The Kindly Ones

When I see them? This idea seemed almost comical to me; at the same time, I was entirely incapable of accepting the thought that I might never see my sister again: it was literally unthinkable. That evening, I had dismissed Käthe early and served myself, I dined for the third time alone in this large candlelit room, solemnly, and as I ate and drank I was overcome with startling fantasies, the demented vision of a perfect coprophagic autarky. I pictured myself confined alone in this manor house with Una, isolated from the world, forever. Every evening, we put on our finest clothing, suit and a silk shirt for me, a beautiful, close-fitting, barebacked evening gown for her, enhanced by heavy, almost barbaric silver jewelry, and we sat down to an elegant dinner, at this table covered with a lace tablecloth and set with crystal tumblers, silverware stamped with our crest, Sèvres porcelain plates, massive silver candelabra bristling with long white tapers; in the glasses, our own urine, on the plates well-formed pieces of excrement, pale and firm, which we calmly ate with little silver spoons. We wiped our lips with monogrammed cambric napkins, we drank, and when we had finished, we went into the kitchen ourselves to wash the dishes. This way, we were self-sufficient, without loss and without trace, neatly. This aberrant vision filled me for the rest of the meal with a sordid anguish. Afterward I went up to Una’s room to drink Cognac and smoke. The bottle was almost empty. I looked at the secretary, now closed again, my evil feeling wouldn’t let me go, I didn’t know what to do, but above all I didn’t want to open the secretary. I opened the wardrobe and inspected my sister’s dresses, breathing in deeply to immerse myself in the smell they gave off. I chose one, a beautiful evening gown made of delicate material, black and gray with silver threads; standing in front of the tall mirror, I held the dress draped over my body, and with great seriousness made a few feminine gestures. But immediately I was afraid and put the dress away, full of disgust and shame: What was I playing at here? My body wasn’t hers and never would be. At the same time, I couldn’t contain myself, I should have left the house right away, but I couldn’t leave the house. Then I sat down on the sofa and finished the bottle of Cognac, forcing myself to think about the scraps of letters I had read, about these endless, answerless enigmas, my father’s departure, my mother’s death. I got up, went to get the letters, and sat down again to read a few more of them. My sister was trying to ask me questions, she asked me how I could have slept while our mother was being killed, what I had felt when I saw her body, what we had talked about the day before. I could answer almost none of these questions. In one letter, she told me about the visit from Clemens and Weser: intuitively, she had lied to them, she hadn’t said I had seen the bodies, but she wanted to know why I had lied, and what exactly I remembered. What I remembered? I didn’t even know what a memory was anymore. When I was little, one day, I climbed, and even today, as I write, I can see myself very clearly climbing the gray steps of a great mausoleum or a monument lost in a forest. The leaves were red, it must have been the end of autumn, I couldn’t see the sky through the trees. A thick layer of dead leaves, red, orange, brown, gold, covered the steps, I sank into them up to my thighs, and the steps were so high that I was forced to use my hands to hoist myself up to the next one. In my memory, this whole scene is thick with an overwhelming feeling, the burned colors of the leaves weighed on me, and I cleared a path for myself on these steps for giants through this dry, crumbling mass, I was afraid, I thought I would sink into it and disappear. For years, I believed this image was the memory of a dream, an image from a childhood dream that had stayed with me. But one day, in Kiel, when I returned there for university, I chanced upon this ziggurat, a little granite war monument, I walked around it, the steps weren’t higher than other steps, this was the place, this place existed. Of course, I must have been very small when I had gone there, that’s why the steps seemed so tall to me, but that’s not what overwhelmed me, it was seeing, after so many years, something that I had always located in the world of dreams present itself this way as reality, as a concrete, material thing. And the same was true with everything Una had tried to talk to me about in these unfinished letters that she had never sent me. All these endless thoughts were bristling with sharp angles, I gashed myself on them viciously, the hallways of this cold, oppressive house were streaming with the bloody shreds of my feelings; a young, healthy maid should have come and washed everything clean, but there was no more maid. I put the letters away in the secretary and, leaving the empty bottle and glass there, went into the bedroom next to hers to go to bed. But as soon as I lay down, obscene, perverse thoughts began to flood in again. I got up again and in the trembling light of a candle contemplated my naked body in the wardrobe mirror. I touched my flat belly, my stiff penis, my buttocks. With the tip of my fingers I caressed the hairs on the back of my neck. Then I blew the candle out and lay down again. But these thoughts refused to go away, they emerged from the corners of the room like mad dogs and rushed at me to tear into me and inflame my body, Una and I were exchanging our clothes, naked except for stockings, I pulled on her long dress as she buttoned herself up in my uniform and put up her hair and fastened it under my cap, then she sat me down in front of her dressing table and carefully made up my face, combing my hair back, applying lipstick to my mouth, mascara on my eyelashes, powder on my cheeks, she dabbed drops of perfume on my neck and painted my nails, and when it was over we just as brutally exchanged our roles, she equipped herself with a sculpted ebony phallus and took me like a man, in front of her tall mirror that impassively reflected our bodies intertwined like snakes, she had coated the phallus with cold cream, and the acrid smell bit into my nose as she used me as if I were a woman, until all distinctions were erased and I could say to her: “I am your sister and you are my brother,” and she: “You are my sister and I am your brother.”