Wolfgang Koeppen

Keetenheuve climbed a fortification, the old customs house, he saw ancient, weathered cannon that might have loosed off the odd shot in the direction of Paris as a friendly greeting from monarch to monarch, he saw frail, phthitic, waving poplars that hadn't taken properly, and behind him on a worthy plinth, he saw Ernst Moritz Amdt* in garrulous lecturer's mode. Two little girls were clambering about on Ernst Moritz Arndt's feet. They were wearing coarse, outsize cotton pants. Keetenheuve thought: I'd like to give you some better clothes. But in front of him now was the river, rising majestically out of the scene. From the narrow of its central course it broadened into the plains of the Lower Rhine, lent itself to trade, to mobility, to profit. The Siebengebirge sank into night. The Chancellor and his roses sank into the shadows of night. To the left were the arches of the bridge to Beuel. Lamps on the bridge shone like torches against the gloaming. The three carriages of a tram seemed to have stopped on the central span of the bridge. The tram looked completely decontextualized, for a moment it was a hyperrealistic image of a means of transport, a spectral abstract. It was a death tram, and it was impossible to imagine it actually going anywhere. One couldn't even think it would go to destruction. The tram on the bridge was frozen or petrified, a fossil or a work of art, a tram per se, without past and without future. A palm was bored on the riverside gardens. There was no reason to suppose it was a palm from Guatemala; but Keetenheuve thought of the palms in the Guatemalan plaza. A hedge like a cemetery hedge surrounded the palm in Bonn. There were scouts on the shore. They were talking some foreign language. They leaned over the railing and looked down into the river. They were boys. They were wearing shorts. In their midst there was a girl. The girl was in very tight black trousers that showed the shapes of her thighs and calves. The boys had their arms laid on the girl's shoulders. In the union of the scouts there was love. It clutched at Keetenheuve's heart. The scouts existed. Love existed. The scouts and love both existed on that evening. They existed in this air. They existed on the shore of the Rhine. But they were completely unreal! Everything here was as unreal as flowers in a hothouse. Even the hot tired wind felt unreal.

*Arndt (1769-1860), writer, poet, professor, and private secretary of Baron von und zum Stein.