I was thinking about that when Frau Falbe appeared, dressed in her robe. . I realized that it was already nine in the morning. — She’d been surprised to see my light still on, she said, running her hands over my shoulders. . I looked up, the room was a cave filled with thick smoke, the desk lamp’s weak beam marked a yellow circle on the shambles of the desk, layered with paper, dirty cups and two smouldering ashtrays, while crumpled paper piled up in a semicircle around the desk. . You’ll smother here sooner than you’ll finish a book, she said. And you haven’t even slept! — Seeing my rumpled bed, she suddenly realized that there was nowhere for her to sit. She left off the stroking movements at the back of my neck and asked: Where did you put my husband’s armchair, anyway? — I wondered whether I could tell her the truth: It’s gone. . — Gone? What’s that supposed to mean? — I explained to her that the armchair had been stolen. . and it wasn’t a lie; soon after my abrupt departure from the downtown flat I’d meant to salvage the papers hidden in the crack between the cushions. . the huge piece of furniture was gone, as though it had dissolved into thin air. Frau Falbe was deeply offended; she left and didn’t show up for several days. — But she’d given me an idea: there was a typewriter in the downtown flat. . I’d always referred to it as ‘my typewriter’.
Now I planned to go and get it. . to play naive and say: I just want to fetch my typewriter. . Or: I’m supposed to fetch my typewriter! — Now I cursed myself for leaving the key there; just in case, I pocketed my collection of duplicate keys. — But when I rang the doorbell, I was in for a surprise. I had to ring a second time and finally heard soft steps coming down the narrow corridor. . it was about fifteen steps to the front door, I remembered. The lock turned, the door opened and before me stood Reader. Dressed in black from head to toe as always, even the artificial leather slippers were black. — He gazed at me coolly through the round lenses of his glasses: How can I help you?
I beg your pardon, I mumbled; there was no sign that he recognized me in any way. I wanted to fetch my. . typewriter. .
Your typewriter! he said.
Yes, I said, I’d like my typewriter.
I don’t understand. .
It doesn’t matter, I said, already turning on my heels. — Don’t you have my red chair in the flat, too? I yelled up from the third floor; but the door had already fallen shut.
Out in my room I took the seven poems out of the drawer to draw them on paper in calligraphy, each separately, but I no longer had seven blank sheets of paper left. And the poems seemed a mistake to me, completely unacceptable.
When October was past I resolved once again to travel to A.; it had turned cold and even the oil radiator didn’t manage to warm the room. And Frau Falbe treated me frostily as well; I already owed her a month’s rent, with just enough money for a train trip to A. — One afternoon, already growing dark, I was tossing my possessions into the duffel bags when the doorbell rang. . about half an hour later it rang again, several times, I gave in and went to the door. Frau Falbe was outside, ashen and distraught, she seemed to be trembling: Come on, there’s someone upstairs for you!
Feuerbach sat at her kitchen table, grinning at me somewhat sheepishly: Can I help it if you don’t answer the door. .
I wasn’t sure if a tantrum would be called for, now that he was even denouncing me in front of my landlady. . but I recalled that I had barely a pfenni to my name.
Come on, he said in his usual manner, say something, where can we go to talk. . not at your place, we’d catch our deaths. So, don’t snooze, get dressed and let’s go!
In a neighbourhood pub — we tossed back a number of shots, and I seemed to feel a bit of warmth again for the first time in ages — he explained the following to me:
We knew perfectly well that you hadn’t gone back to A., we knew that from the start. And that you’d holed up in your icebox again, to be honest, that’s just what we expected. I’m telling you, we actually would have been disappointed if you’d acted any differently. If you’d passed up our assistance so quickly. .
And then he, Kesselstein, as he was known of late, reeled off his sermon, one of those torrents of words I knew him for, and for which I’d known the boss from A., at whose end one was irresistibly sucked in:
Oh, God, I thought, what’s he up to this time. He’s sitting in his ice hole freezing his bones. What kind of foolishness is the poor loon up to now. I spent a long time thinking about what I could do for you. I don’t always get ideas right away either, well, finally I do have an idea, Cambert! But first, please just sign these receipts.
Don’t worry, they’re old receipts, I’ve had them in my pocket for three months now. Or longer, I’m a bit sloppy about these things, and the old geezer’ll probably fire me for it some day. How long has it been since we’ve seen each other, we’ve owed you money ever since. . yes, that’s the way it is, we’re just a bureaucracy with a bunch of bureaucrats. And we don’t pay in advance, you know that. Fine, maybe I could wangle an advance for you, too. .
What have you been up to the whole time, anyway. . You’ve been writing, I know, have you got any new work? A few pages of poems, for now. . and where are you planning to place them? We’ll talk about that, but first I have to tell you that that whole damn story with UnColSec Reader has been sorted out for you, they’ve come to terms with it, they’ve calmed down. . by they I mean our demigods from Olympus. What else could they do, when you, Cambert, probably didn’t suspect the full magnitude of the mess you created by running after that little editor. How on earth did you come up with ‘student’, the chick is quite a force to be reckoned with! We were staring at you transfixed, we had chills running down our spines. We thought, What on earth is he doing, he’s got it bad, that Cambert, we just had to stop you. But it was already too late, you screwed up a pretty perfect story we had going. . the kid just stayed away, and we were left high and dry!
We thought, that Cambert’s going to bust it all up on us now. . and I had to talk to the chiefs till I was blue in the face. I had to literally talk them out of sending you on a training course. I said, Forget the training course, the guy’s much better on the street. . and now he’s just acting up, he’s got a crush on the kid, that’s all. No wonder, either. . but did you really have no clue that she was Reader’s contact person? She was supposed to get him a foothold in West Berlin, we had a perfect handle on the legend. . we would have had him leave the country with tremendous difficulties, the eternally thwarted writer of stature. . You were a lot of help with your constant critiques, even if they were starting to get on our nerves. . See, you’re the better writer after all. But with the little editor we would have had him doing business in West Berlin.
And suddenly you come and start stalking her! I thought, Now Cambert’s lost it, this can’t be happening. And she gets the jitters big-time, she gets a persecution complex, she suspects everyone and his brother. . she even suspects Reader, who used to be our totally safe bet, she accuses him of being an informer just because he won’t sign some dumb petition. And then she stays away, stays in West Berlin — Can you imagine how furious we were?
I’m not saying you need to make up for it now, it’s all forgotten already. You gave me an idea, you see. . yep, somehow you always manage to get back on track. I thought to myself, By Jove, that Cambert always does manage to run his head through walls. To make a long story short, we’re having problems with UnCol Reader. . and you’ve got to sound him out. Whether or not you meant to, you uncovered a certain side of him. . in a nutshell, he’s suddenly started acting like you. Yep, it looks like he’s fallen for his IntelOp too. . I’m telling you, that happens more often than you’d think. That’s what I’ve always said, and I’ve tried to explain it to the folks higher up. When you investigate and keep investigating, suddenly it happens: you only see the people from their human side. . from their best side, you could say. And suddenly you’ve got qualms: What am I doing here, anyway? That’s happened to every good man at some point, no one’s immune to that. . suddenly you ask yourself, Isn’t my case officer a bigger swine than whoever I’ve got in my sights? I’ve shone a light on this person from all sides, I’ve practically X-rayed them, and suddenly I take a liking to the person. . especially when it’s a woman. And you don’t know what side you’re on any more. . but our comrades the chiefs don’t get that, or they don’t want to. All they know is their slogans: You’ve got to know what side you’re on, head and fist of the Party and so on. I’ve always told them that, whenever they asked me, this perpetual shadowing doesn’t do any good. . don’t observe, obliterate, I said, you’ve just got to obliterate these people sooner.