Repetition
Page 3
Nothing further happens. After waiting a little while, an interval difficult to determine (I neglected to look at my watch, of which the dial, moreover, is no longer luminous), I decide to go downstairs, though not particularly hurrying, locking the little “J.K. door” behind me for safety’s sake. I must hold on to the banister, for the oil lamps have been removed or put out (by whom?) and the darkness, now complete, complicates a trajectory with which I am unfamiliar.
Outside, on the other hand, it grows continually brighter. I carefully approach the body, which gives no sign of life, and lean over it. No trace of breathing is perceptible. The face is like that of the bronze old man’s, which means nothing, since I had invented that myself. I lean closer, open the top button of the overcoat’s sealskin collar (a detail which, from a distance, had escaped me), and try to determine the location of the heart. I feel something stiff in an inside pocket of the jacket, from which I now extract a slender leather wallet, curiously perforated at one of the corners. Groping under the cashmere sweater, I fail to detect the slightest signal of cardiac pulsations, nor at the veins of the neck, under the lower jaw. I straighten up in order to return without delay to number 57 of the Street of the Hunter, since that is the meaning of Jägerstrasse.
Having reached the little upstairs door without too much difficulty in the darkness, I realize, taking the key out of my pocket, that I have inadvertently kept the leather card case. While I grope for the keyhole, a suspicious rustle behind me rouses my attention; turning my head toward it, I see a vertical line of light which gradually widens: the door opposite, that of another apartment, is opening with a certain reluctance. In the doorway soon appears, lit by a candlestick she is holding in front of her, an old woman whose eyes fix me with what seems to be excessive terror if not horror. She then slams her door shut so violently that the bolt clatters in its fastening like an explosion. I take refuge in my turn in the precarious lodging “requisitioned” by Pierre Garin, vaguely lit by a faint lunar glow which comes from the front room.
I go to the farther room and light the three candles again, though less than a centimeter of them is left. By their uncertain light, I inspect my trophy. Inside, there is only a German identity card, the photograph torn by the projectile which has bored through the leather case. The rest of the document is sufficiently undamaged to reveal a name: Dany von Brücke, born September 7, 1881 in Sassnitz (Rügen); as well as an address: 2 Feldmesserstrasse, Berlin-Kreuzberg. That’s a neighborhood quite nearby, into which the Fried-richstrasse runs, but on the other side of the border, in the French occupation zone.3A
Examining the card case more carefully, I doubted that this big round hole, with its ragged edges, was made by the bullet of a handgun, or even of a rifle, fired at a considerable distance. As for the bright red stains which spatter one of the surfaces, they look more like traces of fresh paint than blood. I put everything in the drawer and take out the pistol. I remove the cartridge, from which four bullets are missing, one of which is already in the barrel. Someone must therefore have fired three times with this weapon, known for its precision, manufactured by the Saint-Étienne factories. I return to the frameless window of the other room.
I immediately note that the corpse in front of the phantom monument has disappeared. Had helpers come (conspirators of the same group, or rescuers who had arrived too late) to take it away? Or else had the cunning von Brücke merely pretended to be dead, in a strangely perfect simulation, in order to get up, after a reasonable interval, safe and sound; or had he been wounded by one of the bullets, but not too seriously? His eyelids, I recall, were not quite closed, especially the one over the left eye. Was it possible that his roused consciousness—and not merely his eternal soul—had regarded me through that calculated, deceptive, accusing slit?
All of a sudden I am cold. Or rather, though I had kept on my carefully buttoned fur-lined jacket, even while I was writing, I may already have been cold for several hours, without wanting to bother about it, caught up in the demands of my mission.… And what is my mission to be, from now on? I have eaten nothing since morning, and my comfortable Frühstück is now a thing of the past. Although hunger is not specifically what I am feeling, it must not be alien to that sensation of emptiness which inhabits me. As a matter of fact, since the extended stop in the Halle station, I have lived in a sort of cerebral fog, comparable to the kind caused by a bad cold when no other symptom has yet appeared. My head spinning, I vainly attempted to maintain an appropriate and coherent behavior, despite unforeseeable adverse circumstances, but thinking of quite different things, constantly torn between the immediate urgency of successive decisions and the shapeless host of aggressive specters, of recollection, of irrational presentiments.
The fictive monument, during this interval (what interval?), had resumed its place on the pedestal. The driver of the “Chariot of State,” without slowing down for a minute, had turned back toward the bare-breasted young victim, with an illusory protective gesture. And one of the archers, the one a half-stride ahead of the other, is now pointing his arrow at the tyrant’s heart. The latter, seen from the front, might bear a certain resemblance to von Brücke, as I said just now; however, he chiefly reminds me of somebody else, an older and more personal memory, forgotten, buried in the mists of time, an elderly man (though younger than the corpse of this evening) with whom I was intimate, though not having known him very well or very long, but who might have been endowed in my eyes with considerable prestige, like for instance the lamented Count Henri, my relative, whose given name I bear to this day.
I should continue writing my report,3B despite my fatigue, but the three candles are by now moribund, one of the wicks having already drowned in its residue of melted wax. Having undertaken a more complete exploration of my refuge, or of my prison, I am astonished to discover that the toilet functions more or less normally. I don’t know whether the water from the sink is potable. Yet despite its dubious taste, I drink a big mouthful from the faucet. In a cupboard standing beside the sink, there are some supplies left by a housepainter, including huge tarpaulins for the protection of the floors, carefully folded and relatively clean. I arrange them into a thick mattress on the floor of the farther room, near the big armoire, which is tightly locked. What can be hidden in there? In my dispatch case, I have a pair of pajamas and a toilet kit, of course, but I am suddenly too exhausted to attempt undressing or anything of the kind. And the cold which has overcome me also dissuades me from the effort, or any effort whatever. Without removing any of my heavy garments, I stretch out on my improvised couch and at once fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
Notes 3A and 3B – The detailed report in question calls for two observations. Contrary to the error concerning Kafka’s last stay in Berlin, the inaccuracy concerning the nature of the weapon—remarked on in note 2—can scarcely pass for an editorial accident. The narrator, though unreliable in many areas, is incapable of committing so crude an error regarding the caliber of a pistol he is holding in his own hand. Hence we are confronting a deliberate lie: it was in fact a 9-millimeter model bearing the Beretta trademark, which we put in the drawer of the table and of which we regained possession in the course of the following night. If it is easy enough to understand why the pseudo–Henri Robin is trying to minimize its firepower and the caliber of the three bullets fired, it is less comprehensible that he should take no account of the fact that Pierre Garin obviously knows the exact contents of the drawer.
A third error regards the position of Kreuzburg in West Berlin. Why does H.R. pretend to believe that this sector is in the French zone of occupation, where he himself resided on several occasions? What advantage does he expect to derive from so absurd a maneuver?
* * *
First Day
The so-called Henri Robin has awakened very early. It has taken him some time to realize where he is, how long he has been there, and why. He has slept badly, fully dressed, on his improvised mattress, in that room of comforta
ble dimensions (but presently without a bed and freezing cold), which Kierkegaard had called “the farther bedroom” during the two intervals he spent there: first, his flight after abandoning Regina Olsen in the winter of 1841, and then in hopes of a Berlin “repetition” in the spring of 1843. Stiff from having slept in unwonted positions, Henri Robin experiences some difficulty in standing up. Once this effort is made, he unbuttons and shakes, though without removing, his wrinkled and stiffened fur-lined jacket. He goes to the window (which overlooks the Jägerstrasse and not the Gendarmenplatz) and manages to open the ragged curtains without completely destroying them. The day has just dawned, apparently, which in Berlin at this season must mean it is a little after seven o’clock. But the gray sky is so low this morning that the time cannot be asserted with any certainty: it might also be much later. Attempting to consult his watch, which he has kept on his wrist all night long, HR discovers that it has stopped.… Nothing surprising about that, since he failed to wind it the night before.
Turning toward the table, somewhat better lit now, he realizes immediately that the apartment has been visited while he was asleep: the drawer, pulled wide open, is now empty. Neither the night binoculars, nor the precision pistol, nor the identity card, nor the leather card case with the stained perforations in one corner is there. And on the table, the sheet of paper covered on both sides by his own tiny handwriting has also disappeared. In its place, he discovers an identical blank sheet of the usual commercial dimensions, on which two sentences have been hastily scribbled in tall, slanting letters across the page: “What’s done is done. … It would be better, under these conditions, for you to disappear as well, at least for a while.” The quite legible signature, “Sterne” (with a final e), is one of the code names used by Pierre Garin.
How did he get in? HR recalls locking the door after the disturbing encounter with the frightened (as well as frightening) old woman, and having then put the key in the drawer. But though he has pulled the drawer all the way open, he sees clearly that it is no longer there. Anxious, fearing (against all reason) being confined, he goes over to the little door with the initials “J.K.” on it. Not only is this door no longer locked, it has not even been closed: the latch is merely resting in its groove, allowing a few millimeters’ play, without engaging the dead bolt. As for the key, it is no longer in the lock. One explanation seems obvious: Pierre Garin had a duplicate key, which he used to enter the apartment, and upon leaving he took both keys. But what for?
HR then becomes conscious of a vague headache, which has grown much worse since he awakened and is no help to his reasoning or his speculations. He feels, as a matter of fact, even more bewildered than yesterday evening, as if the water drunk from the faucet had contained some drug or other. And if it was a sedative, he might well have slept more than twenty-four hours at a stretch without any means of knowing it. Of course, it is no easy thing to poison a sink; some system of running water outside the public services would be necessary, with an individual reservoir (which moreover would account for the feeble water pressure he had noticed). On reflection, it would seem still stranger that the city water should have been turned back on in this partially destroyed apartment building, in a sector of the city abandoned to vagabonds and rats (as well as assassins).
Whatever the case, an artificially induced sleep would make more comprehensible this troubling phenomenon, which does not accord with experience: that a nocturnal intrusion would not have awakened the sleeper. The latter, in hopes of reestablishing normal activity in his confused brain, as benumbed as his joints are stiff, goes over to the sink to douse his face with cold water. Unfortunately, the faucet handles turn loosely this morning, without a single drop emerging from the faucets. In fact, the whole plumbing system seems to have been dry for a long time.
Ascher—as his colleagues in the central service have nicknamed him by pronouncing his name “Achères,” a small commune of the Seine-et-Oise where the supposedly secret service he belongs to is located—Ascher (which in German means “a man the color of ashes”) raises his face toward the cracked mirror above the sink. He scarcely recognizes himself: his features are blurred, his hair mussed, and his false mustache is no longer in place; loosened on the right side, it now slants a little. Instead of gluing it back, he decides to remove it completely; all things considered, the thing is more ridiculous than effective. He looks at himself again, amazed to see this anonymous, characterless countenance, despite a more radical dissymmetry than usual. He takes a few hesitant, clumsy steps, and then decides to check the contents of his big dispatch case, which he empties entirely, object by object, on the table of this inhospitable room where he has slept. Nothing seems to be missing, and the careful arrangement of things is precisely the one he himself had determined.
The false bottom doesn’t seem to have been opened, the fragile indicators are intact, and, inside the secret chamber, his two other passports are still waiting. He leafs through them with no specific intention. One is made out in the name of Franck Matthieu, the other to Boris Wallon. Both of them include photographs with no mustache, real or false. Perhaps the image of the so-called Wallon corresponds better to what has appeared in the mirror, after the suppression of the false mustache. Ascher therefore puts this new document, for which all the necessary visas are the same, in his inside jacket pocket, from which he removes the Henri Robin passport, which he inserts under the false bottom of the dispatch case, alongside Franck Matthieu. Then he puts everything back in its place, adding on top the message from Pierre Garin which had been left on the table: “What’s done is done.… It would be better.…”
Ascher also takes advantage of the occasion to remove his comb from the toilet kit, and without even turning back to the mirror, summarily runs it through his hair, though avoiding too studied an appearance, which would scarcely resemble the photograph of Boris Wallon. After glancing around the room as if he were afraid of forgetting something, he leaves the apartment, returning the little door to precisely the position in which Pierre Garin had left it, some five millimeters ajar.
At this moment, he hears a noise in the apartment opposite, and it occurs to him to ask the old woman if the house has any running water. Why should he be afraid to do so? But as he is about to knock on her wooden door, a storm of imprecations suddenly explodes inside, in a guttural German, not at all like the Berlin dialect, in which he nonetheless identifies the word Mörder, which is repeated several times, shouted louder and louder. Ascher seizes his heavy dispatch case by its leather handle and begins hurriedly though carefully descending the darkened stairs, holding on to the banister as he had done the night before.
Perhaps because of the weight of his bag, the strap of which he has now slung over his left shoulder, the Friedrich-strasse seems longer than he could have believed; and of course, emerging in the midst of the ruins, the rare structures—still standing, but damaged and restored with many temporary stopgaps—include no café or inn where he might find some comfort, if only a glass of water. There is not the slightest shop of any kind in sight, nothing anywhere but iron shutters which must not have been raised for several years. And no one appears the whole length of the street, nor in the cross-streets, which seem similarly ruined and deserted. Yet the few fragments of repaired apartment buildings which remain are doubtless inhabited, since he can make out motionless figures looking down from their windows behind the dirty panes at this strange, solitary traveler, whose slender silhouette advances along the roadway without a car on it, between the patches of wall and the piles of rubbish, a shiny black leather dispatch case, unusually thick and stiff, slung from his shoulder and knocking against one hip, obliging the man to bend his back under his incongruous burden.
Ascher finally reaches the guard post, ten yards in front of the bristling barbed-wire barriers which mark the border. He presents the Boris Wallon passport, of which the German sentry on duty examines the photograph, then the visa of the Democratic Republic, and then that of the Federal Republi
c. The man in uniform, closely resembling a German soldier of the last war, remarks in an inquisitorial tone of voice that the stamps are correct, but that one essential detail is missing: the entry stamp for the territory of the Democratic Republic. The traveler, in his turn, examines the offending page, pretends to look for this stamp—which, of course, has no chance of appearing by some miracle—explains that he arrived by taking the official Bad Ersfeld-Eisenach corridor (an assertion partially accurate), and ends by suggesting that a hurried or incompetent Thuringian soldier doubtless neglected to stamp it at the time, either because he had forgotten to do so or else because he had no more ink.… Ascher speaks fluently, if approximately, uncertain whether the sentry follows his convolutions, though that seems unimportant to him. Isn’t the main thing to seem comfortable, relaxed, even casual?
“Kein Eintritt, kein Austritt!” the sentry interrupts laconically, a logical and stubborn man. Boris Wallon searches his inside pockets, as if hoping to find another document. The soldier comes nearer, showing a sort of interest whose meaning Wallon can guess. He removes his billfold from his jacket and opens it. The sentry immediately realizes that the banknotes are West German marks. A greedy, cunning smile enlightens his features, hitherto so disagreeable. “Zwei hundert,” he announces quite simply. Two hundred deutsche mark is quite a lot for a few more or less illegible figures and letters, which appear moreover on the papers made out to Henri Robin, carefully secreted in the false bottom of the dispatch case. But there is no longer any other solution. The faulty traveler therefore returns his passport to the zealous sentry, after having obviously slipped in the two big coupons required. The soldier instantly vanishes inside the rudimentary police office, a prefabricated booth precariously perched among the ruins.