[A]s Reiter was leaving, one of the daughters, the oldest and prettiest, caught up to him on the stairs and said she knew where Halder was living now. Then she continued down the stairs and Reiter followed her. The girl dragged him to a public park. There, in a corner safe from prying eyes, she turned, as if seeing him for the first time, and hurled herself at him, planting a kiss on his mouth. Reiter pulled away and asked why in heaven she was kissing him. The girl said she was happy to see him. Reiter studied her eyes, a washed-out blue, like the eyes of a blind woman, and realized he was talking to a madwoman.
Even so, he wanted to know what information the girl had about Halder. She said that if he didn’t let her kiss him she wouldn’t tell him. They kissed again: the girl’s tongue was very dry at first and Reiter caressed it with his tongue until it was thoroughly moistened. Where does Hugo Halder live now? he asked. The girl smiled at him as if Reiter were a slow child. Can’t you guess? she asked. Reiter shook his head. The girl, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, began to laugh so hard that Reiter was afraid if she didn’t stop the police would come, and he could think of no better way of silencing her than kissing her on the mouth again.
“My name is Ingeborg,” said the girl when Reiter removed his lips from hers.
“My name is Hans Reiter,” he said.
Then she looked at the sandy, pebbly ground and paled visibly, as if she were about to faint.
“My name,” she repeated, “is Ingeborg Bauer, I hope you won’t forget me.”
From this moment on they spoke in fainter and fainter whispers.
“I won’t,” said Reiter.
“Swear it,” said the girl.
“I swear,” said Reiter.
“Who do you swear by? Your mother, your father, God?” asked the girl.
“I swear by God,” said Reiter.
“I don’t believe in God,” said the girl.
“Then I swear by my mother and father,” said Reiter.
“An oath like that is no good,” said the girl, “parents are no good, people are always trying to forget they have parents.”
“Not me,” said Reiter.
“Yes, you,” said the girl, “and me, and everyone.”
“Then I swear to you by whatever you want,” said Reiter.
“Do you swear by your division?” asked the girl.
“I swear by my division and regiment and battalion,” said Reiter, and then he added that he also swore by his corps and his army group.
“Don’t tell anyone,” said the girl, “but to be honest, I don’t believe in the army.”
“What do you believe in?” asked Reiter.
“Not much,” said the girl after pondering her reply for a second. “Sometimes I even forget what I believe in. There are so few things, and so many things I don’t believe in, such a huge number of things, that they hide what I do believe in. Right now, for example, I can’t remember anything.”
“Do you believe in love?” asked Reiter.
“Frankly, no,” said the girl.
“What about honesty?” asked Reiter.
“Ugh, that’s worse than love,” said the girl.
“Do you believe in sunsets,” asked Reiter, “starry nights, bright mornings?”
“No, no, no,” said the girl with a gesture of evident distaste, “I don’t believe in anything ridiculous.”
“You’re right,” said Reiter. “What about books?”
“Even worse,” said the girl, “and anyway in my house there are only Nazi books, Nazi politics, Nazi history, Nazi economics, Nazi mythology, Nazi poetry, Nazi novels, Nazi plays.”
“I had no idea the Nazis had written so much,” said Reiter.
“As far as I can tell, you don’t have much idea about anything, Hans,” said the girl, “except kissing me.”
“True,” said Reiter, who was always ready to admit his ignorance.
By then they were strolling through the park holding hands and every so often Ingeborg would stop and kiss Reiter on the mouth and anyone who saw them might have thought they were just a young soldier and his girl, with no money to go anywhere else, very much in love and with many things to tell each other. And yet if this hypothetical observer had approached the couple and looked them in the eyes he would have seen that the young woman was mad and the young soldier knew it and didn’t care. Truthfully, by now Reiter didn’t care that the girl was crazy, much less about his friend Hugo Halder’s address. All he cared about was learning once and for all the few things Ingeborg felt were worthy of swearing by. So he asked and asked and made tentative suggestions: the girl’s sisters and the city of Berlin and world peace and the children of the world and the birds of the world and the opera and the rivers of Europe and the faces, dear God, of men she had loved, and her own life (Ingeborg’s), and friendship and humor and everything he could think of, and he received one negative response after another, until at last, after they had explored every corner of the park, the girl remembered two things she thought were valid oaths.
“Do you want to know what they are?”
“Of course I do!” said Reiter.
“I hope you won’t laugh when I tell you.”
“I won’t laugh,” said Reiter.
“The first is storms,” said the girl.
“Storms?” asked Reiter, greatly surprised.
“Only big storms, when the sky turns black and the air turns gray. Thunder, lightning, and peasants killed when they cross fields,” said the girl.
“Now I understand,” said Reiter, who didn’t love storms. “So what’s the second thing?”
“The Aztecs,” said the girl.
“The Aztecs?” asked Reiter, more perplexed than by the storms.
“That’s right, the Aztecs,” said the girl, “the people who lived in Mexico before Cortés came, the ones who built the pyramids.”
“Oh, the Aztecs, those Aztecs,” said Reiter.
“They’re the only Aztecs,” said the girl, “the ones who lived in Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco and performed human sacrifices and inhabited two cities built around lakes.”
“Oh, so they lived in two cities built around lakes,” said Reiter.
“Yes,” said the girl.
For a while they walked in silence. Then the girl said: I imagine those cities to be like Geneva and Montreux. Once I was with my family on holiday in Switzerland. We went by ferry from Geneva to Montreux. Lake Geneva is marvelous in summer, although there are perhaps too many mosquitoes. We spent the night at an inn in Montreux and the next day we returned by ferry again to Geneva. Have you been to Lake Geneva?”
“No,” said Reiter.
“It’s very beautiful and it isn’t just those two cities, there are many towns on the lake, like Lausanne, which is bigger than Montreux, or Vevey, or Evian. In fact there are more than twenty towns, some tiny. Do you see?”
“Vaguely,” said Reiter.
“Look, this is the lake”—the girl drew the lake with the tip of her shoe on the ground—”here’s Geneva, here, and at the other end, Montreux, and these are the other towns. Do you see now?”
“Yes,” said Reiter.
“Well, that’s how I imagine the lake of the Aztecs,” said the girl as she rubbed out the map with her shoe. “Except much prettier. With no mosquitoes, nice weather all year round, and lots of pyramids, so many and so big it’s impossible to count them all, pyramids on top of pyramids, pyramids behind other pyramids, all stained red with the blood of daily sacrifices. And then I imagine the Aztecs, but perhaps that doesn’t interest you,” said the girl.
“It does,” said Reiter, who until then had never given the Aztecs any thought.
“They’re very strange people,” said the girl. “If you look them closely in the face, after a moment you realize they’re mad. But they aren’t shut up in a madhouse. Or maybe they are. But they don’t seem to be. The Aztecs dress with great elegance, they’re very careful when they choose what clothes to wear each day, one might think they spent hours in a dressing room, choosing the proper attire, and then they put on very precious plumed hats, and necklaces and rings, as well as gems on their arms and feet, and both the men and the women paint their faces, and then they go out for a walk along the lakeshore, never speaking to one another, absorbed in contemplation of the passing boats, whose crews, if they aren’t Aztec, lower their gaze and keep fishing or hurry away, because some Aztecs are seized by cruel whims, and after strolling like philosophers they go into the pyramids, which are completely hollow and look like cathedrals inside, and are illuminated only by a light from above, light filtered through a great obsidian stone, in other words a dark, sparkling light. By the way, have you ever seen a piece of obsidian?” asked the girl.
“No, never,” said Reiter, “or maybe I have and I didn’t know it.”
“You would have known it instantly,” said the girl. “Obsidian is a black or very dark green feldspar, a curious thing in itself because feldspar tends to be white or yellowish. The most important kinds of feldspar, for your information, are orthoclase, albite, and labradorite. But the kind I like best is obsidian. Well, back to the pyramids. At the top is the sacrificial stone. Can you guess what it’s made of?”
“Obsidian,” said Reiter.
“Precisely,” said the girl, “a stone like a surgeon’s table, where the Aztec priests or doctors lay their victims before tearing out their hearts. But now comes the part that will really surprise you. This stone bed where the victims were laid was transparent! It was a sacrificial stone chosen and polished in such a way that it was transparent. And the Aztecs inside the pyramid watched the sacrifice as if from within, because as you’ll have guessed, the light from above that illuminated the bowels of the pyramids came from an opening just beneath the sacrificial stone, so that at first the light was black or gray, a dim light in which only the inscrutable silhouettes of the Aztecs inside the pyramids could be seen, but then, as the blood of the new victim spread across the skylight of transparent obsidian, the light turned red and black, a very bright red and a very bright black, and then not only were the silhouettes of the Aztecs visible but also their features, features transfigured by the red and black light, as if the light had the power to personalize each man or woman, and that is essentially all, but that can last a long time, that exists outside time, or in some other time, ruled by other laws. When the Aztecs came out of the pyramids, the sunlight didn’t hurt them. They behaved as if there were an eclipse of the sun. And they returned to their daily rounds, which basically consisted of strolling and bathing and then strolling again and spending a long time standing still in contemplation of imperceptible things or studying the patterns insects made in the dirt and eating with friends, but always in silence, which is the same as eating alone, and every so often they made war. And above them in the sky there was always an eclipse,” said the girl.
“Well, well, well,” said Reiter, impressed by his new friend’s knowledge.
For a while, without intending to, the pair walked in silence through the park, as if they were Aztecs, until the girl asked what he would swear by, Aztecs or storms.
“I don’t know,” said Reiter, who had already forgotten what he had to swear to.
“Choose,” said the girl, “and think carefully because it’s much more important than you understand.”
“What’s important?” asked Reiter.
“Your oath,” said the girl.
“And why is it important?” asked Reiter.
“For you, I don’t know,” said the girl, “but for me it’s important because it will mark my fate.”
At that moment Reiter remembered that he had to swear he would never forget her and he felt great sorrow. For a moment he could scarcely breathe and then he felt as if the words were catching in his throat. He decided he would swear by the Aztecs, since he didn’t like storms.
“I swear by the Aztecs,” he said, “I’ll never forget you.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, and they kept walking.
After a while, although he no longer cared, Reiter asked for Halder’s address.
“He lives in Paris,” said the girl with a sigh. “I don’t have the address.”
“Ah,” said Reiter.
“It’s only natural that he lives in Paris,” said the girl.
Reiter thought that maybe she was right and it was the most natural thing in the world that Halder had moved to Paris. When it began to get dark Reiter walked the girl to her front door and then went running to the station. (2666)