Death in Rome

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  The square is no square but an oval curve, an ellipse, and Adolf wondered whether Nero might not have had his circus there, whether the obelisks pitched in the middle of it might not have seen the four-horse chariot races that still provide excitement for cinemagoers in our day, whether the cross had stood here where Peter had hung head down, and had won his tragic victory over Nero and Nero's lyre, and over all singers and all emperors to come. From the roof over the colonnades, Bernini's saints gesticulated like excited onlookers down into the oval, but they didn't seem to be crucifying anyone today, there was no animal-baiting, no retiarius finishing off the murmillo, no charioteers taking the curve, only the coaches of the travel companies vying with one another, Rome and the Vatican and the Holy Father and the tomb of the Apostle were offered for little money and in quick time, and still to look forward to there was the Blue Grotto of Capri, Tiberius's castle, Botticelli's Primavera in Florence, a gondola trip in Venice, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Others arrived on foot, and crossed the square in groups: girls' schools, little bosoms jouncing in blue uniform blouses; scouts with little flags, bare knees and dashing cowboy hats, neckties and boyish eagerness; ancient congregations in grey and black, among the perch and the tench the occasional pike, mindful of his career; communities under the care of their vicar who wanted to get away from the village for once in his life; British women's institutes, American ladies' clubs, bored by endless afternoons of bridge, parties of German visitors, spurred on by their guides, hurry hurry, so much still to be seen, lunch was waiting for them in Monte Cassino, now please hurry. But the children are dawdling, holding their quick, avid pulses under the cool flowing water of both fountains, and here come the mothers with their newest offspring in their arms, running up the stairs with babies in white lace to be baptized.

  'Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.' Christ saw them as uncomprehending, vulnerable and helpless, and He wanted to protect the unprotected, and Peter, crucified upside-down in the Circus, and buried on the slope of the Vatican Hill, was to be Caiaphas the rock, the unshakeable foundation against which 'the gates of hell shall not prevail'. He lay buried on the Vatican Hill, but the wolf likes to disguise himself as a shepherd, and the robber appears in shepherd's guise; kings, tyrants, dictators and presidents, all graze their lambs, shear their sheep and slaughter their flocks for their own ends, and the preachers of enlightenment who came forward and cried, 'You are no lambs, you are free, you are no sheep, you are men, break out of the herd, abandon your shepherd,' in what panic, in what deserts they drove the herd, which yearns for the homey smell of the stall, and even for the reek of the slaughterhouse. Adolf strode through the cathedral doors. His boyhood training strode at his side. His training was incomplete, he had broken it off, and had set his face against it. But now it was with him again, accompanying him. When he was alone, speaking to someone, to his fellow-deacons, the cultivated teachers at the seminary, to his confessor, then Adolf was freed of the past in the Teutonic castle, free of its slogans, but when he was in a crowd, surrounded by crowds, confused and embittered by them, then they stirred up in him the methods of his Nazi instructors, the principle of exploiting the masses, despising the masses, directing the masses, and the Party bosses had pastured their sheep, and very successfully, so that the lambs had flocked to them. Adolf felt a profound need to disregard the world's bustle, the frenzied processes of history, what was left was a tub of blood, the repulsive, warm blood of the victims, but each time the world and history came near and got into his thinking, he would wonder whether by putting on his priestly raiment he had really succeeded in cutting himself off from all this killing, or whether for all his rituals and devotions he wasn't part of an organization that—unwillingly, tragically, with a grotesque inevitability—found itself in league with the killers. Did salvation lie in renunciation, in flight, in solitude, was the hermit the only prototype of survival? But the solitary man always seemed a figure of weakness to Adolf, because Adolf needed support, because he was afraid of himself; he required community, even though he doubted its worth. Glorious pillars pillars pillars, Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, one couldn't fail to think of them here, but the pillars of their edifice were glorious but cold, the stucco majestic but cold, the ornate floor ravishing but cold. Charlemagne rode up on a horse, a cold man on a cold horse, and Adolf strode on down the nave, and there was the slab of porphyry where the emperor had been crowned, igneous rock, quartz, feldspar and mica crystals, cold cold cold. And the emperors were anointed and then took it as carte blanche to go out and extend their power, to win horrible battles, their thrones were cold and the splendour of them stolen, and the grass was trodden down in the battle, and the warriors lay there battered and cold. Why did the Church get involved with emperors and generals? Why not just ignore them all, in their purple and their frockcoats, their braided uniforms and dictator leather? Why weren't they seen for what they were, men who formed alliances with God and misused the Cross for quarrels, for gluttony and fucks, for gold and land and naked ambition? There were chapels all around, and priests were busy at the altars. They were reading Masses, saying prayers, deep in meditation, devout, clean-living men, but they were at the same time employees performing their duty, doing their day's work, and once this wicked thought had occurred to him, it put an end to all reverence, and the altars were like counters in a huge department store. To either side were confessionals, stout wooden fortresses, and confessors sat in these hallowed shrines like bank-clerks—the believer could confess his sins in any language, and forgiveness would be granted him in any language. Even the confessionals seemed cold and draughty to Adolf; as cold as the marble tops of the money-changers.

  Adolf felt alone in the huge, lofty splendour that didn't seem lofty to him except in the literal sense, he felt deserted by God and by his faith in Him, he felt assailed by doubt, perhaps tempted by the Devil, who perhaps wasn't a devil, because how could a devil have made his way into the House of God, into St Peter's castle, into this hallowed and blessed shrine? And it was only the oil-lamps burning over the tomb of the Apostle that gave the chill place any warmth, but the colossal shadow of a worshipper darkened the mild, contemplative light of the oil-lamps, and made it seem like the grave of a commercial councillor. Then the sight of the admired Pietà gave Adolf back his breath and his faith, it freed the man struggling in snarls of ideas, suffering, shock, she seemed like compassion to him, all-embracing love, Adolf wanted to love, even if he had to force himself, he wanted to be friendly and loving to every human being he met, even his parents, even his father, the hardest case of all. Here, in front of the rightly praised Pietà, Adolf prayed, he prayed for the power to love; that was the only prayer he said in the principal church of Christianity, and then, gaunt, skinny and miserable, a little deacon defeated by too much splendour, he left St Peter's, whose air and aspect he couldn't take.

  I forgot what time I had agreed to meet Adolf. Was it noon or was it later? I wasn't sure. I'd forgotten. Perhaps I didn't want to remember. I didn't want to see Adolf, but all the same here I was going to the rendezvous, already caught; I was angry because I felt trapped. Adolf took away my freedom, he took away my immediate sense of life, he took away my continual astonishment at things. He took me back to the oppressiveness of youth, the past, family, morning exercises and lessons in patriotism in the Nazi academy, and even though Adolf had, like me, immediately dissociated himself from those days and their watchwords, had left home and was leading his own life in a spiritual seminary, yet the whiff of family still clung to him, clung obdurately to his priest's cassock, a stain like sweat on the skin but not to be removed by any bath, and it adhered to me too, that odour of the Judejahns and Pfaffraths and Klingspors. The Klingspor sisters were our mothers, and that meant a century of nationalist maunderings, military drill, German bourgeois constraint, which turned into horrible frenzy and megalomania each time it burst from its narrow bounds. It was weakness that made me turn up for this appointment. I felt sorry for Adolf in his pries
t's garb. I saw it as a disguise he'd slipped into, out of fear. The kind of thing someone gets into when he's on the run and is afraid of being spotted. But where was he running to? Was he content with running away, as I was, had he resigned himself to a life spent on the run from something, but with no destination? I found incidental pleasures on the way, or I told myself I did, but Adolf didn't really master the new life of freedom from family, freedom from obeisance to a tradition, it seemed to me, and I felt inclined, in spite of the selfishness I preached to myself—and sometimes thinking of myself seemed to be the only way of remaining pure, which begged the question whether purity was the point—against all my own selfish interest I felt inclined to help Adolf, to support him. But could I? Could I even cope with my own life? And then I thought: If Adolf and I can't cope with life, then we should at least unite against those unscrupulous people who want to rule because they are unimaginative, against the real Pfaffraths, the real Judejahns, the real Klingspors, and perhaps we could change Germany. But even as I was thinking that, it already seemed to me that Germany was past changing, that one could only change oneself, and everyone had to do that for him or herself, all alone, and I wished I was shot of Adolf.

  I crossed the Angels' Bridge to the Angels' Castle, and the angels up on their pedestals, the angels with their marble wings, looked like grounded seagulls with lead in their bellies or leaden thoughts, unable to lift into the empyrean. I couldn't imagine the bridge's angels aloft. Never would they float over Rome, never push open my window, step up to my bed, enchant me with their wing-beat, show me the unearthly light of paradise. The Tiber flowed between the old stone arches, muddy, blackish, turbid, it flowed under me towards Ostia and the sea, it had carried a lot of dead bodies, it was an old and experienced river, and I wasn't tempted to bathe in its waters, which were like the washing-water of an old nymphomaniac crone—no, I was tempted after all because maybe I too would be murdered one day!

  Adolf wasn't waiting at the gate of the Angels' Castle. I was glad. That meant I was early. Now I knew I was an hour early, and I was pleased to be there an hour early, I was standing in front of the gate of the Angels' Castle, I was at a loose end, with time on my hands, freedom!

  A tour guide sat on a stool in the sun. He was reading Avanti. Maybe he was dreaming of a just society. He had pushed his peaked cap back from his face. His face was plump; he looked earnest and dim. His shoes were old, but highly polished. From time to time he would spit between his highly polished shoes.

  A horse-drawn cab was waiting. It was unclear whether it was hired or not, or was just waiting for the sake of waiting. The coachman was asleep on the dusty cushions in the back. His open mouth gaped towards heaven. An insect buzzed around him. To the insect, the coachman's mouth must be like the entrance to hell. The coachman's mouth was both alluring and threatening. The horse had a fly-net over its head and ears. It looked down on the paving-stones with the empty disappointed expression of an old moral theologian. Whenever the guide spat between his shoes, the horse shook his head in disapproval.

  There was also a large black automobile in front of the Angels' Castle. A thoroughly infernal conveyance. Maybe the Devil had some outstanding business in this former popes' residence. The car seemed familiar to me. I must have seen it before somewhere. But who hadn't seen the Devil's cab at some time in his life? The chauffeur stood beside the car, stiff as a ramrod, in military livery. He had creaking leather gaiters on, well-cut breeches and a short jacket. His face was sharply etched and sunburned. His eyes were cold and suspicious. They were the eyes of a soldier and a sentry. The chauffeur scared me. I didn't like him.

  I went to the Tiber embankment. I leaned over the railing, and saw the bathing-ship looking deceptively picturesque on the river. The ship floated on the sluggish water, and it looked like a Noah's ark, a beautiful, dirty Noah's ark. Various animals, young squawking ducks and geese, young cats, young dogs of all breeds and none, lounged peaceably on its decks. On the riverbank, covered with long grass, excreta and shimmering twists of metal, accessible from the bridge by a steep staircase, a boy was chased by two youths and roughly thrown to the ground. The boy and the two youths were wearing skimpy triangular bathing-trunks in an eye-catching, screaming red. The boy was beautiful. The two fellows had poor blotchy complexions; their faces were vulgar and nasty. I knew their sort. They were disgusting to me. They were prostitutes and blackmailers, they were base, murderous and cruel. But I was alone. I wanted to be alone. Only sometimes I yearned for contact, for warmth, for the smell of the herd and the stall, for a world of shared physicality, which I had lost, from which I had cut myself off, a compulsion I thought I was clear of, the boys' world of the Teutonic castle, the smell of the dormitories, the naked bodies of boys in that spartan regime, cross-country running in the early-morning mist in the woods; and then later the world of men—the forts, camps and establishments of the nationalist movements, and the comradeship of soldiers were all comprised in this world. I had said goodbye to all that, I was alone, I wanted to be alone, and Kürenberg had commended the solitude of the creative person to me, but I was criminally drawn to these fellows by my background and upbringing, and they were manifestations of a guilt from which I still had to free myself. So when one of the fellows looked up and saw me up on the embankment, he grabbed the point of his triangular trunks and obscenely beckoned me down the stairs to the bank and the bathing-ship. The fellow had apelike paws and swelling muscles, a sign of degeneration and enervation rather than strength. He was repulsive to me. The other fellow was repulsive to me, too. But the beautiful boy was lying between them, pinioned not by eagles, but by these foul vultures. Zeus-Jupiter was dead, and Ganymede probably was too, I cursed myself, and I climbed down to the Underworld

  he had climbed down to the dungeon, down a long passage, the gloomy, sparsely lit track wound its way down into the heart of the papal burg. And then came low arched ceilings, clammy fug, one had to walk with a stoop. Blocked-off doors indicated even worse oubliettes, bottomless pits, terrifying murderpits, death wells. The walls erupted in chains, rings for the feet, manacles for the arms, iron maidens to embrace one all over, torture instruments dangled from the ceiling, racks, bonebreakers, instruments to rip and flay, next to stone beds on which prisoners had rotted away, and the mouldering flesh and bones had etched the outline of the condemned or forgotten man even into the hard unfeeling granite. And upstairs, there were gala rooms, cushy apartments, ornamented chapels, there dwelt a keen appreciation of the arts, beautiful and holy pictures, carved prayer-stools, the silver candelabra of Cellini, in the library people pored over books, absorbed wisdom, were edified, listened to music perhaps, breathed in the evening air, and right at the top the angel hovered over the castle, the archangel Michael saw the sun, watched the glittering splendour of the stars, and looked out on the celebrated panorama of the Eternal City, and sheathed his flaming sword. Adolf had reached the lowest dungeon. A kind of amphora had been set into the bedrock where a prisoner might stand upright, his head above the floor, but his waste would have gradually climbed up his body, walled up the sinful house of the spirit, climbed up to his neck, and whoever by flickering torchlight had seen the man's head, no more than a head separated from the body by a sewer, a cry would have broken from him, 'Ecce homo. Behold, a man,' and the gaoler knelt down and comprehended the miracle of conversion that had befallen him by grace of the prisoner in the nethermost dungeon. Adolf knelt down by the hollow and prayed. He prayed with more fervour than he had in St Peter's; he prayed for the souls of the unknown prisoners. His cassock lay in the dirt, stones crushed his knees. He believed. The world needed to be saved. He believed. Man needed to be saved. He rose and felt strangely replenished. He was on his way back upstairs, to see the full brightness of light coming out of the darkness, when he heard steps, the confident, fearless steps of someone striding purposefully through his own house, though his house is a dungeon, and Adolf, embarrassed, as though ashamed of being found in this place, tried to l
eave down a passage, but the passage was blocked off, and so Adolf stood concealed but able to peer through a slit in the wall, to see who it was who so confidently went to visit the nethermost dungeon

  the bathing-master was like a faun, fat-bellied, wrinkle-skinned, cunning, I took Ganymede into the cell with me, I loosened the red triangle from his sex, I looked at the boy and he was beautiful, and at the sight of his beauty I was filled with happiness and sorrow