Daniel Kehlmann - Fame - A Novel in Nine Episodes

Next day, under the name Matthias Wagner, he rented a furnished room in a rather drafty house not far from where she lived. The landlord looked at him with stupefaction, but Ralf explained that he moonlighted as an impersonator, and that apparently did it. He spent the whole week either there or with Nora, or walking up and down the street enjoying the fact that nobody turned to look, because word had spread around the neighborhood as to who he was and what he did.

Next time he appeared onstage at the Looppool, however, he didn’t make such a good impression. As he stood there speaking his lines, he suddenly felt totally lost. Something was going wrong, he was tensed up, his voice sounded choked, and when he tried to remember how he’d held his hands in that particular scene, he no longer knew how it had been, what he’d felt and thought, all he saw was the image of himself on the screen. He could sense the audience’s attention slipping away, and only his actor’s instinct made him finish the scene.

Then he saw the other Ralf Tanner impersonator. He knew from YouTube that he’d achieved an impressive level of perfection, but the likeness was even more astounding in person. His handshake was firm and he had the penetrating look that Ralf recognized as his own from the big screen. He was tall and broad-shouldered and radiated strength, inner balance, and courage.

“You haven’t been doing this long,” he said.

Ralf shrugged.

“I’ve been doing it since his second film. At the beginning I was just an amateur, I was still working in the Lost and Found. Then his career took off and I handed in my notice.” The man looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to make this your main job? It’s hard—it takes lots of practice. To be able to interpret someone, you have to live with them. Often when I’m in the street I don’t even notice that I’m doing Ralf Tanner. I live as him. I think like him, sometimes I stay in character for days at a time. I am Ralf Tanner. It takes years.”

The owner of Looppool only wanted to give him thirty euros this time. He hadn’t really stood out, and the physical likeness wasn’t there yet.

For a moment Ralf boiled with rage. He looked him straight in the eyes and the other man must have felt the force of a stare he knew from a dozen movies; he took a step back, looked down at the tips of his shoes, and muttered something incomprehensible. His hand slid into his pocket and Ralf knew that he was about to pull out another banknote. But then he felt his strength drain and the rage passed. He said he was just a beginner still.

“Okay.” The man gave him a mistrustful look and the hand came out of the pocket empty.

“I’ll really try,” said Ralf. Something about this pleased him. Wasn’t it proof that he was finally free?

No, he thought on the streetcar on the way to Matthias Wagner’s place. Of course it didn’t prove anything of the sort, it merely showed that self-examination disturbs the personality, deflects the will, and saps the mind; it proved that no one, seen clearly from the outside, resembles themselves at all. He got out at the next stop, waved down a taxi, and had himself driven home.

Once there he asked Ludwig, his valet, to draw him a bubble bath and prepared to listen while he waited to the voice messages on his cell phone. But there weren’t any. Nobody seemed to have missed him. It was as if someone else had taken over all his personal affairs.

He spent the next day in restless distraction. His best friend Mogroll, the failed actor, had swallowed an overdose without warning. Intentional or unintentional, no one knew; he hadn’t given any kind of a signal, hadn’t talked to him, hadn’t left any note. Ralf didn’t understand it.

His personal trainer made him do his usual Wednesday push-ups and told him he had to work on his stomach muscles: there would be scenes in his next film where he’d be stripped to the waist, he mustn’t be laughed at for no longer being young.

He checked the film forums to see if there was anything new about him, but when he read a posting saying that he had sawdust in his head and was as ugly as an ox, he gave up for the moment. Who wrote such stuff, and why? He talked to his agent, then with Brankner the director, who was embarrassingly obsequious. He knew that Brankner didn’t reckon him a good actor but had to have him, because without his participation the movie would never get financed. Halfway through the conversation, Ralf hung up. He leafed through Miguel Auristos Blanco’s Peace, Reach Deep into Us for awhile, then paced up and down looking at the flowers in the tall crystal vases that were suddenly scattered all around the house. He didn’t like flowers, and had no idea how all the vases had got here. Had Ludwig bought them on his own initiative? He was getting stranger as he got older.

Ralf paused for awhile in front of the mirror on the wall, and watched his face become less and less recognizable by the second. Then he left the villa.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he reached Matthias Wagner’s street. Supermarket right there, newsagent next door. The elevator car smelled of cooking. A fat woman greeted him casually. His room welcomed him like a lost refuge.

He watched TV and drank beer out of the can. A newscaster said something about war, the Near East, a visiting minister, tomorrow’s weather. A housewife held up a colorful hand towel, then for some reason an elephant charged across a meadow, then Ralf Tanner appeared, steering a car through big-city traffic and talking to a blonde in the passenger seat. “ Time’s running out and all these people will be turned to dust! ”

“ But maybe, ” said the woman, “ we can stop it. ”

Then in rapid succession came a series of explosions: a car flew into the air, then an oil platform—flames rolling decoratively over the sea—then an apartment building, hit so hard that a blizzard of glass shards flashed in the sun. Then Ralf Tanner’s face again, and underneath, against a black background, the letters: BY FIRE AND SWORD. In theaters now.

What garbage, thought Ralf. Cringe-inducing.

That was when he realized he couldn’t remember shooting it. And that he’d never even heard of the movie.

He channel-surfed for awhile, but the trailer didn’t show up again. He went downstairs and across the street to the Internet café. The owner knew him already and pointed him, smiling, to one of the computers.

By Fire and Sword was listed on imdb.com. The film, which had apparently been reviewed very negatively in the papers the previous week, already had an entry in Wikipedia. In the MovieForum someone praised the intensity of his performance. But why had he gotten involved in such a film? Maybe, someone else replied, he needed the money, hardly surprising given the way he lived. A third person reported that Tanner was currently in Los Angeles, a fourth contradicted him: he was on a publicity tour in China. He’d also added a link, and when Ralf clicked on it, he found himself on the Web site of a Chinese newspaper. A large picture showed him grinning and shaking hands with two officials. He didn’t know these people, he had never been to China. He paid and stumbled out into the harsh morning sun.

By Fire and Sword? Of course, said Nora, she’d seen it. And liked it. Who cared about the critics? She sighed. She’d worshipped Ralf Tanner since she was thirteen. She’d seen all his films.

“So that’s why? Because I look like him?”

“Oh, you’re not that like him. Maybe you should imitate someone else. You’re good, but … he’s not the right one for you.”

His eyes slid to the mirror. There she was, and there he was, and suddenly he didn’t know anymore which side the originals were on and which side the reflections. He ran his hand over her hair, murmured something to cover his confusion, and went downstairs to the streetcar stop.