The Return of Munchausen Read online

  The baron got up and crossed over to an antique wardrobe. A little key clinked, the heavy carved doors creaked open—and Unding, following after with his eyes and the gleam of his cigar, saw poking out from behind the baron’s long thin back on the wardrobe’s wooden pegs: an old embroidered waistcoat of a kind not worn in over a century; a long sword in a battered sheath; a curved tobacco pipe in a beaded case; and a straggly pigtail minus its powder, but still with the bow.

  The baron took the pipe from its peg and, having inspected it, resumed his seat. A minute later his Adam’s apple jumped out of his collar as he sucked in his cheeks to meet the smoke streaming up from the chibouk into his nostrils.

  “We understand still less about fogs,” the baron went on between puffs, “metaphysical ones for a start. Incidentally, Unding, you did well to look in today: Tomorrow I intend to pay a visit to the London fogs. And to those who inhabit them. Yes, the albescent veils rising from the Thames can unshape shapes, shroud landscapes and worldviews, shade facts, and . . . in a word, I am off to London.”

  Unding’s shoulders bristled.

  “You do Berlin a disservice, baron. We too have mastered a few things: ersatzes,* for instance, and the metaphysics of fictionalism—”*

  Munchausen broke in: “We shall not revive that old debate. Older, incidentally, than you think. Some hundred years ago Tieck and I sat up all night disputing about this—in other terms, true, but does that alter the gist? He was seated, as you are now, on my right. Knocking the ashes out of his pipe, he threatened to smite reality with dreams and blow it asunder. I reminded him that even shopkeepers have dreams, and that a rope, though in moonlight it resemble a snake, cannot bite.* With Fichte,* on the other hand, I argued far less. ‘Doctor,’ said I to the philosopher, ‘now that “not-I” has jumped out of “I,” it had better look back more often at its whence.’ In reply, Herr Johann smiled politely.”

  “Allow me to smile not so politely, baron. That stands up to criticism no better than a dandelion clock to the wind. My ‘I’ is not waiting for ‘not-I’ to look back at it. Rather it turns away from all nots. As it was taught. My memory does not go back centuries,”—Unding nodded to his host—“but I do remember our first meeting, five weeks ago, as if it were today. A small marbled tabletop, the chance proximity of two pairs of eyes and two mugs of beer. I sat sipping mine, while you never brought the glass to your lips, only nodding now and then to the waiter, who replaced the undrunk mug with another, which also went undrunk. When tipsiness had slightly misted my mind, I asked you what it was you needed from glass and beer since you did not drink. ‘I am interested in the bursting bubbles,’ you said, ‘and when they have all burst, I must order a fresh dollop of foam. Every man amuses himself after his fashion; what pleases me about this swill is its counterfeitness, its surrogateness.’ And with a shrug of your shoulders you eyed me—I must remind you, Munchausen—as if I too had been a bubble stuck to the rim of your mug.”

  “You bear grudges.”

  “I bear many things in mind: still spinning in my brain is the colorful carousel that began turning right there, by two tangent mugs. We crossed continents and oceans together at a speed greater than the earth’s rotation. And when I, batted about like a tennis ball, from country to country, from past to future and back to the past, happened to drop out of the game and ask, ‘Who are you and how can a single lifetime have sufficed for so many wanderings?’—you, with a courteous bow, told me your name. Counterfeit beer makes for a counterfeit and confusing intoxication, realities burst like bubbles and phantasms slip in to take their place. Is that shake of your head ironic? You know, Munchausen—just between us—as a poet I am ready to believe that you are you, but as a sensible person—”

  The jangle of a telephone bell bored into the conversation. Munchausen reached for the instrument with a long thin hand whose index finger wore an oval moonstone.

  “Hello! Who is speaking? Ah, it’s you, Mr. Ambassador. Yes, of course. I will be with you in an hour.”

  The receiver returned to its metal cradle.

  “My dear Unding, that a poet should acknowledge my existence flatters me exceedingly. But even were you to cease to believe in me, Hieronymus von Munchausen, diplomats would not. You raise your eyebrows: you wonder why? Because to them I am indispensable. That is all there is to it. Existence de jure, from their point of view, is not a whit worse than existence de facto. As you can see, there is far more poetry in diplomatic pacts than in all your valueless verses.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all: life, like any ware, is subject to supply and demand. Have newspapers and wars not taught you that? The state of the political stock exchange is such that I may count not only on life, but on flourishing good health. Do not hasten, my friend, to reckon me a ghost and place me on a library shelf. Do not.”

  “Well”—the poet grinned, eyeing his tall and angular interlocutor—“if shares in the Munchauseniad are going up, then I, perhaps, am ready to speculate on the rise in prices: up to and including existence. But what interests me is the specific how. I do of course recognize a certain diffusion between fact and fiction, the reality in ‘I’ and the reality in ‘not-I’; but even so, how is it possible that we can sit here and converse without aid of an aural and visual hallucination? I need to know that. If the word ‘friend,’ given me by you, means anything at all, then. . . .”

  Munchausen seemed to hesitate.

  “A confession? That would be more in the style of Saint Augustine* than Baron Munchausen. But if you insist. . . . Only allow me to escape here and there—I cannot do otherwise—from the trammels of truth into free phantasms. So then, to begin: Picture a gigantic clockface of the centuries, the tip of its black hand moving from division to division, from date to date; straddling the tip of that hand, one may discern sailing by below: 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871,* and on, and on. Indeed, my head still reels from the racing years. Now imagine, my good friend, your humble servant gripping with his knees that same clock hand suspended over the changing years (and everything in them) as he whirls around the clockface of time. Incidentally, the pegs in my wardrobe, which I forgot to lock, will help you to see my then self more clearly and particularly: my pigtail, my waistcoat, and my sword, suspended over the clockface, jouncing about with the jolts. The jolts of clock hand against numbers become more and more violent: at 1789 I squeeze my knees harder; at 1871 I have to grip the clock hand with both my arms and my legs; but by 1914 the numbers’ shocks have become unbearable; banging into 1917 and 1918, I lose my balance and go tumbling head over heels, down.

  “Coming toward me through the air I see the mottles—obscure at first, then more distinct—of oceans and continents. I stretch out a hand, seeking support: air, nothing but air. Suddenly I feel a blow to my palms, I clench my fingers, and in my hands I have a steeple—imagine that—an ordinary church steeple. A few feet above my head is a weathercock. I shinny up. A gentle breeze is batting the weathercock this way and that—and I may calmly behold the earth spread out beneath my soles some twenty or thirty yards below: radial patterns of paths, flights of marble steps, clipped columns of trees, translucent hyperboles of fountain jets—it all seems somehow familiar,* seen not for the first time. I slide down the steeple and, coming to rest on a chimney pot, survey the scene: Versailles, but of course! Versailles, and I am on the roof of the Trianon. But how to get down? The springy billows of smoke bounding past my back suggest a simple and easy means. I remind you: if now I have solidified, so to speak, and amassed a certain weight, then on that first inaugural day I was not much heavier than smoke. I plunged into the smoky flows, like a diver into water and, gently sinking, found myself by and by at the bottom, that is, casting metaphors aside, in a fireplace—exactly like this one.” A patent-leather pump poked the cast-iron fender inside which the flames had gone out. “I looked around: not a soul. I stepped out onto the hearth. I had landed, judging by the long shelves crowded with books and folders, in the palace library
. I listened: through the wall I heard the scrape of chairs being drawn up, then silence marked off by only the tick-tock of a pendulum clock, then someone’s even, wall-muffled voice slapping over words like slippers over floorboards. Having just fallen from the clock hand onto the clockface, I of course did not know that this was a session of the Versailles Conference.* On the library table I found a card file, the latest editions of newspapers and folders full of official reports. These I set about reading, quickly apprising myself of the political moment. Suddenly I heard the scrape of chairs being pushed back, low voices, and someone’s footsteps approaching the library door. Now I. . . . No, I see I must again visit my old wardrobe.”

  Ernst Unding, leaning far forward in anticipation of the story, watched with impatient eyes as the baron broke off, shuffled back to the pegs protruding from the depths of the wardrobe, and reached into the puckered pocket of his ancient waistcoat.

  “Now then.” Munchausen turned around to his guest. In his outstretched hand there glowed the morocco of a small gilt-edged octavo with leather corner pieces. “Here is a thing with which I am rarely parted. Feast your eyes: first London edition, 1785.”

  He opened the frail worn volume. Unding’s pupils pounced on the title page and skimmed down the letters: BARON MUNCHAUSEN’S NARRATIVE OF HIS MARVELLOUS TRAVELS AND CAMPAIGNS IN RUSSIA. The book clapped shut and slipped in beside the storyteller on the broad flat arm of his chair.

  “Afraid lest I be taken for a spy in search of diplomatic secrets,” Munchausen continued, his soles resting once more on the fender, “I hastened to hide: opening my book—like this—I crouched down, knees touching my chin, head drawn into my shoulders, as compact as could be, and leapt into the pages, banging the book shut behind me, as you, say, might bang the door of a call box behind you. At that instant the footsteps strode into the library and approached the table on which, flattened between pages sixty-eight and sixty-nine, lay I.”

  “I must interrupt you.” Unding started from his chair. “How could you have made yourself as small as that pocket book? That’s in the first place, and—”

  “And in the second place,” the baron rapped the red morocco with the heel of his hand, “I will not be interrupted. . . . And in the third place, you are a bad poet, I swear by my pipe, if you do not know that books, if only they are books, may be commensurate with, but never proportionate to reality!”

  “Very well,” muttered Unding.

  And the story went on.

  “As luck would have it, the man who nearly took me by surprise (by the way, he was one of the honor cards in a tattered diplomatic deck) caused us both a fresh surprise: The fingers of that diplomatic ace, hunting for some reference, sliding over books and bindings, happened to catch in the morocco door of my refuge, the pages flew apart, and I, somewhat abashed I will admit, now three- dimensionalizing myself, now flattening myself anew, did not know what to do. The ace let fall the cigar from his mouth and, throwing up his hands, collapsed into an armchair, round eyes riveted on me. I had no choice: I stepped out of my book and tucked it under my arm, like this. Then I drew up a chair and sat down opposite the diplomat, knees to knees. ‘Historians will claim’—I nodded encouragingly—‘that it was you who discovered me.’ When at last he found his tongue, he asked, ‘To whom have I the honor?’ I reached into my pocket and, without a word, offered him this.”

  A square visiting card flickered before the eyes of Unding, now slumped back in his chair; the Gothic script on the heavy stock read:

  Baron

  HIERONYMUS VON MUNCHAUSEN

  Supplier of Phantasms and Sensations

  In and Out of This World

  Since 1720

  The five lines hung in the air, then flipped about in the baron’s long fingers and disappeared. The wall clock’s pendulum had not ticked ten times when the story resumed.

  “During that pause, which lasted no longer than this one, I noticed that the diplomatic expression on the diplomat’s face was changing in my favor. While his mind moved from major to minor premise, I kindly supplied the conclusion: ‘A more necessary man than I, Baron von Munchausen, you shall never find. I give you my word of honor. As for the rest. . . .’ I opened my octavo, preparing to retire from this world to that, so to speak, but then the diplomat seized my elbow: ‘For goodness’ sake, I beg you.’ Well, having thought a moment, I determined to stay. My old abode—right here, between pages sixty-eight and sixty-nine, if you care to look—has been left empty: for a long time, I suspect, if not forever.”

  Unding looked: on the bent-back page between parted paragraphs were the fine black rules of an oblong box: but inside the box was only the blank stare of white space—the illustration had disappeared.

  “So there it is. My career, as I’m sure you know, began with a modest secretaryship in an embassy.* After that . . . but now the minute hand means to separate us. My dear Unding, I must go.”

  The baron pressed a button. In the doorway darted a footman’s side-whiskers.

  “Bring me my dress coat.”

  The whiskers flashed out. The baron got up. His guest got up also.

  “Ye-e-s,” Munchausen drawled, “they have stripped me of my waistcoat and cut off my pigtail. So be it. Only remember, my friend, the day will come when this frippery”—a long finger, moonstone oval gleaming, pointed prophetically at the open wardrobe—“when these moldering castoffs will be taken from their pegs, placed on cushions of brocade, and carried in solemn procession, like holy relics, to Westminster Abbey.”

  But Ernst Unding was looking away.

  “You have out-Munchausened Munchausen. I give you credit—as a poet.”

  The moonstone dropped down. To Unding’s surprise, the baron’s face now crinkled into countless laughing creases, aging him at least a hundred years; his eyes narrowed to sly slits, while his thin lips unpursed to reveal long yellow teeth.

  “Indeed. Back in the days when I lived in Russia, they invented a saying about me: Every baron has his flights of fancy. The ‘every’ was added later—names, you see, like anything else, become forgotten. In any case, I flatter myself with the hope that I have made better and wider use than other barons of my right to flights of fancy. I thank you, and also as one poet to another.”

  A withered but tenacious palm grasped Unding’s fingers.

  “Do as you please, my friend: You may believe or not believe Munchausen and . . . in Munchausen. But if you should doubt my handshake, you will deeply offend an old man. Goodbye. And one more bit of advice: Do not bore into all and sundry with your eyes. If you bore through a barrel the wine will run out and inside the hoops will remain only a foolish and booming hollowness.”

  Unding smiled from the doorway and was gone. The baron was helped into his coat. Then an elegant secretary whisked into the room, clicked his heels, and handed the baron a heavy briefcase. Having straightened the lapels of his dress coat, Munchausen ran his left thumb and forefinger over the edges of the folders poking out of the briefcase. He riffled past: protocols from the League of Nations;* original documents to do with the Brest peace;* verbatim reports from sessions of the Amsterdam conference;* numerous pacts and treaties,* including Washington, Versailles, and Sèvres.

  Eyeing these with fastidious distaste, Munchausen picked the briefcase up by its two bottom corners and shook the entire contents out on the floor. While secretary and manservant gathered up the paper piles, the baron went back to the morocco-bound tomelet patiently waiting on the arm of his chair; the tomelet dove inside the disencumbered briefcase, which shut over it with a loud click.

  2. SMOKE THAT ROARS

  STAIRS scurried under Unding’s feet and then, damply through his worn-out soles, sidewalk asphalt. The baron’s motorcar blared up from behind, spattering the pedestrian with mud as its yellow lamp-eyes rushed through the brumous spring gloaming.

  Turning up his coat collar, Unding strode through a droning archway under four parallel rails suspended in air,* then down the broad straigh
t course of the king’s quondam street.* Looming up on his right were the stone cubes, arcs, and cornices of the palace.* Down the asphalt’s glassy tire-smoothed glair there stretched—like a string of violet beads—the reflections of streetlights; from the eaves of the dusk-enshrouded palace drooped rain-soaked flags of revolution.* Farther on, right and left, the cast-iron benches of Unter den Linden went past Unding’s eyes, which now descried—pounding the air with bronze hooves—the black quadriga atop the Brandenburg Gate.

  He still had a way to go. Through the long Tiergarten and then down Bismarckstrasse, past ten crossroads to the far edge of Charlottenburg. The air, moist and smoky, seemed like a cheap and crude counterfeit air; the streetlamps’ glass globes seemed like light bubbles of foam about to fly up into the sky, while down onto roofs and pavements in a soundless avalanche darkness tumbled. The bare Tiergarten trees flickering past his footsteps reminded the poet of thickets butchered by missiles, but then his associations came closer than his eyes, came inside his skull, a web of fantastical trench-like streets. Unding stopped, listened for a moment, and decided that the thrum of the city, over there, beyond the Tiergarten, sounded like the receding rumble of an artillery battle. Under the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, which still recalled the recent pressure of Munchausen’s palm, he suddenly distinctly felt, almost burning his skin, the incandescent steel of a musket lock that had just fired.

  “Phantasmagoria,” Unding muttered, looking around at the stars, lamps, trees, and scatter of paths.

  Someone’s unsteady shadow, as if called by name, moved half-heartedly toward the poet. Under the soggy shell of a hat he saw cheekbones etched with hunger and rouge: a prostitute. Unding looked away and walked on. First he tried to think of a diminutive suffix for the name Phantasmagoria. But neither “-chen” nor “-lein” stuck. Then, listening to the rhythm of his footsteps, he began turning assonances and rhythms over in his mind, a familiar exercise that reduced his external world to the radius of his fedora—and a mute keyboard of words began fidgeting its keys.