The Eternal Philistine (8 page)

Some of them had on Napoleon hats and loose, long coats, or short, tight coats, or loose, short coats, or tight, long coats. Several of them were wearing illustrious cock’s feathers that wafted almost all the way down to their shoulders. And yet others were wearing eagle’s feathers or mallard’s feathers, and others wore no feathers at all, at most some down. Most of them were field-gray or field-brown, but there were also some there in a steel blue and greenish color with lapels in red, ocher, silver, gold, and lilac. Many of them were wearing black shirts—these were the famous Blackshirts.

It was a colorful sight. All of them seemed to be freezing because Northern Tyrol’s autumn-like fog hung barely a hundred meters above their heads.

None of the travelers were allowed to leave the express train. Things were quite a bit more stringent here than between Bavaria and Austria at Mittenwald, and not just because the Italians belong to the Romish race, but rather because they have, to top it all off, a Mussolini—a man who
is in a constant furor about the fact that there are only forty million Italians in the world.

Twenty-nine of the thirty uniformed men were very busy with affairs related to crossing the border. The thirtieth man seemed to be the leader, which is to say he was not doing anything. He was standing on the platform, somewhat in the background beneath a colored photograph of the Duce, wearing very elegant shoes. He was perhaps four foot six. His eyes were scouring the express train, scanning the area for a blond woman, either a German or Scandinavian.

“Prego, your passaport!” said the Italian passport official. He spoke broken German, polite yet firm. “Where are you going, Signor Kobler?” he asked.

“To Barcelona,” said the Signor.

“So you’re going to Italy,” said the passport official.

“Yes,” said the Signor.

And now something mysterious happened. The passport official turned gravely toward his companion, a passport subofficer, and said in Italian, “He’s going to Italy.”

The passport subofficer gave a stately nod. “Well, well, going to Italy he is,” he drawled, imagining himself to be more important than Mussolini himself.

Meanwhile, the senior passport officer was already busy with the next traveler and asked him, “You’re going to Italy?”

“Yes, sir,” said the next Signor. His name was Albert Hausmann.

“And why are you going to Italy?” asked the senior passport officer.

“I want to convalesce in Italy,” said Signor Hausmann.

“You’re going to convalesce in Italy!” said the senior passport officer proudly.

“Hopefully,” said the guy in need of convalescence.

Hereupon the senior passport officer once again turned to his companion and said, “He’s going to convalesce in Italy!”

“Or maybe not!” said the passport officer laconically, and stared suspiciously at the guy in need of convalescence. The man reminded him of a certain Isidore Niederthaler in Brixen whose wife was listed on the Fascists’ blacklist as politically suspect. “That wife’s got a gorgeous ass,” thought the petty passport officer.

Meanwhile, the senior passport officer had already directed his attention to a third traveler. His name was Franz Karl Zeisig. “You’re going to Italy?” asked the senior passport officer.

“So stupid!” muttered Kobler. “Of course we’re all going to Italy!”

“Do not underestimate Benito Mussolini!” whispered the guy in need of convalescence. “The passport officers are actually pursuing a quite specific aim with this seemingly nonsensical questioning. They are all especially brilliant detectives from the political police in Rome. Have you ever heard of a cross-examination?”

Kobler did not get a chance to answer him because all of a sudden there were three Fascists standing in front of him. “Do you have any newspapers?” asked the first Fascist. “You are not permitted to bring Austrian, socialist, communist, anarchist, syndicalist, or nihilistic ones into Italy—it’s strictly forbidden!”

“I’m no nihilist!” said Kobler. “I’ve just got a magazine with me.”

And then a few Italian customs officers rummaged through his suitcase. “What’s this?” asked one of them, dangling a tie under his nose.

“That’s a tie,” said Kobler.

The customs officer nodded contentedly, gave him a friendly smile, and then disappeared with his colleagues.

Finally the difficulties of crossing the border were over and the express train resumed its journey southbound,
diretto
.

Down from Brennero and through the new Italy.

AND THEN SUDDENLY ALL THE SIGNS WERE IN Italian. Kobler was so fascinated by them that, like a child, he was hardly able to budge from the window, even though, or perhaps because, he had no idea what they meant.

“Albergo Luigi, Uscita, Tabacco, Olio sasso, Donne, Uo-mine,” he read. “That’s all got a ring to it,” he thought. “It’s a shame that my name’s not Koblero!”

They made a brief stop in the former Franzensfeste. “Excuse me, but where are we right now?” asked a nervous German traveling to Italy. He could not see over Kobler’s shoulder.

“In Latrina,” responded Kobler.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t make such awful jokes,” yelled the nervous guy.

Kobler was rather puzzled. After all, the sign was hanging right in front of him:

“Don’t you holler at me!” he hollered at the nervous guy.

“Apologies, sir,” squealed the nervous guy, fidgeting terribly. “But I’m by no means in the mood for such games!”

“And now has come the solemn moment where I smack you,” thought Kobler.

But just then, Albert Hausmann, the guy in need of convalescence, butted into the argument in an exceedingly polite manner, hoping to nip the disagreement in the bud because he was very anxious. “A mistake, my dear sirs!” he said. “
Latrina
basically means lavatory. You’re talking at cross purposes, my dear sirs!”

The guy in need of convalescence spoke perfect Italian and was an altogether very intelligent and erudite man who was especially well versed in world history. “This all used to be South Tyrol,” he said.

And then he advised Kobler to just watch out for the fascist informers, who were, you see, exceedingly cunning and brutal. “Over there, by the third window, for instance,” he whispered mysteriously, and pointed furtively at a man who looked like a farmer. “You see that guy—he’s definitely an informer. He just tried to lure me into an incriminating conversation—he’ll do it to you too! He’s looking to lure anybody in. And as soon as you make a derogatory comment about Mussolini, Nobile, or the system in general, they’ll arrest you and drag you right off the train. Take heed!”

Kobler took heed.

The informer approached him right before Bolzano.

“Bolzano used to be called Bozen,” said the informer.

“Aha!” thought Kobler.

“The Italians are now building an enormous electricity plant in Bozen,” said the informer.

“Go on!” thought Kobler.

“The Italians,” continued the informer, “routed loads
of water to Bozen from really far away. They drilled a shaft through that entire mountain range out there—that is, they began drilling beneath that peak up there, and they also began drilling in Bozen and they wanted to drill things together, but three times they drilled right past each other instead. In the end, they had to hire German engineers,” grinned the informer.

“The Germans didn’t drill things together either,” said Kobler.

“Sure they did, and spot-on!” said the informer excitedly.

“Coincidence,” said Kobler.

Pause.

“Are you familiar with Bozen?” asked the informer.

“No,” said Kobler.

“Then go ahead and take a look at it!” yelled the informer. “The people of Bozen are delighted about their German guests!”

“I’m a German Fascist,” said Kobler.

The informer stared at him, horrified. “And now over there you have the Rosengarten,” he said meekly.

“Perhaps!” said Kobler, and walked off.

The informer stared at him for a while. He was no informer after all.

KOBLER STEPPED INTO THE DINING CAR, PLEASED to have put one over on Mussolini’s supposed informant. “Now I’ve earned my coffee,” he said to himself. He was so
happy: it was like winning a lawsuit that he should by all rights have lost.

There was only one spot left in the dining car.

“Prego?” asked Kobler, this being the extent of his Italian.

“But of course,” answered the passenger in German. He was a cultivated gentleman from Weimar, home of Goethe and the constitution.

Despite the fact that the train was in the sovereign territory of Italy, it was altogether apparent that everybody was speaking German, save for the conductors and a few Blackshirts. And you could hear all sorts of German dialects in the dining car in particular.

The cultivated gentleman seated at Kobler’s table had a squishy appearance and seemed to be extraordinarily hoggish. A gourmand. As the son of a former municipal architect from Pforzheim who during the Wilhelminian era had married the filthy rich daughter of a patrician, he could afford to eat his three salmon canapés, four sardines in oil, two frankfurter sausages, and three eggs in a glass without any concern. From his father, the municipal architect, he had inherited the delusion of possessing a keen eye for the architectural design of lines. From his mother, he had inherited—despite inflation—a bunch of money and the collected classical works. He was forty-six years old.

“I am a Renaissance man,” he explained to Kobler. He used very literary speech. “My ideal is the southern Italian who suns himself day and night on the beach, never doing anything, and is exceedingly undemanding. Believe me, our German workers would be happier too if they were just less demanding. Waiter! Bring me another steak tartare!”

Naturally this Renaissance man had never worked a day in his life, and thus suffered from an almost pathological
form of hypochondria. He had nothing to do but worry about dying. And to top it all off, he was recklessly stupid.

He would often claim that as long as his dividends accrued, he could not care less about the fate of the German Reich. “You can’t say a thing like that!” exclaimed his cousin, an extreme right-wing political realist. He wanted to have him put under guardianship, but that eventually fell through. “He is quite normal and can reason soundly,” said the court doctor.

“So you’re heading to Barcelona,” this absolutely normal guy said to Kobler, and then added a sample of his sound reasoning: “Primo is a capable man, a cavalier. When you get to Barcelona, please give my regards to the bullfights. You’re going to experience something splendidly traditional there. And then this whole Spanish conservative spirit—it’s always the same there! As I’ve always said, the conservative element has got to join forces internationally in order to conserve itself more efficiently. We German conservatives have got to bring the French conservatives into the country so that they can whip this republic into shape—France has got the military might to put every German worker up against the wall—and
après
we should import coolies from China who wouldn’t need more than a handful of rice a day.” And then he added laughingly, “Of course I’m only joking!”

IN VERONA, KOBLER HAD TO TRANSFER TRAINS for a second time and board the express headed for Milan, which usually arrived from Venice around this time. But he
sadly only had ten minutes at his disposal to do this, which basically meant that he could not see anything of Verona, just the train station, which, sadly, looked a lot like other train stations. By then it was already nightfall, this being a new-moon night.

Verona was an ancient city that somehow had something to do with Dietrich von Bern, the Renaissance man explained to him. And on top of that, Romeo and Juliet, the world’s most famous lovers, were supposedly buried here. Sure, Verona’s brothels weren’t famous, but, well, all the same.

On the platform, there was a gentleman in a brown uniform walking up and down. He was wearing an armband on his right upper arm. On it was written in four languages that he was an official interpreter and therefore not permitted to accept any tips. He was most accommodating and provided Kobler with information in fluent German.

“The
diretto
from Venezia to Milano arrives,” he said, “on track three and departs from track three. It is over there, right where that ridiculous woman is standing.”

The ridiculous woman was the interpreter’s wife. He had just had another fight with her. You see, she had never wanted him to become an official interpreter, hanging around night after night with all sorts of foreign ladies. But the interpreter would merely say, “The more languages somebody speaks, by so much the more is that somebody a person.”

He said the same thing to her again this evening, whereupon she really went wild. “I don’t want anything to do with so many people!” she said, out in the street. “I just want you! Oh Giovanni, if only you were deaf and dumb! Well, then, I’m going to my brother’s in Brescia!”

This was the same Brescia where Frau Perzl of Schellingstrasse once inherited a third of a windmill.

“When possible, you should ride at least second class in Italy,” Kobler recalled Perzl’s advice. “You’ve got to do it, especially if you want to sleep, because the travelers in Italy—especially the ones in third class—often sing out loudly, as though there’s nobody there trying to sleep.”

And Kobler did want to sleep; suddenly he felt very tired. “It’s either the change in the air,” he thought, “or probably all these new impressions.”

All the people he had come into contact with in the last twelve hours now appeared before his mind’s eye, only this time everybody made just one gesture. And yet the apparitions still did not want to come to an end. As the figure of Herr Bschorr tried to come around again for a second time, Kobler tripped over a lost hammer.

And then several mountains, viaducts, and foreign villages started circling around him. The Inn Valley stopped in front of him. The Italian language also looked at him, but somewhat condescendingly.