Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

He’d had completely different things on his mind when he sat at the window of this pub staring out at Hannoversche Strasse, where there was almost no traffic any more. And where he gazed across between the People’s Policemen and civilians practicing their changings of the guard on the yard outside the Mission. One arm resting on the packet of books at the edge of the table, in the other hand the beer glass, between his fingertips a cigarette he forgot to light until the waiter came by and held out a burning lighter. He couldn’t help thinking how he was simply too tired to write, how all his recent writing attempts had failed in fairly pathetic fashion. . the job in the laundry ate up his time, he barely slept any more, the summer’s unbroken blaze did the rest. He was considering giving up the job and moving out on Frau Falbe. . but this very idea of moving out on Frau Falbe had become a problem for him. . and this summer his thoughts liked to dwell on her. He kept asking himself how old she could be. . ultimately she could only be six or seven years older than he, ten at most, Frau Falbe was a chatterbox, always chattering the same things, she no longer placed much value on her appearance, going around in her bathrobe until noon, but you couldn’t say she was bad-looking. Evidently she hadn’t had children; most of the time she looked somewhat disappointed and let herself go a bit, but she had the energetic figure of a sturdy woman, not to be called fat. And she had intelligent eyes, when she wasn’t wiped out by the dog days, as she put it.

Lately Frau Falbe had actually taken on the task of waking him early in the morning (he was incredulous at first; she herself had offered to do it after he’d badly overslept several times: How will I be able to face my friend if her husband the personnel manager finds out!). . and day after day he had the feeling that she used the informal ‘you’ in the morning when she came into his room. . once he was fully conscious she used the formal ‘you’ again and kept it up all day long. — Just let me have my way, it’s fine, I’ve got the other key, and I can’t sleep in this heat anyway. You just toss and turn in bed all night thinking God knows what. It’s impossible to stand it in bed. . yeah, yeah, I remember from Harry what it’s like getting up then. And you, you’ve got to get up just past three when it’s still dark, where will it all end. You ought to lie down instead of sleeping sitting up in the armchair all the time. .

You just brood too much, she said. And then you can’t fall asleep, and when you have to get up, you fall asleep in the armchair. What are you constantly brooding about, that’s no state for a young man like you.

Young? I’ll be young again in my next life, said W.

Yeah, yeah, she said, that’s what you’re thinking about! You’re constantly thinking about your next life, that’s no state for a young man to be in. You’d be better off thinking about the here and now. .

He woke up one morning at a time which struck him each day anew as profoundly ungodly, and saw light in his room (the blind was pulled down). . his pyjamas were drenched with sweat, he’d covered himself only with a sheet, and as usual even it was tossed off, lying bunched up at his feet. As his initial rebellion against this forced awakening died down, he smelt coffee in the room and knew that Frau Falbe was somewhere in the immediate vicinity. The next moment he felt an urgent, almost painful pressure in his bladder (from the beer he’d drunk that evening to put himself to sleep), and became aware of a conspicuous object on his lower body, straining the fabric of his pants and no doubt visible at a glance; he attempted a weary smile and turned away from the room to the wall; he heard a woman’s low voice, his eyes fell shut again at once, and in the darkness that returned to his skull he tried to suppress a spasmodic twinge beneath the cranium. But Frau Falbe wouldn’t let him go back to sleep, she seized him by the shoulder and hip and with gentle force — murmuring to herself ceaselessly — turned him onto his back again so he had to open his eyes; once again the aching organ on his lower body loomed into the light. Frau Falbe murmured something about her previous tenant Harry, in cases like this he’d been sensible enough to sleep upstairs at her place from the outset — otherwise there would have been even more of a drama on the days when he had to report. . Finally W. put his feet on the floor. With the pain in his abdomen he had to sit doubled over; he stayed that way until the woman turned away for a few seconds to pour a cup of coffee, then went to the toilet outside in the stairwell. — The following mornings the coffee was already poured, and instead of turning away, Frau Falbe leant on the edge of the desk waiting for him to cross the room, and was still studying him unabashedly when he returned, relieved, from the toilet; then she sat sideways in her ankle-long bathrobe on the chair behind the desk, with the armchair pulled up for him to sit on. She’d poured two cups of coffee and set out a little jug of milk. . Really I can’t take coffee this early, she said, especially not in this heat! But on your own you might not drink any coffee at all. .

You’ve got to wash your pyjamas, she said (of course he’d noticed her critical gaze fixed on the increasingly discoloured front of his pyjama pants). If you can’t do it in the laundry, give me the pyjamas, I’ll have them dry again by this evening. — Probably I can have them washed at the laundry, and dried there, too. If you like, I can take the bedclothes as well, we’ve got permission to do that. — The next few days she didn’t miss a chance to remind him to wash the pyjamas. — Take them off, she said, I’ve got to wash them! — Finally one day he packed a bag full of bedding, underclothes and the pyjamas and took it with him to the laundry, where they told him he couldn’t have the things back until the next day. The next morning, a Friday, as he lay in his shorts on the unmade cot, Frau Falbe said disapprovingly: I told you you should give them to me. . besides, just one set of bedclothes isn’t enough. You can take some home from the laundry, they’ve got enough bedding there that people don’t pick up again. But let me give you something more for the weekend. — She’d already lent him the first set of bedclothes that was now at the laundry: I used to let Harry use it, it was exactly the same with him, he didn’t even have a sheet to call his own!

So why don’t you want to move out on the old girl any more? asked Feuerbach, seeming to turn the question capriciously in his mind. I can imagine — you suddenly feel real cosy with the old girl. — By now it was autumn, the heat had died down, meaning that he slept better and was even harder to wake in the morning.

Well, soon you’ll have to move out, it’ll be quite an icebox in there when it gets cold. But that you never talked to her about Harry Falbe, that’s practically unthinkable. Unthinkable. And she never said anything about me either, that Frau Falbe of yours?

So where is this Harry Falbe you’re so interested in? W. asked back. Because I’m not interested in him at all, to be perfectly honest I’m glad not to see him any more.

Why don’t you ask the old girl if there’s a photo of this Harry Falbe? said Feuerbach.

Frau Falbe talked a great deal about Harry, the previous tenant (and it was long since getting on his nerves), but in all her talk barely a single solid statement emerged. . she’d never wasted a word on Feuerbach. And now it occurred to him that the first lieutenant had come down the stairs one time, quite a while ago; it seemed he had been up on the first floor. . in which case of course it was quite possible, indeed probable, that he had forbidden her to mention his visit. The point of such prohibitions was to create an initial conspirative relationship, on a trial basis, as it were: if the other person complied with the vow of silence, he was already ensnared (and compromised); if he didn’t comply with it, he had deconspired and was useless. It was a very simple concept: it took a negligible amount of courage to ignore the vow of silence. . you could even have disregarded it out of naivety or simply forgotten it. . all you needed was a little faith in life, and already you were free (retaliation against deconspirees seemed to be the exception, W. believed). . so it was completely logical that they were always looking for characters whose faith in community was shattered. . and that included, among other things, writers. . and that includes me , W. thought.