Enrique Vila-Matas - The Illogic of Kassel

The Nazis, she ended up explaining to me somewhat tersely, produced a great deal of military hardware in Kassel, especially tanks, so the city and its environs were a priority target for allied bombing raids in 1943. In fact, the bombs wiped out ninety percent of the city’s thousand-year history.

The fateful evening hour was now very close at hand, and I noticed that, perhaps even a little earlier than usual, anguish and melancholy were beginning to take hold of me. I would have to wait until the following morning to recover a decent state of mind. I was thinking about the tragedy of this split life, the life of morning joy and nocturnal collapse I seemed destined to live out for the rest of my days, when I saw that the man with the unusually deep-set and gloomy eyes was circling around us (although on this occasion he had not even bothered to greet us). He looked different to me now, seeming suddenly exhausted, as if he were already overcome by the worry he’d probably been dragging around with him since the day he left the Aran Isles. But I preferred not to say anything. All at once, I started to feel unsure whether it was the same German I’d seen before.

Minutes later, looking more closely at this man with the unusually deep-set eyes, I saw that I couldn’t have been more mistaken, as it wasn’t the same guy who’d spoken to María Boston earlier; I’d simply been speculating about a complete stranger. We were getting ready to leave the terrace on Theaterstrasse, and María Boston asked me if I’d ever reflected on the fact that walking was almost the only activity not appropriated by people who devoted themselves to the world of business, that is, capitalists. I paused to think. It had been ages since I’d heard that word, so clear-cut and so unambiguous: capitalists. Look, she said, there’s nothing special that’s sold for walking, and yet there’s a whole market around eating, running, sleeping, having sex, reading, even drinking water. . Well, I said, I liked walking very much, I loved the idea of going for a stroll. That’s all I said. Just that. I remember it perfectly, because it was from that moment on that things started to go downhill, as if following the same rhythm of decline that daylight does when dusk overtakes it.

Strangely, the more María Boston said there was lots of work waiting for her in the curatorial team office (seeming to indicate to me that she had to leave without further delay), the more she insisted on setting off with me on a new walk. It was as if leaving me or not leaving me, staying or abandoning me, amounted to the same thing; and there was something in that contradiction that reminded me of the idea that I could very well experience collapse and recovery simultaneously.

That was an interesting idea, no doubt, but one which anyone could see didn’t really work when applied to normal life, because it made no sense at all. For example, she must clearly perceive I was tired but still suggested we go on walking; who knew if she meant to the end of the world? I found out later she meant only to the end of a train platform, although it wasn’t one that was exactly around the corner.

I looked at Boston, and she did everything in her power not to return my gaze. “I thought the sad man came from the Aran Isles,” I said, just to try out a bit of mischief. This was a somewhat desperate McGuffin, only to make her feel sorry about how tired and irrational I was and to get her to let me withdraw to the hotel and set up my “thinking cabin.”

As might be expected, Boston said she didn’t know what islands I was talking about, and so it fell to me to explain that they were found on the west coast of Ireland, washed by the Atlantic, in Galway Bay. “I thought that you and he were discussing what was happening on those remote islands,” I said. “Who was I talking to?” she asked. “To that sad man earlier,” I said. In the end, it became clear I was referring to that sorrowful German who’d stopped to speak to her. “But poor Hans and I only philosophized a bit; he explained to me that the idea of ‘trying to survive’ was just for megalomaniacs, and I didn’t know what to say to him. What would you have said?” “That I didn’t understand him,” I replied, “but not to worry because, when all is said and done, life is governed by all sorts of misunderstandings, and the natives of Galway Bay know everything, absolutely everything, there is to know about that.”

If it had been Alka, she would definitely have split her sides laughing at what I’d said, not understanding a thing. But in that whole trip, I never again saw Boston as serious as she was at that moment. To tell the truth, it was an almost terrifying moment. And that was despite the fact that I still couldn’t even imagine the sort of heavy pressure Boston was going to put on me in the ensuing minutes to go to that train platform she considered vital for me to see that very evening.

It seemed to me a more than demonstrable fact that every time communication problems arose between the two of us and our relationship collapsed, it recovered immediately. It was as if the acts of ruin and recuperation really could make up a single entity and share the instant perfectly well.

And so, talking of this and that, in reality philosophizing or aspiring to philosophize — possibly the most pivotal activity in contemporary art — darkness was falling over Kassel and extinguishing everything sluggishly, like any old Tuesday on Earth.

Suddenly, Boston showed signs of taking a leap forward, embarking on a surprising new ode to walking, at the same time proposing we go and see a sound installation , which, according to her, was not far, but actually required another long stroll. We had to get to the old central station, the end of platform 10.

During the war, she said, that platform had been the main setting for the deportation of Jews; now it was the setting for the resonant sound installation Study for Strings , by the Scottish artist Susan Philipsz.

I balked gently at this new initiative, telling her that, as she had work to do, I didn’t want to bother her any longer and, moreover, I had to get to the hotel, because I was beginning to feel my energy running out. She seemed not to have heard me, so I stressed my need to go to my room in the Hessenland and immediately set up a cabin, insulating myself at that early evening hour from any sign of the continuity of life outside.

I didn’t tell her, but among other things I had a terrible fear of her seeing the unpleasant expression I habitually started to have at that hour; I knew if I let a few more minutes go by, my face was going to get gloomy, my personality turn bitter, everything was going to get extremely complicated, and this time I couldn’t rely on the help of Dr. Collado’s tablets.

And while I was insisting, I remembered The Walk , by Robert Walser, where, after the more than lengthy description of a happy day’s wandering by the rambler who walks his way through the book, we arrive at a final page as perfect as it is gloomy, with some last words containing a revealing change of mood on the part of the walker: “I had risen up, to go home, for it was late now and everything was dark.”

Walser’s tiny dodge reverses the rules of the game for the book, and the happy wandering comes to a sudden end. The streets go completely dark. If up to that point the walker had always professed to feeling good (tremendously good), to being constantly delighted by everything, all of a sudden he tells us it has grown dark and things have changed, to the extent that the book has reached its end and the rambler wishes to take refuge in his den.

Soon after this, I was going on about my health to María Boston when abruptly — as if night were falling on my words — she interrupted me to say that Study for Strings was a better place than anywhere else to meditate on the great Collapse. Her delivery was so forceful, I was left rather mired in the boggy state brought on by my fragility, as if carrying my grandfather’s two pounds of mud on the soles of my shoes. And this caused me to wonder whether Boston was attempting to keep hold of me, or if she only insisted on the walk so I’d say no and that way couldn’t subsequently claim she’d had no intention of spending further time with me.