Then he discovered one tiled wall. It decided Haffner on the question of a bathroom. Where else did one find ceramic? He ignored, for instance, the possibilities of storerooms, the opportunities of kitchens. Facing this wall, Haffner stood, unbuttoned his fly, and began the lengthy process of unburdening himself — telling himself that, after all, it wasn't as if Haffner disliked the dark. Bourgeois he may have been, but Haffner wasn't spoiled. He started working at Warburg's in the winter of 1946: the nightmarish winter, when the electrics failed and everyone in the City worked by candlelight. The clerks sat with their feet encased in typewriter covers stuffed with newspaper — gigantic and ineffectual slippers, improvised snowshoes. That spring, the streets were still a mess of rubble sprouting woodland plants — ragwort, groundsel. The dark had nothing on Haffner.
When he emerged, the lights were still not on. Now, however, a selection of torches had been discovered, and lighters, and solitary candles. A man was savagely strumming an acoustic guitar.
— Like a refugee camp? Niko breathed into Haffner's startled ear.
Haffner stared at him.
— So wonderful, no? said Niko.
Haffner looked around. In chiaroscuro, a girl was holding a flash-light above her head, like a handheld shower. In the sway of its light, she was dancing. As the light swayed, her breasts swayed with it. Another girl was on all fours, while a man mimicked the act of whipping her: his whip ascending in flourishes, an undulant lasso. The shadows made momentary blindfolds on the man's face; or the girls acquired sudden grimaces, as if from the painted masks of Venice, which Haffner had looked at, in wonder, in 1952, at the carnival with Livia — while she began to cry beside him, describing the carnivals she had seen before the war. Which seemed so long ago, she said. And already, at this point, Haffner had considered if he could ever leave Livia — because this was how he tested all his affections, by imagining him leaving them behind — and had realised that, for him, it was unimaginable. She was the only person he would never leave.
— Vodka? asked Niko.
— Perhaps not, said Haffner.
— Maybe you prefer tea? asked Niko. It is more British?
— A double vodka, said Haffner.
Returning with a plastic cup awash with vodka, Niko asked Haffner if he knew that they had all survived radiation. Or survived as much as they could. Oh yes, many years ago, when they were children, a factory had blown up a hundred kilometres south of here, but the distance was nothing, said Niko. The radiation was everywhere, all over the countryside.
— The motherfuckers, they killed us. Fucked us, said Niko.
His sister, he told Haffner, was born with only four fingers on her left hand. He moved closer to Haffner. He understood this? Only four fingers. On her left hand.
Unwillingly, Haffner inhaled the alcohol of Niko's breath. He drank a gulp of vodka, for equilibrium.
Haffner, said Haffner, understood.
It wasn't as if Haffner hadn't seen the horrors: he had seen the rule book torture — the forced standing for twenty-four hours, so that the prisoner's ankles swelled up, blisters developed on the soles of the feet, the kidneys shut down. In one village in Italy, the soldiers had just gone mad. They dressed up in women's clothes. They hung clothes in the trees. They went through the houses. Soon, there was nothing left to eat. Once, on the edge of the desert, they came across a food truck, carrying fruit. The people inside were crushed. Haffner and his unit stopped. They wiped the fuel and blood off, and started to eat the peaches, the heavy grapes. They hadn't eaten for a day. There was a girl there who had a dress but no legs. This was one of the women to whom Haffner felt closest. At a checkpoint in Syria, a kid was in an abandoned truck, cowering. He went to help her. He picked her up. Her head slumped off the neck on to his arm, heavy, like a pumpkin.
It wasn't then that Haffner threw up. It was ten minutes later, after he had buried her. After he had buried her just there, by the side of the road — because what fool would wander off to find a place to bury the dead? Just as what fool went off to seek his necessary privacy if he wanted to shit? The sniper fire on the way out; the friendly fire on the way back. Instead, you squatted there, in front of everyone, discussing the imaginary world of sports.
And Haffner discovered in this moment with Niko its secret twin, which already existed in the story of Haffner.
In another blackout, the universal blackout of 1977 — the summer Haffner came back to New York after being away for three years — he had argued with Goldfaden about sport. They were in Chinatown. Goldfaden had just outlined his theory that genetically the Jewish race was programmed to adore Chinese food. And Haffner felt no urge to disagree. He was happy. Before him, sat a plate of crispy shredded beef: a pile of orange twigs — which was Haffner's most reliable delight.
Then the lights went out. And Haffner found the conversation turning to sports.
It was escapism, said Goldfaden. There was nothing wrong with this, he wanted to add. He believed that everyone, at some time, needed a way of escaping. For Goldfaden, it was love. For Haffner, it was sports. Where, then, was the argument?
The argument, thought Haffner, was precisely in this idea that anything could be imaginary. Nothing was imaginary. This was Haffner's idea. So often accused of being divorced from real life, Haffner always maintained that — on the contrary — he would love to be divorced from real life, but the divorce was impossible. There was no counterlife.
As waiters began to scurry round for candles, Haffner talked.
The accusation of escapism was not a new one. Normally, however, this was seen as a bad thing. Esther used to accuse him of a lack of seriousness. Sport wasn't, said Esther, real life. She asked her new husband to agree with her. And Esmond did. But Haffner now maintained, in front of Goldfaden, in the dark, that there was no difference between a sport and real life: how, he wondered, could there be? In what way was real life suspended by the act of kicking a football, that would not mean that the act of sipping a coffee also represented a suspension of real life? The theory was ridiculous. What escapism was it to be battered by emotion, scarred by defeat, elated in victory? In Haffner's opinion, this proved a further and deeper truth: there was no such thing as escapism. No, never. How could you escape? Where did Goldfaden think he could go?
Well, said Goldfaden: he supposed he was much more of a romantic than Haffner.
Did he really want to talk about football? said Haffner, ignoring this comparison. Because he could. The Norwegians, for instance, who refused to play Nazi football. So the quislings watched each other in desolate stadiums. How was that not real life? So OK, said Goldfaden. But Haffner wasn't finished. Let us not, said Haffner, forget the Viennese genius Matthias Sindelar, known as The Wafer, who was said to have brains in his legs, and many unexpected ideas occurred to them while they were running. For instance, said Haffner, there was the last ever match between Austria and Germany, a month after the Nazis had annexed Austria in 1938. Everyone knew that Sindelar had been told not to score. For the whole first half, therefore, he pushed the ball a little wide of each post, sarcastically. And then, in the second half, he couldn't stop himself: so Sindelar scored. And then another man scored a free kick, thus sealing the game, and Sindelar, because he had ideas in his legs, went to celebrate by dancing in front of the Nazi directors' box.
That, said Haffner, was sport. It could never be an escape from life. Life was everywhere.
No, there was no such thing as a counterlife, Haffner wanted to argue. Just as there was no such thing as a real metamorphosis. In the end, you only had yourself to work with. Wherever you went, it was still you.