Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

The situation was all too familiar to me, but of course the two of them couldn't be blamed for that.

Melchior was also laughing behind our backs — the spectacle of two bumbling writers must have seemed quite funny to him — and it was at that moment that I thought, in my discomfiture or perhaps out of spite, that Arno was allowed to roam the world because he was a military agent on the side, an informer, a spy, but it's entirely possible, I thought then, that he might just think it's all right, quite all right for me to believe that about him, since he knew something about me I would have preferred to keep secret: he had noticed that Melchior made no effort to control his glances in front of Thea, so what we had meant to keep secret, namely, that Melchior and I were not just good friends but lovers, was surely not hidden from Arno, either.

On top of that, I had to show the man some respect, partly because he was a good deal older than I, around fifty or so, and partly because I had no idea just what sort of things he wrote; all I knew was that they were travel books, published in editions of hundreds of thousands of copies, and for all I knew they may have been masterpieces, but in any event, I felt it would be wisest to couch my caution in respectful courtesy; this mutually considerate conversation, carried on while Thea, like some office girl on her day off, was setting the table for tea and listening to Melchior buzzing into her ear about me, made both of us feel awkward.

Arno did everything to do justice to the role assigned to him, and I sensed a kind of masculine charm in his questions about the nature of my drama studies and the kind of short stories I wrote, a charm born of male strength in a state of embarrassment; in fact, one of his remarks seemed gallantly designed to offer me a way out, suggesting that he did not wish to dig too deep, "just briefly, of course, it would be impossible otherwise; I'm not thinking in terms of content, only a hint," he said, and smiled, but the fine little lines running toward his mouth made plain that his more profound thinking rarely found release in a smile; he seemed more of a brooder, which is why he didn't look you straight in the eye right away, as if he were hiding something or had something to be ashamed of.

But as I was answering him he did suddenly look into my eyes, and although his interest settled not on what I was saying, it was a genuine look, and I should have appreciated it, because whenever a glance seeks what lies beyond our words — as in this case, for example, it sought to discover the relationship between my writing and the fact that, being a man, I was in love with another man, and I believe this was going through his mind as I spoke — when, in short, attention abandons the strands of meaning in the subject discussed and tries to grasp something of the speaker's emotional essence, then that moment must be cherished and taken very seriously.

But I knew full well that I had already stood like this once before in some room, facing and being completely at the mercy of another man.

Arno, who had apparently put up with all of Thea's quirks, was now trying with that very glance to get around the burdensome roles she had forced on us; it was impossible not to notice it in his beautiful dark-brown eyes, but I was too preoccupied with my own memories, and paid more attention to what Melchior was whispering about me to Thea than to what I was saying to Arno about my writing, which is why I didn't realize that his glance could have at last freed us both, for he was looking at me with a child's eyes, curious, open, and eager, and with some well-chosen words, or with none at all, we could have turned our conversation into not only a pleasant but also a meaningful one; yet I took no notice of this glance, I did not reciprocate, and having reached the end of my report, I managed to muddle up my own question; wanting to be polite, I settled for what was convenient, simply repeating the question he had addressed to me, and became aware of the rude indifference inherent in this repetition only when I suddenly lost his gaze, as in an odd self-mocking gesture he quickly tapped his temples with both hands, which he then turned palms forward and dropped resignedly.

This waving of the hands signaled no disparagement of his own avocation or work but was, rather, an expression of wonder, of being wounded and embarrassed, a renunciation of ever being understood— "Oh, I'm just a mountain climber," said the gesture, and indeed, it seemed to have come from a hiker being routinely asked what the hike was like and was the weather all right — but what is there ever to say about a hike or the weather?

Arno answered me, of course — after all, he too had had the benefit of a solid middle-class upbringing that teaches you to bridge moments of inattention, confusion, even hate, with innocuous chitchat — and he spoke as native Berliners do in general, producing words as if gargling with mouthwash; but even if I had managed to pay attention to him — Melchior was whispering to Thea about what I had cooked for lunch — even if I had understood what Arno was saying, his body language, his stooping posture told me that it was nothing interesting, mere talk, just keeping the conversation going, and at one point I lost even his voice, partly because I was fuming about Melchior's intimate disclosures and wanted to find a way to get him to stop, shut him up, but also because I realized or thought I realized why this neatly lined face talking at me looked so familiar: it could have been my grandfather's face, if my grandfather had been born a German, a face exuding seriousness, patience, humorless self-respect, a democratic face, if there is such a thing; and so I lost not only the gist of what he was saying but the sound of his voice, and he stood before me like an empty husk; the only thing I could grasp was that he was still wary of me, careful not to say anything that might be interesting, not to embarrass me by saying anything I really ought to listen to, and even before Thea had finished setting the table he gave up on me; I was left standing, leaning against an armchair, rocking back and forth, and Arno, excusing himself, quickly returned to his room.

How nicely these autumn images overlap.

Never more solitary experiences.

Experiences related to my past, but the past is itself but a distant allusion to my insignificant desolation, hovering as rootlessly as any lived moment in what I might call the present: only memories of tastes and smells of a world to which I no longer belong, one I might call my abandoned homeland, which I left to no purpose because nothing bound me to the one I found myself in, either; I was a stranger there, too, and not even Melchior, the only human being I loved, could make me belong; I was lost, I did not exist, my bones and solid flesh turned to jelly; and yet, despite the feeling of being torn from everything and belonging nowhere, I could still perceive myself to be something: a toad pressing heavily against the earth; a slimy-bodied snail unblinkingly observing my own nothingness; what was happening to me was nothing, even if this nothing contained my future and, because of the successive autumns, some of my past as well.

That autumn, in the back room of the flat on Steffelbauerstrasse, where two maple trees, still green and ripe, stood in front of my window, and where sparrows were nesting above the window frame, in the hollow left by a missing brick, there in that room, that autumn, I should have not only sensed but fully understood the nature of this situation, but I kept grasping at straws, hoping for an extraordinary insight meant only for me, for a new situation to arise, something, a change of mood, a tragedy even, that would at last define me within this indefinable nothingness; I kept hoping to find something worth saving, something that would lend meaning to things and save me as well, deliver me from this animal existence, not be something from my past — I was sick and tired of my past, the past was a reminder as unseemly as the aftertaste of a belch— and not anything from my future, either, since I had given up on the future long ago, always reluctant to plan ahead even for a moment; no, I wanted something in the here and now, a revelation, a redemption I was waiting for, I can confess this now, but back then I hadn't yet realized that precise knowledge of nothingness should have sufficed.