At the end of the show, which I couldn’t watch — I had wanted to rest on a park bench and had fallen asleep until the early evening — I was standing in front of the theater. The people were just coming out. I looked for the canteen. Lindemann was sitting hunched over a table eating soup, and looked up in irritation when I sat down with him.
“My name is Ivan Friedland. Will you give me an interview? For the Oxford Quarterly?” I didn’t know if there was an Oxford Quarterly or not, but this was in the days before the Internet, it was hard to check things out.
Physically he hadn’t changed, the lenses in his eyeglasses reflected back the world, and the green handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket. As I began to ask him questions, I noticed how shy he was. Minus the spotlights and an audience, he came off as lost and insecure. He straightened his glasses, smiled in a stilted way, and kept touching the top of his skull as if to reassure himself that the few remaining hairs were still in place.
Hypnosis, he said, did not involve a single phenomenon but a cluster: the readiness to submit to an authority, a common vulnerability, a general openness to suggestion. Only occasionally were more mysterious operations of the conscious mind involved, but these had not yet been scientifically investigated because no one wanted to get involved in research of that kind. All of which led to the fact that a person could lose superficial control of their own will for short periods.
He was seized by a fit of coughing, and soup ran down his chin.
He used the word “superficial,” he then explained, because under normal circumstances nothing someone didn’t wish to experience or do could be induced in them through a trance. Only rarely was anything spiritually profound stirred into life.
I asked what he meant by this, but he was already elsewhere in his thoughts and began to complain. He complained about the low fees, he complained about the arrogance of TV executives, he complained about a broadcast that had cut his appearance, he complained about the Stage Artists’ Union, and in particular he complained about their pension fund. He complained about the endless train journeys, the delays, the sloppily organized timetables. He complained about bad hotels. He complained about good hotels, because they were too expensive. He complained about stupid people in the audiences, he complained about drunks in the audiences, and aggressive people in the audiences, and children in the audiences, and people who were hard of hearing in the audiences, and psychopaths. It was astonishing, according to him, how many psychopaths would crop up in a single hypnosis show. Then he went back to complaining about fees. I asked if there was anything else he would like to eat, the Oxford Quarterly was paying, and he ordered the schnitzel and French fries.
“To go back for a moment,” I said. “The operations of the conscious mind.”
Right, he said. Mysterious operations, yes, that was what he had said. Mysterious to him too, even with everything he’d seen in his time. But of course he wasn’t an intellectual and so he was unqualified to offer explanations. He had not chosen to embark on this particular profession, he’d actually studied something quite different.
“Such as? What did you study? What other things?”
The waitress brought the schnitzel. He asked if I’d enjoyed the show.
“Very impressive.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“Very impressive!”
Then he said, “Not big enough,” and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about the schnitzel. Too expensive, given the size. But everything was expensive these days, the little man was always being ripped off.
I asked if the schnitzel tasted good, at least.
Too thick, he said. Schnitzels should be pounded thin, why did nobody understand this anymore? He hesitated before asking where my tape recorder was.
“I have a good memory.”
Memory was an overvalued phenomenon, he said as he chewed. Simply astonishing how easy it was to seed it with false recollections, and how easy to erase other recollections without a trace. No tape recorder, really?
To change the subject, I offered him dessert, and he ordered Sachertorte. Then he cocked his head and inquired if the Oxford Quarterly was a student newspaper.
“It’s widely read.”
“And what are you studying, young man?”
“Art history. But I’m a painter.”
He looked at the table. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“I wouldn’t know where.”
“Painter,” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Painter.” He smiled.
I asked him how great an influence a hypnotist could have on people. Could you cause someone to change his life? To do things he’d never have done without being hypnotized?
“Anyone can make someone change their life.”
“But you can’t make people do things they don’t want to do?”
He shrugged. Just between the two of us, what did “want to” really amount to? Who knew what he actually wanted, who was that clear with himself? People wanted so much, and it changed all the time. Of course at the beginning you told the audience that nobody could be made to do anything he wasn’t willing to do anyway, but the truth was that everyone was capable of everything. Humans had no boundaries, they were pure chaos, they had no fixed shape, and they had no limits. He looked around. Why in heaven’s name was the Sachertorte taking so long, what were they doing, baking it?
I’m not just chaos without boundaries, I said.
He laughed.
The waitress brought the dessert, and I asked him to tell me some anecdotes. In such an illustrious career he must have had quite a few experiences.
Illustrious? Well. In olden times, in the heyday of the Varieties, of Houdini and Hanussen, a hypnotist could still be illustrious. But nowadays! A life lived for art did not easily reduce itself to anecdotes.
“Hypnosis is an art?”
Perhaps it was even more. Perhaps it already achieved what art could only aim at. All great literature, all music, all … he smiled. All painting was trying to be hypnotic, wasn’t it? He pushed his plate away. He had to go to bed now, performances were a strain, they left you ready to collapse with exhaustion. He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Painter?”
“Excuse me?”
His expression had changed, there was nothing friendly in it anymore. “Painter? Really?”