In Genoa it was pouring with rain. He stood under the station arcades, looking up and across at the monument for Columbus, and thought: What am I doing here? What am I doing period. And where did he get his energy from? – I need to get my body to a hotel, or hope it will get me there. We’re both exhausted. Come on then, it’s getting dark, we’ll find us a little place to lie down and wail at the rallying-cries of millennia.
Zündel took the first albergo he came to in the harbor quarter. The name of the albergo was just ALBERGO, or strictly speaking just ERGO, because the first three letters of the neon sign over the entrance gave no more illumination. The room itself: a dream of austerity. A bare neon ring hung down from the damp-stained ceiling. The walls, where plaster still adhered to them, were in a faded avocado green. The bed was iron, the chair plastic, wobbly and also light green. The wardrobe, whose door hung open, seeing as it had no lock and no key, had been given a lick of pale green paint. Under the washstand was a small yellow plastic bucket. No pictures on the walls. Not so much as a Virgin Mary.
Zündel tried to wash. The thread on the hot faucet was broken, and when he turned on the cold, it just produced an empty gurgle, then, just as he was on the point of giving up, a tiny trickle of water. – Always the same, he thought. Just as with women. They turn away, and when the man is half dead, they give him a little finger, and lo and behold the donkey, trembling with gratitude, sucks on it.
So he washed roughly. He noticed he kept thinking about Magda, and that he was feeling more and more miserable.
He lay down on the bed. Only now, with a shock, did he register the (apparent) loss of his wife, and feel how everything in him was connected to her, and that it was her love that had given him strength. And his pain only grew sharper when he sensed that there was no more fateful (if understandable) error than the elevation of the beloved into the unique provider of meaning in life. – Obviously, he was heartily familiar with this insight as a trivial theory, but worlds lay between what was merely known and what was abruptly and physically felt!
It is to be assumed that Zündel bit his stale pillow and tore his hair. That he was so bent by anguish that he could hardly breathe. That he appeared to himself as a squashed, godforsaken dung beetle. And it is to be assumed that his pain was not of the blissful sort that stays in one’s head, not slipping down the gullet, thence to collect in heart and innards. – How foolish, insensitive, and inexperienced are those who would smile at suffering as self-pity, and reduce all grief to a masochistic pleasure.
I would like to say: that night something broke in Zündel. – But Vroni, my wife, is offended by the formulation, and thinks it sounds clichéd. Maybe so. I am a clergyman, in my line of work we do not despise formulaic expressions. Quite apart from which, I am writing for myself and for the silenced Konrad, not for a world that has forgotten benevolence, not for a world that is critical of certain turns of phrase, but continues to allow suffering. – Stet, therefore: in that first night in Genoa something must have broken in Zündel, just as a cracked and oft-repaired earthenware pot will eventually shatter.
Of course, the metaphor of the pot is hardly original, and it doesn’t claim to give any information about the nature of what is broken. It only says that something frail, something damaged, one day broke. May I give it a name, Konrad? It was your trust, your always hesitant, always pessimistic faith in the dependability of man and the world. That night you were grabbed and shaken for the last time by the horror of birth. And your halting hope that, your cord cut and rejected as you were, you could still be made to feel at home, if only there were love, the love of one woman in particular, that hope broke in pieces. But could it ever keep what it promised? Did it not falter even at the stage of promise? Yes, it spread its arms wide – only to deliver a smack. (And the child turned pale, and choked and vomited forth its violet spew.)
Zündel woke early the next morning in an almost peaceful mood. The feeling of finally confirmed unbelonging seemed as it were stripped of fear and defiance. It was this feeling, this one bright and radiant certainty, that he meant to cling to. And if in future some mendacious you’re-not-really-so-very-all-alone-as-that blandishment should approach him, be it ever so pleasing, then he would not allow one iota of his belief to be charmed away. The world – he thought, still a little crossly – the world has made me into an erratic block, well, let it bite its teeth out on me. Henceforth women and Easter bells and anything else that deceitfully rings and wheedles round me will smash.
He dawdled through his day, getting a little acquainted with the enormous Old Town. He drifted down lanes and byways. He relished the omnipresence of dirt. To him it was a sign of honesty, the way human squalor lay there unpackaged and stinking. The peeling doors stood open, failing to conceal further peeling stairwells and back courtyards. In fact, he was particularly keen on the facades of the buildings. They had no more pretensions. They were frank, baring with humility the gradations of their pastels decaying into wretchedness.
It smelled everywhere, and of all kinds of things. Zündel noted that he could identify the four cardinal points of frying oil, urine, fish, and excrement.
From time to time a plump whore on a stool in an entryway would pluck at his trouser-leg, herself also weathered.
The cats were unbelievably scrawny.
The main corso was crawling with people. Whoever was alone whistled to himself. All the others talked at the top of their voices. The tradesmen yelled, some tempting with popular tunes. – It came to his attention that all the stalls where pre-recorded cassettes were on sale also offered vibrators, and that the little tables of the black marketeers offered condoms as well as cigarettes.
Never had Zündel seen so many blatant pimps and crooks. They stood on every street corner, generally on one leg, the other bent back against the wall. They were on the lookout for johns or dupes for their fake gold watches, and they hissed “Hashish!” as Zündel gandered past.
It was with some relief that he registered the visible existence of an underworld. He thought of his planned purchase of a revolver and saw that his anxieties were groundless: the transaction would be successful, even straightforward. Even though there was no hurry, he already saw himself as a gun owner, and his heart beat joyfully.
Pippo Bar, July 10. The Colt in the drawer of the bedside table. Provisional MO: 1. Being able to leave at any time makes it easier to stay. 2. But no coquetry. 3. And no threats. 4. Get over any pleasurable fantasies of being mourned. 5. Withdraw from circulation in full knowledge of the world’s immeasurable indifference. 6. Fleeting pangs of despair are not to count. 7. Not over a woman, please! 8. And all in all, motives of spite or revenge are unworthy. 9. Possible exceptions to be made for chronic melancholy and anything that powerfully, seriously, and lastingly draws one down. 10. And yet: if it can be arranged, try to choose as cheery a time as possible. Whoever leaves in tears or upset has chosen the wrong moment. 11. Keep in mind the banal truth: this kind of withdrawal is irreversible. 12. Consider too: relief (if you should be so lucky) comes to the living person, but not the corpse. End and relief are two separate things, even if you were brought up to think of them together. 13. Pass away calmly and with gratitude. Because: you have put it behind you. You were here, you were alive, albeit in your needy way, you put down your little roots.
Zündel went to bed early and tired. But he stayed awake for hours, vainly fighting off images of Magda’s (supposed) unfaithfulness, vainly fighting off his hate which became increasingly immoderate. – Lubricious sow, he said, aloud. Low-down whore. Deceitful bitch. Shameless slut. Stupid, crude, lying, faithless, heartless, selfish cow.
He felt ashamed of himself, found himself alarmingly primitive. I don’t really mean it that way, he whispered, and then he thought: Do I really not? What do we call someone who after years of intimacy and closeness gets rid of her companion just like that? Calls in evidence the involuntary nature of the emotions and gets the dust off her feet? Justifies herself moreover, by referring to her long-suppressed need to find herself? Doesn’t scruple to invoke all at once everything that was bad about the relationship, and scrape together all the things that were inadequate about her partner? And how honest is the whole pompous ritual framing such a desertion, which in any case and invariably turns into a somersault straight into someone else’s waiting arms? Why do people always say: “I turned to someone else for comfort because our relationship was rocky . . .” Why don’t they say: “I depend on your mistakes and the rotten things in our relationship, because they will be there to exculpate me and excuse my lack of faith . . .” What are we going to call a creature that always pretends the ex post factum explanation or justification for their behavior was its motive and release?
Zündel pondered for a long time, rejected his previous terminology, and struggled through to the only just, albeit (in his eyes) somewhat pastoral-sounding reply: we will call such a creature not sow or cow, but human. Just human. Because that’s the way we all are. In this central issue of the conduct of our lives there is dull conformity. Everyone is a more or less elegant, more or less resourceful escapologist, master of disguise and self-justifier, who knows how to lend dignity to his meanest steps. Every word is a coughed up bogie. Every sentence a slithery pretext. Skullduggery as a basic form of human existence. Dishonesty as second nature and principle of form. So we all lie and cheat our way from one falsehood to the next, from self-deception to self-deception, and in the end every death bed contains nothing but a stinking, slimy, loathsome bunch of deceit. – Forever and ever, amen, said Zündel, and soon after he fell asleep.