Enough of that now; the boss had accompanied W., suede-soft arm in the bend of his elbow, two-thirds of the way through town; the boss’ spiel had accompanied him, torn him from his late-afternoon doze, put him on edge and then exhausted him again. . to this day the boss’ spiel had left him no time to reply. — Already near home, W. had turned around and walked into town again; the boss accompanied him; W. stopped in front of a pub. — What, said the boss, you mean we’re supposed to go in there?
They found a free table, and soon there were two full glasses in front of them; the boss was about to speak, but W. had to use the toilet. He knew the way there led across a stairwell with a door to the courtyard; escape was possible through the door and across the yard. — And at the table in the taproom the boss sat talking, almost whispering, for the other guests’ bovine eyes were fixed on him; he talked softly, smiling, constantly sipping his beer and clearing his throat in the smoke, at the shadow on the chair beside him, who didn’t touch his beer.
There was no such back way in the little cafe on Frankfurter Allee where Feuerbach had invited him one day. He had found himself a window seat there and turned away everyone who asked to share the table. . they accepted this, though the cafe began to fill up in the evening. He waited for the first lieutenant, several times seeming to see him appear amid the pedestrians who moved along the pavement in the light of the street lamps coming on; it was almost bright still. . Feuerbach didn’t come. Little by little the darkness falling outside began to impair visibility. . he had time to stare out at the broad traffic artery and think his thoughts. Behind him, in the taproom, the murmur of voices swelled. . gradually it displaced the torrent of his memories which lectured on unheeded somewhere near him, the taproom’s babel of voices surging over them like rising waters. . it was an unintelligible murmur; no one in the cafe spoke loudly enough for anyone else to listen in, that was the typical way of speaking here in the cafe, audible thanks only to the growing number of young men, who kept on coming, no longer sitting alone now, and floated their sotto voce conversations into the smoke-filled air. . and when the medley of voices had reached a level that drowned the noises he produced himself (the clink of the coffee cup), when it had become an even muttering swell, the memories regained their foothold in his mind. They were called up by the gathering haze in the lamplight on the street, where the motor traffic still showed no signs of letting up. . this fog reminded him that the winter wasn’t over yet. . his first real winter here in Berlin. Clouds of frost still swirled over the multilane boulevard. . mixing with the blue-black clouds of exhaust spewed into the air by all the trucks still on the road now. Especially in the lanes on this side of the boulevard, close by the cafe’s big window — on the right side, where the cars drove towards the city centre, that is, towards the West — the traffic was increasing even now. . the cars shot forward like bullets when the traffic light near the pedestrian underpass turned green, a dense squadron of vehicles, welded in an array whose inner structure never changed, seeming to form a fanned-out frayed jagged monster, luridly aflicker in a cascade of flashing, mutually obstructive lights, and trailing its glowing red tail lights, while over the racing agglomeration a bank of smoke washed, turbulent at first, but soon flowing more sluggishly and uniformly, and now rising into the red-yellow light of the streetlamps. . and already a new convoy of cars had pulled up and released a new cloud of smoke beneath it; a moment before, down the street to the right, you’d heard the polyphonic shriek of brakes with which the previous automobile force had stopped at the next traffic light. . And already they were driving on, you could hear it, and the next horde of cars abreast of the window accelerated, revving up even harder to finally outstrip and outdo the red light phases. . and so cohort after cohort raced towards the West, and the drone of their horsepower rolled across the entire city: Westward, Westward, whither all motion seemed to strive unstopping.
There in the West all these forces seemed to gather. . there in the West somewhere, beneath this sky shot with light, West Berlin droned and lived and creaked at the seams. . there, somewhere, this country’s real heart panted and pumped, locked in a choking iron ring.
Why do they still bother writing books in the industry over there, do you have any clue? — That launched Feuerbach’s spiel, a variation on a theme familiar to W. Unlike the boss, Feuerbach took a less optimistic view of it alclass="underline" Isn’t a writer over there, if you can even find one any more, reduced to being a tool of the bourgeois consciousness. . busy rearranging the clichés of consumerism? If he’s lucky, no one notices, and everyone keeps on using the old clichés; if he’s out of luck, they’ll make a new cliché out of his last hard-won stroke of inspiration. Or how do you picture the outfit over there?
Due to the boss’ lectures, W. did have a picture, while leaning towards a negative reply in the question of whether you’d be able to find him over there. — Wouldn’t it be tempting, he thought, to vanish without a trace in West Berlin?
Of course literature in Western society didn’t necessarily have a utility value, he had to be clear about that. You didn’t need to read the structuralists, who relished it, to figure that out. The way he saw it, in the worst-case scenario he had only two options: either you conformed to fashion, constantly chasing trends. . what a low-down sort of spying, always having to identify and record the latest trends, and that without any clear, Classified Guidelines to stick to!. . or you became a lone wolf who hewed to his literary imperatives. In the second case you could easily vanish on the margins of the metropolises, leading a shadowy existence in dark side streets. And you’d have to reckon that once there you’d have no opportunity to emerge into the light again.
As it was, he didn’t need to worry much about it, since at the moment there was little prospect that such a suggestion on his part would be accommodated. Once he had tried, with due care, to talk about it with Feuerbach. First Feuerbach had refused to understand a thing, and then asked: Who put that idea into your head?
After some hesitation he said: There you are charging on ahead, way to go. . So you’re not happy with us any more? When you’ve only just left your Podunk town behind. . is it even a year that you’ve been up here with us? — ‘Up here with us’ referred to the privilege of living in the capital. — Isn’t there a bit more you need to do? Just what accomplishments do you feel you’ve chalked up?
So what’s simply forbidden for most people, what everyone’s supposed to see as treason, has the virtue, just as a side note, of functioning as a reward for good performance! W. thought with derision. Could it come as a surprise, then, if a people that was performing non-stop at its creative peak (you could read that by the yard in the newspapers) had now come in its entirety to crave exactly this reward. . and long found it highly objectionable that this honour went only to the functionaries in the people’s place?
I’m sure you’ve heard, Feuerbach said a few days later, that for some time there’ve been so-called embassy occupations going on? Yes, it’s true. . a couple of people have been hanging out at the Permanent Mission on Hannoversche Strasse for a while now. . and I think there are a few crazies in the American Embassy too.5 And we’re having trouble keeping this from getting too much publicity. It’s a rather tricky situation, you see. . He seemed to cast about for the briefest and most plausible way to put it, staring intently at W.’s averted face: It’s not the first time, up until now we’ve always managed to cope. Because it didn’t get too much publicity. . otherwise things like that can escalate. You know, if they start to catch on! Until now we’ve always given these nutcases the silent treatment. . but if we keep it up, we give the Permanent Mission all kinds of options. In practical terms, this is the situation; they’re demanding that we let the people leave the country as quickly as possible, or they’ll renege on the agreement to keep mum about the situation, get my drift?