by Walter Abish
Anna looked at her class. At the familiar faces of the nine boys and the eleven girls. At the fourteen familiar middle-class children who were living in Brumholdstein and at the six working-class children from Daemling. Why this emphasis on the familiar?
Well, what is familiar? And they decided that a pencil sharpener was familiar, and the long face of the principal was familiar if also a little bit frightening, and the bus taking the children to Daemling was familiar, and so was the driver, a former school caretaker who drove them to Brumholdstein and then back each day. Even the length of the ride was familiar. It might be slow, in bad weather, or when there had been an accident on the highway and cars were backed up for kilometers, or it could be fast, with the driver doing one-ten. Both rides, the six children decided, were familiar. For the children from Brumholdstein, naturally, the ride on the bus was unfamiliar. On the way to school each day the children in the bus passed the now deserted railroad station of Durst. It was so familiar that hardly anyone ever gave it a second glance from the bus. Because, Miss Heller explained, when something becomes terribly familiar we stop seeing it. The schoolbus driver’s children also went to school in Brumholdstein. Although no one in Daemling liked to admit it, the school in Brumholdstein was a better school. It provided a better education. As a matter of fact, it was quite conceivable that the children from Daemling who attended school in Brumholdstein considered themselves a cut above the kids in their own neighborhoods who went to school in Daemling. However, in Brumholdstein they remained apart as a group. They were not popular. They were not asked to join in the games the children from Brumholdstein were playing. But they had come to accept this inequity as part of their everyday experience. They no longer tried to be liked by the children from Brumholdstein. They had stopped waiting for the invitations that never materialized.
But why would Miss Anna Heller spend so much time discussing the familiar, unless she had some doubts, some reservations regarding the familiar, day-to-day events of her life.
When we wake up in the morning, said Anna Heller, as soon as we open our eyes, they come to rest on the familiar outlines of our possessions, our furniture, our walls, our wall posters and drawings, our shutters and our windows, and everything that we can see while standing at the window. Sometimes the sky is clear and blue, at other times it is cloudy, sometimes the trees are in full bloom, at other times they are bare and covered with snow. But everything is familiar. We get up and walk to the bathroom, where we brush our teeth and wash our hands and face and look in the mirror and comb our hair. And all that is familiar. We say good morning to our parents. We are in a sense establishing and reaffirming a history of the familiar. If we ever depart from the familiar. If we ever forget something that is familiar, then, quite likely, someone will remind us, saying: You forgot to say good morning. You forgot to kiss me. You forgot to brush your teeth. Of course, in this world there are also many angry people who never say good morning and never kiss anyone, and for all we know, they may also avoid brushing their teeth, and so for them this behavior I just described would be familiar. Now, if we think about the past, if we think about anything that happened in the past: yesterday, the day before, a week ago, aren’t we to some extent thinking about something that we consider familiar? For if nothing else, the memory, pleasant or unpleasant as it may be, has become a familiar one.
Downstairs, the yellow bus was parked near the entrance to the school. The bus was another reason why the children from Daemling were made to feel like permanent strangers. The bus was old, and it rattled. The windows were loose, the engine was noisy. Everything about the bus seemed to call attention to its decrepit state, and everyone who saw the bus immediately recognized it—knowing why it was there. The moment school was over for the day, the children from Daemling were rushed off. Why the hurry? They had no say in the matter. The driver wanted to get going. If they missed the bus they would have to try to get a ride back somehow. What else is there to say, except that they have only seen the houses in which their classmates live from the outside. They are rushed back to their old houses and to their old apartments that smell of age. The smell of age is familiar in Daemling. A musty, familiar smell. No matter how much everything is scrubbed over and over again, it smells of age, whereas in Brumholdstein one can only smell the freshly waxed floors and the scent of the flowers.
The word “familiar” remained on the blackboard after the class had been dismissed.
On the way to her father’s architectural office, where someone would drive her home, Gisela dreamily examined everything around her to determine to what extent it might be familiar. Herr Minske, the barber, standing in the window of the shop, looking out on the street, waved to her. Every three weeks her father visited him for a trim. She waved back. And that exchange was familiar. The yellow schoolbus rattled past her on its way to Daemling, and a girl from her class leaned out of one of the rear windows and waved to her. And that was somehow slightly less familiar. She could not remember seeing anyone ever wave to her before. Reluctantly she waved back. Reluctantly, because she preferred not to have any contact with the bus or its occupants, possibly because she feared that any show of friendliness toward the kids from Daemling might jeopardize her relationship to the others in Brumholdstein. The bus, however, was all too familiar. Then walking past the shop windows with their more or less familiar contents she suddenly, as she reached the traffic light, spotted the mayor’s wife, Vin, in her car, and that was familiar. But when the mayor’s wife stopped for a red light at the crossing, Gisela saw that the man in the blue blazer sitting next to Vin, apparently in deep conversation with her, was none other than her father. And that, for a reason she could not explain, was not familiar. There was no reason on earth why it should not have been familiar, but the way they were talking, the earnest expressions on their faces, seemed to suggest something that was not entirely familiar. In fact, it inhibited Gisela from rushing toward the car or calling her father’s name. Afterward, Gisela decided that what had made the encounter—if one can call it that—so unfamiliar, was the flushed, angry look on Vin’s face, a face that Gisela recalled as always being white, cool, and withdrawn, as if nothing in the world could possibly affect its exquisite proportions.
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15
An introduction to Gisela and Egon
On the mantelpiece red carnations from the garden in a pale green vase. The vase, the dozen freshly cut flowers, the brightly lit interior are visible in the large framed mirror above the mantelpiece and call for a—or so it seems—special consideration, a special attention. In referring to Germany (after all, a not uncommon topic of conversation), its history, its achievements, its literature, its amazing economic recovery, it hardly seems possible not to acknowledge or recognize in everything German the intrinsic Standpunkt, the German point of view, the unique German way of seeing and appraising an object: a house, a barren hill, a tree in bloom, or something as evanescent as a passing cloud—and also the way in which this appraisal, this mere looking at as well as recognizing the true property or quality of what is seen, can be said to reflect a society, a culture, a particular people.
Gisela and Egon.
She runs an exploratory finger along the rim of the glass vase before carefully placing it on the marble mantelpiece. It is spring or summer. The French windows are wide open. A scent of flowers in the air. In everything a remarkable sharpness of detail. In that luminous light a sense of stepping into something or someplace familiar, as the brain seeks to piece together its claim to this perfection with a zeal and a yearning that comes as a surprise. The vase, the open windows, the prolonged distant sound of a train, the paperweight on the desk acquire a significance that leads to an exhilarating burst of recognition.
Egon picks up the latest issue of Treue. So this is it. He leafs through it, skimming the text.
Gisela, as always anxious for his approval, comments on the cover: Eigentlich ganz nett. Nicht wahr?
What is being presented is a pict
ure of a flourishing German society. And what at this time—one may ask—could be more spontaneously joyous, more filled with expectations and promises? Even the foreign workers, even the Turkish sanitation men have come to express in their simple halting German, Heute sehr gut, Morgen besser, their desire, their wish, their hope one day to participate in this miraculous rebirth of Germany. They, the Turks, the Yugoslavs, the Italians, the Arabs, may still live six to a room in their separate and certainly less attractive quarters, but nothing can prevent them from sharing the enthusiasm, the generosity, and the overwhelming brightness of Germany’s future. Not that this single-minded concern with the future has, in any way, effaced the awareness of the past. For nothing can ever efface the voices, the grave but melodic German voices of Dietmar von Aist, Walther von der Vogelweide, Albrecht von Halberstadt. The classics are still being read: Gellert, Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Hölderlin, Novalis, Fontane. All available in inexpensive paperback editions as well as in leatherbound sets suitable for the oak bookshelves of the doctors of jurisprudence and of philosophy and of medicine. The very backbone of Germany. Yes, there is still so much pleasure, so much gratification, so much insight to be derived from the works of Jean Paul, Friedrich Spielhagen, Stefan George, George Kaiser, Alfred Döblin, Ernst Jünger, and Thomas Mann. And, after all, why not Mann? He remains echt Deutsch despite his dubious decision to abandon his country at its greatest time of need. Can anyone doubt or deny the significance of these writers? Can anyone fail to recognize in them the attribute of a true German? Absolutely no irony intended. And, for that matter, a thorough reading of the classics should enable one to determine the degree to which anything: a house, a barren hill, a barn, a dog, a stein of beer—appears to be German and, accordingly, is slipping into something called die Zukunft, the future. As before, no irony intended.
Gisela and Egon.
They do not necessarily question the meaning of a thing. Why should they? They do not necessarily measure the degree to which it is authentic, or German. Or to what extent the one authenticates the other. The red carnations authenticate the graceful shape of the fluted vase. The large mirror in its heavy gilded frame objectifies the view of the interior space and nicely frames what is clearly an attempt to achieve perfection.
Gisela and Egon.
Participants in an ongoing German drama. The interior of their house (their house in the country) presents to the brain a variety of alternatives: things that can be done, things that need to be done, things that must be done. As such, each response, each decision, each action, whether it entails going to bed early, or sitting down to a leisurely breakfast, or watching the soccer game on TV, entails a certain involvement with one or with several of the carefully selected objects in the house. After all, things are there to be used and not only viewed and admired. The German philosopher, Brumhold, in his book Die einzige Verführung, published in 1927, had raised the question pertaining to the meaning or thingliness of an object: “Does the stated perfection of an object invite or activate an appropriate response?”
Gisela in her bedroom, brushing her hair: one cannot lightly dismiss the pleasure that comes from seeing oneself on the cover of a popular German magazine that has an estimated one and a half million readers.
Gisela and Egon.
Egon, in a double-breasted white gabardine suit, leaning against the car. To be precise, he was casually (incidentally, this casualness cannot be overemphasized) leaning against the left front fender of his (their?) white Mercedes convertible. In the foreground, what appears to be the photographer’s shadow merges with the shadow of a clipped hedge. In the rear, Egon and Gisela’s country house, designed by Helmuth Hargenau. They call it a villa. The even row of French windows along its entire length are left invitingly ajar. The black-and-white vertically striped curtains billow slightly in the spring or summer breeze. In one of the rooms to the left of the entrance a section of the baby grand piano can be seen. Gisela, in tight-fitting leather trousers (black) and a long-sleeved blouse (pale yellow silk) with ruffles around the throat, is standing a few steps to the right of the stationary car. She is not standing, in the strict sense of the word, but bending slightly at the waist—gracefully, to be sure, in order to adjust the collar on Dumas, their giant schnauzer. Dumas’ alert dog face is turned inquiringly toward the alien, the seeming intruder, the unseen photographer (Rita Tropf-Ulmwehrt) who prompts: Smile, smile. No. Now don’t smile. But Gisela, long accustomed to the intrusion of such individuals, appears untroubled, appears oblivious of the weaponlike camera aimed at her as she adjusts the dog’s collar. She is only doing this because the dog’s collar requires adjustment. It is a Saturday morning, and she was about to take a much-needed stroll in the nearby wood, or about to drive to town to pick up a few necessities, a few essentials, or was simply planning to relax with a good book under a tree—don’t believe it. The dog is trained for every eventuality. Like any guard dog taught to respond instantly to a variety of urgent signals, he had grown accustomed to the uncertain existence—the state of doubt—in that prolonged void between one signal and the next. As for Egon: there is something to be said in favor of such a casual (that word again) indifference to the distinct possibility that he might irreparably stain his white suit with car grease: not that there is not a plenitude of skilled Italian tailors in Germany who, given three days, can replace his jacket or trousers; or that the car (gleaming in the sun) has not been (lovingly?) cleaned, waxed, and polished. In a sense, everything in the eight-page article on Egon and Gisela in the magazine Treue is already conveyed and analyzed on the front cover—albeit in a far more compressed manner. The meaning, the shades or layers of meaning are to be found in the components: the ubiquitous gabardine suit, the Paisley scarf, the white silk handkerchief displayed in the breast pocket of his jacket, the drooling schnauzer, the black leather trousers, the high-heeled boots, Gisela’s swept-back blonde hair, the hairdo emphasizing a sleekness, a sexual sharpness, bringing her pale fine-boned face into greater prominence, the gleaming car with its red leather upholstery and, finally, the partially opened French windows on the ground floor revealing vertical slivers of the interior life. All this to spell out the new German competence and a sense of satisfaction and completion. It is all there … the innate German upper- and upper-middle class instinct to combine what is essentially “perfection” with the “menacing.” All in all, it sums up the new German restlessness as well as the general anticipation of the greater German splendor yet to come. Are these not, also, the components of a German story? For ultimately, what may come about is a matching of this finely developed sensibility, this heightened awareness of perfection and its actual realization. It may be only a matter of time before everyone in Germany, including the guest workers, the Turks, the Greeks, and the Arabs, will develop an eye for the nuances of this German perfection, an eye (seeing, after all, is linked to understanding) that will, in time, facilitate the exchange, the reciprocity of perfections between the authentic man and his perfect surroundings.
While, at present … At present? Yes, this is the way it is at present.
Egon and Gisela.
As presented and documented by Rita Tropf-Ulmwehrt. Here the words at present are essential, since everything Egon and Gisela undertake to do is not wedded to a profession, a specific outlook, the result of a certain training, but to a dynamic impulse that derives what purpose and energy it has from the dialectical concern with the tension and intensity of life in Germany. At present, Egon is the publisher of the Möglich Verlag: six books in 1975, six in 1976, six in 1977, and five in 1978. A short description of the company follows. The usual story. Net investment, bank loans, problems with writers, future projects, abysmal failures, a problem of distribution, selection of manuscript, future projects, and spinoffs (an American term), that is to say: book clubs, movie rights, translations. Accompanying the article is a shot of a somber Egon in a business suit at his desk, signing a letter. Standing to one side, eyes downcast, is
the young nameless secretary. From the large window behind his desk, a view of the old city, the rebuilt courthouse, the cathedral, Der Englische Garten, the narrow winding streets. Everything made to look the way it was before the war. On the wall to Egon’s left, a large photomural of a helmeted motorcyclist racing his Harley or Honda along a wide stretch of dirt road. The magnificent landscape of southern Bavaria is somewhat obscured by the cloud of dust trailing the motorcyclist. It is difficult not to see the resemblance between the motorcyclist and Egon. It is difficult not to see Egon’s fondness for his secretary in a number of the shots taken by Rita Tropf-Ulmwehrt of the office. But they have been omitted. What has not been omitted are the photographs of Egon and Gisela at home. She, sprawled on their Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair, wearing a silver-colored T-shirt with the word “PONY” in red across her chest, spanning her small pointed breasts. Egon in a brown pinstriped suit, somewhat complacently (or smugly?) eyeing the camera. Yet, behind all the apparent candor, the willingness to answer questions, the outpouring of information … We have always been overly fond of Thai food … and the matter of his having sniffed (the key word here is “sniffed”) coke when he was younger, lies a deep heavy-lidded reticence, a reluctance to reveal anything that is not on display. He did remark that his father had been a pilot in the Luftwaffe, and that he, Egon, had briefly served in the diplomatic in—of all places—West Africa. This accounts for the capital D on his licence plate. Since the text of the article is essentially an attempt to package (this is the favored American expression) the two of them or, for that matter, an attempt to package Germany, the goods as seen in the photographs deserve special attention. The strategically placed leather couch, the glass-topped chrome coffee table, the tall exotic plant from Brazil, as well as the other couple (presumably friends) dancing on the gleaming wood floor, while Egon watches with a bemused expression. Rita Tropf-Ulmwehrt also elicited from him a list of predictable preferences: car racing, tennis, sailing, mountain climbing, and lately, disco dancing … In the article these declared preferences are given a weight, a significance they might not otherwise have, since they are made to indicate an individual commitment, and consequently bring into play the heavy responsibilities that lie behind each individual choice.