Maxim Biller: Inside The Head of Bruno Schulz

“It is now certain that the false Thomas Mann must be an agent of the Secret State Police,” wrote Bruno, after he had opened his notebook again, laid it neatly on the table and bent over it like a cat with its back arched, “and I suspect he will not leave our town until we have all lost our wits. It is truly very unpleasant to think of the Nazis exploiting your good name, very highly esteemed Dr Mann, and because you, as the voice of the alternative Germany, must be careful of your reputation, I wanted to warn you—”. Here Bruno suddenly stopped. He crossed out the last two sentences and began again: “Is it not terrible that the Nazis are misusing your good name? Terrible for you, Dr Mann, but also for me. Perhaps you are surprised that I write to you in German — I also speak it, but with a strong Podolian accent which unfortunately shows where I come from only too soon — and of course my love of the German language has to do with you, and also the poems and books of Rilke, Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka, whose fine and mysterious novel The Trial I and my former and long-forgotten fiancée translated into Polish. During the war — and hardly any of my literary Polish friends know this, not even Gombrowicz — I spent many months in Vienna, where I studied architecture without much interest, preferring to sit and read in the great libraries. The flexible rules of the Mishnah , the almost inspired melancholy of the Preacher, the gentle clarity of the Shulchan Aruch ? No, those were never in my line. I long, rather, with Malte Laurids Brigge and Gustav von Aschenbach, for an end that awaits us all, but whose beauty and moment in time we should be able to determine ourselves — because God may have a plan for us, but he leaves making it until the last minute. And that is why I am so angry with your double, and his superiors in Berlin who have sent him to us. These people act as if they knew what will happen tomorrow. What shocking presumption!”

As he wrote this sentence, Bruno began sweating even more. He tore open his shirt, buttons flew across the table like shots, and Theo and Hermann, beating their wings, avoided them and then settled again on the cigar box, which was now covered with their white droppings. Bruno carefully removed the pages he had written in the last few hours from his notebook; from the drawer of Papa’s desk he took a manuscript and an envelope, which already bore an address in Zürich and a stamp, and put the manuscript into it. He skimmed the letter, nodding with satisfaction several times, smiling and stroking his cheeks, and then he added a few last sentences. He wished Thomas Mann great success with the last volume of his story of Joseph and his Brothers, and asked him to read his, Bruno’s own story, The Homecoming , the first that he had written in German, and on this occasion he was permitting himself to send it to the great writer. “For many years, dear Dr Mann,” he concluded, “I have wished my books to appear in other countries as well, and perhaps you will like my story and see a way of helping me. Polish is a beautiful but very exclusive language, where you can choke as if on a single melon seed if you are not careful. I know what you are thinking now! No, I do not believe there is any point in waiting until even more Germans follow your double to these parts. I hope they will not come at all, and any who do come will certainly not be lovers of literature. Thank you, highly esteemed Dr Mann, for taking the time to read my letter, although you certainly have more important things to do. You have no idea how much your attention means to me. With the greatest respect, your very sad and very devoted Bruno Schulz.”

Bruno put the letter in the envelope and sealed it. He got to his feet, went over to the little mirror with the white frame that hung beside the door, its paint peeling off, for a while he looked at his attractive, clever, triangular face, which suddenly seemed to him as gray as old newspaper, he tapped the tips of his big sail-like ears two or three times, and smiled at himself, and then — because the heat in his belly was intolerable by now — he slowly began removing his last items of clothing. When he was entirely naked, he shooed Theo and Hermann off the dirty cigar box again and put it, shaking his head, in the bottom drawer of the desk. Then he picked up the envelope and told the two of them, who had settled in front of the door, “Come along, children, Mrs Jakubowicz is waiting for us!” He took the thick envelope between his teeth, growled impatiently, put out the light and fell on his knees. After he had opened the door he crawled on all fours, as quietly as possible, to the ground floor and then — passing the door of Hania’s apartment, behind which there was loud argument, and the sound of furniture and china being thrown around — out into Florianska Street, where only a single street lamp was on. The other lights were just going out again with a faint flickering.

Theo and Hermann and the other doves obediently followed Bruno, tripping and whirring in the air all the time, and some of the birds were already waiting for him, on the icy pavement and in the black trees in front of the building. As he slowly set off towards the school — to reach the large, dark building of the Jagiełło High School, he had to crawl to Piłsudski Street and turn off when he came to the town park — all the doves rose into the air, which was much too warm for winter, at the same time and circled around him, half human, half animal, in ellipses large and small in the silvery dark. The soft, gentle beating of their spread wings calmed Bruno, and he imagined himself following them into the many-branching starry firmament of the heavens.

But after several hundred meters, Bruno suddenly caught sight of a blaze of red firelight over the nocturnal city, he heard the sound of motor engines and loud orders, and when he looked to left or right he always saw, at the end of every alley, a gigantic, black, prehistoric insect running past on feet that rattled like tank tracks.

What’s that? he thought.

No answer came.

What’s that?

That is the army of Abimelech, Fear finally replied; it has come to destroy all who first made him king and remembered, only later, that he had murdered seventy of their brothers.

Oh, I see, said Bruno, of course, and he was very glad that Fear was finally talking to him again. Then he crawled on, thinking: I want Helena to start by putting the black Columbine mask on me, and tying my arms together behind my back with the Easter whips, and the rest is up to her. Although he had been on the move for almost an hour, he had only just reached the portico of the town park, he was breathing heavily, his knees were sore and bloody and the doves in the sky above Drohobycz flew one after another into the red firelight, where they burned like tinder.