In Times of Fading Light

with language. Kurt the orator. The great storyteller. How he used to sit there in his famous armchair—Kurt’s armchair! How all and sundry would hang on his lips as Kurt the professor told his little stories. His anecdotes. And another funny thing: in Kurt’s mouth everything became an anecdote. Never mind what Kurt was talking about— even if he was telling you how he nearly died in the camp—it always had a punch line, it was always witty. Well, used to be witty. In the distant past. The last consecutive sentence that Kurt had managed to utter was: I’ve lost my powers of speech. Not bad. Brilliant, compared with his present repertory. But that was two years ago. I’ve lost my powers of speech. And people had genuinely thought, well, he’s lost his powers of speech, but otherwise… Otherwise he still seemed to be, at least to a certain extent, all there. Smiled, nodded. Made faces that somehow fitted the context. Put up a clever pretense. But just occasionally he did something odd, poured red wine into his coffee cup. Or stood around holding a cork, suddenly at a loss—and then put the cork away on a bookshelf.

Today’s quota so far was pathetic; Kurt had managed only one piece of meat from the goulash. Now he was using his fingers as he wolfed it down. Looked surreptitiously up at Alexander, like a child testing his parents’ reaction. Shoved goulash into his mouth. And more goulash. And chewed.

As he chewed, he held up his fingers, covered with the sauce, as if taking an oath.

“If you only knew,” said Alexander.

Kurt did not react. He had finally found a method: the solution to the goulash problem. Stuffed it in, chewed it. The sauce ran down his chin in a narrow trail.

Kurt couldn’t do anything these days. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t brush his own teeth. Couldn’t even wipe his bottom; you were lucky if he sat on the toilet to shit. The one thing that Kurt could still do, thought Alexander, the one thing he still did of his own accord, the one thing that really interested him, and to which he put the very last of his clever mind, was eating. Taking in nourishment. Kurt didn’t eat with relish. Kurt didn’t even eat because he liked the taste of his food (his taste buds, Alexander felt sure, had been ruined by decades of pipe smoking). Kurt ate to live. Eating = Life, it was an equation, thought Alexander, that he had learned in the labor camp, and he had learned it thoroughly. Once and for all. The greed with which Kurt ate, stuffing goulash into his mouth, was nothing but the will to survive. All that was left of Kurt. It was what kept his head above water, made his body go on functioning, a heart and circulation machine that had slipped out of gear but still kept working—and would probably, it was to be feared, keep working for some time yet. Kurt had survived them all. He had survived Irina, and now there was a very real chance that he would also survive him, Alexander.

A large drop of sauce formed on Kurt’s chin. Alexander felt a strong urge to hurt his father, to tear off a piece of paper towel and wipe the sauce roughly away from his face.

The drop quivered and fell.

Had it been yesterday? Or today? At some point in the last two days, when he was lying on the buffalo leather sofa (motionless, for some reason or other taking care not to touch the leather with his bare skin), at some point during that time the idea of killing Kurt had occurred to him. He had played out variants of the scene in his head: smothering Kurt with his pillow, or maybe—the perfect murder—serving him a tough steak. Like the steak on which he had nearly choked. And if Alexander, when Kurt went blue in the face, staggered about in the road and fell unconscious to the ground, if Alexander hadn’t instinctively turned him over to the stable position on his side, so that as a result the almost globular lump of meat, chewed to a gooey consistency, hadn’t rolled out of Kurt’s mouth along with his dentures, then Kurt would presumably be dead now, and Alexander would have been spared (at least) this last setback.

“Did you notice that I haven’t been to see you for a while?”

Kurt had started on the red cabbage now—some time ago he had reverted to the infantile habit of eating his meal in separate parts, first meat, then vegetables, then potatoes. Surprisingly, he had his fork back in his hand, and it was even the right way up. He went on shoveling red cabbage into his mouth.

Alexander repeated his question. “Did you notice that I haven’t been here to see you for a while?”

“Yes,” said Kurt.

“So you did notice, then. How long was it? A week, a month, a year?”

“Yes,” said Kurt.

“A year, then?” asked Alexander.

“Yes,” said Kurt.

Alexander laughed. And to him it really did feel like a year. Like another life, when the life that preceded it had been ended by a single banal sentence. “I’m sending you to Frobelstrasse.”

That was all.

“Frobelstrasse?”

“The hospital there.”

Only once he was outside did he think of asking the nurse whether that meant he ought to take pajamas and a toothbrush with him. And the nurse had gone back into the consulting room and asked if that meant the patient ought to take pajamas and a toothbrush with him. And the doctor had said yes, it did indeed mean the patient ought to take pajamas and a toothbrush to the hospital with him. And that was it.

Four weeks. Twenty-seven doctors (he’d been counting). Modern medicine.

The assistant doctor who looked like a high school kid in his last year, who had examined him in a crazy reception area where people severely sick with something or other were groaning behind screens, and who had explained the principles of diagnostics. The doctor with the ponytail (very nice man) who claimed that marathon runners don’t get sick. The woman radiologist who had asked whether, at his age, he was thinking of having more children. The surgeon with a name like a butcher, Fleischhauer. And of course the pockmarked Karajan look-alike, Dr. Koch the medical director.

Plus twenty-two more of them.

And probably another two dozen lab assistants who put the blood they’d taken from him into test tubes, investigated his urine, examined his tissues under microscopes, or put them in centrifugal devices of some kind. And all with the pitiful, the positively outrageous result, that Dr. Koch had summed up in a single word.

“Inoperable.”

So Dr. Koch had said. In his grating voice. With his pockmarked face. His Karajan hairstyle. Inoperable, he had said, rocking back and forth in his swivel chair, and the lenses of his glasses had flashed in time with his movements.

Kurt had finished the red cabbage. Was starting in on the potatoes: too dry. Alexander knew what would happen now if he didn’t put a glass of water in front of Kurt at once. The dry potatoes would stick in Kurt’s throat, he would have a noisy attack of hiccups, suggesting that he was about to bring up his entire stomach. Kurt could probably be choked to death on dry potatoes, too.

Kurt, funnily enough, was operable; Kurt had had three-quarters of his stomach removed. And with what stomach was left he ate as if he had been given an extra three-quarters of a stomach instead. Never mind what meal arrived, Kurt always cleared his plate. He had always cleared his plate in the past, too, thought Alexander. Whatever Irina put in front of him. He had eaten it up and praised it—excellent! Always the same praise, always the same “Thanks!” and “Excellent!” Only years later, after Irina’s death, when Alexander happened to cook for him now and then—only then did Alexander realize how humiliating that eternal “Thanks!” and “Excellent!” must have been for his mother, how it must have worn her down. You couldn’t accuse Kurt of anything. Indeed, he had never made demands, not even on Irina. If no one cooked for him, he would go to a restaurant or have a sandwich. And if someone did cook for him, he said thank you nicely. Then he took his afternoon nap. Then he went for his walk. Then he looked at his mail. Who could object to that? No one at all. That was exactly the point.

Kurt was dabbing up the last of the potato with his fingertips. Alexander handed him a napkin. Kurt actually wiped his mouth with it, folded the napkin again neatly, and put it beside his plate.

“Listen, Father,” said Alexander. “I’ve been in the hospital.”

Kurt shook his head. Alexander took his forearm and tried again, speaking with emphasis.

“I,” he said, pointing to himself, “have been in the hos-pi-tal! Understand?”

“Yes,” said Kurt, standing up.

“I’m not through yet,” said Alexander.

But Kurt did not react. Shuffled into the bedroom, still with only one slipper on, and took his pants down.