Wolfgang Hilbig - The Sleep of the Righteous

No. . he gave his soft, strained laugh, immediately stifled by a coughing fit, no, today I’ve got my own lighter. But you’re right, let’s have a smoke before we take our little stroll. — With the cigarette ready in the corner of his mouth, he let the lighter burn longer than necessary; he was still unshaven, we were both unshaven. — Did you recognize me? he asked. And then: Come on, he said, let’s walk a ways. That same old way. .

I don’t have much time, I returned, not stirring from the spot. Actually, I don’t have any time at all. . did you bring the letters?

I thought you’d be in a hurry, you want to catch the early bus to Leipzig, right?

How could you know that. .?

I figured it. You know, we’ve got plenty of time to think now, we’ve got much too much time, we don’t even know what to do with our time. We spend the whole time thinking, and for me it makes sense that you’d go to Leipzig to visit our little lady friend. But you’ve got more than two hours left.

I’ll spend my time as I please! And where are my letters?

I’ll tell you. .

You’ll tell me? Are you trying to say you haven’t brought them with you?

It would be pretty awkward for me if you were in Leipzig today and plunked the whole bundle down on the table. . and if you told who you’d gotten the stuff from. Besides, this has its risks for me. Where I’m living now, you’ve got your hiding places, everyone has a hiding place for sensitive things. And you can’t put things in or get them out at any time, in front of everyone.

I don’t care about that, I just want my letters back. Now we’re going to go to where you live, and you’re going to give them to me. I’ll wait until you’ve gotten them out. What your colleagues think doesn’t interest me. Or what your superiors think. . go get them out, and we can both close the file on this one. Or do you want to make a deal with the letters?

A deal? Not at all, don’t give me any dumb ideas. I’ve got the letters in a safe place; I liked your letters, and I still like them. Besides, if we go there now it could end badly for me.

It’s time something ended badly for you!

Oh, you’re taking a hard line with me. . and you think you’ve got a perfect right to. When I always went easy on you back then, in the old days. — He laughed as he lit his next cigarette; again and again he seemed about to fall into a stroll, his stroll around the block, once even reaching for my arm; I followed him just a short way down the side street, to the big gateway of the former bakery; there I tore myself away and stopped in my tracks.

You know, he said, you can hardly call it living, the place we’ve organized. It’s just holing up. Everyone comes and goes as he pleases. . or as he’s forced to. Someone’ll arrive, and then he disappears again, sometimes for weeks, before suddenly showing up again, and no one asks questions about anyone. It’s all pretty crazy, it’s chaos. . it’s probably just that we don’t have a homeland now. Today I’ve still got a bed there, tomorrow I may not, or I’ll have a different bed. It’s a madhouse, not very cozy, if you know what I mean. No one knows anyone else, and no one wants to know, all kinds of hoodlums could be holing up there. Romanians, Russians, all that scum, let me tell you. And soon the Cubans will come too. . they’ll come and go and run off with everything. How can you hide anything properly there?

You could carry it on you, on your person.

Oh, they’d even steal out of your ass in your sleep. And you sleep like a dead man there, I can tell you, because the only way to sleep in that commotion is with liquor and sleeping pills.

Then you’ve finally achieved your true lifestyle, life in the underground, I retorted. That’s what you always wanted! And you really think no one would be surprised if someone suddenly failed to show up?

They’d even thank you for it, in absentia, so to speak. There are always too many people there, way too many people, it’s a truly artistic existence. Totally Bohemian. . as if we’d learned from you people.

He’d talked himself into a frenzy; his voice, barely skirting dialect now, vibrated with a strange enthusiasm. I had to interrupt him:

Let’s get back to my letters already. .

The letters. . well, it’s a special situation. Can’t you see that they were a kind of identification for me, the proof that I’d belonged? As long as I had the letters in my hiding place, I enjoyed a kind of protection in the house. They wouldn’t put me out on the street.

So there are more people who know about the letters?

Not what’s in them. . I hope. Only the official stamps were important, and the signature mattered. There were some people who’d stopped believing my alias.

Does that mean you don’t have the letters anymore? I took a step toward him; he leaned against the wooden gate of the bakery, rubbing his back against the slats and seeming to bend at the knees, while pulling his dark sweatpants up over his stomach:

I don’t have them anymore. . but I know where they are. I can easily get ahold of them again, with us nothing gets lost, not even now. . I’ll get ahold of them again, you can count on that. How much longer will you be here?. . I can tell you more tomorrow morning, same place. I can even find out more today, in Leipzig, I could come with you to Leipzig, and while you’re with your Marie, I’ll get the letters. Tell me Marie’s new address, I could come by, and I’d have some positive news for you.

So the letters are in Leipzig now? And you want to come along with me to Leipzig?

In Leipzig. . they’re not there yet, I’m sure of that. But I can meet certain people there!

This is getting to be too much, I said. And you really think I wouldn’t mind your showing up at Marie’s apartment?

Oh, he said, that’s what I always wanted. . not just to see the little cloud from below, not just to watch her fade away. You’d really do that, go to Leipzig with me? — All at once he seemed agitated; smoking nervously, he laid his free hand on my shoulder as though to clasp me in his arms:

And you’d pay for my bus ticket to Leipzig? The trip has gotten insanely expensive, it’s not an easy thing for me. . I’ll have the letters in two days, you can count on it!

You’re quite the poor bastard now, eh? I said.

Now, he said, now I am! You’re right about that, but such is life. — He dropped his cigarette and wriggled adroitly out of his tight spot, pressed against the bakery gate; as he did, he pivoted, and suddenly I was thrown against the gate’s wooden slats. He thrust his face close to mine; I felt his stubble on my cheek:

And I’m telling you, I’ll make sure the letters reach their addressee, once I know where she is.

You’ll know, you can count on it, I said; and now I embraced him as well. I pulled him to my chest and reached for the knife tucked away behind my back, beneath my jacket and under my belt. With both fists I drove the blade home beneath the left shoulder blade. It was a long, narrow bread knife, and slipped almost without resistance through the jogging suit into his body; he lifted his head and gazed at me in astonishment. It was like something in a movie; when he opened his mouth, bloody foam welled over his lips instead of a sound. I kept holding him in my embrace, kept him from collapsing. Through the little side gate I led him into the bakery yard and opened the door to the former administrative entrance I knew from my childhood. The door stuck, and I had to push it with my knee. He followed me willingly, with tiny, shuffling steps; I set him down on the dusty wooden stairs in the narrow vestibule. He was still gazing at me wide-eyed; I waited until his head fell against the wall beside the stairs. I dragged the grating door shut behind me, picked up the glowing cigarette butts from the pavement outside, and went home. On my way I tossed the butts through a storm drain into the sewer. I made a short detour along a brook, and dropped the knife into the milky, murky water. I saw not a soul the whole way, it was Saturday or Sunday, suddenly I couldn’t have said which; the jobless were sleeping away the morning, but it was only just growing light.