Andres Neuman - Traveller of the Century

He had spent the morning reading, and had lunched in the kitchen before going to the market square to see the organ grinder. He had gone without coffee to economise. Later on, he had called at the Gottlieb residence, but Sophie had just left with Rudi. After supper, not yet sleepy enough, he had gone for a night-time stroll down winding, unfamiliar streets, through High Gate, and along the path to the bridge and the pinewood. And, almost unwittingly, he found himself in front of the cave. Franz had greeted him with excited barks. The old man hadn’t been sleeping, or claimed he hadn’t. I brought you some cheese, Hans explained. Thank you, my lad, the old man had said, is anything the matter? No, Hans had replied, I don’t know, I just came to bring you some cheese. The organ grinder had given him a bony embrace, cupped his face in his grimy hands and said: Tell me about it.

The following morning, bright and early, a loud clatter of hooves came to a halt outside the inn. The postman’s horn surprised Herr Zeit, his razor halfway down one lathered cheek — two dark drops fell onto the towel draped around his neck. The innkeeper muttered a few curses in a thick Wandernburg dialect. When the horn sounded a second time, he thrust out his belly indignantly, sighed and called to his daughter. Go and see what he wants, he grunted, and wake up that sleepyhead in number seven. When Lisa opened the door, the postman stared at her with annoyance, and, without dismounting, threw her a sealed envelope he had taken out of his saddlebag. All around, upstairs and down, like street lights in the daytime, heads peered out of windows.

Lisa raced down the second-floor corridor, stopping just before she collided with Hans, who was still in his nightshirt and a woollen dressing gown. Hans smiled and said good morning. Lisa stared at Hans’s cared-for teeth. She shivered when she saw his unshaven chin, covered in black dots, and without knowing why felt foolish. Will you give me the letter, Lisa? said Hans. The what? she replied. Oh yes, sorry.

Hans tore open the envelope and his eyes sped to the end of the letter. Before he had even finished reading it through, he had let it fall to the ground and was dressing as fast as he could.

After floating from side to side to the floor, the letter had come to rest next to the legs of a chair. The light from the window fell across half the page. On the part in the light, between a colophon featuring a bird and the heading, printed in capitals were the words:

BROCKHAUS BOOKS, LEIPZIG.

As at every lunchtime, the air in the Central Tavern was beginning to thicken with the smell of cooking oil and working men’s clothes. For the first time in months, Hans had a feeling of benign compassion towards the Wandernburgers filling the establishment. So, you’re staying? Álvaro rejoiced, clinking tankards with Hans. Hans nodded, beaming, his lips moist with beer. What a pity, niño ! chuckled Álvaro. I was looking forward to seeing the back of you!

In the middle of April, when his savings had first shown signs of running low, Hans had written to the editors at Brockhaus offering his services as a reader and translator. He had enclosed an exhaustive (and partially invented) curriculum vitae and a few publications. In the inflated list of his talents, Hans had claimed to be able to translate into German, with varying degrees of competence depending on the case, any European language of literary significance. Despite his repeated exaggerations about his professional experience, this was not far from the truth. Hans proposed writing detailed reports on authors or books the publishing house might be interested in translating, prologues to their anthologies of foreign poetry, as well as translations of essays and poems for their magazine Atlas . And also, perhaps, if the publisher was interested, bringing out an anthology of European poets encompassing a broad range of languages and countries. Although their reply had taken a long time to arrive, to the point where Hans had begun to fear that some of the fictitious additions to his curriculum might have been uncovered, in the end it was encouraging — the publisher had recently lost two of his collaborators (one deceased, the other dismissed) and were indeed looking for a reliable reader and a more or less permanent translator. They agreed to employ him at once as a salaried assistant on their magazine Atlas . They also took him on as a reader for a one-month trial period. And they acknowledged his idea about a future anthology of European poetry, although they could give no assurances. The best news of all, given Hans’s financial situation, was the inclusion in their acceptance letter of two urgent commissions, one generously remunerated (the other, in the editor’s words, should be submitted without payment “as a sign of mutual goodwill”). As soon as he had received the reply, before going out to meet Álvaro at the Central Tavern, Hans had sat down to write two letters: the first, shorter one, was to Brockhaus, in the most casual tone possible, accepting his conditions; the second, a garbled, exhilarated note to Sophie giving her the good news. Afterwards, he had gone downstairs to reception and announced to the innkeeper: My dear Herr Zeit, I should like to speak to you for a moment about business. Following twenty minutes of calculation, recalculation, mutual haggling and theatrical protestations from the innkeeper, Hans had succeeded in reaching a new agreement for the monthly price of his lodgings plus one meal a day. (Two? Out of the question! Impossible! Do you have any idea, Herr Hans, how much the price of food has shot up! do you want to ruin me? Two meals, out of the question! Impossible!)

While Hans was finalising his agreement with the innkeeper, Sophie was shutting herself in her room so she could read the note she had just received. Lying face down on the orange taffeta eiderdown, ankles folded in the air, she couldn’t help giving a cry of joy when she reached the part that said: … therefore, if all goes well, you will have no choice but to suffer my presence in Wandernburg for the time being . On hearing her mistress, Elsa burst into the room to see what the matter was. Concealing the letter under a cushion, Sophie sat up nonchalantly and replied: Nothing at all, why? I thought I heard Miss cry out, said Elsa, puzzled. My dear, said Sophie, is it impossible to sneeze in this house without creating a scandal?

That very afternoon, after lunching with Álvaro and downing three black coffees in a row, Hans went back to his room, bounding up the stairs two at a time. He flung open the door. His eyes fixed on his trunk, he strode across the room. On the oak table were three thick volumes, some carbon paper and an ink pot with a closed lid. Hans knelt beside the trunk. He tried shifting it, confirming how heavy it was. He heaved a sigh. He ran his fingers along its curved top, then unfastened its locks and clasps one by one. Inside, stacks of books lay in disarray from all his travels. The first volumes he saw were his old Greek dictionary, a manual of Italian verbs, a slim book of poems by Novalis, and a dog-eared guide to French grammar.

Hans posted his manuscripts to Leipzig each week, back and forth, like the wind. The publisher remunerated his work with a money order Hans cashed at the Bank of Wandernburg, a square-shaped building of somewhat ostentatious neoclassical design at the end of Ducat Street. Each morning, spectral yellow carriages would depart from there escorted by a police guard. Establishing a work routine in Wandernburg felt at once strange and natural to Hans. The place still felt alien to him, as though he had only just arrived there, and was preparing to leave. And yet there were times when, wandering down an alleyway or crossing the market square, Hans would look up, and an unexpected feeling of harmony would overwhelm him — he liked the pointed towers, he was drawn in by the maze of curves and inclines. Then he would quicken his pace, trying to shake off this uncomfortable nesting instinct by telling himself no, he knew perfectly well he wouldn’t stay long, remembering the hundreds of cities he had visited.