by Uwe Tellkamp
‘You know very well you’re talking nonsense, Philipp,’ Meno broke in calmly. ‘What is there I could say about your theses and figures? I haven’t even read them.’
‘I must speak up for him. He really stood up for my book and just because Redlich supported him doesn’t make that any less courageous. You came barging in with your position paper.’
‘Came barging in my arse! I’ll tell you something. The meeting was actually arranged to discuss points that came up in the Institute’s paper. What you writers had to do with it is a mystery to me; perhaps he just invited you out of cowardice, as a let-out … After all, one or other of his reptilian secretaries will have prepared him on the subject.’
‘Philipp …’ Meno nodded a warning in the direction of the conductor sitting, motionless, at the controls at the other end of the car. Philipp was unimpressed. ‘OK, if you insist, they’re not reptiles, just toadies, jellyfish! – And that’s a standard answer anyway: I’m not familiar with this, I don’t understand it, submit it to those whose responsibility it is.’
‘Is it Barsano’s responsibility?’
‘Don’t you realize what’s at stake here, Judith?’
‘You call her Judith, aha,’ Meno broke in, surprised. ‘You’re getting loud,’ he hurried to add when he saw the two of them exchange glances.
‘Eschschloraque would have a witty response ready for that. Something like: Beethoven is still Beethoven no matter at what level the volume control is set,’ Philipp said in a fairly arrogant tone of voice. Schevola breathed on the window, wiped it, tried to see out. ‘And you think he’ll be happy to see us. Not everyone likes unannounced visitors. Especially not here in East Rome. Perhaps he’s an evening type and is working on one of his plays in which nightwatchmen are chairmen of the State Council in disguise.’
‘That I’m coming, he knows, that you’re coming, he doesn’t. Surprises stimulate him, he says. – And you haven’t answered my question, sweetheart.’
Philipp, Meno thought, had a peculiar sense of humour now and then. Judith Schevola seemed amused by the nickname and the use of the familiar ‘du’, perhaps she’d heard them more than once already. ‘We’ll continue the discussion outside, Comrade Professor, we’ll be there in a moment.’ Lifting up her face, she mimicked the hard-boiled vamp: ‘Baby.’
Philipp rang the bell when Kosmonautenweg came in sight. The car slipped into the stopping bay, shuddered as it came to a halt; the car going in the opposite direction had stopped on the other side. Meno saw two passengers sitting in it; they nodded to him: Däne, the music critic, and Joffe, the lawyer, who seemed to be having an animated conversation. Perhaps about the Semper Opera House, which was due to be reopened on 13 February, perhaps Joffe was asking Däne about a composer for an opera since he’d written a crime libretto from which Erik Orré had performed some gory street ballads the previous winter. The doors creaked open, Philipp gave Judith his hand to help her alight, one of his inconsistently bourgeois courtesies, as Marisa would have said; Meno was tempted to ask after her but decided not to. After a short wait, during which no other passengers appeared, the conductor set off again with the empty car. Gesticulating vigorously, the critic and the lawyer glided on uphill.
‘Since we’re talking about modes of address, shouldn’t we use the “du” to each other?’ Judith Schevola sat on the handrail and tried to slide down but the drizzle had made it tacky. Philipp Londoner laughed, gave Meno a friendly, condescending pat on the shoulder, ‘Want to bet he says no, Judith? With me he was as coy as a young virgin even though I’m the brother of his ex-wife. I’ll never forget what you said to me: “There’s nothing we’ve been through together that would justify such a step, we haven’t fought together yet, we don’t yet know what we should think of each other.” Meno, our little warrior. What made you say that?’
‘As long as it doesn’t give you another opportunity to mock me – experience. I don’t like being disappointed, that’s all. And I don’t like disappointing other people either.’ He turned to Judith Schevola. She was watching the other car disappear like a brightly lit bathyscaphe in the tangle of the steel supports. ‘I don’t want you to feel insulted but I think it’s better if a certain distance between author and editor is retained. What would you do if, while addressing you as “du”, I tore one of your chapters to pieces?’
‘I’d say, “You arsehole” – using the familiar “du” – and bear it with a smile.’
‘Why don’t you give it a try, Meno? Vain as she is, she certainly won’t laugh.’ That evening Philipp was clearly enjoying provoking her.
‘Vanity’s when you can say to your image in the mirror: so you had a bad night too? What about it?’ she said, turning impatiently to Meno.
‘I’d prefer to sick to the more formal “Sie”. You just wait and see, you’ll be grateful to me for it one day. Moreover I never want to see you as a moaning minnie. There’s something off-putting about wailing geniuses, they lose status, and familiarity leads to the sight of rooms with dog ends and mouldy biscuits lying all over the place. Not something for me.’
‘Well, that’s that sorted out then,’ Judith Schevola replied, somewhat put out.
‘I suspect a man’s never refused you something in such a matter-of-fact way before.’ Philipp grinned. Suddenly his expression darkened again. ‘Let’s get on. If we’re going to surprise Eschschloraque, then at least let’s do it punctually.’
Kosmonautenweg was a series of steep winding bends, ending at steps that led through romantic woodland, held back by walls, down to Pillnitzer Landstrasse. In winter the steps were slippery, anyone going up had to pull themselves up laboriously by the rail, carrying the shopping they’d had to do in the town on their back, like a mountaineer, in order to keep both hands free. In the summer there was a smell of moss, it was damp and cool as a gorge on the steps that cut through between Eschschloraque’s house and a guarded property, the entrance to which was blocked by a broad iron gate; the park had been allowed to run wild. Rumour had it that Marn, the right-hand man of the Minister of Security, would come here to recover from the stresses and strains of his responsibilities in the capital. A further set of steps linked Kosmonautenweg with the higher parts of East Rome, they were hardly wide enough for one person on foot and now, when the autumn rains had begun, full of rotting leaves on which it was easy to slip; the wooden handrail was rotten and longish sections had completely broken off.
‘How’s your nephew doing?’
‘Not particularly well, I assume. He’s got to go into the army soon. Three years.’
‘I have pleasant memories of that evening in your garden,’ Schevola said after a while. ‘I thought your nephew – he’s called Christian, isn’t he? – was, in a strange sort of way, nice.’
‘What d’you mean, in a strange sort of way? Are you going in for baby-snatching now?’ Philipp laughed but it didn’t sound genuine.
‘Very charming you revolutionaries are. But for you lot revolution’s a male thing anyway.’
‘When it comes to fighting, yes.’
‘While your wives are at home warming your slippers. By nice in a strange sort of way I mean that normally I can’t take a man I call nice seriously. Your nephew’s nice but I still take him seriously, that’s what I find strange. He seems to know a lot. Perhaps a bit too much for his age. And he’s attractive to women. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem to be aware of that.’
‘I hope you’re not going to put that idea into his head,’ Meno warned more brusquely than he intended.
‘Don’t worry,’ Judith Schevola replied, ‘I don’t believe he’s unthinking and carnal enough to climb into bed with a woman who’s twice his age and could therefore be his mother. There are men who, in a certain way, always go to bed with their mother and others who hate that. He probably belongs in the second category.’
‘Young things belong together.’
‘How tactful you are, Philipp. From mature women young men can learn what sensual fulfil
ment and discretion are. And they’d soon lose the desire to play war games.’
‘You have an uncomfortable way of assessing other people,’ Philipp remarked, hurt. ‘You often base it on mere outward appearances.’
‘Don’t you start getting profound with me, Comrade Professor. – Revolutionaries! You only have to scratch the surface a bit and the home sweet home appears. And a kitchen with a stove and a red-and-white-checked tablecloth with a cosy samovar making heartwarming drinks to go with the cake.’
‘You’re accusing me of that? Me? Of being a bourgeois old fogey? I think you need someone to knock some sense into you.’
‘Don’t worry, my friend, there are lots who’re trying to do that. By the way, you’re welcome to bring your little Chilean woman along. I was never particularly taken with middle-class morality.’
‘Here we are,’ Meno said.
Eschschloraque’s house was built into the slope. A dilapidated-looking bridge, with cannonballs in iron baskets and chains between them as a guard rail, led from the wrought-iron gate, a bent bee lily at the top, to the first floor of the foreign-looking building set amid gloomy firs. The street lamp on the steps down to Pillnitzer Landstrasse cast a faint light over the gable and part of the roof that, with its ornamental shingles, looked scaly, like dragon’s skin. ‘Cinnabar House,’ Judith Schevola murmured, reading the inscription written underneath a rusty culverin between half-timbered gables.
Eschschloraque flung the door open, surveyed Philipp, who still had his hand stretched out for the bell push, then Meno and Schevola. ‘We’re busy with glue,’ he said, nodding for them to come in. ‘For the more advanced part of the evening we had thought of lectures on repetitions and preservatives. Anyone who has something to contribute to that should not be shy and raise their hand; and it would make the quality of the Michurin dinner seem forgivable should anyone urgently desire to correct something even while chewing. Albin!’ he cried to the smiling young man waiting behind him in the hall who seemed to favour the same pastel-colour suits as Eschschloraque, although Albin’s was an iridescent lilac and Eschschloraque’s the silvery shade of fishes’ fins. ‘We have visitors.’
Albin was wearing a monocle and introduced himself with a bow, sketched a kiss on the hand for Judith Schevola. ‘Albin Eschschloraque, whether pleased to meet you remains to be seen. I’m – the son. My father gave me strength and height, my lack of application. My mother, I beg you, nothing at all. Welcome.’ He pointed to a row of sandals and through the barely furnished hall into the living room. It was like the spacious cell of Japanese monks that seemed to receive them with a severely elegant mien; a sparse room, not made for putting your feet up in the evening; two desktops on roughly hewn sections of tree trunk stood facing each other, some distance apart, like proud, unapproachable chieftains, a plank, sticking out into the room from a bookshelf, like a springboard, held a few little bonsai trees up to the bright white of a spotlight. On the sofa under it Vogelstrom, the painter, was sitting with a sketchbook on his knees; he’d torn out several pages and placed them down in front of him on the low wooden table with the clearly defined wavy grain. The ‘Michurin dinner’ kept its head down in a stainless-steel cart. The most striking thing in the room was an aquarium where, in pleasant, slow motion, colour-coordinated choreography, a wide variety of tropical fish alternated in the dreamy oxygen bubbles of its clarity.
‘Philipp, my friend, before you reveal to me how understanding Barsano was of your, I’m sure, polished, trenchant report, sparkling with figures, I’d like to ask you to cast your eye over my aquarium. Can you tell what heinous deed this individual’ – he pointed to Albin, who was still standing by the door, arms folded – ‘committed against my darlings, against their Mozartian weightlessness? And you, Rohde, you who are usually slitting allusions with red commas, can you see it? Ah, Fräulein Schevola, you who have Schiffner piping like a billy-goat, demonstrate your gift for observation undimmed by that fine bottle of Scheurebe, the label of which you were just examining.’
‘You have to admit,’ Albin explained, detaching himself from the door frame and approaching, theatrically limp-wristed, ‘that it can’t have been easy. The slipperiness of fish in general and of their tail-fins in particular, thin and gossamery as they are, resists the adhesive power of even the best glues. And then glue is water soluble-ollubel-wollubel, oh yes.’ He giggled extravagantly. ‘But in this country many things are possibul. Even special adhesives. A spot on every tail-fin, slight pressure in the hollow of your hand – they wriggle like butterflies – then straight back into their element. See, it sticks, they’re heading pointlessly in different directions.’
‘You’ve stuck the tails of my most valuable fish together,’ Eschschloraque retorted, taking a ham sandwich from the Michurin cart. ‘Was it an ideological test? This way or that? What were you up to?’
‘Science, Father. The gentlemen wanted a report.’
‘Science! That is a deity to whom I will gladly make a sacrifice.’ Eschschloraque picked up a net and took out the two fish that had been stuck together. ‘I’ll show you, Albin.’ He waved over his son, who adjusted his monocle suspiciously. ‘You’re going to do me ill, sir. Even Vogelstrom has noticed and is covering the caricature, which is not me, in tinder and fungus.’
‘Oh, just come here.’
With one bound Eschschloraque was with Albin, who had stepped towards him, grabbed him by the cheeks and tried to stuff the fish in his mouth. Albin didn’t spit them out but bit into them and chewed, stretching the second fish like a rubber toy animal and tearing it off. He threw it back into the aquarium, where the fish, injured and with only half a tail-fin, swam behind a stone. ‘I need something to help me digest it. Are there no bitters there?’ Albin rummaged round in the cart. ‘Typical, they always forget them.’
‘You misbegotten son of mine.’ Eschschloraque calmly lit a cigarette. ‘If you want to be a dramatist and outshine me, you’ll have to think up better things than that. Although I do admit –’
‘– that I’m making progress? Have you any idea, dearest Father, what it cost me to acquire that special glue. I had to make serious sacrifices.’ In a pretence of indignation Albin let his monocle fall out. Judith Schevola leant over to Meno – while all this was going on they’d sat down on the sofa beside Vogelstrom, without his either uttering a word of greeting or looking up from his sheets of paper – ‘Albin resembles a castrated seal, don’t you think? The apples on his tie are so … tasteful. Should I get you a bowl of peanut puffs?’ she whispered. Meno looked at her out of the corner of his eye, she seemed determined to enjoy the scene to the full. ‘How do you know what castrated seals look like?’
‘Do you mind if I smoke, Herr Eschschloraque? – I have inclinations of which you know nothing,’ she said to Meno, letting the first smoke dribble out of her nose.
‘Would it perhaps not be better if we left?’ Philipp asked; the expression on his face had become cold.
‘Why the hurry, my dear guests? Are you not enjoying yourselves?’ Eschschloraque gave a mocking smile. ‘So what did it cost you, sonny? By the way, I suggest you check your gestures in the mirror. I know that it’s a cliché that pooftas make poofish movements, but you’re doing it like the worst possible actor.’
‘I must get it from you.’ Albin slurped his coffee with relish. ‘Always Goethe, Goethe, Goethe and nothing else … And then the most you get is amusement, a bite with your false teeth. A couple of jokes snatching at the Holy Grail when in fact it was just a cake tin floating past. Raspberry sauce instead of blood … The fate of the clown.’
‘Do you know what it is that he holds against me?’ Eschschloraque flicked cigarette ash into the aquarium. ‘The fact that I’ve seen through him, right through to the aqueous humour of his expressionless eyes. He’s so desperate, deep down inside he loves me, that’s the problem, but he would rather the floor swallowed him up than descend to sentimentality …’
‘It was you who called me Albin!
Albin! Only ducks or penguins are called Albin. How can one be taken seriously with a name like that!’
‘Yes, that’s it. Can you imagine that a dramatist who’s called Albin can be really good? Talented fathers almost never have talented children, they say. But does that mean that talented fathers should deny themselves the joy! of having children? That was what occurred to me at the moment when I … hmm, let’s say: set you off on your journey. I should have acted in a more responsible way.’ Eschschloraque scrutinized his son’s face, which he held in the harsh light under the bonsai shelf, to see what effect his words had, innocently opening wide his long lashes, silky like a woman’s. ‘The pleasure was at best moderate, anyway.’
‘Even wearily fired cannons can hit the mark.’ Albin was white as a sheet, though his movements were calm and measured, not even the flame of his lighter trembled as he lit himself a cigarillo.
‘That’s enough, the pair of you.’ Philipp stood up, waving his position paper. ‘We’ve more important things to talk about.’
‘If you think so,’ Eschschloraque replied.
‘Damn it all, no one’s listening to me. Here you are, indulging in your private quarrels, which, I have to say, I find in pretty bad taste, especially in front of –’
‘– your guests?’ Albin broke in, unimpressed. ‘So what? Let them learn how far admiration can go. Guests? They don’t bother me,’ he went on with a smug pout.
‘I think the way the pair of you are behaving is not only in bad taste but immature. Surely in a family it must be possible to treat each other normally, naturally –’
‘Normally! Naturally!’ Eschschloraque sounded amused. ‘Two pathologists are discussing their clientele. “He was an artist. He died a natural death,” one says. “So he killed himself?” says the other. My dear Philipp –’
‘Eddi –’
Albin burst out in a fit of squealing laughter that Eschschloraque cut off with the remark that it sounded silly rather than genuine, that people who had imaginary complaints often laughed in that way. – Complaints! Albin laughed even louder. Then he suggested they should listen to Philipp at last, for what would become of revolutions without position papers. Passing over the comment in silence, Philipp, head bowed and hands clasped behind his back, raising his fingers to emphasize his succinct exposition, started to explain the ideas his planning staff had come up with. They concerned the reform of economic policy, a topic that clearly bored Judith Schevola, for she started peeking over Vogelstrom’s shoulder. The artist was sketching Philipp’s face in various stages between indignation and fervour until Philipp concluded, ‘You’re no more interested than Barsano was’, and dropped his arms in resignation. ‘If not even you, for whom socialist ideals still mean something, will listen to me …’