Wolfgang Hilbig - The Sleep of the Righteous

I don’t have to let you shock me anymore, I mumble, not anymore, you’re harmless!

Oh, that Brecht poem, he says. The little cloud! You see, we do have more in common than you’d think.

Had, I say, we had more in common! Enemies always have something they share, that’s a truism. But we have nothing in common now.

You weren’t my enemy, he says with that grin on his mug again. When he sticks in the next cigarette, I’ll hold up the lighter flame to his filthy three-day beard, and when he staggers back, I’ll beat him to the ground.

No, you weren’t my enemy, he repeats; he’s observing me now, walking a stride behind me, and I wait for him with my head turned to the side, on my guard. He speaks as though under some kind of pressure:

I was forced into it, simply forced by the situation, I had nothing at all against you personally. I know, they all say that these days, and it’s not something you need to hear. I just want to confess that sometimes all I wanted was to erase your signature from the cards you wrote Marie A. and add my own there instead. . My little cloud! Didn’t you write her that?

Hardly, I say, that’s a figment of your imagination! But did you do it, did you add your signature? Whatever happened to the cards you read, anyway?

Of course I didn’t do it, and it would have been tough anyway, since you wrote in ink. . though we had ways of dealing with that too. But it would have been too risky, with people breathing down my neck. What happened to them? They were read and passed on, as a rule.

Passed on where? And what wasn’t the rule?

If there was nothing relevant in them, they continued on the normal postal route, quite simple. Of course, copies would sometimes be made of certain things, but that wasn’t the rule with you.

And you can’t recall there ever being something relevant?

Not that I know of. Unlike you, I can remember quite well. I was the only one who was personally interested in you. . that was what I lacked, you see, a little cloud like that.

Could you stop with that goddamned cloud already! She wasn’t a cloud for me. . and she still isn’t. Another thing, can you remember making copies of my letters too?

Goodness me, I couldn’t do that, we kept scrupulous lists of every copy we had to make. But you’re probably asking because you’re still fond of her? Or you’re actually involved with her — I always wished that for you. Though I envied you. I even went to see Marie A., made a special trip out to her part of Leipzig, trespassed on someone else’s beat, and questions were asked, very embarrassing questions. And then I envied you all the more. . how can I manage to write little A. those kinds of letters and postcards, with such lovely photos from Amsterdam? I pored over those cards of yours. But building on what was in the postcards, I would have started expressing myself more clearly, I wouldn’t have left it all in this lovely haze. For me, she wouldn’t have stayed a cloud, or a Madonna up there in the clouds. .

And after a while he said: I wonder if it’s this haze that’s still so appealing to you. Times have changed, no one has to read between the lines anymore. You don’t need to be left out in the cold, as you once put it so nicely. Did you just make that up too? No, you don’t need to do that anymore, you’re successful enough now, now you can reach out and take what you like. . and I’ve helped out a little there, I’ll have you know.

What did you help out with?

That doesn’t matter; I don’t want to brag in front of you. You. . you can go looking for life now, after all it does exist. .

Behind the haze of words! I say, leaning exhausted against the mailbox, where we’ve arrived again. I’ve had enough, I’m not looking for life now, I’m looking for an escape. I won’t come along for a third time.

I’ve talked myself blue in the face, haven’t I? Shall we have one last smoke? Don’t tell me it wasn’t interesting for you!

We light up again; it’s my last cigarette, and I put the empty pack in my pocket, there being no wastebasket nearby. — Interesting or not, I still don’t understand what you actually want, I say. Surely we have less in common than you think. By the way, I’m sure there were other men who were interested in Marie A., and who. .

Oh! he shakes his head. Don’t speak ill of her, no one has that right. I’ll always defend her!

Where she is now, she can do without your defense, believe me.

Sure, he says, I’ll have to take your word for that. But one more thing. . I’ve got to finally come out with it, the reason I had to see you. I’ve still got one long letter and a few of the cards you wrote her. I wanted to give them to you.

I was barely surprised, as I recall. — Come on, I snarled, hand them over, they’re my letters! What took you so long?

I wanted to get an idea of you first. .

And is the idea such that you can finally give me the letters? How many do you have, anyway?

Quite a nice big stack. But I don’t have them here, I didn’t know for sure if I would see you. I can’t go carrying everything around with me all the time. Where I’m living now, one of my superiors might crop up, you never even know them all yourself. I hid the stuff. . I’ll bring it tomorrow. Same time tomorrow, right here, and we’ll take another stroll around the block, eh?

I returned to the flat in indescribable agitation. — Could I believe what I’d just been through, or had it been a figment of my imagination? I’d turned around when I was halfway home: he’d already vanished; I hadn’t seen the direction he’d gone off in. Or had he not been there in the first place. . had I gone mad? In this town there was a person who knew more about me than I about him. . which might not be unusual. The only unusual thing was the way in which he had acquired his knowledge: it was almost as though he’d appropriated my life, or at least a part of it, a part — I suddenly knew — which had meant a great deal to me.

I tried to remember how he looked, his face, his build. . and strangely, as I did so, I looked into the mirror, as though I could remember his face only with the help of my own. — Why hadn’t I taken at least one good look at him? He had seen me, but I hadn’t seen him. .

His face. . I thought. It was unshaven, I was unshaven too; the nicotine of many cigarettes had left a yellow-brown rim in the stubble on his upper lip; on my upper lip I saw the same yellow-brown shadow. He was about my size and stature; he wore a jumpsuit of dark, glossy material, dark-blue or black: a jogging suit, that was what they called it these days. . it was the uniform of the early retirees and the jobless who loitered at the kiosk hour after hour with their canned beer. . It was a catastrophe: the collapse of the system had even robbed people’s resolve to dress themselves at their own discretion.

I felt there had been many more similarities between us. . when I thought of my wife, the image she had of me— and never wearied of confronting me with — perhaps it was really an image of him. His character, I thought, had that mixture of self-loathing and calculation that employs truth and lies indiscriminately. . for years my wife had offered therapy for a comparable sickness in me. My hopeless submission to every authority — or everything I regarded as an authority — had enmeshed me in an inextricable snarl of half-truths, evasions, and subterfuges, she claimed. Every official letter I received transformed me at once into a charlatan, and unable to believe in my true feelings, I hid behind pretended sensitivities. I did try, over and over, to tear through my web of lies — when I myself lost my way in them, that is — but I seemed to think this could be done only with one big, decisive lie. . And perhaps, she said, and this was the final straw, that decisive lie is all that stuff you write! — You’ve been leading a double life for ages! she cried. And she could never forgive herself for feeling attracted, at first, by this of all things. . by your dark existence! It was a mistake, she said, weeping. . and her weeping, for me, had unimpeachable authority. . it was a mistake, all attempts to shed light on your darkness are doomed to failure!