dream, until death. Keetenheuve put off the moment of dealing with his correspondence, the pleas and the abuse, the letters from professional beggars, moaners, business people, and madmen, the cries of despair—he would have liked to sweep the lot of them off his desk. He picked up a sheet of official stationery, and wrote out "Le beau navire " "The beautiful ship," because Elke had reminded him of that wonderful poem in praise of women, that was how he wanted her to live on in his memory, and he tried to translate Baudelaire's deathless lines from memory, ' 'je veux te raconter, o molle enchanteresse," I want to say to you, let me tell you, let me confess to you . . . , he liked that, he wanted to confess to Elke that he loved her, that he missed her, he was looking for the right word, the mot juste, he thought, he scribbled, he crossed out, he emended, he sank back in feelings of aesthetic melancholy. Was he lying? No, he felt it; his love was great, and his sorrow profound, but along with them was an undertow of vanity and self-pity and the suspicion that, in poetry and in love, he was a dilettante. He bewailed Elke, but he also dreaded the desolation he had called for all his life, and which now gripped him. He translated from The Flowers of Evil, " o molle enchanteresse," my sweet, my soft, my warm rapture, o my soft , my smooth , my enraptured word; —he didn't have anyone to write to. There were a hundred letters on his desk, wails, bewildered stammerings, and cursings, but no one was expecting a letter from him, except by way of reply. Keetenheuve had written Elke letters from Bonn, and if they were written with one eye on posterity as well, still Elke had been much more than a postal address; she was the medium that permitted him to speak and put him in touch with the world. Pale as one of the damned, Keetenheuve sat in the Bundeshaus, pale lightnings twitched outside his window, clouds freighted with electricity, charged with the emissions from the chimneys of the Ruhr, steaming broody mists, gassy, toxic, and sulfurous, eerie untamed nature moved stormily past the roof and walls of the hothouse, whistling its contempt and its scorn for the sensitive plant within, the grieving man, the Baudelaire translator and MP in his neon cell the other side of the window. And so the time passed until Knurrewahn sent for him.
They lived symbiotically, in the way that different creatures lived together for mutual advantage; but they weren't sure they weren't damaging themselves as well. Knurrewahn might have contended that Keetenheuve was bad for his soul. Only, Knurrewahn, an autodidact from the period before the First World War, when he had stuffed himself with a progressive-minded and optimistic literature that even then was no longer new (the riddles of the world had all been solved, and once he'd got rid of his ill-advised god, man needed only to put his house in order), denied the existence of the soul. And so the discomfort he experienced through Keetenheuve was comparable to the irritation that a conscientious noncommissioned officer might feel with a one-year volunteer who doesn't understand the point of training and, worse, can't make himself take it seriously. Unfortunately, though, the army needed its one-year volunteers, and the party needed Keetenheuve, who (Knurrewahn guessed) wasn't an officer at all, wasn't even officer material, but was a straightforward confidence trickster, a vagabond, who for some reason, perhaps bound up with his arrogant manner, was taken for an officer. On this last point, Knurrewahn erred; Keetenheuve was not arrogant, he was merely unconventional, and that struck Knurrewahn as the height of arrogance, and so in the end it was he who took Keetenheuve for an officer, whereas Keetenheuve himself would have been quite happy to admit he was something else, a drifter, for example. He respected Knurrewahn, whom he called a boss from the old school, which was said slightly mockingly, but not
They lived symbiotically, in the way that different creatures lived together for mutual advantage; but they weren't sure they weren't damaging themselves as well. Knurrewahn might have contended that Keetenheuve was bad for his soul. Only, Knurrewahn, an autodidact from the period before the First World War, when he had stuffed himself with a progressive-minded and optimistic literature that even then was no longer new (the riddles of the world had all been solved, and once he'd got rid of his ill-advised god, man needed only to put his house in order), denied the existence of the soul. And so the discomfort he experienced through Keetenheuve was comparable to the irritation that a conscientious noncommissioned officer might feel with a one-year volunteer who doesn't understand the point of training and, worse, can't make himself take it seriously. Unfortunately, though, the army needed its one-year volunteers, and the party needed Keetenheuve, who (Knurrewahn guessed) wasn't an officer at all, wasn't even officer material, but was a straightforward confidence trickster, a vagabond, who for some reason, perhaps bound up with his arrogant manner, was taken for an officer. On this last point, Knurrewahn erred; Keetenheuve was not arrogant, he was merely unconventional, and that struck Knurrewahn as the height of arrogance, and so in the end it was he who took Keetenheuve for an officer, whereas Keetenheuve himself would have been quite happy to admit he was something else, a drifter, for example. He respected Knurrewahn, whom he called a boss from the old school, which was said slightly mockingly, but not
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