...of Germany

It was by pure chance that I also went to see my father that year. We hadn’t heard from him in a long time, and I was surprised when he answered the phone. He was living in a small town in northern Germany. As we had done on our few previous meetings, we made elaborate arrangements to meet, missed each other as usual, and spent the whole evening trying to figure out why. Since the death of his wife, he lived alone in the house; he didn’t even have a dog anymore. He saw his likewise widowed woman friend only on weekends; in between, one called the other’s number each evening and let the phone ring briefly as a sign that he was still alive. (but here neither house nor man will be identified in the usual way.) In his eyes I saw the fear of death and suspected a belated sense of responsibility. Here, it seemed to me, was someone’s son. Halfhearted inquiry was swept away by the spirit of questioning, and I was able (wanting to was enough) to ask about what had long been kept silent. And he answered me, partly for his own sake. Casually, he told me that mornings, when he looked at himself in the mirror, he felt like “smashing his face,” and then for the first time I discovered in him the forlornness, bitterness, and rebelliousness of a hero. When late that night he took me to the train, a poster fastened to a tree outside the station was ablaze; some unemployed taxi drivers had set it on fire.
Once after that, I caught sight of another Germany, not the Federal Republic and its Lander, nor yet again the ghoulish Reich, nor the half-timbering of the petty principalities. It was earth-brown and wet with rain, and it was on a hilltop; it was windows; it was urban, devoid of people, and festive; I saw it from a train; it was the house on the other side of the river, it was humorously quiet and was called Mittelsinn; it was “the silent life of regular forms of silence”; it was the enigma; it was the recurrent and real. The man who saw it had a crafty feeling like Lieutenant Columbo after solving a case; yet knew there could never be lasting relief.

[The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire, from Slow Homecoming, Handke, P.]