Lions of the Grunewald

Higgins Aidan

Description

Here is the great Irish novel of Berlin, way back before the Wall came down.

 

Dallan Weaver, a writer and professor who’s been fêted and flattered but has seen better days, has come to the great divided city as a guest of DILDO (Deutsche-Internationale Literatur-Dienst Organization). On arriving, Weaver’s life immediately begins to fall apart. Women fight over him. He is not always in the soberest state of mind. Moving from relatively conventional narrative to deliriously long lists, incorporating everything from children’s drawings to minute recollections of dreams, Lions of the Grunewald is—in the author’s own words—a “missionary stew,” marvelously served up in Aidan Higgins’s inimitable style.

Sujets

• Literary
• Germany
• Fiction
• Berlin

Informations

• Publié par: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Date de parution: 03 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781628974249
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Lions of the Grunewald


Also by Aidan Higgins
Asylum and Other Stories (1960)
Langrishe, Go Down (1966)
Images of Africa (1971)
Balcony of Europe (1972)
Scenes from a Receding Past (1977)
Bornholm Night-Ferry (1983)
Ronda Gorge Other Precipices (1989)
Helsingør Station Other Departures (1989)


Praise for Aidan Higgins
Mr Higgins has a keen ear and a beady eye and the skill to make the most of both. The prose is dense, in places echoing poetry the rich depths of English are lovingly and fruitfully tawled consistently a pleasure.
-William Trevor
There are very few genuine artists at work in English, and Aidan Higgins is one of them.
-Hugo Barnacle, Independent
Higgins s real originality lies in the writing, the vividly distilled prose, the dry wit, laconic wisdom, the bemused indignation: Swift laced with Beckett.
-Joseph Hone, Times Literary Supplement

First published by Secker Warburg in 1993.
Copyright © by Aidan Higgins, 1993.
First Dalkey Archive edition, 2022.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Higgins, Aidan, 1927-2015, author.
Title: Lions of the Grunewald / Aidan Higgins.
Description: First Dalkey Archive edition. | McLean, IL : Dalkey Archive Press, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022933524 | ISBN 9781628974409 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
Classification: LCC PR6058.I34 L56 2018 | DDC 823/.914--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022933524
Ebook 9781628974249
www.dalkeyarchive.com
Dallas/Dublin
Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper.


For Paris and Yanika
of the Finca Fuente de la Vieja

Apologia
We have incorporated material previously published in fugitive Ur -fiction, notably from Ronda Gorge Other Precipices (1989), as stages in the process of yolking together the massacre at Sharpeville (21 March 1960) and Schwarzer September (Munich 1972) via a nightmare in Schwabing, an archery contest, a river flowing backwards, some pseudo-gangsters, and the broken eggshells from a blackbird s nest fallen into a Munich fountain; now all set in their proper context, relocated from embryonic themes.
Other local Berlin references are lifted from Zoo Station , an earplay commissioned by BBC Radio 3.
Nico s yarns are wrung from Colossal Gongorr the Turkes of Mars (Jonathan Cape, 1979), written by my three sons in their days of innocence; since remaindered, as also Ronda Gorge .
a.h.
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Table of Contents Prologue: Herr Hasenclever Calls Part I Fugacious Nature of Life and Time 1 Wannseebad 2 Vampyr Model 3 Mando Demotropoulos (The Dark Prune) 4 Ye Sated Baste 5 Merlin’s Hoardings 6 The Old Admirer 7 An Ominous Litfasssäule (The Empty Ruins) 8 The End of the Polish Week 9 Baron Bogdana Kuguar and the Polish Baroness Kasia 10 Mando Again! 11 A Prize for Sam 12 Nico 13 At the Philharmonie 14 In the Abendland 15 Legends of the Living-Room 16 Dreaming Women 17 Traum 18 Sortilège (The Talking Tea-Leaves) 19 Hereinbrechendes Feuerwerk . . . Part II Fugacity of Pleasure, Fragility of Beauty 20 An Apartment in the Sky 21 Fornication in the Ditch Called Sodom 22 Chess 23 Schnicksal (or Love Humbled) 24 Nancy Departs ( Sperrmülltag ) 25 Nancy’s True Nature and Character Revealed 26 Contretemps at Torrox, Dubrovnik, Dover, Hamburg 27 Baron Bogdana Kuguar Puts the Wind up Two Hausfraus 28 An Irish Submarine in Palma Bay 29 The Miraflores Docks (Adios, Danny Boy!) 30 The Watchers by the Stream 31 Nancy Returns (Struggle and Strife) 32 Sir Delves Digby Bullpitt of the British Council 33 The Vile Nip (A Lewd Chapter) 34 In Secluded Woodland and Thickety Retreat 35 Prendergast Part III Injuries of Time and Nature 36 Prinzregentstrasse 5 37 Autobahn in Twilight 38 A Purgative Called ‘Bitter Tears’ 39 Lore’s Lost Child 40 A Reading of the Cards 41 The Other Day I Was Thinking of You 42 In Some Far-Off Impossible Place 43 Five Letters from Lindemann 44 An Epistle from Lore 45 The Long Train Epilogue: To the Havel Shore
Guide Table of Contents Begin Reading
Dramatis Personae
Dallan Weaver (TCD 1 , DILDO 2 ), an Irish author
Nancy (née Els), his South African Wife
Nico, their only son
Franz Born, head of DILDO
Titania ( Titty ), his wife
Bertha Busse, his secretary
Mando Demotropoulos (DILDO), Greek poet
Baron Bogdana Kuguar (DILDO), Polish poet
Baroness Kasia, his Polish wife
Professor Paul Pflücker
Libgart, his wife
William ( Winky ) Prendergast (DILDO), Irish sculptor
Nelly (née Ebert), his Berliner wife
Bart ( Murt ) Murnane, poet and honorary Irishman
Sasha (née Barathea), his Jewish-Russian-American wife
Dr Wieland Weissenborn, former Gestapo officer, banker
Margarete (née Taut), his wife
Randall ( Randy ) Loftus, Pan Am pilot
Dora ( Dot ) (née Deck), a Vermont milkmaid; his wife
Dixie, their golden retreiver
Peter Handke (DILDO), Austrian dramatist
Wolfgang Bauer (DILDO), as above
Günter Grass, German novelist and librettist
Max Frisch, Swiss novelist and dramatist
Volker Schlöndorff, Munich film director
Margarethe von Trotta, his wife
Arland Ussher, Irish Sage
Emily (née Lysaght), his wife
A Sandycove seer
Betty Buzzard, Nancy s South African friend
Martin Lindemann, Weaver s Berlin friend
Toby ( Trimmer ) Tyrrell, Winky s friend
Mad Mick, another
Fat George, another
Rex Gamble, Nancy s admirer
Varna Anders, Weaver s Munich friend
Ulrika Noyes, Varna s friend
Luis Nkose, African in a dream
Sir Delves Digby Bullpitt of the British Council
Meyric Mellor, his no. 2
Vernon Hoare, their harpist
Sir Kenneth Clark, patrician aesthete
Herr Otto van Bismarck, Munich tailor
Takahashi-san, sculptor and pornographer
Rudolf Hess, the last Nazi in Spandau Prison
Arno von Rajinski, Polish-German of Crown Mines
Rita (née Power), his Irish-South African wife
Colonel Hans Spengler, Vereeniging Police Chief
Colonel Piet Schreiber, Munich Police Chief
Abu Daoud, Al Fatah Terrorist
Jack Lynch, Irish Taoiseach
Heinz Otto Walser, Lore s chief
Sepp Walser, his son
Papa (Axel) Schröder, Berliner
Mama Schröder, (née Axmann), his wife Magda Anneliese
Hannelore (Lore), their only daughter


I see the Berlin Wall, flowers, graves,
H. speaks of the last days here, the
streets on fire, the lions loose, the
world that has outstripped our nightmares,
our subconscious.
John Cheever, Journals
Marriage knots aren t going to slip apart
painlessly, with the pull of distance.
There s got to be some wrenching
and slashing.
Alice Munro, The Progress of Love
In the evening there, in little cul-de-sacs,
the soul seems to dissolve.
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory


Lions of the Grunewald
Aidan Higgins


Prologue:
Herr Hasenclever Calls
One evening at dusk a small-sized man in a tubular tweed overcoat rang the bell and stood on the mat in the unlit porch.
Weaver threw open the door and saw the luminous low snow-covered roof of the Fleischermeister s bungalow, across the ridge of which a chimney-sweep in fulginous work-clothes with face blackened under a tall top hat made his slow way with the extreme caution of a diver weighted down by pressure on the seabed.
Weaver shook the small damp simian hand as the low voice whispered that he was Walter Hasenclever and had moreover the honour of being moderator at Weaver s reading at the Akademie der Künste scheduled for early March; even if he was no relation to the famous German dramatist of the same name, teehee.
Come in anyway, said Weaver, motioning him in.
Thank you.
The diminutive visitor removed a beaver cap with woolly earflaps; under one arm a box of Milk Tray, and in one gloved hand a red rose, presumably presents for Nancy, but nothing for Weaver.
Zukov s men, the advanced spearheads, entered Berlin through the northern suburbs, screeching as they ran. The infantry went in first over the minefields and tank traps, to be blown to glory; but others came on, screeching, wave after wave. Then the tanks went in.
The sneery sculptor who had fluent Spanish asked Weaver what was his astrological sign. When told Pisces he scowled, muttered Kalt blut . A month later Weaver heard that he had died of a heart attack crawling downstairs from his walk-up apartment on Krumme Strasse to expire naked on the pavement below. Near there Weaver and Lore drank glasses of superior red wine at Hardy s by the Opera in a darkened room where they were alone and she told him that in Bastia the black bucks had displayed themselves shamelessly, hung like horses.
The Black Cells, sometimes called Anarchists, ran through the passive resisters as hyenas among wildebeest and the police bulls watched from behind wired glass in their paddy wagons parked in side streets, at times drenching both parties impartially with water-cannons or running them with fierce baton-charges.
Insistence on the particular and unique (The Singular Me) had spawned the microbe Duplication. The Face was on the screen, on the high hoardings, in the street; and violence let loose there in the open, the dream gone mad. For the individual as such was disappearing and the world s capitals had become pissoirs .
Schlagermusik throbbed from underground rock cellars along the Ku damm; one gaudy entrance led down into an inflamed red throat out of which rose the whiff of perdition.
I
Fugacious Nature
of Life and Time

1
Wannseebad
The Motorschiff Vaterland steamed by the Dampfer Siegfried , one outward-bound for Spandau, the other inward-bound for the Wannsee landing-stage. Soon their wakes joined up to become one, sending a shiver over the broad reaches of the Havel.
Presently dirty waves were slapping against the Wannseebad shore where ill-tempered swans waded through the shallows, hissing, choking on the slops of bread floating there; whole sodden loaves were bobbing half-submerged along the shoreline stained a brownish tinge.
Basketweave beach-huts with fleecy linings and coy marine motifs of sprat, anchor and shell were up-ended like coffins with open