years a bishop had once changed his clothes, not even slept; those empty rooms that Roickler was not allowed to rent, that he was not even allowed to offer rent-free to anyone—they spoke of them as “extortion by standardized ritual expressed in totally senseless extravagance.” Roickler would have much rather given them a few rooms, but he wasn’t allowed to, hewas only allowed to give them that three-and-a-half-room shack, only a fifth of the square footage standing empty in the vicarage. “A nihilism,” said Rolf, “that no nihilist can afford.”
Well, they got along fine with Roickler, were, in their eerily calm way, nice to him, amazingly logical and down-to-earth with surprising elements of warmth. And yet all that might be no more than camouflage. Perhaps they had resolved to spend three or four years in Hubreichen and build up a good reputation in a whitewashed shack with green shutters and geraniums in the window boxes. Rolf was already being consulted about growing vegetables, Katharina about handling children (they were certainly thorough, methodical, hard-working!)—yet someday they might launch an attack from within that invisible space, that reservoir of calm—no, he would never dissociate himself from them, but he wouldn’t guarantee for them either.
Was it possible that Rolf, that Katharina, would be this “Who”? Why not? Rolf more likely than Katharina, she did have a certain warmth, a “Communist warmth” as he called it, but only to himself (never would he mention that, never, not even on one of those double tracks), a warmth that he remembered in the Communists of his young days, in his fellow student Helga Zimmerlein, for instance, who had died in the penitentiary, or in old Löhr in the village, the only Thälmann voter, who got along so well with children that he had acquired the reputation of a Pied Piper—it had existed, that Communist warmth which had driven him as a student into Red taverns.
No, Rolf more likely than Katharina—his eyes held such an inscrutable dimension, shadowed by a strange melancholy, a dimension that remained opaque, grew even more shrouded when he played with his little son Holger, held him on his knees or tipped out the bag of building blocks and began to build a house with him on the floor—then he would hold the child close or look at him with such remote, cool tenderness and melancholy. There was always something eerie about that tender, shrouded gaze, even when he looked at Katharina, in fleetingtenderness, touching her shoulder in passing, or her hand when he gave her a light or took a cup from her, that was worlds removed from the suggestiveness with which Kohlschröder imbued such gestures. It lay as deep as the mute utterances of a desperate man who knows what is in store for him—what?
Of course it had been fatal for him to have studied banking with that fellow Beverloh, but that happened to have been his dearest wish. Later he had even worked in one of Bleibl’s branch offices, quietly efficient—until he started throwing rocks, overturning cars and setting fire to them, at which time he had met Veronica. He never spoke about his oldest son, or about Veronica or Beverloh, just went on conscientiously studying financial and stock-exchange reports, and had such a quiet, dry, uncanny way of whispering over a cup of tea or coffee or a mug of milk: “Today I came across one hundred and eleven dead between the lines of the financial supplement, but it may have been only ninety-nine or perhaps a hundred and twenty.”
It sounded cold, precise, pitiless, like a casualty report after an attack or a retreat. Even Rolf hadn’t succeeded in explaining “economic processes,” as Kortschede called them, to him, he had never even properly grasped the economic processes involved in and around his paper, he had fought shy of them. Whether from laziness or indifference—he argued with himself about that. He had been dissuaded from taking an interest
Well, they got along fine with Roickler, were, in their eerily calm way, nice to him, amazingly logical and down-to-earth with surprising elements of warmth. And yet all that might be no more than camouflage. Perhaps they had resolved to spend three or four years in Hubreichen and build up a good reputation in a whitewashed shack with green shutters and geraniums in the window boxes. Rolf was already being consulted about growing vegetables, Katharina about handling children (they were certainly thorough, methodical, hard-working!)—yet someday they might launch an attack from within that invisible space, that reservoir of calm—no, he would never dissociate himself from them, but he wouldn’t guarantee for them either.
Was it possible that Rolf, that Katharina, would be this “Who”? Why not? Rolf more likely than Katharina, she did have a certain warmth, a “Communist warmth” as he called it, but only to himself (never would he mention that, never, not even on one of those double tracks), a warmth that he remembered in the Communists of his young days, in his fellow student Helga Zimmerlein, for instance, who had died in the penitentiary, or in old Löhr in the village, the only Thälmann voter, who got along so well with children that he had acquired the reputation of a Pied Piper—it had existed, that Communist warmth which had driven him as a student into Red taverns.
No, Rolf more likely than Katharina—his eyes held such an inscrutable dimension, shadowed by a strange melancholy, a dimension that remained opaque, grew even more shrouded when he played with his little son Holger, held him on his knees or tipped out the bag of building blocks and began to build a house with him on the floor—then he would hold the child close or look at him with such remote, cool tenderness and melancholy. There was always something eerie about that tender, shrouded gaze, even when he looked at Katharina, in fleetingtenderness, touching her shoulder in passing, or her hand when he gave her a light or took a cup from her, that was worlds removed from the suggestiveness with which Kohlschröder imbued such gestures. It lay as deep as the mute utterances of a desperate man who knows what is in store for him—what?
Of course it had been fatal for him to have studied banking with that fellow Beverloh, but that happened to have been his dearest wish. Later he had even worked in one of Bleibl’s branch offices, quietly efficient—until he started throwing rocks, overturning cars and setting fire to them, at which time he had met Veronica. He never spoke about his oldest son, or about Veronica or Beverloh, just went on conscientiously studying financial and stock-exchange reports, and had such a quiet, dry, uncanny way of whispering over a cup of tea or coffee or a mug of milk: “Today I came across one hundred and eleven dead between the lines of the financial supplement, but it may have been only ninety-nine or perhaps a hundred and twenty.”
It sounded cold, precise, pitiless, like a casualty report after an attack or a retreat. Even Rolf hadn’t succeeded in explaining “economic processes,” as Kortschede called them, to him, he had never even properly grasped the economic processes involved in and around his paper, he had fought shy of them. Whether from laziness or indifference—he argued with himself about that. He had been dissuaded from taking an interest
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