Keetenheuve loved it when Knurrewahn lost his rag. What a magnificent man he still was, with his massive skull, and his Iron Cross shyly in its little box in his desk drawer, and the medal for his wound, both of them wrapped, as it might be, in the release form from the concentration camp and the farewell note from his son before he went off to find his death, fighting for the Condor Legion. But now Keetenheuve had to concentrate, lest Knurrewahn slip away. The party leader wanted to advertise the generals' interview, and let people know what the heads of the European army thought of Germany. He wanted the words Permanent division posted on the walls, and then to turn to the people: "See, we are betrayed and sold down the river, this is where the governments policy has landed us!" But such an action would be to defuse the bomb for parliament; the Chancellor would organize the denials and the statements of support from the European powers before the matter was even discussed in the plenary, and in the end only the fly-poster would be called mean and treacherous. There might be public agitation, but that would have little effect; the government wouldn't be put off by public opinion. Knurrewahn believed that the generals, who had expressed themselves so satisfied about the partition of Germany, couldn't simply be denied, but Keetenheuve knew that the politicians in England and France would call their generals to order. They would give them a rebuke because (and on this point it was Keetenheuve who was biased) foreign generals accepted rebukes from their political masters, whereas German generals automatically represented actual power in the state, and they would restore what seemed to them the natural order of things, namely the primacy of the military over the political. The German general was to Keetenheuve a malignancy on the German people, and even his respect for the generals who were murdered by Hitler wasn't enough to affect his judgment on this point. He detested the old barracks types, who, with expressions of fatherly decency, addressed adult citizens as "my lads" or "my boys," and promptly packed his boys off to their deaths. Keetenheuve had seen the people sickening and dying from this outbreak of generals; and who, if not the generals, was responsible for growing the Braunau bacillus! Force had always led only to misery and defeat, and Keetenheuve wanted to give nonviolence a chance of procuring moral victory, if not happiness. Was that the much touted Final Victory? It meant that Keetenheuve could be only a temporary ally for Knurrewahn, who dreamed sincerely of a German national army, and a German people's general, a fit and unpretentious man in gray mountaineer's garb, who shared meals with his troops, and, a good and solicitous father, would share them just as readily with his prisoners. Keetenheuve wanted an end to prisoners, and for that he needed Knurrewahn to oppose the Chancellor's plans for rearmament, but the day would certainly come when he would have to turn his opposition to his friend's much more dangerous idea of a people's army. Keetenheuve espoused a pure pacifism, a putting down of weapons, once and for all! He knew what responsibility he was taking upon himself, it was oppressive and it gave him sleepless nights, but even though there was no one of like mind in the Republic, and he was friendless and misunderstood in West and East alike, the lesson he persisted in drawing from history was that the abjuring of force and self-defense had never brought such evil in its train as their use. And when there were no more armies, then the frontiers would fall; the idea of sovereign nation states that was such an anachronism in the age of jet travel (you broke the sound barrier, but stuck to air corridors that had been dug by maniacs) would be renounced, and man would be free and free to move, and free, in fact, as a bird. Knurrewahn gave in. He thought he probably gave in too much and too often, but he gave in again, throttled back his fury, and they agreed that Keetenheuve would use the generals' little moment of crowing as a surprise weapon during the debate on the security contracts.
He went back to his room. He sat down in the neon again. He left the tubes on, even though the sky was now clear and bright, and the sun, momentarily, bathed everything in a brilliant light. The Rhine sparkled. An excursion steamer plowed past in the white spray of its wheels, and the passengers could be seen pointing at the Bundeshaus. Keeteneuve was dazzled. The translation of the "beau navire" had been left unfinished among unopened correspondence, and more had arrived now, more cries for help, more screeds, more complaints, more castigations of the Honorable Member, they came flowing in like the water of the river outside, faithfully scooped up onto the table by postmen and clerical staff, without abatement. Keetenheuve was the addressee of a nation of letter writers; it drained him, and only the intuition of the moment saved him from the flood that otherwise would have broken over his head. He devised a speech to hold in front of the assembly. He would shine! A dilettante in matters of love, a dilettante in poetry, and a dilettante in politics—and he would shine. Who else could save them, if not a dilettante? The experts, sexperts, texperts, were still following their old paths into old deserts. They had never led anywhere else, and it took a dilettante to stumble upon the Promised Land, the kingdom flowing with milk and honey. Keetenheuve poured himself a brandy. The thought of honey flowing somewhere was disagreeable to him. And the description of the Promised Land should not be taken literally either, that was why children didn't find it, why they grew tired, grew up, and set up as tax lawyers, which says everything that needs to be known about the condition of the world. Our forefathers had been expelled from Paradise. That was a fact. Now, was there a way back? There wasn't even the most tenuous path to be seen, but then again the path might be invisible, or maybe there were millions upon millions of invisible steps that lay in front of everyone, just waiting to be trodden. Keetenheuve had to follow his conscience; but a conscience was no more visible and palpable than the right way, and you only heard it bleating very occasionally, and that was something you might equally attribute to circulation disorders. His heart was irregular, and his writing slithered on the smooth official notepaper. Frost-Forestier rang to ask if Keetenheuve would like to have lunch with him. He would send his car around to pick him up. Was that the declaration of war? Keetenheuve thought it was. He accepted the invitation. It was time. They wanted to get rid of him. They wanted to set the pistol to his chest and blackmail him. Mergentheim had known it already. Very well, he would fight. He left the correspondence, he left the files, he left the Baudelaire translation, he left his notes for the debate, and the page from the news agency that Dana had given him, he left everything lying in the neon, which he forgot to switch off, because the sun was still shining, and its light broke in thousand prisms in the mirror of the river and in the droplets on the green leaves on the tops of the trees. It shone, dazzled, glittered, sparkled, flashed.
Government cars look like official black coffins, there is something unimaginative and dependable about them, they are of squat construction, cost a lot of money, but still have a reputation for being solid and economical, but also prestigious, and ministers, councillors, and officials feel themselves equally drawn to solidity, economy, and prestige. Frost-Forestier's office was out of town, and Keetenheuve was driven solidly, economically, and prestigiously through little villages on the Rhine that had collapsed without being historic, that were narrow without being romantic. The villages looked wrecked, and Keetenheuve had a sense of frowning people behind the crumbling walls; maybe their incomes were too low; maybe they felt oppressed by their taxes; or maybe the only reason they were frowning and letting their houses crumble was that so many black cars drove past them with important people inside them. And in among the old tumbledown villages, dotted about on cabbage patches, on fallow land and poor grazing, were the ministries, the offices, the administrative centers, they squatted in old Hitler buildings, they lugged their files behind façades of Speer sandstone, heated up their little soups in former barracks. The ones who had slept there were dead, the ones who had been brutalized were in jail, they had forgotten it all, it was in the past, and if they were alive and at liberty, then they struggled to get a pension, or they chased after a job—what else was there for them to do? It was the government quarter of a government in exile tha
t Keetenheuve was driven through in his government car, sentries stood guard behind senseless fences that had been drawn right across fields, it was an administration that depended on the kindness and hospitality of its people, and Keetenheuve thought: My not being part of the government is a joke; its the perfect government for me—exiled from the nation, exiled from the natural order, exiled from the human order (although he did still dream that all men were brothers). There were also men in uniform trekking along the road to see Frost-Forestier. They lived somewhere locally; but they walked individually, albeit with the stride of civil servants, and not marching all in a heap like soldiers. Were they civilian policemen, were they border guards? Keetenheuve couldn't tell; he was determined that even if he knew the rank, he would reply: "Senior Forester."
Frost-Forestier was installed in an erstwhile barracks and was in charge of an army; but it was an army of secretaries whom he kept on their toes. They worked in Stakhanovite shifts here, and Keetenheuve felt dizzy when he saw a secretary talking on two telephones at once. What fun children might have here, what unlikely parties could be put in touch with one another! If the nation was writing to Keetenheuve, then the whole world was on the phone to Frost-Forestier. Was that Paris on the line, or Rome, or Cairo, or Washington? Was the call from Tauroggen already in? What did the shady man in Basel want on the phone? Had he snared himself? Or were there negotiation partners waiting at the Hotel Stern in Bonn, singing their songs from the earpieces of the telephone into the whorled ears of the ladies? There was a trilling and a buzzing and a ringing, an incessant tolling of miserere, a continuous confessional murmur, with the girls' periodic breathy refrain: "no, Herr Frost-Forestier regrets, Herr Frost-Forestier is unable, can I take a message to Herr Frost-Forestier"— Herr Frost-Forestier did not have any official title.
The much demanded one did not keep his guest waiting. He came right away, welcomed his Daniel in the lions' den, and asked him out to the canteen. Keetenheuve groaned. The enemy was advancing his heavy weapons. The canteen was a fearsome great barn of a place, reeking of rancid fat, stinking of burnt flour. There was German Beefsteak Esterhazy on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, Meat Balls with Green Beans on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, Spare Ribs with Sauerkraut on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, and right at the bottom of the menu it said: "Schnullers soups{11} for connoisseurs turn every meal into a feast." It was a tactical decision on the part of Frost-Forestier (an inexpensive tactic, at that) to take the MP, whose gourmet tendencies were widely known, to the canteen. He wanted to remind Keetenheuve of the mean fare to which it was possible to be reduced. To left and right of them, secretaries and petty officials sat at oilcloth-covered tables, tucking into the German Beefsteak Esterhazy. What had Esterhazy ever done to cooks, to make them name all scorched onion dishes after him? Keetenheuve made a mental note to look into the matter. Frost-Forestier paid for their lunch with a couple of tin coupons. They ordered matjes herrings with green beans, boiled potatoes, and bacon gravy. The matjes was a longtime inmate of salt barrels. The bacon gravy was black and full of slimy clumps of flour. The potatoes were black as well. Frost-Forestier ate with relish. He devoured his herring, sopped up the black gravy with the black potatoes, and left none of the stringy string beans. Keetenheuve was astonished. Perhaps he was utterly mistaken about everything, and Frost-Forestier wasn't eating with relish, and wasn't human; perhaps he was a high-performance motor, a cleverly designed digestion engine that needed to be refueled periodically and enjoyed it about as much as a car in a filling station. While he stuffed himself, he told stories about the class struggle and the office pecking order, pointing recklessly at individuals who sat nearby. The steel expert was not on speaking terms with the cast-iron man, except during office hours, and the girl who did English-language stenography ate her spare ribs with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes at a different table from the poor creature who merely did German shorthand. Even here, though, beauty was at a premium, and Frost-Forestier reported on Trojan Wars that had broken out between rival offices when the head of personnel had a pretty girl on his books, and there was Helen, envied, reviled, eating her meat balls and mashed potatoes with the head of the working group on agricultural land degradation. And there was a cute hermaphrodite to be seen as well.
What now? Something reminded him of a singer, a whisperer. A cute hermaphrodite. Where was that? By the sea, on the beach? Forgotten. Sagesse, a poem of Verlaine's. Wisdom, beautiful and melancholy I kiss your hand, Madame. A singer. Womanish. Flotsam. I kiss your hand. Whisperer. What was his name again? Paid. I kiss your hand, Monsieur Paul. Monsieur Frost. Frost-Forestier; the matjes motor, the bacon gravy high-performance engine. The electron computer. Reel-to-reel man. Steel gymnast. Virile. Placid phallus. What does he want? The fish is dished up. Alas, poor herring. The widower. Pickled in brine. Frost-Forestier bachelor. Passionless. Incorruptible. Frost-Forestier the incorruptible. Robespierre. No great revolution. No chance. Feels it in his water. What? A tickle? A tinkle? Lives dangerously. Pisses with privates. All privates together. Writing on the wall. Informs shady characters. Kohlenklau{12} walls have ears. Dark jungle of the airwaves. Pisses waves in the ether. Pissoirs. Swastikas on the walls. Lobby groups. Know their man. Beer. Piss. He said: "Can you get a drink here?" No. You can't. Not for you. Coffee and lemonade. Coffee accelerated the heart rate. Not on. Beat fast enough as it was. The pulse in his throat. The pallid lemonade of evolution, fizzing and repeating. What then? Frost-Forestier ordered a coffee. What then? What did he want?
Frost-Forestier asked him a question. He looked at him. "Do you know Central America?" he asked. He added: "Interesting place, by all accounts." No my snake not that pepper tree, you'd have known all about it if I had been there, it would have been in your files. No good to you. I'm no good to you. It'll have to be the old British major. Sir Felix Keetenheuve, Commander; Member of Parliament, Royal Officers' Club, dropped bombs on Berlin.
"No. I've never been to Central America. I once had a Honduran passport, if that's what you're getting at. I bought it. That's what people did. I could travel anywhere on it, except Honduras." Why am I telling him? Buttering his bread for him. Who cares. Keetenheuve falsifier of documents. I showed my face in Scheveningen. You know; the sea, the beach, the sunsets? I sat outside the Café Sport, and the singer came and sat at my table. He sat at my table because he was alone, and because I was alone I let him sit there. The young girls walked past, Proust's "jeunes filles en fleurs" from the beach at Balbeck. Albertine, Albert. The young men walked past. Young men and women promenaded down the seaside boulevard, they swam through the evening light, their bodies glowed, the orb of the sinking sun sparkled through their sheer clothes. The girls lifted their breasts. Who were they? Salesgirls, schoolgirls, seamstresses. The apprentice hairdresser from the Haager Plein. She was just a sales assistant in a shoeshop—that too was something the singer in his heyday had whispered on disk, softly and campily. He was murdered. We watched the girls and boys walk by; and the singer said: You're as hot as monkey shit. What was going on now? He'd better pull himself together, he hadn't been paying attention. Frost-Forestier wasn't talking about Central America any more, he was talking about Keetenheuve's party, which hadn't had its share of diplomatic jobs recently, well, it was only natural that the government would think of its friends first, though it was hardly an equitable way of proceeding, then again Keetenheuve's outfit was short on suitable candidates, and when one appeared, well, Frost-Forestier was taking preliminary soundings, he was showing his hand, of course everything at this stage was unofficial, the Chancellor hadn't been consulted, but he was certain to give his approval—Frost-Forestier was offering Keetenheuve the ambassadorship in Guatemala. "Interesting place," he said again. "Right up your alley! Interesting people. Left-wing government. Not a Communist dictatorship, mind you. A republic, respect for human rights. An experiment. You'd be our man on the spot, keep a weather eye on developments for us, represent our interests."
Keetenheuve Ambassador Keetenheuve Excellenc
y. He was stunned. But the remoteness of it tempted him, and perhaps that was the solution. The solution to all his problems! It was running away. It was running away again. It was his last escape. They weren't stupid. But maybe it would be freedom; and he knew it was retirement. Keetenheuve pensioner on the state. He saw himself in Guatemala City, on the pillared veranda of a colonial villa, watching the dusty street glowing in the sun, the dust-coated palms, the dry and dust-laden cactuses. Where the street widened out into a square, the dust in the park toned down the obscene colors of coffee blossom, and the memorial to the Unknown Guatemalan seemed to melt in the sun. Huge silent automobiles, clattering fire-red motorcycles leapt out of the sun haze, drove past, and disappeared like visions in the heat. It stank of petrol and putrescence, and from time to time there was the ping of a ricocheting bullet. It might be his salvation, it might be the chance to grow old. He would spend years on the pillared veranda, and years surveying the hot dusty road. At intervals, he would send dispatches home, which no one would read. He would drink endless quantities of bitter gassy soda water, and in the evening he would try and lose the taste by adding rum to it. He would complete his translation of "Le beau navire " on stormy nights he would talk to Elke, maybe even reply to the letters he had got as an MP, which wouldn't do any good to anyone, and one day he would die—and the flags would fly at half-mast in the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry and on the colonial verandas of the other embassies. Excellency Keetenheuve the German Ambassador passed away Frost-Forestier wanted an answer. His secretaries, his telephones, his tape recorders, were all calling him. Keetenheuve was silent. Was the bait not juicy enough? Did the mouse smell a rat? Frost-Forestier threw in the fact that, as an ambassador, Keetenheuve would be working for the diplomatic service. What prospects! And if Keetenheuve's party happened to win the elections, Keetenheuve would be foreign minister. "And the next time the government changes, you'll be our man in Moscow!" Frost-Forestier evidently didn't believe the opposition party had a chance in the elections.
The Hothouse Page 9
