Death in Rome

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  So he drifted away down the Corso, a long intestine stuffed with pedestrians and vehicles. Like microbes, like worms, like digestion and metabolism, they proceeded down the intestinal canal of the city. The weight of traffic was pushing Judejahn towards the Piazza del Popolo, but he felt that was the wrong way for him, and he turned back against the current, was jabbed and barged, but when he turned round and looked, he saw it gleaming, white and gold and illuminated by spotlights, and now he remembered, this was where he had driven up, the escort ahead, motor-cycle outriders to either side, and a long line of vehicles behind him containing Germans and Italians, top officials, dignitaries from the Party and the armed services. He pushed ahead, backwards, he had lost all sense of time and direction, the present became the past, but he kept his goal firmly in sight, the marble steps, the megalith, the white monument on the Piazza Venezia, the national memorial to Victor Emmanuel II, which, through some confusion or false information, Judejahn was convinced was the Capitol and moreover that it was a building of Mussolini's, a monument erected by the Duce, in honour of history, to crown the antique sites, and this was the white-and-gold-gleaming annunciation of the resurrection of the imperium. This was where he had driven up. Now he hurried towards it. Here on the right was the Duce's palace. No sentries? No sentries. In the shadow of night the walls were a grimy yellow. No one stood at the gate. No window was lit up. This was where he had driven up. A former visitor returning. Knock, knock on the door—the master of the house is dead. The heirs don't know you—they are among the bustling crowds on the Corso. Yes, he had crossed the square with the Duce, it had been Judejahn at his side, to lay the Führer's wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There were the sentries, feet apart, stiff and unflinching. Their posture was impeccable. But Judejahn felt nothing—no honour, no pride, no sorrow, no emotion. He was like a worshipper who feels nothing in church. He prays and God isn't there. He kneels down and thinks: The ground is cold and dirty. He sees the Virgin and he thinks: A piece of worm-eaten wood with paint on it. The people were not rejoicing. No singing, no huzzahs. Mopeds rattled past. No photographers appeared to bathe Judejahn in flashlights. A couple of tired carriage horses looked across at him from the cab-rank. Was he a ghost? He hurried up the marble steps. Behind him now were the columns of the magnificent temple which he wrongly attributed to Mussolini, and all that white splendour reminded him of something: it was a cake in the window of Süfke the baker, a cake that little Gottlieb had been fascinated by and never got to taste. And before him now was the black rump of the king's horse, Judejahn didn't know which iron-clad king it was, and he didn't care, he had never had any regard for the kings of Italy, from childhood up, influenced by the comic books of the First World War, he had thought of them as wielding umbrellas rather than swords. But as he stood there, he or little Gottlieb, he had a sense of grandeur, he thought of the Duce who had built all this and had himself been desecrated, and he felt the grandeur of the history that had had such monuments built to it, behind which stood Death, the ultimate inspiration. Judejahn was bathed in light. Rome glowed. But it seemed to him a dead city, ready for the chop, the Duce had been desecrated, history had turned its back on Rome, and so had ennobling Death. Now people lived here, they dared simply to live here, they lived for business or for pleasure—what could be worse. Judejahn looked at the city. It seemed to him to be absolutely dead.

  Late at night the Via del Lavatore is a dead street. The market stalls have been tidied away, and the shutters in front of the little eating-places, grey or green with age, blind the façades of the buildings the way grey or green cataracts blind the aged eye. In the little dead-end side-streets are the simple wine-shops of the people of the area, who live in small, high-ceilinged rooms in many-storeyed tenements. They sit on benches and stools at plain uncovered tables stained by leftovers and spilled wine, and order their half-litre of red or their half-litre of white, dolce or secco, and those who are hungry bring food with them wrapped in paper or in terracotta dishes, and spread it out before them on the tables, quite unabashed. Visitors are a rare sight in this part of town. Still, Siegfried is sitting outside one of these bars in the pallid artificial moon of a white lantern. A man is busying himself at his table, working an onion into a salad. Siegfried dislikes the taste of raw onions, but the man peels and chops with such gusto at the young green bulb, he anoints it with oil and vinegar and salt and pepper, he breaks his bread so reverently, that Siegfried is impelled to wish him 'Buon appetito', This pleases the man, who promptly offers him his wine to try. Siegfried is appalled by the thought of the man's glass, and the oily and spirituous contact the man's oniony mouth has already made with it, but he overcomes his disgust and tastes it anyway. Then Siegfried offers the man some of his own wine. They drink and talk. Or rather, the man talks. He talks in long, intricate and ornate sentences whose meaning is lost on Siegfried, who has only mastered one or two expressions from phrase-books. But precisely because he doesn't understand the man, he is glad to spend time in his company. For a moment Siegfried is happy, and the two men sit together like old friends, one of whom has a lot to talk about, while the other listens to him or lets his attention stray, listening instead to some ghostly voice he doesn't understand either, but which, for the moment, he thinks he does. When the man has finished his onion, he sops up the last of the oil with his piece of bread. He gives the saturated bread to a cat which has been watching him imploringly for some time. The cat thanks him, and takes the bread under an arch; that's where her babies are. Siegfried bids 'Felice notte', He bows. He wishes a happy night to the man, the bar, the cat and her young. Perhaps he wishes himself a happy night also. This late hour of the evening finds him content. Now he goes into the bar to buy himself a bottle for the night. Perhaps he won't be able to sleep. If you can't sleep, it's a good thing to have some wine in the house. It occurs to Siegfried to buy a second bottle of wine. He would give it to the man he was talking to just now. Siegfried thinks the man is poor. Maybe the present will please him. But Siegfried is afraid of insulting the man if he really is poor. He doesn't buy another bottle. As he goes out, he bows once more to his table-companion. Another 'Felice notte', Did he do the right thing, though? Why did he feel awkward about his kind thought? He doesn't know. He's full of doubt again. It's difficult to do the right thing. His contentment has deserted him. He's no longer happy.

  Siegfried's steps echo in the Via del Lavatore in the quiet of the night. His shadow runs ahead of him, his shadow merges with him, his shadow pursues him. Shortly, Siegfried is surprised by the noise and the gurgling of the Piazza di Trevi. Hordes of visitors are standing around the miraculous fountains and talking in a babel of different languages. Tour groups are industrious and offer night-classes in cultural history and ethnography. Photographers flash and click away: I was in Rome, you know. Haggard Roman youth leans over the edge of the fountain, and uses long poles to fish out the coins that the visitors threw in out of superstition, gullibility or just for fun. The tour guide says a person will return to Rome if he leaves money in the fountain. Does the visitor want to come again, does he want to return, is he afraid of dying in his own joyless country, does he want to be buried in Rome? Siegfried would like to return, he would like to stay. He won't stay, he throws no coins in the fountain. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die at home. Would he like to be buried here? His hotel is close by the fountain. He can see its narrow, crooked façade reflected in the water. Siegfried goes inside. He walks through the porch. Alone

  the old man behind the porch was cold. He shivered at his reception desk in the draughty entrance hall, in front of the board where the keys hang. He wore felt slippers on account of the stone floors, he had a coat thrown over his shoulders in the manner of an old veteran, he covered his small bald head with a black floppy hat in the manner of an old professor, he looked like an émigré, like an exiled liberal politician from liberal times, but he was only the manager of this little hotel. He was born an Austrian and would die an
Italian, soon, in a few years, and it didn't matter to him whether he died as an Italian or an Austrian. Sometimes we would talk, and now, on my return, he greeted me with some agitation: 'A priest is waiting for you!' 'A priest?' I asked. And he said, 'Yes, he's waiting up in your room.' And I thought: There must be some mistake, and at this hour of the night. I climbed up the stairs, the stairs of the old hotel, little hollows had been worn in the stone steps, the walls were buckling, the floor on my storey was uneven. I made my way up an incline to the badly fitting door of my room. No light shone through the broad cracks in the weathered door, and I thought once more: A mistake. I opened the door, and there I saw him standing by the window in front of me, a tall, black silhouette, truly a priest, in the light of the spotlights that were still being beamed at the Trevi Fountain, its wild and fabulous creatures, its baroque, fleshy Olympus and its waters, roaring and lulling like the sea. He looked tall and gaunt. His face was pale, but perhaps that was just the spotlights. I turned on the light in the room, the naked bulb hanging over the broad bed, the letto grande of the hotel industry, the letto matrimoniale, the marriage bed that had been leased out to me, to me alone, for me to lie on, naked, bare, chaste or unchaste, alone, the bare naked light bulb over me, alone or with flies buzzing around it, and the rushing of the fountain and the babel of voices from all over the world, so they say, and he, the priest, now turned to me with a timid gesture of welcome, he raised and spread his arms, a movement which evoked the pulpit, and he was wearing a cassock, and then straight away he dropped his arms again, as though ashamed of the gesture, and his hands scuttled into the folds of his black garment like two shy reddish beasts. 'Siegfried!' he called out. And then he spoke hurriedly, falling over himself. 'I found out where you were staying, please excuse me. I don't mean to disturb you. I'm sure I'm disturbing you, and if I am I should leave right away.'

  Standing in front of me, tall and gaunt, confused and in clerical robes was Adolf, Adolf Judejahn, the son of my once so mighty and terrifying uncle, and I remembered the last time I had seen Adolf, in the Teutonic castle. He was small, younger than me, a poor little soldier in the Junker school uniform, in the long black army trousers with red stripes, little Adolf in the brown Party jacket, little Adolf under the black cap, worn at an angle over the regulation cropped and parted hair. I had run around like that myself, and I had loathed it, having to dress like a soldier or an official, and maybe he had hated the get-up as well, but I didn't know that, I never asked him whether he hated the Castle, the service, the soldiers and officials; I thought of Uncle Judejahn and I didn't trust Adolf, I kept out of his way, and I even thought he was like my brother Dietrich, that he enjoyed going around in uniform or took advantage of it and had his eye on promotion, and for that reason I was amused to see him dressed now in the garb of a priest, and I thought about the disguises we liked to appear in, sad clowns in a mediocre farce. I saw him standing there and I told him to sit down. I pushed the rickety old hotel chair towards him, swept the books and newspapers and manuscripts aside on the marble-top dresser, I found the corkscrew in the drawer, opened the bottle of wine I'd brought with me and rinsed the tooth-mug in the wash-basin. I thought: Judejahn has disappeared, Judejahn's copped it, Judejahn's dead. And I thought: Pity that Uncle Judejahn can't see his son now; pity he can't see him sitting on my rickety chair; such a pity, I think he would have had a fit, and that's something I'd like to see even today. Was I exaggerating? Was I giving him more significance than he really had? I poured the wine and said: 'You drink first. We'll have to share a glass. I've only got one.' And he said: 'I don't drink.' And I: 'But as a priest, surely you're allowed to drink a glass of wine. That's not a sin.' And he: 'It's not a sin. But thanks, anyway. I don't want any.' And after a while he went on, 'I'm not a priest yet. I'm still only a deacon.' I drank the wine, refilled the glass, and took it across to the broad bed. I lay there on the broad bed, and it was like a hint that my life was unchaste, which wasn't the case as far as this room was concerned, and I don't know what unchastity is, or rather I do, but I don't want to know, and I leaned back, rested my head on the pillow, and I asked him: 'What's the difference?' And he said: 'I'm allowed to baptize.' And then, as if having given the question further thought: 'I'm not allowed to celebrate Mass yet. I have no power of absolution. I can't forgive sins. Only when the bishop has ordained me am I allowed to forgive sins.' 'That'll keep you busy, ' I said, and then I was annoyed with myself for having said it. It was stupid and unfunny and crude, and actually I like priests. I like priests I don't know. I like priests from a safe distance. I like priests speaking Latin, because then I don't understand them. I don't understand them, but I like it when they speak in Latin, I like the sound of it. If I could understand what they were saying, I wouldn't like listening to them so much. Maybe I do understand them, just a little. Or maybe I only think I understand them a little, and I like that, because in fact I don't understand them at all. Maybe I even misunderstand them, but misunderstanding them wouldn't matter, because if they're right and there is a God, then He will see to it that I take the right sense from their words, even if they are not the sense His servants mean to convey. If I could understand the words of priests as they were meant, I wouldn't like them. I'm sure priests can be just as stupid and obstinate and opinionated as the next man. They invoke God in order to rule. When Judejahn ruled, he invoked Hitler and Destiny. And Adolf? Whom did he invoke? I looked at him. He looked at me. We didn't speak. The tourists, no pilgrims, spoke in their babel. Time flowed with the water in the fountain. That was outside. There were flies buzzing inside. Buzz. Dirty flies.

  There might be rats nesting in the cellar, but Judejahn felt drawn to it, he felt drawn down off the wide and monotonous Via Nazionale, down into this cellar, down the damp, dirty stone steps, gluttony drove him, thirst drove him, he was lured by a sign 'German Cooking', by a sign 'Pilsener Beer', German food for a German man, Pilsen was a German town, it had been cravenly surrendered, Pilsen was a Czech town, it had been lost through betrayal, the Skoda works were important for the war effort, beer was important for the war effort, gallows were important, conspiracy, subhumans, rats, foreign workers, danger spotted and averted by the Reich Security Office, Comrade Heydrich had taken action, Comrade Heydrich, who was like a twin to him, was dead—Judejahn survived. Always the same reproach. The voice reproaching him was Eva's. And he thought, Why is she alive, why did she survive? Thinking wasn't his business. Thinking was quicksand, dangerous, forbidden territory. Writers thought. Cultural Bolshevists thought. Jews thought. The pistol thought more rigorously. Judejahn had no weapon on his person. He felt unarmed. What was the matter with him? Why didn't he go out to a good restaurant, in good clothes, with a valid passport and plenty of money, and fill his belly, fill it the way the Jews were doing again, with pâté de foie, with mayonnaise, with tender plump capons, and then go on to a nightclub, well-dressed, moneyed, drink a skinful and pick up something for the night? He could be well-dressed, well-accoutred, randy as the Jews. He could compete, he could make demands. So why didn't he? Guzzling, boozing arid whoring, that was the Landsknechts' way, that was the way their song went: he had sung it in the Freikorps, they had sung it round the camp fire with Rossbach, in the Black Reichswehr camp they had bellowed it out, in the killing grounds. Judejahn was a Landsknecht, he was the last surviving Landsknecht, he whistled the tune in the desert, he wanted to guzzle and booze and whore, that was what he felt like doing, something was pinching his balls. Why didn't he take what he wanted? Why the cookshops, the poky bars, why this cellar? He was drawn to it. It was a fateful day. There was paralysis in the ancient air of the city, paralysis and catastrophe. It was as though no one in this city could manage a fuck any more. It was as though the priests had cut the balls off the city. He went down, Pilsener beer, he descended into the Underworld, Czech rats, barrels of Pilsener, he came upon a stone cellar, extensive and vaulted, a few tables, a few chairs, a bar at the back, rusty oxidizing beer-taps, beer-slops like vomit on
the aluminium surface. There were two fellows sitting at a table, playing cards. They looked at Judejahn. They grinned. It was an evil grin. They greeted him: 'You're not from this part of the world!' They spoke German. He sat down. 'Hummel Hummel,'{†} said one of them. The waiter came.

  'A Pils,' said Judejahn. The men grinned. With the waiter they spoke Italian. The waiter grinned. The men called Judejahn 'Comrade'. One referred to the other as 'My buddy'. Judejahn felt at ease. He knew their sort: gallows birds, desperadoes. Their faces were like faces in a morgue, ravaged by some horrible disease. The beer arrived. It tasted metallic. It tasted like fizzy lemonade mixed with poison, but at least it was cold. The glasses were frosted. The men raised their frosted glasses with the poisonous-tasting beer and drank to Judejahn. They were the right stuff. Under the table they kept their knees and heels clenched together, and their buttocks. Judejahn did too. He had always been the stuff. The waiter brought food. The men must have ordered it. Fried onions sizzled on large meat patties. They ate. They stuffed themselves. The men liked the onions. Judejahn liked the onions. They got acquainted. 'It tastes just like home,' one of them said. 'Crap!' said the other, 'it's like Barras's. Barras was the only place I got decent grub.' 'Where did you serve?' asked Judejahn. They grinned. 'Take off your glasses,' they said, 'you're no spring chicken yourself.' Judejahn took off his glasses. He looked at the pair of them. They were his true sons. He wanted to drill them. If he drilled them, they'd be useful. He thought: Pair of hard bastards. 'Don't I know you?' asked one of them. 'I'm sure I've seen you somewhere. Well, never mind.' What difference did it make? They gave the name of a unit. Judejahn knew them well, a notorious outfit, trouble, heroes that went in where the Wehrmacht feared to tread. They'd wasted a lot of people. They were under Judejahn's general command. They had solved some of the Führer's population problems for him. They had committed genocide. Judejahn asked after their commanding officer, a sharp fellow, a real animal. They grinned at him. One of them traced a noose in the air, and pulled it tight. 'In Warsaw,' said the other. Hadn't Warsaw been taken, hadn't Paris been taken, wasn't Rome occupied? 'What are you doing now?' asked Judejahn. 'Oh, driving around,' they said. 'Since when?' 'Long time.' 'Where you from?' 'Vienna.' They were no Germans, they were Eastern mixed race, Austrian SS, they'd slipped through all the controls. Judejahn eyed them the way a cobra eyes a toad, and they thought he was just a big bullfrog. But he also looked at them with the calculation and benevolence of a snake-breeder, with the calculation and benevolence of a reptile-house keeper, supplying reptiles to labs for poison and vivisection. Judejahn sent men and boys to the bloody, stinking labs of history, he sent them to the testing ground of Death. Should he tell them who he was? Should he recruit them for the desert? He wasn't afraid of giving them his name; but having eaten and drunk with them, his rank forbade him to give himself away. The murderer-in-chief doesn't sit at the same table as his henchmen: that wasn't the officers' mess ethos. They said, 'We've got a car.' They said they'd 'organized' one. They'd learned to organize. They were still busy organizing. Judejahn paid the bill. It amused him because they presumed he'd pay for everything. Judejahn never paid for everything. He had various currencies in his wallet, and he couldn't find his way around all the different crumpled banknotes, the inflated denominations of a war-ruined currency. The war was Judejahn; and it was as though he'd helped to devalue money and inflate figures; it both satisfied and disgusted him. The men helped Judejahn to work out the exchange rate; they organized such money-changing transactions as well; and they could launder money, and pass off fake bills for real. Judejahn despised money and got through it. But he made sure he wasn't robbed. Little Gottlieb was impressed by the rich, and hated them. Judejahn liked their life-style, but not their lives. He had tried to do better. The rich were stupid. They had thought of Judejahn as a lackey who would do their work for them. But the lackey became a gaoler and locked them up. But in the end the prisoners managed to get away from Judejahn. The rich were rich once more. They were free. They were clever. Little Gottlieb once again stood in the corner eating his heart out. Once in a while there was a crumb from their tables for him. The constellations were not unfavourable to Judejahn. Wallenstein believed in the stars. Mars, Mercury and Clio living in rat holes. Exhausted, drained, quarrelsome, envious, covetous, selfish and forever greedy, they never stop their attentions. The press announced their abortions. Judejahn left the Pilsener cellar with the Eastern Germans, he left with the cadaver-faced, grinning men, left with the useful organizers, the Eastern Hummel-Hummel-callers, his soul-brothers and comrades-in-arms. Comrade rats. Rats climbed up to the street.