Imperium (17 page)

Sl
ü
tter has to cough and looks at his hands. Silence. No, he will not do it. That, he says, is a guilt he does not want to live with. Hahl, who lights a cigarette and, suggesting pensiveness, watches the smoke from the burning orange tip curl quietly upward for a while, begins his disquisition, yes, he can see that the feeling of guilt has had its source in the civilizing of the man who, under pressure to live in an organized society, directs his aggressive instinct inward, ergo against himself. Engelhardt presumably thinks similarly. But nonetheless and in the end: this is a colony. And the concept of a colony comprises the terms
planting
,
processing
,
settling
,
developing
,
making profitable
, indeed,
making useful
. Those are the systems with which he is working. His office, which assigns him, above all, to represent the interests of the German people, empowers him to exercise legal, reasonable force to sustain the colony. If his ambit is touched, as in this case, by anarchy and lunacy, however, then he must act, even take extreme measures; that is, so to speak, his categorical imperative (that everything over on Kabakon is now far worse than he describes lies beyond the faculties of his imagination).

Sl
ü
tter, who does not read philosophers, says no a second time, takes his captain’s hat, and rises to leave. Does he at least own a revolver? Hahl wants to know. Yes, quite, down on the
Jeddah
he keeps one. And Hahl, who would not occupy his post if he could not act with an expediency bordering on cruelty, offers the seaman a brief farewell with a nod, the latter having already stepped out onto the veranda, at which point the governor conjures from his jacket pocket a letter from which it emerges that the young girl Pandora, only daughter of Frederic Thesiger, Viscount Chelmsford, governor of New South Wales, who has fled from a boarding school in Sydney, is to be detained in Rabaul until the pertinent representatives of His Britannic Majesty George have arrived here, collected her, and conveyed her back to Australia. Sl
ü
tter winces, imperceptibly, sleepwalks back into the parlor, sits down again, shakes his head, surrenders; it is enough. Hahl, who holds out the letter to him and goes over to the sideboard to pour them both a glass of whiskey, has won.

XII

In the evening, L
ü
tzow sits somewhat off to the side on the grassy knoll next to the governor’s residence. Chains of pretty Chinese lanterns are hanging between the tops of the palms, fireflies are rising from the bushes, dancing. A swarm of thousands upon thousands of bats flies soundlessly inland to spend the night sleeping deep in the jungle. The sun has already set, but off behind the volcano, the distant glow of gently fading day can still be discerned. Captain Sl
ü
tter, wearing his white uniform, sits on the veranda smoking, lost in thought; his cruel mission overwhelms him. Beside him, Pandora, whose feet rest in dainty patent-leather shoes (where on earth did she get them?) and don’t quite reach the floor, is devouring a large plate of ginger cookies. On the lawn, the good Dr. Wind sings “Che gelida manina” from
La Boh
è
me
to an amused semicircle of planters. Hahl is for some reason not present; liveried Chinese pass around glasses with sugary punch, and L
ü
tzow smokes his first cigarette in a year, which tastes fantastic, a German brand. With his fingertip, he removes a speck of tobacco from his lower lip and is looking out onto the darkening bay when a woman of a certain age saunters up to him and with casual elegance declares without introducing herself that while she is relieved L
ü
tzow is now no longer over with that naked man, it seems he needed that time away, he looks to have regained his health, the health of his soul.

L
ü
tzow, whose recollections of what had then seemed to him horrific musical performances in the German Club have faded and are now not only coated in the veneer of many months on Kabakon, but in fact have passed completely out of his mind due to the confusing relocation of the capital to Rabaul, turns to Queen Emma and gazes at a dark, pleasant, open face whose mouth, slightly agape, reveals two immaculate rows of teeth, which in turn are separated by the barely visible tip of her tongue. He is struck as if by an electric shock. With his slender hands he clasps her waist, draws her close to him in a rather manly way, and kisses her with dark red, ecstatic abandon.

Meanwhile, Engelhardt, under cover of incipient darkness over on Kabakon, has begun excavating twenty-foot-deep holes with his axe (some on the beach, others deep in the jungle), to an obscure purpose known only to himself. He covers these over with branches and palm fronds as soon as the exhausting work is completed, as if he plans to blanket the island with man-traps. L
ü
tzow leads Emma down to the deserted beach coated by the pallid light of the now-risen full moon. Soon they sink to the ground, and the aura of their suppleness falters, movements become automated, which, when observed from a distance, approximate the rhythm of an absurd man-machine; they seem like half-naked mannequins, pursuing a spastic dance while lying intertwined on the ground. The moon shines on the two bouncing orbs of L
ü
tzow’s blond-haired buttocks raised aloft; now and again the sound of moaning drifts over toward the governor’s residence, even though there is no wind. A few nautical miles northward, a naked, limping Engelhardt roams through the jungle of his island under the same full moon, the axe in his raised hands.

The following day, L
ü
tzow and Emma decide not only to leave Rabaul together, but also to get married as quickly as possible. A few suitcases are hurriedly packed, the double doors to Villa Gunantambu bolted with a large padlock, and while the members of the German Club (with the women leading the way) meet for a kind of spontaneous, extraordinary plenary assembly, the sole aim of which is to heap as much ridicule as possible upon Queen Emma and her musician, to blanket both with the filth of their malevolent
ressentiments
, the pair walk over to the governor’s residence, followed by a throng of black porters, to ask Hahl to marry them then and there. Emma is wearing her much-used wedding gown, which hasn’t been a pristine white for years now.

Hahl, who has been quite unhappily in love with Emma for over a decade, though no one would remotely suspect it, has of course already heard about the affair. From time to time, it seems to him as if reality, as tenuous as it already is, is slipping away from him: such is the case now as the two stand before him smiling dreamily, and he, a short time ago still permitting himself pangs of conscience about having ordered a murder, which was perhaps dreadfully cowardly after all, summons to his face a diplomatic, if not to say fake smile, conveys his best wishes to both, and asks L
ü
tzow with a wink if he has indeed thought this over well. L
ü
tzow, as if he could already see the immediate future, declaims with a handsome grin:
Yet drunken the singer, not heeding the warning, back into the maelstrom turns now his gaze.

A tie is located quickly; laughing, Hahl lends one of his, yes, in this he is unprincipled and bighearted, especially as he is so happy that L
ü
tzow has evidently landed back in civilization again; no, no, he does not intend to marry them—an excuse is found just as fast as the tie is lent—he cannot find his pince-nez, they ought to go on without him, the youngsters (Emma is long past fifty), Sl
ü
tter is a captain, after all, he, too, has the right to officiate, shoo, down to the jetty on the shore, he will follow presently, then he’ll down a glass of spumante to their health, better yet two or three, haha. And Hahl, who has seen Emma marry all too often already, of course does not follow, but observes them both as they coo their way down to the
Jeddah
, dolefully opens the door to his study (there, behind glass, in a mahogany frame, hangs the ubiquitous reproduction of B
ö
cklin’s
Isle of the Dead
), slams the door behind him with a crash, sits down behind the desk, buries his gubernatorial face in those manly, suntanned paws, and weeps with a lack of restraint that surprises him most of all.

Down on the quay, euphoric, the two ask Captain Sl
ü
tter to marry them aboard the
Jeddah
. He clears his throat, scratches at his chin, shifts his weight from one leg to another, coughs, and then does agree after all, although he—this, please, they ought to note—has no experience whatsoever in the area of wedding ceremonies. The Maori Apirana slips into one of Sl
ü
tter’s no longer quite so fresh white shirts and, mildly amusing, this, incorrectly hoists the Imperial flag to the jibboom. Then he shakes a bottle of champagne, grinning (as always, November has disappeared into the stokehold, Pandora somewhere onshore). Emma chews on a caramel and looks ten, oh, fine,
fifteen
years younger.

L
ü
tzow himself, in his prime, a touch too sure of himself, sparkles with electrical energy. It is quite clear and obvious, he remarks, that he has missed sophistication, the ritual of civilization, the crystal glasses, the creased white trousers, not so much as a thought for Kabakon, enough of that, it was an experiment, indeed a successful one, he can endure almost a year of asceticism, his various ailments are healed, but now back to Europe, to the Old World, whose complex attitudes are indeed quite conducive to locating oneself inside a structure into which one was born—of what use to anyone is escape if one does not return to apply what has been learned and experienced?

Give me your hand, darling. Away, far away. To Baden-Baden, Montecatini Terme,
É
vian-les-Bains—Queen of the Islands, we will visit Franz Liszt, Debussy in the summery freshness of France, then Berlin, Budapest, and the golden-hued opera houses of our ancient, ancient continent. We will buy an automobile, race toward Monaco with ecstatic, smooth speed, a tanned, unconquerable pair of lions, throw a thousand, nay, ten thousand marks on red, leave the winnings there so they will double and double again, then lobster thermidor, iced Pouilly-Fuiss
é
, afterward an endless, vertiginous roundelay of strawberries, a whirling elfin dance under a Mediterranean half-moon.

Emma whispers her
I do
, L
ü
tzow of course does, too, Captain Sl
ü
tter utters a few words he’s half invented, half cobbled together, they are now man and wife, a champagne cork flies heavenward with a vehement pop. Apirana, his face, tattooed in concentric circles, hilariously wetted by the effervescent wine, fills up the readied glasses (his own fullest of all), empties his in one gulp, and, lured out of the reserved elegance of his people by the lightning-quick effect of the wine on his Maori cerebral cortex, he who has never drunk before, lovingly throws his arms around L
ü
tzow, Emma, Sl
ü
tter.

This morning in Rabaul, the old
Prinz Waldemar
arrived as well. She is now anchoring, snow-white, stately, and somewhat piqued, directly next to what might be described as an extremely unattractive
Jeddah
, whose external appearance has not been particularly enhanced by the storm it sailed through in the Solomon Sea. People look over anyway, of course, at the captain and the bride and groom, wave hello, and L
ü
tzow in turn dashes toward the bulwark of the
Jeddah
in high spirits and, full of joyful anticipation of the elegant first-class salon of the
Waldemar
(for he has really had enough of sand fleas and discussions in the nude), climbs atop it quite recklessly, so as to leap over in a single bound from there onto the Imperial mail ship, all the while balancing two full champagne glasses like some comedic headwaiter and looking back toward the
Jeddah
, a witty remark, a burning cigarette dangling from his lips.

The sole of his shoe (which his feet are not used to wearing anymore) glances off the slippery outer hull of the
Waldemar
, he tries to reach the ship’s rail, snatching, misses it, and now both legs are pulled upward, as if they were each hanging from two threads attached to the sky, he performs a salto (which here actually deserves its epithet
mortale
), then plummets headfirst into the harbor basin, into the water between the two ships, whose bilges, thanks to an unfortunately coursing wave or current, are drawing ever nearer to one another like two iron whales—and he is squashed by them. Not just legs and arms are pulped, but the whole L
ü
tzow.

After horrified cries, a red-striped life preserver is thrown down from the
Prinz Waldemar
, but it doesn’t even make it to the surface of the water; instead, it gets stuck, futilely jammed between the two ships like a chewy bonbon between the tongue and the palate of a disinterested giant.

Emma, poised on the
Jeddah
in a yellowed wedding dress, not only witnesses the incident, but more or less has it imprinted in slow motion onto her retina, image by tumbling image; she sinks down on one knee in shock, as if in sudden prayer. Everything has happened so horribly fast. She raises a little embroidered linen cloth to the place on her upper lip where she has bitten herself, two tears well up, one each in her left and right eyes, the batiste is marked by a circular red stain. Sl
ü
tter gently takes hold of her arm, lifting her up. She stands, fending off his hands, no shrieking, no further tears. Apirana’s visage is a painted rock.

XIII

It seems to Sl
ü
tter, who is sailing over to Kabakon to fulfill his murderous mission, as if Engelhardt were already expecting him, as if the former knew about the approaching executioner, as if Sl
ü
tter were emitting a vibrating, throbbing force field. He has concluded that he will gird himself with a singular pitilessness, not in the least suspecting the extent to which Engelhardt has receded from the community of man and how easy it will be for him, on the other hand, to pull the revolver’s trigger.