Death in Rome

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  Adolf didn't care for his cousin's music. It made him sad, yes, it tormented him; but he tried to understand it. He tried to understand Siegfried. What was Siegfried trying to get across with his symphony? What was he expressing? All kinds of contradictory things, Adolf thought, beneficent pains, comic despair, courageous fear, sweet bitterness, sick love and a desert furbished with potted plants, the decorated sandbox of irony. Was this music inimical to God? It probably wasn't. There was also the memory of a time before guilt in these sounds, of a paradisal peace and beauty, of sadness at the entry of death into the world, there was much clamour for amity in the notes, no hymn to joy, no panegyric, but still a longing for joy and praise of creation. At times, Adolf felt he could recognize himself in the sounds. It was like a reflection of his childhood in a broken mirror. The Teutonic fort was in the music, the exercise grounds, the woods, sunrise and sunsets and dormitory dreams. But the cynicism and unbelief, the narcissistic flirtation with despair, and the drift into anarchy drove Adolf away from the music. The Church would not approve these sounds; no Council of Trent would have found them exemplary. Did the deacon Adolf approve his cousin's music? He did not approve it. Did he then condemn it? He did not condemn it. It was not God who spoke in those sounds, it was some struggling soul, and so perhaps it was God after all, in one of his incomprehensible monologues that were so confounding to Christ's church.

  They were whistling, I could hear them whistling, I had crept away to the door of the upper circle, I was waiting right at the back, a beggar by the church door, a beggar at my own music. They were whistling, I wasn't surprised, they were whistling in all manner of keys and like street-urchins with their fingers stuck in their mouths, they were whistling, my students, my young, imperilled nuclear physicists, my poor proud young girls, I had expected nothing else, the young priests were not whistling, but I think they should have whistled too. I had dreamed of a pure creation, but I had been tempted to meddle in the struggles of this world. I don't know whether a pure creation is possible, an immaculate conception from absolutely nothing, it's what I dream of, and maybe it's pride and delusion and the hubris of Icarus, and my wings broke before they could fly. Icarus must needs be arrogant. It is the arrogance of physicists in their labs, their unimaginative cleverness breaks up the natural world, and Kürenberg wants to encourage me to that destruction because his brain is delighted by beautiful formulae, because he can grasp the lofty laws by which destruction takes place. I don't grasp the rules, and I can't understand the formulae. Probably I'm stupid. How could I work something out, and to whom should I show my results? I still hope to get the right answer without doing the sums, by some inscrutable method which probably would not impress Kürenberg, which would seem dubious and dishonest to him. They were whistling, but downstairs in the stalls they were clapping now, they were shouting out my name, and the shrill whistling in the circle only seemed to encourage those in the stalls to more rapturous applause. Now would be the moment for me to show myself in my white tie. I should have shown myself. Kürenberg kept shaking hands with the first violinist, gesturing to the orchestra, pointing to the wings, from which I was failing to appear, doing everything possible to divert the applause from himself and to calm it down without bringing it to a stop, and with lavish gestures he lamented the inexplicable absence of the composer. One of the poor proud girls near me said: 'I could spit in his face.' She meant she wanted to spit in my face, the composer's. I understood her; she said it in English. And what did the people downstairs want with me, the gentlemen in evening dress, the ladies in expensive dresses, the critics, the publishers, the managers, what did they have in store for me, did they want to garland me, or did they want to spit at me, too?

  Clapping loudest of all, from within a bizarre predicament, was Judejahn. His heavy hands were working like steam-hammers. He would far rather have roared, sworn, and had everyone in the hall and on stage stand at attention or clapped them in irons. He would have stood Siegfried against the base of the Palestrina statue; he would have loved to make Siegfried and the bandleader do thirty press-ups. But little Gottlieb didn't have the self-confidence to yell in the white-tie crowd, to swear, to call for attention and thirty press-ups, and when the upper circle began to whistle, he felt that was insubordination against those in the stalls, against the wealthy, those sitting in the light, whom he had long despised and envied, and whose maddening views of art and life he now found himself supporting with the steam-hammer clap of his palms.

  That was how Adolf saw him; from up in his box, he saw his father, he saw his excited clapping, whereas he himself did not know whether to express approval which he did not quite feel, and whether he was even allowed to express approval of such extreme and dubious music while in his clerical robes. The lady sitting next to Adolf kept her hands folded in her lap; perhaps she would find it a provocation on his part if he joined the ranks of the applauders. But Adolf would have joined the ranks of those noisily giving thanks if Siegfried had presented himself on stage, because Siegfried deserved thanks, because he had made evident God's disquiet, and it was greatly to Siegfried's credit that he did not stand in the limelight and milk the applause. How was it though that Judejahn had gone to the concert, how was it that he approved of the music? Had Judejahn understood the language of these sounds? Had the notes moved and delighted him? Did Siegfried and Judejahn suddenly understand one another in the world of music? Adolf knew nothing of the existence of little Gottlieb in his father, and so Judejahn's behaviour remained a riddle to him.

  They were unable to account for the applause, they could hear the upper circle whistling, which only exacerbated the clapping in the stalls, they heard foreign-sounding accents calling out the name of Pfaffrath heavily and gutturally, this surely was a degenerate, alarmingly corrupt society, blindly tumbling to its own destruction, that was now celebrating their son's music, but the imminent decline of the Roman upper crust did not disturb the Pfaffraths, on the contrary it strengthened their arrogance, for in their certainty of being good Germans, genetically healthy and not susceptible to adulterated nigger-sounds, they thought the fall of what was rotten in Europe was to the advantage of their own nation, which would soon become hegemonous once more, and thus, blinkered by national folly and with the torture of having to listen to the music and the fear of witnessing a scandal to the revered family name for now both behind them, the Pfaffraths too put their hands together in honour of their son and brother. Dietrich could not understand why Siegfried, being summoned, did not appear. And, like everything he didn't understand, it disquieted him. What meaning was there behind his elusiveness? Was it cowardice, or could it be arrogance? Dietrich wanted to know, and he suggested seeking Siegfried out backstage.

  I had slowly gone down the stairs from the upper circle. I knew Kürenberg would be angry with me now. He would be angry because I had once again disregarded one of the conventions that kept the art business going, and had failed to bow to the audience. Even without a white tie, I should have gone up on stage. But I did not want to show myself. The applause appalled me. I didn't give a damn about the accolades from the stalls. I felt kinship with the whistles on Olympus; but even those seated there were no gods.

  Kürenberg was slumped exhausted in a red velvet armchair. The flashes of the photographers were going off all around him. He did not upbraid me. He congratulated me. And I thanked him and congratulated him, and said it was his triumph, as indeed it was his triumph, and he deflected my thanks, and something wasn't quite right about the way we each in turn resisted the other's flattery, and yet it was his victory, he had dazzled with my score, but for him it was enough to know that he had experimented with a new permutation of a limited number of notes, he had presented one possibility among billions, and demonstrated that music was a living and evolving force among us, and now it was time to try new experiments, and thrust on to new sequences of notes. He was right. Why did I not think of further composition? Was I burned out? I don't know. I was sad. I would have l
iked to go to my fountain, my Trevi Fountain; I would have liked to sit down on the edge of the fountain, and watch the hectic foolish tourists and the greedy beautiful boys.

  Ilse Kürenberg came, and she too congratulated me. But the hand she gave me was cold. Once again I saw in Ilse Kürenberg the sober, sceptical muse of modern music, and I had failed to win the vote of the muse. I wanted to thank her for not giving me her vote, but I wasn't sure how to say it so that she would understand it the way I meant it. But while I was looking for words to express my feelings, I saw such dismay on her face that I was frightened. But then I realized that her shock wasn't directed at me, but that she was looking over my shoulder, and when I turned round to understand her terror, I saw my parents coming up to me, I saw my brother Dietrich coming up to me, and standing behind them was the image that had terrorized my youth, Uncle Judejahn back from the dead, grinning at me as though to say he had been resurrected, and I would have to get along with him now, the old power was back, and waiting at the door was a scared-looking Adolf. There was a Pfaffrath-Judejahn family reunion here, and I felt I was seeing gorgons. I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my family, and I was ashamed of feeling ashamed of my family, and I felt like a dog when the dog-catchers have got him cornered with their nets. My liberty was threatened. My father and mother congratulated me, and they threatened my liberty. They spoke to me, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. My brother Dietrich said, well, I had probably made it now, and his face was twisted as he spoke. He too threatened my freedom. And then I saw my father speaking to Kürenberg, greeting him like an old friend. He reminded Kürenberg of the theatre in our town; he spoke of the town orchestra, the subscription concerts and the good old days of 1933.

  Ilse Kürenberg didn't know these people, but in another way she did know them, and it was as though a wall were cracking open behind which ghosts had been walled in. She had never wanted to see them again; she never wanted to be reminded of the ghosts, and now the ghosts were there, they had broken through the wall, demons of a house on fire, revenants of an old murdered father. She guessed that this was Siegfried's family, people from her home town which she had forgotten, local Nazis from a place she didn't want to think about. And she guessed who Judejahn was too, the man in the background, the final-solution man, who was undressing her with his eyes. She thought: Enough of these nightmares. And she thought: There is this symphony which I disliked, there is the priest by the door, a German mystic, maybe a saint, but woe is me if he's no saint, or woe is me if he lapses. And she thought: That one who's talking to Kürenberg is Siegfried's father, the Oberbürgermeister of our town, he was the Oberpresident of our province when we begged him for leniency, and he said he might be the Oberpresident but it was none of his business. She thought: Maybe he bought his shirts in my father's department store, he bought his child's first toys from my father, and when my father's shop burned down, and the shirts and the toys were plundered, then he was satisfied, and when my father was murdered, he made a note of it in the files, and he approved. And Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, whom Ilse Kürenberg thought of as an accessory to murder and arson, was glad to be in conversation with Kürenberg, who gave polite, non-committal replies, he was glad to be speaking about his community, and he offered the conductor a prestigious engagement in the old still-ruined, but soon-to-be-restored theatre, and he felt offended and thought: That's the way they are, whinging or snooty, when Ilse née Aufhäuser butted in and asked Kürenberg to take her away. The conductor looked round for Siegfried, wanting to invite him for supper later, but Siegfried had vanished from the room.

  They waded through paper; there was paper on the Piazza del Popolo, lying in front of the churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Santa Maria del Popolo, Santa Maria di Montesanto, the three Marias that guarded the square, paper lying round the Egyptian obelisk which Augustus had dedicated to the sun, and Sixtus V to the heavenly hosts, the heavenly hosts that guarded the square, paper lying in front of the gate through which Goethe had entered Rome, Goethe was another patron saint of this square, paper lay in the light of the arc lamps making a moonlit night in winter. There had been a demonstration in the Piazza del Popolo, and the leaflets promising people a new spring followed by an unprecedented summer, the oft-evoked Golden Age, the leaflets had fallen to the ground like autumn leaves, and the bold slogans of future happiness had turned to dirt, a filmy crust like dirty snow, a dirty-white winter.

  The paper rustled under his swishing priest's robes, and I told him we were crossing a field of promises. I told him the eschatologies seemed to me like a bunch of hay dangled in front of a donkey to induce him to go on pulling a cart. 'But mankind needs to set its sights on something lofty and distant,' said Adolf. 'Think of the strength that the attraction of heaven gave to people in the Middle Ages.' 'Yes,' I said. 'The donkey pulled the cart. It thought it was pulling the cart heavenwards, and soon it would reach paradise, where there were no loads to carry, evergreen pastures, and the beasts of prey were friendly companions. But gradually the donkey realized that heaven was drawing no nearer, it grew tired, and the hay of religion no longer induced it to step out bravely. So lest the cart come to a halt, the donkey's hunger was switched to an earthly paradise, a socialist park where all donkeys will be equal, the whip will be abolished, where there will be lighter loads and improved fodder, but then the road to this Eden turns out to be just as long, the end is just as far off, and the donkey becomes stubborn again. But in fact, he was wearing blinkers the whole time, so that he never realized that he was just going round and round, and that he wasn't pulling a cart but a carousel, and perhaps all we are is a sideshow on a fairground of the gods, and at the end of their day out, the gods have forgotten to tidy the carousel away, and the donkey is still pulling it, only the gods have forgotten all about us.' He said: Then you live in a world without meaning.' I said: 'Yes. But does everything have to have meaning?' He said: 'If I thought as you do, I would kill myself.' I cried: 'What for? I'll be dead soon enough anyway, and believe me, while I'm not greatly impressed by life, I dread the idea of being dead. So why should I kill myself? Now, if I was like you, and thought of suicide as a sin, that would mean there was a hereafter! The real inducement to leave this world is a belief in the beyond. If I don't believe in heaven or hell, then I must try to find a little happiness here, a little joy here, beauty and pleasure all here. For me there is no other place, no other time. Here and now are the only possibility for me. And the temptation to kill myself is just a trap someone's set for me. Now who set it? If the trap is there, the trapper won't be far off. Then doubt sets in. The unbeliever's doubt in his unbelief is at least as terrible as the doubt of the believer. We all of us doubt. Don't tell me you don't doubt. You'd be lying. In the three-dimensional cage we perceive with our senses, there is room for only doubt. Surely everyone feels the presence of a wall, I mean some kind of barrier that separates us from an inaccessible region that may be very close, just next to us, maybe inside us, and if we could find a door to this other domain, a crack in the wall, then we would have a completely different view of ourselves and our lives. Perhaps it would be awful. Perhaps it would be unbearable. The legend says that when we behold the truth, we turn to stone. I'd like to see the unveiled picture, even if I turn into a pillar. But perhaps even that wouldn't be the truth, and behind the picture that petrifies me there would be other pictures, other veils, still more baffling, still more inaccessible, perhaps even still more terrible, and I would have turned to stone, and still not really seen anything. There is something that is invisible to us, alongside the world and our lives. But what?' 'You are looking for God not in His house, you are looking for Him in dead ends,' said Adolf. 'If God exists, He will also live in dead ends,' I said.

  We were walking beside the old city wall, down the Viale del Muro Torto. It was windy on the Monte Pincio, and sweet scents blew over from the Villa Medici. Power had established these gardens, power had built the villas, the palaces and the city, power had erected the w
alls, power had procured the treasures, power had stimulated the arts, the city was beautiful, I was happy to walk along beside the old walls, but power was a terrible thing for those who lived under it, it was an abuse, it was violence, oppression, war, arson and killing, Rome was built on the bodies of its victims, even churches are set on blood-stained soil, no temple, no basilica, no cathedral is conceivable without spilt blood. But Rome is splendid, the temples are magnificent, we marvel at the evidence of power, we adore it once they are dead who wielded it.