Another glance in Lilstein’s direction from the girl at the counter, the older man, the one ensconced in the corner with the Gédéons and Babars, he’s not the shop-lifting sort, the man who owns the shop told me you must never go by appearances, I’m too hard on Gilles, he’s not that awful, the only thing that grates is the bin-bag, last night he got home at eleven, he saw the bin-bag in the middle of the hallway, he said it smells, I was in bed, the only chore down to him is to take out the bin-bag now and then, that’s a journalist for you.
When I said that he didn’t like it one bit, he said that if philosophers started seriously bothering with bin-bags no one would believe them any more, that’s got nothing to do with it, and philosophers don’t ask to be believed, they try to be rational, does Reason have a date of birth? That’s not the problem, the question of the historicity of Reason isn’t about the date of its birth, or death, you see the trap, the ready-made answer, Reason died at Auschwitz, the sort of remark that leaves the exercise of Reason to the brutes, the dominants, be careful with ‘dominants’, the prof doesn’t like Bourdieu, I was in bed, Gilles went down to the yard with the bin-bag, when he came back up he rang the bell so I’d have to get out of bed, I didn’t, the neighbour banged on the wall, I went and opened the door, I turned my back to him and returned to the bedroom, and he had his keys all the time, he said no I left them here.
Don’t forget Fontenelle, ‘If reason ruled the world, nothing would ever happen’, sounds OK, yes, but it’s not enough, that said it’s the first arm of the pincer, if Reason dominates History there are no more events, no, that’s not my pincer, first hypothesis, if reason isn’t historical then History cannot be rational, but second hypothesis, second arm of my pincer, if reason is historical there can be no absolute of Reason, that’s where you stick Fontenelle in, Gilles made a lot of noise in the living room, it lasted half an hour, finally he came to bed, with the newspaper, it’s amazing how much noise a newspaper makes, Gilles sighs, seen my keys? that really made me see red, but he put on his helpless voice, like he does when I’ve got to help him do his accounts, he said I’m sodding fed up, can’t find them anywhere.
Lilstein turns the pages, the wolf looks a nasty piece of work, maybe it’s just because he’s showing his teeth, a lot of the white of his eyes showing too, it’s like in the cinema, eyes very wide open, black and white comedies, Cary Grant shows a lot of the white of his eyes, I’ll have to buy another video of Philadelphia Story, in Berlin it must have been Honecker who forgot to return the one I had, it’s a damned peculiar life where you lend the leader of your democratic republic an American video, he could end your career by raising one finger, everyone watched everyone else, end the career of the first person who made a mistake, but watching a film with Cary Grant and James Stewart was no longer thought of as an error though there was a time when you could have paid a heavy price for doing so, I’m exaggerating, no one ever paid a heavy price, that being said, you lend a video to the leader of your democratic republic, you can hardly ask him for it back, you realise things are changing the day he says Misha I must give you that video back.
Where videos were concerned, Honecker wasn’t the worst offender, he’d return them, he would even lend some of his without making a big fuss about it.
He was easy to deal with compared to Mathias, the former trade union owner, then retired, Mathias had a superb collection of videos, recordings that had come from the West, he had Angel with Marlene Dietrich, he loaned out his videos, he would offer to lend, he’d stand by his shelves, raise one finger and say:
‘From each according to his needs…’
Gives me a tape:
‘… to each according to his abilities, culture must circulate.’
I always returned his videos, but over time he began saying I’d lost some, he ticked me off for not going to see him, when I did go he was delighted, and within five minutes he’d throw the business of the nonreturned videos in my face, his wife used to give him funny looks, they probably talked about it all the time, I’d arrived after leaving the office, about nine one evening, they gave me a warm welcome, I carefully avoiding talking about films, we were snug and warm, I was pleased to see them, but Mathias never lasted out for more than five minutes, he always found a way of bringing up the videos I was supposed to have lost, it wasn’t true, and he knew it would make me want to leave earlier than planned, if he hadn’t I’d have been glad to drink a tisane and a small plum brandy, but I’d go away without having anything, he wife would say ‘So soon?’ it wasn’t quite a question, it sounded like a question but the sort of question to which you know the answer, as though it confirmed something she’d said before I got there, something like:
‘You’ll see, he’ll hardly have his foot through the door before he’ll be off again.’
People like Mathias criticise you for not going to see them, so you go, they criticise you over the business of the videos, you decide to leave, they criticise you for going, Mathias would nod in my direction and say to his wife ‘this is his idea of a visit to old friends’, we’d be chatting in the hallway, the conversation might very well revert to being pleasant, I might almost have drunk that tisane, with a plum brandy, but Mathias would always get round to saying:
‘Go, don’t strain yourself.’
I always fell into the trap, I was really rather fond of them both, ‘using his persuasive eloquence Gédéon convinced his assembled listeners, he made them understand that there were better things to do in life than going round gobbling each other up’, that’s well said, do they have video recorders in the prisons of the reunified Germany? I’ll have to ask Honecker’s lawyer, when are they going to cart me off to jail? as I’m leaving this kiddies’ shop? No, prison is official, with these people there’ll be an interrogation first, out in the sticks, with a medic to keep an eye on my blood pressure.
About the keys, I said to Gilles we’ll see tomorrow, but I got up, I didn’t say he was becoming impossible, he had them when he came home from work, they weren’t lost, we’d agreed we would always leave them in the plate on top of the central heating, where mine are, you see, we were both starting to feel cold, both of us in just T-shirts, while we were hunting for the keys, I found Dilthey, I must use Dilthey, A Critique of Historical Reason, also find a place for that quote from Faust, ‘In the beginning was the deed’ and don’t fall into the trap, there’s also Ortega y Gasset, got to see clearly that historical reason, the affirmation that reason is historical, is for Ortega the means of putting an end to pure reason, the Enlightenment and the Revolution, mustn’t mix up the first ‘reason’, extra-historical, which can or may seem to be realised in History, with the second, the historical reason which literally refers back to what has befallen man, so use Ortega as a way of shifting towards Heidegger, even if I’m not all that keen, about the keys, search instituted high and low, hallway, living room, kitchen, I was sleepy, Gilles waited for the moment when I was about to get angry so that he could criticise me for being angry, I said to him:
‘A metallic sound.’
‘What metallic sound?’
‘Like the noise keys make when they fall.’
‘Keys falling?’
‘Are you positive you didn’t hear the tinkle of keys falling in a dustbin?’