The Third Reich

SEPTEMBER 22

This afternoon—or this morning, I can’t say for sure, whenever it was that I got up for breakfast!—I ran into Frau Else, her husband, and a man I had never seen before sitting at a table offto one side in the restaurant, having tea and cakes. The stranger, tall, with blond hair and a deep tan, was the one leading the conversation, and every so often Frau Else and her husband laughed at his jokes or witticisms, leaning in toward each other until their heads touched and waving their hands as if in a plea to stop the avalanche of stories. After considering whether it was a good idea to join the group, I perched on a stool at the bar and ordered coffee. For once, the waiter hurried to bring it, which only backfired: the coffee spilled, the milk was too hot. As I was waiting I buried my face in my hands and tried to escape the nightmare. It didn’t work, so as soon as I had paid I hurried back up to my room.

I slept for a while, and when I woke up I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. I asked to have a call put through to Stuttgart. I needed to talk to someone, and who better than Conrad? Little by little I felt calmer, but no one picked up the phone at Conrad’s house. I ended the call and paced around the room, glancing at the German line of defense every time I passed the table, going out on the balcony, pounding or rather slapping at the walls and the doors, fighting the octopus of nerves that squirmed in my stomach.

A little while later the phone rang. It was a call from downstairs, announcing a visitor. I said I didn’t want to see anyone, but the clerk insisted. My visitor refused to leave without seeing me. It was Alfons. Alfons who? I was given a last name that meant nothing to me. I could hear voices arguing. The designer I had gotten drunk with! I gave strict instructions that I didn’t want to see him, that they shouldn’t let him up. Through the receiver I could now hear with utter clarity the voice of my visitor protesting the rudeness, the lack of manners, the inhospitality, etc. I hung up.

A minute or two later some agonized howls in the street drew me out onto the balcony. In the middle of the Paseo the designer was yelling up at the front of the hotel, shouting himself hoarse. The poor kid, I decided, was shortsighted and couldn’t see me. It took me a while to realize that he was just saying “asshole,” over and over. His hair was matted and he was wearing a mustardcolored blazer with huge shoulder pads. For an instant I was afraid he would be hit by a car, but luckily the Paseo Marítimo was almost deserted at that hour.

Unnerved, I went back to bed, but I couldn’t sleep anymore. The insults had ceased a while ago, but the mysterious and hurtful words still echoed in my head. I asked myself who the long-winded stranger spotted with Frau Else could be. Her lover? A friend of the family? The doctor? No, doctors are quieter, more reserved. I asked myself whether Conrad had seen Ingeborg again. I imagined them holding hands and strolling down an autumn street. If only Conrad were less shy! The scene, full of possibilities as I saw it, brought tears of pain and happiness to my eyes. How I loved both of them, in my innermost being.

As I lay there thinking, I suddenly realized that the hotel was sunk in a wintry silence. I got nervous and began to pace the room again. With no hope of getting things straight, I studied the strategic situation: at best I could hold out for three turns or, with great luck, four. I coughed, I talked out loud, I searched through my notebooks for a postcard that I then wrote while listening to the sound of the pen as it moved across the stiffsurface. I recited these lines by Goethe:

All for nothing. I tried to assuage the loneliness, the sense of forlornness, by calling Conrad, Ingeborg, Franz Grabowski, but no one answered. For a moment I wondered whether there was a single soul left in Stuttgart. I began to make random calls, flipping through my address book. It was fate that led me to dial the number of Mathias Müller, the pompous kid from Forced Marches, one of my sworn enemies. He was in. The surprise, I suppose, was mutual.

Müller’s voice, phonily masculine, obeys his intent to show no emotion. Coldly, then, he welcomes me home. Naturally, he thinks I’ve returned. Naturally, too, he expects that I have some professional reason for calling, that perhaps I want to invite him to work together to prepare our Paris lectures. I disabuse him of this notion. I’m still in Spain. I heard something of the kind, he lies. Immediately he turns defensive, as if calling from Spain in itself constituted a trap or an insult. I’m just calling you at random, I said. Silence. I’m in my room making calls at random, and you’re the lucky winner. I burst out laughing and Müller tried in vain to imitate me. All he managed was a kind of squawk.

“I’m the lucky winner,” he repeated.

“That’s right. It could have been any other citizen of Stuttgart, but it was you.”

“It was me. So did you get the numbers from a phone book or your address book?”

“My address book.”

“Then I wasn’t so lucky.”

Suddenly Müller’s voice changed markedly. It was as if I were talking to a ten-year-old boy trying out bizarre ideas for size. Yesterday I saw Conrad, he said, at the club; he’s changed a lot, did you know? Conrad? How could I know when I’ve been in Spain for ages? This summer it looks like someone snagged him at last. Snagged him? Yes, dropped him, roped him, brought him down, took him out, put a bullet in him. He’s in love, he concluded. Conrad in love? On the other end of the line there was an affirmative “uh-huh” and then the two of us retreated into an embarrassing silence as we realized that we’d said too much. At last, Müller said: The Elephant is dead. Who the hell is the Elephant? My dog, he said, and then he burst into a torrent of onomatopoeic sounds: oink oink oink. That was a pig! Did his dog bark like a pig? See you later, I said hurriedly, and I hung up.

When it got dark I called the reception desk asking for Clarita. The clerk said she wasn’t there. I thought I caught a hint of disgust in her reply. To whom am I speaking? The suspicion that it was Frau Else disguising her voice again lodged in my breast like a horror movie with swimming pools full of blood. This is Nuria, the receptionist, said the voice. How are you, Nuria? I asked in German. Fine, thank you, and you? she answered, also in German. Fine, fine, very well. It wasn’t Frau Else. Convulsing with happiness, I rolled to the edge of the bed and fell off, hurting myself. With my face buried in the rug, I let out all the tears that had built up over the course of the afternoon. Then I showered, shaved, and kept waiting.

Spring 1944. I lose Spain and Portugal, Italy (except for Trieste), the last bridgehead on the western side of the Rhine, Hungary, Königsberg, Danzig, Kraków, Breslau, Poznan, Lodz (east of the Oder, only Kolberg still stands), Belgrade, Sarajevo, Ragusa (in Yugoslavia, only Zagreb still stands), four armored corps, ten infantry corps, fourteen air factors…