The History of History

TWENTY-SIX • Erich


Erich the Hausmeister stood across the street from the apartment house on the Grunewaldstrasse. He was hidden in the shadow of Number 54. From here he was leaning back on his heels, regarding Number 88 cannily. It huddled between two buildings more ornate than itself, but still it was apparent that Number 88 had once been a grand place to live, as Erich estimated with a certain paternal pride, although, precisely because his pride was of the paternal kind, not entirely approvingly. Number 88 was his adopted child—he would have told anyone that. The façade was covered in red brick; there were white balconies and crumbling white plaster moldings in the classical style. It was Erich who had made sure the moldings were restored after the old pattern, and he who had organized the repair of the balconies.

Now Erich regarded the building cannily. He already knew who was at home and who wasn’t, but still he surveyed the windows for any sign of life. He had a grocery cart in front of him, borrowed from the nearby Lidl, and he was massaging clumps of almost dried pigeon excrement into fibrous balls. When he was sure no one was coming in any direction, and that the shadow falling on him was heavy, he lofted one of these clumps of droppings up and across the street in a tall arc, his sinewy arms surprisingly powerful, but unsurprisingly accurate. His thin, ropey arms, they looked as if they would be accurate. The first ball dropped down onto the lowest balcony. Erich couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the plop of the ball doing what it was meant to do—that is, upon impact, splitting up into the many clumps of droppings it was composed of, so that the floor of the balcony would be strewn with the solidified excrement.

It wasn’t that Erich had any ill will toward the tenants. They were nice people, always cordial when they passed Erich on the stairs. However, the Croatian couple had been resisting the installation of anti-pigeon spikes along the wide stucco railings of their balcony. They preferred to use the ledge as a sort of breakfast table for their coffee tray in the summers and as a place to air musty carpets in the winter. They also claimed that no pigeons roosted here, they had never seen a single one. Erich knew better. He was finding ways to convince them gently, rather than picking a fight. He felt it was important that he do this while it was still early in the spring, when they wouldn’t yet think of eating outside.

After he had gone into his garden house and washed his hands, he set to work digging up the hard ground and putting flower bulbs in the courtyard. He was only putting in one bulb per meter—a minimalist look that he had seen in a gardening magazine once. It struck him as very economical.


As for the American, Erich had seen her on the subway earlier that same day. Erich almost never took the subway, preferring his mountain bike, but this had been a special trip to see his lawyer—he had had good enough reasons to hire one. Not suing anyone, not exactly at least.

He had seen Margaret right away, but she had not seen him. Typical of her. She was sitting with her head thrown back; her eyebrows drawn up in a peak of amusement; her gaze on something off to the side; her mouth in a knowing half grin. Even at a glance from the other end of the car he had recognized her—she was identifiable by the adolescent’s bravely pathetic habit of believing herself to be masking best her insecurities precisely at those moments when she most revealed them. Look at her legs, side by side in that simpering, pinup-girl position. He had thought his own mother was a generation too late for such stylization. Margaret’s body was tall, thin, and limbs gangly—it wasn’t right for her to make those coy moves! She kept her shoulders hunched up so high that the blades cut sharply out of her skin. It looked like she would keel over with eagerness to please. When she got out of the train at Rüdesheimer Platz, she wobbled her head. Margaret always walked in a way that made it look as if she knew she were being watched, her arms swinging, her head bobbing up and down, winningly cheerful, like an ingénue or a nymphet.

The problem with the show, Erich thought—what made it ridiculous, some would say—was that Margaret’s face didn’t fit the part, when she was motionless she didn’t look at all like a puppy or nymphet of any kind. She had a very high forehead and a pointed, knowledgeable chin. Her dark eyes, on those rare occasions when she revealed them completely, were sensitive. She should have been reasonable. Erich would not have minded being her friend.

Erich was on his way home when he ran into Margaret on the subway. At just that moment, he had nowhere he needed to be. So he followed Margaret off the train. It wouldn’t do any harm to see what she was up to.

Margaret walked by the Justizkammer and Erich followed. Margaret walked and walked, and Erich followed and followed. Finally they were almost at Nollendorfplatz, and lo, Margaret went into the St. Matthias Church. Erich ducked inside as well, almost catching up as he caught the heavy door before it closed behind her.

The church was empty. Margaret, in the still, moist, cold air, knelt in one of the back pews. Erich was surprised. And then surprised to see her face in an expression broad with the laxness of despair, the way of looking when there is finally no one left to look at.

Erich thought of one of her diary entries, one he had read a trifle too absentmindedly, not really taking care to decipher it; it seemed like more of the same gushing nonsense that filled the rest of the journal, albeit a trifle more overwrought, with slightly more self-satisfied, mysterious references. In retrospect, these were easy enough to decode. He had simply lived a long time outside the society of women. In any case, he grasped its meaning now in the church, and he began to think of the large men’s coats Margaret had begun to wear.

More than two years ago, Erich found what appeared to be the entire contents of Margaret’s wardrobe in the trash—girlish, coquettish clothes. And once, too, he saw Margaret throw something yellowy-gold out of the window and into the chaos of the neighboring courtyard. (Over there, they had no Hausmeister.) Later, Erich went and rummaged through the wet dead leaves and rusted coat hangers and garbage lids. In amongst, he found a simple brass key, single-toothed, as though for a piece of furniture. It had been in the autumn.

Now that he was beginning to understand, he felt sorry for her.

February 3, 2002

Oh, dear God forgive me, but I have the most wonderful, most wonderful news! Amadeus was not careful with me, and to be entirely frank, I was not careful with myself and now things have gone all the way. Oh gracious, sweet God! Let it work out and be good for both of us. I must tell you and only you, silent journal, that this was unplanned for Amadeus but not really unplanned for me. For months now I’ve been trying to make things happen accidentally. I don’t think Amadeus suspected anything, and the second two weeks of this month have been a time of perpetual suspense. Looking out my window I’ve seen so many women with round bodies walking by, as if taunting me. This morning I almost killed myself biking over to the drugstore to buy a test, I didn’t pay attention to the traffic at all, and a woman called out to me: Junge Frau, sind Sie lebensmüde? And that’s the one thing I’m not, see, I’m not tired of life! But sometimes life is so alluring that in rushing toward it you rush over the edge of it, and so when I changed lanes directly in front of the car coming up behind me, it was one of those moments where I was gripping so firmly at the quick of life that I couldn’t even consider the possibility that it could come to an end.

Oh, let Amadeus leave Asja, and come to us!

I’m so happy. I wonder if it will give my life meaning. I imagine it will. How nice to have something to work for. I am so good with things that don’t demand that I divide my attention—I love activities that allow me to stay at home and focus on what I can see clearly in front of me. Which is such a good description of what this will be like! I’m teetering on the verge of the most perfect happiness.