A Book of Memories Page 3

  Someone who long ago, yet on this very day, arrived in Heiligendamm and in the evening started out for Nienhagen.

  As if what was about to happen took place fifty, seventy, a hundred years ago.

  And this was so, even if nothing was about to happen.

  It was a new, exciting sensation, rather unsettling, to experience my own disintegration, yet I accepted it with the serenity of a mature person, as if I were fifty, seventy, or a hundred years older, an affable elderly gentleman recalling his youth, but there was really nothing extraordinary or mystical about this, and though I couldn't imagine a more poetic setting for my death neither could I muster the courage to take the sleeping pills I had been carrying with me for years in a little round box; still, just to do something, I again called on my imagination to separate my two selves, liberating myself from my hopelessly muddled emotions, and saw that the future of my strange self was nothing more than the past and present of my familiar self, everything that had already or would still come to pass.

  The situation was exceptional only in that I could not identify with either one of my selves, and in this overexcited state I felt like an actor moving about on a romantic stage set, my past being only a shallow impersonation of myself, just as my future would be, with all my sufferings, as if everything could be playfully projected into the past or the future, as if none of it had really happened or could still be altered and it was only my imagination that made sense of these entangled fragments from the various dimensions of my life, arranging them around a conventionally definable entity I could call my self, which I could show off as myself but which was really not me.

  I am free, I thought to myself then.

  I also thought then that out of this boundless freedom my imagination selected, quite haphazardly and not very adroitly, only potentially tiny possibilities from which to assemble a face that others might like and that I could then consider my own.

  Today I no longer think this, but then the realization seemed so powerful and profound, I saw with such clarity that other being, the one who had remained free, untouched by any of my potential selves—he walked with me and I with him, he was cold and I feared for him—that I had to stop, but that wasn't enough, I had to kneel down and give thanks for this moment, though my knees did not like to bend in a show of humility, I would have liked to remain neutral as a stone—no, but even that wasn't enough—and I even closed my eyes: nothing, nothing but a tattered rag flapping in the wind!

  The moon hung low, it was yellow and seemed only an arm's length away, but on the horizon its reflection grew pale, too feeble to outline the tremulous crests of the waves; the water seemed perfectly smooth but that, too, was an illusion, I thought to myself, the illusion of distance, just as on the other side of the embankment, in the marsh, where the light had no focus, there was no surface or edge in which it could be reflected and so the light ceased, vanished, and because the straining eye could find nothing to fix on, there was no darkness or blackness there, nothing but nothingness itself.

  I had arrived in Heiligendamm in the late afternoon, just before sunset, and I set out for Nienhagen after dark, when the moon was already up.

  I couldn't tell what was out there, the map indicated marshland, the guidebook mentioned a swamp, and whatever it was, it lay deep.

  And silent.

  As if the wind had halted and turned back over the embankment, stopped blowing there.

  Was it covered with reeds or sedge, or, disguising itself as plain soil, did plain grass grow over it?

  There was a time when the possibility of seeing ghosts gave me a thrill; now the thought that only nothingness was out there seemed far more terrifying.

  Back then, years earlier—and much as I'd like to avoid it I shall speak about this at greater length later—if a shadow, a movement, or a noise unexpectedly materialized in something palpable and called me by name from behind my back, spoke to me or seemed to be listening to me, I knew it to be the very embodiment of my fears; now, whatever this was, it just lay over that moor, made no movement, emitted no sound, cast no shadow.

  It merely kept watch.

  Hung there over the marsh, an empty shell, an alien thing watching scornfully whoever strayed this way, and this scorn was disconcerting.

  I wouldn't say it was frightening, more like chastening; its power lay in reining in my overwrought imagination, which wanted to gallop freely and invent its own story; it scorned all such ambition and gave me to understand that it was responsible for confounding my sense of time; it created the gaps through which I could peer into my soul, and in return for the playful doubling of my self, all it asked me was that I not forget it, which meant that I should not believe my own self-serving stories; and if I had neither the courage nor the good sense to do away with myself, I should at least be aware of as of a pain, and know that it was here, outside me but able any time to reach inside and touch my so-called vital organs, of which—no matter how cleverly I try to manipulate things, to become independent of it—I had no more than one or two; my existence could not be replaced by my imagination; I should not be too sure of myself, should not delude myself that a setting such as this, a moonlit night by the sea, could make me free, let alone happy.

  I was standing up by then, and like one who has just completed his compulsory daily devotion, I reached down and with an involuntary movement dusted off my pants.

  Much as I would have liked to excuse this little movement as a telltale sign of instilled orderliness, it made me feel again just how ridiculous I was, how fraudulent, and I quickly turned around and wondered if it might not be a good idea to go back, since after all, I could buy cigarettes in the restaurant, where I had had a pleasant meal earlier on, sitting in a comfortably furnished room set off by a glass door; I could even get a cup of tea there, the place stayed open until ten; the wind kept howling, and I would have loved to howl along with it and throw myself on the rocks, but by now I had got quite far from Heiligendamm, I hadn't even noticed how far, and seemed to be on higher ground, too, because somewhere below, on the line dividing land and water, the twinkling of a few tiny stars suggested the presence of houses, and I would have been at least as ashamed of taking flight as I was disturbed by the vacuous stare of the marsh at my back.

  I thought about how to continue.

  I could not walk without part of my body, mostly my back, coming into contact with it, but what if I turned down to the beach?

  When this idea occurred to me—quite uselessly, since by now I could clearly see the surf exploding in the yellow moonlight, pounding away at the foot of the embankment, and one part of my splintered self found it amusing that the other was seeking shelter at the embankment, hoping to avoid what inevitably he would have to accept—when this idea occurred, it was accompanied by a figure, not a ghost, but a simple notion of a young man walking through the glass door of that pleasant restaurant; he looked around, our eyes met, and the room was flooded with sunshine.

  I made myself turn around once more and continued toward Nienhagen.

  This is getting to be quite amusing, I thought to myself.

  For there I was—and at the same time I imagined myself not there— and walking with me was this elderly gentleman whom I would one day become, and he brought along his own youth; the elderly gentleman at the seaside, reminiscing about his youth, perfectly suited my own purposes, now transformed into strictly literary ones, and so did that room with its comfortable chairs, the white damask tablecloth, the coffee cup he had just raised to his lips; and the young man who joined us, with his hand on the back of a chair bidding a courteous good morning to the group breakfasting at the table; to get a better look at him, for he was the one I was most interested in, I could send him back to the door where he had first appeared, because I felt that he was completely mine, since he did not exist; and there was someone else besides us, the one who was watching and who let me have this blond youth in exchange for allowing myself to become a helpless instrument of his power.


  This had to be the moment when I finally concluded the silent pact that had been in preparation for years: for if today, much sadder and wiser, in full knowledge of all the consequences, I imagine the impossible and ponder what would have happened if, giving in to my fears, I had turned back and not pushed on toward Nienhagen, and like any sensible mortal in similar circumstances had taken cover in my boringly ordinary hotel room, then most probably my story would have remained within the bounds of the conventional, and those twists and deviations that have marked my life thus far would have indicated only which path not to follow, and with a good dose of sober and wholesome revulsion, I might have stifled the pleasure afforded by the beauty of my anomalous nature.

  Our Afternoon Walk of Long Ago

  When I had arrived in Heiligendamm late in the afternoon of the day before, I'd been too tired to change and take part in the communal meal; I had my supper brought to my room, and putting off introducing myself until the morning, I retired early.

  But I had trouble falling asleep.

  It was as if I were curled up inside a large, dark, warm, soft cocoon besieged on all sides by the sea, and though I felt protected, water swept over the cocoon whenever I was about to unwind into my own softness, just above my head, the foam hitting me below the eyes.

  The building was silent.

  I thought I heard the wind blow, but the spiky crowns of the pine trees barely moved.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my lids tight so as not to see at all, but when I didn't, I was there again, lying inside that dim cocoon where it would have been completely dark but for the images forming and dissolving before me, images of myself that would not let me rest, showing me scenes of myself that I thought I had forgotten because I had wanted to forget: on the bed where I lie now my father was sleeping, on his back, though I knew he slept not on this bed but on the narrow sofa in the living room; his shoes on the floor looked so forlorn without his feet; he spread his huge thighs shamelessly, and he was snoring; through the slats of the drawn shutters, sunlight fell into the room in stripes, intersecting those of the parquet floor, and in the depth of my sleep I felt my body convulse at the sight, I could not bear to look on, I wanted air and light; Father's breathing body made the past seem too near, too painfully present—but then I sank into darkness again and saw myself suddenly appear in the halo of a gas lamp, and then disappear again, and I was walking toward myself on a familiar wet street that may have been Schönhauser Allee, deserted on the night before my departure, a little after midnight, on my way home from my old friend Natalya Kasatkina; but on the corner of Senefelder Platz in front of the public lavatory I stopped to wait for myself, and while my footsteps were clattering toward me, the unlighted little structure at the center of the bare bushes on the square seemed to be making noises, as if panting, the wind was battering at its door, opening and closing it to the rhythm of my own breathing, and when it was open, I could see inside: a tall man was standing, facing the wall shining with tar, and when I finally got there he grinned at me and offered me a rose.

  A purplish-blue rose.

  But I didn't want to touch it, somehow I had to dismiss this image, too; how lovely it would be, I thought, to come to rest in some calm, luminous space—and then, quite gently, my bride floated into my cocoon. The moment she whipped off her hat and veil (rather roughly, I thought) and her massive red tresses fell to her shoulders, she breathed with bestial eagerness into my face, but instead of'the aroma of her breath, I got a whiff of something unpleasant, foul almost.

  Somewhere nearby a door was slammed shut.

  I sat up in bed, awake and maybe a little alarmed.

  The bedroom door was open, and I could see the bluish shine of the white furniture in the living room.

  And there was no window through which to see the crowns of the pine trees, the curtains were drawn, there was no sound of wind, only the murmur of the sea coming from afar, because my room faced the park.

  It was as if the door of the public lavatory that slammed shut became, in my wakeful state, the final chord of a dream that had just ended.

  But I heard hurried, retreating footsteps out in the corridor, and in the adjacent room someone cried out, or screamed, sounding much too loud— or the walls were too thin—and then came a heavy thud, as if a large object or a body had fallen on the floor.

  I listened for more, but heard nothing.

  I was too frightened to move; the creaking of the bed, the swishing of the sheets might have obliterated the moment, a careless rustle made by moving the eiderdown might have covered up the noise of murder—but what followed was silence.

  And I couldn't be sure I wasn't dreaming all of this, because we often dream of waking up, but it's not a real awakening, only a new phase of sleep, a slide downward, a descent to greater depths; and it's also true that the cry, the scream, and the thud of the falling body sounded familiar, reminding me again of Father; my eyes were open, I could still see him writhe in his sleep, start up, and then fall from the sofa onto the light-streaked floor; at the time, twenty years ago, he took his afternoon naps on the sofa that at night was my bed, and in those days we rented the very same place from which these peculiar noises were now coming, so it was quite possible that I wasn't actually experiencing these things but dreaming them anew, which was all the more likely, because the event that had put an end once and for all to the beautiful days at Heiligendamm had come to mind again just before I went to bed, as I was closing the terrace door.

  Back then, on warm nights we would leave not only all the windows but the terrace door wide open, which made me especially glad, because it meant that shortly after my parents had finally closed their bedroom door, I could carefully get out of bed and, pretending to have overcome all my fears, steal out onto the terrace.

  At times like that the terrace seemed menacingly empty, wide, enormous, reaching far into the park; on moonlit nights it was like a sharp wedge between the trees, on moonless nights it blended in more softly, almost as if it were afloat among the gently swimming shadows of the pointed pines, and if I kept watching this, this and nothing else, it would seem as if I were not here at all but aboard a ship quietly plowing the waves; but before stepping out on the terrace I always had to make sure I'd be alone, for it happened once that I hadn't noticed the lady who was our next-door neighbor standing in a corner of the terrace leaning on the balustrade, looking alternately like an apparition or a shadow depending on the moon, and if she was there I couldn't go out, for while we did have a secret nighttime understanding that never dared to test the light of day, I was afraid she might report me to my parents, and though her closeness at times felt wonderful and in a way I even longed for it, the nocturnal escapes were truly pleasurable only if I could be alone and picture the ship sailing away with me.

  The first time I ventured out carelessly, in my stunned surprise I was rooted to a spot in the middle of the terrace, for she was there; the moon was out, thin and feeble behind a motionless cloud, and she was standing in the densely blue, glimmering night, her face turned toward the moon, and I believed her to be a ghost, a creature about whose peculiar nature I had been instructed by Hilde, our maid, who told me that ghosts had to be beautiful, "stunningly, stunningly beautiful"; and indeed, the sheer, flowing robe covering her graceful body, the silvery sheen of her waist-length hair seemed to bear this out; she was beautiful as she stood there— firm, yet also as if her feet were hardly touching the ground, as if her eyes were open but her eyeballs were missing from their sockets; when the cool night breeze touched my face I knew it was her breath, an exhalation that would be followed by an inhalation, and then with her next breath she would suck me in, draw me into her hollow body, and carry me off.

  It wasn't fear that made me immobile or, if it was, it had to be fear of such a high degree that the senses are transported into the dimension of rapture, fear of such intensity that the body seems to break free of itself; I had no feeling in my hands or feet, thus had no means to
move, yet without having to think about it I was aware of my entire life, all ten years of it, which I now would have to part with to slip into another form; only much later, when in love, did I experience anything resembling this feeling, but still, this extraordinary state of being seemed natural then, not only because Hilde's tale had warned me about its coming but because I myself had wished for it.

  Of course, this mixture of sublime dread and vehement longing could last but for an instant; I realized quickly that it had been only an illusion, no matter how real it felt; "Why, this is Fräulein Wohlgast, our neighbor," and Fräulein Wohlgast, whose name came up often during our evening walks, was someone I myself frequently observed conversing with Mother at mealtimes; besides, this ghost business had begun to sound a little suspicious, even to me, ever since the time I thought I did see some sort of apparition and Father reacted by nodding somberly, almost gravely, but with the sardonic satisfaction of a man blessed with a sense of humor: of course, the ghost was most certainly there, in the sedge, where else would it be, hadn't I said I'd seen it? Father went on to say that he couldn't see a thing and he was straining his eyes to the limit, though now, just this instant, he thought he heard something, no, it was nothing, which didn't mean it wasn't there a moment ago; it was the very nature of ghosts to be here now and there the next minute, that was the way they were, sometimes they became visible, but mostly they stayed invisible; and I might be interested to know that it was also part of their nature not to appear for just anyone but only for very special persons, so I should be flattered and honored; and he, too, was happy that a ghost had favored his son with an appearance, for he, Father, was sorry to acknowledge that he hadn't experienced this sort of infernal pleasure for a long, long time, his ghosts had simply evaporated, vanished, which he regretted no end, and felt the poorer and emptier for it; in fact, he'd almost forgotten about their existence and eerie ways, but to see if there was any resemblance between his past experiences and my present ones, he asked me to describe, as accurately as possible, the outward appearance of my ghost.