Free The Last Days by Laurent Seksik Page A

bear witness. He had wanted to erect a memorial stone in the midst of all those ruins. He had the terrible feeling that the swastika would fly from flagpoles in Berlin, Vienna—and the whole of Europe—for decades to come. He had resigned himself to no longer having a homeland. But he wanted to tell his readers that the world hadn’t always been like this. He didn’t know whether his book conveyed a hopeful message, or whether his readers would instead be plunged into deep despair. He’d never written any of his books with a message in mind. He had often been criticized for this. He wasn’t
engagé
. He had nothing to say to the world other than recounting the wild passions experienced by his heroes and heroines. He envied the Manns—Thomas, Heinrich and Klaus—his namesake Arnold Zweig, that die-hard socialist. He also envied Martin Buber, Sholem Asch and Einstein, who had fought for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. He didn’t have any fixed ideologies. He hated ideologies. He had simply lookedfor the words to express “we existed”. He wasn’t sure he’d been able to bring the civilization he’d known to life in his books. You had to have grown up in Vienna in order to understand the scale of the atrocities it had suffered. He had wanted to engrave a message on a headstone that would prove to future generations that although it was now extinct, the world had once been home to a race called
Homo austrico-judaicus
. Those who read
The World of Yesterday
would not come across any revelations regarding how his mother had begrudged him her love, or how affectionate his father had been to his two sons. He hadn’t written a word about his love life or his two wives. On perusing it, his readers might very well wonder whether he was all head and no heart. In fact, Stefan only appeared in the book as an observer. He had written it quickly, producing the first draft of four hundred pages in only six weeks. The man who had usually struggled to finish sixty-page novellas had penned four hundred pages in a month and a half. The only question left was what to call it. He had given up on
My Three Lives
for the reasons listed above, while
Our Generation
had struck him as too personal. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with
The World of Yesterday.
Why not
Memoirs of a European?
    “You’ll have all the time you need to settle on one,” Koogan replied.
    He kept quiet. Did he really have all the time to decide? He would turn sixty the following month. He’d lived long enough. He believed he’d seen enough.
    Koogan pulled a cigar case out of his jacket’s inside pocket and extracted a Virginia Brissago. He said:
    “I believe they’re your favourites.”
    Stefan explained he would smoke his later as he had to rush off to another important appointment. He added that Lotte and Koogan should remain seated and enjoy the sublime setting.He wouldn’t be long. Koogan consented cheerfully. Lotte gazed wistfully at her husband, wanting to remind him of her offer, but she refrained from doing so, pretending to acquiesce, but then added in a whisper:
    “Are you sure you won’t need me?”
    But he’d already got up. He shook Koogan’s hand and left.

NOVEMBER
    E VERY MORNING he gazed at the heights of Petrópolis from the veranda, feasting his eyes, long since accustomed to drabness, on the splendour of the world. At dawn, he had an appointment with the light. The air filled with birdsong and the earth sprang back to life. Sometimes, he would catch himself thinking: today, the wind will bring gloomy clouds, black dust will obscure the sun and hummingbirds will launch into a death fugue. But no, each time the dawn illuminated the horizon. Life continued to unfurl like a wave.
    He left his post to consume the breakfast the housekeeper had prepared for him. He drank his
cafezinho
, whose strong, sweet taste erased all trace of the aromas of the coffees he’d enjoyed in Michaelerplatz. Afterwards he sipped a glass of