5
HE AWOKE. HE WOKE EARLY. HE WOKE FROM UNQUIET sleep. He woke from unquiet sleep in the ghetto.
Every ghetto was surrounded by invisible walls and was at the same time open and exposed to view from outside. Keetenheuve thought: The ghettos of Hitler and Himmler, the ghettos of the transports and the victims, the walls and perimeters, the incinerator ovens of Treblinka, the uprising of the Jews in Warsaw, all the camps after the war, all the barracks that housed us, all the Nissen huts, the bunkers, the DPs and the refugees—the government, the parliament, officialdom and underlings, and now we are a foreign body in the sluggish flesh of our capital city.
What he could see were the four walls, the ceiling, door, and window of the tiny room, what he could see—curtains open, blinds up—were the façades of the other houses in the ghetto, jerry-built, flat-roofed, big-windowed, steel-framed tenements. They were a version of the tent towns of traveling circuses and freak shows; run up to be taken down. A secretary was taking a bath. He could hear the water flowing through pipes in the walls. The secretary washed thoroughly, soaped herself, rinsed herself, office dirt was dissolved, flowed down her breasts, sagging, unfortunately, flowed down her belly and thighs, spilled down the drain, tumbled into the underworld, entered the sewage system, the Rhine, the sea. The flushes of the toilets jerked and gushed. The parting of the ways for human and human waste. A loudspeaker wheezed: "One, two, three, and left, one, two, three, and right." A moron was exercising. He was skipping, you could hear it, a heavy body, naked, slap of bare soles on the boards. That was Sedesaum, the human frog. From a second loudspeaker shrilled a choir of children: "Let us sing and jump and shout." The voices of the children sounded drilled, they were bored, the singing was stupid. Frau Pierhelm the MP was listening to the children. Frau Pierhelm lived out of cans. She fixed herself a coffee out of the Nescan, poured a dribble of condensed milk into it, and waited for the radio program We housewives and the Security Pact. Frau Pierhelm had recorded the program in Cologne some two weeks previously.
Keetenheuve lay on his narrow foldaway bed. He stared up at the bed frame, a shelf covered with books, and he stared past it at the low ceiling, where cracks in barely dry plaster had run together into curving lines, a tangled web of roads, the general staff map of some unknown country. Now Frau Pierhelm was to be heard on the wireless: "We housewives must not, we housewives must, we housewives put our trust." What must Frau Pierhelm not, what must she, where did she put her trust? A fine dusting from the general staff map. The opening of a new front. Frau Pierhelm from Cologne exclaimed: "I believe! I believe!" Frau Pierhelm on the airwaves believed. Frau Pierhelm, the other side of the wall from Keetenheuve in the ghetto building, Frau Pierhelm, her cup full of the mix of Nescafe and condensed milk, in front of her an ashtray with her morning cigarette, Frau Pierhelm the honorable member, an ostrich, head buried in her chest of drawers, hunting for clean linen, who washed your clothes while you were securing the future of your country, Frau Pierhelm the politician was listening with satisfaction to Frau Pierhelm the orator, as she reached the conclusion that the pact gave security to German women, a ringing conclusion, if a little reminiscent of a recent advertisement for tampons.
It was still early Keetenheuve was an early riser, as almost everyone in Bonn was a morning person. The Chancellor was preparing himself for the plenary session, rose-scented and fortified by the Rhine air, which sapped his opponents, and Frost-Forestier would long since have started up his powerful juddering machine. Keetenheuve thought: Will he venture something else, will he have a fresh offer for me today, Cape Town or Tokyo? But he knew Frost-Forestier wouldn't offer him another embassy, and, come evening, the knives would be out for him.
Keetenheuve was calm. His heart was beating calmly. He felt a little sorry to be missing out on Guatemala. He thought regretfully of passing up his death on the Spanish colonial veranda. Guatemala had been tempting. He hadn't fallen for it. He had made a decision. He was going to fight. The wirelesses were silent. All that could be heard was the morning song of the capital in summer: the clatter of lawn mowers, like ancient sewing machines, that were being dragged over the grass.
Sedesaum the human frog hopped downstairs. With every smacking step, the flimsy building shook. Sedesaum was a professional Christian, God help him, and since there wasn't a chapel anywhere nearabouts, he took his morning hop to the little dairy, to do a work of humility and publicity, and the Sunday color supplements had already featured the populist representative of the people your concerns are my concerns with milk bottle and bag of rolls in his arms, and besides, what he was doing there was an act of tolerance, the Samaritan was supporting his fallen brother, and they would give him extra credit for that in heaven. Sedesaum bought his breakfast at Dörflich's. Far and wide, Dörflich's was the only shop, which gave him a monopoly, you had no option but to take him your custom, but unfortunately Dörflich was a pain, he was the equivalent of a lapsed priest, he was a member of parliament who had been expelled from the orders of his party, but remained a consecrated parliamentarian. He had gotten tangled up in a disreputable and initially remunerative affair, which unfortunately the press had gotten wind of, and which then, stirred by denials and statements of support, had become impossible to hush up, and had ceased to be profitable; Dörflich was made a scapegoat and banished from his party into the wilderness, where, to the horror of all his colleagues in the parliamentary ghetto, he opened his little dairy business. Whether Dörflich hoped to wash himself whiter than white with his milk, speculating that his customers would give him their votes, or whether he was merely laundering the profits from his disreputable affair; whichever, "non olet," the only thing that perceptibly stank at Dörflich's was the cheese, though Keetenheuve thought he sometimes caught a whiff of carrion in Dörflich's vicinity, which wasn't from the cheese cloche. Actually, Keetenheuve thought it was sensible on the part of Dörflich to diversify away from the uncertain prospects of reelection, and into the milk trade. He didn't share the outrage of their parliamentary colleagues, and he went so far as to think: Each of us should have his own milk shop, so we're not left clinging to the raft of our perished ideas. And so it amused Keetenheuve to watch from the window of the ghetto block, as Dörflich brought in his wares out of the back of his parliamentarian's car, and Keetenheuve didn't mind that the Catholic and now whipless representative of the people was probably using the federal purse to pay for his transport overheads. But, his possibly immoral amusement aside, Keetenheuve did not like Dörflich, and Dörflich for his part loathed Keetenheuve the intellectual scumbag. And so Keetenheuve, when he went to Dörflich's once to try the milk, was duly served some that was off, and Keetenheuve thought: Well, who knows, who knows, maybe we'll see each other in the Fourth Reich, Dörflich's ministerial chair will already be parked in among his milk churns, and my death sentence will have been written.
The Hothouse Page 15
