Kraft

by Jonas Lüscher

  Erkner’s telephone vibrates and after a brief glance at the screen he tells them they need to hurry because the restaurant unfortunately has a strict first-come-first-serve policy and doesn’t take reservations, and his assistant who’s been waiting in line has almost reached the door.

  The line in front of the restaurant called THE MAC&CHEESE stretches halfway down the block. Erkner hurries along the line and stops near the front next to a young man who waved at him from a distance and whom Erkner now greets with such an ostentatious show of friendship that Kraft has the impression the slight young man has stiffened under the hail of backslapping. This is Eddie, Eddie Willers, a deeply valued colleague. At these words, Eddie nervously adjusts his horn-rimmed glasses and blushes. The entire scene seems staged to Kraft, but what does he know about the social behavior of multimillionaire Silicon Valley investors, and in any case he has little time to think about the topic since they are quickly joined by another young man, with a shaved head, meaty cauliflower ears, and a blond goatee braided into a rattail that dangles decoratively over the kaffiyeh wrapped around his thick neck. Aside from the goatee and the kerchief, Ragnar Danneskjöld isn’t wearing much: a black MIT wrestling singlet, Roman sandals, and a Rolex Deepsea, which Kraft, interested in mechanical wristwatches ever since Heike had given him a restored Milgauss for his fiftieth birthday, registers with a connoisseur’s eye.

  Ragnar, as Erkner explains, is the founder and director of the ThunderXStruck Institute, one of his many investments and one particularly close to his heart even if it won’t show a profit for the foreseeable future. This is because it’s a project to develop the Sea Steadies, artificial islands outside of all territorial waters and out of reach of regulations, ineffective governments, and messy politics, which will function as laboratories and breeding grounds for new forms of free cohabitation. Kraft pictures an island like those he’s seen in cartoons of castaways, a tiny island of sand with a single palm tree and a horde of sunburned young men and women indulging in an orgy, but he already senses that Erkner’s investment in a free future has less to do with free love and sexual exchanges than free trade and monetary transactions. Ragnar starts to elaborate on his vision but his élan is brought up short by a man in a rustic leather apron like those worn by artisans who have devoted their lives to crafts that are threatened with extinction, and this aproned man leads them into the restaurant to a booth paneled in blond wood.

  Diners are spared the chore of choosing what they’d like to eat. There’s only one dish on the menu. Erkner orders five portions and a round of beer that the waitress brings to their table. They solicit Kraft’s expertise in his capacity as a German and he is grateful to Ragnar for explaining in detail the origin of the bottle’s contents, which owes its particular aroma to the Russian River’s singular climatic conditions, about which he knows a thing or two, because this gives Kraft the time to rummage through his memory for the English word for “hoppy,” which absolutely eludes him. He is saved by a small procession of leather aprons carrying five redwood boards, each bearing a cast-iron pan filled with spätzle. At a loss, Kraft examines the noodle gratin topped with golden-brown bread crumbs with cheese sauce bubbling around its edges, but it seems there won’t be enough time for anything this evening, certainly not for wondering, because the waiter launches into an explanation of the ingredients in the dish, underpinned by elegant hand gestures, that begins with praise for the tubular pasta, made exclusively with spring water and organic wheat from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and shaped in copper molds, followed by a lengthy excursus on the three types of cheese used this evening, a Blue Fog Mountain from Humboldt County, an applewood smoked cheddar from Sonoma Valley, and finally a mozzarella made with the milk of Simmental cows who enjoy a view of the Pacific from Point Reyes day in and day out, and whose milk, furthermore, is as exceptionally full-flavored as it is extraordinarily digestible. Then, with a flourish, the waiter pulls a long grater out of a bamboo sheath and, to top it all off, he planes a few shavings of cave-aged Jack over each of the party’s bread crumbs, exuding as much enthusiasm as Ragnar, who takes advantage of the moment to draw Kraft’s attention to the grater, which was forged by an old Japanese man in Big Sur from fifty layers of Damascus steel. This, Erkner proclaims, is the ultimate mac and cheese, the chef here has raised this dish to a whole new level, from zero straight to one, so to speak.

  Kraft watches Ragnar raise an overflowing forkful of the steaming dish to his mouth, shovel the bubbling mass into his cheek pouches, adorning his beard with cheesy tinsel in the process, chew rapidly, breathing in gasps all the while to cool the inside of his mouth and blowing his fiery exhalations over the table, then shovel more loads into his gullet. For all that, Ragnar still manages, at the request of Erkner—who, for his part spoons the simmering children’s food into his mouth with mechanical precision, unaffected by the heat, whereas Kraft feels his soft palate contract with the very first forkful like a plastic bag thrown into the fire—to present an overview of his institute and the work being done there, which, if Kraft understands the man in the wrestling singlet’s plan correctly, consists of saving the world by building, with the support of Tobias Erkner’s many millions, a large number of floating islands they intend to anchor in international waters, that is, outside of any national jurisdiction, so they can devote themselves communally, unhindered by government regulations and spared the trouble of convincing those too thick to understand, to work, to business, and last but not least, to the development of new models of society, which, freed from the rotten sediment left by hundreds of thousands of years of politics, could thrive in fresh, unspoiled, and above all controllable ground, like hothouse tomatoes in the pure, germ-free substrate of digital technology, and if a community does not develop in a direction you deem acceptable, you can achieve ultimate freedom by decoupling your part of the island—the plan is to build the Sea Steadies according to a modular system adapted from the process of evolution—and set sail over the open seas in search of a new community you can dock with, which allows you, en passant, to consign to the archives of history the rigid concept of nationality as lifelong obligation, that straitjacket and breeding ground of nationalism. Ragnar underscores this point by picking a few strands of cheese from his goatee and rolling them between thumb and index finger into a tiny ball, which he tosses into his maw after the last forkful of macaroni and cheese, all of which suggests to Kraft that simply being able to set sail would, in fact, be a great advantage, but Kraft doesn’t have a chance to develop this thought because Ragnar Danneskjöld, picking up speed, launches into a description of what he calls the “Cambrian explosion of governance”: with the abandonment of the old, land-based rules that take the joy out of life, millions will be catapulted out of poverty through the construction of one Singapore or Hong Kong after another and, at the same time, furthermore—and he marks his enumeration by jabbing his fork, on the tines of which a single noodle is impaled, into the air—diseases will be eradicated, the oceans cleaned, carbon dioxide filtered out of the atmosphere, the world fed, and fossil fuels replaced by algae, but all of this, the man in the kaffiyeh affirms as he scrapes the cheese crust from the edge of his pan, can only happen if people pull up stakes and make a new land their own, expand the frontier yet again, because peaceful evolution, unlike perpetually bloody revolution, can only occur in new niches, and after all, it’s not only the individual species that evolve, no, cultures are subject to evolution as well, even systems of government develop according to Darwinian principles but only as long as there is room for new concepts, for example, direct democracy, organized through social networks and managed without legislative power, or a community that ratifies its own rules and laws and formulates them according to the participatory principles of the open-source movement in a kind of Legipedia, or even—and why not—enterprises that offer flat rates for all services, well-designed and user-friendly products that until now have been offered by the state, so that you could change providers when
dissatisfied, in short, it’s time to colonize the oceans; these dynamic systems would offer dynamic, fluid individuals—pioneers with new notions for new nations, as Ragnar waxed alliterative—the opportunity for evolution without revolution.

  Ragnar sets down his fork and looks expectantly at his interlocutor. Kraft doesn’t know what to say. Erkner jumps in and explains that there are a hundred million people around the world who are ready to leave their homeland and set out in search of a better life. Now Kraft has even less idea what to say. How is he supposed to equate the millions of Africans, Afghanis, and Iraqis with rudimentary educations who are crossing the desert in trucks and on foot and who are venturing across the Mediterranean in overloaded inflatable boats so they can pick tomatoes in European hothouses with Ragnar’s high-tech vision of floating work-life habitats in a Jonathan Ive–like design for digital nomads with degrees from universities that jockey for the top ten places on ShanghaiRanking? But who knows, maybe he’s being too pessimistic? In any case, Erkner is prepared to invest his millions in the project and maybe he, Kraft, is just an old fossil, too rigid to appreciate the beauty of the notion. He certainly doesn’t want to come off as a cultural pessimist and critic of technology, not today, not in front of Erkner, whose prize money must be won through optimism, so he asks with a show of interest how far the project has advanced, confident that he will hear astonishing things about gigantic, modular, self-sufficient island structures on the open sea, on which the first settlers are already busy cultivating algae and disruption.

  And what he hears is, indeed, astonishing: they’re about to anchor a few old pontoons that have been welded together in the San Francisco Bay, not far from Oakland, on which they’ll install work-life habitats made out of containers. The first community is expected to move in next summer. This description sounds to Kraft more like one of those run-down boats turned into discos that are tied up along the bank of the Neckar, or those dreary accommodations for asylum seekers in the Hamburg port. At least this allows him to connect Ragnar’s brave new world to the Africans whose sandals made from old tires are left stuck on the razor wire of the fences around Ceuta and Melilla, but the discrepancy between what they envision and what they’ve achieved seems to him about as vast as that between Tobias Erkner’s reality and that of a Nigerian emigrant. Faced with this bamboozle, the optimism Kraft has so arduously scraped together collapses like a sliced soufflé and, putting Erkner’s goodwill and the prize money on the line, he draws breath for a rejoinder, a harsh one, formulated with the rigor of a sound European awareness of history and the instinct for realism that comes from such grounding. He will employ the range of his sharply honed instruments: caustic humor, sarcasm, and irony. His rejoinder will be scornful, sardonic, incisive. He wants to shame, destroy, and unmask the two men, this ludicrous would-be pirate in his rank wrestling singlet and this fishy millionaire with his half-baked, childish dreams. Unfortunately, however, the latter has already called for the check without Kraft noticing and just when Kraft is about to let loose, his lips already set in a superior grin of anticipation, a grin with which he intends to underline the bon mot, inspired by Heidegger, about the autonomous laws of technology, which he just thought up as an opening to his ad hoc tirade, when the noodle gratin chef himself comes over to the table in his grease-stained leather apron and announces, after receiving their many-voiced compliments about his ultimate macaroni and cheese, to which the blindsided Kraft also lends his voice, that the gentlemen’s dinner is, of course, on the house, because he very much hopes, he says, turning to Erkner and Danneskjöld, that it will serve as his recommendation for a branch on the high seas; after all, nothing is more important for a new community than a common soul and in that light his ultimate soul cuisine is predestined, you could say, for the nourishment of the settlers, and furthermore, outside of territorial waters and freed from the endless chicanery he is subjected to every day on the part of the unions and the authorities, he will finally be in a position to significantly increase his profit margin on each panful of noodles sold, and for that he is willing to pay a considerable amount in rent. Erkner and Danneskjöld are thrilled with the idea of pushing back the frontier with him and promise to think of him when they put to sea and so he will be hearing from them very soon.

  Exactly eighteen minutes after they entered the restaurant, they are back outside on Valencia Street, and a black car with a glowing pink mustache on the dashboard pulls up to the curb. Kraft is hustled into the back seat, followed by Ivan; then Ragnar and the young Eddie, he who had so devotedly waited in line for them then remained silent for the entire meal, say goodbye through the open window. Erkner gets in the front passenger seat and gives the order to leave. Kraft, who always wants to know where he is and can’t stand being driven, stares out the window, trying in vain to orient himself. He soon gives up. Tonight, he is prepared to admit, he will have to abandon the reins. He can count his blessings that he wasn’t left behind. Kraft turns to his friend, who said little during the meal, in desperate need of agreement, hoping for some sign of understanding, a wink of his good eye, a faint ironic smile, some small gesture that would signal to him, Kraft, that he is not alone in this strange performance and that later, on the drive home, they’ll have a good laugh over it. But Ivan has closed his eyes and is massaging the base of his thumb. He looks exhausted. Kraft slumps in his seat and gingerly probes his burned soft palate with the tip of his tongue. The car glides through the city, up and down its steep streets.

  chapter ten

  History is an arena only one can leave as a victor.

  —FORD SAKAGUCHI

  Kraft held the leather briefcase with the two remaining bottles of Tokay protectively to his chest, while an already downed bottle of wine and a Hungarian paprika salami waged a pitched battle for supremacy in his gullet. There was pushing and shoving on all sides and the gleaming caps of his Italian shoes kept getting stepped on as the glass of broken beer bottles crunched under his shoes’ thin leather soles. The crowd, thick on both sides of the Brandenburg Gate, surged down the Unter den Linden boulevard and onto the Pariser Platz, which just a few weeks before had still been part of the death strip. The crowd squeezed in both directions through the narrow breeches in the Wall, which soldiers of the National People’s Army had opened two days before Christmas, and flooded the square in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where it encountered a tide of people coming from the Tiergarten.

  Kraft had intended to watch the events on television from the sofa in Grunewaldstraße, where he now lived alone, but Ivan—as he wanted to be called since he had moved to California—had other plans. At the crack of dawn on the final day of that turbulent decade, he had rung Kraft’s doorbell, which had also been his until a few years ago, and when Kraft, still half-asleep, opened the door, he stormed into the narrow hallway, bringing the musty whiff of a Hungarian couchette car, brandishing a plastic bag that revealed the contours of wine bottles and sausages, and shouted that he had escaped a second time, but this time, not without booty.

  * * *

  István had not been home even once in the eight years since the Hungarian student delegation had taken him to the chess championship as their shirt-washer and forgotten him in a dreary hotel room. Eight years during which he wasn’t allowed to see his mother or his father or even his little sister, whom he remembered as a mousy sixteen-year-old with a bad complexion. His father, meanwhile, had died, his mother’s hair had become thin, and his sister had a baby at her breast when she opened the door for Ivan. His mother embraced her long-lost son and immediately, even as she patted his cheeks and covered his face with dry kisses, whispered in his ear the first in a litany of reproaches that centered for the most part on the fact that he had left without saying goodbye; how could he have left for the West without telling her, as if he couldn’t trust his own mother? István—he very quickly realized that was who he would always be in Budapest—could only have countered this reproach by admitting to his mother that he hadn’t had any
intention of absconding to West Berlin but had simply been forgotten by his teammates like a single, dirty sock hidden under the bedspread, but he worried that an inadvertent flight would be an even worse excuse for an eight-year absence and for missing his father’s funeral.

  Despite the reproaches and the missing father, it was a lovely and joyous Christmas celebration for his mother, for his sister, for the radiant, chubby-cheeked infant, and for the baby’s walrus-mustached progenitor, who had decided to catch up on all the missed brotherly-in-law drinking bouts in those few quiet, snowy days—for all of them, but not for István, no, not for him, because he had the feeling that the wonderful products from the West that were appearing for the first time in the stores of Budapest, on the festive tables in local homes, and under Christmas trees covered with ornaments, making the holiday a particularly joyous one for his family, had something vulgar about them. He watched disapprovingly as his fellow countrymen blissfully carried video recorders, televisions, and stereo sets out of the stores, as they proudly shivered in their new jeans and leather jackets in the Budapest winter, as they had the cheapest trinkets—which they claimed were Western goods, even though most came from Asia—wrapped in ugly gift paper, as entire families pressed their noses against the richly decorated shop windows; yes, he even disapproved of the red envelopes adorned with golden stars that his sister and her husband handed each other when the presents were exchanged, from which they extricated, with feigned surprise and loud exclamations of delight, plane tickets to Paris they had bought in a travel agency three days prior.

  Why did he frown upon his countrymen’s reveling in consumption and their hunger for travel? They simply didn’t go about it the right way. They were doing it wrong. As consumers they lacked West German sober pragmatism, British understatement, and American insouciance. They were barbarians. They debased the holy act of shopping. Consumption, for Ivan Pánczél, was a serious matter. At least, he convinced himself that this was the source of the disapproval and the bad temper that had dogged him since his arrival in Budapest. Complete nonsense, of course. For several months now, his immediate environment had put him in a state of constant irritation, of heightened tension that had set in coincident with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Outwardly he hailed this collapse and the fall of the Iron Curtain loudly and triumphantly as the definitive victory of economic liberalism, but inwardly he had begun to suspect it was a Pyrrhic victory, at least for him personally, since his existence until then had fed on the duality of those systems that now appeared to have been overcome.