‘“Until two years ago” – this was the gist, though not the exact wording of his sluggish disclosure – “there was among the townspeople a man whose utterly ridiculous outburst of blasphemy and mad love had put the town on the tip of everyone’s tongue for some time. He spent the rest of his life making amends for his transgression, atoning for it even when the affected party – God himself – had possibly long since forgiven him. He was a stonemason. After ten years of being involved in the restoration of the cathedral, he advanced through his skilfulness to become the leader of the entire project. He was a man in the prime of life, an imperious character without family or attachments, when he got caught in the web of the most beautiful, most shameless cocotte that had ever been seen in the neighbouring seaside resort. The tender and unyielding nature of this man may have made an impression on her. At any rate, nobody knew that she graced someone else in the area with her favour. And nobody suspected at the time at what cost. Nor would it ever have come to light were it not for the unexpected visit of the team of building inspectors from Rome, who came to see the renowned restoration works. Among them was a young, impertinent, but knowledgeable archaeologist who had made the study of Trecento capitals his specialty. He was in the process of enriching his forthcoming monumental publication by adding a ‘Treatise on a Capital on the Pulpit in the Cathedral at V…’ and had announced his visit to the director of the Opera del Duomo. The director, more than ten years past his prime, lived in deep seclusion. His time to shine and be daring was long gone. But what the young scholar took home from this meeting was anything but art historical insight. Rather, it was a scheme which he could scarcely keep to himself and which finally resulted in the following being reported to the authorities: the love that the cocotte had bestowed upon her suitor had been no obstacle to her, but rather an incentive to charge a satanic price for her affections. For she wanted to see her nom de guerre – the trademark name that women of her métier customarily assume – chiselled in stone in the cathedral, this holiest of sites. The lover resisted, but his powers had limits and one day, in the presence of the whore herself, he began working on the early Gothic capital which replaced an older, more weathered exemplar, until it landed as a corpus delicti on a table in front of the ecclesiastical judges. Before that, however, some years had passed, and by the time that all the formalities had been taken care of and all of the files were to hand, it turned out that it was too late. A broken, feeble-minded old man stood before his work and nobody supposed that it was play-acting when this once respected head leaned with furrowed brow over the tangle of arabesques in a vain effort to discern the name that he had hidden there so many years ago.”
‘To my surprise I noticed that – I cannot say why – I had stepped closer. But before I could reach out and touch the stone, I felt the hand of the sexton on my shoulder. Well-intentioned, yet surprised, he attempted to determine the reason for my interest. In my insecurity and weariness, however, I stuttered only the most senseless thing possible: “Collector”, whereupon I toddled off home.
‘If sleep, as some maintain, is not only a physical need of the organism, but a compulsion effected by the unconscious upon consciousness such that it vacates the scene in order to make room for drives and images, then perhaps the exhaustion that overcame me at noon in a southern Italian town had more to say than it ordinarily would. Be that as it may, I dreamt – I know I dreamt – the name. But not as it had stood before me, undiscovered in the stone; rather, it had been abducted into another realm – elevated, disenchanted and clarified at once – and amid the myriad tangles of grass, foliage and flowers, the letters, which at that time had caused my heart to beat most painfully, quaked and quivered towards me. When I awoke it was past eight. Time to have dinner and raise the question of how the rest of the day should be spent. My hours of napping during the afternoon prohibited me from ending it early, and I lacked both the money and the inclination to embark on more adventures. After a few hundred indecisive steps, I happened upon an open square, the Campo. It was dusk. Children were still playing around the fountain. This square, which was off limits to all vehicles, and which no longer served for gatherings, only markets, had its vital purpose as a huge stone play and bathing area for children. For this reason, it was also a popular spot for carts selling sweets, monkey nuts and melons. Two or three of them still stood around the square, gradually lighting their lanterns. A blinking light shot forth from the vicinity of the last one that still had children and idlers crowded around it. As I approached, I gleaned brass instruments. I am an observant ambler. What will or hidden wish, then, prohibited me from noticing what could not possibly have evaded even the most inattentive person? Something was afoot on this street, at whose entrance I now found myself again, without having expected it. The silk drapes that hung from the windows weren’t laundry at all – and why should the peculiar candelabras have survived here and nowhere else in the country? The music got underway. It erupted into the street, which quickly filled with people. And it became apparent that wealth, where it brushes up against the poor, only makes it more difficult for them to enjoy what is theirs. The light from the candles and torches clashed violently with the spherical yellow beams that shone from the arc lamps, illuminating the cobblestones and house walls. I joined in right at the very end. Preparations had been made to receive the procession in front of a church. Paper lanterns and light bulbs stood closely together, and a perpetual trickle of the faithful began to break away from the jubilant crowd only to get lost in the folds of the curtains that enshrouded the open portal.
‘I had paused some distance from the centre, which shone red and green. The crowd now filling the street was not just some colourless mass. These were the clearly defined, closely connected inhabitants of the local district, and because it was a petit bourgeois neighbourhood, no one of any higher standing was present, let alone any foreigners. As I stood against the wall, my clothing and appearance should by rights have seemed conspicuous. But, strangely, nobody in the crowd paid any attention to me. Did nobody notice me, or did this man who was lost to this scorching and singing street – he who I was more and more becoming – appear to everyone to belong here? Pride filled me at this thought. A great sense of elation came over me. I did not enter the church. Content with having enjoyed the profane part of the festivities, I had decided to make my way home, along with the first of the well-satiated revellers, and long before the over-tired children, when I laid eyes on one of the marble plaques with which the poor towns of this region put the rest of the world’s street signs to shame. It was bathed in the glow of the torch, as though it were ablaze. Sharp and lustrous, the letters erupted from its middle and, once again, they formed the name that turned from stone into a flower, and from a flower into fire; growing ever hotter and more ferocious, it reached out for me. Firmly intent on returning home, I took off and was pleased to find a small street that promised to be a considerable shortcut. Everywhere, the signs of life had begun to subside. The main street, where my hotel was located, and which had been so animated until a moment ago, now appeared not only quieter, but narrower as well. While I still pondered the laws that connect such aural and optical images with each other, a distant but powerful blast of music hit my ear; and as I heard the first notes, illumination struck me like a bolt of lightning: here it comes. This is why there were so few people, so few bourgeoises, out in that street. This was the great evening concert at V…, for which the locals assemble every Saturday. At once, a new expanded city – indeed a richer and more vivid city history stood before my eyes. I doubled my pace, turned a corner and paused – paralyzed with astonishment – only to find myself, once more, on the street that had reeled me in, as though with a lasso. It was totally dark now and the music band offered up their last forgotten song to this lonesome listener.’
At this point my friend broke off. His story seemed to have escaped him. And only his lips, which were still speaking a moment ago, bid farewell to it with a lingering smile. I gl
anced pensively at the marks that were smudged in the dust by our feet. And the undying verse wandered majestically through the arch of this story as if through a gate.
—
Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski.
Written c. 1929; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften IV, 780–7; also translated in Radio Benjamin, 260–6. As the editors of this volume note, ‘Benjamin borrows the title of his novella from Goethe’s poem, “Nicht mehr auf Seidenblatt” (No longer on a leaf of silk), a verse posthumously added to the West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan), “Book of Suleika”. Benjamin refers to this verse in “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”.’
CHAPTER 24
Palais D…y
Little Castle in the Air (Luftschlösschen), 1915.
If, between the years 1875 and ’85 Baron X stood out in the Café de Paris, and if, as with the strangers of distinction, like the Count de Caylus, Marshall Fécamts and the gentleman rider Raymond Grivier, attention was also drawn to the Baron, it was not because of his elegance, his parentage, or his sporting achievements, but rather quite simply the recognition, indeed the admiration of the loyalty with which he had held to the establishment through so many years. A loyalty which he would later retain for something completely different and highly unusual. That is just what this story is about.
It begins, strictly speaking, with the inheritance which the Baron should have received at some point over a period of thirty years and was due to receive and which indeed finally came to him in September 1884. At the time, the inheritor was not far off his fiftieth birthday and was certainly no longer a bon viveur. Had he ever been one? The question did indeed crop up. Were someone to insist that he had never once stumbled across the name of the Baron in the chronique scandaleuse of Paris, and even that the mouths of the most unscrupulous club denizens and the most gossipy coquettes had never referred to him, it would be impossible to disagree: the Baron, in his shepherd’s plaid trousers, with his puffed-out Lavalliere cravat, was more than a swanky apparition; there were a few wrinkles on his face which bespoke a connoisseur of women who had paid for his wisdom. The Baron had remained a riddle until now, and to see this large, long-awaited inheritance finally in his hands effected in his friends, alongside their unbegrudging goodwill, the most discreet, most spiteful curiosity. What no fireside chats, no bottle of Burgundy had been able to do – lift the veil from this life – they believed they might be able to expect from this sudden wealth.
But after two or three months, they were all of one mind: they could not have been more thoroughly disappointed. Nothing – not a shadow – had changed in the Baron’s clothing, mood, the way he divided up his time, even in his budget and accommodation. He was still the noblest idler, whose time appeared as filled to the brim as that of the most minor clerk. Whenever he left the club, he took his quarters in his bachelor apartment on the Avenue Victor Hugo, and never were any friends, who wanted to accompany him home of an evening, dismissed with excuses. Indeed, it sometimes happened that, right until five o’clock in the morning or even later, the man of the house acted as banker at a green table that was just where a wonderful Chippendale cabinet once stood in his parlour. The Baron liked to play by fluke – that was clear from the rare occasions when he had appeared at the card table in the past. Now, though, even the most long-standing players could not recall experiencing such runs of luck as those that the winter of 1884 brought. It lasted all through the spring and remained as the summer streamed across the boulevards with its rivulets of shade. How could it be, then, that by September the Baron was a poor man? Not poor, but floating indefinably between poor and rich, just like before, though now robbed of the expectation of a great inheritance. Poor enough that he began limiting himself to visiting the club only for a cup of tea or a game of chess. No one dared to wager a question. What would have been questionable anyway about an existence that took place within its narrow, sophisticated limits in front of everybody’s eyes, from his morning ride, to the hour’s fencing, and lunch until the bell rings a quarter to six, when he left the Café de Paris in order to dine two hours later with company at Delaborde? In those intervening hours, he did not touch another card. And yet these two hours of the day robbed him of his whole fortune.
It was only years later that people in Paris discovered what had happened, after the Baron had retreated to Lord knows where – what would the name of a remote Lithuanian manor mean here? – and one of his friends, in the middle of the most aimless strolling one rainy morning, winced in shock – he himself did not immediately know in response to what – a sight or an idea? In truth, it was both. For the monstrosity which swayed down at him from the shoulders of three transport workers on the flight of steps at the Palais D…y was that precious Chippendale piece, which one day had given way to the talismanic gambling table. The cabinet was splendid and could not be mistaken for any other. But it was not only because of this that the friend recognised it. Just as waveringly, his broad shoulders shaking, did the mighty back of its owner appear and disappear that day when he departed for the last time, before the eyes of all the waving people on the railway station platform. Hastily the stranger pushed past the removal men up the low steps, stepped through the open doorway and came to a halt, almost vertiginously, in the vast bare entrance hall. In front of him the stairway went up in spirals to the first floor, its massive balustrade nothing but a single unbroken marble relief: fauns, nymphs; nymphs, satyrs; satyrs, fauns. The newcomer composed himself and searched through the halls and the suites of rooms. Everywhere empty walls yawned at him. No trace of any inhabitants except for an equally abandoned but opulently decorated boudoir, filled with furs and cushions, jade gods and incense jars, grand vases and Gobelins. A thin layer of dust lay over everything. This threshold had nothing inviting about it, and the stranger wanted to begin the search anew, when behind him a pretty young girl, dressed like a lady’s maid, prepared to enter the room. And she, being the only confidante of what had occurred here, told her story.
It was now one year since the Baron had rented this palace for an inconceivable interest from its owner, a Montenegrin duke. Right from the very day that the contract was signed, she had taken up her duties, which consisted of two weeks overseeing the craftsmen and receiving deliveries. Then followed new instructions, sparse but strict specifications, which for the most part concerned the care of the flowers, which had still left something of their perfume in the room, in front of which they were both now standing. Only one, the final instruction, made reference to something else, and precisely that one seemed to the girl bound to a fairy tale–like reward, which was now promised to her. ‘Day in, day out, not one minute before, not one minute after six, the Baron appeared’, she said, ‘on the flight of steps, in order to ascend, slowly, to the doorway. He never came without a large bouquet.’ But in what order the orchids, lilies, azaleas, chrysanthemums appeared, and in what relation to the seasons, was inscrutable. He rang at the door. The door opened. The maid, the one from whom we know everything, opened it, in order to receive the flowers and to accept an enquiry, which was the cue for her most secret duty:
‘Is Madam at home?’
‘I am sorry’, replied the maid, ‘Madam has just left the house.’
Pensively the lover then headed back on his return path, only to return once again the next day to pay his respects at the abandoned palace.
And so it became known how riches, which so often served the common purpose of fanning the embers of strange love, for this one time ignited those of its owner to the final flames.
—
Translated by Esther Leslie.
First published in Die Dame, Berlin, June 1929; Gesammelte Schriften IV, 725–8.
CHAPTER 25
Review: Franz Hessel, Secret Berlin
Cat Lurking (Katze Lauert), 1939.
Franz Hessel, Secret Berlin, Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1927
The small flights of stairs, the front halls supported by column
s, the friezes and architraves of the villas in Tiergarten are taken at their word in this book. The ‘old’ West End has become the West of antiquity, whence the westerly winds reached the boatmen, who slowly floated their barges with the apples of the Hesperides up the Landwehr Canal in order to moor at the bridge of Heracles. This district lifts itself so unmistakably above the urban sea of houses that its entrance appears to be guarded by thresholds and gates. Its poet is well acquainted with thresholds in every sense – except for the dubious one upheld by experimental psychology, which he does not love. The thresholds, however, which separate and distinguish situations, minutes and words from each other, are felt more keenly by him under the soles of his feet than they are felt by anyone else.
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