Castle Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky

Author:Kurt Tucholsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

We finished the great work . . . and we were resting quietly from our labours, when the Princess arrived.

She had bought buttons of many kinds; it’s quite bewildering what a multiplicity of wares a woman will find in even the smallest places. She had no money left either, so with a furrowed brow I pulled out my wallet and made rather a performance of it. Then we went and lay in the grass.

‘Do you find it hard to relax, too?’ asked Karlchen, who already felt completely at home. ‘A holiday’s hard work, I reckon. Even doing nothing is a big effort, and you only realise later quite how . . .?’

‘Hm’ we went; we were too lazy to answer. There was a rustle.

‘Put that newspaper away!’ I said.

‘Did you read about . . .?’ he said. And that did it: time had returned.

We had thought we could escape time. But you can’t, it follows you. I looked at the Princess and pointed at the newspaper, and she nodded. We had talked about it the night before; about newspapers, about time in general, and about this time. One often thinks love is stronger than time; but time is always stronger than love.

‘Reading . . . reading . . .’ I said. ‘Karlchen, what newspaper are you reading anyway?’

He told me the name.

‘You shouldn’t read just one,’ I remarked sagaciously. ‘That’s no good. You have to read at least four newspapers, and one of the big French or English ones as well; things look very different seen from the outside.’

‘I’m always amazed,’ said the Princess, ‘what people like us are offered – there aren’t actually any newspapers for us. Those we do have, pretend we have God-knows how much money – no – they behave as if money didn’t exist . . . but they know perfectly well we don’t have much – they just pretend. The things they tell us . . . and the illustrations!’

‘Just a jumble of fantasies. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, dear child!’

‘No, I don’t mean that,’ said the Princess. ‘I mean they’re always so terribly chic. Even when they write about being broke, they tell a stylish version of it. They seem to have both feet off the ground. Will a newspaper ever talk about what it’s really like: how you start scrimping on the twentieth of each month, how things get miserable and petty sometimes, how you can rarely afford to take a taxi, not to mention buying a car. Instead, they feed us their ridiculous cult of fashionable living . . . do any of us live in proper flats?’

‘Those people gobble you up,’ I said. ‘And the worst of it is that they set the questions. They mark out the course and build the fences – and you have to answer, and follow and jump . . . you can’t choose for yourself. We’re not on this planet to choose, but to make do – I know that.

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