“You laugh, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Herr Adamowski in his harsh-sounding German. “But these days one cannot be serious enough in inquiring after the health of every worthy gathering. You see, Gentlemen and Ladies, you are caught up in the course of the times, without realizing that this is more than just your personal progression — please consider the implications! All jests aside — the difference is a crucial one. For me the difference is quite clear, as a journalist with his finger constantly on the pulse of the times, I live with it every day, I experience this same discrepancy in all its tragic consequences, not only the direct effects that have already resulted, but ones yet to be seen, ones to be feared. It makes a tremendous difference if one chooses to view the times abandoning all claim to exclusive possession, in other words no longer as a phenomenon of personal episodes alone, but of collective experience. As a journalist I have a professional obligation to provide an accounting of the quality of the times, both for myself and for others. While doing this I have to bear two things in mind: first, that the quality of the times is shaped and molded by the sum of its details, a sum of purely personal experiences, which taken alone would be completely insignificant, and would lead to nothing but misleading exceptions divorced from the spirit of the times, but which in the aggregate, as I have said, help determine the general character of the epoch. And, second, that this specific general character in return has an effect on each individual fate, no matter how isolated, and shapes how each person passes their time, no matter how remote the activity. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is perhaps the most interesting interplay in all of nature, the one that leads us closest to metaphysics, and one that demonstrates the difficulty of the journalistic métier … Yes, you laugh, but please bear in mind what our thankless task consists in. The journalist, Ladies and Gentlemen, does not have as congenial a profession as people are wont to think.” The group laughed out loud. “He must, as my esteemed friend Professor Feuer would put it, act like the squirrel carrying discord up and down Yggdrasil, between the eagle in the canopy and the dragon in the roots. He must roust the privately minded man from living solely for himself, by ceaselessly calling his attention to outside his personal sphere — events that don’t concern him at all, that don’t apply to him in the least, as he sees it, but which in reality are of his utmost personal concern, whether it’s a murder in the house next door or a change of regimes in Portugal, for instance, or an earthquake in Kamchatka. On the other hand, our conscience dictates that we journalists hold up this model of the private man to the so-called general public as an ideal form of being.” They laughed. “Yes, my friends, that’s the way it is. Who among us would deny the singular truth of the saying beatus ille homo qui sedet in suo domo, and who does not yearn for this very same thing from the bottom of his heart? Nietzsche was proud of not owning a house, but you ought to read sometime what he said about Epicurus …”
The room groaned with laughter. The woman known as Theophila said: “That was fabulous, Adamchik, truly fabulous. Where does he come up with all of that?”
“The happy isolation of the man,” Herr Adamowski went on, after granting just enough time for the applause to play out, “que sedet post fornacem et habet bonam pacem—you laugh, my esteemed friends, but deep down you also feel envy for such a person. You would not be able to resist his powers of persuasion, as I myself experienced in a recent visit to Fräulein Paulette and the parents of the young man there in the corner who is reading so nicely and at the same time listening so intently …”
I now had to acknowledge that the laughter was meant for me and acted as if I was so deeply engrossed in my reading as to give the lie to Herr Adamowski’s comment. At the same time I was ashamed of being afraid to openly admit that I had been listening in on the conversation — after all, no one could have held it against me. But we often lose our nerve in milieux that we disdain, and when that happens we easily lose our candor as well — otherwise the most reliable of our virtues. However, the embarrassing situation I found myself in did lead me to understand what Herr Adamowski said a little later about the “chemical” makeup of human relationships. Meanwhile he went on:
“The person, Ladies and Gentlemen, who cultivates his garden, has a certain unimpeachability, and indeed, I would feel as though I were ignoring my calling if I missed an opportunity to uphold this as an ideal worthy of the highest striving, to lay it as a charge on the general public — in all earnestness! And herein lies another contradiction: on the one hand, the genuine regret that such happy, modest people are harder and harder to find, and a certain indignation that such a lifestyle still exists — an almost criminal removal from the world, a selfish consumption of time that is actually antisocial, just like someone secretly nibbling from the common larder. I only mention it as one example among many …”
“Fabulous,” said Theophila. “Truly, truly fabulous, Adamchik!”
“You will see, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Herr Adamowski, baring his saw-teeth, “that people show so little understanding for the difficulties of our profession, for the true dilemma that lies at its core, that they begin to mistrust it.” Laughter echoed along the bookcases. “It is so grossly underappreciated that people are inclined to link our efforts to this cause or that — because they fail to understand that journalism is a cause in and of itself. And yet people will dismiss even its most serious attempts to convince the public exactly how great its own misfortune truly is.” Laughter. “I see a time approaching when people will no longer speak of the terribles simplificateurs, but of the terribles complicateurs …”
“Magnificent,” said Theophila, thoroughly exhausted. She nodded to Fellner, who wriggled uncomfortably on his armchair as he relayed the nodding and sighing on to Leutgeb and Kopetzki. “Simply fabulous.”
“You see, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Herr Adamowski, “people reproach us for the fact that what we produce — i.e., the newspapers — is so open to dispute. Of course this criticism comes in various degrees, but that is the general accusation. I’m not talking about the loss that occurs between an idea and its execution, between the vision, so to speak, and the hand that gives it form — everyone knows that the best things are always lost in this process. I mean the fundamental misconception that someone who undertakes to put out a newspaper would ever be able to create anything but a newspaper …”
Fellner slapped his thigh and immediately hid his hands again, aware of his faux pas. Leutgeb grumbled, and Kopetzki coughed on his pipe smoke when he started to laugh. “This ought to be written down word for word,” said Theophila, suddenly very serious.
I was watching Aunt Paulette. She was sitting opposite Herr Adamowski, between Fellner and Kopetzki, evidently unmoved. She did not take part in the bursts of applause that were elicited by every other word and came cascading down like loose scree sliding down a mountain. I could tell that she felt the same inner aversion for the surroundings as I did — that she, too, could not abide the peculiar atmosphere, the combination of slovenly comfort, unabashed abandon, and an extreme but nonetheless futile attentiveness. It was as if Herr Adamowski’s gait were a feature of his words, in the stamping rhythm that resounded in all those present in the room: rearing up and straining excessively on the upswing, and then collapsing onto itself, as the ambitious stamping leg fell onto the careless swinging leg. We could even smell his sweat, for there was nothing comic to his remarks, which were clearly meant to be taken very seriously. The whole performance was like a feat of strength when the athlete is clearly straining and seeks to escape into the grotesque by clownishly exaggerating his own grimace. Herr Adamowski’s own contortions, under a burden that made his forehead bead over with sweat, were repulsive. Today it seems to me that I must have compared his pitiful efforts with Herr Tarangolian’s expertise, the juggler-like ease and fluidity with which the prefect mastered the most tangled trains of thought, evincing far more wit than Herr Adamowski was ever able to wrestle out of the angel of esprit. I’m not saying that I realized then that the Latin’s intellectuality could best be described with the French word lucidité, for which there is no German equivalent, but certainly it was that moment that led to my ultimate understanding that the secret to such clarity of intellect lies in the power of discernment, the ability to differentiate the truly simple from the truly complicated — in other words a sense of tact that accords each person his own room to move.