Less(31)

“No, no. It is the ancient past.” Less squeezes Bastian’s hand and lets it go, then tilts his head so that the lamp lights his face. “What do you think of my beard?”

“I think it needs more time,” Bastian says after some consideration. He takes another bite of Less’s meal and looks at him again. He nods and says, very seriously, before turning again to the television: “You know, Arthur, you’re right. You’re never boring.”



A phone call, translated from German into English: “Good afternoon, Pegasus Publications. This is Petra.”

“Good morning. Here is Mr. Arthur Less. I have concern about tonight.”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Less! Yes, we talked earlier. I assure you everything’s fine.”

“But to double…triple-check about the time…”

“Yes, it’s still at twenty-three hours.”

“Okay. Twenty-three hours. To be correct, this is eleven at night.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s an evening event. It’s going to be fun!”

“But it is a mental illness! Who will come to me at eleven at night?”

“Oh, trust us, Mr. Less. This isn’t the United States. It’s Berlin.”



Arranged by Pegasus Verlag, in association with the Liberated University and the American Institute for Literature, as well as the U.S. Embassy, the scheduled reading takes place not in a library, as Less has expected, or in a theater, as Less has hoped, but in a nightclub. This also seems a “mental illness” to Less. The entrance is under U-Bahn tracks in Kreuzberg and must have been some kind of engineering shaft or East German escape route, for once Less is past the bouncer (“I am here the author,” he says, sure that this is all a mistake), he finds himself inside a great vaulted tunnel covered in white tile that sparkles with reflected light. Otherwise, the room is dim and full of cigarette smoke. At one end, a mirrored bar glows with glassware and bottles; two men in ties work behind it. One seems to be wearing a gun in shoulder holster. At the other end: the DJ, in a big fur hat. The loud thrum of minimal techno beats is in the air, and people on the floor wag back and forth in the pink and white lights. In ties, in trench coats, in fedoras. One carries a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Berlin is Berlin, Less supposes. A woman in a Chinese dress, her red hair held up in chopsticks, approaches him with a smile. She has a pale sharp powdered face, a painted beauty mark, and matte red lips. She speaks to him in English: “Well, you must be Arthur Less! Welcome to Spy Club! I’m Frieda.”

Less kisses her on each cheek, but she leans in for a third. Two in Italy. Four in Northern France. Three in Germany? He will never get this right. He says, in German: “I am surprised and perhaps delighted!”

A quizzical look, and laughter. “You speak German! How nice!”

“Friend says I speak like a child.”

She laughs again. “Come on in. Do you know about Spy Club? We throw this party once a month in some secret spot or another. And people come dressed! Either CIA or KGB. And we have themed music, and themed events, like you.” He looks again at the dancers, at the people gathered near the bar. In fur caps and hammer-and-sickle badges; in fedoras and trench coats; some, he thinks, seem to be carrying guns.

“I see, yes,” he says. “Who are you dressing to be?”

“Oh, I’m a double agent.” She stands back for him to admire her outfit (Madame Chiang Kai-shek? Burmese seductress? Nazi camp follower?) and smiles winningly. “And I brought this for you. Our American. That polka-dot bow tie is perfect.” From her purse she produces a badge and pins it to his lapel. “Come with me. I’ll get you a drink and introduce you to your Soviet counterpart.”

Less pulls at his lapel so that he can read what is written there:

YOU ARE ENTERING

THE AMERICAN SECTOR

Less is told that at midnight, the music will go silent and a spotlight will turn on over the stage where he and his “Soviet counterpart” (really a Russian émigré, beard and ochki, gleefully wearing a Stalin T-shirt under his tight suit) will be waiting, and they will then present their work to the Spy Club crowd. They will read for four fifteen-minute segments, alternating nationalities. It seems an impossibility to Less that club-goers will stand still for literature. It seems an impossibility that they will listen for an hour. It seems an impossibility that he is here, in Berlin, at this moment, waiting in the darkness as the sweat begins to darken his chest like a bullet wound. They are setting him up for one of those humiliations. One of those writerly humiliations planned by the universe to suck at the bones of minor artists like him. Another Evening with Arthur Less.



It is tonight, after all, on the other side of the world, that his old Freund is getting married. Freddy Pelu is marrying Tom Dennis at an afternoon ceremony somewhere north of San Francisco. Less does not know where; the invitation only said 11402 Shoreline Highway, which could mean anything from a cliffside mansion to a roadside honky-tonk. But guests are to gather for a 2:30 ceremony, and, considering the time difference, he imagines that would be about, well, now.

Here, on the coldest night yet in old Berlin, with the wind howling down from Poland and kiosks set up in plazas to sell fur hats, and fur gloves, and wool inserts for boots, and a snow mountain built on Potsdamer Platz where children can sled past midnight while parents drink Glühwein by the bonfire, on this dark frozen night, around now, he imagines Freddy is walking down the aisle. While snow glistens on Charlottenburg Palace, Freddy is standing beside Tom Dennis in the California sun, for surely it is one of those white-linen-suit weddings, with a bower of white roses and pelicans flying by and somebody’s understanding college ex-girlfriend playing Joni Mitchell on guitar. Freddy is listening and smiling faintly as he stares into Tom’s eyes. While Turkish men shiver and pace in the bus stop, moving like figures on the town hall clock, ready to strike midnight. For it is almost midnight. While the ex-girlfriend finishes her song and some famous friend reads a famous poem, the snow is thickening. While Freddy takes the young man’s hand and reads from an index card the vows he has written, the icicles are lengthening. And it must be, while Freddy stands back and lets the minister speak, while the front row breaks into smiles and he leans forward to kiss his groom, while the moon glows in its icebow over Berlin—it must be now.