The Hothouse (15 page)

Keetenheuve wanted to get up. He wanted to address them. He wanted to persuade them, and perhaps he only wanted to provoke them, because he no longer believed he was capable of persuading them. He wished for new architects, young and enthusiastic master builders, to draw up new plans, a mighty construction, to transform the ugly landscape of the slag heaps, the vomit of the pits, the waste products of industry, the rubble and landfills into a single beaming sparkling edifice, which would get rid of all the pettiness of the suburban settlements, their pokiness, their poverty, their pathetic mania for ownership, which was encouraged as a way of overcoming social envy, the woman's enslavement to housework, the man's enslavement to the family. He wanted to tell them about his tower, and the thousand ingenious and comfortably equipped apartments of explicit solitude and proudly borne despair that it would contain. Keetenheuve wanted to erect the profane monastery, with hermits' cells for the masses. He saw the people, and he saw them clinging to things in which they had long ceased to believe. One of their illusions was family happiness. But even Korodin dreaded the drive back (not to mention Heineweg and Bierbohm, who had three-room apartments stuffed full of family and junk), home to his stately inherited home, home to the soirées, the feebleminded and enervating orgies of falsehood that his wife, bitten by some imp, put on to bore him, home to the self-absorption of his half-grown children, who tormented and appalled him, pampered savages, confronting him with their cold pitiless faces, features behind which lurked greed, dirt, and loathing, and where even his celebrated paintings, his exorbitantly insured Dutch, disappointed him, their landscapes with placid bullocks on juicy pastures, their polished gleaming interiors, their winter scenes with ice-skating, fog and frozen mill wheels, the sight of them made him freeze too, and so he chose to occupy himself with politics (in the sensible belief that he needed to do something, seeing as his work had been taken from him, the mines and factories were ruled by managers now who knew how to deal with the work force, and how to get the best out of the brutes, Korodin didn't know) or to sit around anxiously in churches, calling on the bishop, he spent time with the likes of Keetenheuve, and he enjoyed walking in cemeteries at night. They wouldn't understand Keetenheuve. They would think his tower was a tower of Babel. He didn't speak. Korodin looked up at him encouragingly one last time, disappointed by his silence, and Heineweg and Bierbohm looked at him again, they too were disappointed and reproachful, and they wondered what had happened to him, a wreck, a man with heart trouble, what a shocking transformation, it was as though the work in parliament had robbed him of his strength, and they remembered the younger Keetenheuve, who, like them, had eagerly and keenly done the needful, who had helped them feed and clothe the victims of the horrible war, and find them somewhere to live, and give them new hope—well, that was once, and so they decided to have the calculations gone over again, to send the plans back to the experts for one last look, and Heineweg said to conclude, with a mild glance at Keetenheuve: "I think we've made a bit of headway today" Keetenheuve walked through the passageways of the parliament building, up some steps to his office, from time to time he encountered filing clerks who looked like ghosts. The typists had already gone home. Only a few eager beavers were still creeping around the building. Keetenheuve thought: the labyrinth is empty, Minos's bull is trotting among the adoring population, while Theseus wanders through the maze for ever. His desk looked just the way he had left it. The piece of paper from the agency that Dana had passed on to him was lying openly on top of the delegate's correspondence, on top of the delegate's scribbled rendition of Baudelaire's "
Beau
navire
." Guatemala or no—that was the question. The interview quotes from the generals on the Conseil Supérieur des Forces Armées stood between him and Guatemala. If Keetenheuve took up Dana's suggestion and brought up the interview in the plenary session tomorrow, then he wouldn't be able to retire any more, because they would shoot him down in flames here instead, and not throw him the sop of Guatemala. It took cunning to hold out that particular morsel to him. Not that it was an especially appetizing bit! Guatemala—who bade each other good night there?

Foxes?
{16}
—You got them on the Rhine. Guatemala meant peace, Guatemala meant oblivion, Guatemala meant death. And whoever's idea it was knew that, he knew that was what would tempt him, peace and oblivion and death. Otherwise they could have kept The Hague open for him, Brussels, Copenhagen, maybe Athens, he was probably worth that much; but Guatemala, that meant the veranda in the baking sun, the square with the dusty palms, that was the slow and inevitable moidering away. They had his measure! Knurrewahn, if it had been him in power, would have offered him Paris, to get rid of him. Knurrewahn had no idea. Paris meant continuing to blunder around and remaining a player; Guatemala was dissolution, a cynical surrender to death. It was like pulling your pants down for Mr. Death—a comparison that Frost-Forestier would have appreciated. A rainbow had appeared over the Rhine. Its arc ran from Godesberg, from Mehlem, from the American hive, across to Beuel, where it disappeared next to the bridge, behind a wall on which was written
Rheinlust.
The rainbow was like a heavenly ladder going up and down, spanning the river, and it was easy to imagine that angels were crossing it, and that God was at hand. Did the rainbow signify conciliation, did it signify peace, was it a token of friendliness? The President in his presidential palace must be able to see it, the friendly arch of peace from Godesberg to Beuel, maybe the President was standing out on his flowered terrace, gazing across the river, staring into the evening air, which was still now as an old painting, and maybe the President felt sad and didn't know why,
{17}
or the President felt disappointed and didn't know why either. And Keetenheuve, standing by the window, the window of his office in the parliament building, invented a character whom he called Musaeus, who was the butler of the President. It was perfectly possible that the President didn't have a butler, but Keetenheuve endowed him with one by the name of Musaeus, and Musaeus resembled the President. He was the same age as the President, he looked like the President, and he thought he was the President. His work left him with enough time to imagine it. Musaeus was a trained barber, and had "gone to Court," he talked about it sometimes, that was something he didn't forget, in his early years he had "gone to Court" in a tailcoat, to shave the young Prince, and while he lathered him up, he had spoken to him boldly about the plight of the common people, and after the Prince abdicated in 1918, Musaeus hadn't wanted to shave anyone else, and he became an usher in the Office of the Minister President, and then he entered the service of Hindenburg, and then he showed some character and refused to serve the guy from Braunau. He got through the dictatorship and the war years, and then the new state remembered him, and appointed him butler to the President. Well and good; but he was confused, was Musaeus. He read too much Goethe, which he borrowed from the President's library in the sumptuous Sophien Edition, and in the evening, when the rainbow spanned the banks of the Rhine, Musaeus stood by the rose-covered balustrade, thought he was the President, looked far into the countryside, and rejoiced that everything in the Pedagogic Academy at his feet was coming up roses. But somewhere in his heart he felt a twinge, he felt as though he'd forgotten something that had once been his in the days when he'd "gone to Court," the voice of the people, the whisper of the people, the unmeaningful monotonous murmur that he had sloshed around the jaws of the young Prince along with the shaving foam, now he could no longer hear it, and it bothered him that it wasn't there. Musaeus wanted to be good, he wanted to be a good father to the country, maybe back then he had even wanted to train the Prince to become a good father to his country, but the Prince hadn't been in power for very long, and now it was Musaeus' turn, and unfortunately he had forgotten his educational principles for young princes. Musaeus wasn't able to govern properly, they were dragging him into horse trading, he thought crossly, and the leading statesman, Musaeus thought that evening, he was feeding Musaeus too well, and making him fat and deaf and sluggish, till he finally couldn't hear the whisper of the people or, worse, what he was hearing was a confected murmur, recorded in a record factory, who could tell, Musaeus couldn't feel the difference any more, previously he had, and then he decided to go on a diet, cut down on food, cut down on drink. For three days he didn't eat, good old Musaeus, for three days he didn't drink, but then—the job was too cushy, and the kitchen and cellar were too good, Musaeus ate a little chop and he drank a little claret, and so he appeased and mollified his twinge of anxiety. Keetenheuve turned down Guatemala. He turned down the Spanish colonial death veranda. There were terraces on the Rhine as well. He was determined not to let them get rid of him. He would remain. He would remain at his desk, he would remain in parliament; he wouldn't scale the barricades, but he would scale the rostrum. He would speak with holy rage against the policies of the government. The end justified the means. The end was peace. The end was a friendlier planet. Wasn't that an end worth pursuing? Perhaps he would get there. He stopped planning his speech. He would speak without a script, with passion and zeal. Keetenheuve
retired ambassador orator tribune of the people
was one of the last to leave the Bundeshaus that day. A guard had to unlock the door to let him out. For a while Keetenheuve walked with light feet into the evening. What had he left behind him? The unfinished translation of a poem, a deskful of unanswered letters, the beginnings of a speech,
and with him went the new era

Before long, he noticed he was sweating. The evening was still sticky, even with the rainbow up there. There was a stench of sewage. Fragrance of roses wafted from the gardens. A lawn mower clattered over the carpet of grass. Trim dogs sauntered down the avenue. The great diplomatic averter of the worst, his little twerpish ladies' umbrella dangling coquettishly from his limp wrist, was taking his evening turn, excogitating a new chapter in his lucrative memoirs, while other extras on the political stage and honest balladeers strolled proprietorially about. Keetenheuve greeted the averter, whom he didn't know, and the great memoirist acknowledged him, flattered. "Rumbled! Rumbled!" Keetenheuve felt like calling after him, and tapping him on the shoulder. Bismarck already had known the type: "Every politician is burdened with a mortgage to vanity." They were vain, they were all of them vain, ministers, officials, diplomats, MPs, and even the porter who unlocked the door of the parliament building was vain because he unlocked the door of the parliament building, because he belonged to the government, and because he occasionally got his name in the paper, when a journalist wanted to prove he had really been inside the ministry and had seen the porter. They all thought of themselves as historic personages, as public figures, just because they had an office, because their mug shots appeared in the papers, because papers need fresh faces, because their names went out on air, because radio stations also needed their daily bundle of hay, and then the wives saw their great husbands or their little lovers waving enraptured from the cinema screen, and standing with an appealing little grin they had copied off the Americans, who didn't scruple to cosy up to photographers like models. And while the world might not think all that much of its official historic figures, it did keep brandishing them about, to prove that the stock of vacuity and horror was not exhausted, and that history was still being made. Why was there history? And if it was a necessary thing, a necessary evil, why so much clucking over no eggs? The minister is visiting Paris. Okay. What to do? He's being received by his opposite number. Well, isn't that nice. The ministers will breakfast together. How lovely Lovely. Hope they had good weather. The ministers will retire for bilateral talks. Excellent! Then what? They say goodbye. Yes, and then? One minister will accompany the other to the airport or the railway station. Yes, but then what happens? Nothing. The minister will fly home, and his opposite number promises to visit him soon. And the whole thing, station, airport, breakfast, handshake makes banner headlines in newspapers, is shown in cinema news-reels, and broadcast into sitting rooms all over—what's it all been in aid of? No one could say. Go to Paris quietly, why can't you!! Have yourselves a good time. It would be so much better for all concerned. Can't we forget all about them for a year? So we don't recognize their faces, don't remember their names. Maybe legends will form around them.
Keetenheuve hero of legend.
It was his world, and he was thinking it to bits, because how was he going to become a minister if he didn't use all the tools of propaganda to try to persuade the world that it needed ministers?
Keetenheuve minister burdened with Bismarck's mortgage to vanity
—he was sweating a lot. He was bathed in it. Everything nettled him. His shirt clung to him. He felt hemmed in and oppressed. He put his hand inside his shirt, laid it on his skin, felt the hot stubbly hair,
Keetenheuve no stripling
,
Keetenheuve a male of the species
,
a buck
,
aromatic
,
hairy chest
,
covered by his clothes
,
covered by civilization
,
domesticated animal
,
no evidence of buck
—and underneath there was the pounding heart, the little pump that was struggling to cope. He had wanted to oppose them: his heart had beat joyfully. He had met them (and himself): his heart beat irregularly, timidly, he panted for breath like a hunted animal. Was he afraid? He wasn't afraid. But he was like a swimmer, swimming against a strong current and knowing he won't make it, he will be carried away on the current, he makes no headway, the effort is pointless, and it would be easier to let himself drift, be lulled into death.