Blue Self-Portrait

the pianist thought observing her eyes, this girl who of youth and musicianship, of the ravages of music upon youth and of those of youth upon music, had no historical knowledge but who knew, how could she know, the girl’s eyes now, where to put himself in their light, he wished he’d not brought up the Heydrichs, wished he’d spoken neither of father nor son, thought he should have given up peddling his 20th January 1942 from one girl to the next but each time he catches himself banging on about that day, for the pianist discussion of 20th January 1942 is the prior condition for any relationship, but its inevitable end he knows from experience, still each time whips out his pet date and each time destroys the relationship, girls in good health fleeing one after the other or delicate girls dropping like ninepins, one or the other, but this one not fleeing or dropping, the pianist sees, flights and drops he’s seen a thousand variants, but not with her, this girl who crosses and uncrosses her legs, the Heydrichs father and son don’t finish her off, rather they bring the girl and the pianist so, so close together, each word on the Heydrichs from the pianist’s mouth could equally have come from the girl’s mouth, so naturally that the pianist would like to kiss and lay her down and hold her tight against him until all fundamental differences have been effaced; I should have remembered about the 20th of January 1942 when I caught sight of the Wannsee then saw it disappear again in the space of a heartbeat, I don’t know how I could see that water and not think first if not of the father at least of the son, I did think of them but too late, the mistake once again irreparable. The spontaneity of my non-thinking about Heydrich the younger pierced me like a dagger-thrust, the kind that makes warmongers regret war, once again I was ashamed too late as is always the case with me and shame, a belated shame with this devastating effect on my physical condition, and on that of my morale as well as my physique, so terribly moral and much too belated as ever when it comes to me and morality. Moral spontaneity should be learned as young as possible, a flaw in my education I thought, here I go again complaining about my education, a complaint that’s good for nothing but to justify a lack of moral spontaneity; that the two Heydrichs, the Nazi friend of Goering and the Nazi composer and conservatorium director should have zero moral spontaneity: that is what permitted the Wannsee Conference; that this education was catastrophic for Heydrich’s personal development and for humanity: that’s what the Wannsee Conference proved, and even if Heydrich had said something, pointless to expect a single word from Heydrich, however I’ve strained to hear it, the pianist said, I’ve never heard that one word: Entschuldigung. Thanks would not have made much difference, made absolutely no difference for the millions of cadavers foreseen by the younger Heydrich and his friends at the Wannsee of whom Goering was his closest pal, as badly educated as Heydrich, the education of Goering the man is far removed from the education of man in general, which is a construction of man in the idea, the pianist said one day at a conference at Humboldt University, Humboldt’s education is like that of Schiller an exemplary education, an ideal education, die Erziehung des Menschen, that of Goering was not and all’s done that’s done. The plane’s wing rose again, I dived into a letter from Adorno, I recalled the pianist’s saying that if Adorno had been attended to Heydrich would have stayed put in the place he belonged, he’d explained to the Auditorium audience before beginning the concerto, in his place as Heydrich’s son dramatically educated by his composer father, not only but also purveyor of a collective musical future and director of the Conservatorium, in his place as a murderer, and had Mann not written to Adorno we would have to read the correspondence between the Heydrichs father and son, the conservatorium director and the murderer, that’s what we’d have to read, the pianist said to the Auditorium audience which was losing patience, there not for history but for classical music, with no wish to rehash the old tale, what’s done is done, the impatience of the Auditorium audience which wanted to hear Beethoven’s music not listen to Beethoven’s howl, let themselves be moved by Beethoven’s music without knowing if Beethoven’s bust had ever been chiseled for Hitler and if Beethoven was played at Theresienstadt, I began to sweat so copiously that I had to take a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my face and hands, my back was soaked, I had caught the Wannsee fever, I knew this was no air-sickness but rather the sight of water, of that water, of the Wannsee, which resembles no other waterway seen from above. You go to Venice and end up dying of cholera, you go to a sanatorium and contract tuberculosis, you catch sight of the Wannsee and burn with fever, step into the Kaiser Café and you’ll die of shame.

At the Kaiser Café, there before the pianist, I ordered a Berliner, I looked relaxed, sitting in a club chair by the window, resolved not to knot my legs like snakes nor scrunch my shoulders up, I must say that after my Café Einstein experience I was defensive. You’re terrifying him with your wired body language, my sister said, think what you’d be like in a massage parlor or a Turkish bath! I couldn’t see myself in a Turkish bath, I’ve never frequented baths of any stripe or massage parlors, hairdressers are torture enough, I said to my sister, letting myself be shampooed, then snipped and styled and sent to the dryer to wait under that hood and finished off with hair spray, it