Arthur Less has left the room while remaining in it. Now he is alone in the bedroom of the shack, standing before the mirror and tying his bow tie. It is the day of the Wilde and Stein awards, and he is thinking, briefly, of what he will say when he wins, and, briefly, his face grows golden with delight. Three raps on the front door and the sound of a key in the lock. “Arthur!” Less is adjusting both the tie and his expectations. “Arthur!” Freddy comes around the corner, then produces, from the pocket of his Parisian suit (so new it is still partially sewn shut) a flat little box. It is a present: a polka-dot bow tie. So now the tie must be undone and this new one knotted. Freddy, looking at his mirror image. “What will you say when you win?”
And further: “You think it’s love, Arthur? It isn’t love.” Robert ranting in their hotel room before the lunchtime Pulitzer ceremony in New York. Tall and lean as the day they met; gone gray, of course, his face worn with age (“I’m dog-eared as a book”), but still the figure of elegance and intellectual fury. Standing here in silver hair before the bright window: “Prizes aren’t love. Because people who never met you can’t love you. The slots for winners are already set, from here until Judgment Day. They know the kind of poet who’s going to win, and if you happen to fit the slot, then bully for you! It’s like fitting a hand-me-down suit. It’s luck, not love. Not that it isn’t nice to have luck. Maybe the only way to think about it is being at the center of all beauty. Just by chance, today we get to be in the center of all beauty. It doesn’t mean I don’t want it—it’s a desperate way to get off—but I do. I’m a narcissist; desperate is what we do. Getting off is what we do. You look handsome in your suit. I don’t know why you’re shacked up with a man in his fifties. Oh, I know, you like a finished product. You don’t want to add a pearl. Let’s have champagne before we go. I know it’s noon. I need you to do my bow tie. I forget how because I know you never will. Prizes aren’t love, but this is love. What Frank wrote: It’s a summer day, and I want to be wanted more than anything in the world.”
More thunder unsettles Less from his thoughts. But it isn’t thunder; it is applause, and the young writer is pulling at Less’s coat sleeve. For Arthur Less has won.
Less German
A phone call, translated from German into English:
“Good afternoon, Pegasus Publications. This is Petra.”
“Good morning. Here is Mr. Arthur Less. There is a fence in my book.”
“Mr. Less?”
“There is a fence in my book. You are to correct, please.”
“Mr. Arthur Less, our writer? The author of Kalipso? It is wonderful to speak with you at last. Now, how can I help you?”
(Sound of keys on a keyboard) “Yes, hello. It is nice to speak. I call over a fence. Not fence.” (More keyboard sounds) “An error.”
“An error in the book?”
“Yes! I call over an error in my book.”
“I apologize. What is the nature of this error?”
“My birth year is written one nine sex four.”
“Again?”
“My birth year is sex five.”
“Do you mean you were born in 1965?”
“Exactly. The journalists write that I have fifty years. But I have forty-nine years!”
“Oh! We wrote your birth year wrong on the flap copy, and so journalists have been reporting that you’re fifty. When you’re only forty-nine. I’m so sorry. That must be so frustrating!”
(Long pause) “Exactly exactly exactly.” (Laughter) “I am not an old man!”
“Of course not. I’ll make a note for the next printing. And may I say in your photograph you look under forty? All the girls in the office are in love with you.”
(Long pause) “I do not understand.”
“I said all the girls in the office are in love with you.”
(Laughter) “Thank you, thank you, that is very very nice.” (Another pause) “I like love.”
“Yes, well, call me if you have any other concerns.”
“Thank you and good-bye!”
“Have a good day, Mr. Less.”
What a delight, for Arthur Less, to be in a country where he at last speaks the language! After the miraculous reversal of his Italian fortunes, in which he stood up in a daze and accepted a heavy golden statuette (which would now have to be figured into his luggage weight allowance)—the journalists shrieking as in an operatic finale—he is to arrive in Germany on the winds of success. Added to this: his fluency in German, and his esteemed position of professor, and how forgotten are the cares of Gestern! Chatting with the stewards, babbling freely with passport control, it seems almost possible he has forgotten that Freddy’s wedding is a matter of mere weeks away. How heartening it is to watch him speak; how disconcerting, however, to listen.
Less has studied German since he was a boy. His first teacher, when he was nine, was Frau Fernhoff, a retired piano instructor, who had them all (him, sharp-witted Georgia beanpole Anne Garret, and odd-smelling but sweet Giancarlo Taylor) stand up and shout, “Guten Morgen, Frau Fernhoff!” at the beginning of each afternoon lesson. They learned the names of fruits and vegetables (the beautiful Birne and Kirsche, the faux-ami Ananas, the more-resonant-than-“onion” Zwiebel), and described their own prepubescent bodies, from their Augenbrauen to their großer Zehen. High school led to more sophisticated conversation (“Mein Auto wurde gestohlen!”) and was led by buxom Fräulein Church, an enthusiastic teacher in wrap dresses and scarves who had grown up in a German district of New York City and who often spoke of her dream of following the Von Trapp trail in Austria. “The key to speaking a new language,” she told them, “is to be bold instead of perfect.” What Less did not know was that the charming Fräulein had never been to Germany, nor spoken German with Germans outside of Yorkville. She was ostensibly German speaking, just as seventeen-year-old Less was ostensibly gay. Both had the fantasy; neither had carried it out.
Bold instead of perfect, Less’s tongue is bruised with errors. Male friends tend to switch to girls in the Lessian plural, becoming Freundin instead of Freund; and, by using auf den Strich instead of unterm Strich, he can lead intrigued listeners to believe he is going into prostitution. But, even at four and nine, Less has yet to be disabused of his skills. Perhaps the fault lies with Ludwig, the folk-singing German exchange student who lived with his family, took Less’s ostensibility away, and never corrected his German—for who corrects what is spoken in bed? Perhaps it was the grateful, dankbaren East Berliners whom Less met on a trip with Robert—escaped poets living in Paris—astonished to hear their mother tongue working in the mouth of this slim young American. Perhaps it was too much Hogan’s Heroes. But Less arrives in Berlin, taxiing to his temporary apartment in Wilmersdorf, swearing he will not speak a word of English while he is here. Of course, the real challenge is to speak a word of German.
Again, a translation:
“Six greetings, class. I am Arthur Less.”
This is the class he will be teaching at the Liberated University. In addition, he is expected to give a reading in five weeks, open to the public. Delighted he was fluent in German, the department offered Less the chance to teach a course of his choosing. “With a visiting professor,” wrote the kind Dr. Balk, “we can often have as few as three students, which is a nice intimate room.” Less dusted off a writing course he had given at a Jesuit college in California, put the entire syllabus through a computer translation, and considered himself prepared. He called the course Read Like a Vampire, Write Like Frankenstein, based on his own notion that writers read other works in order to take their best parts. This was, especially translated into German, an unusual title. When his teaching assistant, Hans, brings him to the classroom this first morning, he is astounded to find not three, not fifteen, but a hundred and thirty students waiting to take his extraordinary course.
“I am your Mr. Professor.”
He is not. Unaware of the enormous difference between the German Professor and Dozent, the former being a rank achi
eved only through decades of internment in the academic prison, the latter a mere parolee, Less has given himself a promotion.
“And now, I am sorry, I must kill most of you.”
With this startling announcement, he proceeds to weed out any students who are not registered in the Global Linguistics and Literature Department. To his relief, this removes all but thirty. And so he begins the class.
“We start at a sentence in Proust: For a long time, I used to go to bed early.”
But Arthur Less has not gone to bed early; in fact, it is a miracle he has even made it to the classroom. The problem: a surprise invitation, a struggle with German technology, and, of course, Freddy Pelu.
Back to his arrival at the Tegel Airport, the day before:
A baffling series of glass chambers, sealing and unsealing automatically like air locks, where he is met by his tall serious teaching assistant and escort: Hans. Though about to sit for his doctorate exam on Derrida and therefore, in Less’s mind, his intellectual superior, curly-headed Hans willingly takes all of Less’s luggage and brings him, via his beat-up Twingo, to the university apartment he will call home for the next five weeks. It is on a high floor of an eighties building whose open staircases, and open walkways, are exposed to the chill Berlin air; in its goldenrod-and-glass severity, it resembles the airport. Additionally, there is no apartment key but instead a circular fob with a button—like a mating bird, the door chirps in response, then opens. Hans demonstrates this quickly; the door chirps; it seems simple. “You take the stairs to the walkway, you use the fob. You understand?” Less nods, and Hans leaves Less with his luggage, explaining that he will be back at nineteen hours to take him to dinner, and then at thirteen hours the next day to take him to the university. His curly head bobs good-bye, and he disappears down the open staircase. It occurs to Less that the graduate student never met his gaze. And that he should learn military time.
He cannot imagine that the next morning before class, he will find himself hanging from the ledge outside his apartment building, forty feet above the courtyard, inching his way toward the only open window.
Hans arrives precisely at nineteen hours (Less keeps repeating to himself: seven p.m., seven p.m., seven p.m.). Unable to find an iron in the apartment, Less has hung up his shirts in the bathroom and run a hot shower to steam out the wrinkles, but the billowing steam somehow sets off the fire alarm, which of course brings a burly, cheerful, English-free man from the lower depths to tease him (“Sie wollen das Gebäude mit Wasser niederbrennen!”) and return with a sturdy German iron. Windows are opened. Less is in the process of ironing when he hears the Bach chimes of the doorbell. Hans bobs his head again. He has changed from a hoodie into a denim blazer. In the Twingo (evidence of cigarettes but no actual cigarettes), the young man drives him into another mysterious district, parking beneath a concrete railway where a sad Turkish man sits in a kiosk, selling curried hot dogs. The restaurant is called Austria and is decorated everywhere with beer steins and antlers. As is true everywhere else: they are not kidding.
They are shown to a leather booth where two men and a young woman are waiting. These are Hans’s friends, and, while Less suspects the grad student is cagily sponging from the department’s expense account, it is a relief to have someone other than a Derridean to talk with: a composer named Ulrich, whose brown eyes and shaggy beard give him the alert appearance of a schnauzer, his girlfriend, Katarina, similarly canine in her Pomeranian puff of hair, and Bastian, a business student whose dark good looks and voluminous kinky hairstyle make Less assume he is African; he is Bavarian. Less judges them to be around thirty. Bastian keeps picking a fight with Ulrich about sports, a conversation difficult for Less to follow not because of the specific vocabulary (Verteidiger, Stürmer, Schienbeinschützer) or obscure sports figures but because he simply does not care. Bastian seems to be arguing that danger is essential to sports: The thrill of death! Der Nervenkitzel des Todes! Less stares at his schnitzel (a crisp map of Austria). He is not here, in Berlin, in the Schnitzelhaus. He is in Sonoma, in a hospital room: windowless, yellowish, encurtained for privacy like a stripper before her entrance. In the hospital bed: Robert. He has a tube in his arm and a tube in his nose, and his hair is that of a madman. “It’s not the cigarettes,” Robert says, his eyes framed by his same old thick glasses. “It’s the poetry that’s done it. It kills you now. But later,” he says, shaking a finger, “immortality!” A husky laugh, and Less holds his hand. This is only a year ago. And Less is in Delaware, at his mother’s funeral, a hand softly pressing on his back to keep him from collapsing. He is so grateful for that hand. And Less is in San Francisco, on the beach, in the fall of that terrible year.
“You boys don’t know anything about death.”
Someone has said this; Less discovers it is he. This one time, his German is perfect. The entire table sits silent, and Ulrich and Hans look away. Bastian merely stares at Less, his mouth hanging open.
“I’m sorry,” Less says, putting down his beer. “I’m sorry, I do not know why I said that.”
Bastian is silent. The sconces behind him light every kink in his hair.
The bill comes, and Hans pays with a department credit card, and Less cannot be persuaded a tip is unnecessary, and then they are out on the street, where street lamps shine on black lacquered trees. He has never been this cold in his life. Ulrich stands with his hands in his pockets, swaying back and forth to a private symphony, Katarina clutching him, and Hans looks at the rooftops and says he will bring Less back to the apartment. But Bastian says no, it is the American’s first night, and he should be taken for a drink. The conversation takes place as if Less were not there. It feels like they are arguing about something else. At last, it is decided Bastian will bring Less to his favorite bar, close by. Hans says, “Mr. Less, you can find your way home?” and Bastian says a taxi will be simple. It is all happening very quickly. The others vanish into the Twingo; Less turns and sees Bastian looking at him with an indecipherable frown. “Come with me,” the young man says. But he does not lead him to a bar. He leads him to his own apartment, in Neukölln, where Less—to his surprise—spends the night.
The problem comes the next morning. Less, sleepless from his evening with Bastian, sweating out all the alcohol he’s been served over the past twelve hours, still dressed in the black shirt and jeans grease-spotted from dinner, is able to climb the stairs to his building’s exterior walkway but unable to work the lock to his apartment. Over and over he presses the button on the fob, over and over he listens for the chirp of the door. But it is mute. It will not mate. Frantically looking around the courtyard, he sees birds gathering on the balcony of an upstairs maisonette. Here, of course, is the bill for last night. Here is the shame built into living. How did he imagine he would escape it? Less pictures himself sleeping in his doorway when Hans arrives to take him to the university. He imagines teaching his first class stinking of vodka and cigarette smoke. And then his eye falls upon an open window.
At ten, we climb the tree higher even than our mothers’ fears. At twenty, we scale the dormitory to surprise a lover asleep in bed. At thirty, we jump into the mermaid-green ocean. At forty, we look on and smile. At four and nine?
Over the walkway railing, he rests one scuffed wingtip on the decorative concrete ledge. It is only five feet away, the narrow window. A matter of flinging out his arm to catch the shutter. The smallest of leaps to the adjoining ledge. Pressed against the wall, and already yellow paint is flaking onto his shirt, and already he can hear his audience of birds cooing appreciatively. A Berlin sunrise glows over the rooftops, bringing with it a smell of bread and car exhaust. Arthur Less, minor American author known mostly for his connection to the Russian River School of artists, especially the poet Robert Brownburn, took his own life this morning in Berlin, Pegasus’s press release will read. He was fifty years old.
What witness is there to see your Mr. Professor dangling from the fourth floor of his apartment building? Throwing out a
foot, then a hand, to edge himself toward the kitchen window? Using all his upper-body strength to pull himself over the protective railing and to fall, in a cloud of dust, into the darkness beyond? Just a new mother, walking her baby around her apartment in the early morning. Seeing a scene perhaps out of a foreign comedy. She knows he is not a thief; he is clearly just an American.
Less is not known as a teacher, in the same way Melville was not known as a customs inspector. And yet both held the respective positions. Though he was once an endowed chair at Robert’s university, he has no formal training except the drunken, cigarette-filled evenings of his youth, when Robert’s friends gathered and yelled, taunted, and played games with words. As a result, Less feels uncomfortable lecturing. Instead, he re-creates those lost days with his students. Remembering those middle-aged men sitting with a bottle of whiskey, a Norton book of poetry, and scissors, he cuts up a paragraph of Lolita and has the young doctoral students reassemble the text as they desire. In these collages, Humbert Humbert becomes an addled old man rather than a diabolical one, mixing up cocktail ingredients and, instead of confronting the betrayed Charlotte Haze, going back for more ice. He gives them a page of Joyce and a bottle of Wite-Out—and Molly Bloom merely says “Yes.” A game to write a persuasive opening sentence for a book they have never read (this is difficult, as these diligent students have read everything) leads to a chilling start to Woolf’s The Waves: I was too far out in the ocean to hear the lifeguard shouting, “Shark! Shark!”
Though the course features, curiously, neither vampires nor Frankenstein monsters, the students adore it. No one has given them scissors and glue sticks since they were in kindergarten. No one has ever asked them to translate a sentence from Carson McCullers (In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together) into German (In der Stadt gab es zwei Stumme, und sie waren immer zusammen) and pass it around the room, retranslating as they go, until it comes out as playground gibberish: In the bar there were two potatoes together, and they were trouble. What a relief for their hardworking lives. Do they learn anything about literature? Doubtful. But they learn to love language again, something that has faded like sex in a long marriage. Because of this, they learn to love their teacher.
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