Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

The sense of the permanent and the sense of the eternal may be part of our divine inheritance, yet I feel that it's just the other way around: our human senses and the emotions stemming from them are too crude not to feel the familiarly old in everything new, not to sense the future in the present, not to discover in every new physical experience a story already known to our body.

Although not in a divine manner, time does seem to stop at such moments; it's as if our foot did not step into a rushing river but trod desperately on some sinking, soft marsh, trying to stay on the surface of deadly boring repetitions, which nevertheless appear to be the single most acceptable proof of life, until our foot loses the battle and quite literally tramples itself to death.

But far be it from me to affect philosophical airs; the only reason I mention all this is to give some idea of an especially overwrought emotional state in which things appear startlingly new and at the same time stiflingly familiar; I found myself in just such a curious state at the end of my two-month stay in Heiligendamm, as I was standing by the handsome white desk in my room — no, it's no mistake, I had stood and sat in such a state before, in my robe, unshaven, unwashed, waiting for some fateful judgment; now, however, prompted by the coolly inquisitive and somewhat watery eyes of a police inspector, I began to read my fiancée's letter, and even if the situation were not so strikingly similar yet different, even if I hadn't felt those commanding eyes on me, eyes that could read a criminal's mind, her opening line would still have stunned me or, more precisely, would have deepened my astonishment in this wakeful state of bewilderment.

My darling, my dearest, my one and only, wrote my bride, using words she had never used before, the unusual address falling like fiery slaps on my face and, along with the sudden rush of awful memories, making me dizzy; it took all my self-control to keep my head straight on my neck; and as I scanned the rest of the letter, I felt hot perspiration inundating my whole body under the robe; with my hands trembling, I slipped the letter back into the envelope, and to steady myself I grasped the back of a tall armchair, though what I really wanted to do was to flee.

To escape, away from the chaos of my life! which was impossible, of course, if only because of the presence of my strange visitor, to say nothing of the fact that one can never satisfy the animal urge to escape, since from the chaos of one's soul there is no place to escape to.

The reason this worthy officer of the law was standing there by the terrace door, and the reason I so readily complied with his audacious request that I open the freshly arrived letter in his presence, was that that very morning the young manservant, Hans Baader, with a single stroke of a razor had slit the throat of the young Swedish gentleman to whom I had been introduced the day after my arrival, at the luncheon table, in highly unusual circumstances, almost at the very moment Count Stollberg's death was announced; with his throat slit, the young Swede was lying in his own blood on the floor of the neighboring suite; police officials who rode over from Bad Doberan located the murderer in the pitch-dark coal cellar, where, evidently unhinged by his own deed, he was huddling and screaming frantically; within half an hour these same officials shed light on the intimate relationship that had developed between Gyllenborg, myself, and Fräulein Stollberg, and on Gyllenborg's and my special attachment to the young manservant himself; with my courteous and obliging behavior, not completely devoid of a certain condescending haughtiness, I intended to dispel the suspicion that I could have had anything to do with this sordid affair that led to murder.

I thanked my good fortune and my stubbornness for not appearing in those ravishingly beautiful photographs, taken by poor Gyllenborg, that showed the young countess partially clad and the valet completely nude— photographs that might at any moment come into the hands of policemen who were just then rummaging through his belongings — even though my ill-fated friend had repeatedly asked me to pose, indeed beseeched me piteously, with tears in his eyes, saying that a triad was needed: next to the rough-hewn robustness of the valet's body, my own more delicate angularity, so that, as he put it, "these two extreme poles of health would flank what is so alluringly ill."

I was able to reject categorically all allegations, couched in polite, convoluted legal phrases, according to which my relationship with the valet and Fräulein Stollberg was reprehensibly intimate and my knowledge of the motives behind the crime a virtual certainty; but there was not a shred of evidence that could be used against me; in point of fact, during the two months of our friendship, as if all along anticipating a possible discovery, I always used the terrace door to reach Gyllenborg's room, converted of late into a studio, just as Father, twenty years earlier, in pursuit of his nocturnal secret delights, used to slip into Fräulein Wohlgast's room; consequently, no one could have witnessed my afternoon or nighttime visits there; without making much of a fuss, or even being especially cautious, I characterized the allegations as slander, pure and simple, and with a nonchalant shrug of my shoulders assured the inspector that I had absolutely no idea whether the murdered gentleman carried on any intimate liaisons with the persons in question.

It is true, I added, that I wasn't a close enough friend of the victim to have knowledge of the more intimate aspects of his private life, but I knew him to be a man of taste and breeding for whom it would have been unthinkable — howsoever he may have been inclined to behave — to enter into such a dubious relationship with a mere servant; I played the innocent, almost to the point of idiocy, but I had to be sure to avoid the dreadful snare, for, the valet not being of age, I could have been charged not only with indulging in perverse sexual acts but also with corrupting a minor; to give my professed naïveté some psychological support, I lowered my voice to a confidential whisper, shrugged my shoulders again, and asked the inspector whether he had had a chance to see Fräulein Stollberg's hands without gloves.

The inspector's unblinking eyes were staring at me steadfastly, and they were the strangest pair of eyes I have ever seen: light and transparent, cold and with almost no color, a curious transition between vaguely blue and hazily gray; the two eyeballs were large and, because of some weakness or chronic ailment perhaps, constantly swimming in a bowl of tears, and this made it appear as if all his ostensibly plainspoken, unassuming questions, as well as my supposedly innocent replies, had filled him with profound sadness, as if everything had pained him — the crime committed, the lies, even the hidden truths — and all the while his face, and the eyeballs themselves, remained totally impassive and cold.

Using only his eyes, the inspector now indicated that he did not understand my remark and would be grateful for an explanation.

Naturally enough, I assumed that Fräulein Stollberg would not betray me, would hold her peace, perhaps even deny everything, although she herself was somewhat implicated by the photographs Gyllenborg had left behind.

The inspector's silent request prompted me to remain silent myself, and I proceeded to show on my own hand how Fräulein Stollberg's fingers were fused together; that is why she had to wear gloves all the time; like hooves they were, I finally said.

The inspector was a large, jovial man with an air of quiet, commanding professionalism; his powerful build must have been an asset in his line of work; he stood in the terrace doorway with his arms folded; we were both standing as we talked, which meant that this was not yet an interrogation, but no idle chitchat either; he broke into a smile, which his tearing eyes made look almost painful; and then lightly, as if tossing back my argument, he remarked that from his experience he knew that certain people, usually emotionally troubled or weak, not only did not find physical malformations or deformities repulsive but, on the contrary, were often attracted by them.