Siegfried Page 5

  After the applause Marte sat down beside him and asked, to get things started, why he had put the dream in the passage he had read aloud in the present tense, when, apart from that, the novel was written in the past tense. That was of course a good question, and the young man with the ring in his ear rose in his estimation. Herter replied that he had always done that with dreams, for as long as he could remember, since dreams, just like myths, were ahistorical in nature. You did not say “Tristan loved Isolde” but “Tristan loves Isolde.”

  “Apart from that,” he said, running both hands through his hair, “I cannot say for sure, and there are others who know better than I do, but it is possible that I have never written a novel without a dream in it. A novel or a story is nothing but a consciously constructed dream. A novel without a dream runs counter not only to human beings, who both wake and sleep, but also to the nature of the novel.”

  Virtually without exception the questions from the audience, which Marte repeated each time, were ones he had answered before, in countless cities in Europe and America. On the few occasions when he could not think of a good reply, he answered a question that had not been put, which invariably proved satisfactory.

  “Thomas Mann,” he said when a distinguished gentleman stood up and asked him whom he regarded as his literary father.

  “And your literary grandparents?”

  “Goethe and Dostoyevsky,” he said immediately, thinking about his four literary great-grandparents, who of course might come next.

  “And your literary son?”

  He burst out laughing. “You’ve got me there. I don’t know.”

  The director seized the moment of mirth to thank him, after which he walked with Maria to the trestle table with his translated books on it.

  “Did it go okay?” he inquired.

  “Has it ever gone badly?”

  “There’s no need for you to stay here,” he said, sitting down and unscrewing the top of his fountain pen. “Why don’t you go and keep Mrs. Schimmelpenninck company?” There was already a line, and he saw the curiosity with which people looked at Maria, too, especially women: Why her? What kind of woman was she? Wasn’t she thirty years younger? In what ways did she know him? What was he like in bed?

  Now he finally had the chance to look directly at everyone, although there were some who avoided his eyes. With each new look he had forgotten the last, but he knew that they would remember his. Almost everyone who handed him a book had opened it at the flyleaf, where the person’s own name belonged; he turned another page and signed it on the actual title page. If someone asked him to write a name in it, of the person for whom the book was intended, he did so—but there were some people who placed a piece of paper in front of him with something like “For Ilse, with love always.” Then he sometimes had difficulty in explaining that he was sure he would love Ilse if he knew her, but that, sadly, was not the case. Occasionally that cost him an angry look. And then there were always those who set a briefcase on the table and took out ten books: would he please sign them, with a dedication, date, and place? In those instances he would point to the long line of people waiting and say that he could not do that to the others. After half an hour came the inevitable moment when his hand had forgotten how to write his name and could produce only a trembling caricature of it, like an incompetent forger.

  Nevertheless, after Maria had placed a second glass of white wine next to him, the end was in sight. But when he had screwed the top back on his fountain pen and was about to stand up, two little old people approached, husband and wife, whom he had seen standing there before. Obviously they had waited until they were the last. The man made a humble bow and asked in laborious Dutch, with a heavy German accent, “Mr. Herter, could we speak to you briefly for a moment?”

  SEVEN

  “Of course,” said Herter, also in Dutch. He had just about had enough, but he did not want to disappoint them. “And feel free to speak German,” he added in German.

  “Thank you, Mr. Herter.”

  They looked around rather helplessly.

  “Please have a seat.”

  Herter shot a glance at the bookseller, who was already packing up but immediately took the hint. The couple must have been nearer ninety than eighty and looked impoverished but well groomed. Everything the old gentleman was wearing was beige—his shirt, his tie, his suit—combined with light gray shoes. Someone had obviously persuaded him that this look made a brighter impression at his age. His collar, which was too wide for him, indicated that he had shrunk a couple of sizes. He was bald and at the same time not bald; his white hair lay across his pale scalp, which had pink patches here and there, like a transparent haze. She was as fat as he was thin: it was as if she had absorbed him almost completely. Her face, framed by small gray curls, was broad and slightly Slavic and further accented by gold-colored spectacles with outsize lenses; her cheeks still had a flush, which looked natural.

  When they had sat down, they introduced themselves as Ullrich and Julia Falk. Her hand was hot, his as cool and dry as paper.

  “This is a very difficult moment for us, Mr. Herter,” said Mr. Falk. “We discussed for a long time whether we should do this. We’ve never even attended a reading like this before. . . .”

  He did not know how to handle this, and, to put them at their ease, Herter said, “I’m happy you came at any rate.”

  Falk glanced at his wife, who nodded at him.

  “We saw you on television last night, Mr. Herter. Quite by accident, because we never watch that kind of program. They’re not meant for people like us. But then you suddenly said something about Hitler. It was over very quickly, and we’re not sure if we understood you correctly.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “You said that Hitler is becoming more and more incomprehensible. And then you said something about the imagination. That you want to catch him with the imagination.”

  Julia nodded. “In a net.”

  “That was exactly what I said.”

  Falk glanced at Herter. A sharp expression had appeared in his blue eyes. “Perhaps we can help you.”

  Flabbergasted, Herter returned his look. He did not really know what to say. “With imagination?”

  “No, you don’t need any help with that. With something real. To show you what he was like.”

  Suddenly relations were reversed. Suddenly he was no longer sitting there as the great writer in a magnificent hall, opposite a simple, hesitant couple, but had himself become the uncertain one.

  “Mr. Falk, you’re making me very curious.” He looked around. In the empty auditorium, men were clearing away the chairs, at the stall the remaining books were already in cardboard boxes, and a little farther away, Maria, Lichtwitz, and the Schimmelpennincks were waiting for him. “I’m a guest here, and I have obligations now. Can’t we meet somewhere tomorrow?”

  “Where are you staying?” asked Falk hesitantly. “Of course we could come to your hotel tomorrow.”

  “Out of the question. You’ve already taken enough trouble. I’ll come to you.”

  Falk looked doubtfully at his wife; when she nodded and at the same time shrugged her shoulders briefly, he agreed. They lived in an old-people’s home, Eben Haëzer. Herter noted the address and the number of their flat, got up, and shook hands. He would come for coffee at ten-thirty tomorrow.

  “What did that old couple want?” asked Maria, when he joined the others.

  “They know something,” said Herter after he had told her. “They know something that no one knows.”

  The cocktail reception was held in a side room. There were thirty or forty guests from the Viennese literary world, who did not give the impression of having missed him. He would have preferred to drink a glass of wine and eat something in a corner, but there was no way of escaping being introduced to all these writers, poets, critics, publishers, and editors. Actually he did not want to meet anyone else; he felt that he knew enough people by now. Apart from that, he had instantly
forgotten their names and functions when they were introduced, since he was too preoccupied with looking at people and sounding them out. It was not unknown for him to introduce himself three or four times to the same person, from which the person concluded that he really was going senile—but it was worse than that: ultimately he was not interested in who was who or what. Both in The Invention of Love and in other novels, he had evoked figures that had moved many readers, yet for himself other people—apart from the twenty or thirty people closest to him—counted only to the extent that he could fit them into his imaginative world. But perhaps that rather inhuman, almost autistic quality was precisely the precondition for creating those characters. Perhaps the foundation of all art was a certain relentlessness, which was better hidden from good-natured art lovers.

  “You’re not really with it,” said Maria when he was finally left in peace.

  “That’s right. I want to get out of here.”

  “Yes, and you can’t. This has been organized for you, by all kinds of nice people. You’ll have to sacrifice yourself for a little longer.”

  He nodded. “It’s just as well I have an obedient nature and am self-effacing.”

  A small, plump woman made a beeline for him and clasped his hands with both of hers, beginning to shake them effusively, gazing at him with shining eyes.

  “Mr. Herter, thank you, thank you for your wonderful book. The Invention of Love is the finest novel I have ever read. I put off reading the final pages for days because I did not want it to end—as far as I’m concerned, it could have been a thousand pages longer. I immediately started reading it again. That’s why I was so glad that you remarked in your introduction that you need the end before the beginning.” She did not wait for an answer; she turned on her heel blushing, and it was as if she were taking flight.

  “The terrible things I do to people,” said Herter.

  Half an hour later, the manager of the Sacher appeared: he was ready to drive them back to the hotel at any moment. For Herter this was the signal that he could leave with decorum; he refused the offer with thanks, preferring to walk and get a breath of fresh air.

  “Are you sure? A storm has been forecast.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Saying his good-byes took almost another half an hour. Lichtwitz accompanied them to the exit and impressed on Herter that he must be sure to let him know when he was next in Vienna.

  In the square they were caught unawares by a vortex of strange gusting winds, which seemed to come from all directions. The sky was as dark as the back of a mirror, and now and then Herter felt a stray raindrop in his face. As he apologized to Maria for having to leave her alone tomorrow, through Hitler’s fault, the wind gradually grew stronger—and suddenly a blast of such force that they could scarcely keep upright came straight down the Augustinerstrasse toward them. There was a roaring and clattering everywhere. Shutters swung open and banged against the walls, windows shattered, and planters and cycles toppled, followed a few seconds later by a blinding, mountainous cloud of dust and grit. Rubbing their eyes, with their backs to the storm, they stopped. There were flashes of lightning, ear-shattering thunderclaps reverberated through the city, and a moment later a cloudburst of such ferocity exploded that it was as if they were standing under the shower fully dressed.

  “Pay no attention!” shouted Herter, leaning at an angle into the wind and continuing. “Pretend you don’t notice it! Show it who’s boss!”

  EIGHT

  The next morning at breakfast, their eyes were still irritated by the dust. Maria was going to view the Dürer in the Albertina, and they would see each other for lunch.

  “If it gets any later, make your own arrangements,” said Herter. “The plane doesn’t leave till eight-thirty tonight.”

  It was calm autumn weather. On the way to the taxi stand, with a copy of The Invention of Love under his arm, he bought a bunch of flowers for Mrs. Falk. He thought back to his reading of the previous evening. It was so definitively over that it was as if it had never taken place. He had given hundreds of such readings in his life, at first for the top classes of secondary schools, to which he had to go by train and bus, later for cultural societies and universities, to which he drove in his own car, and finally only for prestigious gatherings at home and abroad, which laid on airplanes, limousines, and five-star hotels. The following day it was always over so finally that it might never have happened. Time was a maw without a body—a maw that devoured everything, grinding it all up without a trace.

  As he opened the door of the taxi, he was met by piano music.

  “Satie,” he said as they drove off, “Gymnopédie.” The pianist’s touch was crude, and the tempo was too fast. “Is it the radio or a tape?” he asked.

  “A tape.”

  “Who’s playing?”

  The driver, a fat chap in his twenties, glanced at him in the mirror. “My father.”

  “Really? Not bad.”

  “He died three months ago,” said the driver, this time without looking at him.

  Herter sighed. How could one not love mankind? Here an anonymous Viennese taxi driver was listening to the piano playing of his dead father, which he had doubtless taped himself.

  “Now I take over,” said the driver. There was a moment’s silence, after which it continued in virtually the same way.

  Not only was there not a leaf left on the trees, but all over the city, trees that had blown down were being transformed by whining circular saws into stacks of dead wood. What on earth was one to make of it? Herter wondered. On the one hand you had this heartrending driver, on the other the most bloodthirsty rabble—how in heaven’s name could one reconcile the two? All cows were like all other cows, all tigers like all other tigers—what on earth has happened to human beings? Listening to the music, which overused the pedal, he was driven through shabby neighborhoods where he had never been before. The Eben Haëzer old-people’s home, a large, blackened six-story building from the beginning of the twentieth century, was in a bleak street on the edge of town, behind a station.

  Here and there in the tiled hall, old people in dressing gowns were sitting on wooden benches, their sticks beside them, feet in slippers. Herter reported to the desk, where he was told that, because of rebuilding work, he must first take the elevator to the fourth floor, turn left, and at the end of the corridor take the elevator back to the third floor, then turn right down the corridor. As he walked along the worn carpet of the endless corridor on the fourth floor, down which an ancient woman was shuffling, holding the railing that had been fitted along its whole length, Herter was astonished that his life had brought him back here of all places, under one roof with a centenarian in a Vienna suburb.

  Falk

  Ullrich Falk, small, in a baggy cardigan, again beige, opened the door.

  “Welcome, Mr. Herter. What an honor.”

  The whole apartment was less than half the size of Herter’s study in Amsterdam. It smelled stuffy and musty; the windows had not been opened for months or years. Only the smell of fresh coffee made some amends. In the tiny kitchen, where they obviously also ate, Julia poured a stream of hot water from a whistling kettle into a brown coffeepot with a filter—a model that he had not seen since his youth. Blushing, she received the flowers; it was clear that such a thing had not happened to her for a very long time. He glanced sideways into their bedroom, the door of which was half open: the space was scarcely larger than the bed. In the living room, there was just room for a sofa, a small armchair, and a couple of cabinets full of knickknacks. In the corner was an ancient television set; on top of it was a framed photograph of a blond boy, four or five years old, with a smiling young woman next to him, obviously his mother. Perhaps it was their grandson, or great-grandson. Herter sat down on the dull green sofa, the worn arms of which were covered with pieces of material that themselves belonged in the trash can. Above it hung a framed reproduction of Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding.

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Herter,”
said Falk, with The Invention of Love on his lap, “we didn’t think you would come. You, such a famous writer—”

  “Nonsense,” Herter interrupted him. “That famous writer is nothing to do with me.”

  Apologizing for the fact that they had no vase, Julia put the flowers in a red plastic bucket on the low table. After she had poured the weak coffee and presented crumbly sponge cake, she sat down next to him on the sofa and lit up a cigarette; blowing out the match, she put it back in the box. Herter could see that they were not at ease; he decided to control his impatience and asked if they had always lived in Vienna. They looked at each other for a moment.

  “Almost always,” said Falk.

  Herter felt that he must not probe any further. “How old are you, if I may ask?”

  “I was born in 1910, my wife in 1914.”

  “So you have lived through almost the whole century.”

  “It wasn’t a very wonderful century.”