Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

For some reason the builders had been in a hurry, wanting to break away from the hated past as rapidly as possible, so it took barely two years to complete the theater, so extraordinary for its day, used not only for operas but also for social gatherings and festivities, for which reason Knobelsdorf put kitchens, storerooms, servants' quarters, and washrooms on the ground floor, where the lobby and box office are today, and above them three large halls, one behind the other, so that with the help of the available technical equipment, with levers and traps, the three theater spaces of auditorium, stage, and backstage could be turned into one vast hall — no wonder the contemporary world was in awe! and even after repeated renovations and remodeling, this three-way division was preserved to this day.

And so, when I interrupted Melchior's coolly delivered confession about being a man of lies, careful not to offend him, I tried to share some of these observations with him, telling him I found nothing false in the way he had furnished his apartment but, on the contrary, saw in it a unique fusion of bourgeois practicality, proletarian contentment with bare necessities, and aristocratic aloofness, in which all the signs and elements of the past were present, albeit shifted from their original places, a peculiar, warped system of animate and inanimate traces of the past and present mingling with one another that could be found all over the city; he listened, looking at me askance, and though I felt I was straying into an area where he couldn't and wouldn't even want to follow me, I went on, pointing out that to me the overall effect of the apartment was neither intimate nor attractive but very truthful and, above all, very German, and without knowing how things were on the other side, I'd be willing to guess that all this was uniquely local in character, and therefore it wasn't so much my brain as my nose and eyes that objected to his reflections on his own people and to his statements, which, to me, smacked of self-hatred.

It was enough, I said, to take a good look at the refurbished opera house, where the latest reconstruction made the gods and little angels disappear, knocked out the walls between boxes, and, by considerably reducing the use of gold and ornamentation, seemed to sterilize the past of the theater's interior, leaving only stylistic reminders, rococo emblems along the front of the balconies and up in the cupola, the idea being to cool the sensual, overwrought exuberance of the former decor and bring it in line with the studied simplicity of the theater's exterior, architecturally a sound idea, preserving the past even while destroying it, preserving, more specifically, its grim and ugly orderliness, thus matching perfectly the prevailing atmosphere today, in which the aim was to satisfy only the most basic needs of the people; anyway, I said, there seemed to be a constant threat of secret contagion, because everything here stank of some powerful disinfectant.

It was this wariness about the past, these stylistic twists of simultaneously preserving and obliterating it, that I also noticed in people's homes: in this sense I didn't think Melchior could completely isolate himself from anything, but in fact was repeating, involuntarily imitating, what others were doing: dragging his ancestors' bourgeois furniture into a proletarian flat — and doing so to flaunt his eccentricity — was not very different from how that proletarian family lived in the Chausseestrasse apartment, designed originally for ostentatious haut-bourgeois life.

He didn't quite understand what I was getting at, and as we sat facing each other in the candlelight, I could see on his face how he was struggling, quietly, to overcome the hurt he felt.

If I was so well versed in the history of German architecture, he said, not to mention the soul of the German people, then I must also know what Voltaire jotted down in his diary after meeting Frederick the Great.

Just what he'd thought: I didn't know.

Still sitting, he leaned forward a little and, with the tenderness of confident superiority, placed his hand on my knee, and while he talked he kept looking into my eyes, taking pleasure in mocking both me and himself, smiling a small, supercilious smile.

Five feet two inches tall, Melchior said, in playful imitation of a schoolmaster, the king had a well-proportioned but by no means perfect build, and because of his self-consciously rigid posture he looked a bit awkward, but his face was pleasant and spiritual, polite and friendly, and his voice was attractive even when he swore, which he did as frequently as a common coachman; he wore his nice light-brown hair in a pigtail, and always combed it himself — he could do it rather well — but when powdering his face he sat before the mirror never in his nightcap, gown, and slippers but in a filthy old silk dressing gown — in general he eschewed conventional attire, for years he traipsed around in the unadorned uniform of his infantry regiment, was never seen wearing shoes, only boots, and didn't like to put his hat under his arm as was then the custom; despite his undeniable charm, there was something unnatural in the details of his physical appearance and his behavior; for example, he spoke French better than he did German, and was willing to converse in his native tongue only with those whom he knew spoke no French, because he considered his own language barbaric.

While he was talking, Melchior grasped my knees, leaned all the way forward in his armchair, and when he finished he planted conciliatory kisses on my cheeks, by way of having arrived at another station of his instructions; I remained unmoved, for now it was my turn to be distrustful and offended, and it was a little annoying but also amusing to realize that no argument or theory, however daring and powerful, could knock him out of the saddle of his obsessions.

I became increasingly convinced that if I hoped to get anywhere with him I should not fight him with arguments and theories but surround him with the simpler language of the senses, but just what pathetic result I was after, and how clumsily, wrongly, and foolishly I went about achieving it, I shall relate at a later point; he kept nodding, his forehead almost touching mine, but wouldn't take his eyes off me for a moment.

Well, he said, well, well, he repeated, as if finding the subject disagreeable, poor old Fredericus, he too must have had good reason to cling to his opinions, to speak of barbarism, to knock down what his father had built, and he must have had good reason also to affect that awkward posture, and incidentally, was I familiar with the story of Lieutenant Katte?

I said I wasn't.

In that case, hoping to advance my knowledge in Germanology, he would tell me.

Sometimes I had the impression we were conducting a kind of experiment on each other, without knowing exactly what its purpose was.

Our armchairs faced each other; he leaned back comfortably and, as on other occasions, put his feet on my lap, and while he was talking I'd knead and massage his feet, which gave our physical contact an unnecessary rationality, a pleasant monotony; he turned away for a second, the wineglass caught his eye, he took a sip, and suddenly there was a change in him — the expression with which he looked back at me was serious and pensive — but this had to do not with me but with that elaborate story which he was probably reviewing in his mind, quickly pulling it together before actually recounting it.

The strange prince is eighteen years old at this time, Melchior began, he will be twenty-eight when ascending the throne and embarking on his grandiose building project, but now, after an especially exhausting quarrel with his father, he simply disappears from the palace.

They keep looking and looking for him but can't find him anywhere; when bits of some servants' confessions are pieced together, a picture emerges: the prince must have escaped, and his escape had something to do with a certain Hans Hermann von Katte, a friend of his and a lieutenant in the Royal Guards.