‘You know what you’re going to do once you’re back in the German Democratic Republic? You will prevent our young writers developing in their own way, you’ll cramp their style, the moment they try to come up with something new my Minister and his small-minded comrades will tell them to stop writing tripe, stop imitating the capitalist ways of doing things — at first that’s what they’ll say — if you imitate capitalist ways it will mean that we won’t allow you to publish anything, if you continue making trouble they’ll say you’re imitating imperialist ways, and that’s much more serious, capitalism is there, a fact of life, but imperialism is aggressive, which means that you’re in cahoots with those who wish to attack us, that you imitate imperialist ways.
‘From a literary point of view, that means nothing, Herr Kappler, but coming from them it means “we’re going to put you in jail”, thus far they’ve locked up young people who just wanted to be different, but soon they’ll be jailing anyone who doesn’t want to resemble what you’ve turned into, they’ll say look at Kappler, the penny’s dropped with him, he’s come in from outside and he’s setting you an example, he’s seen through it all, and anyone can read his books, it’s all perfectly transparent, so cut out all this symbolic or imperialistic petit-bourgeois posturing.
‘So you do see what purpose you’ll serve, Herr Kappler, don’t you? You’ll be used to prevent any other Kapplers coming through, I mean Kapplers like the Kappler of the twenties and thirties, now defunct. For a quarter of a century you’ve written nothing remarkable, nowadays you’re just a biographer, that’s why you want to go back, so that people will cheer the man you’re ashamed to have become.’
That’s how in the dimly lit Konditorei earlier that day Lilstein had advanced, destroying Kappler, feeling that he could weep, fabricating lies, lies which nevertheless were powerful, for they made Kappler turn bright red, made his chin tremble, Lilstein greatly admired Kappler’s latest books, but he shot them down in flames while he looked on, all to prevent him returning to Rosmar.
‘This notion that you would construct a narrative using the great days of the first half of the century was quite clever, Herr Kappler, a few dozen sequences, magnificent stuff, all the academies admired your last offering, but I know that the Kappler of 1929 would never have published it, he would have sat down in front of this succession of sequences and asked himself how it could all be brought together. He’d have buckled down to it, he’d have looked for a form.’
Lilstein lying to destabilise Kappler, using any means to ensure that Kappler does not go back:
‘You’re writing now like Turgenev or Anatole France, you write like they did before the war, I mean the 1914 war, it’s so earnest and antiquated, how can you expect to have anything to say?’
And the deeper Lilstein goes in with his lie, the easier the words come, the more convinced he feels that he is right, the quicker Kappler’s pages turn yellow, he knows what the ideologues of the GDR will do, threaten young writers, what’s all this rubbish about disjointed narratives? and your petit-bourgeois monologues, stream of consciousness, conscious smut more like, pornography, you get these ideas from the Yanks, from a reactionary pro-slaver, that apple of their eye, Faulkner, or the traitor Dos Passos, now take Kappler, he’s come back from there, from your precious West, he’s tried it all and he’s reverted to realism and a voice that tells things like they are, clearly, so everyone can understand, in the order they happen.
Lilstein talks to Kappler about what the Party ideologues will do, and the further he goes the more he feels he is right to say it, the more sympathetic he feels to those imperialist writers who are no more imperialist than Cholokhov who isn’t imperialist at all, Kappler is old.
‘Your books are closets for old clothes, Herr Kappler, as a form of writing the equivalent of antique furniture, too genteel, and to escape it you’re opting for a freakish course of action.’
That’s how Lilstein managed to get Kappler to snap:
‘That’s enough!’
Several times, and the last in a bare whisper:
‘That’s enough!’
And stop Lilstein did, he’d have liked to add that young people in the GDR had no need of the portable hell which Kappler has been dragging around with him since the beginning of time, he felt it wasn’t necessary, they drank slowly, Kappler looked around the small bar area of the Konditorei, he didn’t speak again, he seemed lost among the shelves of pots and pans and groceries, he allowed Lilstein to pay the bill, he then bought a few bars of chocolate, they left together, their footsteps were muffled by the snow as they walked towards the little bridge, they stopped, they looked up towards the edge of the forest, eyes peeled, Kappler asked:
‘Tell me, young Lilstein, have you seen her again?’
Then they moved on and made for the village, the landscape was white but in shadow now, snow waiting for more snow, Kappler wanted Lilstein to escort him to the bus, at the last moment he said to Lilstein: ‘I’m going back to Rosmar because you’ve done your damnedest to stop me, I’m going back because there must be people around you who think like you, I have no illusions about what the GDR is like today, I just believe that there is more to be done there than in the West, I’d still like to achieve something before it’s too late for me, it’s no good saying any more, I still want to write new things, and I also believe that you still have decent thoughts.’
‘Thoughts aren’t enough, Herr Kappler, a group of people who have fine thoughts can do a great deal of harm, and they are the worst kind.’
Hans said to him:
‘Actually, young Lilstein, I like you best when you’re trying to be stupid.’
*
Years later, one day when Lilstein has behaved very affectionately towards you, when he’s called you ‘young gentleman of France’ three times on the trot, you will take your courage in both hands and raise the subject of Kappler, Lilstein will give you an unvarnished account of the talk he’d had that morning with his old friend before meeting you that same afternoon, when it was your turn. He’ll say that it had taken a long time for him to forgive himself for failing to find a way of undermining Kappler’s resolve.
Then you’ll ask Lilstein what he would have done if you too had said no.
He’ll reply that he’d have let you go, to live your life in the great wide world, but you have never been sure that this was true. Still, you never asked him outright if he would have arranged for you to disappear.
One day he’ll say that even without him you would have taken the same path, you like influence, especially the influence which multiplies the power of the men who work in the shadows, ultimately it’s an acceptable word, oh it’s most unlikely that you would ever have acquired links, not with anybody, you would have been your own master. Lilstein knows two or three gossipy types in Paris who are paid with signs of consideration, not by him, by the Russians, loose tongues in high places, you would have played that game with much more finesse, but you would have had no real influence, not with any camp, whereas with Lilstein it was real politics, you went forward together, you gave each other presents, gifts, counter-gifts, you betrayed no one and you acted in tandem, really a most lordly occupation.
You were both standing at Klosters in front of the locomotive of a mountain railway, Lilstein told you that the first time he ever saw you in the Waldhaus in 1956 he was desperate because he’d failed with Kappler and he’d decided to speak to you as if you were his last chance.