Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Frau Tummel was talking about her husband. She was playing the part of the wife. One never knew, she said, how much one was doing the right thing.

— Perhaps, said Frau Tummel, I am not the right woman for him.

— Come now, said Haffner. Of course you are!

And perhaps if he had thought more precisely or extensively he might have decided that this was not exactly the right tone; that seduced as he may have been by Frau Tummel's calm he should still have understood its fragility. He should still have expected that his pity was not what Frau Tummel wanted.

He really didn't need to talk to her like this, she said. It was hardly elegant. To this accusation, Haffner made some kind of noise. In this noise, he hoped to register a charming protestation. Frau Tummel regarded him. He was useless, she observed.

— No denying it! said Haffner, cheekily. He opened out his arms in a happy gesture of surrender.

And in her irritation at Haffner's refusal to offer her even the most minimal affection, Frau Tummel informed Haffner that she really should be returning to her husband, and so rose swiftly from her chair, thus colliding with the waiter who — as if he and Frau Tummel were a carefully rehearsed double act, a famous pair of clowns — tipped the wine gently over Zinka, as if in benediction.

Frau Tummel, in a flurry of mortification, tried to apologise to Zinka, who waved her irritably away, pressing her napkin to her top. Haffner looked out of the window, at the sunset, at the inexpertly murdered sky.

He scanned the horizon — like isolated Crusoe, with the craziest beard, wishing for a rescue which he never, now, expected.

Haffner was timeless. Perhaps this moment where Haffner scanned the horizon was one small proof. As he watched, he wondered to himself how far this scene was his fault. He searched the scene for hidden motives. And as he did so, all the previous allegations against Haffner fluently returned to him — trapped on his stage, in his follow spot, the ripples of a sequinned backdrop behind him, facing the disdain of his miniature audience: one couple waiting for another act, the manager himself, the confused splinter group of a stag party, one baffled drunk soldier on leave. In Haffner's lone state, Frau Tummel multiplied into the other women — like Barbra, or Esther — who had found Haffner so disappointing.

His efforts were rarely enough, thought Haffner — as he stood up with a superfluous napkin which he held out to Zinka, who did not see it, occupied as she was in preventing Frau Tummel from offering advice, while wiping off the sticky sheen of alcohol from her skin. It was so often the same, he thought — picking up his own glass, correcting himself, putting it gently down: like the confrontation with Livia, after the Allied liberation of Rome, who was wild with jealousy, having been sent a photo of the Colosseum.

It was not the usual tourist cliche.

In the centre of the photo was a jeep, on which an Allied soldier was sitting, at the wheel: a white carnation was a badge in his beret. A suntanned woman in a navy dress, with large sunglasses up on her blonde hair, was showing something to this Allied officer, which was making him contentedly smile. While beside them an assortment of elegantly coiffed, sunglassed Italians were clapping.

Haffner had always denied that this was Haffner.

The photo had been sent to Livia — whom Haffner had at that time not seen for two years, not since he had been mobilised straight after their marriage in 1942 — by a so-called friend of hers who had seen it in the newspapers. She was jealous, said Haffner. She was mad with jealousy. It was a spiteful thing to do.

It was true that there was some ambiguity. The man in the photograph was looking down, in profile: so there was room for doubt. And this doubt also left room for Haffner to escape the accusations. When, fifty years later, Benjamin discovered this photograph too, going through a pile of Haffner's things, Haffner repeated his excuses again. Why then, thought Benji, had Haffner kept this photograph for fifty years, if it wasn't of him? Why would you preserve the triumph of another man?

But I thought I knew. I tried to tell Benji; but Benji was unconvinced. For I was the only one who believed in Haffner's innocence.

This photograph marked Haffner's jazz. His ultimate in pure freedom. It represented every moment in which Haffner had escaped, momentarily, from the observing world.

Like the riffs he had heard played on Artie Shaw's masterpiece 'Nightmare', in the rundown clubs of the Via Margutta. At some point, after all, you lost your moral compass. This was true. But it was difficult to know where. The borders of the bourgeoisie and bohemia were so hard to identify — like the manic jazz tune of Artie Shaw's which was now returning to Haffner, as he sat there in the dining room, flanked by two gilt mirrors so that an infinite regress of Haffners looked with joyful affection at Zinka: her wet hair slicked to one side, like all the androgynous fashions of Haffner's century: the flappers and the nouvelle vague , the movida after Franco, the perverse and civilised dolce vita of the Fascists and the Communists in Rome.

Zinka stood up, and said that he could follow her. And Haffner, who wanted no fuss in his public life, who wanted no attention to be drawn to him, followed mutely after Zinka, nodding adieu to Frau Tummel.

The air above Zinka smelled of florals and herbs: the intoxicating warm forest contained in the wine she had been doused in. Safely alone, in the hotel foyer, she contemplated her ruined hair, the map of stains forming on her dress. And Zinka said to Haffner that perhaps he could escort her to his room, so that she could wash.

Oh Zinka! Haffner would have bathed her himself. He would have prepared baths of asses' milk, vials of perfumes. He was an old man still piqued by lust, by love. Of this, Haffner had no illusions.

He had so often believed in the counterlife, the myth of Haffner's excess. A Haffner untrammelled by his marriage, his Atlantic existence. Haffner unencumbered! Like the most distant tropical sunset, reached by regal Concorde, supersonic — its front wheel propped under its chin, like the solid goatee of a monumental pharaoh. But his escapes were always so fleeting. A night with a girl, a night at the opera: these were Haffner's Cinco de Mayo ; his risorgimento: the Parisian evenements of Haffner's savage uprising.

These were the new life which Haffner dreamed of — but it always needed, he felt, someone to take him there. And no one, in the end, had really wanted to go.

So maybe, Haffner thought, he understood. The problem had been that he always wanted an elopee. Which meant that the problem, really, was Haffner. He could conjure with time as much as he liked, but the anecdotes only proved one thing. They were a strip cartoon which always involved the same dogged character: a Haffneriad. For the metamorphoses which lust invented in Haffner were never permanent. The glimpses of other Haffners — Haffner the New Yorker, Haffner the Roman, Haffner the free — did not transform him: just like Silberman, in Palestine, in 1944. Haffner had been told to do something with a couple of the other Jewish soldiers in his platoon. Surely something could be done to tone them down? Which Haffner contested. For nothing could be done with Silberman — disguised as a non-Jew with his clever costume of yarmulke, tefillin, and the extraordinary rapidity with which he entered arguments in Hebrew at roadside cafes frequented only by Russian Zionists and the occasional Zionist mule. Now, fifty years too late, Haffner had some sympathy for Silberman: disguised only in the guise of himself.