Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen Read Free Book Online

because Polacks were still Polacks. And in the military cemetery they would pay tribute to themselves and the dead with exalted feeling all round. The dead didn't laugh, they were dead; or they had no time and didn't care who among the living came to see them, they were changing phases, they climbed out of life dirty and guilty, perhaps not even personally guilty, into the wheel of births to a new repentance, a new guilt, a new pointless incarnation. Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath thought it rude of Judejahn to be late. But perhaps he wasn't yet in Rome, perhaps he had experienced difficulties getting there, trouble with a passport maybe, his case was sensitive and required careful handling. Things shouldn't be rushed, but Pfaffrath was convinced that the time had come, seeing as his brother-in-law had succeeded in staying alive, to lose the file on Judejahn, carefully, discreetly, without fuss—one might still be compromised, some unpatriotic type might squeal—but the time of hanging was definitely over, for them at least, the Americans had come to their senses, they now had a truer measure of German circumstances and German usefulness, and vengeful judgements and hatred were no longer wise or appropriate. Roosevelt was dead and suspected of Communist collaboration. And who was Morgenthau? A nebbish! Anyone who'd survived up until now would survive in future. And maybe Judejahn could be found a job in the Agricultural Union, just to begin with, and Eva would snap out of her craziness, because, no question, he, Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, was a nationalist, but mistakes had been made, you had to own up to them and make a fresh start. Hunger had made Prussia great! And wouldn't that apply to the rest of the country too? They'd come on a lot already. Not in terms of hunger—that was a figure of speech, a fortifying legend from past times of pride and shortages—because hunger was just the rumbling of empty bellies after wars that had been lost through deceit, best not to think about that, but in terms of prosperity, that was real and tangible and worth pursuing. And might the new standard of living not finally convince the sons, the lost sheep of the break-up of Germany, those driven away by a happily brief period of chaos, to come home to the ancestral way of their people? The Federal Republic had its democratic weaknesses, certainly, and for the moment it was hard to do anything about them, but overall there was order in the occupied land, and everything was ready for a tighter rein. Soon they would be able to see a little further, prospects weren't bad, and Pfaffrath had the right kind of track record; but as far as the sons were concerned, their lack of common sense, their neuroses, the way they followed their so-called consciences, that was just a sign of the times, a sickness of the times, and in time it would be cured like an overlong puberty. Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath had in mind less his nephew Adolf Judejahn than Siegfried, the elder of his two sons, who had left him, while with Dietrich, the younger, he was content: he was now a Goth, had joined his father's fraternity, had learned corps regulations, acquired connections, was approaching his final exams, and was looking forward to the visit to the battlefield at Monte Cassino, as was only right for a young person. But Siegfried was somehow degenerate. All right, if he had to—let him be a kapellmeister: there were well-paid jobs in music too. Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath was a well-informed man, and it had come to his ears that Siegfried was in Rome. That seemed to him like a good omen for a possible clearing of the air and reconciliation. It wouldn't be easy, because Siegfried still seemed to be wading in a swamp, figuratively speaking, and the programme of the musical congress was full of surrealism, cultural Bolshevism and negroid newfangledness. Was the boy blind? But perhaps that was the way you made your name nowadays, now that the Jews were back in