The Third Reich

SEPTEMBER 12

A cloudy day. It’s been raining since four in the morning and the forecast calls for more rain. Still, it’s not cold, and from the balcony one can watch children in their bathing suits jumping waves on the beach, if not for long. The atmosphere in the dining room, invaded by card-playing guests who stare gloomily at the fogged-up windows, is charged with electricity and suspicion. When I sit down and order breakfast I’m observed by the disapproving faces of people who can hardly grasp that there are those who rise after noon. At the entrance to the hotel, a bus has been waiting for hours (the driver is gone now) to take a group of tourists to Barcelona. The bus is a pearl gray color, like the horizon upon which there appear the faint silhouettes (but this must be an optical illusion) of milky whirlwinds, like explosions or fissures of light under the roof of the storm. After breakfast I went out on the terrace: immediately I felt the cold rain on my face and I retreated. Miserable weather, said an old German in shorts sitting in the TV room smoking a cigar. The bus was waiting for him, among others, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. From my balcony I could see that the only pedal boats left on the beach, forlorn, looking more like a tumbledown shack than ever, were El Quemado’s; for everyone else the summer season was over. I closed the balcony doors and went out again. At the reception desk I was told that Frau Else had left the hotel first thing in the morning and wouldn’t be back until that night. I asked whether she’d gone out alone. No, with her husband. I covered the distance between the Costa Brava and the Del Mar by car. When I got out I was sweating. At the Costa Brava I found Mr. Pere reading the paper. “Friend Udo, how delightful to see you!” He really did seem to be happy, so I let down my guard. For a while we exchanged banalities about the weather. Then Mr. Pere said that he would send me to his doctor. Alarmed, I refused. “Take a few little pills, if nothing else!” I asked for a cognac and drank it in a single gulp. Then I asked for another. When I tried to pay, Mr. Pere said it was on the hotel. “The anxiety of the wait is already cost enough!” I thanked him and after a bit I got up. Mr. Pere followed me to the door. Before we parted I told him that I was keeping a diary. A diary? A diary of my vacation, of my life, basically. Oh, I see, said Mr. Pere. In my day that was for girls… and poets. I detected the mockery: smooth, weary, deeply malicious. Before us the sea seemed about to leap onto the Paseo Marítimo. I’m not a poet, I said, smiling. I’m interested in daily life, even the unpleasant parts; for example, I’d like to write something in my diary about the rape. Mr. Pere looked pale. What rape? The one that happened just before my friend drowned. (At that instant, maybe because I’d referred to Charly as a friend, I was seized by a wave of nausea so severe it gave me the shivers.) You’re wrong, spluttered Mr. Pere. There was no rape here, though of course in the past we haven’t been able to completely avoid such embarrassing incidents, generally attributable to outside elements, since today, as you know, our main problem is the decline in the quality of our tourists, etc. Then I must be wrong, I said. No doubt, no doubt. We shook hands and I ran to the car to escape the downpour.

Winter 1941. I want to talk to Frau Else, or see her for a while, but El Quemado turns up before she does. For a moment, from the balcony, I consider the possibility of not receiving him. All I have to do is not show up at the entrance to the hotel, since if I don’t go to meet him, El Quemado won’t come any farther. But he must have spotted me from the beach when I was on the balcony, and now I wonder whether I didn’t stand there precisely so El Quemado would see me, or to prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid of being seen. An easy target: I exhibit myself behind the wet glass in order to be spotted by El Quemado, the Wolf, and the Lamb.

It’s still raining. During the afternoon the hotel has gradually been emptying of tourists, picked up by Dutch buses. What can Frau Else be doing? Now that everyone has gone, is she sitting in a doctor’s waiting room? Is she strolling on her husband’s arm along the streets of the Barri Gòtic? Are they on their way to a little movie theater almost hidden in the trees? Unexpectedly, El Quemado launches an offensive in England. It fails. Because of my lack of BRP, my response is limited. On the other fronts there are no changes, though the Soviet line is reinforced. The truth is that I stop paying attention to the game (not so El Quemado, who spends the night circling the table and making calculations in a notebook, which he brought today for the first time!). The rain, persistent thoughts of Frau Else, a vague and languid nostalgia, make me lie on the bed smoking and leafing through the photocopies that I brought with me from Stuttgart and that I suspect will be left here, in some trash can. How many columnists really think through what they write? How many have a passion for it? I could work for The General; even in my sleep—sleepwalking, as Frau Else’s watchman says—I could demolish them. How many have looked into the abyss? Only Rex Douglas knows anything about it! (Beyma, perhaps, is historically rigorous, and Michael Anchors is original and full with enthusiasm, a kind of American Conrad.) The rest: deadly boring and inconsistent. When I tell El Quemado that the papers I’m reading are plans for beating him, all moves and countermoves foreseen, all expenses foreseen, all possible strategies invariably noted, a hideous smile crosses his face (against his will, I have to believe), and that is his only answer. As a coda: a few little steps, back hunched, tweezers in hand, troop movements. I don’t watch him. I know he won’t cheat. His BRP have also dropped to a minimum, just enough to keep his armies alive. Has the rain put an end to his business? Surprisingly, El Quemado says no, that the sun will come out again. And meanwhile, what? Will you keep living under the pedal boats? With his back to me, moving counters, he responds mechanically that it’s no problem for him. Sleeping on the wet sand isn’t a problem? El Quemado whistles a song.