The Hothouse

by Wolfgang Koeppen

  Foxes?{16}—You got them on the Rhine. Guatemala meant peace, Guatemala meant oblivion, Guatemala meant death. And whoever's idea it was knew that, he knew that was what would tempt him, peace and oblivion and death. Otherwise they could have kept The Hague open for him, Brussels, Copenhagen, maybe Athens, he was probably worth that much; but Guatemala, that meant the veranda in the baking sun, the square with the dusty palms, that was the slow and inevitable moidering away. They had his measure! Knurrewahn, if it had been him in power, would have offered him Paris, to get rid of him. Knurrewahn had no idea. Paris meant continuing to blunder around and remaining a player; Guatemala was dissolution, a cynical surrender to death. It was like pulling your pants down for Mr. Death—a comparison that Frost-Forestier would have appreciated. A rainbow had appeared over the Rhine. Its arc ran from Godesberg, from Mehlem, from the American hive, across to Beuel, where it disappeared next to the bridge, behind a wall on which was written Rheinlust. The rainbow was like a heavenly ladder going up and down, spanning the river, and it was easy to imagine that angels were crossing it, and that God was at hand. Did the rainbow signify conciliation, did it signify peace, was it a token of friendliness? The President in his presidential palace must be able to see it, the friendly arch of peace from Godesberg to Beuel, maybe the President was standing out on his flowered terrace, gazing across the river, staring into the evening air, which was still now as an old painting, and maybe the President felt sad and didn't know why,{17} or the President felt disappointed and didn't know why either. And Keetenheuve, standing by the window, the window of his office in the parliament building, invented a character whom he called Musaeus, who was the butler of the President. It was perfectly possible that the President didn't have a butler, but Keetenheuve endowed him with one by the name of Musaeus, and Musaeus resembled the President. He was the same age as the President, he looked like the President, and he thought he was the President. His work left him with enough time to imagine it. Musaeus was a trained barber, and had "gone to Court," he talked about it sometimes, that was something he didn't forget, in his early years he had "gone to Court" in a tailcoat, to shave the young Prince, and while he lathered him up, he had spoken to him boldly about the plight of the common people, and after the Prince abdicated in 1918, Musaeus hadn't wanted to shave anyone else, and he became an usher in the Office of the Minister President, and then he entered the service of Hindenburg, and then he showed some character and refused to serve the guy from Braunau. He got through the dictatorship and the war years, and then the new state remembered him, and appointed him butler to the President. Well and good; but he was confused, was Musaeus. He read too much Goethe, which he borrowed from the President's library in the sumptuous Sophien Edition, and in the evening, when the rainbow spanned the banks of the Rhine, Musaeus stood by the rose-covered balustrade, thought he was the President, looked far into the countryside, and rejoiced that everything in the Pedagogic Academy at his feet was coming up roses. But somewhere in his heart he felt a twinge, he felt as though he'd forgotten something that had once been his in the days when he'd "gone to Court," the voice of the people, the whisper of the people, the unmeaningful monotonous murmur that he had sloshed around the jaws of the young Prince along with the shaving foam, now he could no longer hear it, and it bothered him that it wasn't there. Musaeus wanted to be good, he wanted to be a good father to the country, maybe back then he had even wanted to train the Prince to become a good father to his country, but the Prince hadn't been in power for very long, and now it was Musaeus' turn, and unfortunately he had forgotten his educational principles for young princes. Musaeus wasn't able to govern properly, they were dragging him into horse trading, he thought crossly, and the leading statesman, Musaeus thought that evening, he was feeding Musaeus too well, and making him fat and deaf and sluggish, till he finally couldn't hear the whisper of the people or, worse, what he was hearing was a confected murmur, recorded in a record factory, who could tell, Musaeus couldn't feel the difference any more, previously he had, and then he decided to go on a diet, cut down on food, cut down on drink. For three days he didn't eat, good old Musaeus, for three days he didn't drink, but then—the job was too cushy, and the kitchen and cellar were too good, Musaeus ate a little chop and he drank a little claret, and so he appeased and mollified his twinge of anxiety. Keetenheuve turned down Guatemala. He turned down the Spanish colonial death veranda. There were terraces on the Rhine as well. He was determined not to let them get rid of him. He would remain. He would remain at his desk, he would remain in parliament; he wouldn't scale the barricades, but he would scale the rostrum. He would speak with holy rage against the policies of the government. The end justified the means. The end was peace. The end was a friendlier planet. Wasn't that an end worth pursuing? Perhaps he would get there. He stopped planning his speech. He would speak without a script, with passion and zeal. Keetenheuve retired ambassador orator tribune of the people was one of the last to leave the Bundeshaus that day. A guard had to unlock the door to let him out. For a while Keetenheuve walked with light feet into the evening. What had he left behind him? The unfinished translation of a poem, a deskful of unanswered letters, the beginnings of a speech, and with him went the new era

  Before long, he noticed he was sweating. The evening was still sticky, even with the rainbow up there. There was a stench of sewage. Fragrance of roses wafted from the gardens. A lawn mower clattered over the carpet of grass. Trim dogs sauntered down the avenue. The great diplomatic averter of the worst, his little twerpish ladies' umbrella dangling coquettishly from his limp wrist, was taking his evening turn, excogitating a new chapter in his lucrative memoirs, while other extras on the political stage and honest balladeers strolled proprietorially about. Keetenheuve greeted the averter, whom he didn't know, and the great memoirist acknowledged him, flattered. "Rumbled! Rumbled!" Keetenheuve felt like calling after him, and tapping him on the shoulder. Bismarck already had known the type: "Every politician is burdened with a mortgage to vanity." They were vain, they were all of them vain, ministers, officials, diplomats, MPs, and even the porter who unlocked the door of the parliament building was vain because he unlocked the door of the parliament building, because he belonged to the government, and because he occasionally got his name in the paper, when a journalist wanted to prove he had really been inside the ministry and had seen the porter. They all thought of themselves as historic personages, as public figures, just because they had an office, because their mug shots appeared in the papers, because papers need fresh faces, because their names went out on air, because radio stations also needed their daily bundle of hay, and then the wives saw their great husbands or their little lovers waving enraptured from the cinema screen, and standing with an appealing little grin they had copied off the Americans, who didn't scruple to cosy up to photographers like models. And while the world might not think all that much of its official historic figures, it did keep brandishing them about, to prove that the stock of vacuity and horror was not exhausted, and that history was still being made. Why was there history? And if it was a necessary thing, a necessary evil, why so much clucking over no eggs? The minister is visiting Paris. Okay. What to do? He's being received by his opposite number. Well, isn't that nice. The ministers will breakfast together. How lovely Lovely. Hope they had good weather. The ministers will retire for bilateral talks. Excellent! Then what? They say goodbye. Yes, and then? One minister will accompany the other to the airport or the railway station. Yes, but then what happens? Nothing. The minister will fly home, and his opposite number promises to visit him soon. And the whole thing, station, airport, breakfast, handshake makes banner headlines in newspapers, is shown in cinema news-reels, and broadcast into sitting rooms all over—what's it all been in aid of? No one could say. Go to Paris quietly, why can't you!! Have yourselves a good time. It would be so much better for all concerned. Can't we forget all about them for a year? So we don't recognize their faces, don't remember their names. Maybe legends will form a
round them. Keetenheuve hero of legend. It was his world, and he was thinking it to bits, because how was he going to become a minister if he didn't use all the tools of propaganda to try to persuade the world that it needed ministers? Keetenheuve minister burdened with Bismarck's mortgage to vanity—he was sweating a lot. He was bathed in it. Everything nettled him. His shirt clung to him. He felt hemmed in and oppressed. He put his hand inside his shirt, laid it on his skin, felt the hot stubbly hair, Keetenheuve no stripling, Keetenheuve a male of the species, a buck, aromatic, hairy chest, covered by his clothes, covered by civilization, domesticated animal, no evidence of buck—and underneath there was the pounding heart, the little pump that was struggling to cope. He had wanted to oppose them: his heart had beat joyfully. He had met them (and himself): his heart beat irregularly, timidly, he panted for breath like a hunted animal. Was he afraid? He wasn't afraid. But he was like a swimmer, swimming against a strong current and knowing he won't make it, he will be carried away on the current, he makes no headway, the effort is pointless, and it would be easier to let himself drift, be lulled into death.

  He passed construction sites. They were working overtime. The government was building, the ministries were building, the building inspection authorities were building, the federation and the various Länder were erecting centers, foreign embassies were immuring themselves here, cartels, industrial conglomerates, banking groups, oil companies, steel plants, coal mining associations, electricity producers sited their administrative centers here, as though they mightn't be required to pay taxes in the shadow of the central government, insurance companies put by and built up, and reinsurance companies where insurers insured themselves against insurance losses couldn't even find enough space to store their policies, to house their lawyers, to put up their actuaries, invest their profits, flaunt their wealth. They wanted, all of them, to find a roof as near the heart of government as possible; it was as though they were afraid the government might leave without them, as though one day it would no longer be there, and their new headquarters would have become dread-quarters. Was Keetenheuve living through a new age of Founding Fathers? It was an unfounded, unbounded, well-groundedly groundless age you have built on shifting sand. Keetenheuve Verdi singer in Bonn, on the front of the stage he mastered bel canto on fleeting sand oh how treacherously ye have built. Poor little member of parliament between security bunkers. The worm in the wood. Nail to their coffin. Sick worm. Twisted. Rusty nail. Just as well the insurers will outlast him. He was not insured. Would die like that. A burdensome corpse. No memorial to Keetenheuve. Freed humankind from nothing. Felt his way through earthworks. Traps. Blind. A mole. —He reached the playground, and, just like this morning, there were two girls sitting on the seesaw. Two thirteen-year-olds. As Keetenheuve looked at them, they stopped bouncing up and down, one of them squatted down on the ground, the other hung suspended in midair. They giggled. They whispered something to each other. One of them gave a tug to her little skirt, pulled the material down over her thigh. Corrupt. Corrupt. What about you? Weren't you tempted by youth, by smooth cool skin? Hair that didn't yet smell of death? A mouth that didn't breathe out putrefaction? It smelled of vanilla. In the ruins there was someone roasting almonds and sugar in a copper pan. Try my burnt giant almonds called a rain-soaked sheet. Keetenheuve bought fifty pfennigs' worth of the giant almonds and tried them. They tasted bitter. The sugary coat cracked between his teeth. A brittle and sticky mass lay on his tongue. The burnt almonds tasted of puberty of boyish lusts in dark matinee cinemas: on the screen swelled the dirty freckled white breasts of Lya de Mara, you had a mouthful of sweets, and a new ache stirred in your blood. Keetenheuve stood chewing in front of a shop window full of fraternity accoutrements. The owner of the shop windows was living off the same pubescent feelings. Everything was there again, time ran backwards, there hadn't been any wars. Keetenheuve saw white and colored fraternity caps, dueling-society ribbons, drinking jackets, he surveyed fencing gear, sabers, tankards with the fraternity symbol on the lids, ceremonial books with golden nails in the binding, and metal clasps. Those things were being manufactured and sold, they paid the lease for the window and the shop, and provided the owner of the business with a living. The founding years were really back, the same taste, the same complexes, the same taboos. The sons of the master builders drove to university in their own runabouts, but in the evening they put on their silly hats, they aped their grandfathers, and they did something very strange, they rubbed a salamander; Keetenheuve had an unattractive vision of young men full of beer, stupidity, and ill-defined, sometimes nationalistic feeling, bawling songs, and grinding up some kind of lizards between their beer steins and the table. Keetenheuve chucked the rest of the almonds in the gutter. The paper bag burst and the sugar almonds bounced across the paving stones like marbles.

  The infant Keetenheuve plays with agate stones on the pavement. Bonn insurance company director runs up to Keetenheuve with white cap, fraternity ribbon and saber. Director runs Keetenheuve through. Keetenheuve takes a burnt almond and pops it in the director's mouth. He tugs at the director's jacket, and little ten-pfennig pieces come tumbling out of his sleeve onto the pavement. Little girls come by; and start collecting the ten-pfennig pieces: they cry out: more and more and more coins come tumbling, skipping, and rolling onto the pavement. Keetenheuve laughs. The director is cross and says: Seriousness of the situation—

  Keetenheuve crossed the market square. The market women were cleaning their stalls. Joke for Mergentheim: A blind man crosses the fish market, sniffs, says: "Ah, girls." Bedroom at the Mergentheims. Sophie getting dressed for the party, Corps Diplomatique in Godesberg, she pulls a diaphanous corset over her sagging body. Mergentheim is unexcited. He is tired. He says: "Keetenheuve came to see me." The corset pinches Sophie. She'd like to slit the seam. She's hot. Mergentheim says: "I don't think I should be on first-name terms with him any more." Sophie thinks: What's he babbling on about now; this corset is killing me, nylon silk, taut and diaphanous, I could rip open the seam, I'm not getting changed again. Mergentheim says: "I'm his enemy. I ought to tell him. I ought to tell him: 'Herr Keetenheuve, I am your enemy.'" Sophie thinks: What am I putting on this diaphanous corset for? If François-Poncet saw me like this, you can see everything anyway, all the folds, the rolls of fat. Mergentheim says: "I feel mean like this." Keetenheuve walked through the market rubbish, rotten, stinking, decomposing, rancid, and spoilt things lay at his feet, he slipped on something, an orange, a banana, a good fruit ripened to no purpose, picked to be wasted, born in Africa, perished in the market in Bonn, not even consumed, not even metabolized on the journey through the greedy human. Sausage, meat, cheese, fish, and everywhere flies. Heavy bluebottles. Maggots in their bellies. Their weapon. Sliced sausage destroyed on the plate. That's what we eat. That's what they'll tuck into in the Hotel Stern. I could go along there. Middlemen in the lobby; field shovels for the border patrols, patent water cannon, artificial diamonds, waiting for a call from the minister. He'll send a car over. Let's have the diamonds, let's have the patent for the water cannon, the shovel, pretty collapsible shovel you can tuck in your waistcoat pocket, wear it under your suit, no one will notice, goes down well everywhere, spectacular efficiency, six hundred cubic meters of German soil in an hour, comrade burying comrade. This is England. This is England. You are tuned to the Voice of America. This time Keetenheuve wouldn't speak. He wouldn't fight them on the airwaves. Keetenheuve unknown soldier on an unknown front. Pointing forward? Pointing back? Anyone with nerves will fire in the air. Attention! We're not fighting birds here! Keetenheuve a good man, no hunter. White hands. Writer man. On the balcony of the Stern Hotel stood a delegate from the Bavarian sister party. He was looking down the Mangfall valley. Cows coming in off the pastures. Jingle of cowbells. The year was advancing. The pensions were all full of Prussians: Ave Maria. The Bavarian party, like any of the other little parties, might be the one to tip the scales one way or the other. Much courted. When push came to shove, it
voted with the government, in spite of its reservations about the Federal Republic.