by Uwe Tellkamp
‘Could you possibly move up closer?’ Eschschloraque asked with a smile, a smile he managed very well, Meno thought. It was slightly sceptical, with an admixture of modesty and dignity, with no hurt pride and no condescension. Room was found for him on the bench, in the corner where Meno and Schevola were at right angles to him, beneath the carved figure of the nightwatchman with his lantern, French horn and eyes eaten away by woodworm. Schevola leant over to Meno, whispered, ‘Have you read the article he published about your book?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ She seemed to be astonished. ‘He attacked you. You, Altberg and I, he said, are a dubious Romantic faction.’
‘No. For him it’s medicine, for me it spoils my day. So why should I read it. I’m not a masochist.’
‘But if you have to deal with the things he writes?’
‘Then I can’t avoid it. But only then.’
‘And you can bear sitting at a table with him?’
Meno gave a pained smile. ‘That’s the way things are in this little faculty, you see. Jousting by day and in the evening you have a beer together. You’ll have to get used to it.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Who says it doesn’t bother me? But –’
‘You’ve a family to feed,’ Schevola said with a dismissive wave of the hand.
‘You’re rather quick to jump to conclusions.’ Meno finished his beer. ‘Beware of that, if I may give you a piece of advice. It’s very attractive in moral terms and gives you a good strong heartbeat, but it’s not good for literature. We must talk about that when we discuss your manuscript.’
‘What’s not good for literature?’ Eschschloraque’s voice was hoarse, perhaps it was the thick cigarette smoke filling the room. He had a silk cravat that he had tied in a dashing knot in the open collar of his white shirt.
‘Moralizing,’ Meno replied and looked at Eschschloraque. ‘To put it another way: knowing all the answers.’
Eschschloraque gave him a searching look, gently rubbed his carefully shaved cheeks. Munderloh leant forward.
‘I’m interested in you, Herr Eschschloraque.’
‘I call that a chivalrous lifting of the visor. I thank you for that and for your courage in admitting your shyness with such a direct approach,’ Eschschloraque replied, raising his glass to the publisher. ‘Fräulein Schevola for example, about whom our friend Schiffner had such nice things to say to you, is not at all shy. That’s why her black thoughts are initially hidden. And I will be bold enough to make a further psychological leap: the problem, my dear, is the censor, who is right. – Incidentally, Herr Munderloh, what about me? Your publishing house, so full of wit and without me?’
‘I meant it personally – if you’ve no objection. Stalinism and esprit, how can the two be combined?’
Eschschloraque smiled. ‘Sleep quicker, comrade, your bed is needed. Well, Herr Rohde, memories of your days living in a kommunalka?’
‘But surely you can’t … all those who were killed,’ said the Frankfurt press officer, incredulous.
‘People have to be killed,’ Eschschloraque replied coolly. ‘Don’t behave as if people didn’t die on your side too. Enemies have to be eradicated, that is a sensible, tried and tested custom of ages that achieve great things. And it is definitely better to die for a great cause than to live for a mediocre one. The genuine democrats among you should protest before the main course; sharp wits avoid the digestive process.’
‘Let’s talk about football.’ Redlich squinted across at the Frankfurt press officer, but he refused to play along.
‘You are trying to be polite, my dear Redlich, and to save us embarrassment. Look, the way it is with enemies is this: Herr Rohde, whom I respect, is a subtle wag and recently permitted himself a – let’s say – employee’s joke. As an editor who knows what’s right and proper, he marks up a manuscript in pencil; however, when he encounters a passage that is ambiguous, he inserts a red comma. You’ – Eschschloraque smiled – ‘have put a red comma after socialism. Is that supposed to mean something? That socialism is perhaps not the last word.’ Eschschloraque gave a short lecture on monks who commented on the works they were copying out in an equally subtle way, by emphasizing certain letters, over several pages and chapters, so that in a collection of noble love songs the Latin for ‘Troubadour thou art a dead loss’ was hidden, though clearly visible to the philologist’s practised eye.
Schiffner took out his genuine buffalo-horn comb and ran it through the white quiff over his striking features, bronzed from holidays in the Crimea. ‘That’s why you sounded so terribly calm on the telephone.’
‘Rossi was great! He more or less won the World Cup for the Azzurri on his own,’ Redlich cried.
‘You can write?’ Munderloh leant over towards Judith Schevola.
‘I try to,’ she replied, jutting out her chin defensively.
‘She tries to!’ The publisher slapped his hand on the table. ‘Could you kill a dolphin?’ Once more the conversations round the table fell silent.
‘That would depend on the situation, Herr … What was the name?’
Munderloh stared, first at her, then at Schiffner, who was enjoying himself. Eschschloraque clasped his hands under his chin, observing, alert to every nuance, his expression that of a scientist waiting for the result of an interesting experiment that is immoral but unavoidable.
‘The name is Munderloh. I like you. Though your answer that it depends on the situation was all too predictable. It always depends on the situation.’
‘I hate dolphins,’ Schevola said coldly. ‘They’re always so nice and kind, they save shipwrecked sailors and come to the help of the poet Arion, they dance round Bacchus’s boat and bask in the early light of the sun … but I don’t trust them.’
‘There is a school of evil dolphins,’ Redlich muttered. ‘Black dolphins who are not favourably disposed towards us –’
‘What are you on about, Josef?’ The Frankfurt press officer waved his hand in displeasure.
‘I’d like to kill a dolphin once, just to see what the other dolphins do. Whether they’re still so nice and kind, whether the cliché’s correct – or whether they’d then show their true character,’ Schevola said, not avoiding Munderloh’s hard look – from eyes that seemed like light-blue stones, a look like a rod, like a surgeon’s blunt probe, Meno thought.
‘I will read your manuscript,’ Munderloh said after a pause during which the table had been silent, the only sounds coming from the front of the Jägerschänke. ‘I will read it if Hermes will let me have it. – Do you like swimming?’ He took out a visiting card, scribbled something on the back and pushed it across the table to Schevola.
‘Only against the tide,’ she replied after she’d read what was on the card and given Munderloh a long, hard stare.
‘Great. – So it’s not just slaves you produce in this country.’
‘Don’t say that, Herr Munderloh, please don’t.’ Redlich was leaning forward. ‘They have dealings with the darkness, Lichtenberg, Waste Books, notebook L. And feel the pressure of government as little as they do the pressure of the air, notebook J.’
Munderloh nodded. ‘Perhaps you have the wrong idea of conditions in our country. Perhaps I have of conditions here. Let us drink a toast to what unites us.’ He raised his glass, which he’d filled with red wine, and drank to Redlich.
‘We, who know what a valuable thing truth is … And it is also a truth to present language in its purity …’ Redlich sank back onto the bench, his chubby face with the moustache and puffy eyes that reminded Meno of Joseph Roth’s face was in shadow again. Schiffner placed his hand on his arm.
‘However that may be, you, all of you’ – Redlich indicated the row of Frankfurters with a sweeping gesture – ‘are much better dressed than we are.’ He laughed, put his hand over his mouth.
‘You don’t like swimming, with or against the tide, is that right?’ Munderloh leant forward, clasped his hands. They were str
ong, peasant’s hands with hair on the back of the fingers; Meno was sure Munderloh would be able to crack walnuts between his thumb and forefinger. He would survive the camp – that angular head, the nose that looked as if it had been hewn with an axe, that lumberjack’s back, the liberators would see all that when they opened the gates; he’s a man that survives, Meno thought and frowned because he was irritated at connecting Munderloh’s appearance with the camp; it seemed a perfidious thought. Redlich didn’t reply to Munderloh’s question. The party broke up. Philipp Londoner was waiting outside the Jägerschänke and greeted Eschschloraque and Schiffner familiarly, Schevola had disappeared.
It was warm at Philipp’s, Marisa had turned the heating up; Meno and Eschschloraque soon took their jackets off. Philipp seemed to feel cold, he walked up and down restlessly, rubbing his hands, occasionally doing a knees bend when he stopped beside the little Azerbaijani copper table in front of the wall with the thousands of light-brown, blue, white and red spines of Reclam paperbacks. Eschschloraque knew about Meno’s relationship with the Londoner family but had still expressed surprise that he was spending the night at Philipp’s place. Meno had said nothing and on his part was wondering why Eschschloraque was there. Jochen Londoner knew him, Meno also knew that he was a frequent guest in the house on Zetkinweg in East Rome but was surprised at the familiar relationship between Philipp and Eschschloraque.
‘That nightwatchman,’ Eschschloraque said, slowly turning the glass of tea Marisa had given him round and reflectively watching the particles floating in the red liquid, ‘that nightwatchman in the Jägerschänke. Anyone who can write about spiders will notice a nightwatchman as well. What do you think, Philipp, does communism need nightwatchmen? I’m sure friend Rohde here would say yes, he relies on the immutability of certain affairs, especially those of humans – but who knows?’
‘Nightwatchmen? Rubbish. We’ve other problems.’
‘But it would be a rewarding question for your institute. It’s not as humorous a one as you might think.’
Philipp shrugged his shoulders, started walking to and fro again. Marisa came in, made herself comfortable on the sofa beside Eschschloraque, lit one of Philipp’s cigarillos.
‘Tell me instead what the evening was like, with the people from Frankfurt.’
‘A pretty mixed-capitalist soirée. They look on us with both pity and envy. Pity because we are so terribly naive and refuse to give up our belief that the written word can change the world. Envy because, at least in this part of the Fatherland, we are absolutely right. There’s also an element of fury. They don’t like it when we catch them slackening off. Their manufacturing conditions are not determined by the state. The fact that they keep going on about our generally mediocre paper confirms your thesis that under free-market conditions the spirit is like a cow grazing on superficialities. How are things at the Institute, anyway?’ Philipp worked as a lecturer at a Leipzig branch of the Institute for Social Sciences.
‘Nothing special. I’m not getting anywhere.’
‘Because you’re too young?’
‘No, that’s not the problem.’
‘Didn’t you apply for a professorship?’
‘I’ll probably get one but … the Institute’s losing its influence, it’s hardly taken seriously any more.’
‘Then go into politics.’
‘It’s a good thing to know your limits. I’m better off on the theoretical side.’
‘Which doesn’t necessarily say anything against you. Which doesn’t necessarily say anything for the practical side either.’
‘Yes. Theories can be powerful agents of change. And I’m not a demagogue, as old Goatee was, despite everything.’
‘A little more respect, if you please. He wasn’t that bad a politician, taking everything into account. Much better than him up there.’ Eschschloraque jerked his shoulder at a portrait of the General Secretary on one of the shelves.’
‘As a politician – maybe. As a human being … My department’s being cut back a little.’
‘What’s the reason?’
‘My name, I think, paradoxical as it may sound. And probably also because we were in England.’
‘Do you think so? A bit simple, if you ask me. Still, it is possible. They’re not exactly philosemitic, the comrades in the Politburo.’
Philipp broke off. ‘No more of that.’ He looked across at Marisa, who was calmly smoking and staring out of the window. ‘What did you mean with that about the nightwatchman?’
There was something of the clown about Eschschloraque’s face when he smiled. His wrinkled cheeks and the clearly defined bags under his eyes seemed to be part of a mask behind which cunning features were just waiting to leap out like jacks-in-a-box and perform somersaults in the momentarily clear space; also Meno had the impression that, for all his fine speeches, Eschschloraque’s greatest desire was to get up and do a backflip over the table. ‘So he’s made you think, has he, our nightwatchman? Well I’ve got one in the play I’m working on at the moment. I believe a nightwatchman is an idealist out of despair. There’s no one out in the streets any more – at least not officially – apart from him and the darkness. I don’t know, perhaps I’ll have a cat appear as well. His lantern is the only light in the dark. For it is dark, of course, – and not some cosy fairy tale in which the stars turn into silver thalers – and he’s awake. He carries his lantern through the darkness. And has to make do with that. He denies nature, more than that: he hates it – in his official capacity.’
‘Is that another of your defences of classicism against Romanticism?’
‘Why should I defend classicism against something that was cooked up by the English secret service? Unfortunately stupidity seems to be … a metaphor for immortality.’
Philipp burst out laughing. ‘Do you still keep dossiers on your enemies?’
‘That doesn’t concern friend Rohde,’ Eschschloraque replied. ‘Thank you for the tea, madam.’ He stood up and bowed to Marisa.
26
Clouds in April
‘Do you believe truth exists?’ Verena adjusted the pullover that she’d tied across her chest by the sleeves. Siegbert took his time replying. It was warm, April seemed to have taken out a loan from May. They were lying in the grass on a slope above Kaltwasser reservoir, Christian was watching the changing characters inked on the apple-green of the dam by wind and waves. A train of the Erzgebirge railway, small as a model train, was chugging along the opposite bank, steaming up the fir trees along the line.
‘Hey, Verena, I believe in Pink Floyd,’ said Jens Ansorge in bored tones, pulled one hand out from under his head, took the blade of grass he’d been chewing out of his mouth and inspected it suspiciously. ‘You know everything, Chrishan, can you tell me what that is? Tastes as bitter as anti-fever pills, yeuch.’ He pulled a face and spat out.
‘You watch what you’re doing, you mucky pup! Your slobber almost landed on me.’ Reina Kossmann threw back her head in disgust, Jens smirked, bursting imaginary balloons with this forefinger. Falk Truschler let himself fall onto his back and laughed his soft, hoarse, shoulder-twitching laugh. His movements were so shambling Christian felt as if Falk had only borrowed his body for a while; Christian tried to think of the mot juste: clumsy came to mind, and then he remembered sports lessons and Herr Schanzler directing a green-and-white-clad horde round the sports hall with geometries of Prussian precision; Falk’s angular movements as he drew back to throw the Indian clubs for hand-grenade practice, his way of running: legs sticking out sideways like a girl’s, his expression, wavering between despair and self-mockery, at the moment of releasing the club, his hands and fingers waggling, as now at Jens Ansorge’s little joke. Ungainly, he thought, that actually describes him even better than clumsy. But, as Meno said, ‘actually’ is a word to be avoided.
