I'm Not Stiller Read online

  And yet it was beautiful!

  Why didn't I stay there—?

  ***

  Fortunately my public prosecutor (or examining magistrate; I'm not well up in these things) is a pleasant character, a sceptic, who doesn't even believe everything he says himself; also he was the first one with the good manners to knock before coming into the cell.

  'I suppose you know who I am?'

  'The public prosecutor?'

  His smile baffled me. He stared at me for a long time with both hands thrust into his jacket pockets, somehow embarrassed. My first idea was: This man has some confession to make to me. He seemed to lose himself in private thoughts of his own. For a while he behaved as though he were deaf, staring at me openly as adults rarely do, and in any case longer than was polite, so that when he realized what he was doing he blushed slightly.

  'Do you smoke?' he asked, and when I refused, he added, taking a cigarette himself and lighting it: 'This is an entirely personal call. Please don't regard it as an interrogation. I felt the urge to make your acquaintance...'

  A pause.

  'You really don't smoke?' he asked.

  'Only cigars.'

  'My wife sends her regards,' he said, sitting down on the bed like a regular visitor and gazing round for an ash-tray, just to avoid looking at me, I believe '—that is if you really are Herr Stiller.'

  'My name is White,' I said.

  'I don't want to anticipate the judicial inquiry,' he said with an undertone of apology or relief, went on smoking and obviously didn't know what to say next under the circumstances. It wasn't for some minutes, after an exchange of small talk that was suddenly quite impersonal and rendered even more threadbare by the fact that his mind was elsewhere—chiefly about motor scooters and the fact that whisky, and alcohol generally, was 'unfortunately' strictly forbidden to prisoners on remand—he declared abruptly: 'Personally, I've never seen Stiller. At least not consciously. We once had a talk over the telephone, as you may know; it was a call from Paris, but I can't tell whether it was you.'

  Then his tone changed and he suddenly became good-humoured:

  'You murdered your wife, Mr White?'

  I had the feeling that he didn't believe me either. He was smiling, but his smile disappeared when we stared at one another in silence, and he asked me why I murdered my wife.

  'Because I loved her,' I said.

  'Is that a reason?'

  'Look,' I explained, 'it was a sacrifice for her to live at my side; All my friends thought so, to say nothing of her friends. She herself hardly said a word about the way I made her suffer. She was a very noble person, you know, and you can ask anyone you like about that, everybody thought so. They had never seen such a noble, such a fine person as my wife, they all said. And we moved almost exclusively in educated circles. Besides, I thought so myself, I admired her, you know. Her nobility attracted me. That was her undoing. I can't tell you how often that woman forgave me, how often!'

  'What for?'

  'For being as I am.'

  Every now and then he asked a question. For instance:

  'Did you often quarrel?'

  'Never.'

  'Not even before the murder?'

  'Certainly not,' I answered, 'otherwise it would never have been committed. You obviously can't picture my victim. She would never have dreamt of raising her voice, so I didn't dare to either. I told you, she was such a noble person—can you imagine what it's like to be married to such a noble person? For nine years I was plagued by a bad conscience. And if, once a week, I couldn't stand my bad conscience and smashed a plate against the wall, for example, I felt like a murderer, my wife's murderer. Yes, that's how hard this frail woman's life was with me.'

  'Hm,' he said.

  'There's nothing to smile about,' I said. 'It took years of my life before I realized that I was her murderer, and finally drew the logical conclusion.'

  'Hm,' he said.

  'I deny nothing,' I said. 'But don't expect to see me with a bad conscience. I haven't got one any more. Somehow it has simply been used up. I had so much bad conscience while she was alive. It was terrible for her, simply terrible, to have to live at my side,'

  'And that's why you—murdered her?'

  I nodded.

  'I see,' he remarked,

  'It's unbearable,' I said, 'you can't go on having a bad conscience for years, without knowing why you have a bad conscience.'

  And so on.

  I don't know whether he understood me.

  ***

  Once a week, every Friday, we're allowed to take a shower, ten minutes each, ten prisoners at a time. Otherwise I never see my neighbours; but then I see them stark naked and to the accompaniment of a steamy splashing, so that we can scarcely talk to one another. One of them, who considers himself innocent, refuses to soap himself out of spite. One little Italian always sings. There is not much to be learnt from the faces under the shower, distorted by strands of wet hair and soap. Added to this is the nakedness of the whole body: after being used to seeing the face as the only naked area, you are more or less compelled to look at the whole naked body, which is not very pleasant. All you can guess is that it belongs to a workman, an intellectual, an athlete, a clerk. On the whole, our naked bodies are thoroughly embarrassing, because they are inexpressive; at best they are natural, but generally they are rather ridiculous. I have made friends with a German Jew; we soap one another's backs, since he can't reach all over his either, and we agree that we ought to have a shower every day. After an almost childish outcry over the cold water with which the head warder drives us into the drying-room, we are all very quiet as we rub ourselves down, with the pink faces of babies and hair like boys'. Apart from myself, I fancy, there is no one guilty of a serious offence among us. Thanks to the fact that they put me near the end of the alphabet (as 'Stiller'), I have a little more time to chat to the German Jew. We have both come to the conclusion that physical hygiene in Switzerland is in remarkable contrast to the rest of their obsession with cleanliness. He told me that where he lived in the town he was only allowed by contract to take a hot shower at week-ends, as in the prison. Then we march off to our cells one by one with bath towels round our necks.

  ***

  Today I received the following letter:

  Dear Brother,

  You can imagine that since getting the news from your local canton police I have scarcely slept a wink. Anny too is very excited. Anny is my dear wife, I'm sure you will like her. Don't be angry with me for not coming to Zürich at once, but it's simply impossible at the moment. I hope you are not ill, at least, dear brother. Your photograph gave me a shock—you looked so thin on it that I could hardly recognize you. Have you been to see Father in the old age home yet? Don't listen to what he says, he is an old man now and you know what he's like. You know that Mother is dead? She suffered less than we feared she might. We will visit her grave together. When the canton police told us you had returned, I thought most of Mother. She often used to think you were on the point of coming home; she didn't say so, but we knew very well why she stayed up later than usual, she imagined you were coming back that evening. I just want to tell you that Mother always took your part. Whenever your name cropped up she used to say she hoped you were happy.

  Of course, we are very anxious to hear your story, dear brother, for nothing much has happened to us. I'm a manager here, so you see nothing came of my farm in Argentina—it was simply impossible to leave Mother just then, but we're doing quite nicely.

  Have you heard yet that your friend Alex took his life? So I've been told, anyhow; he put his head in the gas oven, I believe. Or wasn't Alex a friend of yours? But I don't want to give you a list of deaths. I'll just tell you again how pleased we are. I don't suppose I need tell you about Julika, according to the newspaper things are going much better with her now. She came to Mother's funeral. I can well understand that afterwards she didn't want to see any more of us, being your family. But I think she's still living in Par
is. Perhaps you've already spoken to Julika.

  I hope you won't mind, but I must stop now: we're just having a fruit show that's to be attended by a member of the Federal Council, and I've hardly asked you a proper question yet about your life and your future. I hope you will very soon be free.

  Meanwhile, all good wishes from

  Your affectionate brother

  WILFRIED

  As soon as I can get away from work for a couple of days I shall certainly come to see you. Today I just wanted to write and tell you that of course you can come and stay with us at any time.

  ***

  Nobody believes a word I say and in the end I shall probably have to take an oath that the fingers with which I am taking the oath are my own fingers. It's really laughable. Today I said to my counsel:

  'Of course I'm Stiller.'

  He stared at me.

  'What do you mean by that?'

  For the first time the idea entered his honest head that I might not be their missing Herr Stiller after all. Then who could I be? I gave him a few suggestions: Perhaps I was a Soviet agent with American papers. No joking please, and anyhow, in his opinion, anything connected with the Soviets was not a fit subject for jokes; it was simply too evil, just as, on the other hand, anything to do with Switzerland was too good to be a fit subject for jokes. I made another suggestion: Perhaps I was an S.S. man who had been underground for a bit and now saw an opening, the Unknown War Criminal with experience of the East, now very much in demand. But how could I prove I was a war criminal? However candidly I swore to it, they wouldn't let me go without proof. My counsel doesn't even believe that Mexico is more beautiful than Switzerland. Whenever I tell him so he just gets irritable and asks:

  'What's that got to do with it?'

  My counsel isn't interested in the way the Indians tear the cobra's fangs out in order to use them for their celebrated snake dance. He is even less interested in the Indians' attitude to death. And not at all in who ordered the murder of the Mexican revolutionaries. And he doubts whether it is true that the Mexican sky belongs to the vultures and Mexican mineral resources to the Americans. It's really not easy to keep this man entertained for an hour a day. He interrupted me in the middle of a story which I, at least, was finding enthralling:

  "Orizaba—where's that?'

  He whipped out his Eversharp and wouldn't rest until he had made a note of my polite but brief reply. Then he immediately asked me:

  'So you worked there?'

  'I never said that,' I replied. 'I earned money and lived there.'

  'How?'

  'Fine, thanks,' I said.

  'I mean, how did you earn money?'

  'Oh just the way people do earn money—' I said. 'Not by my own labour anyhow.'

  'How then?'

  'With—ideas.'

  'Explain that a bit more fully.'

  'I was a kind of estate manager—' I said with a gesture indicating honest profits'—on an hacienda.'

  He pretended not to notice the gesture.

  'What's an hacienda?'

  'A large estate,' I replied and gave him a full description of my position, which was inconspicuous, but the meeting place of the indispensable bribes from both sides, and my ideas on this subject, and then the topographical situation ofOrizaba, which is heavenly, close to the tropical zone yet just above this zone, which I can't bear with its humid luxuriance, gorgeous butterflies, slimy air, and damp sun, its clammy silence full of murderous fertilization—Orizaba lies just above this zone on a plateau that gets the air from the mountains; behind you can see the white snow of Popocatepetl, in front the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, while all around is a blossoming garden about the size of a Swiss canton, blossoming with orchids, which grow there like weeds, but also blossoming with useful plants—date palms, figs, coconut palms, oranges and lemons, tobacco, olives, coffee, pineapples, cocoa, bananas, and so on...

  Today my counsel opened with the remark: 'You don't seem to be very well informed about Mexico.'

  My counsel had been working.

  'What you told me yesterday is a lot of rubbish. Look,' he said and showed me a book from the municipal library. 'Benito Juarez tried to do away with large-scale landed property. He was unsuccessful. Porfirio Diaz was overthrown because he ruled with the support of the big property owners, and as you may know there followed a series of bloody revolutions aimed-at breaking up the big estates. Monasteries were burnt, landowners shot, and it ended with the dictatorship of the revolutionaries. You can read all that in here. Go on, have a look. And then you talk to me about a flourishing hacienda that's supposed to be as big as a Swiss canton—'

  'Yes,' I said, 'if not bigger.'

  My counsel shook his head.

  'Why do you tell me such tall stories?' he said. 'You must see that we shan't get anywhere like this. It's just not true. I don't believe you've ever been to Mexico.'

  'All right,' I said, 'have it your own way.'

  'Who could have owned an hacienda like that in modern Mexico, he said, 'under a government that expressly forbids all large-scale land ownership?'