Traveller of the Century

by Andres Neuman

  Here’s to the other Spain, Álvaro said, emptying his tankard, which they always destroy. It happened with the Catholic monarchs, and then the Counter-Reformation, it went on happening for three centuries, it happened again in 1814, and then again in 1823, who knows when it will happen next. A country as conservative and as monarchist as Spain can only breed cynical rebels, and cynical rebels can only end up being punished by the fatherland (the fatherland doesn’t exist, said Hans, you blame everything on the fatherland! But it’s patriots, not the fatherland, who do the punishing), no, no, you’re wrong, of course it exists, that’s why it causes us so much grief. (Well, in that case, from a purely patriotic standpoint did you grieve over the loss of Spain’s colonies?) Did I? On the contrary! I rejoiced! It was high time we gave up the pretence of empire and focused on our own disasters. And the same goes for the Turks in Athens. I was delighted by poor Riego’s actions, he was a true patriot! A Freemason, a Francophile and a Spanish general (what did he do? Tell me), well, instead of going to defend Spain’s colonies in the Americas, he revolted, demanded the reinstatement of the Constitution of Cádiz and led the movement into Galicia and Catalonia. Perfect! Why attack the Americas? I doubt Bolívar will treat his people any worse than our Viceroys did (perhaps not, but let’s wait and see what the national oligarchies do after independence), ah, that’s a different matter, I think they’d be well advised to unite. (You see, empires are real, fatherlands aren’t!) You’re an obstinate soul, aren’t you? (So, what happened to the general?) Who? You mean General Riego? Nothing, he was executed to loud applause in a pretty square in Madrid.

  In honour of Sophie’s visit, the organ grinder had decorated the entrance to the cave with a row of geometric shapes cut out of newspapers, hanging from the clothesline. Lamberg and Reichardt had helped him dust off the largest rocks and he had improvised some seating out of burlap sacks stuffed with wool. In order to create some atmospheric lighting, he had placed the open umbrella in front of a row of candles. He had arranged the earthenware tumblers, the plates, the bottles and tin mugs neatly on two trays, each on a straw chair. Outside were several little piles of wood and kindling to light the fire for the tea. Between them they had managed to give Franz a bath in the river; he had put up a struggle and growled throughout while Lamberg held him in his vice-like grip. In the middle of the cave, the barrel organ stood on its rug like an arbitrary statue or humble effigy—the organ grinder had changed the barrel for one containing the most lively dances. Although the plan was to have a simple picnic on the grass, the organ grinder knew how much this visit meant to Hans, and he wanted to make a good impression on Sophie. Do you think it’s too gloomy? he asked Reichardt, pointing to the umbrella. Reichardt rubbed his nose, made a sound like a blocked drain, and said: It’s fine so long as we can see her cleavage.

  As she stooped to enter the cave, Sophie’s expression divided into two moments, as though half of her had preceded the other half. In one sense she had expected better, and in another worse. She found it awful and touching, as inhospitable as any grotto and yet believable as a dwelling. It took her a few moments to adjust to the dirt, to move in such a way as not to soil her dress without letting it show. Once she had overcome her awkwardness, she began to feel at home in the coolness of the cave, and, to Reichardt’s delight, bobbed delightfully when she accepted her first cup of tea. Elsa reacted differently. She took one look inside the cave, pulled a face, and elected to remain outside helping Álvaro prepare the tea.

  Once the tablecloth and the food were spread out, the picnic turned out to be agreeably eccentric. Elsa and Sophie held their little tin mugs as if they were china teacups, sipped their tea slowly, and munched modest mouthfuls, fingers in front of their lips. Reichardt wolfed down everything in sight, spilling crumbs all over the place and belching, admittedly less explosively than usual considering there were ladies present. Lamberg said nothing, his cheeks bulging with lumps of bread as he ate. Álvaro spoke more loudly than Elsa would have liked, guffawed prodigiously, egging the excited Franz into the middle of the tablecloth, from which his master shooed him away gently so that he would not step on the ladies’ skirts. The organ grinder was a silently attentive host, intervening here and there, giving the impression of accompanying everyone while scarcely uttering a word. Sophie, who noticed his behaviour immediately, admired the harmonious atmosphere the old man had managed to create amid this diverse group of picnickers whilst passing almost unnoticed. Hans, who had been worried she would disapprove of the cave or his friends’ appearance, breathed a sigh of relief. And, were it not for who he was and for his age, he could have sworn the organ grinder was flirting with her a little.

  Once they had finished their tea, the organ grinder proposed a round of dreams. Hans explained the ritual to Sophie who seemed to think it a delightful diversion. As no one elected to start, the organ grinder recounted the first dream. Last night, he said, I dreamt about a group of fellows eating soup in a tavern. The table was in darkness except for one or two red faces. Suddenly one of the men hurls a spoonful of soup into the air, the soup flies out of the dream then lands back into the spoon as if it were a die. Then the man drinks it and says: Six. And the same occurs with each spoonful. That, Álvaro surmised, means you wanted some luck. Don’t talk rot, said Reichardt, it means he wanted something to eat! The last interesting dream I had, said Hans, was a week ago. I dreamt I was on an island. But this was a strange island because it wasn’t surrounded by sea. What, no water at all? Lamberg asked curiously. No, replied Hans, no sea, no water, nothing. The island was surrounded by an enormous void. So, how did you know it was an island? said Lamberg. Good question, said Hans, and I don’t know how, I just knew it was an island. And I wanted to leave, I wanted to leave for some other islands I could see in the distance. But it was impossible, I didn’t know how to get to them and I became scared. Then I began running round in circles, like a headless chicken, until the island gradually began sinking. And I had to choose between leaping into the void and going down with my island. So what did you do, for Christ’s sake? Reichardt asked. I woke up, Hans grinned. Good! the organ grinder said approvingly, very good! And what about you, ladies, haven’t you any dreams to offer us? Elsa shook her head and lowered her eyes. Sophie looked at him a little embarrassed and said: I don’t know, well, I never dream much, last night, this is silly, but last night …

  After the end of the round, Sophie told them a fable she remembered reading as a child. What if the dreams of those who love one another are woven together as they sleep by silken threads, she said, threads that move the characters in their dreams from above like puppets, controlling their fantasies so that when they wake up they are thinking of one another? What rot! Reichardt barked. I believe it, Hans rallied. I don’t, said Lamberg. What if the threads get tangled and you wake up thinking about the wrong person, Álvaro jested. Elsa looked at him, disconcerted. The organ grinder, who had been nodding thoughtfully, declared suddenly: Like a great handle, you mean? The handle of dreams! Yes, Sophie smiled, that’s exactly it.

  Hans had slipped away for a moment in order to relieve himself amid the pine trees, when he heard Sophie call his name. He stood waiting for her, kissing her neck as she arrived. Hans, my love, she said, breathless from running, your old man is wonderful, a real character! We must bring him to the salon so that everyone can see him. No, not to the salon, he said. Why? Sophie asked, are you ashamed of people meeting him? Of course not, Hans said earnestly, lying, but the organ grinder isn’t a fairground attraction. He’s my friend. He’s a wise old man. He likes a quiet life. Well, she said, returning his kiss, there’s no need to get annoyed, just promise me we’ll come here again. Elsa doesn’t like it, said Hans. I know, she nodded, she’s ill at ease, although I’m not sure that that’s due to the cave. You mean … Hans probed. Him, of course, Sophie replied laughing.

  That night, the interminable wall Hans dreamt of was the same one Sophie saw herself scaling, daunted by how tall it was and surprised a
t being naked, without knowing what awaited her on the other side. Above the wall, the branch of a hollow tree trembled beneath Álvaro’s weight. He lay curled up in an awkward ball, balancing precariously. At the foot of the hollow tree, Elsa was burying a violin in the hole in which the organ grinder sat playing dice with a man with no face, swathed in black wool.

  What are we translating today? Sophie asked as she came in. Realising she was in the mood for work, Hans struggled to ignore the erection in his breeches. This effort excited her, for she had arrived in a state of desire and felt like tormenting him a little. But Hans’s self-restraint was such that Sophie ended up thinking he preferred to work.

  That afternoon they weren’t going to translate. At any rate not from one language into another—a certain Mr Walker had written to Hans on behalf of the European Review asking him for an essay on contemporary German poetry. The fee was good and they paid half up front, which was rare. Hans had accepted without a second thought. He suggested to Sophie that they write the essay together. Walker says he’d like us to include a woman poet, he explained. You can tell Herr Walker, she retorted, that our best poets will be included on their own merits, thank you very much.

  Sophie began writing down a list of names: I would mention Jean Paul, Karoline von Günderrode, the Schlegel brothers, Dorothea, of course, and Madame Mereau. We could also talk about the lays of von Arnim—doesn’t he have a castle near here?—and those of Clemens Brentano. Not forgetting his sister Bettina’s delightful ones (I haven’t read any of them, confessed Hans), too bad, Monsieur, because there’s a most enlightening one by her which ends:

  If your girl is faithful, who can tell?

  Although she begs the Heavens

  For your love to stay close by

  If your girl is faithful, who can tell?

  Included! Hans declared laughing. And what do you think of Brentano and von Arnim? she asked. To be honest, he sighed, they remind me of those students who go around with a guitar, a bandoleer and a German leather jacket, smelling flowers and singing about medieval exploits. And yet if you were a medieval princess, I wouldn’t even be able to speak to you. I’d be a commoner who obeys his liege lord and dies from the plague. That’s the reality of it. Reality, said Sophie, is many things at the same time. In poetry you can be here and there, in the present and in the past, in a castle or at a university. All right, said Hans, all I’m saying is that if we could see what the past was really like we would be speechless with horror. Another thing that irritates me about that idiot von Arnim, is his hatred of France—what are we to do, burn half the books in our libraries? But don’t you think it’s a good thing to rescue popular poetry? said Sophie. If there were anything popular about poetry, replied Hans, the people would be reading it in the street. Oh let me guess, the dear fellow wished to capture the essence of popular poetry without the people realising it! Isn’t that a French tradition? My dear, said Sophie, smiling, politics blinkers you, and you are being unfair on von Arnim. He’s one of Germany’s most underrated poets. If he is virtually unknown it isn’t simply because people don’t read poetry, it’s because he’s a more difficult poet than he appears, filled with death and darkness. In addition, he is detested by his Catholic friends for being a Protestant, and by the fanatical Protestants for having Catholic friends. You won’t find any cheap patriotism in The Youth’s Magic Horn. In the authors, perhaps, but not in the texts. You never know what the soldiers are fighting for in his war songs, only that they are scared, they die, they are in love and they long to go home. I used to love the sentry’s song when I was a girl:

  No my boy, don’t be sad,

  And let me await you

  In the rose garden

  Among the green clover …

  I’ll not go to the green clover!

  I’m obliged to stay here

  In the garden of weapons,

  Weighed down with halberds.

  If you fight, may God help you! …

  Everything always depends

  On the will of God!

  Who believes such a thing?

  The one who does is far away,

  He is the one giving battle!

  He is a king! A king!

  Halt! Who goes there? Stand back! …

  Who was singing there? Who was it?

  Only the poor sentinel

  Singing at midnight.

  Midnight! Sentinel!

  All right, all right, said Hans, included!

  Well, said Sophie, drawing a line under her list, those are my choices, what about yours? I’d start, replied Hans, with the Jena poets, of course. I admire their way of life as well as their work, isn’t that part of what poetry is? A way of living a different life. There are poets who seem sure of their roots, which may be a tradition, a genre, a country—no matter. I like the wandering poets, the ones who are not rooted anywhere. That’s where the younger of the Schlegel brothers and the poets of the Athenaeum come in, they wrote in a fragmented way, they weren’t looking for a system, or didn’t believe they’d ever find one, they were continually searching. I’d like to include Tieck, because he describes his library as though it were the world and he a wanderer. And Hölderlin, because, in spite of everything, his poetry shows us we can’t be gods, much less Greeks.

  Hans felt another erection—this often happened when he indulged in an excess of literary criticism with Sophie.

  Ah, he smiled, I’ve left the best until last—Novalis (your Novalis lived in a dream world, too, Sophie contended), true, except it wasn’t fantasy that interested him, but rather the unknown. His mysticism was, shall we say, practical. A mysticism through which to explore the present. (I understand, she said, but I’m surprised, wasn’t he a religious poet?) No, exactly, that’s the point! I think Novalis was like Hölderlin, his hymns describe the impossibility of overcoming the earthly condition, when he says “I feel in my depths, a divine weariness”, his weariness is worldly, his disillusionment is rational. (Yes, she said, but he also wrote: “Who, without the promise of the skies could bear the earth and all its lies?” How do you explain that? How can you understand Novalis without heaven?) You’re right, I disagree with him there. (Then why all the interest in Novalis, you, the atheist? Didn’t your poet compose canticles to the Holy Virgin and even write a treatise on Christianity?) Touché, touché, Novalis fascinates me because I don’t quite accept him, I have to struggle with him in order to admire him. And since I never quite succeed, I constantly go back to him. I don’t think anyone should completely agree with a poet of genius, unless he also believes himself a genius. Don’t laugh! The question is—why must spirituality be the exclusive preserve of believers? Why should we atheists relinquish the unknown? My ideal as a reader, for we all have one don’t we? Would be to read Novalis without the idea of God. (Do you really think he can exist if you take away his religiosity?) Novalis used religion as a lever (Hans, my love, you’re the strangest critic I’ve ever met. I think religiosity in art can be moving, look at sacred music), precisely, and why are we atheists stirred by religious music? Because we transcend it, or rather we bring it down to earth. And music makes this possible because it has no dogma, it takes the form of a passion, nothing more. One last thing and then I promise I’ll be quiet, bear in mind that Novalis wrote his best poems after he lost his love, who died very young. Who knows what wonderful earthly poems he might have composed to a love who was still alive. In contrast (in contrast? Sophie echoed, sitting astride him), er, in contrast I have you on top of me.

  Hans and Sophie lay, half-undressed, gazing at the ceiling, at the gentle progress of the spiders’ webs. He was breathing noisily and rubbing the tips of his toes together. She smelt faintly of violet water, and the stronger, damper odour of another flower. Sophie sat up, kissed his foot, told him she had to leave, and got up to drink water from the jug. The semen Hans had spilt over her thighs began to trickle down her legs as she walked. When she stepped over their discarded clothes, a drop fell onto an open-mouthed shoe
.

  (Before he met Sophie, Hans hated his feet, or he thought he hated them—they were hopeless at dancing, rather stubby and the slightest touch made them recoil. He felt they were guilty, but of what he did not know. Guilty of being the way they were, averse to being shoeless, getting cold at night. That afternoon when Sophie bared his feet for the first time, she studied them at length and gave them her simple blessing: I like your feet, she said. And she planted a kiss on the tip of his big toe. Nothing more. It is the small things in life that change you, reflected Hans. A man who has walked as much as you shouldn’t be ashamed of his feet, it would be churlish. From that moment on, Hans began walking barefoot around the room.

  Hans and Sophie had decided to go on an outing to the country rather than stay inside working. The day was too splendid, too fragrant. Elsa gladly agreed to the change of plan as it allowed her to go to the market square duly accompanied and without the risk of arousing suspicion. Even so, she asked to take a separate carriage in order to conceal her lover’s identity, which, in any event, Hans and Sophie had known for a while.

  Half-an-hour before going out, as he did every afternoon when he was expecting Sophie, Hans bathed his feet in warm water, salts and essential oils. He soaked them in the tin tub. He stirred the water with his ankles, let it ripple through his splayed toes, he massaged them, perceiving, as though for the first time, that they were ticklish. As he explored the wet soles of his feet, he noticed himself becoming excited, and experienced a delicious feeling of urgency and calm. He sat for a moment in the tub, closed his eyes. He emerged naked and went to shave in the front of the painting. Over the washbasin, he rubbed his face, hands and forearms with water, pounce and soap. He didn’t dry himself immediately. He thought about masturbating but didn’t, partly so he wouldn’t be late and partly as a sweet form of punishment. He used a soft towel to dry his body and a new sponge for his face. He dressed, pulled on his shoes with a sense of regret.