For now in any case, our friend S. is rolling in money. But fear is bubbling out of every pore. The “hour of truth” has come. He has no more excuses not to write his book.
And so first he came here. Hopelessly behind the times: still dreaming the dreams of the Futurists, the Constructivists. Sees their dreams as having come true here—in Paris of all places! Divine city of Reason on earth. This is where the human being first becomes human. Temple of the World. Ziggurat: hieratic tower connecting heaven and earth. Pure and simple: the City of Man: ANTHROPOLIS.
In truth it’s me he’s fled to. As usual, he wants to crib something from me. He’s looking for my secret motor, my special driving force—something he thinks I’ve got over him. Some perfidious secret of existence. Some crafty, not quite permissible, ethically and aesthetically not quite unobjectionable but incredibly practical, exceedingly effective trick for living. That, at any rate, which makes me appear livelier, more present, downright realer in his eyes than the phonies all around (including Nagel, delusively spawning best sellers). Livelier than he himself, en tout cas.
He confesses this to me with a moan of beautiful, admiring envy. He calls it the thing about me that’s “healthy as an ox.” A “vitality that is not yet wholly dissipated.” An “existence that has not yet become wholly abstract”—indeed, one with the possibility of acting like a department-store executive with December stirrings and falling in love with the most banal of all love objects, a fashion model!
Yet at times he regards my vacant-eyed and ingenious concordance with life as sheer flimflam. So much the worse! For then, you see, he becomes intrigued by the fact that my flimflam works. This too requires qualities and abilities whose nature and origin are puzzling to him.
He looks for them in my life story. Even though he all but knows it by heart, he listens to me more attentively, investigates more conscientiously, more methodically than ever. I supply him generously. (A Russian proverb says that you can choke a guest with cottage cheese.) He takes secret notes. Thinks I don’t realize. (I take my own notes about him afterward, at home.) But biographical data are not enough for him. He rummages about in my present living circumstances. Paris, he feels, is a trump in my game. He combs the city for the secret nutritive powers with which it presumably nourishes me. He has come as a scientific Hercules, who, before the fight, begins by taking a tiny sample for chemical analysis from the soil from which Antaeus draws his rejuvenating strength. Of course, he also wants to be cradled a bit:
Fais dodo, Colin, mon petit frère,
fais dodo, t’auras du lolo . . .
My brother Schwab. My brother Abel.
Needless to say, I promptly told him about the grotesque way things ended with Dawn. I didn’t spare the details that might excite him (“Il n’y a pas de détail,” says Valéry). Everything very literary, it goes without saying. Just as he expects of me.
First (in a gentlemanly, cultivated, discreet, tastefully allusive way, of course), I gave him a glimpse of my desperate financial situation: more debts than a village dog has fleas. Christa, my divorced spouse, now morally supported by Witte, has found a lawyer who would squeeze alimony for her and our son from my tombstone. Plus trouble galore with the producer-piglets: my latest screenplays are not being accepted. So I ought to have cut down to the bare bones in everything. Yet I live in grand luxe. I reside sumptuously at the George V. I still keep an apartment for my eccentric beloved, even though it has been empty for months now, awaiting her. (I used to go there daily to put fresh flowers in the vases and change the milk, the steaks, the salubrious vegetables, the eggs in the icebox; she eats everything raw; at the Marché Buci, they are ardently sympathetic and treat me like a worried father: “Mademoiselle est votre fille, n’est-elle pas?” Certainly. Humbert Humbert’s the name. And mademoiselle is out of town? Évidemment. And Papa’s watching her apartment for her while she’s gone. Yes, that’s what young people are like nowadays. They want to live independently but they can’t really manage on their own.)
Mademoiselle was out of town a lot during the past few months, goddamn it! I couldn’t get anything else done because I spent my days combing Paris for the bitch! Do you know how many lousy little hotels there are here where a silly American model can hide out? How many dirty family pensions? I tell you, it’s just like the stars in the sky: God alone has counted them. I’d like to have His problems. He didn’t have to comb through each and every one of them for a lunatic girl who might have snuck in to spend an entire week in a darkened room, consuming nothing but raw eggs from a plastic box, instant coffee from little packets, chain-smoking, pill-popping, afflicted by unnameable terrors, shaken by ineffable fears, in constant danger of falling asleep with the cigarette in her pretty kisser and burning up in bed. He didn’t hang on the telephone for nights on end, waiting to get through because the night clerk had deserted his post and was screwing madame la patronne two flights up . . .
be that as it may, in that very spot, the sleazy, sordid hotel on the place des Ternes—which our friend Schwab knew well enough, didn’t he?—she had found refuge with the handsome Pole and the breathtaking French madame. In the same room where the scene with the Indian doll had taken place two years earlier (S. blushes even now at the mere mention of it). Our first love nest. The setting for an unspeakably arduous, unspeakably joyless deflowering (at the mere thought of it, I blush). I don’t understand why it didn’t occur to me right away to look for her there (probably for that very reason).
In the end, that’s where I found her. With great delight, I can report (relishing Schwab’s round-eyed interest) on how I had to construct a whole set of fictions, a real house of cards, to lure her out of her hole: the past was snuffed out. Our relationship had never existed—that is to say, never reached a higher degree of intimacy than that of casual acquaintance. (“Oh, how nice to see you!”) I called to ask if she would go out with me. (Her date for tonight.) Needless to say, I brought flowers, two dozen white roses. With scrupulous narrative precision I describe how she had once again kept me waiting for hours before she descended the stairs in a black Pola Negri gown, parodying herself with symptoms of daffy insanity: prancing toward me with the marionette gait of a mindless mannequin; her hands, in black elbow-length widow’s gloves, dangling affectedly from bent arms; her head sporting a gigantic black mushroom-shaped stump of a hat, which cast its shadow over soup-plate-sized dark glasses sparkling with green and violet reflections, so that all one could see underneath was the mouth and chin and throat—very red, very white, perfectly beautiful: the tragic lips of Garbo, the tender and resolute chin of Ava Gardner, the stem-like throat of Audrey Hepburn, all the clichés of standardized female beauty in a halved head, as in a Vogue fashion photo.
My friend listens breathlessly as I describe with cruel precision the way she came along, sashaying and hip-wiggling, how she affected incredibly phony theatrical nonchalance as she called out “Hi!” in the guttural tone of her sophomore Americanese, with the jaw-dropping cheerleader smile that revealed all her immaculate glowing toothpaste-commercial teeth back to the molars. The way she didn’t even bother holding out her cheek for a kiss (after all, I am her date tonight, am I not?) as she zoomed past, wantonly purposeful as a bumblebee in flight, and headed toward the handsome Pole’s desk and instantly got on the telephone. The way I waited for her, holding my bridal bouquet of roses stiff in my lap, clumsy as a provincial beau at his first gallant rendezvous. The way I was forced to listen to her talking on the phone with somebody I didn’t know, of whose existence I had had no inkling whatsoever until that moment. The way she said with desperate woe, “No, no! You can’t leave me like that! You know I love you!” And the way I felt nothing, absolutely nothing, not the feeblest sting of jealousy, not even curiosity about whom she was saying it to (for at last it was not tormenting conjecture but certainty, reality). . .
The way she then finally came to me, wordlessly taking the roses and following me out to the car—all this with the robotic mo
tion and lifeless visage of a hypnotized woman. (I couldn’t see her eyes behind the monstrous glasses under the brim of that blasted stump, but I knew every feature of hers so well that I could read the sorrow in the tip of her nose, beneath which incidentally was her mouth, now the mouth of a tired child made up for carnival: the festival had not been the expected happy delirium but, rather, wild and noisy and chaotic, full of crudeness, gloating malevolence; now, it’s over, the dream is dreamed out.)
She did not reply when I asked whether I should take her to dinner, to the movies, or elsewhere. To a dance café perhaps? Home? Where was that? In our—in her apartment in the rue Jacob? Whom was I talking to? Whom was I thinking of? Did she want to go to bed perhaps? A tasteful idea . . . Finally, since I knew she enjoyed riding in an open car, I drove her to the Bois de Boulogne.
Ah, splendid! A starry sky over the rustling backdrop of black foliage, silhouettes that looked cut out of tin. In the daytime, it’s probably bright and green during this season. Nature. Calms the nerves. Relax, my love.
Naturally the cars coming our way flashed their headlights at us. One even did a U-turn behind us, caught up, and cut us off, so that I had to slam on the brakes. Two guys got out, leaving their girls inside. But I knew what they wanted, so I waved them off and drove around them and on until we were off the main road. (One of the men, incidentally, had let out an appreciative whistle when he saw what was visible of Dawn under the black mushroom.)
In the side road where we finally halted, another car approached us. The driver stuck his head out the window and proposed a partouse somewhere in Neuilly. “Non merci, mon vieux, nous avons des problèmes, tu vois.” “Oh là là! . . .” Dawn remained wordless and motionless throughout. (Don’t act so puritanical, I thought, you with your unknown lover!) But the night was soft, and naturally I couldn’t help myself, I had to talk. Had to tell her what I felt for her. What I had suffered because of her. Suffered mainly because I had been forced to torment her (to my son: when Daddy spanks you, it hurts him more than you). That I had been forced to torment her, however, because I loved her so tremendously (just as Daddy loves his little boy). That she had never understood the full extent of the causal relationship (just like Daddy’s little boy). How regrettable that was, though, what a waste of good time in our lives if one thought about it, wasn’t it? Yet how beautiful, how wonderful it could be if . . .
Around us, the lovely city of Paris hummed and seethed (some fifteen million inhabitants when you include the suburbs: first-class nuclear target). And there I was, talking once again—oh shame! Once again spewing out the contents of my soul. Vomitatio animae. My inner life, fermented in its emotional essence (“a speciality of the bloody fucking middle classes,” as John and Stella called it).
Thus did I talk, spitting forth a lover’s verbal gruel. Nonstop and in detail. Soliloquizing. Laying my worldview at her feet. The ordeal of human life. God’s coldheartedness. Needless to say, I did not make it sentimental (people like us avoid sentimentality like the plague). I said, “I’m sorry, my darling, I know it’s not agreeable to be loved, but . . .” I spiced my verbal gruel with piquant little jests. (“What does Torquato Tasso say? Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast . . . That’s not quite the case with me. Two breasts, alas, are dwelling in my soul, and they’re yours!”) In short, I did everything to make myself disagreeable.
Overhead, in the dark backdrop of branches, the stars were twinkling. Many, many. God alone has counted them. It must have taken Him His sweet time. Galactorrhea in the firmament. And it’s big. If you imagined the sun (its diameter one hundred and nine times the size of the Earth’s) as the head of a pin somewhere in West or East Berlin, then the next fixed star would be like a soccer ball in Hamburg. And here I was sitting and talking of my love. Pouring out verbal gruel.
Embarrassing. But—oh my goodness! What man hasn’t been guilty of this sort of thing? And I of all people—how often, how many shameful times, had I not already done this! Talked away, tormented, pigheaded, and persistent, at some then-beloved female. Sputtering verbal figures wrung from necessity: aphorisms, sublimated from my spiritual ordeal. Sentences fraught with confession. Metaphysical knowledge. Blurted out to the beloved female body, to the sweet female flesh, to the soft skin, the fine, frail limbs, the tender curves, the airy, fragrant hair—oh misery! To a face that briefly epitomized all the sweetness of life, mother, sister, the regained half of the original pair, the fulfillment of the dream of being One, of blissfully entering, dissolving into, another human being. To eyes whose depths I filled with poetry and there found the answer to myself. (How did Scherping put it? “If only they couldn’t speak. If they just barked or meowed, then we wouldn’t expect them to react humanly like you and me . . .”)
Oh well. In this case, this at that time beloved pair of eyes was now concealed by soup-plate-sized black glasses under the brim of the gigantic black hat-stump. I could just barely make out the tip of my present adorata’s nose, and under it the mouth: the beautiful mouth over the poignantly tender (and firm) chin over the stem-like girlish throat over the narrow shoulders and the beloved little breasts: two touchingly young, tender, bud-like handfuls of girlish breast (thoroughly art nouveau, but now covered by the black satin of the art deco dress—so let’s stick to the mouth).
It hovered, blood-red, engraved in the dull white of the cheeks, chin, and throat, in the compact blacknesses of the hat and gown and car-seat leather and nocturnal foliage under the starry sky. It was a strangely isolated, a detached yet delicate piece of anatomy, with a mysterious life of its own. A mute mouth. A mouth without a face. And without an explicable expression, not cheerful and not dismal, not proud, not humble, not yearning, and not scornful, not smart, not stupid: just mouth. Beautiful, human (albeit human in a zoologically universalized manner: the mouth of mankind, of the species of man; and at the same time, something animallike in and of itself: a mouth-animal, shaped like a blossom for mimicry. . .). Where the lips swelled there was a wan, slightly greasy glow: reflection of starlight, sparkling too in the black glasses above and in the curve of the windshield in front and on the nickel fittings of the car door at the side.
And all this was embedded in white roses. For she had untied my bridegroom’s bouquet and strewn the flowers in and around her lap. She sat in white roses, like a black swan. Her black torso loomed out of white rose blossoms into the black night. Above hovered the mouth.
I, however, sat next to her, talking. Talking my heart and soul out of my throat. And while I was talking and talking, about my tremendous love, about my misery and wretchedness, about my lofty goals and wishes—for both of us, to be sure, for both of us!—this mouth suddenly laughed. The red lips gaped, revealing two lines of white teeth, well formed and regular, two glistening rows. And while this mouth laughed, soundlessly and without the shaking of vulgar hilarity, her hand in the black widow-glove reached into the roses, drew out one of the blossoms, and put it to her lips, passing it over them as if to cool them . . . And suddenly, from between the bars of teeth, the tongue shot out and seized the blossom and yanked it into the teeth, which snapped shut and shredded it.
A fascinating spectacle. I depicted it vividly to Schwab. I let him take part in it, and he followed it spellbound, suffering with me as the red mouth devoured the white rose. The mouth kept laughing, soundlessly; small, white tatters of shredded petals stuck to the red lips. By the time the trimming and the stem were all that was left, I had stopped talking, switched on the engine, and was driving Dawn back to the hotel.
I had always captivated her with finely polished chivalry. (“We’re not used to such nice manners anymore, you know.”) And so this time too I did not hold back. I got out, walked around the vehicle, and held open the door, handing her out of the car. A ludicrous gesture of farewell, I admit (a movie script would have said here, on the left, “Musical leitmotif comes in softly”). She took two or three steps toward the hotel entrance, then wheeled around, came over to me, pressed her bre
asts, body, and thighs snugly against me, and whispered in a passionate, husky tone, “Darling, do you think you could spare another thousand francs? I need it to pay the bill here and some other things.”
Her mouth laughed again when she put away the money and left. The white roses were scattered from the car seat across the sidewalk all the way over to the hotel entrance, like a strip of moonlight on a dark lake, with a black swan swimming away. . .
. . . and because of that, Schwab expects my heart to have burst in my chest!? . . . I peer into the round, gaping eyes behind his inch-thick bookworm’s glasses. (Aunt Hertha rattling on the door to the shitter, behind which Cousin Wolfgang has locked himself in to read undisturbed: “You’ll go blind someday!”)
Well, what world-shaking event had occurred? I had lost Dawn. This time for good. Irrevocably. No, this time she wouldn’t come back. To be sure, she wasn’t just an extraordinarily beautiful but also an extraordinarily interesting girl, mad as a hatter, no doubt, but only sometimes, periodically. In between, she could be as smart, as merry, as full of wild joie de vivre as any thoughtless young thing . . .
A completely intimidated person, indeed, creature of a civilization of sheer collective madness, product of a civilization of money, dazzled by the myth of success, seduced by the rhetoric, the iconography of the commercialized love of life—a child still, barely twenty years old, I should really have borne a paternal responsibility, but the role doesn’t seem to suit me; I failed shamefully even with my own son (probably by trying too hard, she would have said). And of course, the age gap was rather large for the glorious lover, I assume, even though there had been moments of incredible intimacy—we had plunged into one another with exuberant tenderness, a sudden profound union of souls and senses, of the kind that has been rather infrequent since the fashionable obsolescence of Rilke and D’Annunzio’s emotional world. Ah! Her gigantic gray feline eyes close to mine (without the black glasses, of course), her mouth laughing happily (not scornfully), her beloved beautiful happy mouth . . .
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