Five Weeks at Humanitas. Manfred Jurgensen
fiction may carry, it is always by its very nature the work of imagination. The French novelist Jules Renard writes in his Journals: ‘I have a passion for the truth and for the fictions that it authorises.’ How conceited of us to assume life does not possess the power of imagination! Fiction is not the preserve of humans just because they invented the term. I believe life itself is the most important and powerful author of all, with quirks and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, vice and scruples – and style, its own ‘personality’. Occasionally it even seems to have a sense of humour.
The following narrative attempts to bear witness to the magic, excitement and challenges of life. It is its story I wish to tell. The chronicle’s ‘I’ is the conduit of something much bigger than itself. In the grand scheme of things a tiny individual life seems of little significance.
Yet it is in personal experience that the power and magnificence of existence comes to bear. Despite the inauspicious start to his life, the disappointments and sufferings he shares with many others, the author means to offer his account as witness not for the prosecution but the defence. I have experienced life’s fiction as something more than improbable or unbelievable. For me, it was and remains the very magic of existence. My heart is filled with gratitude to all those who have shared in its magic and contributed to it.
Eggshells
… the fate of my generation, a German fate …
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
One
I saw it coming. It’s not as though it suddenly happened out of the blue. Nothing like it. Nor did it have anything to do with a mental breakdown, at least not in the usual sense.
For some years, especially the last two, something mysterious and horrific was taking place. It wasn’t the normal process of ageing everybody has to come to terms with. Although not unrelated to growing old, this thing was much more scary. Yet in a strange way I also found it exhilarating, fantastic and almost beautiful, close to what I’ve come to call magic. There are certain events in life, exquisite moments or lengthier developments that can only be described in those terms. That they are often accompanied by suffering and pain does not diminish the mystery or enchantment of the spell.
It began with memory. I remembered the fishnets hanging out to dry down at the small port of my hometown. The bigger trawlers were moored in the harbour, smaller boats dragged to a tiny stretch of sand and turned upside down. The fishing nets were hung across high wooden scaffoldings that looked like crucifixes. On summer days their green buoys caught the light in reflections of momentary starlight flashes giving the impression that the nets had somehow come alive. The image of their swaying in the breeze kept haunting me, usually at incongruous and inopportune moments. Drying nets descended above my head as if I was to be their catch. Was I an acrobat about to fall or was it something more threatening than that? Was it safety or peril?
Sometimes a spider I assumed to be venomous would climb out of the web’s centre trying to pierce my eyes. But its segmented body and long jointed legs merely moved to the outer circle of the network spinning a repair of damaged threads. After a while images of fishnets and cobwebs were replaced by something even more disturbing. There were moments when I felt my whole body turn brittle. I thought I could actually hear my skin rustle as it seemed to turn into a different layer. What was going on? At times it felt as if not only my outside cover was somehow transforming itself. Touching myself I discovered the presence of a strange crisp, starchy texture. When I used my fingers to check the nature of the new tissue its surface folded and creased. I seemed to have lost all physical resistance. In panic I thought of attaching a note to my body: PLEASE DO NOT BEND! Amazingly, people around me did not seem to notice anything different about me. Didn’t they hear me rustle as I approached? There were times when I heard it even in my sleep.
My wife Ulrike didn’t seem to notice her husband was in the process of some kind of metamorphosis. I was unsure whether to be pleased about her failure to realise it or not, and I believed it would be unwise to draw attention to it. How could she have understood my invisible transformation when I myself was unable to make sense of it? Yet there could be no doubt in my mind: I was actually in the process of assuming an altered state.
Could such a dramatic change really remain unnoticeable? Could there be individual mutations imperceptible to others? Was it real or just in my mind, a psychosomatic illusion? Even if it were all in my mind, it would still be real, wouldn’t it? I was more than confused. I was at a loss. What did it all mean?
In view of its apparent invisibility I made strenuous efforts to keep the mysterious conversion to myself. Upsetting my wife, colleagues and friends was the last thing I wanted. I resisted the temptation to consult the local GP, not least because he too was a friend. He would be bound to advise me to take things easy, spend a special weekend with Ulrike by the sea, relax, enjoy good food and indulge in what he liked to refer to as marital exercises. I had already done all of that, with no change in my condition. There was only one prospect that filled me with at least some hope. On the strength of my study on The Fictional I, I had been offered a visiting professorship at the University of Basle. Although Ulrike’s own teaching commitments would not allow her to join me — she was dedicated to her refugee students from overseas — she urged me to accept the invitation and travel alone. If I could just last a few more weeks lecturing my own students at university, I thought, this whole transformation business would most probably resolve itself. Perhaps it would prove no more than what some people call a midlife crisis.
Midlife crisis? Who was I kidding? If I ever had one, it passed unnoticed a long time ago. Surely I was well past midlife now! Yet now was the time when I noticed something was going on in my mind and body. Sometimes I wondered whether it could be similar to what women like to call their change of life. By the time I left for Switzerland I considered my condition a puzzle I had not been able to solve but managed to keep under control. Almost.
Yet after a couple of days in the Swiss village guesthouse of Riehen, near the German border, I woke up from my own rustling. I touched myself and found I had been transformed into paper. I got out of bed, picked up the Max Frisch novel I’d read before going to sleep and on the way to the bathroom stared at my image in an old-fashioned gilded mirror hanging in the corridor. What I saw completed my panic. I looked at a tiny human body trying to hide behind a large book. Whether by grotesque distortion of the mirror or my own deformed perception, the book and I merged into one. As I continued to stare at what was no longer myself, I began to recite entire passages of Frisch’s novel. The words poured out of me as if they’d been imprinted in my brain. The recitation continued for several pages until I screamed and ran away from the mirror. Under the shower I did my best to calm down and concentrate on the seminar I was expected to conduct later in the morning. Lathering my face, I found temporary relief in a curious discovery: at least parts of the body seemed to be recovering normal skin. It took me a very long time to pick up enough courage to leave my room and join the other guests for breakfast.
At my arrival no one raised a head. It seemed nothing extraordinary had happened. I dared not look at the large ornamental mirror between the two windows looking out on the sunlit road leading from Basle to the border. Summer was over. The new semester was about to start. If I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself, I had better pull myself together.
Early in the new millennium an Australian visiting professor at the University of Basle had to be forcibly removed from a doctoral seminar he conducted on literary fiction. As the subject of the discussion class was of little interest to the majority of citizens, the Basler Zeitung confined the incident to a couple of paragraphs in the local news section, reporting it as an unfortunate work-related accident. The real reason for the uncharacteristic restraint of the press was the Rector’s request for confidentiality. In particular there would be no need to reveal the identity of the visitor from Down Under. As he had been awarded a Swiss Confederacy fellowship some years ago his reputation deserved to be protected by government, universities