Death in Rome (21 page)

Judejahn had given Ilse Kürenberg, the woman in the box, the woman who had sat next to Adolf and had excited his curiosity, an obscene stare. He had pictured to himself the sexual union in which she lived with his son, unchaste under his priest's robe. Now, when she had gone, he asked Pfaffrath whether he knew who she was, and when he heard that she was the daughter of old Aufhäuser, the department-store Jew who had been liquidated, then he regretted that she had escaped; escaped his hands, his boots, his pistol, the borders had been sealed too late, they had always been too generous, the bacilli had been allowed to spread throughout Europe, and they had been the death of a German Europe, a Jewess had sat next to Adolf, a German Jewess was sleeping with his son, who was a Roman priest, it excited Judejahn the way the reader of a legal journal is shocked and excited by the report of a case of racial defilement; Judejahn had no regrets about having killed, he hadn't killed enough, that was his fault, but the fuss that had been made afterwards about his bit of killing, that did preoccupy him, flattered and bothered him, as a scandalous reputation is flattering and bothersome, and it connected Judejahn to his victims to such a degree that the thought of a botched final solution to the Jewish problem, the thought of the mass executions he had ordered, the recollection of the photographs of naked women in front of the mass graves now roused perverted imaginings in him, it was a sin to consort with Jewesses, it was Arthur Dinter's book
The Sin Against the Blood
, which little Gottlieb had gobbled up, but the thought of sin tickled the testicles, stimulated sperm-production, but the association remained prohibited, unless it be in a dream, in a red mist that dropped before his eyes, he wasn't thinking clearly, it was a waking dream, after the completed sperm-sacrifice, after the lustful hateful liberating thrusts, one smashed the vessel born of circumcized union, the unclean container of inexplicable seduction and cabbalistic magic, which had subtly lured to itself the precious Aryan genes.

Judejahn
thought of Laura. She too might be Jewish, he wasn't sure, he was seeing her that night, but he would sooner have been seeing
Ilse Kürenberg-Aufhäuser
instead. He pictured to himself an encounter in an empty street, on a bomb-site in front of a dark ditch, full moon, and sweat beaded on his brow. The Pfaffraths had sat down in the red velvet armchairs. The drive out to the battlefield of Monte Cassino, an elevating experience, and Siegfried's concert, a depressing and confusing one, had exhausted them. The old-fashioned armchairs were comfortable.
Judejahn
too now sprawled on the cushions, and before Harmony and her winds, in front of the dead Italian musicians, the faded ribbons and golden wreaths, they sat as in their parents' drawing-room, as in the Christmas room of the rectory, as in the best room, which they had left in order to strive for power, to exercise power and represent power in trenches, in camps in woods and fields, in command posts and foxholes, at enormous desks and imposing tables. Now
Judejahn
began to speak about how he saw his homeland, his return to Germany, and they listened to him attentively, but also with strain and struggling to stay awake.
Judejahn
intended to set foot in Germany once it had its sovereignty back, and Pfaffrath nodded, then there would be no danger, no German authority would execute a Nuremberg sentence, and no German court would condemn
Judejahn,
and
Judejahn
spoke of a time to fight and a new movement and assembling the tribes of the faithful, and the finical Pfaffrath called to mind that
Judejahn
would also be in a position to demand a pension for services rendered to the state up to the rank of general, which was his of right, and if necessary the case should go before a court of law, he had an unanswerable claim on the Fatherland, and the state as presently constituted must not be allowed off the hook.

Thus stimulated by glorious prospects,
Judejahn
invited them all to have a drink on him. The Pfaffraths were tired. They would have preferred simply to nod off in the old-fashioned armchairs, in the chairs in the best room, and
Friedrich Wilhelm
Pfaffrath felt as though his father, the Reverend, were sitting there, telling him, as he often had, of
Gravelotte
and Bismarck and old Kaiser Bill, and the creation of the Reich at Versailles, that historic and treacherous site. But how could they refuse
Judejahn,
now playing the great man again? They obeyed him, and he stood feet apart outside the concert hall and whistled. It was a signal he trilled into the night, a bar of the desert anthem, and already his black mobile slid up, and the chauffeur, steadfast tan soldier, made tireless by some fiendish drug, leaped out and held the doors open. But the Pfaffraths of course had their own car, the Oberbürgermeisterly official vehicle, and they decided they would follow
Judejahn.
So
Judejahn
drove through nocturnal Rome as in days of old, admittedly there were no sirens going, no police protection in the van, no outriders, but once more he had followers. He had brought a phantom to life, the phantom of national greatness, the phantom of racial unshackling, the phantom of dishonour avenged, and once more he bewitched them. Where was he leading them? Into the night. Into temptation, and, like every drive, towards some final destination. He decided to make for the Via Veneto. Why shouldn't he regale his in-laws in the bar with the purple-tailed waiters? The bright lights and the many glittering mirrors would impress them, little Gottlieb knew, and
Judejahn
could in the meantime, without them needing to notice anything, look forward to Laura's slender waist so easily held in his hands, and the delicate throat of the smiling cash-desk beauty.

After hours of walking, town-walking, night-, garden- and wall-walking, after blind alleys of conversation in blind alleys, melancholic and futile attempts to close in on the invisible, Siegfried had taken Adolf to the bar. He didn't care for these places, he was amused by the queens, their womanish pother, their fake bird-squawking perched on the high barstools, their peacock vanity, their lies, their little jealousies, their endless involved affairs, Siegfried was a pederast, he was no queen, the affections of grown men were disagreeable to him, he loved the bitter, acrid beauty of boys, and his eye liked to dwell on street urchins, dirty and bearing the scratches of their rough games. They were out of reach and invulnerable, and therefore they couldn't disappoint him; they were a visual predilection and an imaginary love, a spiritual and aesthetic devotion to beauty, an exciting feeling of lust and sorrow; embraces like those on the bathing-ship were acts of blind folly, were joyless descents into hell, a crazed attempt to touch the untouchable, the hubris of grabbing the young god in the dirt, for which Siegfried was rewarded by a brief, fleeting euphoria. Occasionally Siegfried had relationships with girls who resembled boys, the fashion of the time favoured that, there were many lovely girls stalking the world in silk or linen trousers, flat-chested and with tousled, boyish haircuts, but in their long, tight trousers they carried the organs of motherhood, biological alchemy was at work, and Siegfried did not want to reproduce. The thought of being responsible for a life, which might be exposed to unforeseeable encounters, chance actions and reactions, and through its own thoughts, actions or further reproduction could go on affecting the future, the notion of fathering a child, this challenge of the world, truly appalled him, and spoiled his contact with girls, even when they used contraceptives, which were themselves disgusting and embarrassing and reminded him of the disgustingness and embarrassment of what was to be avoided. Physical procreation seemed positively criminal to Siegfried, other people might plead irresponsibility and unthinkingness, but for him it would have been a crime. Beauty was stained by seed, and birth was too much like death; perhaps it was a kind of death, the way orgasm dissolving in the rank and organic, amid sweat and groans, was near to death, and one exhaustion was much like another, in the end they were even one and the same, the warm primeval slime of the beginning. Adolf was a little alarmed by the stylishness of the bar, whose character eluded him, he shied away from the candelabra, the glittering mirrors, the purple tailcoats of the pretty waiters; of course he couldn't sit up on a barstool in his clerical robes, and he thought it wasn't fitting for him to sit out on the pavement, on one of the gaudy terrace chairs outside, and so they sat at a table near the cash-desk, and Adolf Judejahn saw Laura smiling.

I don't care for them, but I thought it was funny to see them again, parrots on their perches, my half-brothers, I saw their hysterical merriment, their inborn cattiness, their deep sadness, I saw their crisped hair, their tarty suits, their jangling bracelets, and the American poet who's on a scholarship to Rome, and has spent all year honing a single sonnet, which will eventually be printed in a small university quarterly, he arrived in his pointed shoes, drainpipes and a Directoire haircut with a curly fringe, and he spoke to me about the concert which he had been to, his opinions were clever and inappropriate, but he had been genuinely moved by my music, and I noticed the way he was looking at Adolf, he was curious to see me here in the company of a priest, but I didn't ask the poet to join us, I stood up to speak to him, and finally we agreed to have a drink together at the bar, and I noticed how the very beautiful cashier was smiling at Adolf, till he stared back at her and her smile, as though at a vision. I liked her too, her smile seemed somehow disembodied, a beam from a mysterious source, she was charming, she was called Laura, I knew her vaguely, I had spoken to her, but I wasn't the right man for her, Laura included me among the queers, and because she spent every evening among them, they had become as familiar to her as brothers, and didn't interest her. I hadn't meant to lead Adolf into temptation, I had taken him to a male bar, and I hadn't thought of Laura, but now I wondered whether I shouldn't introduce him to the cashier, he was young, I hadn't thought about his celibacy vow, I didn't even think he suffered on account of it, and if he kept his vow and lived chastely, then that was fine by me, and I preferred to think of him keeping his vow rather than breaking it, but it really didn't matter to me if he broke his vow and got involved with a girl, and Laura was extremely beautiful, it must be lovely to sleep with Laura, I didn't begrudge him that, and God wouldn't mind, there was no need for the Church to hear about it, and if it did, then it would forgive him, but maybe Adolf had scruples, and so it was probably best that he should leave it, especially as it was doubtful whether Laura would consent, and whether she had time for him, but he looked at her so spellbound that I wondered if I shouldn't help him out, my own first night hadn't been celebrated in any way, and I wanted to do something kind.

She watched the priest enter the bar, and as she was a devout Catholic, it upset her that even priests were queer nowadays, Laura assumed there must be some homosexual clerics, but it annoyed her that this one was coming into the bar now, it was indiscreet and surely wrong, even though nothing scandalous took place in the bar. But then she saw Adolf sitting down, she saw him staring at her, and, she could tell by now, she saw that he wasn't queer, and she saw also that he was innocent, that he had come into this bar innocently and non-homosexually, and was now sitting innocently and non-homosexually, staring at her, and there was something about his face that reminded her of another face, the face of another non-homosexual man, but she wasn't sure which man, and the other face wasn't innocent, she smiled, she smiled her loveliest smile, and she thought: Yes, yes, I would do it, it is a sin, but not a grave sin, I could do it and confess my sin. And Laura saw herself as a gift, and she was glad she had something to give, it was possible to give even a priest something, a beautiful present, and Laura knew that the present would bring happiness.

Adolf had told me about the money his father had given him. He had told me about it in the park, and he had wanted to drop the money on the path so that a poor man might find it, and I had stopped him from throwing the money away, and told him that whoever found it would be bound to be a rich man, a miser or a usurer. And then Adolf had told me that Judejahn had given him the money so that he could get himself a girl. And I now said to him: 'You won't be able to afford the girl at the cash-desk for that money. That'll only buy you a cheap girl, not one here on the Via Veneto.' He said I was beastly, and I said I wasn't being beastly, and he blushed, and then he asked me if I only knew love as lewdness, and I said no. I said: 'I know no lewdness.' And he didn't understand me, and he went on and told me the Greek words for the various types of love, which they had taught him at the seminary school. I was familiar with his Greek terms, and I said I was looking for Phaedrus myself. Anyway, let him try it, let him taste the bitter-sweet drink, I went to Laura, and I bought a coupon for the bar, and I asked her whether we might walk her home later, and she smiled as though she'd seen an angel.

She really couldn't count. All her numbers, times and obligations she got wrong, all the hard, sometimes harsh calculations of life. Judejahn had led the Pfaffraths out to the chairs on the pavement; that way he could check up on his date in the bar, unobserved. Laura saw him, the man with dark glasses, and he seemed to her a promising stranger, a highly auspicious acquaintance, but today she wanted to give herself to the young priest, tonight she wanted to do a good deed, she wanted to offer herself to the young priest, who was so sad and so innocent, and in the morning she would go to her confessor and tell him she had given herself to a young priest, and when Judejahn looked at her questioningly, she shook her head. He went up to the cash-desk and glowered at her. What was going on? What was that whore up to, making a fool of Judejahn? Unfortunately, he didn't have the words, he didn't have the words in any language, and Laura smiled, she found it flattering that the dark-glasses man was furious, and besides she liked sleeping with men in the daytime more than at night, when she was tired out by figures and wanted to sleep, and so she told him to meet her in the morning if he liked, and she wrote the appointment on a piece of paper, ten o'clock in front of the CIT office at the station, she would meet him there, and he didn't understand what this whimsy was about, maybe one of those dirty rich Jews had outbid him, he felt like bawling her out, but little Gottlieb was afraid to raise his voice in the bar, and Judejahn put the piece of paper away in his pocket, and then he asked for a coupon for the bar, a coupon for a Napoléon cognac, they were drinking wine outside, but he planned to get a large Napoléon down him at the bar.