Enrique Vila-Matas - The Illogic of Kassel

Anyway, it was drizzling when we got off the bus at kilometer 19 of the Auedamm. On one side of the highway, a beer terrace with views over the river was crammed with German pensioners. On the other was the most miserable-looking Chinese restaurant I’d ever seen in my life. Karlsaue Park spread out behind it.

The Dschingis Khan, I thought, was a place for the evenings when anxiety gripped me; it had not been designed for my jubilant mornings. I was left hoping this first impression was false — I had to add, moreover, that I was convinced of finding myself confronting my own personal gallows. Perhaps it was all down to the drizzle that made the whole place look unwanted and disastrously glum.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Whatever the circumstances, I’ve never been one to turn and run if I didn’t like something; I’ve always known there’s only one battlefield with no way out. I say this because as soon as I went in to the Dschingis Khan, I spotted the old-fashioned round table, a sort of Spanish warming-table, and could barely believe it: pushed to the back of the dismal corner they’d assigned me, it was one of those tables with a space underneath for a heater and had a hideous vase and a worn, old yellow sign that read: “Writer in Residence.” Despite all this, I did not run away.

I had been so many men (I thought, parodying Borges), and now I was just a resident writer they’d invited to come and do a Chinese number. To cap it off, you could tell the sign had been handled by a large number of writers who’d been invited in the preceding weeks, some of whose names I remembered: Adania Shibli, Mario Bellatin, Aaron Peck, Alejandro Zambra, Marie Darrieussecq, Holly Pester.

I thought I’d be able to bear it.

I would sit at my gallows with dignity.

I knew some of those writers. I had preferred not to email them to ask how they’d artistically come to terms with the obligation to sit in that disagreeable corner each day. The fact of the matter is that writers can get drunk with one another, but they can never resolve together the technical problems they have with their respective lives or novels or Chinese residencies. Watching two writers talk of these matters is as excruciating as watching two future mothers swap details of their respective pregnancies, believing they’re talking about one and the same thing.

At that time of the morning, there were no customers in the dark, not terribly attractive restaurant, and there were just a few employees: some cooks and some waiters. There was also a Chinese woman at a table piled high with papers next to a large fish tank, who was devoting herself, in full view of everyone, to doing the accounts.

Not a single employee bothered to greet me; they all behaved with notable indifference, if not aversion. I understood right away that they saw me as a dangerous element: one more link in a frightening chain of scribblers, which made me surmise that the ones before me had, in general, left dreadful memories behind them. Furthermore, from certain disparaging looks I thought some of the cooks were sending in my direction, it seemed that more than a thousand different reasons to steer clear of writers had built up in their minds.

I took advantage of the unwelcoming atmosphere to ask Pim what she thought I should do with my pencil and my eraser and my red notebook in that somewhat inhospitable spot. No reader had come along at that mid-morning hour to see me, which wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that my appearance at the table in the Chinese restaurant hadn’t been announced anywhere in the city or on the Internet, and only one sign on the restaurant door and another on my table indicated I was there, at the mercy of any idiot with a vocation for gossip or who wanted to snoop at what I was writing.

“Who do you think is going to bother taking the Auedamm bus this miserable Wednesday to come spy on what I write here?” I asked Pim, with all the common sense in the world.

I was waiting for her answer, when a German woman weighing over 260 pounds came in and spoke briefly to Alka or, more accurately, Alka spoke to her very sharply. She must have said something to her about me, because, seconds later, the woman came resolutely forward and, in the most effusive manner, proceeded to embrace me with rare enthusiasm.

“Writer, writer, writer!” she shouted gleefully, as if she’d never seen one before in her life.

She let me go, but then embraced me again. Again she shouted, Writer, writer.

I heard Alka’s needless laughter.

“Yes, I’m a writer,” I said, annoyed. “What of it?”

When I got a grip on myself, Frau Writer-Writer was saying goodbye to Alka and Pim and leaving. Her absence was immediately noticeable, as I was stuck without potential admirers who would want to spy on what I wrote. The woman went without saying anything to me, as if she had forgotten me immediately after her second savage squeeze.

A German experience, I thought.

And I was left relying on what really interested me: whether Pim, the cheerful girl whose name reminded me of a beach in the Azores called Porto Pim, would take responsibility for the absurdity of my situation, given that there weren’t any people there now to annoy me.

I was going to ask her again what she thought I should do there with my pencil and my eraser and my red notebook on the outskirts of Kassel. Up to that point I hadn’t been interested, but now I wondered if she could give me any idea how those who’d preceded me in this Chinese number had worked out this peculiar situation. I was going to ask, but at the last moment, I decided to inquire about my talk with the title “Lecture to Nobody.” I wanted to know if it had been scheduled for a particular time, as I was keen to give it, even if, I said to myself, it was possibly only to make up for the conspicuously shabby “Chinese number” that they’d entrusted to me. What’s more, it seemed that only if I gave my “Lecture to Nobody” would I feel as though I’d really taken part in Documenta.

It took Pim a while to understand my question, but finally the penny dropped. I was to give the talk on Friday, she said, but they’d changed the venue and I would not do it out beyond a forest without an audience, but in the very center of Kassel, in the conference room of the Ständehaus.

“Then I can’t call it ‘Lecture to Nobody.’ ”

“If it’ll make you happy, we’ll stop the public coming in.”

I laughed and asked what kind of place the Ständehaus was. It was the old Hesse parliament, she said, and one of the few buildings left more or less standing at the end of the war. She’d show me around inside whenever I wanted to get a good idea of where I’d be speaking.

I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass me by and asked whether that meant we could go and see the Ständehaus right that minute.

“Don’t even think about it!” Pim barked.

Bit by bit, she lost her smile, which up to that point had suited her so nicely. Seeing her like that made an impression on me. Noticing that her reaction surprised me, she took it badly, not knowing how to get back to her permanent exuberance, the downside of her charm . The return to that state had seemed expected.

“But we’re not doing a thing here in this Chinese restaurant,” I said.

“What do you mean we’re not doing a thing?” Pim said. She seemed put out.

Far from venting my rage on her false charm or accusing her of taking orders from superiors about what she had to do with me, I kept quiet. Perhaps it was for the best. I smiled, took a step toward her, and positioned myself very close to her face; then I retreated, making out nothing had happened, that I hadn’t noticed she wasn’t always charming. But something had happened, and then some. There was something shockingly horrible about the unpredictable Pim’s face. When it’s artificial, I thought, joy can fall apart in an extremely alarming manner. And what’s more, how frightening people are who suddenly show a side of themselves we’d never imagined (as sometimes happens to me, which is why I try not to be seen out too much at night).