The Hothouse (12 page)

Government cars look like official black coffins, there is something unimaginative and dependable about them, they are of squat construction, cost a lot of money, but still have a reputation for being solid and economical, but also prestigious, and ministers, councillors, and officials feel themselves equally drawn to solidity, economy, and prestige. Frost-Forestier's office was out of town, and Keetenheuve was driven solidly, economically, and prestigiously through little villages on the Rhine that had collapsed without being historic, that were narrow without being romantic. The villages looked wrecked, and Keetenheuve had a sense of frowning people behind the crumbling walls; maybe their incomes were too low; maybe they felt oppressed by their taxes; or maybe the only reason they were frowning and letting their houses crumble was that so many black cars drove past them with important people inside them. And in among the old tumbledown villages, dotted about on cabbage patches, on fallow land and poor grazing, were the ministries, the offices, the administrative centers, they squatted in old Hitler buildings, they lugged their files behind façades of Speer sandstone, heated up their little soups in former barracks. The ones who had slept there were dead, the ones who had been brutalized were in jail, they had forgotten it all, it was in the past, and if they were alive and at liberty, then they struggled to get a pension, or they chased after a job—what else was there for them to do? It was the government quarter of a government in exile that Keetenheuve was driven through in his government car, sentries stood guard behind senseless fences that had been drawn right across fields, it was an administration that depended on the kindness and hospitality of its people, and Keetenheuve thought: My not being part of the government is a joke; its the perfect government for me—exiled from the nation, exiled from the natural order, exiled from the human order (although he did still dream that all men were brothers). There were also men in uniform trekking along the road to see Frost-Forestier. They lived somewhere locally; but they walked individually, albeit with the stride of civil servants, and not marching all in a heap like soldiers. Were they civilian policemen, were they border guards? Keetenheuve couldn't tell; he was determined that even if he knew the rank, he would reply: "Senior Forester."

Frost-Forestier was installed in an erstwhile barracks and was in charge of an army; but it was an army of secretaries whom he kept on their toes. They worked in Stakhanovite shifts here, and Keetenheuve felt dizzy when he saw a secretary talking on two telephones at once. What fun children might have here, what unlikely parties could be put in touch with one another! If the nation was writing to Keetenheuve, then the whole world was on the phone to Frost-Forestier. Was that Paris on the line, or Rome, or Cairo, or Washington? Was the call from Tauroggen already in? What did the shady man in Basel want on the phone? Had he snared himself? Or were there negotiation partners waiting at the Hotel Stern in Bonn, singing their songs from the earpieces of the telephone into the whorled ears of the ladies? There was a trilling and a buzzing and a ringing, an incessant tolling of miserere, a continuous confessional murmur, with the girls' periodic breathy refrain: "no, Herr Frost-Forestier regrets, Herr Frost-Forestier is unable, can I take a message to Herr Frost-Forestier"— Herr Frost-Forestier did not have any official title.

The much demanded one did not keep his guest waiting. He came right away, welcomed his Daniel in the lions' den, and asked him out to the canteen. Keetenheuve groaned. The enemy was advancing his heavy weapons. The canteen was a fearsome great barn of a place, reeking of rancid fat, stinking of burnt flour. There was German Beefsteak Esterhazy on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, Meat Balls with Green Beans on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, Spare Ribs with Sauerkraut on a Bed of Mashed Potatoes, and right at the bottom of the menu it said:
"Schnullers
soups
{11}
for connoisseurs turn every meal into a feast." It was a tactical decision on the part of Frost-Forestier (an inexpensive tactic, at that) to take the MP,
whose gourmet tendencies were widely known, to the canteen. He wanted to remind Keetenheuve of the mean fare to which it was possible to be reduced. To left and right of them, secretaries and petty officials sat at oilcloth-covered tables, tucking into the German Beefsteak Esterhazy. What had Esterhazy ever done to cooks, to make them name all scorched onion dishes after him? Keetenheuve made a mental note to look into the matter. Frost-Forestier paid for their lunch with a couple of tin coupons. They ordered matjes herrings with green beans, boiled potatoes, and bacon gravy. The matjes was a longtime inmate of salt barrels. The bacon gravy was black and full of slimy clumps of flour. The potatoes were black as well. Frost-Forestier ate with relish. He devoured his herring, sopped up the black gravy with the black potatoes, and left none of the stringy string beans. Keetenheuve was astonished. Perhaps he was utterly mistaken about everything, and Frost-Forestier wasn't eating with relish, and wasn't human; perhaps he was a high-performance motor, a cleverly designed digestion engine that needed to be refueled periodically and enjoyed it about as much as a car in a filling station. While he stuffed himself, he told stories about the class struggle and the office pecking order, pointing recklessly at individuals who sat nearby. The steel expert was not on speaking terms with the cast-iron man, except during office hours, and the girl who did English-language stenography ate her spare ribs with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes at a different table from the poor creature who merely did German shorthand. Even here, though, beauty was at a premium, and Frost-Forestier reported on Trojan Wars that had broken out between rival offices when the head of personnel had a pretty girl on his books, and there was Helen, envied, reviled, eating her meat balls and mashed potatoes with the head of the working group on agricultural land degradation.
And there was a cute hermaphrodite to be seen as well.

What now? Something reminded him of a singer, a whisperer.
A cute hermaphrodite.
Where
was that? By the sea, on the beach? Forgotten.
Sagesse
,
a poem of
Verlaine
's.
Wisdom
,
beautiful and melancholy I kiss your hand
,
Madame. A singer. Womanish. Flotsam. I kiss your hand. Whisperer. What was his name again? Paid. I kiss your hand
,
Monsieur Paul. Monsieur Frost. Frost-Forestier
;
the matj
es
motor
,
the bacon gravy high-performance engine. The electron computer. Reel-to-reel man. Steel gymnast. Virile. Placid phallus. What does he want? The fish is dished up. Alas
,
poor herring. The widower. Pickled in brine. Frost-Forestier bachelor. Passionless. Incorruptible. Frost-Forestier the incorruptible. Robespierre. No great revolution. No chance. Feels it in his water. What? A tickle? A tinkle? Lives dangerously. Pisses with privates. All privates together. Writing on the wall. Informs shady characters.
Kohlenklau
{12}
walls have ears. Dark jungle of the airwaves. Pisses waves in the ether.
Pissoirs.
Swastikas on the walls. Lobby groups. Know their man. Beer. Piss.
He said: "Can you get a drink here?"
No. You can't. Not for you. Coffee and lemonade. Coffee accelerated the heart rate. Not on. Beat fast enough as it was. The pulse in his throat. The pallid lemonade of evolution
,
fizzing and repeating. What then?
Frost-Forestier ordered a coffee.
What then?
What did he want?

Frost-Forestier asked him a question. He looked at him. "Do you know Central America?" he asked. He added: "Interesting place, by all accounts."
No my snake not that pepper tree
,
you'd have known all about it if I had been there
,
it would have been in your files. No good to you. I'm no good to you. It'll have to be the old British major. Sir Felix Keetenheuve
,
Commander
;
Member of Parliament
,
Royal Officers' Club
,
dropped bombs on Berlin.

"No. I've never been to Central America. I once had a Honduran passport, if that's what you're getting at. I bought it. That's what people did. I could travel anywhere on it, except Honduras."
Why am I telling him? Buttering his bread for him. Who cares. Keetenheuve falsifier of documents. I showed my face in
Scheveningen.
You know
;
the sea, the beach
,
the sunsets? I sat outside the
Café
Sport
,
and the singer came and sat at my table. He sat at my table because he was alone
,
and because I was alone I let him sit there. The young girls walked past
,
Proust's
"jeunes filles en fleurs"
from the beach at Balbeck. Albertine, Albert. The young men walked past. Young men and women promenaded down the seaside boulevard, they swam through the evening light
,
their bodies glowed
,
the orb of the sinking sun sparkled through their sheer clothes. The girls lifted their breasts. Who were they? Salesgirls
,
schoolgirls
,
seamstresses. The apprentice hairdresser from the
Haager
Plein.
She was just a sales assistant in a shoeshop
—
that too was something the singer in his heyday had whispered on disk
,
softly and campily. He was murdered. We watched the girls and boys walk by
;
and the singer said: You're as hot as monkey shit.
What was going on now? He'd better pull himself together, he hadn't been paying attention. Frost-Forestier wasn't talking about Central America any more, he was talking about Keetenheuve's party, which hadn't had its share of diplomatic jobs recently, well, it was only natural that the government would think of its friends first, though it was hardly an equitable way of proceeding, then again Keetenheuve's outfit was short on suitable candidates, and when one appeared, well, Frost-Forestier was taking preliminary soundings, he was showing his hand, of course everything at this stage was unofficial, the Chancellor hadn't been consulted, but he was certain to give his approval—Frost-Forestier was offering Keetenheuve the ambassadorship in Guatemala. "Interesting place," he said again. "Right up your alley! Interesting people. Left-wing government. Not a Communist dictatorship, mind you. A republic, respect for human rights. An experiment. You'd be our man on the spot, keep a weather eye on developments for us, represent our interests."

Keetenheuve Ambassador Keetenheuve Excellency.
He was stunned. But the remoteness of it tempted him, and perhaps that was the solution. The solution to all his problems! It was running away. It was running away again. It was his last escape. They weren't stupid. But maybe it would be freedom; and he knew it was retirement.
Keetenheuve pensioner on the state.
He saw himself in Guatemala City, on the pillared veranda of a colonial villa, watching the dusty street glowing in the sun, the dust-coated palms, the dry and dust-laden cactuses. Where the street widened out into a square, the dust in the park toned down the obscene colors of coffee blossom, and the memorial to the Unknown Guatemalan seemed to melt in the sun. Huge silent automobiles, clattering fire-red motorcycles leapt out of the sun haze, drove past, and disappeared like visions in the heat. It stank of petrol and putrescence, and from time to time there was the ping of a ricocheting bullet. It might be his salvation, it might be the chance to grow old. He would spend years on the pillared veranda, and years surveying the hot dusty road. At intervals, he would send dispatches home, which no one would read. He would drink endless quantities of bitter gassy soda water, and in the evening he would try and lose the taste by adding rum to it. He would complete his translation of
"Le
beau
navire
"
on stormy nights he would talk to Elke, maybe even reply to the letters he had got as an MP, which wouldn't do any good to anyone, and one day he would die—and the flags would fly at half-mast in the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry and on the colonial verandas of the other embassies.
Excellency Keetenheuve the German Ambassador passed away
Frost-Forestier wanted an answer. His secretaries, his telephones, his tape recorders, were all calling him. Keetenheuve was silent. Was the bait not juicy enough? Did the mouse smell a rat? Frost-Forestier threw in the fact that, as an ambassador, Keetenheuve would be working for the diplomatic service. What prospects! And if Keetenheuve's party happened to win the elections, Keetenheuve would be foreign minister. "And the next time the government changes, you'll be our man in Moscow!" Frost-Forestier evidently didn't believe the opposition party had a chance in the elections.

Keetenheuve said: "I'd be persona non grata."

Frost-Forestier smiled a thin-lipped smile. "It could be that time's on your side." Did he feel that in his water too? Would they still make music?

He went back to his barracks, back to the twittering mouths of his secretaries, to the humming wires, to the enigma of wireless communication. Keetenheuve, meanwhile, asked to be driven to Godesberg, the town that, as legend had it, had fifty retired mayors living in it, all of them aspiring to follow a great example, all of them having grasped, like Morgensterns polyp, the reason for their existence, namely to steer the ship of state, and all of them practicing hard at the family dinner table. The mortarboard that came with the honorary doctorate was invisibly inclining over the sponge cake. If he accepted Guatemala, Keetenheuve would probably be given a black official car to take with him, maybe even one of the new models, where prestige had finally got the better of economy. Keetenheuve was heading for Godesberg because after the salty herring and the—albeit unofficial—conferral of the ambassadorship, he wanted to eat a diplomatic lunch, and where better than on the celebrated
Rheinterrasse
,
{13}
where the great diplomatic calamity had occurred? He was all alone in the hall, all alone on the carpet, the carpet was new; maybe the Führer had breakfasted on the old Persian rug because Chamberlain and the gentlemen from the Foreign Office were late, and his neurotic character couldn't bear to be stood up. Now industrialists came here to relax. The Führer had been a bad investment, or had he not? A dilettante shouldn't be the judge of that. Maybe the savior of the people had been worth it. How many million dead? The chimneys are smoking. Coal is being cut. The foundries have fire in them. The steel glows white. Keetenheuve looked every inch the manager too. He had his briefcase with him; the MP's imposing briefcase. Poems of Cummings, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire—he knew them all by heart.
Keetenheuve industrialist
,
Excellency Keetenheuve
,
Sir Keetenheuve Knight of the Realm
,
Keetenheuve traitor
;
well-intentioned Keetenheuve.
He went out onto the terrace. He sat down beside the Rhine. Four waiters observed him. Haze. Storm haze. Hothouse atmosphere. Sun glare. The windows of the hothouse could do with a clean; the air-conditioning wasn't functioning. He sat in a vacuum, around him haze, above him sky. A pressurized chamber for the heart. Four waiters softly approached; heralds of death, formal, in tails, an initial approach, an opening bid? "Cognac, please." Cognac to stimulate him. "One cognac Monnet!" What's bobbing along on the Rhine? Steel, coal? The flags of the nations over the black barges. Low in the water, these new tales of the riverbank, fantasy accounts, the myths of write-offs while the substance remained untouched, one-to-one exchange rates, ore and coal, shipped from mine to mine to yours, from the Ruhr to Lorraine, from Lorraine back to the Ruhr, your Europe, gentlemen,
visit the art treasures in the Villa
Hügel,
and the panties of the bargeman's wife, panties from Woolworths in Rotterdam, panties from Woolworths in Düsseldorf, panties from Woolworths in Basel, panties from Woolworths in Strasbourg, panties on the line, across the deck, fluttering in the west wind, the mightiest flag in the world, rosy pink over the sub rosa coals. A little spitz, furious and white, a little spitz, very full of itself, switches from bow to stern. On the opposite bank, the retirement villages of the rose growers stifle a yawn: siesta time.