The Hothouse (6 page)

Keetenheuve went out into the corridor. Many ways led to the capital. There were many travelers toward power and livings.

They were all on their way, delegates, politicians, civil servants, journalists, party lobby fodder and party founders, interest groups by the dozen, unionists, publicity managers, jobbers, the corrupters and the corrupted, the fox, the wolf, and the sheep of the security services, the news hawkers and news fabricators, all the string pullers, the stage managers, the pact makers, the splinter groups, all those who wanted to strike it rich, the brilliant cineastes of
Heidelberg on the Rhine on the Heath in the tub for Germany at Dragons Rock
,
the spongers, swindlers, moaners, placemen, and Michael Kohlhaas was sitting in the train, and the alchemist Cagliostro, Hägen the Vehmic killer sniffed the dawn, Kriemhild wanted her pension, the lobby riffraff kept their eyes and ears peeled, generals still in their Lodenfrey suits came marching in to be reactivated, numerous rats, numerous panting dogs and plucked fowls, they had visited their wives, fucked their wives, murdered their wives, they had bought ice cream for their kids, they had watched the ball game, they had followed the priest in their chasubles, they had served as deacons, they had been chided by their bosses, received encouragement from their backroom staff, they had come up with an idea, drawn up an itinerary, they wanted to pull a fast one, they made plan B, they had drafted legislation, spoken in their constituencies, they wanted to get up the greasy pole, stay in power, keep their noses to the grindstone, their snouts in the trough, they made their way to the capital city, the tiny capital lowercase hamlet that they liked to poke fun at, and they failed to understand what the poet had meant when he said that the real capital of any kingdom was not in any case behind high walls and could not be stormed.

Make way for the peoples representatives,
{4}
dime-store jibes, the joke already had a beard in the Kaisers time
a lieutenant with ten men writing Germany awaken on the latrine wall,
by now the beard was so long you couldn't even see where the joke had been. What did the people want, and what did it mean anyway, the people? Who was it on the train, on the street, at the station? Was it the woman in Remagen pushing the beds over to the window, beds for birth, copulation, or death, then the building was hit by shrapnel, was it the maid with the milk pail staggering to the cowshed, up so early tired so early, or was he, Keetenheuve, the people? He distrusted the simplifying collective. What did it mean, the people, was it a herd to be fleeced or shod or led, was it composed of groups, to be brought into action by the planners according to their terms and their needs, sent into battle, driven to their graves, the German boy in action, the German girl in action, or was the people millions of individuals, each one different, each one thinking for himself, separately, away from any center, toward God, or toward a void or madness, impossible to lead, to direct, to bring into action or to shear? Keetenheuve hoped it was the latter. He belonged to a party that believed in majority rule. So what did the people mean? The people worked, the people funded the state, the people wanted to live off the state, the people complained, the people muddled along.

It wasn't given to talking about its representatives much. The people was not as mannerly as the people in school textbooks. It didn't share the author's notion of civics. The people was resentful. It resented the title of its deputies, their seats, their immunity from prosecution, their diet, their free travel passes. The dignity of parliament? Laughter in the bars, laughter in the streets. The loudspeakers had humiliated the parliament in people's front rooms for too long, the representation of the people had been a male voice choir for too long, a simple chorus to beef up the dictators solo. Democracy was held in low repute. It failed to galvanize. And the repute of the dictatorship? The people said nothing. Was it silent because it was still afraid? Or was it silent out of unabating adoration? The jury acquitted the men of the dictatorship on all charges. And Keetenheuve? He was engaged on the work of rebuilding, and he was traveling on the Nibelungen Express.

Not all the parliamentarians traveled on the sleepers of the Bundesbahn. Others came to the capital by car, claimed the mileage allowance and the depreciation, and did very well out of it; they were the sharper cookies. On the Rhine highway, the black Mercedes roared downstream beside the water. Downstream washed the ooze, the driftwood, the germs, the excrement, and the industrial discharges. The men sat next to their drivers, or they sat behind their drivers, and they nodded off. Their families had taken it out of them. Sweat poured down their bodies, under their coats and jackets and shirts. The sweat of exhaustion, the sweat of memory, night sweat, death sweat, sweat of rebirth, sweat of being driven somewhere or other, sweat of naked panic fear. The chauffeur knew the road and hated the scenery. The chauffeur's name might be Lorkowski and he might have come from East Prussia. He came from the pine forests; there were dead bodies in the pine forests. He remembered the lakes; there were dead bodies in the lakes. The member of parliament had a soft spot for displaced persons. I thought it was supposed to be pretty here, thought Lorkowski, I shit on the Rhine.
He shat on the Rhine, Lorkowski
,
parliamentary' driver from East Prussia
,
Lorkowski
,
hearse driver from the POW camps
,
Lorkowski, ambulance driver from Stalingrad, Lorkowski, National Socialist Motorized Column driver from the old
Kraft durch Freude
days
,
shit the lot of it, corpses, parliamentarians
,
and cripples all one and the same load, load of shit, he shat everywhere not just on the Rhine.

"There's an eyeful."

The lobbyist left the lavatory, adjusted his cock,
nihil humanum,
etc. He rejoined the other lobbyists in their compartment at the front of the carriage, a man among men.

"Bit on the pale side."

"Who cares."

"Rumble, fumble, tumble."

"Spent too long underneath."

Wagalaweia.

The girl came in a floating gown, an angel of the line, a night angel in a floating night gown, lace brushed the dust, snot, and dirt of the varnished corridor, nipples, full buds rubbing against the lace, the feet tittupping in dainty slippers, laced with satin ribbons,
Salome's feet like white doves
, the toenails lacquered red, the girl was still half asleep, moody, sulky, lots of girls wore sulky expressions on their pretty china dolls' faces, it was the fashion for girls to be sulky, in her throat she felt her smoker's tickle, the men watched as the girl, tittupping, lacquered, long-legged, pretty and sulky, went to the little girls' room. Perfume tickled their noses and mingled behind the door with the lobbyist's steady consumption of bocks the previous night—he wasn't one on whom hops and malt were wasted.

"Nice case you've got there. Real diplomat's accessoiy. Like it's just come from the Foreign Ministry of the Reich. Black red and gold stripe and all."

"Black red and mustard, we used to call it."

Wagalaweia.

The Rhine was now wending its way between flat beds, a winding silver ribbon. Distant hills arced up out of the early morning haze. Keetenheuve breathed in the mild air and straightaway felt sad. Chambers of commerce and tour operators described the area as the Rhine Riviera. A hothouse climate flourished in the basin between the hills; the air stagnated over the river and its banks. Villas stood beside the water, roses were bred, prosperity strode through the parkland wielding hedge clippers, gravel crunched crisply under the pensioner's lightweight footwear, Keetenheuve would never join their ranks, never own a home here, never trim or breed roses, the
nobiles
,
Rosa indica
,
which put him in mind of
Erysipelas traumaticum
, faith healers were at work here, Germany was one large public hothouse, Keetenheuve took in rare flora, greedy, curious plants, giant phalluses like chimney stacks full of billowing smoke, blue-green, red-yellow, toxic, but it was a fertility without youth and sap, it was all putrid, all ancient, the growths swelled, but it was all
Elephantiasis arabum.
Engaged, it said over the door handle, and on the other side the girl was peeing—prettily, sulkily— over the tracks.

Jonathan Swift, the dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin had taken a seat between Stella and Vanessa, and was offended by their corporality. In old Berlin, Keetenheuve had known one Dr. Forelle. Forelle had had a general practice in a tenement block in Wedding. He was squeamish about bodies, for decades he had been working on a psychoanalytical study of Swift, and at night he would line his front door bell with cotton wool, in case he was called out to a birth. Now he lay in the ruins of his tenement together with all the other detested bodies. The lobbyists, with empty bladder, with voided burbling intestines, gabbled and slanged, they knew what they were after.

"I'd go see Hanke if I were you. Hanke's been in the Defense Ministry for as long as I can remember. Tell him I sent you."

"But I can't just treat him to a frankfurter."

"Take him to the Royal. Three hundred. But it's first rate. Worth every penny. Never fails."

"Or else just go and tell him we can't provide the merchandise after all."

"I think the minister ought to take care of the bond. What's he a minister for?"

"Plischer was at Technical College with me."

"Then Plischer's my man."

"Soft knees."

Wagalaweia.

The girl, pretty and sulky, tittupped back to bed. The girl, pretty and sulky, was headed for Düsseldorf, she could go back to bed for a little, and the men's lusts slipped in beside her, pretty and sulky under her blankets. Lust chauffed. The girl worked in fashion, beauty queen in some competition or other. The girl was poor, and lived, not badly, off the rich. Von Timborn opened the door of his compartment, von Timborn neatly shaved, von Timborn comme il faut, von Timborn already presenting his credentials to the Court of St. James.

"Good morning, Herr Keetenheuve."

Where did he know him from? Some foreign press banquet. People toasting each other and listening out for scraps. Keetenheuve didn't remember the occasion. He didn't know who was greeting him. He nodded a greeting. But Herr von Timborn had a remarkable memory for names and faces, and he trained it for professional reasons. He set down his suitcase on the grille of the heater in the passage. He observed Keetenheuve. Timborn had the habit of thrusting out his lower lip, a rabbit snuffling in clover. Maybe the Lord had provided for His servant in the night. The rabbit didn't hear the grass growing, but he did hear the whisperings in the corridors and anterooms. Keetenheuve had a dodgy scent, he was hard to discipline, he was uncomfortable, he gave offense, he was an enfant terrible in his particular party, that might yet harm a body, for Timborn that would have meant the end of all his hopes, but then again, these outsiders, you could never be sure, their mistakes might be the making of them yet. There were good jobs and pressure jobs, government jobs and dead-end jobs a long way from Madrid, and Timborn once more was led by the nose, trotting along the strait path, not of virtue exactly, but of promotion, step by step, up or down, that couldn't be ascertained just yet, but all the same, one was back at the center, eight years previously one had been in Nuremberg, eight years before that one had also been in Nuremberg, on the podium then, the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, the first of them, the system of mutual reinsurance seemed to be working, he was on the comeback trail, and everything was up for grabs once more. And now if Herr Keetenheuve gambled on the election result and maybe was rewarded with a ministerial portfolio? Then Keetenheuve would kick up. Idiotic of him—even Gandhi didn't milk his own goats any more. Keetenheuve and Gandhi, he could see them walking hand in hand on the banks of the Ganges. Gandhi would have been irresistible to Keetenheuve. Timborn retracted his lip and gazed dreamily across the Rhine. He could picture Keetenheuve seated under palm trees—not a pretty sight. Timborn himself would look far better in a safari suit. The gateway to India was open. Alexander killed his best friend with a spear.

The train stopped in Godesberg. Herr von Timborn doffed his hat, the correct, the becoming, the Antony Eden felt. Godesberg was where the top people lived, the Foreign Ministry wallahs. Herr von Timborn strode briskly away over the platform. The engine driver swore. What a line! Get up steam and break. It was supposed to be an express. They'd used to rattle through Godesberg and Bonn. Now they stopped. The lobbyists blocked the doorway. They had sharp elbows, and they were the first into the capital. Schoolchildren came running up the stairs of the underpass. It smelled provincial, the staleness of tight little streets, cluttered rooms, fusty wallpaper. The platform was roofed in and gray—

and there at the gate
,
in the drab hall, he set foot in the capital, hunt him, catch him, O God Apollo O, and they grabbed hold of him again, fell upon him, overwhelmed him, dizziness and shortage of breath, a cardiac cramp shook him, an iron band laid itself around his chest, was tightened, soldered, riveted fast, every step helped to solder and rivet it, the movements of his stiff legs, his numb feet, were like hammer blows knocking in rivets in a wreck on the devil's wharf, and so he took one step after another (where was there a bench where he might sit, a wall he might lean against?) walked, even though he thought walking was beyond him, wanted to put out his hand for support, even though he didn't dare put out his hand for support, emptiness, emptiness stretched mightily in his skull, pressed, climbed like the pressure of a balloon rising into remote atmospheric
distance
,
but like a balloon that was filled with the merest nothing
,
a void
,
an un-substance
,
non-substance
,
something baffling that had the urge to expand
,
that wanted to break through his bones and skin
,
and he could hear, it wasn't yet happening but he could hear it
,
the silk ripping like a glacial wind
,
and that was the extreme instant
,
an invisible juncture not even definable in mathematics
,
where everything stopped
,
there was no beyond
,
and this was the interpretation of it, see
,
see!, you will see!, ask
,
ask!, you will hear, and he lowered his glance, coward
,
coward
,
coward, his mouth remained closed, poor, poor, poor, and he clutched at himself and the balloon was a disappointing dirty shell, he felt terribly exposed, and then he began to fall.
He showed his travel permit, and his sense was that the station official saw him naked, the way prison guards and corporals see the men in their charge before they are put into uniform.