PART ONE
Chapter One
Before leaving the house, he pressed his forehead up against the window and looked out. Night pushed through Berlin on the backs of clouds and icy winds tossed the stripped, leafless branches of trees lining the boulevard. The Wilmersdorfer Luch clock across the way read six o’clock already. Benjamin set his glasses on his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He had to go. He was in a cold sweat, nailed into the shadow, numbed by pain and sadness, but he had to go. He adjusted his tie, looked lingeringly over the rows of books on the shelves, at the paintings on the walls and his threadbare old sofa. Then he grabbed his bags and went out into the stairwell. A bitter wind worked its way under his coat and cleared his thoughts. For a moment, he saw the coin of his life spinning in the air and hitting the ground with a false note – it fell the wrong side up. He had to go. In the courtyard the dim lights from the windows formed a trap and the ground was sprinkled with the recent rain. He turned the key in the lock, twice, then three and four times, struck by his last doubt, a final awareness of his habits and memories. After that it was done.
Through the window of the tram he watched scattered pedestrians on the boulevard, eyes turned downward, the pavements slick with filthy sewer water, a reckless woman begging on the church steps. The square in front of the station was deserted except for a lone patrol, standing stiff and bored under the opaque illumination of the street lights. Benjamin couldn’t turn back now. With effort he lugged his suitcases to a checkpoint where two soldiers stood watch.
‘Papers,’ ordered the older of the two. He was SA, blond and thin, his uniform seemed to hang off his shoulders.
Benjamin pulled them out of his coat pocket and handed them over the barrier. He wasn’t trembling but he still didn’t dare look him in the face. The blond soldier took his time. He showed the passport to his partner, turned it over, unconvinced, and then stared hard at the traveller – that pointy chin, those mean, chilly eyes boring into him.
‘Go on,’ he concluded.
It was some time before Benjamin caught his breath. He didn’t feel right again until he got to the middle of the enormous atrium. Panting, he set his bags down on the ground. The silence around him was broken only by the puffing trains idling on the tracks and the wind sneaking in through the tunnels, the creaking of a sandwich cart. He moved forward, keeping some distance between himself and the soldiers with their rifles slung around their necks, staying away from the unpopulated waiting rooms. The train was practically empty and no one waved from the platform.
Benjamin was still thinking of nothing when the train pulled out. Several hours later he looked out the window at the Cologne station. It was midnight. Standing right outside on the platform was Carl Linfert, a historian he’d met in the Frankfurter Zeitung offices.
‘Herr Benjamin, where are you headed?’
‘To Paris, and you?’
‘Oh, I’m staying right here,’ Linfert answered with a shake of his head. ‘I just came to see a friend off.’
The conductor at the end of the platform swung his lantern and the train slowly started moving.
‘Have a safe trip and good luck!’ cried Linfert.
Linfert was the last familiar face Benjamin saw on German soil. After that, just lights streaming past in the night through the dirty glass, and the clinging stubborn preoccupations that kept him from sleeping until he got to the border. It wasn’t until later, after the day had started breaking over the countryside and the listless French sunlight began to creep into the compartment, that Benjamin realised how much he had to lose. Perhaps he had already lost it forever.
Chapter Two
What’s that, my son? Still going on about your German, your philosopher? His name was Benjamin, wasn’t it now? He must have really been someone – a very important person if you came all the way to Mexico from Italy, all those thousands of miles, just to talk to a poor old man like me.Yes, I’m very old. Do you know that this October 26, I’ll turn seventy-eight? Have I already told you that? You’ll have to forgive me. Andrés, my grandson, the boy who let you in, he’s always making fun of me because I can’t keep things straight. I never remember what happened yesterday or the day before. He says that I have diseased arteries and that I’m incurable. What can I do about it? I’m certainly not going to let it bother me. Let him talk. If I were really sick, people wouldn’t joke about it. Instead you’d all treat me with those pious little smiles that people reserve for jackasses. It’s better to play along.You want to know what I really suffer from? The affliction of time. Just like my grandfather, may he rest in peace. After a certain point, he’d answer questions that you’d asked him three days earlier. He’d mix up the before and after. But I remember things from fifty years ago as if they were happening now. That’s why I remember your philosopher perfectly.As I said, it must have been autumn 1940. I found myself at the top of the Pyrenees in the middle of the night, standing on the French–Spanish border on the Lister Trail.What was I doing up there? Well, that’s another story.You should know that I was born in Spain, in Asturias. I wasn’t born here in Mexico. But I’ve been living here for the last fifty years. I came here back in 1941 to save my skin and I stayed, because I couldn’t ever go back. At sixteen, in October 1934, I was in the middle of the Asturias revolution. I hardly need to explain that we were fighting for a lost cause. Two thousand dead, fifteen thousand prisoners tortured. There were the legionnaires, the Moors of the African army raping women and burning down houses. My mother died then, struck down by a bomb. It fell on us by accident. Maybe they just dropped it so that they wouldn’t have to carry it back to their base, which would make them look bad. It was rotten luck.