Frisch - Homo Faber: a report

Copyright 1959 by Michael Bullock
Copyright renewed 1987 by Michael Bullock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Frisch, Max, 19111991.
[Homo Faber English]
Homo Faber: a report/by Max Frisch, translated from the German
by Michael Bullock.
p. cm.(A Harvest book)
A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.
ISBN 0-15-642135-6
I. Title.
pt2611.r814h613 1994
883'.912dc20 94-6232

e ISBN 978-0-547-54037-5
v2.0415

W E were leaving from La Guardia airport, New York, three hours late because of snowstorms. Our plane, as usual on this route, was a Super-Constellation. Since it was night, I immediately prepared to go to sleep. We spent another forty minutes waiting on the runway with snow in front of the searchlights, powdery snow whirling over the runway, and what made me tense and anxious, so that I couldnt get off to sleep straight away, was not the newspaper brought around by our air hostess, FIRST PICTURES OF WORLDS GREATEST AIR CRASH IN NEVADA , a piece of news I had already seen at midday, but simply and solely the vibration in this stationary plane with its engines runningand also the young German next to me, who immediately caught my attention, I dont know why, he caught my attention the moment he took off his overcoat, when he sat down and pulled at his trouser creases, when he did nothing at all, but simply waited for the takeoff like the rest of us, merely sat in his seat, a fair-haired fellow with pink skin who at once introduced himself, before we had even fastened our safety belts. I didnt catch his name, the engines were roaring, being revved up one after the other...

I was dead tired.

Ivy had talked away at me for three hours while we waited for the overdue plane, although she knew I was dead set against marrying.

I was glad to be alone.

At last we started.

I had never taken off in such a snowstorm before: no sooner was our landing gear off the white runway than there was nothing more to be seen of the yellow ground lights, not a glimmer, and a little later there was not a glimmer of Manhattan, it was snowing so hard. I could see only the flashing green light on our wing, which was swaying violently and occasionally jerked up and down; for seconds at a time even this flashing green light vanished in the mist and I felt like a blind man.

Permission to smoke.

He came from Dsseldorf, my neighbor, and he wasnt as young as all that, in his early thirties, younger than I at any rate; he was going to Guatemala; on business as he immediately told me...

The wind was buffeting the plane pretty hard.

He offered me cigarettes, my neighbor, but I took one of my own, although I had no wish to smoke, and thanked him; then I picked up the paper again; there was no desire on my part to get better acquainted. Perhaps it was rude of me. I had a hard week behind me, not a day without a conference, I wanted to rest. People are tiring. Later on, I took my papers out of my briefcase in order to work; unfortunately hot soup came along just then, and after this there was no stopping the German. (He spotted me as Swiss the moment I replied in German to his halting English.) He discussed the weather or more exactly radar, which he knew very little about. Then, as is customary since the Second World War, he began to talk about European brotherhood. I didnt say much. When we had drunk our soup I looked out of the window, although there was nothing to be seen but the flashing green light on our wet wing, the usual shower of sparks and the red glow in the engine cowl. We were still rising.

Later I slept.

The gusts of wind fell off.

I dont know why he got on my nerves, there was something familiar about his face, a very German face. I thought about it with my eyes closed, but in vain. I tried to forget his pink face, which I succeeded in doing, and slept for about six hours, worn out as I was. But no sooner was I awake than he began to get on my nerves again.

He was already eating his breakfast.

I pretended to be still asleep.

As I could see out of my right eye, we were somewhere over the Mississippi, flying at a great height and absolutely smoothly, our propellers flashing in the morning sun; the usual windowpanes, you see them and at the same time look through them; the wings also glistening, rigid in empty space, no swaying now, we were poised motionless in a cloudless sky, a flight like hundreds of others; the engines running smoothly.

Good morning, he said.

I returned his greeting.

Did you sleep well? he inquired.

We could make out the tributaries of the Mississippi, though only through mist, like trickles of molten brass or bronze. It was still early in the morning, I knew this part of the run, I shut my eyes with the intention of going to sleep again.

He was reading a paperback.

It was no use shutting my eyes, I was awake and there was nothing I could do about it; I kept thinking about my neighbor. I could see him, so to speak, with my eyes shut. I ordered breakfast... This was his first visit to the States, as I had supposed, but his opinion of the country was already cut and dried; on the whole, he found the Americans lacking in culture, but there were certain things of which he could not help approving, for instance the friendly attitude of most Americans toward Germany.

I didnt contradict.

No German wanted rearmament, but the Russians were forcing it on America, it was tragic, as a Swiss (a Switzer, he called it) I couldnt judge these things because Id never been in the Caucasus, he had been in the Caucasus, he knew Ivan and you could only teach him with weapons. He knew Ivan! He repeated this several times. You could only teach him with weapons, he said. Nothing else made any impression on Ivan...

I peeled my apple.

To distinguish between the master races and inferior races, as Hitler did, was nonsense of course; but Asiatics were always Asiatics...

I ate my apple.

I took my electric shaver out of my briefcase in order to shave or rather to be alone for a quarter of an hour; I dont like Germans, although my friend Joachim was also a German... In the washroom I wondered whether I should move to another seat. I just didnt feel like getting better acquainted with this gentleman, and it would be at least another four hours before we reached Mexico City, where my neighbor had to change planes. I had made up my mind to sit somewhere else; there were a number of places free. When I came back into the cabin, shaved, so that I felt freer, more confidentI cant bear being unshavenhe had just taken the liberty of picking up my papers from the floor in case somebody trod on them. He handed them to me, politeness personified. I thanked him as I stowed the papers away in my briefcase, rather too cordially, it seems, since he immediately took advantage of my thanks to ask more questions.

Did I work for UNESCO ?

I felt my stomachas I often did recently. There was no real pain, I was simply aware of having a stomach, a stupid feeling. Perhaps that was why I was so disagreeable. I sat down in my old seat and, in order not to be disagreeable, told him I was concerned in TECHNICAL AID TO UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES ; I can talk about this while thinking of something entirely different. I dont know what I was thinking about. He seemed to be impressed by UNESCO , as he was by anything international, he stopped treating me as a Switzer and listened as though I were an authority, with positive reverence, interested to the point of subservience, which didnt prevent him from getting on my nerves.