His sister crouches at his feet in a bad mood, saying nothing, asking no questions, but merely deciding in that deathly silence within her that she won't go swimming again in a hurry because water is not her element. Her element is musical sound, the waves of which pound and foam and ebb away, they may shower down but they never shower. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out, not a word, not a musical note. Silence.
The water does not welcome her, it repels her. The attendant blows his whistle shrilly because one lad has been too beastly, leaping right into a group of people and knocking them over, but the people simply laugh. An inconceivably smooth smoothness creeps out from under the twins' wet soles and slithers away like a snake. There is nothing those soles can get a grip on. And somebody must have sneakily taken away Art, which normally provides them with a support to grip hold of, and transported it to some unknown location.
Anna opens her mouth again. Nothing. Again. If the whole writing business starts again, she'll kill herself.
Rainer states that happiness and love, which are identical, are feelings (or rather, one single feeling) of the kind you cannot describe. Any account of the phenomenon is bound to be inadequate and can never do service for true feeling, dear Sophie. Anna wants to reply to this stuff about love but cannot manage to, though she could think of the answer.
Together with her brother she shuffles towards the lockers. Sophie is already slipping wirily out of one of the cabins, completely dressed, her hair done, how sweet is the way her damp curls cling to her temples, Rainer would like to stroke them tenderly but she would probably ruin the little gesture. How sweet Sophie looks! But she goes off right away, saying: See you tomorrow, I'm in a hurry today. We've got a lot to talk about tomorrow, I've been thinking over the attacks. These words darken the clear overall impression made by the Jorger Baths today; where there was glistening brightness there is now dull gloom because Sophie has gone, perhaps for ever, but probably just till tomorrow morning at school.
RAINER'S AND ANNA'S rooms are separated by a thin DIY partition wall which lets everything from one side through to the other and back, teenagers simply don't have any privacy. You can't develop without the other one noticing and developing too. Today, for instance, Anna develops a physical appetite for Hans, and lo, in two shakes Rainer has his ear to the wall that keeps them apart, to pick up tips he can put to use with Sophie. Though no one's meant to realise that he still has anything to learn. Because, you see, in their teens youngsters invariably believe that no one can teach them anything. Naturally Sophie is somewhat different from his sister, Sophie is destined to become his loved one, who at a certain age takes the place of a brother's sister. It is to be hoped that the changeover will take place on time and the young man will cut his ties with the parental home without any harm being done.
Get undressed, I want to have you right now (Anna). Then I'll listen to the new record afterwards, okay (Hans). By now the act has been practised a number of times and goes more smoothly than it did at the outset. First some foreplay is performed and then you force an entry into Anna and rummage about inside as in a drawer of old socks when you're looking for the second of a pair. Don't pound away like a moron. Sensitive, sophisticated friction's what's called for. What I often can't say with my mouth because I'm totally speechless with rage, I express with my heart and my whole body (Anna, neurotically). Lips are silent, violins whisper: love me tender. And Hans whispers, hey, this is great, Al, and it'll be even better, just think how long we've been waiting for it, any moment you'll scream with desire and honk like a ship's siren.
Lying on his side, Rainer absent-mindedly studies himself in the blotchy mirror on the wall; today as so often he is practising having no expression and showing none. He practises keeping his face frozen and impassive so that people cannot detect any changes of mood outside, on the facade, and adapt their responses to those changes. His aunt often says that nothing satisfies him, not even his parents, who make such sacrifices, in fact he is satisfied with them least of all, although they are extremely pernickety with the kids, in front of strangers too. He only wants to listen to the very latest jazz records and is neither undemanding nor modest. Don't imagine he wears just any ordinary shoes! Not him! All he wears are winklepickers, which ruin your feet. And he won't wear the trousers from his old confirmation suit either, oh no, it has to be jeans. Since pocket money has to be saved (his parents might as well keep it themselves and have done with it), one has to go begging to Grandma or the aforementioned aunt for money to buy jeans, which means running errands, which robs one of one's personal dignity and practically forces one to assault and robbery, what alternative is there? Right now Rainer has no alternative either, he simply has to listen to Anna shouting more more more and yesyesyesthat'ssogood and to Hans burbling Jesus, Anni, you've got a great cunt and fanny. Which rhymes. Hans says you ought to be able to do this all the time and it's a pity that it's only possible at rare intervals. He'd be up to it any time, it's her parents that are the problem. Is that my sister, who I know like the back of my hand, uttering those noises? wonders her brother, and stares expressionlessly into his mirror, mirror on the wall.
Promptly he sits down at his desk and in spite of himself writes down a boast on a scrap of paper, a boast he is going to spread about the class tomorrow. To the effect that his parents flew to the Caribbean only recently, where they got a terrific tan and met some interesting fellow-travellers. They went swimming the whole time and walking along a white beach beside a blue sea, they went surfing a lot too. On the outward and return journeys they travelled by aeroplane. I am telling you this in writing because it is a means of communication that is very much my own, I feel an urge to tell you things this way, even if they're meant to be secrets. Rainer has no friends, alas, only mates. Still, even mates can be told this story about the Caribbean.
Next door Anna gives a great howl, it sounds revolting, one's mind may be on the same wavelength as hers but one's body isn't, her inarticulate scream of desire sticks to one like pine resin, it goes: Ahhhhhh, now! Presumably he's squirting his juice into her at this very moment, that strapping Goliath. And she even accepts that crap he's dumping inside her, she will put to organic use what others waste and wash their hands of, secretly washing out the sullied sheet with cold water. One can never bring a schoolmate home because home both looks and is disgusting. One is ashamed of one's ancestral home. Now Rainer is writing yet another lie, a love poem to Sophie, which is a subtle process. The title is Love, and it continues in the same clueless way because one is confined within one's limits. Love, then. I see your face before me night and day. Carissima… that was how the letter began in which I confessed my love for you… Blushing, you heard me swear my love. Kisses… I kissed your red lips, candles were burning beside us, we gazed into the bright flames and the crystal glasses. Where are you supposed to get crystal here, the only glass in this place is in spectacles, there's nothing but battered old cups. As for Rainer, the facial expression is still under control.
In the adjoining room, which is no more than a closet, Hans is grunting gibberish, Hans who is no more than a jerk, a jerk of the first order. The stupidity of it must really be getting too much for his sister, that is presumably why she is making no reply. His sister, who reads Bataille in the French original. Though at present the latter seems to have slipped her memory altogether. The wall of Rainer's den (a 'young person's room'), like most of the walls in this poor persons' flat, consists of unwieldy objects stacked high, because nothing is ever thrown away, all manner of junk which may be of some value after all or may become valuable some day in goodnessknowshowmany years. In his direct line of vision there is an old refrigerator, the door of which was removed by some heartless person years ago. Inside it are apples, a piggy bank, an old clock with only one hand, several pairs of glasses (no longer used), a flower pot, sundry cleansing agents, cutlery in a plastic tray, a razor, various toiletry articles in a brightly-coloured plastic bag, an ashtray, a purse with nothing in it, several tattered books, one or two maps for long walks, and a china bowl with a sewing kit. Inside Rainer's head the sea is roaring, and tanned feet, attached to slender legs, race into aforesaid sea, the feet belong to Sophie, and the second pair of feet, also tanned, which now enter the field of vision are Rainer's and likewise enter the salt water. All are equal before the Sea, rich and poor alike. The business of swimming can be taken for granted because in this daydream the watery element is as acceptable to Rainer as the dry element he normally inhabits.
Oooooh, cry Hans and Anna in unison, which is not a particularly intelligent comment on the situation, in Rainer's opinion. Doubtless Hans is now looking her in the face and noting that said face looks really wowed. In an old cardboard suitcase there is a bayonet, which is also old, dating from the First World War. It is a precious souvenir and the blade is 25 cm long. Which is plenty. It needn't be any longer. Rainer would like to be photographed by Anna holding this bayonet, for a lark. He would hold it the way you hold a rapier in fencing, but it would look awkward, that's for sure, because he always looks a little silly if he doesn't happen to be talking about philosophical problems. At present the bayonet is peacefully resting in the container intended for it, the suitcase. Along with it are broken toys, a slide projector for showing holiday slides which were never taken because there were never any holidays either, and a pile of pieces of felt. In his interior world, Rainer has already detached himself completely from this family; in the outside world he will detach himself by assaulting and robbing innocent people.
Aaaaah, comes a noise from next door, for a change, a variation on the same theme, though it introduces nothing new. Rainer goes on practising keeping his face impassive despite his hatred and his hand relaxed despite extreme aggression and his mouth unstrained despite his greed and anger.
Eeeeeh, rollicks Anna, yet another orgasm, who knows however many that is now, amazing. Tonight will doubtless be another occasion for Rainer onanism, to ease the tension, but in spite of himself and in total darkness, which is where he normally leads his life anyway.
Rainer, like countless other teenagers of his generation, is an adolescent who never gets what he wants and always wants more than he can get, though perhaps he'll make it once he's a full-grown adult. His position is hopeless. That is how he himself sees it. Once, last year, he expressed the trust he placed in his gym teacher and showed him one or two of his own poems, by way of a shy approach to the confidential closeness that can prevail at times between two human beings. But plainly the gym teacher entertained the whole staffroom with these paltry and (granted) as yet none too skilful works, guffawing the while, because other teachers often teased the young creator by quoting single lines of poetry at random, out of context.
Next door Anna is screeching as if something were hurting her. But no doubt this is indicative of unendurable desire, which is why it sounds like pain in many ways. Hans promptly starts bawling too, to keep her company. Like two wolves howling. Bestial stuff. Not really what makes Man noble at all. I think they've finished now, there's nothing left in Hans so they'll stop now and at last turn the record over.
Impassively, Rainer gawps into the mirror, and Rainer gawps back out of the mirror equally impassively, only the other way round. Rainer is on the right side, that is to say, the side where he himself is. He is not there in anybody's place, nor does anyone want to be represented by him, not even his class, which elected someone else as class spokesman, though Witkowski campaigned furiously for the job. The reason they give is that he boasts and wants to appear better than he is and is forever saying things that are untrue. This isn't a very matey way to behave to the others, because you have to be truthful, even if it hurts, even if you might be beaten as a result. You could bear the blows with pride because you hadn't lied to escape them.
I wouldn't play with fire myself, I'd have far too many reservations, says Rainer. A lot happens in the mind, enriching a person, but nevertheless some things still have to be put into action.
In Father's pistol case, an iron case 7- 8 cm deep, 30 cm long and 15 cm wide, lies the pistol. Underneath it are nude photos of Rainer's mother, including one or two close-ups of her genitals. Father always has the key with him, on his person. In a school essay on Paul Claudel's play Le Soulier de Satin Rainer puts forward the fundamental view that remorse affords no protection from punishment, and freedom can only be achieved through punishment.
Anna and Hans are just emerging, rather dishevelled, from Anna's room, pretending it was great. You could hear it, loud, replies Rainer. His sister snuggles up to her brother with her whole body, as if she had an incestuous act in mind. But no, she hasn't, because she has just been satisfied. Hans talks about some kind of sport. Compared with this, his carry-on back then was pleasant.
The dirty dishes are stacked high in the kitchen sink, the bottom of the sink is caked in a furry, mouldy, greenish felt that was once bacon and eggs. The young adolescent often gets in his own way and unfortunately there is no way of avoiding himself. There is a lot of dust on the furniture, dust which Mother ought to have removed. But she is out. Really, one can't invite anyone here. Often the adolescent obstructs himself more than his parents do, and is in his turn considerably impeded by the conditions of his life. For instance, the two of them could fetch a duster now and clear things up.
We have to go over the plans for our crimes in detail, Rainer reminds them. Come off it, not now, not after that intense experience, breathes Hans, heavily, like an athlete, and he makes an eloquent face. You ought to screw too, you wouldn't have those thoughts any more. Though Anna may possibly be pregnant, it is Rainer who throws up, a biological curiosity of the first order. Dad and Mum will be home any moment and will find an unwanted friend in the house.
Sure enough, here comes Mum and here lollops Dad. Won't you give me a kiss, eh, a kiss for your Dad, he demands of his own darling son. The latter flushes and says no, you know why not. Well, why not? Because Auntie said not long ago that only homosexuals kiss people of the same sex. Where does the boy get things like that, when we were young we had no idea about things like that! He gets if from your sister, you heard what he said.
And the ceiling complete with the light attachment – two of its little glass cups (where the candle-shaped electric bulbs are mounted) are already broken – folds down upon Rainer and his needs. But it's not as if this put an end to the needs. They are merely locked up in a prison with no means of escape.
KOCHGASSE HAS BEEN taking Hans in for several years now, to make him forget his childhood in the country altogether. All that's left are long lines of men in working overalls, washed-out trousers or smocks, and nothing about them reminds you of green meadows and a little stream. The city has no mercy, it takes a great effort to stand out so that others notice and acknowledge you, sport helps you achieve this, you fight for your team and you may even win! The muddy paths rutted with tractor tracks, the rural animals and people, have retired to the places they belong. Kochgasse conveys an urban atmosphere, today it takes him in once again and sucks him into the correct hallway, which is functionally furnished so that workers will feel at home there and not come across anything unnecessary which might be a pleasure to behold and would perhaps encourage them to want inessentials in their own lives.
No adornment, no gables or oriels, no turrets, no stucco reliefs, those are all for the irremediably dead bourgeois. Who doesn't really exist. A down-to-earth j image to match the down-to-earth strength of Recon- j struction. Which the workers who live here have been busy at for a long time. The Poetry of Life can be supplied by doilies, family photographs, pictures of deer, and the new furniture, from which may sometimes come the unwonted sounds of a new era, always supposing the furniture in question is one of the popular new radiograms. Bought on credit. Every inmate is allowed to create his own Poetry, the architect left space clear on the walls and ceilings for this purpose, for pictures and statues. Whether aforesaid Poetry is up top, round the sides or down below is just a question of the degree of maturity of the people in question.
Hans enters and instantly hits on naked simplicity.
It has no character whatsoever. Only Mother's work impresses a stamp on it, heaps of envelopes are lying around ruining the impression. Hans is now familiar with rooms unblemished by use, where islands of furniture drift by from the depths like floating pack-ice. Sophie has a room of that kind and he has often spent time in it, always keeping Sophie from something urgent that she was just intending to do. But she is glad to have him there and give him pleasure because there is something between them and that something is maturing by the hour. It is not only her environment that makes Sophie different from the other girls he knows, however. She is so special. He'd know her among thousands. Even in working overalls it would have been love at first sight, as they say in hit songs.
What Hans means by this is: if she had been wearing overalls too and not just him. In the flat, Hans finds two mates from the Workers Youth Group, which he is also a member of (whether he wants to be or not), waiting for him. They have posters with them and a bucket of paste which they are stirring. This leaves Hans essentially unstirred. Recently he has taken to changing at work before heading for home. He won't wear anything in the street but trousers and a pullover. At one time he would cycle home wearing his work clothes, but nowadays his muscles are clad in the clothing Sophie has given him. The things have stretched somewhat and are visibly creased in the critical areas, although Hans looks after them very well and is forever shooing his mother off to the ironing board. They lose a little more of their shape every time and adapt to Hans's. Their original owner is now studying in Oxford and will no doubt have bought himself some new things. Where muscles come from and where they go are two quite different things.
Hans's muscles go into electrical current and are absorbed by it wholly, they are transformed into pure energy. Hans often chews a square, snow-white lozenge of dextrose to replace the energy he has used up.
Recently he has practically been living on these lozenges, they are so pure and so regular in shape, like Sophie, and sportsmen advertise them. They are called Dextro Energen. Skiers and tennis-players alike know the uses of Dextro Energen and avail themselves of it.
Hans goes instantly to his closet to take off his good clothes and put them away tidily. Wearing his everyday clothes, even though he will very probably be going out again (wearing his cashmere) in just half an hour, he enters the living room, where his fellow-workers are skulking. These last few weeks, the new company he's been keeping has given him greater assurance in his dealings with people of every race, class and nationality than back when all he knew was his own race and class. These young fellow-workers represent a step back to his former life because they are of his own class and in that class they will remain, you can tell right away, they are incapable of getting anywhere. Mother has made them coffee to warm them up and every one of them has a thickly-spread slice of bread too. Her son gets a slice as well. The youngsters with the bucket have their enthusiasm and their socialism, and Hans has his ambition, which is so strong that you can even swim against the current, you can even fight against heavy electrical current, which is an invisible enemy, Hans will take on anyone who represents an obstacle to his future. Hans puts on a new record so he doesn't have to listen to the old tune about the Communist Party, which is scratched and sounds awful, and furthermore the two of them always say the same thing although they are different people, they have no lives of their own, no individuality. They do not realise that Hans has already quit the long chain of hands passing the bucket of water forwards in the direction of the house that's on fire (which you cannot see, but it must be there because otherwise there wouldn't be a bucket). He has got out and has simply gone away, and the last in line needs a little more energy to bridge the vacant space, but that's all. They declare that the time to join forces with the right people has already been upon them for some time.
One day, once he is mature enough, Hans proposes to join forces with Sophie, in matrimony.
Hans's hands are worn with labour. He has been working since he was fourteen. There is a paste of grime and sweat under his fingernails. The grime and sweat unite to form one substance and so do the body and the mind, a two-in-one unison Hans has been wanting to get to know ever since he got to know Sophie. On Sophie's nails there is not even varnish, they have no need of it, they have nothing to hide nor do they hide it.
Mother knows the parents of these two from a bus trip they took together and wants Hans to get to know them too because they have the kind of sense her son lacks. You have to join a group, one individual cannot achieve anything on his own, only when you're united do you become stronger. Hans says he has already found a group of that kind and is respected there on account of his special abilities, which nobody else respects him for. No one can take his place in the group, he's unique.
I'm irreplaceable at basketball, both as a thrower and as a catcher, but anyone can do my work exactly as I do it, and it's the same in Life. That is just one example of how things are in every branch of Life. Work is an evil and people keep telling me that it is a necessary evil but I could manage without work and Life would be better. All I need is Sophie. If she loves me, I can even do without work.
Having said this, he is all contempt for the wretched extra-thickly-spread margarine slice, margarine again, no wurst, yuck and he hurls at his fellow-workers the proposition that it is the individualist who must achieve his liberation and not the group because a group is unfeeling and anonymous and you disappear in it, never to emerge, unless you are its leader or the group is made to measure, like his own group, which he helped sew together.
All this time, his slice of bread goes uneaten. I give you enough of my money to buy decent butter or wurst. It's high time to become an individual. That is the new-style worker, the modern worker. Though I won't be a worker for much longer. The old-style worker remains a worker for ever. The individual worker requires a lot of space, light, air and sun, where flowers, grasses and trees flourish. Which the aforesaid worker comes to appreciate again, at long last. He neglected all those things during the political struggle. Sport is also writ large by Modern Man.
Mother now makes the cardinal error (one she makes whenever she flies into a rage and can no longer control herself in her behaviour towards her son) of talking about the concentration camp. About the child who was eating an apple and was smashed against the wall till it was dead, whereupon the mother went on eating the apple. About children whose torture consisted in being thrown from the second floor. About the mother who was sent to the gas chamber along with her two-day-old child because she had begged the doctor to be allowed to give birth to the child. The doctor gave his permission. A great many friends of your father's and mine, of both sexes, were beheaded at the district court, too. I think of them constantly.
Hans exaggerates a yawn. He's heard it all, frequently, and his opinion is that times have changed and people too. People have other things to worry about now. Particularly young people, to whom the future belongs, which after all they are helping to fashion.
His two mates with slush in their heads are stirring the contents of the bucket, ill at ease, so that the paste will stay gummy and not go hard. For which the paste has to have warmth, which is not available outside but in the cosiness of a kitchen range, which is where it is right now. They do not know which side to approach this Hans from, he makes such a self-confident impression, plainly the others have already appropriated him and harnessed him to their own purposes. Outside a cold wind is lashing cold rain along the streets, the trees are bending over into wet loops. This is the violence of Nature. Countless invisible hands, from the workers' movement, are reaching out to the two young lads with the bucket of paste, pushing them forward to put their arguments to Hans. And some of them are in fact issuing from their mouths now. But he does not pay any attention to them. He only listens to the voice within himself that says you have to go to the roots of existence in order to understand yourself, and only then can you understand others. If you imagine you can do anything for others without first having grasped your own natures, you're deluding yourself. That's absolutely essential. Sometimes you may do things that even appear nonsensical at first glance, but they're not, because they're terrifically important for you. My new friend's name is Rainer and he's in better shape than this dump. Which isn't true, objectively speaking. The Witkowski's flat is in an extremely shabby state. But this bedazzled young man does not see that. Who is this Rainer, asks Mother. Which she has already asked once before. But she's forgotten. His father was in the SS, replies Hans, now he's a pensioner and a porter. His kids go to grammar school with Sophie and I'm going to go to technical college some day. You wanted to be a gym teacher the other day. Not any more, I definitely want to make a bigger success of things.
The paste-bucket bearers are silent. They have to be going now anyway. Outside the downpour is easing off but it is still shaking the panes to the foundations. No doubt a similar downpour is lashing Sophie's window and making the birch trees in the garden tremble, it may as well bear a message of love to her while it's about it. Without a shadow of a doubt, Sophie will be sitting in the lamplight doing her homework, how Hans would like to be doing that too, but he doesn't have a school to go to, nor any work worthy of the name.
So aren't you coming then, say the two poster-pasters, and they get up. Why not go along too, suggests Mother. In that pissy weather, no thank you, but even if the weather was fine I wouldn't go because that would be just right for tennis.
You always enjoyed your work. Your work is what's really made you a member of the working class, one of the unbroken line of human beings stretching out before and behind you, the people who will forge the new era (Mother).
You must be joking. Enjoyed it? Manual labour is a primitive stage of employment which will come to an end altogether one day, says Rainer. He, Anna and Sophie say that human culture did not even start to develop till people learnt to distinguish between manual work and methods of doing the same work with tools and other aids. Without the work the mind does, there would never have been any culture. Which is the most important thing of all.
Mother says she must be going crazy, and the two pasters say that they must too. We don't think we'll get through to him just now, Frau Sepp. Goodbye, then. We're going to leave this mate of ours, they've got to him, maybe he'll see the light but on the whole we rather doubt it. We're seeing more and more cases like his these days.
Mother says: Please stop by again when you can stay longer. We'll convince him, you'll see. But you have to be going now.
The gusts of wind outside take their cue, open their arms wide, and swallow up the two youths plus their bucket. Let's hope they don't swallow the posters too. The posters are paper and that means they are defenceless against the wet. They are protected by makeshift plastic sheeting. Anyway, the storm has abated, the walls of houses stand out wetly, the asphalt is gleaming again the way that wet asphalt gleamed in the film. After all, it was this asphalt's fellow-asphalt that played the part in the film.
Mother says: If your dead father knew, your father who sacrificed himself for the cause.