Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (36 page)

Among the most extraordinary places in the world – said Atwo – are those Berlin courtyards where two, three or four buildings flash their rear ends at each other, and where, in square holes set in the middle of the walls, kitchen maids sit and sing. You can tell by the look of the red copper pots hung in the pantry how loud their clatter is. From far down below a man’s voice bawls up at one of the girls, or heavy wooden shoes go clip-clop back and forth across the cobblestones. Slowly. Heavily. Incessantly. Senselessly. For ever. Isn’t it so?

The kitchens and bedrooms look outwards and downwards on all this; they lie close together like love and digestion in the human anatomy. Floor upon floor, the conjugal beds are stacked up one on top of the other, since all the bedrooms occupy the same space in each building – window wall, bathroom wall and closet wall prescribe the placement of each bed
almost down to the half-yard. The dining rooms are likewise piled up floor on floor, as are the white-tiled baths and the balconies with their red awnings. Love, sleep, birth, digestion, unexpected reunions, troubled and restful nights are all vertically aligned in these buildings like the columns of sandwiches at a vending machine. In middle-class apartments like these your destiny is already waiting for you the moment you move in. You will admit that human freedom consists essentially of where and when we do what we do, for what we do is almost always the same – thus the sinister implications of one uniform blueprint for all. Once I climbed up on top of a cabinet just to make use of the vertical dimension, and I can assure you that the unpleasant conversation in which I was involved looked altogether different from that vantage point.

Atwo laughed at the memory and poured himself a drink; Aone thought about how they were at that very moment seated on a balcony with a red awning that belonged to his apartment, but he said nothing, knowing all too well what he might have remarked.

I am still perfectly willing to admit today, by the way – Atwo added of his own accord – that there is something awe-inspiring about such uniformity. And in the past this sense of vastness, of a wasteland, brought to mind a desert or an ocean; a Chicago slaughterhouse (as much as the image may turn my stomach) is after all quite different from a flower-pot! But the curious thing was that during the time I occupied that apartment, I kept thinking of my parents. You recall that I almost lost contact with them – but then all of a sudden this thought came to me out of nowhere: they gave you your life. And this ridiculous thought kept coming back again and again like a fly that refuses to be shooed away. There’s nothing more to be said about this sanctimonious notion ingrained in us in early childhood. But whenever I looked over my apartment, I would say to myself: there, now you’ve bought your life, for so and so many marks a month rent. And sometimes maybe I also said: now you’ve built up a life for yourself with your own two hands. My apartment served as some amalgamation of a warehouse, a life insurance policy and a source of pride. And it seemed so utterly
strange, such an inscrutable mystery, that there was something which had been given to me whether I had wanted it or not; and, moreover, that that something functioned as the very foundation of everything else. And I believe that that banal thought concealed a wealth of abnormality and unpredictability, all of which I had kept safely hidden from myself. And now comes the story of the nightingale.

It began on one evening much like any other. I’d stayed home, and after my wife had gone to bed, I sat myself down in the study; the only difference that night was that I didn’t reach for a book or anything else, but this too had happened before. After one o’clock the streets started getting quieter; conversations became a rarity; it is pleasant to follow the advent of an evening with your ear. At two o’clock all the clamour and laughter below had clearly tipped over into intoxication and lateness. I realized that I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what for. By three o’clock – it was May – the sky grew lighter; I felt my way through the dark apartment to the bedroom and lay down without a sound. I expected nothing more now but sleep, and that the next morning would bring a day like the one that had just passed. And soon I no longer knew whether I was awake or asleep.

In the space between the curtains and the blind a dark greenness gushed forth; thin bands of the white froth of morning seeped in between the slats. This might have been my last waking impression or a suspended dream vision. Then I was awakened by something drawing near; sounds were coming closer. Once, twice I sensed it in my sleep. Then they sat perched on the roof of the building next door and leapt into the air like dolphins. I could just as well have said, like balls of fire at a fireworks display, for the impression of fireworks lingered; in falling, they exploded softly against the window-panes and sank to the earth like great silver stars. Then I experienced a magical state; I lay in my bed like a statue on a sarcophagus cover, and I was awake, but not like during the day. It is very difficult to describe, but when I think back, it is as though something had turned me inside out; I was no longer a solid, but rather a something sunken in upon itself. And the air was
not empty, but of a consistency unknown to the daylight senses, a blackness I could see through, a blackness I could feel through, and of which I too was made. Time pulsed in quick little fever spasms. Why should something not happen now that normally never happens? It’s a nightingale singing outside! I said half aloud to myself.

Well, maybe there are more nightingales in Berlin than I thought, Atwo continued. At the time I believed that there were none in this stony preserve, and that this one must have flown to me from far away. To me! I felt it and sat up with a smile. A bird of paradise! So it does indeed exist! At such a moment, you see, it seems perfectly natural to believe in the supernatural; it is as if you’d spent your childhood in an enchanted kingdom. And I immediately decided: I’ll follow the nightingale. Farewell, my beloved, I thought – farewell, my beloved, my house, my city! … But before I had even got up out of bed, and before I had figured out whether to climb up to the nightingale on the rooftop, or to follow it on the street down below, the bird had gone silent and apparently flown away.

Now he’s singing from some other rooftop for the ears of another sleeper, Atwo mused. You’re probably thinking that this was the end of the story? But it was only the beginning, and I have no idea what end it will take!

I’d been abandoned, left behind with a heavy heart. That was no nightingale, it was a blackbird, I said to myself – just as you’d like to say to me right now. Everyone knows that such blackbirds imitate other birds. By this time I was wide awake and the silence bored me. I lit a candle and considered the woman who lay next to me. Her body had the colour of pale bricks. The white border of the blanket lay over her skin like a lip of snow. Wide shadow lines of mysterious derivation ringed her body – mysterious even though they must of course have had something to do with the candle and the position of my arms. So what, I thought, so what if it really was only a blackbird! The very fact that an ordinary blackbird could have such a crazy effect on me: that makes the whole thing all the more extraordinary! For, as you well know, while a single disappointment may elicit tears, a repeated disappointment will evoke a smile. And meanwhile I
kept looking at my wife. This was all somehow connected, but I didn’t know how. For years I’ve loved you – I thought to myself – like nothing else in this world, and now you lie there like a burnt-out husk of love. You’re a stranger to me now, and I’ve arrived at the other end of love. Had I grown tired of her? I can’t remember ever having felt sated. Let me put it like this: it was as if a feeling could drill its way through the heart as though through a mountain, and find another world on the other side, a world with the same valley, the same houses and the same little bridge. In all honesty, I simply had no idea what was happening. And I still don’t understand it today. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to tell you this story in connection with two others that happened afterwards. I can only tell you how I saw it during the experience: as a signal from afar – so it seemed to me at the time.

I laid my head beside her body that slept on unawares, and took no part in all this. Then her bosom seemed to rise and fall more strenuously than before, and the walls of the room lapped up against this sleeping form like waves against a ship far out at sea. I would probably never have been able to bring myself to say goodbye; but if I were to slip away right now, I told myself, then I’d remain the little lost boat, past which a great sturdy ship would sail unnoticing. I kissed her sleeping form, she didn’t feel it. I whispered something in her ear, and maybe I did it so quietly that she wouldn’t hear it. Then I ridiculed myself and sneered at the very thought of the nightingale; but quietly nonetheless I got dressed. I think that I cried, but I really did leave. I felt giddy, light-hearted, even though I tried to tell myself that no decent human being would do such a thing; I remember that I was like a drunkard rebuking the pavement beneath his feet to reassure himself that he’s sober.

Of course, I often thought of returning; at times I would have liked to cross half the world to get back to her, but I never did. She had become untouchable to me; in short – I don’t know if you understand – he who has committed an injustice and feels it down to the bone, can no longer set it right. I am not, by the way, asking for absolution. I just want to tell you my stories to find out if they ring true. For years I haven’t been
able to tell them to anyone, and had I heard myself talking to myself, I would quite frankly have questioned my sanity.

Please be assured, then, that my reason is still the equal of your enlightened mind.

Two years later, I found myself in a tight spot, at the dead angle of a battle in the South Tyrol, a line that wound its way from the bloody trenches of the Cima di Vezzena to Lake Caldonazzo. There, like a wave of sunshine, the battle line dived deep into the valley, skirting two hills with beautiful names, and surfaced again on the other side, only to lose itself in the stillness of the mountains. It was October; the thinly manned trenches were covered with leaves, the lake shimmered a silent blue, the hills lay there like huge withered wreaths – like funeral wreaths, I often thought to myself without even a shudder of fear. Halting and divided, the valley spilt around them; but beyond the edge of our occupied zone, it fled such sweet diffusion and drove like the blast of a trombone: brown, broad and heroic out into the hostile distance.

At night, we pushed ahead to an advanced position, so prone now in the valley that they could have wiped us out with an avalanche of stones from above; but instead, they slowly roasted us on steady artillery fire. The morning after such a night all our faces had a strange expression that took hours to wear off: our eyes were enlarged, and our heads tilted every way on the multitude of shoulders, like a lawn that had just been trampled on. Yet on every one of those nights I poked my head up over the edge of the trench many times, and cautiously turned to look back over my shoulder like a lover; and I saw the Brenta Mountains light blue, as if formed out of stiff-pleated glass, silhouetted against the night sky. And on such nights the stars were like silver foil cut-outs glimmering, fat as glazed biscuits; and the sky stayed blue all night; and the thin, virginal crescent moon lay on her back, now silvery, now golden, basking in the splendour. You must try to imagine just how beautiful it was; for such beauty exists only in the face of danger. And then sometimes I could stand it no longer and,
giddy, with joy and longing, I crept out for a little night stroll around, all the way to the golden-green blackness of the trees, so enchantingly colourful and black, the like of which you’ve never seen.

But things were different during the day; the atmosphere was so easy-going that you could have gone horseback riding around the main camp. It’s only when you have the time to sit back and think and to feel terror that you first learn the true meaning of danger. Every day claims its victims, a regular weekly average of so and so many out of a hundred, and already the divisional general staff officers are predicting the results as impersonally as an insurance company. You do it too, by the way. Instinctively you know the odds and feel insured, although not exactly under the best of terms. It is a function of the curious calm that you feel, living under constant crossfire. Let me add the following, though, so that you don’t paint a false picture of my circumstances. It does indeed happen that you suddenly feel driven to search for a particular familiar face, one that you remember seeing several days ago; but it’s not there any more. A face like that can upset you more than it should, and hang for a long time in the air like a candle’s afterglow. And so your fear of death has diminished, though you are far more susceptible to all sorts of strange upsets. It is as if the fear of one’s demise, which evidently lies on top of man for ever like a stone, were suddenly to have been rolled back, and in the uncertain proximity of death an unaccountable inner freedom blossoms forth.

Once during that time an enemy plane appeared in the sky over our quiet encampment. This did not happen often, for the mountains with their narrow gaps between fortified peaks could only be hazarded at high altitudes. We stood at that very moment on the summit of one of those funereal hills, and all of a sudden a machine-gun barrage spotted the sky with little white clouds of shrapnel, like a nimble powder puff. It was a cheerful sight, almost endearing. And, to top it off, the sun shone through the tricoloured wings of the plane as it flew high overhead, as though through a stained-glass church window, or through coloured crêpe paper. The only missing ingredient was some music by Mozart. I couldn’t help thinking, by the way,
that we stood around like a crowd of spectators at the races, placing our bets. And one of us even said: better take cover! But nobody, it seems, was in the mood to dive like a field mouse into a hole. At that instant I heard a distant ringing drawing closer to my ecstatically upturned face. Of course, it could also have happened the other way round – that I first heard the ringing and only then became conscious of the impending danger; but I knew immediately: it’s an aerial dart. These were pointed iron rods no thicker than a pencil lead that planes dropped from above in those days. And if they struck you in the skull, they came out through the soles of your feet, but they didn’t hit very often, and so were soon discarded. And though this was my first aerial dart – bombs and machine-gun fire sound altogether different – I knew right away what it was. I was excited, and a second later I already felt that strange, unlikely intuition: it’s going to strike!