Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

And in fact this was not a new discovery of Haffner's. Perhaps he had forgotten, but the emperors had entered his moral universe before. Years ago, Livia had been reading about these Roman dictators. They were all in Dubrovnik, in the wilds of Europe, during one of Esther's summer holidays. They lay underneath a parasol, moving their position in relation to it as the day wore on, a live performance of a sundial — and, to the shuffle of the sea, Livia read aloud to Haffner from the book which her brother had given her. A new translation. Haffner was slowly sunburning. And she had mischievously read out to Haffner the story of Tiberius — the man who had built a private sporting-house, where sexual extravagances were performed for his secret pleasure. Hundreds of girls and young men, whom he had collected from all over the empire as adepts in unnatural practices, and known as spintriae — but what did spintriae mean? wondered Haffner: it must have been dirty; it must have been good, or the man would have translated it: no, said Livia, there was no footnote, nothing — would perform before Tiberius in groups of three, to excite his waning passion. Some aspects of his criminal obscenity were almost too vile to discuss, much less believe, read Livia. Imagine training little boys, whom he called his minnows, to chase him while he went swimming and get between his legs to lick and nibble him! Or letting babies not yet weaned from their mother's breast suck at him — such a filthy old man he had become! So wrote his historian. But neither Livia nor Haffner was so prone to judgement.

Filthy old man or not, they seemed to get Tiberius. The experimenter with pleasure: a pioneer of power — always minuscule before the infinite.

A few years later, at the time of the Brazilian coup, they had been in Sao Paulo — some deal with a bank which didn't work out. The deal, and the bank. With their host, who impressed Haffner with the beauty of his wife, and the cultural beauty of his life, they were sitting in a theatre, watching a classic of contemporary theatre. And even Haffner was amused when the police burst in, and called up everyone involved on stage. They took a programme and began to intone the names: the actors, the stage manager, the lighting designer. Dutifully, the arrested provocateurs lined up on stage. And finally, stated the policemen, confident in their authority, they demanded that the arch instigator, the impresario of this whole production should present himself to the police as well: a man with the unlikely Brazilian name of Bertolt Brecht. Everyone looked concernedly around. Mr Brecht appeared, they thought, to have disappeared.

And what Haffner now remembered was how that night, in their hotel room, Livia had confessed that however much she found it funny, however much she had laughed with their hosts, with the audience, with the entire tropical night — deep in her worried thoughts was a regret. She still felt sorry for the deluded dictatorial policemen.

The poor dictators! Even the dictators, after all, were the dupes of accident and defeat.

At this moment, for instance, Frau Tummel was trying, in the words of the comics, to offer Haffner pleasure. Perhaps this might not obviously seem like a defeat. But look closer, dear reader — look closer. Enter Haffner's soul. Haffner was beginning to feel melancholy. Soft in Frau Tummel's mouth, his penis had no point to it.

If the ghost of Livia were looking down, at this moment, perhaps she would have found this funny, thought Haffner. And so could he. It was just another instance of the accidental.

He touched Frau Tummel, gently, on her grey and golden hair — on the combed grey roots. Could he ask her, politely, he said, to stop doing what she was doing?

Frau Tummel looked up, the head of his slumped penis slumped on the slump of her lower lip. A thin trail of saliva, unnoticed, connected the two. Haffner tried to be romantic: he tried to maintain the tone. She still loved her husband, he told her. She was being silly. But no, said Frau Tummel. It was over a long time ago. And she bent down, continuing to show her affection to Haffner. While Haffner despaired. His soft penis was not moving. It hung there: obeisant to the law of gravity.

It wasn't, obviously, the first time this kind of event had occurred. The despair was local. It had placed Haffner in a difficult social situation. On the one hand, it meant that he could not experience the pleasures he had previously experienced with Frau Tummel. But, on the other hand, he could not ask her to leave. His pride would not allow it. So he was trapped into a conversation — where Frau Tummel had the power. She pitied him; she pored over him; she looked after him. She stated the permanence of their love.

His impotence had trapped Haffner in a conversation he wanted to be over. This sadness was creating so much more intimacy than he ever wanted. He tried to concentrate on images of the erotic: he tried to think about Zinka's breasts. But Zinka eluded him. He remembered the way Livia had touched him, the first time, at the ponds on Hampstead Heath — her hand dipping under his briefs, under the curve of his tense strained penis, a hand which he delightedly and immediately made wet with his semen. Neither of them had spoken. She simply withdrew her hand, took out a handkerchief, wiped it gently — a gesture which for Haffner still seemed fraught with tenderness.

And maybe that had been the moment when he decided to marry Livia: when he knew that he was in love. Just because it had happened so fast. All his triumphs, he began to think now, were just defeats reconfigured. Like the time he batted for five hours in Jerusalem, in 1946, thus securing an improbable draw on a pitch destroyed by three days of tropical rain.

He looked at Frau Tummel. Frau Tummel was looking with tenderness at him: an absolute maternal tenderness. A tenderness which made Haffner afraid with its intimacy. And she bent down, kissed his penis, at its tip.

— Whatever you want, she said. Whatever you want, I will do.

He looked down at his drooping penis — once faithful in all his infidelities. Its defeat now should not, he reflected, have surprised him.

— You can have me, said Frau Tummel, anywhere. If that will help. You can have me where my husband has not had me.

Frau Tummel believed in the reality of their love. She believed that this love was truth. Frau Tummel was not a libertine: for her, the erotic was an aspect of love. She was a Christian woman. She had been brought up to trust and worship the instincts of her soul.

Or was now not the right time for her little lamb? she wondered. Perhaps not, replied her little lamb. Perhaps not.

— We must, said Frau Tummel, talk to my husband. It is the only right thing.

She said this with no enjoyment, no glory. She had come here with her ill husband. She was a model wife. And she would leave with her life destroyed, she thought. She could not live without her husband, and now she could not leave without Haffner. To Haffner, however, it seemed so unnecessary. He talked about the need to take their time. He talked about the need not to injure the blossom of their love.

The dawn was just beginning, in the window. There was a light sparse rain.

But maybe it was possible, she added, for Haffner to forget. If he would only let another woman into his life — to care for him, to be his companion.

Frau Tummel's will was just another way in which the twentieth century was conspiring to entrap Haffner. Once more, he had entered Mitteleuropa . It was a place which had always amazed him. Its endless capacity for seriousness! The intellectual fervour! Whenever he thought about the Europeans, he became hysterical with exclamations. Ever since he discovered, through Cesare, that the Russians wrote to each other with exclamation marks, Haffner had liked this theatrical way of talking. The European vocative — addressing absent abstractions. Love! Death! Fame! Bohemia! Wherever Bohemia was. It was how he always thought about Cesare. Whom Haffner had loved. Of whom Haffner despaired.