The Hothouse

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  There were people lining up in front of a cinema box office. What were they hoping to see? The great German comedy Keetenheuve joined the line. Ariadne guided him, Theseus, who was willing to risk the dark, Ariadne said: "Please move into the middle!" She had a snotty squeaky voice. As an usherette, she had been put in charge of a naughty humanity that didn't move into the middle in time. Keetenheuve sat, and he sat in the appropriate attitude for his time, he was part of a passive audience. Just now he was a passive audience for advertising. On the screen, razors, driving licenses, neckties, fabrics, lipstick, hair dye, and a trip to Athens were offered to him. Keetenheuve market potential, Keetenheuve consumer. Useful. Keetenheuve bought six shirts a year. Fifty million West Germans bought three hundred million shirts. From one vast bale, the material was fed into the sewing machines. Coils of material snaked around the citizen. Captive market. Maths lesson: If a man smokes ten cigarettes per day, how many will he smoke in a year, therefore fifty million smokers will get through a volume of tobacco six times the size of Cologne Cathedral. Only, Keetenheuve didn't smoke. Darn it! He was pleased. Here was the newsreel. A minister was opening a bridge. He cut a ribbon. He swaggered over the bridge. Swaggered after him other swaggerers. The President visited the exhibition. A child welcomed him. Our Führer loves children. A minister was departing. He was taken to the railway station. A minister was arriving. He was picked up. The Miss Loisach contest. Bikinis on the Alps. Nice ass. Big atomic mushroom over the Nevada desert. Skiing on artificial snow on the beaches of Florida. More bikinis. Big crowds. Even nicer asses. Cut to Korea: Meeting of two grim-faced enemies; they go into a tent; they come out again; one of them climbs grimly onto a helicopter; the other, still more grimly into his limousine. Gunfire. Bombs falling on some city. Gunfire. Bombs falling on some jungle. Miss Macao contest. Bikini. Stunning Sino-Portuguese ass. Sport brings people together. Crowd of twenty thousand watching a ball. So boring. But then the cameras tele-lens pulls out a few individual faces from the crowd: terrifying faces, chins thrust out, mouths twisted with hatred, murderous eyes. Do you want total war? Yeah yeah yeah From his seat in the dark cinema, Keetenheuve watched the faces that the treacherous tele-lens had violently pulled out of the shelter and anonymity of the crowd, completely beside themselves, cast up on the screen as on a dissecting table by the power of light (which according to Newton was an uncertain substance, floating chilly and aloof over earthbound matter), and he was afraid. Were these human faces? What had happened, and to what chance did he owe it Keetenheuve pharisee, that he too wasn't scrambled in this twenty-thousand-strong mass (there were ministers seated on the benches too, and they were caught by the camera's eye, ministers had the common touch, either they really had it, or else they pretended to: gifted mimics) following the ball with outthrust chin? His heart didn't race here, his blood didn't throb, he felt no rage: get the ref by the throat, lynch the bastard, he's bent, penalty ref, never a penalty, whistles! Keetenheuve was offside. He was outside the force field of this assembly of twenty thousand. They were united, they were an accumulation, a dangerous aggregation of zeros, an explosive mixture, twenty thousand excited hearts and twenty thousand empty heads. Of course they were waiting for their Führer, their number One, who would face them down, and turn them into a colossal number, a people, the new bastardized golem that was called a people, one Reich, one Führer, total hate, total explosion, total destruction. He was all alone. He was in the same position as the Führer. Keetenheuve Führer. But Keetenheuve couldn't charm the multitude. He couldn't animate the people. He couldn't fire them. He couldn't even cheat the people. As a politician, he was like a bigamist, who couldn't get it up when it was time to bed Frau Germania. But in his imagination and often enough in fact, and always in his strivings, he was on the side of the people's rights! On the screen, the cinema was now selling itself; short clips from forthcoming dreams were being shown. Two old men were playing tennis together. But these old lads were the romantic leads in the next film, pertly clad in little shorts, and they could easily be Keetenheuve's older brothers, because when Keetenheuve had been a stripling, he could remember seeing these gents in films. But they weren't just tennis players, they were also property owners, because it was a historical film that was being trailed here moving and dramatic, and the property owners had lost everything, all their worldly goods had been lost, all that was left to them were their respective properties, the big house, the fields and woods and tennis courts and their natty shorts and of course a couple of thoroughbred horses, which they would one day again ride for Germany. A voice-over declared: "A ravishing woman comes between two lifelong friends. Which of them will win her?" A chunky matron hurtled up to the net in a girly dress, and it was all taking place in the very best society, in a world that no longer existed in that form. And Keetenheuve wondered whether such a world ever had existed. What was this? What were they trying to pretend? A popular German writer called one of her many books Highlife; she or her publishers had given the German book the English title, and millions who were unfamiliar with the word "highlife" gobbled up the book. Highlife—tiptop society, magic talisman, what was it, who belonged to it? Korodin? No. Korodin wasn't highlife. The Chancellor? Nor him. The Chancellor's banker? He wouldn't have had people like that in his house. So who was highlife? Ghosts, shadows. The actors on the screen, the ones who were playing at highlife, they were the only ones who were it, they and a few celebrities from the world of magazines and advertisements, the man with the spruce mustache who pours champagne with such inimitable style, the man who smokes everyone's tram cigarette in his polo kit, and the blue smoke twines around the beautiful horse's neck. No one on earth would ever pour champagne or sit on horseback like that, and why should they—but these types were the real shadow kings for the people. A second trailer gave notice of a color film. This time the voice-over cried: "America in the Civil War! The Deep South, land of burning passions! A ravishing woman comes between two lifelong friends!" Two lifelong friends and a ravishing woman—on both sides of the water that seemed to be the only concept the screenwriters knew. On this occasion, the ravishing woman sat on a bareback mustang, and rode in three colors, till it hurt Keetenheuve's eyes to watch. Her two friends—also in three colors—snuck through shrubbery and shot at each other. The voice-over commented: "Such derring-do!" Keetenheuve didn't have a friend he could shoot at. Was he supposed to fire at Mergentheim, and have Mergentheim fire at him? Not such a bad idea really. Sophie could play the ravishing woman.

  She'd be up for it. She wasn't a spoilsport. And now it was time for the German comedy. Keetenheuve was shattered. The comedy flickered. It was a ghost comedy. The romantic lead put on a disguise. He dressed as a lady. Okay, there were such people as transvestites. But Keetenheuve didn't think it was funny. The transvestite got into a bath. Well, even transvestites have to wash. What was so funny about that? A woman walked in on him in the bath, rightly naked and no longer wrongly in disguise. Laughter in front of Keetenheuve and laughter behind him, laughter on either side of him. Why were they laughing? He didn't understand. It frightened him. He was excluded. He was excluded from their laughter. He hadn't seen anything funny. A naked actor. A thrice-divorced woman who walked in on him in the bath. Surely these events were more sad than funny! But all around Keetenheuve they were laughing. They howled with laughter. Was Keetenheuve a foreigner? Was he among people who laughed and cried differently than himself, who were different from himself? Maybe in his feelings he was a foreigner, and the laughter came out of the darkness and washed over him like a powerful wave that threatened to drown him. He groped his way out of the labyrinth. He rushed out of the cinema. It was panic flight. Ariadne squeaked after him: "Right for the exit! Right!" Theseus flees Minotaur lives

  The day was drawing to a close. There was still one last shimmer of the dying sun in the sky. It was suppertime. They sat in their dowdy rooms, they sat in front of their made beds, they chewed and they listened apathetically to the wireless: Take me with you, cap
tain, on your journey to the stars. Only a very few people were out on the streets. They were the ones who didn't know where to go. They didn't know where to go, even if they had a room, even if their bed was made, and beer and sausages were waiting for them, they didn't know where to go. They were people like Keetenheuve, but they were different from Keetenheuve too—they didn't know what to do with themselves. There were youths standing outside the cinema. They went to the cinema twice a week, and on other days they stood outside it. They were hanging around. What were they hanging around for? They were hanging around waiting for life to begin, and the life they were waiting for didn't begin. Life didn't turn up for them outside the cinema, or if it did come and was standing next to them, they didn't see it, and the people they could see, that they later ended up sharing their lives with, they weren't the ones they were hoping to see. If they'd known it was only going to be them, they wouldn't have bothered standing around waiting. The boys were waiting in a group on their own. Boredom was in them like a disease, and you could already see in their faces that it would be the death of them. The girls were off on their own. They were less afflicted with boredom than the boys. They were fidgety, and they hid it by putting their heads together and gossiping and teasing each other. The young men were looking at the film stills for the hundredth time. They saw the actor sitting in the bathtub, and they saw him wearing woman's clothing. What was he playing at? A queer? They yawned. Their mouths became a round hole, the entrance to a tunnel where emptiness came and went. They stuck cigarettes in the hole, to tamp the emptiness, they pressed their lips around the tobacco, and they looked mean and self-important. They might become MPs one day; but probably the army would get them first. Keetenheuve didn't have a vision: he didn't see them lying in shallow graves, he didn't see them without their legs, begging on pram wheels. Just then he wouldn't even have felt sorry for them. He had lost the gift of second sight, and his empathy had run out. A baker's boy was eyeing the box office. The cashier sat in the box office like a waxwork figure in a hairdresser's window. The cashier smiled a stiff, sweet, waxwork smile and wore her permed wig thinly and stiffly. The baker's boy was wondering whether he could rob the cashier. His shirt was open to the navel, and his very short baker's pants barely covered his rump. His chest and his bare legs were dusted with flour. He didn't smoke. He didn't yawn. His eyes were alert. Keetenheuve thought: If I was one of the girls, I'd want to go down to the riverbank with you. Keetenheuve thought: If I was the cashier, I'd worry.

  He met lonely people undertaking desperate strolls through town. What was on their minds? What were they going through? Were they frustrated? Were they looking for partners for the lusts that were fermenting inside them? They wouldn't find any partners. The partners were everywhere. They walked past one another, men and women, they soaked up images, and in their rented rooms and in their rented beds they would remember the street and they would pleasure themselves. A few wanted to get drunk. They wanted to talk. They looked longingly at the windows of pubs. But they didn't have any money. Their wages were portioned out; so much for rent, for laundry, a bit for food, some to support their families; they should be pleased to hang on to the job that supplied the money that needed to be portioned out. They stopped in front of the shop windows and they studied expensive cameras. They speculated over the merits of a Leica as against a Contax, and they couldn't even afford a kiddies' box.

  Keetenheuve went into the wine bar with wood-paneled walls. It was quiet and pleasant; only it was still hot in the bar, and he was sweating. An elderly man was sitting over his wine, and reading the paper. He was reading the editorial. The headline ran Will the Chancellor Get His Way? Keetenheuve had read the article; he knew that his name appeared in the editorial as a possible obstacle in the Chancellor's way. Keetenheuve roadblock. He ordered a wine from the Ahr, which was always good here. The old man, while informing himself of the prospects for the Chancellor, stroked an old dachshund that was sitting quietly beside him on the bench. The dachshund had a clever expression; it looked like a statesman. Keetenheuve thought: One day I'll be sitting like that, old and alone, looking to a dog for companionship. But there was still the question whether he would have even that: a dog, a glass of wine, and a bed somewhere in town.

  A priest entered the wine bar. A girl accompanied the priest. The girl must have been twelve or so, and she was wearing red ankle socks. The priest was big and strong. He looked as though he was from the country, but his face was that of a scholar. It was a good face. The priest gave the wine list to the girl, and the girl shyly read out the names of the wines. The girl was afraid she would have to have lemonade; but the priest asked her if she wanted wine. He ordered an eighth for the girl, and a quarter for himself. The girl grasped the wineglass with both hands, and drank with careful little sips. The priest asked: "How is it?" The girl replied: "Goood!" Keetenheuve thought: You don't have to be shy, he's glad of your company. The priest took a newspaper out of his cassock. It was an Italian newspaper, a newspaper from the Vatican, it was the Osservatore Romano. The priest put on a pair of spectacles and read the editorial in the Osservatore. Keetenheuve thought: That newspapers no worse than any other, its probably even better. Keetenheuve thought: The article will be well written, they are humanists, they know how to think, they will be supporting a good cause with good arguments, but they will suppress the view that there are equally good arguments for supporting the opposite cause. Keetenheuve thought: There is no such thing as truth. He thought: There is belief. He wondered: Does the editor of the Osservatore believe what he prints in his paper? Is he a cleric? Has he taken orders? Does he live in the Vatican? Keetenheuve thought: That would be a nice life; evenings in the gardens, evenings strolling down by the Tiber. He saw himself as a priest in a cassock and a black hat with a red ribbon Keetenheuve Monsignore. Little girls curtseying to him, and kissing his hand. The priest asked the little girl: "Do you want some mineral water to go with your wine?" The little girl shook her head. She drank her wine undiluted, with appreciative little sips. The priest folded up his Osservatore. He took off his glasses. His eyes were clear. His face was calm. It wasn't an empty face. He enjoyed his wine, the way a wine grower might. The little girl's socks under the table were red. The old man stroked his clever dachshund. It was quiet and peaceful. The waitress was sitting quietly and peacefully at one of the tables. She was reading a magazine serialization of I Was Stalin's Girlfriend. Keetenheuve thought: Eternity. He thought: Fixity. He thought: Belief. He thought: This peace is deceptive. And he thought: The heat in here, the silence in here, it's a moment in eternity, and contained in this moment are we, the priest and his Osservatore Romano, the little girl with her red socks, the man and his dog, the waitress who's resting, Stalin and his unfaithful girlfriend, and me, the parliamentarian, the protean, weak and ailing, but at least still turbulent.

  All of a sudden, everyone paid. The priest paid. The old man paid. Keetenheuve paid. The wine bar was suddenly empty. Where to? Where to? The old man and his dog were headed home. The priest walked the little girl back. Did the priest not have a home? Keetenheuve didn't know. Maybe the priest would go and see Korodin. Maybe he would go to a church, and spend the night in prayer. Maybe he had a beautiful home, a broad baroque bed with carved swans, old mirrors, an important collection of the seventeenth-century French, maybe he would go and browse in it a while, maybe he fell asleep on cool linen, and maybe little red socks twinkled through his dreams. Keetenheuve felt no craving to return home; his parliamentarian's apartment was a functional pied-à-terre, a doll's chamber of fear, where he felt one thing—that if he died there, no one would mourn. All day long, he'd been running scared of the dismal place.

  The streets of the neighborhood were empty. The lights in the windows of the clothes shops burned to no purpose. Keetenheuve studied the lives of the shop window families. A radio station had been questing for the ideal family. Here they were. The clothes shop owner had had them for ages. A grinning father, a grinning mother, a grinning
child stared delightedly at their price tags. They were happy because they were cheaply clothed. Keetenheuve thought: If the designer thought of putting the man in a uniform, how he would grin, how they would grin and admire him; they would admire him until the windows burst with the pressure of the explosions, until the wax melted down in the heat of the firestorm. And the lady in the next-door window, with a fashionable hairstyle, a lustful mouth, and a nice provocative thrusting belly, was pleased with her inexpensive dress. It was an ideal population standing there, ideal fathers, ideal housewives, ideal children, ideal mistresses, Serial reportage I Was Keetenheuve's Shop Window Dummy Keetenheuve contemporary personality; Keetenheuve moral exemplum for magazine readers, they grinned at Keetenheuve. They grinned encouragingly. They grinned: Go for it! They led a clean, cheap, ideal life. Even the provocatively thrusting belly of the fashionable doll, the little slut, was clean and cheap, it was synthetic: in her womb was the future. Keetenheuve could buy himself a doll family. An ideal wife. An ideal child. They could share his parliamentarian's doll's apartment with him. He could love them. He could put them in the cupboard when he didn't love them any more. He could buy them coffins, lay them out, and bury them.