As for the confusion of the world: even the documentary value of notes like those presented above is questionable. I have in my possession certain others (along with many more, which were meant to serve literary purposes) concerning Schwab’s visit to Paris a year before the visit just described. At that time, I made a point of opening his eyes a little to the childish expectations he came here with whenever he fled Hamburg and its philistinism (only to plunge into a spiritual low when he went back home, an abyss with an alcohol pond waiting for him at the bottom).

This was not an entirely pleasurable business. It really took it out of me, I can tell you. He was already rather ragged when he came from Hamburg—came looking for me: his chubby German hand reaching out for Mama’s apron string. I picked him up at Orly. If a first glance was not enough to tell me what a state he was in, then he would have betrayed it on the ride to his hotel in the rue des Beaux Arts. (Though I was trying to drive at a snail’s pace, as much as the curses and shaking fists from the vehicles around me permitted: Parisians prefer their traffic to flow smoothly.)

Schwab’s baggage had been lost; it had been flown somewhere else—I believe to Caracas. Running around after it, waiting for hours and filling out lost baggage forms and insurance questionnaires, had reduced him to hysteria. I had to bombard him with nonstop gin and tonics to prevent an outburst. He was wearing a heavy turtleneck sweater (not a Hanseatic outfit but, with corduroy slacks and a beret, the guild costume of German intellectuals in the fifties, which costume he carried on into the sixties—typical of people who are behind the times but consider themselves avant-garde!). He was sweating like a cart horse; it was October, but as warm as summer. During the drive (his fingers clutching the edge of the dashboard, his nose pasted flat against the windshield, beads of sweat on his upper lip), he told me he had had a row with Scherping. About me, but originally about Nagel—an unspeakably ridiculous business:

He had had a few weeks of intense, highly stimulating work during which he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol (had even seriously thought of finally beginning his own book) when Nagel came along with something that caused him profound embarrassment. Nagel entrusted him with the first hundred and fifty pages of a new novel (the seventeenth in sixteen years) for a first reading, with an urgent request for absolute secrecy, especially in regard to Scherping. He, Nagel, was fed up with the renowned (Hemingway-like) directness of his narrative art and had tried a stylistic experiment that he wanted to present to Scherping only when he was sure his gamble had paid off. Magari!

In reading these pages, Schwab plunged into abysmal melancholy and hence into a battery of Saint-Émilion 1957, which I had once brought to him in Hamburg—two dozen bottles. It was a smooth, mannish wine, not all too heavy, yet full of strength, a true friend and comforter. Nevertheless, while making his way through the first dozen bottles, he did not dare venture out of the house, because he feared (correctly, no doubt) that Nagel was lying in wait to hear his verdict. He was living on old rolls and liverwurst and a tiny remnant of cheese, and he wouldn’t answer the phone when it rang. Schelmie, his secretary, had been told to spread the news that he had gone to Bückeburg. (Why Bückeburg of all places is still unclear.)