A Different Light

No renewal of the world's image falls from the sky. Every new understanding is preceded by a shift in perspective, by a conciliatory act of imagination. The old is reconciled with the new until the new has established itself and the old has fallen out of frame.

God remains the unquestioned measure of all human things when Anson Beauregard sets out on the adventure of his life. It is easy enough to dismiss Anson as simple-minded. A Scottish American from Pennsylvania, he drags a great deal of Old World history behind him, even as he does his utmost to conform to the frontier customs of the 1830s. He has already sacrificed his wife on the altar of his dream of a free and unencumbered life. Now he severs his last family ties, expecting to carve out a unique place in history. He abandons those whom it should be his duty to protect.

Anson follows in the footsteps of a line of famous predecessors into the Alleghenies. Daniel Boone comes to mind. He follows the trail that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark blazed westward at the beginning of the century.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition (May 14, 1804 – September 23, 1806) was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific Coast and back. Beyond searching for a navigable water route to the Pacific, its principal aim was to lay the foundations for a powerful nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Anson crosses the Mississippi, hears tales of atrocities committed by Indigenous groups, and survives as a wandering trader. His first winter on the trail breaks him. He nearly dies, yet somehow lives on by what seems little short of a miracle.

Hope keeps him alive. He writes letters to relatives who have long since given him up for dead. He hears of extraordinary bones being unearthed—bones as immense as the stripped skeletons in a windjammer graveyard. Hardly anyone yet realizes these reports concern dinosaur fossils. Enthusiasts search for breathing descendants of these giants. Surely an omnipotent God would not allow any creature of His creation to vanish entirely. Somewhere there must still be living counterparts to these extinct beasts.

Anson begins to suspect that herds of dinosaurs roam the West.

Jana's Grandfather

Thomas Meinecke and Joachim Lottmann insisted on being the authorities on subjects that, in the heyday of Kursbuch, were capable of igniting the great discourse of West German intellectual life. They held a kind of monopoly over the cultural middle class. Their prose functioned like radar, detecting phenomena of renewal that supplied fresh energy to the ordinary course of events.

Listening to literature read aloud is not everyone's cup of tea. Most people would rather do the talking themselves. To let someone tell you a story requires qualities that must be cultivated as deliberately as a landscape. What is wild and untamed has to be cleared away. The inner terrain, too, must be cleared and fenced in with discipline. Experienced listeners control their body language. They still their expressions and cultivate an air of impenetrability.

You sometimes saw this in older men—true Loriot characters—who sealed themselves off from their surroundings during a reading, as though they wished to deny, by the very manner of their presence, the interest their attendance was meant to signify. They might have been retired schoolmasters or judges. I imagine they wore ties even when dining alone.

In the last century you encountered such people in the Kleine Haus of the Mainz State Theatre at events attended by audiences that seemed determined to be spared every fashionable attempt at presentation. The evenings unfolded in the prosaic atmosphere of the foyer like spa concerts. An actor read from a novel, and that was all there was to it.

One evening Michael Thomas read from January by Iris Jiménez. The story unfolds beneath a suede-colored sky. At its Andalusian beginning, a wild dog fights a farm dog. An aristocratic republican in exile watches the struggle while awaiting the delivery of a servant girl who has become his sister-in-law. His emotions are as rustic as oak furniture. His brother, the farmer, has disappeared. Franco's Spain is a sack full of dirty secrets. The Civil War has forced society to confront its own reserves of cruelty. Fallen aristocrats accommodate themselves to upstarts enriched by the Franco regime, while other "victors" end up as buffoons in the gutter—like the shoeshiner from Salamanca who elevates his own name by adding a self-invented del. With his father's resentment clenched in his fists, a son wins his first fight. A disgraced doctor reads novels in his empty practice. The farmer's wife gives birth; the brother-in-law takes the husband's place. Before long he dies "in perfect health," after a period of stubborn passion. They had never been meant for one another. Social reflexes had failed across the board, making something unimaginable possible.

Thomas stripped the force from the words and held it up for everyone to see. It was a feat of sheer physical effort; the veins stood out in his neck. I sat beside Iris, who smelled wonderfully intoxicating and tried not to reveal how delighted she was to hear herself translated into another language and spoken in another voice. The following evening she read herself—first of five authors—at the Alte Patrone near Judensand. After her came Meinecke and Lottmann. Both insisted on their authority over those themes that, during the glory days of Kursbuch, had fueled the great West German discourse. They presided over the middle class. Their prose resembled radar, detecting forces of renewal that injected energy into the normal flow of life.

Lottmann's May, June, July, first published in the late 1980s and widely acclaimed at the time, had just been reissued. Lottmann seemed at odds with both himself and the stage. His cast included "fake confirmands, genuinely existing bundles of grief, and pre-pubescent individual anarchists"—in short, "cripples moving sideways like crabs."

Meinecke's protagonists knew people like that too, but they never associated with them.

The evening's title was Kanaks, Ossis, and Other Germans. Feridun Zaimoğlu and Jana Simon seemed to compete with one another in their readings. Their perspectives met at an extreme angle. A few days earlier I had visited Simon's grandfather, who in the Stone Age of Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg literary scene had given the new poetry its journalistic legs, to interview him. Simon read from Because We Are Different. She described how East Berlin gangs synchronized their rituals. Hooligans united by a GDR childhood greeted one another in much the same way as the "ethno kids" of West Berlin's melting pot. I took notes; Zaimoğlu's German Amok supplied keywords for an exquisite tirade.

Frank Schirrmacher has just sparked a debate about female media power: Liz Mohn, Friede Springer, Sabine Christiansen. No surprise there. But Schirrmacher also mentions Ulla Unseld-Berkéwicz, who has little to show so far and cannot get along with Berg, the last Suhrkamp managing director appointed by Unseld. What is that supposed to mean?

"It's obvious," Ariane sings. "Schirrmacher is sawing off Berg's chair. But don't ask me about sunshine, my dear chairman of the singing club. What kind of Banana Republic do you think we're living in?"

The New Age of Hanauer Landstraße is already growing old again, along with an audience whose faces have been carved by the relentless demands of the perpetual present. They become mirrors for one another on the grounds of the former Union Brewery. A price tag seems pasted to the forehead of a beauty towering over Ardi Goldman. I fetch Ariane something to drink, and together we enjoy the rooftop atmosphere outside the Romanfabrik. We are accomplices in our appetite for watching people. Frankfurt's smallest pub used to stand here before the place became such a grand establishment. The landlord, Manfred Kötter, was a photographer. He served Aldi beer long before everyone else admitted Aldi had become unavoidable.

At night, the lights of Ostparkstraße filter through the shrubbery onto the square in front of the Favela Bar. They could be illuminating a dream. Brazilian beer, until the Atlantic rolls over Ostparkstraße.

In Ostpark, animals with gleaming collars chase one another through the darkness. A playground looks like a fort. Boys barricade themselves inside. Purely for fun—and perhaps to avoid losing the habit—they keep speaking to one another in the tone of a siege, the tone that creates territory in their schoolyards.

I imagine Ariane uses her husband's name to deceive me. I suspect she is concealing something that has nothing to do with him. She talks about landscaping projects her father has undertaken in his garden. She spins an elaborate sexual anecdote. We both love elaborating stories. Ariane chatters away at random. I try in vain to steer us onto a shared course.

She says something dismissive about Frankfurt's Nordend, too categorical to have originated with her alone. She claims that art is concentration. She has discovered a new favorite Italian restaurant. Her girlfriends take up much of her time. On weekends she is away too often.

Ariane's sleeping face reminds me at once of a dead Viking and a wolf scenting prey. In the morning she has something to say. She adopts her most pitiful voice. I know this is where it becomes serious. There is no room for negotiation. Even so, Ariane lets the traffic light of love flash green. In a bewitched moment I imagine myself occupying a place in her life that I will never attain. I fail like a minor political party falling short of the five-percent threshold. Close only counts in horseshoes. The joke is that Ariane always lets me try again. Again and again I jump over the little stick she holds out for me.

Elfchen says, "Things with Ariane will never come to any good. She's plundering your soul."

Elfchen's husband Paul says, "Elfchen talks about you all the time."

Paul's irritation is the highest emotion he can muster.

"Don't worry," I tell him.

"Don't imagine you know what goes on between my wife and me."

I like that answer so much I carry it with me out into the street. That's exactly how it should be. I drift into loneliness among second-rate artists in a courtyard in Bornheim.

The city is ruled by moods that hand themselves over from one district to the next like relay runners. In Bornheim the light falls differently than it does in the Nordend.

Now the square in front of the theatre resembles a wind-carved gorge. I make my way toward the station district, mouth open like a feeding whale in a sea of light. I seep into the gutters along the Main. The river lies beneath its bridges like shimmering steel.

I breathe in the city.

I see Ariane sitting on the lap of a man I do not know, late at night on a bench beside the Main. The sight crushes me.

I know the station district at every hour of day and night. I have wandered through it in my darkest states, seldom as a voyeur, if one accepts the terms Céline used in Journey to the End of the Night.

My libido migrates into perception itself. I enjoy Elfchen's solicitude. She seeks physical closeness. As a girl she curtsied to Adenauer. She once advised a federal president on matters of art. Paintings cling to walls like traces of an earlier coat of paint. In one picture, knotted figures cross a Panton bridge. On the Sachsenhausen riverbank, a girl watches over geese while an elegant lady looks on. I invent a story to match the painting. Tiny creatures climb into the nostrils of sleeping people. They have tasks; some human beings require their help. I want to tell the story to Ariane and embellish it with her. For me she could become the goose girl lying beside me in the grass.

A cockatoo, magnificent as a feathered Uhlan helmet, presides over its aviary.

We sit in a perfect kitchen like astronauts inside a capsule. I begin to understand how profoundly Jackie Kennedy impressed Elfchen. She tells me about her currywurst years in the station district. She once desired a handsome man who spent his days playing pool with friends, pretending to be sharks of the big city. She pursued Paul, though at first he had no use for a high-born virgin. Paul preferred voluptuous Madonnas of the sort you met as butchers' daughters in those days. Elfchen hauled him ashore with considerable effort. She needed a husband who would not take too much interest.

Then she surprises me by saying, "Please think only of yourself now."

*

"I had a terrible cold," Ariane announces. I feel as though I could drink the mucus straight from her nose. If she ever lets me back into her bed, I won't wash again.

Ariane captivates me with the way she phrases things. She recites words of intimacy. We go to the Tannenbaum and sit in our usual place. Once I held her foot between my legs here. Who else can say that?

Be kind. I order beer and sausages with a gesture of hospitality. That's simply how things are done at the Tannenbaum.

"You'll always be my most important conversation partner."

How dreadful.

Ariane's phone rings.

"I'm not answering it."

Am I supposed to be grateful? How often have I been the one calling? If Ariane did answer, she would say, "I'm here with Barbara," or, "I went to the movies with Maren," or, "I'm meeting Flora at a fish-themed bike party."

Ariane and I sneak into the Palm Garden and discuss who pollinates whom. Hummingbirds pollinate pineapples. Pineapples can also fertilize themselves, just as bananas do, while their plants bend together into bouquets of humility beneath palms that rise to the roof. The Palm House dates back to 1869. Her divorce is final now. Her ex-husband has found someone new—an alpine academic sex bomb.

"How could he give you up?" I ask fanatically. "How could he walk away from you?"

"He's a man on the rise," she replies. "He has choices."

She giggles. "Once you understand a few things, you'll never have to do entirely without me."

She brings coffee to bed and lets herself be drawn beneath the blanket. I imagine I could date every shift in the course of our erotic journey. Some of her gestures seem to me like public announcements of the progress she's making with other men.

She has to get ready. She creams herself from head to toe with gymnastic efficiency.

"Even this will bore you someday."

"Never," I cry in bright indignation, pelting her with pillows.

"We'll see."

---

I haven't slept for fifty-six hours. My nerves are shredded. I offend people with remarks they would normally brush aside. It must be the expression on my face. I don't want to see it any more than they do. A few acquaintances ask what's wrong. I can't tell anyone. My condition is close to unbearable.

The Astor Bar. Eddie's. The Mood. Some women possess the radar of motherhood by the age of eighteen. Suddenly Ariane and Martin appear. She is wearing a skirt and boots. I nearly lose my mind. Before the night is over Martin will lift her skirt. Ariane likes that best of all, even in stairwells. Without a word she presses a pistol to my chest: either accept the situation or I'll shrink its boundaries until there's no room left for you. I am blind with rage. Instead of asking why she feels compelled to appear in the Mood with another man, I concern myself with refreshments.

"What are you drinking?" I ask Martin. "I don't have to ask Ariane."

Martin senses the false concern.

"It's okay," he says. "It's a shitty situation. Not just for you. But Ariane insisted."

Eat the bird or die. Ariane stiffens. She intends to hold her ground. Courtesy and consideration mean little to her. At this moment her willingness to transgress seems limitless, though she can also be an incredible coward. I ask for five minutes alone with her. Reluctantly she follows me into a niche. We stand facing one another at a cautious distance.

"I'll never give you up," I say.

"I know," she replies. Hatred glows in her dark eyes. "I know I've got you hanging around my neck."

I close my eyes so the pain can arrive more fully. I smoke a hole into my lungs.

*

I persuade Ariane to give me one evening together. My intention is to butter her up, hoping the sweetness will still linger when someone else kisses her. I still cannot imagine her being with other men in the way she is with me. A natural companion. A friend who asks over dinner, "Does it taste good?"

My sense of inferiority becomes an experience of symbolic castration. I feel as though warts are spreading inside me while my gums keep growing—mutations of despair.

Ariane appears as a girl approaching twenty-eight. I display the remnants of my vitality; together we laugh at ourselves. I tell her about the days when I knew the Nordend only by hearsay, a district somewhere beyond the horizon. There is even a pub there called Horizont. I searched for the Nordend and couldn't find it.

Automatically Ariane counters my story about the district with her own family history. She summons the entire clan—father, mother, brother, cousins, uncles, aunts, all the pomp and circumstance.

Sherry at the Alhambra. Ariane remarks, "It's still so beautiful here."

To my ears it sounds as though she is saying goodbye.

*

Ariane shows me her new favorite Italian restaurant behind the station. Shell pasta with capers and olives in tomato sauce is quickly agreed upon. She watches to see whether I enjoy it, whether everything is perfect. That's how we are together. Later we drink plum wine at the Goto. Someone says the wrong thing. Ariane's upper lip curls back; she develops the mouth of a politician. I remember my astonishment the first time I heard her speaking English effortlessly, one morning at the Mood. Friends of mine had come to visit, and Ariane insisted on receiving them with impeccable courtesy. I stretch the memory of her across an orchard meadow. She took off her dress so she could climb a tree unhindered. I remind her of it; she joins in. The meadow bordered the Vilbel forest. We walked on to Bergen, eating ice cream and pizza all afternoon. Exactly where and how we sat matters. You were sitting like this, and then... I... Ariane folds her hands in her lap, allowing me to share in the possession of her virtues. My favorite are her pointed knees. She cannot believe knees can be beautiful.

*

I see Ariane sink onto a landing stage. I see her enter her house ahead of Martin. I see her climb into a passenger seat after midnight. One Saturday morning I see her and someone else cycling away. I follow on foot across the Hohlbein footbridge and lose sight of them at the flea market by the Museumsufer. On a Friday evening I spot Ariane on the Iron Footbridge. The man beside her is not Martin.

I begin to learn the language of curtains. Behind them I scent an intimacy long since completed. Nightmares as gripping as cinema. Their endless repetitions. Now Ariane is sleeping with the assassin of my life's dream.

She admits nothing. Emotionally I am dismantled. Ariane immunizes herself against me with insults.

My topographical understanding of the city changes. Berliner Straße swears a false oath; Großer Hirschgraben raises an accusing finger. I discover the Rote Bar. I bring charges at the Staufen Wall. I turn the Gutleut district upside down.

The city's nodal points display oppositions. Out of the energy of competing interests emerge structures that can be contemplated like works of art.

Ariane arrives. The small gestures with which she adjusts her handbag or reaches up to touch her pinned hair never lose their enchantment. This is how Ariane presents herself to men—I know that. And yet, in the end, I will be the only one who gets to hear her whisper words of love.