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He
also told her about Mr. Bubis's friends and Mr. Bubis's list of writers. And
each time Archimboldi finished a sentence he and Ingeborg laughed, as if he
were telling an irresistibly funny story. Then Archimboldi set to work in
earnest on his second book and in less than three months he had finished it.

Lüdicke
had yet to
come off the presses when Mr. Bubis received the manuscript of
The Endless
Rose,
which he read in two nights, after which, deeply shaken, he woke his
wife and told her they would have to publish this new book by Archimboldi.

"Is
it good?" asked the baroness, half asleep and not bothering to sit up.

"It's better
than good," said Bubis, pacing the room.

Then
he began to talk, still pacing, about
Europe
,
Greek mythology, and something vaguely like a police investigation, but the
baroness fell back asleep and didn't hear him.

During
the rest of the night, Bubis, who often suffered from fits of insomnia that he
knew how to turn to his advantage, tried to read other manuscripts, go over his
accounts, write letters to his distributors, all in vain. At the first light of
day he woke his wife again and made her promise that when he was no longer head
of the publishing house, his euphemism for his own death, she wouldn't abandon
Archimboldi.

"Abandon him
in what sense?" asked the baroness, still half asleep.

Bubis
didn't answer for a moment.

"We have to
protect him," he said.

After a few
seconds, he added:

"Protect him
to the extent possible as his publishers."

These
last words the Baroness Von Zumpe didn't hear because she had fallen asleep
again. For a while Bubis sat gazing at her face, which was like something out
of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Then he got up from the foot of the bed and went
into the kitchen in his bathrobe, where he made himself a cheese sandwich with
pickled onions, a recipe he'd been taught in
England
by an Austrian writer in
exile.

"There's
something so simple and restorative about a sandwich like this," the
Austrian had told him.

Simple,
doubtless. And tasty, with an unusual flavor. But not at all restorative,
thought Mr. Bubis, one needs an iron stomach to withstand a diet like this.
Then he went into the sitting room and opened the curtains to let in the gray
morning light. Restorative, restorative, restorative, thought Mr. Bubis as he
nibbled distractedly at his sandwich. We need something more restorative than a
cheese sandwich with pickled onions. But where to look, where to find it, and
what to do with it when we've found it? At that moment he heard the back door
open and he listened, with his eyes closed, for the soft step of the maid who
came each morning. He could've stood like that for hours. A statue. Instead he
left the sandwich on the table and went to his room, where he proceeded to
dress for another day of work.

Lüdicke
garnered two
positive notices and one negative notice and three hundred copies in total were
sold of the first edition.
The Endless Rose,
which came out five months
later, received one positive review and three negative reviews and sold two
hundred and five copies. No other editor would have ventured to publish a third
book by Archimboldi, but Bubis was ready to take on not only the third but also
the fourth, the fifth, and every book that came along. Archimboldi was in good
hands.

During this time, Archimboldi's finances improved slightly, but
only slightly. The
Cologne
Cultural
Center
paid him for two public readings in two different city bookshops, whose owners,
it must be said, knew Mr. Bubis personally. Neither reading aroused marked
interest. Only fifteen people, counting Ingeborg, came to the first, at which
the author read selections from his novel
Lüdicke,
and at the end only
three dared to buy the book. At the second reading, of selections from
The
Endless Rose,
there were nine, again counting Ingeborg, and at the end only
three people were left in the room, the small size of which went some way
toward softening the blow. Among them, of course, was Ingeborg, who hours later
confessed to Archimboldi that at a certain point she too had considered
leaving.

In collaboration with the recently established and somewhat
muddled cultural councils of Lower Saxony, the Cologne Cultural Center also
organized a series of lectures and readings that began with some pomp and
circumstance in Oldenburg and continued on to various towns and villages, each
smaller and more godforsaken than the previous one, places no writer had agreed
to visit before. The tour ended in the fishing hamlets of Frisia, where
Archimboldi unexpectedly found the largest crowds, and where very few people
left before an event was over.

Archimboldi's writing, the process of creation or the daily
routine in which this process peacefully unfolded, gathered strength and
something that for lack of a better word might be called confidence. This
"confidence" didn't signify the end of doubt, of course, much less
that the writer believed his work had some value, because Archimboldi had a
view of literature (though the word
view
is too grand) as something
divided into three compartments, each connected only tenuously to the others:
in the first were the books he read and reread and considered magnificent and
sometimes monstrous, like the fiction of Doblin, who was still one of his
favorite authors, or Kafka's complete works. In the second compartment were the
books of the epigones and authors he called the Horde, whom he essentially saw
as his enemies. In the third compartment were his own books and his plans for
future books, which he saw as a game and also a business, a game insofar as he
derived pleasure from writing, a pleasure similar to that of the detective on
the heels of the killer, and a business insofar as the publication of his books
helped to augment, however modestly, his doorman's pay.

The
job at the bar he didn't give up, of course, in part because he had grown used
to it and in part because the mechanics of it were perfectly adapted to the
mechanics of writing. When he finished his third novel,
The Leather Mask,
the
old man who rented him the typewriter and to whom Archimboldi had given a copy
of
The Endless Rose
offered to sell him the machine at a reasonable
price. The price probably
was
reasonable as far as the ex-writer was
concerned, especially if one took into account that he hardly ever rented the
machine anymore, but for Archimboldi it was still too much, though also a
temptation. So, after a few days of thinking about it and doing sums, he wrote
to Bubis, for the first time requesting an advance on a book he hadn't yet
started. Naturally, he explained in the letter what he needed the money for and
solemnly promised to deliver his next book in no more than six months.

Bubis's response was completely
unexpected. One morning a couple of deliverymen from the Olivetti branch in
Cologne
brought
Archimboldi a splendid new typewriter and all he had to do was sign some papers
acknowledging receipt. Two days later he received a letter from the publisher's
secretary in which he was informed that on the boss's instructions a purchase
order for a typewriter had been issued in his name. It's a gift from the
publishing house, said the secretary. For a few days Archimboldi was nearly
dizzy with joy. They
believe
in me, he repeated to himself aloud, as
people passed by in silence, or, like him, talking to themselves, a common
sight in
Cologne
that winter.

Ninety-six
copies of
The Leather Mask
were sold, which wasn't a lot, Bu-bis said to
himself with resignation as he went over his accounts, but the publisher's
support for Archimboldi never waned. On the contrary, around this time Bubis
had to travel to Frankfurt, and while he was there he made a day trip to Mainz
to visit the literary critic Lothar Junge, who lived in a little house on the
edge of the city, near a forest and a hill, a little house from which one could
hear birdsong, which struck Bubis as incredible, listen, you can even hear the
birds singing, he said to the Baroness Von Zumpe, with his eyes wide and a
smile from ear to ear, as if the last thing he would've expected to find in
that part of Mainz was a forest and a colony of songbirds and a two-story house
behind whitewashed walls, like something out of a fairy tale, a little house, a
little white-chocolate house with beams like slabs of dark chocolate,
surrounded by a little garden in which the flowers looked like paper cutouts
and a lawn trimmed with mathematical precision, and a little gravel path that
crunched underfoot, a noise that set one's nerves or nervelets on edge, all
laid out with a ruler, carpenter's square, and compass, as Bubis said under his
breath to the baroness just before he let the door knocker (which was in the
shape of a pig's head) fall against the heavy wooden door.

Lothar
Junge himself came to the door. Of course, they were expected and on the table
Mr. Bubis and the baroness found crackers with smoked ham, typical of the
region, and two bottles of spirits. The critic was at least six foot three and
he moved around the house as if he were afraid of hitting his head. He wasn't
fat, but he wasn't thin either, and he dressed in the fashion of the professors
of
Heidelberg
,
who never removed their ties except in situations of true intimacy. For a
while, as they did justice to the appetizers, they discussed the current German
literary scene, a territory through which Lothar Junge moved with the caution
of a defuser of unexploded bombs or mines. Then a young writer from
Mainz
arrived with his wife, followed by another literary
critic from the same paper in
Frankfurt
where
Junge's reviews were published. They ate rabbit stew. The wife of the writer
from
Mainz
opened her mouth only once during the meal, to ask the baroness where she'd
bought the dress she was wearing. In
Paris
,
answered the baroness, and that was the last time the writer's wife spoke. And
yet from then on her face was transformed into a discourse or memorandum on the
affronts suffered by the city of
Mainz
from its founding until the present day. The sum of her pouts or scowls, which
flitted at light speed between utter resentment and embryonic hatred of her
husband, who in her mind stood for all the unworthy people at the table, didn't
pass unnoticed by anyone, except Willy, the other literary critic, whose
specialty was philosophy and who therefore reviewed philosophy books and whose
hope was someday to publish a book of philosophy, three occupations, if they
could be called that, which made him especially insensitive to indications of
the state of mind (or soul) of a fellow diner.

The
meal finished, they returned to the sitting room for coffee or tea, and Bubis,
whose plans did not include spending any longer in that maddening toy house,
seized the moment to drag a willing Junge into the back garden, as carefully
tended as the front garden, but with the advantage of being bigger, and from
which one had an even closer view, if possible, of the surrounding forest. They
spoke, first of all, about the critic's writings, which he was dying to see
published by Bubis. The latter made vague mention of an idea he'd been toying
with for months, which was to create a new imprint, though he took care not to
mention what sort of imprint he had in mind. Then they went on to discuss the
new authors who were being published by Bubis and Bubis's colleagues in
Munich
and
Cologne
and
Frankfurt and
Berlin
, as well as the
publishing houses firmly established in
Zurich
or
Bern
and those resurfacing in
Vienna
. At last Bubis
asked in a deliberately casual tone what Junge thought, for example, of
Archimboldi. Lothar Junge, who walked as cautiously in the garden as he did
under his own roof, at first shrugged his shoulders.

"Have you read
him?" asked Bubis.

Junge
didn't answer. He considered his reply with his head bent, absorbed in
contemplation or admiration of the grass, which, as they approached the edge of
the woods, became more untidy, less scoured of fallen leaves or twigs or even,
as it seemed, of insects.

"If
you haven't read him, say so, and I'll send you copies of all his books,"
said Bubis.

"I've read
him," admitted Junge.

"And
what did you think?" asked the old editor, stopping by an oak whose very
presence seemed to announce in a threatening tone: here ends the realm of Junge
and here begins the republic of trees. Junge stopped, too, but a few steps
farther on, his head slightly ducked, as if he feared a branch might muss his
sparse hair.

"I don't know,
I don't know," he murmured.

Then,
incomprehensibly, he began to make faces that in some way linked him to the
wife of the writer from
Mainz
,
to such a degree that Bubis thought they must be brother and sister and only
thus could one fully understand the presence of the writer and his wife at the
meal. It was also possible, thought Bubis, that they were lovers, because it
was common knowledge that lovers often began to resemble each other, usually in
their smiles, their opinions, their points of view, in short, the superficial
trappings that all human beings are obliged to bear until their deaths, like
the rock of Sisyphus, yes Sisyphus, known as the craftiest of men, son of Aeolus
and Enarete, founder of the city of Ephyra, which is the old name for Corinth,
a city that the good Sisyphus turned into the staging ground of his happy
misdeeds, because with his characteristic nimbleness of body and intellectual
inclination to see every turn of fate as a chess problem or a detective story
to unravel, and his instinct for laughter and jokes and jests and cracks and
quips and gags and pranks and punch lines and spoofs and stories and gibes and
taunts and send-ups and satires, he turned to theft, in other words parting all
passersby from their belongings, even going so far as to steal from his
neighbor Autolycus, also a thief, perhaps with the remote hope that one who
steals from a thief is granted one hundred years of forgiveness, and at the
same time smitten by his neighbor's daughter, Anticlea, because Anticlea was
very beautiful, a treat, but the girl had an official suitor, she was promised
to Laertes, of subsequent fame, which didn't daunt Sisyphus, who could count on
the complicity of the girl's father, the thief Autolycus, whose admiration for
Sisyphus had sprung up like the regard of an objective and honorable artist for
another artist of superior gifts, so that even though it could be said that as
a man of honor he remained true to his promise to Laertes, he didn't look
unkindly upon the romantic attentions Sisyphus lavished on his daughter or
treat them as disrespect or mockery of his future son-in-law, and in the end
his daughter married Laertes, or so it's said, but only after surrendering to
Sisyphus one or two or five or seven times, possibly ten or fifteen times,
always with the collusion of Autolycus, who wanted his neighbor to plant the
seed of a grandchild as clever as Sisyphus, and on one of these occasions
Anticlea was left with child and nine months later, now the wife of Laertes,
her son would be born, the son of Sisyphus, called Odysseus or Ulysses, who in
fact turned out to be just as clever as his father, though Sisyphus never gave
him a thought and continued to live his life, a life of excesses and parties
and pleasure, during which he married Merope, the dimmest star in the Pleiades
precisely because she married a mortal, a miserable mortal, a miserable thief,
a miserable gangster in thrall to his excesses, blinded by his excesses, among
which not least was the seduction of Tyro, the daughter of Sisyphus's brother
Salmoneus, whom Sisyphus pursued not because he was interested in Tyro, not
because Tyro was particularly sexy, but because Sisyphus hated his own brother
and wanted to cause him pain, and for this deed, after his death, he was
condemned in hell to push a stone to the top of a hill only to watch it roll
down to the bottom and then push it back up to the top of the hill and watch it
roll again to the bottom, and so on eternally, a bitter punishment out of all
proportion to his crimes or sins, the vengeance of Zeus, it's said, because on
a certain occasion Zeus passed through Corinth with a nymph he had kidnapped,
and Sisyphus, who was smarter than a whip, seized his chance, and when Asopus,
the girl's father, came by in desperate search of his daughter, Sisyphus
offered to give him the name of his daughter's kidnapper, but only if Asopus
made a fountain spring up in the city of Corinth, which shows that Sisyphus wasn't
a bad citizen or perhaps he was thirsty, to which Asopus agreed and the
fountain of crystalline waters sprang up and Sisyphus betrayed Zeus, who, in a
blind rage, sent him ipso facto to Thanatos, or death, but Sisyphus was too
much for Thanatos, and in a masterstroke perfectly in keeping with his
craftiness and sense of humor he captured Thanatos and threw him in chains, a
feat within reach of very few, truly very few, and for a long time he kept
Thanatos in chains and during all that time not a single human being died on
the face of the earth, a golden age in which men, though still men, lived free
of the anxiety of death, in other words, free of the anxiety of time, because
now they had more than enough time, which is perhaps what distinguishes a democracy,
spare time, surplus time, time to read and time to think, until Zeus had to
intervene personally and Thanatos was freed and then Sisyphus died.