by Beauman, Ned
First outrage: theft. The novel began in 1677 with the arrival in Paris of the great Venetian set designer Adriano Lavicini. Loeser should have guessed as soon as he heard the title, but after all Rackenham’s talk in that taxi to Puppenberg about the pointlessness of historical fiction, it never would have occurred to him that the Englishman might help himself to the very same shank of the seventeenth century that Loeser, Blumstein, and Klugweil had been trying to turn into a play for nearly three years. (Three years! Einstein’s equations said that time slowed down on a merry-go-round or ferris wheel because of the relativistic effect of the angular momentum. Was that why, in Berlin, which never stopped whirling, you could work for season after season on just one play and still feel as if it was all right that you’d barely got anything done?)
In Rackenham’s travesty, Lavicini fell in love with a young ballet dancer he met at the Théâtre des Encornets, who was actually Louis XIV’s rebellious daughter Princess Anne Elisabeth in disguise. She spurned his advances because she was worried he might uncover her identity, so he built the Teleportation Device as an expression of his love, loading the scene changes in The Lizard Prince with little winks and curlicues that only she would understand. In the final chapter, when she saw it all for the first time during the première, she was won over at last, and feigned a fainting fit so she could hurry backstage into his arms. As the performance continued, they made love on a couch, giving a jealous stagehand the opportunity to smash the Teleportation Device’s controls, sending the (otherwise reliable) machine haywire and consequently killing all three of them. Rackenham seemed to be making some point about how some of the greatest art in the world is created to impress girls, and that’s rather sweet in its way, but the artist musn’t lose sight of his moral responsibilities or chaos might ensue.
In the Loeser–Blumstein–Klugweil production, by contrast, there would have been nothing so glib, and no romance: instead, Lavicini became so maniacal about his Teleportation Device that he lost all humanity, refused to acknowledge the machine’s many defects, and in the end was literally consumed by it. What that might have symbolised would be left up to the audience. To Loeser, it was about how politics, business, and all other such bourgeois social contraptions had a tendency to turn anyone who got involved in them into an insufferable prick.
Second outrage: insult. And this one was much worse. The Sorceror of Venice did not contain, as predicted, a brutal parody of himself. Nor did it contain some unexpectedly warm tribute. Nor did it contain even the most innocuous incidental likeness.
There was no character based on Loeser at all.
There were characters recognisably based on Achleitner, Blumstein, Brecht, Drabsfarben, Grosz, Heijenhoort, Klugweil, Ziesel, and Zuckmayer. There was even a character based on Brogmann. Charming Lavicini, needless to say, was based on the author, and Princess Anne Elisabeth seemed to be Adele. But Loeser was nowhere. In a book that was being read all over Europe as the most scandalously detailed document of the young Berlin artistic classes that had ever been produced – a book that specifically centred on a fucking set designer – he was nowhere. To appear in The Sorceror of Venice was to go to bed with posterity, and everyone was allowed to go to bed with posterity but Loeser: Adele all over again, except that this wasn’t posterity’s fault, because posterity was getting pimped out by Rupert Rackenham, of all people. And of course it wasn’t even possible to complain about his negation, because that was the one response that would make him look even more pitiable than he already did – except perhaps to sink his life savings into the staging of a baroque opera called Rupert Rackenham is a Worthless Cunt, music by J. Drabsfarben, libretto by E. Loeser, which was what he urgently wanted to do by the time he finished skimming the book. Instead, he set off for the Romanisches, and upon arriving twenty-five minutes late to meet Ziesel, the first person he saw was Rupert Rackenham himself, drinking coffee with Klein.
The Romanisches still had its separate sections for artists, actors, writers, directors, film producers, art dealers, fashion designers, Marxists, philosophers, right-wing journalists, left-wing journalists, doctors, psychiatrists, and all the rest, but by the end of the 1920s the territorial negotiations had become even more complex because of the defeat of movements like Dadaism and Expressionism and the consequent power vacuum. One might have expected a sort of Versailles, with one faction taking their western Prussia, another their northern Schleswig, another their Alsace and Lorraine, and so on, but in fact there was always an initial reluctance to sit down where the tablecloths were still stained with obsolescence. So those seats were occupied in their first weeks of availability by the sort of insignificant newcomers who could otherwise only get a place near the entrance and were happy to penetrate further into the café, until the real customers decided that, well, if anyone was going to sit there, it shouldn’t be these packs of stray dogs, and briskly moved in, sometimes pausing to inform the head bouncer, with his greying beard and pierced lip, that these latest arrivals shouldn’t be let in at all. For the last year or so, Loeser, Klugweil, and their fellow New Expressionists had been waging a campaign to recover the section of the terrace that had once belonged to the original Expressionists and was now given over to theatre critics. But none of them had had much luck – what they needed, Loeser often thought, was a strong leader.
Rackenham and Klein were in the middle of a conversation about boxing when a copy of The Sorceror of Venice was slapped down on their table with such force it made the coffee cups flinch in their saucers. They looked up. ‘What the fuck made you think you could do this?’ said Loeser. He hadn’t seen Rackenham in person since the première of Urashima the Fisherman.
‘I’d already spent the advance so I didn’t really have any choice,’ said Rackenham.
‘No, I mean, what the fuck made you think it was all right to steal our plot?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean. Lavicini was a real individual. Nobody can own him. I did all the research myself.’
‘But you know perfectly well you never would have thought of writing a novel about him if I hadn’t told you about our play.’
‘Yes, like most of us I like to continue my education through conversation.’
Loeser was trying to keep in mind that he couldn’t admit to being offended over the lack of a Loeser character. ‘It wouldn’t be quite so bad if you didn’t get everything wrong!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know where to start. Among the twenty or thirty historical celebrities with whom Lavicini just happens to cross paths in your ridiculous plot is his old friend Leonardo da Vinci.’
‘Yes, he helps with the Teleportation Device.’
‘Leonardo died a hundred and twenty-nine years before Lavicini was born.’
‘Bad timing on his part.’
‘You also have somebody referring to Leonardo as Signor da Vinci. Da Vinci means “of Vinci”. That’s like referring to Joan of Arc as “Mademoiselle of Arc”. “Telegram for Mademoiselle of Arc!” ’
‘All right, I feel a bit sheepish about that one.’
‘And da Vinci carries a pocket watch and calls people “rotters”.’
‘You’re such a pedant, Loeser. It’s a novel, and I wrote it in a hurry. If my public want historical rigour they can refer to the Domesday Book or Wisden.’
‘But for God’s sake, why even bother to write a historical novel if you’re not interested in history as it actually was? Your Venice is worse than Kempinski’s New York.’
‘You must understand, I don’t have much imagination,’ said Rackenham. ‘Every one of my novels is a roman à clef. It’s just a question of whether I bother to hide the clef under a flowerpot. And I was getting bored with doing nothing but changing the names each time. I had a nasty experience with my last one. In Steep Air, when it’s implied that the judge’s daughter goes to bed with three rugby players at once after a party – that story is true in almost every detail. It happened to a university girlfriend of mine. S
he confided it to me in a tender moment, not long before our untender disunion. When I wish to enact a private sexual humiliation, I’d much rather the girl’s face was buried in a pillow at the time than buried in a book, but since this one wasn’t quite stupid enough ever to let me fuck her again, I had no choice but to use my publisher as an intermediary. And I assumed it would remain private, because obviously rugby players can’t read and obviously my old flame couldn’t complain about what I’d done, even to her dearest friends. When she read it she would have felt so angry, and so powerless, and it would have guaranteed me the upper hand every time I saw her for the rest of our lives. Ideal in every way.’
‘What happened?’
‘One of the rugby players had a chum who knew about the episode and was literate. He told all three of them about the book. They came down to London in search of me. Luckily I was in someone else’s flat that night. It’s one of the chief reasons I ended up in Berlin.’
‘So what difference does it make if you settle your scores in seventeenth-century Venice? It’s still quite obvious who everyone is supposed to be.’
‘Yes, but my theory is that people will feel so absurd about coming to me and saying, “This syphilitic gondolier in a carnival mask is transparently my good self” that they won’t want to do it. History is a sort of fantasy, and fantasy softens the blow. So far it seems to have worked. But of course, whatever precautions one takes, excuses can always be found for fury, as you’ve just demonstrated.’ Rackenham drained his coffee. ‘Anyway, Loeser, I should have thought you’d still be in a cheerful mood after what happened with Adele last night.’
‘Are you taking the piss? It was awful. She called me an apprentice cuckold.’
‘But you kissed her.’
‘What?’
‘You kissed her,’ said Rackenham. ‘I didn’t see it myself, but you came up to me afterwards and told me about it. I’ve never seen you so happy.’
‘I don’t remember anything of the kind.’
‘I’m not surprised. You were as glazed as a sash window. You were trying to hang on to your own wineglass for balance.’
‘You’re sincerely telling me I kissed her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Rackenham, if this is a joke, I will stuff this book so far down your throat that your duodenum will autograph it in bile.’
‘It is not a joke. You said you had just kissed her.’
And then Loeser remembered. He really had.
‘You’re an apprentice cuckold,’ Adele had said in the Fraunhofens’ dining room.
‘And you’re an aspiring joke,’ Loeser had replied.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I estimate you have about three more weeks until this conquering trollop routine loses its novelty and people start talking about something else. After that you will pass out of gossip and into mere signification. The only time anyone will mention your name is when they need a simple way of referring to a specific pattern of social behaviour. You will be living shorthand for something out of date. A ghost. A statue. A joke.’
‘And how exactly can I avoid that fate?’
‘Stop being so predictable. For instance, you might try being old-fashioned just for a night.’
‘That sounds tiresome. What does it involve?’
‘I’ll take you to dinner and there’ll be no absinthe and no ketamine and you can decide whether to sleep with me on the basis of my intelligence and my charm instead of my notoriety and my jawline.’
‘How boring. Where would you take me?’
‘Borchardt’s.’
Adele smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘What about the Schwanneke?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘If it’s the Schwanneke, and you’re nice to the waiter and give him a big tip, then I will condescend to eat with you.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yes. I won’t go home with you afterwards, though. That wouldn’t be very old-fashioned.’
‘But you might kiss me, at least?’
‘I suppose.’ She frowned. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Now you will just spend the whole evening calculating how you can coax me that far.’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, if we get it over with now you shan’t be distracted.’ Adele stood up on tiptoe and kissed him in a way that was both utterly passionless and staggeringly potent. ‘Eight o’clock tomorrow, then?’ she said afterwards.
Loeser wanted to respond but he felt as if both his tongue and his penis were likely to end their days among the shell-shocked in a rural mental institution.
‘Well, anyway, I’m going to find Sartre,’ said Adele. ‘Just because I’m seeing you tomorrow it doesn’t stop me making his acquaintance tonight. Have a nice evening.’ And she was gone.
When all this came back to Loeser in the Romanisches Café, he nearly bent down to give Rackenham a hug, but then he reminded himself that the Englishman hadn’t actually had any part in this victory. Instead, he just picked his book, apologised for the interruption, and went over to sit down with Ziesel.
‘Dieter! How have you been?’ he said, and generously permitted almost an entire phoneme to venture out of Ziesel’s mouth before cutting him off: ‘I’ve been pretty fucking well myself, since you ask. I’m having dinner with Adele Hitler tonight. Adele Hitler. And she kissed me last night.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘She said she won’t sleep with me but, come on, we all know her. And after that I feel fairly sure she’ll be my girlfriend. I’ll be the first to tame the beast. You wouldn’t know about this, of course, but there’s normally something a bit distasteful about going out with someone who’s fucked a lot of other men. “If a woman is good at sucking cock, it can only be because she’s sucked a lot of cocks. That is man’s eternal tragedy.” Somebody said that . . . Goethe, no doubt . . . And sometimes I think it’s only the replacement of the cells of the body that makes sex even conceivable: there’s no way I could kiss a girl’s clitoris if on a molecular level it was the same clitoris that other men had kissed instead of on a mere Ship of Theseus level. But this time I won’t care about any of that. If she’s mine, I’ll be operating on a new plane. Oh my God, Dieter, this is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to anyone. To think – for two years the highlight of my romantic life is flirting with an elderly dental nurse, and now this. Oh, yes, a ham sandwich, some gherkins, and a glass of champagne please – thanks. And I’ve even beaten Marlene! It had never occurred to me that she might take even longer to find a new squeeze than I would, but look at me now. I’ve got Adele Hitler and she’s still got no one. No one!’
Ziesel took the pause for breath that followed as a cue for corroboration and said, ‘Well, no, quite, I mean, Klugweil hardly counts, does he?’
Here it was: the equal and opposite reaction.
‘What on earth has Klugweil got to do with this?’ said Loeser.
Some sort of rapid mental computation clicked across Ziesel’s face. ‘Nothing. He doesn’t have a girlfriend either. That’s what I meant.’
‘You said he “hardly counts”. He hardly counts as what?’
‘Whatever we were talking about. I wasn’t really following.’
‘You were following perfectly well. It sounded almost as if you were trying to express some sort of connection between Klugweil and Marlene.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Don’t try to lie to me, Ziesel.’
Ziesel cringed. ‘I thought you must already know.’
‘That my best remaining friend in Berlin is fucking my ex-girlfriend? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
‘Well—’
‘No, I did not already know that.’
‘But you dumped her. Two years ago. It’s not as if he stole her from you.’
‘Are you now dictating what I am or am not allowed to be angry about? I will be as angry as I fucking like. I don’t need to be issued a licence. Jesus, I am generous enough to let you have lunch with me and this
is what I get in return.’ The waiter arrived with his glass of champagne. Loeser knocked it back and then rushed out of the Romanisches to catch a tram.
Sometimes psychology could be very straightforward: Loeser’s parents had died in a car crash, and ever since he had hated cars. He had never learned to drive, and he refused even to be a passenger in a private vehicle. Taxis were all right because a taxi was essentially a very specific bus. And trains were relaxing. But trams were best. Loeser, as an expert judge of character might have noticed after a lot of close observation, was not a man who shed tolerance and camaraderie in every flake of skin. But somehow, as soon as he stepped on a tram, his usual sensibilities would vanish and he would look around at the other passengers with their mysterious lives and find himself powerfully grateful that he had been born in a big twentieth-century city. He delighted in the tram network’s indifferent generosity: who else would ever work so hard to help you achieve your desires without pausing even for a moment to enquire what those desires might be? Wasn’t that an attitude about one stop short of love? Even a doctor would only do what you asked if he thought it would keep you healthy, while a tram would unhesitatingly take your fare even if you were on your way to jump off a bridge. Loeser couldn’t stand it when his friends complained that the trams were too expensive or too crowded or too erratic. That was so spoiled. Hecht had told him that if he extended this sentiment to the entire brotherhood of man, he would realise he was a communist at heart, but Loeser wasn’t interested. No Party was ever going to get him to a party. To Hecht, he liked to quote from Politics. ‘There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves,’ Aristotle had said, ‘and this condition would be that each instrument could do its own work,’ like the golden robotic handmaidens in the Iliad that Hephaestus had built to help out in his workshop. (Or like a tram with no conductor.)