I wormed my way through the flood of people and continued along the pavement, forcing myself to walk slowly, to don the impassive expression I’d rehearsed; gradually it worked, the nervous flutter subsided. Where Frankfurter Allee ended I turned left onto Siegfriedstrasse and walked up to the next intersection, where Wagner’s was located, a cheap beer bar that was packed with people as well. Here there was no one I knew; this was where the workers who’d absconded from the demonstration had settled. At the bar I drank a large glass of beer which ran ice cold down my gullet and calmed me still further. Then I moved on, in the opposite direction now, parallel to the main thoroughfare, past the open entrance gate of the Oskar Ziethen Hospital, where the ambulances stood on call in the courtyard; I put a few more cross-streets behind me, then walked back down to the boulevard. By now the marching formations had dissipated, the little cafe was empty again. At any rate I found my window seat unoccupied, and ordered my usual coffee and brandy. When the waiter brought my order he said to me: An acquaintance of yours told me to tell you to wait for him here!
In nearly all such instances I waited in vain. And I realized that I was supposed to wait in vain. . so that he could accuse me, when the time came, of not having waited for him. That too I put down to the universal practice of simulation which we extended to all realms and in which there was never a pause. It was one of the peculiarities of our function that we were unreliable in every respect. . which did not preclude us from standing everywhere as one man and always being utterly reliable. The simulation enabled us to make one mistake after another in moments of the keenest vigilance, but just when everything threatened to get out of hand — it was just like the movies — we were keen as hound dogs and got right on top of things. Our life was one long training session, and that wasn’t a bad thing at all. — Keen as hound dogs! was one of Feuerbach’s special phrases; I disliked it, but more and more often I used it myself. And I had the fantasy that our eyes were keenest when they were shut. With our eyes shut we really did see frighteningly far ahead. Don’t ask me how that’s possible.
When Feuerbach failed to show up for a rendezvous, I could count on his coming the next day, or in three days. It often happened that he had the waiter tell me a date, and then asked me a month later why I hadn’t come on this day or that. I didn’t even react to such questions, knowing he preferred it that way. — You didn’t wait for me, and that snarled a whole series of meet-ups, he said to me. Because of you we’ll have to start all over again from scratch, I’ve got to come visit you. — From scratch? I said. That’s good for training. — You’ll see, all right, he said, we’re already fitter than fit can be!
I’ll have to call quite late, he said, I’ll come to your flat. — He knew I felt threatened by his home visits, and that was exactly why he kept starting up with them again. There too, of course, I usually waited in vain; I could concretely recall only two or three of his visits. One night he had appeared unannounced; it was a mystery to me how he’d got through the locked front door. I just couldn’t picture Feuerbach wandering through the basements. — I could still see him standing at the desk where I had just been sitting, his left hand casually, absently — the way he moved seemed dismissive — leafing through my papers without actually reading them; in his other hand he daintily held a cigarette at chin height. . though normally a non-smoker. . when he took a cigarette from my pack without asking and nervously lit it, he was simulating growing interest. . and he breathed out the smoke disdainfully. He was a good-looking man, this Feuerbach. . unlike me, I thought. . he was taller than I, with blond hair, streaked with grey, that looked sophisticatedly unkempt; usually he was badly shaven, underscoring the slightly raffish look of his pale, younger-seeming face, a perfect blend of naive and hard-boiled. Perhaps he sometimes seemed enigmatic. . on me, looking back, he even made a rather demonic impression; my desk lamp lit his face from below, his dispassionate grey eyes invisible, as the shadow cast by the hand with the cigarette covered his nose and brow. As usual he had little to say to me, and I forgot about it. . once, during one of these visits, he murmured something about a photo he needed. — Or he asked me: You didn’t happen to notice, by any chance, the cigarettes that young lady smokes, the one who’s running after Reader? They’re West German cigarettes. . — So? I said. — All right, he said. But you didn’t notice the excise stamp on these West German cigarette packs, the excise stamp with the federal eagle! You’re not noticing that those packs were bought over there. The young lady’s from West Berlin. . and you don’t even notice! — He vanished again just as abruptly and silently as he had come. — He mixed up my papers on purpose, I thought angrily after he’d left.
Suddenly, in the crowd leaving the U-Bahn tunnel, I thought I saw her; it was the student who had caught my eye in the audience at the so-called Scene’s kitchen and living-room readings. Or wasn’t it her. .? I’d paid her too little notice so far, she had a somewhat too-smooth, expressionless face, an open face, but at the same time remote and hard to reach; I still had no connection whatsoever to this generation, there was something androgynous about it. She was already past the cafe window when I thought I recalled exchanging a few words with her once: only trivial phrases, though. . apparently she’d noticed that I didn’t speak the Berlin dialect, she’d asked me about it. . now it occurred to me that someone who lived in East Berlin would hardly have asked me a thing like that, at least not in the Berlin Scene, where people came from all over the place: it was a typical West Berlin question!
I hit on the idea of running out and accosting her; she was walking slowly, I could still catch up with her. Before I’d entirely suppressed my reservations about the idea, I was already out on the street; I recognized her, some distance away, by the short sure steps with which she managed to cut straight through the hectic scrum of people. As though on a sudden intuition she turned half towards me, I waved at her, but she turned her head away and continued on her path, perhaps even quickening her pace. I hesitated; someone, a passer-by, slammed into my back, and set in motion again by the collision, I walked on and caught up with her; she didn’t react when I touched her sleeve — it was barely a touch, but she must have noticed me — now I overtook her in an arc so as not to step too abruptly in front of her. . and of course in that instant I thought once again I’d been mistaken. Evidently she really was a student, smoking with her left hand as she walked; she wore dark clothes, a knee-length skirt over dark, patterned tights, a light black leather jacket with a skinny red scarf under the collarless neckline with its knitted border. . I couldn’t have given Feuerbach such a meagre description, I’d have been guaranteed one of his most venomous looks. Her face was white, there was no other word for it, snow-white, and especially the gently incurved planes of her temples had a translucent pallor beneath which I could have seen the pulse of every sensation — now, as she saw me, these temples seemed filled with agitation, and the close-set arcs of her eyebrows drew together before I’d said a word. — Do you happen to know where the next reading will be held? I asked. . my voice seemed to burst alien and overly loud from my throat; later my harmless question struck me as an interrogation. — No, I don’t know about that, she said; it sounded as though she really had no idea what I meant. — The follow-up to last month’s reading on S. Strasse, don’t you remember? — I named the occupant of the flat on S. Strasse; again I seemed to be gazing at a completely unfamiliar, expressionless face. She shook her head and tried to keep walking. — We spoke briefly, you must remember that, I said. — No, I don’t know, she said, I don’t know that we know each other. — But the reading, you know about the reading! We saw each other there, you must remember. . You don’t want to remember! — Knock it off! she said, it only sounded gentle. Knock it off, you’ll have to try that on some other girl. .