Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

Replies to send, a waste of his time, he regretted having written those letters, a blind alley in his research, he went back to the newspaper collections, only went to the cinema in the hope that he might get to see America in the newsreels or a film, he could have booked a ticket to the United States straight away but his enquiries awoke feelings he feared he would not rediscover when he got there, he delayed his departure, he was afraid of failing, it was his dream. One card, three words.

That morning for the first time in many years he woke thinking of something other than the business of resuming ownership of his body which he liked less and less. He slept well, Berlin was sinister, Hamburg was sinister but he got up early and the moment he opened his eyes he could see the Manhattan skyline dead ahead, he was on the bridge of the boat that was about to dock.

There is no longer that roar from the horizon, but another sort of hubbub which stirs him, sirens, to these he sometimes added the water-jets from the fireboats, let’s go, leaving was such a big thing, it wasn’t his enquiries which detained him but the idea that he needed more time to become stronger.

He wanted a reception like the one they gave Dickens, crowds on the Long Island wharf, for him. Not too big a crowd, he didn’t write popular serials for the newspapers, but lots of reporters, with microphones and questions which allowed him to show how smart he was.

To reconcile Germany and America, that’s why he’s come! Next he’ll reconcile Germany and the Soviets. It’s all so simple.

Germany is hungry, America needs markets, forget the fine sentiments, he had long talks with Rathenau before he was assassinated, reduce the debt claimed by the English and France, France especially, the French owe the Americans money, they reckon Germans owe them that money, it’s all quite simple, straightforward, the Americans hold the key, still can’t avoid the fine sentiments, but the solution’s a commercial one.

All that remains is to devise suitable sentiments to facilitate debt reduction, it’s just like literature, when you read me it’s because you have faith in me, you allow me credit but at any moment you can shut the book and say ‘What tripe!’ or else you can take a chance on what comes next. Hans will say that I’m nothing more than a man of letters.

Talk to them about the things they like, the Americans aren’t savages, they’re as fond of the French language as Hans, ‘The Pronunciophone Company’, it was in Time, a full-page ad, ‘Are you embarrassed by mistakes in pronunciation?’, and to correct these mistakes in pronunciation a set of gramophone records which give the right way of saying hors d’oeuvre, entente cordiale, déshabillé, Poincaré, objet d’art, faux pas, beau geste, en route not forgetting canapé, show them that Germany is also part of Culture which is not just a French preserve, he will have won when ‘The Pronunciophone Company’ of New York will put out records declaiming Gemütlichkeit, Sehnsucht, mein Liebchen, Schadenfreude, no, not Schadenfreude, at least not straight away, make a start with mein Liebchen, so pretty, and philosophy, Bewußtsein, keep Schadenfreude for the Russkies, they know Marx, whenever I’m asked to translate this word I can’t do it, all I can do is say, oh, it’s so German, the pleasure we take from the misfortunes of others whether or not we’ve had anything to do with causing those misfortunes, absolutely essential to import the word to the United States, along with mein Liebchen.

Hans’s words would cross the entire territory of the United States and finally reach Lena, one of his books in a shop window would catch her eye, she would come to meet him, she would show him New York, night-time, the cascades of lights, stars in the streets, stars in the sky, New York like Hamburg and Berlin only a hundred times more so, the billion stars of the dreaming city and sky, the façades of buildings throbbing with white light, architecture of glass, metal, stone writhing amid the whirling flashing lights, lights which flare aggressively from the shadows, rise dancing to the stars like Hans’s dreams then fall back and project on to walls cascades of scintillating light and words written in fire, that’s what Hans will say to them the day he arrives, at the foot of the gangplank, the microphones, I have come to you, I have come to the city of where the façades of buildings are made of white light, and glass, metal, stone writhe amid the whirling flashing lights which rise dancing to the stars then fall back and project on to walls cascades of scintillating light and words written in fire, New York’s belligerent sleeplessness, machines competing with the sun, machines which murder the old moonlit night, the constant roar and high-speed kicks and pricks, quiet is for the war-wounded, music, rhythms from hell, everything that punches holes in the night, sometimes a light shows, atop a column of darkness, more than sixty floors up, like an eye, like a Cyclops.

By day they will walk between the metal towers, in the cold air, whenever he lets Lena go first he watches her buttocks, still firm and trim, sway in air as clear as ice which blows in off the sea, the arteries of poverty and luxury, the freshness of the pretty women scrubbed clean with soap and water, the huge litter bins full of the newspapers people have discarded, here you eat fast, you read fast, come on, just do it!

They hurry on past buildings made of light but built of steel, copper, stone and glass, standing stones in the city, and the bridges, their gateways built of Florentine blocks, passers-by transformed into gymnasts in the reflections, the shining chain mail that is the river, halt halfway across a bridge, feel the throb of power, and the tunnels under the water, and above them the huge transatlantic liners of iron and steel pass like toys.

The mountain range of the skyscrapers, the city on tip-toe, metal and glass, or else themes of Renaissance palaces multiplied by thirty, a snow-storm that is not to be credited, wind that takes the breath away, air like liquid ice, cars buried under the snow, and the magic of lifts, a single supple silky bound upwards, head for the sky, hardly time to draw breath twice and you’re at the sixty-second floor, the approach of the boat as it arrives from Europe when the new skyscrapers of Manhattan rise suddenly out of the mists of the pulsating morning, all the centuries converge here, sometimes she didn’t have the patience to wait.

She took him directly to a vast, greedy railway station, the sun pours down from high up on the walls through round windows at least ten metres in diameter and erects in the dust of the concourse giant tubes of light, a train of steel bound for Vermont, a sleeper, she wore pyjamas made from some ultra-soft material, behaved as if they’d been married for ten years, she laughed, it was a sweet time, sometimes he skipped the interlude on the train, saw himself back in a chalet in Vermont, where there are mountains and lots of snow, it was a surprise when he arrived.

She was by herself, was wearing the big Finnish pullover he’d just seen in a shop window in Rosmar, it reached halfway down her thighs, she is as beautiful standing up as lying down, and if it wasn’t for the snow this could be a ranch, yes, in Texas, there are ranches in Vermont too, he got out a map of the United States and saw that Vermont was more or less on the East Coast, too European, not enough wide-open spaces, not enough appeal, go west, that’s right, make for the Rockies, Colorado, he looked for a name that cast a spell, Aurora, east of Denver, there’s another Aurora west of Chicago, check the index of the atlas, at least thirteen Auroras for all the American States, Walsenburg, also in Colorado, it would be funny if she lived there, if she had a ranch just next to Walsenburg, or maybe she’d be staying in a hotel, not a big one of course, the clients would be regulars, in the evenings guests stay in and read in the lounge or play cards, or just talk, Lena stands, ‘Goodnight everyone’ in a warm voice, she takes the book from Hans’s grasp and gently makes him get up, in front of everyone.