The Pages Read online

  On a train through the Ruhr Valley he meets a young black man with blond hair and blue eyes. Describing this tall, confident, half-French, half-African man is like describing a version of his own contradictions, a Jew born with blond hair and blue eyes. The passengers are perplexed by this paradox. The black man speaks fluent German, his mother tongue. To rub it in, the black man is a reader. A lover of German poetry. He reads passages of Goethe aloud to his friends. He doesn’t need blue eyes or blond hair to be German.

  Never have people of difference been under so much suspicion. The language has become twisted. Everyone is either a friend or an enemy. People are waiting to see what will happen before they can decide what needs to be done. He will accuse the literary community of being submissive. What right do writers have to be any more reluctant to scream than ordinary people on the street? How can they be so passive now, so fearful of losing sales? He will say that never before have writers been as loud as they are now silent.

  The public has been taken in by a new kind of impartial reporting in the media that gives falsehood equal billing. The balanced view. This is the era of distortion, when everything can be instantly refuted. A numbness has entered the vocabulary. All information has become unstable, as though everything contains an equal opposite. If something is said to be safe, then it must also be implied unsafe. The lie appeals to your fears. The truth is too much trouble.

  Why am I so concerned about separating truth from lies? As a novel, I belong to the invented world in which you wish things to be true. It’s a little secret we keep, between me and the reader, we agree to suspend too much questioning. It’s like watching the scene in a movie where they never inhale the cigarette. Where a woman is seen pouring tea without steam. Where she holds the scalding teapot with both hands in such a way that would normally make her drop it and scream.

  He spends hours putting the tiny parts together. Little by little, the cogwheels line up in a pattern that seems so arbitrary. He sees how beautiful and complex this is. Like trying to fit bits of memory together in a story that will spin again. The fragments make no sense now. The parts laid out belong to watches not even in the room. Mismatching components rolling off the bed, out the window, scattered throughout the city, on the streets, in bars, in silent rooms where people are afraid to sleep because they worry about waking up again.

  Friedl watches him with love in her eyes. Her female conviction shines in a room full of chaos. He looks up in disbelief, as if the watch is made up of more parts than required. He is left over with a wheel that doesn’t belong. He sees missing fragments that no watchmaker has imagined.

  She stands at the window and sees her reflection in the madness that has taken over the streets.

  And then he suddenly has it. The watch is functioning again. Yelping like a boy, he holds it up and makes her listen to the ticking. It’s well past midnight. She kisses him. Her happiness is measured in hurried minutes. He lays her out on the bed like a disassembled watch.

  14

  It’s five thirty in the evening. Armin is on the U-Bahn. The passengers are making their way home or heading out for the evening. An accordion player gets on with a small drum machine on a porter’s trolley. Once the train is in motion, he plays an upbeat country wedding tune. He might be from Ukraine, or maybe Romania, Macedonia – his music evokes remote places with traditional haystacks on stilts, potatoes baking in the fields, and chestnut roasters.

  We hear his music over the clacking noise of the train rushing through the tunnels. We hear his drum machine like a heartbeat. A coin drops into a plastic cup which has been cleverly attached to the top of the accordion. The accordion has also been decorated with a series of small cymbals which ring like coins to create the further illusion that people are being exceedingly generous.

  The musician times his departure perfectly at each station so he can rush around to the carriage behind and begin the same routine again. Each carriage brings its own luck. The passengers can look through the glass in the connecting doors and see him playing the same country wedding tune without any sound.

  At the next stop, a young woman comes into the carriage holding up a street newspaper. In a hoarse voice, she politely apologizes to the passengers for the disturbance, but if they had some spare change she would greatly appreciate it, if not, she wishes them a pleasant evening all the same. Her voice seems detached. The words are like foam in her mouth.

  Armin gives her a coin and she thanks him, staring for a moment into the cup in her hand as if the single coin cannot even begin to address her needs in life.

  At the next station, with the usual turnover of passengers getting on and off, the homeless woman becomes suddenly desperate. She spots a woman coming in with an attractive brand-name handbag that gleams with prosperity. She is so taken by the sight of the handbag that she cannot help seizing the opportunity of reaching out to pull it off the owner’s shoulder before the doors of the carriage close again. In shock, the owner of the bag tries to hold on. A silent tug-of-war develops in which the homeless woman and the owner of the bag have time to look each other in the eyes. It seems as though the homeless woman wishes not so much to get the contents of the handbag as to step into the life of the handbag owner. For her part, the handbag owner is determined to hold on to her own life and avoid turning into the homeless woman. It would not take much for these lives to be exchanged.

  The doors are prevented from closing and the train is held up.

  Passengers both on and off the train are simultaneously reporting what is going on as if they are watching a clip on YouTube. For a moment it is no longer clear which of the women is the true owner of the handbag. Bystanders are unable to intervene. For fear of being punched, or sued, or contracting some disease. Everyone stands back. Finally, a man shouts the word – Polizei. This seems to re-establish true ownership. The homeless woman is forced to let go and they are both sent stumbling back in a jolt by this sudden release of forces for and against.

  The train doors close and the lives of both parties in the stand-off race apart in such different directions. The owner of the handbag is reassured by kind words from other passengers, while the homeless woman stands on the platform as though in a dream, just waiting to be apprehended.

  If Joseph Roth were alive today, he would be writing about what happens next to the homeless woman. How she is taken into custody by the police. They ask for her identity papers and her address, though one of the officers already knows her from a previous incident. They find witnesses on the platform who tell them what happened. Not unlike the barrel organ player, she faces the same rigours of the law, everything is written down in the records. She has now become a danger to passengers on the U-Bahn and needs to be taken away.

  In the case of Andreas Pum, our fictional antihero of a century back, his altercation on public transport leads to him being sentenced by default to six weeks in prison. He leaves his home and his marriage. The barrel organ is no good to him now that he has lost his licence. He goes back to stay with his friend the sausage thief. The sausage thief tells him to remain in hiding, the law will never catch up with him. But then there is a knock on the door one morning and the police come to take him away. It turns out that his wife has revealed his hideout.

  The homeless woman vehemently struggles to retain her freedom. Appealing to bystanders for help, she screams at the police officers – you’re hurting me. Help. Brutality. They’re breaking my arm.

  One of the officers picks up the tattered issue of the Motz off the platform.

  As gently as possible, they lead her up the escalator, past the kiosk selling kebabs, into the waiting police vehicle. She is brought to a place of safety and offered medical assistance so she can wear off the effects of the drugs. Instead of being formally charged with attempted robbery, she is cautioned and eventually released, but her life is not unlike the story of the barrel organ player, leading to an accelerated death.

&
nbsp; Armin gets off the train. After a short walk, he enters an interior space where a small gathering of people is standing around holding glasses of wine, listening to a woman making a speech. It’s the voice of Lena’s friend Julia Fernreich, the gallery owner.

  In my view, Julia is heard saying to the crowd, the work here represents a significant shift in how the artist takes on the world in which we live. Those of you familiar with her previous work will no doubt be aware of how she uses random words taken from literature, such as Kleist and Fontane, transposing them into her art in a way that one reviewer described as – pieces of silver dug up from the earth. In this current show, Julia says, the artist is questioning where we have come to in our time. The most compelling take on our present world is to be found in the piece at the end of the room.

  At this point, all the people in the room turn around.

  This series of prints, Julia says, contain words taken straight from the web. From Google Maps, she has transposed specific directions to a place called Paradise in California, where many people died as wildfires engulfed the town. The words map out the linear route from Berlin via JFK airport, all the way by road to the site of the fires.

  After the applause dies down, Armin reaches into his bag and takes me out like a lost glove. He stretches his hand up in the air and holds me high above the heads of the crowd for everyone to see, with the title facing out – Rebellion. It doesn’t take long before Lena comes rushing towards him through the crowd and speaks with some excitement.

  The book, she says.

  Armin brings his arm down and passes me over into her hands.

  How did you find us?

  The flyer, Armin says with a smile. I found the gallery flyer inside. So, I took a chance.

  15

  A book knows. I’ve seen that look crossing the room between Effi Briest and Major Crampas. It’s there in the glances of Madame Bovary. In Molly Bloom’s thoughts. It’s there in thousands of novels, the libraries are full of chance encounters, new beginnings, those breathless possibilities of attraction, people running towards each other with a huge volume of little things unsaid. It’s there in many of the books written by Joseph Roth. In the story about a man falling in love with a woman who is brought to his house in shock after surviving a nearby train crash.

  They spoke in English. Lena pulled Julia over by the arm and made Armin tell the whole thing again from the start, how he had found the book in the rain, how he had discovered the flyer for the exhibition inside. Julia shook hands with Armin and Lena offered him a drink. She held me under her arm as she carried over glasses of red wine. I could feel the excitement in her lungs.

  Two people brought together by a book.

  In the follow-up conversation, after Julia had gone to introduce more people to one another, Lena told Armin how I had been rescued from the book-burning by her grandfather, and now, obviously smiling at the coincidence, she said I had been rescued all over again. Making that direct link between Armin and her grandfather seemed to say that she was welcoming him into her family.

  My father gave me this book, Lena said, before he died. He told me to look after it like a little brother and I went and lost it. I’m so grateful to you, Armin. She began leafing through to find the hand-drawn map at the end and said – look, this little map, I want to find out where that is.

  The manner in which she moved closer to Armin and held the page out for him to see appeared like a gesture of intimacy. She might as well have been holding his hand.

  I’m sorry, Armin said, somebody cut a page out in the middle.

  How did that happen?

  It’s a long story, he said.

  She waited.

  My sister’s boyfriend. He’s not much of a reader.

  Don’t worry, she said.

  As they continued talking, I found myself taking on the role of intermediary, turning loss into luck, matching the finder with the seeker.

  Lena revealed that she had read me in translation before she left New York, though sometimes, she said, you can find yourself reading a book without knowing what to look for. There was warmth in her voice. She said it was a sad story, but somehow uplifting in the end. She wondered if you could still find a barrel organ in some antique shop.

  You want to buy one?

  See how much I can make.

  Why not?

  A woman playing a barrel organ, she said.

  You’d clean up, he said.

  The story of the organ grinder had finally become relevant to the living world. She said she loved the part where he’s in prison, when he finds a section from a newspaper in the exercise yard and brings it back to his cell to read the announcements in the personal columns. Like he’s smuggled in a piece of the outside world. The people are brought to life as he calls out the names.

  The engagement between Fräulein Elsbeth Waldeck, daughter of Prof. Leopold Waldeck, and Dr. med. Edwin Aronowsky. Between Fräulein Hildegard Goldschmidt and Dr. jur. Siegfried Türkel. The bank manager Willibald Rolowsky and his wife Martha Maria, née Zadik, announce the birth of a son.

  Then he sits in his cell and gets depressed. He feels excluded from their joy and cannot be part of their celebrations. He might have been better off not finding that page of the newspaper.

  Armin said he loved the passage where the barrel organ player asks for a ladder to be brought to his cell so he might feed the sparrows at the window. The request has to be made in writing. The organ player is given pen and paper. That gives him hope as he crafts the letter. But after careful consideration his request is denied on the grounds that it would be inappropriate for a prisoner to have a ladder in his cell and that feeding birds would violate the principles of punishment.

  Lena suggested going for a drink. A couple of us are going to a place down the street from here, she said. The gallery crowd and the artist. A small celebration. Would you like to come with us?

  Sure, thanks.

  It’s a nice evening. We can sit outside.

  Sounds good, he said.

  They spoke only very briefly about where they were from. He told her he was from Chechnya. She tried to discover more but he said it was a long time ago, he came to Germany as a child. She told him that she was living in New York and had come to Berlin to track down some relatives.

  There was a warm glow in the sky. Waiters coming to take orders. People eating schnitzel. Beer being brought to tables and empty glasses ringing. A woman slapped her ankle and said she was being bitten. A man was overheard saying – OK, I’m going to say nothing more. There was music coming from inside and a string of festive lights hung between two trees. The tables were set out as though they were on the deck of a ship. While they were waiting to be seated, Julia said she had something to show them. She linked arms with Armin on one side and Lena on the other.

  Come on, she said. A small touristy thing.

  She brought them both inside the building to show them the ballroom upstairs. A tango lesson had just come to an end and the dancers were standing around talking. It was a spacious room with high ceilings and giant mirrors. She pointed at the bullet holes in the mirrors, dating from the Russian conquest of the city at the end of the Second World War. The cracks in the mirrors were like huge cobwebs radiating out from each bullet hole. Imagine them coming up the stairs in their heavy boots, she said, drinking and dancing and firing off their weapons.

  16

  Everybody says Friederike is beautiful inside and out. The most attractive woman ever seen in Berlin literary circles. Her heart is open to the world. Her unaffected smile makes everyone feel welcome. It’s the dimples that spring up on her cheeks, the schoolgirl mischief in her eyes. The freedom in her long white arms.

  She’s in every one of my author’s books.

  Here she is in a novel called The Blind Mirror.

  Fini, a young woman who works in a warehouse, falls
in love with a violin player whom nobody warned her about and who soon betrays her. She is heartbroken. She then falls in love with a talker, but he’s no better because he leaves her and goes travelling on endless writing assignments. He sends her money, but she’s only interested in love and puts the money aside. She stops eating. She walks out of the city and comes to a river, where she drowns.

  What does Frieda make of this story?

  Friedl.

  Like the character in his novel, she used to work in a fruit and vegetable warehouse in Vienna and supported her parents. She married a talker who sends her money whenever he’s away working as a journalist. She buys new clothes. She likes to look good. But she gets lonely and stops eating. Living in hotels makes her feel estranged. She doesn’t like to go into restaurants alone, pacing up and down outside the entrance without going in. Fearful of his friends talking about literature, to which she has nothing to say, only that she is married to a writer whose manuscripts she reads in his absence. His stories are all she has to hold on to until he comes back. Sometimes she’s afraid to go out and sometimes she’s afraid to stay in, because the radiators start making noises like people whispering.

  She is not cut out for all this travelling. His disfigured idea of home is making her ill. He is a man with no borders, in fear of standing still.

  He decides to get an apartment in Berlin where she might feel more at home. But he can’t stand it. He’s afraid of family life. Afraid of being confined to the real world. Afraid to be found dead in a conventional apartment, so he buys a dozen penknives to defend himself against imaginary intruders. His publisher finds him pacing up and down the living room in his overcoat as though he’s waiting for a train.