The Hothouse (17 page)

She'd be up for it. She wasn't a spoilsport. And now it was time for the German comedy. Keetenheuve was shattered. The comedy flickered. It was a ghost comedy. The romantic lead put on a disguise. He dressed as a lady. Okay, there were such people as transvestites. But Keetenheuve didn't think it was funny. The transvestite got into a bath. Well, even transvestites have to wash. What was so funny about that? A woman walked in on him in the bath, rightly naked and no longer wrongly in disguise. Laughter in front of Keetenheuve and laughter behind him, laughter on either side of him. Why were they laughing? He didn't understand. It frightened him. He was excluded. He was excluded from their laughter. He hadn't seen anything funny. A naked actor. A thrice-divorced woman who walked in on him in the bath. Surely these events were more sad than funny! But all around Keetenheuve they were laughing. They howled with laughter. Was Keetenheuve a foreigner? Was he among people who laughed and cried differently than himself, who were different from himself? Maybe in his feelings he was a foreigner, and the laughter came out of the darkness and washed over him like a powerful wave that threatened to drown him. He groped his way out of the labyrinth. He rushed out of the cinema. It was panic flight. Ariadne squeaked after him: "Right for the exit! Right!"
Theseus flees Minotaur lives

The day was drawing to a close. There was still one last shimmer of the dying sun in the sky. It was suppertime. They sat in their dowdy rooms, they sat in front of their made beds, they chewed and they listened apathetically to the wireless: Take me with you, captain, on your journey to the stars. Only a very few people were out on the streets. They were the ones who didn't know where to go. They didn't know where to go, even if they had a room, even if their bed was made, and beer and sausages were waiting for them, they didn't know where to go. They were people like Keetenheuve, but they were different from Keetenheuve too—they didn't know what to do with themselves. There were youths standing outside the cinema. They went to the cinema twice a week, and on other days they stood outside it. They were hanging around. What were they hanging around for? They were hanging around waiting for life to begin, and the life they were waiting for didn't begin. Life didn't turn up for them outside the cinema, or if it did come and was standing next to them, they didn't see it, and the people they could see, that they later ended up sharing their lives with, they weren't the ones they were hoping to see. If they'd known it was only going to be them, they wouldn't have bothered standing around waiting. The boys were waiting in a group on their own. Boredom was in them like a disease, and you could already see in their faces that it would be the death of them. The girls were off on their own. They were less afflicted with boredom than the boys. They were fidgety, and they hid it by putting their heads together and gossiping and teasing each other. The young men were looking at the film stills for the hundredth time. They saw the actor sitting in the bathtub, and they saw him wearing woman's clothing. What was he playing at? A queer? They yawned. Their mouths became a round hole, the entrance to a tunnel where emptiness came and went. They stuck cigarettes in the hole, to tamp the emptiness, they pressed their lips around the tobacco, and they looked mean and self-important. They might become MPs one day; but probably the army would get them first. Keetenheuve didn't have a vision: he didn't see them lying in shallow graves, he didn't see them without their legs, begging on pram wheels. Just then he wouldn't even have felt sorry for them. He had lost the gift of second sight, and his empathy had run out. A baker's boy was eyeing the box office. The cashier sat in the box office like a waxwork figure in a hairdresser's window. The cashier smiled a stiff, sweet, waxwork smile and wore her permed wig thinly and stiffly. The baker's boy was wondering whether he could rob the cashier. His shirt was open to the navel, and his very short baker's pants barely covered his rump. His chest and his bare legs were dusted with flour. He didn't smoke. He didn't yawn. His eyes were alert. Keetenheuve thought: If I was one of the girls, I'd want to go down to the riverbank with you. Keetenheuve thought: If I was the cashier, I'd worry.

He met lonely people undertaking desperate strolls through town. What was on their minds? What were they going through? Were they frustrated? Were they looking for partners for the lusts that were fermenting inside them? They wouldn't find any partners. The partners were everywhere. They walked past one another, men and women, they soaked up images, and in their rented rooms and in their rented beds they would remember the street and they would pleasure themselves. A few wanted to get drunk. They wanted to talk. They looked longingly at the windows of pubs. But they didn't have any money. Their wages were portioned out; so much for rent, for laundry, a bit for food, some to support their families; they should be pleased to hang on to the job that supplied the money that needed to be portioned out. They stopped in front of the shop windows and they studied expensive cameras. They speculated over the merits of a Leica as against a Contax, and they couldn't even afford a kiddies' box.

Keetenheuve went into the wine bar with wood-paneled walls. It was quiet and pleasant; only it was still hot in the bar, and he was sweating. An elderly man was sitting over his wine, and reading the paper. He was reading the editorial. The headline ran
Will the Chancellor Get His Way?
Keetenheuve had read the article; he knew that his name appeared in the editorial as a possible obstacle in the Chancellor's way.
Keetenheuve roadblock.
He ordered a wine from the Ahr, which was always good here. The old man, while informing himself of the prospects for the Chancellor, stroked an old dachshund that was sitting quietly beside him on the bench. The dachshund had a clever expression; it looked like a statesman. Keetenheuve thought: One day I'll be sitting like that, old and alone, looking to a dog for companionship. But there was still the question whether he would have even that: a dog, a glass of wine, and a bed somewhere in town.

A priest entered the wine bar. A girl accompanied the priest. The girl must have been twelve or so, and she was wearing red ankle socks. The priest was big and strong. He looked as though he was from the country, but his face was that of a scholar. It was a good face. The priest gave the wine list to the girl, and the girl shyly read out the names of the wines. The girl was afraid she would have to have lemonade; but the priest asked her if she wanted wine. He ordered an eighth for the girl, and a quarter for himself. The girl grasped the wineglass with both hands, and drank with careful little sips. The priest asked: "How is it?" The girl replied: "Goood!" Keetenheuve thought: You don't have to be shy, he's glad of your company. The priest took a newspaper out of his cassock. It was an Italian newspaper, a newspaper from the Vatican, it was the
Osservatore Romano.
The priest put on a pair of spectacles and read the editorial in the
Osservatore.
Keetenheuve thought: That newspapers no worse than any other, its probably even better. Keetenheuve thought: The article will be well written, they are humanists, they know how to think, they will be supporting a good cause with good arguments, but they will suppress the view that there are equally good arguments for supporting the opposite cause. Keetenheuve thought: There is no such thing as truth. He thought: There is belief. He wondered: Does the editor of the
Osservatore
believe what he prints in his paper? Is he a cleric? Has he taken orders? Does he live in the Vatican? Keetenheuve thought: That would be a nice life; evenings in the gardens, evenings strolling down by the Tiber. He saw himself as a priest in a cassock and a black hat with a red ribbon
Keetenheuve Monsignore. Little girls curtseying to him
,
and kissing his hand.
The priest asked the little girl: "Do you want some mineral water to go with your wine?" The little girl shook her head. She drank her wine undiluted, with appreciative little sips. The priest folded up his
Osservatore.
He took off his glasses. His eyes were clear. His face was calm. It wasn't an empty face. He enjoyed his wine, the way a wine grower might. The little girl's socks under the table were red. The old man stroked his clever dachshund. It was quiet and peaceful. The waitress was sitting quietly and peacefully at one of the tables. She was reading a magazine serialization of
I Was Stalin's Girlfriend.
Keetenheuve thought: Eternity. He thought: Fixity. He thought: Belief. He thought: This peace is deceptive. And he thought: The heat in here, the silence in here, it's a moment in eternity, and contained in this moment are we, the priest and his
Osservatore Romano,
the little girl with her red socks, the man and his dog, the waitress who's resting, Stalin and his unfaithful girlfriend, and me, the parliamentarian, the protean, weak and ailing, but at least still turbulent.

All of a sudden, everyone paid. The priest paid. The old man paid. Keetenheuve paid. The wine bar was suddenly empty. Where to? Where to? The old man and his dog were headed home. The priest walked the little girl back. Did the priest not have a home? Keetenheuve didn't know. Maybe the priest would go and see Korodin. Maybe he would go to a church, and spend the night in prayer. Maybe he had a beautiful home, a broad baroque bed with carved swans, old mirrors, an important collection of the seventeenth-century French, maybe he would go and browse in it a while, maybe he fell asleep on cool linen, and maybe little red socks twinkled through his dreams. Keetenheuve felt no craving to return home; his parliamentarian's apartment was a functional pied-à-terre, a doll's chamber of fear, where he felt one thing—that if he died there, no one would mourn. All day long, he'd been running scared of the dismal place.

The streets of the neighborhood were empty. The lights in the windows of the clothes shops burned to no purpose. Keetenheuve studied the lives of the shop window families. A radio station had been questing for the ideal family. Here they were. The clothes shop owner had had them for ages. A grinning father, a grinning mother, a grinning child stared delightedly at their price tags. They were happy because they were cheaply clothed. Keetenheuve thought: If the designer thought of putting the man in a uniform, how he would grin, how they would grin and admire him; they would admire him until the windows burst with the pressure of the explosions, until the wax melted down in the heat of the firestorm. And the lady in the next-door window, with a fashionable hairstyle, a lustful mouth, and a nice provocative thrusting belly, was pleased with her inexpensive dress. It was an ideal population standing there, ideal fathers, ideal housewives, ideal children, ideal mistresses,
Serial reportage
I Was Keetenheuve's Shop Window Dummy
Keetenheuve contemporary personality
;
Keetenheuve moral exemplum for magazine readers
, they grinned at Keetenheuve. They grinned encouragingly. They grinned: Go for it! They led a clean, cheap, ideal life. Even the provocatively thrusting belly of the fashionable doll, the little slut, was clean and cheap, it was synthetic: in her womb was the future. Keetenheuve could buy himself a doll family. An ideal wife. An ideal child. They could share his parliamentarian's doll's apartment with him. He could love them. He could put them in the cupboard when he didn't love them any more. He could buy them coffins, lay them out, and bury them.

The town had plenty to offer the lonely wanderer. It offered him cars, it offered him stoves, refrigerators, pots and pans, furniture, clocks, radios, all these objects were lying there in windows lit up as if for the personal benefit of Keetenheuve in a striking isolation, they were a devilish temptation, they were at present unreal cars, unreal stoves, pots and pans, or cupboards, they were magic charms or curses cast in the guise of utilitarian objects. A powerful magician had cast a spell, they were solidified air pressed into chance shapes, and the magician had enjoyed making ugly things as well, and now he was pleased that mankind desired these things and was prepared to work for them, to murder and steal and cheat for them; yes, mankind was prepared to kill itself if it couldn't meet the payments, honor the signature it had given the devil to acquire the magic goods. A shop with red light was pure black magic. A man stood in the window, cut open. Keetenheuve saw the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach; they were large as life, and clearly visible to him. The organs were connected to one another by glass tubes, by transparent laboratory snakes, and through these tubes flowed a pinky juice that the magic drink Sieglinde was supposed to keep flowing. The open man carried a skull with brushed teeth, and his right arm, which had been stripped of skin, exposing the strands of muscle and nerve, his right arm was raised in the fascist greeting, and Keetenheuve thought he could hear the "Heil Hitler" that this ghost had yelped out at him. The creature was without sex organs, it stood impotently among a store of hygiene goods, as they called themselves, and Keetenheuve took in rubber douches, contraceptive pills, all kinds of slimy pastes and sugared pills, there was a stork of artificial resin, and a luminous sign that read:
The best for your children.

Keetenheuve thought: Don't take part, don't participate, don't sign on the dotted line, don't be a consumer or a subject. For a while in the quiet nocturnal streets of the capital, which was now reverting to small town, Keetenheuve dreamed his ancient dream of ataraxy. The dream gave him strength, as it gave everyone strength. His strides echoed.
Ascetic Keetenheuve. Keetenheuve disciple of Zen. Keetenheuve Buddhist. Keetenheuve the great freer from the shackles of self
But the stimulation he felt stimulated his gastric juices, the spiritual swing to his step woke his appetite, the great freer from the shackles of self felt hunger, felt thirst, he wasn't in the mood for liberation, which would have to begin now, right away, immediately, if it was to succeed. His strides echoed. They made hollow sounds in the quiet street.

Keetenheuve went into the town's second wine bar. This wine bar wasn't so quiet, it wasn't so formal as the first one, there was no priest here, no little girl in red socks to gladden the eye, but the establishment was still open, they were still serving. The regulars at a couple of tables were engaged in debate. They were fat men and fat women; they had businesses here, they had a comfortable living, they had lit up their shop windows, they were in league with the devil. Keetenheuve ordered wine and cheese. He was pleased he had ordered cheese. The Buddhist didn't want any animal to be slaughtered for his sake. The slightly smelly cheese salved his conscience. It tasted good. On the wall were the dying words of the vintner to his sons: You know, you can make wine from grapes also. The wine Keetenheuve drank was good. And then the Salvation Army girls walked into the bar.