpredictably intense scrutiny , adolescent , unpleasant , sexual but sexually obscure or half-formed , and made up of ridiculous postures which no one is allowed to laugh at .sx Laugh at these ridiculous postures , and everybody will want to kill you .sx How fortunate that I am unkillable .sx Unkillable , but not immortal .sx What happened to our manhood ?sx It could be worse , because we still see Herta every day , at the school :sx she's a tight-skirted secretary in Superintendence .sx I often get ten minutes with her in a corridor , and sit quite near her table in the cafeteria , and there's a stairwell where we go and kiss - where we breathe into one another .sx Apart from that it's park benches and dark archways .sx Mickey Mouse sniggers and Greta Garbo averts her pained gaze from our mortified writhings on the shallow fur of cinema seats .sx We cling close in the safety of crowds under streetlights and torchlights .sx During certain ten-minute intervals in her parent's front room , while they set out the filthy plates for dinner , I have achieved much .sx .. Also on our spring and summer picnics .sx Among the delphinium , the snapdragon , the hollyhock and the sweet-pea , on a blanket , by a basket , she will grant me a nostalgic caress - always followed , on Odilo's part , by hours of snivelling entreaty .sx Where once we ruled , now we serve .sx His most prosperous theme is that the frustration is damaging his health .sx Another thing that usually works is the naming of flowers , in English .sx The woods embolden her .sx The German girl is a natural girl .sx Odilo is hysterically grateful for any sylvan handful or eyeful or mouthful that comes his way .sx But I'm not .sx He forgets .sx I remember .sx This tormented groping .sx I am excoriated by erotic revanchism .sx And I know something he seems unable to face :sx it will never happen again .sx The future always comes true .sx Sadly we gather forget-me-nots .sx She loves me .sx .. Actually we hardly dare look at her now , the tiny typist , such power does she wield .sx Ja say the ghosts of painted letters on the trees in the avenues .sx Nein says Herta as she takes my hand and places it , for an angry moment , between her thighs .sx Then , in the late afternoon , to the school :sx zygoma , xanthelasma , volvulus , all drained from him , at least , at last , all that ugly shit .sx But most of his lessons , to my surprise , aren't about the human body being a machine :sx they are about hospital administration .sx Sometimes , late at night , Odilo and I sneak out alone on to the roof of the boarding-house , while the Germans dream their dreams .sx