And he did not even say a word
We find ourselves in Germany in the years immediately following the Second World War. The wounds of war are still palpable, physical and psychological: destruction, destitution, memories of the conflict’s horrors, and no hope for the future. Fred, a telephone operator at the city’s archbishopric, has abandoned the family home where his wife, Kate, and their children live, after catching himself venting his rage on the children, beating them. He can, in fact, no longer endure the cramped misery and desolation of the single room in which they live. Given over to drink, he roams the city and arranges clandestine encounters with his wife in squalid hotel rooms, in parks, and amidst abandoned courtyards. The story is indeed constructed around one of these meetings, through the alternating narration of Fred and Kate. In this way, it becomes possible to grasp the two different points of view: Fred’s despair and Kate’s exhaustion. Despite their mutual love, they are now divided by the different ways in which they have responded to hardship. Kate is sustained by a profound devoutness, grounded in a direct relationship with God. > God alone seemed to remain with me in that malaise that overwhelmed my heart, filled my veins, circulated within me like my own blood..... I was seized by a great indifference toward them all, and nothing remained with me but the word of God . In Fred, religion offers no comfort, but rather further proof of the falsity and vacuity that govern the world; for him, nothing remains but a dark affliction, a somber existential despair, a monotonous succession of tavern visits, hurried meals, and the desperate hunt for money, often to be spent on drink. Are they by now two strangers, or is love stronger than desolation? The novel’s conclusion leans toward the former outcome. In several remarkably powerful pages, the author brilliantly renders the sense of a growing estrangement. After a night during which Kate has told Fred of her intention to leave him, the man, locked in a mute resignation and an agonizing passivity, walks aimlessly and catches sight of a woman > no longer young, but beautiful, I could see her legs, the green skirt, the worn brown jacket, I could see the green hat, but above all the sad and gentle profile..... and suddenly I knew that it was Kate. Then she seemed a stranger to me once more..... it was she, but she was different from how I remembered her.... so we walked on, one behind the other, both thinking of the children, and I did not have the courage to catch up with her, to speak to her . The novel has been interpreted in various ways: an erotic tale, where the reader waits in suspense for the love scene between husband and wife, turned once again into clandestine lovers; a meditation on the loss of meaning in religion and, more broadly, of values after a war; the description of a battered city, where survivors wander in an endless struggle to stay alive, and thus the representation of a mutilated Germany. Toward this latter interpretation points a narrative inextricably fused with madness, visions, noises, advertisements, and the popular songs of the metropolis where the protagonists live. To me, however, it seems that the novel should be read in the simplest way. It is a love story that does not, despite everything, survive destitution, because Fred and Kate react with differing moral strength to their own desolation and to that of society. Kate still looks to the future despite a deep-seated malaise; Fred allows himself to be dragged along, with self-pitying indulgence, in an attitude of victimhood and self-destruction. The narrative plot, slender and sparse, is sustained by an exceptionally effective style. The spare yet incisive prose and the stripped-down syntactic structure are clear proof of how a complex narrative can be crafted without getting lost in linguistic redundancy. Why read it? It remains intensely relevant, capturing as it does the sense of disorientation before a society that is dissolving, while no traces of the emerging one can yet be seen.