The Illogic of Kassel

57

When dinner was over, I said goodbye and went out onto the dark Jordanstrasse. Chus stayed with her friends, but I had the impression that her eyes possessed a strange power and were somehow binoculars, allowing her to see beyond the restaurant. If so, she was surely following me with her long-distance gaze and not planning to stop until she saw that, retracing my earlier steps, I’d turned into the dark alley leading to Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse.

I remembered for a moment that a friend had wondered in his latest novel whether acting out life was the only way to live it and if life were less true when it was performed. Those questions came to mind at the very moment I left the Osteria. I think it was because there wasn’t a soul on the street. I observed that I wasn’t going to be seen by a single human eye for a while, so I began to speculate that Chus might be following my steps with her binocular gaze. Then I began to act — literally to act — for Chus, as if I were sure she was observing what I was doing. It was possibly my only way of not feeling so alone. I reaffirmed once more the great truth that we need to feel we are seen by someone, since the opposite is insufferable.

Acting for Chus in the deserted streets, I felt that life was more intense when one put on a performance, for everything seemed to take on more importance, even if I just perceived someone following my steps on the big stage. Just as I approached art to turn my back on the world, it seemed to me that dramatizing my own life, my footsteps in the dark, was a way to intensify the sensation of being alive, that is, one more way of making art.

Initially, my performance leaving the Osteria consisted of simulating being undecided about whether or not to retrace my exact steps, turning again into the shortcut of the dark and lonely alley, or taking the well-lit street in front of the restaurant that also led to Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse.

These doubts I pretended to have didn’t last long, because I quickly chose to take the well-lit street. The other option — retracing my steps — was shameful, because it would be acting like any old Tom Thumb who’d left a trail of crumbs so as not to get lost on his way home.

I went up the slope of the well-lit street and, arriving at Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, turned right expecting to find myself, after a few steps, passing the same places I’d seen before. But instead of finding them, I ran straight into the illuminated foyer of the Gloria Cinema, which disconcerted and unnerved me, making me think I was lost. Hadn’t I been wondering a few hours earlier where that cinema was and why I hadn’t seen it when I’d tramped around practically the whole downtown? Well, there it was. There was the added danger of running into Nené again, for this was where I was meant to meet her at midnight, though most likely she wouldn’t show up.

Probably, somewhere just past the Gloria Cinema, were the shops and businesses of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse that I’d seen on my way out, so I kept walking, leaving behind the cinema that held within it a certain danger. I kept walking, but I didn’t come to any of those stores and eventually I had the sensation of beginning to travel back to my childhood terrors, as if the story of Tom Thumb (Daumesdick) had projected its long shadow over my adult footsteps.

In other words, I was lost. I ended up making the difficult and humiliating decision — humiliating in my eyes at least and probably also to anyone who might be watching me through binoculars — to turn back, to return literally to the front porch of the Osteria and, once back there, this time singing Tom Thumb’s song, begin the walk over again using the shortcut of the alley.

In about four minutes I got back to the porch of the Osteria and, though it was not at all necessary, I peered in the window to see what Chus was doing at that moment. She had sat down, as was to be expected, with her friends, and it looked like she was having another dinner. This is the night of the double dinners, I thought. Chus didn’t see me, but I believe one of her friends did, at least he reacted in a way that made me think I’d been spotted. I was so embarrassed at having been discovered there with my nose pressed up against the window that I shot off the porch, straight to the alley, happy for a moment knowing I was going the right way this time.

It was admirable to observe how, through all that, the third sense of impulse hadn’t abandoned me. I overacted as I went down the alley, as if I thought Chus would be interested in watching my second attempt to get back to the hotel through her binoculars. But when I saw two young people suddenly burst out of one of the alley’s doorways in animated conversation, I felt less inclined to care about my own drama and more inclined to protect my own life. Those strangers, with their laughter and exaggerated liveliness, deserved to be looked on with total distrust. But they walked quickly off into the night, both with their hands behind their backs. They were inoffensive, just laughing at their own business. Even so, I was aware of the risk of walking around unprotected and I modified my will to exist as a performer. I stopped playing my solitary role and started concentrating on what I was doing, trying not to get lost anymore.

I reached the end of the alleyway and stepped out again onto Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, walking down it, finally past familiar scenery, toward the hotel. It was somewhat frustrating that no one else could be seen on the streets; I would have preferred to cross paths with someone who would at least look at me. I was very happy in any case. My childhood fears had vanished, and with them the Brothers Grimm’s great Tom Thumb. Though I felt physically exhausted, mentally I kept going, to the point where, when I passed the door of my hotel, I didn’t stop but kept walking in the direction of Friedrichsplatz. I crossed it fifteen minutes later at a serene pace, especially as I passed by Horst Hoheisel’s reproduction of the old fountain funded by the Jewish businessman Sigmund Aschrott. I ambled along, entering Karlsaue Park without the slightest fear. At that hour, the park wasn’t exactly teeming with people, but there were still quite a few strolling around.

I tried to encourage myself as much as possible by thinking I was about to encounter a brand-new experience in my life, but I couldn’t stop wondering if it wasn’t absurd that, despite how much mental energy I felt, I wouldn’t have rather retired to my hotel room.

It was odd to have chosen this pilgrimage to the most sordid spot in the park. Sordid? Perhaps it was, but I sensed that Huyghe’s contribution was one of the high points of that Documenta, since among other things it had the virtue of not wearing thin in a single visit; it was an installation that was open to all sorts of interpretations. After seeing it for the first time, a person was left with the memory of a strange harmony between the animate and the inanimate. Maybe that’s what I had wanted to see there. I was sure that the mystery of that place was endless. It had been accompanying me since María Boston had shown it to me.

I don’t know when I started passing fewer people and walking more and more slowly through the park, as if reluctant to arrive at Untilled, reluctant just when I’d decided that all that dug-over land (where an Ibizan hound with one leg painted pink prowled around) was practically my promised land.

After walking for a good stretch and passing near Anri Sala’s oblique Clocked Perspective, I approached the big greenhouse where Jimmie Durham had sited The History of Europe: a work that, seen from outside, seemed to consist only of two lumps of stone, each deposited in a glass display case in the very center of the immense space of that giant heated greenhouse.

In the middle of the night, unable to enter the warm enclosure, I found it difficult to understand what kind of history those two stones were telling. A metal plaque, found by chance as I was leaving, allowed me to discover that the rocks were in reality Neanderthal remains, indicating that Europeans had identity issues: for ever since they were invaded by the Romans, they’d thought they were Occidentals and Orientals were people in Asia. However, the plaque said, the most ancient finds of Neanderthal remains — like those two sleeping there in the gigantic greenhouse — had been discovered in Georgia, which forced us to rethink everything.

When I got tired of looking at the Neanderthal remains and pondering the history of Europe, which was happening more and more in my Kassel itinerary, I continued my walk through the park and sat down under the oblique clock with the idea of having a rest. In the meantime, I asked myself if I really considered it necessary to get as far as Untilled, or if I could turn around and go back to the hotel, where, though sleep might collapse my great mood, it might also do me a lot of good.

I had doubts about whether or not I should go as far as Untilled because to get to the area of disturbed earth I had to go into an even denser, leafier zone of Karlsaue Park, an area that, no matter how lively I might be feeling, instilled a certain respect at night. For the last five minutes or so I’d detected no signs of human life, and that whole pilgrimage seemed to have something of an “end-of-the-trail” feel to it, finis terrae. .

There was a strange peace, seemingly resulting from the absence of the loudspeakers that during the day disseminated the uproar of the bombings of FOREST (for a thousand years. .). It was very peaceful and I didn’t know if it would be worth going to the enigmatic calm of Untilled, which I was increasingly seeing as my personal Manderley. Everything in it reminded me of the atmosphere of the famous opening scene of Hitchcock’s film Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. On and on wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been. .”

Untilled was also arrived at by a winding path, which hadn’t worried me in daylight, but I guessed it might cause me some problems visiting at that hour, for there was a slight mist and the moon wasn’t casting much light. Finally I decided to risk it. After all, I said to myself, I hadn’t gone that far to turn back at the last moment. I remembered reading that Huyghe was constantly anxious about forces we so often know are lurking in the fog, the smoke, the clouds. Had I not always had this anxiety too? I’d had less anxiety about clouds than about fog or smoke, but that didn’t prevent me from thinking of the words of the aviator Daniele Del Giudice in Takeoff: The Pilot’s Lore: “Remember that beneath the sea of clouds there is nothing but eternity.”

Some of my fictions start, or end up, in cloudy or misty lands, in Manderleys of the spirit, in extraordinarily secretive and silent places. In these fictions, there are misty nights in port cities like Detroit, thick fog through which a solitary hero glides until finally entering a bar.

I was going toward Untilled in the hazy night, walking with cautious steps toward that strange territory. Deep down, I felt that traveling toward Huyghe’s uncultivated place was turning out to be like moving toward a certain atmosphere of my own fictions. More than that, perhaps I was moving toward pages I hadn’t yet written; it was like traveling toward the future without seeing anything.

I tried to turn my way of walking into a performance as well, as if Chus’s binoculars could see me where I was and I thought she might be pleased by her image of me as a one-eyed metaphysical excursionist in an interminable, sinuous ascent.

When I arrived at the threshold of Untilled territory, the first thing I tried to find out was whether there was anyone else in that sordid place. There wasn’t. I was as alone there as Robinson on his island. That shifting earth would probably have to wait some hours before another man’s foot would leave a print in it. Neither of the dogs was there. Really, it was to be expected, Documenta couldn’t expose itself to the risk that someone might steal those animals. I’d reached the place and didn’t actually have anything to do there; I could have left. But I immediately thought that would be turning my back on uncertainty and I stayed. I absolutely didn’t have to worry about being bored, I thought, I could be well occupied all night just wondering, for example, what kinds of things God had got up to before He created the world.