Death in Rome (17 page)

didn't I know? He was right: it was out of fear, out of desperation, because of the apparitions and terrible dreams, that I wrote music. I guessed, I asked questions, I didn't know the answer, I had no answer, I could give no answer; there was no answer. Music was an enigmatic construction to which there was no longer any access, or just a narrow gate that admits only a few people. Whoever sat inside couldn't communicate to those on the outside, and yet they felt that this enigmatic, invisible construction, built by magic formulae, was important to them. Music didn't exist in order to change people, but it was in touch with the equally mysterious force of time, and thus in time it might perhaps contribute to great changes, but what is a century compared to time, what is a millennium? We measure time from the point of view of our own fleeting lives, so we don't understand what time is. It's possible that it may be friendly, it may be kindlier than we thought, or again it could be a gorgon whose full terrifying visage we still have to see. But aside from time and music, Adolf affected me, because wasn't it my own idea too, that we, the sons, looking for different ways of living, should fight for them too, however hopeless it might appear? I wanted to be reconciled with Adolf.

But

Siegfried said: 'We'll lose to Dietrich. My brother Dietrich will always get the better of us. Even as a priest you'll lose. You'll lose, and then either you'll ally yourself with Dietrich as the representative of law and order, of the state and the strong hand—or you'll just lose. Anyway, I don't believe a single thing you've said! I don't believe in your faith in your dogma, and I don't believe in your faith in mankind. You've turned to God, you turned your coat because you needed a master, and you'll be one of those embittered and disappointed priests who lack faith. You'll seem like a perfect priest. But you'll suffer.' Adolf said: 'I don't know.'

I was ugly, as ugly as Caliban. There was no mirror to hand, no magic mirror; it would have shown me Caliban's face 'wound with adders'. I looked at Adolf's worn, threadbare cassock. I could picture his clod-hopping peasant boots under the table. Why did I torment him? Why did I discourage him? Because I'm discouraged myself, or because my own discouragement makes it easier for me to be an outsider, the Pan pipes for the swamp-dweller? Am I actually looking for a fatherland, or am I just appealing to humanity, like a kind of fog into which I can disappear? I love Rome because I'm a foreigner in Rome and perhaps I always want to remain an outsider, an agitated observer. But other people need to belong, and if you could have a fatherland with none of the yelling, the flags, the processions, the state violence, just minimal rules for all responsible citizens, neighbourliness, wise administration, a land free of duress and free of arrogance toward strangers and its own people, wouldn't that be a home for me? I'll never find such a place. I don't think it exists.

I handed Adolf my ticket for the concert. I told him he could go in his cassock, but I couldn't, I didn't have any tails. I said: 'But I don't suppose you will go.' He said: 'Yes. I will go.'

Laura of the charming smile was on her way to her cash-desk, and, being unable to count, she had miscalculated the time. The bar was still closed; the owner hadn't arrived yet to turn the key in the door, nor were the pretty waiters there in their purple tails, they were all still sitting at home with their families, helping their wives with the housework, playing with their children, and now, tired and unenthusiastic, they were just beginning to get ready to go to work, to the homosexuals from whom they made a living. Laura stood outside the door, looked around, smiled down the Via Veneto, and smiled at the large black automobile that silently drew up, as though sliding on invisible runners over invisible ice, she smiled to the driver, who leapt out, wasp-waisted, smooth, like clockwork, opened the back, clicked his heels together, and Laura bestowed her smile on Judejahn, whom she recognized as the non-homosexual man in dark glasses who had patronized the bar once before, out of ignorance of its clientele, and in a quiet hour. Judejahn had meant to look out for Laura, and, seeing her unexpectedly on the street outside the locked door, he realized what had happened, that she had made a mistake over the time, and he said in English that it was probably still too early, the door was still locked, he behaved as though it were a misfortune, he talked about the whisky that had lured him inside and Laura smiled, sent her beams through the tinted glasses, warmed his heart, thrilled his senses. And the smile embraced the large automobile, like all women she felt the power of the motor, the powerful panther-silent gliding of the conveyance was a sex symbol, gently flattering the owner of the vehicle, to whom one prostrates oneself womanishly, not because the owner is presumably a man of wealth, a good punter, but out of slave-girl instinct, because he is mighty, master of so many horsepower drawing the carriage of his life, and this one also disposed of a driver, who stood at frozen attention before the majesty of his master. What to do? Judejahn was going to suggest a visit to the confectioner's next door, he was hungry and Austerlitz's disgusting cups of milk had given him a craving for cream-puffs, and he imagined Laura's large eyes, her dreamy, lustful smile floating over compotes and tartlets in a spun-sugar atmosphere which he wanted to douse with cognac. But when he asked Laura, he got snarled up in his hesitant, stammering English, little Gottlieb hadn't done his homework, and since he saw her smiling at the car, he asked her to join him for a drive, and she allowed the ramrod-straight chauffeur to hold the door open for her, got in, and, such are women, the smile climbed into a cage.

They glided slowly along, invisible runners on invisible ice. Below them was the sparkling Underworld; raging demons, wicked warlocks, evil sprites, hell's beadles ground their teeth, raked invisible fires, bathed in flames, lustfully rubbed their prongs. And the automobile passed through the Porta Pinciana, they rolled into the grounds of the Villa Borghese, and the captive smile lavished itself on the plush interior, they were transported blissfully through avenues of green, she leaned back, and her companion in his dark glasses might be her King Farouk, her pipeline magnate, he had big hands, he was no homo
sexual.
And he saw her waist, he saw her throat, where he might hold her, he hated this life, he hated this type of woman, they were all right as booty, or in a brothel, you paid your money, you undressed or you didn't bother, you assuaged your hunger, breathed in woman smell overlaid by scent, but you remained aware of the carnality of the procedure, and for afters there was soapy water or a prophylactic injection from the regimental quack just in case, whereas this here was a freelance harlot, her smile suggested women's rights, and equal rights, human rights, faugh, he'd had that. He reached into his pants, this could lead to the enfeeblement of the male, loss of virility, this is the way defence secrets were betrayed, empires ruined, little Gottlieb knew all about that, and
Judejahn
felt a soft-rough, a rigid-smooth, bump in his pants, it slid into his hand like a mouse, and it was the suede pouch with Austerlitz's silencer pistol. They skated past some water, came to a temple standing by the water's edge. Was this the residence of the goddess of love? Did she live in the park? The day clouded over, the trees took on the blue colour of the Valley of Death, a blue that had frightened
Judejahn
on the aeroplane flying into Rome, the trusty German forest, silent as this automobile was the tread of jackboots on its mossy and needled floor, and one's comrade walked on ahead in the Black
Reichswehr
undergrowth, treachery treachery treachery cawed the rooks, one gripped one's pistol in both hands, one's comrade fell to the forest floor, treachery treachery treachery cawed the rooks, up into the tops of the knotty oaks, and on the heath there grows a flower fair, it is my maid with the nut-brown hair, homesick homesick homesick. The woman sitting beside him wasn't nut-brown, she was ebony-black, a southerner, perhaps a Jewess, most probably a Jewess, a succubus, a polluter of blood, who was laughing, with her mouth now red as blood, white as snow was her face, as white as snow, not quite, not yet, almost as white as the snow at home in the German forest, corpses were white as snow, this park was blue, the blue of the southern park, the agonising melancholy of the Roman trees, with their deathly blue, was insufferable to him. He was riding along the Devil's avenue. Abruptly he ordered the soldierly, erect, almost motionless chauffeur to drive them back to the Via Veneto, back to their starting-point, perhaps back to Eva. By now the bar doors were open, the pretty waiters in their pretty purple tails were flitting round the orphaned till.
Judejahn
wanted Laura out of the car, the chauffeur opened the door, stood at attention, but Laura was still hesitating. She smiled, slender waist, long neck, she smiled, black as ebony, red as blood, white as snow, smiled her bewitching smile expectantly now, and he arranged a rendezvous with her for the evening. Laura walked smiling to her cash-desk, just her walk appeased the anger of the owner. The poor child couldn't count, and her strange new friend seemed very promising to her.

Black-clad, cut-outs on a shadow stage, the sun fell harshly through the window, they stood and faced each other, two pallid figures, he in his black priest's garb, and she in her black mourning dress, and he was pale because he was fearfully excited to be setting foot in her room, while she was pale because the sight of him startled her. It tormented her to see him, to see him in the hated outfit of a power which, according to her, had shamefully joined forces with the Jewish underworld, overseas plutocrats and Bolshevik animals, to wreck the exalted dream of the Reich, of an Aryan future and German hegemony, perhaps destroying it for good. By now she was used to being confronted by betrayal brazenly not lowering its eyes. German women flaunted themselves shamelessly on the arm of Negroes, and traitors were rewarded with ministries. She was used to it now. She was used to weakness and greed in the words of German-minded people who reached accommodation with everything—spat out in disgust in private, but grew rich from change. But her son? Her son in the camp of the traitors, her son in the womanish robes of the papist enemies of the Reich, her son in cahoots with international conspiracies, fatherlandless as a Jew? It wasn't only a wound that hurt her to the quick, a brand in her heart, it was accusation and self-reproach. Where had the bad seed come from? Her family book had been scrupulously kept, there could be no questioning its Aryan purity. And yet she hadn't managed to prevent Adolf from defecting. She had put him in a Nazi educational establishment, and that hadn't kept him from defecting. The school had been blown apart, and he had defected, in the critical hour of need he had betrayed the work of both his parents. Traitors deserved to die. They were strung up on trees or lampposts. Their charge-sheet was hung round their necks. Should she not refuse to see Adolf? There was no bond between them any more, and yet he was her son, flesh of her flesh, now a stranger to her in his hypocrite's black, he had chained himself to the Cross, to the un-German creed from Judaea, there was a cross on his robe hanging from a chain which bound him, he came in enemy uniform, he was the opposite of the son she'd wished for, the continuation of her ancestral inheritance and its avenger, but he was her son, she had let him go out of her house at an early age so that he might mature into a man, and he had become a woman, she felt weak, she didn't show him the door. She asked disdainfully, 'What do you want?' And he, heart beating, his excitement making it difficult to speak, stammered, 'To see you,' as though he might simply pull up a chair and have a chat, each of them simply letting the other be, accepting the other for what he was, but she wasn't of a mind to offer him a chair, to accord him an hour at her mother's knee. She returned to the window, gazed out into the yard at the heap of empty bottles now glinting in the sun, flashing drunken greetings to her, and once more she heard the nigger songs of the kitchen staff, alien and offensive to her. 'Father's in Rome,' said Adolf. 'Then don't let him see you,' she murmured back, 'he never liked papists.' 'I have seen him,' he said. And then, clumsily, 'In prison.' The word tore her from her numbness. It was liberation, ennoblement, acquittal, the word spoke of heroic deeds and an heroic example. Judejahn was in prison, he had been arrested, the old shameful judgement was valid, it would be executed. Judejahn was going to Valhalla, and their marriage was rescued. 'Where is he?' she cried. And when he said he didn't know, she grabbed hold of him, tore at his loathsome robes, 'tell me, tell me', and he told her about the encounter in the dungeon, but left out Judejahn's availing himself of the hole in the rock where the lowest prisoners had been kept, and she, not understanding at first what he was talking about, what prison? what fortress? a papal fortress? the Pope had caught Judejahn? what were these caves Judejahn was descending into, going in and coming out again, at liberty, unmolested, a tourist? And when she did understand, vaguely understand, what had happened in the prison, then she felt deceived, sitting in her room mourning heroes, and she laughed, the Northern Erinys, and called them cissies, the pair of them, father and son, prison visitors, playing hide-and-seek in gaol. Gaols weren't there to be visited, people were condemned to gaol, they killed or were killed in gaol, now wasn't the time to visit the historic prisons of the city, a city Judejahn might have destroyed. 'He could have hanged your Pope too, and he should have blown up that fortress of his,' she screamed at him, as he stood trembling in front of her. 'He could have hanged the Pope, but he was too stupid or too craven, maybe he was already implicated in treason, and the Führer didn't know, the Führer was duped by everyone, he wasn't told that the Pope should have been hanged.' She was a Fury. Should he go down on his knees and pray? Should he pray that she be forgiven for her impious words? He said: 'Calm down, Mother,' and felt the feebleness of the words against her wild ranting. For a time he thought she was possessed by the Devil, but Adolf didn't have sufficient faith to believe in the Devil's actual existence, he doesn't exist, he told himself, and his mother wasn't obsessed by the Devil, but by a fiendish idea. How could he exorcize that idea, how could he free her of her obsession with it? He didn't know. He was helpless. He thought: Siegfried was right, there is no communication. He wanted to leave, he ought to leave, but he felt sorry for her. He felt that she was suffering. He sensed that she was being consumed by her own ideas, that she contained an inferno within her. She didn't need any devil. She was a devil unto herself, tormenting herself body and soul. He would pray for her, although at that moment he lacked faith.