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The Nature of Truth
(paperback edition from Arte Publico Press, 2014)
By Sergio Troncoso
Downloadable
PDF of First Three Chapters
Chapter One
Helmut Sanchez yanked the steel ring of the creaky wooden door and
stepped blindly into the dark castle that was Yale's Sterling Library. He pushed open the inner foyer door. A puff of steam hissed from a radiator in the
shadows. The air inside was cold and
damp. In front of him, two lines of
students waited to check out books at the circulation desk under the watchful
eyes of the mosaic of the Goddess of Knowledge.
Another line surrounded the copy machines, which flashed and droned like
baby dragons trapped in boxes. Without
stopping, Helmut displayed his ID to the bored security guard and veered into
the first floor stacks, toward Mr. Atwater's office. Jonathan Atwater was the assistant librarian
responsible for interlibrary loan requests.
"Hello?" Helmut said with a
studied meekness, knocking twice on the oak frame next to the opaque glass,
like a gumshoe's door. A genteel older gentleman, about forty-five, hunched over Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad,
his spectacles on the bridge of his pink nose. Puffy light brown eyebrows and a head of thin
gray hair distinguished Mr. Atwater's patrician face. He wore a candy-apple red bow tie and a
perfectly starched blue oxford shirt. A
dozen books, in German and Spanish, were fastidiously arranged on his desk in
front of him like a mini-fortress.
Helmut noticed a small red leather edition of Goethe's poems atop a
stack of white papers and manila folders.
"Helmut. Please, come in," Mr. Atwater said,
warbling just a note higher than normal.
"Sit down. Here. Take a look while I bring you a cup of
coffee. Bought it on
Saturday at an old bookstore in
"But I was on my way–" Helmut
protested weakly, but Mr. Atwater was already out the door and bounding down
the hall. Helmut glanced at the poetry
book in his hand, a leather-bound edition with gilded pages from the late
nineteenth century. He reluctantly sat
down on the black wooden chair emblazoned in gold with the crest of Yale. Lux et Veritas.
"This is what you came for, I
presume," Mr. Atwater said, striding into the room, handing Helmut four
volumes, and placing a Harvard-Radcliffe mug of coffee on the edge of the desk
in front of Helmut.
"Thank you very much, Jonathan."
"Here's the confirmation for Geschichte und Literatur
Österreichs, just sign at the bottom."
Mr. Atwater handed Helmut two sheets of
paper, the first a barely legible pink carbon of Helmut's original request, the
second an agreement to return the books by such-and-such a date to Yale, which
would return them to the library or archive that owned them. "What a quest for those!" Mr. Atwater continued. "At least we finally found them."
"Thanks." Helmut drank half a mug of coffee and pushed
the four volumes into his backpack. All
morning his head cold had dizzied him at the oddest moments.
Suddenly Helmut had the eerie feeling that
something was wrong, that he had seen a mistake but had not recognized it for
what it was. He signed the second sheet
of paper. He folded it back and glanced
at the first sheet. Ach! he thought. He had originally requested Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur. There it was, in fading blue ink. This was the wrong literary review for the years 1957, 1961, 1965, and
1970. Mr. Atwater had made a rare
mistake. Helmut's shoulder's
slumped. He felt bloated and depressed. He handed back the sheets to Mr. Atwater.
What would be the point of telling Mr.
Atwater he had wasted a month looking for the wrong review? Helmut gulped down the rest of the coffee and
stood up. "Thanks again. I'll give you a call next week."
Helmut smiled politely and marched toward
the circulation desk. Outside, it was
gusty and warm for March. He might as well
peruse these four volumes of Geschichte
und Literatur Österreichs. He didn't have much to lose. If Mr. Atwater was right, they were obscure,
if not rare, reviews. What would have
been the point of deflating
***
Not until a few weeks later on April 29th
did Helmut open the 1961 volume of Geschichte
und Literatur Österreichs. The Thomas Bernhard article for his boss
Professor Werner Hopfgartner had been mailed weeks
ago. The semester was near its end, and
finals would begin in a week. Helmut was
putting the final touches on Christa Wolf.
Before Hopfgartner left for his summer
vacation of hiking on the
Before his retirement, Hopfgartner
envisioned the Compilation as a synthesis and expansion of his ultimate views
about literature and philosophy. German
culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the professor wrote, had
achieved a community as distinct about the good and the right as that of
classical
Wednesday night-Thursday
morning Helmut was reading an article in Geschichte
und Literatur Österreichs
on the American revival after the Kennedy election. It
was 2:30 a.m. and Helmut desperately needed a distraction from the brain
chatter that kept him awake. Suddenly,
in the table of contents of the second quarter issue from 1961, he noticed that
a
Helmut didn't immediately read the letter,
and instead checked the biographical lines at the end. The author was indeed a W. Hopfgartner who had also
been a professor of literature. So there
was a chance, however slim, that this
The year 1961 was the year Professor Hopfgartner had arrived in
***
The sun was bright overhead by the time Ariane Sassolini, Helmut's
girlfriend, drove him back to
Helmut dragged out an old beach chair, a mug
of coffee with milk, a milk crate to use as a small table, the newspaper, and a
stack of photocopied articles, including W. Hopfgartner's
"Why I Am Neither Guilty Nor Ashamed." The chair was as comfortable as he remembered
it had been. A perfectly cool breeze
meandered in from the north. The air was
finally dry after the rainstorm last night.
A squirrel pranced across the porch railing, unafraid. He pushed the newspaper away and refilled his
coffee mug and settled himself on the porch again.
"Why I Am Neither
Guilty Nor Ashamed" was short enough, just three pages. Helmut started to read it. Immediately his stomach twisted into a
knot. His left foot, dangling over the
railing, at once stopped bouncing to an unknown beat. The letter was a response to a prior issue of
Geschichte und Literatur
Österreichs.
That previous issue had been dedicated to expurgating
In any case, the letter from this W. Hopfgartner derided all such pandering as "weakness
and indecision." Vague
"foreign influences" were at work.
It declared, in a staccato prose, that
"Rid yourselves
of this guilt and this shame!" the letter exhorted its readers. "Believe not, in such a blind fashion,
these accusations of what your parents did during the war. These lies will emasculate you. The German self will thus be destroyed! The great German spirit, so corrupted by
guilt and shame, will not even be capable of correcting past excesses. How will we ever soar back to our splendor,
creativity, and productivity? This is
the only way. A future
free of guilt."
Helmut Sanchez felt sick to his
stomach. How could anyone have written
this garbage, in 1961 or at any other point after the war? What kind of sick mind would rationalize away
this massive moral black hole? Millions
of Jews murdered simply because they were Jews.
Millions of gypsies and Catholics and countless
political prisoners and so-called subversives slaughtered by a regime gripped
by a frenzy of murderous thinking.
And this, exactly, was what had always troubled Helmut about the Holocaust
and the war in general. That Germans, he
felt, had a tendency to think too far, to an abstract and rigid
self-righteousness that could all-too-easily devalue the simple aspects of
daily life. Such a murderous
abstractionism could be used to justify crushing something today for the sake
of an escapist ideal of a far-off tomorrow.
Of course, the student Marxists at
Helmut had once dated a younger student
from
During finals the previous semester,
Stephanie had locked herself in the bathroom and screamed, "I will die a
complete failure!" After a tense
hour, Helmut had forced open the door and saved this beautiful creature from
herself. So Helmut understood only too
well that this murderous thinking was still pervasive and even part of his
blood.
But what was his blood? Who was Helmut, really? That was the question that had tormented him
all his life. Helmut Sanchez had always
hoped his Mexican blood would save him from a free-fall into his German
heritage. Yet certain parts of this
heritage also captivated him, especially German philosophy and poetry. So instead of saving him outright, these
mixed legacies confused him. He had
never really felt at home with German culture, but in many ways he had harbored
the same doubts about American culture.
He was neither American nor German nor Mexican. He was neither here nor there. Sometimes he still felt like a fat, lonely,
little boy. In any case, now he was on
his own. He could still pull himself
above his own wretched ambiguity about who he was. There was no need to doubt himself
when his heart was clear. He could still
feel repelled by W. Hopfgartner's letter. Helmut could still understand what was right
and what was wrong.
Before he tucked the letter away in an
empty blue folder, Helmut read it again Sunday night. He memorized the flow of thought. The ridiculous justifications
and qualifications. The conviction and exhortation of its style. Even the seeming plausibility and rationality
of what it said. In Helmut's head, there
was still one well-formed doubt: perhaps this W. Hopfgartner
was not the Werner Hopfgartner at Yale with the
endless stream of inamoratas. Hopfgartner was indeed a common German name. Also, Professor Hopfgartner
had been a professor in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the journal was
from
Chapter
Two
On Cross Campus, a festive air seemed to soften
the edges of the pale yellow stone walls of Yale. Four male students, two of them shirtless,
tore through the newly planted grass at the center of the quadrangle, grunting
their way through a game of Ultimate Frisbee.
One young woman, wearing white shorts and a Harvard T-shirt, lay
listless on the edge of grass, her back against a blackened wall. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pockmarked with acne scars. Three blue examination books rested
carelessly on her lap. Subject: Organic
Chemistry. Grade: in the thick red slash
of a hurried marker, ninety-three. Her
hair was scraggly and unwashed. The
armpits of her T-shirt had yellowed. Yet
a beatific smile was on her face. And
the sun seemed warmer than ever.
At the other side of the quadrangle,
another young woman, in a short, black skirt and a black blouse that seemed a
second skin over her slim and attractive body, danced wildly on the grass. From the third floor of
"Alesh! Hey! I just heard!"
another girl shrieked from the dorm window with the blaring speakers. "Aiyyyi! Three ninety-two kicks ass
in
Alesha Brown smiled and danced and waved the
piece of paper over her head as her roommate started dancing, too, each
mimicking the other and swaying to the rhythm of the music, their hands
outstretched toward the heavens. Let's celebrate!
"Alesh! To Rudy's, honey pie! I'll call Marla and Tina! Pa-r-ty!"
"Can't!
See ya at dinner, Sweet Face! Got one last thing to do! And I'm outta
here!" Alesh yelled, still swinging her arms as
she planted her bare feet in the espadrilles she had shed on the grass. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair shimmered
in the sunlight. As she skipped toward Harkness Hall, her pointy breasts bounced against her
blouse. One of the boys playing Frisbee
missed a long pass because he was staring at this beauty sprinting past them,
at her sleek, long legs and tight waist, and that magnificent, perfectly
protruding ass so out of reach for all of them.
Alesha Brown was gorgeous. She was savvy. Now she was on her way to
She pulled open the heavy wooden doors of Harkness and immediately dashed into one of the restrooms
next to the German department's office. Alesha strode into an empty stall, peed quickly, and
brushed her hair with a long pocket comb from her purse. She splashed water on her face, rinsed her
mouth, and double-checked the row and schedule of birth control pills on the
small pink plastic grid of pills. She
glanced at her watch. It was five
minutes past 4:00 p.m. She stared at a
test schedule somebody had pilfered from the hallways of Harkness
and posted in the restroom. TAKE BACK
THE DAY! somebody
had scrawled on it in heavy, blue ink.
Two full weeks of finals remained for everyone else, but not for
seniors. Cel-e-brate!
***
Alesha Brown knocked on Werner Hopfgartner's door.
She imagined the old professor looking up slowly and frowning. He was probably reading the article on Max
Frisch he had just published, the one he had bragged about in class, the kind
he had regularly published with the greatest of ease years ago. Alesha remembered a
conversation Hopfgartner had casually mentioned
before, that “young bastard Rittman” cutting Hopfgartner
with, "You must be so looking
forward to doing nothing," and Hopfgartner
stiffening angrily in his chair as if the Jonathan P. Harkness
Professor of Literature and Philosophy should be ready for the trash heap!
She rapped sharply on the door again, and
heard a chair slowly drag across the wooden floor. Professor Hopfgartner
had also bragged to her about other forthcoming "excellent articles"
on Thomas Bernhard, and another on Christa Wolf, and another, all in one final,
glorious year for old Werner Hopfgartner. It was as if Hopfgartner
were collecting gems and admiring them.
But of course, Alesha had never seen the prof in the stacks, only Helmut, his little gnome,
oblivious to the world, to everything and everybody, in the darkness surrounded
by books.
"Yes?
Alesha, mein hübsches Mädchen,
please come in."
The professor's large basement office in Harkness Hall resembled a grand, disheveled closet. An ornate wooden desk was positioned
diagonally across a far corner, facing out, so the old man could easily scan
his lair. Behind the professor, near the
fireproof ceiling, a row of rectangular windows revealed, through heavy wrought
iron bars, an occasional pair of sneakers pounding the sidewalk of Wall Street.
Against one beige wall was a row of metal
cabinets, about chest high, on top of which were more books, piles of papers,
and a Styrofoam cup. In front of these
cabinets, a bare, wooden chair was angled toward the professor's desk, for
supplicants. Here Alesha
sat, crossing her legs tightly in front of her.
Against the other wall was a comfortable, blue sofa with a glass-topped
coffee table in front of it, strewn with more papers and copies of
articles. Surrounding the hallway door,
like a multicolored arch, were teak bookshelves. Alesha tapped her
foot impatiently on the linoleum floor and possessed a cheery look about her.
"Well, Alesha,
your final, right?
Excellent as always," Professor Hopfgartner
said in a thick, German accent, yet still enunciating every
English word clearly, tediously, as if he directed a spelling bee. He handed her the blue books, glancing at the
supple roundness of her breasts. Werner Hopfgartner's eyes, like quivery blue moons, darted to and
fro. His face had the chiseled look of
salmon-colored granite. He flicked off
his reading glasses and poured himself another shot of bourbon. The liquor was never far from his fingers.
"My God!
Didn't know you'd already finished grading. I'm so psyched! This is great!" she squeaked, sliding
her body forward to the edge of the chair.
"You need only apply yourself, my
dear girl. I've told you that many times
before. Remember last year? One of the best in Contemporary German Literature. And you did it all on your own,"
Professor Hopfgartner said, not looking at Alesha, flipping through a stack of term papers on his
desk. Apparently he had the wrong
class. "I don't know what happened
at the end of this semester. I didn't
see you at the seminar for—what?—the last four or five weeks?"
"I'm sorry, Professor Hopfgartner. Really and honestly.
God, this last semester was a killer.
Law school apps, my senior paper– I pulled two all-nighters in a row,
and almost a third one, to finish it! I
almost died," she said, not
really worried, tapping her heel against the floor to some unknown rhythm. She crossed her legs again, dangling her arms
indifferently by the sides of the chair.
Even if it took three hours and she missed dinner, she wasn't coming out
of this room until it was over. This was
it. She had just won her own glorious
ticket to ride. Just this,
and she could finally walk away from Yale, free and clear.
"I know you're a smart girl. Lebendig.
I saw it in your eyes immediately as soon as you walked into my class
last year. A smart
girl with a great future. Beauty, a good mind, and something special. Something extra. A thing many others don't have and can't
learn. Guts. Fight.
Hunger," he said, still
pretending to look for something she knew he didn't have. "But this semester, well. Maybe it was just too much to do. Too short a time."
"I almost did everything. Except for this class. I thought I could catch up later," Alesha said in a pleading voice, high-pitched like a
plaintive, feline growl. "I loved
your class last year! You're the best
professor I've had at Yale! I just had
to take your class this semester.
Absolutely had to! And now I've
ruined everything! Don't know what I
would have done if you hadn't saved
me at mid-term! Don't know what I'm
going to do now." Tears were
dripping over her rosy cheeks. She
stared directly at Hopfgartner. Her foot was still rapping the floor.
"Now, Alesha. Everything will be
fine. You are an excellent student. There's no need for this. Your final paper isn't here, right?"
"Oh, my God! I
tried so hard! I was trying to do
everything! I just simply couldn't! I don't know what to do, Professor Hopfgartner. Please
help me! This is the only thing I have
left," she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "What am I going to tell my parents if I
can't graduate?"
"Nein, nein.
That's not going to happen, my sweet Alesha. We have an understanding, richtig? No need for panic. But you do know, that
paper was worth a third of your grade.
It was an important paper. Some
of your classmates spent months working on it.
I don't know how I can dismiss it completely."
"Maybe this is asking too much. I'll say it.
I don't know what you'll think of me.
I enjoyed being with you in March.
It was the best thing that happened to me all year. I mean it.
It was absolutely thrilling! I
dreamed about it over and over again.
There! I've said it! I just don't know what to do," Alesha said seductively, in a husky voice this time, at the
edge of her chair. She brushed back her
chestnut hair again, thought about winking at the old geezer, but knew she had
to play her part in this pleading, painstaking chase. A crude move could easily ruin it. As soon as he stood up, she stood up, too,
seemingly quivering, her back straight like a rod, waiting with her eyes as
wide open as his.
Professor Hopfgartner
strode slowly toward her until his bluish, burgundy jacket brushed against her
chest. Although he was taller than
she—just under six feet, while Alesha was
five-feet-eight inches tall—she was statuesque, muscular, angular, even lithe,
but he only stocky, creakily slow, stiff, like an upright turtle just in sight
of a delectable treat. Werner Hopfgartner raised a chubby, blotchy hand to her cheek of
silk and light and caressed it, almost as a grandfather would.
"Are you sure about this, mein Liebling? Do only what is right. For you."
"Yes," Alesha
whispered, edging closer to him, "This is what I want."
She reached up and kissed him slowly on
the mouth. His whiskers were rough, and
he smelled of bourbon and stale cigar smoke.
Her lips fluttered over his mouth, and just before she pulled away she
flicked her tongue ever so delicately over the dry edge of his upper lip.
"I enjoy being with you," she
repeated as she stepped back, clasped his hand between hers, kissed it, and
lifted it gently to her left breast.
Werner Hopfgartner's eyes were owl-like. He took another step back, almost coming to attention
as he gazed at a full view of his prize.
He marched to the door and locked it.
The professor turned off the fluorescent
light above them and flicked on the reading lamp on his desk. As he pulled the window curtains shut, she
glanced at the wall clock and noticed it was just past 4:30 p.m. Almost perfect, she thought. Already the halls were quiet without classes,
and the finals that had started at 2:00 p.m. were about to end. The last secretary would also be gone exactly
at 5:00 p.m. She would give the old man
a splendid farewell to his penultimate year.
He turned around, and Alesha was already
waiting for him on the couch. He took
off his jacket and folded it on the seat of his desk chair.
"My dear, come here," he
murmured to her hoarsely, and she slid closer to him and began kissing him ever
so slowly on his neck, over his cheeks, on his lips. At mid-term, Alesha
had been too quick, too aggressive. Oh,
how the old man had chastised her! He
exhorted her to take a certain pace, stepping back and threatening to stop,
then and there, if she insisted on her haphazard idiocy. But Alesha Brown
was a smart girl. She learned
quickly. She had been almost delicate by
the end of that first tryst, pleasing him to the very pit of his stomach. Much, much better than a Sarah Goodman, Hopfgartner had once mumbled, who would always be cursed
with a certain clumsiness.
Alesha breathed heavily, and fluttered tiny
kisses over the professor's face, waiting for his next move. If it took a century, she didn't care. This was easy, it was relatively quick, and last time—although she hated to admit it to
herself—she had almost finished. The old
guy could really do it if he was given half a chance. Soon she would be off to
She felt one of the professor's hands, a
gnarly, impatient claw, grab one of her breasts, and she moaned softly. The hand jumped from breast to breast,
intermittently squeezing hard and fingering her nipples lightly. Alesha closed her
eyes, rested her head against the back of the couch, and pushed her chin up as
Werner Hopfgartner greedily licked her neck and
panted, "Ja, meine Schöne, ja." Suddenly, another hand swooped in between her
legs and grabbed her crotch roughly. She
was reminded of a wrestler hoisting an opponent by the trunks for an explosive
body slam. Alesha
spread her legs willingly. She thrust
her hips into that clamp of fingers, yet he pulled quickly away. Only a test, a taunt, a declaration to invade
a boundary at will. The
swoon and whim of power. "Ja, mein Alles."
"Please," he said quietly,
tugging at her blouse. Alesha pulled her black blouse over her head one hand at a
time. This time she didn't immediately
remove her brassiere, but waited for him to do it. Professor Hopfgartner
pinched it open from the front, with nearly a casual ease. Alesha's big, brown
eyes feigned surprise. He kissed her
lower neck, his face like sandpaper, and plunged into the soft whiteness of her
breasts, sucking them in spasms, as if gagging on the plethora of skin and fat,
and—Alesha swore later—biting her nipples until they
were raw. Oh, and how delicious these
pinches were! Her skin
almost breaking. A precipice. Then a sweet reprieve.
Was she already somewhere high above Place de la Révolution
or
She sensed another hand rub the inside of
her thighs rhythmically, the gray and shiny head still attached to her chest
like a lamprey. Alesha
stared at the gray cabinets in front of them and imagined a cloudy afternoon, a
lonely fountain with cherubic angels.
Professor Hopfgartner suddenly grunted in a
protracted, phlegmatic cough, and just as abruptly a claw yanked aside the
crotch of her panties and thrust two sharp fingernails into her vagina. She yelped, and then exhaled rapidly,
rewarding him with another languorous moan.
"Ja, meine Schöne."
His fingers flickered inside her like tiny ballerina legs. Alesha began to
relax and open up and steady her breathing with soft little whimpers. Her skin was radiating warmth, and she was
wet. She was a very smart little girl.
"Let me kiss you down there,
Professor Hopfgartner. I want so much to please you," she
pleaded, almost out of breath, her body arched on the sofa seat and nearly
sliding off. So she was fucking a dirty
old man who was so insecure, so weird, that she hadn't
even seen him naked the first time. That
wasn't going to happen today. Hey,
doggie-style was sweet for her too. But
this time Alesha Brown wanted a good hard look at it.
Werner Hopfgartner
stared at her with huge, blue orbs.
Astonished? Daydreaming? Simply calculating his fortune? He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his khakis
and pulled his pants and boxer shorts to his knees. The professor looked as if he were sitting on
a newfangled sofa-toilet. Before Alesha kneeled in front of him, she unhooked her skirt and
dropped it on the floor behind her with an effortless twirl of her body.
Even in this near darkness, she could see
that his skin was a glimmering white, like the scales on a lizard's belly. His paunch hung above his little soldier and
created what seemed like a rocky, white cave.
Rocky because enormous ridges of wrinkles, more like wavy folds and
creases, crisscrossed his abdomen and dangled from his thighs. And white because his hair was frosty,
brittle, only softer and darker atop his testicles. A faint acidic scent wafted up from his
loins, as well as the much more overwhelming odor of the elderly. The smell of fine dust and
decay. She kissed his little
soldier, but she was taken aback. It was
tiny.
A wrinkled, deflated pinky! Could
this have been what had really nailed her before?
"Ja, mein Liebling, ja. Nur langsamer, bitte. Verstanden?"
"Natürlich, mein Herr."
It seemed hours before he started to come
around. She knew it would take
time. In March it had taken at least
this long, if not longer, with her hand blindly groping at the bulge in his
trousers until her wrist was sore. Now
she was clearly focused. The thing-in-itself in front of her without a barrier between them. What would Heidegger have said about
possessing such a delicate morsel of an object?
Salty and almost creamy. Like the underside of kugel. Alesha nearly
laughed, but quickly stifled herself.
The professor would not have understood.
Ah, was that a tingle? A precious quiver from the near-dead? Finally this old soldier heard the clarion
call to another good fight.
Like a water balloon slowly being filled,
the professor's penis became erect at a ceremonious pace. And she encouraged it heartily. Alesha licked and
caressed it, teased it, and withdrew.
She barely seemed to notice his studied silence. She herself was almost hyperventilating,
trying to maintain that flow of interest as a torrent. To aggrandize it. To convert play-acting into
being. Anything less, and she would have dissolved into tearful
laughter. Allow a sliver of doubt into
drama, and the impossible would metamorphose into the ridiculous.
"Professor, please, my God! I can't wait any longer!" she screamed
and tore off her panties. In the next
instant, she was prostrate on the sofa, still panting furiously like a quarter horse, and he was inside of her. His talons clenched her perfect, half-moon
hips. His face flushed with blood,
gasping.
Perhaps Werner Hopfgartner
would have been no match for these muscular thighs and perfectly tapered back
and rock-like biceps and triceps had Alesha released
herself completely to him. She gave him
only what she imagined he could take, and then just a bit more for herself,
enough to keep her happy and on the way toward ultimate freedom. Back and forth. Slowly and then a little faster. To one side and then gently
to the other. Like the only
perfect song they could have between them.
She moaned, this time for real.
She was definitely on her way out of the nether world of
And then something awfully strange
happened. Stranger
than even a 74-year-old man having sex with a young vixen of twenty-one. Just as she had almost willed herself to the
precipice, despite flashes in her mind that she was fucking a bowel of oatmeal,
a sharp slap stung her behind like a splash of acid. Slap!
Slap! Slap! Alesha tried to
wiggle away, but he had her now. The pain was bright against her skin. She thought she saw red spots in the
darkness. She pushed against him more
forcefully. Slap! Slap!
Slap! She liked it. Oh, such exquisite pain! Slap!
Slap! Slap! She pushed harder and screamed. Who was fucking whom now? Slap!
Slap! Slap! His fingers were like bait hooks on her
thighs. Slap! Slap!
Slap! What utter, impossible
sweetness! What tremendous power! Slap!
Slap! Slap! She exploded like a super nova. For years thereafter, she would fondly
remember that moment of heaven and think of how he had done her such an
unexpected favor. When Alesha Brown finally came down from her black universe, she
heard the professor's own sonorous explications of joy. "Mein
Gott! Mein Gott!"
After a few minutes of silence, she
finally wiggled free. He immediately
turned off the reading lamp, and they dressed in complete darkness.
"Ready, Alesha,
my dear?"
"Yes.
Here I am."
The fluorescent lamp above their heads flickered
and snapped into an almost painful brightness around them. Alesha sat on the
sofa, combing her hair, not one stitch out of place. The professor stood at the doorway, still
without his jacket but otherwise unruffled, the crease on his khakis razor-sharp. Only his hair betrayed any evidence of the
previous tussle, spiky at the temples, matted down with sweat on his
forehead. Alesha
stared at the professor and almost giggled, but said nothing. A wet spot, the size of a quarter, punctuated
the round bulge on his crotch. Suddenly
it seemed to her an endearing symbol to remember him by.
"That was quite wonderful," he
said, still motionless by the door, ready for this final exit.
"For me too," she said, picking
up her purse and slinging it over her shoulder.
"I'm going to miss you so much."
"You have been a wonderful
student. An excellent one. And I am confident about your future. If you ever need my recommendation, I will
give you only the best one. You deserve
nothing less."
"Thank you, Professor Hopfgartner. Maybe
I'll stop by before graduation. Please
take care of yourself."
"I'll certainly be here. Good luck, again," he said, the door open. She
reached up and kissed him on the lips again, and this time he seemed shocked,
his eyes bulging out of their sockets in a fiery azure. But the hallways were deserted. There was no one around. Only a few hallway lights were still on.
As Alesha Brown
walked away and pushed through the hallway doors—she turned around for one last
look—she saw Werner Hopfgartner felt quite satisfied
with the perfection of all of this, as if he had just sipped the last drop of a
fine and exquisite whiskey. That was the
look on his face. Soon the old man would
begin his long walk home, and that wonderful burning sensation around his loins
would make his face glow pleasantly too.
She imagined before the professor readied himself to leave that he would
listen carefully, because if Hopfgartner was anything
he was careful to the point of paranoia, trying to detect any inadvertent
squeak of a chair moving, or a sneeze, or even the click click click
of a computer keyboard. But if there was
nothing, if Harkness Hall seemed empty of life, then
Professor Hopfgartner would lock his office door,
walk home, and relive every second with her in his mind.
Chapter
Three
Helmut Sanchez, even at twenty-six,
appeared far too serious for his own good.
Everyone had said he looked like his mother. He looked like his mother, yet he acted like
his father. His thick black hair had a
tendency to grow too fast, so that if he waited four weeks between haircuts his
hair became helmet-like. His face
possessed high cheekbones, an angular chin, a Roman nose. The skin pale, not
ruddy, more the color of a contemporary Greek or Italian man, for whom he was
repeatedly mistaken. And yet, Helmut was
in fact half German and half Mexican, or at least New Mexican.
Only
its practical implementation had been a distortion? The excessive digression of
a few idiots? I must be going out
of my mind! Of course, it can't be the
same person. I should just forget about
the whole thing. It's none of my
business anyway.
There was a knock at his office, a
converted small storage cubicle in the basement of Harkness
Hall. Helmut glanced at the battered—yet
still accurate—wall clock above his metal bookshelves. It was almost 1:00 p.m. Before he said a word, the door opened.
"Hi," said Ariane,
her brunette hair shimmering against her olive skin.
"Let me just save this," Helmut
said, punching his keyboard. He should
stay and finish Hopfgartner's essay. The old man would surely be looking for him
today.
"Missed you."
She swooped down to kiss his cheek.
"Forgot to shave this morning?" She rubbed his neck as he exited the word-processing
program.
"No time to take a shower."
"So that's what that smell is."
"Thanks."
"You know I love it. Every last bit of
it," she whispered into his ear and took a nip. A sudden spasm electrified his neck and
shoulders; at once his back was rigid.
Helmut stood up, pulled her gently against him, his hands on her hips,
and imagined, in a lingering kiss, he was about to shatter like a statue of
mica.
"Did I tell you the Eggman gave me a raise on Friday?" Ariane
said as they walked on
"That's great! I'm proud of you, I mean it." Helmut squeezed her hand. As they crossed the corner of High Street, at
Yale's
Helmut and Ariane
stepped inside Atticus Book Café. The
little boy held out his hand and looked at the ground, as if Helmut's stare had
been too forbidding. But many memories
had simply been flooding Helmut's mind.
Before the glass door slammed shut, Helmut stopped it with his heavy
shoe, waved Ariane forward, and bent down to find the
little boy's eyes. As the little boy
grinned, Helmut took out a five-dollar bill and planted it in the small
palm. Yet instead of feeling better,
Helmut at once felt cheap and stupid. It
was now much worse leaving the little boy in the street. It was much worse when the glass door shut
between them.
Helmut and Ariane
sat down at a table next to the section on European History and Philosophy, the
air thick with the steamy aroma of cappuccino, blueberry muffins,
ham-and-cheese croissants, and chamomile tea.
The tables in the café section were half-full. The coffee bar was empty except for a young woman
reading Thomas Mallory's The Tales of
King Arthur.
"You know, that's how I looked when I
was in grade school," Helmut said, glancing at the glass door. The little boy stood like a sentinel at the
doorway, his back toward them, occasionally fingering something in his
pocket. Suddenly he popped a handful of
raisins or chocolates into his mouth.
"Like that?"
"Yeah, I was fat. Nobody liked me and I don't think I liked
anybody either. Nobody likes you when
you're fat. They tease you," Helmut
said. "I can only imagine what it's
like for him, with that face."
"Children can be cruel. I was teased because I looked like a
horse. Or so they said. All arms and legs. Big nose. I was clumsy."
"In
"That's awful. But you're not fat now."
"I know. But you never forget. Even when I'm old, I'll probably still think
of myself as a fat little boy."
"Hey!
Look," Ariane said, handing him a book
off the shelf next to them. It was
Werner Hopfgartner's treatise on Nietzsche and
Heidegger. "Read it already?"
"Not really. You know, I'm not a bleeding
heart." He flipped through the
first few pages with little interest.
"I don't think caring means giving money away. But nobody's going to take the time to help
that boy. Where the hell are his
parents? I won't help him either, I'm
guilty too. I can hardly take care of
myself."
"I'll take care of you, my
sweet." She reached out to hold his
hand, then took a bite of her muffin and drank her coffee.
"I loved being with you Saturday
night," he said quietly, still feeling guilty and ashamed about all sorts
of things. "You know, you're the
best thing that's happened to me since I came here." He was a coward, he thought. Why couldn't he simply say to her, I love you.
Was it too much? Was it saying
something new, an irreversible step into an abyss?
"You
were quite thrilling this weekend. Over
two hours." Ariane's
whisper was low and husky, and her big brown eyes opened wide and stared at him
in mock astonishment. Her hair flickered
between blue black and dark brown. The
silky smooth skin of Ariane's oval face glowed
warmly. Only her aquiline nose seemed
out of place. Helmut and Ariane, in fact, looked like distant cousins from the same
cluster of villages on the
Helmut at once seemed lost in Ariane. The Florentine with a green card who made love like a jaguar. He really did love her. Without her, he'd be alone and unhappy. And it wasn't just the pleasure of their
lovemaking. It was the whirlwind she
created around her. This kindness mixed
with steely determination. Ariane had assumed her place next to him, sure of what she
wanted. She expected the rest of the
world to play along with her or move aside.
She was the way she was. Nothing
hidden, yet still a surprise. She smiled
at you and took you in but never seemed to lose her own self. He, however, was here and there and nowhere,
in exile.
If Ariane was
also a young immigrant trying to gain a foothold in the land and promise of
After finishing his Bakkalaureus der philosophischen
Fakultät in
"Helmut, m'ijo," she would plead to
him, "You don't need a job on the East
Coast. Come over here. You don't need to work at all. I've got plenty for both of us. It's so beautiful here. I've got five
acres! Bear and deer are
everywhere. Pine trees!
"Everyone here is beginning to think
I lied about you. You know that? Pedrito told me the
other day—he thought it was funny—that
maybe I just paid some guy for his graduation pictures, for his pictures as a
little boy! They don't think you exist, m'ijo! I'm beginning to have doubts too," she
said over the phone, more resigned than ever to the stubborn independence of
her son. Indeed, he had put himself in
exile.
After lunch, at the southern entrance to Harkness Hall, Ariane wheeled
around and kissed Helmut, leaning against him and almost toppling him over.
"I'm going in too," he said, his
arms around her waist. Many thoughts
invaded his mind. When could he say it
simply, without thinking about
it? He wanted to be with her, and he
also wanted to be alone.
"Thought you were
done for the day." She yanked open the oak slab of a door. Her biceps curled under her billowy blouse
and then relaxed to a flat, taut surface of olive skin. They walked inside.
"I'm finishing some work for Hopfgartner. I'm
dead if it's not done today."
"He's taking advantage of you,
Helmut. You know that, don’t you?"
"I promised to have it done
today. I just want him off my back. Hardly have anything to do this summer while
he's gone."
"Well, you deserve a break. Twenty hours a week! As far as I can tell, you're here mornings and afternoons."
"I'm not always doing his shit, you
know. Sometimes I'm just reading."
"Just don't work too hard."
"Call you tonight," he said as
he walked down the stairs into the dimly lit hallway that looked like a cave.
Helmut clicked on his computer, and while
the virus scan skipped through the files, he started a pot of coffee. The basement offices felt empty. A pair of fluorescent tubes, in the middle of
the basement hallway, pushed aside the darkness with a pulsating gray
light. The only noise Helmut could hear
was the faraway echo of an occasional slamming door one floor above. He imagined he was deep within the bowels of
an almost deserted freighter that coursed and creaked across the sea. Who else was on this ship? Did they know he was here too? He left his door open. It was hot enough in this cramped space.
After two hours, Helmut was almost done
touching up the Christa Wolf bibliography.
There was one reference he'd have to check tomorrow at
A door banged shut at one end of the basement
hallway. Only one final exam was in
progress in the Harkness basement, and it had started
two hours ago. Helmut heard quick, short
footsteps on the linoleum floor. She walked by again, without so much as a glance into his open office. In her short black skirt and black blouse,
she almost melted into the hallway darkness, except for her beautiful, young
legs. Helmut heard her rap against the
door next to his.
Was Werner Hopfgartner
still here? Helmut had forgotten to
check for a sliver of light underneath the professor's door when he returned
from lunch. That had been careless of
him. Helmut heard the professor's door
open, and she walked in. She wasn't of
course the only she, yet she was
certainly the most exquisite: terribly young and tender, absolutely bold, not
the least bit careful or doubtful or guilty.
In a way, she reminded him of Ariane, and in a
way she did not. Ariane
Sassolini was loving and passionate, and not just
voracious.
Helmut closed his door and locked it. He stepped beside the computer keyboard,
saved his work, and turned the machine off.
Murmurs now seemed to emanate from the wall he shared with the Jonathan
P. Harkness Professor of Literature and
Philosophy. He could occasionally hear a
sentence or two through a ventilation grate on the wall a foot from the
floor. He slid into his reading chair
with a book on his lap. The blue folder
was next to him. Wild thoughts consumed
Helmut's mind like a fire. The professor and one of his conquests. The very best one.
"Ja, meine Schöne, ja."
It
comes to all of us from nowhere, this cursed evil. Why me?
I am not even a part of that generation.
I should simply stop reading these pages. Ignore them.
None of my business at all. Let evil fuck up the world for all I
care! Why should I give a damn? Please, dear God, what should I do? I'm sick of this feeble mind.
"Ach! Nein! Hier. Besser. Ja,
viel besser, mein Liebling."
First
I should find out the facts. I don't
even know anybody's exact involvement.
It could be a horrible mistake on my part. Should I tell Ariane
about my suspicions? Maybe I should find
out the truth first. Piece
by piece. A
methodical investigation.
Certainly I'm good at that.
"Mein
Gott! Mein Gott!"
What
terrible rubbish! What abyss of words! It will never end even with my
grandchildren. It was simply a
nightmare. My blood. I can't escape that. But then, again, why escape? Why not confront and act now? I should at least find out who it really
is. Exactly who. These words. The thought and prose of
that nightmare. My God!
"Ja, ja, ja! Mein Gott! Ja! Mein Gott! Oh, mein
lieber Gott!"
Helmut Sanchez carefully balanced the blue
folder on his knee. The room was finally
quiet. Slowly he read the German
words. These carefully
chosen words. The
style rhythmic and assured. The
logic clear, almost convincing, finally ghoulish. He heard a door slam shut, and the same
hurried little footsteps stomped down the empty hallway again. After a few seconds, he heard a faraway door
close like a muffled explosion. An echo.
When he had read "Why I Am Neither
Guilty Nor Ashamed" for the first time this
weekend, he had been expecting nothing out of the ordinary. But as one word led to another, and an
idiotic thought connected to a dangerous one, Helmut couldn't believe his
eyes. These words. He wanted to stop reading. He wanted to will himself back in time before he had ever set eyes on these
words. He read the pages to the bitter
end again, and put them in a blue folder.
Maybe the utter shock of reading them was greater because Helmut had
been expecting nothing when he had picked up the pages this past weekend. If you open a closet where your winter coats
are stored for the season and find, instead, the red, wormy head of Mrs. Johnson
from across the street, on a spike, then you, too, might be especially shocked
out of your mind.
Helmut heard Hopfgartner’s
door close with a soft click. The knob
was jiggled once and then twice to check the lock. And then more footsteps, plodding softly,
nearly gliding, made their way down the hallway too. Did they almost pause in front of his
door? Of course not. It was Helmut's imagination again. After a few minutes, he heard the faraway
door close again.
These words more than thirty-five-years
old. From an obscure
literary journal. "Why I Am
Neither Guilty Nor Ashamed." The language still evoking the bitter, copper stink of blood in the
air. A fog of
blood.
The
Nature of Truth was
published by Arte Publico Press in 2014 (revised and
updated paperback edition) and Northwestern University Press in 2003 (hardcover
edition). Copyright
2003 and 2014 by Sergio Troncoso.
Click here for discussion questions.
Listen to Sergio Troncoso talk about his
novel on National Public Radio: NPR Interview on
Latino USA.
Short stories: Angie Luna, The Snake, A Rock Trying to be a
Stone, and Espíritu
Santo.