THE LUTE AND THE SCARS Read Online Free Page A

German literature; Heine was the first writer to poison him with poetic reveries and teach him the difference between the lyrical and the ironic, as well as the fragile relationship between them — a knack that is as hard to find among poets as it is among readers. In the 1930s, as German writers were becoming less and less able to find publishers in their fatherland, having been adjudged insufficiently transported by the national spirit or poisoned by the inheritance of their blood, Mr. van der Lange started publishing the books of German refugees, without being at all unfaithful to his preferences. The writers found in him not just a publisher of their works but also someone who gave them a friendly word and some encouragement. He was, in other words, one of those publishers whom success, money, and fame hadn ’ t made arrogant and inaccessible, or who just went through the motions, seeing their writers as frauds and malingerers who, instead of doing real work, spent their time in pursuit of something entirely vague and pointless . . .
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    If it hadn ’ t been for the papers (the stateless one read them early in the mornings, in the hotel restaurant) and their talk of armaments, of the dizzying increases in prices and unemployment, of diplomatic negotiations and anxious urgency, one could have believed, here in Amsterdam, that one still dwelled in the good old Europe of yore, and that the threat of war, Munich, the Reichstag fire — that they were all just nightmares and apparitions of a sick imagination. Mr. van der Lange, his publisher, a man with a jutting lower jaw and calm, gentle eyes (as if the bottom of his face were separated from the upper part by centuries of civilization), conversed with him over cognac and coffee, as if the two of them inhabited some island together. Mr. van der Lange was very well informed about the situation in Germany, and in their conversation he evinced — in spite of all the strict discipline that supposedly consigns men of good upbringing and high culture to lives of self-control and sangfroid — no little concern over the fate of German culture and the future of the continent. As for those matters strictly related to business, he again took care of these with the politeness of a man both realistic and sober, and he put together a contract with the stateless one about which neither of the signa-tories could be dissatisfied. But when the other man laid out the “ German situation ” for him on the basis of his own experience, that is to say as a witness, Mr. van der Lange grew morose, like a person hearing something horrifically unpleasant and difficult to refute about his very own mother.
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    After that nervous and depressed Europe where the people were gathering in the streets to catch the words of orators and demagogues on the balconies, and where armies were goose-stepping through the cities while masses howled in the stadiums, the man without a country suddenly found himself in Amsterdam on that bright April day, as if in another world altogether. The market women offered their goods with voices that were hoarse but merry and betrayed no trace of anxiety; the housewives continued flipping the big wriggling fish at the stands; the young men rode around quite civilly on their bicycles, pushing the pedals slowly and steadily, spokes gleaming in the sun. Next to the marketplace stood a huge barrel organ, painted orange, looking like an elegant coach and cranking out a medley of songs. Two girls in traditional folk outfits, with their white kerchiefs and yellow wooden slippers, held out to pedestrians tin cans bearing the symbol of the Red Cross. Boats moved calmly along on the canals; on one of them multicolored laundry hung on the ropes to dry, and someone on deck was playing the harmonica as if trying to imitate a canary . . . Through narrow uncurtained windows families could be seen around tables with steaming dishes of food: bright accents on idyllic scenes of family life,