He smiled at me again. “Our friend here is wondering what point there is in all this talk about evil. Are not the great scoundrels dead? Have not the evil empires crumbled or been destroyed? Are not freedom, democracy, and the market spreading over all the earth? Has not peace eternal supplanted the Cold War? Will not the century of good succeed the century of evil within a decade?”
The class was over. The students stood slowly, hesitantly under the burden of so many unanswered questions. De Baur waited until the first few had reached the door, then started in again. They stopped and turned. “Be suspicious. Trust neither the coming decade nor the coming century. Trust neither the good nor the normal. Truth first reveals itself in the face of evil and in the moment of crisis.”
De Baur picked up his notes and books and was out of the room before the students grasped that these were his last words. It was an impressive performance, and I was certain he had staged it and taken pleasure in it. He wanted to do more than impart academic knowledge; he wanted to teach them to question and think. He wanted to change them. Into what?
7
BY EARLY NOVEMBER Barbara had begun to nag: “How long do you plan to stay? You know him now; what more do you want? Do you want to expose him? Well, go ahead! What's stopping you?”
I equivocated. I said I needed to know him better. I wanted to try and make closer contact with his wife and children. I couldn't get out of the talk I'd promised him, and it was still two weeks off. Besides, I had to complete the translation of the book. She was not at all convinced by my translation argument, and two weeks later the talk was behind me. I had even met Mrs. de Baur and the children again.
I intended to provoke him with my talk and spoke about Hannah Arendt's definition of totalitarian thought. I knew he did not care for her. I thought that her definition—namely, that totalitarian thinkers consider facts liable to arbitrary fabrication and manipulation and hence deeply disdain them—would offend him. Didn't he consider facts liable to arbitrary interpretation? Didn't he feel cornered by Arendt's definition? Didn't it make him uncomfortable?
De Baur was not easily provoked. Arendt was right, he said. But we were all totalitarian thinkers nowadays: thought had become totalitarian. Our best defense against arbitrariness lay in the responsibility we take for our thought. “The great lies propagated by totalitarian regimes—was it facts that did them in? Would the regimes have survived by destroying more proof, murdering more witnesses, falsifying more documents? No, it was thought that did them in. We refuse to think everything people want to make us think, even things the facts want to make us think.”
On our way home he praised my talk and invited me to have dinner with his wife and children. His wife gave me a friendly greeting, as if our embarrassing conversation had never taken place; the children had a good time practicing their German on me (they were taking it at school); even the dog came up to me to be petted. After dinner the children made espressos for us, then went off on their own.
“What do your brothers and sisters do? The ones you started telling me about.”
One lie led to another, and soon I had to be careful to keep my fabrications straight.
“Where were you brought up?”
This time I told the truth so as to be able to follow it up with the question as to whether they were familiar with the city. No, they'd never been to Germany together.
“But your trace of an accent tells me you come from Germany, don't you? Or is it Austria?”
“Switzerland. In 1950 I got a scholarship, and that one year in America has turned into a life.”
“Aren't you ever homesick?”
He laughed. “After forty years?”
“Odysseus, whose story you love so much, was homesick enough after twenty years to expose himself to all sorts of dangers.”
“Homesick?” his wife asked. “You call that homesick? Wasn't it more of a desire to see his wife and son again?”
“But he had Calypso, and he'd totally forgotten Telemachus. That's how I see it, but your husband knows the story better.”
She looked at him. He shrugged. “Homer says he longed to see Ithaca, his home, and Penelope, his wife. As for Telemachus, I doubt Odysseus even knew he had a son.”
“Because if you know you have a son you don't simply forget him?”
He was not the least bit suspicious. “We know for certain that Odysseus had no interest in Telemachus until he got to Ithaca. Penelope was a different story. The desire to see her goes back to the Calypso episode. But where does it come from? If we are to believe Homer, he longed to come home because he had simply grown tired of Calypso.” He paused. “How do you think he would have behaved had Penelope been unfaithful? Would he have murdered her the way he murdered the suitors? Did he take into account that she might try to murder him the way Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon? They played by hard rules back then. Iron rules. Wasn't that how you put it the other day?”
Now I did sense suspicion: he wanted to corner me as much as I wanted to corner him. But whereas I was still feeling my way, he knew what he was after: he wanted to know where I had found the iron rule idea, his rule, his idea. He was so obsessed with it that the allusion to the forgotten son had failed to register.
“Iron rule? It doesn't ring a bell. Can you remind me of the context?”
He waved off the question. “It doesn't matter.”
If I didn't remember, my use of the term was harmless; if I was only pretending not to remember, I wouldn't tell him anything and would only play games with him. So the iron rule issue was taken care of. If I had thrown him off and he still wanted to corner me, he would have to take another tack.
Seeing me to the door, he invited me to the retreat. Was that the other tack? “The first week in January. I should be glad to have you as part of the group.”
“I should like that very much.”
“We are having a preliminary meeting in early December. You will be notified. But please keep it to yourself. I do not wish to hurt anybody.”
I told Barbara I would be home in a few weeks, right after the preliminary meeting.
There was such a long pause that I had to ask whether she was still on the line.
“And you'll go back again in January?”
“Just for a week. Doesn't school start again on the seventh? I'll be flying back the day before, the last day of your break.”
There was another pause.
“Barbara?”
“What do you expect to find out in one week that you didn't find out in three months? And if you don't find it out, how much longer will it take? Another month? Another two?”
“No, that week will be it.”
“How can you be sure? If you don't know what you want, you can't know when you have it.”
“I love you.”
“Peter?”
“Barbara?”
“Don't come back until you really come back.”
8
SHE STUCK TO HER GUNS. I was welcome to come home. Of course I was. She'd be only too happy to have me. But if it was only to go back, well, it was better not to come at all.
“But surely it's not better to—”
“It's better for me. If you can't make up your mind, you can't make up your mind. But I don't want a guy who can't make up his mind. I want a guy who knows what he wants and knows he wants me, not one who runs off after an idea he can't pin down. I want a guy here.” Her voice had grown louder. “And will you please stop calling me every day and saying the same things!”
“But Barbara, we could have Christmas together and start the new year together, I'd be away only a week, Barbara, you've been away for a week, Barbara, you can't lock me out, it's my place as much as yours, Barbara—”
“Oh shit.” She hung up.
She called back a few hours later. “I don't want ‘Oh shit’ to keep ringing in your ears. Look, I don't hate you or anything. You are what you are. Don't worry. I'm not going to run off with the first guy who comes along.
Things could really work when you come back in January or February or whenever. But do stop calling me all the time. It's upsetting. And don't come until you can stay, okay?”
We tended to talk just before she went to bed. For her it was twelve or one, for me six or seven, and weather permitting I would go for a jog after the call. I would start from my place on 127th Street, go uphill past Grant's tomb, turn down into Riverside Park, take a wooded path all the way to 96th Street and then the wide, street-level promenade back. When it was over, I would stand huffing and puffing on a large terrace that had once had a station under it and gaze out at the Hudson, the ships, the houses, the rocks and wooded areas on the opposite shore, the radiant setting sun, and the evening star in the deep-blue sky. It was a spot made for longing: the ships plying the river, the occasional train roaring through the abandoned station below, and the unending succession of airplanes above were a continuous invitation to leave, to go home, to go anywhere.
During my run after that last talk with Barbara I had made up my mind to fly home in early December. My determination grew with every step, every time my foot hit the ground and pushed off again. Whether I would then stay or come back for the retreat remained to be seen. Everything remained to be seen. After Barbara and I had had some time together. But on the terrace things seemed less simple. Hadn't I resolved against halfway measures? What could be more halfway than going home without deciding whether or not to return and how to cope with de Baur? I would sleep on it and come up with a decision. I watched the sun set, found the evening star, and longed for Barbara. Tomorrow. I would settle it all tomorrow.
The semester was coming to an end. What I had read of de Baur and heard him say in the lectures and seminar all fell into place. What we take for reality is merely a text, what we take for texts merely interpretations. Reality and texts are therefore what we make of them. History has no goal: there is no progress, no promise of rise after fall, no guarantee of victory for the strong or justice for the weak. We can interpret it as if it had a goal, and there is nothing objectionable in that, because we must always “act as if ”—as if reality were more than text, as if the author were speaking to us in the text, as if good and evil, right and wrong, truth and lies actually existed, and as if the institutions of law actually functioned. We have the choice of either droning back what has been droned into us or deciding for ourselves what we want to make of the world, who we want to be in it, and what we want to do in it. We come to our truth, which enables us to make decisions, in extreme, existential, exceptional situations. The validity of our decisions makes itself felt in the commitment we make to carrying them out and the responsibility we take for carrying them out, responsibility in the sense of the iron rule, which de Baur did not mention by name and for which he gave rather more anodyne examples than in the wartime pieces.
In his final lecture de Baur spoke on Saint Augustine. Ama et fac quod vis. Love and do as you will. In other words, a passionate heart justifies a passionate commitment; what we love is in fact our responsible decision; love is a matter of the will, not of the emotions. “I have no business telling you what to love, but I cannot hide my respect for the new generation, which sees its mission as bringing freedom, democracy, and prosperity to the world.”
The students applauded, then stood and applauded on. I remained seated until the students had filed out after de Baur. So now it was freedom, democracy, and prosperity. Times changed; missions changed with them. That was what he would tell me if I tried to confront him. And what would I respond?
I stood up and looked around. Empty rows of folding desks and folding seats, a large green board with the dates of Augustine's birth and death, a lectern de Baur never stood behind, paneling without windows. A neon light flickered off for a fraction of a second. It had started bothering me during the lecture.
No, I would never return to this room. I did not know what I wanted of him, but I did know I never wanted to hear him again. Oh, I would go to the January retreat, but I would not talk to him afterward, I would not try to confront him, I would not reveal my identity; I would simply drop the whole thing. I could see myself gradually returning to my life. For a long time I had been certain that something had to happen between us, that I at least needed to find out from him how the story ended. I was no longer certain.
9
IT WAS NOT SO EASY to dismiss de Baur and leave him behind. In early December I received a thick letter with Barbara's return address, but when I tore it open it turned out to have been forwarded from Switzerland: it was from the father of my former playmate.
Dear Peter Debauer:
In the years before his death I kept up with my German teacher. He was an inspired lecturer and an outstanding Goethe specialist. During our last year we read nothing but Faust. The class had had the teacher before, a year or two prior to my return, and he kept a composition your father wrote for him then. He showed it to me, and I photocopied it and put it in my edition of Gottfried Keller. I am enclosing it now.
The teacher liked your father and liked the composition. He said the ending was a bit overblown for the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old your father was at the time, but he admired his interpretation of Wenzel Strapinski—the tailor in the dark coat who, after being given a lift in a count's carriage and dropped off at a tavern, was taken for a count—as more than a plaything of circumstance and milieu, as an individual acting on his own. The only thing he missed in the composition was that Strapinski was moved to act through love.
I too like the composition.
Best wishes,
Gotthold Rank
The photocopy was new, a copy of the old copy. The handwriting was not only neat; its thin upstrokes and thick downstrokes made it pleasing to the eye. The paper was unruled, and as the space between the lines was less than uniform I could tell he had not used a ruled sheet under the paper as a guide: it was just page after page of lively, attractive script. The Swiss teacher had found no spelling or punctuation errors and written “Bravo” and a “6” after the last sentence, the highest mark.
WENZEL STRAPINSKI: A CONFIDENCE MAN IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
The idea of a confidence man in spite of himself is a contradiction in terms. Because a confidence man wants to be more than he is, and if he wills it, it cannot at the same time be in spite of himself.
Thus Wenzel Strapinski in Gottfried Keller's story “Clothes Make the Man” cannot be a confidence man in spite of himself. Either he was a confidence man or he was not. If he was, then one must clearly determine the kind he was. Because there are sympathetic and unsympathetic, moral and immoral, happy and sad confidence men.
Wenzel Strapinski did everything a confidence man does. His behavior is a veritable set of instructions as to how to be a confidence man.
1. Make the most of what you have. The dark overcoat with the black-velvet lining gave Wenzel Strapinski a noble and romantic appearance and attracted attention and curiosity. Wenzel Strapinski wore it with style.
2. Make the most of what you know. Wenzel Strapinski had served on an estate and with the hussars. He knew horses and knew the expressions squires and officers use. He used those expressions too, and when he was handed reins and a whip he knew what to do with them.
3. Do not hide your weak points; turn them to your advantage. Wenzel Strapinski was awkward and shy. He impressed the innkeeper and his cook with his manners by taking small portions of fish and wine; he said little, which gave his words weight; and he blushed in Nettchen's presence, which she found charming.
4. Play your part in such a way that you can pursue your interests instead of hiding them. It was in Wenzel Strapinski's interest to keep his past and his plans in the dark. By making people believe he was a fugitive and being pursued, he dodged all questions about his past and plans.
5. Do not make unnecessary use of your false identity. Wenzel Strapinski had it easy in this respect, because his name was exactly the same as the count he was taken for—except for the title. But he was smart
enough never to call himself count and to sign his name only as Wenzel Strapinski.
6. Do not introduce yourself under your false identity; let other people invent it for you. The reason the people of Goldacher believed in Count Wenzel Strapinski is that they themselves invented him as a count with their sensation-hungry interpretation of simple events.
7. The secret of success is secrets. Secrets make you interesting and let others see you as they wish you to be.
8. Gain the sympathy of those who mistrust you, but do not trust them. The only person in Goldacher suspicious of Wenzel Strapinski is Melchior Böhni. Melchior Böhni was sympathetic to Wenzel Strapinski at first, but the latter forgot to keep an eye on him. Though he would have lost his sympathy anyway, because they were competing for Nettchen.
9. Do not try to hush up your defeats. Accept them.
Although Wenzel Strapinski did everything a confidence man does, he did not at first want to be anything more than he was. However, he did not apprise the people of Goldacher of their error. Was he obliged to do so?
The people of Goldacher did not make him a count for his sake; they made him a count for their own sake. He did not take anything from them. Nothing of what their hospitality gave him could he take with him. No, Wenzel Strapinski did not owe the people of Goldacher a thing.
Was he obliged to reveal his true identity to Nettchen? Nettchen too had made him a count for her own sake, not for his. She fell in love with him for her sake, not for his, and became engaged to him for her sake, not for his. But the engagement jeopardized her reputation and her future, which she could not know, but Wenzel Strapinski did. So was he obliged to reveal his identity? Did not revealing his identity make him as much of a confidence man as if he had intentionally misled her?