I couldn’t stop her. . Don’t you remember, my name is Cambert! I yelled after her. . at least I dimly recalled having yelled this name after her; and I’d forgotten whether I’d given her that name or a different name at last month’s reading! — That was a bad blunder, the name business, altogether I’d done everything wrong. . I was about to go back and sit in the cafe again, but suddenly I changed my mind. I followed her at a proper distance, but she sensed it or guessed it, ducking into the next U-Bahn entrance, one which took her back to the station she’d just come from, only from the other side, meaning that she’d probably take the same U-Bahn line she’d arrived on fifteen minutes before. I boarded the U-Bahn too and took it to the last stop. . I’d lost the student, of course.
Though I’d lived in Berlin for some time — was it two years. . I simply didn’t know for sure any more — I was far from having a handle on the passages under Alexanderplatz Station; over and over they conducted me into the open by different exits, over and over by one opposite the one I sought, and above ground I always had to reorient myself. Usually I went back down to seek the right exit, which as a rule confused me still further. Absently I wandered the spacious, branching, overlapping passages which held the din of the trains, indeed the din of the entire city. . I still couldn’t get my mind off the name business; I kept asking myself whether it was really the student I had run into. — When I came out into the open, off in the middle of nowhere again, near Alexanderstrasse, I believed — I gazed over in astonishment at the mighty block of the emporium towering above the S-Bahn rail-bridge a few hundred yards away — it was already beginning to grow dark. A grey light swam above the box of the department store and the glass roof of the S-Bahn station; behind me the sky, broken by roofs, had black stormy patches. Spring was coming. . I was still dressed for winter; the weather outstripped my lagging thoughts. This evening, though, promised to turn cool once more. . I crossed part of the square to the bookshop to look at the window displays; it was hard to make them out in the dusk. Just then it occurred to me how imaginary was the life I led. . outwardly, or perhaps even in the reality of my own that was hidden from the outside world? Again and again memory and present reality merged for me in a diffuse mix of times, and I wondered if this might start to pose a danger for me: When would this also befall the information I selected for my work?
Maybe it had happened long ago. . at the mere thought I lost my bearings completely. — Indeed the light over the city was growing weaker and weaker. . the time I lived in swam like the city itself, this backdrop vaguely reflected in the glass of the shop windows; it seemed to be going up in steam, this backdrop of grey-black cloudbanks scudding straight through the transparent images of the high-rise facades, occasional flares of lamps amid the images of the clouds, and behind all this shadow-work reposed the dark illegible titles of the books, jumbled like upheaved paving stones.
What a simulation this reality was! How long had I lost touch with its contingencies — how long ago had I’d lost precisely the things I hadn’t reported on. And these included forays like today’s: hunting trips above the street surface undertaken utterly without consciousness, and utterly in vain, perhaps only undertaken to breathe in the light of this city, a light that brought forth faces so pale and expressionless as to seem potentially responsive to the expression of my nature. And perhaps I undertook nothing now but quests in search of the student, or other female apparitions associated in my imagination with her light and unmarked figure. . these were imaginings and figures of which Feuerbach learnt nothing. Or very little. . my superiors knew nothing of these thoughts of mine! And the result seemed to be that I knew less and less of them myself.
Memory Underground
I’d been mistaken yet again — like a ghost that walks through walls, First Lieutenant Feuerbach suddenly strode forth from the overlapping reflections of the high-rise facades, his pale face looming vivid against the twilight of the clouds; too late to escape, he was already plucking my sleeve. — It was my turn now to be grabbed by the arm, much less gently than I had done just before. . reality grabbed me by the sleeve, and in that instant the evening grew still darker; turning around, I anticipated Feuerbach’s smile, in which his eyes had no share. But there was no grin this time; in a conciliatory tone he asked me: Why didn’t you invite that young lady to the cafe just now? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice me coming in right behind you, didn’t you see me sitting by the window? We’d arranged something of the sort, or am I mistaken? Did you forget about it again? I would have been delighted to meet the young lady.
She didn’t want to come, I said with an effort. She didn’t want to come because the cafe doesn’t have any outdoor tables. Now that it’s spring, she said, she’s not going to go inside a smoky bar.
My quick reply took him off his guard; he said: There probably won’t be any outdoor tables at all this summer, I heard they can’t get the waitress back for the outdoor service. . she doesn’t want to go back to that dive either.
Oh, and by the way, I left without paying, I said. Can you cover that for me? You go there practically every day, right? Then why don’t you pick up the tab?. . There might be a couple of bills I haven’t paid yet, nothing major, I don’t think.
Okey dokey! said Feuerbach. For all I care. . let’s talk about something else. .
Actually it only looks like I have lots of time, I demurred.
You’re chasing her, Feuerbach retorted, go ahead and admit it. Do you really think you’re going to run into her again this evening?
He was right, it really was too much to expect now; I’d come into town for nothing, at a completely pointless time of day, and running into him precipitated one of those embarrassing moments in which I felt like a person with no function whatsoever. . which I wouldn’t have felt on my own. Not much was going on in the Scene, I knew, and I stood like a Kaspar Hauser in the middle of the city. . Feuerbach was still clutching my arm. I’d almost always felt this way on Berlin’s big, busy plazas, and had avoided them whenever possible; but recently this very feeling appealed to me somehow.