What he told me took little time, he didn’t even offer me a seat: I was recalled. . herewith! A different field of operation, a different section! You know the town of A. from somewhere, don’t you, must be in the Leipzig area, right? Have you been there before, my young friend? You’ll proceed there as quickly as possible, immediately, your new managing cadres are awaiting you. Lieutenant Kesselstein has other duties, he’s not your contact man any more. Have you got all that? Do you have any papers we need to take into safekeeping? No. . OK, we’ll see about that! Make your arrangements as quickly as you can. .
With that he flipped open a file on his desk and hunted in the drawer for a writing utensil. . This place is a pigsty! he said; I no longer existed for him.
For several seconds I stood thunderstruck, not knowing if it was relief or panic I felt. . there was a faint hum or drone in the building, as from heavy machinery in the basement; perhaps it was just in my ears. — The man at the desk looked up from his file, his parted lips in barely perceptible motion as though tallying long columns of numbers. . What’s on your mind, my young friend? he asked. — I excused myself and left the office.
Feuerbach was waiting for me in the stairwell, down at the next landing, and grabbed me by the sleeve: Well. . keen as a hound dog, isn’t he, the old geezer? Come on, run on ahead, we’ll see each other in the dive on Frankfurter! — Still speechless, I tried to free myself but he wouldn’t let me: Have you been back to the flat? No. . you’ve been out in your den again? Good, actually you’re not allowed in the flat any more. Go over there today, get your personal things out by this evening, you don’t have the flat any more! So, see you in the cafe.
For half an hour I sat waiting in the cafe, waiting to be served, the shadow-waiter didn’t come, the barman stared past me. . and Feuerbach didn’t come. — Out on the boulevard what they called an Indian summer was in progress. The sunlight had lost its whiteness, tinged blue-gold in the nicotine weave of the curtains, a piercing mixture of sun glare and exhaust fumes, making blinding backlight come from all directions. Through the window thrust a flickeringly defined wall of brightness. . not a wall, it was an irregular oblique pseudo-box filled with glare and dust and whirling smoke with a slumped cut-out of a shadow in its midst: the dark silhouette of my ‘I’. .
Then a male figure rose from one of the tables to the side, crossed the light-space to the bar and murmured together with the waiter, who had reappeared and fixed me with his gaze. The waiter moved towards my table and laid a slip of paper in front of me: We’ve had an unpaid bill of yours lying around here for a small eternity, enough is enough. The police will deliver you the bill. Leave the premises. . right now, and for good!
This time, too, I left without a word, first glancing at the slip — it showed a sum of about forty marks with a question mark, and a date from last autumn.
Then I ransacked the flat for my so-called personal effects: a few pieces of clothing and a number of books, I thought I had them all; my complete possessions just half-filled the two duffel bags. For several days I’d gone to the flat just to sleep and hadn’t paid any mind to the desk. . now I found almost no written material left, which didn’t surprise me. I searched all the drawers; there were neither notes nor letters, no other writing (my manuscripts, or what was left of them, were out at Frau Falbe’s), even the wastebasket had been emptied, and my tear-off calendar was missing. All I found was an ancient Neues Deutschland and two sports papers; several borrowed West German literary magazines had vanished.
I tossed the key onto the floor of the long narrow corridor, picked up my two bags and left. After shutting the door behind me I removed my nameplate (bearing the name M. W.) and did the same downstairs with the postbox; then I headed out to Frau Falbe’s.
In the train packed with sweaty people — I had a seat, though — I felt feverish; when the flickering snatches of evening sun shot between the trees from the West and struck my face, I felt as though I were being slapped about the head; I barely felt my own weight, perched on the seat as though on an air cushion. . How should I have answered the gentleman at Feuerbach’s desk? I asked myself. — I don’t care what you say or what you arrange for! I should have retorted. The Firm is my home, and I am my own informer. And I can wait, I’ve got time, I’ve got lots of time. .
From then on I lived in Frau Falbe’s room, and it was peaceful there, when I left myself in peace; on into the winter I lived without any human contact, not counting my landlady. . until Feuerbach (or Kesselstein, as he had to be called now) reclaimed me — tried to reclaim me, a peculiar episode which thoroughly deranged my sense of time once again. But allow me to treat things in their proper order. .
Relations between me and Frau Falbe had become strangely cool, and I wondered what the reason was; apparently she’d adjusted quite well to my coming just once or twice a week, and now I was suddenly there all the time, without offering any explanation; she accepted it but stayed upstairs in her flat. I told myself that she could easily have read the papers hidden in the red armchair during my absence, back before the end of May, when the armchair was still here. . maybe she’d got suspicious in the meantime, maybe she’d seen the light. — Various conflicts developed around my dealings with electrical appliances, on which she looked askance. Quite apart from the immersion heater, which she had always feared as the source of an imminent fire — and maybe she was also offended because I didn’t take her up on her offer: Come to my place and make your coffee on the gas stove! — now I had an electric heater too, a so-called oil radiator I’d bought in the Intershop with the last of my Forum cheques at the end of October, when the cold crept into the room. Unfortunately the fuses, next to the basement stairs, did not hold up to prolonged use of this appliance. . and Frau Falbe complained about escalating electricity bills; I tried to compensate by raising my rent payments, which rapidly diminished my bank account. Frau Falbe — she paid me back for the increased rent by inviting me to eat, occasions which she used to vent her complaints in concentrated form — quickly realized that I was in for financial difficulties and offered once again to find me a job. — I’d love to work, I replied (though I dreaded it), but I can’t right now, I have to focus on my writing first. . I had to finish a book, I was really a writer, she knew that. — Oh no, she said, that you most certainly aren’t. I can imagine what you’ve got to write.
Back in my room, I laughed to myself — it was the first time in ages that someone had denied I was a ‘writer’. . and at that moment I felt a warm and long-familiar feeling: I was reminded of my time in A., when I’d sat constantly writing and thinking. No one knew me as a poet, I hid my poems even from my mother, a truly clandestine, oppositional writer taking a stand against his ignorant age. — When Frau Falbe said her angry words to me, I felt for the first time in ages that someone took me seriously.
Now I actually recalled my project of presenting my poems to the Unofficial Literary Magazines, of which more and more were appearing, springing up like mushrooms from the humus of ignorance. Within two weeks I’d produced seven pieces. . or at least ceased work on them once they struck me as readable. Now I needed a typewriter so that the manuscripts would look halfway professional. .