“Fate,” said Arthur. “The capital letter F. But chance is a powerful force, and suddenly you acquire a Fate that was never assigned to you. Some kind of accidental fate. It happens in a flash. But the man could certainly paint. Think about that, and don’t ever forget it. The man could paint.”
“Who?”
“Ivan.”
“But that’s not by Ivan.”
Arthur stared hard at her. She waited, but he didn’t say a word.
“Can we go now?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m going to take you home.”
3
As Marie and Matthias reached the presbytery, Eric and Martin were fighting again. There was nothing unusual about this, it was pretty standard.
“Good that I’m moving out!” yelled Eric.
“I’m not stopping you. What I truly don’t need here is some kind of fanatic. How can anyone even begin to assert—”
“That God performs miracles?”
“God does not perform miracles. The minute you start with miracles, you cannot begin to explain why He fails to make them most of the time. If He saves you, why didn’t He save everyone else? Because you’re more important?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not serious, are you? You mean He sent a complete economic crisis just to rescue you from the mess you’d gotten yourself into? You’re not just saying that, you actually mean it?”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t it have come just to save me personally, why not?”
“Because you’re not that important!”
“Obviously I am. Otherwise it wouldn’t be—”
“That’s a totally circular argument!”
“You people always say that His ways are not ours to know. You keep telling us that no one can predict how He will steer our fate and by what means.”
“And Ivan? Did he disappear just so that you could grab his paintings and use the proceeds to pay the interest?”
“You may not say any such thing!”
“You were the one who said it!”
“I never said that!”
“It follows implicitly from what—”
“We were twins. You don’t understand. I’m not just me, and he’s—well, he wasn’t just him. In a certain way we were always just one person. It’s hard to explain.”
“Every day!” said Martin to Marie. The acolyte held out the white shirt to him, and he panted as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. “Every day he explains to me that God watches over the world and over him in particular. Every day!”
“He didn’t want to baptize me!” cried Eric. “I had to go to another parish. My own brother didn’t want to baptize me!”
“Every day he stands in front of me in that checked shirt of his and says that God sent a financial crisis just to save him.”
“Go play with your cube, and leave me in peace.”
“The cube isn’t a plaything.”
“No, it’s a serious sport, really hard stuff!”
“Save yourself that tone of voice! I’m back at number twenty-two again!”
“On which list?” asked Marie. She knew the answer, but she also knew how much Martin liked repeating it.
“The national one!”
The acolyte put the stole around Martin’s shoulders. He was an unprepossessing young man with whom she’d had a brief conversation the week before. It hadn’t been easy, because at first he’d been so shy, but after she’d smiled at him twice, he’d immediately asked her to go out with him. She’d tried to say no as nicely as she could, but he was stricken anyway, and since then he’d avoided her. Martin had gotten to know him at the Catholic Youth. There was a hole in his right nostril from which a ring had recently been removed, and his name, if she remembered correctly, was Ron.
Marie put her arm around Matthias’s neck. She felt him flinch; he found it awkward whenever she touched him in front of her father. He was afraid of him, you couldn’t reproach him for that.
It wasn’t easy having a boyfriend. Sometimes she wished she’d waited, but Lena already had one, Natalie had one, and even Georg would have liked to have a girlfriend. In desperation he’d even asked Marie, but she’d had to laugh, the thing was too absurd. She’d been together with Matthias, who was already sixteen, a year older than she was, for a month now, and she’d already slept with him three times. The first time it was strange and a bit exhausting, and the second time it just seemed really dumb, but the third time, at his house, while his parents were away and the dog kept scratching pathetically at the door, suddenly made her understand why people made such a fuss about it all.
The acolyte stepped back. Martin was now in his full vestments. Immediately he looked thinner and radiated worthiness.
“Is Laura coming too?” asked Eric.
“She’s shooting,” said Marie. “They’ve enlarged her role in the new season.”
“So what’s it like, this series?” asked Martin.
“Very good,” said Matthias. “Really interesting.” Marie poked him with her elbow. Both of them had to grin.
It was a year ago when she’d begun to draw. Nobody knew, she was still too inept in the way she laid down her lines, the shapes of things were not yet under her control, but she had no doubt that she would get better. Later she intended to study graphic arts alongside her major, which would be medicine, and then she’d pick up another language, or maybe three or even four, but not more: she still wanted to be able to read books and take trips to distant continents, Patagonia was a mustsee, as was the coast of North Africa, and she also had to get to China.
“So, let’s do this.” Martin opened the door. Outside the snow was coming down in big, slow-falling flakes.
It was only a few steps to the church. Martin went first, followed by Ron, then Eric, with Matthias and Marie bringing up the rear. She stuck out her tongue to taste the snow. The white cold stifled all noises. She tucked her arm into Matthias’s.
“Can we go to my place afterward?” he whispered in her ear.
Maybe that was a good idea. His parents were off on another trip. They would have the house all to themselves, and yet she wasn’t sure. She liked Matthias and didn’t want to hurt him, but maybe what she needed was a different boyfriend. She tipped her head to one side so that her hair brushed his cheek. “Maybe.”
Eric looked back at them uneasily. Marie was too young to be running around arm in arm with a boy, let alone a pathetic one. It was far too early. If things kept on going like this, they would soon be kissing each other. How was he going to stop it?
He had to pray more often. Praying always helped. If he’d prayed more in the past, he’d never have gotten himself into such difficulties. All of his hunches had proved true: people were under constant surveillance, the cosmos was a system of signs arranged so as to be legible, nights were infested with demons, and evil lurked in every corner. But he who entrusted himself to God had nothing to fear. It was all plain and simple, and he couldn’t understand why his brother got so cross every time he talked about it. He’d always understood Ivan, but things with Fatso were eternally complicated. It was simpler to talk things over with his new friend Adrian Schlueter, who’d explained to him that God was obliged to forgive anyone who went to Confession: the Lord Himself was bound by His own Sacrament.
So Eric went every day to Confession. He had already been in every church in the city, he knew where you got stuck in line and where you were next up right away, where the priests were approachable, where they were inquisitive, and where even after the tenth time they didn’t recognize you; he knew which churches were better to avoid because there were demons staring down off their façades, hissing swear words and trying to prevent you from getting in. Confessing every day demanded its own discipline. Sometimes you’d done nothing wrong and you had to invent it, but it was worth the effort: you could go through life devoid of sin, as weightless as a newborn, without any fear of the Last Judgment.
He looked up. Flakes of snow were
dancing against the gray of the sky. It had started to snow the previous evening, and lying on his lumpy sofa he had been unable to sleep because of the sheer silence. He had spent the night visualizing his desk, his business cards, his phone setup, his computer, his company car—everything that would be his again soon.
It was only two months since he’d bumped into Lothar Remling. Much boxing on the shoulders, loud cries, football talk: Unbelievable, whooped Eric, apropos of absolutely nothing, the game! Remling replied that you couldn’t believe how the idiots had frittered the whole thing away, and then he started talking about how these were high times for Remling. Consult, governments had been pumping so much money into the system that nobody knew what to do with it all, could you have imagined such a thing even a year ago! Then he asked how things were going for Eric, and Eric was about to answer that he was up to his ears in new projects and working himself into exhaustion, but then suddenly, to his own astonishment, he said he wasn’t doing anything.
Nothing?
Absolutely nothing. Totally, absolutely nothing. All day. He had withdrawn from the world and was living in the presbytery. With his brother. The priest.
Totally crazy, said Remling. Are you for real?
Eric said he’d realized things couldn’t go on like this. Everyone needed to declare time out once in a while. Sit and think. As for him, he dipped into the Bhagavad Gita. Meditated. Went to Confession. Spent time with his daughter. Was also administering the art collection of his dead brother. Of course he’d be making a comeback, but there was no hurry. It was so terribly easy to lose sight of the essential.
The essential, said Remling. Yes, exactly, that was what it was all about.
Then he had asked for Eric’s number, and Eric had told him he didn’t have a cell phone anymore, but he could be reached at the presbytery.
And Remling had actually called three days later, and they’d met to eat, and two days later they’d met again, and then again that same week, and everything was in the bag. No, Eric had said, he didn’t need a lawyer to take care of the contract, his future was cradled in the hands of God, and Remling had exclaimed that all this was so cool.
Eric had no doubt whatever that he was on the fast track to glory at Remling. Consult. As regards experience, he had it nailed, he knew every trick in the book, he had built one of the biggest asset-planning companies in the country. The fact that it had been torpedoed wasn’t his fault, no one had foreseen the crisis, no one had been able to know what was bearing down on them, everyone who worked for him had said the exact same thing. He met twice a week with Maria Gudschmid and Felsner for tea, and they went around in a circle saying Who Could Possibly Have Known?! Which was why the investors had accepted their losses, and why Kluessen’s son had decided not to sue. The only fly in the ointment was his onetime chauffeur, who’d written a letter to the state prosecutors, but the accusations it contained were so off the wall that nobody had wanted to pursue the thing. The sale of the almost one hundred paintings and almost one thousand sketches that had been found partly in Eulenboeck’s studio and partly in Ivan’s apartment, when combined with reproductions of Eulenboeck’s farmhouses on pens, children’s crayons, pajamas, and cups, had become so profitable that he could pay off the interest on the bridging loan. But such a shame that so many pictures had gone missing: there were three dozen paintings described exactly in Ivan’s records—nobody had ever seen them, nobody knew a thing about them, it was just as if they’d never existed. Now the boom was unfortunately a bust, Eulenboeck’s prices were shrinking, and the license agreements were all eroding, but the worst was past. He wasn’t going to jail. God had decided that one. And his instincts had sharpened themselves, and he was thinking faster than he ever had—it had been genuinely helpful that he’d had to restrict his budget for medications—he now took only the essentials, those things that made it possible to stand more or less upright and get through the day.
And that’s what he’d said to Sibylle. He hadn’t seen her for four years, she’d lost weight, and she looked exhausted. He’d told her what he’d told Remling: Bhagavad Gita, Confession, no cell phone, time out, hand of God. He’d talked about the crisis that nobody could have foreseen, he’d talked about the presbytery and about the divorce. He’d talked about the fact that he would never again be a complete human being since the day his twin brother had died. Sibylle had asked if Laura was okay again, healthwise, and he’d said, Thank God, yes! And now he was going to move in with her. His income was down to the bare minimum it took for sheer survival, he had no means to pay for an apartment of his own, but he absolutely had to get out of the presbytery, no matter what. It was no place for a pious human being of any stripe.
Eric bent down and scooped up a handful of snow. It was still so powdery that it was almost impossible to shape it into a ball. He wanted to hurl the crumbling lump at somebody, but couldn’t see any particular target. Marie suddenly seemed too grown-up to have snowballs thrown at her, and he didn’t want to target her disgusting boyfriend either—if he hit him in the face, it would be really embarrassing. And he couldn’t snow-bomb Martin anymore either, now, when he was wearing his priest’s outfit. So he took aim at the acolyte.
He hit him in the back of the head, and the snow dusted itself into a halo. The young man spun around, with the momentary look of an animal on the attack, then his face softened into an effortful smile.
There was something odd about him. The first time he’d come into the presbytery and met Eric’s eyes, he’d begun to giggle hysterically. He still could barely talk to Eric without turning pale and beginning to stutter. Eric guessed he must have been commissioned by someone to spy on him, but it just didn’t matter anymore. He was under the protecting hand of God.
They went into the church. The organ advanced triumphantly from one chord to the next, and the congregation was bigger than before. The five old women who always came were here, along with the friendly fat man, the sad young woman, and Adrian Schlueter. But this time there were also a few old friends of Ivan’s, including a Belgian painter with a pointed beard and a silk shawl, and a cousin none of them had seen in ages, and Eric’s secretary Kathi, who was now installed at the Eulenboeck Trust to oversee merchandising. Martin’s mother was here, and next to her, upright and calm, was Prelate Finckenstein. In the front row, face hidden behind dark glasses, maybe out of grief and maybe out of a desire to pass unrecognized, sat Ivan and Eric’s mother.
Ivan had been missing for four years now, and in the previous week he had officially been declared dead. Eric had insisted on this Mass, he had begged, cursed, and finally threatened to intervene with the bishop. Martin had defended himself as long as he was able. Ivan had never been baptized, and besides which, Masses for the souls of the dead were absolute rubbish—why would the Almighty, All-Knowing God change His view of a single human soul because that soul’s survivors sang a few songs? Or, to put it better, any Mass for the dead would have been rubbish if there really had been an all-knowing God and any sense in theology. Which was why he’d finally given way.
The congregation rose to its feet. “The Lord be with you,” said Martin. Since he had come to understand that faith was never going to alight on him, he’d felt free. Nothing was ever going to help: never in this life was he going to be thin, and never in this life was he going to escape the power of reason.
“And with your spirit,” murmured the congregation.
Martin spoke about his brother. He wasn’t a novice, so the sentences flowed freely, without his having to think about them: Ivan Friedland had lived and painted, he had researched, he had seen much in the world, because the act of seeing was his passion. He had behaved badly to no man, and he had dedicated his work to a greater artist, whose authority he had been the first to acknowledge. Much was to have been expected of him, but an untimely fate had cut short his life, only God knew how. He would never come back.
Martin folded his hands. The acolyte took a ragged breath, rubbed his face, made little co
ughing noises, and sniffled in a way that could drive anyone mad. The boy was doing his best, but he just wasn’t suited for this job, someone had to find another solution for him. Perhaps Eric could help, he still had all these connections.
As Martin heard himself speak, he closed his eyes. He imagined the snowflakes falling outside. If the weather report was to be believed, they were going to keep falling for days, big machines would be working at full power to clear the streets, chemicals would be sprayed around with abandon, but the snow would keep falling on the pavements, on the parked cars, on the gardens, trees, roofs, and antennas. For a few days to come, the world would be a thing of beauty. He noticed that he was getting hungry again.
“And now,” he said, “the Profession of Faith.”
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His works have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in postwar German literature.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Carol Brown Janeway’s translations include Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Summer Lies, Jan Philipp Reemtsma’s In the Cellar, Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s Lost, Zvi Kolitz’s Yosl Rakover Talks to God, Benjamin Lebert’s Crazy, Sándor Márai’s Embers, Yasmina Reza’s Desolation, Thomas Bernhard’s My Prizes, and Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World, Me and Kaminski, and Fame.