by Simon Strauß
What kind of a time was that, when the papers were still white and the screens black, when it still meant something to step outside onto the street, into the bars and apartments of strangers? Departure, resistance, slammed doors—I bet nobody asked for sparkling water back then.
What we’re missing most of all today are real spaces. We let ourselves be evicted and fenced into places that were once useful precisely because of their absence of purpose and order. The library where I’m sitting right now, for example, is nothing but a service station.
Instead of bookshelves, I’m greeted by information desks and screens. Everywhere I have the opportunity to extend my membership, get information about dental hygiene or return Club Mate bottles. There’s a repair cafe that revives defective electronics. Sewing machines stand at the ready to mend torn pants, and on the third floor there is a 3-D printer and a recording studio. The Ministry of Health advertises a workshop and there is a poster for a drone flight show.
Downstairs, in the family area, where kids jump around on digital playgrounds and play computer games, there’s a gong that sounds when a new baby is born in the maternity ward of the city’s hospital.
But the books, those stand on the sidelines. They don’t fit into the image of the modern architecture of emptiness. That’s why they’re being relocated and demoted to space holders. The library has turned from a space that treats books like treasures, where thick layers of dust protected knowledge, to a profane location where much happens and little is read. Revolutions don’t always devour their children immediately. Sometimes they just suck them dry. Like a vampire that prefers to consume its victim slowly, rather than a monster that gobbles them down in one bite. The digital forces weaken their victims slowly until—still halfway intact on the outside, but completely devoid of energy on the inside—they collapse. Porn theaters, travel agencies and postcards have already lost their lives this way, and now libraries are in danger. With every Wikipedia page, every Google Book Scan they lose a grain of their aura, an ounce of their necessity. Jobs and funds are being cut.
Even though now would be the time for the library to position itself confidently against the intangible. Its allure comes from the endless rows, the battalions of spines. In the smallest space it offers visitors a cosmos of perspectives: Within it the reactionary has space next to the progressive, the exceptional stands back to back with the conventional. The library is a home to polyphony. In the glow of the green lamp shade you travel more safely than on any slick surfboard. The library as the departures hall. The books as the planes with their gangways extended. Patiently awaiting their sole passenger. At some point he will come, on a dark winter night and pull at random while strolling along the shelves. Then the engine starts and the plane lifts off.
“The library will close in fifteen minutes,” the voice of an unemployed actress informs me. Via the intercom she wishes me a safe journey home. And at the exit they will probably offer hot towels and coconut water.
Where does it come from, this dull, snivelly feeling of having been born too late? To live in times without arias and excess? Time in which you want to plead with your parents: “Keep your memories to yourselves! Don’t you realize how they crush our shoulders and our courage with their weight?”
Whenever I imagine the past, I picture how days started (maybe not quite with a gunshot wound, but at least with a bloody wet shave), the delicious anticipatory rage with which one opened the newspaper, downed the coffee and threw the one-night-stand off the sofa—how one loved loving with all its difficulty. Whenever I think of the past, I get envious. Because so much was destroyed that could be built anew. Nobody wants war, but we should have the freedom to dream of a fresh beginning. A time when adversaries existed, real enemies. When you weren’t permitted to take the coward’s route, to avoid saying hello. “You also have to greet those you don’t know” (Karl Kraus). A time when we actually said things to each other’s faces that left their marks. When real things were the subjects of discussions, not just states of affairs, when the arguments were about right and wrong, and the critical impulse manifested itself, thereby putting itself at stake.
We can no longer even imagine that people once believed—were fundamentally convinced—that things should and could be done in a radically different way.
Planning the great coup, together at the kitchen, bar, or cafeteria table, what kind of confidence and sense of mission would it have taken? What sense of power?—You are done, now it’s our turn: We are coming to your schools, your parliaments, your factories, theaters, publishers, newsrooms and factory floors.
The revolt of our ancestors was not just spawned by a feeling. It strode on the high heels of theory, possessed intelligence, mental agility, had read much and with great concentration. It was able to criticize the current situation with turns of phrase that today we have to look up.
What and how intensely they dreamed, that is what I envy. I, who often sit across from them on the tram, silent, depressed by their advantage of experience. I, who am their inferior in terms of knowledge (how many books have I really read twice? and where are my notes on them?) and passion (slept with fewer women, never have been to Cuba, diligently kept the twenty mph speed limit). I, who stand by and listen to the stories of how great it was then. I envy their wounds. Their gazes, their longing. And their hairstyles. Why are there no more groups today who fly to Princeton? Why are there no more collectives, communes and tearooms? Is it really enough to lie around on Sunday afternoon with Alexandra and mark the vacation days in our shared calendar in blue? It is still our parents who wear the leather jackets.
Of course, everyone is always a successor. That’s nothing new, the feeling that you’ve arrived too late. But the question is whether one is able to make something of this feeling--or whether one simply watches the candle burn down. This has never been about the majority, which has always toiled so that the few could govern, paint and write. The many have forever given the few a light without catching fire themselves. It has always been an elite, a small esoteric group that has been responsible for progress. Those who think too much about equality at the outset lose the courage to act. They will soon only make sure that the towel rests on the warm (but not too warm!) radiator and that the bike chain is well-oiled.
Now the security guards enter the reading room from the back. They start to clean off the tables of those who haven’t been at their desks in the last thirty minutes. Carelessly the women shove everything left behind into yellow mailboxes—notes, books, photocopies. Once the desk is empty they spray it down with disinfectant from a silver can and polish it with a cloth until it’s shiny.
We work and relax, driven by the attendance clock. That is our situation. We have never really lived, only felt the pull in our chest when we hear how old someone was when they put their stamp on history, when they created this or that. Somehow everyone seems to only have been in their mid-twenties when they wrote their first novel, played their first leading role, made their first million.
For me, envy means first and foremost: counting the years. Calculating how much distance there is, how much runway remains. It means: wanting to be Rimbaud. Wanting to live without the longing for the past. To be a creator, theater director, starter of a discourse if necessary, but to be there, really be there and not just sort through business cards in an office. As an eternal spectator, the shadow boxer who never entered the ring, always just dreaming of the music that would accompany the crowd cheering him on.
The last warning, a security guard approaches me with heavy steps and pulls away my chair. “Get out.” The library as transitory space from which you are mercilessly evicted when the grace period is over. The cleaning crew approaches with their silver spray cans. This time the women are wearing masks over their mouths and have a vacuum cleaner, no, a pressure washer, in tow. Now it’s the books’ turn. Every day they are scrupulously cleaned until the last fleck of dust is obliterated. They
shine like never before, these books, but they are no longer being read. The knowledge disappears along with the dust. The aura of touchability.
We lack the fire. The courage. We always come in second. We, who at night secretly write our own names into the books of our fathers, in the hope that the heritage will give us strength.
VI
LUXURIA
Two men in suits stroll past the entrance of a prewar building, their arms crossed behind their backs, like Greek philosophers. One keeps his shoulders straight, the other walks a little bent. They are wearing black masks and their foreheads are sweaty. They approach me, quietly. The neighbors aren’t on good terms, they say, and guide me past a dark staircase and across a backyard without cats to an old wooden door with a milk glass window. “Knock three times, please. Have fun.” A young woman opens the door, her gaze calculating, even as her mouth is smiling. Her pale skin reflects the flickering candle light and I think I see her shivering. But later, at the end, when she will lie next to me on the table and stroke the back of my head, the shivering will be over. Then there will be only calm and happiness.
A dark garden of sequin and velvet, ghost lights, an oasis of ecstasy and music. Effervescent drinks and fresh exotic fruit. A ruby red basement where you can gamble—for luck, for money or for the head of Laocoön. A midsummer night among strange friends and friendly strangers. A little “Eyes Wide Shut.” Just a little. The dream of a night in which everything is forgiven. In which you can lose the shame, can finally escape the old limpet that latched on in childhood days. Touching naked skin, shattering glasses, roaming labyrinths. Darkness and candles, a shadow from somewhere that becomes a friend, a lover for a brief time. And then moves on as if nothing had happened, as if this was all just a game and the bill would never come due. Though lips are sealed / Violins whisper / Care for me! I’ve had this dream for a long time. It snuck into my fantasy and followed me, expectantly and a little derisively, as if to say: you don’t dare! In the deciding moment you will close your eyes, will adjust your bow-tie and remember that you will have to get up early on Monday morning. You will look forward to a tax refund and the next physiotherapy appointment. And let the others give it a go.
I have always been better at dreaming of the big win than at actually placing the bet. More ambitious in drawing up maps and deciding on a direction, rather than putting the plan into action. The dream is my evasive maneuver, a never-fulfilling prophecy.
But tonight I want to change course, want to be rakish and odd. Let us dance, exchange looks and sit in the back room in the dark and kiss each other’s necks. Let’s do everything we want without fearing that anything will escape these walls.
Why always think of retreat when the lights go down? Would Fitzgerald have researched bus times as others were dancing the waltz? Come over, look into the mirror and stand up straight. Tomorrow you can return to being a harmless nobody.
Of all the things that are bad form, that counteract the senses and the longing, taking off the mask too early is the worst. A few ignoramuses do it only a few steps into the room, just to wipe their forehead or to scratch the corner of their eye. They fear the veil, the hidden glance.
But I, intent on living it all, intent on waking the sleeping song, hold tight to the desire for secrecy and keep the mask on. This is my night. Nothing will stop me. Not the mediocre EDM DJ, not the gay car salesman out on the hunt, not even the tired TV star who thinks he can pay for his drinks with his famous face.
A palm tree stands in the front corner, illuminated red, reminding me of the house in the south, the casa in a Spanish alley, where in the morning donkey carts clanged against the sidewalk and in the evening we drank wine on the rooftop terrace until the stars fell. In the interior courtyard there was a palm tree, the roots of which had crawled under the house, into the sewer and the well, had lifted the tiles and cracked the facade. One afternoon a Palmista arrived with three power saws and a sickle. He cut up the noble tree giant into ever smaller pieces until all that was left was a stump. We used it as a table, toasting civilization with a glass of Rioja. The house was forgotten, sold long ago, but the palm tree stuck with me, with its wild growth and great joy in its murderous embrace.
The tree here in the hall is its little sister. Standing shyly in the corner, allowing itself to be touched by the guests. But not moving its branches, indifferent to their embraces.
On the stage, the revue starts. A Burlesque dancer steps in front of a semicircle of costumed illuminati. In real life she’s a clerk at a suburban bank, but tonight she’s pulling the frills off her body. It’s all well rehearsed. On the last note she drops her last piece of clothing. But contempt is written in her face, her tantalizing gaze is directed at the ceiling. A Salomé would look different. Where is the cut-off head, where the bloodthirst, the terrors of lust? Her skin, which I touch in passing with the tip of my finger, is cold. The revenge of the touched: to suffocate the embers with a shiver. Communicate to each admirer that someone else would do just as well.
Above the entrance to the basement, where the beer crates would normally be stacked high, a bare-chested young girl is now sitting on the windowsill, taking photographs. She does not respond to calls, doesn’t let anyone get close. A malicious oracle, a false Loreley? In any case she remains there the entire night, even later when the bass has stopped and the police have confiscated all of the magic powder.
A broad-shouldered boy in suspenders makes an announcement, speaks with an Italian, Russian and Greek accent. Invites the crowd to a celebration with the ghosts of yesteryear and the demons of today. His girlfriend is from Madrid. She has tragic dark eyes and an Eton crop. When she speaks, she speaks in long sentences. Together we descend into the basement, while her boyfriend is busy with drinks and coke upstairs. Later I see him come down the stairs to watch me desire her. Where does it come from, this clandestine, malevolent and yet infinitely arousing male fantasy to see one’s own lover in the arms of a stranger? To closely watch her surrender, how she puts her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, her breath on his ear.
Upstairs the Russian DJ plays EDM sets that lack a sense of time and place. His music is too challenging. The people want Abba, not James Blake. A young woman of nobility, beautiful eyes, challenges a man in a fox mask to a round of arm wrestling. Last year, he slept with her, then shut the door on her. She would rather punch him in the face, no warning, break his nose. But it is too early for that. In a few hours she will get her revenge: She will make sure that he hears her moan as she makes love to a bearded musician on the bar. She will—just as his pants open in lust—notice with a satisfied glance that the man in the fox mask has been defeated, that the toxin of jealousy has done its work. Humiliated he will tumble out onto the street, to look up into the sky for a moment.
Outside, a grieving widow has placed a sign in front of the closed metal shutters. The name of her deceased husband is written on it in shy letters. She knows that he would have liked to stand at the bar, in the midst of the bustling crowd, in the twitching light. He would have been perfectly quiet, simply observing. His eyebrows slightly raised, lips pursed. He would have thought of Buñuel and Visconti and how much time he still had. He was the film critic for a major newspaper. Often he’d walk back and forth in the middle aisle of a cinema, unable to decide on a row. I once worked as a waiter at a birthday party in his house. I was fourteen and his daughter twelve. We bit each other’s lips on the balcony and later I read in the newspaper of his death. There aren’t a lot of people whose view on the world you miss. He was one of them.
Back in the basement, where an old sign says “suffocation hazard,” red velvet is draped over waiters’ lockers. The hum of the refrigerators fills the room. In front of them people play roulette at a long table. Nobody verifies date of birth; no account balance is checked. In the back corner, a young Austrian writer reads the intercessions that he has written for his godson. He is invited to his baptism tom
orrow. He looks around in disgust, the players frozen with covetous desire as they lean across the table. The ball is rolling—rien ne va plus. The croupier, an Orientalist from Wales, is completely pale, but he’s used to crazy nights. His favorite movie is Just a Gigolo with Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie. A princess and prince who never came together—the divide was too vast. They talked on the phone a few times, but Marlene didn’t want to see David. He who wore the scent, the strong perfume of a new era. He wanted to come to her with a helicopter. A helicopter! She hadn’t spent her life on the back of a piano to be picked up by half a man in a helicopter.
The girlfriend of the boy in suspenders wishes she had her very own Fallada, the little man and his burning question: “What now?” Wishes for a ballroom with ten thousand Chinese lanterns. Suspenders alone no longer do the trick. There would have to be neon advertisements and silk tablecloths. Signal lamps that can be activated with the push of a button that say either “Do Not Disturb” or “Dance Requests Welcome.” What is missing here is not just the Champagne fountains and pickled herring pyramids. Most of all she is thinking of the table telephones that Fallada mentions. You could call anyone in the room with them. Could threaten, seduce, goad. And when you’re not in the mood to talk, you can write a letter and send it through a pneumatic tube. In 1979 the Resi was demolished. Today you can go shopping at a Lidl there instead.