“As of late,” he said, “our literature is neglecting the death motif. Everything pretty much just wants to be alive.”
“You really shouldn’t concern yourself with such things,” Kobler reassured him dismissively. Sure, as a child he had enjoyed going to the graveyard to visit his father, his grandparents, or good old Aunt Maria, but the World War had changed all of that. “What’s gone is gone!” he had told himself, and then moved to Munich.
At that time—1922—Munich was one big mess and the opportunity to exploit the political situation presented itself to Kobler. After all, he didn’t have a thing to eat. And as a sprig of the middle class, he was already a convinced right-winger and had no idea what the left wanted. Although deep down he was never really as far right as his new acquaintances were because, after all, he still had a sense of what was possible. “After all, everything is possible,” he told himself.
One of his new acquaintances even belonged to a secret political society with which the police back then sympathized deeply because it was even more radically right-wing than they were. His name was Wolfgang and he fell in love with Kobler. But Kobler never let him have his way. Wolfgang procured a position for him just the same, because he was not only passionate but also quite capable of loving somebody selflessly.
And so Kobler fell into a job at a nationalistic-minded bank on the verge of bankruptcy, only then to switch over to a bicycle shop when the banker was arrested. He did not last very long there and became a traveling salesman of skin cream and practical joke products from Württemberg. Then he peddled stamps door to door, and finally he wound up in the auto industry through the agency of another Wolfgang.
Nowadays when he thought back to this time he really had to strain to remember exactly how he had gotten by. Often he only just managed to slink past the snares that life sets for us. “You must have a good guardian angel,” a prostitute once told him.
He did not like thinking about his past, much less talking about it. That is, he often felt like he had to cover something up, like he had done something wrong, which of course he hadn’t, when seen from within the framework of the prevailing social order.
This is why he preferred to talk about the future while drinking Chianti.
“The World War of the future will be even more gruesome,” he explained to Schmitz, “but it pretty much comes as no surprise that we’ve still got people in Germany who are looking for another war. They just can’t get used to the fact that we lost our colonies, for instance. For instance, an acquaintance of mine outlined in black the former German colonies in his stamp album. He looks at them every day. And the rest of the colonies—the English, Italian, Portuguese ones and whatnot—were sold off, and at giveaway prices at that. And the French colonies, well, I think he burned those.”
Schmitz listened attentively.
“I, Rudolph Schmitz,” he stressed, “am convinced that you Germans will reclaim all your lost territories without striking a blow. And we German-Austrians will likewise align ourselves with you. I only have one thing to say: the Holy Alliance equals the League of Nations, Napoleon equals Stalin!”
“I’m not sure yet,” answered Kobler skeptically, because he had no idea what the Holy Alliance was supposed to mean. “So who’s Stalin?” he asked.
“That’s not so easy to explain,” said Schmitz restrainedly. “It’d be better if we returned to the topic: I, Rudolph Schmitz, am convinced that there will not be another war between the bourgeois Great Powers of Europe because nowadays it’s considerably cheaper to exploit nations in a peaceful, mercantile manner.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing,” nodded Kobler.
“I’m delighted to hear that!” said Schmitz happily, and grew lively once again. “But consider America for a second! Don’t forget that the United States of North America wants to relegate Europe to a colony. And they’ll do it too if Europe doesn’t come to an agreement—we’re already a mandated territory!”
“But will we come to an agreement?” asked Kobler, feeling superior.
“We’ve got to put an end to our past once and for all,” said Schmitz excitedly.
“I personally wouldn’t have anything against that,” Kobler consoled him.
“These passport and customs shenanigans are just pure insanity!” wailed Schmitz.
“When seen from a higher point of view,” said Kobler serenely, “you’re quite right, but I think it’s going to be pretty hard for us to come to an understanding because nobody trusts anybody, everybody thinks that the other guy is the bigger crook. I’m thinking of Poland in particular.”
“Have you ever been to Poland?”
“I’ve never been anywhere.”
“Well, I have, and I even fell in love with a Polish woman. My dear sir, there are basically decent people everywhere! Somebody has got to start throwing themselves behind this idea of coming to an agreement!” He threw back the rest of the fourth bottle of Chianti.
“Let’s get another bottle,” Kobler decided, and fixed his gaze on the lady at the counter while Schmitz eagerly ordered it. “So that’s Italy!” he thought. He was gradually slipping into an exhibitionist mood. “I can think more nimbly when I’ve had something to drink,” he said.
“So what!” thought Schmitz.
“And if I haven’t had anything to drink,” he continued, “thinking often really hurts me, especially when it’s about these international political problems.”
The waiter brought the fifth bottle, and Kobler kept getting more and more inquisitive. “What does ‘pan’ actually mean?” he asked.
“Ultimately, the universe,” pontificated Schmitz. “And in the case of Pan-Europe it means the United States of Europe.”
“That I know,” Kobler interrupted him.
Schmitz slammed his fist against the table and bellowed, “But without Great Britain, thank you very much!” And then he suddenly had to yawn. “Excuse me.” He composed himself. “I just yawned, but I’m not even that tired. It’s merely stomach gas, which develops particularly strongly in me when I’m a bit tipsy. And that reminds me, have you ever heard of my war novella? Sadly it wasn’t a pecuniary success because I combined the gruesome realism of war with my own gruesome brand of fantasy. A kind of wartime version of Edgar Allan Poe. Does that name ring a bell?”
“No.”
“Yes, the art is gradually vanishing,” muttered Schmitz. He let a thunderous one rip and then once again grew sentimental. He was a moody creature.
“If I’m going to read something, I’d prefer it be a true story than a made-up one,” said Kobler.
“That’s just the generation gap between us,” nodded Schmitz, and smiled paternally. “Sometimes I just don’t get your generation. Sometimes your theories seem insipid, insubstantial, and non-Dionysian in a higher sense. In my youth I was able to recite half of Faust by heart, and all of Rimbaud. Ever hear of the drunken ship? Excuse me for a moment—I’ve got to run to the john.”
And Kobler watched as Schmitz stepped out, clenching his teeth and frantically balling his fists. He really had to brace himself so as not to keel over. “Could I be just as full?” he asked himself worriedly. “In any case, he’s one interesting guy.”
It was just about time to hit the road when the interesting guy came staggering back to the table. Outside on the tracks, the nonstop railroad cars to Ventimiglia were already waiting. Both gentlemen spoke a little more about politics in general, about art in general, and then Schmitz complained particularly about European absentmindedness in general. But another proper conversation failed to take shape because neither gentleman could really collect himself by now. Kobler quickly wrote a postcard to Perzl: “Just drove by your erstwhile windmill in Brescia. Regards, Kobler.” Schmitz wrote below: “Flying kisses sent from the unknown hands of your most humble, Rudolph Schmitz.” The gentlemen then paid the bill. The waiter cheated them and afterward commended himself with the roman salute.
Schmitz raised his arm to give the f
ascist salute. Kobler did the same. So did the lady at the buffet.
CHAPTER 15
THE TWO GENTLEMEN ALMOST COLLAPSED when they left the warm, smoky restaurant and stepped out into the fresh night air. This is how drunk they were.
They were staggering around in a most despicable manner, and it took quite a while before they finally found their way into one of the nonstop cars to Ventimiglia.
The two gentlemen were quite taken with each other, especially Schmitz who was unbelievably delighted to have met Kobler. Deeply moved, he kept thanking him for allowing him to accompany him to Spain, all the while dubbing him Baron, Majesty, General, and Councilor of Commerce.
But suddenly Kobler was no longer really listening. The fatigue with which his drooping eyelids had been grappling since Verona now knocked him out flat, and he gave laconic answers, often of only one word.
“And why exactly is His Eminence going to Barcelona?” asked Schmitz.
“Egypt,” muttered His Eminence.
“Why Egypt, Herr veterinarian?”
“Registry office,” moaned the veterinarian.
“Political?”
“Possible!”
“And now for the interview!” yelled Schmitz, and let himself get carried away by a sudden wave of enthusiasm. “An interview like none other!” He pulled a notebook from his chest pocket so that he could take down Kobler’s answers in all due diligence. Out of sheer intoxication he no longer knew what he was doing.
“Might I ask,” he exclaimed, “the Herr Lieutenant Colonel what he thinks about the Mind-Body Movement? And what about the Body-Mind Movement?”
Kobler wrenched open his eyes and gazed at him with ineffable intimacy. He even tried smiling and then slurred, “My gracious young lady, I’m all yours.”
“Now I feel sick to my stomach,” howled Schmitz. “Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach!” He leapt up in horror and darted out of the room to vomit.
Kobler gazed after him in surprise. Then he made a resigned gesture and slurred, “Women are unpredictable.”
Such was the condition in which the two gentlemen left Milano, the metropolis of Northern Italy. And this condition remained essentially unchanged for the remainder of the night. Although they fell asleep, their sleep was restless and agonizing, rife with dark and mysterious dreams.
For instance, Schmitz dreamed, among other things, that he was striding across Arcadian meadows in the summer: his feet were nimble and his senses exhilarated. It was right around the fin de siècle and he was eavesdropping on a group of fair Hellenic women frolicking around a sacred grove. “Pan-Europa,” he shouts, she being classically the most beautiful. But the saucy Pan-Europa puts him in his place. “Whosoever goes forth shall be shot dead,” she calls out to him arrogantly, and peals forth a silver laughter. But here things get a little too dull for him, so he transforms himself into a bull, namely into a pan-bull. Pan-Europa likes this. Breathing heavily, she throws herself around his pan-bull neck, covering his pan-bull nostrils with voluptuous kisses. But alas, in the midst of kissing him, the classical, beautiful Pan-Europa transforms herself into the nasty Frau Helene Glanz from Salzburg.
And shortly after leaving Milano, Kobler began dreaming of his poor brother, Alois, who had been blown to pieces by an enemy grenade during the World War. Alois appears as a dead soldier in a metropolitan cabaret and reenacts to an exclusive audience the grenade blowing him to pieces back then. Then he goes and scrapes himself back together again like a good little boy. This is done very gracefully. And the audience sings along with the chorus:
“Limbs get tossed,
But the war’s not lost!”
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS AROUND NOON WHEN THE TWO GENTLEMEN awoke. They had slept through Genoa entirely and were now approaching San Remo.
Outside was the sea, our primordial mother. That is, the sea is supposed to have been the place where life originated hundreds and hundreds of millions of years ago, only later to crawl forth onto land where, being forced to either adapt or perish, it continued to evolve in that marvelously complicated way.
Schmitz realized that Kobler was looking at the sea for the first time. “So what do you think of the sea?” he asked him.
“I didn’t think it would be any different,” Kobler answered apathetically. He was still lying down, looking very haggard.
“Calm down, my dear sir!” Schmitz consoled him. “My skull is hurting me just as much as yours, but I’m restraining myself. We shouldn’t have gotten so drunk in Milano.”
“We should’ve restrained ourselves in Milano,” lamented Kobler.
“Vintage 1902,” muttered Schmitz.
They were now riding alongside the sea but they did not actually see anything of it, even though they passed first the Italian Riviera di Ponente and then the French Côte d’Azur, no less. They had to submit themselves to another official customs control and passport inspection in Ventimiglia, a border town between these two coasts. It was here that Kobler felt the most nauseous. Even Schmitz was mucking around on the toilet for nearly an hour. They had to pay a bitter price for their Milanese Chianti. And the bitterness of this price was, as is so often the case in life, vastly out of proportion with the sweetness of the pleasure enjoyed. Kobler in particular could not enjoy this world-famous landscape. He also could not eat anything, vomited at every sharp turn, and looked into the future with gloomy eyes. “I haven’t even achieved the goal of my trip yet and I’m already dead,” he thought dejectedly. “Why am I even going?”
Schmitz kept trying to get him to think about something else. “Look,” he said in Monte Carlo, “here the palm trees grow on the very platforms! I can’t shake the feeling that Western Europe is significantly more bourgeois for having won the World War. I don’t want to know what’ll happen when the Western Europeans finally figure out that, ultimately, they lost the World War! Know what’ll happen then? Then Social Democrats will become ministers here too.”
“Here in Nice,” Schmitz stated, all the while smiling sarcastically, “the clocks ought to be turned back not just by an hour, but by a whole forty years.” When he was alone, however, he did sometimes feel right as rain in the atmosphere of 1890, even though this meant he was contradicting himself.
Antibes made Schmitz think, among other things, of Bernhard Shaw. He thought: that was one witty Irishman. Or he thought of old Nobel, who made the very noble gesture of founding the Nobel Prize after watching people blow each other up with his dynamite.
Now the train was leaving the sea and would return to it again in Toulon. “We’re almost in Marseille now,” said Schmitz. It was already late in the afternoon; the sky was dark blue.
Outside was Toulon, the naval base of the French Republic. The sight of the gray torpedo boats and armored cruisers roused all sorts of childhood memories in Schmitz. And so he remembered how, back when he was a child, he had been allowed to look around one of the armored cruisers of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian fleet in Pola with his posh aunt Natalia. But his aunt soon went down below with a deck officer, leaving him alone up above. He had to wait for her for nearly half an hour. And he was terribly afraid because the gun barrels started moving all by themselves.
“I just don’t understand the French democracy,” he now thought melancholically in Toulon. “This armament madness is only natural to the Fascists, so long as you take their criminal egoism into consideration, but the French democracy, with its European mission? So you’ll say, La France has got to prepare itself for war against Mussolini because, after all, he’s got his eye on Nice and Corsica and even wants to annex the great Napoleon for himself. And sadly, dear Mariann, what you’re saying there is just logical!”
They finally reached Marseille.
It is well known that all the larger harbor cities distinguish themselves with a colorful life, but Marseille is particularly distinguished.
The center of Marseille’s colorful life is the old harbor. And the center of this old harbor is the bro
thel district. We shall return to this later.
As the two gentlemen descended the wide stairs of the Gare Saint-Charles, Schmitz already felt considerably better while Kobler was still feeling rather faint. He also still felt like he could not think properly.
“ ‘The Marseillaise’ originated here in Marseille,” Schmitz instructed him.
“Just keep it to yourself,” Kobler rebuffed him in a weak voice.
Night had fallen right after they left Toulon, and now the two gentlemen had no greater desire than to be able to fall asleep as soon as possible in a wide, soft French bed.
They checked into a small hotel on the Boulevard Dugommier, which had been recommended to Schmitz as being extremely tasteful and reasonably priced. Whoever made this recommendation must have been exceedingly malicious because the hotel was not tasteful but rather a sleazy hot-sheet hotel and thus not reasonably priced. Upon arrival, though, the two gentlemen failed to realize this—they were, after all, already half asleep when they walked into the reception. They went silently up to their rooms and undressed automatically.
“Hopefully you’re not a sleepwalker,” wailed Schmitz.
“That should be the least of your worries,” joked Kobler, and then fell into his bed.
CHAPTER 17
THE NIGHT DID THE TWO GENTLEMEN THE WORLD of good. This time they did not have any dreams after having been freed of the monotony of the train tracks and wheels.
“I feel like a newborn baby today!” warbled Schmitz the next morning, and gleefully tied his tie.
Kobler was also cheerful. “I’m really looking forward to Marseille,” he said.
After getting dressed, the two gentlemen went for a stroll along the Canebière, that world-famous thoroughfare. Then they rode the bus past the Prado and out to the Corniche, a peaceful street permitted to hug the coast, and thereupon they took a motorboat out to the islet of the romantic Count of Monte Cristo, riding past old, useless fortifications. Thereupon they took an audacious elevator up to those uncannily steep rocks upon which the Notre-Dame de la Garde rests. Thereupon an all-encompassing panorama presented itself to them.
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