Now, I think, it’s about finding a café that’s not too gloomy.
I spot a tavern on Berlinerstrasse. A neighborhood tavern, the milk of human kindness. As I walk in, the warmth seems putrid. I sit down at a table where a middle-aged man is already seated; he’s wearing a bowler hat, a black suit, and his eyes are a watery blue. The café is in the half dark, the electric light doesn’t meet the challenge. Even so, at first glance, I think the man opposite is Herr Brandt, who rents Frau Berends’ other room. He’s staring at a bottle of ersatz curaçao. I can see he is knocking it back. I take another glance. I’ve seen him only two or three times in the three months he’s been lodging in our household. There’s no doubt about it: it is Herr Brandt. He’s a potato purée color; his delicate hands are white, a corrosive chloride white, with swollen webs of veins. He smokes a cigarette in a holder; his eyes look glazed and doltish; he’s now eyeing the bottle in disgust. An incoherent word emerges between puffs, as if from between his teeth. The waiter’s eyes imply: “He’s pathetic, but a good soul …”
It’s quite obvious Herr Brandt doesn’t have the slightest notion that an acquaintance — a fellow lodger — is sitting at his table. Nothing indicates that he has recognized me. He’s sozzled. Sweet liqueur — how dreadful! I don’t know what to do: whether to forget it or introduce myself.
In the meantime, I survey the café. There’s a table where a card school is solemnly studying every card as if they were important industrialists or bankers. Here and there, a handful of blind drunkards are irrevocably losing it. There’s a family that looks as if they’ve just been to a funeral; father in tailcoat, top hat and stiff, protruding starched shirt; mother a blonde, with pale radish colored skin under a posh, vertical hat, all just so, a genuine throwback to the Kaiser and the Kiel regattas. Their children seem out of a bazaar. It’s obvious their presence in the café is the result of long deliberations. They want to enjoy themselves but don’t know how. They want to be happy but don’t know where to begin. In the end, seeing that their efforts are in vain they wearily pose as if for a photograph. Local folk at the bar: drivers, tram workers, passersby and two or three sallow men, clearly postmen, with caps without peaks, a red button in the middle of a white circle. A German colossus stands behind the counter, with a gleaming, shaven head — a giant from the lakes or forests. His ear lobes are particularly striking. The lobes of a prehistoric man from the forests of Germany.
All of a sudden, the man at my table — Herr Brandt — lurches towards me, stretches his arm threateningly over the wood — his face sagging into a scowl that would rather be a grin — and tries to grip a button of my overcoat between his trembling fingertips. However, before he articulates the first word, I take the initiative: “How are you, Herr Brandt …?”
He stares at me almost steadily for a time, wipes his brow and blurts confusedly: “Oh, it’s you? What a coincidence! Though it makes no difference … Right now I’m not really myself … I don’t know who I am … We are just two ordinary fellows … I’ve drunk too much.… That’s blindingly obvious. When I drink, I feel like talking …”
“Go on, Herr Brandt …”
“Herr Brandt, Herr Brandt …! No matter, it makes no odds …”
After uttering that last sentence he looked pensive and fell silent. He wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start. I acted as if I couldn’t care less, given that nothing is more ridiculous than trying to galvanize the mental processes of a drunkard. He downed another shot, lit another cigarette and shut up again. After a while, making a real effort, he asked much more politely: “Are you a bachelor?”
“Of course …” I answered smiling pleasantly.
“A subtenant and bachelor like me.”
“Nothing much we can do about that.”
“What it is to be a subtenant!”
“Why?”
“Because we are evil beasts …”
“Most likely! But that’s not so strange …”
“What’s that?”
“I was saying it’s not so strange …”
“That’s odd! Did you say that? I tell you it is very peculiar. I share your ideas about subtenants. No, it’s not so strange that we subtenants are such evil beasts.”
“Perhaps we lack something …” I responded offhandedly.
“Something, do you say? More like the lot! Don’t you think? I, for example, would love to be married. I’d like … I imagine it must feel so nice. A man marries and people listen to him. That’s highly important.”
When he said that, I couldn’t tell whether he was being ironic. What I did see was that he said it with immense conviction. In any case, I did think his head was clearing and the glazed doltish expression fading from his face.
“So, if you like the idea,” I asked, “why don’t you? Some women are truly angelic …”
“Oh really?” he responded quickly, perking up, his eyes popping at my fantastic suggestion.
“Of course! They are like angels. You’d be more relaxed, you’d eat better, your ill temper would go. Why don’t you? You wouldn’t find it so hard …”
“There’s no cure now …” he declared after a short pause, looking at the end of his tether.
“It’s too late. When I should have done it, it was impossible to date. And now it’s surely impossible.”
“It’s never impossible.”
“Forgive me! It is!” he rasped bringing his eyes within an inch of my face. “It’s totally impossible.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“And do you know why?” he asked benignly. “It’s simple enough. Ten years ago I was one man. Now I’m another. Now I have two faces. We subtenants are people with two faces. Don’t you believe me? We don’t know what we want. We are violent and weak.”
“Weak, do you say?”
“Yes, that’s right. Don’t doubt it for one minute. We can’t live without being dominated and find domination intolerable. We are suspicious yet irresistibly attracted to what is obscure. Isn’t it strange? And yet, do you see? This kind of attitude spoils everything. Generous, well-disposed people make advances … and we don’t notice. We lock and bar ourselves in. We mistake black for white. So there’s no cure in this life, it is a wretched, intolerable situation …”
He seemed to have relaxed a little. He wearily removed his hat. A bald, starkly white head appeared with the consistency and color of lard: slightly pointed at the top, tiny droplets of sweat on its flaky skin. Then he sat straight.
“Do have a glass of curaçao …” he suggested.
“No thank you.”
“Are you in a hurry? Some days everybody is in a hurry!”
“No, but no thanks. I’m a beer drinker.”
“Obviously, I don’t mind what it is, as long as it’s a sweet liqueur. Don’t think I’m a drunkard. I’ve only just started. The fact is I couldn’t get used to hard liquor. I started drinking,” he continued as if in a daydream, when I lodged at Frau Dening’s. I started cold. One day I went into a café and rather than asking for tea with lemon I ordered a kümmel. I really took to it. But perhaps that in and of itself wouldn’t have mattered. It’s got much worse since I moved into this Frau Berends’ house. There are days when I’d kill for a drink.”
A moment of calm followed. Then I suddenly saw him look up rather crazily and stare at me, half ironic and half delirious. Where are we at? I wondered. Is this guy seeing the light or sinking into the mire? Evidently he was increasingly anxious to communicate his inner feelings and perhaps what was holding him back was the knowledge that I lived in the same house. His was a coherent if rather fractured story.