But what did all that mean now? Around me everything was dead. Stella was dead and Uncle Ferdinand’s Middle Kingdom; Cousin Wolfgang was dead, and the Berlin of the gracious beginning of our life-dream. Stella was dead, and Gaia, and the beautiful city of Paris lay dying before me. The old Occidental Europe and with it I myself were a middle shadow kingdom, a myth, a literary invention like my friend Schwab. And it was left to me to take all of this to my grave.

•

The cremation of my friend Schwab took place three days after his demise on October 18, 1965. In the sympathetic presence of all who were near and dear to him. They turned out to be an amazingly presentable grouplet. It filled out the cremation pavilion at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery down to the last seat; in fact, a few people were even standing in back, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Very little was happening, but all sorts of things were going on. First during a worshipful silence, then during the scrambling clamber of pipe organ sounds in a fugue by Pachelbel (masterfully performed by a radio organist who used to frequent Lücke’s Bar and—as it turned out—was Schwab’s downtrodden first cousin twice removed. He was now rendering him his loving familial final service as a reward for lifelong scorn).

Honey-golden smoke rose steeply from tall white tapers (Pre-Raphaelitely inspirited by clusters of lilies at their bases) into the vault of the fire temple, which curved through parabolic ribs into a kind of expressionist Oriental Gugelhupf Gothic (an architectural achievement of the 1920s that in the span of our generation’s lifetime has already become a historic document).

I don’t know who paid for the considerable funeral expenses. Perhaps S. himself had taken care of them with regular payments to a burial society (back then I began to feel he might even have been capable of doing so).

Be that as it may: the wealth of flowers was overpowering. The lily-gilded candles in the apse were foamingly encircled by sprays of white lilac like ostrich feathers on helmet adornments. And in the very midst, where an altar normally looms in a house of God, a blossoming mound of white roses and camellias ascended out of a declivity one step down.

He was presumably resting under the flowers, having finally passed on into the lighthearted self-lavishing that had been so difficult for his prim and prudent character.

•

A dead man’s generosity enabled anyone who might like to worship this prize piece of a flower growers’ contest (Dawn’s longing for the Mardi Gras in Cannes!) to do so. Needless to say, Scherping was present: as a bearer of culture, employer, and rival. He expressed the first function by means of a silk-lined black hat (which he held in his lap like a soup pot) and the latter two functions with a cunning contentment in his apple cheeks. At times, however, his soft mouth twitched painfully—with the corresponding emphasis of pleasure. The drapery of his face was tied back for the solemn occasion, but with a frivolous touch, like the hem of a Belle Époque cocotte, who sees a puddle on the pavement as an excuse to reveal her calves.