What and how intensely they dreamed, that is what I envy. I, who often sit across from them on the tram, silent, depressed by their advantage of experience. I, who am their inferior in terms of knowledge (how many books have I really read twice? and where are my notes on them?) and passion (slept with fewer women, never have been to Cuba, diligently kept the twenty mph speed limit). I, who stand by and listen to the stories of how great it was then. I envy their wounds. Their gazes, their longing. And their hairstyles. Why are there no more groups today who fly to Princeton? Why are there no more collectives, communes and tearooms? Is it really enough to lie around on Sunday afternoon with Alexandra and mark the vacation days in our shared calendar in blue? It is still our parents who wear the leather jackets.
Of course, everyone is always a successor. That’s nothing new, the feeling that you’ve arrived too late. But the question is whether one is able to make something of this feeling--or whether one simply watches the candle burn down. This has never been about the majority, which has always toiled so that the few could govern, paint and write. The many have forever given the few a light without catching fire themselves. It has always been an elite, a small esoteric group that has been responsible for progress. Those who think too much about equality at the outset lose the courage to act. They will soon only make sure that the towel rests on the warm (but not too warm!) radiator and that the bike chain is well-oiled.
Now the security guards enter the reading room from the back. They start to clean off the tables of those who haven’t been at their desks in the last thirty minutes. Carelessly the women shove everything left behind into yellow mailboxes—notes, books, photocopies. Once the desk is empty they spray it down with disinfectant from a silver can and polish it with a cloth until it’s shiny.
We work and relax, driven by the attendance clock. That is our situation. We have never really lived, only felt the pull in our chest when we hear how old someone was when they put their stamp on history, when they created this or that. Somehow everyone seems to only have been in their mid-twenties when they wrote their first novel, played their first leading role, made their first million.
For me, envy means first and foremost: counting the years. Calculating how much distance there is, how much runway remains. It means: wanting to be Rimbaud. Wanting to live without the longing for the past. To be a creator, theater director, starter of a discourse if necessary, but to be there, really be there and not just sort through business cards in an office. As an eternal spectator, the shadow boxer who never entered the ring, always just dreaming of the music that would accompany the crowd cheering him on.
The last warning, a security guard approaches me with heavy steps and pulls away my chair. “Get out.” The library as transitory space from which you are mercilessly evicted when the grace period is over. The cleaning crew approaches with their silver spray cans. This time the women are wearing masks over their mouths and have a vacuum cleaner, no, a pressure washer, in tow. Now it’s the books’ turn. Every day they are scrupulously cleaned until the last fleck of dust is obliterated. They shine like never before, these books, but they are no longer being read. The knowledge disappears along with the dust. The aura of touchability.
We lack the fire. The courage. We always come in second. We, who at night secretly write our own names into the books of our fathers, in the hope that the heritage will give us strength.
VI
LUXURIA
TWO MEN IN SUITS stroll past the entrance of a prewar building, their arms crossed behind their backs, like Greek philosophers. One keeps his shoulders straight, the other walks a little bent. They are wearing black masks and their foreheads are sweaty. They approach me, quietly. The neighbors aren’t on good terms, they say, and guide me past a dark staircase and across a backyard without cats to an old wooden door with a milk glass window. “Knock three times, please. Have fun.” A young woman opens the door, her gaze calculating, even as her mouth is smiling. Her pale skin reflects the flickering candle light and I think I see her shivering. But later, at the end, when she will lie next to me on the table and stroke the back of my head, the shivering will be over. Then there will be only calm and happiness.
A dark garden of sequin and velvet, ghost lights, an oasis of ecstasy and music. Effervescent drinks and fresh exotic fruit. A ruby red basement where you can gamble—for luck, for money or for the head of Laocoön. A midsummer night among strange friends and friendly strangers. A little “Eyes Wide Shut.” Just a little. The dream of a night in which everything is forgiven. In which you can lose the shame, can finally escape the old limpet that latched on in childhood days. Touching naked skin, shattering glasses, roaming labyrinths. Darkness and candles, a shadow from somewhere that becomes a friend, a lover for a brief time. And then moves on as if nothing had happened, as if this was all just a game and the bill would never come due. Though lips are sealed / Violins whisper / Care for me! I’ve had this dream for a long time. It snuck into my fantasy and followed me, expectantly and a little derisively, as if to say: you don’t dare! In the deciding moment you will close your eyes, will adjust your bow-tie and remember that you will have to get up early on Monday morning. You will look forward to a tax refund and the next physiotherapy appointment. And let the others give it a go.
I have always been better at dreaming of the big win than at actually placing the bet. More ambitious in drawing up maps and deciding on a direction, rather than putting the plan into action. The dream is my evasive maneuver, a never-fulfilling prophecy.
But tonight I want to change course, want to be rakish and odd. Let us dance, exchange looks and sit in the back room in the dark and kiss each other’s necks. Let’s do everything we want without fearing that anything will escape these walls.
Why always think of retreat when the lights go down? Would Fitzgerald have researched bus times as others were dancing the waltz? Come over, look into the mirror and stand up straight. Tomorrow you can return to being a harmless nobody.
Of all the things that are bad form, that counteract the senses and the longing, taking off the mask too early is the worst. A few ignoramuses do it only a few steps into the room, just to wipe their forehead or to scratch the corner of their eye. They fear the veil, the hidden glance.
But I, intent on living it all, intent on waking the sleeping song, hold tight to the desire for secrecy and keep the mask on. This is my night. Nothing will stop me. Not the mediocre EDM DJ, not the gay car salesman out on the hunt, not even the tired TV star who thinks he can pay for his drinks with his famous face.
A palm tree stands in the front corner, illuminated red, reminding me of the house in the south, the casa in a Spanish alley, where in the morning donkey carts clanged against the sidewalk and in the evening we drank wine on the rooftop terrace until the stars fell. In the interior courtyard there was a palm tree, the roots of which had crawled under the house, into the sewer and the well, had lifted the tiles and cracked the facade. One afternoon a Palmista arrived with three power saws and a sickle. He cut up the noble tree giant into ever smaller pieces until all that was left was a stump. We used it as a table, toasting civilization with a glass of Rioja. The house was forgotten, sold long ago, but the palm tree stuck with me, with its wild growth and great joy in its murderous embrace.