still laughing, when I visited that house I stood in his study and could picture the writer sitting there at his desk, composing his works. When he lived there, Goethe generally employed a secretary to transcribe what he dictated, rather than putting pen to paper himself. I was surprised by this, and responded that in that case it’s hard to believe his sentences are entirely his own, as his secretary would have been able to improvise some minor edits in the course of his transcription, and since Goethe himself could not have remembered every sentence precisely as he’d dictated it, down to the punctuation, even on examining what his secretary produced, it’s possible that he wouldn’t have been able to spot any cuts or alterations. But the real cause for my surprise was that such a method, whereby another personality can squeeze its way into a creative work, was strange to me. The first writer immediately refuted this, saying that such a thing could not be. What makes you so sure? It’s not as though you yourself are Goethe. It’s unimaginable that a writer could compose a piece “through another’s pen.” “The ‘cornerman,’ who was one of those secretary-cum-assistants, took it upon himself to arrange Goethe’s manuscripts, you know. But he wasn’t just an assistant, as people commonly think, who looked after Goethe’s needs or ran small errands for him. Though his reputation has been thoroughly besmirched, a misconception that persists even today . . . the ‘cornerman’ was himself a poet, and had been one before he ever met Goethe. Though of course, some people devalue his poetic worth by labeling him ‘Goethe’s parrot.’ He was the son of a poor peddler, and lived in poverty his whole life. His fellow poets would never accept him into their own artistic rank. But it’s simply impossible to think that he would have put his hand freely to Goethe’s manuscripts. He was Goethe’s helper, but he was also his friend. I cannot think of him as someone who practiced petty deceptions while sitting at Goethe’s side. And since such a thought can, on the other hand, occur to you,” here the first writer broke off for a short while, as though pondering whether it was really admissible to speak his mind so frankly. “I think you must have never actually read Goethe’s original writing. Or books about him, such as Conversations with Goethe. If you want to make claims about a certain writer, you have to have read his books. If only you’d known the extent to which his writing pursues strictness and exactitude.”
After this discouragement, the first writer fixed me with a look of obvious disappointment. He’d probably supposed that I was an academic, faithful to the classics. I’d thought I knew a lot about him, but had completely forgotten his ardent worship of Goethe. What I knew of his career history and personal inclinations had actually led me to suspect the opposite.
“Are you suggesting that professional assistants could only work if they were always shut up in a corner? And that’s why they were called ‘cornermen’?” I’d hoped to avoid any further criticism by going off on a tangent, but he hurriedly dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “No no, that’s just a coincidence.” As though meaning to apologize for having been overly touchy, he arranged his features into an expression of tolerance, of choosing not to make an issue of my outburst. “His name really was ‘cornerman.’ Eckermann. It was a genuine surname, inherited from his father’s father’s father.” “Oh,” I said, clamping my mouth shut after that short sound.
We drank lemon-leaf tea in his study. The pale green leaves floated in the teacups. His study also served as his bedroom, workroom, office, dining room, and living room. The apartment comprised this single decent-sized space with a balcony, plus a small cooking area and bathroom. Apparently he and his wife each lived in a different apartment in the same building, so that each could have their own creative space. In the center of the room were three longish desks, each of a slightly different size, shape, and even height to the others, the three arranged in the shape of the letter
Contrary to your expectations, you never went back to the first writer’s house. The orchid’s petals and the empty birdcage were swaying in the wind. The balcony with the laundry hung out to dry, the brass candlestick clattering on the table, the chirping of unfamiliar language pressing in through the open window, the noise of tourists thronging the alleyways, and of motorbikes, formed the scene. And what it hinted at was a curious waiting. The kind of formless waiting that takes place within a long and hazy nap, when your schedule for the rest of the day is free. The first writer was remembering your name. But he was unable to recall when it was that he’d seen you last. It might have been several years ago, or several decades. He was remembering you as a broad-minded journalist who wrote pieces for newspapers and radio. Though as far as I knew, you hadn’t written an article for a very long time.
What is it that you do? Are you a journalist, or a writer?
I looked the first writer straight in the eye and said, I’ve been a fan of your writing for a long time, more than a fan, in fact, and so I’ve been hoping for a long time to meet you, and even, if possible, to translate your work—as this is the only possible way of bringing me closer to you, that I could dare to ask for. Though my love for him was perfectly true, the idea of translating his work was something I’d plucked from thin air on the spot. “Oh, so you’re a translator!” the first writer exclaimed, his face becoming open and welcoming. “I’d sensed you were something of the sort, you know. And I was correct.” I was in fact nothing of the sort, had never done anything you could call proper translation, but once the words had popped out of my mouth it somehow felt as though I genuinely did have a long-held wish to translate his book. I made a promise that when I went back to my hometown I would translate his work into my mother tongue and find a publisher worthy of bringing it out. I really was planning to do this.
The two of us exchanged many letters. If emails were included in the tally, the person with whom I’ve maintained the most extensive correspondence would be none other than you. It was already enough to fill a fair-sized book just a year after we first met. Of course, there were plenty of brief notes and postcards with just a single line like “thanks” or “okay.” You were an especial fan of letter writing. Each time you went traveling you sent several postcards back to friends, and your job meant that you spent more than half of each year away from home. My mailbox became crowded with your letters and postcards, not to mention the records and photographs, the essays and poetry collections. Once, you even tore out a newspaper advert you’d come across while eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant, and sent it to me, still permeated with the faint fragrance of tea. It was an ad for a tourist destination that the two of us had once visited together. You’d drawn an arrow in pen pointing to the bench in the photograph, with the words “We sat right here!” You also sent me any interviews you came across with either the first or second writer. Even when I went to Berlin for a while, you asked for my address there so you could keep mailing things. Some mail arrived for me there even after I’d moved out. One was an essay you wrote for a magazine, which you’d sent from America. The Berlin landlord forwarded it on,
