Frau Berends silently opened the door and tiptoed in. It was nearly pitch black in my bedroom. I was lying on the bed at the back smoking. I expect I’d been awake for a while, but I was afloat on a cloud of languid unknowing. Frau Berends stood by my night table, put down my newspapers and letters, and turned to leave.
“Eleven o’clock, Frau Berends …?” I asked in a sheepish, squeaky voice.
Frau Berends replied, groping for the handle to close the door, not looking round, her head sunk between her shoulders, in a pitiful rather than resigned tone:“Eleven o’clock …? Two o’clock! It’s getting dark again …”
She left holding her head between her hands.
I opened my letters. One was from my brother. It said: “Last week I sent two telegrams to your new address. They were accurately written, but both were returned with the comment: not known! They were about the favor Sr N. asked of you, that you promised to honor and never will. If you weren’t so careless and lackadaisical, I’d feel really sorry for you. Where the hell are you? Who is this Marta Berends? Are you really in Berlin? Are you sure? You’ll never change, there’s no curing you: you’re a loose cannon. Your selfishness creates infinite problems for you and makes your life a real mess. You think you’re doing whatever you feel like and the smallest incident sends you off course …”
My first inclination was mentally to agree with my brother. That gave me the pleasure of feeling I’d done my duty. That pleasure would have restored me to my languid cloud, had I not decided to reread the letter. The lost telegrams stirred me. It was indeed odd and disturbing.
Are you an unknown in this household? I wondered, as I laced up my shoes.
I thought about it for a time. It was strange. However, there could be no mistake. I was the only visible subtenant. The other living creatures were Frau Berends, a boy, Roby, a cat, and a kitten. The house contained objects from the intermediate realm – a gramophone, a stove and an alarm clock. Apart from that, there was nothing else with any life.
I worried as I dressed. While I knotted my tie I decided it was true enough, I’d lived in that house for a couple of weeks and still didn’t really know where I was. I’d yet to examine my bedroom properly. At the same time, I didn’t know where the house began or ended. The neighborhood seemed vague and remote, doubly so when I gave it a moment’s thought. Once again I agreed with my brother and now I too felt sorry for myself.
Frau Berends’ alarm clock chimed three. I switched on the light. It was raining outside and the sky was very low. Apart from the distant patter of rain, I could hear nothing. I was definitely in Berlin, but I could hear no city sounds. I listened to the rain and stopped musing for a moment. Then I realized that my things were scattered around the room just where I’d dropped them when I arrived. My suitcase, with my clothes still a jumble inside, was open on the table in the center. My toiletries were lined up by the mirror over the basin. I’d been putting the daily papers on a chair, and the pile had grown. At first glance I thought the things I’d hung up the day before were still in the wardrobe. Then I realized my bowler hat was missing. I searched my bedroom in vain. I went out into the passage hoping the playful kitten had taken it to its somersaulting Paradise. No sign of my hat.
I thought I heard footsteps behind the kitchen door so I knocked. Frau Berends came out. She closed the door behind her. The passage was murky. I could only see Frau Berends’ imposing hulk and a pale pink hydrangea spot of color on one corner of her face.
“Frau Berends, where is my bowler hat?”
A long pause followed. My words echoed horribly down the passage. Frau Berends remained disconcertingly still. Finally she waved her hand as if to chase a fly away, snorted, and declared sarcastically: “Your bowler hat? Is that why you summoned me? What a liberty! Perhaps …”
As she opened the door I saw her in the light from the kitchen for a second: a wrinkle under her nose, nodding as if she really pitied me.
I went downstairs, with alarming thoughts buzzing round my head. I was worried: Where are you? I asked myself on a landing, feeling slightly afraid yet thinking how stupid and grotesque that was. The wooden staircase was very narrow and a dusty bulb flickered in my eye. Everything looked down-at-heel and dirty, and a cold draught blew up the stairs. The threadbare carpet was spattered in soft black mud. I struck a match to light a cigarette. With my first puff I heard a child crying nearby that I thought was behind me. My heart leapt and I turned quickly round. I dropped the match. The crying had stopped, as if they’d just drowned it.
I rushed down the rest of the stairs. I know this is absurd but I have to confess that when I walked out into the street, my head felt on fire, my mouth was parched, and my cheeks red hot. The stupidest presentiment at twilight can transform the most harmless, ordinary reality into something arcane, unbearable, and chaotic. I thought how everything seemed possible except for a telegram sent three thousand kilometers away going astray. How difficult it was to keep rational! The sound of certain words, for example, can interpose a misty film between our eyes and reality. The words ‘not known’ have such a mysterious resonance! When we are influenced by one of these mirages we think the reality of fantasy has a deeper, more logical and sensible meaning than the mechanical, ordinary day-to-day. The reality of fantasy is more vivid and exciting because it belittles an individual and makes him see the world through more pessimistic eyes.
It was raining and windy. The streetlamps were lit but glowed dimly. The street was almost empty. The wind whined through skeletal trees. I took the first turning. A tiny man with crooked legs was walking ahead of me. He was striding along and the unpleasant scrape of his hobnailed shoes gave me goose bumps. He wore a bowler hat pulled over his forehead, smoked a pipe, and carried a yolk-yellow suitcase. I tried to overtake him, and when I drew level, his innocent blue eyes stared at me, as he continued humming a popular tune. The street was long, straight, and terribly drab, dotted with patches of window light. The houses were all the same: reinforced concrete, mostly not pebble-dashed, a small, leaden-colored strip of garden, and a front fence – cardboard constructions. The silence of the graveyard hung over the street.
I found a huge, undeveloped plot at the end of the street. It was a field of potatoes dotted with black wooden huts. A thread of light slipped out of the occasional hut. The field was surrounded by the precipitous, scary walls of the neighboring blocks. There was a vertical line of lights: seven toilets, one atop another. Silhouettes of tall trees loomed over the non-built-up corner, magnified by the low sky and milky gleam of twilight. Rain pattered monotonously on the half-dead field. The wind occasionally swept up the rain, slanting gusts hit the ground, and the raindrops made huge bubbles that popped.
I ambled back. On the first street corner, the wind blew the screams of kids my way. I walked in their direction. This street seemed constructed of equally cheap and characterless cardboard. A gang of boys was playing football in the light from a street lamp. I stopped and gaped. One of the boys had one leg shorter than the other and his gammy leg hung inside a huge, black, lumpy, monstrous shoe with a wooden sole, the kind worn by children with dropsy joints. I imagined the thin, spindly bone under the longish stocking. The knee stuck out like a rock under his clothes – a yellow blob.
The young lad was never still, capered like a goat and booted the rag ball with his monstrous foot. When he kept goal, he stretched out his whole leg and that vast shoe described a semicircle over the ground to stop the ball getting through. The shoe grated on the asphalt. That scraping sound went straight to my heart. I stood there a while, my hand over my eyes, listening as the heavy, sodden ball hit the lame boy’s foot. I felt his leg could snap at any moment like a reed and scatter shards of bone in the lamplight or that his leg would dangle like a broken branch.
I took a few steps as if to walk away, but then turned round and moved closer to the boy. I had a clear sight of him in the dull glow. His red puffy face and anxious eyes were glued to the movements of that bundle of rags; he ran to and fro, screaming, like an apparition. He kept leaning the palm of his hand on his gammy knee and taking the weight of his body on the ball of his foot, with a grimace of pain. The grimace was short-lived, then he tilted his head back and his face brightened. His eyes and entire body resumed their frantic movements, the wooden sole echoed on the asphalt and against the soft, sopping wet ball while he screamed as diabolically as ever. I was dripping with sweat, my heart thudded and my hands shook.
All of a sudden, I could stand it no longer; I entered the circle of light and grabbed the young lad’s arm. He squealed hysterically and was stunned. Then he leaned on the toe of that huge shoe, twisted round and took three or four quick jumps. All at once he turned round and stared me in the face. My heart missed a beat. That young lad was Roby, Frau Berends’ nephew.
Roby recognized me straightaway and his first reaction was to lift both hands behind his head. Then he backed away. Finally he came tearfully over, his teeth gleaming in what was a sad, apologetic, faltering smile. Rain and sweat poured down his face. He kept his hands on the back of his neck.
“What’s the matter with your head? Is it hurting?”
He didn’t answer and took another step back. Perhaps he wanted to tell me something, but couldn’t. Then, still staring at me, his eyes moistened and more tears rolled down his cheeks. His faltering smile seemed to freeze on his lips. As a result, the game had been called off and five or six lads encircled us, one by one, their eyes full of mischief. Roby was quivering and glancing fearfully in turn from the lads to me.
“What’s that behind your head?” I asked with the friendliest look I could muster.
He hesitated for a moment and then lethargically dropped his arms, an anxious glint in his eyes. A black object rolled down from the nape of his neck. I stooped and picked it up. It was my bowler in shreds: a soft, ridiculous, shapeless bundle, like a dead black cat. The other lads couldn’t stop laughing. Roby stood straight on his good leg – the other hung down, not touching the ground – tears now came in a flood, he sobbed, looked at me askance, then his face blanched and contorted in terror. I smiled as I put my hand on his shoulder.
“It was an old hat,” I said, “We’ll soon buy another … Why must you play so frantically? You’ll hurt yourself one of these days. Is your leg hurting?”
As he was crying, and didn’t move or say anything, I took his hand and pulled him towards me. He walked by my side for a time, limping horribly, accompanying each step with a sob. The other boys followed a few steps behind, then stopped between the shadows and the arc of light. When they saw we were a distance away, they started chorusing: “Roby! Roby! Lamey! Lamey!”
Their shouts were deafening. I wanted to stop, but Roby squeezed my hand and looked at me with a livid, almost purple face. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and his teeth chattered. He aroused horror and infinite pity. I walked back and sent the other boys packing. They took off like a flock of birds but we could still hear their distant jeers: “Roby! Lamey!”
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll buy you some chocolate.”
“No, it’s late. I’ve got to go home.” And wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve, he sniveled: “Frau Berends is expecting me.”
“Frau Berends …? I asked, more at a loss than ever. “Isn’t Frau Berends your aunt?”
“So they say, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t!” he answered, standing straight energetically, his hands in his pockets, as if annoyed I’d doubted him for a second.
We walked down the middle of the road. It was still raining and the wind whined through the trees. Roby was sopping wet. His monstrous shoe dropped into a puddle of water, slurped and splashed out. His shoes hit the ground, one after another, awkwardly. I accompanied him to the front door. I was itching to ask him about Frau Berends but restrained myself. In the doorway, I laughed and asked: “So why did you take my hat?”
“I’d promised …” he rasped “They never let me play. They always shout: ‘Lamey! Lamey!’ We went to the saddlers yesterday to stitch up a ball. The saddler heard them say they wouldn’t let me play today. He said: ‘Roby, you have a subtenant at home who must have a bowler hat. Bring that, and you’ll play the whole of tomorrow afternoon. We’ll patch up the ball with the bands from the bowler …’ The others agreed. I took your bowler before lunch. I used Frau Berends’ key to get into your room without making a sound. And you heard nothing … They punched and screwed it up … It wasn’t the saddler’s fault, he’s a good man.”
“Why do you say he’s a good man?”
“Because he is!” said Roby abruptly, a tear hanging on one eyelash.
I said nothing, but thought it was all very peculiar. I looked at Roby for a second. I saw a patch of blue in eyes that were large, open, motionless, and melancholy. He stood in the doorway, mouth half open, hands in pockets, nose in the air …
I shrugged my shoulders and disappeared down the street.
After supper I went into a café and wrote to my brother:
The first thing I’d ask, said my letter, is for you to pacify Sr N … Then I’d like to admit that you’re absolutely right in what you say about me. I agree entirely. And, then, I’ll tell you that you made this a wretched day for me. I’m shivering with cold and, if I’ve not got a temperature, I’m not far off.
I write to tell you exactly what my situation is at the moment. First of all, don’t doubt for a second that I’m living in Berlin, in the Wilmersdorf district of the city. I couldn’t tell you whether the street that counts me as one of its residents is central or on the outskirts. Lots of people believe that living centrally means you live round the corner from a cinema. If you apply the cinema concept of centrality to me, you’d conclude I’m on the outskirts. I’d say I’m a good quarter of an hour from the local Town Hall, and the nearest tram is four minutes away. The part of the neighborhood where my street falls is, in any case, notoriously interim. It’s that indeterminate part of the city where the countryside invades the urban space which in turn melts into country. It’s forlorn and remote. When darkness descends, all those still out and about are apprehensive: we stride along quickly.
My street is only half built-up. The other half wends between fields of potatoes, cabbages, and sugar beet. It hardly looks like a suburban street. The idea we have of a suburb doesn’t hold true in this city: Berlin doesn’t possess that belt of dirtier streets, full of children, workers in blue overalls and dewy-eyed, conceited girls you find in so many cities. Here, if you will, it’s either suburb or city. Berlin is a machine-built city and when they decide to construct a row of houses or part of a district, they do so thinking it’s come to stay. This means that apart from its old city center Berlin is completely uniform. Every district is alike. Reinforced concrete in the bourgeois district of Charlottenburg is perhaps a little more expensive than that used in the poorer district of Moabit, but the atmosphere is the same everywhere. Life in these neighborhoods is also uniform. The shopping streets, dotted around, are strategic hubs always thronging with people. Every shopping street is surrounded by a network of sad, lonely, grimly silent streets. There are no unusual nooks or crannies. Everything is geometrically angled and four-days old. Imagine the Eixample of Barcelona, a looser, vaster Eixample that’s not so uniform or monotonous. Take away the sun, the delicate, not entirely African layers of white gauze in Barcelona; add in the same tendency of stone, on overcast days, to assume the color of porridge and you have something approximating Berlin. Of course, there is more reinforced concrete, the houses have two-meter long front gardens behind a fence, but the architecture is equally bland and equally cold: it’s the mass-produced way to accommodate large, orderly families. The tone is perhaps not so bright; it’s the tone of the first layers of cork on the oak or, if you prefer, a grayish pumpkin hue … Think on that and don’t say you didn’t like it. That would be the limit!
However, one aspect of Berlin I can’t stomach is the mania Berliners have for covering their houses in ivy and climbing plants. These clerks in their tailcoats and paste collars, or those fat, sallow bourgeois must think that living in a house with an ivy-clad façade is like life in a medieval castle on the banks of the Rhine. Nature softens the German and poetry makes him go dreamy-eyed. I, for one, am unimpressed by a scene of ruins. I’m horrified by the variety of lizards, rats, salamanders, insects, creepy-crawlies, beetles, and all kind of strange beasts that thrive in the ruins rhapsodized by poets. These little creatures made by Our Lord Almighty – well, it beggars belief, doesn’t it? – must live in the holes, crannies, and crevices of houses in Berlin, as God disposes. They must be animals that have adapted to the comforts of civilian life, and must be delighted by the tender or passionate and ever interesting musical exercises played by the young ladies who live in those blocks. But what can I say? Despite the miracles wrought by adaptation to the environment, they don’t fill me with joy. If I lived in one of these places, I’d always be worried I’d find a lizards’ nest in my waistcoat.
The house where I live tends to the other extreme. It’s so prosaic and bare, so cold and spare you could weep. It is huge, rectangular, with a small, sad, interior garden. The building has four staircases that correspond to its four wings. If we so wished, we residents could spend our lives peering into that inner yard, looking at each other, admiring ourselves and waving our handkerchiefs in greeting. My bedroom is on one of the side wings. From the outside, the house is a mixture of barracks, factory, and human beehive. Frau Berends’ flat is rather big. The door from the stairs opens on to the passage and that makes the flat feel like a cul-de-sac. The kitchen, bathroom, my room, and the two rooms that are presently unoccupied look over the inner yard. The dining and sitting rooms and other rooms have never seen the light of day.
I was scrutinizing my room today. I’d never thought it was so small and gloomy. It’s a rectangle with a rather low ceiling. Down one long wall is a wardrobe, a washbasin with accompanying paraphernalia, and a window over the communal yard. Down the other, a divan with two or three cushions covered with that so-called Japanese fabric, now tattered and dirty, and a splendid stove. At the back is a bed and facing the window, the table where I write. The middle of the bed sags terribly and must have previously been occupied by an Italian with a black beard and treacherous eyes who won lots of battles thereon. A table stands in the center where I have placed my suitcase between two bunches of paper flowers. The suitcase occasionally reminds me of a child’s coffin. The walls are papered a horrible purple, and among the objects stuck on them are a set of postcards from Egypt complete with pyramids, lions, palm trees, camels, and tourists dressed 1908 style – ladies with leg-of-mutton sleeves and forward tilting, beribboned hats, men wearing white képis and fancy waistcoats. There are two prints over the bed: Madame de Recamier and a lady I thought must be by Reynolds, with a mouth like a carnation. Not forgetting the ubiquitous seated figure of Frederick the Great playing a flute.
Do you think this room is ripe for crime? Would you even think you could lose two telegrams in this place? The neighborhood is certainly out of the way and the house impersonal and insipid, but even if it were closer in than we’d like, Frau Berends is too sensible to play stupid tricks on me. And the telegrams? I don’t know what’s happened to them, and I never will. I have a friendly relationship with Frau Berends but I dare not ask her anything that’s not absolutely necessary. I’m sure that if I made her talk any more she’d bill me for her words. My impression is that she has some very original ideas, for example, about the act of opening a door. Germans are cosmic, opaque and contradictory but that’s not to say they don’t like their céntims.
What happens in the house is really strange. The six beings that live there have very well-defined personalities and if we ever do interact, it’s out of pure need. We are individualists and jealous of our independence. This means there is always an atmosphere of suspicion, an icy silence and total ignorance of what goes on beyond the door to one’s respective bedroom.
I think it’s obvious that Frau Berends’ main drive is a feeling of repulsion towards her subtenants. Even when I’m paying my rent she looks at me with a mixture of pity and contempt. Why is this? Has Frau Berends concluded that inside each subtenant hides a spoilsport who entered this world with the sole purpose of interrupting her in full flow? Or is she someone who’s gone down in the world and now finds that her miserable dealings with tenants remind her of a life that was once elegant and prosperous? Or does she think her trade is below her and demeaning? I’ve often thought about Frau Berends’ curious attitude and I find it absurd. If she doesn’t want subtenants, why does she have them? If she’s forced to have them, why doesn’t she resign herself? I know it’s painful – and how! – to accept that one must act pleasantly and go through the motions, but this lady has no excuses, and in her line of business you can’t occupy middling, reformist, equivocal positions. You can’t claim she is a tenderhearted, easygoing, impressionable youngster, since she must be at least forty-five and her worn looks hardly single her out as a woman completely ignorant of the ways of the world.
Frau Berends is a tall, stout, and imposing figure; she tends to walk with a stoop, and around the house you sense she’s beginning to eye her growing belly. It’s a stance that could spark memories of a procuress, however charming and pious she might seem. Full of surplus flab, her face is generally the purplish yellow of people with a heart condition; her eyes are blue and watery, her nose tiny and damp, her hair sparse with a pink skull smoldering beneath, mauve bags under her eyes, and peculiar eyelashes and lids, seemingly made of fluff. Frau Berends always wears a chocolate Spanish-style housecoat, with a tasseled belt, Scotch plaid slippers, and bed socks. When she wants to read, she puts on spectacles that dangle over her chest on a big black ribbon. Frau Berends doesn’t take a single step around the house or outside without her patent leather handbag.
She is mild-mannered, even negligent. When she walks, she tilts her head slightly to the left. However, the slightest upset can make her lose her temper and then her whole body trembles and rocks and her eyes squint and bulge out of their sockets. I’ve seen her in this state a couple of times and imagined she was inflating, that I should grab her housecoat to stop her floating off like a paper balloon.
Today I spoke to Roby, the young lame boy I thought must be Frau Berends’ nephew. He told me forcefully, absolutely sure of himself, that it’s fiddlesticks to think he is anyone’s nephew. I was astonished.
Roby is pitiful. Mystery surrounds that boy and he must know the truth, though he’s only ten years old. With his huge black shoe and woeful expression I can’t look at him without feeling moved. I know of no other child’s face with more anguished eyes and mouth. He has large, still blue eyes with a touch of gray, wide-open and full of melancholy. His usual look is that of a simple soul – half-gawping mouth, hands in pockets, gangling body. Roby spends his days out of the house. I don’t know if he even eats with Frau Berends. He often comes back at ridiculous times of the day or night and when he does, he always plays with the kitten first. Roby lies in the passage and teases the cat with a paper ball or a piece of string or by making shadows on the wall with his fingers. The cat jumps, hits the wall, knocks his head against the bar in the chair and meows in pain. However, he knows Roby well, climbs onto his shoulder and wraps his back around his ear and his tail around the nape of his neck. The boy rewards him with somersaults and all kinds of games. You sometimes hear a loud noise in the middle of the night: it’s Roby’s wooden shoe that’s clumsily hit the floor while he’s clowning with the cat. This shoe is the only noise you hear in the house at night: it sometimes sounds more muffled, when Roby, who apparently doesn’t take his shoes off very often, hits the slats in his bed with the big one. On my first days there I found that noise acutely distressing. Now I’m used to it.
The big cat, on the other hand, can’t stand the boy. She’s an animal that can’t bear poorly dressed people. She tolerates Roby to an extent; her loathing isn’t so loud or offensive; in any case, the boy’s ripped elbows, the holes in his trousers, and stiff, messily cut hair don’t bring out the best in her.
She has other features that make her a cat for a lordlier establishment. She is fat, with fluffy, painfully flaccid legs and an eye veiled in blood like an arthritic burgher. And, for example, she won’t tolerate whistling in the house. If somebody does, she meows two or three times by way of a warning, then sidles treacherously up and bites the ankle of the offending individual. Like all intelligent beings, this cat recognizes the proper importance of heating. She’s fussy in matters of food: her stomach is as sensitive and demanding as an old bon viveur’s. She only likes one particular brand of Frankfurter, in the evening only accepts fish. Frau Berends maintains that she likes to chew typewriter carbon paper – a must – and tobacco. Frau Berends is naturally inclined to emphasize the qualities and traits of the beast. Naturally, she exaggerates. That cat is hardly different from any other living being in this world. Though it’s hopeless! Pet owners will always believe that theirs is the most intelligent or sensible around.
In this household, Frau Berends and the cat represent the past, tradition, and order; Roby and the kitten, the future, revolution and instability. As a matter of taste I’d prefer to be on Roby’s side, but I recognize, albeit reluctantly, that I have one leg in the other camp. Roby’s still eyes and sorrowful air have stolen my heart but I respect the cat’s stomach and Frau Berends’ rude spirit. One must be objective in this world and accept it as it is – to echo the words uttered by that elegant gentleman when acknowledging that someone had trampled on a recalcitrant corn and made him see stars.
In my previous letter I said I was the only subtenant in the house. However, another gentleman moved in recently: Herr Brandt. He is middle-aged, shy, law-abiding, and unobtrusive. He is a draftsman. There’s sometimes a light on in his room at night. Otherwise he often arrives back very late and seems to grope his way along the passage. His is the sad, ravaged face of a man who has spent his entire life in lodgings and is perhaps fated to continue there forever.
You may be wondering why I’ve embarked on such detailed explanations, and what I have in mind. I expect it’s rather futile an excuse but now and then I find self-justification heartening. If I have succeeded in giving you an idea of where I am and of the society surrounding me, I feel I won’t have wasted my time – apart from the fact that I am much more relaxed after writing this letter to you. Yours put the fear of God into me. I now think I’m less of an unknown quantity than I was at four o’clock. Keyserling the writer – who is currently on everyone’s lips here – had no choice but to go round the world to discover himself. I’ve been once round this neighborhood and house and feel much better.
Remember me and write to me. Adéu.
I’ve completely recovered from influenza and today, Sunday, 14 December, Berlin, venture into the street. It’s two o’clock. The city is covered in snow, but the air is dry. The snow in the street is frozen, dirty, trampled underfoot, and yellowish. The snow on the trees, in sheltered spots, on cornices and roofs is soft and white. Is it white? I wonder why sometimes when observing a snow-swept city or landscape, I’ve sometimes thought it was black. It’s a distilled kind of cold. My face must still look quite poorly. What’s more, I’ve had several sleepless nights. Feverish hallucinations, delirium prompted by being so bedridden, and complete inertia have tired me out. I feel frail, and shriveled in the head. My body reacts to the cold in the street by seeming drained and weary. The freezing cold of my leather hatband stings my forehead. The hard, icy snow makes my legs buckle. It’s sunny, but the hard, dull sunlight gives out no heat. The sky is a pale, diluted blue and fading quickly. Men and women look like big black balls in their thick greatcoats. Silence hangs heavily in the air. The sunlight reflected from a house’s windows dazzles me as does the ubiquitous frozen pumpkin hue. My God, what a winter! The temperature changes so abruptly, with rapid lows and highs of cold. When the icy cold starts to freeze, the air stiffens, your skin stretches like rubber and turns sallow with bloody blotches; everything shrinks and withers. When a thaw sets in, and a short, mellow spring surges in the air, the blood rushes back to your skin and turns you into a daring, voluptuous cat. Perhaps the erotic belongs to countries that freeze. These warmer spells are pleasing but in my view they don’t compensate for the searing pain inflicted by the deep lows. All in all Barcelona must have the best of temperatures. At this time of day – I think – there will be butterflies on Tibidabo. Seen from here those butterflies seem ordered specially, but so what? I come to a street corner. Three lengthy, identical streets extend before me. I can go straight on, take a right or left turn. Which will I choose? I wonder ingenuously. In the end I give up on my stroll.
Now, I think, it’s about finding a café that’s not too gloomy.
I spot a tavern on Berlinerstrasse. A neighborhood tavern, the milk of human kindness. As I walk in, the warmth seems putrid. I sit down at a table where a middle-aged man is already seated; he’s wearing a bowler hat, a black suit, and his eyes are a watery blue. The café is in the half dark, the electric light doesn’t meet the challenge. Even so, at first glance, I think the man opposite is Herr Brandt, who rents Frau Berends’ other room. He’s staring at a bottle of ersatz curaçao. I can see he is knocking it back. I take another glance. I’ve seen him only two or three times in the three months he’s been lodging in our household. There’s no doubt about it: it is Herr Brandt. He’s a potato purée color; his delicate hands are white, a corrosive chloride white, with swollen webs of veins. He smokes a cigarette in a holder; his eyes look glazed and doltish; he’s now eyeing the bottle in disgust. An incoherent word emerges between puffs, as if from between his teeth. The waiter’s eyes imply: “He’s pathetic, but a good soul …”
It’s quite obvious Herr Brandt doesn’t have the slightest notion that an acquaintance – a fellow lodger – is sitting at his table. Nothing indicates that he has recognized me. He’s sozzled. Sweet liqueur – how dreadful! I don’t know what to do: whether to forget it or introduce myself.
In the meantime, I survey the café. There’s a table where a card school is solemnly studying every card as if they were important industrialists or bankers. Here and there, a handful of blind drunkards are irrevocably losing it. There’s a family that looks as if they’ve just been to a funeral; father in tailcoat, top hat and stiff, protruding starched shirt; mother a blonde, with pale radish colored skin under a posh, vertical hat, all just so, a genuine throwback to the Kaiser and the Kiel regattas. Their children seem out of a bazaar. It’s obvious their presence in the café is the result of long deliberations. They want to enjoy themselves but don’t know how. They want to be happy but don’t know where to begin. In the end, seeing that their efforts are in vain they wearily pose as if for a photograph. Local folk at the bar: drivers, tram workers, passersby and two or three sallow men, clearly postmen, with caps without peaks, a red button in the middle of a white circle. A German colossus stands behind the counter, with a gleaming, shaven head – a giant from the lakes or forests. His ear lobes are particularly striking. The lobes of a prehistoric man from the forests of Germany.
All of a sudden, the man at my table – Herr Brandt – lurches towards me, stretches his arm threateningly over the wood – his face sagging into a scowl that would rather be a grin – and tries to grip a button of my overcoat between his trembling fingertips. However, before he articulates the first word, I take the initiative: “How are you, Herr Brandt …?”
He stares at me almost steadily for a time, wipes his brow and blurts confusedly: “Oh, it’s you? What a coincidence! Though it makes no difference … Right now I’m not really myself … I don’t know who I am … We are just two ordinary fellows … I’ve drunk too much.… That’s blindingly obvious. When I drink, I feel like talking …”
“Go on, Herr Brandt …”
“Herr Brandt, Herr Brandt …! No matter, it makes no odds …”
After uttering that last sentence he looked pensive and fell silent. He wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start. I acted as if I couldn’t care less, given that nothing is more ridiculous than trying to galvanize the mental processes of a drunkard. He downed another shot, lit another cigarette and shut up again. After a while, making a real effort, he asked much more politely: “Are you a bachelor?”
“Of course …” I answered smiling pleasantly.
“A subtenant and bachelor like me.”
“Nothing much we can do about that.”
“What it is to be a subtenant!”
“Why?”
“Because we are evil beasts …”
“Most likely! But that’s not so strange …”
“What’s that?”
“I was saying it’s not so strange …”
“That’s odd! Did you say that? I tell you it is very peculiar. I share your ideas about subtenants. No, it’s not so strange that we subtenants are such evil beasts.”
“Perhaps we lack something …” I responded offhandedly.
“Something, do you say? More like the lot! Don’t you think? I, for example, would love to be married. I’d like … I imagine it must feel so nice. A man marries and people listen to him. That’s highly important.”
When he said that, I couldn’t tell whether he was being ironic. What I did see was that he said it with immense conviction. In any case, I did think his head was clearing and the glazed doltish expression fading from his face.
“So, if you like the idea,” I asked, “why don’t you? Some women are truly angelic …”
“Oh really?” he responded quickly, perking up, his eyes popping at my fantastic suggestion.
“Of course! They are like angels. You’d be more relaxed, you’d eat better, your ill temper would go. Why don’t you? You wouldn’t find it so hard …”
“There’s no cure now …” he declared after a short pause, looking at the end of his tether.
“It’s too late. When I should have done it, it was impossible to date. And now it’s surely impossible.”
“It’s never impossible.”
“Forgive me! It is!” he rasped bringing his eyes within an inch of my face. “It’s totally impossible.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“And do you know why?” he asked benignly. “It’s simple enough. Ten years ago I was one man. Now I’m another. Now I have two faces. We subtenants are people with two faces. Don’t you believe me? We don’t know what we want. We are violent and weak.”
“Weak, do you say?”
“Yes, that’s right. Don’t doubt it for one minute. We can’t live without being dominated and find domination intolerable. We are suspicious yet irresistibly attracted to what is obscure. Isn’t it strange? And yet, do you see? This kind of attitude spoils everything. Generous, well-disposed people make advances … and we don’t notice. We lock and bar ourselves in. We mistake black for white. So there’s no cure in this life, it is a wretched, intolerable situation …”
He seemed to have relaxed a little. He wearily removed his hat. A bald, starkly white head appeared with the consistency and color of lard: slightly pointed at the top, tiny droplets of sweat on its flaky skin. Then he sat straight.
“Do have a glass of curaçao …” he suggested.
“No thank you.”
“Are you in a hurry? Some days everybody is in a hurry!”
“No, but no thanks. I’m a beer drinker.”
“Obviously, I don’t mind what it is, as long as it’s a sweet liqueur. Don’t think I’m a drunkard. I’ve only just started. The fact is I couldn’t get used to hard liquor. I started drinking,” he continued as if in a daydream, when I lodged at Frau Dening’s. I started cold. One day I went into a café and rather than asking for tea with lemon I ordered a kümmel. I really took to it. But perhaps that in and of itself wouldn’t have mattered. It’s got much worse since I moved into this Frau Berends’ house. There are days when I’d kill for a drink.”
A moment of calm followed. Then I suddenly saw him look up rather crazily and stare at me, half ironic and half delirious. Where are we at? I wondered. Is this guy seeing the light or sinking into the mire? Evidently he was increasingly anxious to communicate his inner feelings and perhaps what was holding him back was the knowledge that I lived in the same house. His was a coherent if rather fractured story.
“It’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “I started drinking heavily the day I started thinking hard about something I had done, something I had done that was a really dirty trick. When I lived at Frau Dening’s, as I’ve said, my drinking never amounted to much. It took a turn for the worse a few days after I moved into Frau Berends’. Barely three or four months ago … I haven’t had a clear head since …”
“Is it to do with women?”
“Oh, no! Believe me, it’s much simpler. A vile, dirty deed.”
“Frankly,” he continued, “I haven’t a clue who Frau Berends is. People said she was the widow of a military man who died in France. The story we’re so familiar with. Some in France or others in Russia. The same old story. Naturally. They also said this lady had a crippled son, Roby, you’ve met him, that violent, short-tempered runt who’s rude to everyone.”
“Roby is very nice …”
“Oh, yes! Tell me about it! Nice and adorable. After a few days in the house I saw that Frau Berends was warm-hearted though she had a gloomy, irritable temperament. Because of her financial problems and Roby’s pranks, she has her irascible moments, and generally simmers violently. Nevertheless, over those first few days I managed to establish a bond of sympathy with her and even started to think seriously about marriage. Of course, self-interest was involved, the need to find some sort of shelter … However, when she saw my interest, she tried to dominate me. And I reacted to her onslaught in the usual way. I began to treat her dismissively and even to put her down a peg or two. Do you understand? If you don’t …”
“Absolutely. We’ve talked about that previously. Do go on …”
“I tried to get her to tell me the real reason why Roby lived in her house. His presence was important because taking responsibility for strange children, that is, other people’s children, had never entered my plans. But I couldn’t get any sense out of her. I couldn’t tell you whether Roby is Frau Berends’ son, nephew or relative or whether he is completely alien to her. In the countless conversations we’ve had about that child, when I said Roby was lively and intelligent, she pretended to despise or hate him. When I said I found him to be intolerable and naughty, Frau Berends has defended him heatedly – much to my surprise. The fact is that Roby’s presence between me and Frau Berends has created endless friction, rows and petty misunderstandings that, in the end, have led to very unpleasant, wearing tensions.
“You mean that quite unawares Roby shattered all your plans.”
“Absolutely, quite unawares. However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve not hated him coldly and spitefully at times, a hatred I could never explain.”
“Yes, of course …”
“What then happened is quite straightforward. I arrived home one evening. I had to finish a job that day. I set out my things on the table. I discover something vital has gone missing: a small bottle of red ink that is really necessary in my trade and for that project. I look everywhere. I find nothing. I seek further afield, rummage in drawers, open suitcases, and search every nook and cranny. All to no avail. What’s more, it was too late to go and buy another one. I was livid. In that state I ask Frau Berends if she’s seen it anywhere. We both start frantically looking. I tell her I’d bought a new bottle that very afternoon for the task in hand. I feel she’s helping reluctantly. It lacks importance in her eyes. I say something to stir her up. She replies tetchily. We exchange a few needling insults. At my wit’s end, in a fury, I tell her I’m leaving. I start to pack my cases. Frau Berends is downcast and silent. Two tears tumble from her completely dry eyes. Tears of rage. Her face is contorted. She storms out of my room knocking into furniture and hasn’t the strength to shut the door. Meanwhile I continue gathering my belongings together when I suddenly hear Roby let out a terrible scream. I put my clothes down, stand in the doorway, and listen. How horrible! What a beating she was handing out! I heard two or three muffled blows and thought I then heard the boy’s head bang against the partition wall. I hesitated for a moment. I may even have opened my mouth to shout out, but nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps I took a first step to end that savagery. But I didn’t persist. What a coward! That poor, screaming child! Such a battering! The fact is I thought it would show weakness on my part to shout out or put in an appearance, so I did nothing … I retreated into my bedroom. Horrified, I decided to postpone my efforts to leave that house. I grabbed my hat and overcoat and tiptoed to the stairs …”
He paused. Took a swig and lit a cigarette with a flickering match. Then continued, increasingly agitated: “When I walked into the street, as the temperature was dropping, I put my hands in my coat pockets. I felt an object wrapped in flimsy paper. It was the bottle of red ink I’d bought that very afternoon – that damned little bottle … My first reaction was to feel disgusted at myself, but I didn’t have the strength to score my heart on glass from that bottle … Unconsciously, almost blindly, but knowing perfectly well what I was doing, I looked for the grate of a drain and threw the bottle of ink into it, making as little noise as possible. Nobody was in the street: I’d made sure of that first. It was vile cowardice on my part, an act of futile, gratuitous cruelty … Once I’d removed the evidence of my cowardly foolishness I thought I’d feel relieved. Liberated. The strength of our mental habits can be deceptive. In effect: I immediately felt liberated and cleansed. I went for a walk around the neighborhood … When I returned home, I tried to fake the expression of a troubled man, of someone who’s just suffered a loss because others have been careless. In fact, my feeling of liberation had melted away and deep down I now felt a terrible need to beg that bludgeoned child to forgive me. But I didn’t do that either! I unpacked my suitcases and started working on my assignment. I worked through the night trying to build up a positive sense of exhaustion. I felt increasingly ill at ease. I took ages to get to sleep, and I am a person who has never suffered from sleeplessness. I thought it was a wretched business. The day after, I drank tea, ate bread, butter and marmalade, and drank a glass of freezing water. That glass of water was so delicious! My mouth was so dry it made a new man of me. I tried to resume normal life, but found the events of the previous night were still obsessively drilling into my brain … I’m not exhausting you, am I?”
“Not at all … Do go on if it helps …” I answered with a look of deep repulsion.
“Yes, of course. I really do want to. I was saying how I tried to resume normal life. However, when I went into the street, something strange happened: I entered a bar like this and ordered a glass of kümmel … I’d never previously felt the need to enter this kind of place, particularly in the morning. You could say I’ve not had a clear head since … A subtenant is such an evil beast! And it’s strange that you said exactly the same at the beginning! We share the same ideas in this respect; we think ab-so-lu-tely the same …”
He said a little more, but I could see his features dipping and darkening and that he was straining to keep on. He took another swig of curaçao and his head slumped on to his arms that were folded on the table.
I left that dive and struggled home: I was shivering with cold yet my head was on fire. My hatband felt icy on my forehead. As soon as I arrived, I went to bed and put out the light, feeling tired and disgusted.
Winter in Berlin was harsh and desolate and Frau Berends’ house seemed curiously dark and remote. There were two or three heavy snowfalls. I was getting over the flu and was unfortunate to catch a cold. That forced me to spend several days indoors. I spent hours behind windowpanes where the rain splashed endlessly and left a yellowy-green film; I contemplated the inner yard of that half-barracks, half-factory where the flat was slotted. The flat windows looked over the garden. Twenty or so square meters of sparse pale green grass were home to three spindly, pallid trees and in the middle, to a leaning, down-at-heel wooden trapeze with a few large dangling rings and two frayed broken ropes. I never saw any children climb it, not even when it was fine, and sometimes, in the evening, I’d imagine the trapeze was an abandoned guillotine. Snow and mud were piled up in the corners of the garden; there were white patches on the sparse grass, and the flakes on the thin tree branches looked like newborn, yellow and white chicks. The mud in the garden was black and icy; everything was lifeless and dreary. The silence in the house was strangely shocking. It was like living in a submerged diving bell or enclosed cistern. You heard nothing: no laughter, no shouts, no excited conversation. You opened the window a crack and the only sound you heard was the rain falling on the grass, mud, and sleety snow. People went vaguely in and out and seemed to leave no trace.
Especially in the afternoon that intense quiet brought on a repeated feeling of fatigue and I sank into a state of unconsciousness with a raging temperature. Sometimes, a wave of nervous disenchantment flushed my cheeks. Long hours of morose lethargy followed. I’d adopted an infantile attitude to everything, relapsing intermittently into dread triggered by a vision of the way things seemed linked logically together, by a sense of the fated naturalness of the greatest catastrophes. My heart thudded and leapt and stiffened my legs. An apparition almost always floated before my eyes of a voluptuous, grotesque figure – a woman in a blouse and a gentleman with a small topper and large mustache – or I’d imagine some physical sensation. Even so my mouth felt parched, my head fuzzy, and my joints couldn’t sustain me. Most astonishingly, children never cried. They must have been born already briefed. They had never stopped in my family. These were afternoon moods. In the morning, a poor man occasionally drifted into the yard, leaned on a tree, and sang a song that sounded like a mournful psalm. I heard him from my bed, a potassium chloride pill on my tongue. I’m not familiar with the kind of songs the poor of Berlin sing: the Lumpen-proletariat. They are what you call songs of the poor, of poverty without hope. Many couldn’t rise to a song and didn’t dare look up at the windows for alms. They’d harangue in blurred, mumbling voices, with startling highs and lows. Now and then, an exasperated neighbor would angrily fling open a window and a black arm would emerge: the coin fell with a plop into the mud. Other poor people came with a young boy carrying a trombone or flugelhorn. The brass introduced absurdly desperate, explosive blasts into the yard. However, this group didn’t seem as poor as the others; the instruments in their hands, their hungry fervor and play-acting amused, brightened, and sustained them. The occasional rag-and-bone man with a booming voice passed through. One carried a briefcase under his arm and wore a hat tilted over the back of his neck, a purple cravat, a pink celluloid collar and a good quality dark suit that sagged slightly as posthumous garments generally do. You’d have said that man, an Israelite in looks, was probably a trade-union secretary.
For a moment I thought I’d entertain myself observing the windows of other high flats. I was soon disabused. The houses seemed dead, and if anyone ever budged behind those panes of glass, they seemed at a loss. It was only in the afternoon, if it didn’t rain, at dusk, that a window opened and a woman with her hair in a bun emerged to beat a mattress with a stick. The whiteness of the snow highlighted the actual color of the blocks: reinforced concrete covered in a layer of cheap pebbledash the color of burnt cork. Towards the top the cement was cracked and large dirty patches stood out, stains from leaking liquids the frost studded with lurid twinkles. The shapes and figures were unspeakably alarming. By the evening, the flats livened up. Darkness fell abruptly. There were days we had to switch on the light at three o’clock. When the bulb lit up I’d feel a hazy, childish sense of relief. I looked at the other houses: a light with a green shade; the weary glimmer of a bulb hanging from a bare, white ceiling; a pale glow on a stretch of wall that must be gaslight. One rectangular window secreted a purple-yellow beam that died a death on the snow in the yard with the hesitant charm of moonlight. I could see the corner of a freezing kitchen in one flat; in another, an old man reading the newspaper, his head a blur in the bright light; and a dining room sideboard in yet another, a fruit bowl with two oranges standing there – that exuded a misty glow that suggested they were plastic. All that absorbed you and there was no escape: anonymous, characterless misery; immersed in the house’s cold silence, it was hard not to believe the world was a place of bitterness. Yet something pleasant did exist in Frau Berends’ block: the sound of a distant piano, one you sometimes heard late at night. I never discovered where that piano was or where the notes came from. It was like a wave of gentle quivering, liquid music that penetrated through walls and dissolved. It was ethereal, shadowy, a pure sound, at once soft, velvety, and profound. Nothing transcendental, naturally! I often imagined that piano; I’d see a young gentleman and lady playing: four hands. She wore a plum-colored dress that was slightly too big. He was fair, had a clerk’s small nose and wore a tuxedo that was perhaps too tight. Now and then, when it was time to turn the page, they looked into each other’s eyes, enraptured. Then rested and ate a slice of cheese. I imagined them swathed in warm, discreetly lit comfort: they were symbols of social progress. I could have spent a lifetime listening to that piano, and the nights they didn’t play I missed their delightful idealism as keenly as if I’d missed my supper. The program they played was my program. It’s most likely that had I lived in a suitable environment, my feelings would have readily appreciated their sublime nobility. My responses have, in fact, always been commonplace and ordinary. They played exquisitely prosaic Italian pieces, Handel’s sumptuous largo, and several Vienna waltzes from the year ’12: waltzes with monocles for generals and diplomats, and several French and Russian pieces. I like everything bourgeois, pleasant, and digestible, and the taste of these distinguished homespun pianists met my needs exactly. My room was the one in the house where you heard them best, and Frau Berends sometimes tiptoed to my door and put her ear to the keyhole.
At this point Frau Berends was quite upbeat. Every day she was visited by a man they said was a retired army lieutenant. He was small, stocky, fair, pink, and featureless, and spoke with a quiet, nasal twang. They would shut themselves in the kitchen and mumble for hours on end. As it was hard to imagine they were talking about anything of any importance, it was most likely they simply kept each other company opposite an empty sink and rows of dishes. He’d often come after supper and they always stayed in the kitchen except for the odd day when they sat in the sitting room listening to a military march on the phonograph. They’d switch off the electricity. A long gas flame burned under the jug of water for the tea. A dull fluorescent glow flitted over things, and, seated opposite each other, their loose skin drooped. They looked deflated. No one bothered to find out who he was or why those two met. Frau Berends had visibly changed and one could say that she lived her life as if we didn’t exist. We’d pass in the corridor and I’d have a pleasant word for her but she never deigned to reply. She was absentminded and remote. I noticed how they would go out after lunch on days where there was a sunny spell. She dressed up: a heavy black dress and a hat strewn with tiny purple flowers. They looked like a family portrait from twenty years ago. Generally they strolled across a park, and their favorite spot seemed to be a distant park in Wilmersdorf. The lieutenant had a friend who was its lifelong concierge. They’d walk slowly back at dusk holding a sprig of fir. They crossed large, undeveloped areas, dotted with tin huts and cabbage and radish patches over which wet imperial flags flapped. Then they’d go down various dark, solitary streets and arrive home on their last legs. Even so one day the lieutenant suspended his visits. The postman started to leave letters and postcards. It was a short excursion, probably a family tragedy. In effect the letters had mourning edges. Frau Berends read them anxiously; her back to the door, she ripped the envelopes open in a tizzy.
Roby, Frau Berend’s son, was completely neglected. By day, he was never in the house. He played on street corners or roamed. When he came back, he was a chloride yellow, as stiff as a brush, and his big wooden shoe clattered over the floorboards. After his supper of a slice of smoked herring and a slice of bread and greasy margarine, he’d call the cat and they’d go off to play. I sometimes looked him up and down: his spotty face, his pigeon chest, his pointy shoulders piercing his jacket like over-long stakes, his large round blue eyes, almost always blank and gawping, his fraught, faded fair hair, and skin covered in rough down. Tattered long underwear poked out from the legs of his pants. The huge hard black shoe hung off the rickety spindle of a leg, making his whole body look lopsided. You couldn’t look at it without your hair standing on end: it seemed a monstrous artifact that might snap at any second. His life went in fits and starts: he was sometimes swept up in frantic activity, he blanched and shook and beads of sweat dotted his forehead and nose. Then he seemed driven by a mixture of fear, anguish, and daring. His ears glowed while his hands felt icy cold. That phase passed and he sank into docile torpor. He couldn’t take his dreary eyes off the shiny things he could see and his mouth sagged blissfully. From my bedroom I heard him play with the cat. Now and then an incoherent word reached me. However, I never heard him laugh. I’d hear his wooden shoe clump intermittently over the wooden floor when he stumbled down the passage. The bangs echoed morosely. Yet again I thought the bone in his leg must have broken. But you’d suddenly hear his short, croaky coughs, see his translucent chest, or hear the cat’s furious squeals and Roby’s cruel, perverse gleeful whoopees. That’s how they whiled away their time.
One night I caught them playing with paper balls. I suspected they were the lieutenant’s letters and thought it didn’t augur well. By this time the lieutenant had returned. He now wore a blue suit and, in contrast, his hat was such a sour chemical green it brought the taste of acid to one’s lips. I wasn’t mistaken: the paper I’d see in Roby’s fist was from the letters edged in black. The next morning they were strewn along the passage in the shape of balls and scraps of paper. Frau Berends let out a frightful howl the moment she set eyes on them, a tragic silence filled the house. Roby was out all day. The cat disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. Frau Berends had bounced it off the wall in the morning with a massive kick. I heard it: the sound of a slightly deflated ball being booted with gusto and encountering an obstacle in its path. The cat meowed miserably for a time and was never seen again. That evening Roby hobbled through the door, whistling. The lieutenant was at home and had been shut up in the kitchen with Frau Berends for ages. When I heard the boy come in, I switched off my bedroom light and half-opened my door to watch what was inevitably going to happen – without being noticed. Roby hadn’t taken a couple of steps down the passage when I heard the kitchen door swing open – Roby was in the rectangle of light in the dark passage, a sudden swath of light that hit me like a bolt of lightning – and a hand grabbed his shoulder. Taken by surprise, Roby turned his head, a look of unspeakable terror on his face. He had no time to do anything else. A brutal thwack lifted his body up and sent it flying through the door as if blasted by a gust of wind. Then the door shut silently and for the moment I heard nothing more. Nonetheless, I tiptoed down the passage, scared stiff. I soon heard words being whispered and the clatter of a chair falling over. A second later a muffled crash shook my whole body. It was obvious something had smashed against the wall – probably the boy’s head. I heard other blows. Anguish took my breath away. They were blows in concert and on target. I walked to the kitchen door, put my hand on the handle, set to go in. I didn’t dare. My legs were shaking and I had to keep my head up to stop myself from falling. It was horrific! I don’t remember how long I stayed like that by the door, full of indignation and pity.
Finally, after a long, depressed silence, I heard the familiar mumble of muffled words. I leaned against the wall and eased myself along the passage. I’d taken very few steps when the kitchen door swung open and Roby came out in despair. His cap was tilted over one ear and his clothes were rumpled; he seemed dead to the world, but his eyes were wide-open in terror, and his face was contorted by a kind of rage as if he wanted to cry and couldn’t. Blood was streaming from his temple and down his cheek. He stood by the door, shell-shocked. Before the door closed I glanced into the kitchen: the retired lieutenant was grinning and wiping a handkerchief over his forehead. At that point the boy must have seen something strange – my shadow perhaps – because I saw him take a leap and grab the key to the staircase door.
I hurried into my room to collect my hat and coat. I instinctively felt something disastrous would happen that night. I rushed into the street to catch sight of Roby turning the first corner. I decided to follow completely at random. I hadn’t been out of the house for a couple of weeks, and when the first rush of excitement was over and the cold hit me, I felt my eyes go on the blink and my legs struggle. There was a bitter chill in the air, snowflakes were falling and the black mud in the street had frozen. Roby was walking at a pace. Because of his huge shoe I sometimes thought he must be hopping along. My weakened state made me think for a second that I couldn’t possibly pursue him: my eyes glazed over, my head was in a spin, my whole body in a sweat – I almost fainted. I made a real effort because I thought I should go wherever it was necessary. Roby was thirty steps ahead of me. I don’t know what streets we walked down. The dark houses had a short strip of front garden. A crack of light shone in the odd window. Streets were empty and badly lit. For a second I thought I should call out. I soon desisted, thinking it would be counterproductive. As soon as he heard his name, I decided, he’d be off like a flash. We walked like that for perhaps a quarter of an hour. We finally came out onto a street with more life. There was a lurid ball of light – like the eye of a dragon – in a pharmacist’s. Roby was visibly tired and slowed down. Then he did something shocking: he looked round several times – perhaps to see if anyone was following him – and stopped in front of a shop window. It was the tawdry glitter from a cheap jewelry shop. Fifteen paces behind I saw his face light up. I saw him in profile: one hand in a pocket, the other holding a handkerchief over his wrist. His cap hung round the nape of his neck; he was shivering and his shoe hung limply on that wretchedly livid bone. He seemed to have got over his previous attack of rage, and if his eyes had glistened, you might have thought he’d calmed down. He gawped at the shop window. Then he began to walk more slowly. The few people in the street looked black. In the light from the streetlamps the snow rained down like confetti. The black lines of the trees against the glowering sky seemed straight out of a child’s drawing. The yellow trams, with their misted windows, left a pink spongy glow in their wake. We were in Berlinerstrasse, near Bayerischer Platz. Roby had just entered the square and I saw him linger for a moment by the deserted entry to the subway. Some windows gave off those blurred purple-mauve pumpkin hues that suggest a touch of domestic sensuality. Inside those tepid goldfish bowls everything must be a single color and the inmates must navigate between feather pillows, soft mattresses, bird wings, and sweaty morbid acts.
I then noticed Roby enter some gardens behind the station, walk over to a lamppost and start to pee peacefully. The light shone on his face and I thought he smiled, as he watched his piss steaming in the cold. I found his smile soothing and took heart. Then I watched him wander round the gardens as if he were searching for something while he did up his flies. In the end he went into the square and turned down Martin Luther Strasse. The street cut a sudden right angle against the sky: huge, black, interminable, and unbelievably monotonous. Then the snow started to drive harder, the dirty slush in the street disappeared and cornices and landings were edged in white. An icy breeze blew making the snowflakes swirl and the white flock in nooks and crannies dance. The gusts left wandering spirals of snow over the ground. Soon there wasn’t a soul on the street. An onerous peace – similar to the one you imagine at the end of time – hung over everything. A handful of people walked silently past. The headlights of the odd automobile turned the flakes iridescent and for a moment the air, a cadaverous, luminous yellow. Roby kept on down the street. I thought I detected a determination in his step that yet again made me foresee disaster. He was less than fifteen paces in front. Hands in pockets, nose poking up, hopping along on his big black shoe. It was a horrendous night and perhaps he found pleasure in plunging his bruised body deep into it. Again I thought I should draw level and speak to him. However, other people were still in the street. I watched anxiously in case he turned down a side street. Then I’d be able to draw level. But he never did … If he doesn’t want to see you, I thought considering all the eventualities, if he starts to shout or is frightened and starts running, it could get unpleasant. A policeman might intervene, will ask what’s going on, and you’ll have a problem. Besides, I was exhausted. My teeth chattered with cold. Walking over snow exhausted and hurt my legs. Whenever the snow crunched and slipped under my shoes the pain in the joints in my feet was unbearable. We continued down that tedious, interminable road. The houses, all the same, never ended. Everything was shut and no dingy tavern imprinted a patch of grimy yellow on the snow. Passersby became increasingly rare. Roby continued to walk with that determined air and my instinctive fear grew. Where was that child heading?
He looked so small, wretched, and dark – a blob of black mud – in that vast and horrible night: I wanted to weep. Snow was still falling … The distant vistas had disappeared. The wind corkscrewed up flurries of flakes. People on the other side of the road were like blurry, walking statues. Everything was a struggle. The individuals we passed, under their white umbrellas, advanced slowly, stooping behind puffs of white breath. A church with steep spires emerged from the haze at the bottom of a kind of cul-de-sac. In the murk its huge carcass seemed unreal, suspended between heaven and earth, its spires inordinately tall and white. A carriage trundled past: the horse pounded its hoofs and the wheels turned. Silently. It was strange and ghostly. The string of streetlamps burned with a dying glow and tongues of hazy light stretched and shrank as the wind gusted and died … I saw the soda bottle green of another tavern door before me; a delicious taste of hot toddy filled my mouth! If only I could have stopped for a toddy! If I hadn’t been afraid of losing Roby … he was six or seven steps in front. I could see a white line of snow on his shoulders. His garments hung wet and limp on his body. I accelerated to catch up with him. At that very moment, I thought I glimpsed a policeman’s helmet in a staircase entrance. I slowed down thinking of possible headaches. Oh, if only I hadn’t … Perhaps Roby would have been spared. Then I saw arcades the somber atmosphere transmuted into a giant building blacking out the horizon at the end of the street.
We were approaching Bülow-Strasse and the building was the outside of the subway. Each arcade had areas of light and shadow. I saw Roby lengthen his stride and enter the arches; he removed his cap and dusted it, knocked off the damp snow encrusted on his clothes, and pulled his stockings up to his knees. He must have found a dry rock, because he sat down and, resting his elbows on his knees, sank his head into his hands. It was late in the night and I knew the area had a bad reputation. A band of dubious women and inverts with painted faces lurked in the dense evening shadows of the arcades. There were taverns around full of monsters and angels I’d visited by chance now and then. The street lighting had dimmed. The last subway train had just rolled by and the lights over the line had been switched off. So as not to lose sight of Roby and taking the opportunity to close in on him I also went under the railway arches. I made a detour up the street so he wouldn’t see me. The reinforced concrete porches made for good shelter: even so the ground was covered in hard, frosted mud between pools of frozen water. The snow never stopped and the occasional soul still walked miserably by. Keeping in the swath of shadows under the arches I inched closer to Roby. He was still sitting in that same spot, his head between his hands. His handkerchief was draped over his forehead. I couldn’t see his face. He was motionless. Perhaps he was in horrible pain or perhaps fatigue had broken him and he was sleeping the sleep of the weary. I felt incredibly weak: anguish parched my mouth and a powerful headache kept me on edge. I couldn’t decide what to do next and indecision was exhausting. Who had given me a candle at that funeral? Roby barely knew who I was. The hatred he felt towards everyone living in that flat of people who mistreated him must surely extend to me. If you approach him, I thought, what will he say, think, or do? I leaned back on a column turning these things over that seemed a huge dilemma at the time. My inner monologue was a mixture of reality and dream, a confused sequence of melodramatic images and surges of wistful tenderness.
This flow of inner life, quickened by physical pain, plunged me into a kind of vacant reverie and for a time – I’m not sure whether long or short – I lost contact with the world around me. What I do remember perfectly is that I came to when I felt someone touch my back. Yes, that was it: I felt a hand slide gently down from my shoulder to my arm. I was aghast and swung round in amazement. A man was looking at me with an expression of mild surprise, an amused-cum-cynical smile on his lips. It was Zorin, a journalist and sociologist, and friend from the Romanisches Café and press bodies, a Russian émigré. When I realized it was him I also smiled, quite overwrought. We began a halting conversation. However, a few words in, I must have scowled angrily. His presence was an unpleasant intrusion. Why had he turned up at that time, in that place, in that weather, in the circumstances in which I found myself? What did he want? I soon realized that the sociologist wasn’t remotely interested in the expressions on my face. On the contrary, he talked to me as sweetly and politely as ever, and his quiet, gruff voice assumed a wheedling drone. I don’t exactly remember what he said. I have a vague notion that the name of Victor Hugo cropped up and he may even have recited a few lines by the immortal poet. His physical appearance was, on the other hand, etched on my mind. He was a featureless fellow: neither fat nor thin, neither short nor tall. He always wore the same longish hat with a broad blue band and a short coat that struggled to reach his knees; his face betrayed a rush of energy I thought was alcohol driven: his mouth quivered; his beady eyes kept closing above his greenish cheek bones and his hands convulsed almost lustfully. Soon after we started talking I yielded to the influence of his honeyed persistence. It was the charm of the Russians, a cold charm. He invited me to a glass of punch in one of the neighborhood taverns. He attacked twice – to no avail. I gave in at the third – I ought to say that I gave in to get him off my back, and I don’t say that to justify myself, but simply stating the truth. In the meantime, Roby hadn’t budged. It’s most likely, I thought as Zorin took my arm, that he has fallen asleep. You’ve plenty of time to go to the tavern and come back. You can pick him up later. We went into a sordid, repugnant dive. I couldn’t see a thing at first. An ocher, acidic cloud smothered everything. I didn’t sit down despite the Russian’s constant pleas. I ordered hot toddy at the bar. Once my eyes had adapted to the murk, I glanced round the tavern. There were four or five customers. A begrimed pianist with Roman-style tresses was playing a sentimental waltz. Two women were dancing. In that tepid atmosphere, after so many hours in the open, my body seemed numbed: my skin was so taut I’d have felt no pain if somebody had stuck a needle into me. The Russian recited lines by Victor Hugo in my ear, and chuckled and chatted. The toddy finally arrived. It was barely hot. It tasted so markedly of chemicals it made my nose shrink. I should have thrown the lot at the sinister character next to me. I freed myself from his smarmy clutches and shot out into the street feeling more drained than ever. It had stopped snowing and the sky had cleared. I ran towards the spot where I’d left Roby. I looked all around. It was hopeless. I couldn’t find him.
The stone was there where he’d been sitting, alongside the prints his huge shoe had left on the frozen mud. Roby had gone. I then saw the implacably fated order of the disaster so clearly it seemed almost natural. Even so a whole wave of emotions swept through my head and I managed to keep running down streets for a long, long time. The description of my state of mind from the moment I discovered he’d gone to the following day when I discovered the outcome to this obscure, anonymous backstreet tragedy is beyond my measly means of literary expression and however much I strain I cannot remember the detail. I searched underneath the railway arches, above and below, perhaps for a quarter of an hour. Then I decided to go down Potsdamer Strasse. I remembered a canal crossed beneath that road and its pavements were usually quite empty in the evening even though it was so central. I’d often been delighted to watch a half sunken barge or small trader float breathlessly by on the canal from the point where the road became a bridge. The canal became an obsession; the mere thought of its murky waters took the ground from beneath my feet. Stumbling, wandering, in despair, oblivious to my body, I continued down the deserted street. Irregular blotches on the snow made me think of Roby’s maimed foot. Once again I thought I caught a glimpse of him in the light from a streetlamp: the black blob turned out to be a discarded rag. I’d been so full of hope! I stopped in the middle of the bridge. I thought I could see signs of where a body had straddled the parapet. I looked down into the water: I thought there was a slight current pulling along chunks of ice. It was a murky red under the electric lights. Not a single sign. I looked around me completely distraught: everything was snowed under and wrapped in an impenetrable haze of silence.… I took a taxi home.
The day after somebody spotted a shoe floating in the canal. They pulled on the shoe and found Roby’s bloated, mud-covered body, with a bruised temple.