Daniel Kehlmann Read online

  Me and Kaminski

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  A Note about the Translator

  A Note about the Author

  Also by Daniel Kehlmann

  Copyright

  What a singular being do I find myself! Let this my journal show what variety my mind is capable of. But am I not well received everywhere? Am I not particularly taken notice of by men of the most distinguished genius? And why? I have neither profound knowledge, strong judgment, nor constant gaiety. But I have a noble soul which still shines forth, a certain degree of knowledge, a multiplicity of ideas of all kinds, an original humor and turn of expression, and, I really believe, a remarkable knowledge of human nature.

  —James Boswell, Journals, December 29, 1764

  I

  I AWOKE as the conductor knocked on the door of the compartment. It was a little after 6 a.m., we’d be there in half an hour, had I heard him? Yes, I muttered, yes, and dragged myself up into a sitting position. I had been lying across three seats, alone in the compartment, my back hurt and I had a stiff neck. My dreams had been shot through with the persistent racket that comes with any journey, voices in the corridor, announcements about platforms; they were unpleasant dreams, and I was jolted out of them repeatedly; once someone had yanked open the compartment door from outside in the corridor and coughed, and I had to get up to shut it. I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window: raining. I put on my shoes, took my old shaving kit out of my suitcase, yawned, and went outside.

  The mirror in the toilet showed me a pale face, a mess of hair, and a cheek still imprinted with the pattern of the seat upholstery. I plugged in the shaver, nothing happened. I opened the door, saw the conductor still down at the other end of the car, and called out that I needed help.

  He came and gave me a look and a thin smile. The shaver, I said, wasn’t working, clearly there was no current. Of course there’s current, he replied. No, I said. Yes, he said. No! He shrugged, perhaps it’s the wiring, but in any case there’s nothing he can do. But surely, I said, it’s the very least one can expect from a conductor. He wasn’t a conductor, he said, he was a train escort. I said I really didn’t care. He asked me what I meant. I said I really didn’t care what the job was called, it was superfluous anyway. He said he wasn’t going to let himself be insulted by me, I should watch out, he might just bust me in the chops. He could try, I said, I was going to file a complaint in any case, and I wanted his name. He wasn’t going to do any such thing, he said, and what’s more, I stank and I was getting a bald spot. Then he turned around and went away cursing.

  I shut the door to the toilet and took a worried look in the mirror. Of course there was no bald spot; where on earth did that ape get an idea like that? I washed my face, went back to the compartment, and put on my jacket. Outside the window railroad tracks, electricity poles, and wires began to form a tightening grid, the train was slowing down, and the platform was already in sight: billboards, telephone booths, people with luggage carts. The train braked and came to a halt.

  I pushed my way along the corridor toward the door. A man jostled me, and I pushed him aside. The conductor was standing on the platform. I handed down my suitcase. He took it, looked at me, smiled, and let it fall smack onto the asphalt. “Sorry,” he said, and grinned. I climbed down, picked up the suitcase, and walked away.

  I asked a man in uniform about my connecting train. He gave me a long look, then fished out a crumpled little book, tapped his forefinger thoughtfully against his tongue, and began to thumb the pages.

  “Don’t you have a computer?”

  He gave me a questioning look.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Keep going.”

  He thumbed, sighed, thumbed again. “Intercity 6:35. Track 8. Then change . . .”

  I moved on quickly, I had no time for his chatter. Walking wasn’t easy, I wasn’t used to being awake at such an early hour. My train was standing at track 8. I boarded it, entered the carriage, pushed a fat lady aside, worked my way to the last free window seat, and let myself fall into it. A few minutes later we were on our way.

  Straight opposite me was a bony man wearing a tie. I nodded to him, he returned the greeting and then turned his eyes away. I opened my suitcase, took out my notepad, and laid it on the narrow table between us. I almost knocked his book off, but he was able to grab onto it in time. I had no time to lose, my article was already three days overdue.

  Hans Bahring, I wrote, who has made many . . . no! . . . numerous attempts to bore us to death . . . yes, that’s it . . . with his insights, no, badly researched insights into lives of important, no, prominent, no, that’s even worse. I thought for a moment . . . historical personalities, has come up with another one. To call his just-published biography of the artist, no, painter Georges Braque a failure would probably be to overpraise a book that . . . I stuck the pencil between my teeth. Now I needed something really to the point. I pictured Bahring’s face when he read the article, but that didn’t give me any ideas either. This was less fun than I’d thought it would be.

  I was probably just tired. I rubbed my chin, the stubble felt unpleasant, I simply had to get a shave. I put down the pencil and leaned my head against the windowpane. It was starting to rain. Drops were hitting the glass and streaming in the opposite direction from the one we were traveling in. I blinked, the rain got heavier, the raindrops seemed to make little exploded puddles full of faces, eyes, and mouths. I closed my eyes, and while I listened to the drumming of the water, I dozed off: for a few moments, I didn’t know where I was; I felt I was floating through the huge emptiness of space. I opened my eyes: the glass was covered with a film of water, and trees were bowed under the force of the rain. I closed my notepad and put it away. Then I noticed the book the man in front of me was reading: Picasso’s Last Years by Hans Bahring. I didn’t like this. I had the feeling I was being mocked somehow.

  “Lousy weather,” I said.

  He looked up for a moment.

  “Not very good, is it?” I pointed to Bahring’s hash-up.

  “I find it interesting,” he said.

  “That’s because you’re not an expert.”

  “That’ll be why,” he said, and turned the page.

  I leaned my head against the neck rest, my back was still hurting from the night in the train. I took out my cigarettes. The rain was easing up, and the first mountains were becoming visible through the haze. I used my lips to pull a cigarette out of the pack. As I clicked the lighter, I flashed on Kaminski’s Still Life of Fire and Mirror: a flickering dazzle of bright colors out of which a lancelike flame came leaping, as if it were trying to shoot clear of the canvas. What year? I didn’t know. I had to prepare better.

  “This is a nonsmoking carriage.”

  “What?”

  The man didn’t look up, just pointed to the sign on the window.

  “Just a couple of quick puffs!”

  “This is a nonsmoking carriage,” he said again.

  I dropped the cigarette and ground it out with my foot, clenching my teeth with fury. Okay, if that’s how he wanted it, I wouldn’t talk to him. I pulled out Komenev’s Some Thoughts on Kaminski, a badly printed paperback with an unattractive thicket of footnotes. It had stopped raining, blue sky could be seen through gashes in the clouds. I was still very tired, but I couldn’t allow myself to go to sleep again, I was goi
ng to have to get off any time now.

  Very shortly afterward, I was wandering shivering through the main hall of a station, a cigarette in my mouth and a paper cup of steaming coffee in my hand. In the toilet I switched on my shaver, it didn’t work. God—no current here either. The bookstore had a revolving paperback holder outside: Bahring’s Rembrandt, Bahring’s Picasso, and of course the window display had a pile of hardcover copies of Georges Braque, or the Discovery of the Cube. In a drugstore I bought two throwaway razors and a tube of shaving cream. The local train was almost empty, the upholstered seats were soft, I leaned into them and immediately closed my eyes.

  When I woke again, there was a young woman sitting opposite me, with red hair, full lips, and long, narrow hands. I looked at her, she pretended not to notice. I waited. When her eyes crossed mine, I smiled. She looked out the window. But then she hastily smoothed back her hair, she was having trouble concealing her nervousness. I looked at her and smiled. After a minute or two, she stood up, took her purse, and left the carriage.

  Silly creature, I thought. Most likely she was waiting for me in the dining car, but so what, I had no desire to get up and follow her. The heat was sticky now: the haze was making the mountains seem close for a moment, then distant again, the soaring cliffs were draped in shreds of clouds, villages flew by, churches, cemeteries, little factories, a motorcycle crawling along a path between the fields. Then more meadows, woods, meadows again, men in overalls smearing steaming tar on a road. The train stopped, I got out.

  A single platform, an arched canopy outside, a little house with shutters, a stationmaster with a mustache. I asked about my train, he said something, but it was in dialect and I didn’t understand. I asked again, he tried again, we looked helplessly at each other. Then he took me to the big wall display with all the departure times. Naturally I had just missed my train and the next one wasn’t for another hour.

  I was the only guest in the station restaurant. Up there? That’s quite a long way, said the proprietress. Was I going to spend my vacation up there?

  On the contrary, I said. I was on the way to Manuel Kaminski.

  It wasn’t the best time of year, she said, but I’d surely have a couple of good days at best. She could promise me.

  To Manuel Kaminski, I said again. Manuel Kaminski!

  Don’t know him, she says, he’s not from around here.

  I said, he’s been living here for twenty-five years.

  Exactly, she said, not from around here, she knew she was right about that. The kitchen door flew open, a fat man set a plate of greasy soup in front of me. I looked at it uneasily, swallowed a little, and said to the proprietress how beautiful I thought it was to be here. She smiled proudly. Here in the countryside, in nature, even here in this station. Way away from everything, among simple people.

  She said what did I mean.

  Not among intellectuals, I explained, overeducated posturing types with university degrees. Among people who were close to their animals, their fields, and the mountains. Who went to sleep early and got up early. Who lived, instead of thinking!

  She stared at me as she frowned, and went away; I counted out the money on the table. I shaved in the wonderfully clean toilet: I had never yet been good at it, the shaving-cream got mixed with blood, and when I’d washed it off, dark stripes were suddenly spreading across my red, naked-looking face. Bald spot? Where on earth did he get that idea? I shook my head and my mirror image did the same.

  The train was tiny. Just two carriages behind a little engine, wooden seats, nowhere to put your suitcases. Two men in rough overalls, one old woman. She looked at me, said something incomprehensible, the men laughed, and we set off.

  Straight up the mountain. The force of gravity pushed me against the wood, as the train leaned into a bend, my suitcase tipped over, one of the men laughed, I glared at him. Another bend. And another. I began to feel faint. A ravine yawned next to us: a vertiginous slope of grass sprouting the strangest thistles and way below them contorted evergreens. We went through a tunnel, the ravine opened to our right, then another tunnel and it was back on our left. The air smelled of cow shit. A dull pressure made itself felt in my ears, I swallowed, and it disappeared, but a couple of minutes later it was back to stay. Now even the trees had run out, and there was nothing but fenced pastures and the outlines of mountains on the other side of the void. Another bend, the train braked, my suitcase fell over one last time.

  I got out and lit up a cigarette. The dizzy feeling gradually subsided. Behind the station was the village street, and behind that a two-story house with a weathered wooden front door and open shutters: Belview Boardinghouse, breakfast, good cooking. A stag’s head stared at me gloomily from one of the windows. No help for it, this was where I’d reserved, everything else was too expensive.

  The reception desk was staffed by a large woman with her hair in an elaborate beehive. She spoke slowly, articulating every word, but I still had to concentrate in order to understand her. A shaggy dog was snuffling around on the floor. “Take the suitcase to my room,” I said, “and I need an extra pillow, a coverlet, and paper. Lots of paper. How do I get to Kaminski’s house?”

  She set her sausage hands on the reception desk and looked at me. The dog found something and ate it noisily.

  “He’s expecting me,” I said. “I’m not a tourist. I’m his biographer.”

  She seemed to be thinking this over. The dog pushed his nose against my foot. I suppressed the urge to kick him.

  “Behind here,” she said, “up the path. Half an hour, the house with the tower. Hugo!”

  It took me a moment to grasp that this was aimed at the dog. “Do people often ask for him?”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Vacationers. Admirers. Anyone?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Do you have any idea who this man is?”

  She said nothing. Hugo grunted and let something drop out of his mouth; I made myself not look. A tractor chugged past the window. I thanked her for her help and went outside.

  The path began behind the semicircle of the main square, went up in a double spiral above the roof tops, and then through some brownish field of rubble. I took a deep breath and set off.

  It was worse than I’d expected. A few steps and my shirt was already sticking to my body. A warm mist was rising off the meadows, the sun was blazing, sweat poured down my forehead. When I stopped to catch my breath, I had cleared the first two turns.

  I took off my jacket and put it over my shoulders. It fell to the ground; I tried tying the sleeves around my hips. Sweat was getting into my eyes, I wiped it away. I made it up another two bends, then I had to rest.

  I sat on the ground. A mosquito buzzed, high-pitched, then suddenly stopped somewhere close to my head; seconds later my cheek began to itch. The wet grass was beginning to soak my pants. I stood up.

  The main thing was obviously to find the right rhythm between walking and breathing. But it didn’t come to me, I kept having to stop, my whole body was soon wet, I was having to pant and my breath rattled, my hair was stuck to my face. Then there was a rumble, I leapt sideways in fright, a tractor overtook me. The man driving it looked at me with indifference, his head bobbing to the rhythm of the engine.

  “Can I hitch a ride?” I yelled. He didn’t pay any attention. I tried to keep pace with him and almost managed to jump on. But then I fell back and couldn’t catch up with him, and watched as he climbed the hill away from me, grew smaller, then disappeared around the next curve. His diesel smell hung in the air for quite some time.

  Half an hour later, I was at the top, breathing heavily and hanging on to a wooden post. As I turned around, the slope seemed to plunge in one direction as the sky soared away in the other, and I clung to the post till the rush of vertigo eased. I was surrounded by sparse tufts of grass mixed with shale, and the path ahead of me fell away gently. I followed it slowly, and after ten minutes it ended in a small south-facing bowl of rock
that held three houses, a parking place, and a black-topped road leading down to the valley.

  Yes: a wide, tarred road! I had made a great big detour, not to mention the fact that I could have done the whole thing by taxi. I thought about the proprietress: this was going to cost her! The parking place held nine, I counted them, cars. The first nameplate said Clure, the second said Dr. Glinzli, the third said Kaminski. I looked at it for a while. I had to get myself used to the idea that he really lived here.

  The house was large and graceless: two stories and a pointy decorative tower in an elephantine approximation of art nouveau. There was a gray BMW parked in front of the garden gate; it made me envious, I would love to have driven a car like that just once. I smoothed back my hair, put on my jacket, and fingered the mosquito bite on my cheek. The sun was already low in the sky, my shadow on the lawn in front of me was narrow and long. I rang the bell.

  II

  APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS, a key turned, the door flew open, and a woman in a dirty apron was giving me the once-over. I said my name, she nodded, and the door slammed.

  Just as I was about to ring again, the door reopened: another woman, mid-forties, tall and thin, black hair, narrow, almost oriental eyes. I said my name, she made a brief gesture that meant: Come in. “We weren’t expecting you until the day after tomorrow.”

  “I was able to get here sooner.” I followed her through a bare hall, at the other end of which a door stood open, emitting a babble of voices. “I hope it won’t cause you any problems.” I gave her time to confirm that it wouldn’t indeed cause any, but she didn’t take me up on it. “You could have told me about the road. I came up here on the path, I could have gone right over the edge. You’re the daughter?”

  “Miriam Kaminski,” she said, quite coolly, and opened another door. “Please wait.”

  I went in. A sofa, two chairs, a radio on the windowsill. On the wall, an oil painting of a dark hilly landscape, probably Kaminski’s middle period, early fifties. The wall above the heating unit was streaked with soot, in a couple of places dust hung down from the ceiling in threads that moved in some air current that was otherwise undetectable. I was going to sit down, but right then in came Miriam and, I recognized him at once, her father.