Death in Rome (8 page)

Kürenberg
was still looking down into the street, thinking: One could tell their future. He had met analysts, sociologists, economic planners, atom-splitters, international lawyers, politicians and PR men. They were a devilish breed. The devilish breed made up his audience. They went to his concerts. He shut the window and asked Siegfried, 'Do you remember Augustine's saying about music, that it was what great men gave themselves over to when their day's work was done, to refashion their souls?' Siegfried didn't remember. He hadn't read Augustine. He was an ignoramus. There was so much that he didn't know. He blushed. Are they great, the men I know?
Kürenberg
asked himself. And if they aren't, where are the truly great men? And do they have souls that can be refashioned by music in the evening? Did Augustine know great men? And did those whom he thought to be great men think him one? So many questions!
Kürenberg
had a high opinion of Siegfried's work. He looked to him for surprise, for a wholly new language. It might sound horrible to the generality which lagged behind the times; but it would carry a new message. A new message for the few who were capable of hearing it. Were those the great men Augustine had in mind? Man wants to know, even if knowledge makes him unhappy.
Kürenberg
smiled. But he spoke seriously: 'I don't know who you compose for. But I believe your music has a purpose in the world. Ignorant people may whistle when they hear it. Don't let that put you off. Never try to satisfy people's wishes. Disappoint the season-ticket holder. But disappoint him with humility, not with arrogance. I'm not advising you to climb the ivory tower. For heaven's sake, don't live for your art! Go out on the street. Listen. Remain alone. You're lucky to be lonely. When you're on the street, stay as lonely as you might be in the isolation of a lab. Experiment with everything, all the splendour and grime of our world, with humiliation and greatness—maybe you'll find a new sound!'

And Siegfried thought of voices, of the voices of the street, he thought of the voices of vulgarity, of fear, of torment, of greed, of love, goodness and prayer, he thought of the sound of evil, the whisper of unchastity and the shout of crime. And he thought: Tomorrow he will humble me, come to me with his laws of harmony and his schoolmasterly strictness, celebrated
chef d'orchestre
that he is, an exact reader of a score, a gardener with pruning shears, while I'm all weeds and wilderness. And
Kürenberg
said, as though he read Siegfried's mind: 'I believe in our collaboration. There are contradictions in me and in you that don't contradict each other.' And the life into which they had been pitched was contradictory, and they contradicted their kind.

Judejahn had felt himself under observation, and had withdrawn. He retreated, with his angular skull between his hunched shoulders—retreat or tactical withdrawal, the way a patrol between the lines in no man's land retreats or withdraws when they feel they've been spotted; no shots are fired, no flares light the night sky, fate hangs in the balance, but they withdraw, creep back through barbed wire and vegetation, back to their own position, and conclude for the moment that the enemy position is impregnable. And the murderer too, the hunted criminal, presses back into the shadows, the jungle, the city, when he senses the bloodhounds are near by, when he knows he's in the policeman's field of vision. Likewise the sinner flees the eye of the Lord. But what of the godless man who doesn't know himself to be a sinner, where does he turn? Straight past God, and into the desert! Judejahn didn't know who was watching him. He saw no spies. There was only a priest in the lobby—Rome was crawling with religious brethren—standing strangely transfixed and staring like Judejahn through the glazed double door at the animated company sitting at the table, drinking and talking. It was a German
Stammtisch
, a table established in the German way but transported provisionally to a southern latitude; and, objectively speaking, there was only the wood and glass of the double door to separate Judejahn and his brother-in-law, Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, but he had remained seated: whether he was holding forth here or in front of the town council at home, he had remained seated, whereas Judejahn had strode boldly on, boldly and blindly on with the watchword that God is dead. He had gone further than the burghers in the hall, but it was they who had made it possible for him to go so far. They had underwritten his wanderings with their lives. They had invoked blood, they had summoned him, exhorted him, the world will be won by the sword, they had made speeches, there was no death to compare with death in battle, they had given him his first uniform, and had cowered before the new uniform he had made for himself, they had praised his every action, they had held him up as an example to their children, they had summoned the 'Reich' into being, and endured death and injury and the smoke from burning bodies all for the sake of Germany. But they themselves had remained seated at their table in the old German beer hall, German slogans on their garrulous tongues, Nietzsche clichés in their brains, and even the Führer's words and the Rosenberg myth had only been exhilarating clichés for them, while for Judejahn they had been a call to arms: he had set out, little Gottlieb wanted to change the world, well well, so he was a revolutionary, and yet he detested revolutionaries and had them flogged and hanged. He was stupid, a dim little Gottlieb, worshipping punishment, little Gottlieb afraid of a beating and desiring to beat, powerless little Gottlieb, who had gone on a pilgrimage to power, and when he had reached it and had seen it face to face, what had he seen? Death. Power was Death. Death was the true Almighty. Judejahn had accepted it, he wasn't frightened, even little Gottlieb had guessed that there was only this one power, the power of death, and only one exercise of power, which was killing. There is no resurrection. Judejahn had served Death. He had fed plentiful Death. That set him apart from the burghers, the Italian holiday-makers, the battlefield tourists; they had nothing, they had nothing except that nothing, they sat fatly in the midst of nothing, they got ahead in nothing, until finally they perished in nothing and became part of it, as they always had been. But he, Judejahn, he had his Death and he clung to it, only the priest might try to steal it from him. But Judejahn wasn't about to be robbed. Priests might be murdered. Who was the fellow in the black frock? A pimply face, a haggard youth seething with lust under the womanish robes. The priest too was looking at the assembly in the lobby, and he too seemed to be repulsed by it. But he was no ally for Judejahn. Judejahn was equally revolted by the priest and the burghers. He recognized that the burghers' position was impregnable for today. But time was in Judejahn's favour, and so he would return to the desert, drill recruits for Death, and one day, when battlefields were more than tourist attractions, then Judejahn would be on the march again.

He fled the hotel. He fled the sight of the burghers, the priest, fled the eye of the unseen spy. It wasn't cowardice, it wasn't disgrace, it was a tactical withdrawal. If
Judejahn
had set foot in the lobby, if
Judejahn
had shown his face among them, the burghers would have leapt up, they would have clustered round him, but it would have been for an evening of hero-worship, and then they would have cast their bourgeois net over him. Eva might be lurking at one of the lit-up windows—a mother and a heroine, why hadn't she died that May of shame? But she was still alive; and
Judejahn
could imagine sitting with her in a German lounge, going to the job that Pfaffrath would fix up for him, coming home from the job that Pfaffrath had fixed up for him; they would eat roast goose and drink Rhine wine, presumably brother-in-law Pfaffrath's job would run to that, and on the
Führer's
birthday and on the ninth of November Eva would wear the brooch on her dress—so long as it hadn't been stolen, the occupying forces were after souvenirs and valuables,
Judejahn
knew that—the golden swastika brooch, a present from the
Führer,
and she would stare at him when the news came on the radio, and Heuss spoke, and Adenauer spoke, when their neighbours played nigger songs, and she would stare and think: You're alive you're alive you're alive. And he would be alive and think of the desert, the desert from which he would reconquer Germany. He dropped into a cookshop somewhere on his way, which was now aimless, he entered a miasma of oil and batter and sea smells, he went up to the buffet, he could have wolfed the lot down, he was racked by an incredible hunger. There were some large white beans, a German dish, a dish from his schooldays and his childhood. He pointed to it, but the beans were not warm, they were not German, they were slick with oil, tart with vinegar, and they had a fishy taste as well, because what he had taken to be meat was blubbery fish; but he wolfed it all down, and then an order of pasta to follow, regular Italian-style noodles, the tomato sauce rimmed his mouth in a slobbery wet kiss, spaghetti dangled from his lips, they'd forgotten to bring him a knife, and he sucked them into his mouth like a cow eating long grass, and it took another half-litre of
Chianti
to cleanse
Judejahn
and make him human again. Or so he thought.

The human reached the Piazza San Silvestro through a maze of alleys. He saw the electric sign announcing the telephone exchange. That suited his purpose. He went inside, saw the booths with telephones in them, didn't know how to use them, he wrote down the name of the Pfaffraths' hotel on a piece of paper, gave it to a girl at the counter, who looked up the number for him in a directory and sold him a telephone coupon, then he stood in one of the booths, dialled the number, he heard 'Pronto', and he spoke German into the mouthpiece, said he wanted Pfaffrath, heard, clicks and whirring and footsteps, and then Pfaffrath was there on the line, replying in the correct official style, aware of his rank.
'Oberbürgermeister
Pfaffrath here. Who's calling, please?' And
Judejahn
felt like shouting back, 'Hello, you asshole!' Or should he rasp out his own titles, his military and party rank, or even the florid Arabian one he now held? Should he describe himself as Chief Eunuch or Harem Administrator or Desert Fox, or squeak out 'Gottlieb here'? And he was such a shrunken little Gottlieb that he didn't reach up to the mouthpiece and he merely said
'Judejahn',
but he spoke the name with such emphasis that power, violence and death resonated down the line. Now it was Pfaffrath's turn to clear his throat, to change down from
Oberbürgermeister
to brother-in-law, presumably also getting over his terror on hearing the voice of the dear departed, pride and scourge of the family, whichever, whose resurrection he was awaiting; it probably took him a while to muster courage to confront
Judejahn.
And he said excitedly, 'Where are you? We've been waiting for you.' And
Judejahn
coolly replied that he had plenty to do and little time, and he summoned them to his own hotel for the following day, the splendid palace on the Via Veneto, there they would see
Judejahn
in all his glory, and he told him his assumed name, his cover name and passport name, ordered him, in the small booth—the Italian scribbles on whose walls were presumably smut as in any other booth, and
Judejahn
wondered whether the latrines at home had 'Germany awaken' written in them again—ordered him to 'repeat the name', and
Oberbürgermeister Friedrich Wilhelm
Pfaffrath duly repeated the false name, the official lie: he wouldn't appear before
Judejahn
as his benefactor any more, he would stand at attention, and Judejahn's creeping away from the German hotel had been no flight, his sneaking away had been a tactical masterstroke.

And once again the human being felt on top of things, in charge of his destiny. He left the telephone exchange in triumph. He was crossing the Piazza San Silvestro, on his way to conquer Rome, when there was a sound of breakage, a hullabaloo as of battle, a crashing and sundering, screams of terror and cries of death. It was a new building that had collapsed, its foundations had been miscalculated, twisted girders protruded from clouds of dust, people ran by in panic, and
Judejahn
commanded: 'Seal it off, keep back, seal it off.' He wanted to bring a little discipline to the accident, but no one listened to his German voice, no one understood him, and then came the sirens and bells, police, ambulance and fire brigade, and from the church on the square came a priest, they stuck their noses in everywhere, and
Judejahn
saw that he was out of place here and in the way, useless at best, and he stepped aside, barged his way through the crowd, and then he remembered how at school, in his detested Gymnasium, he had learned about the Roman belief in omens, and this here was a bad portent. There were the wailing cries of a woman. Had she lost loved ones in the ruins? The sacrifices that
Judejahn
had offered to Death had never cried. It was odd, he had never heard any of them cry.

So he drifted away down the
Corso,
a long intestine stuffed with pedestrians and vehicles. Like microbes, like worms, like digestion and metabolism, they proceeded down the intestinal canal of the city. The weight of traffic was pushing
Judejahn
towards the Piazza del Popolo, but he felt that was the wrong way for him, and he turned back against the current, was jabbed and barged, but when he turned round and looked, he saw it gleaming, white and gold and illuminated by spotlights, and now he remembered, this was where he had driven up, the escort ahead, motor-cycle outriders to either side, and a long line of vehicles behind him containing Germans and Italians, top officials, dignitaries from the Party and the armed services. He pushed ahead, backwards, he had lost all sense of time and direction, the present became the past, but he kept his goal firmly in sight, the marble steps, the megalith, the white monument on the Piazza Venezia, the national memorial to Victor Emmanuel II, which, through some confusion or false information,
Judejahn
was convinced was the Capitol and moreover that it was a building of Mussolini's, a monument erected by the Duce, in honour of history, to crown the antique sites, and this was the white-and-gold-gleaming annunciation of the resurrection of the imperium. This was where he had driven up. Now he hurried towards it. Here on the right was the Duce's palace. No sentries? No sentries. In the shadow of night the walls were a grimy yellow. No one stood at the gate. No window was lit up. This was where he had driven up. A former visitor returning. Knock, knock on the door—the master of the house is dead. The heirs don't know you—they are among the bustling crowds on the Corso. Yes, he had crossed the square with the Duce, it had been
Judejahn
at his side, to lay the
Führer's
wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There were the sentries, feet apart, stiff and unflinching. Their posture was impeccable. But
Judejahn
felt nothing—no honour, no pride, no sorrow, no emotion. He was like a worshipper who feels nothing in church. He prays and God isn't there. He kneels down and thinks: The ground is cold and dirty. He sees the Virgin and he thinks: A piece of worm-eaten wood with paint on it. The people were not rejoicing. No singing, no huzzahs.
Mopeds
rattled past. No photographers appeared to bathe
Judejahn
in flashlights. A couple of tired carriage horses looked across at him from the cab-rank. Was he a ghost? He hurried up the marble steps. Behind him now were the columns of the magnificent temple which he wrongly attributed to Mussolini, and all that white splendour reminded him of something: it was a cake in the window of
Süfke
the baker, a cake that little Gottlieb had been fascinated by and never got to taste. And before him now was the black rump of the king's horse,
Judejahn
didn't know which iron-clad king it was, and he didn't care, he had never had any regard for the kings of Italy, from childhood up, influenced by the comic books of the First World War, he had thought of them as wielding umbrellas rather than swords. But as he stood there, he or little Gottlieb, he had a sense of grandeur, he thought of the Duce who had built all this and had himself been desecrated, and he felt the grandeur of the history that had had such monuments built to it, behind which stood Death, the ultimate inspiration.
Judejahn
was bathed in light. Rome glowed. But it seemed to him a dead city, ready for the chop, the Duce had been desecrated, history had turned its back on Rome, and so had ennobling Death. Now people lived here, they dared simply to live here, they lived for business or for pleasure—what could be worse.
Judejahn
looked at the city. It seemed to him to be absolutely dead.