“Well, at least one can choose among one’s memories.”
“Yes.”
“And fifteen years ago this city was a fun place.”
“You’re right, it was. A kind of innocent lay. The whorehouses with their emerald lights and their smell of disinfectant. The hundreds of cabarets dressed out in tinsel. The Indian prostitutes parading in their satin dresses. It was a city full of con men and bouncers and pimps. And people like Diego Rivera and Siqueiros and María Félix and Tongolele. It was a brash, sentimental, gutty world.”
“All that was left of the revolution, just before it became the Establishment.”
“I suppose. You’re always saying that the revolution was betrayed. I don’t know.”
“Revolutions are always betrayed, Elizabeth. It’s inevitable.”
“Why?”
“Look, a revolution destroys one status quo and creates another. That’s all. But in between the two there can be some glorious times. And that is all.”
“I guess. Our life has certainly gone on being the same these fifteen years. Javier with his nervous stomach and his X rays and his pills, his teaching at the university and his job with the United Nations. Me with my best-sellers. God, is there any point in even talking about it?”
“Tell me what you want, don’t tell me if you don’t want to. We aren’t writing a book.”
“Oh, hell no. And speaking of books, lover, the other day I was reading a really good one. A novel by Styron. If you ever need an epigraph, here’s one I memorized for you. ‘Didn’t that show you that the wages of sin is not death, but isolation?’”
“Put it the other way around, Dragoness, and you’ll understand why Borges says that at wakes, as the process of decay proceeds, the dead man recovers all of his previous faces.”
“The film reversed.”
“Yes. By the way, no matter what your husband thinks, I enjoy watching you jump up from bed. Zip, pow, like the Marines making a landing.”
“Get off my neck, caifán. What you like is not how I get out of bed but the way I hop into it.”
* * *
Δ “Have you finished yet?”
“No, Lisbeth, not yet. I want to tell you about our party.”
Yes, the party, Dragoness. An end of the semester celebration by young German students, in costumes yet.
“Ulrich and I sat beside the coffin-refrigerator for quite a long time, as if we were holding a wake for Herr Schnepelbrücke. But darkness was about to fall, and with it, our guests. I ran out to buy more beer and wine. When I came back, Ulrich already had his costume on. I laughed when I saw him. A brown uniform with a wide black belt and a wide strap slanting down across his chest, black boots, a swastika arm band. I laughed and he laughed and he pranced around the room goose-stepping, throwing his right arm up stiffly, crying ‘Heil, Heil, Sieg Heil!’ He did it perfectly. I roared until my sides hurt.”
“The Nazis were a joke to you then, Franz?”
“I went behind the screen and put on my own costume. A horned helmet, a chest-plate and long red skirts, a yellow wig of curls that came down to my neck, a bronze lance. I came out with a shrill Valkyrie howl and it was Ulrich’s turn to laugh.
“There was a knock at the door and our guests rushed in, happy, shouting, carrying bottles and cans, loaves of bread, sausages, Limburger, all of them disguised. Heinrich was old Goethe and with him was our classmate Elizabeth decked out as Mephistopheles, her eyes blue and candid beneath the painted arched eyebrows, her red lips smiling above the pointed painted beard. Reinhardt and Elsa were dressed as Tyrolean peasants. Malaquias was a Prussian officer. Otto was an Austro-Hungarian hussar. Ruby, in wooden shoes and a striped skirt and the customary liberty cap with its tricolor ribbons, was a French Marianne. Lorenz was Rasputin: black gown, long beard and wig. And Lya was dressed like me but had a higher rank; she was Brunhilde and I was her aide-decamp. Everyone cried out ‘Yo-ho-to-ho-ho’ and danced around chanting the Valkyrie music and using the wine bottles as lances. High-pitched voices, low-pitched, a crazy chorus, all of us in costume to celebrate the end of the school year. Finally the singing died down.
“Reinhardt and Elsa were the first to head for the refrigerator, laughing, with their bottles of white wine in their arms. I jumped in front of them, almost tripping over my skirts, and spread my arms dramatically and cried out: ‘No! Forbidden! Decree of Woden. The libations must be made at once. No bottle that enters our refrigerator shall ever come forth from it again!’ Heinrich and Lisbeth protested, groaning, but the others shouted and laughed and Ulrich quickly grabbed a bottle from Lorenz-Rasputin, uncorked it, and raised it to his lips. Everyone began to open bottles then, gathering in a circle to pull the corks out. We drank with heroic, grandiose gestures, letting the wine wet our false beards, smear our painted lips, splash down our bodices. The naked bulb that hung from the ceiling cast a cold and too direct white light. I turned on the light on the drawing board, turned off the overhead bulb, shouting, ‘Shadows! Twilight! The dead year wants no light, the dead year is buried!’ Our Tyrolean couple embraced with mock fear and everyone laughed again. I went from guest to guest passing out drinks, sweating inside my wig and armor. ‘Celebrate! Three months of freedom! Three months before us without the beard of Professor Essler, without the pompous jokes of Professor Von Cluck! Without…’ ‘Don’t even mention them,’ Ruby-Marianne interrupted. Her cap had fallen down to her eyebrows. ‘Franz,’ she said, ‘you’re a phony.’ ‘Frankness, honesty forever!’ I replied. Ruby sat on the floor with her eyebrows heavy and her lipstick smeared and took off her wooden shoes and her red and white striped stockings and began to rub her feet. I emptied my cup over her head and she slapped me. The party was on its way.”
“The dirty jokes began,” you suggested, Dragoness.
“No, Lisbeth. The ideology. Heinrich-Goethe proclaimed that all greatness has always come from aristocracy. Malaquias, the Prussian officer, shouted that power must remain with the people. Heinrich shouted back: ‘Oh, to hell with your free people! Look at your ridiculous Weimar Republic! Your miserable Stresemann, the inflation, the unemployment, the national humiliation! There you can see what happens when the magnificent people govern themselves!’ Malaquias raised his thumb to his nose and wagged his fingers. Heinrich, shouting violently about the Jews and the bankers, grabbed him by the ears and knocked off his proud helmet with its gilded imperial eagle. I separated them and emptied the last of a bottle into their glasses.
“Elsa, sitting on the bed between Reinhardt and Elizabeth, was saying that love comes only once. She squeezed Reinhardt’s hand and with her other hand smoothed her Tyrolean skirt. Elizabeth smiled dryly and said that if Reinhardt was true to her, it was because he had never been sufficiently tempted. Elsa looked questioningly at Reinhardt. He caressed her hand and said that in January, when he took his degree, they would be married. I poured their glasses again and asked Reinhardt if he had a job lined up yet. No, he said, not yet, but his father had connections in Cologne that might lead to something. At first, he went on, they would make their home with his parents. Elizabeth, who seemed to be taking her role as Mephistopheles seriously, laughed. ‘And that will be the end of love, Elsa!’ Elsa calmly shook her head. No, she liked Reinhardt’s family and they liked her. ‘You’ll see how much they like you when they start correcting you, asking where in the world were you brought up, telling you that that’s not the way to handle a baby, hinting that their handsome Reinhardt deserves something better.’ ‘Cut it out, Elizabeth,’ Reinhardt said, looking at her coldly. ‘We’re going to be very happy.’ ‘Okay, okay, be happy,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Be happy as birds.’ ‘We need so little that we can’t help but be happy,’ said Elsa. ‘And just what do you need?’ smiled Elizabeth. ‘To be together the rest of our lives,’ said Elsa. ‘That’s all.’ ‘To have a decent job and be respected,’ said Reinhardt. Elizabeth raised her glass to them. ‘God bless you both!’ She jumped up from the bed and began to dance, alone, humming. ‘Berlin for me!’ she cried. She was pliable and slender in her red costume, happily unworried as she spread the corners of her cape like wings. ‘Berlin and freedom! Let blockheads peel potatoes! The cafés, the theaters! Nobody bothers you! Berlin! Freedom! Hoppla, wir leben!’ Heinrich grinned and embraced her. Then Otto, the hussar, took off his cape and began to play at bullfighting with Elizabeth. She would charge him, jerking her horned head and grunting ferociously. We formed a circle around her and applauded, spilling our drinks as we interlocked arms, all of us beginning to sweat now and to feel that our costumes had lost their freshness and elegance. Suddenly Heinrich broke the circle and rushed at Ulrich and grabbed him by both shoulders. ‘I won’t tolerate it any longer!’ he said angrily. Ulrich, astonished, stared at him. ‘You see, I tell you straight, straight to your face,’ said Heinrich. ‘And it was with good reason,’ he went on, turning until he was facing me, ‘that I said we ought not to have our party in the room of a goddamn foreigner!’ I started to move toward him but Ruby pulled me back, saying wearily, ‘Oh, Heinrich, what a bore you are!’ ‘What’s bothering you so?’ Ulrich asked quietly. ‘Your costume, pig!’ Heinrich shouted. ‘It’s a mockery! A calculated insult!’ He extended his arm and jerked off the red band with the black swastika. Ulrich’s response was to drive his fist into Heinrich’s face. Heinrich’s gray wig fell as he threw himself upon Ulrich with all his weight and carried him down to the floor. They rolled there, Heinrich on top trying to rip the brown shirt off, Ulrich trying to choke him as he went on shouting ‘Pig! Pig!’ Lorenz and I pulled them apart to cries of ‘What a loused-up party!’ ‘Drink, you idiots, get up and drink!’ ‘Stop spoiling the evening!’ We pulled them apart and helped them up and they glared at each other with false smiles, pressed teeth. Finally Ulrich shrugged and extended his hand, Heinrich, sneering, turned his back on him and embraced Elizabeth. I snapped off the remaining light and went from mug to mug pouring beer as a peace offering. Our guests found places on the divan, the bed, on the floor, and their conversations dropped to murmurs as the kisses and caresses began.