My struggle with the German tongue began in mid-October and lasted nearly the full academic year. As the mostprominent figure in Hitler studies in North America, I had long tried to conceal the fact that I did not know German.

　　I could not speak or read it, could not understand the spoken word or begin to put the simplest sentence on paper. Theleast of my Hitler colleagues knew some German; others were either fluent in the language or reasonably conversant.

　　No one could major in Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill without a minimum of one year of German. I wasliving, in short, on the edge of a landscape of vast shame.

　　The German tongue. Fleshy, warped, spit-spraying, purplish and cruel. One eventually had to confront it. Wasn'tHitler's own struggle to express himself in German the crucial subtext of his massive ranting autobiography, dictatedin a fortress prison in the Bavarian hills? Grammar and syntax. The man may have felt himself imprisoned in moreways than one.

　　I'd made several attempts to learn German, serious probes into origins, structures, roots. I sensed the deathly powerof the language. I wanted to speak it well, use it as a charm, a protective device. The more I shrank from learningactual words, rules and pronunciation, the more important it seemed that I go forward. What we are reluctant to touchoften seems the very fabric of our salvation. But the basic sounds defeated me, the harsh spurting northernness of thewords and syllables, the command delivery. Something happened between the back of my tongue and the roof of mymouth that made a mockery of my attempts to sound German words.

　　I was determined to try again.

　　Because I'd achieved high professional standing, because my lectures were well attended and my articles printed inthe major journals, because I wore an academic gown and dark glasses day and night whenever I was on campus,because I carried two hundred and thirty pounds on a six-foot three-inch frame and had big hands and feet, I knewmy German lessons would have to be secret.

　　I contacted a man not affiliated with the college, someone Murray Jay Siskind had told me about. They were fellowboarders in the green-shingled house on Middlebrook. The man was in his fifties, a slight shuffle in his walk. He hadthinning hair, a bland face and wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing thermal underwear beneath.

　　His complexion was of a tone I want to call flesh-colored. Howard Dunlop was his name. He said he was a formerchiropractor but didn't offer a reason why he was no longer active and didn't say when he'd learned German, or why,and something in his manner kept me from asking.

　　We sat in his dark crowded room at the boarding house. An ironing board stood unfolded at the window. There werechipped enamel pots, trays of utensils set on a dresser. The furniture was vague, foundling. At the borders of theroom were the elemental things. An exposed radiator, an army-blanketed cot. Dunlop sat at the edge of a straightchair, intoning generalities of grammar. When he switched from English to German, it was as though a cord had beentwisted in his larynx. An abrupt emotion entered his voice, a scrape and gargle that sounded like the stirring of somebeast's ambition. He gaped at me and gestured, he croaked, he verged on strangulation. Sounds came spewing fromthe base of his tongue, harsh noises damp with passion. He was only demonstrating certain basic pronunciationpatterns but the transformation in his face and voice made me think he was making a passage between levels ofbeing.

　　I sat there taking notes.

　　The hour went quickly. Dunlop managed a scant ............