First of all he’d go to the supermarket. Every day, because he didn’t like to buy too much, only little daily supplies, according to Renate’s wishes. What would you like this morning, Renate, for instance, would you like those Belgian liqueur chocolates, or would you prefer some hazelnut pralines? Or else, look, I’ll go to the produce section, you can’t imagine everything in that supermarket, you know, there’s no comparison with the grocery stores of our day, you can find everything, really everything, for instance, would you like some nice juicy peaches on this gray December day? I’ll bring you some, they come from Chile, or from Argentina, those places way over there, or would you prefer pears, cherries, apricots? I’ll bring you some. Would you like a very sweet, yellow melon, the kind that goes well with port or with Italian prosciutto? I’ll bring you some of that too, today I’d like to make you happy, Renate, I want you to smile.
Renate would smile at him wearily. Going along the path in the garden, he’d turn to look back at her as she waved from the window on the terrace. The terrace wall hid the wheels of her wheelchair. She seemed to be sitting in an armchair, seemed like a normal person, still pretty, her face smooth, her hair blond, never mind her age. Renate, my Renate, I’ve loved you so much, you know?, you can’t imagine how much, more than my own life, and I still love you, truly, even if there is one thing I need to tell you, but what’s the point now? I have to take care of you, wash you, nurse you as if you were a child, poor Renate, destiny’s been cruel, you were still pretty, and really you aren’t so old, we wouldn’t be so old, we could still enjoy life, who knows, traveling, instead you’re reduced to such a state, all this is such a pity, Renate. He’d turn on the path and walk beneath the trees along the wide boulevard. Life is out of phase, he’d think, everything’s off schedule. And he’d head to the supermarket, spend a nice morning there, it was a good way to pass the time, but now, since Renate was no longer there, it was difficult to pass the time.
He looked around. Another tram had stopped across the street. A middle-aged woman with a shopping bag, a guy and a girl holding hands, an elderly man dressed in blue. They seemed ridiculous Targets to him. Patience, patience, don’t act like a little boy, have you perhaps forgotten your craft? It takes patience, don’t you remember anymore? So much patience, days of patience, months of patience, paying attention, being discreet, hours and hours of sitting in a café, in a car, behind a newspaper, always reading the same newspaper, for entire days.
Why not wait for a good Target reading the newspaper, like this, to know how things were going in the world? He bought Die Zeit at the nearby kiosk, it had always been his weekly, in the days of real Targets. Then he sat on the terrace of the würstel kiosk, under the lindens. It wasn’t lunchtime yet, but he could have a nice würstel with potatoes. Normal or with curry? asked the little man with a white apron. He decided on the curry, something entirely new, and asked for more ketchup, really postmodern, which was a word on everyone’s lips. He left practically the whole thing on the paper plate, just disgusting, who knew why it was so popular.
He looked around. Everyone seemed so ugly. Fat. Even the thin ones seemed fat, fat on the inside, as if he could see them on the inside. They were oily, that was it, oily, as if covered in suntan oil. They were practically gleaming. He opened the newspaper: let’s see how the world’s going, this vast world that’s waltzing along so happily. Well, not so much. The Strategic Defense Initiative, claimed the American. Who’re they defending themselves from? he snickered. Who are they defending themselves from? – from us? – when we’re all dead? There was a picture of the American on a podium, alongside a flag. He must’ve had a brain no bigger than a thimble, as the little French ditty went. He recalled the song he liked so much, that Brassens sure was quite a guy, he hated the bourgeoisie. Long time ago. Best mission of his life, Paris. Un jolie fleur dans une peau de vache, une jolie vache désguisée en fleur. His French was still perfect, no accent, no inflection, neutral like the voice over the loudspeaker in an airport, that’s how he’d learned it in the special school, you really had to study back then, no kidding, five chosen out of a hundred and those five had to be perfect, as he was.
There was a line in front of the booth of the Staatsoper, must be an important concert that evening. And what if he went? Why not, I could … A man was coming down the staircase of the library, an elegant man, a thin briefcase under his arm. There he was, the perfect Target. He pretended to be buried in his newspaper. The man passed right by him. What a goose. He let the man walk on another hundred meters or so and then he stood up. Crossed the street. Always better to stick to the opposite sidewalk, that was the old rule of thumb, one mustn’t ignore the old rules. The man went in the direction of the Scheunenviertel. What a sweet Target, he was taking his same route, couldn’t get any better than that. The man seemed to be heading to the Pergamon. And in fact he went inside. How clever, as if he himself hadn’t understood. He chuckled to himself: sorry, dear goose, if you’re here on a mission or are pretending to be a university professor it’s logical you’d enter the Pergamon, do you really think someone with my experience would be fooled by such a cheap trick?
He sat on the base of a statue and calmly waited for him. He lit a cigarette. Up to now the physician allowed him only four cigarettes a day, two after lunch and two after dinner. But this Target deserved a cigarette. Waiting, he glanced at the newspaper, the arts page. There was an American film that was a popular box-office hit. It was a spy film set in Berlin in the sixties. He felt a strong yearning. He had the urge to go where he’d decided to go and not lose any more time with this stupid little professor he’d gotten involved with. It was too banal, too predictable. And in fact, there he was, exiting with a clear plastic bag full of catalogs that probably weighed a ton.
He threw his butt in the canal and stuffed his hands in his pockets, as if he were just dawdling. This, yes, this was what he liked: pretending to stroll around. But he wasn’t strolling around, he had a visit to make, he’d decided on this the night before, an agitated night, full of insomnia. He had some things to say to him – this guy. First of all, he’d say that he’d worked everything out. So many of his colleagues, including those at his level, had wound up taxi drivers – fired just like that – but not him, no, he’d fixed himself up quite nicely, he’d had the foresight, like you should, and so he had, to set aside a nice nest egg. How? That was his business, but he’d succeeded in setting aside a nice nest egg, and in dollars – in Switzerland, no less – and when everything had flopped he’d bought a nice single-family home on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, which was a name that meant something, a few steps from Unter den Linden, because this made him feel at home. All told, it was a house that made him feel at home, like when his life still held meaning. But did it once? Of course it did.
The Chausseestrasse seemed deserted to him. Few cars passed. It was Sunday, a nice Sunday at the end of June, Berliners were in Wannsee, taking in the first rays of sun on the Martin Wagner beach, drinking aperitifs before their nice little lunch. He realized he was hungry. Yes, if he thought about it, he was hungry, that morning he’d had only a cappuccino, maybe because the evening before he’d gone overboard. He’d eaten oysters at the Paris Bar, at this point he went to the Paris Bar almost every evening, when he wasn’t trying out other chic restaurants. Don’t you get it, you knucklehead, he murmured, you acted like a Franciscan your whole life, but now I’m having a ball at chic restaurants, eating oysters every night, and you know why? Because we aren’t eternal, caro, you said so yourself, and so it’s worth eating oysters. He liked the courtyard. It was simple, uncluttered, it resembled the knucklehead, rough as he’d been, with tables under the trees where two foreign tourists were drinking beer. The man was in his fifties, with the round eyeglasses of an intellectual, metal frames, like his own beloved knucklehead, bald with fringes on the side. The woman was a brunette, pretty, with a determined and frank expression, big dark eyes, younger than the man. They were speaking in Italian, with some
snippets in an unknown language. He pricked up his ears. Spanish? Maybe Spanish, but he was too far away. He walked by them with a purposeful air and said: Hello, welcome to Berlin. Thank you, replied the man. Italian? he asked. The woman smiled at him: Portuguese, she answered. The man spread his arms wide looking pleased: changing countries more often than shoes, I’m a little Portuguese too, the man said in Italian, and he caught the quote. Very nice, my little intellectual, I see you’ve read that knucklehead, congratulations.
He decided to have lunch inside. You had to go down to a cellar, and maybe that’s what it was once. Of course, sure, it was that cellar, now he remembered, often the knucklehead would meet a little failed actress there, a bitch older than Helene who then told all in a book that came out in France, called … he could no longer recall what it was called, even though he’d followed the whole thing himself, during his Parisian years, ah, yes, it was called Ce qui convient and ostensibly it talked about the theater, yet it was also a kind of philosophy of life: gossip. But what year was that? He couldn’t remember. The knucklehead had set up a sofa and a side lamp in that cellar, right under Helene’s nose, Helene, who in her life had swallowed more bitter pills than mouthfuls of air.
The restaurant was fairly dark, with a cabaret atmosphere, like Maria Farrar and other expressionist stuff the knucklehead had been devoted to in his youth. The tables were of rough wood, the other furniture charming, the walls full of photos. He examined the photos. He knew most of them, had seen so many of them while looking through dossiers in his office. His assistants had even taken a few of these pictures. Whoremonger, he said to himself, you were a real whoremonger, a moralist without morals. He studied the menu: the lady never knew how to win over lovers, but at least she’d succeeded with food, all her life she’d demanded Austrian cuisine, and the restaurant respected her tastes. Appetizers, best not. First course, soup. He began pondering. There was a potato soup he liked better than the German version. Actually he’d never much liked German food, too greasy, the Austrians were more refined, but maybe he should avoid the potato soup, it was hot out. The roe deer? Why not the roe deer? You couldn’t beat the Austrians at cooking roe deer. Too heavy, the physician would disagree. He decided on a simple wiener schnitzel. The fact is, wiener schnitzel done the Austrian way was sublime, and then those potatoes they made here, well yes, he’d take the wiener schnitzel. He drank white Austrian wine, even if he didn’t like fruity wines, and mentally made a toast to the memory of Helene. To your thick skin, he said, my dear prima donna. To finish, a decaf, to avoid nighttime arrhythmia.
When he went out into the courtyard he was tempted to visit the house, a house museum now, how amusing. But, who knows, maybe the place had been renovated, painted, all traces of life scrubbed away, adapted for intelligent tourists. He recalled the house one night in ’54 when that jerk was there in the wings with the Berliner Ensemble, staring at Mother Courage’s cart. He’d inspected each room, drawer by drawer, sheet by sheet, letter by letter. He knew it like no one else: he’d violated it. I’m sorry, he said softly, I’m sorry, really, but those were my orders. He went out onto the street and walked a few meters. The little neighboring cemetery, protected by a gate, was accessed by a driveway. It was deserted. There were many trees, everyone resting in the shade. A little cemetery, but racé, he thought, with certain names: philosophers, physicians, literary figures: happy few. What do they do, the important people in a cemetery? They sleep, they sleep just like the ones who don’t count for shit. And everyone in the same position: horizontal. Eternity is horizontal. He turned around and there was Anna Seghers’s tombstone. When he was young he’d really loved her poems. One came to mind: years ago, a Jewish actor recited it every evening in a little theater in Le Marais, a frightening, heartrending poem that the man didn’t have the courage to say by heart.
When he arrived before the tomb he said: hi, I’ve come to see you. Suddenly he had no desire at all to talk with him about the house and how he’d set himself up well for his old age. He hesitated and then said only: you don’t know me, my name is Karl, it’s my baptismal name, look, it’s my real name. Just then, a butterfly arrived. It was a common little butterfly with white wings, a small cabbage butterfly wandering into the cemetery. He stood stock-still and closed his eyes, as if making a wish. But he had no wish to make. He reopened his eyes: the butterfly had perched on the tip of the nose of the bronze bust in front of the tomb.
I’m really sorry, he said, that they didn’t give you the epitaph you dictated when you were alive: here lies B.B., clean, objective, bad. I’m really sorry they didn’t put it on there for you, a person should never come up with his own epitaph ahead of time, since his descendants never obey. The little butterfly beat its wings, raised them, then drew them together as if about to take flight, though it didn’t move. You really did have a great big nose, he said, and a bristly head of hair, you were a knucklehead, you’ve always been a knucklehead, you gave me a whole lot to do. The butterfly took off briefly, then settled back on the statue’s nose.
You fool, he said, I was one of your friends, I loved you, are you amazed that I loved you? So now listen, that August in ’56, when your coronary arteries exploded, I cried, really, I cried, I haven’t cried that much in my life, you know? When he had the time, Karl cried very little, but for you I cried.
The butterfly rose in flight, made two turns over the head of the statue and fluttered off. I have to tell you something, he said rapidly as if he were talking to the butterfly, I have to tell you something, it’s urgent. The butterfly disappeared beyond the trees, and he lowered his voice. I know everything about you, I know everything about your life, day by day, everything: your women, your ideas, your friends, your travels, even your nights and all your little secrets, even the tiniest one: everything. He realized he was sweating. He took a breath. On the other hand, I didn’t know a thing about myself, I thought I knew it all but I didn’t know a thing. He paused and lit a cigarette. He needed a cigarette. It was only two years ago, when they opened the archives, that I discovered Renate had been betraying me all along. Who knows why it suddenly occurred to me that even I might have a file like everyone else. It was a complete file, detailed, of someone who’d been spied on every day. The item “Relatives” was a whole dossier, with photos taken with a zoom lens, showing Renate and the head of the Internal Office naked in the sun, on a riverbank, like in a nudist colony. Underneath was the caption: Prague, 1952. I was in Paris by then. And there are many others: in ’62 while leaving a hotel in Budapest, in ’69 on a beach on the Black Sea, in ’74 in Sofia. Up till ’82 when he died, his coronaries exploded like yours, he was old, twenty years older than Renate, proof positive.
He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and stepped back. He was bathed in sweat. He sat on the wooden bench, on the other side of the little alley. You know, he said, I would have liked to tell Renate, I would have liked to tell her I knew everything, I’d discovered everything, but things are comic, Renate had a stroke, there was hope at first that she’d recover, and in fact they took good care of her, with physiotherapy too, everything that was necessary, but she didn’t get better, in the final years she remained in a wheelchair, and her facial paralysis didn’t go away either, every evening I said to myself: tomorrow I will tell her, but how can you say you’ve discovered everything to someone who has a distorted face and twisted legs? I didn’t have the courage, really, I didn’t have the courage.
He checked his watch. Maybe it was time to go. He felt tired, maybe he’d get a taxi. He said: what I like most of all about my new house is the view over Unter den Linden, it’s a nice house, with all the modern conveniences. He started down the little alley to the entrance gate. He hesitated and turned, waved good-bye to the trees. In the evening I eat in classy restaurants, he said again, for instance tonight I’m thinking of going to an Italian restaurant where they make this spaghetti with shrimp you can’t imagine, with more shrimp than spaghetti. He closed the gate delicately, caref
ul not to make a sound. Back in our time, such places didn’t exist, caro, he murmured to himself, we missed out on the best.
Between Generals
“I’ve never believed life imitates art, that saying’s widespread because it’s so easy, reality always outstrips the imagination, that’s why some stories can’t be written, they’re too pallid to evoke what actually was. But let’s forget about theories, I’ll gladly tell you the story, but then you can write it yourself if you wish – you’ve got the advantage over me – you don’t know who lived it. The truth is he only told me the backstory, I learned the ending from a friend of his, a man of few words; we limit ourselves to talking about music or chess moves, probably had Homer known Ulysses he would’ve thought him a banal man. I’ve come to realize one thing, that stories are always bigger than we are, they happen to us and we are their protagonists without realizing it, but in the stories we live, we aren’t the true protagonists, the true protagonist is the story itself. Who knows why he came to this city to die when it doesn’t remind him of a thing, perhaps because it’s a Tower of Babel and he started to suspect that his story was an emblem of the babel of life, his own country was too small to die in. He must be almost ninety, he spends his afternoons gazing out the window at New York’s skyscrapers, a Puerto Rican girl comes each morning to tidy up his apartment, she brings him a dish from Tony’s Café that he reheats in the microwave, and after he listens religiously to the old Béla Bartók records that he knows by heart, he ventures out for a short walk to the entrance of Central Park, in his armoire, in a plastic garment bag, he preserves his general’s uniform, and when he returns from the park, he opens its door and pats the uniform twice on the shoulder, like he would an old friend, then he goes to bed, he’s told me he doesn’t dream, but if he does, it’s only of the sky over the Hungarian plains, he thinks that must be the effect of the sleeping pill an American doctor prescribed. So I’ll tell you the story in a few words just as the one who lived it told me, all the rest is conjecture, but that is your concern.”