Read Online Fame by Daniel Kehlmann - Free Book Online Page B

early dawn she stroked his neck and told him he was wonderful. Many women had said this to him before, but he knew none of them had meant it.
    Next day, under the name Matthias Wagner, he rented a furnished room in a rather drafty house not far from where she lived. The landlord looked at him with stupefaction, but Ralf explained that he moonlighted as an impersonator, and that apparently did it. He spent the whole week either there or with Nora, or walking up and down the street enjoying the fact that nobody turned to look, because word had spread around the neighborhood as to who he was and what he did.
    Next time he appeared onstage at the Looppool, however, he didn’t make such a good impression. As he stood therespeaking his lines, he suddenly felt totally lost. Something was going wrong, he was tensed up, his voice sounded choked, and when he tried to remember how he’d held his hands in that particular scene, he no longer knew how it had been, what he’d felt and thought, all he saw was the image of himself on the screen. He could sense the audience’s attention slipping away, and only his actor’s instinct made him finish the scene.
    Then he saw the other Ralf Tanner impersonator. He knew from YouTube that he’d achieved an impressive level of perfection, but the likeness was even more astounding in person. His handshake was firm and he had the penetrating look that Ralf recognized as his own from the big screen. He was tall and broad-shouldered and radiated strength, inner balance, and courage.
    “You haven’t been doing this long,” he said.
    Ralf shrugged.
    “I’ve been doing it since his second film. At the beginning I was just an amateur, I was still working in the Lost and Found. Then his career took off and I handed in my notice.” The man looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to make this your main job? It’s hard—it takes lots of practice. To be able to interpret someone, you have to live with them. Often when I’m in the street I don’t even notice that I’m doing Ralf Tanner. I live as him. I think like him, sometimes I stay in character for days at a time. I am Ralf Tanner. It takes years.”
    The owner of Looppool only wanted to give him thirtyeuros this time. He hadn’t really stood out, and the physical likeness wasn’t there yet.
    For a moment Ralf boiled with rage. He looked him straight in the eyes and the other man must have felt the force of a stare he knew from a dozen movies; he took a step back, looked down at the tips of his shoes, and muttered something incomprehensible. His hand slid into his pocket and Ralf knew that he was about to pull out another banknote. But then he felt his strength drain and the rage passed. He said he was just a beginner still.
    “Okay.” The man gave him a mistrustful look and the hand came out of the pocket empty.
    “I’ll really try,” said Ralf. Something about this pleased him. Wasn’t it proof that he was finally free?
    No, he thought on the streetcar on the way to Matthias Wagner’s place. Of course it didn’t prove anything of the sort, it merely showed that self-examination disturbs the personality, deflects the will, and saps the mind; it proved that no one, seen clearly from the outside, resembles themselves at all. He got out at the next stop, waved down a taxi, and had himself driven home.
    Once there he asked Ludwig, his valet, to draw him a bubble bath and prepared to listen while he waited to the voice messages on his cell phone. But there weren’t any. Nobody seemed to have missed him. It was as if someone else had taken over all his personal affairs.
    He spent the next day in restless distraction. His best friend Mogroll, the failed actor, had swallowed an overdosewithout warning. Intentional or unintentional, no one knew; he hadn’t given any kind of a signal, hadn’t talked to him, hadn’t left any note. Ralf didn’t understand it.
    His personal trainer made him do his usual Wednesday push-ups and told