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He spoke English and one of the paratroopers answered in English
telling him not to worry. Then the American vanished into the darkness and
another of the paratroopers appeared with a little truck, its lights off, and
after forcing the lock of the freight car they set to work. An hour later they
were done and two paratroopers got in the cab of the truck and Archimboldi and
the other paratrooper got in the back, in the tiny space left by the boxes.
They drove along backstreets, some unlit, to Mickey Bittner's office on the
edge of the city. There the secretary was waiting for them with a thermos of
hot coffee and a bottle of whiskey. When they had unloaded everything they went
up to the office and began to talk about General Udet. As the paratroopers
spiked their coffee with whiskey, they slipped into recollections of historic
events, which in this case were also manly reminiscences punctuated by
disillusioned laughter, as if to say I've seen it all, you can't fool me, I
know human nature, the endless clash of wills, my memories are written in
letters of fire and they're my only capital, and then they began to recall the
figure of Udet, General Udet, the flying ace who killed himself because of
slander spread by Goring.

Archimboldi wasn't sure who Udet was, and he didn't ask. The name
was familiar, in the way other names were familiar, but that was all. Two of
the paratroopers had once managed to catch a glimpse of Udet and they spoke of
him in glowing terms.

"One of the
best men in the Luftwaffe."

The
third paratrooper listened to them and shook his head, not entirely convinced
but in no way prepared to argue, and Archimboldi listened in horror, because if
there was anything he was sure about it was that the war provided more than
sufficient reason to commit suicide, but the tittle-tattle of scum like Goring
clearly didn't qualify.

"So
this Udet killed himself because of Goring's salon intrigues?" he asked.
"So he didn't kill himself because of the death camps or the slaughter on
the front lines or the cities in flames, but because Goring called him an
incompetent?"

The
three paratroopers looked at him as if they were seeing him for the first time,
although without much surprise.

"Maybe
Goring was right," said Archimboldi, pouring himself a little more whiskey
and covering the cup with his hand when the secretary moved to fill it with
coffee. "Maybe the man was essentially incompetent," he said.
"Maybe he really was a mass of blunted and frayed nerves," he said.
"Maybe he was a faggot, like most Germans who let themselves be fucked by
Hitler," he said.

"So you're
Austrian?" asked one of the paratroopers.

"No, I'm
German too," said Archimboldi.

For
a while the three paratroopers were silent, as if contemplating whether to kill
him or settle for beating him to a pulp. But so assured was Archimboldi, who
every so often shot them looks of rage in which many things but fear could be
read, that they decided against a violent response.

"Pay
him," said one of them to the secretary.

She
got up and opened a metal cabinet, in the lower part of which was a little
strongbox. The money she handed to Archimboldi represented half his monthly pay
at the bar on the Spenglerstrasse. Archimboldi put the money in an inside
pocket of his coat as the paratroopers watched nervously (they were sure he had
a gun in there, or at least a knife) and then he looked around for the bottle
of whiskey and couldn't find it. He asked where it was. I've put it away, said
the secretary, you've had enough to drink, kid. Archimboldi liked that she
called him kid, but he asked for more anyway.

"Have
a last drink and then go because we have things to do," said one of the
paratroopers.

Archimboldi
nodded. The secretary poured him two fingers of whiskey. Archimboldi drank
slowly, savoring the liquor, which he supposed was also contraband. Then he got
up and two of the paratroopers escorted him to the door. Outside it was dark
and although he knew perfectly well where he was going, he still stumbled into
the pits and potholes that dotted the streets in that neighborhood.

Two
days later Archimboldi paid another visit to Mickey Bittner's publishing house
and the same secretary from before recognized him and told him they'd found his
manuscript. Mr. Bittner was in his office. The secretary asked whether
Archimboldi wanted to see him.

"Does he want
to see me?" asked Archimboldi.

"I think
so," said the secretary.

It briefly crossed his mind that maybe now Bittner wanted to
publish his novel. He might also want to see him so that he could offer him
another job on the import-export side of his business. But he thought that if
he saw him he would probably break his nose, so he said no.

"Good luck,
then," said the secretary.

"Thank
you," said Archimboldi.

He sent the recovered manuscript to a publishing house in
Munich
. After he mailed
it, when he got home, he suddenly realized that during all this time he had
hardly written anything. He discussed it with Ingeborg while they were making
love.

"What a waste
of time," she said.

"I
don't know how it could've happened," he said.

That night, as he was working the door at the bar, he amused
himself by thinking about a time with two speeds, one very slow, in which the
movement of people and objects was almost imperceptible, and the other very
fast, in which everything, even inert objects, glittered with speed. The first
was called
Paradise
, the second Hell, and
Archimboldi's only wish was never to inhabit either.

One
morning he received a letter from
Hamburg
.
The letter was signed by Mr. Bubis, the great editor, and in it he said
flattering things, or at least flattering things could be read between the
lines, about
Lüdicke, a
work he would like to publish, that is, of
course, if Mr. Benno von Archimboldi didn't already have a publisher, in which
case he would be very sorry, because the novel wasn't lacking in merit and was,
in a certain sense, rather original, in any case, it was a book that he, Mr.
Bubis, had read with great interest, a book he felt he could take a gamble on,
although such was the state of publishing in Germany just now that the most he
could offer as an advance was such and such, a ridiculous sum, he knew, a sum
that fifteen years ago he would never have proposed, but at the same time he
guaranteed that the book would receive the finest treatment and be carried in
all the best bookshops, not just in Germany but also in Austria and
Switzerland, where the Bubis name was remembered and respected by democratic
bookshop owners, a symbol of independent and high-quality publishing.

Then
Mr. Bubis signed off in a friendly way, begging him to come and visit if
someday he should happen to pass through Hamburg, and with the letter he
enclosed a leaflet from the publishing house, printed on cheap paper but in a
lovely typeface, announcing the impending release of two "magnificent"
books, one of Doblin's first works and a volume of essays by Heinrich Mann.

When
Archimboldi showed Ingeborg the letter she was surprised because she didn't
know who Benno von Archimboldi was.

"It's me, of
course," said Archimboldi.

"Why did you
change your name?" she wanted to know.

After
thinking about it for a moment, Archimboldi answered that it was for his
safety.

"The
Americans might be looking for me," he said. "It's possible the
American and German police have put two and two together."

"For the sake
of a war criminal?" asked Ingeborg.

"Justice is
blind," Archimboldi reminded her.

"Blind
when it suits her," said Ingeborg, "and who does it benefit if
Sammer's dirty laundry is hung out in public? No one!"

"You
never know," said Archimboldi. "In any case it's safest for me if
Reiter is forgotten."

Ingeborg looked at
him, surprised.

"You're
lying," she said.

"No,
I'm not lying," said Archimboldi, and Ingeborg believed him, but later,
before he left for work, she said with an enormous smile:

"You're
sure you'll be famous!"

Until that moment Archimboldi
had never thought about fame. Hitler was famous. Goring was famous. The people
he loved or remembered fondly weren't famous, they just satisfied certain
needs. Doblin was his consolation. Ansky was his strength. Ingeborg was his
joy. The disappeared Hugo Halder was lightheartedness and fun. His sister,
about whom he had no news, was his own innocence. Of course, they were other
things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame,
which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was
reductive. Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame
was inevitably diminished. Fame's message was unadorned. Fame and literature
were irreconcilable enemies.

All
that day he thought about why he had changed his name. At the bar everyone knew
he was Hans Reiter. His acquaintances in
Cologne
knew he was Hans Reiter. If the police finally did decide to come after him for
Sammer's murder, there would be plenty of clues. So why adopt a nom de plume?
Maybe Ingeborg is right, thought Archimboldi, maybe deep down I'm sure I'll be
famous and with the change of name I'm making the first arrangements for my
future protection. But maybe this all means something else. Maybe, maybe, maybe
. . .

The
day after he received the letter from Mr. Bubis, Archimboldi wrote to assure
him that his novel wasn't promised to any other publisher and that the advance
Mr. Bubis had proposed was satisfactory.

Soon afterward he received a letter in which Mr. Bubis invited him
to
Hamburg
so
they could meet in person and proceed to sign the contract. In times like
these, said Mr. Bubis, I don't trust the German post or its proverbial
punctuality and infallibility. And lately, especially since I returned from
England
,
I've acquired the habit of meeting all my authors in person.

Before '33, he explained, I published many promising young German
writers, and in 1940, in the solitude of a London hotel, I set out to pass the
time by calculating how many of the first-time writers I published had become
members of the Nazi party, how many had joined the SS, how many had written for
rabidly anti-Semitic newspapers, how many had made a career in the Nazi
bureaucracy. The result almost drove me to suicide, wrote Mr. Bubis.

Instead
of committing suicide I simply hit myself. Anyone who saw me would've thought I
was mad. Suddenly I felt as if I couldn't breathe and I opened the window.
There, unfurled before me, was the great nocturnal theater of war: I watched
the bombing of
London
.
The bombs were falling near the river, but in the dark they seemed to drop just
a few feet from the hotel. Spotlights crisscrossed the sky. The noise of the
bombs grew louder and louder. Every once in a while a small explosion, a flash
above the barrage balloons, made one think, even if it wasn't so, that a
Luftwaffe plane had been hit. Despite the horror that surrounded me I kept
beating myself and cursing. Idiot, ass, cretin, fool, moron, dolt, utterly
puerile or senile name-calling, as you see.

Then
someone knocked at my door. It was a young Irish bellhop. In a fit of madness I
thought I saw James Joyce in his face. Ludicrous.

"Better
close the shutters there," he said.

"The
what?" I asked, red as a beet.

"The blinds,
old man, and downstairs with yer."

I understood that
he was ordering me to the cellar.

"Wait a
moment, boy," I said, and I handed him a tip.

"Very
kind of you, sir," he said before he left, "and now hurry, to the
catacombs."

"You go
first," I answered, "and I'll catch up."

When
he left I opened the window again and stood there watching the blazes on the
docks and then I wept for what I thought at the time was a life lost and then
saved by a hair.

So
Archimboldi asked for leave from work and took the train to
Hamburg
.

Mr.
Bubis's publishing house was in the same building it had occupied until 1933.
The two neighboring buildings had been flattened by bombs, as had several
buildings across the street. Some of the publishing house employees, behind Mr.
Bubis's back, of course, said he had personally directed the raids on the city.
Or at least on that particular neighborhood. When Archimboldi met Mr. Bubis,
the publisher was seventy-four and sometimes he gave the impression of being an
ailing man, bad tempered, miserly, mistrustful, a money-grubber who cared
little or nothing for literature, though he wasn't really like that at all: Mr.
Bubis enjoyed or pretended to enjoy enviable health, never got sick, was always
ready with a smile, was as trusting as a child, and wasn't miserly, though at
the same time it couldn't be said he paid his employees handsomely.