Hanna asked: “Why does Udo spend so much time up here?” And after a pause: “What is that game board with all those counters there on the table?” Ingeborg was slow to find an answer. At a loss, she looked at me as if I were the one responsible for her friend’s stupid curiosity. Hanna stood there waiting. In a calm and cold voice that disconcerted even me, I explained that since my shoulders were so burned I’d rather sit in the shade and read on the balcony. It’s relaxing, I said, you should try it. It helps you think. Hanna laughed, not sure what I meant. Then I added:
“That game board, as you can see, is a map of Europe. It’s a game. It’s also a challenge. And it’s part of my work.”
Flustered, Hanna stammered that she’d heard that I worked for the electric company in Stuttgart, so I had to explain that even though nearly all of my income came from the electric company, neither my true passion nor much of my time was devoted to it. What’s more, games like the one on the table brought in an extra bit of money. I don’t know whether it was the mention of money or the gleam of the board and the counters, but Hanna came over and began to question me in earnest about the map. It was the ideal moment to introduce her to the gaming world . . . Just then Ingeborg said they should go. From the balcony I watched them cross the Paseo Marítimo and spread their towels a few yards from El Quemado’s pedal boats. The way they moved, so delicately and in such an intensely feminine way, was strangely painful to me. For a few moments I felt sick, unable to do anything but lie on the bed, facedown, sweating. Absurd, agonizing images passed through my head. I thought about suggesting to Ingeborg that we head south, to Andalusia, or that we travel to Portugal, or that we lose ourselves on the back roads of Spain, or cross over to Morocco . . . Then I remembered that she had to be back at work on September 3 and that my own holiday ended on September 5, and that we didn’t actually have the time . . . Finally I got up, showered, and found myself in the game.
•
(General aspects of the spring turn, 1940. France defends the classic front along the line of Hex 24s, and a second line of defense along the hex 23s. Of the fourteen infantry corps that by this point should be present in the European theater, at least twelve should cover hexes Q24, P24, O24, N24, M24, L24, Q23, O23, and M23. The two remaining corps should be placed in hexes O22 and P22. Of the three armored corps, one should probably be in Hex O22, another in Hex T20, and the last in Hex O23. The replacement units will be in hexes Q22, T21, U20, and V20; the air units in hexes P21 and Q20, on air bases. The British Expeditionary Force, which in the best of cases will consist of three infantry corps and an armored corps— of course, if the En glish attacked France in greater force, the variant to use would be the direct strike against Great Britain and to that end the German airborne corps should be in Hex K28—would be deployed in Hex N23 [two infantry corps] and Hex P23 [one infantry corps and one armored corps]. As a possible defensive variant, the English forces could be moved from Hex P23 to Hex O23, and the French forces [an armored corps and an infantry corps] from O23 to P23. In any deployment the strongest hex will be the one where the English armored corps is located, whether P23 or O23, and it will determine the focus of the German attack. This attack will be carried out with very few units. If the English armored corps is in P23, the German attack will be launched from O24; if, on the contrary, the English armored corps is in O23, the attack must be launched from N24, through the south of Belgium. To assure a breakthrough, the airborne corps must be launched from Hex O23 if the English armored corps is in P23, or from N23 if it’s in O23. The initial strike will be made by two armored corps and the follow-through will be carried out by two or three different armored corps that must arrive at Hex O23 or N22, depending on the location of the English armored corps, and proceed to an immediate exploitation of Hex O22 [Paris]. To prevent a counterattack at a ratio greater than 1:2, some air factors must be left in reserve, etc.).
•
That afternoon we had drinks in the tourist district and then we went to play miniature golf. Charly was calmer than he had been for the last few days, his face relaxed and peaceful, as if a tranquillity thus far unsuspected had settled over him. Appearances are misleading. Soon he began to ramble on in the usual way, and he told us a story that was a good illustration of how stupid he is or how stupid he thinks we are, or both. Briefly: All day he had been windsurfing and at a certain point he got so far out that he lost sight of the coastline. The joke was that upon returning to the beach he confused our town with the next one; the buildings, the hotels, even the curve of the beach, made him suspect something, but he ignored his doubts. Disoriented, he asked a German bather to direct him to the Costa Brava hotel. Unhesitatingly, the German sent him to a hotel that was in fact called the Costa Brava but that looked nothing like the Costa Brava where Charly was staying. Still, Charly went in and asked for his room key. Since he wasn’t registered, the receptionist of course wouldn’t give it to him, despite Charly’s threats. Strong words finally gave way to conversation, and since things were slow at the reception desk, they had some beers at the hotel bar, where, to the surprise of all those listening, everything was explained and Charly made a friend and won general admiration.
“What did you do then?” asked Hanna, though clearly she already knew the answer.
“Picked up my board and headed back. By sea, naturally!”
Charly is a serious braggart, or a serious idiot.
Why am I so afraid sometimes? And why, when I’m most afraid, does my spirit seem to surge, rise up, and observe the whole planet from above? (I see Frau Else from above and I’m afraid. I see Ingeborg from above and I know that she sees me too and I’m afraid and I want to cry.) Tears of love? Do I really want to escape with her not just from this town and the heat but from what the future holds for us, from mediocrity and absurdity? Others find peace in sex or the passage of time. Charly is satisfied with Hanna’s legs and tits. He’s happy. But I, when faced with Ingeborg’s beauty, am forced to see clearly at last and am thrown into turmoil. I’m a nervous wreck. I feel like weeping and throwing punches when I think about Conrad, who has no holidays or spends his holidays in Stuttgart without even a trip to the pool. But my face remains unchanged. And my pulse is steady. I scarcely move a muscle, though inside I’m falling apart.
As we got ready for bed, Ingeborg remarked how well Charly looked. We’d been at a club called Adam’s until three in the morning. Now Ingeborg is asleep and I’m writing and chain-smoking with the balcony door open. Hanna looked good too. She even danced a couple of slow songs with me. Our conversation: trivial as always. What can Hanna and Ingeborg have to talk about? Is it possible that they’re truly becoming friends? Charly treated us to dinner at the restaurant at the Costa Brava. Paella, salad, wine, ice cream, and coffee. Then we left in my car for the club. Charly didn’t feel like driving, nor did he feel like walking; maybe I’m exaggerating but I got the impression that he didn’t even feel like being seen in public. Hanna kept leaning over and kissing him. I imagine she kisses her son in Oberhausen the same way. As we were on our way back I spotted El Quemado on the terrace of the Andalusia Lodge. The terrace was empty and the waiters were clearing the tables. A group of local kids were leaning on the railing, talking. El Quemado, a few yards away, seemed to be listening to them. When I remarked to Charly, half jokingly, that his friend was there, his reply was irritable: what do I care, keep going. I think he thought I was talking about the Wolf or the Lamb. In the darkness it’s hard to tell people apart. Keep going, keep going, said Ingeborg and Hanna.
AUGUST 28
Today, for the first time, we woke up to gray skies. From our window, the beach looked majestic and empty. A few children were playing in the sand but soon it began to rain and one by one they disappeared. At the restaurant, during breakfast, the atmosphere was different; banished from the terrace because of the rain, people gathered at the indoor tables and the breakfast hour stretched on, encouraging the quick formation of new friendships. Everyone talked. The men star
ted to drink early. The women were constantly going back up to their rooms in search of warmer clothes that most of the time they were unable to find. Jokes were made. A general air of frustration soon manifested itself. But since there was no point spending the whole day at the hotel, expeditions were orga-nized; groups of five or six, huddled under a couple of umbrellas, went out to visit the shops and then a café or some video arcade. The rainswept streets seemed removed from the daily bustle, immersed in a different kind of ordinariness.
Charly and Hanna arrived partway through breakfast. They had decided to go to Barcelona and Ingeborg was going with them. I said I wouldn’t go. Today will be all mine. After they left I sat watching people come and go. Despite what I expected, there was no sign of Frau Else. But at least it was a quiet and comfortable spot. I put my brain to work reviewing the beginnings of matches, opening moves and exploratory moves . . . A general lethargy had fallen over everything. Suddenly the only truly happy people were the waiters. They had twice as much work as on an ordinary day but they were kidding around and laughing. An old man sitting near me said that they were laughing at us.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “They’re laughing because they can feel summer coming to an end, and work too.”
“So they should be sad. They’ll be out of a job, the lazy bastards!”
I left the hotel at noon.
I got in the car and drove slowly to the Andalusia Lodge. I would’ve gotten there faster by walking but I didn’t feel like walking.
From the outside it looked like all the other bars with terraces: chairs upended and water dripping from the fringes of the umbrellas. The fun was inside. As if the rain had broken the ice, tourists and locals— mingling in a way somehow tinged with catastrophe— were enmeshed in an endless and unintelligible exchange of gestures. In the back, near the TV, I spotted the Lamb. He waved me over. I waited until I’d been served a coffee, and then I went to sit at his table. At first we just made small talk. The Lamb was sorry it was raining, though not on his account but on mine, because I had come in search of sunny days and beach, etc. I didn’t bother to tell him that actually I was delighted it was raining. After a while he asked about Charly. I told him he was in Barcelona. With who? he wanted to know. The question took me by surprise; I would have liked to say that it was none of his business. After hesitating, I decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“With Ingeborg and Hanna, of course. Who did you think he was with?”
The poor guy seemed taken aback. Nobody, he said, smiling. On the fogged-up window someone had drawn a heart bisected by a hypodermic needle. Out the window, the Paseo Marítimo and some gray planks could be glimpsed. The few tables at the back of the bar were occupied by young people and they were the only ones who kept a certain distance from the tourists. The bar was tacitly divided between the people up front (families and older men) and those in the back. Suddenly the Lamb began to tell me a strange and meaningless story. He spoke rapidly, confidentially, leaning over the table. I hardly understood him. The story was about Charly and the Wolf, but the way he told it was like something out of a dream: an argument, a blonde (Hanna?), knives, the all-conquering power of friendship . . . “The Wolf is a good person, I know him, he’s got a heart of gold. Charly too. But when they get drunk they’d drive anybody crazy.” I nodded. I couldn’t care less. Near us a girl stared into the empty fireplace, now a giant ashtray. Outside the rain came down harder. The Lamb bought me a cognac. Just then the owner came in and put on a video. To do so he had to get up on a chair. From his perch he announced: “I’m putting on a video for you kids.” No one paid any attention. “You’re a bunch of bums,” he said on his way out. The movie was about postnuclear bikers. “I’ve seen it,” said the Lamb when he returned with two drinks. It was good cognac. The girl near the fireplace started to cry. I don’t know how to explain it but she was the only one in the whole bar who didn’t seem to be there. I asked the Lamb why she was crying. I can hardly see her face, he replied, how do you know she’s crying? I shrugged. On the TV a couple of bikers were riding through the desert; one of them was missing an eye; on the horizon sprawled the remains of a city: a gas station in ruins, a supermarket, a bank, a movie theater, a hotel . . . “Mutants,” said the Lamb, turning sideways so he could see better.
Next to the girl by the fireplace was another girl, and a boy who might have been thirteen or eighteen. Both of them watched her cry and from time to time patted her on the back. The boy had a pimply face. He whispered into the girl’s ear, more as if he were trying to convince her of something than as if he were consoling her, and out of the corner of his eye he made sure not to miss any of the most violent scenes in the movie, which, as it happened, followed constantly one after the other. In fact, the faces of all the kids (except the one who was crying) lifted automatically toward the TV at the sound of fighting or at the music that preceded the climactic moments of the fights. Either the rest of the movie didn’t interest them or they’d seen it already.
Outside the rain was still coming down.
I thought about El Quemado. Where was he? Could he possibly be spending the day on the beach, buried under the pedal boats? For a second, as if I were gasping for air, I felt like running out to check.
Little by little the idea of visiting him began to take shape. What attracted me most was seeing for myself what I’d already imagined: part child’s hideout, part third-world shack. But what did I really expect to find under the pedal boats? In my mind’s eye I could see El Quemado sitting like a caveman beside a kerosene lantern; when I come in, he looks up and we gaze at each other. But how do I get in? Down a hole, like a rabbit burrow? Maybe. And there, at the end of the tunnel, is El Quemado, reading the paper and looking like a rabbit. A giant rabbit, scared to death. Of course, I didn’t want to frighten him. I should announce myself first. Hello, it’s me, Udo, are you there, the way I imagined? . . . And if no one answered, what to do? I imagined myself pacing around the pedal boats searching for the way in. A tiny crack. Sliding on my belly, creeping in with great difficulty . . . Inside everything is dark. Why?
“Do you want me to tell you how the movie ends?” asked the Lamb.
The girl by the fireplace wasn’t crying anymore. On the TV a kind of executioner was digging a hole big enough to bury the body of a man and his bike. When it was over, the kids laughed, though there was something indefinable about the scene, something more tragic than comic.
I nodded. How did it end?
“So the good guy escapes the radioactive zone with the treasure. I can’t remember whether it’s a formula to make synthetic gasoline or water or what. Anyway, it’s just another movie, right?”
“Right,” I said.
I wanted to pay but the Lamb refused to let me. “You can pay tonight,” he said, smiling. The idea was completely unappealing to me. But no one could make me go out with them, after all, though I was afraid that idiot Charly had already made plans. And if Charly went out, Hanna would go; and if Hanna did, Ingeborg probably would too. As I got up, I asked casually where El Quemado might be.
“No idea,” said the Lamb. “That guy’s kind of a nut job. Do you want to see him? Are you looking for him? I’ll go with you, if you want. He might be at Pepe’s bar. I doubt he’ll be working in this rain.”
I thanked him; I said it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t looking for him.
“He’s a weird guy,” said the Lamb.
“Why? Because of his burns? Do you know how he got them?”
“No, that’s not why, I don’t know anything about that. He just seems strange to me. Or not strange, exactly, but a little off, you know what I mean.”
“No, what do you mean?”
“He’s got his hang-ups, like everybody. Maybe he’s a little bitter. I don’t know. We all have something, don’t we? Take Charly, for example, all he cares about is the bottle and his fucking board.”
“Come on, man, there are other things he likes too.”
“Chicks?
” said the Lamb with a malicious smile. “You have to admit Hanna’s hot, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s not bad.”
“And she has a son, doesn’t she?”
“I think so,” I said.
“She showed me a picture. He’s a good-looking kid, blond and everything, he looks like her.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen any pictures.”
Before I could explain that he knew Hanna practically as well as I did, I left. In some ways he probably knew her better, but there was no point saying so.
Outside it was still raining, though not as hard. On the wide sidewalks of the Paseo Marítimo a few tourists walked by in brightly colored windbreakers. I got in the car and lit a cigarette. From where I was I could see the fortress of pedal boats and the curtain of mist and foam raised by the wind. Through one of the bar’s big windows the fireplace girl was also staring out at the beach. I started the car and drove off. For half an hour I circled around town. In the old part of the city the traffic was impossible. Water bubbled out of the drains and a warm and putrid scent crept into the car along with exhaust fumes, the blare of horns, children’s shouts. At last I managed to escape. I was hungry, ravenously hungry, but rather than look for a place to eat, I left town.
I drove aimlessly, not knowing where I was going. From time to time I passed the cars and campers of tourists; the weather signaled the end of summer. The fields to each side of the highway were covered in plastic and dark grooves; against the horizon stood small, bare hills toward which the clouds sped. In a grove, under the trees, I saw a group of black workers sheltering from the rain.