Abel and Cain

by Gregor von Rezzori

  There is no doubt whatsoever that in this manuscript, extremely personal experience strives to achieve poetical form. It is, however, by no means a conventional autobiography. What seems to be the author’s account of how he was moved to write the book is in fact the architectonic floor plan of the book itself. Very deliberately, events and the experiential impressions they leave on the experiencing subject are selected and arranged to create the illusion that this is only a first sifting of drafts, beginnings, and experiments that have been assembled in order to review their suitability as material for a book to be written in the future. In reality, the result is this very book in its inventive form, a form however, that in the final analysis is a dead end. As if in a mannerist painting, more or less finished sections of the work as well as the artist’s tools of the trade are arranged in an atelier still life and reflected in the mood of the artist—in his own personal problematics—constantly revealing new and surprising aspects that proceed from the artist himself, who also looks out at us from these reflections. The result is an insight into the structure of the work in statu nascendi, i.e., in its origin in the creative artist, and thus also his self-portrait. Everything written in this book is the experience of a writer, i.e., a person for whom writing is not just a calling and a profession, but existence itself, in a word: destiny. Accordingly, what we have is a way of experiencing that is fundamentally different from that of a nonwriter. The author’s claim—based on a quotation from Nietzsche (the prediction of an “artistic era”?)—that thanks to a predominantly literary education, modern man is already a potential writer and thus experiences reality in the same way as the writer, assumes a general awareness of the process that is being described: the continual transformation of factual events into literary material. The dissection of this process also reveals the falsification necessarily inherent in all novelistic literature.

  Personally, I have nothing to add to this impeccable evidence of the poet Aristides’s respect for the truth.

  One reason I am publishing the manuscript of The Lost Daughter is to document the lamentable fact of alienation from reality and the unfortunate neglect of box-office receipts that has rightly been levelled against the movies and is solely and exclusively due to the collaboration of madmen of the ilk of Aristides.

  Munich, September 21, 1984

  Heinz Wohlfahrt

  INTERCOSMIC LITERARIA

  (formerly INTERCOSMIC ART FILMS, Munich)

  Handwritten enclosure, presumably not for publication:

  As a former journalist and the current wife of the producer Heinz Wohlfahrt before I came to the movie business via television, I would like to add a few personal words to my husband’s preface. I am of course not sufficiently familiar with the technical details of the rights to the Aristides manuscript to form a conclusive opinion. I know my current husband well enough to be able to say that he is incapable of any dishonest behavior whatsoever. At least for my own person, I applaud his decision to have Aristides’s manuscript printed in book form, thereby applying the organizational skills of an entrepreneur more to literature in these times of crisis, which in the end must also benefit film.

  Of course, the Aristides manuscript interested me from a literary standpoint. Like Wieland Haslitzsch, I see it as coming to grips with the problem of reality. The writer creates his own world, which for him is often more real than genuine reality, with which he then naturally loses contact. I therefore would like to suggest as an epigraph the following pretty quote which I found while leafing through a Chinese book:

  I dreamed I was a butterfly that dreamed it was a man. Now I don’t know if I’m a man who dreams he is a butterfly or the man the butterfly dreamed.

  Wiebke Keller-Wohlfahrt

  Current address: Tutzing on the Starnberger See

  Folder C

  We are about

  to wake up

  when we dream

  that we’re dreaming.

  —NOVALIS

  THE ICE AGE, 1947

  If I would seek my ending

  as well as my beginning

  then I must sound out God

  and fathom Him within me.

  I must be what He is:

  a gleam within His gleaming,

  a word within His word,

  a god within my God.

  —ANGELUS SILESIUS

  —.where’d you get that idea? you tell me, what should I tell you? please don’t start in again, please! I can’t stand it! well a person can say what he thinks, can’t he? you should be ashamed of yourself! stop it, you two! Just a sec—fine—well?—well if I understand you correctly—yes, go ahead, I’m dying to know what you think, that’s exactly what I wanted to do, to summarize briefly: if I understand you correctly, you wanted to say—I’ll express it very simply . . . yes? . . . that the precondition for a constructive conversation here this evening, but also in general with respect to our topic—eh, the precondition for such a constructive discussion of a new and yet-to-be-determined form of government here in postwar Germany, following the collapse of all values formerly considered worthwhile . . . yes? . . . eh, so the prerequisite for a form of society that conforms completely to all previously encountered psychic conditions—if not requirements—of man in genere is our agreement on the existence (whether objective or subjective plays no role at this point), anyway, on the existence of an object which, while not rationally comprehensible, can be psychically experienced—right? transcendental object, if I may, and it’s psychologically necessary to enter into religious association with it, which, in the event that such association is suspended or never existed in the first place, or only temporarily—in childhood, for instance, but not later—expresses itself in a need that can often increase to the point of emotional disequilibrium and neurosis, and as a consequence must absolutely be taken into account when creating a new state structure as an integral part of the—if I may—psychic environment in which we live, for better or for worse—agreed? That is the precondition, is it not? Did that sum up what you wanted to say?

  Man, pull yourself together! All eyes are on you (on me is good! They’re on me like leeches). Show these intellectuals and viragos what you’re made of! Show ’em you’ve got a brain in your head too! Now’s the time to show your mettle, the moment of truth (Heil Hemingway! For Whom the Balls Tell). The existentialist has to realize himself every minute of his life, even in the outhouse. So roll up your intellectual sleeves and get down to business: the prerequisite for a constructive etc. etc.—so far so good—is our agreement . . . Here! There’s the catch: why “agreement”?—but that probably emerges later in the sentence; it has to or I wouldn’t have started it out that way—so go on: is our agreement on the existence of an object which, while not rationally comprehensible—absolutely right, I agree one hundred percent (this guy really knows his text, damn it all!)—so: while not rationally comprehensible, can be psychically experienced—well how the hell else than with the psyche? With the large intestine maybe? (Careful! If I say that out loud he’ll say I’m anal)—so “experienced” in any case, can’t argue with that, all the psychic conditions man has experienced up to now confirm it, a few dozen millennia of not just Catholic religious ecstasy look down upon you, Christian Soldiers! It’s just the old duality: light and darkness, Ormus and Ariman, Baldur and Schirach, all nicely transcendental, so that’s okay, and it’s psychologically necessary to enter into religious association with it (“religious association” is actually a pleonasm, but what the heck), a psychological necessity—just like when you did something bad as a kid: first you get down on your knees and pray they won’t find out, they usually do, but that’s just the way humans are put together—the bastard is right, damn it, he’s a scientist after all, PhD in head-shrinking, an inspector of underpants trained by Papa Freud, and they don’t hire just any clown at the university, he’s not a Nazi either or he wouldn’t be thick as thieves with Freud and the Tommies, an intellectual reconstructionist appointed by the military gover
nment—appointed for what? to drink their whiskey. . . but stay on track here, it’s so aggravating to have your thoughts drift off, it’s probably due to the damn schnapps—or rather whiskey (I can’t even be precise about a thing like that and I’m crossing swords with a scholar?!)—you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, the Golden Rule, but what’re you gonna do when you’ve got nothing to stuff your face with? let’s get back to his (or rather, my) sentence or they’re gonna think I’m completely soused or just nuts, or possibly they’ll blame it on my leg (who was it who brought that up anyway? They’re gonna be sorry they did!) what’s that supposed to prove anyway? a cripple’s psychology, trauma, amputee and only half a man . . . just because you were hit (to the right of the scrotum, thank God: a gentleman carries his on the left side) and not in a vital organ, doesn’t mean you’re obliged to choke down all this religious content to understand the meagre ideas of this bastard Hertzog (with tee-zee), what a joke, a bit of dialectics (all Teresas and Annalisas, Freudian prick prosthesis) . . . what were we talking about? the formation of a future state—what a joke! By then we’ll all be dead and gone (not him, of course; he’s thick as thieves with the Tommies); but me for example, all I need to do is catch my fucking crutch in a hole under the snow on my way home and I’ll be lying there like a bug on its back, Kafka my contemporary, and I can wiggle my legs until I’m frozen to the ground, requiescat in pace on Brahms Blvd., and I could give a shit about a future state, whatever it turns out to look like won’t matter to me, so if there’s a psychological necessity that can increase to the point of psychosis, then he’s absolutely right—after all, the man’s a psychiatrist, a professional—then he can serve up a state to his crazies that corresponds to their neuroses, a perfect metaphysical comfort station in harmonious accord with everybody who wants to participate, it’s just a shame that my buddies over there are all in on it, I thought they were my friends—but the way they all started attacking me! the dames were the nastiest, of course: “you know what we’re talking about”—what do I know? what the hell do they think? that I’m a spy for the East or something? some of ’em are Marxists themselves—but it’s not worth getting all riled up about, they’re just crazy, the whole lot of them, Hertzog’s patients from the word go, they’re right to get themselves a house psychiatrist, but they used to be so nice, they were once true friends, real buddies, hungry, no future state, just nice people, I liked hoofing it out here, even though it was hard with one leg gone, it sure wasn’t for their crappy turnip schnapps and their shitty hand-rolled smokes, what a pile of shit it all is, and now they’re gonna invite the savior too: Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, may the shit you’ve dished us now be blessed! and in the same breath they swear by Karl Marx, comrades hear the happy news: the baby Jesus is the real founder of the classless society, the model of a metaphysical need fulfilled: in constant, active contact with the transcendent Big Daddy while completely free of any Oedipus complex thanks to his virginal Mommy, what do I need them for anyway? best thing would be to just beat it—this guy here, the Germanic Führer with tee-zee—etymologically without tee: the “herzog,” the duke to these blond-bearded assholes, the arch-asshole—he just puts me in the shade, he’s made to order for them, hand-tailored by the providence of the immortal Führer, the stiffs got scared by their own daring, reorganizing the globe in accordance with their weltanschauung blew up in their faces, let’s stick with time-tested Western values, with all of them if possible, without regard to what we’re losing: when in doubt, the good, the beautiful, the noble, and the true are innate human needs, no question about it, if we lost sight of them it was collective guilt, just ask the military government, turn yourself over to a trained therapist, Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest so easily—that’s how it is:

  •

  they’re scared shitless, that’s all, just look at ’em, the way they look at me, like I was going to steal their mental crutches (accompanied by the chrome-steel baritone of that asshole there)

  . . . did I more or less summarize what you were trying to say? (Okay, pipe up now, Willem!) . . .

  . . . well sure, partly—I mean: some of it was exactly right . . .

  and the other parts? (I wish they wouldn’t look so gleeful, waiting for him to crush me, nice friends I’ve got . . .)

  . . . well now, on the other hand—you know, I’ve got nothing against God—I mean no fundamental objection (or: in principle—or what’s the best way to put it?)—I mean, I’m not particularly unbelieving . . .

  but what? . . .

  but nothing (why’d he say “but what”?), Jesus Christ too, right? it’s all okay with me—I just mean about the “agreement” part . . .

  Yes? . . .

  I mean, I admit that in a certain sense, Christian teachings—in their original form, of course—yes?—naturally those teachings represent in a certain sense an end point of social thought (why’re they squirming like I’d kicked them in the stomach? did I say anything against Karl Marx? or even Karl Nagel? just ’cause I’m drinking his turnip whiskey?)

  . . . yes, I’m listening. . .

  (the way that sounds: “I’m listening”! it’s like being interrogated by Roland Freisler)

  . . . I just meant to say we all know what the church did was a load of bullshit (shit! that was a mistake! it just slipped out—talking like a grunt is definitely not in the right key for a serious discussion of central questions of political philosophy—and here comes his unrelenting baritone again: “Well, for the time being that’s not what’s at issue”—all that’s missing would have been for him to let it pass without comment! such a compelling thinker) . . . I only said that to formulate—I mean, just simply to express—yes?—that the idea that a new state in future should naturally be founded on original Christian principles—yes?—well, that in that case, of course I’m in agreement . . . (however—but then the whole shitty discussion will start all over again; let’s leave it at that)

  . . . so, as I said, I agree (I’m about to beat it anyway)—

  • • •

  Once articulated, inventions, insights, and discoveries gain a reality that makes their obviousness unassailable and omnipresent, independent of their communication by the spoken or written word. Everywhere and simultaneously they are invented, comprehended, and discovered—

  as if it wasn’t just a single person they would have occurred to but instead, from a particular moment on, were ripe for discovery, floating in the air we breathe, and could have occurred to anyone—would soon have occurred to everyone:

  as if no one could avoid them reaching him as well—

  • • •

  . . . couldn’t even broach the subject with him. He always cleverly changed the subject to the immediate postwar years, which he called the “Ice Age.” He stubbornly kept returning to his pet topic: the “rubble killer” who was never found or punished for his crimes. Corpses of women had been found in the rubble of the ruined city, all stripped naked and killed in the same manner. They could not be identified; it was a time when all sorts of people were moving through the city, God knows from where, nobody had papers, countless numbers were missing, disappeared. Unless there had been a notice of a missing person with precise information that matched one of the murdered women, there was almost no chance the victims would ever be identified; and none of the existing notices matched them. It wasn’t just the anonymity of murderer and murdered that fascinated him. It was primarily the instrument with which they had been killed: a wire loop with a toggle that could throttle them in the blink of an eye. He never tired of praising the “admirably ingenious” simplicity of this murderous tool (“loop it around her neck and twist the toggle—couldn’t be quicker, cleaner, quieter . . .”). And he carried it to absurd lengths, claimed this lethal loop had already been in use in the Egypt of the pharaohs, he’d seen with his own eyes a wall painting in which a dignitary was holding one in his hand like a hieroglyph—“no, I’m sure I didn’t dream it, I do sometimes dream about a murder
—quite often in fact—but never with the garrote, I wish I could kill so elegantly, my murders are gruesome, base acts of violence, that’s what makes them so distressing . . .” If his listeners showed signs of getting bored, he served up the story of the girl from Buxtehude who’d been given a ticket to the Holstentor Theater and had come to Hamburg for the performance. The sight of the rubble around the train station was enough to give her the creeps already. She didn’t have a return ticket to Buxtehude. After the play, she would have to walk in the dark to Rothenbaum Avenue where a relative of hers lived. She hadn’t even had time to let this relative know she was coming and of course, she’d heard about the rubble killer lurking in the ruins—in a word, she was very restless during the first act and was thinking she should maybe forgo the second act and set off right after the curtain came down on the first. She got so fidgety that the man sitting next to her asked if there was anything wrong: did she have fleas or need to go to the ladies’? He was a nice middle-aged gentleman and seemed trustworthy enough to tell him what was worrying her. “You can stay here and relax,” he said. “I live near Rothenbaum Avenue. When the play’s over, I’ll walk you there.” So she sat back happily and enjoyed Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Helmut Käutner was directing and was riding his hobbyhorse: there was a tango interlude in which a Spaniard in a bolero jacket whipped his partner into obedient lockstep. And sure enough, when that magnificent spectacle was over, the helpful gentleman was prepared to accompany the girl to her relative’s place through a landscape pocked with craters and piled with rubble.