The Hotel Years

  But nor could I muster the cool to resume my reading. So, although I wasn’t much interested in nature, I stared out of the window, and saw advertising hoardings, guard-huts, ramps and telegraph poles. At the end of a quarter hour the lady found some change, handed it to me, said thank you, and joined me in looking out of the window. I took up my newspaper and read. The beautiful lady stood up, stretched, reached for the luggage rack, was unable to reach her suitcase, and stood there piteously. I felt compelled to get up, take down the surprisingly heavy suitcase, pretending that its weight was negligible, my muscles were bands of iron and steel, and the suitcase a down feather. I had to keep the blood from rushing into my face, discreetly mop the sweat that beaded on my brow, and with an elegant bow, say, “Madam!” I managed this feat, the lady opened her suitcase, a little gasp of perfume, soap and powder escaped from it, pulled out three books, and was evidently hunting for a fourth. All the while I sat there strickenly pretending to read, but actually wondering how I would ever get the suitcase back up on the luggage rack. Because there could be no doubt that I was condemned to return it to its resting place. Condemned to pick up an item that weighed more than I did, with effortless ease, and return it without turning purple. I silently tensed my muscles, loaded up with energy, and told my heart to be calm. The lady found her fourth book, shut the suitcase and made an attempt to lift it.

  Her effort incensed me. Why did she pretend not to know that I was bound to relieve her of the task? Why not ask me directly for help, as required by morality and very nearly the law? What was she doing with such a heavy suitcase anyway? And seeing as she was, why hadn’t she packed her reading matter separately? Why did she have to read, seeing as she would certainly enjoy herself more talking to me right away, instead of allowing an hour to pass for the sake of decency? Why was she so beautiful that her helplessness was multiplied tenfold? And why was she a lady, and not a gentleman, a boxer, a sportsman, who might have picked up the suitcase with superb ease? My indignation was unavailing, I had to get up, say my “Allow me!” and with a superhuman effort hoist the suitcase up in the air. I stood on the seat, the suitcase was shaking in my hands—what if it should fall and crush the beautiful lady? It would have been unfortunate, but I don’t think I would have felt any guilt. Finally, the suitcase lay up on the rack, and I flopped back into my seat.

  The lady thanked me and opened a book. From that moment on, I pondered how best to leave compartment and lady. I wholeheartedly envied any man with the good fortune of travelling with such a beautiful woman. But seeing as it was me, I did not envy myself. With honest alarm, I speculated about further useful objects the suitcase was bound to be harbouring. I no longer had eyes for my newspaper. The scenery had my contempt. Just as well a gentleman entered the compartment, a young, bold, athletic-seeming gentleman, and much dimmer than me. The lady set down her book. After a quarter hour, the gentleman made an idiotic remark, and the beautiful woman tinkled. He had presence of mind, quick-wittedness, he was capable of being entertaining, and surely of lifting a suitcase as well. He had no apprehensions, he would surely vanquish me and win the heart of the beautiful lady. I on the other hand had my peace of mind back, watched with indifference as the suitcase went up and down, my heart no longer pounded, and I followed with deep enjoyment the movements of the beautiful lady and the unfolding of the adventure. I was happy to have pleasant companions who were irked by my presence and wished me to the devil. For turbid natures like mine there is no better society.

  Frankfurter Zeitung, 19 September 1926

  57. Morning at the Junction

  High summer. The train stops, and we hear the indefatigable chirping of crickets in the fields, and the song of telegraph wires, which sounds like the whooshing of dark, eerie, otherworldly scythes. The railway junction lies at the confluence of mountains, fields, larks and sky. We get there at four in the morning, no sooner and no later. The thoughtful timetable has arranged for the June sun and the passenger to reach the junction at the same time.

  The porters are already up, so we aren’t on our own. Rails run off in every direction, elastic as stretched rubber bands, tightly held by far-off stations to keep them from snapping back to the junction. The station has a cosy restaurant in first, second and third class. Hospitable as it is, it accommodates a red vending machine with gold writing, six apertures for coins, a curly-wurly handle and a baroque gable that looks like a nod to some miniature gatehouse. All the stations I ever saw in my childhood had vending machines like that. I associate their aspect with the mysterious sound of the signals, the sound of the golden spoon in the glass that experts can interpret, but which to the layman says only that a train is coming from who knows where. Throughout my childhood, I saw those red vending machines. If I were to throw in a coin now, I could pull out the chocolate I would have wanted twenty years ago that I no longer care for.

  The small green news-stand is still closed, as it’s thought to be too early for tobacco. The restaurant however is already giving out coffee, in freshly rinsed glasses, that a girl lifts out of their bath and holds up against the sun. Yesterday’s newspapers are on sale, not knowing that they are yesterday’s. But the sense of today is so strong that the newspapers look very old. The sunrise alone is enough to refute their news.

  If you leave the station, you will see a hamlet so small that you wonder why the junction is here of all places, and if it is here, by blind chance, then why it hasn’t grown into a city; and how it can be the aim of a place to remain a junction and concentrate its whole significance outside itself, in the railway station; and how this place, even though every morning a train stops and passengers alight, is so deeply asleep it doesn’t even seem to know it is a junction at all. Only the cocks in all innocence are crowing. Not until five o’clock does a man with a rake and a watering can potter down the single street to his allotment. The barber is still asleep behind the fence that has his gleaming bronze basin affixed to it, a mirror in the sun. No. 76 is where the fire brigade’s trumpeter lives, there is a sign that says as much. His ground floor window is open, he gets up, kisses his wife, pulls a shirt on, and goes out to perform his ablutions. I stand outside his window in the hope that he will play me something, even though there’s no fire. An intellectual summer visitor is awake already. He is just setting off, swinging his cane, traces of soft boiled egg about his lips, up a mountain, the newspaper in his pocket, a subscriber to the bitter end, the highest peak.

  How time creeps, when observed like this through a magnifying glass! Another three hours—and the clock on the church tower is slow. A stream drives a mill, a shepherd his sheep, a wind the morning fog. The news-stand at the station is still closed. It has glass walls, like someone sleeping with their eyes open. The girl at the buffet is still rinsing glasses. She has a plait, an apron, and her mouth is a little red splotch. Were you out for a walk? her mouth asks, while her hands rinse glasses. Are you travelling far?

  Yes.—Will you take me with you then?—And because I fail to say yes (the junction makes one so slow on the uptake!), I answer her question with another: Would you like to come with me then?

  Oh yes, she says.

  Probably she asks the question every morning, aloud or to herself, to some man who’s waiting for the train, travelling far away, and hence likeable. I should like to be old now, to cover my cowardice. If I had a white beard, or was at least bald, then I could say to her: Stay here in the junction, miss! It’s sometimes better to watch men leave, than be whisked away by them. Because if you’re old, you’re allowed to comfort girls—and yourself as well—with sage lies.

  I don’t take her with me, but I do take her hand. She wipes it on her apron—the movement is expressive of her resignation. She has wiped out her desires, with a sponge. Bon voyage! she says. I’m looking at the rails, I don’t look her in the eye, otherwise we would have had to kiss—which we’re afraid to do, because we’re stupid, scared and practical-minded.

 
Frankfurter Zeitung, 24 June 1927

  VIII

  Ending

  58. The Old Poet Dies

  A few days ago in the Frankfurter Zeitung I wrote a piece about the eighty-year-old Linz poet Eduard Samhaber. I concluded with the wish that the eighty-year-old might live to be a hundred. Now I read in the Kölnische Volkszeitung that three days before the appearance of my piece, and as I can now relate, on the very day I was writing it, Eduard Samhaber passed away. I wrote it at night. Samhaber, the dead man, was dear to me, and I didn’t know while I was wishing him a long life that I was actually writing his funeral oration. On the day of his death, moreover, he was given an honour: the silver medal that the Austrian republic gives its distinguished poets. Now both the state medal and my wishes are redundant. Genuine violets will sprout from his bones—and he will have eternal life in the section of paradise that is reserved for poets. He has put aside his wonderful earthly face and left it to us to remember him by. Honour to his beautiful inheritance!

  Frankfurter Zeitung, 2 April 1927

  59. The Third Reich, a Dependency of Hell on Earth

  After seventeen months, we are now used to the fact that in Germany more blood is spilled than the newspapers use printers’ ink to report on it. Probably Goebbels, the overlord of German printers’ ink, has more dead bodies on the conscience he doesn’t have, than he has journalists to do his bidding, which is to silence the great number of these deaths. For we know now that the task of the German press is not to publicize events but to silence them; not only to spread lies but also to suggest them; not just to mislead world opinion—the pathetic remnant of the world that still has an opinion—but also to impose false news on it with a baffling naïveté. Not since this earth first had blood spilled on it has there been a murderer who has washed his bloodstained hands in as much printers’ ink. Not since lies were first told in this world has a liar had so many powerful loudspeakers at his disposal. Not since betrayal was first perpetrated in this world was a traitor betrayed by another, greater traitor: has there been such a contest between traitors. And, alas, never has the part of the world that has not yet sunk into the night of dictatorships been so dazzled by the hellish glow of lies, or so deafened and dulled by the screaming of so many lies. For hundreds of years, we have been accustomed to lies going around on tiptoe. The epoch-making discovery of modern dictatorships is the invention of the loud lie, based on the psychologically correct assumption that people will believe a shout when they doubt speech. Since the onset of the Third Reich the lie, in spite of the saying, has walked on long legs.* It no longer follows on the heels of the truth, it races on ahead of it. If Goebbels is to be credited with a stroke of genius, then surely it is this: he has caused official truth to walk with the limp he has himself. The officially sanctioned German truth has been given its own club foot. It is no fluke but a knowing joke on the part of history that the first German minister of propaganda has a limp.

  But this sophisticated attention to detail on the part of world history has had little effect on foreign reporters. It would be wrong to suppose that journalists from England, America, France, etc. didn’t fall for the lying loudspeakers and loud speakers of Germany. Journalists too are children of their time. It is a mistake to think that the world has an accurate sense of Germany. The reporter who has sworn to be true to the facts bows to the fait accompli as before an idol, the fait accompli that is recognized by powerful politicians, rulers and wise men, philosophers, professors and artists. Even ten years ago a murder, never mind where and of whom, would have been a thing of horror to the world. Since the time of Cain innocent blood that cried out to heaven has found hearing on earth. Even the murder of Matteotti—not so long ago!—stirred the living to dread. But ever since Germany has started using its loudspeakers to drown out the cries of blood, these have only been heard in heaven, on earth they have been degraded to a common news item. Schleicher and his young wife were murdered. Ernst Röhm and many others have been murdered. Many of them were murderers themselves. But it wasn’t a just, but an unjust punishment that befell them. Cleverer, nimbler murderers have murdered others, less clever, less nimble than themselves. In the Third Reich, it isn’t just Cain killing Abel; it’s also a super Cain killing plain Cain. It is the only country in the world where there aren’t just murderers but murderers raised to the power of n.

  And as I say, the spilt blood cries out to that heaven where the terrestrial reporters do not sit. They sit instead at Goebbels’s press conferences. They are only human. Stunned by loudspeakers, baffled by the speed with which suddenly, in spite of every natural law, limping truths start to sprint, and the short legs of lies stretch out to overtake the truth, these reporters tell the world only what they are told in Germany, and hardly anything of what is happening in Germany.

  No reporter is equal to a country where, for the first time since the creation of the world, not just physical but metaphysical anomalies are propagated: monstrous hell births; cripples that run; arsonists who incinerate themselves; fratricidal brothers; devils biting themselves in the tail. It is the seventh circle of hell whose dependency on earth is known as “The Third Reich”.

  Pariser Tageblatt, 6 July 1934

  * Long legs: German says Lügen haben kurze Beine—Lies have short legs.

  60. Far from the Native Turf

  I

  Heinrich Heine is a poet for the ages and a perennially current writer. His lasting, so to speak, continually reawakening journalistic relevance vies with his poetic immortality. He was always a darling of the Graces and of women, and therefore always detested by Germany. This country that is forever trying to prove itself was minutely understood, loved, pitied and despised by him. He is its prophet. He foresaw the course Germany would take. Read him, and save yourself the daily reports of events in Germany. Every new German calamity bears him out. Every new pubescent phase of this people that is unable to attain maturity and as a result sees itself (and unfortunately other countries as well) as “dynamic”, confirms Heinrich Heine’s words about his fatherland. No wonder the number of Heine biographies almost matches the number of German catastrophes. The newest one, to our knowledge, is by Antonina Vallentin, published in French by Gallimard.

  Probably it is the discreetest of all the Heine biographies, cautious, tender, forgiving, and more than half in love. The personal wretchedness of the poet, the happiness and grief of his love affairs are discerned with greater reliability than literary science and research can establish for a fact. Which is not to say that this book lacks knowledge. On the contrary: it is full of diligence. But it takes the gentle hand and sensitive heart of a woman to order so much knowledge that it appears only in the background. It sometimes seems as though the author had known Heine personally, and only then, as if to cross-check her impressions, consulted the more substantial and objective sources. And all the time, the epoch that Heine crowned and represented is not lost from sight, nor his continuing relevance, which we noted above. A very alert publicistic sense compels the tender eye of the authoress, watching the suffering darling of the Muses with pity, to keep returning to the actual scene, and to draw the analogy between those days and ours.

  It is a distinguished book. The author walks in the shadow of her great hero—and yet her discretion betrays her sympathetic presence. The book, written in German, appears in French, one of the few worthy gifts that German writers across the borders of German barbarism have been able to offer the French admirers of Heine and his spirit.

  II

  An evidently significant coincidence brings us, almost simultaneously, a new book by the noted Heine biographer and politician Hermann Wendel. Readers who are acquainted with pre- and post-1914 politics will need no introduction to Hermann Wendel. Born in Metz of German parents, tending in his heart a love of France and a wish for a free and dignified Germany, Hermann Wendel was a socialist MP out of poetic élan, an active politician from idealism, not a realist but an idealist politi
cian, if you like. The very embodiment of the frontier man, German and Gaul, European in a way that no longer exists.

  Hermann Wendel has now published his memoirs (Recollections of a Citizen of Metz) with the Strasbourg house of Mésange: written in German, felt in European, like everything from the pen of this politician, historian and publicist. These memoirs radiate a kindly melancholy, a forgiving melancholy. (Wendel certainly has much to forgive socialism and Germany.) His book is important, and of broad interest, even though seeming to contain only personal experience. But Wendel has the grace of the writer and the man of the world. Everything he says is cultured, delicate, powerful, valid and rich in suggestion.