The Hothouse (23 page)

A few steps farther, and Keetenheuve ran into a painter. The painter had driven to the Rhine in his caravan. He was sitting in the beam of its headlights at the edge of the river, he was looking pensively into the sunset, and he was painting a German mountain scene with an Alpine hut, a peasant woman, dangerous-looking cliffs, plenty of edelweiss and looming clouds, a nature that Heidegger might have invented, and Ernst Jünger might have bestrode, and people were clustered around the painter, admiring the master, and asking what he would charge for the piece.

Keetenheuve climbed a fortification, the old customs house, he saw ancient, weathered cannon that might have loosed off the odd shot in the direction of Paris as a friendly greeting from monarch to monarch, he saw frail, phthitic, waving poplars that hadn't taken properly, and behind him on a worthy plinth, he saw Ernst Moritz Arndt
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in garrulous lecturer's mode. Two little girls were clambering about on Ernst Moritz Arndt’s feet. They were wearing coarse, outsize cotton pants. Keetenheuve thought: I'd like to give you some better clothes. But in front of him now was the river, rising majestically out of the scene. From the narrow of its central course it broadened into the plains of the Lower Rhine, lent itself to trade, to mobility, to profit. The Siebengebirge sank into night. The Chancellor and his roses sank into the shadows of night. To the left were the arches of the bridge to Beuel. Lamps on the bridge shone like torches against the gloaming. The three carriages of a tram seemed to have stopped on the central span of the bridge. The tram looked completely decontextualized, for a moment it was a hyperrealistic image of a means of transport, a spectral abstract. It was a death tram, and it was impossible to imagine it actually going anywhere. One couldn't even think it would go to destruction. The tram on the bridge was frozen or petrified, a fossil or a work of art, a tram per se, without past and without future. A palm was bored on the riverside gardens. There was no reason to suppose it was a palm from Guatemala; but Keetenheuve thought of the palms in the Guatemalan plaza. A hedge like a cemetery hedge surrounded the palm in Bonn. There were scouts on the shore. They were talking some foreign language. They leaned over the railing and looked down into the river. They were boys. They were wearing shorts. In their midst there was a girl. The girl was in very tight black trousers that showed the shapes of her thighs and calves. The boys had their arms laid on the girl's shoulders. In the union of the scouts there was love. It clutched at Keetenheuves heart. The scouts existed. Love existed. The scouts and love both existed on that evening. They existed in this air. They existed on the shore of the Rhine. But they were completely unreal! Everything here was as unreal as flowers in a hothouse. Even the hot tired wind felt unreal.

Keetenheuve turned into the town. He got to the part of town that had been destroyed. From a field of rubble, from stumps of masonry, from a cellar landscape, there arose, intact, a yellow air-raid sign marked
Rhein.
The inhabitants of the town had once fled down to the river, to save their lives. A large black car was parked among the ruins. A car with foreign plates was prowling along a rubble road. The word
School
appeared on a warning sign. The foreign automobile braked on a crater field. From out of the furrows, shapes crept toward it. Keetenheuve glimpsed the shop windows again, the window dummies, the swanky bedrooms, the swanky coffins, the various pieces of sexual and contraceptive gadgetry; he saw all the modern conveniences that the business people were laying before the people in peacetime.

He went back to the less fancy wine bar. The corner tables all had regulars at them. The corner tables were discussing the vote in the Bundestag. The corner tables were grumpy and they were displeased at the vote. But their displeasure and their grumpiness were sterile; they were displeasure and grumpiness in a vacuum. The corner tables took exception. Any other outcome of the parliamentary session would have provoked them to equal displeasure and grumpiness. They referred to the Bundestag with a préexistent irritation; they referred to the most recent debate as to an event that was irritating and presumptuous, but that didn't concern them or make them feel anything. What made these people feel anything? Were they longing for a taste of the whip to make them shout "Hurrah"?

Keetenheuve had no truck with glasses
Keetenheuve big drinker
, he ordered a bottle, a sexy, paunchy container of the good wine of the Ahr. Purple, mild, smooth the wine flowed out of the bottle into the glass, and from the glass down his throat. The Ahr was near. Keetenheuve had heard that its valley was beautiful; but Keetenheuve had worked, he had spoken and written, he had not visited the river and its valley and vineyards. He should have gone there. Why had he not gone walking with Elke beside the Ahr? They would have stayed the night somewhere. They would have left their windows open. It was a warm night. They would have listened to the murmuring waters. Or were they palms, clashing their blades, rustling drily? He sat alone
Ambassador Excellency Keetenheuve
, he sat on the veranda in Guatemala. Was he dying? He drank his wine quickly. E. E. Cummings' "handsome man" drank greedily; U.S. poet Cummings' "blueeyed boy" drank greedily in great gulps; Mr. Deaths "blueeyed boy"
member of parliament
drank greedily in great gulps the red Burgundy from the German river Ahr. Who kept him company from his schooldays on, spread his wings protectively over him, showed his curved beak, his raptor's claws? The German Aar.
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He groomed himself, he fluffed himself up according to the markings of the old fighting birds. Keetenheuve loved every creature, but he didn't care for heraldic beasts. Was an emblem of nobility looming? Was some humiliation at hand? Keetenheuve needed no emblem of nobility. He didn't want to humiliate anyone. He was carrying Elke’s picture in his breast pocket
on the left where the heart is.
As a boy he had read
Man is good. And now the grisly damp dark depths of the grave.
Bei mir
biste scheen.
Schön schön schön.
The wireless loudspeaker over the corner table was whispering. "People in the Tirol give each other roses."
Roses in popular song
,
roses on the Rhine
,
blooming hothouse roses
,
rich wise rose growers going about with their clippers and cutting back the young growths
,
hedge cutters on gravel paths
,
wicked old rose magicians
,
assiduous wizards toiling sweating working miracles in the Rhenish hothouse heated by coal from the Ruhr.
Bei mir
biste scheen
, bei mir
biste cheil.
Geil geil geil.
Too much randy politics
,
too many randy generals
,
too much randy understanding
,
too many randy meals
,
too many stuffed shop windows in the world.
Bei mir
biste die Scheenste
auf der
Welt.
Yes, the best-looking shop front. "Don't leave the optics of the thing out of account." "They need to view it with the correct set of optics." "Yes, Ministerial Councillor, the optics are everything!
Most beautiful beauty queen. Bikini. Atom test atoll. Beautiful boozer.
Elke
lost child of the ruins.
Kaputt.
Lost child of the War/ National Socialism/ Gauleiter parents.
Kaputt.
The most beautiful of the tribades "be-o by-o be-o boo would-ja ba-ba-botch-a-me."
The corner table speaker sings: "Because Texas is my home."
Busses vitamin-enhanced lard.
The corner table businessmen nod. They are lads. They feel at home in Texas. Tom Mix and Hans Albers, heroes of businessmen's boyhood fantasies, ride across the corner table on bareback ashtrays.
Holder for an association flag. Flaps. Waves. Everything goes crazy.
Keetenheuve drank. Why did he drink? He drank because he was waiting. Who was he waiting for in the capital city? Did he have any friends in the capital city? What were the names of his friends in the capital city? Their names were Lena and Gerda. Who were they? They were Salvation Army girls.

There they were, Gerda, the strict one, with the guitar, Lena the trainee engineer, carrying the
War Cry
; and Lena made no secret of the fact that she wanted to go to Keetenheuve, and Gerda stood there pallidly, twisting her mouth. The girls had had a quarrel. It was evident. You will be robbed, thought Keetenheuve, and he was alarmed at his own cruelty, because he took pleasure in hurting the little dyke, he was ungentlemanly (though not unmoved), he would have her take down her guitar and sing and play—the song of the heavenly bridegroom. He thought it would be nice to take Lena the trainee engineer by the waist, and to have Gerda singing the song of the heavenly bridegroom. He looked into Gerda's pale face, he saw the rage in her face, he saw the twisted mouth, he observed the trembling pinched lips, the nervous, tormented flicker of the eyelids, and he thought: You're my sister, we're both part of the same miserable family. But he hated his reflection, the stupid mirror image of his isolation. A drinker will destroy a mirror; along with the splintering glass, he destroys the hated knight of the tottering form, his image as it keels down to the gutter. Lena, when motioned to, sat down, and Gerda, likewise motioned to, squatted down contrarily, because she didn't want to yield. The men at the corner tables looked up. They had a box seat to watch the beasts of prey fighting over their spoils. Keetenheuve took the collecting tin for the Salvation Army, got up, rattled it around,
Keetenheuve belated collector for the WHW,
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held it out to the business people. They turned up their noses. Pretended not to know the little tin can any more,
no contributions for the
Führer
and his army.
They turned away, disturbed in their boyhood dreams. Keetenheuve just now was dreaming more powerful dreams, just as puerile as theirs.
Keetenheuve pedagogue and pedophile. Man with pronounced pedagogical eros. A friend of youth.
The corner table wireless speaker chanted: "And don't forget your swimming trunks!" A child sang, went screeching over hill and dale, a tape hissed.
A dog barked. Where? In Insterburg. Jewish joke. Mergentheim joke. Old
Volksblatt
joke. Who's alive? Who's dead? We're still alive. Mergentheim and Keetenheuve
,
arm in arm
,
old
Volksblatt
memorial
,
recommended to the protection of the citizen!
Lena wanted a brandy and Coke; she was blending in. Gerda wouldn't accept anything; Sapphic principles. Keetenheuve said: "A brandy would do you good." Gerda ordered a coffee; she ordered a coffee in order to guarantee herself the right to remain in the place, whatever befell. Keetenheuve hadn't done anything for Lena the trainee engineer yet. He was sorry, genuinely. He had misspent his day The waitress brought him some letter paper. It had the name of the bar on the top of it.
What is wine hut preserved sunshine
it said. The letter couldn't fail to make a terrible impression on respectable addressees.
Keetenheuve man without decency.
He wrote a letter to Knurrewahn and he wrote a letter to Korodin. He begged Knurrewahn and Korodin to find a lathe for Lena, the trainee mechanic. He gave the letters to Lena. He said to her: "Korodin isn't sure whether he believes in God, and Knurrewahn isn't sure whether he doesn't. If I were you, I would try them both. One of them is sure to help." He thought: You won't take no for an answer, my little Stakhanova. He wanted to help her. But at the same time he knew that he didn't want to help her, that it was he who wanted to cling to her; he would have liked to take her away, she could live with him, she would eat with him, she had to sleep with him, he had appetite for human flesh again,
Keetenheuve old ogre;
maybe he could send Lena to the technical institute, she would take her exams,
Lena Dr. ing.
—and then what? Should he try it? Should he try and establish contact? But what did you do with an academically qualified bridge builder? Sleep with her? What did you feel when you held her in your arms?
Love is a formula

He took Lena, and led her into the ruins. Gerda followed them. With every step, her guitar banged against her man-hating body and buzzed. It was a monotonous rhythm. The beat was like that of Negro drums, a complaint against the lash, against feeling abandoned, against yearning for dark forests. The black car was still waiting in front of the ruined setting. The foreign automobile was still parked on the rubble road. The moon was just breaking through the clouds. Frost-Forestier was sitting on some broken stones. In front of him, casual and bold, in the liquid moonlight, in his shirt open to the waist and his tight shorts, with floury bare calves and bare thighs, stood the beautiful baker's boy who had wanted to rob the cashier at the box office. Keetenheuve waved hello to Frost-Forestier; but the shadowy forms of the man sitting upright on the ruins, and the swaggering youth in front of him, did not move. They were like visions in stone, and everything was unreal and hyperreal at once. From the foreign car parked on the rubble road came a groan, and Keetenheuve almost felt the blood well out from under the door, and drip into the dust. Keetenheuve led Lena into a cleared area surrounded by low walls that had once been a room, and even some of the wallpaper was still visible, it might have been the room of a Bonn scholar, because Keetenheuve recognized a Pompeiian pattern, and the washed-out lusty body of a female Eros with ripped parts that resembled overripe fruits. Gerda followed Lena and Keetenheuve into the enclosure lit by the moon, and from the surrounding caverns, from buried cellars, from the hidey-holes of hunger and depravity, people whispered and crept and slithered closer as for some performance. Gerda set down her guitar on a stone, and the instrument gave back a full chord. "Play for us!" cried Keetenheuve. He seized Lena, the girl from Thuringia, he leaned down over her inquisitive expectant face, he groped for her slightly too curly, her soft, her Middle German lips, drank sweet saliva, strong breath, and warm life from her young mouth, he pulled up Lena the trainee engineers flimsy dress, he touched her, and Gerda, even paler in the pale moonlight, took up her guitar, struck the chords, and in a high clear voice sang the song of the heavenly bridegroom. And from out of holes in the ground rolled the murdered, from craters crept the buried alive, from quicklime tombs crawled the strangled, from their cellars tottered the homeless, from their beds in the rubble came the whores, and an alarmed Musaeus came from his palace and saw misery, and the delegates were convoked in extraordinary nocturnal session on the burial ground from the Nazi years, aptly enough. The great statesman was chauffeured there, and was granted a vision into the workshop of the future. He saw devils and vermin and he saw them creating the homunculus. A train of Piefkes
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climbed the Obersalzberg and met the coach tour company of the daughters of the Rhine, and the Piefkes copulated with the Wagalaweia girls, and bred the super-Piefke. The super-Piefke did the hundred-meter butterfly in under a minute. He won the Atlanta thousand-mile race in a German-built car. He invented the moon rocket, and feeling threatened, he armed himself against the planets. Chimneys popped up like erect penises, a poisonous smog wrapped itself around the earth, and in the sulfurous fumes, the super-Piefke called the World Nation into being, and introduced lifelong conscription. The great statesman tossed a rose into the smoke of the future, and where the rose fell, a spring burst forth, and the spring flowed with black blood. Keetenheuve lay in the eternal flow, he lay with the girl from Thuringia, with the Thuringian trainee mechanic, in the arena of the representatives of the people, in the arena of statesmen, he lay in the course of blood, surrounded by day flakes and night rabble, and screech owls hooted in the air, and the cranes of Ibycus screamed, and vultures sharpened their beaks on the scarified walls. A scaffold was set up, and the prophet Jonah came riding up on Jonah, the good- humored dead whale, and sternly he supervised the erecting of the gallows. The delegate Korodin dragged along a great golden cross, under whose weight he was bent double. With a huge effort he set up the cross next to the gallows, and he was very afraid. He broke some pieces of gold off the cross, and he tossed them into the group of statesmen and delegates, into the circles of night rabble and day flakes. The statesmen paid the gold into their bank accounts. The delegate Dörflich hid the gold in a milk churn. The delegate Sedesaum took the gold to bed with him, and called on the Lord. The night rabble and the day flakes called Korodin obscene names. Everywhere on stumps of masonry, in blown-out windows, on the broken pillar of the singer's curse, sat greedy heraldic animals, squatted stupid puffed-up murderous eagles with reddened beaks, fat complacent lions from coats of arms, with bloodied mouths, snake-tongued griffins with dark sticky claws, a bear growled menacingly, the ox of Mecklenburg mooed, and the SA marched, death's head units paraded, Vehmic killer battalions moved up with blare of brass, swastika banners unfurled from moor-slimed sheaths, and Frost-Forestier, a shot-through steel helmet on his head, called out: "The dead to the front!" There was a huge troop inspection. The youth of two world wars marched past Musaeus, and the pale Musaeus took the parade. The mothers of two world wars walked mutely past Musaeus, and Musaeus whitely saluted their mourning procession. The tail- coated statesmen of two world wars strode past Musaeus, and Musaeus signed the treaties they laid before him. The generals of two world wars, heavily decorated, goose-stepped up; they stopped in front of Musaeus, drew their sabers, saluted, and demanded their pensions. Musaeus granted them their pensions immediately, and the generals seized him, took him up to the scaffold and gave him to the hangman. Then along came the Marxists with their red flags. They lugged a plaster bust of Hegel, and Hegel stretched and cried: "The great individuals in their particular duties are the realization of the substantial, which is the will of the world spirit." The emaciated nonstop pianist from the bar played the "Internationale." The inadequate beauties of the other bar danced the carmagnole. The police minister came driving along in water tanks, inviting people to a drag hunt. He dispatched trained dogs into the field, and shouted after them: Chase him, grab him, catch him! The minister was trying to catch the dog-loving Keetenheuve with his dogs. But Frost-Forestier spread a map of the world protectively in front of Keetenheuve, pointed to the Rhine, and said: "There's Guatemala!" The guitar crashed; its strings yowled. The singing of the Salvation Army girl resounded far beyond the ruins, rose over the rubble pile and its misery and fear. Keetenheuve felt Lena's sacrifice, and he felt all the sacrifice of all the years since his return, all the desperate determination to enter the flow of the mainstream, which remained infertile and ineffectual. It was an act of complete irrelation that he was performing, and he was a stranger, staring into a strange face, distorted by the deceptions of sexual pleasure. There was only sadness. There was no uprising here, there was guilt, no love, just a grave. It was the grave in him. He let go the girl and stood up. Before him he saw the air-raid warning arrow pointing people to the Rhine. The air-raid warning arrow loomed unignorably in the pale moonlight, and pointed imperiously toward the river. Keetenheuve broke out of the circle of the rabble, that really had assembled here, drawn by the sad singing and the pretty strumming of the Salvation Army girl. Keetenheuve ran to the bank of the Rhine. Abuse and laughter followed him. A stone was thrown. Keetenheuve ran toward the bridge. In the illuminated windows of the department store on the approach the dummies were beckoning. They stretched out their arms appealingly to the delegate, who ran away from their blandishments for ever. Over.
It was over. Eternity had already hegun.