— Sometimes, Haffner said to Zinka, one has conversations which are impossible with one's wife.
— But you're not married, said Zinka. Your wife, she is dead.
— It's the principle, he said.
And Haffner smiled.
— She's still alive in spirit, said Haffner.
And Zinka smiled too.
And in the sudden pause of their understanding, Haffner could still not prevent himself remembering the first time he had used this line about impossible conversations. It was one of his ordinary lines: in the Travelodge, at the business convention. Each time he used it, even now, even though he could remember all the times he had used it insincerely, he believed in it as true.
As if to celebrate this moment of Haffner's glory, the small jazz band serenading the hotel's residents began a melody from the oeuvre of Haffner's hero, Artie Shaw; and, cushioned by this melody, Frau Tummel descended on him, as if from the highest clouds.
Haffner looked to Zinka. Zinka looked away, staring at the indifferent mountains, as if finding in their indifference some kind of solace.
Frau Tummel was simply here, she said, to have the smallest word with Haffner. She beamed at Zinka. She did not want to interrupt.
He was all ears, said Haffner. She was sorry? said Frau Tummel. He was listening, said Haffner.
But this was not entirely true. The melody began to bother Haffner. He couldn't remember the title. Even as Frau Tummel stood in front of him. It suddenly seemed important. And maybe this wasn't just a ruse of Haffner's. For his only dates left were the songs. The songs in which dead people sang about their immortal love. As soon as he heard a song, then everything came back to him. With the songs, he could happily wallow in the wreckage of Haffner.
She just wanted to check that they still had their arrangement for the next day, said Frau Tummel. And Haffner nodded: a toy dog.
That was wonderful, exclaimed Frau Tummel. Because if he didn't want to, then he only needed to say.
It was a conversation Haffner was practised in. Of course he wanted to see her, he said, fluent and abstract with flattery.
In that case, said Frau Tummel, she would leave them be. Or perhaps, she added, she could take a glass of aquavit with them — glancing over at her husband making pencilled notes in his guidebook.
Zinka sighed. Haffner was silent. Encouraged, Frau Tummel motioned to the distant waiter. She pointed to Haffner's glass of aquavit. She mimed her desire for another. Then no, she reconsidered: she called the waiter over and ordered a glass of dry white wine.
— The aquavit, she explained to Haffner and Zinka, it is not for me.
She smiled, at Zinka, who did not smile back.
Frau Tummel, thought Haffner, was the absolute bourgeois. She embodied strength: the statuesque matronly repression. There was nothing, thought Haffner, which Frau Tummel could not sublimate. And perhaps this, if he were honest with himself, was also why Frau Tummel so appealed to him. He liked the effort of her strength. Her strength enchanted him. Yes, he realised, for Frau Tummel he felt a spreading tenderness, welling under Haffner's soul, like a bruise.
Frau Tummel was talking about her husband. She was playing the part of the wife. One never knew, she said, how much one was doing the right thing.
— Perhaps, said Frau Tummel, I am not the right woman for him.
— Come now, said Haffner. Of course you are!
And perhaps if he had thought more precisely or extensively he might have decided that this was not exactly the right tone; that seduced as he may have been by Frau Tummel's calm he should still have understood its fragility. He should still have expected that his pity was not what Frau Tummel wanted.
He really didn't need to talk to her like this, she said. It was hardly elegant. To this accusation, Haffner made some kind of noise. In this noise, he hoped to register a charming protestation. Frau Tummel regarded him. He was useless, she observed.
— No denying it! said Haffner, cheekily. He opened out his arms in a happy gesture of surrender.
And in her irritation at Haffner's refusal to offer her even the most minimal affection, Frau Tummel informed Haffner that she really should be returning to her husband, and so rose swiftly from her chair, thus colliding with the waiter who — as if he and Frau Tummel were a carefully rehearsed double act, a famous pair of clowns — tipped the wine gently over Zinka, as if in benediction.
Frau Tummel, in a flurry of mortification, tried to apologise to Zinka, who waved her irritably away, pressing her napkin to her top. Haffner looked out of the window, at the sunset, at the inexpertly murdered sky.
He scanned the horizon — like isolated Crusoe, with the craziest beard, wishing for a rescue which he never, now, expected.
Haffner was timeless. Perhaps this moment where Haffner scanned the horizon was one small proof. As he watched, he wondered to himself how far this scene was his fault. He searched the scene for hidden motives. And as he did so, all the previous allegations against Haffner fluently returned to him — trapped on his stage, in his follow spot, the ripples of a sequinned backdrop behind him, facing the disdain of his miniature audience: one couple waiting for another act, the manager himself, the confused splinter group of a stag party, one baffled drunk soldier on leave. In Haffner's lone state, Frau Tummel multiplied into the other women — like Barbra, or Esther — who had found Haffner so disappointing.
His efforts were rarely enough, thought Haffner — as he stood up with a superfluous napkin which he held out to Zinka, who did not see it, occupied as she was in preventing Frau Tummel from offering advice, while wiping off the sticky sheen of alcohol from her skin. It was so often the same, he thought — picking up his own glass, correcting himself, putting it gently down: like the confrontation with Livia, after the Allied liberation of Rome, who was wild with jealousy, having been sent a photo of the Colosseum.
It was not the usual tourist cliche.
In the centre of the photo was a jeep, on which an Allied soldier was sitting, at the wheeclass="underline" a white carnation was a badge in his beret. A suntanned woman in a navy dress, with large sunglasses up on her blonde hair, was showing something to this Allied officer, which was making him contentedly smile. While beside them an assortment of elegantly coiffed, sunglassed Italians were clapping.
Haffner had always denied that this was Haffner.
The photo had been sent to Livia — whom Haffner had at that time not seen for two years, not since he had been mobilised straight after their marriage in 1942 — by a so-called friend of hers who had seen it in the newspapers. She was jealous, said Haffner. She was mad with jealousy. It was a spiteful thing to do.
It was true that there was some ambiguity. The man in the photograph was looking down, in profile: so there was room for doubt. And this doubt also left room for Haffner to escape the accusations. When, fifty years later, Benjamin discovered this photograph too, going through a pile of Haffner's things, Haffner repeated his excuses again. Why then, thought Benji, had Haffner kept this photograph for fifty years, if it wasn't of him? Why would you preserve the triumph of another man?
But I thought I knew. I tried to tell Benji; but Benji was unconvinced. For I was the only one who believed in Haffner's innocence.
This photograph marked Haffner's jazz. His ultimate in pure freedom. It represented every moment in which Haffner had escaped, momentarily, from the observing world.