On YouTube he found the tape of a performance by a pretty good Ralf Tanner impersonator: a man who was almost his double—with a voice and gestures to match. On the right of the screen, the system offered a list of links to other videos connected with his name: clips from his films, two interviews, and of course the scene with Carla in the hotel lobby.
That evening he went out with a woman he’d been chasing for a long time. But when he was sitting opposite her, he suddenly found it impossible to pretend that her chatter interested him. The glances from people at the other tables, their whispering, and the direct staring, all disturbed him more than usual. As they got up to leave the restaurant, a man came up to ask for an autograph with the usual mixture of shyness and insistence.
“I only look like him, that’s all,” said Ralf.
The man eyed him suspiciously.
“It’s my job. I do it onstage. I’m an impersonator!”
The man let them pass. The woman found his answer so funny, she was still laughing minutes later in the taxi.
That night, watching in the gray mirror as their two naked silhouettes merged, he wished himself with all his heart transported to the other side of its flat surface, and the next morning, as he listened to her breathing peacefully beside him he felt some stranger had wandered into the room by accident, and the stranger wasn’t her.
He had long suspected that the act of being photographed was wearing out his face. Was it possible that every time you were filmed, another person came into being, a less-than-perfect copy that ousted you from your own presence? It seemed to him that after years of being famous only a part of him survived, and all he needed to be whole again was to die, and to be alone in the place he truly belonged: in films and in his myriad photographs. That body, the one that still breathed, felt hungry, and wandered around for no good reason, would cease to be a burden to him—a body that in any case bore little resemblance to the film star. So much work and so much makeup, so much effort and remodeling went into making sure that he really looked like the Ralf Tanner on the screen.
He called Malzacher, his agent, canceled the trip to the Valparaiso Film Festival, then set off to a discotheque called Looppool on the outskirts of town, where, according to what he’d found on the Internet, there was going to be an appearance by famous actors’ doubles. He told his chauffeur to wait outside, and went in, feeling shyer than he had in years. Someone wanted an entrance fee, but, when he saw Ralf’s face, waved him on in.
It was hot and sticky, the light harsh and flickering. Over at the bar was a man who looked like Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger was clearing a path through the crowd at the other end, and of course there was a Lady Diana in an outfit straight from a discount store. People turned as he went by, but their glances were brief and unfocused, slightly indifferent. Diana now climbed up onstage and sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President”; there was obviously some mix-up, but the crowd roared its approval. A woman smiled at him. He looked back at her. She came toward him. His heart began to thump, he didn’t know what he should say. She was at his side and then they were on the dance floor, her body pressed close to his.
Shortly after that he found himself up onstage. People stared up at him as he did his famous dialogue with Anthony Hopkins from I’m the Man in the Moon. He did the Anthony part really well, but stumbled a bit in his own replies. The audience clapped and whooped, he jumped back down into the room, and the woman he’d been dancing with whispered in his ear that her name was Nora.
The owner of the discotheque tapped him on the shoulder and gave him fifty euros. “That was okay, though not terrific. Tanner talks differently, and he holds his hands sort of like this.” He demonstrated. “You look like him, but you haven’t got his body language yet. Watch more of his movies! Come back next week.”
As he and the woman stepped out onto the street, he panicked. He couldn’t take her home with him. The moment she saw the house and the servants, she’d know that he wasn’t who he claimed he was—or, rather, that he really was. He pretended not to see the waiting chauffeur, flagged down a taxi, invented something about a brother who was visiting right now; with a look that told him she didn’t believe a word and assumed he must be married, she said her apartment was in a mess.
It was in fact small and extremely tidy, and Ralf Tanner spent the last night of his life there. It wasn’t him but someone else who clasped Nora’s body with a strength he’d never possessed before. In the early dawn she stroked his neck and told him he was wonderful. Many women had said this to him before, but he knew none of them had meant it.
Next day, under the name Matthias Wagner, he rented a furnished room in a rather drafty house not far from where she lived. The landlord looked at him with stupefaction, but Ralf explained that he moonlighted as an impersonator, and that apparently did it. He spent the whole week either there or with Nora, or walking up and down the street enjoying the fact that nobody turned to look, because word had spread around the neighborhood as to who he was and what he did.
Next time he appeared onstage at the Looppool, however, he didn’t make such a good impression. As he stood there speaking his lines, he suddenly felt totally lost. Something was going wrong, he was tensed up, his voice sounded choked, and when he tried to remember how he’d held his hands in that particular scene, he no longer knew how it had been, what he’d felt and thought, all he saw was the image of himself on the screen. He could sense the audience’s attention slipping away, and only his actor’s instinct made him finish the scene.
Then he saw the other Ralf Tanner impersonator. He knew from YouTube that he’d achieved an impressive level of perfection, but the likeness was even more astounding in person. His handshake was firm and he had the penetrating look that Ralf recognized as his own from the big screen. He was tall and broad-shouldered and radiated strength, inner balance, and courage.
“You haven’t been doing this long,” he said.
Ralf shrugged.
“I’ve been doing it since his second film. At the beginning I was just an amateur, I was still working in the Lost and Found. Then his career took off and I handed in my notice.” The man looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to make this your main job? It’s hard—it takes lots of practice. To be able to interpret someone, you have to live with them. Often when I’m in the street I don’t even notice that I’m doing Ralf Tanner. I live as him. I think like him, sometimes I stay in character for days at a time. I am Ralf Tanner. It takes years.”
The owner of Looppool only wanted to give him thirty euros this time. He hadn’t really stood out, and the physical likeness wasn’t there yet.
For a moment Ralf boiled with rage. He looked him straight in the eyes and the other man must have felt the force of a stare he knew from a dozen movies; he took a step back, looked down at the tips of his shoes, and muttered something incomprehensible. His hand slid into his pocket and Ralf knew that he was about to pull out another banknote. But then he felt his strength drain and the rage passed. He said he was just a beginner still.
“Okay.” The man gave him a mistrustful look and the hand came out of the pocket empty.
“I’ll really try,” said Ralf. Something about this pleased him. Wasn’t it proof that he was finally free?
No, he thought on the streetcar on the way to Matthias Wagner’s place. Of course it didn’t prove anything of the sort, it merely showed that self-examination disturbs the personality, deflects the will, and saps the mind; it proved that no one, seen clearly from the outside, resembles themselves at all. He got out at the next stop, waved down a taxi, and had himself driven home.
Once there he asked Ludwig, his valet, to draw him a bubble bath and prepared to listen while he waited to the voice messages on his cell phone. But there weren’t any. Nobody seemed to have missed him. It was as if someone else had taken over all his personal affairs.
He spent the next day in restless distraction. His best friend Mogroll, the failed actor, had swallowed an overdos
e without warning. Intentional or unintentional, no one knew; he hadn’t given any kind of a signal, hadn’t talked to him, hadn’t left any note. Ralf didn’t understand it.
His personal trainer made him do his usual Wednesday push-ups and told him he had to work on his stomach muscles: there would be scenes in his next film where he’d be stripped to the waist, he mustn’t be laughed at for no longer being young.
He checked the film forums to see if there was anything new about him, but when he read a posting saying that he had sawdust in his head and was as ugly as an ox, he gave up for the moment. Who wrote such stuff, and why? He talked to his agent, then with Brankner the director, who was embarrassingly obsequious. He knew that Brankner didn’t reckon him a good actor but had to have him, because without his participation the movie would never get financed. Halfway through the conversation, Ralf hung up. He leafed through Miguel Auristos Blanco’s Peace, Reach Deep into Us for awhile, then paced up and down looking at the flowers in the tall crystal vases that were suddenly scattered all around the house. He didn’t like flowers, and had no idea how all the vases had got here. Had Ludwig bought them on his own initiative? He was getting stranger as he got older.
Ralf paused for awhile in front of the mirror on the wall, and watched his face become less and less recognizable by the second. Then he left the villa.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he reached Matthias Wagner’s street. Supermarket right there, newsagent next door. The elevator car smelled of cooking. A fat woman greeted him casually. His room welcomed him like a lost refuge.
He watched TV and drank beer out of the can. A newscaster said something about war, the Near East, a visiting minister, tomorrow’s weather. A housewife held up a colorful hand towel, then for some reason an elephant charged across a meadow, then Ralf Tanner appeared, steering a car through big-city traffic and talking to a blonde in the passenger seat. “Time’s running out and all these people will be turned to dust!”
“But maybe,” said the woman, “we can stop it.”
Then in rapid succession came a series of explosions: a car flew into the air, then an oil platform—flames rolling decoratively over the sea—then an apartment building, hit so hard that a blizzard of glass shards flashed in the sun. Then Ralf Tanner’s face again, and underneath, against a black background, the letters: BY FIRE AND SWORD. In theaters now.
What garbage, thought Ralf. Cringe-inducing.
That was when he realized he couldn’t remember shooting it. And that he’d never even heard of the movie.
He channel-surfed for awhile, but the trailer didn’t show up again. He went downstairs and across the street to the Internet café. The owner knew him already and pointed him, smiling, to one of the computers.
By Fire and Sword was listed on imdb.com. The film, which had apparently been reviewed very negatively in the papers the previous week, already had an entry in Wikipedia. In the MovieForum someone praised the intensity of his performance. But why had he gotten involved in such a film? Maybe, someone else replied, he needed the money, hardly surprising given the way he lived. A third person reported that Tanner was currently in Los Angeles, a fourth contradicted him: he was on a publicity tour in China. He’d also added a link, and when Ralf clicked on it, he found himself on the Web site of a Chinese newspaper. A large picture showed him grinning and shaking hands with two officials. He didn’t know these people, he had never been to China. He paid and stumbled out into the harsh morning sun.
By Fire and Sword? Of course, said Nora, she’d seen it. And liked it. Who cared about the critics? She sighed. She’d worshipped Ralf Tanner since she was thirteen. She’d seen all his films.
“So that’s why? Because I look like him?”
“Oh, you’re not that like him. Maybe you should imitate someone else. You’re good, but … he’s not the right one for you.”
His eyes slid to the mirror. There she was, and there he was, and suddenly he didn’t know anymore which side the originals were on and which side the reflections. He ran his hand over her hair, murmured something to cover his confusion, and went downstairs to the streetcar stop.
In the streetcar, no one bothered him. He tried to see himself in the glass, but it didn’t work, any more than it did in shop windows, there seemed to be no more reflecting surfaces to be found anywhere. On the edge of the sidewalk he saw two posters for By Fire and Sword. It wasn’t till he reached the gate of the villa, all out of breath, that he realized his pockets were empty. He must have lost the key in all the turmoil. He pressed the bell.
“It’s me,” he called into the intercom. “I’m back early.”
“Who?”
He swallowed. Then, fully aware that this response wasn’t a good idea in the circumstances, he repeated, “Me.”
The intercom was switched off. Thirty seconds later the front door opened: Ludwig came out and walked across the lawn, dragging his feet. Leaning against the grill, his weathered face peered through the bars.
“It’s me,” said Ralf for the third time.
“And who is ‘me’?”
It took him a moment to understand that Ludwig wasn’t trying to debate an abstract philosophical point, but that he didn’t recognize him.
“I’m Ralf Tanner!”
“That’ll surprise the boss.”
“I’m back early.”
“The boss came home hours ago,” said Ludwig. “So please leave.”
“This is my house!”
“We’ll call the police.”
“Can I … speak to the man who claims he’s Ralf Tanner?”
“That’s you.”
“Excuse me?”
“The man who claims he’s Ralf Tanner is you.”
“Can I … speak to Ralf Tanner?”
Ludwig looked at him with a thin smile. “Ralf Tanner is a very famous actor. Hundreds of people want things from him. His phone never stops ringing. Do you think he’s going to interrupt what he’s doing to chat with you, because he’s so glad you look like him?”
“Ludwig, surely you recognize me?”
“You know my name. Congratulations. So when did you hire me?”
He rubbed his forehead. What kind of a question was that? He was too taken aback to remember. Ludwig seemed to have been with him forever, that lumpy, lugubrious face his lifetime companion. “Can I speak to the others? Can you get Malzacher on the phone with me?”
“My dear man, let me give you some advice. Of course we can do these things. You can summon the entire household. Maybe you’ll even get Ralf Tanner to come outside himself. But what would you have gained? Ridicule, mockery, an extremely unpleasant encounter with the police, and, if you keep this up, a charge of harassment. You’re dealing with a star, and that means zero tolerance. He has to protect himself. I know he plays a large role in your life. You know all his movies, you accompany him and he accompanies you, he has no finer audience, but now you’ve reached a line you shouldn’t try to cross. Go home. I’m an old man, I’ve seen a lot of you, and I don’t want people to make themselves unhappy. You seem to be a nice guy. Pull yourself together!”
He felt dizzy. Opened his mouth and closed it again. Breathed in and out. Blinked in the sun.
“Are you feeling all right?” asked Ludwig. “Would you like a glass of water?”
He shook his head, turned around, and walked away slowly. All around him were villas, hedges, and high garden fences. There was a smell of mown grass. He stopped, then sat down on the ground.
What had happened? Had some imposter taken his place? It must be the impersonator he’d met in the Looppool; maybe the guy had seen through him and taken advantage of the moment to relegate him forcibly and completely into the role of a man named Matthias Wagner, spectator, imitator, and fan. A man who’d so submerged himself in the existence of a model who looked just like him that he’d come to confuse that other existence with his own. It happened. You could read about it in the newspapers. Pensively he took out his identity card, read t
he name printed on it as if for the first time, and put it back.
He looked up. On the other side of the street, the garden gate had opened. Ludwig and Malzacher came out, and between them, tall and well built, Ralf Tanner.
He couldn’t remember ever looking that good himself. Whoever had chased him out of his own life, he was perfect at it, he was the right person for it, and if anyone had earned the right to Tanner’s existence, it was him. What dignity, what charisma! A car drew up, Ralf Tanner opened the door, nodded to the chauffeur, and disappeared into the back. Malzacher got in after him, and Ludwig closed the gate.
As the car went by, Matthias Wagner leapt up and bowed, but the windows were tinted and all he could see was his own reflection. The car had already passed him, turned the corner, and was gone.
He pushed his hands into his pockets and walked slowly down the street. He’d actually found the way out. He was free.
He paused at a bus stop but then changed his mind and continued on his way, he had no desire at this moment to use public transport, it was always a strange experience when you looked like a star. People stared, children asked stupid questions, and used their cell phones to take photographs of you. It could even be fun sometimes. It made you think you were someone else.
The East
How could she have known it was hot here? She’d imagined snow-covered steppes, swept by icy winds, whirling snows, nomads in front of tents, yaks, and campfires at night under huge skies canopied with stars. Actually, it smelled like one gigantic building site, cars blasted their horns, and the sun was scorching. A fly buzzed around her head. No cash machine anywhere. Yesterday at her bank, the teller had laughed at her: they didn’t carry currencies like that, she’d have to change her money once she got there.