The silence of the night
by Arezu Weitholz
The night (2001)
In the end it´s all about the now. About how the moonlight is shining through the blinds onto the parquet floor. How a car is driving by on the street. How quiet it is afterwards. You are breathing. I am sitting here, by your bed. I am wearing the color, that suits me so well, this middle grey anthracite.
I could play some music, I could leave. Put on my coat, go back home and forget about you for a few hours. I could fall asleep and call you tomorrow to find out if you made it. Even now, it´s only one phone call – please, tell me, and I´ll call an ambulance. But we never talked about things like this, did we? Emergencies do not occur in your world.
The light resembles empty sheets of music. The fridge is humming in the kitchen. There is a picture of Arvo Pärt in your bedroom. His music is as quiet and orderly as it is here in your flat. I saw you once in the living room, sliding around on a cloth, because you didn’t want to dirty the floors that you had just cleaned. You looked cute, like a clumsy duck. It made me think of mum. I never told you about her. She had knobbly skin on her knees from polishing the marble floors in our house. You could see the skin through her nylons. I could have told you about messy lounges, with the tv set always on, about patients drugged with Haldol, dragging their feet. About the constant neon light. About dust on the book-shelves and peonies in the garden in front of the clinic. About mum’s empty face. About her floral nightgown. They used grey slings to fix her on the bed. For you, a mental hospital would be out of the question. You would never forgive me. You would go mad.
Mum couldn’t survive what happened to dad, and I never told you about dad, because it made you angry, when something wasn’t perfect, happy, joyous or light.
The skin on your forehead glistens, your hand is clammy. I count your pulse. One, two, three. Although I do not know, how to measure it.
I get scared, when somebody feels something, you said. But they were always here, with us, these feelings. They followed us like stray dogs. You said, we have to be factual, otherwise we are like animals. You looked sad, when you told me about your ´releases´, that’s how you call it, when you say something really mean to another person. To hell with your intelligence, damn your Heraklid! War is the father of all things?
You lie here and breathe. Is that supposed to be a fight? In your world, people fight for recognition, for positions, for power. Your weapons are your brain and the weakness of others. That is no war, that is Kindergarten. Fighting is something different. It is something quiet.
There is a woman, for years she is suffering from depression. Every morning, when she gets up, she feels a weight, nobody can measure, because it is invisible. Every waking moment, she tries to not think of something, because it cannot be thought. She lives with bones that hurt and a thick fog, that lies over her thoughts. Most of the time she is alone. She is waiting. For something to change, for something to happen, maybe even for herself to die, but she is not killing herself. She stays alive, even though life doesn’t mean anything to her anymore. Do you suffer from such a depression? Can you fathom, how difficult it is, when you really have to fight? Against everything? For nothing?
For you, everything seemed okay this morning. The sun was shining, we got dressed, had breakfast. Your brain must have thought something, arrived at a conclusion and informed me. “Over.” Friendly. Peaceful. I even got the impression, it put you in a good mood. “Over”. But then? How did your day continue? Did your shitty Heraklid lead you towards the bed you’re lying in now? Why? Is there a war raging inside you, only I do not get it, because I do not have the insight or I didn´t read a certain book or I didn´t understand it correctly? Didn´t understand you correctly? Because I am not factual enough? But isn´t it you, who isn’t himself? Almost unconscious. Barely there. Tell me, what is a person, who is barely there? Finished? Bored? Or is this meant to be ironic? A paramedic would be the most factual person, who could happen to you. He would measure your pulse, set up an IV, maybe perform a gastric suction, and if you are unlucky, he would commit you to the next mental ward. B follows A, and C follows B. Did you not think this through? Or were you just curious and wanted to know how it feels, finally letting go?
Man, you always wanted to avoid this. A moment of maximum weakness, and look where we are now. If you could see yourself. How fragile you are, and how beautiful. Towers of books are watching over you. A dog is barking outside. And you? You are breathing.
Everything must be grand because we are small, that’s what you said, and then we listened to your music. Your pop music, about which you never tire to talk in grand words. Words that people read and do not understand, but think, how clever the author must be. But salvation is not a loop in a techno track. Can’t you hear what a loop really is? Broken chords!
Have you ever been on a rave, and I am not talking about the VIP lounge, where your friends hang, wearing the right sneakers. I am talking about a party, where you notice at four in the morning, that you have been dancing in the mud all the time. That you haven’t looked at your watch for ages. That you look like somebody who has forgotten, how he looks. A rave, where you see the sun rise, without sunglasses.
But you don’t dance. You always stand by the dancefloor, arms crossed, nodding approvingly every now and then.
It doesn´t have to be electronic music, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is: an orchestra can let the same sun rise in your mind, or a man, who is singing on the street. But that’s too banal or cheesy or stupid, right? You attend parties, because you are invited. Visit concerts, because somebody got you on the guest list. You never go anywhere, where it’s not special or exclusive. You leave out what you can`t talk about, afterwards. On good days, reality is like a chapter from a novel, that you are writing. It´s all in your hands: the protagonists, the places, what people say, what they think, what they wear and most importantly, what all of this means. A catastrophe is part of a narrative, and a happy ending is something for idiots.
In restaurants in the evenings you despise those, who want to talk to you, and remain silent – your outfit makes the statement, and whoever doesn’t get it, their loss. Where are they now, your stylish shoes, your shirts? Is this the final chapter? I thought you hated drama? Didn’t you want to blow up all theatres and actors and directors? And even your idols can’t help you now. Foucault, Deleuze, Bernhard – the book towers remain silent. Nobody writes, no one thinks, only your heart is beating. And I am an ungrateful audience. Can you hear me?
You feel sick, when you listen to a love song by the Stones. And when somebody tells you about Brian Jones, about the drugs and their Rock and Roll Circus, you want to throw up. You have arrogant ears. You are semipermeable. You let something out, but not much in. But you need more than morse code for your pop discourse. You need people in-the-know, you need insiders and outsiders, of course you need outsiders, many of them! Unthinkable, if everybody could be part of it. You despise hippies, disgustingly nice and soft and mild. But your methods follow the same rules as their bla bla or village gossip on the countryside. Just like farmer Tegtmeier or slaughter Becker tattle about their neighbours’ new car, you talk with your selected few about what Tracy Emin wore last night at Fischereihafen restaurant, or who has written what in the culture pages. People listen to you, recognize solitude in your writing, even though they don’t always understand all those foreign words – just like everybody feels at home in those movies, in which people are lonely: clueless, speechless and always surrounded by noise, slate and concrete.
And just like in every group, where some individuals think they are more special than the others your circus has a pecking order. You are on top, looking down on everybody else. The others are the infantry, stupid enough to work in record companies, in editorial offices, in television, in marketing, somewhere in these content-mashing-machines of the now. They keep the system running, but are only service staff, too stupid for a career in finance and too lazy to work as garbage collectors, that’s what you said, right? Most of them can´t hold a pencil, but want to work “in media”. They danced the Nineties away, round and around the pop-calf with the thousand stomachs. They earned a lot, changed nothing, and repeat. They are the media precariat, people with a Ramones T-Shirt but without a pension plan – small minded townsmen. Really? Why? How do you differ from them? Are you yourself no small service provider by selling your essays to a newspaper? Are you a better person than the promoter, who is writing a fact sheet, only because you write so intellectually about something that a small exclusive clientele savors so much? Is everything you do a form of protest? Against what? Is it art? Do you see yourself as an artist? Did you fake your articles because of that? But no, you do not fake. You remix, that’s big a difference. You call it “puff the story a little bit”. Nobody will notice, and even if they do, you couldn’t care less, because that’s what lawyers are for. You would withdraw for a while and be back in a year´s time with a higher salary in a better job. But now you have been found out. And you did care, or I am missing the point, here.
One night last autumn. We were walking along the river Elbe. You like always with your arms behind your back and I like always silently next to you. You asked whether I would die for something great. I have an answer now. No, I wouldn’t. I would live for it.
To die young. What for, anyway? Is that the final gesture? God, what a cliché. And it is not great. It is a line from a song, that even Kurt didn’t get: “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.”
Artists never died like their music. They died because of mishaps, of small things, of old age, that you fear so much. Do you know why so many of them died in traffic accidents? It wasn’t like with James Dean, reckless driving. It’s a statistical matter. A person, who is travelling so much, who is on the road all the time, the probability of a car crash rises. Simple. Not great. What is great, anyway? Getting the very small stuff done, that’s hard enough. Manage that first! Just like Little Jimmy Scott. Right now they celebrate him, even Madonna speaks highly of him. He was famous at 15, but got pulled over the barrel by the record industry. He was forgotten, he became ill, poor, and then he has been rediscovered, but not by everybody, only by Madonna and a few Jazz magazines. What does he do? Old and sick and underpaid he is singing in tiny clubs, that only get sold out, when a celebrity talks about him. But boy, how he sings. He never stopped shining. How can you at 31 argue, that it is impossible to age with dignity? How can you say, it is a failure to be old?
I would have loved to show you my archive. I collected so much material about pop and death, and I am not talking about Elvis, Jimi Hendrix or Bon Scott, I mean all of them, especially the ones in the niches, especially those. I watched films, read their words, examined their songs, I wanted to know: Can you hear death? Is it an invisible sound, a color in the voice, just like in Blues? Something you cannot measure, but feel? Lorca called this duende. He said, duende is something, that isn’t here nor there, it lives in your nervous system, it is a premonition, some sort of demon. Possessing duende meant you were christened with black water.
Little Jimmy Scott always sounded like as if he had it. But how? How could a 13year old boy sound, as if he had already died a hundred times? Everybody, who heard him at Atlantic records, thought there was an old sad woman singing. Today he is old himself, his features are fine, his head is small, he is sick. You would call him a loser.
Once, for an interview, I lay on the carpet next to a Jazz musician. I had to lie there, because the man couldn’t sit anymore, and he could speak only very softly. He was about 40 and in his circles he was famous. You wouldn’t know him. The carpet was of a greyish blue, and next to our heads there were the legs of a dark wooden table. I heard the constant hum of New York traffic from outside, sirens, cars. We talked about his music. I asked him, if he wanted to die. Why, he answered. Why not, I said. He began to cry.
Your story has no tears. Correct? What is there to know about you? I know that you have a sister. That you grew up in a middleclass family with an intellectual background, your mum was a dancer, your father a professor. You were their first child. Clever, but alone. Early on, you inhabited your own world. Your parents are proud of you today, because you are earning so much money, and you think it’s no wonder they feel like that, because they are so very bourgeois and orderly, you always know what to expect on Christmas. What else? You love old watches, you love the Daytona, or was it the Explorer? Your favourite book is Father and Sons by Turgenev, your favourite movie is Stalker, but you always quote from Heat and Fight Club. When you cannot sleep at night, you clean windows, always beginning in the living room. Is that enough to describe you? No. Smaller, the details must be small. When eating a chicken, you eat the skin first, and never the breast, that’s too boring. When you are nervous, your fingers wiggle. Is this you? Are you chicken skin and wiggly fingers?
You kept on trying to explain to me how to win, how to be strong. You said, never give way, never allow anyone to see your nakedness. And now you are lying here, only the blanket covers your body. You could see me, if you´d open your eyes. But I don´t even know if you listen.
Maybe you were right. I have been a tragic figure from the beginning. Somebody who isn’t designed for greatness, who will always sit in second row.
My grandparents´parents were farmers. I never told you that. No holiday. No central heating. A top hat, a golden necklace, and empty goat stable. Back home we read tabloids, not newspapers. My grandfather was the only one in the village who could have attended grammar school. But first there was the first war, then came the second and then it was too late. He became a blacksmith. I travelled to countries and he sat in his living room with his old globe and looked, where I was. He knew these countries from books and he couldn’t know, no matter how far I travelled, I still wanted to flee. Do you know, what that is like? Wanting to be elsewhere all the time?
Sitting alongside beautiful people in hip restaurants in New York, wishing yourself away, because you don’t belong there, just like you don’t belong in a university lecture hall with sheepish students, or in a private club in London or in a loud rock-concert, where you might want to be, but have to leave again, because you have to rush to the hospital, because grandma is there, or to the asylum, because mum is there, and from there back to the village, because grandpa cries and doesn’t know how to go on. And then you work and mum is released and you drive back to the hospital again and pick her up, and for a while all is okay, and then the phone rings again, in the middle of an editorial-conference, and you have to drop everything and rush there, because she has had another nervous breakdown, and then you drive to another mental hospital, and you smoke too much, and you drive too fast and then you talk to doctors and sit by another bed and there are always these grey slings, with which they fix patients onto their beds. Every time, you told me, how well I look wearing that middle grey anthracite, I think of them.
…
sample from the novel “Wenn die Nacht am stillsten ist”, published 2012 by Verlag Antje Kunstmann, Munich
foreign rights: Arezu Weitholz, something@elvislebt.com