Tours of the Black Clock

67

I WORK THROUGH THE winter. Once a week the car pulls up the street and stops at my building, and someone comes to my door with an envelope of money in exchange for a folder of finished pages. I’ve had to protest being paid in Deutschemarks. The middleman’s been eliminated, though sometimes I wonder if Petyr’s been eliminated as well; someone’s translating the work after all. I can picture him as he sits before the pages incensed with Kronehelm’s betrayal; what white rage is he bringing to these scenes? He’s sabotaging me with politically incorrect interpretations of the way I love you. We’re in his hands, the temptation must drive him crazy, restrained only by the possibility that another translator could discover his deceit at any moment.

It’s early March when Holtz comes again.

I know it’s something extraordinary because it’s not the night the car usually comes; I think it’s a Wednesday. I hear the car outside and sit waiting for the knock on the door; I just reach over and turn off the light on the desk and wait. Finally he opens the door himself and steps into the dark room. He stands for a moment waiting for me to say something. “Mr. Jainlight,” he finally breaks the silence. “I apologize for disturbing your work.” I finally turn in my chair. He closes the door behind him; I’ve already opened the window. He comes in and takes the same chair he sat in the last time. He’s as composed and cordial as the last time. “How does it go for you,” he asks, the first of several questions I won’t answer. He notices that the room is cold, and touches the radiator. “They don’t give you much heat here,” he says, “I’ll attend to that. It must be difficult to work when your hands are cold.”

“Lots of things are difficult when your hands are cold.”

He nods. “I hope the arrangement’s been satisfactory so far,” he says, “if there’s anything that—”

“I don’t like being paid in Deutschemarks.”

“Would you rather American dollars? It’s no problem.”

“Austrian schillings are fine.”

He waves it away. “Whatever.” He rubs his hands together; he’s kept on his long coat this time and now fumbles inside it for his cigarettes. “I want you to know, Mr. Jainlight,” he begins, “I’ve been instructed to convey to you the great enthusiasm our client has for your recent work.” He shakes his head emphatically. “Very delighted about what you’ve done. Deeply moved. As an artist himself, our client is in a position to understand its worth.”

“Horseshit.”

“He wants you to know, it’s important to him that—”

“Why are you here?”

Finally he finds his cigarettes. In the cold of the room he has difficulty lighting one; he keeps looking at the window, wishing it were closed, but not, I think, for the weather. “I believe,” he says, “the work has taken a new turn over the last six months.” He motions with his cigarette.

“Why are you here.”

“Well, Mr. Jainlight.” He keeps looking at the window. “I’m here to talk about that work, to offer some of the client’s comments, from one artist to another so to speak. Specifically, I’m here to talk about her.”

“Her?”

“It’s nothing of import,” he says dismissively, shaking his head, having just traveled all the way from Berlin to say it, “very small details, a few adjustments to reinforce the client’s boundless enthusiasm for what you’ve done. Of course we could make the changes on our end, if it came to it, or if you wanted to proceed that way, but … but my sense … well, I couldn’t in all conscience tamper with an artist’s vision without—”

“This is all complete horseshit.”

“The eyes, for instance,” Holtz says. “The eyes should be blue, not brown. The hair. The hair’s to be a bit more golden. Like spun sunlight, perhaps.”

“Spun sunlight?”

“Whatever.” He sits puffing on his cigarette.

“Why don’t you just find another person who will do the work the way the client prefers it.”

After a moment Holtz says quietly, “No, sir.”

“Maybe this is a case of mistaken identity. Maybe we’re not talking about the same girl.”

“No, sir,” he says, “we’re talking about the same girl.” He licks his lips, I can see him do it in the dark. He looks at the window once more and says, “The only girl he ever loved,” and gets up from the chair and walks to the window and closes it. It’s not the weather. He goes to the door and opens it, and says something to the guard outside who goes downstairs. He closes the door and returns to the chair, and turns it so that he’s straddling it with his arms rested on the back.

He takes a long puff on his cigarette and then puts it out in the same coffee cup he used three months ago. “The only girl he ever loved, Mr. Jainlight,” he says again. I unnerve him when I don’t say anything, but he’s getting used to it. “Now, what I’m about to tell you, well, I suppose it’s something of a secret to those whose memories are short. Which, fortunately, in the case of the client, happens to be most everyone. But the fact is that ten years ago it wasn’t such a secret at all. It was rather well known in the party, and in Munich, where the affair took place.”

I think I know now why he closed the window. I think I know now why he sent the guard away.

“Her name was Geli Raubal,” he goes on, “she was a singer from Vienna, and his niece. He met her when, frankly, his political fortunes were at their lowest. The party had just gotten thrashed in the elections, and who’s to say that if things had been going better, he might not have been so … turned. Who’s to say. What’s unmistakable is that he fell in love with her, and in fact a year after their meeting she began living with him. The exact nature of this affair was …” He stops. “That is to say … well, whether their love of the heart was expressed with physical love, no one knows. That she would or could not relent to his particular wishes in this regard may have been what strained the affair. I should perhaps say, for the purposes of your work, that …” In the winter light of the night I can see the gleam of his brow. “I understand,” he begins again slowly, “that Z’s wishes in the regard of physical love may have been rather specific and … a bit sophisticated, for a girl who, at twenty, was half his age. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“Well,” he continues, “the long and short of it is that after three years they had difficulties. By this time the Depression had come, of course, and politically he was very much on the ascent. The pinnacle was barely eighteen months away. But the course of their affair did not follow that of his other successes, and there were, on her part, affairs with other men. The client’s own bodyguard even. She also wanted to return to Vienna. One afternoon they argued, and the next morning she was found with a bullet through her chest. The coroner ruled it a suicide.”

“Not usually where people shoot themselves, in the chest.”

Holtz shrugs. “Perhaps she meant to deliver a shot that wasn’t fatal.” He stands from the chair and paces. “I know what you’re suggesting, of course. Others suggested the same. And again, who’s to say. Perhaps he shot her. Perhaps he had her shot. Perhaps political supporters had her shot because they were afraid she would become a scandal and humiliate him. Perhaps political opponents had her shot to untrack him. Who knows. At any rate, untracked he certainly became, of that there’s no doubt. For a time his right-hand people stayed with him every hour because they actually believed,” and he can’t even fathom saying it, but he does, “because they believed he might well try to finish himself off. He was that devastated. It was months before he found his vision again. He never really found his passion for a woman again, though he keeps the company of women.” He stops before the window and begins to tap on the glass, absently. “It has, until so very recently, left a space in him.”

There’s a pause as though I’m supposed to respond to all this.

The snow falls slightly from the upper sill at his tapping. “But now, you see,” he says, “she’s back.” He turns to look at me.

The havoc of my hands has long since become the havoc of my dreams. “She’s back?”

“You see how the situation has developed.”

Either I don’t understand at first, or I do and am too stunned to realize it. “It’s preposterous,” is all I can finally answer.

“Eyes of blue,” he says. “Hair of spun sunlight.”

“This is a mistake. Mistaken identity.”

“Then it’s you who makes the mistake.” He opens the window now, wider and colder than it was before.

“I won’t change anything about her.”

“The small scar on her mouth, that won’t do either, of course.”

“I won’t change anything.”

“It’s no matter,” he says easily, “we can take care of things on our end.”

“Go ahead and try. She’ll defy you as she defies me.”

“There’s another thing,” he says at the door. “We would like you to come to Berlin. It would be easier for all of us if you worked there. Berlin is quite the most exciting place in the world now. It’s the center of our century.”

“The center of our century,” I answer him, “is right here,” and I take hold of my crotch. “Take me to Berlin and I won’t write a punctuation mark.” I cannot hide the hopelessness. “I have a wife in Vienna,” I tell him, almost pleading, “we’re going to have a child.” It’s dreadful how this news doesn’t surprise him.

“Then if you won’t come to the client,” he smiles in the doorway, “the client will have to come to you,” and he’s gone.