Death in Rome

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath slept contentedly with his wife Anna, united in one bed for the holiday, though not united in any embrace, at home they had separate beds. Why should he be dissatisfied? His life appeared without blemish, and life on the whole rewarded those who were without blemish. Nationalist thoughts and feelings were once again resurgent in Germany, albeit in a Germany of two separate halves, and personal popularity, reputation, continuity and the democratic process had made Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath the head of his city once more, absolutely legitimately, not by deception, electoral fraud or bribery, still less by the favour of the occupying forces; the people had freely elected him to be their Oberbürgermeister, and even though he had once been Oberpresident and the administrator of great Party sums, he was content, he was without blemish. And yet unfairly a nightmare came to haunt his blameless sleep: brother-in-law Judejahn rode up to his bedside on a snorting steed and in his black uniform, and a choir sang 'Lützow's Wild and Daring Chase', and brother-in-law Judejahn pulled Pfaffrath up on to his snorting steed, and into Lützow's wild and daring chase. And they galloped up to heaven, where Judejahn unfurled a large, luminous swastika flag, and then he dropped Pfaffrath, pushed him away, and Pfaffrath fell fell fell. And against that dream the mighty Oberbürgermeister Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath was powerless

  I'm powerless. I wash. I wash in cold tap water from the sink, and I think of the water flowing through the old Roman pipes, flowing to me from the sad blue hills, across the ruined masonry of old aqueducts as Piranesi drew them, into this basin—I enjoy washing in this water. I walk barefooted across the old stone floor. I feel the firm cool stones underfoot. It's pleasant to feel the stones. I lie down naked on the broad bed. It's good to lie down naked on the broad bed. I don't cover myself. It's good to lie alone. My nakedness lies bare. Naked and bare, I stare up at the naked and bare light-bulb. The flies buzz. Naked. Bare. Music paper lies white on the marble. Or maybe it's not white any more; the flies have smirched the paper. I hear no music. There is no note in me. There is no refreshment. Nothing to refresh the thirsting soul. There is no source. Augustine went into the desert. But in those days the source was in the desert. Rome sleeps. I hear the noise of great battles. It's distant, but it's a terrible tumult. The battle is still far off. It's far off, but it's terrible. It's far off, but coming ever nearer. Soon the dawn will break. I will hear the steps of workers in the streets. The battle will be nearer, and the workers will move towards it. They won't know they're moving into battle. If asked, they will say: 'We don't want to go to battle.' But they will go to battle. The workers are always there, marching into battle. The little Communist girl will be there, too. All proud people will go to battle. I'm not proud, or rather I am proud, but not in that way. I am naked. I am bare. I am powerless. Naked bare powerless.

  PART TWO

  The Pope was praying. He was praying in his chapel, the small private chapel in his apartment in the Vatican, he was kneeling on the purple-carpeted altar steps, the crucified Christ gazing down on him from one painting, the Mother of God looking at him from another, St Peter peering down at him from the clouds. The Pope was praying for Christians and for the enemies of Christendom, he was praying orbi et urbi, he was praying for all the world's priests and all the world's atheists, he prayed to God to enlighten the governments of the world according to His Holy Will, and he prayed to God to vouchsafe His Presence also to the rulers of rebelliously inclined empires, he sought the intercession of the Mother of God for bankers, prisoners, executioners, policemen and soldiers, for atomic physicists and for the sick and maimed of Hiroshima, for workers and for businessmen, for cyclists and for footballers. By virtue of his Holy Office he blessed the nations and the peoples, and the crucified Christ looked down on him in pain, and the Mother of God smiled at him sadly, and St Peter had probably lifted himself off the earth into the clouds, but there was still some doubt as to whether he had reached heaven, because the clouds are only at the very beginning of the way to heaven, floating in the clouds doesn't mean anything, the journey has hardly even begun. And the Holy Father prayed for the dead, he prayed for the martyrs, for those buried in the catacombs, for all those fallen in battle, all those who had died in prisons, and he prayed also for his advisers, for his subtle jurists, for his astute financiers and his worldly-wise diplomats, and he remembered also the dead gladiators of his city, the dead Caesars, the dead tyrants, the dead popes, the dead condottieri, the dead artists, the dead courtesans, he thought of the gods of Ostia Antica, of the spirits of the old gods wandering about the ruins, the pagan sites, the crumbling walls, the Christianized temples, the places of worship stolen from the old heathens. And in his soul he saw the airports, in his soul he saw the magnificent railway station of Rome, he saw hordes of new heathens arriving there every hour, and the newly arrived new heathens mingled with the new heathens who were already resident in the city, and they were more godless and more remote from God than the old heathens, whose gods had turned to shadows. Was the Pope himself a shadow? Was he on the way to becoming one? On the purple floor of his chapel the Pope cast a slim, infinitely fleeting, infinitely moving shadow. The shadow of the Pope darkened the purple carpet to blood-red. The sun had risen. It shone over Rome. Who, should the Holy Father die, would inherit the sacrum imperium ? Who will be the inheritors of the Holy Empire? In what catacombs are they praying, in which prisons are they languishing, on what execution blocks are they dying? No one knows. The sun shone. Its rays were warming, but its light was cold. The sun was a god which had seen many gods come and go; warming, beaming and cold, it had seen them come and go. The sun didn't care on whom it shone. And the heathens in the city and the heathens in the world said sunshine was an astrophysical phenomenon, and they calculated the sun's energy, analysed the solar spectrum and measured the temperature on the sun's surface to the nearest degree centigrade. That too the sun didn't mind. It didn't mind what the heathens thought about it, any more than it minded the prayers and thoughts of priests. The sun shone over Rome. It shone brightly.

  I love mornings in Rome. I get up early; I sleep little. I love the freshness of morning in the narrow lanes in the shadow of the tall buildings. I love the wind as it jumps off the crooked roofs into ancient crannies; it carries greetings from the Seven Hills, it bears the scorn of the gods into the city. The sun teases the towers and domes, it teases the mighty dome of St Peter's, it strokes the old walls, it comforts the moss in the guttering, the mice in the Palatine, the she-wolf imprisoned in the Capitol, the birds nesting in the Colosseum, the cats in the Pantheon. Mass is being celebrated in the churches. I don't need to go far to hear Mass. There's a church beside the Trevi Fountain, and another on the corner of the Via del Lavatore, and half a dozen other houses of God near by, whose names I don't know. I like going into churches. I smell the devout smell of incense, wax, dust, varnish, old robes, old women and old fear, so magnanimous and so petty. I hear the litanies, ab omnipeccato libera, the murmuring monotone, a subitanea et improvisa morte, the rigid and set dialogue between the priest and the old women, who cover their heads, who prostrate themselves to be raised up, who kneel on the floor of the church, te rogamus, audi nos, I hear the tinkling bell of the server. I stand by the door, a stranger, a beggar almost; I stand outside the communion, and deliberately so. I see the candles burning in front of the paintings of the saints, once I bought a candle myself, lit it and put it in an empty niche where no saint yet resided; I offered up my candle to the unknown saint, the way the Romans built a temple to the unknown god, because the probability that we have failed to recognize a saint is far greater than that a god has remained unknown. Maybe the unrecognized saint is even living in our midst, maybe he's someone we pass in the street, maybe he's the newspaper vendor in the passage shouting out the headlines about the latest bank robbery or the chances of war breaking out, perhaps the policeman who stops the traffic in the Via del Tritone is a saint or perhaps the man sentenced to life-imprisonment, who will never walk through Ro
me again, and it could even be that the director of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, which has its grand offices on the Corso, is a saint, and an unknown one at that—the faithful say nothing is impossible for God—so perhaps the banker has also heard the call; but the Holy Father won't come to any of them and wash their feet, because the Holy Father would never guess there were saints living near him, and the Church will never hear of them, never know that they were alive, and were saints. But it's also possible that there are no more saints, the way there are no more gods. I don't know. Maybe the Pope knows. He wouldn't tell me if he knew, and so I won't ask him. There are nice things to do in the mornings. I got my shoes polished; they gleamed up at me like the sun. I had myself shaved; my face was pampered. I walked through the passage; my footsteps on the flagstones made a funny echo. I bought the paper; it smelled of printer's ink, and had the latest data on the condition of the world, material and spiritual. I went into the espresso bar in the passage, went up to the counter and stood among the men, polished, shaven, combed, brushed, clean-shirted, crisply ironed, after-shaved men, and like them I drank hot, strong steam-machine-made coffee, I drank it à la cappuccino with sugar and a froth of milk. I liked standing there, I was happy there and on page 6 of the newspaper I found my picture and my name, and I was happy to see in the Italian paper the picture of the composer of the symphony which was to be played that evening, though I knew no one would take any notice of it, only one or two composers would take a closer look at it to check my gormless expression, the lineaments of scant success, lack of talent or madness in my face, and then the picture would become waste paper, food-wrapping, or fulfil some other function, and that was fine by me, it had my full consent, because I don't want to remain for ever as I am today, I want to live in continual change, and I'm afraid of not existing. And so, for the last rehearsal, I go to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Will she be kind to me? I haven't bought a candle for her, and she may not care for my particular music. I'm on my way to Kürenberg, the sage magician, to the hundred players who perform my score and who intimidate me, I'll probably run into Ilse Kürenberg, who seems not to be affected by anything, who accepts life and death, the way the sun smiles or the rain falls. She is no patron saint, I feel that, but maybe that makes her the goddess of music, or at least Polyhymnia's number two, the muse of the day wearing the mask of flight, callousness or indifference. In the Via delle Muratte, I stop reverently in front of the Società delle Pompe Funebri. Death attracts me; but how laughable are its trappings which man buys to lay himself in the grave with dignity. The funeral director, a fine fat gentleman with curled, dyed-black hair as though his career involved the denial of everything transient, unlocks the door of his shop, and his cat, who had been dreaming on the coffins, on the bronze wreaths, on the cast-iron immortelles that spite decay, corruption, the dirty process of turning-to-earth, his little cat steps alertly up to him, and he greets her pleasantly: 'Good morning, my dear cat'—is it that the man is afraid of mice, is he afraid that mice might gnaw at his funeral pomp in the night, hold a funeral banquet on the paper funeral dress, unpetal the artificial flowers?

  He sat at the bottom end of the dining-room table in the hostel for travelling priests, bathed in a dirty brown penumbra, because the window opened on to a small courtyard, and the curtains were drawn too, so that there was gloom, gloom barely lightened by a few weak electric bulbs, which gave the daylight its tinge of brown. All of them, they looked tired, as though they'd been travelling all night or making a rough crossing, but they'd all spent the night in the hostel, sleeping or waking, lying in their beds, sleeping or waking, and, sleeping or waking, they were proud to be in Rome, the capital of Christendom. Some had already been to early-morning Mass, and now returned to breakfast, which was included in the price, and lacked savour, like breakfast in all seminaries, hospitals and educational establishments everywhere, coffee like dishwater, jam that was without colour and without fruit, an old dry loaf, and they choked it down and pored over their travel guides and wrote out lists of addresses of places they wanted to visit or to which they had introductions, and the head of the hostel asked Adolf whether he would like to take part in a tour of the city, all places of worship would be included, the graves of the martyrs, the places of illumination, the paths of visitations, and the Holy Father was to meet the participants, but Adolf declined, thank you, he preferred to be alone. They were priests, they had been ordained, the bishop had called out their names, they had replied, 'Adsum,' and the bishop had then asked the archdeacon, 'Do you know whether they are worthy?' and the archdeacon had replied, 'Inasmuch as human frailty may be sure, I know and affirm that they are worthy of the burden of office.' Whereupon the bishop had called out, 'Deo gratias,' and they had become priests; they were anointed, they swore obedience to the bishop and his successors, they acquired the power of absolution: 'Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quorum remiseris peccata, remittuntur eis, et quorum retinueris, retenta sunt.' He himself was not yet a priest, he was just a deacon, he was one step below them, they were his superiors, he watched them as they ate their bread, as they made their plans for the day, how they might spend it usefully in Rome, and he asked himself whether God had chosen them, whether God had sent them, ambitious ravens and shy scarecrows, and he doubted it, because then why hadn't God done more, why didn't his servants do more to oppose the world's unhappy course? Adolf had come to them out of great unhappiness, and since it seemed to him that even as a priest he would hardly be able to prevent fresh misery, and he doubted that a pharisee's smug indifference was for him, he asked himself whether he really felt a vocation, if that was what the others felt. He could find no reply, just as he could find no reply to the question whether he should see his mother and confront his father; maybe he did love his parents, or he felt duty-bound to love them, perhaps as a priest it was his particular duty to love them, or again perhaps not, perhaps a priest had to love all men equally. His parents had given him life, but his soul he owed to God, and it wasn't for God's sake that his parents had given him life, not to serve God, not to obey God's commandment; they had given him life out of lust, because they were concupiscent, or out of carelessness or simply because they had wanted a child, or because it was the fashion in the Third Reich to have children, because the Führer loved children, or perhaps it was all of these, lust, carelessness, the wish for offspring and the Führer's favour. And yet God had been in attendance, invisible and unacknowledged, because there is no begetting without a miracle, and even the drunk who rapes the maid by the side of the road breeds by God's inscrutable plan, but Adolf the deacon asked, 'Why why why?' And in the hostel's twilight of dull joylessness and sour devotion Christ did not appear to him, and he was unable to ask him as Peter did, 'Lord, whither goest Thou?'

  They had packed all the picnic things into the car, bread, cold roast, some pheasant, fruit and wine. They were off to Monte Cassino, not to the monastery, but the battlefield. They had got together with other Germans, veterans of the battles, who would guide them, but they were getting behindhand, because they still had to go and see Judejahn first, they wanted to invite him along, too. He surely wouldn't be indifferent to the battlefield, it would be a way of bringing them closer, their enthusiasm for certain shared ideals, their victors' pride even after a lost battle, but Eva, the crucial person in all this, was making trouble, she refused to participate, refused to attend the reunion, refused to go along on the expedition; she wanted to stay in her room, the room at the back with all the kitchen noise and kitchen smells, or she wanted to return to Germany, to go and live in a tiny room there, and they were furious and pleaded with her, 'Why won't you see him, what's he going to think?' and she couldn't tell them, they who had made their peace and lived for the day, made their peace with collapse, betrayal and robbery, she couldn't explain to them that the marriage contract between herself and Judejahn was so inextricably bound up with the Third Reich, had only lived in this one faith, only been fed from this one source, that the bond was broken, it
had ended automatically with Hitler's death, with the passing of the Reich, with foreign troops on German soil mocking the Führer's vision and promises. Whoever didn't understand that, whoever didn't find it inconceivable that one might think and feel in any other way, couldn't be told it, it was better to keep silent and not to insult one's own grief. She wasn't at fault, and nor was Judejahn either, neither of them was at fault in what had happened and what couldn't now be mended, but they both inevitably shared the guilt of every survivor. Eva had borne this guilt, not guilt for building the road that had led to ruin, but guilt at having outlived her salvation, that never left her, and she feared that Judejahn would now have to pick up the burden of mere existence and share it with her, and she didn't want that, she still saw him as blameless, a hero in Valhalla, but a portion of the guilt was given to each living person, and the letter from Judejahn, the news of his survival, had shocked rather than delighted her. But who was there she could tell that to, to whom could she show her dismay? Her son was her enemy. He was her bitterest enemy, if the word bitter means anything, and if she had been religious, she would have cursed him. But he was the religious one, and as a heathen she had no curse at her disposal, as a heathen she was deprived, she didn't believe in curses, or the withdrawal of blessings, she believed in the life of the race, and for anyone who trespassed against that there was only death. But she couldn't kill him. She no longer had the power. She could only forget him. Forgetting took time, and she was trying to forget him, but now Judejahn's appearance reminded her of everything, all collapse, all defeat, all severance, and she didn't want to see Judejahn. She stayed in the hotel, and she felt she was being scourged.