Daniel Kehlmann - F

It was a dreamy soul with metaphysical tendencies, a medical student in Minden, who having read it set up a lunatic experiment to test his own existence. No one understood the details, but it had something to do with the log he kept of his every flicker of awareness, with controlled needle jabs that he administered alternately to himself and to a pathetic guinea pig, and with the jump that he made, with absolute premeditation and equally absolute precise execution, from a railroad bridge. In the following week a young woman jumped from the television tower in Munich clutching a copy of My Name Is No One , which unleashed yet another flood of newspaper articles, which in turn resulted in a greengrocer in Fulda taking poison along with his wife. Between the two corpses lay a copy of Arthur’s book.

That marked the end of the wave of suicides, although the wave of articles, commentaries, and rebuttals kept going, not least including the incident of the well-known radio talk-show host who voluntarily checked into a locked psychiatric ward after declaring on the air that he was convinced of his own nonexistence. Given that he wound up by reading out a rather long excerpt from My Name Is No One , this provoked a debate in parliamentary committee about whether the index of dangerous films, video games, and books should not be administered more severely. This provoked mocking responses from several MPs, and a pronouncement from a bishop, which in turn engendered a further wave of commentary, in which there was much speculation about who this Arthur Friedland person was, who kept in the background, didn’t defend his book, didn’t step forward, and didn’t allow himself to be photographed.

When the subject had been so exhaustively explored that there wasn’t a human being in the country who wasn’t bored by it, Arthur was famous. His second book, the novel The Hour of the Hunter , a superficially conventional thriller about a deeply melancholic detective who, despite his vast intelligence and desperate efforts, is unable to solve an apparently simple case, spent several weeks on the lower ranks of the best-seller lists.

Shortly thereafter, The Mouth of the River appeared, a novel about a man whose fate branches out again and again, depending on different decisions or the whims of Fortune. Each time the two alternatives are explored, the two paths that life can take from the same event. Death is an ever-more-frequent visitor, between a successful existence and its horrifying end, there is often no more than a moment of inattention or some tiny incident — more and more paths lead to sickness, accident, and death, while very few lead to old age.

This book moved me in some extraordinary fashion, and it provokes my anxiety to this day. In part because it shows how immense the consequences of every decision and every move are — every second can bring destruction, and if you really think things through to their conclusion, how is it possible to live at all? But also in part because I could never rid myself of the suspicion that it had more to do with me than Arthur’s other books did: with a summer afternoon long ago when I was almost killed by a car, now little more than a distant memory, a brief anecdote, at best an echo in a bad dream after a heavy dinner.

There is a creak of wood, a figure pushes its way in and goes down on its knees. I put the cube to one side. I just completed it in twenty-eight seconds; my best time is nineteen, but that was long ago.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” I say crossly.

“For ever and ever, amen,” a hoarse male voice responds.

“I’m listening.”

He’s silent, breathing heavily, searching for words. I look at the cube again, but it’s not okay, twisting the rows might make a noise and he’d notice it.

“Unchastity. I pleasure myself. I do it all the time.”

I sigh.

“Even just now. On the street. No one saw. I have a wife and a girlfriend. They both know about each other, but neither of them knows about my second girlfriend, although she knows about them. Then I have a third girlfriend that none of them knows about. And she doesn’t know about any of them, she thinks I live alone.”

I rub my eyes. I’m tired, and it’s so hot.

“Things went wrong when Klara made fun of my wife on Facebook. She didn’t think of the fact that Pia’s her friend and can read it.”

“Her friend?”

“Facebook friend. I told all of them that I’m stopping, things are going to be different now. But it’s so hard! How do you do it? No woman ever! I get shaky after just two hours.”

“We’re speaking about you.”

“And besides I’ve taken money.”

“Ah.”

“Not that much. A thousand euros. From the company cash register.”

“What is your profession?”

“I’m an accountant. My girlfriend works in my office.”

“Which one?”

“Which office?”

“Which girlfriend!”

“Well, Klara. The one my wife knows about.”

“Why an accountant?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why would anyone be an accountant? I’ve always wondered.”

He says nothing. But why can’t I ask questions, where is it written that I’m not allowed to learn anything in the confessional?

“I like crossword puzzles,” he says. “When everything is neatly filled in. All of it is right. I like that. You look at all the receipts, at first it’s all pure chaos, but then you begin to fill in the answers. One thing here, another thing there, this space and that space, and at a certain point it all comes together. In life it’s the only place you’ll find order. Do you need an accountant?”

“No, no. Thank you.”

“The money wasn’t from a client. You mustn’t think that. It was from the office supply for petty expenses. A friend of mine has a furniture business, I told him I need to buy new swivel chairs, but you need to fill out the invoice a little higher, around three thousand euros, and then—”

“You just said one thousand!”

“—he delivered the chairs and I paid and we split the difference between us. Unfortunately he then wanted to write off the money I got as a special expense on his tax return, and because he’s our client, I had to tell him that this wasn’t possible. I tried a couple of bookkeeping tricks—”

“Let’s talk about the women.”

“It’s terrible, Father! They keep calling.”

“Who?”

“All of them except my wife. She never calls. Why would she? And I visit one of them every day, I’ve got things well organized, but it takes too long, I still have to … just like before. How do you stand it, Father? I once managed for a whole week. I stayed at home, played with the children, and helped my wife in the kitchen. In the evenings we watched funny animals on YouTube. There are so many of them. Thousands. Thousands of funny animals.”

“What do they do?”

“Eat, roll around, make noises. On the third day I thought things weren’t really so bad. On the fifth, I thought I’d have to kill myself. Then I went to her.”

“To which one?”

“I can’t remember. Is it important?”

“No.”

“So what should I do?”

“Exactly that. Stay at home. Help with the cooking. Watch animal videos.”

“But that’s terrible.”

“Of course it’s terrible. That’s life.”

“Why are you saying such a thing to me?”

“Because I’m not your therapist. Nor am I your friend. Look truth squarely in the face. You’ll never be happy. But that’s not important. You can live that way.” I wait for a moment, then make the sign of the cross. “I absolve you of your sins. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Be true to your wife for as long as you can. Try it for two weeks. Two weeks have to be possible. And give the money back. That is your penance.”