"WRONG MOVE" "I want you to go away." "I'm selling out to a supermarket, you'll get some of it." "No..." "Don't say anything, Wilhelm dear." "Wait till you have to." "And don't lose that unrest and discontent of yours." "You'll need it if you want to write." "I'm going to enjoy life now." "I'll be smoking when I cross the square." "I'll be drinking a Martini in the Haider Hof and reading your letters." "I'll say "with ice please" when I order the Martini." "I'm not desperate, just listless and fed up." "It's as if I had no tongue." "I haven't spoken for two days." "Except I keep talking in my sleep, says my mother." "I want to be a writer... but is that possible, when I don't like people?" "If only I could write." "Write!" "Hi." "Do you have an evening show?" "No." "Janine." "I wanted to see you again." "I can't look at you in that outfit." "You've got something there." "No, here." "In the course of time..." "When I left my home town, it seemed alive for the first time, though with the dreariness of people left behind." "Janine and the pain she felt because of her clothes" "I had already forgotten." "Mother had packed my suitcase." "On top, she had put two books." "Life Of A Good-For-Nothing by Eichendorff and Sentimental Education by Flaubert." "I determined not to withdraw my arm if she linked arms, as I'd always done if anyone came." "In the taxi, she suddenly told me not to be intimidated if people pointed out how useful a doctor or carpenter was and how useless my life was." "People with restricted professions reminded her of dried-up snails." "I listened, but my thoughts were already far away." "Your ticket." "In my other hand, Mother." "Why did you choose Bonn?" "I leafed through the novel you read recently." "I'm fond of you, Wilhelm." "Please don't forget me." "I left her to a fate I didn't believe in myself." "I imagined the taxi driver asking her whether he should take her home." "By herself, she'd have taken the bus." "I suddenly wanted to comb my hair in the train but then I waited for it to leave." "I would remember her better later in some other place." "I soon forgot all about it." "It was a nice, peaceful day." "The gulls that had screamed across the sea flew silent over land." "I remembered too the canal we were passing." "I began to think ahead, intending to find out more about myself during this journey." "Somebody's nose must have bled on the seat opposite." "Life Of A Good-For-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff" ""Chapter one " ""The wheel of my father's mill was once more turning and whirring merrily" ""the melting snow trickled steadily from the roof," ""the sparrows chirped and hopped about." ""I sat on the doorstep and rubbed the sleep from my eyes." ""It felt great in the warm sunshine." ""Then Father came out of the house." ""He had been busy in the mill since daybreak" ""and his nightcap... his nightcap was awry."" "Hey." "The woman that made you so full of longing." "She's Therese Farner." "She's an actress." "Would you like to know why my nose is bleeding?" "It comes from remembering." "Maybe I'll tell you about it at breakfast tomorrow." "Do you know the story of St Januarinus, whose blood is kept in a Neapolitan church?" "It becomes fluid once a year on the anniversary of his death." "Where are you going?" "To Bonn." "There's only one ticket." "No, no, you aren't dreaming." "Two tickets are missing." "You can get your companions' tickets in the train." "Something terrible happened to me today." "But I only have to pay half for the girl." "I left the house and when I got outside on the street I noticed I'd forgotten my umbrella." "I opened it up." "I had odd socks on too." "That's no good." "It was indescribable." "Was it raining?" "No, but that wasn't the point." "I remember that salute from old movie newsreels." "Go on, thank the gentleman for the ticket." "No, no." "Have you decided on something?" "I was thinking maybe three minced veal, dumplings and salad." "We'll drink a beer and an orange juice." "It was Eichinger the conductor who gave me the note." "Carriage 83, compartment 3, window seat." "It can only mean you." "I'm sure it's not me." "Carriage 83, compartment 3 (window seat)" "What profession did you give?" "I'm a singer and she's an artist." "WRITER" "Good night." "Seeing that woman this afternoon on the train seemed adventure enough to me." "I thought I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't pursue it." "Get me 06351-7270." "But now in this hotel room with its feather bed, plastic wastepaper basket and neon light over the sink," "I was as deflated as my surroundings." "I was practising what I would say on the phone." "For example" " I'm dying to see you." "I decided to shake off the urge and not start blabbing." "If she said nothing, I would say nothing too." "I looked down onto the square." "All of a sudden I had the urge to write." "It would take my mind off her." "This thought dissipated my fear of a new person." "I wanted to know her voice, which I hoped was like her gaze." "Afterwards I'd write it down in detail." "For the last two nights, I haven't dreamt." "I haven't cut my nails for over a week and I've worn the same shoes for a month." "And I haven't thought of dying for years." "I've always thought things would go on the same without me." "But since I met you, I have known what it feels like." "Couldn't you make a song about it?" "If you let me have the poem." "I'll tell you my story soon." "Maybe tonight." "Just a hint." "I ran in the 1936 Berlin Olympics." "The 100 metres." "And you wouldn't shake hands with Jesse Owens, like your Führer." "I only got to the semi-finals." "But..." "I probably wouldn't have shaken a black person's hand." "What now?" "We'd better go for a walk." "I intended to start writing today." "But I dreamt so much in the night it's now impossible to write about anything else." "And just writing about dreams is..." "I'd like to be able to write something essential." "Essential as a house, or a glass of wine in the evening." "More essential of course." "On the way here I saw that Germany still has scenery." "I wanted to stop but kept on going faster." "I felt like going for a walk with you out of town." "We were doing that." "I wanted to talk to you." "Nothing in particular - just talk." "But suddenly..." "Would you like to be alone with me?" "Not now." "It's good..." "It's good that we have company, otherwise it would be worse." "This way, I feel like I have a secret." "Do you have any idea what pain is?" "Do you swines know how the rushing of a sailplane sounds when it's in your brain?" " Here." " This way." "Everything is so strange to you." "I like that about you." "I don't think you could write otherwise." "What I don't like is... that you think only you can be that way." "Others can, too, believe me." "Excuse me." "I heard you reciting poetry in the hotel today." "I write poetry myself, so I followed you." "I'd like to ask your opinion." "May I recite something?" "I lay still half asleep." "Then I heard the bells ringing." "One struck so hard, it was as if it struck me." "And my skin peeled off in misery." "The feeling of not even being a silhouette in the universe... was terrible." "I felt myself squeezing, jellyfish like, through the spheres." "There's nobody serving here." "A child trod on me, like on snail-festooned... jellied, rotting fungus." "I yearned to spurt myself into the gutter." "I felt like trembling, transparent veal jelly." "I fell through a trap door into a last dream and hung like well-hung meat on a hook." "And a hanged man with the sign "I am a traitor"" "twitched as myself from a plum tree." "From my terror-stricken stiff member there shot sperm and dripped upon a white sheet." "Since then I've lived under a glass bell and let my rotting consciousness vapour the glass." "Why must there be so vast a space between me and the world?" "I should introduce myself." "My name's Bernhard Landau." "I'm Austrian." "I've never amounted to much and hope I'll stay that way." "I get injured once a year." "This year I fell on the edge of a chair and gashed the corners of my mouth." "It's already healed." "My uncle owns a big bakery, and a country house." "We could all stay with him." "He wanted to be a composer and suffers now and then from being a capitalist." "I think people like that are the right sort of capitalists." "Put your gun away, Uncle, or we'll shoot." "It's me, Bernhard from Vienna." "I have some friends with me." "We'd all like to stay the night." "This isn't my uncle." "And it's the wrong house." "It's the wrong time too." "I don't actually know you but I'm glad you're here." "There's plenty of room." "Stay as long as you like." "I'd just shoved the rifle into my mouth when I heard the car and waited, hoping that... it would stop." "I live here all alone." "My wife hanged herself three months ago." "That's why everything's in a mess." "I was going to redecorate, change everything." "She often wished for a machine to stretch all the tendons of her body." "I couldn't help her." "In the end, I even started praying." "I've been alone long enough." "I feel like reading papers again." "Come into the room." "I'd like to talk about loneliness." "I don't believe it exists." "It's more of an artificial feeling engendered from outside." "Once..." "I sat in this room in profound idiocy." "Cigarette stubs from the evening before lay in ashtrays." "So I sat there yesterday evening as idiotically as today, I thought." "Yesterday I sat there, today here." "And this vision of myself... touched me so much that I felt myself caressed." "That, then, was loneliness." "I was proud with loneliness, carried away with it." "Drenched in loneliness." "I produced a similar loneliness one night while sitting on the terrace outside." "I drank a bottle of wine and time passed easily." "People strolled along the woods and looked across at me." "How lonely I must seem to them, I thought." "At once I was cradled again in artificial, manipulated loneliness." "It's just a theatrical state which arises... the moment you wallow in your own theatricality." "And yet... it's these moments of hypocritical loneliness that make me feel reborn." "It's the paradox of loneliness." "The overwhelming feeling of security that I then experience." "You were going to reveal your secret to us." "I'm too tired." "Let's put it off till tomorrow when we go for a walk." "Come, Mignon." "She's called Mignon?" "I never knew that." "You didn't ask her." "She's been waiting for you to ask for ages." "Wilhelm." "I'm going upstairs now." "Will you be coming?" "Yes, you know I will." "I'll stay down here for a while." "I'm dissatisfied because I've written nothing today." "He's already written a poem." "But I don't want to remain unsatisfied." "Look in on me." "And I'm glad" "I found you people." "Good night." "A self-portrait of my wife." "I'd just like to talk a bit... about loneliness in Germany." "I think it's more hidden and more painful than elsewhere." "Maybe the history of ideas here is responsible, which made people seek a way of life that could help overcome fear." "The propagation of virtues like... courage, fortitude... was meant to distract attention from fear." "Let's say it was that way." "More than anywhere else philosophy could be used as an ideology so that the necessary criminal methods for overcoming fear could be legalised." "Fear was considered vain and shameful." "That's why loneliness in Germany is masked by all those revealing soulless faces that haunt supermarkets, recreational areas pedestrian zones and fitness centres." "The dead souls of Germany." "A boy should know no fear, my parents told me." "I refuse to overcome my fear." "I hope you will like it here." "It was very touching to see the way you listened to me." "I also think that maybe a person can want to write without knowing what." "Just like you want to walk." "Wanting to write is the need." "Not loving, but wanting to love." "I'm going upstairs now." "Are you there?" "I dreamt I was skating." "On the frozen sea." "It was the North Sea." "I was quite far out" "and couldn't get back... and kept skating straight on." "I was very afraid." "The worst was... the grating of the ice skates... behind me on the ice." "I kept thinking it wasn't my dream at all." "I dreamt you had to die." "A few hours before your expected death you were to go and prepare yourself in a mausoleum... below the main street." "A child was to keep you company till you died." "The child stood next to you and the mausoleum was sealed with a large stone." "I dreamt of absolute darkness in which the child stood next to you" "till you died." "It was my child." "I dreamt I lay on the bed in my room... seeing the wall with the door the whole time." "I kept waking up... and really seeing the wall with the door in front of me." "I fell asleep and dreamed of it again... almost exactly the way I'd really seen it." "Except it was closer to me." "I had to vomit." "I'm sorry." "Now it's daylight." "I can't remember my dream... though it gave me a start when I reached... for the sugar bowl." "I almost remembered." "It seems so significant." "And you, Mignon?" "She thinks dreams are ridiculous." "A man screams at me frenziedly" ""Now I've got you, Rosenthal"" "He grabs me by the collar" "And bashes four teeth in" "Then that man spits in my face" "I think to myself, "Who cares?"" "My name's not even Rosenthal" "I couldn't care less" "When it's my turn to die" "I'll enter the coffin cheerfully" "And because I have so many friends" "I'll lie there upside down" "My belly I will hold quite still" "And think whatever I like" "Maybe someone will drop in" "I couldn't care less." "Can a person write if he's estranged from politics?" "If he could describe how the estrangement came about." "It shouldn't appear natural." "That's the history of the Western World." "Of course." "Politics really escaped me when I started writing." "I tried to write politically, and realised words failed me." "The words there meant nothing to me." "I thought, it's not part of me." "I wrote as progressive politicians speak." "Only... more helpless and pointed but... it was helplessness." "A good reason to be politically active... and drop writing altogether." "But it was through writing that I realised" "I couldn't formulate my needs politically." "Politicians never aroused them, only poets." "What does the world care about personal needs?" "Everybody has personal needs." "They're real." "For me that's all there is." "But they're unattainable... compared with the needs that politics deals with." "Lf..." "If only politics and poetry could be united." "That would mean the end of longing and the end of the world." "I saw you during the night lying on the floor with a sort of whip in your hand." "What is your penance for?" "It's time for your story." "Just now on the terrace I sang a Jew's song." "Your friend's?" "I killed him." "Remember the salute the conductor gave... when he left me on the train?" "He was my aide in Vilna." "I saved some Jews, if they were professionally qualified." "Can you swim?" "How do you know I can't?" "I was hoping so." "I feel like I had seven-league boots on." "I even understand your revulsion against politics, Wilhelm." "For me, nature is important for life." "It makes me forget whatever was." "Those innocent camp fires of my youth." "We cast sticks to foretell the future." "The way we leapt laughing through the fire without a care." "We got fun out of fire-baked potatoes... whereas the spoilt kids of today think it's adventurous to roast a suckling pig in their parents' gardens." "I'm trying to remember my dream." "I know it's something to do with my uncle." "I've just thought of a short poem." "A sort of haiku." "In writing, observation's better than inspiration." "Do you want to hear it or not?" "I just thought of a story." "Tell us." "You say your poem first." "It's called Lovingly." "Lovingly." "Lovingly the mother watches her children eat." "A poem by Bernhard Landau." "Very good." "My story is also quite short." "It goes something like this." "He finally got around to saying he loved her." "At the moment he said "I love you"" "she happened to use a toothpick." "He hated her forever from then on." "Did he marry her, then?" "Of course, once he said he loved her." "You must bring that in, it rounds the story off." "Otherwise, it's just a punch line." "Then again, I'd give them both names." ""He" and "she"" "are just comic figures." "What should I call them?" "Anton and Martha." "Anton was finally able to tell Martha that he loved her." "It sounds like a novel." "You didn't look for me." "Yes, I did look for you." "Your face is soft." "You really are sad." "Yes." "Don't say what you're thinking." "You had so much to tell." "I want to be alone with you today." "I'm not afraid any more." "I made up that dream about skating." "I just felt that way." "I realised and looked away while you were telling it." "Did you see those feathers on the path?" "Yes." "Why?" "Did you notice anything?" "I didn't look properly." "There was a yellow beak too." "There's a lot you don't notice." "True." "I usually have to make a conscious effort." "Everybody else notices more details than me." "Yet you still want to be a writer?" "I know I haven't got so-called powers of observation." "But I believe I have... the gift of a sort of erotic insight." "Suddenly I notice something that I've always missed and not only see it, but get a feel for it." "That's what I call erotic insight." "I then write what I experience, not just observations." "That's why I want to be a writer." "Something has to happen." "Everything is so matter-of-fact." "Finished." "Closed up." "I don't want to walk any more." "I feel like we're putting things off." "Let's do something." "Have you ever wanted to kill someone?" "No." "I have." "As a child I had a real lust for blood." "I've got it right now." "I wouldn't need a weapon, just my bare hands." "What do you mean?" "I know what you mean." "I've just thought of my dream." "Our host ran along a coast road." "A man with a camera pursued him." "Our host shouted," ""Long live the world's exploited masses!"" "Then he leapt over the side and plunged down." "Far below was the sea." " I had to look at the film as a witness..." " Let's go." "Let's go." "I'm scared." "The cameraman..." "At times I stared into space... without seeing a thing." "Then I shut my eyes... and only realised what was before me... by the afterimage that resulted." "And when I'm writing, I shut my eyes and see things... that I couldn't see with my eyes open." "After the industrialist's suicide, whose presence stimulated me... it seemed we had lost direction." "The journey through Germany, which I felt was a kind of adventure and work, was called off and we moved in an idiotic panic." "Bernhard disappeared without explanation from a motorway café." "We others stuck together, but seemed to be moving apart." "Can you still run as fast as in the Olympics?" "In the evening, we reached Taunus, where Therese had an apartment on the tenth floor." "Faeces lay in the lobby and the elevator was scrawled with genital symbols scratched in the woodwork." "Therese said she'd only just moved in." "Her apartment walls were still not plastered." "I wanted to sleep with her." "But maybe it was just an urge... to get a grip on things." "My aimless rage was directed at the old man." "I used his past as an excuse to myself." "She's not a child any more." "I know." "What?" "What do you know?" "Everything." "I could tell at once." "Never mind." "I envy you, Wilhelm." "Me?" "You don't usually worry about anything." "I know it's unpleasant for you... but I can't help liking you." "Why?" "Sorry." "You know what I think is funny?" "That just now your stubble was scratching me... and I felt your lips panting on my shoulder." "And now you're making that serious face." "You're ridi..." "Your objective pose is ridiculous, you know." "Instead of becoming desperate, I got more stupid." "So I just looked stupidly at really desperate people." "In spite of this, I moved like a hero bearing the world's cares." "I have to pay 20 marks extra?" "That's impossible." "Yes, yes." "We don't have any money with us." "All this homework." "I'm sick of them." "Maths and all this other stuff..." "I couldn't understand how all these people in the supermarkets on playgrounds, behind the windows of the high-rises in this country, not only in this country, put up with life." "Are you learning quantities?" "Really boring." "Quantity A plus quantity B equals quantity C." "I have a friend on the third floor." "Mine's the eighth." "I used to have one in the penthouse." "Everything strikes me as nonsensical." "No sooner do I try to learn my part in the play than I see this matchbox" "and wonder why it isn't in the play too." "It's so artificial... expressing oneself with other people's words." "Only when I keep remembering does a text sometimes make sense." "Because I remember... experiencing something similar..." "I had just forgotten." "If I remember, I can act without that suffocating feeling... the feeling I always have." "After this memory work I enjoy acting and I am happy." "More often I don't get to remember and act like a machine." "In the last show I suddenly got stuck... even though I knew the text off by heart" "and the prompter whispered it." "Parrot repetition is humiliating..." "I always thought." "Are you listening?" "Parrot repetition is humiliating." "Help me, Wilhelm, or leave me." "The way everything leaves you cold disgusts me." "Yesterday you envied me." "But today it makes me sick." "I could..." "Kill me." "Go ahead." "Maybe I can learn something from you." "Beat me to death." "You disrupt my writing." "You talk about yourself and difficulties in working, not realising... that I'm actually working." "Then I'm like you and the matchbox that isn't in the text." "And I can't go on writing, because I feel..." "What you've just said should appear in my writing." "So, leave me in peace." "You weren't even listening." "I was, but I kept thinking I was losing writing time." "You're an arsehole!" "Don't say that, Therese." "Say something." "You look revolting when you're silent." "What are you writing?" "I'm writing a story about a man who is a kindly man... but also incapable of any kind of pity." "I aim to prove that kindliness and pitilessness go together." "I think it'll end up being political." "Where can you go boating around here?" "On the Main." "In that case, we'll go boating tomorrow and take the old man." "We'll leave Mignon here." "She'll have to get used to being alone." "He committed suicide." "He hanged himself in the room behind the pastor's apartment." "It was a terrible end." "I couldn't help Therese." "My work was merely an excuse... although I knew it couldn't really be described as work." "I was discouraged, and in my unloving nature..." "I could only act big in front of her." "Are we rowing here?" "Wilhelm." "I've changed a lot since then." "It's not just that I sleep on the bare floor." "I have back pain." "Times were different." "You must understand that." "We differentiated, like you, between nature and politics and our natural defence against politics led to atrocious politics." "You really can't swim?" "Wilhelm!" "Please, Wilhelm." "Let me live, Wilhelm!" "Wilhelm, I know you want to go on." "Take me with you." "I can imitate animals." "And I'm a good cook too." "Liver dumplings, halibut..." "Now I've got you, Rosenthal!" "Now I've got you." "Wilhelm!" "Wilhelm!" "The water used to be pure and clear here, right?" "The cat was different in those days." "When are you leaving?" "Tomorrow." "How did you find out?" "You've been making slips recently." "That made me realise your thoughts were elsewhere." "Where will you go?" "I've just seen a photo of the Zugspitze in the paper." "I'm going to the Zugspitze." "I've never been up a mountain as high as that." "There's a rack railway that goes up it." "What if I ask you to stay?" "I know I shall love you very much one day..." "Therese." "Mignon, I'm leaving tomorrow." "You must decide for yourself what to do." "Your friend's decision-making is over." "So how do we part now?" "Somewhere in the crowd." "Where is your crowd?" "I'm disappointed too." "I thought it would be so crowded that we couldn't walk alongside each other." "Shall we meet again?" "It's necessary." "Parents #37 who left their child in the nursery please come and collect your child." "Parents #37 who left their child in the nursery are kindly asked to collect their child." "I told Therese I intended to stay in Germany because I knew too little to write about it." "But that was only an excuse." "In reality, I just wanted so much to live my stupid life alone." "I stood on the Zugspitze waiting for an experience like a miracle." "But there was no snowstorm." "Why had I run away, why wasn't I back there with the others?" "Why did I threaten the old man instead of listening to his tale?" "I felt I had missed out somehow and was continuing to miss out with every new movement." "WRONG MOVE"