Free Virginia Woolf by Ruth Gruber Page A

“Inthe room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo” often sang in my head.
    “I understand,” she said, “that you have been traveling. Where have you been?”
    “Germany, Poland, Russia, and the Soviet Arctic.”
    “The Soviet Arctic!” Leonard called out.
    I turned to look at him.
    “I didn’t think,” he said, hunching closer, “that the Russians allowed anyone to go up there.”
    “They said I was the first journalist.”
    “And you were writing for whom?” he asked.
    “The New York Herald Tribune .”
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-four.”
    “And how old were you when you wrote your essay on Virginia?”
    “Twenty.”
    Virginia seemed not to be listening, drifting off, when her housekeeper Lotte entered with a tray of teacups. She handed me one, but I put it on a small table next to me. I was afraid my hands would tremble and I would drop the cup. Virginia sipped her tea gracefully and began to speak again.
    “We were just in your Germany,” she said.
    Why did she call it my Germany? True, the thesis had been published as a trade paperback by the Tauchnitz Press in Leipzig. The publishing house, then 100 years old, was famous for printing the books of English and American authors such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, all for tourists who could not read German and wanted to read a good book while traveling. To be sure, I had sent her my first letter in 1931 while I was a student at Cologne University. But I had sent the published book from my home in Brooklyn in 1935. She had sent her answer to me in Brooklyn, and I had spoken with a New York accent.
    “We were driving through Bonn, on holiday,” she said. “Our car was stopped to let Hitler and his entourage pass.”
    From her diary of April 2, 1935, I later read her impressions as she watched the Nazi convoy:
Hitler, very impressive, very frightening. … No ideals except equality, superiority, force, possessions.And the passive heavy slaves behind him, and he a great mould coming down the brown jelly. 1
    In her parlor, puffing her cigarette, Virginia Woolf shook her head, still talking of Germany.
    “Madness, that country. Madness.”
    I felt I could talk comfortably about Germany; I had lived there from 1931 to 1932.
    “When I was an exchange student in Cologne,” I said, aware that Leonard was moving his chair closer to me, “I went to a Hitler rally held in a Messehalle , a huge hall near the Rhine. The family I lived with was terrified that I might be arrested, but I was determined to find out what that madman was really like.
    “There were guards and soldiers everywhere, but no one stopped me and I entered the hall with trepidation. I found a seat in a half-filled balcony near the stage. A brass band struck up marching music as, within minutes, the hall filled up with an army of stormtroopers in brown uniforms and heavy black boots, marching and waving flags with swastikas.”
    I paused. Had I talked too much?
    Leonard moved his chair closer, as Virginia took the cigarette holder out of her mouth. I went on:
    “The crowd went wild when Hitler entered and goose-stepped to the podium, followed by his entourage. The audience shouted, screamed, some applauded, others wiped their eyes in rapture. My heart was beating so loud, I thought one of those SS men would surely hear and maybe throw me out. But no one approached me.
    “The moment Hitler raised his right hand in salute, the band stopped playing, the stormtroopers stopped marching, the flags stopped waving. Hitler’s worshippers stood frozen.”
    Leonard nodded, as if to encourage me to go on. Virginia had still not resumed smoking.
    “Hitler,” I said, “was ranting against the Weimar Republic, ranting against America, and mostly against Jews. It was ahysterical voice that seemed to come not from his throat, but from his bowels. Terrifying.”
    “He has a terrifying voice,” Virginia agreed. “There is such horror in the