He gives a seminar on eternity. Ulrike is there, taking notes and hardly looking at him. What if she got pregnant? Says there’s no chance but anything’s possible. Good that he and Gretel never had children. No way to perceive the little mites except in relation to one’s own generation whom they can only despise. The student protests are a manifestation of social infantilisation. Relate this to the growing tendency to remain childless.
“Are you saying that immanent and to-be-completed eternity are distinct?” a student asks him. Adorno says nothing, he’s lost his train of thought. Everything is a void and the students look at each other, even Ulrike stops writing.
One of them turns to his companion. “I think he’s saying there is no eternity. It only feels that way.”
When he goes to Ulrike’s apartment building later that day and presses the entry buzzer he gets no reply. And yet they had an arrangement, she told him to come at exactly this time. She must have gone out briefly, he waits. Eventually a dark-skinned foreign woman comes and lets herself in, he follows her and takes the lift to the third floor, tries Ulrike’s door but of course it’s locked. Keeps waiting until at last, furious, he goes home. So this is how she tells him it’s over.
The man comes to see him about that wretched book. The appointment is in his diary but Adorno is in the middle of writing about dialectic in the Eroica when the secretary knocks and reminds him, then shows the fellow in.
“Laurent Oeillet.” He extends a hand, though the first thing Adorno notices apart from his French accent is the eye-patch; a war-wound, perhaps, he’s old enough to have been in the Resistance or Wehrmacht.
“You wanted to talk to me about this.” Adorno opens his drawer, rifles beneath some student essays that have been deposited there in the last few days, and brings out the thin yellow book which he drops on his desk. Oeillet’s single eye is momentarily transfixed by it, then sends its sparkle once more at Adorno who invites him to sit down.
“What story did Madame Carreau tell you?” Oeillet asks. “You know she thinks she can hear messages from aliens on her radio?”
“She struck me as having a lively imagination.”
“A polite way to put it.”
“She herself said the story was fiction. Now are you going to give me a different version?”
The secretary knocks again and asks if the gentlemen wish coffee. University life these days, thinks Adorno, is so much less pleasant than it used to be, so much less conducive to thought. More like being in a cafeteria.
“I was a friend of the late Monsieur Carreau. He was a fine man. His business interests brought him to Germany not long after the war ended; he ran a small plant producing thermionic valves, later he got into electronics. His wife, his very lovely wife, unfortunately developed mental problems. She spent time in an institution.”
“What about the lover she lost, Klauer?”
“Madame Carreau is what one might charitably call a romantic.”
“She says this book belonged to my friend Walter Benjamin.”
“And you believe her?”
“Carreau got it from him in Spain in 1940.”
Oeillet laughs. “Louis came across it not long before he died.”
It is an interesting problem: two stories, wholly contradictory, either of which could be true. Oeillet leans forward in his chair, about to continue, but the coffee arrives. When the secretary departs with her tray and closes the door behind her Oeillet says, “I should like to buy the book.”
The proposal is more distasteful than the coffee; Adorno nearly spits what’s in his mouth, but swallows. “You’ve come for that?”
“I’m a collector and Louis intended me to have it.”
“His wife evidently doesn’t. And whatever her mental condition, she happens to be the one still living.”
Oeillet is barely able to conceal his displeasure. “Natural courtesy would be to give it freely to its rightful possessor; instead I show you the favour of making a fair offer.”
Adorno, too, is displeased. “The courtesy was mine, in receiving you here. It is you who have made of this meeting a financial transaction, and in relations such as those, courtesy plays no part.”
“Fifty marks,” Oeillet says abruptly. “More than it’s worth.”
“And less than I have imminent need of.”
“One hundred.”
“I shall not sell it.”
“You don’t believe me? You find Yvette’s ravings more convincing than the plain facts I’ve told you?”
Adorno shakes his head. “I believe what you say. Her story is false. But she gave the book to me, and unless you tell me what it is and why it is important, I will not part with it so easily.” He opens the drawer, puts the book back inside, and waits for Oeillet to leave. But the seated visitor has no intention of departing.
“It is mine, sir, and I shall have it. My dear friend wished it, yet you go against the most fundamental decency of human conduct, respect for the dead. You are an atheist, I suppose. You have no notion of the immortality of the soul…”
“Do not presume to lecture me about the categorical imperative. Excuse me but I have work to do.” Adorno turns to arrange papers on his desk; the Frenchman refuses to take the hint.
“You will give it to me or there will be consequences.”
This is the most incredible effrontery. “Consequences?”
“One hundred marks for your troubles, professor, I can give you cash straight away. Otherwise…” Oeillet shrugs with the casual brutality of a police interrogator.
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Women.” The word falls stillborn from Oeillet’s lips, vile and slimy.
“You think you can blackmail me?”
“I have names, evidence. Photographs.”
Adorno can feel the room spinning; this is simply unreal. “You’ve been following me? Spying on me? Who the hell are you? Who are you working for?”
Oeillet has found beneath his own fingernail something more noteworthy than Adorno’s pale face. He picks at the irritation, then looks up. “Just give me the damned book, that’s all. Give me it or I’ll tell your wife.”
“You pathetic bastard, she knows already. I’m not afraid of you.”
“She knows everything about you? And the faculty, do they know? Your students? The press? Would you ruin yourself on account of a few pages that mean nothing to you?”
All is apparent: the widow’s story holds a greater truth. Walter Benjamin was once in exactly the position that is now Adorno’s own, confronted by a demon persecutor. Is Adorno to be a martyr too? And for what will posterity praise and honour him? No Gestapo, no epic journey of escape. Only torrid afternoons at an apartment in an inferior part of town. You’ve lost the game, he says to himself, a game that is not worth playing. He opens the drawer, brings out the book and hands it to Oeillet who quickly glances with satisfaction at it, flicks through the pages, puts it inside his briefcase then reaches into his pocket and begins to draw out his wallet.
“Get out,” Adorno says heavily, barely able to breathe.
“I owe you one hundred marks.”
“I said get out of here.”
“I’m a man of my word.” Oeillet tosses the notes onto his lap. Adorno, broken, grasps and crumples them like a handkerchief.
“Who are you?” Adorno eventually asks.
“I told you, I’m a collector.”
“No more of that shit. Your name, your story, even that stupid eye-patch, none of them real, surely?”