William H. Gass - The Tunnel

Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he lay dying

in a foreign land, The descent to hell is the same from every place.

THE

TUNNEL

What Ihave to tell you is as long as life,

but I shallrun as swiftly, so before you know it,

we shall both be over.

It was my intention, when I began, to write an introduction to my work onthe Germans. Though its thick folders lie beside me now, I know I cannot.Endings, instead, possess me... all ways out.

Embarrassed, Im compelledto smile. I was going to extend my sympathy to my opponents. Here, in myintroduction, raised above me like an arch of triumph, I meant to place awreath upon myself. But each time I turned my pen to the task, it turned asideto strike me. As I look at the pages of my manuscript, or stare at the hookswhich wall my study, I realize I must again attempt to put this prison of mylife in language. It should have been a simple ceremony: a wreath to honordeath and my success the defense of my hypothesis concerning Germany. And whenI wrote my book, to whom was I writing if not the world?... the world!...the world... the world is William welshing on a bet; it is Olive sewing upthe gut of a goose; it is Reynolds raping Rosie on the frat-house stair; it isa low blow, a dreary afternoon, an exclamation of disgust. And when I wrote wasI writing to win renown, as its customarily claimed? or to gain revenge aftera long bide of time and tight rein of temper? to earn promotion, to rise abovethe rest like a loosed balloon? or was it from weak self-esteem? from purefunk, out of a distant childhood fear or recent shame? .. the world... theworld, alas. It is Alice committing her Tampax to the trash.

I began, I remember, because I felt I had to. Idreached that modest height in my career, that gentle rise, from which I couldcoast out of gear to a soft stop. Now I wonder why not. Why not? But then dutydrove me forward like a soldier. I said it was time for the Big Book, thelong monument to my mind I repeatedly dreamed I had to have: a pyramid, acolumn tall enough to satisfy the sky. Duty drove me the way it drives men intomarriage. Begetting is expected of us, and in those days of heavy men inhelmets the seed was certain, and wanted only the wind for a womb, or any slit;yet what sprang up out of those foxholes we fucked with our fists but our ownfrightened selves? with a shout of pure terror, too. That toothat too wasexpected; it was expected even of flabby maleless men like me. And now here,where I am writing still, still in this chair, hammering type like tacks intothe page, speaking without a listening ear, whose eye do I hope to catch andcharm and fill with tears and understanding, if not my own, my own ordinary,unforgiving, and unfeeling eye?... my eye. So sentences circle me like a toytrain. What could I have said about the Boche,about bigotry, barbarism, butchery, Bach, that hasnt been said as repeatedlyas I dreamed my dream of glory, unless it was what Ive said What could I haveexplained where no reason exists and no cause is adequate; what body burned toa crisp could I have rebelieved was bacon, if I had not taken the tack I took?

And last night, withmy lids pulled over me, I went on seeing as if I were an open window. Full ofwind. I wasnt lying in peaceful darkness, that darkness I desired, that peaceI needed. My whole head was lit with noises, yet no Sunday park could have beenmore lonely: thoughts tossed away, left like litter to be blown about and lost.There were long avenues of footfall, leaf flutter lacking leaf or tree, barksunreturned to their dogs.

My hypothesis...My word... My world... My Germany...

Of course there isnothing genuinely German about me, though my name suggests that some distantancestor doubtless came from that direction, for I have at least threegenerations of Americans safely beneath me. My wife, a richly scutcheonedMuhlenberg and far more devoted to armorial lines and ties of bloodall suchblazonrythan I could ever bring myself to be, has already tunneled throughfive layers of her own to find, to her unrelenting triumph and delight, thedeepest layer lying on American soil still, and under the line of thenineteenth century, if only by a spades length. So my name, and the fact thatI speak the German language fluently, having spent a good many years in thatexemplary country (though there is nothing genuinely German about me), helpmake the German nation a natural inference. I was there first as a student inthe middle of the thirties, and I must confess I was caught up in the partisanfrenzy of those stirred and stirring times; yet when I returned it wasironically as a soldier behind the guns of the First Army, and almostimmediately afterward I began my term as a consultant on dirty Fascist thingsat the Nuremberg Trials. Finally, on the fore-edge of the fifties, with myfourteen hundred francs of fame, to alter the French reviewers expression inmy favor, I purchased my release from the paws of the military and waspermitted to become a tourist and teacher and scholar again. Yes, by that timeI had a certain dismal renown as the author of the Kohler thesis concerningNazi crimes and German guilt, and this preceded me and lit my path, so that Ihad to suffer a certain sort of welcome too, a welcome which made me profoundlyuneasy, for I was met and greeted as an equal; as, that is, a German, a Germanall along, and hence a refugee: I was William Frederick Kohler, wasnt I?wasnt I fat and fair, with a dazzling blond wife and a troop of stalwartchildren fond ofheaven help themhiking about with bare knees? and sowhy not? .. no, there was no mistake, I had the name and knew the language,looked the part, had been wisely away through the war, and, of course (thoughno one said it, it was this which pinned that wretched label to my coat like astar), had written that remarkably sane, peace-seeking book, so close on theevent, too; a book which was severe tight, it was severe, perhaps severeyetpatient, fair and calm, a Christian book really; its commentators, myhostesses, their guests, all my new friends, smiling pleasantly to pump myhand, declared (as though history had a fever); yes, so calm and peace-seeking(came Herr Kohlers cool and soothing palm), so patient and perceptive, soserene (while he lay bitterly becalmed himself) witha quotation from Heinrich Heine just beneath the title like a tombstone with agravethat the French reviewer (and there was only one at first) spat on hispage (he had a nose Like a dirk and spectacles enlarged his eyes): It will befourteen hundred francs spent on infamy, he said, and you will get your moneysworth. Of peace-seeking, peace-making, peace-loving Buch. A good buy.