Me and Kaminski

by Daniel Kehlmann

  “Follow me!” said Holm and went ahead of us into the living room. “Little Therese, guess what!” He looked back at us. “Sorry, what was the name?”

  I waited, but Kaminski said nothing. “This is Manuel Kaminski.”

  “He knows you from before,” said Holm. “Do you remember?”

  A bright room with large windows. Flowered curtains, striped rugs, a round dining table, a sideboard with piles of porcelain plates behind the glass doors, a TV in front of the sofa, an armchair and a coffee table, a telephone on the wall, next to a photograph of an elderly married couple and a reproduction of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Sitting in the armchair was an old woman. Her face was round, all folds and wrinkles, and her hair was a ball of white. She was wearing a pink wool jacket with a flower embroidered on the front, a checked skirt, and furry slippers. She switched off the TV and looked at us questioningly.

  “Little Therese doesn’t hear so well,” said Holm. “Friends! From the old days! Kaminski! Do you remember?”

  She looked up, still smiling, at the ceiling. “Of course.” Her hairdo bobbed up and down as she nodded. “From Bruno’s firm.”

  “Kaminski,” said Holm loudly.

  Kaminski clutched my arm so tightly that it hurt.

  “My God,” she said. “You?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  For a few seconds there was absolute silence. Her hands, tiny and looking as if they were carved out of wood, brushed over the remote control.

  “And I’m Sebastian Zollner, we spoke on the phone. I told you that sooner or later we’d . . .”

  “Will you have some cake?”

  “What?”

  “Have to make coffee first. Do sit down!”

  “How kind of you,” I said. I tried to lead Kaminski to one of the chairs, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “I’ve heard you became famous.”

  “You predicted it.”

  “What did I do? God, come on and sit down. It’s all so long ago.” Without moving a finger, she indicated the empty chairs. I tried once again, Kaminski didn’t move an inch.

  “So when did you know each other?” asked Holm. “Must be a long time ago, Little Therese never mentioned a thing. She’s lived through a lot.” She giggled. “It’s true, you know, there’s no need to blush! Married twice, four children, seven grandchildren. Quite something, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I said, “it certainly is.”

  “You’re making me nervous, standing there,” she said. “It’s so uncomfortable. You don’t look good, Miguel, sit down.”

  “Manuel!”

  “Yes, yes, come on, sit down.”

  With full force I pushed him toward the sofa, he stumbled forward, reached for the arm, let himself down. I sat next to him.

  “First a couple of questions,” I said. “What I’d like to know from you is . . .”

  The telephone rang. She reached for the receiver, said “No!” loudly, and hung up.

  “Children from the neighborhood,” said Holm. “They call up pretending to be someone else and think we won’t notice. But they picked the wrong person!”

  “The wrong person.” She gave a sharp little laugh. Holm went out. I waited: which of them would start to talk first? Kaminski sat there, bent over, Therese nestled there smiling between the lapels of her jacket; she nodded once, as if some interesting thought had just gone through her head. Holm came back with a tray: plates, forks, a flat, brownish cake. He cut it into slices and gave me a piece. It was dry as dust, hard to chew, and almost impossible to swallow.

  “So,” I cleared my throat. “What did you do back then, after you left?”

  “Left?”

  “Left,” said Kaminski.

  She gave an empty smile.

  “All of a sudden you were gone.”

  “Sounds just like Little Therese,” said Holm.

  “I took the train,” she said slowly, “and headed north. I worked as a secretary. I was very alone. My boss was called Sombach, he always dictated too fast, and I had to correct his spelling. Then I met Uwe—we got married after two months.” She looked at the backs of her gnarled hands with their web of veins. For a moment her smile disappeared and her eyes hardened. “Do you remember that dreadful composer?” I looked at Kaminski, but he didn’t seem to know who she was talking about. Her expression softened, the smile came back. “Now you’ve forgotten the coffee.”

  “Oops!” said Holm.

  “Never mind!” I said.

  “He who wants, never gets, and vice versa,” he said and stayed sitting.

  “We had two children. Maria and Heinrich. But you know them already.”

  “How would I know them?” asked Kaminski.

  “Uwe was in a car accident. Someone hit him head-on, a drunk, he was killed instantly. Didn’t suffer.”

  “That’s important,” said Kaminski softly.

  “The most important. When I heard the news, I thought I was dying too.”

  “She says that,” said Holm, “but she’s tough.”

  “Two years later, I married Bruno. Eva and Lore are his. Lore lives right over there in the next street. You drive straight ahead, third left, then left again. Then you’re there.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “At Lore’s.” There was silence for a few moments. We looked at one another, confused. “That’s where you said you wanted to go!” The telephone rang, she picked up, cried “No!” and hung up again. Kaminski folded his hands and his stick fell on the floor.

  “What business are you in?” asked Holm.

  “He’s an artist,” she said.

  “Oh!” Holm’s eyebrows shot up.

  “He’s well known. You shouldn’t just read the sports pages in the papers. He was very good.”

  “That’s a long time ago,” said Kaminski.

  “Those mirrors,” she said. “So spooky. The first time you did something that wasn’t . . .”

  “What annoys me,” said Holm, “are those pictures where you can’t recognize anything. You don’t paint that sort of thing, do you?” Before I could take evasive action, he pushed another slice of cake onto my plate; it almost fell off, and crumbs showered down into my lap. He himself, said Holm, made herbal products: small factory, shower gel, teas, creams for muscle pains. You’d find almost nothing comparable these days, you just had to accept that, a certain decline was built into the order of things. “The order of things!” he cried. “Are you sure you don’t want coffee?”

  “I’ve always thought about you,” said Kaminski.

  “But it’s been such a long time,” she said.

  “I asked myself . . .” He fell silent.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. You’re right. It’s a long time ago.”

  “What is?” asked Holm. “You should come out and say it!”

  “Do you remember your letter?”

  “So what’s going on with your eyes?” she asked. “You’re an artist. Isn’t that a problem?”

  “Your letter!”

  I bent down, picked up the stick and pushed it into his hand.

  “Remember what? I was so young.”

  “And?”

  A thought passed over her face. “I knew nothing.”

  “You knew more than that.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Holm, “whenever I ask Little Therese . . .”

  “Shut up!” I said. He took a long breath and stared at me.

  “No, Manuel. I really don’t remember anymore.” The corners of her mouth turned up, her brow smoothed itself out, and she turned the remote control around and around in her hand without bending her fingers.

  “You don’t know the best story of all,” said Holm. “It was Little Therese’s seventy-fifth birthday and everyone was there: her children, the grandchildren, everyone finally together in one place. Nobody was missing. And when they sang For she’s a jolly good fellow, right then, in front of the big cake . . .”

  “Seventy-five candles,
” she said.

  “Not that many, there wasn’t room. Do you know what she said?”

  “There were so!”

  “We have to go,” said Kaminski.

  “Do you know what she said?” The doorbell rang. “Now what?!” Holm stood up and went out into the hall, you could hear him talking quickly and agitatedly with someone.

  “Why did you never come?” she asked.

  “Dominik said you were dead.”

  “Dominik?” I said. “You insisted you didn’t even know him.” He frowned, Therese looked at me in surprise, they both seemed to have forgotten I was there.

  “Did he?” she said. “Why?”

  Kaminski didn’t reply.

  “I was young,” she said. “One does the oddest things. I was someone else.”

  “You certainly were.”

  “You looked different. You were taller and . . . you had such strength. Such energy. If I spent enough time with you, I felt dizzy.” She sighed. “Being young is a disease.”

  “The fever of reason.”

  “La Rochefoucauld.” She laughed softly. Kaminski smiled for a moment, then leaned forward and said something in French.

  She smiled. “No, Manuel, not for me. Basically everything started after that.”

  There was silence for a few moments.

  “So what did you say?” he asked hoarsely. “On your birthday?”

  “If only I knew!”

  Holm came back. “She didn’t want to come in, she said she’ll wait. Would you like coffee now?”

  “It’s late already,” said Kaminski.

  “Very late,” I said.

  “But you just got here!”

  “We could watch TV together,” she said. “It’s almost time for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

  “Schmidt is a good moderator,” said Holm.

  “I’ve read somewhere that he’s getting married,” she said.

  Kaminski leaned over and gave me his hand. I helped him to his feet. I had the impression there was something he still wanted to say; I waited, but nothing came. His hold on my arm was weak, almost imperceptible. In my pocket I could feel the tape recorder, I’d almost forgotten it, still running. I switched it off.

  “Are you often in the neighborhood?” asked Holm. “You must come again. Mustn’t they, Little Therese?”

  “And I’ll introduce you to Lore. And her children. Moritz and Lothar. They live in the next street.”

  “That’s nice,” said Kaminski.

  “What kind of art do you actually do?” asked Holm.

  We went out into the hall. Holm opened the front door, I turned around, Therese was following us. “Safe trip, Miguel!” she said, crossing her arms. “Safe trip!”

  We went out through the front garden. The street was empty, except for a woman loitering around. I noticed that Kaminski’s arm was trembling.

  “Drive carefully!” said Holm, and shut the door.

  Kaminski stood still and lifted the other hand, the one that held the stick, to his face. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. It had turned cold, I closed my jacket. He was leaning heavily on my arm.

  “Manuel!” I said.

  He didn’t reply. The woman turned around and came toward us. She was wearing a black coat and her hair fluttered in the wind. I was so surprised I let go of Kaminski.

  “Why didn’t you come in?” asked Kaminski. He didn’t seem surprised at all.

  “He said you were almost finished. I didn’t want to prolong things.” Miriam looked at me. “And now give me the car keys!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m taking the car back. I had a long talk on the phone with its owner. I am to tell you that if you make any difficulties, you’ll be accused of theft.”

  “I didn’t steal it!”

  “The other car, our car, has been located, meanwhile. In the parking lot of a rest stop, with a very polite note of thanks. Do you want it?”

  “No!”

  She took her father’s arm, I opened the door, she helped him into the backseat. He moaned softly, his lips moved but no sound came out. She slammed the door. Nervously I held out the cigarette pack. There was only one left inside.

  “I shall allow myself to present you with the bill for my airplane ticket and the taxi fare to get here. I promise you it will not be cheap.” The wind whipped through her hair, and her fingernails were chewed down to the quick. The threat didn’t bother me. I had nothing left, so she could take nothing away from me.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Of course not.” She leaned on the car roof. “This is an old man who’s been made the ward of his daughter, right? No one has ever told him that the love of his youth is still alive. You just wanted to help.”

  I lifted my shoulders. In the car, Kaminski’s head was rocking backward and forward, and his lips were moving.

  “That’s how it is.”

  “And how do you think I know this address?”

  I stared at her, confused.

  “I’ve known it for a long, long time. I visited her already ten years ago. She gave me his letters and I tore them up.”

  “You what?”

  “That’s what he wanted. We always knew that someone like you would come along.”

  I took another step back and felt the garden fence on my back.

  “He didn’t actually want to see her ever again. But after the operation he became sentimental. He asked all of us, me, Bogovic, Clure, everyone he knows. He doesn’t know that many people anymore. We wanted to spare him. You must have said something that made him come back to the idea.”

  “What did you want to spare him? Meeting that silly old woman? And that idiot of a man?”

  “That idiot of a man is clever. I assume he tried to save the situation. You don’t know how easily Manuel cries, and how much he enjoys it. You don’t know how bad it could have become. And this old woman got free of him a long time ago. She had a life in which he was totally insignificant.” She frowned. “Not many people have achieved that.”

  “He’s weak and he’s ill. He doesn’t manipulate anyone anymore.”

  “No? When you spoke about a prison, I had to laugh. That’s when I knew you were just as much in his hand as the rest of us. Didn’t he get you to steal two cars and drive him halfway across Europe?”

  I put the cigarette between my lips. “For the last time, I didn’t . . .”

  “Did he tell you about the contract?”

  “What contract”

  As she turned her head, for the first time I suddenly saw her resemblance to her father. “I think he’s called Behring, Hans . . .”

  “Bahring?”

  She nodded. “Hans Bahring.”

  I grabbed the fence. A metal spike stabbed itself into my hand.

  “A series of articles in some magazine. About Richard Rieming, Matisse, and postwar Paris. Memories of Picasso, Cocteau, and Giacometti. Manuel talked to him for hours.”

  I threw away the cigarette unlit, and held tight to the fence, tighter, as tightly as I could.

  “Which doesn’t mean you rummaged through our house in vain.” I let go of the fence, and a thin stream of blood ran over my hand. “Perhaps we should have told you sooner. But you’ve still got the rest: his childhood, that long time in the mountains. And all his late work.”

  “He has no late work.”

  “Right,” she said, as if this had just occurred to her. “Then it’s going to be a thin book.”

  I forced myself to breathe calmly. I looked into the car: Kaminski’s jaws were working, his hands clasped the stick. “Where are you going now?” My voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way away.

  “I’m looking for a hotel,” she said. “He’s . . .”

  “Missed his midday nap.”

  She nodded. “And tomorrow we’re driving back. I’ll return the car, then we’ll take the train. He . . .”

  “Doesn’t fly.”r />
  She smiled. As I looked back at her, I realized that she envied Therese. That she had never lived a life apart from him, that she too had no history. Just like me. “His medicines are in the glove compartment.”

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “You look different.”

  “Different?”

  She nodded.

  “May I say good-bye to him?”

  She stepped back and leaned against the fence. I opened the driver’s door. My knees still felt weak, it was good to sit in the car. I closed the door so that she couldn’t hear us.

  “I want to go to the sea,” said Kaminski.

  “You talked to Bahring.”

  “Is that what he’s called?”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “A friendly young man. Very cultivated. Is it important?”

  I nodded.

  “I want to go to the sea.”

  “I wanted to say good-bye to you.”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This will surprise you. But I like you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It really did surprise me.

  “Do you still have the car key?”

  “Why?”

  His face crumpled, and his nose looked very thin and sharply drawn. “She won’t take me to the water.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve never been to the sea.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Never happened when I was a child. Later it didn’t interest me. In Nice all I wanted to see was Matisse. I thought I had plenty of time. Now she won’t take me. It’s my punishment.”

  I looked over at Miriam. She was leaning on the fence and watching us impatiently. Carefully I pulled the key out of my pocket.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  He nodded. I pushed the “lock” button and all four doors closed themselves with a click. I stuck the key in the ignition and started the engine. Miriam leapt forward and grabbed for the door handle. As we moved forward, she rattled it, as I accelerated she slammed her fist against the window, her lips formed a word I couldn’t understand, she ran with us for a few steps, then I could see her in the rear-view mirror, standing there as she let her arms fall and watched us go.

  “Move it!” said Kaminski.

  The street stretched away, the houses slid past us, already we’d reached the end of the village. Meadows opened up. We were in open country.