Free Me and Kaminski by Daniel Kehlmann Page A

cool air. The sun was already touching one of the peaks, soon it would be gone. So, the last thing left was the portfolio. I flicked the cigarette away, sat down at the desk, and pulled out my pocket knife.
    A single smooth incision down the back from top to bottom. The leather was already cracked, and gave way with a crackling sound. I worked the blade carefully and slowly. Then opened the portfolio from behind. No one would notice. Why would anyone take it out while Kaminski was still alive? And by then—so what?
    There were only a few pages in it. Some lines from Matisse, he wished Kaminski success, had recommended him to several collectors, and assured him of his good wishes and was, his respectfully . . . the next letter was also from Matisse: he was sorry about the failure of the exhibition, but nothing to be done about it, he recommended serious focus and work, work, work, was optimistic about Mr. Kaminski’s future, and moreover assured him of his good wishes and . . . a telegram from Picasso:
Walker
wonderful, wish I’d done it, all the best, compadre, live forever! Then, already quite yellowed, three letters in Richard Rieming’s small, semi-illegible handwriting. I knew the first, it was reproduced in all Rieming biographies; it was a strange feeling to be holding it in my hand. He was on the ship now, Rieming wrote, and they would never meet again in this life. This was no cause for sorrow, just a fact; and even if after our separation from our mortal bodies there were still ways in which we would endure, it still was not certain that we would remember our old masks and recognize one another again, in other words if there were such a thing as a last farewell, this was one. His ship was on course for a shore that he still, despite what the books said, and the time-tables, and his own tickets, found unreal. Yet this moment at the end of an existence which had at best been a compromise with what people called Life could not be allowed to pass without serving to ensure that if he, Rieming, had earned the right to call anyone his son, then he would wish to bestow this title on the recipient of this letter. He had led a life barely worthy of the name, had been on earth without knowing why, had carried himself because one must, often freezing, sometimes writing poems, a handful of which had had the luck to find favor. So it did not behoove him to advise someone against following a similar path, and his only wish was that Manuel should be shielded from sorrow, that was already a great deal; indeed it was everything.
    Rieming’s two other letters were older, written to Kaminski when he was still a schoolboy: in one of them, he advised him not to run away from boarding school again, it didn’t help, you had to endure; he didn’t want to claim that Manuel would be grateful one day, but he promised him that he would get past it, fundamentally you do get past most things, even when you don’t want to. In the other, he announced that
Roadside Words
would be coming out next month, and he was anticipating it with the anxious joy of a child who feared he was going to get the wrong thing for Christmas, and yet knew that whatever he got, it would also be the right thing. I had no idea what he meant. What all this pointed up was his coldness and affectation. Rieming had always struck me as unpleasant.
    The next letter was from Adrienne. She had been thinking about it for a long time, it hadn’t been easy for her. She knew it wasn’t in Manuel’s capacities to make people happy and the word
happy
had a different connotation for him than it did for other people. But she was going to do it, she was going to marry him, she was prepared to take the risk, and if it was a mistake, then she’d make a mistake. This wouldn’t come as a surprise to him, but it did come as one to her. She thanked him for giving her time, she was afraid of the future, but perhaps that’s the way it had to be, and maybe also she’d be capable one day