How German Is It

by Walter Abish

  What is it that you really want? Paula had once asked him.

  Redistribution of wealth, he said instantaneously.

  No. What do you really want?

  Success, he said cautiously.

  No. Not success. What do you really want?

  Why not success?

  You’re terribly devious, did you know that?

  No.

  If only I knew what you really wanted I would be able to trust you, she said in all sincerity.

  You can trust me.

  No.

  .

  8

  By now he liked to think that most people in Würtenburg had put him out of their minds. His somewhat inept performance in court, as reported widely in the press and on TV and radio, had fortunately been superseded by more recent events. An earthquake in Chile, a famine in Ethiopia, a coup d’etat in Tanzania, widespread use of torture in Latin America and Greece. Once in a while, one of Paula’s friends, a fellow activist, now serving ten to twenty, or was it fifteen to thirty years, for a long list of alleged crimes—including: arson, assault, kidnapping, armed robbery, first- and second-degree murder—would go on a hunger strike and receive some mention in the newspapers. But as far as he, Ulrich, was concerned, no one was really interested in his whereabouts. No one could possibly care what he planned to write next. It would not have surprised him to learn that a number of people familiar with his work expected to find in his next book some form of explanation for his obviously—to them—aberrant behavior … an explanation that struck him as being totally redundant. He had been led to believe that many of his former friends were convinced he had lied to the police and in court in order to extricate himself and Paula from the mess in which they found themselves. But he hadn’t. He merely told the truth to save their skin. It was not necessary to fabricate anything. He did not even have to worry about being caught in a contradiction. Still, it came to the same thing. What he had to say enabled the Justizministerium to build an airtight case against the eight people who had frequently eaten at his table and, for reasons he still could not explain, given his lack of enthusiasm, had entrusted him with their objectives and their plans. Perhaps they had reasoned that, after all, Ulrich von Hargenau, the elder, had died—or so it would appear—without divulging the names of his fellow conspirators. So why couldn’t they expect Ulrich Hargenau, the younger, to follow his example? Of course, the police had known all along that Paula had been one of the principal strategists, the planner, the brain behind so many of the Einzieh “war games,” just as she must have known that he, or rather their hallowed name Hargenau, would pull her out of the mess. And it did. Of course, it took some doing. A number of hasty telephone calls, a few conferences, some tears, a few negotiations, a few promises, and the Justizministerium was prepared to overlook, this once, their indiscretions. Their youthful indiscretions. The day after the trial the newspapers quoted Paula as saying pointedly that she and her group had been betrayed. No, she said. She would prefer not to name names. Well, she had said rather smugly when they briefly met in their house, this affair can’t have hurt the sales of your books, or has it?

  It was probably true. His books could now be found in almost every house in Würtenburg, on the shelf next to the unread books by Brumhold and the unread books by Achsel Weinradt and Klaus Karsch, the only other contemporary authors of any note living in Würtenburg. He had every reason to doubt that anyone really cared that he was back or that Paula was, at present, in Basel, or Berne, or Zurich, or Geneva. As for Marie-Jean Filebra. She didn’t as yet exist for them … at least not until the next book reached the bookstores and everyone, as a result, could gorge themselves on his affair in Paris … a somewhat unsatisfactory affair, an affair that in the end served more of a literary than an erotic purpose … an affair that also demonstrated to him his moral cowardice, his vacillation, his indecision, his unreliability, his cunning, and his deviousness … in fact, everything of which he had been accused by Paula as she packed her belongings and moved out.

  Why did you wait all this time to leave? he had wanted to know.

  .

  9

  What are you working on, his publisher asked him when they met shortly after Ulrich’s return from Paris. Something quite intriguing, he said. A love affair in Paris. His publisher looked relieved. So much has been written about your past political involvement, he commented tactfully. Still, I was under the impression that you might wish to add to your … recollections.

  Had he been about to say, your version?

  I still receive a good deal of hate mail, Ulrich said after one of their prolonged silences.

  We must have you over for dinner soon, his publisher said politely.

  His publisher had known Ulrich’s father quite well. It really was an impossible situation, he once told Ulrich. As a man of honor, a man who loved Germany, he had no other option.

  To which his brother Helmuth would have said: Bullshit.

  .

  10

  Was he thinking of his next book, or merely expressing his innermost feelings when he wrote in his notebook: I still love Paula Hargenau and I do not love Marie-Jean Filebra. How soon after meeting Marie-Jean had he made the entry in his notebook? One month? Two? Three?

  .

  11

  He told the young American woman who had moved in upstairs that on his mother’s side he was a distant relative of Albrecht Dürer. He said this without the least desire to impress her. He would not have brought up the subject had he not run into her in the university bookstore, holding a book on Dürer. She greeted his statement with an appropriate skepticism, staring at him as if trying to gauge his intentions. My mother’s maiden name is Dürer, he explained. Her family moved to Würtenburg in 1803. At one time my family owned six drawings and watercolors by Dürer, but by now we are down to one. For lack of anything else to say he kept on talking about Dürer. He described one of the drawings that had been in his family’s possession. It was one of the last drawings, the Double Goblet. As the title indicated it offered the viewer a view of two extremely ornate goblets, one balanced head down on the other, as well as revealing upon closer scrutiny an entirely different picture, one that disclosed an explicit sexual content.

  You like that, don’t you, she said, challenging him.

  What? The sexual content?

  No, the duality in the picture. Seeing something that others may overlook.

  She looked startled when he said: Why are you attacking me?

  Later that afternoon, in a bar on the Kleiber Strasse, she told him that she had been in Würtenburg for a little over six months. Tired of sharing a place with another student, she looked around for an apartment and found one in the building where he was staying. To support herself she gave English lessons to young German business executives, most of whom expected to be sent by their firms to America for a year or two.

  Must be a bore, teaching beginners, he said.

  Oh no, she said. I enjoy it. They’re all quite bright and extremely eager to improve their English, in addition to being so very … Here she paused briefly, evidently searching for the right word, and then settled on the word: understanding.

  Understanding?

  Yes. She smiled, pleased with the word. Pleased by his puzzlement.

  Understanding? Why should her German students show understanding for anything other than the information she was imparting? Understanding? That word more than anything else she could have said may have served to arouse his curiosity. It was quite possible that had he not been so involved in writing about his former wife, Paula Hargenau, and his former mistress (to use an old-fashioned term), Marie-Jean Filebra, he might have paid closer attention to Daphne. Her appearance, her surname and perhaps even her humorlessness led him to assume that she was of German extraction. He had not spoken of his work to her and had no reason to believe that she knew what he did or, for that matter, who he was. She did not ask any questions, and he in turn did not offer any information on the Ha
rgenaus. He was not in the least bit attracted to her and for some inexplicable reason wished to communicate this fact to her, as if feeling the need to reassure her so that she could permit herself to relax. No, that was patently untrue. At this time the burden of another intimate relationship would have been more than he could handle. If anything he was signaling to her his own unavailability.

  It was a glorious summer day. Daphne and he were seated at a sidewalk table drinking beer and watching the people passing on the street. She mentioned that she was studying philosophy under Brumhold. An American studying Brumhold and seeing the Germans, as only a stranger can see the Germans, with a mixture of envy and a certain disdain. We Germans like to draw attention to our most conspicuous flaws, since the uncertainty and doubt we arouse in strangers saves us from being inundated by a deluge of uncritical admiration.

  Had he said that? If he did, he must have retracted it immediately.

  What did Daphne think of him?

  .

  12

  In Bavaria as in the rest of Germany everyone is passionately in love with the outdoors, in love with what they refer to as Natur, and the splendid weather is an added inducement for the people to put on their Lederhosen and spend several hours serenely tramping through the woods, studiously looking at trees and birds, haphazardly selecting one path, then another, without exactly knowing where the path might lead. The splendid weather is also an inducement for everyone to breathe deeply, to fill their lungs with the fresh country air. Ahhh. It is an inducement as well for many to open wide the windows of their apartments. Everywhere one looks one can see the open windows of Würtenburg and, walking down one of the narrow and deserted side streets, one can overhear snatches of conversation of people who are preparing to go out for a walk or a drive in the country, or about to receive a visitor, or about to make love, their voices—their lazy voices, their melodious voices, their shrill impatient voices expressing sentiments, feelings, that can be said to match the warm summer day. And then, to boot, accompanying the snatches of conversation are the old popular tunes that surprisingly are still performed on the radio, because there still appears to be a great demand for old tunes, old marches (“Wenn die Soldaten durch die Stadt marschieren, / öffnen die Mädchen die Fenster und Türen”), military bands, anything that will keep the past, the glorious German past, from being effaced forever.

  He kept rereading the notebook he diligently kept during his stay in Paris. He kept rereading the first line: I still love Paula Hargenau and I definitely do not love Marie-Jean Filebra. I would love to make love again to Paula and no longer care to make love to Marie-Jean Filebra, something she cannot possibly fail to detect. Yet, if that statement was still true, why did he not make any attempt to locate Paula in Geneva?

  Why did you pick on me? Marie-Jean Filebra had asked him. She expected an honest answer. Why me? He stomped out of her apartment, enraged, because he could not find a suitable reply.

  He who never needed a reason to write required a reason to fall in love and then a reason to fall out of love with Marie-Jean Filebra. Needless to say, he also required a reason to incriminate eight of his former friends. Well, Paula’s friends really. The prosecution thoughtfully provided him with a reason. Paula Hargenau, on leaving him, bluntly stated: The problem is that all your reasons are simply not good enough.

  What you now need, his brother had said the day the trial had ended, is a change of air. So he headed for Paris and for Marie-Jean Filebra.

  The first time he made love to Marie-Jean she raised and clasped one leg to her side. He remembered the startling unexpectedness of her move, made at her own volition, and also recalled some time later remarking how she had at that time reminded him of those magnificent Greek statues of the dying warriors on display at the Glyptothek in Munich. Must he always introduce an art or literary reference in order to withdraw from the immediacy of the situation?

  Asshole.

  Repeat.

  Repeat instantly.

  In his notebook he had jotted down that initially he was able to overlook what soon thereafter became physically distressing, and yet he found that this feeling of being repelled while making love to Marie-Jean was not displeasing. Three months after they had met he found himself seeking a way to extricate himself, without wishing to admit that he could no longer bear to bring himself to kiss her.

  Marie-Jean’s large soft tongue filled his entire mouth and then, or so it seemed to him, penetrated to the center of his brain. A feeling of total helplessness. Only now he was able to admit that her tongue’s acrid taste set him free … the question remains … free to do what? How startled he had been when he first discovered the stubbles of hair on her thighs and crowning the nipples of those perfectly shaped small breasts. Yet, at first at any rate, he was determined to remain in love with Marie-Jean, to have that love efface his somewhat dubious conduct in Würtenburg, where he, by merely telling the truth, helped incriminate eight of his former friends, former fellow activists. Still, writers are not terribly reliable as witnesses for either the defense or the prosecution. They are also not to be relied upon as lovers. They lack patience. They seem to have a certain difficulty in taking pleasure from what they are doing. Like chess players, they are inwardly preparing themselves for the inevitable end game.

  You are the only man about whom I could not say what he preferred sexually, Marie-Jean once remarked. She also said accusingly: You have an insidious prick. He could not recall how she came to make that remark or what could have prompted her to make it, but clearly what she intended by it was that the prick, his prick, was only an extension of his intentions.

  Gradually, as their meetings became less frequent, he found that at night, lying in bed in his hotel room, he could not remember her face. For some reason, her face, her familiar face, completely evaded him. He would lie awake for hours grimly trying to piece together Marie-Jean’s appearance: her lips, her eyes, the rapid motions of her hands as she kept gesturing as if to dispel something unpleasant, and those curious grimaces of distaste she made when something did not please her, which had recurred with greater and greater frequency toward the end of their relationship. Poor Marie-Jean Filebra. It had been he of all people who had followed her. He who had told her: Everytime I followed a woman in the past I hoped that it would turn out to be you. What would happen now, Marie-Jean asked him shortly before they separated, if the woman turned out to be me?

  .

  13

  Everything at a standstill. Only the brain continued to function. It provided him with the unreliable evidence that at one time he had stayed in a small hotel on Rue des Canettes, where late one night, after returning from Marie-Jean’s apartment, he reasoned: Well, I can always return to Würtenburg. I can always return to be among the people who speak the same language I do. People who take it for granted that I share their cultural opinions, their dislikes, their detestations. The more he had thought of it, the more the idea appealed to him. He would return to Würtenburg and start on another novel. Marie-Jean had—or so it seemed—provided him with ample material for a book. She had spoken almost casually of her love life. He had asked her incessantly: Who else, and what happened then? If she had come to distrust his questions, and she had every reason to do so, she did not let on. On the contrary, she answered his questions fully, as if aware that they would in time become a part of his next novel.

  She had once laughingly described making love to a woman in the presence of two men. Had you made love to a woman before? he asked.

  The last time he had visited her small elegant apartment she had not worn her perfume, a fragrance he had come to identify with her person. From what he knew about her, he could only deduce that this was an absolutely deliberate gesture. She had begun to reciprocate his antipathy. That last time he remembered carefully studying her apartment as if aware that he would not return, although that was not made clear until they said good-bye at the door. Most likely he would have continued to visit her out of a character
istic weakness had she not said what she should have said all along. But why on earth do you say that it is the end between us? he protested. I am not saying that it is the end, she replied. You are. Not in words perhaps, but by your actions. He walked out of the building elated, thinking, Well, it’s really time to return to Würtenburg—all the time hoping, in the back of his mind, that Paula Hargenau might still be there.

  For the next few days he said good-bye to his French acquaintances. All expressing their regret. All exquisitely polite, somewhat condescending, somewhat disdainful, somewhat nervous to be with a German, a “good German,” as they carefully chose their words to describe what they thought of the latest books by Bichsel, or Handke, or Kempowski. He had become somewhat tired of their cleverness, although he had to admit they tactfully refrained to the very end from raising the subject of his own rather disreputable role in the Einzieh trial. They simply behaved as if he were just another German writer on his annual pilgrimage to the city of Balzac, Anatole France, Victor Hugo, Proust, Gide, Valéry, Max Jacob, and Apollinaire.

  The young earnest-faced American woman in the apartment above his in Würtenburg asks her German student: What’s the weather like today?

  Oh, it’s very pleasant outside, he replies.

  Yes? Go on, she urges him. What else?

  It is a glorious summer day, he says with an innate German politeness. The kind of day people like to spend out of doors. In the woods. In the country.

  Please repeat what you have said.

  This was the young man’s first visit to her apartment. He was still trying to overcome an initial discomfort, an inexplicable sense of not feeling at ease. He tried to concentrate on the words and on his pronunciation as both of them took each other’s measure. But discreetly, so as not to make the other aware of their probing, searching glances.