The Last Days (13 page)
Authors: Laurent Seksik
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Psychological, #Biographical
How could he help being drawn to Kleist instead of Goethe, since he had always been more drawn to losers rather than winners? He nursed an unbounded admiration for poets who’d met tragic ends. He had dedicated
The Struggle with the Daemon
, his finest collection of essays, to poets such as these. His mind found itself in perfect harmony with those mad souls. He found himself gripped by the same torments that plagued Nietzsche and Hölderlin.
Well before he had gone into exile, before the First World War had even broken out, indeed as far back as his memory reached, his dark thoughts had always been the breeding ground for all his ideas. He had never felt at ease in the world. Every time he thought about his childhood, he remembered seeing a shadow hovering above his head. As the years had gone by, this shadow had stretched. It now covered the entirety of the sky. Alas, he could truly claim one of Kleist’s phrases as his own: “My heart is so sore, that I might almost say the daylight hurts my nose whenever I stick it out of the window.”
“May I ask you a question,” Feder asked, “…even though it’s indiscreet? Well… in your essay on Kleist, you talk about his death, about his double suicide with Henriette Vogel, his second wife, in… in quite a strange way.”
He pretended not to have understood the question.
“Yes,” Feder pressed, “your words are suffused with empathy, as if you were fascinated by his suicide, you give the impression
that you agree with his decision to kill himself. If my memory serves me well, you even add that he was the greatest German poet of all time because his death had been the most beautiful. You sublimate his horrible death.”
Feder saw Zweig’s tired black eyes land on him, full of pain and bitterness. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Feder was both frightened by that look and filled with endless compassion.
“Please reassure me that when you wrote that his suicide had been a masterpiece it was merely a flourish?”
Of course! That had been nothing but a figure of speech. He had wanted to bring the conversation to an end and went to fix himself a drink.
Yes, he had written all those foolish, dangerous sentences—and many others still—about how sublime that suicide had been. Yes, he admired how grandiose Kleist’s decision had been, and yes, he believed it placed Kleist above all others. After having shot his wife in the heart, the poet had turned the gun on himself and fired a bullet into his brain. Yes, his
Kleist
had dared to praise that deadly deed! He had written those lines in 1925, when pack hounds had yet to start snapping at his heels and long before death had become Germany’s motto. Back then, peace had reigned over Europe, although the continent was already headed towards the edge of the precipice.
“Forgive me for raising the matter again,” Feder persevered, hesitating more than ever, “but… has Lotte… never read your
Kleist?
”
Feder lowered his gaze to the floor, knowing he had crossed the line with that question. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from adding:
“I say that… because of… the coincidences.”
What was Feder driving at? Of course, he had described in great detail how the poet had put an end to his life after having killed his second wife. True, he had spoken of it as a heroic act, as the most affectionate act ever committed between two lovers. The suicide had undoubtedly inspired some of the finest passages in that book. But what was Feder accusing him of? What coincidences had he spotted? That Kleist had left his first wife, Marie, and chosen a younger woman, an invalid, as his last companion? The question was pointless, absurd even. Feder was looking for coincidences whereas it had all been a simple twist of fate. Or maybe he thought that Zweig was a psychic, who had been able to divine his own destiny by retracing that of his heroes? Or maybe that Zweig believed he was Kleist? Or that he would shoot his wife in the heart the following day? Is that what he was driving at? Feder began apologizing profusely. His host carried on. No, Lotte had never read his
Kleist
, she’d never thumbed through
The Struggle with the Daemon
. But so that he might not read any malice into this, Lotte also hadn’t read his play
The Lamb of the Poor Man,
or even his
Fouché
or his
Magellan
. He wasn’t going to force his wife to read all of his works! Yet if she ever would read that book, he didn’t think she would be offended. Lotte was an innocent soul. She didn’t go looking for evil where there was none to be found.
In the adjacent room, Lotte was eavesdropping on the conversation with her ear glued to the wall, horrified. Stefan was lying through his teeth, and, worse still, he had lied to her, his wife, his devoted wife, she who could understand everything, she who had seen everything, who had endured everything. She thought back to the advice he’d given her, whose meaning she hadn’t grasped at the time. When she’d opened up his
Kleist
to read it, he’d told her, “Oh, that’s hardly worth reading, the book isn’t
worth much, one day when you will have read all of my other essays and biographies, then it might be worth your while to read that… that is, maybe…” In her naivety, she had believed him. Why did she have to take orders from him?
Then, all of a sudden, her hatred turned in on herself. She forgave him all his lies. It was her fault if he hadn’t deemed her worthy of his confidences, if he hadn’t judged her brave enough to confront the secrets hidden between that book’s lines. Was his opinion of her so low that he would go to the lengths of sparing her the reading of that book? Had she shown him a side of herself that looked frightened of everything? He clearly couldn’t trust her. Yes, she was the guilty party, she had shown herself too fragile when he’d needed someone strong by his side. Oh, how much he must have missed Friderike! Now she had to show him a reckless side of her, once, only once, so that he might look upon her as he’d never seen her! She dried her tears, stopped in front of the mirror, fixed her hair and took a deep, determined breath. She opened the bedroom door and walked resolutely down the corridor to the lounge, going right up to Feder and giving him a firm handshake, before throwing her husband a sharp look—and reading a surprised look in his eyes. She turned around, headed towards the library, leant on one of the shelves, reached out with a steady hand towards the volume in question, pulled it out and slowly—as if stunned that a bolt of lightning hadn’t struck her down—headed back into the bedroom.
She experienced a surge of pride. She had finally shown herself determined, ready to brave the storm, an intrepid woman, and now saw herself in a new light. She had found a new sense of self-confidence. Following that act of bravery, he would love her more than ever before. He would never lie to her again.
She sat down on the bed, swaying with happiness and euphoria.
Sitting up straight, she began reading the book. From the very first lines, she experienced a profound sadness at discovering that Stefan had used his portrait of Kleist to talk about himself, “the eternal vagabond on the run”.
As early as page 9, she was already on the brink of tears:
…left Marie von Kleist, who was also dear to him, in loneliness and neglect; and dragged Henriette Vogel down with him to death… he retired more and more into himself, growing more solitary even than nature had created him.
She spilt her first tears when she read:
Like every other of his hyperbolical affects, Kleist’s passion for a fellowship on which a joint suicide could alone put the seal remained a mystery to his friends. Vainly did he seek a companion into the Valley of the Shadow. One and all they contemptuously or shudderingly rejected the proposal.
Then she was grief-stricken by the following:
He encountered a woman, hitherto almost a stranger, who thanked him for his strange invitation. She was an invalid, whose death could not in any case be long delayed, for her body was inwardly devoured by cancer even as Kleist’s mind was devoured by weariness of life. Though herself incapable of forming a vigorous resolution, she was sensitive and highly suggestible, and therefore open to the promptings of his morbid enthusiasm; she agreed to plunge with him into the unknown.
The “coincidences” that Feder had mentioned reverberated in her mind. She carried on reading:
At bottom this somewhat priggish and sentimental wife of a tax-collector was of a type uncongenial to Kleist… She who would have been too petty, too soft, too weak for him as a living companion, was welcomed by him as a comrade in death.
Her vision started to blur at the sight of these sentences:
Although another woman swore to be his companion in death, his thoughts turned to her for whom he had lived and whom he loved, to Marie von Kleist.
The name “Friderike Marie Zweig” resounded in her mind, and then came the terrible end:
In the high spirits of honeymooners, the couple drive to the Wannsee. The host at the inn hears them laughing, sees them sporting merrily in the fields, can tell how they drank their coffee with gusto in the open air. Then, at the prearranged hour, came the two pistol shots, in swift succession, the first that with which Kleist pierced his companion’s heart, the second that with which (barrel in mouth) he blew out his own brains. His hand did not falter. It was true that he knew better how to die than to live.
She tried to pull herself together. No, he wasn’t a psychic. There was no way he could have foreseen his own end fifteen years ago. That panegyric to suicide was nothing but a work of literature.
She leafed through the book and stopped when she came across Kleist’s last poem, which her husband praised as his finest.
You beam through the blindfold covering my eyes
At me with the radiance of a thousand suns.
Wings have put forth on both my shoulders,
My spirit lifts through the ether’s silent spaces.
The lines of the poem he’d written for his sixtieth birthday came flooding back to her:
Presentiments of closing day,
When our desires are gone,
Soothe us far more than they dismay
Now, in the setting sun…
The world before us never lay
So fair, or life so true,
As in the glow of parting day,
When shadows dim the view.
They were written in the same vein, and even sounded the same; “coincidences” indeed, as Feder had put it. All her feelings of anger suddenly abandoned her. She no longer resented him for lying to her, and she no longer felt any jealousy towards Friderike. She stretched out on the bed, staring into space. He was her first and only love. If he has chosen to model himself after Kleist, then I will be Kleist’s wife, I will be his last companion, I will go with him towards the light. I will grasp his hand in the pitch black. I will precede him to where destiny sees fit to take us, towards the unknown place that fate has set aside for us. So much the worse
if that road only takes us past gloomy shores devoid of all life, where it’s difficult to breathe. I know how much it hurts when it’s difficult to breathe. It’s been a long time now since my lungs were broken beyond repair and my body is nothing but an open wound. Each breath that filters all the way down to my bronchi tastes as bitter as though it were my last. I know the scent of death as it lurks in the wings. Death hangs over me night and day, it sniffs up all my air and breathes it in. I am both familiar with it and haunted by it. I’m not afraid of death. My inner voice isn’t pleading for its life and I’m not held back by any regrets. The life I have led and the future that lies before me exude a poisoned air. My last hour will bring me merciful relief. Life has turned me into a weak, pitiful person, contemptible too, the silent woman, isn’t that what they call me? My whole life has been a struggle. I have tasted bitterness, solitude and misfortune. I have never been loved. I will walk with him through the darkness. And if everything is ice cold in the middle of the forest, the fire that burns deep within me will keep us warm. My boundless enthusiasm will warm his soul. My tears will console his pain and sorrow. His heart will be inaccessible in the next life, but my love knows no confines and it will reach his heart, my love will be so strong that it will carry his mortal remains. My love will reign in the kingdom of shadows. The next world will undoubtedly be too dark for him to see my real face, but the next sky will be studded with stars where I will be able to shine, where my pale spectre will exert its charms. Yes, in the next life we will taste unimaginable sweetness. So much the worse if I couldn’t be his wife in this world. That is, if any woman could ever truly occupy such a place. I, Lotte Altmann, will be his companion for ever.
T
ORCHES HELD ALOFT
by swarms of people were lighting up the night in Rio. A rush of humanity came pouring out of every street corner, winding down the hills, rolling out like a tide, wave after wave, bursting out of crowded trams, spilling out of the
favelas
, crowds of men, women and children dancing on the pavements. It was a joyous masquerade, with people wearing wigs, fake noses, their faces painted in bright colours, dressed up like lords, devils, clowns, transvestites with quirky hats, top hats, feather headdresses and fake tiaras. A cacophony of cries, stamping, songs, drumming, maracas and trumpets rose from the asphalt. The wind was shaking curtains, lanterns and garlands on the balconies of buildings. Sung by thousands of mouths, the sound of samba music filled the entire city, a loud pagan chant that rose from the depths of time. The streets were overflowing with life like a river in spate.
They walked in the middle of the crowds. They marched ahead, gripped by the feverish atmosphere, gripped by a feeling of euphoria. They had allowed themselves to be persuaded to
leave their sanctuary behind for three days in order to attend carnival, and were now being carried along by the crowds, away from the place of their distress. Drowning in the procession, they slipped into oblivion.
They had left Petrópolis a few hours earlier, a town so steeped in silence and bad dreams that it already seemed to them like a distant planet. As for Vienna, it seemed like a lifetime ago! Germany was a dead star. They could no longer hear the sound of funeral processions. In the midst of those delightful, restless crowds, they recovered their sight. Perhaps they were already dead and their ghosts were drifting through that bacchanalia? Tomorrow it would be Mardi Gras, while the following day would be Ash Wednesday. Time no longer followed the ancient order of days. They allowed themselves to be swallowed by that deafening crowd that swelled with boundless love. On the other side of the world, the earth was a dank dungeon where a mute people trudged through the snow. Here, on the other hand, the singing and dancing had filled their gloomy souls with light.
The crowd gave way to make room for a movable float. A single man in the middle of the street led the way, dancing a sarabande. Behind him was a horde of women in low-cut dresses, with heavy-set, voluptuous bodies, but whose feet seemed to be barely touching the ground. Farther behind was the first float, the flagship, which crawled along with a huge emblem
emblazoned
on its prow, and was accompanied by an orchestra. A man dressed like a master of ceremonies followed suit, followed hot on his heels by hundreds of dancers, beating time and moving forwards in a dispersed fashion. Then there came a succession of women and children in traditional Bahian dress, followed by more movable floats, topped with sculptures, gigantic guitars, statues of young men, two-headed monsters and idols, all overflowing
with half-naked dancers. They clung to each other’s hands so as not to be swept away by the crowd. They looked on, astonished by the sight of so much beauty and whimsy.
He wore a white suit and a panama hat. When he’d examined himself in the mirror of the room that his friend de Souza had put them up in, that vision of himself—as if dredged from a distant past—had made him smile. Lotte had emerged from the bathroom wearing a short, figure-hugging red dress, which left her back bare and which he’d never seen her wear before. She looked radiant and he had drawn close to her, kissed her lips and slid a hand over her shoulders. Then they had left, waiting on the front steps of the house for their host, as well as the Feders and the Koogan family to join them. Once they were all accounted for, they had headed off into the streets.
Overwhelmed by the crowds, they were led down the Avenida Central right up to the Praça Onze, a square deep in the heart of the black quarter, close to the Morro da Favela and the
neighbourhoods
of the Zona Norte. This was where nearly all
cariocas
seemed to have converged, singing a spellbinding, melancholic song to the tune of a samba. Koogan explained that the song, “Adeus, Praça Onze”, evoked the sadness of the people at the forthcoming demolition of the Avenida Praça to make way for the future Avenida Presidente Vargas. Koogan wagered that “Adeus, Praça Onze” would be voted the most popular song of the 1942 carnival. Koogan admitted to a preference for “Saudade da Amélia”, a song that belonged to a different musical genre and was more sentimental and melodious. Stefan asked him why any of this even mattered.
“You see,” Koogan had replied, “this carnival is a little like our Bayreuth Festival.”
Stefan had forgotten all about Bayreuth.
The air reverberated with the lyrics being chanted by the whole crowd.
“Vão acabar com a Praça Onze, Não vai haver mais Escola de Samba, não vai Chora o tambourim, Chora o morro inteiro…”
Koogan shouted the translation into Stefan’s ear.
“They’re going to tear down Praça Onze, there will be more samba, the tambourines will cry, the whole world is going to cry…”
The crowd was on the move again—a shapeless stream that undulated under a hail of confetti and ticker tape. In the midst of that gigantic, joyful fray, Stefan was seized by a sudden panic. He had lost hold of Lotte’s hand. He looked around frantically. The thought that she might have drowned in that human flood terrified him. Pushing his way through the pandemonium, he began screaming out her name, a cry that was lost in the midst of that racket. Everyone around him was lost in jubilation. A man wearing a skeleton costume and a skull mask roared in his face. He felt oppressed by the crowd and began thinking he’d lost her for good. A group of women wearing open bodices surrounded him, their bodies dripping with sweat as they shook in a sort of primitive dance. He saw himself as rather grotesque, lost in a ragged crowd wearing a white linen suit. A man wearing a fake beard jumped towards him and stole his panama hat from his head. He stood motionless, petrified. Then, just as quickly as the crowd had assembled, it dispersed. All of a sudden, he caught sight of her, covered in ticker tape, swaying her hips in front of a man playing maracas. He lingered for a while observing the scene, in the middle of that frenzied outburst, keeping his gaze obstinately fixed on his wife. She appeared to be floating before his eyes as if in a dream. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s about time, there you are!” Koogan exclaimed. “You had us frightened out of our wits… but isn’t Lotte with you?”
He pointed to his wife with his index finger.
A grand ball was being held at the Teatro Municipal. Koogan promised that they would amuse themselves there. Champagne would flow like water. Ray Ventura’s Orchestra was scheduled to perform. They headed to the Teatro. The ball was to be held in the great hall, which was situated on the main floor. It was an altogether different atmosphere, devoid of cross-dressing men and buxom women covered in glitter. This was where the white people had fun. Men wore dinner jackets and women were attired in sumptuous gowns. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was still suffused with a certain madness and abandon. Men and women were swaying their hips in the mirror-panelled rooms, stamping their feet to the rhythm of sambas played by the orchestra. People formed into conga lines that snaked through the hall, and then broke off to mingle once more in that contagious frenzy. Confetti rained down and camera bulbs flashed. Stefan had never witnessed such anarchy before. He drained the champagne flutes he was offered, and let the spectacle of beautiful women go to his head, then went for a walk around the room. The night seemed to last for ever. Everything in the room—the fabrics, the tables, the marble—seemed suffused with a drunken perfume. This new smell seemed to augur a fresh start. Perhaps tomorrow wouldn’t herald the end of the world. The singing in the room was imbued with a genuine sense of brotherhood. A new humanity was being built in the streets and palaces. The orchestra began playing a slow waltz. Lotte stationed herself in front of him. He uncrossed his arms and grabbed her by the waist. They began to dance. Everything started spinning around them. They picked up the
pace and looked grandiose amidst all the other couples. On they danced, ignoring everyone around them, ignoring the past, ignoring the future. Looking right into her eyes, he told her he loved her. She held his gaze, then brought her lips to his ear and explained that she hadn’t understood what he’d said over all that noise. Could he repeat it?
“I love you,” he said once more.
Outside, the night was slowly turning to dawn.
They walked in single file on the pavement under the scorching sun. They entered the crowds that had assembled once more on the streets to celebrate Mardi Gras, a crowd that was still drunk on the excesses of the previous night’s festivities, and exhilarated by the day’s prospects. They marched ahead, their heads hung low, through the deafening din as drums were pounded, fireworks exploded and whistles were blown. They didn’t talk. He wore black velvet trousers and a slightly creased shirt, while she was wearing a shapeless grey dress. They were carrying a suitcase each. He was leading the way. He was forced to confront people’s wrathful stares as he pushed past them. He didn’t excuse himself. No words left his mouth. His lips were dry. He tried to get his bearings as he walked in the direction of Praça Mauá, where they would take the bus back to Petrópolis. Lotte followed him closely, terrified at the thought that she might lose him. They walked through the street party as it rose from the ashes of the previous day, sustained by the exuberance of the night’s festivities. A man in a clown’s costume strode up to Lotte and started gesticulating. She walked past him unheedingly. A woman behind her showered her with insults and pushed her. Lotte lost her balance. Her suitcase snapped open and spilt its contents on the ground. Lotte shouted to draw her husband’s attention. He heard her cry amidst the uproar. He turned around and headed back towards her. She put her belongings back in the suitcase one by one. The woman who had insulted her grabbed Lotte’s red dress off the ground, held it out at arm’s length, tossed it on the
asphalt and carried on dancing. Laughter burst out all around her. Lotte’s eyes welled with tears. Stefan closed the suitcase. Frozen with fear, she stared at her dress as it got trampled by the crowd. Stefan urged her to hurry up. She followed him. They drew near the bus station. Stefan had now got his bearings and knew where he was going. They came across a tram chock-full of people dancing to the sound of a little orchestra. They slipped through a crowd that refused to make way for them. They fled Rio. They followed their shadows as they stretched out on the ground. The fever that was gripping the city no longer affected them. Their hearts were frozen in fear. Their eyes saw abysses opening up all around them. They were immune to the warmth of the flares being lit all around them. They marched on, enveloped in their pain. The windows of buildings gleamed in the sun. Yet their eyes registered nothing but hailstorms and cold, wretched, endless rains. They were going back to their tomb. They were starting back for Petrópolis on that festive day in which they’d placed so many of their hopes. Tomorrow would be Ash Wednesday. As far as they were concerned, it was already Ash Wednesday. They had seen the newspaper headlines that morning. Singapore had fallen. Singapore, the last remaining bastion of civilization, had surrendered to the Japanese. They hadn’t seen it coming. The impregnable British fortress and its hundred thousand soldiers! The headline had read: “
THE BRITISH HAVE LOST THE WAR
.” The last bastion had fallen. The barbarians had the world at their feet. Nothing could ever stop them now. Henceforth, His Majesty’s soldiers would march through the Malaysian jungle with their heads hung low. Singapore had fallen. The Japanese had secured their oil supplies. The war was over. The Germans were advancing towards Suez. Any day now, the Axis Powers would be able to combine their forces. In a year’s time, the
barbarians would arrive in Rio. The party was over. There was no sanctuary left, nowhere left to hide. Their faces were etched with pain and suffering. If Singapore had fallen, there was no army or general on earth that could withstand the waves of enemy soldiers. It was time to stop hoping for a better tomorrow. It was time to admit defeat. The dreaded moment had finally come to pass. They could no longer aspire to peace and happiness. There would be no world of tomorrow and the world of yesterday had disappeared. The years of terror had gone on long enough. The sham of a life they had lived had backfired. It was time to rejoin their people, to follow in their footsteps, the path ahead of them had already been mapped.
They left Cláudio de Souza and the other Koogans behind. They left their grotesque illusions behind in Rio. They felt guilty. They had behaved disgracefully. They had laughed, sung and danced. Luckily, Singapore, the martyred city, had reawoken them to the bleak state of affairs. The crowds around them had no idea of the catastrophe about to befall them. Their drunken, bloodshot eyes were blind. Those happy, simple souls were dancing on the ruins of Singapore. They went about in the grips of ecstasy while the
danse macabre
was readying to bear down on them. There would never be an end to the misery.
There was nothing to keep them perched on the brink of the abyss. It was time to leave this world. To go back to Petrópolis.
They had dismissed the housekeeper. The gardener had taken Sunday off. The house was bathed in light. Birdsong filtered through the half-open windows and the gently swaying curtains. They paced around their house for one last time. Everything was neat and tidy. The letters they had written over the past week had been carefully arranged on the little desk. They had spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday dedicated to that single task. One letter was destined for Abrahão Koogan, while others had been written to Victor Wittkowski, Lotte’s brother and Friderike’s brother, while he’d reserved the longest for his dear friend Jules Romains. Sunday morning had been set aside to write a statement intended for their Brazilian hosts, and the last letter he’d composed, just an hour earlier, had been addressed to Friderike. He had drafted those letters with the same dedication with which he’d worked on his books. He had chosen his words carefully to avoid wounding the letters’ recipients and to ensure they knew how dearly they’ve been loved. The same man who’d never been one for pouring his heart out had allowed the letters’ recipients to read the intensity of his emotions, friendship and love between the lines. Though he was under no illusions, he’d tried his best to explain his actions. Who would understand or forgive him? Only Friderike might grasp the meaning of his act. She was the only one who had ever glimpsed into the recesses of his tormented soul.