Andres Neuman - Traveller of the Century

As soon as she was lost in the crowd, Lisa ran from the park, clutching her dress in one hand like a jilted princess.

During their initial sessions, Hans and Sophie couldn’t decide whether to do the translations first and then make love, or to begin their lovemaking and move on, less excited, to the books. To begin with, Sophie was in favour of putting off jumping into bed, not out of any lack of desire, but because she enjoyed Hans’s agitation, and because they both had the impression that being in a state of sexual anticipation made them more sensitive to the allusions and ideas in the poems. Hans had at first favoured sex as a preamble to reading, not only because of the urgency that assailed him when he was alone with Sophie, but also because he was convinced the blissful, floating state they found themselves in after their lovemaking was conducive to understanding the nuances of a poem.

As the afternoons went on, however, they began improvising the order in which they conducted matters. They never made any explicit decision — simply when they greeted and their tongues intertwined, each gauged the other’s preference and opted for whatever felt most urgent. The fact of not establishing any other routine within their work routine kept them on their toes, habituated but not quite knowing. This alternating was also sexual — sometimes Sophie was dominant, and Hans felt scared and in awe of her almost brutal impulses; on other occasions she enjoyed slipping beneath his body, letting herself be rocked, out then in, slow then fast, in a kind of deep repose, which also satisfied her.

Now, for instance, they were leaning against the rickety headboard shoulder to shoulder, leafing through a novel. It was uncomfortable, the blazing light shone through the window casting a shadow over the page, forcing them to twist and turn in order to be able to read. They didn’t care — their muscles retained the suppleness of recently satisfied desire. Sophie and Hans were fulfilling a promise they had made to each other a while ago, of rereading Schlegel’s Lucinde together. Occasionally they would stop to have discussions that grew out of the novel itself.

Do you know something? he said. I have the feeling right now that we two are as one. As one? she asked, turning her head and resting it on his shoulder. I don’t mean when two people are or believe they are one person, Hans explained. (What a dreadful thought, gasped Sophie, like being only half a person.) Quite! And that’s not the same as being two people at the same time, is it? Two as one. Here, now, you and I seem completely harmonious, and yet at the same time I feel each of us is both more strongly ourselves, does that make sense? If I tell you that I feel the same, Sophie laughed, will I always have to agree with you?

But, said Sophie, caressing his knee, aren’t you afraid that we fell in love because it was forbidden? I don’t know, Hans said, I don’t think about it, it would complicate things too much, how can we know what we would feel if we were able to see each other normally? And what the devil would seeing each other normally be? No, I only think about how much I like being with you. And what do you like best about it? she asked. I don’t know, the fact that we can be ourselves, we don’t have to pretend. Mmm, Sophie hesitated, isn’t that rather a lot of being ? What I like best is that we can be the other if we want — you can be a sweet young girl who opens herself to me, or I a vigorous man who forces you to embrace me. You’ve been reading too much of the younger Schlegel! he laughed. Never enough to forget his older brother, my dear, she retorted.

“At first nothing attracted him or made such a powerful impression on him”, Sophie read aloud “as the realisation that Lucinde was similar or identical to him in character and spirit; with each day he began to discover new differences. Yet even these differences were founded upon a deeper similarity, and the more each of their personalities developed, the more versatile and exhilarating their love became”. You see? For me this is one of the most important passages in the novel. And yet we are still so far away from this, can you imagine legions of narrators reflecting about the changes in themselves because the women they love have changed? And what have you to say of this? Hans remarked, look, this part here where he compares himself to lovers who feel they don’t belong in the world, who feel detached from everything because of their love, and he says: “We are not thus. All that we loved before, we love more. The meaning of the world has become clear to us”, to me this vision is admirable, love not as a way of fleeing but of discovering the world. This means a new society would begin by reinventing love. Quite right, said Sophie, although Schlegel also has his contradictions, remember the chapter we read just now, let me see? I think it was in this one, there was something, wait, which I found rather shocking, and I don’t mean that nonsense about women being the purest of all creatures, I won’t even mention that, ah, here it is: “The loftier a man becomes, the more he resembles a plant, the most moral and beautiful of all the forms that nature takes”. Surely it’s the other way round, surely we must question the roots of things, challenge what is considered natural, there are times, for instance, when in order to blossom a woman must defy nature. And besides, plants also evolve, like people they adapt to their environment, their needs change. And why shouldn’t novels evolve, too; Lucinde has a hybrid rather than a pure nature. Prologue! Hans cheered, we want a prologue from you for the new edition. Don’t flatter me, please! she protested. Well, flatter me, but without me realising it.

Did you know that Schlegel wanted to write a sequel to his story? Sophie said, poking at Hans’s sex with her finger. Apparently he planned to continue the story from Lucinde’s point of view rather than that of Julius. It is odd that she scarcely has a voice in the novel. Sometimes I think that if Schlegel had written the second part of Lucinde , his life, and perhaps ours, would have been different. But didn’t his wife Dorothea, publish a novel at the same time? Hans asked, pinching her stomach. Yes, replied Sophie, and despite writing about a young girl who wishes to defy her family and see the world, the book was finally entitled Florentin , after its peripatetic young hero. They say Dorothea also planned to write a sequel called Camilla , a woman’s story narrated by a woman. She never finished it. Silence. That’s the story of literature.

The thing is, said Hans, trying to lead her on, Lucinde is about marriage isn’t it? Absolutely not, Sophie hastened to reply, it’s about the union of two people in love. Yes, he insisted, but the characters who love one another are husband and wife. My sweet, she said, disappointed, your brain becomes a little confused when it comes to men and women. This novel is about love, a different kind of love, and the fact that it happens within a marriage is simply to make the passion more natural, to give it an everyday feel. Some of us women readers, you know, are fed up with tragic love affairs and impossible desires, that’s why I think Schlegel was right to place his story in the ordinary setting of a marriage. Call me curious, Hans ventured, but can the same be said of your marriage?

Sophie stood up without saying a word. She crouched over the chamber pot and, for a few moments, all that could be heard was the wistful trickle of urine. She went back and perched on the edge of the bed, her back to Hans. He feared she was more offended than he’d expected, but just when he was about to offer an apology, she murmured: I’ve postponed the wedding. What? Hans gave a start. She repeated the words in an identical voice. Hans felt bewildered, ecstatic, terrified. How long for? he probed. Until December, she replied, until Christmas. He knew he mustn’t speak. Sophie sat for a long time, naked on the edge of the bed, listening to the sound of her own breathing. At last she turned around and lay down again, her head resting on Hans’s belly, and, having casually discovered the cobwebs in the rafters, she began to talk.