W. could recall having heard something of the kind before. . the same proposal had been made — it was so long ago you could hardly call it real any more — by the boss in A. When W. mentioned that to Feuerbach, the reply was: What, him? Then he can only have got it from us.
At about the same time W. notched up an additional triumph. Feuerbach informed him that his code name had been accepted. — Did you even remember it, he asked, didn’t you pick it out yourself way back when? And be careful with this name, no one knows this name besides you. If it ever crops up somewhere, the only person to blame will be you. Remember, many things can be guessed, but not known. And there will never be any proof if you don’t expose yourself. Even so-called evidence needn’t be proof, because. . we might have just faked it all, you see! — We might well have, at least in our little part of the world. . Names, poems, reviews, even unofficial magazines, W. commented, and Feuerbach pulled a sour face.
I meant the written part of the world, the first lieutenant continued his thoughts the next day (as he often did, strengthening W.’s conviction that time was immaterial for people in the Firm). At least in the so-called world of signs. And for the poet that’s the real world, isn’t it? And for him reality’s but a demented dream, isn’t that so?
Not just for the poet, of course, but for us too, more often than you’d think, he said (once again with several days’ delay). There you’ve got the commonality you keep mulling over. Especially when we have to fulfil other people’s dreams. With Biermann6 and his buddies gone, the world’s become a demented dream even for us. We are the perpetuators of the system, and what kind of system is it if it no longer has an opposition? What to wield all the power on, I ask you. It ends up finishing us off, I tell you. Do you think it’s any fun having to build up a new opposition over and over again? New so-called hostile-negative forces, just to perpetuate the system? Sometimes I don’t see any hostile-negative forces left at all, at least not in our bailiwick, but the fossils up at the top want to keep seeing them, otherwise their world view goes down the tubes. For ages all we’ve had is an empty phrase: Hostile-negative! But in reality. . where, I ask you, where. We’re living in a world of signs, my friend, is that a commonality or isn’t it?
Maybe, he continued his musings (a weekend had intervened), we ought to get ourselves transferred to the skinhead gang. Supposed there’s lots to do still in the department that does the skins and the punks. But then we’d have to run around in beat-up leather things, and we’d even have to duke it out now and then. I can’t stand bike chains, for Chrissake. So me, I’d rather stay in the world of signs and ask myself three times a day who we can do a favour for this time. Don’t you know anyone in the Scene who still wants to defect? One of these days we’ll be the only two hostile-negative forces left. . which isn’t so far off with you, you’re a poet after all.
Can’t we finally, Feuerbach was far from finished, get this son-of-a-bitch Harry Falbe to start writing poetry? I mean, he is someone who wants to get out of here still, right? I don’t understand why no one in your Scene wants to go West any more, when they all feel oh-so opted out. How can you want to live in a country you can’t work up the slightest interest in? Isn’t there anyone who wants to keep playing the same old game, out there in the world of signs? You’ve got to have heard something!
Everything I’ve heard, you know already, said W.
If that’s so, you’ll have to go in yourself and say you want to go West. Say you’re starting to get fed up. You’ll let that slip at some point, to someone the group trusts the most. Then we’ll see how the group reacts. Maybe you can get a few of them to go along with you, at any rate it’ll make them nervous. I’d give you completely free rein, say something about occupying an embassy for all I care. . say you have to put the authorities on the spot because here in this country you’re worried about your kid’s future. You do have a kid down there in A., don’t you?
A kid? said W., alarmed; Feuerbach’s poorly concealed edginess infected him. What’s the idea with the kid, most of them have kids themselves. They might nod sympathetically, but then they’d just say, that’s not our problem. .
That’s no good, said Feuerbach. They must have lost all sense of respect. Either you break the laws, or you back them. But you can’t act as if the State authorities. . or, as if we didn’t even exist any more.
Soon after these conversations the first lieutenant had vanished from the radar for some time; to be exact, first for about ten days, and then, after another seven days, for a whole month.—W. had listened to his case officer with malicious glee at first, but in the end with mounting concern. Then, left alone in the city, Feuerbach’s behaviour struck him as peculiar; never had he seen him in such suppressed agitation. For all his witty talk (which, incidentally, was starting to seem a bit stale), his testiness had been noticeable. . he’d given the impression of an imminent outburst. . or a breakdown?
Three times in the four weeks Feuerbach went missing (the entire month of April), W. had received a summons to a so-called meet-up to which the first lieutenant failed to appear; that was nothing unusual. Three times W. had found a sealed envelope with no address or sender, two in close succession in his postbox, the third slipped under his front door. Each time the envelope contained the same slip of paper with one solitary sentence: ‘You’ll meet me tomorrow 19.00 in the cafe on Frankfurter Allee’; there was no signature, the date was noted in pen on the upper right-hand edge, so miniscule that it could hardly be in Feuerbach’s lavish hand. The message on the slips of paper had been typed, but only once, and then duplicated on a photocopier. . W. pictured the machine spitting out thirty such copies in barely a minute — perhaps he could expect still more of these notes, until such time as he finally ignored them. . and then there’d be hell to pay. Feuerbach’s typewriter was the same model W. used. . and sometimes he’d suspected that Feuerbach had been in his flat and typed there at his machine; W. had found nothing to confirm his suspicion. When he received the third note, W. didn’t even go to the cafe; a few days before, he’d tried to see his case officer in the office but hadn’t been admitted; an unfamiliar middle-aged woman had turned him away: Feuerbach. . she didn’t know a gentleman of that name!
On the day of the third meet-up he’d had other plans, he’d gone out to visit Frau Falbe, for the second time that spring. He’d asked his former landlady whether she would rent him the room again — for the entire summer, perhaps the autumn as well, in addition to his flat, he could afford that now. He needed a crash pad for writing again, where he could be by himself once or twice a week. — Frau Falbe was dismissive, seeming mistrustful of him; he had to come by a few more times, and finally, towards the end of April, she consented. — Harry never paid me anything, she said, but I can use the bit of extra money. You’ll have to pay full, even if you’re not here every day. . and one more thing, I can’t make you coffee every day. — So the next time he came he brought her a pack of coffee he’d bought at an Intershop; since several of his poems had been printed in West German magazines, he’d acquired a number of Forum cheques which allowed him to make such privileged purchases.7 Frau Falbe accepted the present without a word, apparently still mistrustful; as she went, W. thought that she suddenly displayed a frailty far from befitting her. W. felt a sense of disappointment; he’d recalled her as a woman still full of resilience, and asked himself how the past year and a half could have made such a difference.