The Safety Net Read Online Free PDF Page B

him from simply walking to the village: it was also his legs, which no longer behaved as well as they used to, and he couldn’t have said which deterred him more: his legs or that inescapable surveillance. His cheerfulness, that new sense of relief after the disappearance of his fear, had not yet communicated itself to his legs, they remained heavy, stiff, cold down to his feet. On Käthe’s arm he might have managed, alone he couldn’t risk suddenly giving way, perhaps having to support himself on that young Hendler, whose vigilance would thus be impaired, nor did he want to ask Blurtmehl to accompany him. What would Blurtmehl, what would any of them think, if he suddenly stopped outside the Pütz house or the Kelz house? Whatever they thought or imagined, it would stifle his memory, and he would never recapture the two girls’ faces; or if he sat down inthe empty church, staring at the confessional, the neo-Gothic windows, thinking in sorrow and disgust of what he had never yet been able to come to terms with: that disgusting drivel of Nuppertz’s that had stifled all, all poetry, all beauty, even the sad enjoyment of the “alone.” The very idea of what they might think killed his memory, killed the memory of those two girls—once so nice, so sensible—of the blustering, indiscreet Nuppertz, of the “with others.” Probably it was better not to return to the places of memory. It wasn’t the men, the guards, but what they might think that pursued him, thoughts they probably never even had.
    He took the stairs rather than the elevator in order to avoid yet another encounter with the faces of possible stragglers: Pottsieker and Herbtholer, and all those others he hadn’t been able to get away from during the four days of isolation: Bleibl, who might still be in the building; friends, enemies, waiters. Always that tension in the elevator; forced smile, awkwardness with cigar or cigarette ash (Kulgreve never remembered to have ashtrays installed in the elevator—he would have to mention that to Amplanger, who would see that it was done), and those brief ironic remarks about Tolmshoven, manor house and meeting place that they called his “castle of nostalgia”; some of them couldn’t resist dubbing him “Friedrich von Tolm zu Tolm,” whereas he was plain Fritz Tolm and happened to have been born in the village named after the manor and the local aristocracy. Yet everyone, including Bleibl, had been forced to admit that the purchase of the manor had turned out to be ideal. The remodeling and modernization had been worthwhile, even financially; two airports within thirty minutes’ drive, another within forty, and, in an emergency, landing permission could even be obtained from the British military airfield only twenty minutes away. It had been an excellent idea to get away from the hotels rented by the day or the week. After vain attempts to persuade the Association to make the purchase, he had eventually bought it himself, from Holger Count Tolm, the last of the name, who for many years now hadbeen disporting himself with women and gambling somewhere in southern Spain, trying without success to be accepted by the international playboy set: the very image of an embarrassing type of decay which, in its unashamedness, was still more to his liking than the decay of the clergy behind carefully preserved façades. In Holger’s case, not even hair and teeth had held out. He had even become a bit lachrymose, dotty—Holger, with whom he could never be angry, much less resent, ever since his childhood, his youth, when Holger had covered up for his love affair with Gerlind, provided alibis, helped arrange trysts; Holger, driven by the war into an unsuccessful career in the air force and to drink, whose sole talent was that of golden boy of the officers’ mess, their
maâitre de plaisir
, hanging around staff headquarters, arranging dinners, obtaining caviar, champagne, and women, eventually making it to the rank of