Matthias Politycki - Next World Novella

Schepp registered that with pleasure. His gaze followed Dana while she strode around the room as if shooting from the hip, furious down to the tips of her toes. He didn’t yet know that she had an unsuccessful career as a dancer behind her, but he could see it, good God, he could see it. The fact that that career had been a failure, a few short engagements in third-class shows, made no difference when he learnt about it later. He was no wiser on the vital point: had she exerted her obvious talents only to drive men crazy — or women as well? An excitingly terrible idea.

Schepp sat. Schepp drank. Schepp waited. Was he not the only one who knew what Dana was really like? Hadn’t he seen it with his own eyes? He was always trying to extract a revelation from her when he followed her outside. He discovered all sorts of things, but not what he was hoping to discover. After a few weeks he knew a good deal about the circumstances of her life, the past circumstances of her life, because she liked to tell him about her childhood with her grandmother in Galicia, and how she had helped out in the fields as a little girl; they’d even had a television, a tractor, there was an uncle in America, in short it had been a golden age — but she was airily elusive so far as her present life was concerned, she reacted to questions both impulsively and confusingly: ‘Well, of course, Professor, a bit of fun makes things even more fun.’ Was that supposed to mean —? Was it just naïve chatter, or was there subtle calculation behind it?

Dana. As every single one of his questions led only to more questions, never to a definite answer, Schepp thought her capable of anything. He often found her out in a lie; she was both a talkative and a muddled creature who seemed to have forgotten how a sentence had begun by the time she reached the end of it — her brain was a labyrinth of blind alleys, what she said was surprising, sometimes amusing, but above all a strain on the listener, or at least on a listener like Schepp, who doubted and even despaired of her mind when she talked to him. Until the image of a mobile hanging from the ceiling occurred to him. Yes, he said to himself, that may be how her mind functions, each thought fitted separately to make up a constantly circling structure, moved forwards by the slightest breath of air, next moment backwards or upwards, downwards, something that seemed puzzlingly fickle and unpredictable, but in reality was nothing but a natural process, the outcome of a change in air current rather than thought process.

Soon there was no resisting Dana’s erratic way of conversing. It was something of a borderline experience for the honest scholar he had been all his life: he understood that when he talked to her it wasn’t the meaning but the sound of the words that mattered. From then on he stopped speaking logically to her, no more arguing, insisting, deploying his brilliance; instead he indulged in a sweet buzz of sound, rhetorically dressing up an absence of meaning. Dana would sometimes smile at him with her big, empty eyes, a reward worth more than any international recognition he had ever received.

He, number one in his field of study, spent an entire spring, almost an entire summer with her, smoking, agreeing with nearly all of her mysteriously wayward remarks as if he had finally found someone who understood his innermost mind. He was entirely absorbed in his new life. Doro at most wrinkled her nose and said nothing. There was nothing worth talking about, was there? The fact that Schepp had discovered the life of bars and red wine and smoking, all in moderation, of course, who could blame him? Certainly not Doro with her gentle sympathy. ‘If you ever stop loving me I shall notice at once,’ she had assured him when they married, when he had asked her what she expected from their life together and without stopping to think she had replied, ‘Nothing.’ All she wanted was to be happy. But suppose one day she wasn’t? She’d know what to do, she said.

Oh, Doro trusted her feelings, she would feel it when he stopped loving her whether his clothes smelled of stale smoke or not. He did still love her just as he always had done. At times, however, he surprised himself, even if Doro didn’t; he was sometimes oppressed by guilt in the afternoon, in broad daylight, although he hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of. Luckily such feelings became much less distinct at dusk, dissipating entirely once night fell and he took his hat and went out again.

So it could probably have gone on for years. Then Dana suddenly disappeared. Apparently because a considerable sum of money had gone missing from the till when the drinks bought were reckoned up against the takings. Paulus had obviously only just checked the figures, promptly blaming his waitress for the discrepancy. Although of course she protested her innocence. Her, innocent? Paulus asked across the bar as he polished a glass to sparkling radiance, and he was sure of the nods all round. When customers nevertheless threatened to go off and drink wherever Dana turned up to wait if he didn’t take her back, he assured them that he’d rather go bust.

Schepp listened calmly to all this, sitting at his usual place beneath the wooden vault and working his way, sip by sip, towards a decision. It was no good, you had to bow to the unrelenting nature of existence, you had to reconcile yourself to whatever happened and would happen, you had to accept your fate or be dashed to pieces against it — this, or something like it, is how Schepp was thinking as he picked his way through the situation. And thought that if it turned out badly for him, at least he’d know the right place to attack, indeed to bite.

Shortly thereafter Schepp observed himself speaking casually to Paulus, bringing the conversation around to Dana and her ‘misappropriation’ of funds, striking his forehead and confiding that now, embarrassingly, it was clear that the whole thing probably should be chalked up to his account, literally so. It was not the real Schepp, of course, who confessed to Paulus, making a very obvious effort to be discreet, that all those weeks and months he had let Dana chalk up what he owed. The missing sum could only be the amount she had secretly cancelled on his behalf. Paulus tugged awkwardly at his moustache, not sure what to think of this story, then decided not to complicate matters even further and unnecessarily, and named a sum he thought appropriate. Schepp was alarmed by the amount but did not hesitate for a moment; yes, it must be something like that, could he settle up with his credit card?

Which made Dana’s innocence clear and gave Paulus no option but to apologize to her immediately and ask her to come back and work for him, after all, he wasn’t a monster — in fact, Schepp ought to give her the glad news himself, he said, handing him the telephone that stood on the bar. He was sure the Professor could explain it to her better.

Schepp had enough presence of mind to put this off until the following day. He didn’t like to call anyone so late, he said, perhaps Paulus would be kind enough to write the number down? Paulus stroked his moustache even more thoroughly than usual, but then he even wrote down the Polish country code. Yes, a call to her would cost money, what had Schepp been thinking?

Schepp preferred to leave that question open. A few days later Dana was back serving drinks at La Pfiff as if she had never been away, and she thanked him by observing him very carefully from the bar, so carefully that it wasn’t quite seemly, and then she brought him his wine, ostentatiously breathing in an undertone, ‘I dreamt of you again last night.’ Schepp was accustomed to mockery of that kind from her, it meant nothing at all, it was just what he expected.

It did, however, surprise him that she never once took a smoking break. Only when nearly everyone had left, and she still hadn’t said or done anything that she didn’t say or do at every other table, did Schepp give himself a push and go over to the bar to pay; he almost stumbled, the wine affected his legs so suddenly. As she printed out the receipt Dana turned to him in such a way that the tattoo was right in his face. Sorting the notes she asked how she could ever repay him for ‘all that’, but her eyes did not sparkle as she spoke. It was on the tip of Schepp’s tongue to say, oh, it will be enough if some day I can give that damn throat of yours a good bite, but immediately a rushing began in his ears, his jaw worked idly, and he said nothing. Or did he? He must have said something or other in his confusion; with that rushing in your ears you couldn’t hear yourself speak. Dana suddenly laughed so indignantly that the rushing stopped at once, and everyone still sitting with their glasses looked up..