I'm Not Stiller

'And Alex was so gifted!'

  'Yes, yes,' says the elderly professor showing a tendency to prevent the mother from speaking by quickly agreeing with her, 'yes, he certainly was—'

  'Didn't you think so?' asks the mother.

  'As regards his death—' says the father.

  'Julika Tschudy thought so too,' declares the mother. 'There's even a letter from your dear wife who, as an artist, greatly respected our Alex, as you know, and I shall always feel grateful to your dear wife for encouraging Alex when he lost faith in himself, and I know that when his work was going badly there was no one whose respect he was more afraid of losing than your wife's. Without her loving encouragement—'

  The elderly professor, having been interrupted by his wife and fallen silent out of politeness, meanwhile lights a cigarette, which he then doesn't smoke, and for a time, while the white› haired lady is the only one to speak, it really seems as though the important thing is to bear witness to the great promise and talent of a young man who has died, in fact it's as though she needs a reference concerning her dead son's abilities as a pianist to present to God. I can understand the elderly professor, who in this direction merely agrees, for his part tormented by other questions. Whenever he thinks I'm not looking, he stares at me in a manner that suggests the missing Stiller was to blame for the fact that one morning, after a ballet rehearsal in the City Theatre, Alex sat down in front of the gas stove. At times the two parents talk at once, understandably upset, since everything is appearing before their eyes again as if it had happened yesterday. As a stranger one has the confusing sense that actually two sons took their own lives, two quite different sons, only united by the fact that one single reason can be found for their suicide. That's what it's all about. I am supposed to know who Alex, their only son, really was. He sat down in front of the gas stove, the way you read about it in newspaper reports and novels, he turned on all the taps, put a raincoat over the gas stove and his head and breathed in the hope that death is simply the end, breathed a bluish stupefaction, perhaps screamed, but screamed without a voice. He fell from the chair, I was told, it was too late to correct his mistake; suddenly he had no more time. Now it's too late. For six years now he has had no time. He can no longer find out who he is, not any more. He begs for redemption. He begs for the real death ... After a while I hand back the photograph, without a word.

  'What did you talk about with Alex?' sobs the mother. 'What did you—'

  'Keep calm,' says the father.

  'Don't remain silent,' beseeches the mother. 'Tell us, in heaven's name, don't remain silent!'

  Her sobs prevent her from speaking. When the warder comes to see what's going on, as is his duty, we sign to him mutely to go away; he'll tell Dr Bohnenblust about it, I know. In the presence of my defence counsel I shall say absolutely nothing, that's for sure, sorry though I am for these parents, especially the elderly professor who with some difficulty, because he is rather corpulent, looks for a clean handkerchief in his trouser pocket, eventually finds it and offers it in vain to the white-haired mother, who has both hands over her face.

  'You probably don't know about that,' says the mother later in a controlled, or perhaps only exhausted voice, after using the handkerchief which she now keeps crumpling in her fine hands, 'in his farewell note—you can't know that—Alex writes that he had a long discussion with you and you agreed with him, that's what he wrote.'

  The father shows me the tear-stained note.

  'What did you agree with him about?' sobs the mother afresh. 'For six years—'

  It's a short note, actually an affectionate note. It begins: My dear parents. No reason is given for the imminent suicide. Really he is only asking his dear parents to forgive him. With regard to Stiller it says: 'I have had several talks with Stiller; everything he says agrees with my opinion, there's no point. Stiller is really only talking about himself, but everything he says is true of me too.' There follow a few instructions regarding the funeral, in particular the wish that no clergyman should be present and there was to be no music either ... When I hand back the note without a word, the father also asks me:

  'Can you remember what you talked about with our Alex that day?'

  My explanations, I can hear that myself, sound like excuses. But even so, I can see that they are more reassuring than my silence.

  'I hope you didn't misunderstand my wife,' says the elderly professor when I stop speaking. 'We can't say that you are the one—whether or not you are Herr Stiller—we don't reproach anyone for not having been able to save our poor Alex. I, his father, couldn't save him either...'

  'And yet,' says the mother weeping silently, 'and yet Alex was such a valuable person—'

  'He was arrogant,' says the father.

  'How can you—'

  'He was arrogant,' says the father.

  'Alex?'

  'Like you and me and everyone around him,' says the elderly professor turning back to me. 'Alex was a homosexual, as you know; it wasn't easy for him to accept himself. But it isn't easy for any of us, that's true. If he had met someone who didn't merely encourage him with words and expectations, but someone who showed him how we can live with our weaknesses—'

  The mother shakes her head.

  'That's right,' says the elderly professor, without discussing the white-haired lady's mute contradiction, speaking man to man as it were. 'And I also think that there are all sorts of things wrong with people who need success like oxygen, in order to live. But what did I do about it? I merely made success contemptible, nothing else. The result: the lad was even ashamed of being successful! Instead of learning to tolerate himself the way he is, of loving himself, you know what I mean. Someone would have had to really love him! I was nothing but a good school teacher to him, I fostered his talents wherever I could, but he was left all alone with his weakness. My whole education consisted in separating him from his weakness. Until the silly fellow started trying to do the separating himself—'

  The mother begins to cry again.

  'Our son came to you,' she laments. 'Why didn't you tell him all that? You talked to him—at that time!'

  Silence.

  'It's terrible,' says the elderly professor, polishing his pince-nez and revealing quite small, blinking eyes, 'it's terrible to realize that you weren't able to save a person who loved you ... After that conversation I thought Stiller—Alex spoke so warmly of him, didn't he, Berta, as if he were a truly Vital person-'

  Soon after this my defence counsel arrived.

  ***

  Julika has written from Paris. The letter was addressed to Herr A. Stiller, c/o Remand Prison, Zurich. And it arrived—unfortunately. It began, 'My dear Anatol'. She had a good journey and in Paris the sun was shining. The letter was signed 'Your Julika'. I slowly tore it into a hundred pieces; but what difference does that make?

  ***

  Today it was perfectly clear once more that we cannot bury the failure in our lives, and so long as I try I shall never get out of the failure, there is no escape. But the bewildering thing is, other people take it for granted that I have no other life to produce, and so they consider what I take upon myself to be my life. But it was never my life. And I know that only in so far as it was never my life can I take it upon myself—as my failure. This means one must be capable of passing without spite through their confusion of identities, playing a part without ever confusing oneself with the part; but for this I must have a fixed point—

  ***

  My public prosecutor admitted he had forgotten the flowers for his wife; to make up, he suggested that I should visit his wife in the nursing home and take her the flowers myself (at his expense). His wife, he thought, would be delighted.

  ***

  Herr Sturzenegger was here. I had been asleep and when I more or less woke up, he was already sitting on my plank bed; he had also—and this must have been what woke me—grasped my right hand with both of his.

  'My dear fellow,' he asks, 'how are you?'

  I slowly
sit up.

  'Fine,' I say. 'Who are you?'

  He laughs.

  'You don't remember me?'

  I rub my eyes.

  'Willi,' he calls himself and waits for an outburst of friendliness; but. I have to ask him to introduce himself properly; with an undertone of ill-humour he adds: 'Willi Sturzenegger—'

  'Ah,' I say, 'I remember you.'

  'At last!'

  'My public prosecutor told me about you.'

  So this is Sturzenegger, a friend of Stiller's, once a young architect full of enthusiasm for consistent modernism, now a man with a career, a man who is cheerfully resigned, a man with both feet on the ground, and since he is a success he is full of hearty comradeship.

  'How about you?' he says at once, without mentioning his success, his hand still on my shoulder. 'What have you done, old fellow, to have been put in this State-subsidized apartment?'

  As expected, he takes everything very cheerfully, including my request not to mistake me for the missing Stiller.

  'Seriously,' he says, 'if there's any way I can help you—'

  Once again I feel something uncanny, a mechanism at work in human relations which, whether they are called acquaintanceship or even friendship, immediately takes all the life out of them, all the immediacy. What could a prisoner like myself do with a banknote? But everything functions, like an automatic machine: the name, the supposed name, goes in at the top and the right mode of behaviour comes out at the bottom, ready for use, the stereotype of a human relationship which (so he says) means more to him than almost any other.

  'You can believe me,' he says, 'otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here on your plank bed in the middle of my working day.'

  For a whole hour we play Sturzenegger and Stiller and the uncanny thing is, it goes splendidly, without a hitch. His jesting and his seriousness are still so attuned to his missing friend, seven years after their last meeting, that I (anyone in my place) can generally guess without difficulty how their Stiller used to behave at this, that or the other point in a conversation, and thus how he would behave today. At times it's spooky; Sturzenegger shakes with laughter, I don't know why. He knows the joke his vanished friend would now unfailingly make and I don't need to make this joke, or even to know it. Herr Sturzenegger is already shaking with laughter. Then he looks like a puppet operated by the invisible strings of habit, not a human being. Afterwards I have almost no idea who this Sturzenegger really is. Since I can do nothing about this, it makes me melancholy even during our jolly conversation. His admonishment not to lose heart, all his friendliness, is a sum of reflexes geared to an absent person who doesn't interest me. At one point I try to tell him so; in vain. It seems he has no antenna for anything else, anything I broadcast on my own wavelength, so to speak, or he doesn't tune in; in any case, there's no reception, only disturbances that make him edgy, so that he leafs through my Bible.

  'Tell me,' he interrupts, 'since when have you read the Bible?'

  His friend, I note, was an atheist and at the same time a strict moralist; why else should Sturzenegger defend himself for having made so much money in recent years? I haven't reproached him. Another time, because I don't say anything, he remarks:

  'Oh yes, sure, of course Communism is a great idea—but reality, my dear fellow, reality!'

  He spends almost half an hour describing the Soviet Union to me, the way it's described in the newspapers, in a didactic tone, as though I were crazy about the Soviet Union; I sit there as though listening to a radio, I hear the voice of a man who is speaking into the void and can't see the other person who happens to be listening to him. How is he to know who he is talking to? Hence it's impossible to raise any objections, to shake one's head, even occasionally to nod in agreement. Sturzenegger is speaking as I rise, and speaking as I stand at my barred window, long since fallen silent myself, gazing out at the autumn-brown chestnut tree. His vanished friend (Sturzenegger is only talking to him!) seems to have been a very naive Communist, more exactly: a romantic Socialist, for which the Communists, I'm afraid, would be grateful. As one who doesn't know the Soviet Union, I can only shrug my shoulders before the alternative of swearing by Stiller or by Kravchenko; I'm not convinced by either of them.

  'By the way—Sibylle is expecting a child, did you know that?' says Sturzenegger, to change the subject, adding: 'I met Julika recently, she looks marvellous!'

  'I think so too.'

  'Who would have thought it,' he laughs. 'But didn't I always say so? She won't die if you leave her, on the contrary, I've never seen her looking so good, positively radiant—'

  Once again I'm learning all sorts of things.

  'Tell me,' he says. 'You've bummed around half the world, I hear. How do you feel about being back here? We've been building, my dear fellow. Have you seen anything yet?'

  'Yes,' I say, 'one or two things.'

  'What do you think of them?'

  'I'm amazed,' I say, but naturally Herr Sturzenegger, the architect, wants to know exactly what I'm amazed by. And since he is naturally expecting praise, I mention everything I can praise with a clear conscience: how neatly, how safely, how trimly, how solidly, how seriously, how spotlessly, how conscientiously, how tastefully, how tidily, how thoroughly, how seriously and so on they build in this country, as though building for eternity. Sturzenegger admits all this, but misses any enthusiasm, and in fact I don't feel any. I once more repeat all the usual adjectives: trim, orderly, conscientious, tidy, nice, quaint. But all this, as I've said, falls under the heading of material quality, which is indeed a Swiss characteristic. I say: Quality, yes, that's the word, I'm amazed by the quality! But Sturzenegger insists on an explanation of why, although I see quality everywhere, I'm not enthusiastic. Now it's always a tricky business trying to interpret a foreign nation, especially if you are that nation's prisoner! They themselves, I hear from Sturzenegger, give the name moderation to the thing that gets on my nerves; in general, they have all kinds of words to help them come to terms with the fact that they lack all greatness. Whether it's a good thing they come to terms with it I don't know. In the spiritual realm renunciation of daring, once it has become a habit, always means death, a gentle, imperceptible, and yet inexorable kind of death and in fact (so far as I can judge from my cell and on the strength of a few outings) I find that nowadays there is something lifeless about the Swiss atmosphere, something spiritless in the sense that a man always becomes spiritless when he no longer seeks perfection. I see their blatant passion for material perfection, as manifested in their contemporary architecture and elsewhere, as an unconscious substitute achievement; they need this material perfection because in the realm of ideas they are never clean, never uncompromising. To avoid being grossly misunderstood, let me say it's not the political compromise, which is the essence of democracy, that is the dubious factor, but the fact that most Swiss are incapable of suffering in any way over a spiritual compromise. They make things easier for themselves by simply outlawing the need for greatness. But isn't it the case that the habitual and hence cheap renunciation of the great (the whole, the perfect, the radical) finally leads to impotence even of the imagination? The lack of enthusiasm, the general inability to feel pleasure, that we meet in this country are obvious symptoms of how close we already are to this impotence...

  'Let's stick to architecture!' comments Sturzenegger.

  There follows a discussion concerning the area they call the Old City. I consider it a noble idea to preserve the city of their forefathers and care for it as a memory. And then alongside it, at an appropriate distance, build the city of our own day! In actual fact, however, so far as I can see they are doing neither the one nor the other, but reconstructing their way around any decision. Architects full of talent and love of country are building, as I recently saw, office blocks on about the same scale as the sixteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth century. A tricky business! To be sure, it's possible to camouflage reinforced concrete (as though it were shameful) with blocks of sandstone, with s
egmental arches and genuine medieval orioles; but it seems that piety and profit can never be quite reconciled, and the result is something that not even a Negro soldier on leave is going to mistake for Old Europe. Do they themselves take it to be that? It would seem to them crazy, criminal, simply to tear down the city of their forefathers with its narrow alleys in order to make room for their modern city; there would be a paper storm of indignation. In reality they do something much crazier: they mess up the city of their forefathers without building a new, modern one of their own. How is it that such an idiocy, which a foreigner sees at once, doesn't shock the natives? Sturzenegger can't do anything about the ruination of their Old City, on the other hand he shows me photographs of a new town at Oerlikon, a suburb of Zürich, known all over the world for its arms export industry; a town on the scale of a past that is gone, gone forever, an idyll that is no idyll. How can I explain to Sturzenegger what it is that makes me feel so uncomfortable when I see something of this sort? It's very tasteful, very clean, very serious; but surrounded by stage scenery. And in order to avoid saying it makes me want to throw up, I ask in a matter-of-fact tone whether Switzerland has such an inexhaustible supply of land that it can afford to go on building in this 'style' for a few more decades. This seems not to be the case. What is tradition? I thought it meant tackling the problems of one's own day with the same courage one's forefathers brought to bear on theirs. Everything else is imitation, mummification, and if they still see their homeland as something alive why don't they defend themselves when mummification claims to be preservation?...Sturzenegger laughs:

  'You're telling me! I've been protesting for years—not publicly, of course—and by the way, our Old City is by no means the only piece of idiocy, you know—'

  He describes a few others to me, which as a prisoner I can't check. His strikingly enthusiastic agreement (unfortunately it's a while before I notice this) is not based on an identity of outlook, however, but on resentment; Sturzenegger is ridiculing the chief architect of their little town—to whom, on the other hand, as he admits, he owes some not inconsiderable commissions—and it is only human that in speaking to a foreigner, who doesn't know their chief architect, he expresses himself with a positively audacious frankness that does him good. For my part, on the other hand, it is only human that I have no interest in this personality or that, but only in the general frame of mind of the country whose prisoner I am. I should like to know the nature of those who are going to sit in judgement on me; that's a very natural wish. So when we talk about architecture the only thing that interests me is the extent to which a Swiss citizen can be bold, can focus on the future, in a country which really, it seems to me, doesn't want the future but the past. Has Switzerland (I ask Sturzenegger) any goal in the future? To preserve what one has or used to have is a necessary task, but not enough; in order to be alive you need a goal in the future. What is this goal, this unattained objective that inspires them, this aspect of the future that keeps them alive in the present? They are united in the desire to keep the Russians out; but beyond this: what is their goal in the event that they are spared the Russians? What do they want to make of their country? What is to rise up out of the past? What is their plan? Do they have a creative hope? Their last great and truly living epoch (according to my defence counsel's speeches) was the middle of the nineteenth century, the so-called forty-eights. At that time they had a plan. At that time they wanted something that had never existed before, and they looked forward to tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. At that time Switzerland had an historic present. Do they have that today? Homesickness for the day before yesterday, which governs most people in this country today, is oppressive. It shows up (in so far as our prison library is representative, that is to say corresponds to the taste of official institutions) in the literature: most stories, and doubtless the best, take us back into the rustic idyll; peasant life appears as the last redoubt of sincerity; most poems avoid all metaphors derived from the world of the citizens' own experience and if ploughing is not being done with horses then bread no longer provides them with any poetry; the most essential statement in Swiss writing seems to be a certain regret that the nineteenth century is moving further and further away. And the official architecture is just the same: how hesitantly and listlessly they change the scale of their growing city, how regretfully, how reluctantly and niggardly. At one point Sturzenegger comments: