The Witches' Book of the Dead

by Christian Day

  At any rate, a film needs to be made with him, a comedy, Nägeli will fly to Japan with German Lufthansa (or travel by ship, whatever he likes), where he can reunite with his fiancée in Tokyo and then shoot a film there that will put everything that has ever been made to proverbial shame (Nägeli also ought to bear in mind his secret trip to Italian Somaliland, those film shoots there for Flaubert’s Salammbô that were abandoned after a week, what a catastrophe, water under the bridge, not worth mentioning, wink, wink). Your associate Arnold Fanck has also been asked, it must be said in fairness, but he is rather more grounded in his work while you, my good Swiss, are a film director with his head in the heavens, the clear ether, the capricious froth of the sun, the shadows of the clouds, aren’t you?

  And then, without waiting for a reply, Hugenberg stands up, his legs splayed apart, swaying slightly as if he were a captain at sea, grows yet taller, puffs himself up, physically filling out the void his aura is projecting, stares at Nägeli, and thunders: Two hundred thousand dollars are completely at his disposal. He may pick his own topic, a Japanese-German film company is being established for him, he just has to make a movie, with Zeiss lenses, lord, yes, a sound film, whatever, our pal Rühmann here in the main role, everything is up for discussion, it doesn’t even have to be a comedy, Nägeli can call all the shots.

  Nägeli leans over the table to that indomitable man with the crew cut, gazes up at him, stunned, takes a gulp of the sparkling wine (one of the gangsters has inadvertently ashed in his glass); never before has he so vividly been served up the madness and megalomania of the Germans. Up onstage a slender elf haltingly loosens the brassiere from her boyish breasts.

  Why? Why all this? The tycoon shakes with laughter, and it sounds like a rachitic goat. Why, indeed? Why, Hugenberg doesn’t just want to snub the Americans, he wants to get out of the unbreachable contracts they’ve entered into with Paramount, then he of course wants to bring in the Japanese, who reject sound film and will sooner or later subdue the Asian continent, just imagine those gigantic markets, they can’t simply be surrendered to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer without a fight, the globe must be overrun with German films, colonized with celluloid. After all, film is nothing but cellulose nitrate, gunpowder for the eyes. Cinema, Hugenberg says, lighting one of Putzi’s cigars, cinema is war by other means. Nägeli, flummoxed: everyone has gone insane.

  And now Siegfried Kracauer turns up staggering, terrifically drunk, the head of the Frankfurter Zeitung’s culture section. He stumbles while shaking hands with Nägeli and Hugenberg and Putzi and Heinz—he is to convey best, sincere, warm wishes from Bloch and Benjamin (the irony dissipates unheard), soon he’ll probably have to leave Germany, it’s looking grim here, but at least there’s still our brother Kästner over in Babelsberg who’ll write the best screenplays—Hugenberg, who now no longer wishes to ignore this hostile tone, turns away in disgust.

  Nägeli asks for a cigarette, whereupon he is handed a glass of warm, flat beer, the way Englishmen like to drink it, he knocks it back in a single swig, then another, now Putzi is ordering whiskey on top of that, then finally Champagne once more, down the hatch with it, too, four glasses, two hundred thousand dollars. Oh, fair, drunken Germany, Nägeli thinks.

  A smoking woman slinks up to the table imperiously and with great self-confidence, a film critic, Hooray, she shouts, but of course, certainly, she knows all of Nägeli’s films, kudos, a pleasure, really, Die Windmühle being a thunderous masterpiece.

  Then she performs some sort of coin trick, and while the orchestra launches itself from an appealing popular tune (during which the now stark-naked troupe of sprites leaves the nebulous stage, to the right and to the left, with astonishing dispassion) to the safety of a slightly stale tarantella, Kracauer elbows Nägeli in the side; that’s Lotte Eisner, notorious for her ruthless hatchet jobs of films that surge against the rocks of her razor-sharp mind and are there adjudged bad or (even worse) insignificant. And Eisner, well, she winks at Nägeli, blowing him a kiss.

  Putzi straightens his cuffs and tops up everyone’s glass; a waiter invariably positioned at attention near the group is quickly chased off to fetch another bottle of Champagne. And now Lotte Eisner quite brazenly seizes the hand of the powerful UFA lord, gives it a squeeze, and says: There is no better filmmaker than that shy Swiss over there, how fortunate, no? that he is not a Jew.

  Abashed silence, but faraway, dense Hugenberg is visibly stirred by this joke (which it is not) while the lickspittle from Nordisk, who has of course first waited for Hugenberg’s reaction, eagerly and with a click of his heels raises his Champagne glass, and Heinz Rühmann breaks into a quite malevolent sneer. And lo: even on the countenances of the revolver men, fossilized for hours now, there appears the chaste hint of a smile.

  25.

  And Kracauer and Eisner (who, Nägeli notices in his inebriation, has a wonderfully pretty pursed mouth)—having finally given the slip to Hugenberg and his blond little monkey Heinz and Putzi the Golem at the Hotel Adlon around three thirty in the morning—now embark on a breakneck taxi ride with Nägeli, during the course of which he must request the vehicle be stopped at once, there, at the edge of the Tiergarten. Exeunt. The sky, it plunges upward, dark and starless.

  Nägeli kneels down on one leg, retching and retching, while bracing himself on the black automobile’s rear fender, his face contorted theatrically and illuminated in profile by the taxi’s yellow taillights (as though he himself were suddenly starring in one of those garishly overblown, now slightly antiquated German films with overly mannered acting), then relief; he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, Kracauer putting his arm around his shoulders warmly and amicably; they climb back into the car, and Lotte Eisner holds a vial of Hoffmann’s anodyne under the nostrils of this slender Swiss soul.

  And now it continues, this nocturnal swoon through Berlin, under the light of streetlamps blurred by intoxication, past soaring steel colossi, past dozens of clownishly made-up whores frozen in salacious poses on the curb, past shoeblacks, rat catchers, disabled bodies. Trucks, loaded with jeering youths racing from one political melee to the next, speed through red traffic lights.

  And above them, yet again, as if they were driving in circles, shimmers the noxiously green neon-light ad of the Philips company, extolling the virtues of pentode tubes.

  What nerve you had with this Hugenberg fellow, Nägeli says to Eisner. The truth is, she replies, we’ve got maybe another six months to live in Germany. At most. That’s why it is essential not to engage in self-denial anymore, not for another minute.

  Yes, that goes for him, too, Nägeli, Kracauer adds, a director should believe in the absoluteness of his subject, yes, yes, he must believe in vampires and in ghosts and in miracles. Only then would emerge, presto: Truth. Nägeli nods, swallowing down the acrid taste of what he has just vomited up; yes, they are right, his new friends.

  Up front, the taxi driver then says something very ugly in cowardly grousing Berlin dialect: The Jews are to blame for the whole mess, for all of this. All the better if they are chased off, to Timbuktu, deep into the most distant jungle where those vermin belong. Whoever doesn’t want to live like a respectable German here can simply get going, or get got, and he draws the edge of his hand across his gullet.

  Nägeli wants to give him a smack from behind; Lotte holds on to his arm, it’s better to just ignore these sorts of things, but then Kracauer, who is sitting up front next to the driver, pokes him in the eyes with two outstretched fingers, the chauffeur cries out, jerking his hands from the steering wheel to his face, and the now driverless Mercedes swerves to the left, just barely missing a car in the oncoming lane (the honking races past, as if they were seated in some diabolical sound tunnel, first directly in front, then from the side, finally from behind), avoids a stately chestnut tree on the left, on the right an oak; then the taxi smashes into an advertising pillar, and there it comes to rest, smoking and with a steam-sputtering, accordioned radiator hood, beneath one of those gaudil
y colored posters touting the rather untenable promises of Electoral List No. 2 (Bread and Jobs).

  Nägeli and Eisner are heaved forward slightly, but aside from the bloody nose of Kracauer, whose fit of laughter reveals a row of teeth with blood from his mouth climbing up the gaps between them, no one has come to grief.

  Two gendarmes who appear more at a saunter than at a run are handed dollar bills by Lotte Eisner; they disappear again (over at Nollendorfplatz there are more important matters anyway—a goon squad of recently banned Brownshirts has come upon a detachment of the likewise banned Hamburg Red Navy; blood is flowing there in much greater quantities), Kracauer gives the chauffeur, who now resembles a Teutonic, comedic Virgil cowering beside his battered taxi, a well-placed kick, they hasten down the boulevard, to the left, right, left again, more fits of laughter, more hugging, and then, in a conspiratorial flat on Tauentzienstrasse, on whose pale-green velvet wallpaper the first shudders of daybreak will soon tremble, the three lie recumbent on the rug before the hearth, smoking, and Lotte and Siegfried are certain of having found in him the right one, and into the intimacy of this moment they plant the thought that Nägeli, whom they consider to be the very best, must make a horror film, an allegory, if you like, of the coming dread.

  And Nägeli, who on the one hand sees flashing before him Hugenberg’s two hundred thousand magical dollars (which are, alas, pegged to the requirement that he cast Heinz Rühmann) and on the other hand finds the gigantic irony of this idea downright wonderful, laughs, blowing smoke up at the ceiling, and the longed-for deliverance is here; the whole time he’s thought he wouldn’t let that blond cretin in front of his camera, and yes, that is exactly the idea that’s been eluding him for months; he’ll shoot a horror film, it just has to be made palatable to UFA somehow, he’ll simply no longer mention Rühmann, yes, he’ll go to Japan and film there—after all, he was invited, or so he understood Hugenberg earlier—everything will be paid for. And it’s really quite obvious: the undead fiend in his film must be a good-looking, slim Asian man, which is to say, exactly the opposite of blond Rühmann.

  Right, one just has to think big, everything else will take care of itself, Lotte Eisner giggles, opening another bottle of Champagne, and Kracauer, who has wandered off now into the kitchen to poach some eggs, calls back: Why, of course, a woman could also play the part of the living dead, an Asian woman, Anna May Wong, for example, then you’d be rid of Rühmann permanently. His eggs do not turn out, so he simply beats another half dozen into the skillet and in no time carries the omelet into the salon, impishly whistling The Internationale.

  Two hundred thousand isn’t nearly enough, you really have to fleece the Reich, Nägeli must meet Hugenberg again and demand three, oh, why not? four hundred thousand to fulfill UFA’s fantasies of world domination. But that’s a gigantic scam, Protestant Nägeli protests, he’s never done anything like this before, nor does he have any ideas, at which Lotte interjects, it’s the others who are dishonest, the furschlugginer Reich ministers, the purveyors of culture, the capitalist profiteers, yes, even the journalists who support this glaring corruption and this brutish power structure, who support the pandering and preservation of their skittishly defended economic security with their irrelevant, mediocre scribblings.

  She could just vomit, vomit, if it weren’t so sad. Kracauer smiles and gently touches Eisner’s arm. At some point the birds begin their song outside, and the discussions melt away, becoming softer and one with the rising arpeggio of the early morning street noise.

  And so it happens that Nägeli, after having slept facedown for eight hours on Kracauer’s sofa without moving a muscle, his head howling needles, casually telephones Hugenberg’s office, requests an appointment, and even keeps it that afternoon, too, despite his Swiss conscience’s suggestion that he not go through with it for heaven’s sake and instead hurry back to his safe Zurich, there’s still time, last chance not to agree to this misplaced Faustian pact, everything can still be broken off helter-skelter, basta, bupkes, finito, finale. But of course he does end up going to Hugenberg’s office. On his way there, untold numbers of swastikas line Berlin’s façades; like mindless swallows they hang there.

  26.

  Chaplin more or less forced Amakasu to hold this press conference, for which over a hundred journalists—the entire regiment of international writers accredited in Japan and their photographers—now gather in the ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, which has been commandeered expressly for this purpose. The French are there, the Italians, the Swedes, the Russians, the Americans of course, and the Germans, then Chinese, easily a dozen Englishmen; there is simply no end to the upraised steno pads, the sketching draftsmen, and the popping bursts of flashbulbs.

  They have, as always, agreed on English as a mediating language, and dim-witted, indeed almost impertinent, questions tumble through the room. Is there now, in his opinion, a power vacuum in Tokyo, did the young officers act on their own, how exactly did Chaplin escape the assassination attempt, has the film star now armed himself in anticipation of further attempts on his life, and if so, with what? Does he own a revolver? If so, what make? Will Chaplin now leave Japan with unpleasant impressions of the country? They of course wouldn’t be able to hold it against him—whom they erroneously insinuate to be an American—but didn’t one also have to say in fairness that the murder attempt was directed more at him as a symbol, at the Little Tramp, at the silhouette of an actor, and not at him personally?

  While the questions rain down upon Chaplin, he seeks to find a line between sensitive Englishman and bumbling likeable figure; it would perhaps be incorrect to say that he is fidgeting around; just because he is grimacing and gesticulating about and daubing his forehead doesn’t mean he isn’t relying on the impact of his charm, perfected over the course of what feel like centuries of public appearances; coquettishness also belongs to his repertoire, an ostensible shyness, evasion. And the journalists buy it, this able performance of the idiot savant; in the end what is he even supposed to say about it anyway? He is an actor, and the exquisite byzantinisms of Japanese statecraft remain for him as arcane as the complexities of his Swiss wristwatch. Besides, he is drunk, again.

  Amakasu sits next to him, smiling stonily, half turning back time and again to the two Foreign Ministry officers flanking him, feeling that if he does not move aside fast enough they will stab him from behind the next moment or loop a garrote around his neck, put a foot into the small of his back, and shout Ten thousand years! Banzai!

  Images from a waking dream of recently experienced indignities appear, and although he bridles at their manifestation, they are as palpable and real as this room full of journalists and the officers standing behind him.

  The invitation to dinner from a family of aristocrats close to the emperor, which he was of course simply delighted to accept, the offer to sit at the prince’s table, to the left of His Highness himself, even though the seat should actually have gone to those of higher rank—despite his more humble origins Amakasu had finally felt he had arrived.

  He had chatted with refined politeness and elegance as the servants whisked around him; the others had, or so he thought, enjoyed his company, asking him for his opinion, which he had revealed to them drop by drop, politely masked, admittedly, as befitting the occasion and the guests. It had been a glorious evening, and he had returned to his ordinary home euphoric and in high spirits.

  Two weeks later he had been invited there once more; filled with anticipation, he had a servant show him from the villa’s entrance to his seat, which, however, was now located at the farthest imaginable chair from the prince, between a rubber trader from Indochina and a bespectacled, hirsute Greek danseuse who had obviously seen better days.

  Try as he might, he was unable to fathom what he could have done wrong; it was as if someone had switched off the sun. The dinner discussions proceeded sluggishly and laboriously, and the prince, who at the previous supper had virtually paid court to him, not only ignored him completely
, but had, it seemed, even instructed the other guests to avoid him as conspicuously as though he had been stricken all of a sudden by a disfiguring and contagious ailment. Even the rubber trader evaded his verbal advances. He was never invited back.

  When the press conference is finally over, he still feels shame at this agonizing memory. His ears seem a few degrees warmer than the rest of him. He exhales audibly.

  The two officers, as it turns out, are not assassins at all, and instead escort him and Chaplin to the door of the Imperial Hotel, through the throng of journalists still photographing with enthusiasm, and into a waiting limousine, and one of them, a young lieutenant with almost transparent jug ears, grazes his sleeve, bows deeply, and says he has such great esteem for Chaplin, would it perhaps be possible for him, Amakasu, to ask for his autograph, it’s for his young daughter, of course only if it doesn’t cause all too great a fuss.

  27.

  Deposited in Hugenberg’s outer office by the secretary, a shrew as coarse as she is sturdy (she orders him to sit and wait on a chair in the middle of the room as though he were an improper little lapdog to be punished), Nägeli rolls a pale-violet pencil (which had materialized there through the ether from God knows where) back and forth on the floor with his shoe, looks at his watch, searches in vain for an ashtray, pockets the pack of cigarettes again, glances at his watch once more when, after five or six minutes that stretch out like chewing gum, the double doors open and the tycoon appears, blustering up a grin, his arms flung apart, his palms gaping as wide as shovels for a welcoming embrace.

  Whiskey glasses are filled, ice cubes tossed in with a clink, oil paintings on the walls of his titanic office pointed at: Voilà!—Ingres, Gros, Delacroix, de Neuville, yes, only the French are able to paint war appropriately, just look at that, goddamn, how precisely that’s done, those muscular, bleeding flanks of the fatally wounded horse on the battlefield at Borodino.