(Here by this window he had first realized how he was losing his sense of time. . here by the window of the cafe on Frankfurter Allee, as the cohorts of cars raced down the concrete lanes in the chromatically lit night air. . in one sudden opening of his eyes out into the fog iridescent with lights he had no longer known where he was. . or if it was summer out there, if he was staring out onto Hannoversche Strasse, at the barren yard across the way with the Permanent Mission on its right, at the yellow metal sign with the federal eagle by the gate, outside which paced a policeman in green. . if he was sitting by the window in this pub where sometimes in his imagination he gazed out upon a West Berlin street, the ceaseless paint-bright cohorts of cars outside. . here, was it here, he’d forgotten if he’d been expecting Feuerbach for a day, two days, three days now, and as he waited without knowing since when, he’d sometimes thought he was staring into the bustle of a small-town pub and listening to the babble of voices, unintelligible and underlined by unintelligible gestures which refused to fit the incessant opening and closing of the mouths, while he sat waiting at a table on the margin, not knowing where he was. .)
Quite right, he no longer knew when he had begun to accumulate in his mind vast quantities of the most minor everyday details that might have stemmed from any arbitrary time. There was a crazy jumble of details in his mind, but the relationships of these details to each given point in time eluded him. . Little things, any normal person would have forgotten them, but he’d stored them away, he’d reeled them off into telephones, recited them on tape, recited them on tape over the telephone, from telephone receivers he’d heard his voice reeling things off on tape, redolent with a certain professional fear, repeating details. . he’d made as few notes as possible. — Forget it, Feuerbach usually said, toss it out of your urn, whatever you’ve given us is all taken care of, don’t think about things you’ve already delivered, make room for more. Don’t bother with commentaries, classification, connections, that’s what we’ve got experts for.
His organizing mind was not called for, in this chaos it became an irrelevancy, perhaps close to atrophying; his mind had become a machine that took in details and passed them on — the overall picture that emerged from the facts was a matter for the experts. — And thus the life that coalesced from all these details had practically become an irrelevancy. . when he sat in the cafe listening to the chaos of voices repeating their irrelevancies next to him, and apart from him, depression came over him, slow and mysterious. — It was pointless to try conveying this feeling to Feuerbach; he knew what his answer would be. Or at some point Feuerbach had already given the answer: So you’re worn out, run down, done in, at sea? The times are no better than they’re made out to be, my dear man, we mustn’t get smoke in our eyes. You’re in just the mood we need. It attunes you to life’s nasty little details. .
And once again W. was reminded of the boss from A., who had expressed himself on quite similar lines. — Conversations of this nature regularly seemed to correlate with some other subject entirely: W. was waiting for Feuerbach’s response to his question as to whether it would be expedient to apply for a travel permit. . Whether it was a convenient point in time, or perhaps too early, he’d asked to defuse the question from the outset. — What do you mean. . now? the first lieutenant flung out and went on his way. — When such ‘difficult questions’ came up, Feuerbach generally gave the impression that he wasn’t really listening, his replies came weeks later, and always as a surprise; in the meantime, presumably, he obtained (in higher places) his information guidelines. — It’d be possible in six months, he said, walking up one evening to the table in the cafe, where W. had been brooding for hours. W. looked uncertainly at his superior, who leant on one armrest (playing the role of a man pressed for time), bent down to W. and yelled: Now, listen, you asked me about it yourself. . besides, that’s all you ever think about, you’ve got it written all over you. — He’d delivered the second half of the speech more calmly, but it was too late — the waiter came up and reminded him that they weren’t the only people in the cafe. . Feuerbach waited until he’d gone away again, then he said: You arsehole!—W., familiar with such tantrums, held his tongue; Feuerbach continued his speech, still standing: Probably both of us are more than ready for it. . I’m authorized to say that headquarters don’t think half-badly of you. . of course, they don’t see you snoozing away at this table here. All joking aside, well, their view is that naturally it’s no go unless there’s a compelling reason. That means, for instance, that you’d have to have a contact in West Berlin. Now my question is, do you have a contact there? — Feuerbach fell silent and glanced around the taproom; if any interest had arisen at the other tables, it had died down again. — Of course you don’t have a contact! Feuerbach went on. But without one it’s no go, you’d have to find a contact, start thinking about that. All I can tell you is, the Scene offers the perfect opportunities. But are you the type for that? In a pinch I can find a contact person for you, but you’ll have to do the contacting yourself. You have six months’ time, I think you’ll pull it off by the summer. .
(If he wasn’t mistaken, the conversation had taken place around Christmas or New Year’s; the six months Feuerbach had spoken of had not yet elapsed. It was proving difficult, if not impossible, for W. to establish the necessary contact, as he could well imagine which ‘contact person’ his case officer had in mind. He’d already mentioned her on occasion. . for W. she was the student; Feuerbach had once characterized her as ‘that kid who’s running after Reader’, but that was later on, once the author’s rapid — and ephemeral — rise had begun. — But, as Feuerbach insisted, even before that she had been a frequent presence in the so-called Scene in the Eastern part of Berlin, and for W. she was an extremely unapproachable being. And the role he himself played was that of a reticent, rather nondescript regular at the events in which the Firm was so very interested. — Thus, in W.’s view, she was the most inauspicious conceivable connection. . for a while this seemed to be the very appeal of it for Feuerbach. W. felt overwhelmed — though not immune to the aforementioned appeal— and sometimes he was almost resolved to go to the first lieutenant with the question: How does one establish human contact with this woman. .?)
Gradually it was fading again, the thought of an excursion to West Berlin. . a S-Bahn journey of one stop, lasting about five minutes, for which the word travel had established itself. It wasn’t just that by all indications the time was unfavourable for such a request; it was impossible to determine in a rational manner why it was favourable at certain moments and then unfavourable again; in the summer following the relevant conversation, travel issues even seemed to be a kind of red flag for the chiefs. — Feuerbach hadn’t mentioned the matter again, and W. had increasingly frequent ‘contact’ with circles in which such issues were off the table.
Here the emptiness he carried around with him — he used the word exhaustion—made it easy for him to quickly adapt to the style that prevailed. The issue of leaving the country was not discussed at all here, or as a matter one was only remotely involved with, and this was not for reasons of caution but from the conviction that one’s place was in this country. . At least W. soon felt that this was how best to understand it. That conviction, however, did not come from an acceptance of the state in which the country persisted. . and W. spent a long time wondering what else might explain it. He’d discussed this with Feuerbach, who also seemed to be thinking about it and failing to come to any real conclusion. . this time W. didn’t have the sense that the first lieutenant was holding back his thoughts only to deploy them as aggressively as possible at a suitable opportunity. . no, even Feuerbach made a baffled impression. The higher-ups, in the regions above Feuerbach to which W. had no entrée, had to believe that most people in the groups that comprised the Scene were willing to stay in the country lately because they intended to offer resistance — they must have hit on the crazy notion of changing the Republic from within! — This meant that the Scene was converging disturbingly with the other groups known as coalition movements; these were groups occupied only marginally with art and literature, much more with ecology or conscientious objection, which got support from the Church and probably little response otherwise. — Feuerbach shook his head over this notion of convergence. . We know the Scene much too well for that, he said to W., people feel that the grassroots groups are just using them. And if they don’t yet, they will soon. And besides, the people in the Scene are much too intelligent for these night vigils on the street clutching candles. — In Feuerbach’s view, it was impossible to find anyone in the Scene with a strategy to give resistance a manageable organization or even a unified line. On the one hand they simply lack a mastermind, that is, some guru who has the cheek to keep them on their toes, on the other hand none of them are dumb enough to fall for a charlatan like that. . and that’s what I love about them! — Feuerbach grinned and said they were considering the possibility of providing just this master-mind. . Wouldn’t you like to do it? he asked. You’d have to dye your hair green or white, change your parka for a yellow leather jacket and paint a Chinese pictograph on the back. Or you’d have to go about all in black, pitch black all the time, that’d do the trick. And after a suitable gestation we’d nab this mastermind and use him to bust the gang. .