The town had plenty to offer the lonely wanderer. It offered him cars, it offered him stoves, refrigerators, pots and pans, furniture, clocks, radios, all these objects were lying there in windows lit up as if for the personal benefit of Keetenheuve in a striking isolation, they were a devilish temptation, they were at present unreal cars, unreal stoves, pots and pans, or cupboards, they were magic charms or curses cast in the guise of utilitarian objects. A powerful magician had cast a spell, they were solidified air pressed into chance shapes, and the magician had enjoyed making ugly things as well, and now he was pleased that mankind desired these things and was prepared to work for them, to murder and steal and cheat for them; yes, mankind was prepared to kill itself if it couldn't meet the payments, honor the signature it had given the devil to acquire the magic goods. A shop with red light was pure black magic. A man stood in the window, cut open. Keetenheuve saw the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach; they were large as life, and clearly visible to him. The organs were connected to one another by glass tubes, by transparent laboratory snakes, and through these tubes flowed a pinky juice that the magic drink Sieglinde was supposed to keep flowing. The open man carried a skull with brushed teeth, and his right arm, which had been stripped of skin, exposing the strands of muscle and nerve, his right arm was raised in the fascist greeting, and Keetenheuve thought he could hear the "Heil Hitler" that this ghost had yelped out at him. The creature was without sex organs, it stood impotently among a store of hygiene goods, as they called themselves, and Keetenheuve took in rubber douches, contraceptive pills, all kinds of slimy pastes and sugared pills, there was a stork of artificial resin, and a luminous sign that read: The best for your children.
Keetenheuve thought: Don't take part, don't participate, don't sign on the dotted line, don't be a consumer or a subject. For a while in the quiet nocturnal streets of the capital, which was now reverting to small town, Keetenheuve dreamed his ancient dream of ataraxy. The dream gave him strength, as it gave everyone strength. His strides echoed. Ascetic Keetenheuve. Keetenheuve disciple of Zen. Keetenheuve Buddhist. Keetenheuve the great freer from the shackles of self But the stimulation he felt stimulated his gastric juices, the spiritual swing to his step woke his appetite, the great freer from the shackles of self felt hunger, felt thirst, he wasn't in the mood for liberation, which would have to begin now, right away, immediately, if it was to succeed. His strides echoed. They made hollow sounds in the quiet street.
Keetenheuve went into the town's second wine bar. This wine bar wasn't so quiet, it wasn't so formal as the first one, there was no priest here, no little girl in red socks to gladden the eye, but the establishment was still open, they were still serving. The regulars at a couple of tables were engaged in debate. They were fat men and fat women; they had businesses here, they had a comfortable living, they had lit up their shop windows, they were in league with the devil. Keetenheuve ordered wine and cheese. He was pleased he had ordered cheese. The Buddhist didn't want any animal to be slaughtered for his sake. The slightly smelly cheese salved his conscience. It tasted good. On the wall were the dying words of the vintner to his sons: You know, you can make wine from grapes also. The wine Keetenheuve drank was good. And then the Salvation Army girls walked into the bar.
Only one of the girls was wearing the red-and-blue uniform and the bonnet of the soldiers of the Lord, and with the other, you couldn't tell if she belonged to the Salvation Army at all, or if she was a novice who didn't yet have a uniform, or if she had just come along by chance, freely from friendship, or against her will, forced by circumstances, under protest, or just out of mere curiosity. She was perhaps sixteen. She was wearing a crumpled dress made of a cheap synthetic, her young bosom pushed out the sleek fabric, and Keetenheuve was struck by the expression of astonishment in her face, a look of constant surprise, mixed with disappointment, regret, and rage. The girl wasn't strictly speaking beautiful, and she was small as well, but her freshness and her truculence made her pretty. She was like a young colt that had been yoked up, and was frightened and bucky.
Hesitantly, holding copies of the War Cry in her hand, she followed in the wake of the uniformed girl, who might be twenty-five, a pale and suffering face in whose taut pallid expanse was an almost lipless mouth. Her hair, what Keetenheuve could see of it under the bonnet, was cut short, and if she took off the unflattering headgear, she would look like a boy. Keetenheuve felt himself drawn to the pair. Sensitive and open-minded Keetenheuve. The uniformed girl held the collection tin out to the regulars' table, and the fat business people pulled faces and pushed five-pfennig pieces into the rusty slit. Their fat wives looked stupidly and arrogantly off into the middle distance; they pretended not to be aware of the Salvation Army girl and the collection tin. The girl took her can back, and her face expressed apathy and contempt. The business people didn't look up at her face. It never occurred to them that they might be despised; and the Salvation Army creature didn't have to trouble to hide her contempt. Then the guitar adorned with pious slogans jangled against Keetenheuve's table, and the girl, contempt on her face, held out the can to him—a grim and arrogant angel of salvation. Keetenheuve wanted to talk to her, but shyness prevented him, and he spoke to her only in his thoughts. He said: Why don't you sing! Sing your hymn! And the girl replied in Keetenheuve's imagination: This isn't the place! And Keetenheuve in his imagination replied: Every place is the right place to sing the Lord's praises. And he thought: You're a little dyke, I've seen your like before, and you're terrified lest something you've stolen might be taken away from you. He put five marks in the collecting can, and he felt ashamed because he was putting five marks in the slit. It was too much and too little. The little sixteen-year-old in mufti watched Keetenheuve and watched him in astonishment. And then she pushed out the chapped lower lip of her curved and sensual mouth, and her face showed honest rage and indignation. Keetenheuve laughed, and the girl felt embarrassed and she blushed. Keetenheuve would have liked to ask the girls to sit down with him. He knew the other table would make a stir if he did; but he didn't care, yes, he would have welcomed it. But he was shy of the girls, and by the time he had got up his courage to ask them, the uniformed one was standing by the door, shouting to the little one, who hadn't taken her eyes off Keetenheuve, to get a move on. The girl trembled like a horse that hears the hated cry of the coachman and feels the tug on the reins; she turned away from Keetenheuve and cried back: "I'm coming, Gerda."
The girls left. The bell over the door rang. The door fell shut. The instant the door shut, Keetenheuve was back in London again. On the wall of an underground station, he saw a great map of the great city of London, with the sprawl of its suburbs into the countryside, and on the map there was a speck of fly dirt in London's docklands. That was where he was, Keetenheuve, at a tube station in the docks. The train that had ejected him had gone on its way; there was a roar and an icy blast in the tunnel. Keetenheuve stood on the platform and froze. It was Sunday afternoon. It was a Sunday afternoon in November. Keetenheuve was poor and alone and a stranger. Up on the street it was raining. It was a slant, lashing rain, coming out of low clouds, out of broody masses of fog that sat like heavy woolly hats on the roofs of the scabby, dirty houses and the tarred warehouses, sucking up the slothful, acrid smoke from the ancient crusty chimneys. The smoke smelled of bogland, it smelled of peat fires in wet bog-land. It was a familiar smell, it was the smell of Macbeth's witches, and in the air was their cry, fair is foul, and foul is fair! The witches had traveled into the city on the backs of the fogs, they squatted down on roofs and gutters, they had a rendezvous with the sea wind, they were touring London, they pissed in the ancient precincts, and then they howled lecherously as the storm buffeted them, as it hurled them onto the bed of the clouds, shook them, and clasped them wildly and lustfully. There was whistling and sighing in every quarter. The beams of the warehouses creaked round about, and the wind-skewed roofs groaned. Keetenheuve stood in the street. He heard the witches cackle. The pubs were sh
ut. Men stood around idly. They listened to the witches. The warm pubs were shut. Women stood shivering in alleyways. They listened to the witches' racket. The gin was behind lock and key in the pubs. The randy witches laughed and howled and pissed and copulated. The sky was full of them. And then, out of the fog and the wet, out of the peat smoke, and the gale and the witches' sabbath, came music, came the Salvation Army people with their banners, with their War Cry; with fifes and drums, with peaked caps and bonnets, with speeches and hymns, trying to banish the demons and to deny the insignificance of men. The Salvation Army ranks formed into a spiral snail, formed a ring, and there they stood and shouted, and tootled and drummed their Praise the Lord, and the witches went on laughing, they split their cloudy sides, they pissed, and they lay down on their backs before the wind. The yellow gray black skies over the dirty square in London's docklands looked like the swollen lust-chafing thighs and bellies of pregnant witches. The cosy little pubs were shut, and the gloomy homely dives. And even if the pubs had been open, who would have had a shilling to spend on the black, frothy, gluey beer? And so of a Sunday, the men and women and the poor and also Keetenheuve poor immigrant had nothing better to do than form up around the Salvation Army people, and they listened to their music, and they listened in silence to their singing, but they didn't listen to the speeches, they heard the witches, they felt bony fingers reaching for them, they felt the chill and the damp. And then they went away, a hunched, freezing, sorry-looking procession, their arms folded, their hands in their pockets. Men and women, Keetenheuve immigrant SA marching along, behind the Salvation Army flag, to the beat of the Salvation Army drum, and the witches laughed and ranted and the wind rammed them hard, repeatedly, lovely sea wind from the Arctic wastes, won't you warm up, won't you get a little excited, we are the witches from the heath, we've come to be at the ball in good old London town . . . They came to a shelter and there they were made to wait, because the Salvation Army also wanted to remind them what poor people they were, and poor people had to wait. And why shouldn't they wait? There was nothing waiting for them. The shelter was warm. Gas fires were burning. They hummed, their flames glowed yellow and red and blue like flickering will-o'-the-wisps and there was a sweetish smell in the room, like a dull opiate. They sat down on wooden benches without arms or backs, because for the poor such benches are good enough. The poor are not allowed to be tired. The rich are permitted to lean. Here there were only the poor. They propped their elbows on their thighs and their chins on their hands, and they leaned forward, because they were exhausted from standing, from waiting, from feeling lost. The band played "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and a man they called the Colonel, and who looked like a colonel from the "Daily Sketch" Colonel Keetenheuve at a game of cricket at Banquo Castle, held the sermon. The Colonel had a wife (who didn't look anywhere near as posh as he did, with his picture in the "Sketch" she looked just about fit to be his washerwoman, and scrub his underpants), and after the Colonel had spoken (What had he said? Keetenheuve had no idea, no one had any idea), the Colonel's wife called upon the people in the hall to proclaim how bad they all were. Now, there is a confessional side to many people, and also an inclination to masochism, and so a few stepped forward and owned up to thinking wicked thoughts they had never thought, all the while they anxiously tried not to tell about the serpents they carried in their bosom, the venomous creatures. Their evil deeds remained unconfessed. Perhaps it was advisable not to mention them here. There might be plainclothesmen in the hall. And what was an evil deed if you had to confess it here in public, and before God? To torture a dog is a wicked deed. To beat a child is a wicked deed. But was it wicked to want to rob a bank? Or was it wicked to plan to murder a powerful wicked and universally respected man? Who could tell? You needed a very alert conscience to discriminate. Did the Colonel of the Salvation Army have such a conscience? He didn't look the sort. His clipped mustache looked martial, more Army than Salvation. And if the Colonel had happened to have such a sensitive conscience, what good would it do him, because a sharp, fine, and well-developed conscience would be precisely the one that could never decide whether a bank robbery was an ethical or an unethical undertaking. Confession was followed by tea. It was ladled out of a large steaming cauldron into aluminum mugs. It was black and very sweet. You burnt your lips on the hot rim of the aluminum, but the tea felt good sliding across your tongue, and trickling warmly into your belly. The gas flames buzzed, and their soft and lethal fumes mingled with the sweet smell of the tea and the harsh whiff of unwashed bodies, the pong of rain-soaked steaming clothes, to make another kind of fog that reddened before Keetenheuve's eyes and made him giddy. All longed to be outside, they longed for the tempest, they longed for the witches—but the tempting pubs weren't yet open. In Bonn, they wanted to close as well. The regulars got up to go from their tables. The business people put on fake smiles, and reached out their plump hands, they squeezed fat gold-ringed fingers, each knew what the other was worth, they knew one another's bank balances. Then they went to turn out the lights in their shop windows. They took their clothes off. They emptied their bladders. They crept into bed, the fat businessman, the fat businessman's wife, the son will go to college, the daughter will make a good marriage, the woman yawns, the man farts. Good night! Good night! Who's freezing out in the open?
Keetenheuve saw the lights going out in the windows. Where would he go? He walked aimlessly. And in front of the department store, he ran into the Salvation Army girls, and this time he greeted them like old friends. Gerda gnawed her thin bloodless lips. She was livid. How she hated men, the unmerited gift of the penis had turned their heads. Gerda would have run away, but she doubted whether Lena, the little sixteen-year-old, would have followed her, and so she had to stay and suffer the proximity of the predatory man.
Keetenheuve walked up and down with Lena in front of the shop windows, up and down in front of the darkened dolls' rooms, and while Gerda looked on with pinched mouth and burning eyes, he heard the refugee's story. Lena told it in a gentle dialect that softly swallowed some of the syllables. She came from Thuringia, and she was training to become a mechanic. She claimed she had certificates as a mechanic, and had already worked as a toolmaker. Her family had flown to Berlin with Lena, and from there they had been flown into the Federal Republic, and had lived in camps for a long time. Lena the little mechanic wanted to end her apprenticeship, and then she wanted to earn a lot of money as a toolmaker, and then she wanted to study and become an engineer, as she had been promised back East, but in the West everybody just laughed at her, and said a workbench wasn't a place for girls, and if you were poor you couldn't study. So some labor exchange put Lena in a kitchen, put her in the kitchen of a hotel, and Lena, the refugee from Thuringia, was set to rinse plates, the fatty leftovers, the fatty sauces, the fatty skins of sausages, the fatty trimmings of roast meat, and all that fat nauseated her, she vomited into the vat of pale blubbery fat. She ran out of the fatty kitchen. She ran onto the street. She stood by the side of the road, and waved to cars, because she wanted to reach her paradise, which was a shiny factory with oiled workbenches and a well-paid eight-hour day. Lena was picked up by traveling salesmen. Fatty hands groped her breasts. Fatty hands reached up her skirts, and yanked at her knicker elastic. Lena resisted. The traveling salesmen swore at her. Lena tried truck drivers. The truck drivers laughed at the little mechanic. They reached up her skirts. When she yelled, they shifted down into first, and threw her out of the cab. She reached the Ruhr. She saw the chimneys. The blast furnaces were burning. The steel rolling mills were working. The forges were forging. But outside the factory gates sat the fat porters, and the fat porters laughed when Lena asked if they had a job for a trainee mechanic with lots of experience. At least the fat porters were much too fat to reach up the trainee mechanics skirt. And so Lena had ended up in the capital. What do you do if you're homeless, where do you go if you're hungry? You go to the railway station, as if the trains would bring you a change of luck. Plenty of peop
le approached Lena. One of them was Gerda. Lena followed Gerda, the Salvation Army girl, and she toured the town with the War Cry in her hand, and she was surprised by everything she saw. Keetenheuve thought: Gerda will touch your breasts as well. He thought: And so will I. He thought: It's your destiny. He thought: We're like that, it's our destiny. But he told her he would try to find a job for her at the end of her apprenticeship. Gerda’s mouth opened angrily. She said plenty of people had offered that to Lena, and their promises hadn't been worth much. Keetenheuve thought: You're right, I want to see Lena again, I want to touch her, she's tempting, and particularly tempting to me; that's what it is. Vicious Keetenheuve. But he still resolved to take up Lena's case with Korodin, who had contacts with factories, and maybe with Knurrewahn or one of his party colleagues who was up on the labor exchange situation. He wanted to help her. The mechanic should be given her lathe. Virtuous Keetenheuve. He asked Lena to meet him at the wine bar the next evening. Gerda took Lena's hand. The girls disappeared into the night. Keetenheuve remained behind in the night.
Night. Night. Night. A bad moon. Summer lightning. Night. Night. Nightlife. There were efforts to get something going in the station area. Lemurs. Lemurs in the bar staring at a scrawny ghost, trying to set a record for nonstop piano playing. The ghost was sitting at an old grand in sweaty socks, and, surrounded by brimming ashtrays and empty Coca-Cola bottles, hammered out tunes that you could hear from any loudspeaker. From time to time a waiter went up to the ghost and, with an apathetic expression, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, or poured Coca-Cola down his gullet. Then the ghost would nod like Death in the puppet theater—an expression of gratitude and solidarity Night. Night. Lemurs. The Rhine valley express flashed past. Flashed on its way to Cologne. At the station in the Café Kranzler, fat men were sitting, singing: "I've got another suitcase in Berlin." They looked across at the fat women and sang: "I miss the old Kurfürstendamm," and the fat women thought: ministerial councillors, government councillors, embassy councillors, and they wiggled fattily in a Berlinerish fashion, pig's liver with apple and onions, and blew their noses Berlinerishly: "Come on, then, little fella, your hands on my flowerpots," and the agents, the travelers, the assistants, thought: Woman like a cloud, just like my old lady at home, phwoarh, thirty smackers, only my old lady will do it next Sunday for free, better get myself a magazine, else I'll forget what a woman looks like. "I'll pass." They played games of skat, and drank their wheat beer with shots out of long straight glasses. Night. Night. Lemurs. Frost-Forestier was going to bed. The Frost-Forestier industry was being put to bed. He exercised on the bars. He stood under the shower. He rubbed his fit, well-muscled body dry. He drank two gulps of cognac out of a brandy balloon. The great wireless was speaking news. All quiet in Moscow. Appeals to the Soviet people. The little wireless screamed: "Dora has diapers. Dora has diapers." On the table lay a photocopy of the interviews with the generals on the Conseil Supérieur des Forces Armées. Mergentheim's telephone number scribbled on the sheet. Also: Ask about Guatemala?? The black paper with the white writing looks like a corpus delicti. Frost-Forestier winds his alarm clock. Its set for half past five. Frost-Forestier's bed is narrow. It is hard. A thin blanket covers Frost-Forestier. Frost-Forestier opens a volume of the works of Frederick the Great. He reads Frederick's dodgy French. He examines an engraving, a picture of the King with the face of a greyhound. Frost-Forestier turns out the light. He falls asleep as on command. The other side of the curtains of generalissimo red, there's a screech owl in the park. Night. An owl screeching. It signifies death. A dog has barked. Jewish joke. Signifies death. Keetenheuve superstitious. Night. Night. Lemurs. On the first floor they were choosing the beauty queen of the night. Evening dresses like flapping washroom curtains. A professional Rhinelander, cheery chappie, stood by the mike and asked the ladies to step forward. Giggles. Embarrassed looks at the oiled floor. The professional Rhinelander, cheery chappie, cheeky chappie, gets his way. Keetenheuve whip in the lower house. The professional Rhinelander, cheery chappie, cheeky chappie, wending his way among the tables, champagne tables, more-wine-tables, champagne and wine salesmen, took the ladies by the hand, led them on to the smooth parquet of judgment, presented them, exposed them, offered them up, derailed housewives, aborted mothers, robes out of the Domestic Advice Bulletin classical and plain, what do I do about semen stains, can you tell me some slimming recipes, Frau Christine always offers the most asinine advice, stiff, awkward, limitlessly conceited movements. Keetenheuve stood in the doorway, Keetenheuve had customer, bottle baby, won't buy his round, sucks on his pacifier, he thought of parliament, the second reading of the bill, no bill for beauty contests, Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen, a decision of immeasurable consequence, we vote in division, I jump through the wrong door, annoy the party, this here is a mutton jump, little sheep to the right, little sheep to the left, the professional Rhinelander, cheery chappie, cheeky chappie, hup two three, hup two three!, waits for the bill to pass into law. Keetenheuve thought: What are you playing at, you'll offend them all mightily, not one of these geese is worth plucking, but every one of them imagines she's beautiful, thinks she's irresistible, even her stupidity is no match for her vanity, they'll be offended. But the professional Rhinelander, hup two three!, cheeky and cheery, wasn't one to be troubled by such concerns. He chirpily persevered with the work now begun. He gave numbers to his golden gaggle, asked the honored guests, asked the wine buyers, asked the bucks wanting fucks to write down the number of their preference, of their queen, on one of the ballot papers distributed throughout the room. But there wasn't a beauty in the room. They were all charmless. All ugly. They were the ugly daughters of the Rhine. Wagalaweia, dimwits, rejects. Take another look! There was one animally attractive specimen. Meat market. A pink raven. Keetenheuve chose her. Keetenheuve discharges democratic duty Good citizen Keetenheuve. She had curved sensuous lips, cow's eyes, unfortunately, Europa Keetenheuve Jupiter, a round bust, trim hips, slim legs, and the notion of taking her to bed was not disagreeable. The night is warm. Van de Veldes complete marriage. Darling, what position would you like me to adopt for you? Keetenheuve Van-de-Velde-husband. He was curious. What were the odds? Was his favorite in the running? Only one vote for the animally attractive one! She was the last of the bunch. A beanpole with pompadour hair and goose features was chosen; selling point "decent girl with good dowry." Attractiveness not in demand. Bedroom lights dimmed. All cats gray. Fanfare, drumroll, from the band. The professional Rhinelander, cheery chappie, cheeky chappie, presents boxes of sticky candy. Gracious smile from the winner. Sweet lady; hear my song. Keetenheuve chanteur on the skids. The wine buyers applauded and ordered up another bottle; excited bucks wanting fucks. Enterprising reps sought. Diligent workers. Did Keetenheuve work diligently? Will Keetenheuve learn? No, he will not learn. Is he condemned? Yes, he is condemned. All those in favor? All those not in favor? Night night. Lemurs. A better sort of place, a more distinguished location. François-Poncet hadn't turned up. Was in Paris, in his academician's tails. Palm-embroidered. Was working on a dictionary. Sat in Pétain's chair. She couldn't remember whose arm was embracing her, but it was a socially respectable arm, and the head that went with the arm belonged to a whiskey advertisement, King Simpson Old Kentucky Home American Blend, that inspired trust, and she danced under the summer lightning on a terrace by the Rhine, Sophie Mergentheim from the circulation department of the old Volksblatt in Berlin. Rooms in Berlin, rooms over the courtyard at the back, lightless rooms, expropriated, imprisoned, burned, destroyed, she was part of the whipped froth on the pudding, the crème de la crème, reddish sponge base, golden froth, caramelized, egg yolks rubbed in her blond hair. Mergentheim was telephoning. The host discreetly left the room. Diplomat. What's he doing? Eavesdropping discreetly. Tapping into the line. Mergentheim was calling the editor. He was making sure. They were running the article. Copies had reached the station in time. Mergentheim was sweating in his tails. He thought: He's my enemy a man with those views is bound t
o be my enemy. Night. Night. Lemurs. Keetenheuve descended into the basement. "Bei mir biste scheen"{18}—that's what they were playing in the basement. "Bei mir biste de scheenste auf der Welt"—this was catacomb air, but not the catacombs under the cathedral, not Korodin's burial site going back to Frankish-Roman times, this was Keetenheuve's nightspot from the period of the Western alliance, there wasn't any smell of mold or incense for that matter, there was a powerful smell of cigarette smoke, of schnapps, of girls and men, people were dancing a mixture of boogie-woogie and Rhinelanders, and energetically in both cases, this was a place for young people who didn't wear caps and didn't need sabers to get in touch with themselves, this was an echt catacomb, a place of concealment underground, a gathering place for youthful opposition to the old beds of the town, but the young opposition was gurgling away like ground water, it made a splash for one night in the fountain, and then it dribbled away in lecture halls, in seminars for grinds, on office chairs and at the lab assistant's workplace. "We're All Going up to Heaven," played the student band. Keetenheuve stood by the bar. He drank three shots of schnapps. He drank them one after the other, knocking them back. He felt old. He wouldn't get to heaven. The young people were spinning and whirling around him. A steaming bubbling yeasty ferment. Bare arms, bare legs. Open shirts. Bare faces. They mingled. They blurred. They sang: "Because we're so good, because we're so good." Keetenheuve thought: You're so good, you'll lie down in the despised beds of your parents, you won't make yourselves any new beds of your own, but maybe by that time the old beds will be burning, maybe you'll be burning as well, maybe you'll be in the ground. There was a throng around the bar, but it didn't concern him. They didn't touch him. He stood off on his own. Elke would have been a link connecting Keetenheuve to the young world. So he didn't venture to ask them to have a drink with him. Neither boy nor girl did he venture to ask to have a drink with him. Keetenheuve the stone guest. He took himself off. Little Keetenheuve doesn't play nicely with others. Night. Night. Lemurs. Korodin was praying. He was praying in an attic. The room was unfurnished, but for a hassock in front of a crucifix, which was hanging soberly on a whitewashed wall. Korodin was kneeling on the hassock. A candle was burning. Flickering. The attic window was open. The summer lightning had moved nearer, and its flashes lit up the room. Korodin feared the heavenly fire, and in not closing the window, he was mortifying himself. He prayed: I know I am evil; I know my life is not righteous; I know I ought to give everything to the poor; but I know too that to do so would be pointless; no poor man would become rich, no man would be made better by it. Lord, punish me if I'm mistaken! The crucifix, carved by a master out of rosewood, looked in the light of the storm to be doubled over in pain, sick, suffering, rotting. It was an image of torment. The torment remained silent. It gave Korodin no reply. Korodin thought: I ought to go. I ought to give everything away. It's all wrong. It's just a distraction. It's just in the way. I should just go. Go and keep going. Don't know where. I have nowhere to go—and he guessed that it was important not to have anywhere to go. The lack of destination was the real destination. But he feared the lightning. He feared the onset of the rain. He continued to pray. Christ remained mute. Night. Night. Lemurs. Drunks shouting around the station. They shouted: "Infantry!" And they were gone. They shouted: "Give us back our Kaiser Bill!" And they were gone. Boys lurked in doorways, selling themselves. Gone. At the station, haggard pleasure mares ready for the knackers were waiting for a rider. Gone. Thunder and lightning. The rain came down. Keetenheuve stopped a taxi. He had no option. Time to go home. Home to his doll's apartment. Home to the ghetto. Home to the government ghetto, the parliamentarians' ghetto, the ghetto of journos, of officials and secretaries. Thunder and lightning. He opened the French window that went—not very far—from the floor to the low ceiling. The narrow fold-away bed was down, as he'd left it. Unmade. Open books lay around. Papers. The desk was covered with papers, drafts, sketches, half-written speeches, abandoned letters. Keetenheuve's life was a draft. It was a draft for a real life; but Keetenheuve could no longer imagine real life. He couldn't remember what it looked like; and he was certain he would no longer live it. Among the papers was a letter from Elke. Her last letter. Elke had been his chance, his one chance at another life. Maybe. He had lost that chance. Gone. Lightning. Lightning over a grave. He saw the weepy immortelles of the graveyard in the pale flicker of the lightning. He breathed in the smell of moldy, damp yew hedges, the sweet corruption of rotting roses in funereal wreaths. The graveyard wall seemed to flinch in the lightning. Fear and trembling. Kierkegaard. Nursemaid consolation for intellectuals. Silence. Night. Keetenheuve timid night bird Keetenheuve night owl at the end of its tether Keetenheuve pathetic wanderer down cemetery avenues, ambassador to Guatemala lemurs accompany him
The Hothouse Page 14
