Matthias Politycki - Next World Novella

‘Well, better begin right away, then!’ she cried, grabbing him with both hands, bending him back over the bar and leaning over him.

Not to kiss him — ‘Does that old fool seriously think …?’ — but to spit in his face. When she finally let go of him she was baring her teeth. Schepp struggled up, breathing heavily, and wiped his face with the handkerchief from his breast pocket. A mistake! he would have liked to assure her, a bad joke! Good God, hadn’t he had to put up with many of her own bad jokes? While he was still gasping for air, Dana was already turning away, ripping him to shreds at the top of her voice in front of the remaining customers. It wasn’t long before one of them, a young fellow known as Kiddo, staggered over to the Professor and gave him a lecture, if you could call it that, because Kiddo was so sozzled he could hardly utter a coherent sentence.

There could be a saint even inside a waitress, that was the gist of it; did that old jerk think he could pester her with his improper advances, did he really think he could fumble her with his grubby paws?

Normally Schepp would have calmed everyone down quickly with a few rhetorical flourishes, but the young fellow took him by the lapels and pulled him close, bad breath wafting in his face. Someone like him, said Kiddo, needed a good thrashing, he’d earned it, but — and here he pushed Schepp away so that he hit the bar, waiting speechless for what came next — but a man like the Professor wasn’t worth a straight right or left, man to man, he wasn’t even a quarter of a man, so a slap in the face — and here Kiddo gave him a resounding one — would have to do for now. Schepp exited the building.

And hardly dared to breathe. While reading, his remaining powers of resistance had been extinguished, for — for what Doro had written was strikingly like what had actually happened, practically verbatim, there was no point in denying it. He couldn’t even fool himself any more. Confronted so unexpectedly with the wretched details of that night, he saw the whole scene in his mind’s eye, an intolerably well-lit image surfacing from his memory, an image in which the glances the others shot his way paled in insignificance. As if it hadn’t happened five years ago but just yesterday. He had gone home like a beaten dog swearing never, ever to set foot in La Pfiff again. He could have died of shame; he had wanted only to forget it, keep it secret, suppress it until it had vanished from his memory, until no one knew about it any more, until it had never happened. But Doro, whom he most particularly would not have told about it, appeared very well informed, knew every detail, even knew about that embarrassing request to be paid ‘in kind’.

Schepp put down the sheet of paper. There was no glossing it over any more. His past faux pas, or rather his offence, or rather the stain on his life, was there in his file in black and white. Doro had deprived him of any opportunity to fashion an alibi through rhetorical manipulation of the facts. He was as deeply ashamed as he had been on that night five years ago, not least of being described as someone not even worth a straight punch, a right or left between equals. Doro had even known about that — and had never said a word.

There were a few more pages which she used for editorial notes. He had not expected much from those, but now he knew that they would go to the heart of the matter.

Yet he had so often sat in judgement on himself, oh how he had regretted it, how he had resolved to return to his old life, seeking happiness in the old heroic tales, the brushstrokes of ancient Chinese calligraphy. But happiness was no longer to be found there. He had thrown out the coloured handkerchiefs he’d worn in his breast pocket, he had let his hair grow out and combed it over his bald patch the way he used to. But beneath the surface his thoughts had simply run on. Had he at least begun to avoid La Pfiff, had he chosen to drink in some other bar? No. Perhaps the worst thing was that in spite of his double humiliation — as if Dana’s hadn’t been enough, as if he’d needed another from a young man like Kiddo to open his eyes — he couldn’t bring himself to draw a line under the whole business, that after two or three weeks without being able to whistle his usual goodbye to Dana, he couldn’t stand it any longer. Acting as naturally as possible, he had turned up at La Pfiff again.

But no one took any notice — because hardly any of the old late-night regulars were still there. The dreary atmosphere of former days was back again. No one minded who came there now, not even if it was Schepp. And this time Paulus didn’t know why Dana had disappeared. Or where she’d gone. Maybe back to Poland, he conjectured; anyhow it was better that way. For the Professor too, he added, stroking his moustache.

Better that way, yes, certainly. Although of course it was the worst thing of all, it was unbearable. To see Schepp return to his regular table, order his red wine, spend the evenings in silent dialogue, sometimes allowing himself to scan the place as if looking for something in particular — well, no one would have taken him for a renowned international expert in anything. And Doro, whom he had always loved faithfully, stayed the same even in these difficult years. With her natural elegance of mind, she rose quietly above his ingrained melancholy. He was so lonely when they were together, she might have understood that from his clumsy grin, a grin that really meant to be a smile, most really of all an exclamation mark. But at most Doro cocked her head at him and said nothing. Hadn’t she become even a bit cooler, more distant, more reserved, as if, in her intuitively vegetative way, she had picked up on his dismal failure and wanted to avoid it for herself? Was she secretly ashamed for him, was she suffering with him so much that she was hiding her empathy?

Discontented, Schepp regarded the gloomy sketch of his life, remembering how he had hardly been able to write a line, how in desperation he had looked for old essays and papers that might be worth revising, how he had finally come upon Marek the Drunkard . He remembered staring at the typescript and suddenly recalling the scene he had meant to write decades before, the scene where Marek had to report to the police first thing the next morning and then go to the MOT office. Where after a brief inspection of load-bearing parts he was told that he could count himself lucky to be getting off without a hefty fine, but in any case it would be without his Dolly. No, he would not be allowed to drive it so much as a metre away from the MOT testing station, it was hereby withdrawn from circulation and sent for scrap. There stood Marek with a bag of possessions hurriedly salvaged from his home; he would have liked to have shrugged, but instead the tears were pouring down his cheeks. He had no home any more, there was nothing for it, he’d have to call Hanni and ask if she might additionally allow him a day. But Schepp hadn’t even tried to write this little scene. The manuscript, unread, had soon disappeared under a stack of papers in a cupboard or drawer. And so, somehow, things had gone on and on, day after day. He managed to continue teaching; as for his research, he had stopped nurturing any ambitions in that department long since. His eye fell on the cap of the fountain pen lying under the coffee table, much too far away for him to retrieve it. He didn’t hear the clock of the Church of the Good Shepherd strike four high notes and then four low notes, he didn’t feel another tear run down his cheek. He picked up his manuscript with both hands — what else was there for him to hold on to? — and read what Doro had written at the end of the story.

No, Hinrich, I know very well that even that can’t be the end. It’s taken me a few years to summon up the courage to think as much and, more to the point, to tell you so. I’m relieved now, even if I find it a little embarrassing, that I had to make use of your old story. Yes, Hinrich, I know you’re not Marek and definitely not Jörn. I’m sure you only worshipped this Hanni from afar, hidden among your friends at the other end of the bar. At the time I probably loved you, my little would-be Marek, more than you ever let yourself dream I might. Did you maybe stay a would-be Marek until your eye operation? Anyway, you were certainly not a man who could make a woman feel secure for an entire lifetime.