Perhaps he could penetrate the closed rooms of this language from below. . from underground, through its basements, through its floor?
Of course he shared none of these thoughts with the boss, sus- pecting that he’d agree with him; for the boss, too, it could only stand to reason that people who talked to one another constituted a conspiracy. . which could be countered only with the same means. But the boss didn’t take it all that seriously; whenever they ran into each other in the town’s fog, he had good advice to offer. . You have to listen to the man on the street, he said, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There’s not a writer here who can deliver that like you can! — And when we’ve heard enough we’ll kick him to the kerb, said W.
The boss looked flustered, unsure whether to take these words as a joke. . W. didn’t know himself. But the boss noticed at once that W. had troubling thoughts on his mind, and barraged him with more and more ostensibly comforting phrases. — Do you think I’m not feeling OK, or what? W. asked him one day. What is it you’re constantly having to cheer me up about? — You know, a writer. . actually, any thinking person in this day and age can’t always feel OK. Maybe only rarely, even, but that’s how it’s got to be, and it’s better that way, the boss replied. And then he brought to bear one of his key sayings which left little to be desired in terms of universality: You know, you see best when you look from the dark into the light! And not the other way around. .
The boss proffered most of his comforting sayings with a sort of breezy irony, relentlessly constructive, completely unperturbed when he met with occasional resistance. He was one of those functionaries who went unfazed by his underlings’ obtuseness so long as they still functioned. . and it always seemed to take a while before he grasped that someone didn’t want to function. Usually he made a show of superiority that was just another form of incomprehension; he thought resistance so absurd that anyone who displayed the least sign of it immediately got a pitying clap on the shoulder. . it was stupidity, and for someone absolutely convinced of the human capacity for change (he was one of those rare bosses who’d read Brecht), stupidity was a deplorable thing. — And so at all times he radiated a semblance of broad bonhomie which showed how accustomed he was to reigning irreplaceably and unconditionally over the town and the surrounding communities.
You see best from the dark into the light! W. had come to Berlin with these words in his head, and it surprised him what a distinct image of that boss’ being he had here. . in contradiction to his otherwise foggy impressions. But he had escaped the sphere of the gentleman in the expensive suede jacket (so his thinking went); here he could forget him. . the gentleman’s sayings were things he could, if he liked, assimilate, the language was public property, even if some regional potentate had performed his variations on it.
Here he could forget the boss. . yet at this remove from the small town it was futile to deny to himself that he and the boss had had conversations one would have to describe as fairly exhaustive. . down there he’d been able to deny it, even with a degree of success. Now he had to admit to himself that requests had been made of him which, strictly speaking, could be called commands. True, he hadn’t taken them as such. . his encounters with the boss had always followed a similar pattern; for W. they lay hidden in impenetrable gloom, even when he’d been accosted during the midday break (while still working as a stoker) on his way into town to buy one of the several identical newspapers. — Come on up for a moment, I’ll treat you to a coffee in my office, Room 17.—W. shook his head, indicating his work clothes. . You know I’ve got nothing to offer, he replied. — Oh yes you do, said the boss, I can talk about literature with you, and that means quite a bit! There’s no way I can do that with that longlegs, say — there’s no one in this backwater to have a real conversation with.
He said these things with ironic melancholy; W. felt how susceptible he was to that sort of tone. The boss seemed to intuit this, redoubling his efforts and ambushing W. at dusk now too: Did you see that on TV just now? They’ve arrested two of those young authors in Berlin again! Well, if that ever happens to you, and it can happen any time, I practically see it coming, just ask for me. . You know, Room 17! But don’t say anything until it happens! Not a word! Take care, one way or the other it can happen soon. — Do you know anything specific? asked W. — I’ll tell you soon enough, if I can. .
And shortly after that he said: I think we ought to finally get back to our conversations, they started off so nicely. . tomorrow afternoon in my office! And forget all the things I told you the other day, forget about it, it’s better that way. .—W. was unaware of any conversations that had started off; here too he must have been peering into a language chamber from which he was shut out. — Finally he was unable to shake the suspicion that they were shadowing him on his fog-shrouded nocturnal errands (this settled his move to Berlin). . the boss had even indirectly admitted it when yet again expressing his dissatisfaction with the lanky ‘rookie’ whom W. had first met at his front door: apparently he was excessively cautious and always kept a respectful distance from his target. . it looked like he’d stay a rookie forever, the long-legged loser! I’m sorry, I can’t do a thing with the tall guy, I’m sure he means well, but I need a replacement! Best of all, let’s turn the tables, and from now on you follow him. Put him to the test. After all, they call rookies probationers. . don’t they?
In this town the target the boss had mentioned could of course refer only to W. . he had a bad case of respectful distance as well, another thing he realized only in Berlin.
Now he’d put a real remove between himself and the boss. . in Berlin it was like waking up for real (as opposed to that rude awakening at the kitchen table down there in the town, his head immersed again immediately in the fog, in the smoke); here in Berlin most of the phrases he thought he’d forgotten seemed to reach his brain belatedly. . suddenly he realized he’d let himself be confused. And it still seemed possible to find his way back to the state before this confusion; perhaps first he’d have to stop regarding himself as this weird writer?
First he’d had to travel back and forth several times between Berlin and the town of A., the fog still seeming to swathe his brow, the frosts of the night streets still gripping his limbs and the smoke still stinging his eyes. . when at last he walked down the Berlin street where he meant to live, the first pale green bloom was on the lindens. They lined the pavement of a tiny side branch of a larger thoroughfare, the main artery of an outlying southern neighbourhood, already in Berlin’s periphery. When all hope had seemed lost, he’d found a rental room here: he refused to see it as more than a lucky coincidence. And it was in this neighbourhood that the city showed him its bright and spacious side. . the first confirmation of the words in his head: he thought he was looking from the dark into the light.
He’d spent more than a week looking in vain for a place to stay. . albeit in the clumsiest possible fashion: at a loss for ideas, he’d gone knocking at the doors of total strangers. . each time he’d seen himself leaning rebuffed on the doorframe, just a bit shorter than the lanky ‘probationer’—as the boss denoted the mode of existence W. had now escaped. . each evening, frazzled and filled with feelings of futility, he’d returned to the town, almost sick with fear of running into the boss again, and the next morning he’d set out for Berlin once more; it was nearly four hours by train. Once he’d had to take a day’s break, meaning to use it to finally hand in his notice at the factory; he’d failed, sleeping all day. And then, in the ghastliest exhaustion, he recalled an address he’d forgotten because from the start he’d thought it was a fiction. One of his shady pub companions had given it to him once (‘Just for a weekend in Berlin!’), and he’d been carrying it around with him for a year now. Searching his papers, he actually found it — apparently Harry, Cindy’s boyfriend, had lodged there when he wound up in Berlin in the brief interims between prison terms; the woman who rented out the room seemed to be a relative of his. — And this room was in fact still free; it was on the ground floor, poorly furnished (a cot, a chair, an armchair, an inadequate washbasin. . the only table was a bulky desk), and as it couldn’t be heated, it would be virtually uninhabitable in winter.—W. had told the woman, who seemed mistrustful, something he’d meant not to tell, but he felt he owed her an explanation: I work as a writer, I need the room on the side, so I can have some peace and quiet. — That’s more or less what the previous tenant claimed, she replied. — Could he have the room for longer than a weekend, too? — If necessary, she said, still mistrustful. But then he’d have to go and fill out his registration, within ten days at the latest, otherwise she’d get into trouble.—W. paid the rent for the next three months (a comparatively laughable sum) and explained to the astonished woman that he probably couldn’t be there all the time, but she’d have to keep the room free for him. — The woman tucked away the money as quickly as though he might reconsider the deal that very moment. If he didn’t want to take his turn cleaning the stairwell, she said, he’d have to add nine marks for the three months. — He gave her another ten-mark note, told her to keep the change, and withdrew with the key. That evening he took the train home again to fetch the absolute necessities and a small stockpile of books. The whole time the situation felt utterly familiar. . it couldn’t be, since he’d never left his town for long: but often, in his short narrative pieces, he’d tried to describe characters in a similar position. He’d contrived figures who arrived with a sense of liberation in some new setting, at long last, after unduly long attempts to free themselves from their habitual circumstances. . and he’d always meticulously described the changes, indeed the transformations, that took place in such a character at that moment.