New Lives (79 page)

“The original on the bookshelf is nothing more than printed paper,” Rudolf Böhme stated. “The moment you open it and start reading, things get complicated.”

“Maybe you could give them a hint of what it is you're translating,” Bernadette's mother said, after having lit yet another cigarette.

“And there's the problem right off,” Rudolf Böhme declared. “The
Bacchae
by Euripides, the
Bacchantes, The Possessed,
or
The Frenzied
—or what should I call them? Do you understand?”

“No,” Martin said.

“If I say the
Bacchantes,
then I see Jordaens's painting before me, and Bacchus reminds me of Caravaggio, of a Bacchus not feeling so well—and what does that have to do with Dionysus?”

“Then choose a different word,” Martin said.

“Which one?”

“Whatever's in the dictionary.”

“Whatever's in the dictionary?” Rudolf Böhme asked, closing his eyes. “In the dictionary you'll find: ‘bacchic: frenzied, roisterous, bewitched, possessed,' something like that.”

“And what fits?”

“Yes, which of them fits?” Rudolf Böhme looked at his plate. “We had a joke in school,” he began. “The ancient Greeks didn't know the most important thing of all: that they are the ‘ancient Greeks.' Do you understand? Time, which turned the Greeks into the ‘ancient Greeks,' keeps bringing to light new meanings the Greeks themselves, of course, knew nothing about, could never have known about, although the words came from them. I see in them something different than you do, and Mama sees something else entirely. And our friend Titus here, he would find some other facet to be of significance. Each person has his own experiences, and so he reads the same sentences very differently.”

“Is that true, Titus?” Martin asked.

“Yes, that's true,” Titus said in a serious voice.

“Yes, that's true,” Martin aped him.

“A text is not a dead thing,” Rudolf Böhme continued, “but rather it answers my questions in its own special way, or refuses to answer. There's a voice in there, an encounter, a conversation…”

“Wow!” Martin exclaimed. “The witching hour for the bewitched.”

Bernadette's mother shook her head and angrily exhaled a puff of smoke.

“He's right, Sophie,” Rudolf Böhme remarked before Bernadette's mother could say anything. “Reading is always the witching hour.”

“And so what's this bewitched play about?” Titus asked.

“That would just spoil our evening,” Bernadette's mother said.

“In any case it was Goethe's favorite tragedy, but it's cruel, it's gray

         

[Letter of May 25, 1990]

“And now I've lost my train of thought. Well fine,” he said, and placed his forefingers at the edge of the table, flexing them outward like horns. “Dionysus takes on human form—it's important that he's welcomed in human form—and arrives in Thebes in order to bring his cult to the city of his mother, Semele. All Asia worships him by now, only Greece still knows nothing about him. Semele, one of Zeus's lovers, had given in to Hera's whispered suggestion and demanded that Zeus show himself in all his divinity. Zeus appeared as a bolt of lightning that struck and killed Semele. But her sisters, Dionysus's aunts, claim this story was merely invented by Cadmus, Semele's father and the founder of Thebes, in order to preserve the honor of his daughter, and thus of the royal house as well. In truth Zeus struck Semele down because she had bragged that she was pregnant by him. Dionysus doesn't like any of this gossip. That is why, so Dionysus says, he has turned the women of Thebes into frenzied Maenads and driven them off to a nearby heavily wooded mountain, Cithaeron. Dionysus demands the Thebans believe in him…”

“Which, as a god, he's allowed to do,” Joachim inserted.

“If he were to reveal himself as a god, yes,” Rudolf Böhme rejoined. “Pentheus is the ruler of Thebes and a cousin of Dionysus, since his mother Agave is one of Semele's sisters. Cadmus is thus the grandfather of both Pentheus and Dionysus. Pentheus is a god-, or perhaps better”—here he gave Joachim a nod—“gods-fearing man. It is only to Dionysus that he fails to offer sacrifices and prayers. Although to be fair, one should add that Pentheus knows nothing whatever about him.”

Bernadette had stood up and, while Rudolf Böhme described the first commentary of the chorus, began to clear the table. Titus stacked the plate of the girl next to him on his own and pushed his chair back.

“No,” Bernadette whispered, laying a hand on his shoulder. She picked up the plates and vanished into the kitchen, from where, just as in the theater, a wedge of bright light first struck the table and then went out again. Rudolf Böhme told about the scene where two old men—the blind seer, Teiresias, and Cadmus, the founder of the city, declare their intention to visit the mountains to worship Dionysus. He compared them to two retirees on their way to a disco.

Titus concentrated on his right shoulder, on the spot where Bernadette's hand had touched it. He would rather have helped Bernadette tidy up than have to listen to Rudolf Böhme. Titus could well understand why Pentheus would make fun of Teiresias and Cadmus.

He didn't start paying attention again until her mother declared, “Dionysus afflicts women with
mania,
and Pentheus wants to lock them up behind bolted doors. We should keep that in mind.”

“We should keep that in mind,” Rudolf Böhme agreed, and remarked on the fine differentiation that Teiresias makes between
kratos,
external force, and
dynamis,
energy and power as an inherent quality.

As he spoke Rudolf Böhme stared at the table. When he did raise his head, his eyes were closed. It was only from close up like this that you could see all the wrinkles that started at the corners of his eyes and spread down like a delicate mesh over his cheeks.

Just as when his mother used to tell him stories, Titus could see it all before him now too. The castle of Pentheus looked like Holy Cross School, Pentheus was a kind of principal or teacher, and Dionysus, or so Rudolf Böhme had claimed, was a hippie, a lady's man, an artist.

“The cult of Dionysus,” Rudolf Böhme said, “isn't something that you can simply be told about, you have to become part of it, join in its rituals and abide by its rules—as with any religious faith.”

Titus saw Dionysus being locked in the cellar coal bin, there is an earthquake, and the school building collapses. But Dionysus walks out into the courtyard unscathed and boasts of how he has driven Pentheus mad. In the same moment Pentheus comes running up—was it Petersen? Was it the principal? Everything has turned out just as Dionysus predicted. But Petersen doesn't want to hear any of it. He orders the school gate closed and bolted, as if he hadn't already learned how useless such commands are. Joachim points that out to him, but Petersen has had enough of this schoolboy who always wants to have the last word.
“Sophos, sophos sy!”
he shouts. “Wise, wise you are, only never where you should be wise!”

“He's hard of hearing, as my grandpa would put it,” Joachim said.

“We can understand Pentheus, and yet we don't understand him either,” Rudolf Böhme continued. “Everything he has learned in life so far, all his previous experiences, contradict what he is now going through. We shouldn't expect that, just like that, he can put aside the spectacles through which he has seen the world all his life. On the other hand, it's amazing how blind he is to the changed situation.”

In that instant the wedge of light fell on the table again. Bernadette entered with two small bowls and set them on the table. Titus got up and went to the kitchen, following the fragrance of apples and vanilla, picked up two more bowls, and carried them out. Bernadette smiled, her lips moved as if she were about to say something. They passed close by each other twice more. When they were seated at the table again, Bernadette looked at him. Looks are all we need to read someone's mind, Titus thought, and waited for Bernadette to pick up her spoon and start eating—baked apples with vanilla sauce.

“This is marvelous,” Rudolf Böhme said, pursing his lips and waving his spoon in the air as if trying to crack an egg. Titus didn't join in the general praise, that seemed silly somehow. Bernadette was silent as well. But it was a cheerful silence that cast even tragedy in its bright light.

“Where's Stefan?” Rudolf Böhme asked as he scraped at what was left in his bowl. Martin evidently hadn't heard the question. He was very intent on his dessert, Titus noted. He had to smile and wanted to let Bernadette see his smile, but at the same moment she remarked, “I'll go check,” and looked right past Titus, who was now at a loss where to direct his smile. He shoveled it away, shoveled it full of pieces of apple as if filling a grave with dirt and didn't look up as Bernadette left.

“Her friend is being inducted the day after tomorrow,” Rudolf Böhme whispered. “A little like the end of the world for both of them.”

When Titus felt Bernadette's mother's hand on his shoulder, he could have broken into sobs. Without turning his head, he gave her the empty bowl, but his voice failed him for even a simple “thank you.”

“Would anyone like a cup of
tea
?” Bernadette's mother asked, setting the pewter bowl of rock sugar directly in front of Titus.

“Let me quickly bring this to an end,” Rudolf Böhme declared, “or are there seconds?”

He told about a shepherd who had been spying on the women in the mountains. But what he has to report—scenes of perfect harmony between man and nature—is not to Pentheus' liking…

Titus could see Stefan in his mind's eye, with his buzzed haircut and a steel helmet on his head. Titus tried to recall the loyalty oath Joachim had written out for him weeks before. He let this Stefan recite the oath, while Bernadette was forced to listen. I swear, Stefan said, faithfully and at all times to serve my fatherland, the German Democratic Republic, and when so ordered by a government of workers and peasants, to protect it against every enemy. I swear I will be prepared at any time to defend Socialism against all enemies and to lay down my life for its victorious cause. Should I ever…may I be subjected to the strict punishment of the law…and the contempt of all working people.

“The women hurl themselves at the animals, ripping sheep and cows to pieces with their bare hands, tearing them limb from limb as blood spurts and hunks of flesh dangle among the branches, as bones and hooves fly through the air…”

Titus enjoyed listening to this part. He didn't wince. Rudolf Böhme didn't have to show him any special consideration.

Joachim said that it had been violence that evoked the women's violence.

“Yes, of course, Pentheus hears only what he wants to hear. Besides—and he offers this as his reason—there is nothing worse than defeat at the hands of women, a disgrace to which Greece cannot be subjected. Suddenly it's no longer about Thebes but about Greece. One must admit that Nietzsche—and those who agree with him—is right in saying that Pentheus does not cut a very good figure here. On the other hand, his reaction is perfectly normal for a ruler. In any case, Dionysus, offended by such stubbornness, warns him yet again not to take up arms against a god.”

“Dionysus shows patience,” Joachim said.

Titus was disappointed the carnage was over already. Because that's what war was like, horrible, cruel beyond words, and this Stefan would be in the thick of it—he had sworn an oath that he would. And instead of listening to Rudolf Böhme, who was now talking about the tragedy's
peripeteia,
he watched as Bernadette, disgusted by such mealy-mouthed cowardice and blind submission, turned away from her uniformed boyfriend at last.

“Pentheus translates everything he hears into his own language. And because he believes he never receives the right answer to his questions—never realizing he is asking the wrong questions—he will perish. Or to put it succinctly: because he is not willing or able to question himself, he will meet a gruesome end,” Rudolf Böhme said. And Titus would have loved to shout: Because he's a coward! Because he doesn't understand what he's doing! Because he doesn't deserve Bernadette!

“Horny old goat,” Martin exclaimed.

“Yes, Pentheus is a voyeur,” Rudolf Böhme said. “But now we also understand why when others speak of consecration and worship, he sees nothing but lewdness and prurience. Believing he knows himself very well, he also believes he knows what other people are like. And his playing the old goat, as you put it, is really the first and only time he escapes his own obstinacy. Suddenly he reveals qualities he has always fought against and repressed, both within himself and in the state. The horrible thing is that this is precisely what destroys him.”

Even as Rudolf Böhme told about how Pentheus disguises himself in women's clothes and slinks off to Cithaeron, afflicted now by Dionysus with
lyssa,
madness, which lacks any of the ambiguity that defines
mania,
Titus realized he had to act, that only in action could he save Bernadette and himself.

“‘Were Pentheus possessed by reason, he would not don the garb of women,' Dionysus says,” Rudolf Böhme continued. “And the question is whether in saying this Dionysus hasn't become absurd himself. For from now on every step is a step toward annihilation. Dionysus isn't content to slay his adversary, Pentheus must die at the hand of his own mother.”

Titus felt hot, his head was burning. He tried to force himself to listen and not think of everything all at one time. But he couldn't manage it. There were too many worlds, too many dreams, too many lives. He had to make a decision.

Rudolf Böhme spoke as if he had watched with his own eyes as Dionysus bends a pine tree down and sets Pentheus in the crown, then carefully lets the trunk swing back upright. The women see him before he sees them and grab hold of the pine tree and uproot it. Pentheus rips off his women's clothes, pleads with his mother—it is I, your Pentheus, the son whom you bore, have mercy, Mother, do not slay me because of my wrongdoing, for I am your child! His mother, Agave, however, grabs him by his right hand, braces her feet against his body, and rips his shoulder out…After the butchery, Pentheus's head ends up in his mother's hands. She fixes it on her thyrsus in place of a pinecone and bears it in triumph into the city. Agave boasts that she was the first to strike this wild beast and to have slain it, and demands that the chorus share in the meal. The chorus refuses in revulsion. Agave pets the calf she believes she has in her hands, scratches the fuzz on its chin. Her son Pentheus, she brags, will praise her for this hunt, for this prey. “And whoever sheds no tears at this,” Rudolf Böhme said, “has no tears left to shed.”