The Magician

Thomas and Katia visit Agnes and Eugene Meyer in Washington and have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House. Eleanor lauds Thomas’s speeches, which the BBC now broadcasts. Thomas asks Eleanor to help Mimi and Goschi, but she says that extricating anyone from Europe is impossible now.

At the Meyers’ home, several other guests, including a senator and a poet, are invited to dinner. When talk turns to rebuilding Germany, Katia notes with quiet rage that she has no interest in the project. Germany shouldn’t be rebuilt because ordinary German people are complicit in the barbarity of World War II. The barbarity itself is ancient, stemming from antisemitism that has been rife in Germany for ages. Katia declares that the Manns will never live in Germany again. Thomas sees the others at the table falling silent, impressed by Katia’s gravity.

In California, Klaus meets them. The US Army accepted him. Katia and Thomas are happy to see him filled with a new sense of purpose. Meanwhile, Agnes sends a young Jewish man to meet Katia and Thomas. The young man reveals the graphic truth about the Nazis’ treatment of Jewish people in the concentration camps. After he leaves, Thomas is shaken and phones the assistant secretary of state to confirm the news. In his next broadcast—to Germany, in German—Thomas declares that Germany’s crimes against the Jews will forever stain the country. Every German who is listening must believe the truth about the camps and call for Germany’s defeat in the war.

As the US becomes fully embroiled in the war, anti-German sentiment grows in the US. The FBI interviews Erika about her politics and sexuality. They interview Thomas as well. To escape the tense atmosphere, Thomas plans his book, attending concerts and hoping to observe Arnold Schoenberg, on whom he wishes to base his protagonist. Thomas considers Schoenberg the most important contemporary German musician, since he has shown that classical composition can be atonal (i.e., lacking a tonal center).

Nelly dies by suicide in December 1944. In April 1945, President Roosevelt dies. Thomas is dejected, since he’s unsure about Truman, Roosevelt’s successor. While Roosevelt could listen to nuanced arguments, Thomas fears that Truman may not share that gift. When the Manns hear of Hitler’s death, Katia opens a bottle of celebratory champagne. Thomas phones Heinrich to join them, but he isn’t in the mood to celebrate. He feels that Germany will fall into the hands of corporate America and that Thomas will support that move. Thomas hangs up.

Thomas has laid out the structure of his new novel, Doctor Faustus. Serenus Zeitbolm, the narrator, will be Thomas’s double, though milder than Thomas. Zeitbolm will watch as a more-talented counterpart makes a Faustian bargain. The talented, haunted composer will have Schoenberg’s mannerisms. The setting will be a Lübeck-like place in the 1920s.

When the war ends, Klaus goes to Germany, writing for Stars and Stripes, the magazine of the US Army. He covers German cities in the war’s aftermath. Erika and Golo are also in Germany, working for the BBC and a radio station, respectively. Golo goes to see the family’s house in Poschingerstrasse and finds it reduced to a shell. Klaus uses his army pass to go find Mimi and Goschi in Prague. Goschi wasn’t detained during the war, while Mimi spent several years in the concentration camp at Terezin, but survived. However, it negatively affected her health. Klaus writes to Katia to send Mimi money and clothes.

As Klaus witnesses the events in Germany, his letters home become increasingly irate. He writes about meeting an unrepentant Winifred Wagner, who still speaks about Hitler’s “Austrian charm.” Winifred’s statements should cause an uproar among Germans, but have little effect. Klaus grows even more despondent when he sees that Germans still don’t want to accept the truth about their role in their country’s fate.

In the weeks after the war, Thomas often thinks of his former friend Ernst Betram. He wonders how the man averted his eyes when synagogues were burnt, and Jewish people were dragged out of their homes. Michael’s visit home eases the melancholic period following the war. Although Michael makes acerbic remarks about the book Thomas is writing, wondering what Thomas knows about musical composition, Thomas is too entranced by Frido to care, performing magic tricks like he once did for his own children, even abandoning his writing for hours.

One day, Katia asks Thomas to read a couple of chapters from his new novel to the family at a predetermined time. As Thomas reads the first two chapters, he knows Katia will instantly know that he used young Frido as a model for the child Echo. In the chapters he reads, Echo’s arrival brightens the life of his uncle, the composer, but the child dies tragically of an illness, crying out, “Echo will be good, Echo will be good” (366) in a harrowing sequence. The group is silent after Thomas finishes reading. After a while, Katia asks Thomas if the reason only he befriended Frido was to use him as material for his novel. Thomas tells her he loves his grandson, but Katia walks away to join the others across the room.