Me and Kaminski

by Daniel Kehlmann

  I lit a cigarette. “What was that with the women?”

  “That was Goethe,” said Kaminski. “Don’t you know anything? Give me one too.”

  “You’re not allowed to smoke.”

  “Right,” said Kaminski, stretching out his hand. I realized that all things considered, it was in my interest, and gave it to him. For a few seconds I could feel Karl Ludwig’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror. I sighed and held the packet over my head so that he could take one. He reached out, I felt his soft, clammy fingers close over mine and pull the packet out of my hand.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  “You two, if I may say so, strike me as really odd.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His eyes in the mirror again: narrow, focused, malicious. He showed his teeth. “You’re not related, you’re not teacher and pupil, and you don’t work together. And he”—he lifted a skinny finger and pointed at Kaminski—“seems familiar to me. You don’t.”

  “There are reasons for that,” said Kaminski.

  “So I would guess!” said Karl Ludwig. The two of them laughed. What was going on here?

  “Give me back the cigarettes,” I said.

  “How careless of me. Please forgive me.” Karl Ludwig didn’t move. I rubbed my eyes; suddenly I felt weak.

  “Dear sir,” said Karl Ludwig. “The majority of life is falsehood and waste. We encounter evil and we know it not. Would you like to hear more?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Kaminski. “Do you know Hieronymus Bosch?”

  Karl Ludwig nodded. “He painted the devil.”

  “That’s not confirmed.” Kaminski sat up. “You mean the figure with the chamber pot on its head, eating people, in the far right in The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

  “Further up,” said Karl Ludwig. “The man growing out of a tree.”

  “Interesting idea,” said Kaminski, “the only figure that’s looking out of the picture and showing its pain. But you’re on the wrong track.”

  Furious, I looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?

  “That’s not the devil!” said Kaminski. “It’s a self-portrait.”

  “Is there a contradiction?” asked Karl Ludwig.

  There was silence for a few moments. In the rearview mirror, Karl Ludwig was smiling. Kaminski, nonplussed, chewed his lower lip.

  “I think you took the wrong exit,” said Karl Ludwig.

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” I said.

  “So where are you going?”

  “Not bad,” said Kaminski, reaching back to pass him the croissants. “The tree man. Not bad!” Karl Ludwig tore the paper and began to eat greedily.

  “You were saying you had a hard life,” said Kaminski. “I can still remember my first exhibition. What a catastrophe.”

  “I’ve exhibited too,” said Karl Ludwig through a mouthful.

  “Really?”

  “Privately. A long time ago.”

  “Paintings?”

  “Something of that sort.”

  “I bet you were good,” said Kaminski.

  “I don’t think one could say that.”

  “Was it tough for you?” I asked.

  “Well, yes,” said Karl Ludwig. “In principle, anyway. I had . . .”

  “I wasn’t asking you!” A sports car was driving too slow, I honked and overtook it.

  “It was okay,” said Kaminski. “By chance I didn’t have any worries about money.”

  “Thanks to Dominik Silva.”

  “And I had enough ideas. I knew my time would come. Ambition is like a childhood illness. You get over it and it strengthens you.”

  “Some people don’t,” said Karl Ludwig.

  “And besides, Therese Lessing was still there,” I said.

  Kaminski didn’t answer. I gave him a sharp side-ways look: his expression had darkened. In the rear-view mirror Karl Ludwig was wiping his mouth with his hand. Crumbs trickled down onto the leather upholstery.

  “I want to go home,” said Kaminski.

  “Excuse me!”

  “Nothing to excuse. Take me home!”

  “Perhaps we should talk about it in peace and quiet.”

  He turned his head, and for a long moment the feeling that he was looking at me through his dark glasses was so strong that it took my breath away. Then he turned away, his head sank down onto his chest, and his whole body seemed to shrivel.

  “Fine,” I said quietly, “we’ll go back.” Karl Ludwig sniggered. I signaled, pulled off the road, and turned around.

  “On,” said Kaminski.

  “What?”

  “We’re going on.”

  “But you just said . . .”

  He hissed, and I shut up. His face was hard, as if chiseled. Had he really changed his mind, or was he simply demonstrating his power to me? No, he was old and confused, I shouldn’t overestimate him. I turned around again and drove back onto the road.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to decide,” said Karl Ludwig.

  “Be quiet,” I said. Kaminski’s jaws were chewing on nothing, his face had gone slack again, as if nothing had happened.

  “Besides,” I said, “I was in Clairance.”

  “Where?”

  “In the salt mine.”

  “You’re certainly making an effort!” Kaminski said loudly.

  “Did you really get lost in there?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous. I couldn’t find the guide again. Until then, I hadn’t taken the thing with my eyes seriously. But suddenly there was a mist everywhere. And there couldn’t be any mist down there. So I had a problem.”

  “Macular degeneration?” asked Karl Ludwig.

  “What?” I asked.

  Kaminski nodded. “Good guess.”

  “Do you make out anything at all these days?” asked Karl Ludwig.

  “Shapes, sometimes colors. Outlines, if I’m lucky.”

  “Did you find your way out by yourself?” I asked.

  “Yes, thank God. I used the old trick: keep following the right-hand wall.”

  “I understand.” The right-hand wall? I tried to picture it. Why should that work?

  “Next day I went to the eye doctor. That’s when I found out.”

  “You must have thought the world was going under,” said Karl Ludwig.

  Kaminski nodded slowly. “And you know what?”

  Karl Ludwig leaned forward.

  “It went under.”

  The sun was almost at its zenith, the mountains, already far behind us, shimmered in the midday heat. I had to yawn, a pleasant exhaustion crept over me. I began to talk about my Wernicke book. How I had heard about the incident by chance, luck is often the father of great achievements, and I was the first to get to the house and had peered through the window. I described the widow’s fruitless attempts to get rid of me. As always, the story was well received:Kaminski smiled pensively, Karl Ludwig looked at me open-mouthed. I stopped at the next gas station.

  While I filled the tank, Kaminski got out. Groaning, he smoothed down his dressing gown, pressed one hand against his back, pulled the cane into position, and straightened up. “Take me to the toilet!”

  I nodded. “Karl Ludwig, out!”

  Karl Ludwig took his time putting on his glasses and bared his teeth. “Why?”

  “I’m locking the car.”

  “No problem, I’ll stay in it.”

  “That’s why.”

  “Do you want to insult him?” asked Kaminski.

  “You’re insulting me,” said Karl Ludwig.

  “He hasn’t done anything to you!”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  “So stop that nonsense!”

  “Yes, please—I beg you!”

  I sighed, bent down, put the tape recorder away, pulled out the car key, gave Karl Ludwig a warning glance, shouldered my bag, and reached for Kaminski’s hand. Again his soft, oddly certain touch, again the feeling that he was the
one leading me. As I waited, I looked at advertising posters: Drink Beer!, a laughing housewife, three fat children, a round teapot with a laughing face. I leaned my head against the wall for a moment; I really was very tired.

  We went to the cashier. “I don’t have any money with me,” said Kaminski.

  I bit my teeth and pulled out my credit card. Outside an engine started up, died, started up again, and then receded into the distance; the woman at the cash register looked up curiously at the surveillance monitor. I signed, and took Kaminski by the arm. The door hissed as it opened.

  I stopped so abruptly that Kaminski almost fell.

  And yet: I really wasn’t surprised. I felt it was inevitable, that some essential piece of a composition had fallen into place. I wasn’t even shocked. I rubbed my eyes. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t have the strength. I sank slowly to my knees, sat down on the ground, and propped my head in my hands.

  “Now what?” said Kaminski.

  I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I just didn’t care. He, and my book, and my future could all go to hell! What concern of mine was all this, what did this old man have to do with me? The asphalt was warm, the dark streaked with light, it smelled of grass and gasoline.

  “Zollner, are you dead?”

  I opened my eyes and stood up slowly.

  “Zollner!” roared Kaminski. His voice was high and cut like a knife. I left him standing there and went back in. The woman at the cash register was laughing as if she’d never seen anything so funny. “Zollner!” She picked up the phone receiver, I stopped her, the police would just hold us up and ask inconvenient questions. I said I would take care of things myself. “Zollner!” She should simply call us a taxi. She did so, then she wanted money for the phone call. I asked her if she was mad, went out, and took Kaminski by the elbow.

  “So there you are. What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t behave as if you don’t know.”

  I looked around. A light wind was making waves run across the fields, a few thin clouds hung in the sky. Basically it was a peaceful place. We could stay here.

  But our taxi was arriving already. I helped Kaminski into the backseat and asked the driver to take us to the nearest railroad station.

  VIII

  THE RINGING OF A TELEPHONE jolted me out of sleep. I groped for the receiver, something fell to the ground. I found it and pulled it toward me. Who? Wegenfeld, Anselm Wegenfeld, from reception. Fine, I said, what is it? The room I found myself looking at was a shabby hodgepodge: bedposts, table, a stained bedside lamp, a mirror hung squint. The old gentleman, said Wegenfeld. Who? The old gentleman, he repeated with peculiar emphasis. I sat up, wide awake. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, but you should check in on him.”

  “Why?”

  Wegenfeld cleared his throat, coughed, cleared his throat again. “There are rules in this house. You’ll understand that there are some things we just cannot tolerate. You understand?”

  “Dammit, what’s going on?”

  “Let’s say, he has a visitor. Either you get rid of her, or we will!”

  “You’re not trying to say . . .?”

  “Yes I am,” said Wegenfeld. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.”

  I stood up, went into the tiny bathroom, and washed my face with cold water. It was five in the afternoon, I had been so deep asleep I’d lost all sense of time. It took a moment or two for my memory to start functioning.

  A silent taxi driver had collected us at the gas station. “No,” Kaminski said suddenly. “Not to the station. I want to lie down.”

  “You can’t right now.”

  “I can and I will. Drive to a hotel!”

  The driver nodded phlegmatically.

  “It’ll only hold us up,” I said. “We have to get on.” The driver shrugged.

  “It’s just turned one o’clock,” said Kaminski.

  I looked at the time, it was twelve fifty-five. “Nowhere near it.”

  “At one o’clock I lie down. I’ve been doing it for forty years and I’m not going to change. I can also ask this gentleman to drive me home.”

  The driver threw him a greedy look.

  “Well, all right,” I said, “to a hotel.” I felt empty and helpless. I tapped the driver on the shoulder. “The best in the neighborhood.” As I said the word “best,” I shook my head and flapped my hand. He understood and grinned.

  “I don’t use the other kind either,” said Kaminski.

  I slipped the driver a twenty. He winked. “I’m taking you to the very best!”

  “I hope so,” said Kaminski, pulled his dressing gown tighter, held tight to his stick, and smacked his lips quietly. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that his car and luggage were gone, along with my suitcase and my new shaver; all I had left was my bag. He simply hadn’t taken in what had happened. Probably it was better not to talk about it.

  A small town: low houses, shop windows, a pedestrian precinct with the usual fountain, more shop windows, a large hotel and a larger one, both of which we drove past. We stopped in front of a small, shabby boardinghouse. I looked at the driver, cocked an eyebrow, and rubbed my thumb against my forefinger. Was this really the cheapest? He thought for a moment and then drove on.

  We stopped in front of an even more wretched-looking hotel with a dirt-encrusted façade and filthy windows. I nodded. “Great! Do you see that man in livery!”

  “Two of them,” said the taxi driver, who was obviously enjoying himself. “When government ministers come, they always stay here.”

  I paid, gave him another tip, he’d earned it, and led Kaminski into the small, dirty lobby. A depressing stopover for commercial travelers. “What a carpet!” I said admiringly and demanded two rooms. A man with greasy hair looked surprised and handed me the registration book. On the left-hand page I wrote my name, on the right I scribbled something illegible. “Thank you, no porters?” I said loudly and led Kaminski to the elevator; the car rose groaningly and delivered us to a corridor that was barely lit. His room was tiny, the cupboard gaped open, and the air was stale.

  “There’s a genuine Chagall hanging there!” I said.

  “There are more of Marc’s originals than there are copies. Put the medicines next to the bed. It smells strange, are you sure this is a good hotel?”

  The bedside table barely provided enough space for them all; luckily I’d packed everything in my bag yesterday: beta-blockers, cardio-aspirin, blood thinner, sleeping pills.

  “Where’s my suitcase?” he asked.

  “Your suitcase is in the car.”

  He frowned. “The tree man,” he said. “Remarkable! Have you ever focused on Bosch?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then off you go!” He clapped his hands merrily. “Go!”

  “If you need anything . . .”

  “I don’t need a thing, now go!”

  I sighed and left. In my room, which was even tinier than his, I undressed, got into bed naked, hid my head under the coverlet, and dozed off. When Wegenfeld called, I had been dead to the world for three hours.

  It took me some time to find Kaminski’s room again. There was a do not disturb sign on the door, but the door wasn’t closed. I opened it quietly.

  “. . . he had this idea,” Kaminski was saying, “to keep painting himself, with this mixture of hate and self-love. He was the only megalomaniac who was absolutely right.” The woman was sitting on the bed, bolt upright, legs crossed, back against the wall. She was heavily made up, with red hair, a see-through blouse, a short skirt, and fishnet stockings. Her boots were set neatly side by side on the floor. Kaminski, fully dressed and in his dressing gown, was lying on his back, hands folded on his chest, his head on her lap. “So I asked him: Does it have to be the Minotaur? We were in his extremely orderly studio, he only ever messed it up when photos were going to be taken, and he looked at me with those black eyes of his, a god’s eyes.” The woman yawned and slowly stroked his head. “I said, the Minotaur—don
’t you think you’re taking yourself a little too seriously? And he never forgave me. If I’d laughed at his pictures, he wouldn’t have cared less. Come in, Zollner!”

  I closed the door behind me.

  “Have you noticed how she smells? No expensive perfume, and a bit too strong, but what an effect! What’s your name?”

  She looked at me for a moment. “Jana.”

  “Sebastian, be glad you’re young!”

  He had never used my first name before. I inhaled the air to test it, but there was no hint of perfume. “This really isn’t okay,” I said. “She was noticed on her way in. The manager called.”

  “Tell him who I am!”

  Disconcerted, I said nothing. On the table was a small notepad, with only a few sheets on it, left behind by some previous guest. There was a drawing on it. Kaminski maneuvered himself laboriously into a sitting position. “Just a joke. You’re going to have to go now, Jana. I’m very grateful to you.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, and began to put on her boots. I watched attentively as the leather stretched itself over her knee, for a moment her collarbone was exposed, her red hair slid down softly over the nape of her neck. I snatched the notepad, tore off the top sheet, and pocketed it. I opened the door, Jana followed me out silently.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “he’s paid already.”

  “Really?” And before, he’d insisted he had no money with him! But I couldn’t let an opportunity like this slip. “Come with me!” I led her into my room, shut the door behind her, and gave her a twenty. “There’s something I want to know.”

  She leaned against the wall and looked at me. She must have been nineteen or twenty, no older than that. She crossed her arms, lifted one foot, and ground the sole of her boot into the carpet, it was going to leave the most awful mark, then she took a look at my ravaged bed and smiled. To my annoyance, I could feel myself blushing.

  “Jana . . .” I cleared my throat. “May I call you Jana?” I had to be careful not to unsettle her.

  She shrugged.

  “Jana, what did he want?”

  “What?”

  “What does he like?”