It was totally idiotic of me to think a vacation trip could change anything. The old man himself said it best years ago: “Emigration would make sense only if the country we were running from wasn’t ourselves.” How I love him when he writes like that. And that’s precisely why he doesn’t let me read his stuff anymore. It’s his way of taking himself away from me. He pretends he’s not working. He deletes his things. Hides them. Publishes nothing. And tells me lies. Because he thinks living with a writer is too good for me. A failure is what I deserve, a failure and nothing more.
It’s so quiet here. The absence of people in Lahora is like breathing underwater — wonderful, but a little scary. If I had to make a quick getaway, I wouldn’t even have a car. Rilke: Who, if I cried out, would hear me then …? Answer: Sven, at best. I’ll make sure he’s always nearby. I felt really sorry for him, sorry that he had to get so upset over us. He stood there amid the trappings of his little diving-instructor world, trembling with rage. I was shocked by how shocked he was. Because I understood that he doesn’t understand us. No one would ever turn off Sven’s valve — he’s not the type. He didn’t even know there were people who did that sort of thing. All at once I felt a strange kind of longing. I’m going to make an effort for his sake. And for Lotte’s sake. Underwater, I was so close to her. As alert and nimble as a fish. While Theo was bobbing around like a sack of potatoes.
We don’t have to be on vacation. The old man could get to work on writing a book about the island. I can train for Lotte. That’s the beauty of being in the arts. You can call everything work, and then you can realize it’s shit without being disappointed.
5
The Lobster’s Paradise was an insider’s place. The kind you had to reserve a few days in advance. At least, if you weren’t Geoffrey’s friend. Geoffrey was a Northern Irishman who at some point had had his fill of constant war and left his homeland. His companion, Sasha, had been a professional handball player, a member of Yugoslavia’s national team. When war broke out in Yugoslavia twenty years ago, Sasha signed with a Spanish handball club. Now he ran a paragliding school near Famara during the day and in the evenings helped at the restaurant. Immigrants ran half the businesses on the island. Most of us stuck together, which was why I could always get a table at the Lobster’s.
Geoffrey’s business model was making him a fortune. The Lobster’s Paradise was in the middle of nowhere, that is, in the middle of a rugged field of solidified lava on the Famara massif. No signs marked the way; customers had to cover the last three hundred meters on foot. Inside, the place was always too crowded and too hot. There were two dishes on the menu: lobster and rabbit. Nobody ordered rabbit.
Theo and Jola insisted on inviting me to share their meal. The incident that morning was still fresh and I didn’t much feel like letting them take me out, but it was a part of our agreement that I must be available for any free-time activities they chose, twenty-four hours a day. After driving them to the Lobster’s and accompanying them to the entrance, I could hardly decline their invitation and wait outside.
They made a genuine effort. Theo held the door open and then held Jola’s chair for her. She was wearing a blue band in her hair that made her look sweet and a little old-fashioned. Delighted to be able to discuss the wine list with a connoisseur like Theo, Geoffrey brought us the bottle he ordered along with a second bottle for us to try. Despite my protests, Theo poured me a glass, and I had to confess that the wine tasted remarkably good.
Then they started to talk about things back home. Or rather, Theo talked while Jola looked at him attentively with both hands on the table, like a well-behaved spouse. The wine and her gaze combined to set him off; he talked like a waterfall.
As a writer, Theo said, he was basically a sort of big businessman. Thousands of people lived off his work. Publishing-house employees, booksellers, librarians, copy editors, critics, translators, printers, cultural program directors for television and radio, to say nothing of the entire dramatic profession, including actors, dramaturges, directors, and stage technicians, as well as anyone involved in the movie business — all those occupations existed solely for the commercial exploitation of texts. And what’s the author? A nothing. The weakest link in the food chain. Despised, ridiculed, rarely acclaimed, mostly ignored. A nobody who tortures himself at his writing desk in the dead of night, only to be derided in the end as a loser by the artistically impotent.
Jola laid a hand on his arm and remarked that many reviewers referred to him not as a loser but as a writer of great promise.
Theo insisted that it was a matter of principle. How does a man who has no artistic accomplishments get the right to judge someone else’s work? Even a critic who hands down a positive judgment thinks himself more important than the author he’s assessing, Theo said. It’s an upside-down world, and it teaches you repugnance as a form of being.
I knew the feeling. When I imagined the life Theo lived as a cog in the gears of the big judgment machine, the thought made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Basically, Jola said, Theo was right. Her case was similar, she said. Every moron who cowered in fear at the very thought of having to get up on a stage felt perfectly entitled to go on the Internet and criticize her ability.
“We need a law!” Theo cried out. “Anyone who criticizes someone else without exposing himself to criticism is to be prohibited from speaking for a period of not less than two years.”
They shared a confidential laugh. I was happy to listen when clients bad-mouthed Germany. In my ears they sounded like soldiers on leave from the battlefront, reporting on conditions in the war zone. They reminded me of what I’d run away from and made me feel I’d been right to do so. When Theo tried to refill my glass, I put my hand over it and switched to mineral water. The food came. We spurned the side dishes and plunged up to the elbows in lobster juice.
Jola asked why I’d left Germany. I told my story about Brunsberg and Montesquieu. Theo and Jola laughed hard, holding their sides. While I was gazing at Jola — who didn’t look like an actress anymore, but simply like a high-spirited young woman — I thought about that morning. The incident with the closed valve suddenly seemed less dramatic.
Still laughing, I asked them why they didn’t just stay on the island, like all those who’d grown tired of living with pointless stress and lousy weather. Theo dipped his hands in lemon water and answered me seriously. He said he envied and pitied me at the same time. Then he cracked open another lobster tail, removed a bit of intestine, took the choicest piece from the middle, and gave it to Jola.
“Jola could buy a luxury finca with her family’s money,” said Theo. “On the prettiest basalt hill. Boat included.”
Jola made a face. You could physically feel the mood capsize. She said, “I’m not my family.”