After a slight hesitation the young Frenchman said he was sure we were thinking about and talking about two entirely different things; he was thinking, naturally, about the Paris of 1968 and I, just as naturally, of the Prague Spring.
Or if Langerhans did have the foggiest about such matters, it was bound to be common, indecent, gross, she'd tell Melchior a little story about that, a racy little adventure, actually.
It wasn't the first time he'd encountered this kind of unpleasant, though from a historical perspective quite insignificant skepticism, the Frenchman continued, and he refused to believe that the Russians' clumsy military action could cast any doubt on the incontrovertible truth that this part of the world was the home of socialism, and then he mumbled something irrelevant about ownership of the means of production.
The thing happened between the two of them — she had to blush about it in retrospect — when they finally reached the point of not knowing what to do with each other, and she decided that she was going to tease the man out of Langerhans, wanting to see what he was like, whatever happened.
To me, this kind of demagoguery was at least as amusing as my skepticism was unpleasant for him, and I didn't really think, I said, that he'd be talking about "clumsy military action" if a foreign army had crushed the student riots in Paris.
It was usually mindless aristocrats who referred to revolutions as riots, the Frenchman said.
Just as it was usually obtuse ideologues who believed that the end justifies the means, I replied.
We both stopped on the staircase while they continued on, though Melchior, as if I were holding him back with my shoulder, quickly turned around before taking the next step, and I could see that the Frenchman, however irritated, was still enjoying what I not only did not enjoy but found disgracefully painful, ludicrously unnecessary, having let myself be dragged into a conversation like this in which I wasn't even expressing my own opinion or, rather, was mouthing a fraction of my own nonexistent opinion, since I had no whole opinion, since the all-too-thin membrane of self-discipline had been ripped open by the seething of raw, deeply repressed emotions, by my willful blindness, by something that knows only the language of the senses, which we ought to hide rather than show, and consequently I was angrier at myself than at him, while he seemed to feel so comfortable with his impossibly lanky body and impossible views that he didn't even notice these people staring at him so indignantly, so enviously! people among whom he supposedly felt at home but who saw him with his uncombed hair and dirty red scarf as a buffoon, as a living mockery of their lives and miserable ambitions, though the real clown, I knew, was not he but I.
It seems, he said calmly but testily, that we were speaking in entirely different languages.
It seems that way, doesn't it? I said, but since he felt so at home here, I went on, no longer able or willing to contain my irritation, hadn't it occurred to him that while he could freely come here from the other side of the Wall, we weren't allowed to go over there?
I said this a little too loudly, and the two women stopped, if only because Melchior's arm slipped out of Thea's hand, and they all turned around, Frau Kühnert's eyes flashing with fright behind her thick glasses — careful, they seemed to be saying, every word can be heard — but I couldn't stop, and though I was mortified I went on, he shouldn't be too surprised, I said to him, if our notions of individual freedom made us speak in different languages.
But then Melchior, with schoolmasterly authority, stepped between us, shaking a finger at me in mild admonition: I should be careful, he said, his friend spoke with the words of a Robespierre, a Marat, and of course I had no way of knowing that I was talking to a fearless revolutionary.
Completely frustrated with myself, and with the last breath of my ridiculously envious anger, I said that was precisely the reason I was talking to him.
You mean you're one, too? Melchior asked, cocking his bushy eyebrows in mock alarm and disbelief, having a little fun at his friend's expense.
Why, yes, of course I am, I said, grinning up at him out of my anger.
The common ground we found in the intimately conspiratorial tone of his voice promptly relieved me of my shame, for he well understood my feelings, understood my shame, and knew how to dissolve it, with his understanding drew me to himself, distancing himself from his French friend; because of him I could breathe again.
But now unexpectedly the Frenchman broke into laughter, silent laughter, maintaining his aloofness, standing apart even as he laughed, his aloofness being meant for Melchior: the two of them were no doubt beyond such debates, beyond the point where they could reach a pact or agreement, which itself may have become a pact, but now, regarding Melchior and me, as if he were brushing away the filth of our cynically supercilious common stance and, with it, the disgust we had evoked in him, he waved his hand, dismissing us, shooing us away, rubbing us out of his space, indicating that we were frivolous and irresponsible, unworthy of further debate.
And there was something of a heroic pose in his bearing, in the way he threw back his handsome head and at the same time turned it away from us, while our carriage somehow remained servile despite our shared victory.
And then an old, gray-liveried usher, an apparition from a bygone era, with a look of complete attentiveness fixed on and meant exclusively for Thea, flung open for us the doors of the former royal box.
From there, from a height of nearly four meters, we could look down at the orchestra level with its curving rows of crimson and white seats, at a sea of pink faces, an animated expanse still stirring, rippling, then suddenly coming to rest; beyond the rigidly classical proscenium arch with its Corinthian columns and gilded capitals we could see the huge open stage: under the cyclorama painted steely gray to suggest the dawning of a dreadful day, grimy towers and jagged fortress walls loomed, enclosing a prison courtyard still sunk in the cheerless night; from here, darkly yawning passageways led to an even grimmer world of subterranean dungeons; farther back, in the vaulted caves of barred cells carved into the massive walls, one could sense the shadowy presence of human forms.
Nothing moved, yet everything seemed to be alive: there was a sudden gleam, perhaps the weapon of a guard, and the clang and rattle of chains heard over the peaceful uniform murmur of the audience and the bright flourishes of musicians tuning their instruments; and a little later, way upstage, deep in the impenetrable shadow cast by the brooding towers, the pink of a woman's dress seemed to swish by, and a breeze appeared to be carrying the snatches of a melodious offstage command, and indeed there was a breeze, because whenever a stage this size is open, and before the audience's warm breath has had a chance to heat up the vast space thus created, one can always feel a kind of cool breeze blowing from the stage, smelling faintly of glue.
Inside the empty box we engaged in a silent round of politeness over the seating arrangements; from behind a façade of good behavior and courtesy we were sharply observing one another's complicated intentions, indicated by looks and careful gestures — the task was clear: a hard-fought battle had to be brought to a peaceful conclusion, and it was a matter of no small importance who would wind up where — I would have liked to stay near Melchior, which was his intention, too, but I couldn't separate myself from the Frenchman or he from me, for this would have announced too harshly that we were incompatible not only ideologically but physically, found each other's proximity irritating, unpleasant, even repellent, an emphatic mutual rejection that would have hurt Melchior's feelings, which I didn't want to happen, yet at the same time it was so evident that Pierre-Max and Melchior were a couple and that neither Thea nor I had the courage to come between them, though Thea, who had after all organized this whole theater party because of Melchior, wasn't going to yield her place next to him for anyone, while Frau Kühnert, although seemingly unconcerned for the moment, nevertheless let us know in her diffident and unassuming way that we were all just part of the scenery to her and she wanted nothing to do with us: she was most definitely going to sit next to Thea, no discussion about that, which again put me in an awkward position, because sensing Thea's silent displeasure over my loud, tactless, uncooperative behavior, I'd have liked to end up between her and Melchior so that, without having to give up Melchior, I could also somehow mollify her, but of course this was not viable, since I had no right to separate the two of them.