Elderly Germans voted for that decade thanks to the magnificent person of Helmut Kohl, who radiated stability and security. The young, or those who had been young then, i.e., the majority of voters, chose the remnants of disco of the ’80s.
In the end, the banal always wins out, the trivial and its barbarians sooner or later invade and conquer the empires of weighty ideology. The big winners in the referendum were Falco, Nena, Alphaville, the whole West German soccer team from the ’80s, Breitner’s beard, the young Becker and Steffi Graf, the ponderous luxury of KaDeWe, Dallas, Dirty Dancing, Michael Jackson, whom everyone was wild about here, even that ennui-inducing New Year’s celebration on A Kettle of Color on East German television.
You always say that the eighties are the decade that produced mostly boredom and disco in the East, E. wrote me after the elections, but clearly that’s what people want—disco and boredom.
E. was right, but there was something else going on. People also likely chose the ’80s because of their upcoming end. There was something strange about the voting and this gave us a clear sign. By choosing a decade or a year, you are actually also choosing what comes after it. I want to live in the ’80s, so as to look forward to 1989.
(No one paid any attention to the fact that in most of Germany’s eastern provinces, the sinister Party of the ’30s came in second.)
10.
For several days (weeks?) I haven’t spoken to anyone. I seem to be losing my sense of time. I get up, get dressed, go down into town for fish, it’s market day. I try to call Gaustine again, no luck, just a strange signal on the other end of the line. I chat a bit with the olive seller. He speaks Italian, I reply in bad German. He ends up selling me as many olives as he had intended. I roll his last words around in my head like olive pits as I climb back up to the monastery on the hill—prego, olive, grazie, prego, olive, grazie. When I reach the top, I spit them out. I’ve bought cheese and fish as well. I clean the fish, cut a sour apple into thin slices, then olive oil, basil, lemon, a splash of wine, and a piece of white alpine cheese. In half an hour the fish is ready. I set it on the table on my nicest plate. I pour myself the rest of the wine. I sit down and realize that I have no appetite whatsoever.
11.
The Absentee Syndrome
So many places where I’m not. I’m not in Naples, in Tangier, Coimbra, Lisbon, New York, Yambol, and Istanbul. Not only am I not there, I am painfully absent. I am not there on a rainy afternoon in London, I am not there in the clamor of Madrid in the evening, I am not in Brooklyn in autumn, I am not there on the empty Sunday streets of Sofia or Turin, in the silence of a Bulgarian town in 1978 . . .
I am so very absent. The world is overcrowded with my absence. Life is where I am not. No matter where I am . . .
It’s not just that I’m not there geographically; that is, I’m absent not just in space. Even though space and geography have never been merely space and geography.
I am not there in the fall of 1989, in that crazy May of 1968, in the cold summer of 1953. I am not there in December 1910, nor at the end of the 19th century, nor in the Eastern ’80s, stuck in their disco groove, which I personally loathe.
A person is not built to live in the prison of one body and one time.
—Gaustine, New and Imminent Diagnoses
12.
Switzerland’s turn comes around. The country’s willingness to take part in the referendum without being a member-state is one of those flattering (if inexplicable) surprises.
Months earlier, Gaustine and I had been locked in the following argument.
Mark my words, I would say, these folks here will choose the 1940s without blinking an eye, to everyone else’s horror.
Look here, he would say, amid a war-torn Europe, Switzerland may have looked like paradise, but believe me, that wasn’t the case. They were expecting to be attacked at any moment, warplanes were circling the borders. Hitler didn’t pussyfoot around. I assure you, he even had a detailed plan to conquer Switzerland, city by city.
I loved when Gaustine spoke as if he had been an eyewitness, although sometimes it got on my nerves. How can you argue with somebody who talks as if he had been there?
Still, preparing for war is not the same as being in the thick of it, right? I sniped back at him.
I’m not at all convinced of that, he replied, sometimes it’s even worse. Hearing about all the horrors being visited upon your neighbors, sleeping with your rifle on your pillow, in full battle-readiness. Burrowing into the Alps to make yourself bunkers, we called them “redoubts,” hiding in redoubts, always giving larger and larger loans and concessions to the Reich . . . Especially after they had trounced the French in no time. I recall that some cities were bombed by the Allies—Basel and Geneva, for example, if I’m not mistaken, and Zurich.
Navigational errors, I retorted, using the U.S. Air Force’s official explanation. As they say, nobody bombs a bank that is holding his own money.
But just look at how much money those same Swiss poured into charitable funds right after the end of the war, the Marshall Plan, the Red Cross in Geneva, that can’t be denied, Gaustine replied.
And yet, they will still choose the 1940s, mark my words. The influx of gold, money, and paintings was never greater. Banks and Old Masters.
That’s true, but the money went to the banks, while the people were truly poor, especially outside of Zurich. They’ll never choose the 1940s, Gaustine argued.
In the end, Gaustine was right. He always was right. Even though all polls indicated high levels of support for the war years, which put Brussels on tenterhooks. At the last minute, however, the old masters of the referendum made a decision that was so logical, yet at the same time absolutely unexpected. Switzerland, surprise, surprise, chose neutrality. A peculiar, temporal neutrality, so to speak. It chose as its period the year, month, and exact date of the referendum.
But . . . but that isn’t the past, the European commissioners stuttered. On the contrary, it is already the past as we speak, the government responded calmly. And tomorrow it will surely be even more in the past. And so on with every passing day.
Remaining neutral has always been a game outside of time. I don’t dance to your time—for a certain time, at least. But I can measure it out for you, if you’re willing to pay, I’ll time it with a stopwatch (Swiss-made, of course) and I’ll sell you clocks, I’ll guard your paintings, rings, diamonds, and all your baggage, while you’re off playing or fighting.
No objection could be made to that.
After some debate, the Europeans admitted that, in fact, Switzerland’s choice did offer certain advantages to everyone. It wasn’t a bad idea in this historical overturning of time to have one country that everyone could set their clocks by. And what better clock to depend on than a Swiss one? It was good to have a preserved model, a gold standard of the time that the others had pushed off from. And also, if anyone experienced severe claustrophobia from the past, Switzerland could offer them temporary asylum. A shelter.
It was also decided that it was best for the independent European institutions that would oversee compliance with the new temporal borders to be situated in such a country. In the no-man’s-land of time.
13.
P.S. Italy
I had given up all hope when, in the end, Italy, with typical southern dawdling, managed, albeit at the very last moment, to save the ’60s. Especially when at first nothing hinted at this at all.