After the reading was over, I turned back to Inge, intending to continue monopolising her. But before long Paul Boeden came up and stood just behind me.
‘How’s life, Inge?’ he said, cutting right across me.
In her usual flustered way, Inge looked helplessly back and forth between us. With a show of good grace, I moved aside to make room for Paul. He gave me a brisk nod. Though we hadn’t mentioned our shared past, I had the sense that he knew who I was, and this made me wary of him. He also appeared to be on easy terms with Inge, which further added to my discomfort at his intrusion.
I am trying to account here for the ill-judged step I made a few minutes after he joined us.
Inge had just congratulated him on his reading.
‘Stefan’s a poet too,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that right, Stefan?’ she added, putting her hand on my arm. ‘Margarete told me…’
I knew she was saying this just to make conversation, but her gesture – the warm interest it seemed to promise if only what she was saying were in fact the case – made me momentarily giddy.
‘A poet? Really?’ Paul asked, raising an eyebrow. I felt suddenly that he knew exactly who I was – knew all about my father’s disgrace, perhaps even about my own humiliation at the hands of his sister, and that in his mind this gave him the right to look down on me.
Among the few things I took in during my stint in the Philosophy Department at Humboldt was the idea – I forget whose – that the underlying motive for all human action is the desire for recognition – recognition of one’s worth and dignity as a human being, without which one was a nonperson; a slave. The concept had articulated very precisely the obscure cravings of my own soul, and it had lodged itself in my imagination. It had felt incontrovertible. And it was surely what motivated me now as I replied to Inge and Paul’s question with a gesture of assent – half nod, half shrug – feeling instantly the immense weariness of spirit that, in my experience, accompanies the discharging of all such acts of self-destructive folly.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah?’ Paul replied, baring his teeth in a smile that seemed to me fully Brandtian in its mocking incredulity. ‘Where can we read some of your stuff?’
I hesitated. Inge was looking at me with a pleasant, innocent smile, waiting politely for the simple answer to a simple question. I didn’t feel that she herself was all that curious as to where she could read my ‘stuff’, and my answer, when I gave it, wasn’t to impress her so much as to prevent any suggestion arising in her mind that I might be a less than straightforward character. As far as Paul was concerned, I perhaps was guilty of wanting to impress him; to force him to ‘recognise’ me. The situation became further complicated by the fact that Menzer, who had been wandering in our direction, was now within earshot. With a feeling of reckless abandon, I blurted:
‘Sinn und Form.’
‘Sinn und Form? No kidding!’
Sinn und Form had been the leading journal of the literary establishment throughout my childhood, and as far as I knew, still was. My Uncle Heinrich was a subscriber and occasional contributor, and always brought the latest issue with him when he came to visit. I never read it, but its sober appearance, lying on the coffee table, was as permanent a feature in my private landscape as the Kurt Teske nude or the American radio (before Otto smashed it). It was a part of who I was, which is no doubt why its name tripped so readily off my tongue.
‘Have I died of boredom or did I just hear the words Sinn und Form?’ Menzer drawled, joining us.
‘This man’s published his poems there,’ Paul told him.
Menzer looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time. To my surprise he treated me to a smile -a half smile, at least – and held out his hand to me.
‘By the way, I’m Menzer,’ he said. ‘We haven’t met properly.’
‘Stefan Vogel.’
‘I didn’t mean to be rude there. That’s good, getting your stuff in Sinn und Form. Almost impressive. I used to try them myself. They never accepted anything, so naturally I pretend to despise them for being hopelessly middle-of-the-road. Which issues are your poems in? I’d like to read them.’
I’d seen that last bit coming, at least, and by the time he got to it, my sprinter’s imagination, with its knack for the short-term solution, had come up with an answer:
‘They were only just accepted. I think they’ll be out in the next issue.’
‘Good. Well, be sure to bring it along when it comes out.’
‘I will.’
‘I’d like to read them too,’ Inge said, smiling at me.
And there I was: back on the treadmill again, back in my little hell of vainglory, deceit, and desperate expedient. And whereas the price before had merely been a few years of my manhood, it was now apparently to be my soul.
CHAPTER 12
I see that I am slowing down as I reach this part of my story. As a matter of fact, I seem to be grinding to a halt. It’s October now – almost a month since I began: a month-long torrent of memory, spilling out with unexpected swiftness and ease. (Possible I overestimated this writing business? It seems straightforward enough when you have something to say.) But now I feel as though I’m back in my room on Micklenstrasse before I raided my mother’s trunk, trying to wring a poem out of my own dry brain… I seem to have a strong reluctance, even now, to resurrect the events that took place over the next few months: dusting off the old anthology to create another little set of masterpieces (Brandt had gone by then, replaced by an obliging woman with a cheerful smile for everyone); taking them up to my Uncle Heinrich in his book-filled room in the Office of the Chief of the People’s Police; brazening out my own shame to ask if he would do me a little favour and recommend my efforts to the editors of Sinn und Form for their next issue…
Can’t seem to drag myself back there. Can’t bring myself to spell it all out even in the knowledge that I will be past caring by the time Inge or anybody else gets to read about it.
But speaking of that there is perhaps another factor in this sudden inhibition.
A few days ago I did something I’d been meaning to do for some time: double-check on the terms of our life insurance policy. Just as well I did, as I appear to have a certain amount still to learn about the defensive instincts of large capitalist institutions. It turns out that what I have in mind is not after all the ticket to an easy quarter of a million dollars for Inge. All the insurance company pays out in that event is the sum of what you’ve paid in: a few hundred bucks at most. So much for ‘converting myself into gold’.
A blow. Not that the future awaiting me, so eloquently summarised by that glass of wine in my face, becomes any more conceivable. Life without Inge – a certainty once these revelations break her spell – is a prospect I have zero interest in pursuing. From my point of view she is life; all I want of life. I have felt this since I carried her off from Berlin, and the years since have merely strengthened that feeling. Even so, without the consoling lustre of making her rich (or at least giving her the means to relaunch herself into her own life), the act of aborting that future becomes suddenly a bleaker, starker matter. Hence, no doubt, my Scheherazade-like reluctance to get to the end of this tale.