The Eternal Philistine
Author: Ödön von Horváth; Shalom Auslander; Benjamin Dorvel
Date: 1930-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Historical; Classics
Description: “At the World’s Fair in Paris I once lost my late husband and, just then, an elegant gentleman accosted me. As I look at him, he opens up his overcoat and hasn’t got anything on underneath. I only mention this in passing.” This never-before translated work by a major yet overlooked mid-20th century writer is a brutally funny look at the human comedy on the eve of Europe’s descent into Fascism. It tells the tale of a failed used car salesman who wants to live the high life, and so decides to travel by train from Munich to Barcelona to attend the World’s Fair—in hopes of meeting a beautiful, ric
Publisher: Melville House
Rights: Copyright © 1974 by Suhrkamp

PRAISE FOR ÖDÖN VON HORVÁTH

“Horváth had turned his back on the mournful realism of the émigrés, with their passion for easy caricature and their desire for revenge. He had realized with extraordinary acuteness that to meet the horror of reality with a horror literature was no longer possible or useful; that the reality of Fascism was in fact so overwhelming and catastrophic that no realism, particularly the agonized naturalism of the twentieth century, could do it justice.”

—ALFRED KAZIN

“Ödön von Horváth was a brilliant German writer.… He makes the truth irresistible.”

—EDMUND WILSON

“The most gifted writer of his generation.”

—STEFAN ZWEIG

“Horváth is better than Brecht.”

—PETER HANDKE

“One of the best Austrian writers … In every line of his prose there is an unmistakable hatred for the kind of German philistinism that made the German murder, the Third Reich, possible.”

—JOSEPH ROTH

THE ETERNAL PHILISTINE

ÖDÖN VON HORVÁTH (1901–1939) was born near Trieste, the son of a Hungarian diplomat who moved the family constantly. Horváth would subsequently say of himself, “I am a mélange of Old Austria; Hungarian, Croat, Czech, German; alas, nothing Semitic.” Although his first language was Hungarian, he went to high school in Vienna and college in Munich, and began writing plays in German. Leaving school, he settled in Berlin, where in 1931 his play Italian Night debuted to rave reviews—except from the Nazi press, which reviled him. His next play, Tales from the Vienna Woods, starring Peter Lorre, drew an even stronger, equally divided response. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he relocated to Vienna, but on the day of the Anschluss—March 13, 1938—he fled to Budapest. From there, he soon moved to Paris, but on June 1, 1938, he was killed in a freak accident when, caught in a rainstorm coming out of a theater on the Champs-Élysées, he took shelter under a tree that was hit by lightning; von Horváth was struck by a falling tree limb and killed instantly. He was 36 years old and had published 21 plays and three novels—The Age of the Fish, A Child of Our Time, and The Eternal Philistine.

BENJAMIN DORVEL has worked as a lexicographer and editor for Langenscheidt. He is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University.

SHALOM AUSLANDER is the author of Foreskin’s Lament, Beware of God, and the forthcoming novel Hope: A Tragedy. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, New York magazine, and elsewhere, and he is a regular commentator on the NPR program This American Life.

THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much. —HERMAN MELVILLE, WHITE JACKET

THE ETERNAL PHILISTINE

Originally published in German as Der ewige Spießer by Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1930

Copyright © 1974 by Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main

Translation © Benjamin Dorvel, 2011 (text follows Vol. III, Ödön von Horváth, Gesammelte Werke; Suhrkamp, 1970)

“Einsamkeit” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1902) translated by Andrew Brown, © 2012

First Melville House printing: February 2012

Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.mhpbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows: Horváth, Ödön von, 1901-1938.
[Ewige Spiesser. English]
The eternal philistine : a novel / Ödön von Horváth; translated by Benjamin Dorvel.
p. cm. -- (Neversink)
eISBN: 978-1-935554-74-5
I. Dorvel, Bejamin. II. Title.
PT2617.O865E813 2011
833′.912–dc22
v3.1

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

INTRODUCTION
by Shalom Auslander

Dedication

THE ETERNAL PHILISTINE

1    Herr Kobler Becomes a Pan-European
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
2    Fräulein Pollinger Becomes Practical
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
3    Herr Reithofer Becomes Altruistic
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

INTRODUCTION:
TRUTH AND FURY AND OBSCURITY
BY SHALOM AUSLANDER

What is comedy without truth and fury?

—Nikolai Gogol

The novel you hold in your hands is, unfortunately, funny. In some places, I am loath to admit, it’s hilarious. There are prostitutes, whorehouses, cheaters, liars, radicals, pointless journeys, empty philosophies, anti-Semites, more prostitutes, hypocrites, fools, nose-pickers, semen-wipers, adulterers, xenophobes, and, briefly, a World’s Fair (which only leads to more adultery). It is full of truth and fury, and you’ll want to tell your friends about it, but because the book is funny, I can tell you right now that they are not going to be very impressed.

“Is it funny?” they’ll ask.

“Hilarious,” you’ll reply.

“Oh,” they’ll say with an air of disapproval—not just with the book, which they’ll immediately reject, but with you for even suggesting it. “We’re reading X,” they will say, the serious book of the moment written by the serious author of the moment, which will weigh in at a minimum of four pounds and tell a miserable tale of spiritual sadness and unfulfilled longing no one will understand or care to try. It will be about a man lying in bed. The review will call it hilarious. It won’t be. It will win many awards.

I’m going to be honest with you—I don’t like your friends. They’re shallow assholes desperate for external validation who fear the very mirror that reflects them most faithfully, frankly, but I don’t blame them; reading is difficult, and books don’t have a touch screen or downloadable apps (yet), so the only real reason to suffer through them is to impress other people. Of course this book is a foreign translation, it does have that going for it, and the author is not only dead, but he died young—both of which should give the book a certain literary respectability, but not enough, sadly, to overcome the fact that it is (there’s just no getting away from this) funny. If satire, as they say in the theater, is what closes on Saturday night, humor in literature is what gets belittled by reviewers, ignored by the award committees, goes out of print and is never spoken about again. Comedy bravely stands up, speaks the harsh truth, attempts to show things the way they are, to teach us to see and laugh at our own shortcomings and failures. For that it is dismissed. The fate of humor in literature, one could say, is utterly tragic, but then one would be saying something funny, and one would be ignored.

I was born on 9th December, 1901, and it was in Fiume, on the Adriatic, at 4:45 in the afternoon (4:30 according to another report). When I weighed twenty-pounds I left Fiume and loafed about partly in Venice and partly in the Balkans, and experienced all sorts of things, among others the murder of H.M. King Alexander of Serbia along with his better half. When I was four foot tall I moved to Budapest and lived there for half an inch. There I was a keen visitor to numerous children’s playgrounds and was conspicuous in a rather disagreeable way because of my dreamy and mischievous personality. When I grew to a height of about 5’0” Eros awoke in me, but initially without causing me any bother … My interest in art, especially in the classics of literature, stirred relatively late (at a height of about 5’7.5”) but it only became an urge from about 5’11.5”, not, it is true, an irresistible one, but there all the same. When the first World War broke out I was already 5’6”, and when it ended I was 6’ (I shot up very quickly during the war). At 5’7” I had my first proper sexual experience—and today, now that I have long since stopped growing (6’1”), I think back with tender nostalgia to those portentous days.

—Ödön von Horváth

Hungarian by birth, Ödön von Horváth lived and wrote in Berlin during the tense and tumultuous years between the First and Second World Wars. The Eternal Philistine was his first novel, a form he returned to later in his life after a successful career as a playwright.

“I have attempted,” Horváth once wrote of his work, “to be as disrespectful as possible towards stupidity and lies.”

That is the noble mission of comedy, perhaps the noblest mission of all, and one at which Horváth was very, very good. He was so good at it, in fact, that today, nobody’s ever heard of him. Brecht, on the other hand, dealt with many of the same subjects and themes in a dreadfully serious manner, and look at him: almost a century later, and I don’t even have to use his first name.

So what can we do to help, you ask? How can we make sure that The Eternal Philistine at last acquires the audience and recognition it so rightly deserves?

One of the easiest ways, as I demonstrated earlier, is to quote Nikolai Gogol. Gogol was Russian, and everyone in the West respects Russian writers, even if they’re crap. Trust me, with friends like yours, you cannot go wrong quoting Gogol. Nikolai, incidentally, was also hilariously funny (before he came down with an incurable case of Lord-itis), but somehow he managed to be taken seriously. Are there lessons to be learned from his example? There are, and these are them:

1) Be Russian.

2) Die crazy.

Just to be safe, I will also, somewhere in this introduction, try to work in a mention of Voltaire (who is practically God by now), and of Kafka (who actually is God), both of whom were also funny writers your friends probably claim to read but probably don’t.

Jesus Christ, I really hate your friends.

I’ll shoot for Samuel Beckett as well, but I’m not promising anything.

The best thing you can do, however, while I’m busy name-dropping, is to not tell anyone that this book is “funny.” There’s no reason to frighten them away. What can you tell them, then, to make them read it? To make them respect it? To keep this work alive?

It’s called “spin.”

1. IT’S NOT FUNNY; IT’S DARK.

Dark comedy is, according to Wikipedia, a subgenre of comedy whose themes “include murder, suicide, depression, abuse, mutilation, war, barbarism, drug abuse, terminal illness, domestic violence, sexual violence, pedophilia, insanity, nightmare, disease, racism, disability (both physical and mental), chauvinism, corruption, and crime.”

Unless I’m forgetting something, that’s pretty much all the funny things in the world, so I’m not sure what the point of the label is (cannibalism isn’t there, but I’d file that under mutilation, which everyone knows is funny). It may well be a pointless distinction, but it serves our purposes well, because for some reason, the literary gatekeepers who determined that funny isn’t serious determined, at the same smoke-filled, clandestine meeting, that dark is.

Funny is fatuous.

Dark is deep.

Funny is frivolous.

Dark is meaningful.

While Funny is in the kitchen with a fake arrow through its head, Dark is in the basement with its weirdo Goth friends, smoking cigarettes and making jokes about killing itself. Or cannibalism.

The Eternal Philistine, you can confidently tell your friends, is dark. It’s about as dark as it gets. It’s Candide dark. It’s Catch-22 dark. The Eternal Philistine is an inversion of the traditional “journey” novel, wherein the protagonist, due to some “inciting incident,” forced into a strange new world, whereupon he learns many lessons, whereupon he returns to the original world a better, changed person. While the basic story elements may be consistent, every writer approaches these elements in their own particular way; in Voltaire’s Candide, for example, the inciting incident occurs when the eponymous hero is discovered kissing his truly beloved. In The Eternal Philistine, it occurs when the hero, a used-car salesman named Kobler, is caught by his employers taking prostitutes for, uh, “test-drives.”

Horváth: 1. Voltaire: 0.

The story takes place in Munich, in the dark years following World War I. The German economy is depressed, and so are the people. The citizenry is struggling with the question of whether, through rapprochement, to join the greater Pan-Europe, or whether to go it alone (I think you know how that story ends). Nobody in this novel is particularly moral, or bright, or kind, or wise, least of all Kobler himself. After losing his job, defrauding a customer and impertinently ripping off the car’s real owner, Kobler decides, on the suggestion of his bitter xenophobic landlady, to go the World’s Fair in Barcelona. His goal, incidentally, is not to gain a greater understanding of other cultures:

[… She] had convinced him that a considerably larger assortment of Egyptian women could be found at an exhibition of the entire world than in the most luxurious of luxury hotels.

Kobler’s got a thing for the Egyptian ladies, you see.

The thing he has for them is their money.

“ ‘I’ll combine business with utility,’ he said to himself.”

The journey goes poorly. Everyone is angry, stupid, greedy, and selfish, while Kobler can’t seem to get his mind off Egyptians. Or prostitutes. Prostitutes are never far from anyone’s mind in this novel (one character decides to become one); a deep political discussion between Kobler and his traveling companion Mr. Schmitz on the contentious issue of retaking lost German colonies ends with an impassioned question from Schmitz:

“… [if we didn’t retake them] what would be left of our occidental culture?”

“I’m not sure,” answered Kobler, shooting a bored glance at his watch. “When are we going to the brothel district?” he asked anxiously.

At last, Kobler finds some prostitutes at a stopover in Marseille, but they are diseased and disappointing.

“Everybody’s diseased around here,” [said Schmitz.]

“I’ve never caught anything,” said Kobler, which was a lie.

“I’ve never caught anything either,” said Schmitz, which was also a lie.

Later, at the fair, Kobler finally meets his dreamed-of Egyptian, who isn’t actually Egyptian, but at least she’s rich. She’s also beautiful. And available. And a Nazi:

“Yes, the Jews are making the workers really nasty,” [her] voice sounded once again. “No, I can’t stand the Jews. I find them too nauseatingly carnal—they’ve got their hands in everything!

This anti-Semitic strain doesn’t concern our hero too much; she is, after all, rich. Schmitz takes offense at Kobler’s hypocrisy, but Kobler is unfazed:

“And by the way, Herr Schmitz,” he went on, “I shall now ask you to kindly leave me in peace while I work my way up the social ladder. I’ve already got a plan worked out. I’m going to debauch that lady in Barcelona, then I’ll accompany her back to Duisburg, where I’ll debauch her again, and then I’ll marry into daddy’s company. And Pan-Europe doesn’t give a crap whether or not that lady in there is for or against her!”

“That’s the same damn excuse everybody makes!” said Schmitz, and then walked off.

The journey tale is an old and revered one; we readers hurry along with our hero as quickly as we can, anxious to see if our hero will survive, if he will return home, and what the greater purpose of his journey was in the first place. What has he learned? we wonder. What wisdom has he gained? In Candide, for example, the lesson of the journey seems to be that while the world is ugly, we can do well if we just “tend to our gardens.” The lesson of the journey in The Eternal Philistine is best summed up by Mr. Reithofer, the only semidecent character in the whole story:

“If all the shitheads went and helped each other out, then every shithead would be better off.”

Horváth: 2. Voltaire: 0.

“Is it funny?” your friends will ask.

“It’s not funny,” you will reply. “It’s dark.”

Then quote Gogol:

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”

I have not, by the way, forgotten about Kafka.

2. IT’S NOT FUNNY; IT’S SOCIOPOLITICAL COMMENTARY.

If a book, sadly, must be funny, it’s preferable, meritoriously-speaking, for it to be funny about political matters, which suggests that the author is not merely funny but also knowledgeable, passionate, and concerned with the major issues of the day. Why anyone would want to be knowledgeable, passionate and concerned with the major issues of the day is somewhat beyond me; Tolstoy’s work survives despite the passages about the political climate of his time, not because of them. Kafka (there he is) wrote passionate, deeply felt, funny (shh) tales about his deepest inner self—his sense of failure, his feelings of impotence, of longing, of loneliness, of frustration. Fortunately for his literary legacy, he wrote them allegorically, which allowed people to see them not as reflections of a personal nature—and certainly not as “funny”—but rather as Sociopolitical Commentary: on bureaucracy, or corporations, or political systems. “Kafkaesque” should, if there has to be such a regrettable term, refer to the searing pains of dysfunctional families, of brutal fathers, emotionally manipulative mothers, to the spiritual tortures of ambivalence, self-loathing, and guilt. Instead, it has something to do with the IRS. Or the DMV. Or the Post Office.

“Forty-two cents to mail a letter! This is Kafkaesque!”

I swear to God I have heard that, and not just once.

Fortunately for Horváth, his lacerating humor was aimed at many targets: at stupidity, at hatred, at misogyny, and, yes, at politics and the social system he witnessed around him. If we focus on that—and only that—perhaps we can restore his reputation and keep him in print.

Ödön’s target list was a long one; class distinctions figure prominently on it. He is a friend of the powerless and exploited, and shows the bourgeois—the Eternal Philistines of the title—for who they are. Here he his, describing the low-level office job of Anna, who considers becoming a prostitute, who loves Kobler, who loves wealthy Egyptians:

“[…] that night, by way of exception, she had to work until nine o’clock. On average, she would have to do this, by way of exception, four times a week. Of course she was not paid for working overtime because after all, if she wanted to be jobless, she had the right to quit on the first of every month.”

(“I’m by no means asking you to prostitute yourself,” says the man demanding Anna become a prostitute later in the novel, “but I’m begging you, for your own sake, to please be more practical!” She comes to agree.)

When Kobler and his crew at last reach the glorious World’s Fair, the holy idea of progress to which the fair is so committed is, in one short paragraph, utterly deflated:

It got dark quickly. Gazing through the well-nigh exotic shrubs, the three of them watched from a distance the glorious trick fountains in front of the National Palace. Now these were indeed advances of the modern era. Outside the front gates of the World’s Fair stood the folks who could not afford to pay the admission fee, and so had to watch these advances from afar. Only the police kept dispersing them because they were obstructing traffic.

It is this eye for hypocrisy, irony, and truth that characterizes this novel. It appears on every page, relentlessly. Later, when Herr Reithofer takes Anna to a movie—that flickering Philistinian temple to this very day—Horváth describes the film thus:

Sadly he did not get to see any livestock at the movie theatre, just a social drama. That is, the tragedy of a beautiful young woman. She was a millionairess, the daughter of a millionaire and the spouse of a millionaire. Both millionaires fulfilled her every desire, but this millionairess was still very unhappy. You watched as she unhappily got dressed for hours on end, received manicures and pedicures; how she would unhappily travel first-class to India, stroll along the Riviera, have lunch in Baden-Baden, fall asleep in California and wake up in Paris; how she would sit unhappily in opera boxes, dance at carnival, and scorn champagne in an exceedingly unhappy manner. And she kept getting more and more unhappy because she did not want to give herself to the elegant, young son of a millionaire who adored her in a discreetly sensuous way. So there was nothing left for her to do but to take to the water, which she then did in the Ligurian Sea. They recovered her unhappy body in Genoa. All of her maids, lackeys, and chauffeurs were very unhappy.

It was a very tragic film and had just one funny episode. That is, the millionairess had a lady’s maid. And one time this lady’s maid secretly put on her mistress’s “grand” evening gown and went out on the town with one of the chauffeurs in a “grand” fashion. Only the chauffeur did not exactly know how the “grand” world held a knife and fork, and so both of them were exposed as attendants and then shown out of the posh restaurant. One of the guests even gave the chauffeur a good slap in the face, and the unhappy millionairess fired her lady’s maid on the spot. The lady’s maid bawled and the chauffeur’s face was not exactly clever either. It was very funny.

Horváth described his purpose in writing as “to be able to portray once again the gigantic struggle between the individual and society, this eternal battle with no peaceful outcome—during which the individual can at best enjoy a few moments of the illusion of ceasefire.” His truth, and the fury that followed, was provoked by a genuine care and concern for the individual. Observing a photograph of a happy family, Herr Reithofer thinks:

… that it might be nice sometimes to be able to call such a family his own. He, too, would sit in the middle and have a beard and children because without children people would die out, and there’s really something sad about dying out, even if you don’t have any legal claim to German unemployment benefits as an Austrian citizen.

“Is it funny?” your friends will ask.

“It’s not funny,” you’ll reply. “It’s social commentary.”

Then quote Alfred Kazin:

“Horváth … realized with extraordinary acuteness that to meet the horror of reality with a horror literature was no longer possible or useful; that the reality of Fascism was in fact so overwhelming and catastrophic that no realism, particularly the agonized naturalism of the twentieth century, could do it justice.”

I have not, by the way, forgotten about Beckett.

3. THE AUTHOR FLED FROM THE NAZIS.

There is no single greater guarantor of literary greatness than for an author to have, at some point, fled from the Third Reich. Sadly, though, there are no more Nazis from whom to flee, and you can see how few modern writers, consequently, are considered great. If David Sedaris had fled from Buchenwald instead of Raleigh, North Carolina, he would be seen as much more than just a successful humorist. Through the twisted prism of a dark and gallows humor, Mr. Sedaris, a survivor of the death camps, turns his existential search for meaning into a something something something. After all, Beckett (there he is) fled from the Nazis, and look how his career turned out. Beckett, incidentally, was hilariously funny; fortunately for him, though, he looked like a corpse, plus he frowned a lot, so everyone decided he was very serious (“My plays,” he was forced to remind a Godot producer, “should not be ponderous”).

Horváth, however, did more than just flee the Nazis; he openly provoked them. It’s all well and good for me to make jokes about Nazis, because it’s 2011 and I’m a pussy. But Horváth wrote in the early 1930s, in Berlin, and the Nazis were already a powerful and ominous presence. You did not fuck with them. The Brownshirts were not big fans of Horváth’s work, and it’s easy to see why. Here is Horváth at his Horváthian best, laying bare the contemptibility of the powerful that would blame the powerless for their own misfortunes:

Along these lines he had a friend in Berlin. And this friend once ran over a pedestrian with his fabulous car because she was jaywalking. But despite the fact that it was a case of jaywalking, an inquiry was launched. Indeed, it even went to trial, probably because that pedestrian had been the widow of a counselor for the regional court. The state’s attorney, however, failed to sentence his friend to paying damages. “After all, what do I care about a few thousand marks,” said the friend, “but as a matter of principle I want to know that things have been resolved.” He had to be acquitted, even though the chairman had asked him whether he felt sorry for this pedestrian, the jaywalking notwithstanding. “No,” he had said, “as a matter of principle—no!” He was just asserting his rights.

Revolutionary animus was set ablaze in Harry every time he saw a gasoline engine collide with the engine of the state. At such times he hated this state, which maternally protected pedestrians from every fender and reduced motor vehicle drivers to second-class citizens.

The connection made here to the humans at the World’s Fair having to make way for the cars is not accidental; progress may change the way we do things, he suggests, but we’ll continue to do the same things we always have. Like mass murder.

Man, said Aristotle, is the only animal that laughs.

Or builds gas chambers.

Not surprisingly, after Hitler came to power, Horváth’s home was searched and his writings banned. He fled to Salzburg, then to Vienna, where he married the German singer Maria Elsner in Vienna; she was Jewish, the marriage simply to help her escape from Germany by taking on his Hungarian nationality. He returned to Berlin in 1934, but was soon harassed by the Nazis again, and he fled to Zurich. He returned once more to Germany, to see his parents, but was ordered to leave after 24 hours. Which led, unfortunately, to this:

4. THE AUTHOR DIED TRAGICALLY.

It’s bad enough this book is funny; to make matters worse, the author didn’t even kill himself. It was the least he could have done. Respect-wise, nothing beats suicide (even Gogol had the courtesy to starve himself to death), and your asshole friends would have loved Horváth if he had. Still, he died tragically, and that should count for something.

Ödön was not afraid of much. He was not afraid of Nazis, criticism, or failure. What he was afraid of, however, was trees.

His whole life.

Trees.

In 1938, Hitler invaded Austria. Ödön left Vienna and, after many stops along the way, finally made his way to Paris. He loved Berlin, but was thrilled to be back in a bustling, lively city.

“Human life,” Ödön once wrote, “is always a tragedy and only in individual episodes is it a comedy.”

One night, as he was returning from the cinema, a summer storm kicked up, and Ödön took shelter beneath a tree. A gust of wind broke off a branch, which landed on Ödön’s head, killing him instantly.

He was thirty-six years old.

Tragic.

And yet, in a typically, uniquely Horváthian way:

Hilarious.

5. THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED BY AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER.

If all that doesn’t convince your friends to read this book, they’re even bigger assholes than I thought, and you should immediately point out to them that the book is being published by Melville House, which they’ll not have heard of (+10 points), but which you can tell them is a tremendously respected (+10 points) independent publisher (+15 points) based in Brooklyn, New York (Win). It will have a beautifully designed cover and be published on high-quality paper, maybe even with that respected-book rough edge thing going on.

“I have neither prettified nor disfigured,” wrote Horváth of his work. “I have never built and will never build distorting mirrors, because I reject parody in all its forms.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

He was telling the truth. Furiously.

“Please,” he wrote to his readers, “recognize yourself!”

“I see now,” wrote Gogol, “what it means to be a writer of comedies. The smallest trace of truth and they are up in arms against you.”

In the summer of 1989, the Horváth archive came up for sale at Sotheby’s.

It failed to make its reserve.

Hilarious.

THE ETERNAL PHILISTINE

For Ernst Weiß

The philistine is, as is generally known, an egoist who suffers from hypochondria, and this is why he seeks, like a coward, to fit in wherever he goes and to distort every new formulation of the idea by calling it his own.

If I am not mistaken, the news has slowly spread that we, of all people, are living in between two eras. The old species of philistine no longer even deserves to be ridiculed, and whoever is still mocking him at present is at best a philistine of the future. I say “future” because the new species of philistine is still nascent, it has yet to fully emerge.

Several contributions to the biological makeup of this nascent philistine shall now be attempted in the form of a novel. Of course, the author would not dare hope to have an influence on legitimate world affairs through these pages, but, well, all the same.

PART ONE
HERR KOBLER BECOMES A PAN-EUROPEAN

“As long as you lack

This ‘dying and becoming!’

You’re but a cloudy guest

Upon the sunny earth”

Note: In quoting from Goethe’s “Selige Sehnsucht” Horváth has changed “the dark earth” to “the sunny earth.”

CHAPTER 1

IN MID-SEPTEMBER 1929, HERR ALFONS KOBLER of Schellingstrasse earned six hundred Reichsmarks. There are many people who cannot even imagine that much money.

Even Herr Kobler had never before earned so much money all at once, but this time fortune favored him. She winked at him, and all of a sudden Herr Kobler had more bounce in his gait. On the corner of Schellingstrasse he bought from the good old Frau Stanzinger a pack of eight-pfennig cigarettes imported straight from Macedonia. He loved these in particular because they were exceedingly mild and aromatic.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” screamed the honest Frau Stanzinger. Ever since her spinster sister died, she would sit between her tobacco articles and smoking paraphernalia all alone, looking as though she were shrinking a little bit every day. “Herr Kobler, since when you smoking those eight-pfennig jobs? Where’d you get the money? You gone and killed somebody or did you make up again with the royal-opera-house-singer-lady?”

“No,” said Herr Kobler, “I just finally sold the clunker.”

This clunker was a beat-up six-cylinder convertible with a jump seat. It already had eighty-four thousand kilometers on it, a few dozen breakdowns, and two life-threatening injuries. A geriatric.

And yet Kobler found a buyer. He was a cheese-merchant from Rosenheim by the name of Portschinger. A tall and enthusiastic fat man. He had already made a down payment of three hundred Reichsmarks back in mid-August, giving his word that he would come back to pick up the geriatric by mid-September at the latest, at which time he would promptly bring the remaining six hundred Reichsmarks in cash. This is how keen he was to secure this extraordinarily good bargain.

And that is why he kept his word. In mid-September he arrived on schedule in Schellingstrasse and reported to Herr Kobler. In his company was his friend Adam Mauerer, whom he had brought along all the way from Rosenheim because, as this Adam had owned a little tax-exempt motorcycle since 1925, he regarded him as an expert. Herr Portschinger had actually only gotten his driver’s license two days before, and as he was by no means a cocky man he now realized that he was still a long way away from fully unlocking the secrets of the engine.

After taking a really close look at the convertible the expert was simply ecstatic. “That’s a jump seat!” he screamed. “A wonderful jump seat! An upholstered jump seat! The jump seat par excellence! Buy it, you oaf!”

The oaf bought it on the spot as though the remaining six hundred Reichsmarks were a mere trifle. He then took his leave while Kobler inspected the authenticity of the bills.

“Well, then, Herr Kobler, if you ever come to Rosenheim, be sure to drop by. My wife would be thrilled. You’ve got to tell her the story later about the prelate, you know, the one that was going round with them young girls like an alley cat in heat. My wife, you see, is even more liberal than me. Heil!”

The two gentlemen from Rosenheim then took a seat in the convertible and drove back home in good spirits—or at least this was their intention.

“The clunker rides nicely,” remarked the expert.

They drove across the station square.

“Ain’t it much nicer in your own convertible than in one of them smelly trains?” said Herr Portschinger. He no longer even made the effort to speak properly, for he was very content.

They drove across Marienplatz.

“Shut your exhaust pipe!” a policeman hollered at them.

“It already is,” Herr Portschinger hollered back.

The expert added that the convertible had a very sound pronunciation, so he shouldn’t be jealous.

After five kilometers they had their first breakdown. They had to change the left front wheel.

“It happens to the best of convertibles,” said the expert.

An hour later the engine fan began twittering like a lark. Then one of the axles fractured right before Rosenheim, and after failing to break several times, the convertible overturned and hurled the two gentlemen out of the vehicle and into the air in a high arch. By some miracle they remained unharmed, while the convertible was turned into a steaming heap of rubble.

“It’s a good thing nothing happened to us,” said the expert. But Portschinger, in a fury, ran to the nearest attorney. The attorney, however, merely shrugged his shoulders. “The purchase is in order,” he said. “Prior to finalizing the transaction you should have gathered more accurate information as to the performance capabilities of the convertible. Calm down, Herr Portschinger, you were just cheated. There’s nothing you can do about it!”

CHAPTER 2

THE ROYAL-OPERA-HOUSE-SINGER-LADY HAD purchased this clunker back when it was still brand-new. She was the one that Frau Stanzinger thought was keeping Herr Kobler. This was not true per se, although she had immediately taken quite a liking to Herr Kobler. This had happened at Bear Brothers, the very store where she had purchased this brand-new clunker.

Then Kobler had begun to call upon her regularly, from the beginning of October up until the end of August, though their entire relationship was, from a pecuniary point of view, outright platonic. Sure, he would eat, drink, and bathe at her place, but he never accepted even so much as a mark from her. And of course she never offered him anything of the sort, for she was a refined and educated lady, a former royal opera house singer who, ever since the revolution, had only sung at charity concerts. She could afford all of this charity business without worrying, because she owned, among other things, a beautiful mansion with a garden in front that resembled a park. Yet she had no interest in occupying ten rooms all alone, for at night she was often afraid of her deceased husband, a Danish Honorary Consul. An inflamed appendix had sent him knocking at the pearly gates just before the World War. He left her all of his money. It was a lot of money. She sincerely mourned for him. Only in 1918, in her early forties, did she once again feel a longing for some sort of man in her life. By 1927 she looked back on half a century.

In 1929 Kobler was, by contrast, only in his twenty-seventh springtide and was neither remarkably educated nor especially refined. He had also always been rather impatient, which is why he had only just made it through the winter at the Bear Brothers, even though one of these bears kept saying: “My dear Kobler, you sure are a formidable salesman!”

And he really did know something about the automobile industry, though he had some little quirks that the other bear could not condone after a while. He would take, among other things, prolonged test drives with ladies whom he had, in fact, secretly asked to come by. Later, these ladies would appear before the two bears with unusual self-confidence, giving the impression that they could buy an entire motor coach just on a whim. One time, though, the other bear recognized one of these ladies as a prostitute, and toward evening, as Herr Kobler returned from one of his test drives quite satisfied, this bear was already waiting for him out on the street in front of the dealership.

He ripped open the door and smelled inside the sedan. “Curious test drives indeed, my dear Kobler,” he said maliciously. After that, for better or worse, dear Kobler had to become self-employed. Sure, he could not afford to lease a dealership, and so had to pursue the automotive trade within its modest bounds, but now he was basically his own master. However, it was only thanks to his friendship with the royal-opera-house-singer-lady that he was able to ascend to this higher social class. This really irritated him sometimes.

This friendship did not last very long at all. It shattered at the end of August, for two reasons. The royal-opera-house-singer-lady suddenly began aging at a revoltingly rapid speed. This was the first reason, though the decisive reason was a disagreement on a matter of business.

You see, the royal-opera-house-singer-lady had entreated Herr Kobler to dump her busted convertible with a jump seat on the guy for the cheapest price possible. But when Herr Kobler received the first three hundred Reichsmarks from Herr Portschinger, he had the impertinence to hand over only fifty. She was so upset by this that she even wanted to report him to the police. She only refrained out of fear that her name could wind up in the papers, which she could not afford to let happen because she was friends with the wife of an undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture who fancied herself a singer.

And so she merely wrote to Herr Kobler, saying that she considered him a downright scoundrel, that he had disappointed her and that she no longer wanted to have any human interaction with such a subject. And then she wrote him a second letter explaining that you couldn’t simply tear up a love affair like a piece of tissue paper, because women would always have a little something inside them that remained insolubly stuck.

Kobler said to himself, “I am indeed a good guy,” and called her on the phone. They met up for dinner outside in the exhibition restaurant.

“Peter,” said the royal-opera-house-singer-lady.

Besides that, she did not say anything else for the next fifteen minutes. To be sure, Kobler’s name was “Alfons,” not “Peter,” but as the royal-opera-house-singer-lady had told him on several occasions, “Peter sounds better.” He, too, preferred it, especially when the royal-opera-house-singer-lady pronounced it, almost making you feel that you were in Chicago. Sure, he was not exactly crazy about America, but he respected it. “They’re businessman types,” he would often say.

The music was playing gently in the exhibition restaurant. The royal-opera-house-singer-lady softened up once again. “I forgive you for everything, darling, just go ahead and keep my entire convertible,” her smile seemed to say.

But her darling thought, “It’s only just occurred to me how old she is.” He took her home, but did not accompany her upstairs. The royal-opera-house-singer-lady threw herself onto the sofa and moaned, “I want my convertible back!” And then suddenly she had the feeling that her deceased husband was standing behind her.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she yelled.

“Pardon me! You’ve got varicose veins,” replied the former Honorary Consul, and withdrew back into eternity.

CHAPTER 3

TWO CORNERS DOWN FROM SCHELLINGSTRASSE, Kobler rented a furnished apartment on the left side of the third floor. The landlady was a certain Frau Perzl, a native of Vienna who belonged to the same generation as the royal-opera-house-singer-lady. She, too, was a widow, but other than that she had absolutely nothing in common with the singer. Among other things, she had never been frightened of her deceased husband. She just dreamed of wrestlers every now and then. And so one such wrestler who looked a lot like Kobler once bowed down before her and said, “We’re now in the year 1904. Please, Josephin, cross your fingers for me! I want to become world champion this instant, you whore!”

She sympathized with Kobler. She loved, among other things, his pleasant voice so much that he could go for more than fourteen days without paying his rent. When he had his back turned to her, she would take a particular pleasure in the area around his collar.

She would often complain about aches and pains. The doctor told her that she had lumbago. Another doctor said that she had a wandering kidney. A third doctor said that she should beware of her own digestion. What a fourth doctor told her, well, that she would not say. She liked going to doctors, to the crude ones and polite ones alike.

Her deceased husband had also been a physician, a gynecologist in Vienna. He hailed from a well-respected, slightly dim-witted Christian-social family. In the run of the prewar years, he had amassed six houses through inheritance. One of them was in Prague. She, on the other hand, had brought into the marriage just a third of a windmill in the northern Italian city of Brescia, but only once did he reproach her for it. Her grandmother was a native of Milan.

Anno Domini 1907, Doctor Perzl became a victim of his profession. He caught an infection from the corpse of one of his patients. That is, while he was cutting it apart in order to discover what was wrong with the woman, he was carelessly fiddling around with the scalpel because he was, well, drunk again, and he gashed himself. It was generally held that, were it not for his binge drinking, he would have had a bright future.

Ferdinand Perzl, the only child, was forced to attend cadet school because he had had no sensible ambitions in high school. He then became a first lieutenant in the Imperial and Royal Army and even managed to spend the World War whoring around behind the lines. After Austria-Hungary squandered everything—and even as he slowly lost everything that he stood to inherit, the six houses and the third of a windmill—he took stock of himself and, rather than whoring around, gnashed his teeth and watched with balled fists in his pockets as people loaded with foreign currency whored around instead. He then found his way into an office and erased from his eyes any trace of his dissolute behavior during the great struggle of the nations; he became an anti-Semite and married Frieda Klovac, the blond office worker with two left feet. Slight abnormalities of this sort could make him so nostalgic since his time behind the lines.

His mother, however, got really worked up about this marriage business. She had always hoped that some day her little Ferdinand would marry a respectable young girl from a well-to-do family. An employee was, in her eyes, not exactly a proper personage, especially as a daughter-in-law. And so she would only ever address her as that “whore,” “bitch,” “fleabag,” and the like.

And the poorer she became, the more she emphasized her social origin. In other words, the more she sensed her material defeat, the more conscious she became of her spiritual superiority. This spiritual superiority consisted above all in ignorance and the natural narrow-mindedness of the middle class. As with all people of her ilk, she did not hate the men in uniforms and the civilian criminals who had cheated her through war, inflation, deflation, and stabilization, but rather hated the proletariat alone, because, without really wanting to come to terms with it, she sensed that the future belonged to this class. She grew envious, but denied it. When she saw that a worker was able to afford a glass of beer, she was deeply hurt and her most sacred feelings were offended. Merely reading a democratic editorial made her furious. She was almost unbearable on May Day.

Only once did she have a gentleman caller, for eight years. He was an art teacher at the vocational school in the Eighth District. He had always been a little bit nervous, always making odd remarks like “Well, now, so who’s the Titian? A wop!” Finally one day he literally went crazy, as was right and proper. It began with an excessive need for cleanliness. He would shave his entire body, meticulously snip the hairs from his nostrils, and change his clothes ten times a day, despite only having one suit. Later, he would always carry a dust cloth around with him, dusting everything from the candelabra, pavement, and tramway to the pedestal of the statue of Maria Theresa. In the end he was even bent on dusting the air. And then the show was over.

CHAPTER 4

BUT LET US NOW PUT THESE SOCIOHISTORICAL sketches aside and return to the present, namely to Schellingstrasse.

A certain Count Blanquez had stopped by Frau Perzl’s place scarcely ten minutes before Kobler returned home. He told her that he wanted to wait in Kobler’s room for his friend Kobler.

This Count Blanquez was an elegant figure and a botched character. His ancestors were Huguenots, but he himself was born in the Bavarian Forest. He was partly raised by Piarists and partly by a homosexual staff surgeon in one of those hopeless prisoner-of-war camps in Siberia. He did not get along well with his family because he had fourteen siblings. And yet he seemed for the most part to be in good spirits—a big boy, a loyal companion, but sadly without scruples. He loved music, only he never went to the opera because every opera reminded him of the Huguenots, and when he thought about the Huguenots he got depressed.

Perzl showed him in without much courtesy. That is, she did not find him especially pleasant because she suspected him of only being interested in young girls. While observing him through the keyhole, she thought mistrustfully, “Where on earth does he get his elegant ties?” She watched him as he sat down on the sofa, picked his nose and then, after inspecting the extracted specimen, wiped it off sluggishly on the edge of the table. Then he stared at Kobler’s bed, smiling cynically. Hereupon he began rummaging through Kobler’s drawers and skimming through his correspondences. Annoyed not to find any cigarettes anywhere, he removed a handkerchief from Kobler’s armoire and proceeded to squeeze out his blackheads in front of the mirror. He was, as has already been noted, sadly without scruples.

He was just combing his hair with Kobler’s comb when the latter took Perzl by surprise at the keyhole.

“The gentleman count is here,” she whispered. “But if I were you, I’d clamp the lid on that. Just think about it, didn’t he come up here just yesterday with some whore, plop himself down on your bed with her, use your towel, and then just like that, head out the door again with her! That’s really crossing the line. And that’s just what I’d say to the gentleman count!”

“It’s not as simple as you think it is,” said Kobler. “The count’s a bit touchy—he could easily take it the wrong way. And I’ve got to be on good terms with him for our many business collaborations. In fact, I did notice something about the towel while I was drying my face today, but, well, one hand washes the other.”

Perzl returned to the kitchen miffed and muttered something unfavorable about the cavaliers of today. As the count caught sight of Kobler, he was gurgling with the latter’s mouthwash, and did not allow himself to be the least bit perturbed.

“Hey there!” he called out to him. “Pardon me, but I had such a dreadful taste in my mouth. Speaking of which, I heard you sold the clunker. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” said Kobler meekly, and waited angrily for him to try and mooch some money off of him. “How come every crook already knows about me cheating Portschinger?” he asked himself desperately. He thought, “Just try and mooch some money off me, and I’ll smash in your unsavory face!”

But quite the opposite happened. The count placed ten Reichsmarks on the table with a chivalrous gesture. “Much obliged,” he smiled suavely, and kept gurgling like nothing special had happened. “It seems,” he remarked casually, “you’ve forgotten that you loaned me ten marks.”

“What a day!” thought Kobler.

“I can pay you back today without any problems because tonight,” the count continued, “I’m going to do some inheriting. You see, my great-uncle, who is ten months younger than me, is dying. He’s got cancer. The poor guy’s suffering terribly. Cancer is incurable, you know. We still don’t even know whether it’s a bug or a tumor. He won’t make it through the night, that much is certain. I’ll go to Sopot once he’s been relieved of his suffering. No, not through Poland, but up and around.”

“Does Sopot still belong to Germany?” inquired Kobler.

“No, Sopot is in the Free State of Danzig, which reports directly to the League of Nations,” lectured the count. “By the way, if I were you, I’d take a trip now too. You couldn’t invest your six hundred any better. If you do it like me, you just spend ten days in a luxury hotel, meet some rich woman and then everything else will fall into place real easy like. You really do make a good appearance. You’ll have the most fabulous connections for the rest of your life, guaranteed. You still remember the tall Kammerlocher, right? You know, the one who used to be with the lancers, the aspiring cadet, the one who skipped out on the bill at the Maxim Bar? He went to Merano with a whopping two hundred Schillings, put himself up in a luxury hotel there, and on that very same evening engaged an Egyptian broad with a few pyramids for a Boston waltz, flirted with her, and then wound up marrying her because he had debauched her. Now he owns half of Egypt. And what did he have? He didn’t have anything. And who had he been? He had been a pervert. He used to put on long, silk stockings and look at his legs in the mirror. A narcissist!”

“I’ve still got to think long and hard about the best way to spend my money,” said Kobler pensively. “I’m no narcissist,” he added. Kammerlocher’s long legs, the luxury hotel, and the pyramids had slightly discombobulated him. He mechanically offered the count one of his eight-pfennig cigarettes.

“Those are Macedonians,” said the count. “I’ll just go ahead and take two.”

They were smoking.

“I’m definitely going to Sopot,” repeated the count.

The clock struck eleven.

“It’s already twelve,” said the count. He was very dishonest.

Then he suddenly got nervous.

“Well, then, so I’m going to Sopot,” he repeated once again. “I’ll do some gambling there. You see, I’ve got a system that’s founded on the laws of probability. You always bet on the number that’s most likely to come up. You’ll likely win. It’s very likely. On the subject of likely, let me have back those ten marks. I just realized that it would be best if I got them back to you tomorrow, otherwise I won’t be able to pick up my laundry. I had to borrow one of your handkerchiefs earlier.”

CHAPTER 5

PERZL BROUGHT KOBLER THE FRESH TOWEL WHILE he was shaving. “All’s well that ends well,” she said triumphantly. “I’m very grateful to you for finally ushering out that count with such vigor. I’m so happy that I’ll never have to see that pimp again!”

“Shut your face, Perzl!” thought Kobler. He explained to her rather pointedly that she had completely misunderstood the count. “Sometimes you’ve just got to tell him that he’s impossible, or else he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. Sure, at the moment he’s hurt, but he’ll thank you for it later. —All right, now bring me some hot water!” he said, and seemed unwilling to tolerate any dissent.

She brought him some, sat down on the smallest chair, and watched him attentively. She always found herself forgiving men for a great many things while they were shaving. It was just in her nature.

He, however, barely took any notice of her. He did not like it one bit that she was always nosing around in his private affairs with her big snout.

“Well, I never even had a great-uncle,” she uttered sheepishly, “but when my stepbrother died—”

Kobler cut her off impatiently. “That stuff about the dying great-uncle was just to soften me up so that I’d be quicker to lend him something. The count is quite cunning, you see. But he’s also quite forgetful. Keep in mind, he was briefly buried alive during the war. He really is no spring chicken. Nowadays you’ve got to sell your own grandmother just to get anywhere, only I wouldn’t sell mine because I just couldn’t. All right, now bring me some cold water!”

She brought him the cold water and then gazed innocently at his back. “May I be perfectly frank with you, Herr Kobler?”

Kobler stopped short and stared at himself in the mirror. “Frank,” he wondered. “Frank? In that case I’ll give her notice on the first of October!” Slowly he turned toward her. “Please do,” he said officially.

“You now know how highly I esteem the gentleman count, but he was, nevertheless, right about one thing, namely about taking that trip. If I had all of your money right now, I’d drop everything as it stands and get out into the world.”

“So that’s her being perfectly frank,” thought Kobler, reassured. At that point he grew conspicuously domineering. “Tell me, Frau Perzl, why do you always eavesdrop on me when I’m attending to guests?”

“But I didn’t eavesdrop,” objected Perzl, gesticulating wildly. “I was just listening to the radio, but I couldn’t hear a peep of the classical quartette because the gentlemen were speaking their minds so loudly. Believe me, I’d rather have edified myself with the music than overheard your vulgar ranting and raving.”

“It’s okay, Frau Perzl, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Kobler, initiating his retreat while she was reveling in her wronged innocence.

“When I think about all those foreign countries,” she said, “I get all dreamy—that’s how much I yearn for Abbazia!”

Kobler paced up and down.

“I find all of that talk about the wide world,” said Kobler, “really very interesting. That is, I’ve often thought one should get acquainted with the world abroad in order to expand one’s own horizon. For me, as a young businessman, it’d be especially crummy if I didn’t get out of here, because you’ve got to acquaint yourself with the foreign sales methods. Like, for example, a convertible with a jump seat—how do people sell them in Poland and Greece? Of course, it’ll mostly be just nuances, but often it comes down to such nuances. Customer service keeps getting harder and harder. People keep getting more and more demanding and—” He paused because a spine-chilling thought had suddenly seized him: “What guarantee do I have that I’ll find another Portschinger?”

“Nobody is going to give you one, Alfons Kobler, no god and no hog,” he thought to himself. He stared sorrowfully into space. “Nothing is ever good or cheap enough for these customers,” he thought sadly, and gave a weary smile.

“You’ll surely learn many things abroad that you’ll be able to exploit magnificently,” Perzl consoled him. “The art treasures alone that you’re going to see! The Louvre in Paris, and in the Doge’s Palace there’s a portrait hanging of an old doge who always stares at you no matter where you’re standing. But especially Florence! And the Roman Forum in Rome! The whole of the ancient world!”

But Kobler rebuffed her. “I’ve got absolutely no time for art! Do you think I’m unworldly or something? Only the wives of rich Jews, like Frau Automo-bear, are interested in such things. She was just smitten with the Gothic age and let herself get worked over by some belletrist.”

Perzl gave a dejected nod. “It used to be different,” she said.

“With me, everything has got to have some sense,” averred Kobler. “Didn’t you hear what the count had to say about the Egyptian with the pyramids? Now you see, that would have some sense!”

Perzl kept getting more and more dejected. “With all my heart, I wouldn’t begrudge you it, my dear sir!” she shrieked frantically. “If only my poor son also had some sense and had found himself a rich Egyptian instead of that lousy bitch of a typist. O lord forgive her her sins!”

She started sobbing.

“Are you familiar with Sopot?” asked Kobler.

“I’m only familiar with stuff as it was before the war. I used to travel a lot with my late husband. He even took me up to Mount Vesuvius. Oh, how I’d love to go back up there again!”

She started crying.

“Calm down,” said Kobler. “If it can’t be done, it can’t be done.”

“I, too, take solace in that,” whimpered Perzl before pulling herself together.

“Forgive me for bothering you.” She smiled sorrowfully. “But if I were you, I’d travel to Barcelona first thing tomorrow—right now there’s a World’s Fair going on there. You don’t even need to stay in a luxury hotel; you can easily meet those Egyptian women in the pavilions. It’s always like that at World’s Fairs. At the World’s Fair in Paris I once lost my late husband and, just then, an elegant gentleman accosted me. As I look at him, he opens up his overcoat and hasn’t got anything on underneath. I only mention this in passing.”

CHAPTER 6

KOBLER ENTERED A GOVERNMENT-RUN TRAVEL agency because he knew that information could be obtained there for free. He wanted to make inquiries about Barcelona and the simplest way of getting there. You see, he had abandoned Sopot because Perzl had convinced him that a considerably larger assortment of Egyptian women could be found at an exhibition of the entire world than in the most luxurious of luxury hotels. Besides, this way he could spare himself all the costs of luxury hotels, and should nothing come of his plans with the Egyptian women (which he by no means feared, but he planned for every contingency), he could always go to the automobile pavilion, where he could get an overview of the worldwide automotive industry at a glance and fill in the gaps in his knowledge about it. “I’ll combine business with utility,” he said to himself.

Posters of palm trees and icebergs were hanging in the government-run travel agency. You had the feeling that you were no longer in Schellingstrasse.

Nearly every clerk seemed to speak several languages, and Kobler listened reverently. He was standing at the counter entitled “Abroad.”

Two upper-class ladies and an elderly gentleman with a well-groomed beard were already standing in front of him. The ladies were speaking Russian; they were emigrants. The clerk was also an emigrant. The ladies were placing great demands on him. He had to tell them where the sun was presently shining, whether in Lido, Cannes, or Deauville. They would travel to Dalmatia either way, said the ladies. The price was, after all, irrelevant, even if Dalmatia should turn out to be cheaper.

The elderly gentleman with the well-groomed beard was a delegate from Hungary. He called himself a democrat and was just reading in his Hungarian newspaper how democracy was going belly-up. He nodded his approval.

One of the ladies darted a look at him. It looked real good. Just as Kobler was getting upset about not being an emigrant, the bearded democrat got upset about MacDonald. “Every democrat ought to be exterminated,” he thought.

Finally the two ladies left. The clerk seemed to know them very well because he kissed one of their hands. They did, after all, come in every week and make inquiries about all sorts of routes. They still had not traveled anywhere yet, though, because they only just got by with their money. And so they got the prospectus every week and that sufficed. On weekends the clerk would sometimes go canoeing with the lady whose hand he kissed.

“Now, finally, I would like to go to Hajdúszoboszló in a sleeping car,” said the guy with the beard impatiently, and then gave Kobler a belligerent look.

“What’s up with him?” thought Kobler.

“Wonder if that’s another democrat,” thought the democrat.

“Unfortunately, I cannot give you a ticket to Hajdúszoboszló,” said the clerk. “I only have one as far as Budapest.”

“That’s an outrage!” said the beard indignantly. “I shall lodge a complaint with my good friend, the Royal Hungarian Minister of Trade!”

“I’m a clerk,” said the clerk, “I’m just doing my duty—I can’t do anything about it. Which class would you like?”

The guy with the beard looked at him in an inexpressibly wistful and hurt manner. “First, of course.” He nodded sadly. “Poor Hungary!” randomly crossed his mind just as Kobler accidentally stepped on his corn. “What do you think you’re doing there!?” roared the beard.

“My apologies,” said Kobler.

“Well, that’s surely a democrat!” hissed the democrat in Hungarian.

“Please, just wait a few moments. I’ve got to have somebody check to see if there are still seats available in the sleeping car to Budapest,” said the clerk. Then he turned to Kobler. “Where to?”

“To Barcelona,” he answered, as though it were just around the corner.

The beard pricked up his ears. “Barcelona,” he reflected, “that was one of the centers of the anarchist movement before Primo di Rivera. He stepped on my corn and he’s riding third class, too!”

“Barcelona is far away,” said the clerk. Kobler nodded.

The beard could not help but nod and was upset about it.

“Barcelona is really far away,” said the clerk. “How do you want to get there? Via Switzerland or Italy? Are you traveling to the World’s Fair? All right, listen up: go there via Italy and return via Switzerland. The cost and distance are immaterial, right? The trip there and back will take ninety-three hours, naturally with the express train. You’re going to need a visa for France and Spain. All taken care of! You won’t need one for Austria, Italy, or Switzerland. All taken care of! If you depart from here, you’ll be at the German border by 10:32 and in Innsbruck by 13:05. I’ll write it all down for you. 13:28 departure from Innsbruck; 15:23 arrival in Brennero; 15:30 departure from Brennero; 20:50 arrival in Verona; 21:44 departure from Verona; 00:13 arrival in Milano; 03:29 departure from Milano; 07:04 departure from Genova; 11:27 arrival in Ventimiglia; 18:40 arrival in Marseille; 05:16 arrival at Portbou, the Spanish border; 10:00 arrival in Barcelona; 11:00 departure from Barcelona.

Cerberes, Tarscon, Lyon, Geneva, Bern, Basel: the clerk wrote down all the arrival and departure times for his return journey, too. He even knew the numbers by heart.

“Well, that’s one mnemonic acrobat,” thought Kobler. “A circus!”

“So third class, there and back, will only cost 127 marks and 54 pfennigs,” said the circus.

There and back?! Kobler was delighted.

“Is that all? It’s not possible,” he gaped.

“Actually, yes,” the clerk was quick to reassure him. “Germany is, as you know, one of the most expensive countries in Europe because it lost the war. France and Italy are considerably cheaper because they have inflation. Only Spain and Switzerland are still more expensive than Germany.”

“You are forgetting the remnants of Greater Hungary,” interjected the beard suddenly. “The remnants of Greater Hungary are even cheaper than Germany, despite having lost everything in the war. It was hacked to pieces, my dear sirs! Serbia and Croatia are, by contrast, even cheaper than the remnants of Greater Hungary because America won the war. Even though, militarily speaking, we won the war!”

“In the end, it doesn’t seem to matter one bit who wins such a war,” said Kobler. The beard glared at him indignantly. “Aha, that’s a Bolshevik!” he thought.

“The neutral countries are the best off—they’re the richest ones today,” said the clerk, closing the debate.

Kobler was genuinely aggrieved that Spain and Switzerland had not also been involved in the World War.

CHAPTER 7

ON THE EVENING BEFORE HIS TRIP TO THE World’s Fair, Kobler stepped into the Schellingsalon, a restaurant and café in the Schellingstrasse where he was a regular. He went there to impress people. He ordered the roast pork with a mixed salad.

“Anything else?” asked the waitress.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” he said.

“Huh, how could you be so stupid!” she said, and walked off. Just then Herr Kastner walked by his table.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” Kobler shouted out to him, but Herr Kastner was already long gone.

Even Herr Dünzl walked past him. “You’re going to Barcelona?” asked Dünzl caustically. “My dear boy, at serious times like these—”

“Hush,” Kobler cut him off, disgruntled. The Count Blanquez also walked by.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” said Kobler.

“Since when, then?” inquired the count.

“Since today,” said Kobler.

“Well, then, that means you’ve got a whole day to pester me,” said the count. Herr Schaal also walked by.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” said Kobler.

“Bon voyage,” said the good old Herr Schaal, and then sat down at another table.

Kobler was shaken. After all, he wanted to impress people and it was not working at all. He skulked into the bathroom with his head ducked down.

“Do you want ten or fifteen?” asked the attentive old Rosa.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong with you?!” blurted out the good old lady, aghast. Kobler remained firmly silent, leaving the old lady to her suspicions. When he had returned to his seat, she peered out at him through the crack in the door with her haggard eyes, wondering whether he had ordered another beer. Yes, he had indeed already ordered his second beer because, having been unable to impress anybody, he had gulped the first down hastily. “It’s like everything’s been bewitched!” he said to himself.

And there she was, Fräulein Anna Pollinger.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” he greeted her.

“Why?” she asked, eyeing him with horror. He basked in her gaze.

“There’s an international World’s Fair going on there right now.” He gave her a cruel smile. And it made him feel good, even though he had otherwise always been respectful to her.

He was exceedingly considerate in helping her to remove her coat, neatly draping it over a chair, albeit with a rather snide expression on his face. She sat down next to him and began fiddling with a loose button on her sleeve. The button was only there for decoration. She ripped it off.

Just then Anna started looking around the restaurant. Deep in thought, she nodded to Herr Schaal, who did not even know her.

“To Barcelona.” she said, “I’d sure like to go there too.”

“And so why don’t you?” asked Kobler snobbishly.

“Don’t ask such dumb questions,” she said.

Have you all heard the fairy tale of Fräulein Pollinger? Perhaps there’s still somebody out there who hasn’t, and it might be worthwhile for everybody to hear it one more time. Well …

Once upon a time there was a young lady who was never really able to catch the attention of the more well-to-do gentlemen because she only earned 110 marks a month, had just an average figure and an average face—it being neither unpleasant nor especially pretty, just decent. She worked in the office of a rental car agency, but at best could afford a bicycle on an installment plan. She was permitted to ride on the back of a motorcycle every once in a while, but something was often expected of her in return. Despite everything, she was quite sweet-tempered and did not shut herself off to men. But she would only ever go out with one guy at a time—experience had taught her that much. Often she did not exactly love this one particular guy, but she took comfort in being able to sit next to him in the Schellingsalon or elsewhere. She did not want to yearn for anything, but if she ended up doing it anyway, everything seemed insipid to her. She would rarely speak; she only ever listened to what the gentlemen were saying amongst each other. Then she secretly made fun of them because, after all, the gentlemen did not actually have anything to say. These gentlemen would rarely speak to her, and if they did it was usually only when they felt the urge to do it. During the first few sentences she would often be spiteful and malicious, but then she soon let herself go again. She was indifferent to practically everything in her life, and it had to be like that, otherwise she would not have been able to bear it. It was only when she was feeling ill that she would think about herself more intensely.

At one point she went out with a gentleman by the name of Fritz for well over a year. Toward the end of October she said, “If I got pregnant right now it’d be the biggest disaster.” She was shocked by her words.

“Why are you crying?” asked Fritz. “I don’t like it when you cry. All Saints’ Day falls on a Saturday this year, so there’s an extra day off and we can take a hike in the mountains.” And then he explained to her that all the physical stress during the climb down would, as is generally known, see to it that she didn’t get pregnant.

So she climbed with Fritz up the west side of the Wasserkarspitze, which stands 2,037 meters above yonder sea. It was already night when they reached the summit, but up above there were stars in the sky. There was a fog in the valley below; it slowly wafted up toward them. Everything in the world was very quiet, and then Anna said, “The fog looks like it has all the unborn souls flying around in it.” But Fritz did not respond to this tone.

Ever since this hike in the mountains she had had a sickly pallor. She never really fully recovered and every so often her womb area hurt her like crazy. But she did not hold it against any of the gentlemen; she just had a strong constitution. There are people out there that you just can’t kill. And so she lived happily ever after.

So in mid-September she was sitting next to Kobler in the Schellingsalon. She ordered just a small glass of dark beer. She had already eaten her supper, two little rolls of bread and butter, at the rental car company because that night, by way of exception, she had to work until nine o’clock. On average, she would have to do this, by way of exception, four times a week. Of course she was not paid for working overtime because after all, if she wanted to be jobless, she had the right to quit on the first of every month.

“Give me a bit of your potato salad,” she said suddenly because, suddenly, she just had to eat something else.

“Sure,” said Kobler, at once feeling as though he should be ashamed of himself for going to Barcelona.

“It’s going to be very exhausting,” he said.

“So I guess that means there’s nothing doing tonight,” she said.

“Right,” he said.

CHAPTER 8

THE EXPRESS TRAIN THAT WAS TO TAKE KOBLER across the German border departed punctually because the gentleman with the red uniform cap raised his baton punctually. “Now that’s German punctuality for you,” he heard somebody say in a Hanoverian accent.

The young wife of a businessman was standing on the platform among others. She was excitedly waving goodbye to her husband, who was in the front car, traveling abroad in order to cheat another businessman.

Kobler nudged his way into the scene. He leaned out of the window and gave the young lady a condescending nod, but she merely grimaced and made a dismissive gesture with her hands. “Now she’s upset,” rejoiced Kobler, and thought of Fräulein Pollinger. “Anna’s probably also upset right now,” he continued this line of thought. “Right now it’s precisely eight and this is when her office opens up. I’d be upset too if my office opened up at this time. Nothing beats self-employment. What a disaster it’d be if everybody were an employee, like Marxism envisions it. As an employee, I would never have gone the extra mile to cheat Portschinger. If the convertible had been state property, I’d just have had it melted down as scrap metal, which would have been the right and proper thing to do anyway. But so many potentially exploitable objects of value would lie idle as a result of this menacing socialization. And that’s just how it’d be because the personal incentive would be eliminated.”

He sat down mischievously at his window seat, riding proudly through the dismal suburban train stations and past the suburban travelers who stood motionlessly waiting for their suburban trains. And then the city gradually came to an end. The landscape became increasingly dreary; Kobler languidly observed the person sitting across from him, a gentleman with a vigorous demeanor who was absorbed in his newspaper. It was written underneath the newspaper’s headline, NOW MORE THAN EVER!, that any German who said he was proud to be a German because, were he not proud of being a German, he would still be a German all the same and would, therefore, naturally be proud to be a German—“such a German,” read the newspaper, “is no German, but rather an asphalt-German.”

Kobler had also equipped himself with some reading material for the trip, namely a magazine. In it there were a dozen young girls who, in the shadow of mounted photographs of skyscrapers, were shouldering their legs as if they were rifles. The caption read THE MAGIC OF MILITARISM, and said that it actually came across as spooky that pin-up girls have heads as well. Then Kobler also saw a whole pack of feminine beauties, one of whom was smiling sensuously as she stood atop an enormous tortoise that had been tamed. Apart from that he had no other reading material with him.

Just a number of dictionaries, each containing around twelve thousand words printed in an exceedingly tiny font: German-Italian, Français-Allemand, German-French, Español-Aleman, etc. He had also got himself a booklet with useful phrases for traveling in Spain (with the pronunciation clearly spelled out). It had been edited by a secondary-school teacher in Erfurt whose daughter still hoped to marry the rich German-Argentinian who had given her his promise during the period of hyperinflation. In the preface, the secondary-school teacher lamented the deeply distressing fact that Spanish was rarely learned in the German-speaking lands, even though the Spanish world supplied us Germans with myriad natural products while itself lacking in industry. These facts had not yet been adequately appreciated by the young world of commerce, not by a long shot. And then the secondary-school teacher enumerated the countries in which Spanish was spoken, for instance Spain and Latin America, minus Brazil.

Kobler read further: I’m hungry, thirsty. Tengo hambre, sed. Pronunciation: tango ambray, said. How do you say that in Spanish? Como se llama eso en Castellano? Pronunciation: como say yama ay-so en casteyano. Could you please speak more slowly? Tenga ustay la bondahd day ablar mas despassio? Please repeat that word. You have to speak a little louder. He commands a proud language, but he expresses himself well. Porter, bring me my luggage. I have a large suitcase, valise, travel blanket, and a bunch of socks and umbrellas. Is that the train to Figueras? Give me dry bed linen. Onions, please. Now it is right. We have been missing your orders for some time now. What do I owe? Very good, my dear sir, I remain indebted to you for everything. What did you do? Nothing. Would you like the check? No. It appears that you have understood me correctly. Well, goodbye! Send your dear wife (dear husband) my regards! Thanks a million. Bon voyage! Godspeed!

“What are you reading there?” he suddenly heard his neighbor ask. He looked like Herr Portschinger. He had been peering distrustfully into the secondary-school teacher’s work for some time now. His name was Thimoteus Bschorr.

“I’m going to Barcelona,” replied Kobler laconically, eagerly awaiting the effect of his words. The person sitting opposite him with the vigorous demeanor looked up with a jerk and, seething with hatred, glared at him, only then to continue reading the definition of an asphalt-German for the twentieth time.

A third gentleman was also sitting in the corner, though Kobler’s travel plans did not seem to have made the slightest impression on him. He merely gave a weary smile, as though he had already traveled around the world several times. His collar was too loose for his neck.

“So, then, Italy it is,” stated Herr Bschorr phlegmatically.

“Barcelona is, as you well know, situated in Spain,” said Kobler superciliously.

“That ain’t so well known.” Bschorr got worked up. “As you well know, I could’ve sworn that Barcelona was, as you well know, in Italy!”

“I am merely solely passing through Italy,” said Kobler, making an effort to speak very properly so as to provoke Thimoteus Bschorr. Only he would not let himself be provoked.

“Barcelona sure is a ways away,” he said dully. “A real ways away. I don’t envy you one bit. Spain—the whole place has got to be real filthy. And a torrid zone. What you going to do in Madrid?”

“I shall ignore it altogether,” explained Kobler. “I’m merely interested in seeing the world abroad just once.”

The person sitting across from him winced visibly at these words and butted into the conversation, speaking clearly and concisely: “Under no circumstances should a German send his honestly earned money abroad in these economically depressed times.” All the while he had a censorious gaze fixed on Kobler. He owned a hotel in Partenkirchen that was generally avoided because of its insanely high prices and so was always vacant.

“But Spain was neutral during the war!” said the third gentleman in the corner, coming to Kobler’s aid. He was still smiling.

“Whatever!” snapped the hotelier.

“As a matter of fact, Spain is even well disposed towards us,” said the guy in the corner, refusing to let up.

“Nobody out there is well disposed towards us!” countered Thimoteus excitedly. “It’d be a real miracle if somebody was. It’d be a real miracle, huh, folks?!”

The hotelier nodded. “I repeat: a German should keep his honestly earned money in the fatherland!”

Kobler gradually became furious. “What business is Portschinger’s convertible of yours, you bastard!” he thought and then put the hotelier in his place: “You are mistaken! We, the young German tradespeople, must establish even more meaningfully intimate connections with the part of the world abroad that is well disposed to us. Last but not least, we must of course uphold our national honor.”

“All that stuff about upholding honor is just empty talk,” the hotelier interrupted him in a surly manner. “We Germans are just simply not capable of establishing commercial relations abroad in an honest way!”

“But what about the nations?” said the third man, suddenly no longer smiling. “Nations all depend on each other, just like Prussia depends on Bavaria and Bavaria on Prussia.”

“What’s that, you trying to talk down Bavaria?” roared Thimoteus. “Who’s dependent on who? What’s dependent on what? Those lousy Prussians can all take a hike to Switzerland! What the heck do I need tourism for? Tourists don’t buy nothing from me. Got me a brick factory, used to be a butcher!”

“Ho-ho!” the hotelier flared up. “Ho-ho, my dear sir! If it weren’t for tourism, Bavaria’s sovereignty would be in dire straits. We need the Northern-German spa guests; we need the foreign spa guests, especially the Anglo-Saxon spa guests; but what we are sadly still frequently lacking is a more accommodating approach to the influx of foreigners. We have to adapt ourselves even more keenly to the foreign psyche. Though of course, when the dear Minister of Finance declares …”

And here is where Thimoteus exploded.

“Those ain’t ministers—just a bunch of Prussians!” he raged. “Scoundrels, the whole lot of ’em, no exceptions. Who’s sucking wind here? The middle-class! And who’s making a killing? The workers! The workers are smoking cigarettes at six pfennigs a pop … My dear sirs, like I always say: Berlin!”

“Bravo!” said the hotelier, and continued memorizing the sentence about the asphalt-German.

The gentleman in the corner stood up and hastily left the compartment. He stood at the window, gazing out sadly at the beautiful Bavarian countryside. He felt sincerely sorry for that countryside.

“He’s outside now. I guess I gave him the boot,” Thimoteus was pleased to declare.

“I follow the homestead movement with great interest,” answered the hotelier.

“You blockheads!” thought Kobler, and turned towards his window.

There were people working in the fields, cattle at pasture and deer standing at the edge of the forest. If it were not for the apostolic patriarchal crosses of the overhead power cables, you might forget it was the twentieth century. The sky was blue and the clouds were white and molded in Bavarian-baroque.

Meanwhile, the express train was approaching the southern border of the German Republic. At first it rolled past huge lakes where the mountains still appeared small on the horizon, but now the mountains kept getting larger and larger, the lakes smaller and smaller, and the horizon closer and closer. And then the lakes disappeared altogether; all around there were just more mountains. This was the Werdenfelser Land.

The hotelier got off at Partenkirchen and did not even deign to look at Kobler. Herr Bschorr likewise got off and tripped over a four-year-old child in the process. “Jarghh!” he said. The child let out a terrible squeal because it had nearly been trampled by Herr Bschorr.

The express train resumed its journey.

Mittenwald-bound.

The gentleman who had been sitting in the corner returned to the compartment because Kobler was now alone. He sat down across from him and said, “And there you can see the Zugspitze!”

As is generally known, the Zugspitze is Germany’s tallest mountain, though sadly a third of it happens to belong to Austria. And so a few years ago they built a suspension railway up to the Zugspitze, even though for the last twenty years the Bavarians had been wanting to do just that. This, of course, really angered the Bavarians, as a consequence of which they finally managed to build a second train up to the Zugspitze, and a purely Bavarian one at that—not some aerial suspension railway, but a solid rack-and-pinion railway. Both trains up to the Zugspitze are undeniably grandiose achievements at the pinnacle of modern mountain railway structural engineering, and by mid-September 1929, the project had already claimed the lives of around four dozen workers. However, until the Bavarian train up to Zugspitze was operational, numerous workers would sadly just have to keep believing in the project, the management reassured.

“I once told a lady this,” the gentleman said to Kobler, “but the lady said that the story had been concocted by the esteemed workers in order to extort a higher wage.”

The gentleman was smiling so strangely that Kobler no longer knew what to make of him.

“This lady,” continued the gentleman, “is the daughter of a man from Dusseldorf who sits on a supervisory board. She married somebody in Cuba as far back as 1913, so she spent the World War there.”

And the gentleman once again smiled so strangely that it nearly confounded Kobler.

“The war must’ve been more pleasant in Cuba,” he said, and this pleased the gentleman.

“You’re going to see a nice little piece of the world,” he said, and gave him a friendly nod.

“A little piece is fine,” thought Kobler, piqued, and then asked, “Are you also a businessman?”

“No!” said the gentleman curtly as if he no longer wished to speak another word with him.

“What could he be, then?” thought Kobler.

“I used to be a teacher,” the gentleman said abruptly. “I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Weimar Constitution, but if you advocate your political convictions with the commitment of your entire person, with every fiber of your being, then its constitutional grounded civil rights and liberties will do you shit-all good. For instance, I married a Protestant woman and lost my job for it. I can thank the Bavarian Concordat for that. Now I’m a sales representative for a brand of toothpaste that nobody buys because it’s atrocious. My family has got to live with my in-laws in Mittenwald. The old lady reproaches the children for every little thing they eat—And there’s Mittenwald! Sure is a cozy spot, huh?

CHAPTER 9

MITTENWALD IS A GERMAN-AUSTRIAN BORDER station with passport inspection and customs control.

This was the first border that Kobler had ever crossed in his entire life, and the official ceremonies tied up with crossing it touched him in a strangely solemn way. It was with an almost tremulous veneration that he watched as the gendarmes stood indolently around the platform.

He was already holding his passport expectantly in his hand before he even reached Mittenwald. Now his suitcase, too, was lying wide-open on the bench. “Please don’t shoot—I’m an honest boy,” was the message here.

Kobler really cringed when the Austrian customs officer appeared in his car. “Anybody got anything to declare?” yelled out the customs officer unsuspectingly.

“Over here,” yelled Kobler, pointing to his honest suitcase. But the customs officer did not even look over at him.

“Anybody got anything to declare!?” he called out in horror, and then dashed headlong out of the car. He was afraid that somebody would, by way of exception, really have something to declare, which would mean that he would, by way of exception, have something to do.

The passport inspection, on the other hand, was conducted a little more rigorously because it was a better piece of business. That is, there was usually at least one person on every train whose passport had just expired. They could then be sold a border-crossing permit for a few marks or schillings, respectively. One such person once said to the passport official, “Excuse me, but I really am in favor of the Anschluss!” But the passport official vehemently refused to tolerate any insults directed at an official.

The express train slowly left the German Republic, driving past two signs:

KINGDOM OF BAVARIA: KEEP TO THE RIGHT! | FEDERAL STATE OF AUSTRIA: KEEP TO THE LEFT!

“So we keep to the left?” Kobler asked the Austrian conductor. “We’re all on the same track,” yawned the conductor. Kobler could not help but think of Greater Germany.

They were now heading through the northern Limestone Alps, specifically alongside the old Roman road between the Wetterstein and Karwendel mountain ranges.

The express train needed to climb 1,160 meters in order to reach the Inn Valley, which was situated around 600 meters lower. It was a complicated region for express trains.

The Karwendel is one mighty massif. Its magnificent high valleys undoubtedly number among the most barren stretches in the Alps. Starting at the brittle ridges, magnificent heaps of scree often extend all the way down to the bottom of the valley and then converge with the debris from the other side. At the same time, there is almost no water anywhere and hence hardly any life. In 1928 it was declared a nature reserve so that it could remain unspoiled.

And so the express train rolled past tremendous abysses and through many, many tunnels and over boldly constructed viaducts. Kobler now caught sight of a filthy cloud of haze hanging over the Inn Valley. Underneath this cloud of haze was Innsbruck, the capital of the holy land of Tyrol.

Kobler did not know anything about the city except that it had a famous golden roof, reasonably priced Tyrolean wine, and that travelers approaching the city from the west could see several large brothels on the left-hand side. Count Blanquez had once explained this to him.

He had to change trains in Innsbruck, switching to the express train bound for Bologna. The express train was coming from Kufstein and was late. “The Austrians are just a very cozy people,” thought Kobler. The express train finally arrived.

Until Steinach am Brenner—that is, almost right up to the new Italian border, that is, for scarcely fifteen minutes—Kobler shared a compartment with a Hofrat, a privy councilor from the Old Austrian empire, and a so-called man on the street, who really sucked up to him because he was seeking his patronage. This man was an unprincipled foreman who had joined the Heimwehr, an Austrian variant of the Italian fascist organization, so that he could cheat his colleagues more efficiently. His managing engineer was, you see, a Gauleiter of the Heimwehr.

The Hofrat wore an old-fashioned golden pince-nez and had a deceitful look about him. He had a very smart appearance—and, indeed, he seemed to be an altogether very vain man because he chattered incessantly just so he could hear the other man’s approval.

The express train had turned away from Innsbruck and was already heading through the Bergisel Tunnel.

“It’s dark now,” said the Hofrat.

“Very dark,” said the man.

“It’s gotten so dark because we’re driving through the tunnel,” said the Hofrat.

“Maybe it’ll get even darker,” said the man.

“Gadzooks, it sure is dark!” yelled the Hofrat.

“Gadzooks!” yelled the man.

The Austrians are a very cozy people.

“Hopefully the Lord will let me live to see the day when all the pinkos are hanged,” said the Hofrat.

“Just put your faith in the man upstairs,” said the man.

“Bergisel is right over us now,” said the Hofrat.

“Andreas Hofer,” said the man, and then added, “The Jews are getting too uppity.”

The Hofrat’s dentures were chattering.

“They’ve simply got to toss that Halsmann into a cell—nothing but bread and water for him!” he squawked. “Who gives a crap whether or not that Jew bastard slayed his Jew-daddy! The prestige of the Austrian judiciary is at stake here—you can’t just let the Jews get away with everything!”

“Just recently we roughed up a Jew,” said the man.

“Ahh, is that right?” asked the Hofrat gleefully.

“The Jew was by himself,” said the man, “and there were ten of us. Fists were flying—Heimwehr fists!”

The Hofrat sniggered.

“Yes, the Heimwehr!” he said.

“Heil!” shouted the man.

“And Sieg!” said the Hofrat.

“And death!” shouted the man.

Kobler stepped out into the corridor just as the express train was leaving the Bergisel Tunnel. He could not bear to stay in there any longer; the nonstop blathering prevented him from thinking.

And he needed to do some thinking—this being a need of sorts, such as if he urgently needed to relieve himself. You see, the Egyptian woman, the true aim of his trip, had suddenly popped into his head. He was shocked that it had been several hours now since he had thought about the pyramids.

He was once again distracted now that he was standing at the window, only this time by God’s magisterial mountain world, which is what Kitsch calls the Earth’s crust that broke asunder long ago.

“What is man next to a mountain?” it suddenly occurred to him. And this thought really took hold of him. “Next to a mountain man is one big nothing. You see, that’s why I wouldn’t want to live in the mountains all the time. I’d rather live in the lowlands, at most maybe among some hills.”

CHAPTER 10

EVER SINCE THE TREATY OF SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, the Austrian-Italian border had run along the top of the Brenner Pass between North and South Tyrol. The Italians, you see, helped deliver their brethren in Trento from the Habsburgs’ yoke. And any decent fellow can only openly salute a thing like that.

After all, the Italians had not entered the World War with the goal of subjugating foreign nations. They were no more bent on annexing territories than Count Berchtold, the ex-Emperor Wilhelm II, or Ludendorff were. But, alas, the Italians were simply forced to annex the entire German South Tyrol for military-strategic reasons, just like, say, Ludendorff would have been forced to annex Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium, etc., for purely strategic reasons. “The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a downright crime,” a university professor from Innsbruck once said. And had he not been a chauvinist, he really would have been quite right.

As is generally known, Mussolini now wants to Italianize German South Tyrol to its core, just as ruthlessly as Prussia had once wanted to Germanize the Polish city of Poznan.

And so Mussolini, among other things, ordered that wherever possible all German names—place names, surnames, etc.—be rendered into Italian such that they could only be pronounced in Italian. And rendered according to their literal sense, at that. Should, however, a name lack a literally translatable sense, Mussolini would merely stick an “o” on the end of it. Such, for instance, as in “Merano.”

Brennero as well.

As Kobler caught sight of the Brennero, it immediately struck him that there was a great deal of construction going on up there, and of nothing but barracks.

The fascist officials were already expecting the express train at the Brennero train station. There were approximately thirty men standing around, and nearly every one of them had on a different type of uniform.

Some of them had on Napoleon hats and loose, long coats, or short, tight coats, or loose, short coats, or tight, long coats. Several of them were wearing illustrious cock’s feathers that wafted almost all the way down to their shoulders. And yet others were wearing eagle’s feathers or mallard’s feathers, and others wore no feathers at all, at most some down. Most of them were field-gray or field-brown, but there were also some there in a steel blue and greenish color with lapels in red, ocher, silver, gold, and lilac. Many of them were wearing black shirts—these were the famous Blackshirts.

It was a colorful sight. All of them seemed to be freezing because Northern Tyrol’s autumn-like fog hung barely a hundred meters above their heads.

None of the travelers were allowed to leave the express train. Things were quite a bit more stringent here than between Bavaria and Austria at Mittenwald, and not just because the Italians belong to the Romish race, but rather because they have, to top it all off, a Mussolini—a man who is in a constant furor about the fact that there are only forty million Italians in the world.

Twenty-nine of the thirty uniformed men were very busy with affairs related to crossing the border. The thirtieth man seemed to be the leader, which is to say he was not doing anything. He was standing on the platform, somewhat in the background beneath a colored photograph of the Duce, wearing very elegant shoes. He was perhaps four foot six. His eyes were scouring the express train, scanning the area for a blond woman, either a German or Scandinavian.

“Prego, your passaport!” said the Italian passport official. He spoke broken German, polite yet firm. “Where are you going, Signor Kobler?” he asked.

“To Barcelona,” said the Signor.

“So you’re going to Italy,” said the passport official.

“Yes,” said the Signor.

And now something mysterious happened. The passport official turned gravely toward his companion, a passport subofficer, and said in Italian, “He’s going to Italy.”

The passport subofficer gave a stately nod. “Well, well, going to Italy he is,” he drawled, imagining himself to be more important than Mussolini himself.

Meanwhile, the senior passport officer was already busy with the next traveler and asked him, “You’re going to Italy?”

“Yes, sir,” said the next Signor. His name was Albert Hausmann.

“And why are you going to Italy?” asked the senior passport officer.

“I want to convalesce in Italy,” said Signor Hausmann.

“You’re going to convalesce in Italy!” said the senior passport officer proudly.

“Hopefully,” said the guy in need of convalescence.

Hereupon the senior passport officer once again turned to his companion and said, “He’s going to convalesce in Italy!”

“Or maybe not!” said the passport officer laconically, and stared suspiciously at the guy in need of convalescence. The man reminded him of a certain Isidore Niederthaler in Brixen whose wife was listed on the Fascists’ blacklist as politically suspect. “That wife’s got a gorgeous ass,” thought the petty passport officer.

Meanwhile, the senior passport officer had already directed his attention to a third traveler. His name was Franz Karl Zeisig. “You’re going to Italy?” asked the senior passport officer.

“So stupid!” muttered Kobler. “Of course we’re all going to Italy!”

“Do not underestimate Benito Mussolini!” whispered the guy in need of convalescence. “The passport officers are actually pursuing a quite specific aim with this seemingly nonsensical questioning. They are all especially brilliant detectives from the political police in Rome. Have you ever heard of a cross-examination?”

Kobler did not get a chance to answer him because all of a sudden there were three Fascists standing in front of him. “Do you have any newspapers?” asked the first Fascist. “You are not permitted to bring Austrian, socialist, communist, anarchist, syndicalist, or nihilistic ones into Italy—it’s strictly forbidden!”

“I’m no nihilist!” said Kobler. “I’ve just got a magazine with me.”

And then a few Italian customs officers rummaged through his suitcase. “What’s this?” asked one of them, dangling a tie under his nose.

“That’s a tie,” said Kobler.

The customs officer nodded contentedly, gave him a friendly smile, and then disappeared with his colleagues.

Finally the difficulties of crossing the border were over and the express train resumed its journey southbound, diretto.

Down from Brennero and through the new Italy.

CHAPTER 11

AND THEN SUDDENLY ALL THE SIGNS WERE IN Italian. Kobler was so fascinated by them that, like a child, he was hardly able to budge from the window, even though, or perhaps because, he had no idea what they meant.

“Albergo Luigi, Uscita, Tabacco, Olio sasso, Donne, Uo-mine,” he read. “That’s all got a ring to it,” he thought. “It’s a shame that my name’s not Koblero!”

They made a brief stop in the former Franzensfeste. “Excuse me, but where are we right now?” asked a nervous German traveling to Italy. He could not see over Kobler’s shoulder.

“In Latrina,” responded Kobler.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t make such awful jokes,” yelled the nervous guy.

Kobler was rather puzzled. After all, the sign was hanging right in front of him:

LATRINA

“Don’t you holler at me!” he hollered at the nervous guy.

“Apologies, sir,” squealed the nervous guy, fidgeting terribly. “But I’m by no means in the mood for such games!”

“And now has come the solemn moment where I smack you,” thought Kobler.

But just then, Albert Hausmann, the guy in need of convalescence, butted into the argument in an exceedingly polite manner, hoping to nip the disagreement in the bud because he was very anxious. “A mistake, my dear sirs!” he said. “Latrina basically means lavatory. You’re talking at cross purposes, my dear sirs!”

The guy in need of convalescence spoke perfect Italian and was an altogether very intelligent and erudite man who was especially well versed in world history. “This all used to be South Tyrol,” he said.

And then he advised Kobler to just watch out for the fascist informers, who were, you see, exceedingly cunning and brutal. “Over there, by the third window, for instance,” he whispered mysteriously, and pointed furtively at a man who looked like a farmer. “You see that guy—he’s definitely an informer. He just tried to lure me into an incriminating conversation—he’ll do it to you too! He’s looking to lure anybody in. And as soon as you make a derogatory comment about Mussolini, Nobile, or the system in general, they’ll arrest you and drag you right off the train. Take heed!”

Kobler took heed.

The informer approached him right before Bolzano.

“Bolzano used to be called Bozen,” said the informer.

“Aha!” thought Kobler.

“The Italians are now building an enormous electricity plant in Bozen,” said the informer.

“Go on!” thought Kobler.

“The Italians,” continued the informer, “routed loads of water to Bozen from really far away. They drilled a shaft through that entire mountain range out there—that is, they began drilling beneath that peak up there, and they also began drilling in Bozen and they wanted to drill things together, but three times they drilled right past each other instead. In the end, they had to hire German engineers,” grinned the informer.

“The Germans didn’t drill things together either,” said Kobler.

“Sure they did, and spot-on!” said the informer excitedly.

“Coincidence,” said Kobler.

Pause.

“Are you familiar with Bozen?” asked the informer.

“No,” said Kobler.

“Then go ahead and take a look at it!” yelled the informer. “The people of Bozen are delighted about their German guests!”

“I’m a German Fascist,” said Kobler.

The informer stared at him, horrified. “And now over there you have the Rosengarten,” he said meekly.

“Perhaps!” said Kobler, and walked off.

The informer stared at him for a while. He was no informer after all.

CHAPTER 12

KOBLER STEPPED INTO THE DINING CAR, PLEASED to have put one over on Mussolini’s supposed informant. “Now I’ve earned my coffee,” he said to himself. He was so happy: it was like winning a lawsuit that he should by all rights have lost.

There was only one spot left in the dining car.

“Prego?” asked Kobler, this being the extent of his Italian.

“But of course,” answered the passenger in German. He was a cultivated gentleman from Weimar, home of Goethe and the constitution.

Despite the fact that the train was in the sovereign territory of Italy, it was altogether apparent that everybody was speaking German, save for the conductors and a few Blackshirts. And you could hear all sorts of German dialects in the dining car in particular.

The cultivated gentleman seated at Kobler’s table had a squishy appearance and seemed to be extraordinarily hoggish. A gourmand. As the son of a former municipal architect from Pforzheim who during the Wilhelminian era had married the filthy rich daughter of a patrician, he could afford to eat his three salmon canapés, four sardines in oil, two frankfurter sausages, and three eggs in a glass without any concern. From his father, the municipal architect, he had inherited the delusion of possessing a keen eye for the architectural design of lines. From his mother, he had inherited—despite inflation—a bunch of money and the collected classical works. He was forty-six years old.

“I am a Renaissance man,” he explained to Kobler. He used very literary speech. “My ideal is the southern Italian who suns himself day and night on the beach, never doing anything, and is exceedingly undemanding. Believe me, our German workers would be happier too if they were just less demanding. Waiter! Bring me another steak tartare!”

Naturally this Renaissance man had never worked a day in his life, and thus suffered from an almost pathological form of hypochondria. He had nothing to do but worry about dying. And to top it all off, he was recklessly stupid.

He would often claim that as long as his dividends accrued, he could not care less about the fate of the German Reich. “You can’t say a thing like that!” exclaimed his cousin, an extreme right-wing political realist. He wanted to have him put under guardianship, but that eventually fell through. “He is quite normal and can reason soundly,” said the court doctor.

“So you’re heading to Barcelona,” this absolutely normal guy said to Kobler, and then added a sample of his sound reasoning: “Primo is a capable man, a cavalier. When you get to Barcelona, please give my regards to the bullfights. You’re going to experience something splendidly traditional there. And then this whole Spanish conservative spirit—it’s always the same there! As I’ve always said, the conservative element has got to join forces internationally in order to conserve itself more efficiently. We German conservatives have got to bring the French conservatives into the country so that they can whip this republic into shape—France has got the military might to put every German worker up against the wall—and après we should import coolies from China who wouldn’t need more than a handful of rice a day.” And then he added laughingly, “Of course I’m only joking!”

CHAPTER 13

IN VERONA, KOBLER HAD TO TRANSFER TRAINS for a second time and board the express headed for Milan, which usually arrived from Venice around this time. But he sadly only had ten minutes at his disposal to do this, which basically meant that he could not see anything of Verona, just the train station, which, sadly, looked a lot like other train stations. By then it was already nightfall, this being a new-moon night.

Verona was an ancient city that somehow had something to do with Dietrich von Bern, the Renaissance man explained to him. And on top of that, Romeo and Juliet, the world’s most famous lovers, were supposedly buried here. Sure, Verona’s brothels weren’t famous, but, well, all the same.

On the platform, there was a gentleman in a brown uniform walking up and down. He was wearing an armband on his right upper arm. On it was written in four languages that he was an official interpreter and therefore not permitted to accept any tips. He was most accommodating and provided Kobler with information in fluent German.

“The diretto from Venezia to Milano arrives,” he said, “on track three and departs from track three. It is over there, right where that ridiculous woman is standing.”

The ridiculous woman was the interpreter’s wife. He had just had another fight with her. You see, she had never wanted him to become an official interpreter, hanging around night after night with all sorts of foreign ladies. But the interpreter would merely say, “The more languages somebody speaks, by so much the more is that somebody a person.”

He said the same thing to her again this evening, whereupon she really went wild. “I don’t want anything to do with so many people!” she said, out in the street. “I just want you! Oh Giovanni, if only you were deaf and dumb! Well, then, I’m going to my brother’s in Brescia!”

This was the same Brescia where Frau Perzl of Schellingstrasse once inherited a third of a windmill.

“When possible, you should ride at least second class in Italy,” Kobler recalled Perzl’s advice. “You’ve got to do it, especially if you want to sleep, because the travelers in Italy—especially the ones in third class—often sing out loudly, as though there’s nobody there trying to sleep.”

And Kobler did want to sleep; suddenly he felt very tired. “It’s either the change in the air,” he thought, “or probably all these new impressions.”

All the people he had come into contact with in the last twelve hours now appeared before his mind’s eye, only this time everybody made just one gesture. And yet the apparitions still did not want to come to an end. As the figure of Herr Bschorr tried to come around again for a second time, Kobler tripped over a lost hammer.

And then several mountains, viaducts, and foreign villages started circling around him. The Inn Valley stopped in front of him. The Italian language also looked at him, but somewhat condescendingly.

“Well, if things keep up like this,” he thought, “I’ll forget all about my Egyptian lady. And the foreign convertibles—I’m not even thinking about them anymore. I’ve almost entirely forgotten myself. Hopefully now I’ll be able to sleep till Milano—that’s the Italian name for Milan. I can sit around there until I pick up the connection to Ventimiglia. It’s going to be a long journey, as small as our world actually is nowadays. And it keeps getting smaller, even smaller and smaller every day. I won’t be around to see it get really small—”

And thus he attempted to collect himself, though it gave him an unpleasant feeling. He felt like the man who forgets on Thursday what he did on Wednesday.

“First class is the only way to travel!” sighed Kobler. “My ass is already hurting me from the wood. My goodness, I do declare I’m sore!”

And so he moved into a compartment in second class. There was already a gentleman in the corner. He was sitting behind his raincoat and seemed to be fast asleep. He only had a small handbag with him, but for that a fabulous amount of newspapers. The editions were scattered everywhere, on the floor and the baggage rack alike. He must have fallen asleep while reading them.

Twenty minutes after leaving Verona, just when Kobler was about to fall asleep, the gentleman woke up. At first he yawned rather indistinctly. Then he peered out from behind his coat and, after catching sight of Kobler, gazed at him in amazement, rubbed his eyes, focused in on him more precisely, and then asked in a rather relaxed German: “How did you get in here?”

But Kobler was annoyed that the gentleman had not let him fall asleep and was brusque with him: “I came in through the door.”

“I suspected as much,” said the gentleman. “I suspected as much indeed! Surely you didn’t come flying in through the window. Was I really so fast asleep? Yes, I really was so fast asleep.”

“Weird!” thought Kobler. “At once he pronouncedly addressed me in German. Perhaps he, too, is an informant?” He observed the gentleman mistrustfully. He was already somewhat gray and smoothly shaven.

“How is it that you knew I was German,” he asked him suddenly, taking great care to appear as harmless as possible.

“I can tell by the skull,” said the gentleman. “I can tell by the skull straightaway. You see, Germans all have thick skulls, but of course only in the true sense of the word. In fact, I’m also half German myself. What am I not half of? I’m half everything! Such is life! And so here we are, sitting across from each other, riding through the Po Valley. I’m coming from Venice, and you’re …?”

“I’m just now coming from Verona,” said Kobler.

“Verona has a magnificent piazza,” said the gentleman. “The Piazza d’Erbe is the center of folklife. And there’s a large military presence there—it’s pretty well fortified. Along with the fortifications in Peschiera, Mantua, and Legnago, it forms the frequently mentioned defense square. Defense from whom? From Austria-Hungary. And why from Austria-Hungary? Because it was allied with Italy. But what was an alliance in the age of secret diplomacy? The arms industry provided assurance. And what’s an alliance today? Or do you think that we don’t have secret diplomacy anymore? We’ve got nothing but secret diplomacy!”

“Is he a windbag or what?!” Kobler thought grimly.

“It feels so good to be able to chat a smidge, because I’ve hardly said anything sensible for the last three days,” said the windbag with a friendly smile.

“Oh, now, what’s next?!” The thought flashed through Kobler. He hated the gentleman. “You shithead,” he continued thinking, “I’ll never get to sleep with you around. What you really need is a punch in the face. Oh, but I know what I’ll do.” And he said, “May I have a look at some of your newspapers?”

“Of course you may!” cried the gentleman. “You may very well indeed! I can’t even look at a newspaper anymore. Do you just need the German ones, or would you also like the Italian, French, Czech, and—oh my goodness—here’s a Polish one too! How’d this Romanian stuff get in here? I guess I must’ve bought it somehow. It’s a pity about the money—out ya go!”

He opened up the window and flung out every one of his non-German newspapers into the roaring darkness.

But he had hardly finished closing the window when a member of the fascist militia appeared, a so-called Blackshirt. The Blackshirt stepped into the compartment solemnly and spoke to the gentleman in a calm yet stern manner. The gentleman made some deflective gestures and spoke perfect Italian, whereupon the Blackshirt retreated and was quite aggravated.

“What did the Fascist want from you?” asked Kobler.

“I’m wondering the same thing myself,” cried the gentleman, trying to dodge the question. Then he continued: “I’ll translate for you what he wanted from me. He wanted to know if I had just thrown my newspapers out of the window, because they flew in through an open window farther back and hit him smack-bang in the face, and with some momentum at that. Of course, I told him right away that I’d never before in my life thrown a newspaper out of a window. You can’t catch me off-guard! Believe me, I’m an experienced traveler!”

“Where’s that penetrating stench coming from?” asked Kobler.

“That would be me,” said the experienced traveler. “Hopefully it won’t bother you too much, mister! If I’m not mistaken, I’m twenty years your senior. So tell me, were you ever a soldier?”

“I’m going to Milano now,” answered Kobler evasively.

He had actually not been a soldier because he had still been a teenager during the war. And the fact that he had not been a soldier sometimes bothered him when he was around older gentlemen whom he suspected had probably been wounded.

“I’m going to Milano,” he repeated to himself stubbornly, “and then I’ll go on to Marseille because I’m going to Barcelona.”

And now something unexpected happened.

The experienced traveler acted as though he wanted to spring up from his seat. He leaned over stiffly and cried, “So he’s going to Barcelona!” Hereupon he recoiled and took a deep breath.

“Well, now, the strongest effect my words have had yet,” thought Kobler, gazing at the man in front of him with satisfaction. “A strong effect!” he thought.

“That’s some coincidence!” the gentleman spoke up again, and smiled as though he were truly happy: “You see, I’m going to Barcelona too.”

This stunned Kobler. “That is indeed a coincidence,” said Kobler, grinning sourly. He was piqued about the competition.

“Might be more than a coincidence!” said the competition, getting excited. “I’m not going directly to Barcelona, though. I’m going to get off in Marseille for two days in order to acquaint myself with the city. It’s an exceedingly colorful and, above all, ethnologically fascinating harbor city, you see, boasting instructive insights.”

“This is what I’ve heard,” said Kobler. “This Marseille has got to be a hooker heaven. I’ve been wondering whether or not it’s worth a look, too. Then again, it might not pay off. I’m quite skeptical.

“But there you do Marseille a bitter injustice! Allow me to introduce myself: Rudolf Schmitz from Vienna.”

Rudolf Schmitz was an editor. Among other things, in Vienna he represented an evening paper from Prague, a morning paper from Klausenburg, an afternoon paper from Zagreb, a weekly paper from Lemberg, and a gutter paper from Budapest.

As a native Austro-Hungarian from Ujvidék, he had a colossal gift for languages. For this reason he could command all the languages of the former double monarchy, but for this reason sadly none of them perfectly. Nevertheless, during his adolescent years he had fancied himself a poet. He composed poems in those days—an entire series of them. An Early Summer in Hell was the title of the series; it had been influenced by Western decadence. But no publisher wanted anything to do with Early Summer. “Here’s two Gulden—now give it a rest already!” said one of the publishers. And Schmitz did just that, because at the end of the day, he was just an intelligent guy and a healthy egoist. Over the years he grew more worldly-wise. “After all, even Rimbaud turned away from writing poetry in order to live a life of poetry,” he slowly realized, and then step by step became a correspondent.

Sociologically speaking, he hailed from families of Imperial and Royal officers and civil servants, only he had never been keen on being bourgeois. He was a born bohemian. He was walking around hatless as early as 1905. His weakness was metaphysics.

And now he asked Kobler, “What is coincidence, my dear sir? Nobody knows what coincidence is and that’s precisely what it is. Coincidence—it’s the hand of a higher power. The dear Lord reveals himself in coincidences. If it weren’t for coincidences, then we wouldn’t have a dear Lord at all! That is to say, the ability to think through and elaborate on things is a human quality, but the absolute senselessness of coincidence is divine.”

He put his legs up on the upholstered seat opposite him, this position being most conducive to philosophizing.

And just then the Blackshirt from earlier reappeared. He demanded gruffly that he put a newspaper beneath his shoes. “Now, of all times!” thought Herr Schmitz angrily as he took down his legs and stopped philosophizing.

The Blackshirt left the compartment and was already in a somewhat better mood.

“A pyrrhic victory,” muttered Schmitz. And as soon as the Blackshirt was out of sight, he sighed: “That’s their idea of a revolution! The Fascists ride around like this in every train, making sure that nobody chucks newspapers out the windows, or carelessly messes up the lavatories. That’s how they raise their nation! And what are they raising their nation for? For war.”

“Against who do you think?”

“Against everybody, my dear sir!” moaned the philosopher. “Yes, this here is basically a pedagogical revolution. As you well know, every revolution is basically a pedagogical problem, but pedagogy is also a revolutionary problem. As you can see, it’s all very complicated. But is Fascism really even a revolution at all? No sign of it! Sacro egoismo and nothing else!”

“Well, I personally don’t care much for revolutions,” said Kobler. “Now, sure, I wouldn’t have anything against everybody being better off, but I just don’t believe that revolutionary leaders are business men—they’re simply not business-minded.

“The age of businessmen,” nodded Schmitz.

“We businessmen have got a long way to go before we reach our peak, don’t you think?” asked Kobler hastily. The thought of sleep was suddenly gone.

“Who are you telling this to!?” cried Schmitz, and proceeded to pontificate. “Just listen here: the businessmen will have reached their peak only when every last human value has been assessed fair and square on the basis of their own commercial worldview. Then things will eventually go downhill again for the businessmen, and then a new age will dawn for another social class. That’s the eternal ellipsis. That is, it’s no circle.”

“I can’t imagine a social class that might be dawning behind us businessmen,” said Kobler bleakly.

“The proletariat.”

“But that’s not possible!”

“Why shouldn’t it be possible?” asked Schmitz, astonished. “If you’d told Alexander the Great back then that businessmen would be ruling the world today, he’d have had you buried alive. I warn you not to play the role of Alexander the Great.”

The conversation was interrupted here by a conductor entering the compartment to inspect the tickets.

Kobler had to pay an additional fee. Schmitz also had to pay an additional fee because he too had just a third-class ticket.

The conductor spoke broken German and conversed with the two gentlemen while changing their money. He said that he greatly esteemed and respected Germany because he knew a German family, and they were extraordinarily decent and accommodating people. Granted, they were not actually pure Germans, but rather Germans from Russia, so-called emigrants. They had fled Russia because the Bolshevik criminals would’ve forced them to start working, and you can’t just start working if you’ve never worked before. And so they had to leave all their belongings behind, fleeing in the dead of night with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Then they bought a hotel on Lake Garda—a gorgeous hotel!

“Here’s another windbag,” grumbled Kobler while Schmitz was regarding the windbag fondly.

“Switch trains in Milano,” the windbag continued, gratified. “Mussolini was in Milano the other day; the sun was shining. But no sooner had Mussolini left than it started to rain. Even the sky supports Mussolini.” He grinned and wished both gentlemen a pleasant trip. A silence ensued when he left.

“He was a mischievous fellow,” Schmitz once again let his voice be heard. “Another contribution to the philosophical-metaphysical mentality of the suppressed classes.”

“I take it you’re not a businessman,” said Kobler.

“No,” said Schmitz, “I’m a man of the pen and I’m traveling to the World’s Fair as a special correspondent.”

Another silence ensued.

During this silence both of them thought about each other. “Up to now I’ve really only known one man of the pen,” thought Kobler. “He was a poet whose head was in the clouds unless somebody was talking about hyacinths. Not a practical man. He could only have hurt me, nothing else. But this Schmitz here seems to be an erudite and obliging man, and you should only associate with people who can do you some good. Of course everybody does this, only most people aren’t aware that they’re doing it. Perhaps this man of the pen could help me somehow, maybe I can even use him. As a man of the pen, he’s sure to have plenty of female admirers—he’ll probably even have some in Egypt. Oh, I’m starting to believe in providence. If only he didn’t stink so!”

And Schmitz was thinking: “Perhaps it was stupid of me to have immediately offered to be his traveling companion. It was definitely stupid. Oh, I’m so stupid! And why am I so stupid? Because I’m a pushover. But I can also be forceful. Maybe he’s a mooch, trying to hit me up for some money. I’m very forceful. So he says he’s a businessman. Who isn’t one today? And what sort of businessman might you be, my dear sir? Of course it’s really not my affair. Definitely a swindler, otherwise he wouldn’t be going to Barcelona at his age. That is, he doesn’t belong to the upper bourgeoisie—I can tell that by the way he moves. Could he be a fraud? No, because I would also be able to tell that by the way he moves. In any case, he’s stupid. My goodness—what a bad match for me! I’ll get rid of him however, whenever, and wherever possible! I’d even jump out of the train while it was moving!”

CHAPTER 14

IT WAS TEN MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT WHEN THE express train reached Milano, even though the express train was not scheduled to arrive in Milano until thirteen minutes past midnight. “That’s what I call order!” yelled Schmitz.

He led Kobler into the train station’s restaurant, where they wanted to linger until their connecting train to Ventimiglia departed (03:29). Schmitz really knew his way around. “I know my way around Milano like it was Paris,” he said. “Best thing to do is to stay in the train station.”

“You see,” he continued, “there’s no reason to go into the city because, in the first place, it’s pitch-black right now, so we wouldn’t get to see anything of the gothic Milan Cathedral. And secondly, there isn’t much going on here architecturally—it’s pretty much a modern city. You’ll get a chance to see plenty of gothic stuff!”

“I’m not really so keen on gothic stuff,” said Kobler.

“Yeah, I’m more of a baroque guy myself,” said Schmitz.

“I’m not really so keen on baroque stuff either,” said Kobler.

“Of course, when compared with the marvels of Eastern Asia, we Europeans just can’t keep up!” said Schmitz.

Kobler did not say anything else. “And now will you shut up already!” he thought.

“And now we should drink some Chianti!” cried Schmitz, and gleamed. “That’s the wine with the straw on the bottom of the bottle. Or are you a teetotaler?”

“Where’d you get that idea?” Kobler rebuffed him forcefully. “I can drink like a fish, no matter what you put in my glass!”

“Pardon me!” apologized Schmitz, and smiled cheerfully.

You see, Schmitz was quite fond of Chianti. Kobler, too, felt a very strong connection to her after making her acquaintance in the train station’s restaurant. She was trickling voluptuously through their guts, and before long another bottle stood in front of them. Meanwhile they were discussing the World War and war in general. They had already begun the discussion on the train because, given that Schmitz had not been a soldier either, Kobler had nothing against chatting a bit about the idea of war.

The Chianti loosened their tongues. Kobler related that, sure, he had always been politically on the right, but only up until the Beer Hall Putsch. At present he was somewhere just about in the center, even though he couldn’t technically be a pacifist because his only brother had fallen on the field of honor.

“What’s your dear brother’s name?” asked Schmitz.

“Alois,” said Kobler.

“Poor Alois!” sighed Schmitz.

“Are you feeling all right?” inquired Kobler.

“I never feel all right, my dear sir,” smiled Schmitz wistfully, and then emptied his glass. “I’m basically just half a man,” he continued speaking, growing more and more sentimental. “Sometimes I feel like I’m missing something, whether that be a home or a woman. Sure, the medical consultant thinks my lousy digestion is behind my depression, but then what do doctors know!”

“I’m personally very much in favor of there never being another war,” answered Kobler, “but do you really think such a thing could be achieved?”

“Poor Alois,” muttered Schmitz, and then suddenly the air got very quiet. This made Kobler feel uncomfortable, and at the same time it occurred to him that back then this heroic death had taken a pretty heavy toll on his mother. She really could not bear the fact that the sun had continued to shine. “If I could only dream of him,” she kept saying over and over, “then I’d be able to see him again!”

They were already on their third bottle of Chianti, but Schmitz still seemed to be thinking about very depressing things because he was really preoccupied. But then suddenly he pulled himself together and broke the uncomfortable silence.

“As of late,” he said, “our literature is neglecting the death motif. Everything pretty much just wants to be alive.”

“You really shouldn’t concern yourself with such things,” Kobler reassured him dismissively. Sure, as a child he had enjoyed going to the graveyard to visit his father, his grandparents, or good old Aunt Maria, but the World War had changed all of that. “What’s gone is gone!” he had told himself, and then moved to Munich.

At that time—1922—Munich was one big mess and the opportunity to exploit the political situation presented itself to Kobler. After all, he didn’t have a thing to eat. And as a sprig of the middle class, he was already a convinced right-winger and had no idea what the left wanted. Although deep down he was never really as far right as his new acquaintances were because, after all, he still had a sense of what was possible. “After all, everything is possible,” he told himself.

One of his new acquaintances even belonged to a secret political society with which the police back then sympathized deeply because it was even more radically right-wing than they were. His name was Wolfgang and he fell in love with Kobler. But Kobler never let him have his way. Wolfgang procured a position for him just the same, because he was not only passionate but also quite capable of loving somebody selflessly.

And so Kobler fell into a job at a nationalistic-minded bank on the verge of bankruptcy, only then to switch over to a bicycle shop when the banker was arrested. He did not last very long there and became a traveling salesman of skin cream and practical joke products from Württemberg. Then he peddled stamps door to door, and finally he wound up in the auto industry through the agency of another Wolfgang.

Nowadays when he thought back to this time he really had to strain to remember exactly how he had gotten by. Often he only just managed to slink past the snares that life sets for us. “You must have a good guardian angel,” a prostitute once told him.

He did not like thinking about his past, much less talking about it. That is, he often felt like he had to cover something up, like he had done something wrong, which of course he hadn’t, when seen from within the framework of the prevailing social order.

This is why he preferred to talk about the future while drinking Chianti.

“The World War of the future will be even more gruesome,” he explained to Schmitz, “but it pretty much comes as no surprise that we’ve still got people in Germany who are looking for another war. They just can’t get used to the fact that we lost our colonies, for instance. For instance, an acquaintance of mine outlined in black the former German colonies in his stamp album. He looks at them every day. And the rest of the colonies—the English, Italian, Portuguese ones and whatnot—were sold off, and at giveaway prices at that. And the French colonies, well, I think he burned those.”

Schmitz listened attentively.

“I, Rudolph Schmitz,” he stressed, “am convinced that you Germans will reclaim all your lost territories without striking a blow. And we German-Austrians will likewise align ourselves with you. I only have one thing to say: the Holy Alliance equals the League of Nations, Napoleon equals Stalin!”

“I’m not sure yet,” answered Kobler skeptically, because he had no idea what the Holy Alliance was supposed to mean. “So who’s Stalin?” he asked.

“That’s not so easy to explain,” said Schmitz restrainedly. “It’d be better if we returned to the topic: I, Rudolph Schmitz, am convinced that there will not be another war between the bourgeois Great Powers of Europe because nowadays it’s considerably cheaper to exploit nations in a peaceful, mercantile manner.”

“I’ve been saying the same thing,” nodded Kobler.

“I’m delighted to hear that!” said Schmitz happily, and grew lively once again. “But consider America for a second! Don’t forget that the United States of North America wants to relegate Europe to a colony. And they’ll do it too if Europe doesn’t come to an agreement—we’re already a mandated territory!”

“But will we come to an agreement?” asked Kobler, feeling superior.

“We’ve got to put an end to our past once and for all,” said Schmitz excitedly.

“I personally wouldn’t have anything against that,” Kobler consoled him.

“These passport and customs shenanigans are just pure insanity!” wailed Schmitz.

“When seen from a higher point of view,” said Kobler serenely, “you’re quite right, but I think it’s going to be pretty hard for us to come to an understanding because nobody trusts anybody, everybody thinks that the other guy is the bigger crook. I’m thinking of Poland in particular.”

“Have you ever been to Poland?”

“I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Well, I have, and I even fell in love with a Polish woman. My dear sir, there are basically decent people everywhere! Somebody has got to start throwing themselves behind this idea of coming to an agreement!” He threw back the rest of the fourth bottle of Chianti.

“Let’s get another bottle,” Kobler decided, and fixed his gaze on the lady at the counter while Schmitz eagerly ordered it. “So that’s Italy!” he thought. He was gradually slipping into an exhibitionist mood. “I can think more nimbly when I’ve had something to drink,” he said.

“So what!” thought Schmitz.

“And if I haven’t had anything to drink,” he continued, “thinking often really hurts me, especially when it’s about these international political problems.”

The waiter brought the fifth bottle, and Kobler kept getting more and more inquisitive. “What does ‘pan’ actually mean?” he asked.

“Ultimately, the universe,” pontificated Schmitz. “And in the case of Pan-Europe it means the United States of Europe.”

“That I know,” Kobler interrupted him.

Schmitz slammed his fist against the table and bellowed, “But without Great Britain, thank you very much!” And then he suddenly had to yawn. “Excuse me.” He composed himself. “I just yawned, but I’m not even that tired. It’s merely stomach gas, which develops particularly strongly in me when I’m a bit tipsy. And that reminds me, have you ever heard of my war novella? Sadly it wasn’t a pecuniary success because I combined the gruesome realism of war with my own gruesome brand of fantasy. A kind of wartime version of Edgar Allan Poe. Does that name ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Yes, the art is gradually vanishing,” muttered Schmitz. He let a thunderous one rip and then once again grew sentimental. He was a moody creature.

“If I’m going to read something, I’d prefer it be a true story than a made-up one,” said Kobler.

“That’s just the generation gap between us,” nodded Schmitz, and smiled paternally. “Sometimes I just don’t get your generation. Sometimes your theories seem insipid, insubstantial, and non-Dionysian in a higher sense. In my youth I was able to recite half of Faust by heart, and all of Rimbaud. Ever hear of the drunken ship? Excuse me for a moment—I’ve got to run to the john.”

And Kobler watched as Schmitz stepped out, clenching his teeth and frantically balling his fists. He really had to brace himself so as not to keel over. “Could I be just as full?” he asked himself worriedly. “In any case, he’s one interesting guy.”

It was just about time to hit the road when the interesting guy came staggering back to the table. Outside on the tracks, the nonstop railroad cars to Ventimiglia were already waiting. Both gentlemen spoke a little more about politics in general, about art in general, and then Schmitz complained particularly about European absentmindedness in general. But another proper conversation failed to take shape because neither gentleman could really collect himself by now. Kobler quickly wrote a postcard to Perzl: “Just drove by your erstwhile windmill in Brescia. Regards, Kobler.” Schmitz wrote below: “Flying kisses sent from the unknown hands of your most humble, Rudolph Schmitz.” The gentlemen then paid the bill. The waiter cheated them and afterward commended himself with the roman salute.

Schmitz raised his arm to give the fascist salute. Kobler did the same. So did the lady at the buffet.

CHAPTER 15

THE TWO GENTLEMEN ALMOST COLLAPSED when they left the warm, smoky restaurant and stepped out into the fresh night air. This is how drunk they were.

They were staggering around in a most despicable manner, and it took quite a while before they finally found their way into one of the nonstop cars to Ventimiglia.

The two gentlemen were quite taken with each other, especially Schmitz who was unbelievably delighted to have met Kobler. Deeply moved, he kept thanking him for allowing him to accompany him to Spain, all the while dubbing him Baron, Majesty, General, and Councilor of Commerce.

But suddenly Kobler was no longer really listening. The fatigue with which his drooping eyelids had been grappling since Verona now knocked him out flat, and he gave laconic answers, often of only one word.

“And why exactly is His Eminence going to Barcelona?” asked Schmitz.

“Egypt,” muttered His Eminence.

“Why Egypt, Herr veterinarian?”

“Registry office,” moaned the veterinarian.

“Political?”

“Possible!”

“And now for the interview!” yelled Schmitz, and let himself get carried away by a sudden wave of enthusiasm. “An interview like none other!” He pulled a notebook from his chest pocket so that he could take down Kobler’s answers in all due diligence. Out of sheer intoxication he no longer knew what he was doing.

“Might I ask,” he exclaimed, “the Herr Lieutenant Colonel what he thinks about the Mind-Body Movement? And what about the Body-Mind Movement?”

Kobler wrenched open his eyes and gazed at him with ineffable intimacy. He even tried smiling and then slurred, “My gracious young lady, I’m all yours.”

“Now I feel sick to my stomach,” howled Schmitz. “Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach!” He leapt up in horror and darted out of the room to vomit.

Kobler gazed after him in surprise. Then he made a resigned gesture and slurred, “Women are unpredictable.”

Such was the condition in which the two gentlemen left Milano, the metropolis of Northern Italy. And this condition remained essentially unchanged for the remainder of the night. Although they fell asleep, their sleep was restless and agonizing, rife with dark and mysterious dreams.

For instance, Schmitz dreamed, among other things, that he was striding across Arcadian meadows in the summer: his feet were nimble and his senses exhilarated. It was right around the fin de siècle and he was eavesdropping on a group of fair Hellenic women frolicking around a sacred grove. “Pan-Europa,” he shouts, she being classically the most beautiful. But the saucy Pan-Europa puts him in his place. “Whosoever goes forth shall be shot dead,” she calls out to him arrogantly, and peals forth a silver laughter. But here things get a little too dull for him, so he transforms himself into a bull, namely into a pan-bull. Pan-Europa likes this. Breathing heavily, she throws herself around his pan-bull neck, covering his pan-bull nostrils with voluptuous kisses. But alas, in the midst of kissing him, the classical, beautiful Pan-Europa transforms herself into the nasty Frau Helene Glanz from Salzburg.

And shortly after leaving Milano, Kobler began dreaming of his poor brother, Alois, who had been blown to pieces by an enemy grenade during the World War. Alois appears as a dead soldier in a metropolitan cabaret and reenacts to an exclusive audience the grenade blowing him to pieces back then. Then he goes and scrapes himself back together again like a good little boy. This is done very gracefully. And the audience sings along with the chorus:

“Limbs get tossed,

But the war’s not lost!”

CHAPTER 16

IT WAS AROUND NOON WHEN THE TWO GENTLEMEN awoke. They had slept through Genoa entirely and were now approaching San Remo.

Outside was the sea, our primordial mother. That is, the sea is supposed to have been the place where life originated hundreds and hundreds of millions of years ago, only later to crawl forth onto land where, being forced to either adapt or perish, it continued to evolve in that marvelously complicated way.

Schmitz realized that Kobler was looking at the sea for the first time. “So what do you think of the sea?” he asked him.

“I didn’t think it would be any different,” Kobler answered apathetically. He was still lying down, looking very haggard.

“Calm down, my dear sir!” Schmitz consoled him. “My skull is hurting me just as much as yours, but I’m restraining myself. We shouldn’t have gotten so drunk in Milano.”

“We should’ve restrained ourselves in Milano,” lamented Kobler.

“Vintage 1902,” muttered Schmitz.

They were now riding alongside the sea but they did not actually see anything of it, even though they passed first the Italian Riviera di Ponente and then the French Côte d’Azur, no less. They had to submit themselves to another official customs control and passport inspection in Ventimiglia, a border town between these two coasts. It was here that Kobler felt the most nauseous. Even Schmitz was mucking around on the toilet for nearly an hour. They had to pay a bitter price for their Milanese Chianti. And the bitterness of this price was, as is so often the case in life, vastly out of proportion with the sweetness of the pleasure enjoyed. Kobler in particular could not enjoy this world-famous landscape. He also could not eat anything, vomited at every sharp turn, and looked into the future with gloomy eyes. “I haven’t even achieved the goal of my trip yet and I’m already dead,” he thought dejectedly. “Why am I even going?”

Schmitz kept trying to get him to think about something else. “Look,” he said in Monte Carlo, “here the palm trees grow on the very platforms! I can’t shake the feeling that Western Europe is significantly more bourgeois for having won the World War. I don’t want to know what’ll happen when the Western Europeans finally figure out that, ultimately, they lost the World War! Know what’ll happen then? Then Social Democrats will become ministers here too.”

“Here in Nice,” Schmitz stated, all the while smiling sarcastically, “the clocks ought to be turned back not just by an hour, but by a whole forty years.” When he was alone, however, he did sometimes feel right as rain in the atmosphere of 1890, even though this meant he was contradicting himself.

Antibes made Schmitz think, among other things, of Bernhard Shaw. He thought: that was one witty Irishman. Or he thought of old Nobel, who made the very noble gesture of founding the Nobel Prize after watching people blow each other up with his dynamite.

Now the train was leaving the sea and would return to it again in Toulon. “We’re almost in Marseille now,” said Schmitz. It was already late in the afternoon; the sky was dark blue.

Outside was Toulon, the naval base of the French Republic. The sight of the gray torpedo boats and armored cruisers roused all sorts of childhood memories in Schmitz. And so he remembered how, back when he was a child, he had been allowed to look around one of the armored cruisers of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian fleet in Pola with his posh aunt Natalia. But his aunt soon went down below with a deck officer, leaving him alone up above. He had to wait for her for nearly half an hour. And he was terribly afraid because the gun barrels started moving all by themselves.

“I just don’t understand the French democracy,” he now thought melancholically in Toulon. “This armament madness is only natural to the Fascists, so long as you take their criminal egoism into consideration, but the French democracy, with its European mission? So you’ll say, La France has got to prepare itself for war against Mussolini because, after all, he’s got his eye on Nice and Corsica and even wants to annex the great Napoleon for himself. And sadly, dear Mariann, what you’re saying there is just logical!”

They finally reached Marseille.

It is well known that all the larger harbor cities distinguish themselves with a colorful life, but Marseille is particularly distinguished.

The center of Marseille’s colorful life is the old harbor. And the center of this old harbor is the brothel district. We shall return to this later.

As the two gentlemen descended the wide stairs of the Gare Saint-Charles, Schmitz already felt considerably better while Kobler was still feeling rather faint. He also still felt like he could not think properly.

“ ‘The Marseillaise’ originated here in Marseille,” Schmitz instructed him.

“Just keep it to yourself,” Kobler rebuffed him in a weak voice.

Night had fallen right after they left Toulon, and now the two gentlemen had no greater desire than to be able to fall asleep as soon as possible in a wide, soft French bed.

They checked into a small hotel on the Boulevard Dugommier, which had been recommended to Schmitz as being extremely tasteful and reasonably priced. Whoever made this recommendation must have been exceedingly malicious because the hotel was not tasteful but rather a sleazy hot-sheet hotel and thus not reasonably priced. Upon arrival, though, the two gentlemen failed to realize this—they were, after all, already half asleep when they walked into the reception. They went silently up to their rooms and undressed automatically.

“Hopefully you’re not a sleepwalker,” wailed Schmitz.

“That should be the least of your worries,” joked Kobler, and then fell into his bed.

CHAPTER 17

THE NIGHT DID THE TWO GENTLEMEN THE WORLD of good. This time they did not have any dreams after having been freed of the monotony of the train tracks and wheels.

“I feel like a newborn baby today!” warbled Schmitz the next morning, and gleefully tied his tie.

Kobler was also cheerful. “I’m really looking forward to Marseille,” he said.

After getting dressed, the two gentlemen went for a stroll along the Canebière, that world-famous thoroughfare. Then they rode the bus past the Prado and out to the Corniche, a peaceful street permitted to hug the coast, and thereupon they took a motorboat out to the islet of the romantic Count of Monte Cristo, riding past old, useless fortifications. Thereupon they took an audacious elevator up to those uncannily steep rocks upon which the Notre-Dame de la Garde rests. Thereupon an all-encompassing panorama presented itself to them.

“Down there is Marseille,” Schmitz explained the situation.

Thereupon they took a ride in the transporter bridge’s iron spider, namely once there and once back. Thereupon they went into one of the popular restaurants in the old harbor, namely the restaurant The Comet.

There were all sorts of things to eat there, and everything was cheaper than in Germany or Austria. Consequently, the two gentlemen nearly overindulged. The all-you-can-eat appetizers particularly appealed to them, and the soft white bread too. This time they went a little easier on the wine, but Schmitz got rather talkative again all the same. He reminded Kobler of that fitting German proverb about living like God in France, and then he asked him whether it had ever occurred to him that in numerous establishments, often even truly luxurious cafés, there weren’t any toilets, this being like some sort of Southern French specialty. Thereupon he enumerated to Kobler the culinary specialties of Marseille and ordered himself a sort of fish soup.

“Well, that’s one peculiar dish,” said Kobler warily, and sniffed it. “I’d say there are a lot of exotic ingredients in there.”

“Do you remember the colonial monument on the Corniche?” inquired Schmitz with his mouth full. “That was that monumental monument for Frenchmen who died fighting against the French colonial peoples. And of course, lots of stuff here comes from the colonies, but it’s like that everywhere! Even our famous Viennese black coffee is grown by the blacks. If we didn’t have any colonial goods, we wouldn’t, my dear sir, be able to satisfy even our most primitive needs. And believe me, that’d be the case too if somebody didn’t so shamelessly exploit those poor negroes. And then of course all the colonial goods would be prohibitively expensive because plantation owners would also want to earn a thousand times more money. Just believe me, my esteemed colleague, we whites are the biggest beasts!”

He suddenly had to cough violently after tossing down his throat a morsel that was too large. Once he was finished coughing, he resumed:

“If we white beasts were honorable people, we would have to build our civilization upon people without any needs, people whose needs could be satisfied without negro products, forest people as it were. Then we’d have states hardly capable of satisfying a need. But then what would be left of our occidental culture?”

“I’m not sure,” answered Kobler, shooting a bored glance at his watch. “When are we going to the brothel district?” he asked anxiously.

“It’s not worth it just yet—it’s still way too light out,” said Schmitz. “In the meantime we could take a look at a few old churches. Garçon, bring me another banana!”

CHAPTER 18

RIGHT BEHIND MARSEILLE’S BEAUTIFUL TOWN hall begins the famous brothel district: dismal and filthy, a true labyrinth that seems to go on forever.

The farther one strays from the city hall, the more unofficial the prostitution gets and the more brutishly it deports itself. The streets keep getting narrower, the tall houses more dilapidated, and even the air seems to be decaying.

The God and the Bayadère, it suddenly occurred to Schmitz, he being a literary man and all. “Do you see that bayadère over there?” he asked Kobler. “That fat yellow thing that’s washing its black feet—oh, how unsavory! My goodness, now she’s about to give herself a pedicure! And that thing calls itself God’s likeness!”

“It’s enough to make you sick,” said Kobler.

“Watch out!” yelled Schmitz. He saw another likeness approaching Kobler. This likeness had a crusty rash all around its mouth and insisted on giving Kobler a kiss. While Kobler was putting up a desperate struggle, a third likeness snatched Schmitz’s hat off his head, acting very coy. A group of Senegalese sailors couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“No matter how you look at it, that’s one interesting mixture of peoples,” stated Schmitz, who after lengthy negotiations had reclaimed his hat for the price of five cigarettes. “Did you get a look at that Japanese whore too?”

“I even saw the Chinese one!” answered Kobler. “You certainly can see all sorts of stuff here. I just don’t get the men who mess around with it all.”

“Sex drive—nothing more,” said Schmitz, “and sailors are said to have quite exceptional ones.”

“I don’t get these sailors,” interrupted Kobler sullenly, before beginning to curse and complain impatiently about the apparent lack of nice whores in Marseille—“just horrible, abominable ones.” He had envisioned this harbor city as being quite different.

“Just calm down,” Schmitz consoled him. “I’ll take you to an upscale, very official whorehouse. I got the address from a head waiter at the Bristol in Vienna. The women are sure to be well cared for. And supposedly you can see all sorts of stuff there, even if you don’t mess around with it. You shouldn’t do something like that in a harbor city anyways, if only because of the increased risk of infection. Everybody’s diseased around here.”

“I’ve never caught anything,” said Kobler, which was a lie.

“I’ve never caught anything either,” said Schmitz, which was also a lie. Then he grew melancholy once again. “When all’s said and done, this whole prostitution business is really sad stuff, but you just can’t get rid of it.” He smiled wistfully.

“I feel the same way,” concurred Kobler. “I know an attorney whose highest ideal was to look at obscene pictures with the woman he loved, only his own wife refused to do it, claiming that such photographs would make her grow weary of life. So, where was the attorney to turn to? Streetwalkers’ district. And where there’s a demand, there’s pretty much also a supply. Those are just basic instincts!”

“Unbelievable, the creatures there are in this world!” thought Schmitz, and grew philosophical yet again. “I too regard prostitution from a higher point of view,” he explained. “I’ve just been thinking that, since we humans have been around, we’ve actually only repressed three instincts, namely incest, cannibalism, and bloodlust. And as the recent World War has once again demonstrated to us, we haven’t even fully repressed these either. Those are problems, my dear sir! For instance, just take a look at me! In my youth I sympathized with The Communist Manifesto. Without exception, everybody’s got to get through Marx at some point in time. Marx claims, for instance, that prostitution will disappear through the abolition of the bourgeois conditions of production. I just don’t believe it. I think that you can only reform it. And that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“How?”

“Nobody has really got that figured out yet. The only thing we know for sure is that Marxism isn’t the solution. After all, right now we’re experiencing the full scope of communism and its desire to destroy our entire European civilization!”

He jerked to a halt.

“Well, looks like we’ve found it,” he said. “That over there is our whorehouse!”

The head waiter at the Bristol really had not been exaggerating when he gave Schmitz his word of honor about Chez Madelaine being respectable and honest, run in an exemplary fashion in every respect. “For once he wasn’t lying,” thought Schmitz. “I’ll write him a postcard today.”

The doorwoman, a friendly elderly woman, led the two gentlemen into the reception room, offered them seats and then asked them to wait just a few moments. The reception salon had been kept in the Louis XVI style, but it was by no means garish—more plain than anything. On the walls hung engravings à la Watteau and Fragonard, in which Schmitz immediately took a purely mechanical interest.

“Think it’s going to be really expensive?” Kobler asked warily. But Schmitz could not allay his fears because the madam had just walked into the salon.

The madam was an elderly lady with wonderfully white hair and expressive eyes, a noble figure. She had something regal about her and a natural charm. But there was also a hint of harshness around her mouth, this being necessary if she wanted to uphold the good reputation of her brothel.

“This is going to cost a lot,” thought Kobler worriedly as the madam tactfully addressed Schmitz, he being the elder of the two. She immediately greeted him in English, but Schmitz immediately cut her off, explaining that he wasn’t an American, nor was his friend, but rather quite the opposite. The madam seemed very pleased about this. She apologized repeatedly, smiled exceedingly courteously and was no longer reserved—more cocky than anything.

“Did you notice the change in tone?” whispered Schmitz to Kobler while they followed the madam into the bar. “Did you notice how hated Americans are in France? Nobody wants to become an American colony here either!”

“I don’t give a crap about that right now,” Kobler interrupted him anxiously. “Right now the only thing I’m worried about is that all of this is going to cost a pretty penny!”

“How much can it cost? We simply go into the bar, simply order ourselves two whisky and sodas, and simply leave it at that!”

So they entered the bar.

In the bar there was almost nothing but uniformed men, soldiers and sailors amusing themselves in a more or less vulgar manner with the half-naked girls. In one corner sat two patrons from India and in another three sports students from North America. The latter had crimson heads, but were putting on puritanical airs. There were also two gentlemen in whom the girls took no interest: one of them was a confirmed bachelor and the other had just come to give the madam some tips for the racetrack.

It was a lively operation. The pianist was very talented, playing partly sentimentally, partly unsentimentally. He looked like he sat on a governing council. The waiter looked like Adolf Menjou; he was very distinguished. The whole place was overwhelmingly fragranced, which of course was only necessary.

The whores were roused a bit when the madam stepped into the salon, because despite their relaxed bearing, an iron discipline reigned inside them. They immediately formed a regular semicircle around Schmitz and Kobler, stuck out their tongues, and, according to individual disposition, swayed either faster or slower. This was supposed to appear sensual and lewd.

“Alors!” said the madam, but Schmitz explained to her that for the time being they were fine with just a drink, and, who knows, maybe it would stay at just that.

“Très bien!” said the madam, whereupon the semicircle dissolved. The madam refused, however, to let up so easily, and inquired as to whether the two gentlemen might not perhaps desire a lady for discussion purposes. She also had, as she said, very intelligent ladies here with whom one could discuss problematic topics. Altogether her ladies could speak fourteen languages. There was also a German lady among them whom she would be glad to direct to their table. This of course would cost absolutely nothing—provided, that is, that it remained just a discussion.

The madam left to fetch the German lady who had just gone missing. Just then a negress walked across the bar. She was wearing a bright-red turban and had a completely different gait from her white colleagues, which afforded Schmitz another opportunity to comment on the common note of all European women and to express, moreover, his regret that the typical notion of Europeanness had hitherto only been framed superficially. “Or could you shoot at these people here just because they aren’t German?”

Kobler answered in the negative.

And then Schmitz went on to say that among these people there were not just French women but Romanian, Danish, English, and Hungarian women as well. Then he asked triumphantly: “So, then, what do you think about this set-up now?”

“I must say, we Germans are still way behind in this area,” said Kobler.

The German lady walked up to their table. “Are the gentlemen from Germany?” she asked in German, and bent over Schmitz. “I’m also a German, ja. So who wants to go first?”

“There must be some mistake,” said Schmitz defensively. “We thought that you just wanted to drink to our health—nothing else!”

“However the gentlemen want to have me,” said the German lady, and sat down courteously, for she could also be mannerly.

It soon emerged that her name was Irmgard and she was from Silesia. She had also lived in the capital of the Reich. You see, she had wanted to become a saleswoman there, but instead she became a factory worker, this being her destiny. The machines really got on her nerves because she was just a country girl. On Easter of 1929 she met a certain fellow by the name of Karl Zeschke. He and his machines were once again her destiny. It was not long before she lost her marbles: overnight she started drawing and painting, and nothing but hermaphrodites.

The madam was right: you really could have an amusing discussion with Irmgard. After a little while she had to take her leave because one of the uniformed gentlemen had asked for her. Visibly moved, Schmitz smiled: “You know, Irmgard, you’re all right! I’m a writer, you see, and if you could just work a typewriter you’d be the right gal for me.”

CHAPTER 19

THE TWO GENTLEMEN LEFT MARSEILLE THAT same night and rode directly to Barcelona without making any stops, passing right by Tarascon, Sete, and the Spanish border Port Bou.

They were passing through Arles.

“Van Gogh painted here,” related Schmitz.

“Who was that?” asked Kobler.

“He was a great painter,” answered Schmitz, and then locked himself sorrowfully in the lavatory. “Hopefully now I’ll finally be able to make,” he muttered to himself. But he would soon discover that his hopes were in vain. “Jeez, what a blithering idiot!” he expressed furiously. “He’s never even heard of my beloved Van Gogh! All right, let’s give it another shot!”

Locked and loaded, but he couldn’t manage to get anything out.

“Van Gogh, too, was misunderstood,” he said with resignation. “Pretty soon one man won’t understand the next. It’s really kind of lonely when every man is for himself.”

He sat like this for a while, staring pensively at the toilet paper. Then, suddenly, he opened up the window to help himself to concentrate on something else. The cool night air did him good. The reeds next to the railway embankment stood head-high and rustled in a romantically eerie way as the express train roared past.

“People sure got it nice here!” thought Schmitz desperately. “They’ve really got magnificent nights here! Somebody ought to compose a poem about the fall night in Southern France, only I’m not a lyricist. If I were only twenty years younger, then sure, but I’m a little too sensible for all that now.”

In Tarascon, the hometown of Tartarin and a sort of French Upper Bavaria, they had to wait for the Paris Express train because there were a lot of passengers on it who had to switch, some of whom were heading to Spain, some only to Nîmes. The Paris Express soon arrived and shortly thereafter a lady arrived at their compartment door. She was about to ask whether there was still a seat available for her when Schmitz cut her off, immediately exclaiming that all the seats were available! He promptly yanked her suitcase out of her hand, expertly stowed it in the luggage rack, and then relinquished his corner seat to her in a most solicitous manner.

It may be superfluous to point out that this lady was very good looking, which means she was young, slim, yet still pleasantly curvaceous. And she had a pair of legs that seemed to be preoccupied with just that, and a strangely veiled expression, as if this were exactly what she was doing right now, and indeed, with great pleasure and still not quite enough. All the while she was emanating her scent with a certain modesty, which only made it all the more cunning: back and forth, up and down, and soon enough the entire compartment smelled of her, despite the two gentlemen. That is, she had that certain something about her that people commonly referred to as sex appeal.

After thanking Schmitz with a friendly—though nevertheless reserved—nod, the lady sat down in his former corner seat, and in such a voluptuous way that you would think she had something going on with that seat. Naturally this got Schmitz rather excited. Kobler was likewise spellbound. “Egypt!” flashed through his mind as he realized that everything this woman was wearing must be very expensive. And “I’ve always believed in providence!” flashed through his mind again. “And if this Schmitz doesn’t stop ogling like that, he’ll have me to reckon with—”

He faltered here in the midst of his calculations and turned pale. Now for the third time a thought flashed through his mind, this being pure contrition: “I can’t speak French, which means I can’t talk to her, and without talking things like this just don’t work,” was the thought that babbled inside him.

Seething with rage, he looked over at the happy Schmitz. He was poised for victory and would not let her out of his sight.

“Now he’s going to schmooze with her awhile, and I’ll just sit there like a deaf and dumb monkey! You’ll never see your Pan-Europe as long as there are so many languages in this world, you bastard!” And so he fixed a fierce gaze on his Pan-European rival.

But the Egyptian woman did not seem to want to have anything to do with Schmitz; she did not respond to him in the slightest. His stereotypical smile even suddenly started to make her feel awkward. She jumped up and went to the toilet.

“A thoroughbred Parisian woman!” Schmitz whispered hastily to him, acting rather excited. “I can recognize that by the way she moves!”

“Oh, go ahead and kiss my ass!” thought Kobler angrily.

“I’m going to address her as soon as she gets back from the toilet!” Schmitz went on, hurriedly combing his hair. “Sadly you won’t be able to speak to her,” he added gloatingly.

Kobler thought the same thing again.

As soon as the thoroughbred Parisian woman had returned to her seat opposite Schmitz, he mustered all of his charm and addressed her, and in perfect French, too. She listened with a smile and then explained softly that she could only speak broken French at most.

“You speak English?” asked Schmitz.

“No, Allemagne,” said the thoroughbred Parisian.

This gave Kobler quite a jolt, whereas Schmitz was left feeling strangely unsure of himself.

“So there is indeed providence!” thought Kobler triumphantly. Schmitz became very small and hideous.

“Although I was born in Cologne,” said Allemagne, “I often live abroad. Last summer I was in Biarritz and last winter in St. Moritz.”

“An Egyptian par excellence!” thought Kobler, and Schmitz pulled himself together again.

“Cologne is a glorious city!” he shouted. “An ancient city!”

“Oh, but we’ve also got beautiful, new quarters!” the Egyptian defended her hometown.

This touched Schmitz in a most agreeable manner. He took the view that stupid women possessed an acrobatic sensuality, and after all, what he loved most about women was their physical sensuality, especially as he had once had a soul mate. You see, that was a rather unhappy love affair that had started very metaphysically, but ended in forgery on the part of the woman. He took it easy on her up until the last moment, but he stopped taking it easy on her when she asked him for a lavish allowance. And when she was denied probation, he said: “I’m just a child of the night!”

It is of course only understandable that he now painstakingly avoided all such trauma, by no means out of convenience, but rather as a result of a heightened sensibility and a sexual neurasthenia. He only wanted to get them in the sack and would often catch himself regretting that women were human beings too, and even had so-called souls. But despite this, he could only get them in the sack by means of his mind, either directly or by first translating his mind into money. He simply had no sex appeal. In other words, he only got them in the sack with his mind, and such a thing is of course downright tragic.

And so now he was trying to impress this Rhineland woman with his intellect. He listed to her the names of twenty good friends, these being nothing but prominent people, one more prominent than the next. She was already starting to make a very meek face—

“And now it’s high time,” thought Kobler, and he interrupted Schmitz violently. “Ever been to Marseille?” he asked rashly, causing her to look at him aghast. But after taking a closer look at him, she did not find him altogether unpleasant.

“No.” She smiled, and this really encouraged Kobler.

“But my dear lady, you absolutely must go there!” he said excitedly.

“I bet it’s pretty terrific there,” said the dear lady.

“But, that’s nothing! My dear lady, I saw films in a house of ill repute there that ought to be prohibited!”

“Please, do tell!” the dear lady said quickly, and then gazed at him silently, giving Schmitz and his prominent acquaintances the cold shoulder.

And so Kobler recounted how first he and Schmitz were taken up to a spacious room on the fourth floor where a white screen stood outstretched. There were approximately ten chairs, nothing else. They were left there all by their lonesome and reassured that the operator would show up any second and then the show would begin immediately. But a good while passed and there was still no living soul to be seen, which gave them the heebie-jeebies because, after all, how can you ever really know whether you’re going to be, say, killed or made the victim of a lust murder or something like that—

Here Schmitz cut him off forcefully. He found it utterly disagreeable that this Rhineland lady should prefer Kobler’s boorish films to his prominent little friends. He had been staring venomously at Kobler’s ultramodern socks for a while now and his social conscience burst forth violently. He stressed every word as he explained to her that nothing unjust could ever take place in any of the world’s official brothels. The official operators of these brothels, he said, would never expose themselves to the danger of breaking the law, because they didn’t have to. After all, they exploited these prostitutes in such a criminally shameless manner that even within the framework of the law they could still yield an enormous profit. And then he turned to Kobler and asked him irritably whether or not he could recall having seen the door on the second floor that happened to have been standing wide open, behind which you could see the prisonlike simplicity of the prostitutes’ common refectory. Or whether he had also already forgotten that awful stench of medicine on the third floor, which defied even the overwhelming fragrances, because the room where the doctor had been conducting his examinations was right there.

But now the dearest lady would not let him continue because “that was awfully disillusioning,” she protested.

Thereupon Kobler immediately said, “So finally the operator arrived and then it finally started.”

But Schmitz would not admit defeat. He caustically remarked that it only took so long because this operator was, you see, paralyzed—that is, just from the waist down—and so had to be carried up the stairs by two men—

“Ughh!” yelled the dearest lady.

“Pardon me!” Schmitz apologized formally, and left the compartment in a rage.

“These Germans—just where does an impoverished nation get the money to travel around for the fun of it?” he asked himself in a desperate rage. He was pacing up and down the corridor. “Do I really deserve to be so contrite right now?” he pondered contritely. “Yes, I do deserve it. What’s the cause of the most intense rage? Preventing a living creature from performing sexual intercourse—now that’s primal rage!”

And so he continued to pace up and down until suddenly he surprised himself by coming to a halt and gazing furtively into the compartment where his thoroughbred Parisian was listening to the content of several pornographic films, which, of course, all amounted to the same theme, regardless of whether they had a historic, a criminal, or a timeless setting.

“She’s already his,” he thought. “She really is hanging on his every word. But what can I do about that? After all, he’s twenty years younger than me. I can’t just stay out here all night; I’ll have to take a seat again. The two of them together aren’t as old as me alone. They’ve still got a lot ahead of them that I’ve already got behind me. Youth will have its fling.”

And as he observed through the glass door these two people who liked each other, they gradually appeared more and more distant to him, as if they were living a hundred years later. And with this increased distance, his primal rage also gradually transformed itself into an ominous apprehension of the eternal laws, this being of course a consequence, if nothing else, of his theoretical understanding of the entire historical movement.

“Those two young people in there basically consist of nothing but single cells,” he thought, “of cells that have basically already managed to form a superbly organized cell state in which the individual cells have ceased to exist. And basically that’s what is in store for our human states. Just look at the evolution of those other state-building organisms, the termites. Strictly speaking, they’re around a hundred million years older than us. We’re basically only just born when we—” he was thinking when, suddenly, he had to yawn violently. “Now it’s high time that I return to my seat!” he continued.

And so it was in a mood of paternal understanding that he reentered the compartment. He had barely sat down when he heard the female cell-state say the following: “Yes, I’m also going to Barcelona! No, well, that is indeed interesting! Yes, I still have no idea where to stay there! No, Paris is the most beautiful. And what I like about it in particular is the fact that you can dress up there, something we really can’t do in Duisburg anymore because the workers are so full of hatred. If you walk across the street looking elegant they’ll give you fanatical looks.”

“You’re certainly right about that,” said Kobler.

“Who? The workers?” asked Schmitz.

“No, the dearest lady,” said Kobler.

“Am I hearing this right?” thought Schmitz.

“Yes, the Jews are making the workers really nasty,” the female cell-state’s voice sounded once again. “No, I can’t stand the Jews. I find them too nauseatingly carnal—they’ve got their hands in everything! Yes, it’s quite a shame that we don’t have an army anymore, especially for these adolescent workers and that rabble! No, I flat out reject these leftist parties because they keep betraying the fatherland. Yes, I was still a child when they shot and killed Erzberger! No, and I was even happy about it back then! Yes!”

“I’m also very much against all the politics of promoting understanding,” answered Kobler. And now Schmitz could no longer hold back.

“What?” he cut him off, and looked at him piercingly.

“Yes,” smiled Kobler.

“No!” roared Schmitz, and left the compartment indignantly.

But this time Kobler ran after him.

“You’ve got to understand me,” he said.

“I don’t understand you!” roared Schmitz, shaking horribly. “How could you? Oh, that’s an outrage! Oh, that’s a beastly shame! How could you say such drivel after we’ve been talking about nothing but Pan-Europe for the past three days?”

“In principle you’re of course quite right,” Kobler reassured him. “But I’ve just got to talk like that—she’s my rich Egyptian woman! Her father sits on several supervisory boards and is a big industrialist—I’ve already prised that out! Her name is Rigmor Erichsen and she lives in Duisburg. Egypt is of course merely a symbol! And by the way, what the hell do women have to do with your Pan-Europe anyway!?”

“Quite a bit, Herr Kobler! Just think for a second about the war and the mother’s role in it. Tell me, have you ever given any thought to the woman question?”

“I’m not interested in the woman question, just the woman!” said Kobler impatiently, and then he became very serious. “And by the way, Herr Schmitz,” he went on, “I shall now ask you to kindly leave me in peace while I work my way up the social ladder. I’ve already got a plan worked out. I’m going to debauch that lady in Barcelona, then I’ll accompany her back to Duisburg, where I’ll debauch her again, and then I’ll marry into daddy’s company. And Pan-Europe doesn’t give a crap whether or not that lady in there is for or against her!”

“That’s the same damn excuse everybody makes!” said Schmitz, and then walked off.

CHAPTER 20

THEY WERE ALREADY DRIVING THROUGH Montpellier. Schmitz was still standing out in the corridor while Kobler and Rigmor continued their discussion of the Marseille films, all the while getting to know each other on a human level.

“And so that’s what poor Alois died for!” thought Schmitz dejectedly. “What harm would it do if somebody went and shot this Kobler and his Rigmor? No harm at all, it’d probably do us all a favor!”

“Poor Alois!” He sighed. “Has it ever occurred to you, poor dead Alois, that in the wake of the Great Russian Revolution pacifism has once again become a problem? I mean that Bolshevism is forcing us, we who call ourselves the intellectual class, to submit our position on pacifism to a rigorous revision. That is, if there had never been a Lenin, pacifism really would no longer be a problem for us intellectuals, but it’s become a problem again because of this idea of revolutionary war.

—My goodness, I’m really wavering! There really are some pretty difficult problems in this maleficent world! I sympathize—and yes, I’ve got to keep returning to myself personally—with Pan-Europe even though of course I know that the Soviets are right that every day our bourgeoisie keeps distorting the Pan-European idea again, like pretty much every idea. And I also know that what we’ve got here is just a sham culture, but I still enjoy Botticelli! If only the Soviets weren’t so puritanical—! My goodness, sometimes I’m really reactionary out of pure pessimism! Being skeptical is pretty much self-torture, but if skepticism were someday outlawed, what else would be left for me to do in this world?”

CHAPTER 21

BUT SCHMITZ HAD ONCE AGAIN RECONCILED with the two young people before they arrived in Spain, partly because he kept getting sleepier and sleepier out in the corridor and partly because he was quite fond of acting saintly. And so now he could plop back down on his nice soft seat and slumber, though sadly only up to the Spanish border.

Its name was Port Bou, and here you had to transfer trains several times, and in the middle of the night at that. Nowadays Kobler can only hazily recall the remarkably dressed gendarmes and the few polite solicitors from the Exposición de Barcelona 1929 who thrust complimentary brochures and catalogs into his hands, pointing out that, quite frankly, the listed prices were bogus.

Schmitz, on the other hand, can still remember quite clearly how the Spanish connecting train only had first- and third-class seats. In contrast to Kobler, who had to pay a surcharge because Rigmor was of course riding first class, Schmitz stayed alone in third class in protest against this government-run rip-off, all the while harboring impolite thoughts about the Spanish Hapsburgs.

They all checked into a hotel together in Barcelona. It was nearly a skyscraper. This very fragile-looking thing, which was located in the vicinity of the World’s Fair, was an object of real-estate speculation. It probably only had to remain standing until the end of the World’s Fair. It was situated in Calle Cortes, a wide street with an Argentinian flair.

An interpreter greeted them in the hotel’s reception. He was from Prague and had once been an agent for an oil company. Two porters also bowed down before them.

“The señorita has two traveling trunks, three suitcases, and four valises,” the interpreter told the two porters in Spanish. “The older caballero is definitely an editor, and the younger caballero is either the son of rich parents or a nebbish. He’s either going to pay for everything or nothing.”

Hereupon the two porters started arguing about whether they should pinch eight or ten pesetas from Caballero Schmitz. They agreed upon ten because, after all, he did not even actually have a room, but rather a closet without windows, cabinet, or chair, just an iron bed and an iron vanity.

By contrast, Kobler’s room was an apartment par excellence. He even had two windows from which you could see the rear of the World’s Fair. But Kobler hardly even looked in that direction because he was focused entirely on himself. He was changing all of his clothes and having a wash and shave.

“She’s already mine!” he thought while brushing his teeth. “Where and when I debauch her—now it’s only a matter of the right opportunity.”

He was very confident. He had already worked out a hard-and-fast plan back in Montpellier. He had weighed every possibility and was determined not to shrink from any sentimental obstacles. It really was an almost anatomically precise plan for the prostration of Egypt.

“What did this Schmitz say in Milano again?” crossed his mind while he combed his hair. “ ‘You people of the younger generation haven’t got any soul,’ is what he said. Baloney! Soul, what does that even mean?”

He buttoned up his pants.

“All you’ve got to do is be honest!” he went on. “Honest with yourself. Okay, sure, I know I’m not exactly classy, but it’s only because I’m honest. I don’t dress myself up for my sake. I can handle seeing things just the way they are!”

CHAPTER 22

ONCE RIGMOR WAS FINALLY NEATLY GROOMED, they went over to the World’s Fair. It really was quite impressive.

Rigmor read aloud from her catalog:

“Under the auspices of His Majesty the King of Spain, and with the collaboration of the Royal Spanish administration, the city of Barcelona is hereby organizing a grand world exhibition at a cost of one hundred million gold marks.”

“A hundred million!” thought Schmitz. “Well, it’s definitely not worth that!”

Rigmor continued reading:

“Barcelona is Spain’s most important and largest trade and manufacturing city. The number of inhabitants amounts to one million, thus making it the largest city in the Mediterranean.”

“The whole thing is a political demonstration,” Schmitz cut her off, “so that we can all see how Spain is awaking from its lethargy.”

Rigmor continued reading:

“With this magnificent enterprise, Barcelona hopes to show the world the revival of the city and country. After the World War there was doubtlessly only one country that could have organized such a lavishly constructed exhibition as the one the city of Barcelona felt compelled to host, driven by the desire to adopt the multifaceted and abiding advances of the modern era.”

“Voilà!” said Schmitz.

At first they entered the Automobile Palace, where there were only automobiles. Standing in front of a convertible with a jump seat, Kobler suddenly thought of Herr Portschinger from Rosenheim.

“And that’s exactly how it is with all politics,” he thought, “one country—Germany, France, Spain, England, or whatever—sells another one a convertible. They all buy and sell their convertibles from each other. Now sure, if all this went down totally fair and square, it would be the ideal Pan-Europe. But right now the other nations are just cheating us Germans, just like I cheated Portschinger. Pan-Europe can’t be achieved like this. That’s not the spirit of Locarno!”

In the Palace of the Royal Spanish War Ministry, Kobler continued his thoughts: “If only Germany, too, still had an army with such canons, tanks, and submarine fleets, then we’d definitely be able to reclaim our former supremacy, and then we Germans would easily be able to sell our old convertibles to the whole world à la Portschinger! That would definitely be the best thing to do, only doing it without weapons is a sadly utopian idea. This Schmitz is probably right about his Pan-European idea after all!”

And then they entered the Airplane Palace, where there were only airplanes. Then the Silk Palace, where there was only silk, which really upset Rigmor. And then the Italian Palace, where there was really only Mussolini. Thereafter the Romanian, Swedish, and then the Meridian Palace behind the stadium, where there were all sorts of things. And then they entered the enormous Spanish National Palace, where there was actually nothing, just an empty hall for twenty thousand people—

“—in the Wilhelminian style,” stated Schmitz.

“And boring oil paintings,” said Kobler.

“Now can we finally go to the Missionary Palace, please!” protested Rigmor.

The Missionary Palace was very interesting. That is, it was an original Vatican exhibition. Here you had to pay an additional entrance fee. And to top it off, at every turn you were subtly importuned for alms, as is pretty much the custom among all representatives of the afterlife. You also got to see something for your money, though, namely what the missionaries had despoiled from and shuffled out of the poor primitives, ad maiorem bourgeois method of production gloriam.

After this sacred spectacle, they took a bus up to the restaurant Miramare, which had a stunning view of the city and sea from atop the Mont Juich. This was a very elegant establishment; Rigmor seemed to feel right at home. Schmitz, on the other hand, looked embarrassed when four waiters at once tried shoving a chair under his butt. And Kobler grew very pale when he caught sight of the prices on the menu.

“In the catalog,” said Rigmor, “it says that according to legend, this is supposed to be the place where Satan led the Lord when he was trying to tempt him with all the glories of the world.” But Kobler did not respond to her and instead thought something rather impolite. Schmitz, surmising what that was, said, “Order whatever you like!”

Apart from them, another twelve elegant guests were allowing themselves to be fleeced in this heavenly establishment, it being just too lovely. The mountains of the Castle of the Holy Grail sent over their greetings from the horizon. And then down below to the left, the Columbus Monument was waving up to them from out of the hustle and bustle of the city. And if you really felt like it, you could also watch how strenuously the people were working in the harbor. And when seen from up here, all of these thousands and thousands of working people looked incredibly tiny, as if one were the dear Lord himself.

At twilight, Rigmor simply had to ride the roller coaster, at all costs. And so the three of them headed toward the amusement park, strolling first through a laughing park that, thanks to the mild climate, horticulturists had used their craft to bring forth. It got dark quickly. Gazing through the well-nigh exotic shrubs, the three of them watched from a distance the glorious trick fountains in front of the National Palace. Now these were indeed advances of the modern era. Outside the front gates of the World’s Fair stood the folks who could not afford to pay the admission fee, and so had to watch these advances from afar. Only the police kept dispersing them because they were obstructing traffic.

CHAPTER 23

WHAT IS THE MOST SPANISH THING IN SPAIN? THE bullfights, of course. In Spanish, corrida de toros. Rigmor in particular could hardly wait.

The bullring had enormous dimensions. It seemed even larger when you consider that Barcelona alone has three such gigantic arenas. Even so, everything was already sold out. There must have been around twenty thousand people there, and now Schmitz was only able to get hold of tickets for three seats in the shade through a scalper.

Spaniards are a noble nation: they love to strut about with measured step, wearing national sashes around their waists and comfortable white shoes. The Spaniards are so proud that even their toilets say “knights” instead of “gentlemen.” Almost everyone seems to be his own Don Quixote or Sancho Panza.

Schmitz caught sight of the bullfight butchery right next to the main portal where the bull carcasses from yesterday were being sold as cutlets. A large police presence assured peace and order.

A large band was playing music inside the arena. The somber entrance of the gentleman bullfighters began punctually.

“You’re going to experience something splendidly historical there,” Kobler remembered the words of the Renaissance man of Verona. And it was indeed a gorgeous sight. The gentleman bullfighters stepped up to the dignitaries’ box and saluted the committee in a strictly ceremonious manner.

And then the bull came: a small, black Andalusian bull. He was furious by now because there was already a knife sticking out of his back, this being part of the program. There were only three gentlemen left standing in the arena, unarmed and with red coats. Suddenly blinded by the sun, the bull halted for a moment and then he spotted the red coats and charged after them. But the gentlemen graciously sidestepped the crude beast. Loud applause. Rigmor and Kobler also applauded. The bull harkened. It seemed like it was only now that he realized something wicked was in store for him. Slowly he turned back toward his dark enclosure, only to be repulsed yet again.

And now a gentleman rode into the arena. His horse had to be led in by two other gentlemen because it was a blind, skinny old jade whose hair was gray from bondage. The gentleman on the jade had a long lance. The bull was being goaded into attacking the trembling jade with all sorts of contrivances. Finally the gentleman was close enough to drive the lance into the bull’s back with all his might, and in an especially sensitive spot at that. Of course now the bull ran down the jade and of course the gentlemen ran away. Even the desperate, blind jade tried to flee, but the bull gored it in the stomach and, in so doing, appeared to gain considerable favor with the now ecstatic audience. Finally he let up on the jade, whereupon several gentlemen shoveled sand into the dying animal’s abdominal cavity so that its blood would not dirty the arena.

Now three other gentlemen entered the arena. They all had a short lance in each hand that was adorned on top with colorful ribbons and lower down with barbs. The gentlemen thrust them into the bull’s neck, two at a time. This must have been atrociously painful for the bull because, despite its encumbered state, he would shoot up into the air with all four limbs each time and then squirm and writhe about, but he could not shake off the lances because of their masterfully designed barbs. Its grotesque movements elicited true bursts of laughter.

Loud applause—

Suddenly there was a gentleman standing by himself in the arena. It was the head bullfighter, the matador. He was carrying a bright red cloth that concealed the sword with which he would deal the death blow to his bull. So at long last he was death himself. This death was very conscious of his movements, for he was one of the audience’s favorites. He approached his victim with confidence, only the animal would not attack him. It was already rather weakened from the heavy blood loss and all the torment.

Now it saw death approaching; now it was afraid. The matador stopped right in front of him, but the animal turned away and slowly staggered back toward its enclosure. But the audience howled and ridiculed it for not wanting to fight with death. With an elegant gesture the matador uncovered his sword; the twenty thousand fell silent in expectation. And amid this tense silence suddenly came the sound of somebody weeping. It was the poor, sad bull. But unrelenting death neared him and thrashed him with a scarf across his tearstained eyes. Here the animal pulled itself together once more and ran into the sword. Blood gushed out of its mouth. It staggered around and then collapsed with a dreadfully reproachful look in its eyes.

Here the audience fell into frenzy; a hundred straw hats flew out to death. Schmitz was outraged.

“That’s pure lust murder!” he said, full of indignation. “These Spaniards are getting off on the death throes of a noble, useful animal! High time that I wrote my article against vivisection! It serves us right for having had a World War—we’re nothing but beasts! Oh, it’s just repulsive—the League of Nations should intervene!”

But the bullfight had quite a different effect on Kobler.

“Toreros are highly esteemed men with lucrative professions,” he thought. “Sure it’s one big mess, but even the king receives them and all the ladies chase after them!”

And for Rigmor the bullfight had yet another effect. She was anxious that something would befall one of the bullfighters. She could hardly look over in that direction, as if she, too, were a poor animal being chased. As a consequence of which, she kept looking over at Kobler with increased frequency. And this got her thinking about quite different things.

“Do you wish that I were a torero?” he asked.

“No,” she yelled anxiously, and then cracked a gracious smile and snuggled up to him even more. Something indecent had just crossed her mind.

CHAPTER 24

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Schmitz was already sitting down for his morning coffee. During breakfast, he wrote one article against vivisection and another in favor of Pan-Europe. While he was writing he looked like he was thinking about something quite different, his experience being just so vast.

He was still not quite finished with the second article when Kobler wished him good morning.

“Right now I’m advancing the notion of understanding among nations,” said Schmitz as a greeting. “I’ll be done in just a second!”

“Please don’t let me hold you up,” said Kobler while taking a seat. Then he suddenly said in passing: “If it were only a matter of reason, then sure, people could easily come to an understanding, but quite a few emotional aspects also play a role in the matter, and a decisive one at that!”

Schmitz gazed at him in surprise.

“Where’d he come up with that?” he thought. “Apparently I’ve underestimated him.” And then he added aloud: “But of course! We rationalists are already all in favor of rapprochement. But now agitation is being introduced into the great mass of sentimentalists, those being the people who are capable neither of analyzing nor of comprehending the historical process, because they basically can’t think. But of course you’re right, my dear sir, when you say it all comes down to them!”

“Nevertheless …” answered Kobler.

“Why neverthless?” asked Schmitz with the utmost interest.

“When I think about Poland or the Polish Corridor in particular,” said Kobler dismally, “I just can’t summon up any peaceful feelings—my heart refuses to do it. Even though, on an intellectual level, I’ve got absolutely nothing against Pan-Europe. All right, then, now let’s talk about something more interesting!”

And he informed Schmitz that he had spent the previous night with Rigmor.

“I’ll now accept your unsolicited congratulations!” he said, looking quite mischievous. “I just basically had the right tactic. She’s really feisty!”

“Yes, I could hear that all the way from where I was,” Schmitz dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “But above me there were some people who were apparently even feistier, because a load of mortar from the ceiling fell onto my face. The interpreter just told me that it was a certain Herr von Stingl and an Italian countess. But as you know, the flesh isn’t the only thing that counts. Tell me, did she truly fall in love with you? I mean, with all her soul?”

“I’m quite confident!” said Kobler triumphantly.

“Herr Alfons Kobler,” said Schmitz, laying a somber emphasis on every syllable, “believe me, despite what psychoanalysis says, women are indeed still sphinxes!” And then he quickly added, “But now you must excuse me. I’ve got to take care of something for the review section quickly.” He wrote:

“The little Rigmor is chasing after me: A humorous anecdote by our special correspondent R. Schmitz (Barcelona). Epigraph: And do not greet me beneath the linden trees!”

CHAPTER 25

THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT WAS IN THE PROCESS of writing “—it was only for curiosity’s sake that I followed my hot-blooded partner, for I am a literary man with all my heart and soul—” when the interpreter hastened into the restaurant. He asked Kobler to please come to the green room immediately. The señorita would be waiting for him there.

“Why there and not here?” asked Kobler. He was rather surprised.

“How should I know that?” said the interpreter. “All I can say is that the señorita is very nervous.”

“And here comes the sphinx,” thought Schmitz. Though suddenly he felt sorry for Kobler, despite the prophesized sphinx.

Rigmor was pacing up and down the green room. She was indeed very nervous. Her skirt had an interesting, irregular crease to it. When she caught sight of Kobler, she ran up to him and planted a kiss on his forehead.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” thought Kobler, and felt rather uneasy. “How are you?” he asked her mechanically.

“Tell me if you can forgive me?” she asked, looking rather hurt.

“Nothing could be wrong with her, could it?” he thought mistrustfully, and then asked her, “Darling, what is it that I should forgive you for?”

But then she started crying. She did it out of sheer nervousness.

“I can forgive you for everything,” he consoled her, “you’re already worth that much to me!”

She wiped her tears and blew her nose with such a tiny tissue that Kobler’s thoughts could not help but dwell on it. Then she dragged him down to her and became rather monotonous as she confessed that just a half an hour ago something unexpected had happened, this unexpected thing being a telegram from Avignon. The telegram’s sender was a gentleman, a certain Alfred Kaufmann from Milwaukee. He was a painter and an American millionaire. Only this millionaire could not paint artistically enough on account of his repressions, for which reason he had traveled to Zurich to have his libido cured. And he had planned to have his libido cured for at least four weeks, but evidently he had straightened things out with his libido much sooner than expected. And so instead of arriving in Barcelona in fourteen days’ time, he was now expected as early as this morning. Any moment now he could turn up in the hotel and that would be just horribly, horrifically embarrassing for her because after all, he was her official fiancé. He was a likable fellow, but she would’ve preferred to be with a German all the same.

Then she started crying again a little bit. She had, she said, really been looking forward to spending the next fourteen love-filled days with him (Kobler) but she simply had to marry Mister Kaufmann, if only because of her daddy, who was in urgent need of American capital despite the size of his company. Germany was only a poor country and her father was suffering terribly from the Social Security payments in particular.

Kobler was taken aback. He was watching himself lose his battle, and a decisive one it was at that. Despite his superior tactics and brilliant strategy, the USA was coming from across the ocean to strike him, to strike a crushing blow to him with its brute superiority. “That’s no great feat!” Kobler was thinking furiously when, just then, the USA arrived in the green room in the flesh.

It was a gentleman with even broader shoulders. Kobler, who was on the verge of giving Rigmor a crude answer, could only manage an acerbic smile.

“Hello, Rigmor!” the gentleman called out, and then hugged her in his ridiculous American way. “The professor says I’m all better and can start painting artistically right away. Today we’re going to Seville and then afterward to Athens! Who’s this mister?”

Rigmor introduced him. “A childhood friend from Germany,” she lied.

The American gazed at Kobler companionably. “Are you also a painter?” he asked.

“I’ve got nothing to do with art,” objected Kobler. A profound contempt could be heard in his voice.

“What’s Germany up to?” asked the American.

“We’re not doing well at all,” answered Kobler sullenly, but the American would not let up.

“What do you think of Germany?” he asked. “What do you think of art? What do you think of love? What do you think of God?”

Kobler said that he could not think of anything at all today because he had, you see, a terrible headache. As he shut the door behind him, he heard Rigmor say: “He’s a likeable fellow!”

CHAPTER 26

THAT SAME DAY KOBLER RETURNED HOME, AND without making any stops either. He just did not want to see anything else.

“I’ve almost spent my entire six hundred marks, and on what? A bunch of crap!” he lamented. “And so now I’ll get back and what’ll be awaiting me? Nothing but worries!” He was really quite depressed.

Schmitz, who had paternally accompanied him to the train, attempted to console him: “You just can’t compete with America!” he expressed sullenly.

And then he quickly explained to him that if he were in his (Kobler’s) shoes, he wouldn’t actually be complaining because after all, he (Kobler) hadn’t simply spent his honestly earned money on a bunch of crap, but rather bought himself a meaningful experience with it. And he would probably only later realize just how deep an experience that actually was, an experience that would be ideally suited to completely change a person. That is, he had just received the striking proof of America’s brutal supremacy, sensing its ominous hegemony in his own body.

“And now,” he continued with a wink, “perhaps your feeling will also change now that you’ve got, as you explained to me earlier this morning, nothing on an intellectual level against Pan-Europe. Great events often come from little causes, and even the greatest ideas—”

—And thus Schmitz competed for Kobler’s soul. And then he confided to him that he personally could never be interested in an American woman. He also wanted to tell him some things about the League of Nations, but the train pulled out.

“You’re riding through Geneva, right?” he called out to him. “All right, give my regards to Mont Blanc for me!”

Kobler drove through Geneva, but he could not pass on the regards to Mont Blanc because it was nighttime.

He also had the misfortune of riding all the way to the German border without meeting a single passenger who spoke German, which meant that he could not take his mind off things and had to be alone. And forced solitude combined with the never-ending trip caused the figure of Rigmor to turn into something peculiar. She assumed political forms, this bride whose daddy’s firm he couldn’t marry into because daddy desperately needed North American capital in order to vegetate.

This poor European woman who had to sell herself oversees gradually turned into a depressing symbol. Mr. Kaufmann with the disorderly libido cast his shadow over Europe. Kobler was quite fierce. And when at last he set foot on German soil again, he already bore a deep grudge against all European borders. He bought himself all the available French, English, and Italian newspapers at the very same border station, despite not being able to read a single one of them. But he wanted to make a point!

He could hardly wait to meet somebody who understood German. But the train was quite empty. And on top of it all, absolutely no opportunities to enter into a political discussion with one of the other travelers presented themselves.

It was only right before Munich that he could finally declare to an older gentleman his feelings and reasons for an absolute and expeditiously executed consolidation of Europe, especially in the field of economics, not least because of the Bolshevik menace. But the gentleman cut him off derisively: “I too was once a European, young man! But now—”

—And now nationalistic slime par excellence surged from his mouth.

You see, at the turn of the century this gentleman had married a racy Frenchwoman from Metz. She started packing on the pounds just before the World War, and in such an alarming way that the Romance race started to disgust him. It was not a happy marriage. He was a real domestic tyrant and she was secretly delighted about the Treaty of Versailles.

“From what I know of the French,” he screamed at Kobler, “they’ll never vacate the Rhineland! Never of their own free will, unless we compel them with force! Or what, do you think things can keep going on like this!? Don’t you see that we’re stumbling into a new European world-conflagration!? Don’t you know what that’s called: Amunullah and Habibullah?! Just think for a second about Abd el Krim! And what’s the Christian General Feng doing back there?!”

He was quite fanatical.

“Oh, I know the French all right!” he roared. “Every Frenchman and Frenchwoman ought to be gassed! I don’t draw the line with women, not me! Or what, do you believe in Pan-Europe or something?!”

“I have no time for your idiocy right now!” answered Kobler, and left the compartment, disgruntled. He was really piqued.

Out in the corridor, he discovered a friendly gentleman who was standing at the window. Kobler approached him and the gentleman did not seem averse to a discussion because he began speaking of his own accord, namely about the beautiful weather. But Kobler did not let him finish and instead immediately explained to him categorically that he was an absolute Pan-European. And this all sounded almost bellicose.

The gentleman listened attentively to him. Then he said that Barcelona was very pretty. Sadly he had never been there, just to the European countries that had waged war with us, except for Great Britain and Portugal, so almost all of Europe. And it was indeed high time, said the gentleman, that the whole of Europe finally came to an understanding, in spite of all the historical nonsense and hostile namby-pamby stuff that kept poisoning the atmosphere between the different nations, like for instance between Bavaria and Prussia. And sure, the Pan-Europe that people were striving for today would by no means be the true one, but at least it would serve as the foundation upon which the true Pan-Europe could develop.

At the word “true,” the gentleman smiled quite strangely. Then he explained that it was the same way with this word as it was with the expression “social mobility.” That is, people were also frequently forced to use this expression instead of “liberation of the proletariat.”

—And then the gentleman smiled again, so strangely that Kobler could not make head nor tail of it.

Now came Munich.

As the gentleman had already politely taken his leave, Kobler was unable to figure out exactly who and what he was.

PART TWO:
FRÄULEIN POLLINGER BECOMES PRACTICAL

“Only he who changes
remains akin to me”

CHAPTER 1

NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY TOOK PLACE in Schellingstrasse while Herr Kobler was out of town. Life went on more or less smoothly, and nothing exciting happened to any of his acquaintances, with one exception. But exceptions, as you well know, prove the rule.

This exception was Fräulein Anna Pollinger. Out of the clearest of blue skies, she suddenly found herself out of work, and through no fault of her own. She lost her position in the rental car company because of the disastrous economy. This company had collapsed, in the truest sense of the word, overnight, from Tuesday to Wednesday. So on Wednesday afternoon there were thirty-two employees out on the street. And even the employer himself was now destitute, partly because the rapacious rates and drafts had depleted his resources and partly because he had transferred the larger half of these resources to his wife’s name in the nick of time.

Anna, too, received a white envelope. She opened it and read:

Testimonial

Fräulein Anna Pollinger, who was employed as an office girl in the rental car company “National” from 03.01.29 until 09.27.29, proved herself to be honest, hardworking and dutiful. Fräulein Pollinger is leaving as a consequence of the company’s liquidation. Even our company has become a victim of Germany’s hardship. Failing this, we would not have wanted to dismiss Fräulein Pollinger and wish her all the best for her future life.

Rental Car Company “National”

Sgd. Lindt.

CHAPTER 2

ANNA LIVED WITH HER AUNT BECAUSE SHE NO longer had any parents. But this only occurred to her once in a while. That is, she had never actually seen her father because he had left her mother quite early on. And she never got along well with her mother because the mother had been very embittered about the lousy world. When she was still really small, her mother would constantly forbid her to sing to her doll, and each time she did this more maliciously than the last. The mother did not know any songs and so was an evil person. She never deigned to give a living soul anything, not even her own daughter. She died of a headcold shortly after the World War. But for the life of her Anna could not really feel sad about it, even though it was a very sad autumn day.

From then on she lived with her aunt in Schellingstrasse, only not next to the Ludwig’s church in the posh section of the street, but rather where it breaks off. The aunt rented out two rooms on the fifth floor here and carried on the business of her deceased husband on the first floor. The store was hardly larger than a closet. The sign read Antiquarian Bookshop, and there were torn magazines and dusty erotic postcards in the shop window.

The aunt had rented out one of the two rooms to a certain Herr Kastner. The other one was not currently being leased because it was bug-infested. For the time being Anna was able to sleep in this room instead of with her aunt in the kitchen. Herr Kastner had brought in the bugs, but you could never prove it because he was very cunning.

When Anna came home with her testimonial, the aunt ranted terribly about the whole postwar period and wanted to throw Anna out, but naturally this was not meant to be taken seriously. The aunt had a kind heart and her constant ranting and raving was just a weakness of hers. After all, Anna had already been unemployed a number of times, the last time lasting eight weeks. That was last winter. Back then Herr Kastner said to the aunt: “I hear that your dear niece is unemployed. I’ve got the best connections in the film industry, so it’s all up to your dear, unemployed niece.”

That stuff about the film industry was of course a lie. Herr Kastner had quite different things in mind. In August, for instance, he took her to the movies. The movie Ten Days That Shook the World was playing. Kastner kept trying to grope her the entire time, but she fought back because his pivot teeth gave her the creeps. Kastner was outraged afterward and asked her how she felt about somebody taking a young lady out to a feature film and “not even getting to do that?!” But eight days later he gave her a friendly greeting again. You see, in the meantime he had found a cashier from Augsburg who let him have his way with her.

CHAPTER 3

THAT EVENING ANNA WENT TO BED VERY EARLY. While getting undressed, she heard in the other room that Kastner had remained home for a change. He was talking to himself as though he were memorizing something, but she could not understand a word. Suddenly Kastner left his room and stopped in front of her door. Then he walked in without knocking.

He positioned himself in front of her like she was a shop window. He was wearing his modern pants and shirtsleeves and smelt of sweet shaving cream.

She sat up in bed and could not figure out what he was doing there. Kastner had a strangely official expression on his face, as though he did not want anything from her at all.

“Dearest Fräulein!” and took a very ironic bow. “Honny soit qui mal y pense!”

Kaster’s speech was very literary because he actually wanted to be a journalist, but his mother had thought differently. You see, her teeth gave her a lot of grief and she said: “Dental technicians are mankind’s benefactors. I want my son to be a benefactor!”

He was very attached to his mother and so he became a dental technician, although, sadly, not a benefactor because instead of precision he had an imagination. He was fortunate that the war broke out shortly after he opened his practice. He enlisted and became a military dental technician. After the armistice he asked himself: “Am I a benefactor? No, I’m not a benefactor. I’m a typical bohemian type of guy and such a type of guy belongs in easygoing Montmartre and not in the morgue.”

He wanted to be a journalist again, but he wound up in the film industry because he had a good conservative profile and knew an assistant director. He worked as an extra and even played a minor role in the film The Massacre of the Innocents, or Glory to God in the Highest.

The film was not shown anywhere and he was thrown out of the glass house for taking naked photographs of an underage extra who played the part of one of the children of Bethlehem.

Now he was pacing up and down in front of Anna’s bed, taking pride in his dialectics. He loved to hear himself talk and he felt on form so he went at it like a bad op-ed.

At first he explained to her that unapproachable women only existed in fairy tales, sagas, and madhouses. He had, you see, given thought to all of these problems and was “speaking here from my own experience acquired through personal, sexual, and sexual-ethical curiosity.” And this is how he immediately recognized that she (Anna) wasn’t a frigid beauty, but rather a deep, calm water—

“What business is that of yours?” she cut him off in a remarkably matter-of-fact way. She liked to see him getting worked up about her yet again. She even yawned.

“Of course it’s none of my business per se,” answered Kastner, suddenly acting very straightforward. “I only had your future in mind, Fräulein Pollinger!”

Future! And it was staring at her again, sitting at the edge of the bed and knitting stockings. The future was an old, withered little woman that resembled her aunt, only it was much older, dirtier, and shiftier.

“I’m knitting, I’m knitting,” nodded the future, “I’m knitting stockings for Anna!”

And Anna yelled: “Just leave me alone! What do you want from me!?”

“I personally don’t want anything from you!” objected Kastner somberly.

The future gave her a furtive look.

Anna did not have anything else to say; Kastner smiled complacently. That is, it had just occurred to him that he would make a good animal tamer. He fixed his gaze on Anna as if she were at least a seal. He would have loved to force her to balance a ball on her nose. He could already hear the applause and was surprised that he wanted to take a bow.

“What the heck was that!?” He gave himself a jolt and, horror-stricken, fled from the circus, which was suddenly on fire, and barked out: “Fräulein Pollinger, let me get to the point! You see, the way you’re conducting your erotic life can no longer be tolerated. Here you are again, jobless, and yet you’re constantly hanging around elements like that wonderful Herr Kobler—”

“I don’t hang around anybody!” she protested vehemently.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he consoled her. “You don’t have to tell me, Fräulein, that you’re not capable of love! Sure, you could get mixed up with any old Kobler, but when you feel like you might be falling in love with all your heart and soul, what do you do? You back down right away. And of course this is not meant to be an accusation. What with your financial situation you’re of course looking to avoid all superfluous complications. But what I’m accusing you of is simply this: you’re wasting yourself. Nowadays even sensuality has got to be made productive. I’m by no means asking you to prostitute yourself, but I’m begging you, for your own sake, to please be more practical!”

“Practical?” thought Anna. It seemed to her like she had never heard this word before. She really should think about herself more often, she continued thinking cautiously. She had the feeling that she was blind and needed to grope her way forward. She actually did think of herself frequently, she continued, but probably just too slowly. If Kastner had never been right about anything, he was surely right about this. She would have to think everything over carefully. So what’s “everything”?

Ever since there were gods and men—put briefly: since there were rulers and ruled—ever since then the phrase holds true: “In the beginning there was prostitution!”

“Discretion is a point of honor!” she heard Kastner saying. And when she recognized him again, he put on an exceedingly sincere face.

You see, it’s like this: when the rulers recognized that they could murder and plunder in a considerably more amusing manner by cloaking themselves in the idealism of a certain crucified person—that is, ever since this crucified person preached that the souls of women were coequal with those of men, ever since then “discretion is a point of honor” has been the motto in prostitution’s coat of arms.

So who would dare to accuse the rulers of today of divesting not only the work but also the relationship between man and woman of its varnished lies and uplifting self-deception by simply posing the question: “So, then, how much does love cost?” Can you blame them for doing it in the full knowledge of their economic power, and for the sake of more affordable bookkeeping? No, you cannot because they are, you see, exceedingly honest.

“How so?” asked Anna, and gave Kastner a perplexed look.

He paused for effect. Then he said: “I’m offering you an opportunity to move into better circles. Do you know the etcher Achner? We’re very close friends. He’s a highly talented artist and right now he’s looking for a suitable model. You could earn ten marks as easy as nothing and you’d have magnificent opportunities to develop. That is, the elites of society all congregate in his atelier—all people with their own cars. Now those are people! You see, my dear Fräulein Pollinger, it actually pains me to see you squandering nature’s gifts in such an impractical manner!”

“It pains me,” the dear Fräulein Pollinger heard him say. She smiled. “And so this is how you deceive yourself,” she said softly. And suddenly she felt sorry for Kastner. She even felt sorry for his pivot teeth, the little ones and the big ones alike.

“Right now I’m thinking in a radically selfless manner.” Kastner gave her a nod and acted really moved.

But of course that was radically different. You see, when he heard that Anna had lost her job, he immediately rushed over to that etcher and offered him a reasonably priced model: medium-size, slender, dirty blond, and she would also know how to take a joke. As it happens, the etcher had been searching for just such a model, so he agreed right away. “Well,” said Kastner, “I’ll show up once you’ve etched one out. I’ll bring some sloe gin, you’ve already got the gramophone—”

Anna was silent.

“There was just a World War,” the thought suddenly crossed her mind. “You can’t just pretend there wasn’t—you mustn’t either.”

CHAPTER 4

THINGS WERE STILL NOT ANY CLEARER FOR HER after Kastner left. All right, so she had given him her word of honor that she would go to Achner tomorrow. Ten marks is a lot of dough. And after all, being a model would be something absolutely reputable, it would be a normal profession. But “getting more practical”—that’s a weighty piece of advice. Got to think that over carefully. You see, poor girls can quickly go off the rails, and nobody ever returns from there.

Kastner’s tempting prophecies granteth her not a moment’s rest. But then other notes sounded, and these were sinister chords. She really had to peg herself down in order to start thinking logically. Only gradually did her thoughts begin to assume more definite shapes, getting more and more placid and acting hesitantly.

Now somebody was standing behind her, but she did not turn around. She clearly sensed that it had to be an eerie gentleman. And then suddenly the room was full of such gentlemen. They all moved alike and seemed very familiar to her.

“So how did that go again?” she heard the eerie gentleman ask. His voice sounded awfully soft.

“It was like this,” said one of the gentlemen. “It was at the Oktoberfest, actually right in front of Lionella the Lion Girl’s booth. Anna was wondering whether this freak was also still a virgin when she met her academic.”

“And where’s this academic?” inquired the eerie gentleman.

“The dear doctor is already dead,” answered another gentleman, and gave Anna a friendly nod. “The dear doctor is in hell,” he continued, “because he had a bad disposition. You see, he stole Anna’s virginity. And that was not an especially heroic deed since she was drunk on beer.”

And then a third gentleman jumped up from his chair and shouted at her: “Come on, Fräulein Pollinger, stop telling such disgraceful lies!”

“Right now you’re acting as though you hadn’t been constantly seeking to finally lose it. So give us an answer already!”

“That’s true enough,” Anna answered shyly, “but I thought it would be different.”

“Regardless!” the third man screeched, and turned to the eerie gentleman: “Somebody has got to tell God that the dear doctor is wrongfully sitting in hell.”

But now a fourth gentleman, a melancholic coffeehouse musician, cut him off. “Fräulein Pollinger is an honest person,” he said, “please, just go ahead and ask Herr Brunner!”

“Over here!” yelled Brunner. He was sitting on the sofa, leaning over the little table. “Dear Anna,” he said solemnly, “I know that I was your one and only love, but I only took you out of pity. You’re not even my type, not at all.” Then he stood up slowly; he was an enormous figure of a man. “Anna,” he continued, this sounding almost tender, “if you haven’t got anything else to worry about, then a one true love like yours is quite rich in variety. But I’m an electrical engineer, and the world is full of envy.”

“Everything is pretty much about money.” Anna smiled. She was hurting all over.

“That’s right!” muttered the gentlemen in the chorus. Some of them were looking at her reproachfully.

“I’ve never accepted any money for it,” she said in her defense.

“Where’s Kobler?” asked the third gentleman ironically.

“Ach, Kobler!” yelled Anna, suddenly losing her temper. “Right now he’s in Barcelona while I’m stuck here, talking to you. He could easily have given me something!”

“Well, finally!” one of the gentlemen called out from the corner, and swiftly stepped forth. He was wearing a tailcoat. “Fräulein, now it’s about time you got practical!” he said. “My limousine is out front! Come along, come along!”

CHAPTER 5

THE ETCHER ACHNER HAD HIS ATELIER DIAGONALLY opposite. He was a complicated character and what some would call, in the bourgeois sense of the word, an original.

When he opened the door for Anna, he had on a pullover and sailing shoes. The sun was blazing in through the high windowpane. It smelled of English cigarettes. On the little stove stood two bent spoons, a dirty razor, and Vincent van Gogh’s letters bound in half-linen. On the bed lay a gramophone, and Buddha was enthroned upon a case that had been painted to look mysterious.

That’s a family altar, said the etcher. His god, you see, hadn’t been crucified, but rather gazed incessantly at his navel. You see, he personally was a Buddhist. He personally would meditate regularly, carrying out the prescribed prayers and gestures at the stipulated time. And if he were allowed to follow his instincts, he would paint Madonna with six arms, a hundred and twenty toes, eighteen breasts, and six eyes. You see, he personally detested philistines because they weren’t capable of appreciating true art.

But sometimes he would dream of his mother, a rotund woman with nice, big eyes and greasy hair. At home everything had been so nice: the cooking was good and the meals were relished. And nowadays it seemed to him as though his parents also believed in the Christ Child and Santa Claus. And sometimes he had to wonder whether he, too, would have been better off being a philistine with a child and a rotund wife.

This thought threatened to kill him, especially when he was sitting alone in the atelier. Then he would speak out loud to himself simply so as not to have to think about anything. Or he would let the gramophone sound out, recite Rainer Maria Rilke, and sometimes even write himself notices on those pieces of paper with the heading:

IN CASE NOT HOME, SPACE FOR MESSAGES

He hated silence.

Something about his being was reminiscent of his late uncle Eugen Meinzinger. Eugen had collected laces, had long narrow ears, and would often sit for hours on end in children’s playgrounds. He died way back in 1908 after horrible death throes. For ten hours he kept rattling, ranting, and bellowing over and over again: “Lie! Lie! I don’t know any little Mizzy, I never carry candy with me, I never pushed any little Mizzy into the canal, Mizzy drowned by herself, on her own! On her own! I only patted her little-bitty calves, the back of her little-bitty knees! My dear sirs, I never carry candy with me!” And then he flailed about and wailed: “Satan’s sitting on the divan! There’s another Satan on the divan!” Then he whimpered that a tram with wheels like razors was running him over. His last words were: “Speaking with the driver is strictly forbidden!”

CHAPTER 6

AND ANNA GAZED AT BUDDHA’S NAVEL, THINKING it was nothing but a potbelly. Then she walked behind the dressing screen.

“Just go ahead and get undressed. Everybody bathes in Sweden without a leotard,” the Buddhist encouraged her.

She found it, however, quite redundant that he felt he had to make the undressing business easier with such comments. As of last spring she no longer had anything against people looking at her. Kastner once forced upon her a pamphlet on the spirit of antiquity, and it said that shame was merely a shameless invention of Christianity.

The Buddhist paced back and forth. “We all bring sacrifices to the altar of art,” he mentioned casually. And this resulted in Anna getting annoyed once again about this art business because, for example: pictures in museums have got it so darn good! They live elegantly, don’t freeze, don’t have to eat or work, they just hang there on the wall and people gaze at them in amazement like they had accomplished God knows what!

“I’m just happy that you’re not a professional model!” she perceived the Buddhist’s voice again. “You see, I hate schematizing—I’m a staunch individualist. The masses aren’t behind me. I, too, belong to that ‘invisible lodge’ of genuine minds that have raised themselves above their times and about whom the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten ran a fabulous article in yesterday’s paper!” This is how he condemned the idea of collectivism while Anna got undressed.

But it was the Glyptothek museum that annoyed her most of all. Here people would ogle old rubble, and they did it so reverently, as though they were standing in front of the display case at a delicatessen.

She had been to the Glyptothek once. It had been pouring rain and she happened to be walking across Königsplatz. Inside there was somebody with a uniform cap leading a group from one hall to the next. While standing in front of one of the figures, he said that it was the goddess of love. The goddess of love had neither arms nor legs, and even the head was missing. She could not help but smile. Somebody from the group smiled too, then he broke off and approached her. He said that ancient Greek art couldn’t be imitated. Then he asked her if she wanted to go and see a movie with him later that afternoon.

And so they met up at Sendlingertor Square. He bought two box seats, but none of the boxes were completely empty because it was a wet and cold Sunday. This put him in a bad mood. He said that if he had known, he would’ve bought seats in the second orchestra section because he was, you see, really nearsighted. He grew rather melancholy and said who knew when they’d see each other again. He was from Augsburg, you see, and had to drive back to Augsburg right after the showing. Actually, he didn’t like the theater at all, and the box seats were insanely expensive.

Afterward Anna accompanied him to the train station. He got her a platform ticket and almost cried when they parted ways. He said, “Fräulein, I’m cursed. I married at twenty, now I’m forty. My three sons are twenty, nineteen, and eighteen and my wife is fifty-six. I had always been an idealist. Fräulein, please don’t forget me. I’m a businessman. I would make a great sculptor.”

CHAPTER 7

BUT DESTINY DID NOT WANT HER TO MODEL today. It had something else in store for her. That is, the Buddhist had an unexpected visitor. He belonged to those better circles to which Kastner had drawn her attention with the following words: “I’m by no means asking you to prostitute yourself!”

She was only half naked behind the dressing screen when the young gentleman bounced into the atelier. His name was Harry Priegler and he was a well-conditioned sportsman.

As the only son of a rich pig butcher and thanks to the doting love of his mother (a class-conscious daughter of a civil servant who, even during her silver wedding, could not completely forgive herself for having married a pig butcher), Harry was able to attend to his healthy muscles, nerves, and intestines with such abandon that at sixteen he was already regarded as the hope for German ice hockey. And he did not disappoint these hopeful people. Admired across the board, he soon became the most famous winger and achieved international fame with his stunning shots on goal, especially those graceful and unstoppable long-range shots that he blasted from the rear. And he always fought absolutely fairly no matter who he was covering. He never let himself commit a foul because, thanks to his subtle technique and formidable swiftness, he did not have to.

He had almost no appreciation for art. Sure, he had his dictionary ostentatiously bound, because it was more beautiful than the most beautiful wallpaper or weapons on the wall. He also loved to read titles and chapter headings, but most of all he loved to engross his mind with quotes from sheet calendars. In spite of this the Buddhist did not find him disagreeable because, among other things, he often let him ride in his car, this being a racy sports car.

The two gentlemen were now conversing very quietly because the Buddhist, seeing as how he thought something of himself, would have been embarrassed if Anna had found out that he owed Harry forty Reichsmarks.

“Of course she’ll come along!” he said, emphasizing this “of course” with such confidence that Anna could not help overhearing it, even though she was not listening.

But now she was curious, because she loved the word “maybe.” While flipping through Van Gogh’s letters with feigned interest, she heard Harry talking about two gentlemen who wanted to personally congratulate him on account of his magnificent match in Switzerland, but while paying their courtesy visit, they stole the “One kreuzer black” and “Saxony three pfennig piece” from his stamp collection. Later on one of these gentlemen had an affair with a vivacious baroness. But the baron came home unexpectedly. He merely said, “Pardon!” That same night he shot and killed himself on his mother’s grave. And Harry said that he couldn’t understand how somebody could kill himself out of love. This also astonished Anna. That really would be eccentric of her, she thought, if she went and shot herself on her mother’s grave. Sure, she had once entertained the idea, at the time of her one true love, back when she was going out with Brunner. But nowadays such a notion seemed hilarious to her. After all, nowadays only children kill themselves out of love!

It was only now that she understood her Brunner. He said that when two people liked each other, those two people basically got together. But all that nonsense about the soul’s role in love was just an invention of those gentlemen who had nothing better to do than to gaze at their bare navels. And in this sense it would be merely a brutish lack of sensitivity if some Anna were to demand from him not just his love but also his soul. Such a deeper form of love always ended, as you well know, in pain. And why should he make his life any more painful than it already was? After all, he didn’t want to start any family. For that he’d definitely need to muster up a special feeling, because living with the same person forever—that really did call for something special. But he didn’t want any children anyways. There were already too many of them running around as it was, what with us losing our colonies.

When Harry was introduced to Anna, he said: “Pleasure!” And to the Buddhist he said: “Forgive me if I’m interrupting something again!”

“Oh, by no means!” he politely cut in. “We’re done for the day! Fräulein, you can go ahead and put your clothes back on!”

Anna was already starting to worry that Harry would not ask her out and so she almost said “yes” too quickly, all the while astonished to find herself attracted to his tie. You see, Harry had asked her: “Fräulein, you’re going to come with me, aren’t you? Just to the Starnberger See—”

Out front was his sports car, and it was truly magnificent. And so off they went …

CHAPTER 8

HERR KASTNER WALKED INTO THE ATELIER scarcely an hour later, just as he had planned to do the day before. But because the Buddhist owed Harry Priegler, among other things, forty Reichsmarks, it would have been unforgivably foolish of him to not accommodate his debtor in regards to some Anna merely for the sake of being able to keep his promise to some Kastner.

Kastner was a thorough businessman and so immediately assessed the situation. He understood everything and merely said: “Once again you’ve broken your word of honor.” But this was intended to be merely an observation, by no means an accusation, for Kastner could be generous, on some days especially so.

On such days he would awake with a peculiar feeling behind his forehead. It did not exactly hurt. It really was not all that horrible. Actually it was nothing at all.

The only unpleasant thing about it was a certain draft of air, like a fan was above him. Those were the blades of stupefaction.

“I went out of my way to bring a bottle of sloe gin,” he said, and gave a resigned smile. “It would’ve all been so easy with your gramophone. After all, she was really taken aback by the fact that I had organized this for her. She had nice skin.” And so he sat there, staring vacantly at the grease stain on the dressing screen.

This grease stain reminded him of another grease stain. One day this other grease stain was taking a walk in the Schellingstrasse when he ran into a third grease stain that he had not seen for a long, long time. So much so that these once so chummy grease stains almost walked right past each other like strangers. That is, if a fourth grease stain with an excellent memory for faces had not suddenly shown up. “Hello!” the fourth grease stain called out. “You guys know each other! Let’s go and drink some sloe gin together, only not here. You see, there’s a draught here, as though there were a fan above us!”

Today Kastner’s speech was not literary. He was not proud of his dialect either. “I was really sloppy again today,” he muttered to himself. The sun continued to set.

It was very silent in the atelier when suddenly the Buddhist said:

“Loneliness is like a rain.

It rises from the sea towards the evenings;
from plains that are far away and remote,
it goes to the sky, that always holds it.

And only from the sky does it fall upon the city.

Rains down in the ambiguous hours,
when all the streets turn towards morning
and when the bodies that have found nothing
leave off from each other, sad and disappointed;
and when the people who hate each other
have to sleep in one bed together:

then the loneliness goes with the rivers …”

“Those are Bulgarian cigarettes,” answered Kastner, and gave his grease stain an intimate look. “Bulgaria is a fertile country, a kingdom. This stuff here isn’t genuine tobacco—the taxes are too high. Frankly we’ve lost the campaign. It was all for nothing. We lost for nothing.”

And so he drank his sloe gin. It was not long before he was in agreement. An almost pious humility suffused his soul. He did not even notice that he was content. He felt like the friendly ghost that has never been upset about his own harmlessness.

He didn’t even get angry with himself when the sloe gin ran out.

CHAPTER 9

WHILE KASTNER WAS GREETING THE GREASE stain, Anna was catching sight of Starnberger See.

The city with its gray houses was gone. It was like she had never even lived there. Mansions with roses and large dogs popped up to the right, to the left, and everywhere.

The afternoon was gorgeous. Anna was driving through an excitingly foreign world. There is a big difference between riding pillion and riding in a gorgeous sports car. She had her feet placed side by side like a good little girl and her head tilted slightly backward because the wind, too, was gorgeous. And she seemed to shrink in the face of so much gorgeousness.

Harry was a dazzling gentleman driver.

He simply passed everybody and took the curves as they came. He was not talking about ice hockey for a change, but rather illuminating traffic problems. And so he explained to her that a pedestrian was surely behind every motor vehicle accident, which is why you couldn’t blame a gentleman driver for just dimming the lights if and when he ran over such a pedestrian. Along these lines he had a friend in Berlin. And this friend once ran over a pedestrian with his fabulous car because she was jaywalking. But despite the fact that it was a case of jaywalking, an inquiry was launched. Indeed, it even went to trial, probably because that pedestrian had been the widow of a counselor for the regional court. The state’s attorney, however, failed to sentence his friend to paying damages. “After all, what do I care about a few thousand marks,” said the friend, “but as a matter of principle I want to know that things have been resolved.” He had to be acquitted, even though the chairman had asked him whether he felt sorry for this pedestrian, the jaywalking notwithstanding. “No,” he had said, “as a matter of principle—no!” He was just asserting his rights.

Revolutionary animus was set ablaze in Harry every time he saw a gasoline engine collide with the engine of the state. At such times he hated this state, which maternally protected pedestrians from every fender and reduced motor vehicle drivers to second-class citizens.

The whole German state, he said, ought to see to it that people work more so that we can finally get back on our feet! Pedestrians were going to get run over anyway, and now more than ever! Our former enemies were really right to defame Germany in this regard! He could only append his signature to these defamations because, although he was quite nationalistically minded, they were the truth. He knew exactly how the world abroad thought because, for the purpose of recovering from an exhausting ice hockey season, he would take a cruise every spring, summer, and fall through a little piece of the world.

Now they were driving through Possenhofen.

An Empress of Austria was born here. And over there, on the other shore, a King of Bavaria drowned in the lake. Both majesties were related to each other and when they were younger, they used to have romantic and hapless rendezvouses on the Rose Island between Possenhofen and the Castle of Berg.

It was a posh area.

“We’ll do the eating in Feldafing,” decided Harry. “Feldafing has an acceptable clientele since the golf course is outside. You can hardly eat anymore in the city—there are lowlifes everywhere.” And then he also mentioned that he used to drive frequently to Tutzing, this being situated only six kilometers to the south, but nowadays no decent person could go there because, you see, there’s a factory there now and you run into workers wherever you go.

CHAPTER 10

YOU CAN SIT BEAUTIFULLY ON THE LAKE IN Feldafing.

Especially on such a mild autumn evening. At such times the lake is calm, and you can see the Alps from Kufstein all the way to Zugspitze, and you can hardly tell where the cliffs end and the clouds begin. Only the Benediktenwand clearly dominates the horizon and has a soothing effect.

There were nothing but classy people seated at the lakeside restaurant in Feldafing. All the gentlemen resembled Harry, even though every one of them took great pains to look different. The ladies were quite sleek, which is why they looked really new. They moved gracefully and talked nonsense. They looked disgruntled whenever they had to go to the bathroom, whereas their respective gentlemen, sighing with relief, would then quickly pick their noses on the sly or do some other naughty thing.

The menu was long and wide, but Anna could not make anything out, even though the dishes did not have any French names, just uncommonly elegant ones.

“Empress’ soup?” she heard the waiter’s voice say. Her belly rumbled. The waiter heard it rumbling and gazed at her cheap hat, full of contempt. The rumbling bothered him because he had a bad disposition: that is, truly classy folks eat, as you well know, as though they did not have to, as though they were already totally sublimated while in fact they are just plain full.

Harry ordered two Wiener schnitzels with a side of cucumber salad, but then left it because it was too fattening for him. Then he demanded two deviled eggs and said: “Fräulein, you know what I can’t quite figure out: how come I’m so lucky with the ladies? That is, I’m very lucky. Do you have any idea how many women I could have? I could have any woman I want, but that’s just not what I’m looking for.”

While dreamily looking at the Benediktenwand he thought: “The best thing to do would be to wait till it gets dark, I’ll drive back and then pull into some bypath. And if she doesn’t want it, then out she goes.”

“It’s just not what I’m looking for,” he went on loudly. “Sure, the ladies say I know how to mesmerize. But do I ever find love? Is there really such a thing as love? Do you understand what I’m saying when I say ‘love’?”

It was not yet dark, dusk was just approaching, and so he had to keep the conversation going for another fifteen minutes.

“For instance, that lady over there on the third table to the left,” he related, “I’ve done her too. Her name is Frau Schneider; she lives in Mauerkircherstrasse eight. The guy she’s sitting with over there is her ongoing boyfriend. Her husband, you see, is frequently in Berlin because he’s got a girlfriend there who he furnished a seven-room apartment for. Only after transferring the apartment to her name did he discover that she was married and her husband was a business acquaintance of his. I’ve also done this girlfriend, because I used to play ice hockey in the Berlin Sportpalast. Her name is Lotte Böhmer; she lives in Meineckestrasse fourteen.

“And the lady to the right with the borzoi—that’s the sister of the woman whose mother fell in love with me. The old lady’s a real hag. Her name is Weber; she lives in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse, I forget which street number. She would always say to me: ‘Harry, you’re no connoisseur of women—you’re just too young. Otherwise you’d act quite differently. You’re chasing me away. I’ve already been through so much with my husband—you’re just no psychologist.’ But I am one indeed. I was, after all, trying to chase her away.

“And behind you—don’t turn around!—there’s a tall blondie, a striking figure. I had to chase her away, too, because she was getting in the way of my training. Her name is Else Hartmann; she lives in the Fürstenstrasse twelve. Her husband was once an ordnance captain. I’m very good friends with another former ordnance captain who once came to me and said: ‘My dear Harry, be honest! Is it true that you’re sleeping with my wife behind my back?’ I said: ‘To be honest, yes, it’s true!’ I thought that he wanted to challenge me to a duel, but instead he just said: ‘Thanks, my dear Harry!’ And then he explained to me that it wasn’t my fault after all because men, as he knew full well, were ostensibly the active parties, but were actually the passive ones, whereas women were ostensibly the passive parties, but were actually the active ones. That’s always been the case, he said, at all times and among all peoples. He’s a great psychologist and is working on a novel right now. He’s also got a knack for writing. His name is Albert von Reisinger; he lives in Amalienstrasse next to the Gabelsbergerstrasse.

“Check, please!” yelled Harry. It was now dark.

CHAPTER 11

HARRY PULLED INTO A BYPATH IN FORSTENRIEDER Park, slammed on the brakes and then stared motionlessly into space as though he were searching for a great thought that he had lost.

Anna knew what was coming, but even so she asked what was the matter. But he remained silent for a while. Then he slowly turned to her and said that she had beautiful legs.

But he was not aroused at all; now he had to blow his nose. She took the opportunity to tell him that she needed to be back in Schellingstrasse by nine at the latest, whereupon he asked her if she could sense that he wanted her.

“No,” she said, “I can’t sense that at all.”

“Well, isn’t that sad!” he said, and gave a charming smile.

The September evening was moody. Harry really felt obliged to possess Anna because otherwise he would feel outsmarted. Here she was sitting in his sports car, he had bought her a Wiener schnitzel and cucumber salad, and all after realizing back in Feldafing that she could never really turn him on.

So everything happened as it was meant to happen. Anna looked around anxiously.

Did she hear something, he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “but it was nothing.”

And so he drew closer to her, and in a rough way too. Only he was not to arrive too quickly at his destination. Anna heard the gentleman in the coattail once again: “Please, be more practical already!” the gentleman entreated her, stroking her like an older brother would.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said suddenly. Her voice sounded different to her, as though it belonged to a new Anna.

“Then how?” asked Harry.

“Ten,” said the new Anna. Now it got terribly quiet …

“Five,” said Harry suddenly, and sprung up. “There’s a bench over there!” They went to the bench. On the bench’s backrest read: ONLY FOR ADULTS.

It was in a clearing that she accepted money for the first time. The stars were up above and the forest surrounded them, cavernous and black. She took the money like she had never thought about the fact that it was wrong. But she really did think about it, only thinking about it does not make the injustice of it any different—it just hurts.

It was a five-mark piece. Now she no longer had any feelings; it was like she was already dead.

PART THREE:
HERR REITHOFER BECOMES ALTRUISTIC

“Love never fails”

CHAPTER 1

SOME WEEKS HAD PASSED SINCE THIS NIGHT and now it was the beginning of November. The nation’s weather station reported that a high-pressure system over Ireland would give way to a low-pressure system over the Bay of Biscay. Snow was said already to have fallen in America, and also things were not quite right with the Gulf Stream, so it was said in Munich.

But over here the fall was still mild and pleasant. And it was supposed to stay that way for another few days, officially. As of the day before yesterday, Anna was no longer living with her aunt in Schellingstrasse, but rather near Goetheplatz. And this is how that happened:

A criminal investigator showed up at the aunt’s place on Monday. He had gone to school with her. He disclosed confidentially to her that her niece had been occasionally sighted accepting money for it. This was beyond any doubt. The criminal investigator only mentioned this in passing because he was a friend and after all, he had actually come to the aunt in order to arrest Herr Kastner for the distribution of obscene writings for commercial gain and for negligent perjury. But at the time Kastner was sitting in a café, so the criminal investigator took the opportunity to alert his old school friend that the police authority was keeping a file on a certain Anna Pollinger, according to which the lady was suspected of roaming the streets and turning tricks.

The aunt went completely nuts. The criminal investigator was afraid that she might have a stroke, which is why he attempted to reassure her. Women of the night, he said, can’t just be condemned wholesale. He once had an acquaintance who had nothing but frivolous things for tenants, but they were so painstakingly punctual with the rent and took it easy on the furniture, were clean and meticulous. They furnished their rooms with love and never said a vulgar word.

But these arguments ricocheted off the aunt’s catholic worldview. She was terribly desperate, kicked Anna out of the house and then cut all family ties to her.

Anna likewise never talked to Herr Kobler again. Only once did she see him standing across the street on the corner with the Count Blanquez. She had wanted to go over to them, but Kobler turned his back on her in such an overt manner that she stopped asking about him.

“I can’t see her any more,” he said to his count. “I’ve pretty much outgrown the circumstances here and I don’t want to lower my standards.”

“You’re surely right about that,” nodded the count, “because I’m afraid she’s utterly debauched.”

“Since when?” inquired Kobler.

“For a while now,” said the count. “The other day our friend Harry told me she wanted five marks for it.”

“Not possible!” yelled Kobler.

“It’s just these terrible times. Europe has got to come to an understanding or we’re all going to perish!”

That evening Anna almost wound up in the police station for making a big fuss in Augustenstrasse. A man from the student corps spat in her face for approaching him in spite of his uniform. She was seething with rage and hate for a long time afterward. She took a holy oath never to get involved with men again, but she could not keep this vow because nature exacted its toll. That is to say, she had nothing to eat.

Nature is a hideous mistress and gave her no quarter. And so she started to believe that there was only evil in this world. But now she was to witness an instance of the contrary, this being admittedly only a small instance, but nonetheless an indication of the possibility of human culture and civilization.

CHAPTER 2

DUSK WAS ALREADY FALLING WHEN ANNA MET her Herr Reithofer next to Thalkirchener Strasse, in front of the city’s employment office. You see, Herr Reithofer was also out of work, and this is what he drew on when he approached her. After all, you still could not tell by looking at her how she made her living, because having only recently started doing it, she was still the same old Anna on the outside. But on the inside—there loomed the new Anna, slowly burrowing her way up to the surface.

Herr Reithofer said that he had been out of work for ages now and that he was actually not a Bavarian, but rather an Austrian. She said that she, too, had been out of work for the last two months now and that she was not actually from Munich, but rather had been born in Upper Palatinate. He said that he had never been to the Upper Palatinate; she said that she had never been to Austria. Hereupon he said that Vienna was quite a lovely city and that she actually looked like she was from Vienna. She laughed deliberately; he smiled. He was happy to have met her, otherwise he might have forgotten how to speak. But she cut him off, saying that you don’t just forget how to speak.

A Reichswehr company was passing by, and with music playing too.

When Herr Reithofer saw the Reichswehr, he said that in life sometimes even the best intentions do you no good. Sadly, there were many forces out there that were stronger than man, but you couldn’t think like that because then you’d basically have to hang yourself.

He shouldn’t babble about such gloomy stuff, she interrupted him again, but instead he should look up at the sky. There was a wispy biplane flying up there. But he hardly looked up. You see, he already knew about that and said that the world kept getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon people would be able to fly from here to Australia in two hours, albeit only the financial tycoons and their secretaries and secret secretaries. That stuff about this Herr von Löwenstein was really strange. He wanted to use the lavatory midair between England and France, but took the wrong door and wound up in heaven. Technology in general was progressing tremendously. Just the other day an American invented an artificial human being, it’s really fantastic that the human mind can ascend to such heights. And if things kept up like this, she would even live to see the day when all genuine human beings would perish. And the machines wouldn’t be to blame for it, but rather the anarchic modes of production. Yesterday he had read that the economy’s sphinx face was slowing turning towards socialism because the capitalists were starting to organize themselves. And he concluded by saying that there were even artificial human beings in Munich, but for now he had said enough.

And as Herr Reithofer was speaking like this, it became clear as daylight to Anna that he had mistaken her for somebody else. She wondered why she hadn’t broached the topic yet, but suddenly now she no longer had the courage to bring it up, which was very strange. She gave him a furtive look. He had a soothing air about him and remarkably well-groomed hands. She wondered what his profession was. “Waiter,” he said. And if there hadn’t been a World War, he would definitely be working right now in a Grand Hotel abroad, probably in Africa, in the Biskra oasis. Right now he’d be strolling beneath palm trees. He would also have seen the pyramids, had that mess in Sarajevo never happened, you know, where the Serbs assassinated the Czech Archduke, the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne. And Anna answered that she didn’t know what sort of city this Sarajevo was and sure, her father had died in battle and as far as she knew he was buried outside Paris, but she could only faintly remember this whole World War because she had only been four years old back when it broke out. She could only remember the inflation, when even she had been a trillionaire. But she’d prefer not to think about it because they had buried her dear mother back then. Granted, she had never truly loved her mother, this being a gaunt woman with a stern-looking pallor around her mouth. Back then she often had the feeling that her mother had wondered: Why’s this girl alive?

And here is where Herr Reithofer said that every person had relatives, some more and others fewer, and that every relative would leave you something, either money or a bunch of crap. But even traits were hereditary, making one guy a genius, the next a civil servant and the next a total chump, only most people became nothing but numbers that’d put up with everything. There were only a few people who wouldn’t put up with everything, and this was very sad.

They were walking across Sendlingertor Square.

“And what sort of occupation does the young lady have?” he asked. She gave him a searching look, wondering if he had already guessed it. She was surprised that it would’ve been embarrassing for her.

“I was actually trained to sew,” she said. Now she was getting upset about feeling anxious. Men were subtle rascals, and being unemployed didn’t change that at all. Maybe this subtle unemployed man had three marks, she thought, and then put him to the test: “I’d like to see a movie in that theater over there,” she said.

Herr Reithofer was quite startled by this suggestion because he only had a ten-mark bill left. And he was also aware that as an Austrian citizen he was not legally eligible for German unemployment benefits. And he also remembered watching a Calmuck die in Volhynia in 1915, who had died just like any Austrian citizen or German.

“I’d like to see a movie,” Anna repeated, and purposefully looked at him with really dreamy eyes.

And in order to drive away the dead Calmuck, he thought that at this point two marks really wouldn’t make much of a difference. And being the good person that he was, he was happy to make her happy.

“It’s a shame that Tom Mix isn’t showing!” he said.

He loved this Wild West guy because everything always worked out for him, and he was particularly fond of his loyal horse. He was crazy about all livestock, which nearly got him court-martialed in 1916. That is, he had put a Russian horse out of its misery because its two hooves had been blown off by shrapnel and the gunshot’s bang got his company into a horrible cross fire. Even a general staff officer died.

Sadly he did not get to see any livestock at the movie theatre, just a social drama. That is, the tragedy of a beautiful young woman. She was a millionairess, the daughter of a millionaire and the spouse of a millionaire. Both millionaires fulfilled her every desire, but this millionairess was still very unhappy. You watched as she unhappily got dressed for hours on end, received manicures and pedicures; how she would unhappily travel first-class to India, stroll along the Riviera, have lunch in Baden-Baden, fall asleep in California and wake up in Paris; how she would sit unhappily in opera boxes, dance at carnival, and scorn champagne in an exceedingly unhappy manner. And she kept getting more and more unhappy because she did not want to give herself to the elegant, young son of a millionaire who adored her in a discreetly sensuous way. So there was nothing left for her to do but to take to the water, which she then did in the Ligurian Sea. They recovered her unhappy body in Genoa. All of her maids, lackeys, and chauffeurs were very unhappy.

It was a very tragic film and had just one funny episode. That is, the millionairess had a lady’s maid. And one time this lady’s maid secretly put on her mistress’s “grand” evening gown and went out on the town with one of the chauffeurs in a “grand” fashion. Only the chauffeur did not exactly know how the “grand” world held a knife and fork, and so both of them were exposed as attendants and then shown out of the posh restaurant. One of the guests even gave the chauffeur a good slap in the face, and the unhappy millionairess fired her lady’s maid on the spot. The lady’s maid bawled and the chauffeur’s face was not exactly clever either. It was very funny.

Of course it was very dark in the movie theatre, though Herr Reithofer did not make any advances on Anna. He never did things like that at the movies, as a matter of principle.

It was already dark outside when the showing came to an end. Anna felt really secure inside because she could forget herself. But now that she was wedged between all those strangers and making her way out into the harsh reality, she had already decided how she would confront Herr Reithofer. She would simply give him the choice, even though he really was a nice man. But anything nice a man does is merely a ploy.

As they got up from their seats, Herr Reithofer noticed that she was smaller than he remembered. And now he thought how noble it would be just to run his fingers through her hair like a father, give her some candy and say: “Go on home, my dear child!” But everything about love life in nature is just so incomprehensible! Sure, it’s a powerful necessity, but you’re free to fight it with your will, provided that you have one. And so he said: “Come on, Fräulein, let’s go for a walk. It’s an incredibly mild November evening.”

But then she drew back and delivered her hard line: “It doesn’t work like that!”

“Why not?” he inquired harmlessly. At the moment he could not imagine what exactly she meant.

“Because it’ll cost you something,” she said, and looked quite scornful because she liked it when the gentlemen got angry. Now she was waiting for an outburst.

But she was to wait in vain. Herr Reithofer would never have thought her one of those types, which is why he remained silent for a while.

“So you’re one of those types,” he said softly. He was looking at her with such resignation that it gave her the creeps.

“I only recently started” slipped out by accident.

“I’m sure,” he smiled, “but I haven’t got any money.”

“So this is where we say goodbye!”

Now he was looking at her again like before. “Now I don’t bear you any ill will,” he said, “but letting somebody in my economic situation treat you to a movie—that’s a really mean thing to do!” Then he walked off.

CHAPTER 3

HE SLOWLY WALKED DOWN SENDLINGER STRASSE and, as if looking at a more beautiful future ahead of him, did not turn around once.

“Well, she was some shithead,” he expressed. At that moment he hated Anna. He could not help but think of his first love; she had only sent him a single postcard. But soon his thinking took a conciliatory turn again, for he was an experienced connoisseur of women. He told himself that pretty much every woman was untrustworthy, and they’d even tell you an outright lie just to be able to say something pleasant. Women pretty much just had a slave nature, they really couldn’t help themselves. And only men were to blame for it because they’d been buying women everything for millennia. “But she really was some shithead!” he concluded this train of thought.

In Rosenstrasse he stopped apathetically in front of a photographer’s shop window. An enlarged family photo hung inside, portraying eight righteous people. They were attired in their Sunday best and stared out at him with deceitful and bigoted eyes. All eight of them were exceptionally ugly.

Just the same, Herr Reithofer got to thinking that it might be nice sometimes to be able to call such a family his own. He, too, would sit in the middle and have a beard and children because without children people would die out, and there’s really something sad about dying out, even if you don’t have any legal claim to German unemployment benefits as an Austrian citizen.

And suddenly he could not get rid of a preposterous idea. He had no idea why it had come into his mind.

It occurred to him that a blind man had once said: “Please look at me when I’m speaking to you. It bothers me, my dear sir, when you look elsewhere!”

It was nighttime. It kept getting later, only Herr Reithofer did not want to go home because, despite being very tired, he would not be able to fall asleep. After all, once again he had walked around all day without finding any work. He had even tried his luck in the Continental. And after watching his haughty colleagues fawning upon a true lord he hated his profession, not for the first time. And now on top of that this adventure with that shithead—this would totally rob him of his sleep.

He was standing in Müllerstrasse, full of dust, inside and out. Across the street he discovered a bar; it was situated so enticingly. He stared at it for a long time.

“Well, if the world is collapsing,” the thought suddenly seized him, “then I’ll risk another thirty pfennigs and buy myself a glass of beer!”

The world did not collapse, but instead fulfilled its predestined course in a thunderous march. Its aspect gave the angels strength as Herr Reithofer walked into the bar. The lofty works, incomprehensible, remained as fair as on the primal day.

CHAPTER 4

HERR REITHOFER WAS THE ONLY PATRON. HE drank his beer and read in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten that the unemployed had it decidedly too good because they could even afford a glass of beer. “The orator’s speech was perfectly structured,” the newspaper said, “and people were duly happy about having conquered materialism yet again—”

Here he sensed that somebody was looking at him.

A lady he had never seen before was standing in front of him. He had not heard her coming at all, or he would have sat up.

“Good evening, Herr Reithofer!” said the lady he had never seen before. She then blurted out that running into each other here was a huge coincidence. And such a coincidence could easily be the subject of an entire novel, a novel published in serial form. You see, she was a passionate reader.

“You don’t mind if I join you, do you?” she asked. She was very happy. “How long have you been in Munich, Herr Reithofer? I’ve been here since last May, but I’m not going to stay much longer. You see, I just found out that I’d be better off in Cologne. There was that enormous journalist exposition there not long ago.”

—And so she greeted him quite familiarly, but all he could give was a self-conscious smile. He still could not remember where she knew him from. She, on the other hand, seemed to know him very well, but he did not want to ask her where she knew him from because she was sincerely delighted to see him again and held him fondly in her memory.

“Not every exhibition is good for me,” she continued. “I went a whole four days without getting any business at the GESOLEI Exhibition for Healthcare, Social Welfare and Exercise in Dusseldorf. I was totally out of it, and out of sheer annoyance I accosted an exhibition attendant. He was a very polite man from Krefeld. I told him that things weren’t going so well for me at your GESOLEI Exhibition. The guy from Krefeld said that he could see why I wasn’t doing any business if I was approaching the gentlemen in front of his pavilion. And that’s when it hit me: I had been standing at the health department for the last four days, right in front of the pavilion for sexual transmitted diseases. And then of course I realized why I hadn’t made any money. I walked out of the pavilion disgusted with myself—I just wanted to cry. Exhibitions like that are absolutely pointless! Exhibitions of paintings—artistic events in general—are good for me. Automotive exhibitions aren’t bad either. But agricultural exhibitions are the best for me.”

And then she went on to talk about the German Museum, where the foundation stone for the future library had been successfully laid in the presence of von Hindenburg, the President of the Reich, then about a grand homeland rally in Nurnberg, and then about the Catholics Day in Wroclaw.

Herr Reithofer was thinking, “This is a real talker! Perhaps she’s mistaken me for somebody else. After all, complete strangers have the name Reithofer too,” when suddenly he noticed that she was cross-eyed, albeit only slightly. Nevertheless a colleague came to mind, somebody he had worked with before the war in Bratislava, namely in Restaurant Klein. He had a cooperative disposition; he was a big kid. This kid got married right before the World War and said to him: “Believe me, my dear Reithofer, my wife is cross-eyed, but only slightly. She’s got a good heart.” Then he died in battle in Montenegro. His name was Karl Swoboda.

“After my husband died in battle in Montenegro,” said the talker, “I thought about you a lot, Herr Reithofer. I thought to myself, wonder if he also died in battle, the poor Reithofer? I’m happy you didn’t. Can you still remember my doughnuts?”

Now he also remembered her doughnuts. You see, one time he picked up Karl Swoboda to go to the horsetrack and it was here that Swoboda introduced him to his young wife. He commended her homemade doughnuts. He could still see how the two beds had not matched up, but he had not taken advantage of it. Swoboda was very depressed after the horse race because he had lost five Gulden. He said sadly: “Believe me, Herr Reithofer, if I hadn’t married her she’d already be totally depraved, by my honor she would!”

“You really did commend my doughnuts,” said Karl Swoboda’s widow. There was a rather wistful expression on her face: she hadn’t been born under a lucky star. Although it was written in her horoscope that she had a lucky hand, all she had to do was beware of the month of April, this being her unlucky month, and then she could accomplish anything. When she discovered this, she cried out in a deliberately funny way: “In that case I shouldn’t even be alive!” Her birthday was in April.

The restroom attendant had given her this horoscope and claimed to have a precise knowledge of the universe, albeit only as far as the fixed stars. Her name was Regina Warzmeier. The patrons adored her because she always knew how to give advice and guidance, which is why they dubbed her “granny.”

While Herr Reithofer was thinking about those Bratislava beds, the granny drew closer to him. You see, when she was not busy, she would stand in front of her two doors and observe the patrons in order to discover even more about them. This is how she noticed that Gretchen treated Herr Reithofer like an older brother. She had real motherly feelings for big siblings like that, so she took a seat at Herr Reithofer’s table.

Gretchen was just relating that, sadly, many strong men died in battle and that afterwards even she had totally lost her grip. Hereupon the granny said that losing such a war was pretty much awful for officers. That’s why many officers became drunkards after the war, especially in Augsburg. She once serviced a large men’s restroom that was frequented by a colonial officer who traded in all of his exotic antlers for a keg of beer. And a pilot officer likewise traded in a whole propeller for a half-dozen glasses of eggnog. And this pilot was so drunk that he greeted you with “Cheers!” instead of “Hello!”

Herr Reithofer said that, sure, the World War didn’t bear any fruit, and of course these officers would’ve been better off if the war had been won, and even though he wasn’t an officer, losing a war was still pretty awful for him, but he was of course still convinced that even as a victor he’d be suffering from the same economic depression. It’d been ages now since he had had work, and there wasn’t the slightest prospect of things getting any better.

This is where an elderly gentleman butted into the conversation. Out of curiosity he, too, had taken a seat at the table. He said that it was a real shame that Herr Reithofer wasn’t a young lady because then he’d have work for him right away.

“What do you mean by that?” inquired Herr Reithofer warily, but the elderly gentleman refused to get flustered.

“I mean it well.” He gave a friendly smile and explained to him that, were he only a seamstress and not a waiter, he’d have a position for him right this instant.

That is, he knew a prewar Councilor of Commerce who was the owner of an enormous tailor shop in Ulm on the Danube, but that Herr Reithofer couldn’t be an Austrian woman either, given that the Councilor of Commerce was also an Austrian and so was reluctant to hire other Austrians. But maybe he might hire an Austrian woman as a favor to him. You see, he held a certain power over this Councilor of Commerce because his daughter, who had also been a seamstress there, had gotten pregnant by this Councilor of Commerce five years ago. And of course the Councilor of Commerce’s wife couldn’t find out about this. The daughter was now living nicely in Neu-Ulm so as to fully devote herself to raising the child, for the Councilor of Commerce was an uncommonly decent Austrian.

This friendly gentleman was a regular and repeated himself frequently. He also loved to debate with the granny and knew no limits. And so he told her that the first caveman to draw an ox on the cave wall had been worshipped by all the other cavemen as a mysterious magician, and this was precisely how every artist should be worshipped today. (He was, you see, a talented pianist.)

Then he would argue with the granny about whether the five-pfennig mark was called Schiller or Goethe (he collected stamps to boot), whereupon in most cases the granny would retort that the forty-pfennig mark was at any rate the great philosopher who had made a poor critique of reason, and the fifty-pfennig mark was a genius who wanted to lead mankind to noble aims, and she really couldn’t imagine how one would begin such an endeavor, whereupon he would say that pretty much every beginning was difficult, and then he would add that the thirty-pfennig mark had introduced the age of individual consciousness. Then the granny would fall silent and think that this dogmatic guy had better go and play a nice old waltz.

CHAPTER 5

WHEN HERR REITHOFER HEARD ABOUT THE JOB for the young lady, he could not help but think of that shithead from earlier who had suckered him into going into that stupid movie theater. He said to himself that, of all jobs, this one could really be her salvation. After all, she told him that she was actually a seamstress and had only just started being one of those types. Maybe it would cost him but a word now and tomorrow she wouldn’t be the other thing anymore, as if he were the Emperor of China. “Only I’m not the Emperor of China,” he said to himself, “and she’s just a shithead!”

The older gentleman got up to grab the new illustrated magazine. “He’s a strange character,” said the granny ironically. Herr Reithofer thought, “This strange character is probably also a shithead!”

“But it’s really nice of him to want to help Herr Reithofer,” said Swoboda softly, and flipped vacantly through a magazine.

“Sure it’s nice,” smirked Herr Reithofer, and suddenly a thought crossed his mind: “He’s got no idea whether or not I’ll also turn out to be a shithead! My goodness, I really am one!” And he kept thinking, which made him feel well in a melancholy way: “If all the shitheads went and helped each other out, then every shithead would be better off. Yeah, shitheads should help each other out more often—it’s just downright indecent not to help somebody when you can.”

“That man’s lying!” said the granny.

“No, he’s not!” Swoboda defended him, and grew fierce.

“We’ll see about that right now!” said Herr Reithofer and turned toward the strange character was once again walking up to the table with his magazine. “So listen, sir. I’m afraid I can’t turn into a woman, but I do know of one for your Councilor of Commerce, and a first-class seamstress at that! You’d be doing me personally a huge favor,” he stressed, and this was a lie.

Now, then, it’d be no trouble at all, the strange character cut him off. It would only cost him a phone call, given that the Councilor of Commerce just happened to be in Munich as of yesterday. And he rushed over to the telephone.

“Well, now, that’s one touching shithead,” thought Herr Reithofer, and Swoboda thought, reverently: “That’s an uncommon man and an even more uncommon artist.” But the granny said: “He’s lying.”

However, the granny turned out to be wrong. The uncommon man reappeared just a few minutes later, looking like he had won the World War. That stuff about the Councilor of Commerce was absolutely true, and in his flush of victory he found it hard to return to his seat straightaway. He was walking around the table and explaining to Herr Reithofer that his young lady could take up the post immediately, only thing was she’d have to report in at the hotel German Emperor at exactly seven thirty tomorrow morning. All she’d have to do would be to ask for the Herr Councilor of Commerce from Ulm and he’d bring her along. That is, he was going to return to his Ulm at eight o’clock.

And Herr Reithofer asked him how he could thank him, but the uncommon man just smiled: one hand basically washed the other, and perhaps someday Herr Reithofer would be in the position to procure him a job, were he only a masseuse and not a salesman. And he wouldn’t let him pay for the telephone call either. “It’s nice to make a phone call for someone else every once in a while,” he said.

“I don’t know how to sew,” Swoboda muttered, “I’ve pretty much forgotten how to do everything.” Even the granny was moved, but the most moved of all was the uncommon man himself.

CHAPTER 6

IT WAS ALREADY PAST CURFEW, AND THE Holzstrasse stood next to the livelier Müllerstrasse in silent serenity. That shithead would probably be wandering around here somewhere, thought Herr Reithofer. He was thinking logically.

He had been frantically searching for her for a while now, and it was almost one thirty. And then finally there she was, standing on the corner. She was conversing with a chauffeur who had a powerful effect on women. You could tell this just by looking at him, which is why Herr Reithofer waited until they had finished speaking.

And then he slowly approached her from behind, feeling so noble and good that it hurt him.

“Good evening, Fräulein!” he greeted her unexpectedly.

Anna looked back, recognized him and was so startled that she couldn’t utter a peep. Her reaction was, however, unwarranted, because he merely told her that he had found a respectable employment opportunity for her, the only thing was she’d have to take a ride to Ulm on the Danube tomorrow morning at eight with a real Councilor of Commerce, which would be a real lifesaver for her.

She was staring at him, and he had to repeat himself because she could not understand him. But then she cut him off touchily, saying he should go find somebody else to tell his mean jokes to; that she refused to tolerate this crude teasing and all this mockery.

But he would not let her out of his sight. Now he really felt bad for this shithead for not believing in the Councilor of Commerce.

She was muttering something about crudeness when suddenly she started to cry. He should just leave her in peace and quiet, she cried, she already had it bad enough as it is. And after all, nobody on earth would chase after her with a lifesaver after having just been taken advantage of. But Herr Reithofer kept silent. And now the shithead, too, stopped talking.

She had, you see, already started to believe that there was only evil in this world, but now she was experiencing an instance of the contrary, this being admittedly only a small instance, but nonetheless an indication of the possibility of human culture and civilization. Her face wore a different expression and she stopped crying.

“I’d never have thought it.” She smiled, and it hurt her to do so.

“You see, Fräulein,” said Herr Reithofer, “it’s possible to do things without being in love, basically out of human solidarity.”

Then he walked off.

And he had a pleasant feeling doing it, for now he could to some extent attest to the fact that he had helped out a shithead. Something along these lines:

Testimonial

I am hereby pleased to attest that the shithead, Joseph Reithofer, is an altruistic shithead. He’s a kind, good, and honest shithead.

Sgd. Joseph Reithofer

Shithead.

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