their own.) We entered the clinic on a wide gravel road leading to a cast-iron security gate bearing the inscription Humanitas. A couple of burly guards were trying hard to authenticate their camouflage as liveried hotel doormen. After exchanging a few words with the driver of the limousine who took me there, they cast a casual glance at me and smiled. I half-expected them to salute, but with the window down their polite beam was designed to assure me I had come to the right place. Despite their brawny appearance, they spoke soothingly in calm and gentle voices, to convey that all would be well from now on. I would be very comfortable here. The driver grinned conspiratorially and closed the electric window. Almost ceremoniously we glided through the splendour of the decorative park. I listened to the grinding noise of the tyres as we approached an overpowering doorway that would have done justice to a medieval palace.
Before I was brought here I stayed at my usual, much less grandiose guesthouse in the very heart of Riehen. I’ve often stayed there before, whenever I attended the university either for a week’s conference or as a visiting professor for an entire semester. I’d come to like the small hotel, located close to the German-Swiss border. All my life I felt most comfortable in the vicinity of frontiers. Did I mention I was born in a border town? People growing up near a boundary acquire a special sensitivity. Dividing lines and limits prompt in me illusions of escape, transgression or travelling. Living close to something foreign or different has always been my kind of freedom, the assurance that there was something other than where I was. From childhood on I was spurred into restless urges to explore, to search for something new, without knowing what I’d find. I was barely five the first time I ran away from home. Today there are hardly any frontier crossings, complete with customs clearance. In a united Europe the Danish-German border, so important to me that during my adolescence I could feel it in my blood, has all but disappeared.
I suspect the excellent service offered by Humanitas is just another cover to uphold the illusion of being a luxury hotel. My suite can only be described as obscenely comfortable, lavish with its furniture, chandeliers, thick carpets and large windows overlooking a pond almost totally covered in papyrus plants and water lilies. Even nature seems to choke on its own luxurious growth. An impeccably liveried, painfully polite young man guided me to my spacious prison. As we entered the lights went on automatically. While another uniformed assistant lifted my small suitcase to the luggage rack I was shown to the marble bathroom, the gilded Louis-quinze wardrobe and a matching ornate writing desk, complete with three silver frames that bore no photographs. After that I was shown how to operate the Bang & Olufsen audiovisual. Before leaving they looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for a sign of approval that everything was in perfect working order. Or did they expect a tip? Are there rules of etiquette in this five-star asylum?
As I had not asked to come here, I refused to unpack. Someone would join me soon, I was told, ‘to explain everything’. Threats like that make anyone who’s read Kafka shiver.
As if I needed to be told why they thought I’d suffered a mental breakdown and needed ‘rest’. It had begun so innocently at an end of semester party when almost all colleagues thought my response to a question put by the Rector merely quirky and original. Knowing I was about to retire, he had politely enquired what I intended to do with the rest of my life. My answer couldn’t have been more honest and straightforward: ‘Turn into a book.’ I said it with a smile, anxious to be affable and deferential. It was considered an honour to be invited to a party by the chief executive officer of a university as distinguished as this. Accompanied by polite laughter, a half-serious discussion followed assessing the validity of my metaphorical expression. Was reading, especially among academics, really that personal, devoted and cherished? Wasn’t it rather a matter of profession, rectitude and rules, maintaining distance in the name of objectivity? For subjective reading would surely reinforce bias and be at odds with the very principle of science!
I’d listened to what was being said and knew it was little more than an academic exchange of unrelated meaningless words and concepts. Hamlet was wrong: the rest is not silence but a sanctimonious commentary of linguists, philologists and philosophers reflecting their theories of spontaneity. When I said I wanted to turn into a book I meant it, quite literally and in every other way. What I didn’t say was that this book would logically turn into my life. In other words, I was talking about writing an autobiography.
It took several weeks before my constant references to that unwritten book of my life began to irritate some colleagues. I admit I may have become obsessed with the idea because it had turned into a directional briefing for my future. A couple of colleagues mocked me, calling it structural thinking or a discourse for myself. When in a seminar of comparative cultural studies I was asked to list the literary milestones of 1940, I tersely replied: ‘Page 47’. In a lecture on Romanticism I introduced the concepts of longing and belonging by announcing: ‘Today I want to talk about the unity of separation, the correlatives of borders, the concept of home and self. Pages 89-103.’ At first it merely prompted some disquiet among students, no open revolt. When I noticed their laughter I joined in. But when I continued to quote from my as yet unwritten life the listeners grew restless and unruly. Some sitting in the front row turned around and shouted: ‘What’s he talking about?’ High up from the back rows came the reply, ‘He’s come to the wrong seminar.’ In vain I tried to regain control. After a while everybody was beginning to leave the room.
Questioned by the Dean about the incident, I listened carefully before replying: ‘Page 311, op. cit. All other quotations are the author’s.’ Puzzled, he tried another way to get to the bottom of what had occurred. Had anything happened, he wanted to know. If the recent workload had proved too much for me, an assistant would be available to take over. How was my general health, he enquired. I assured him I was perfectly well. In fact, I couldn’t recall having felt quite as energetic for a very long time. ‘You see, I’m busy turning myself into a book,’ I announced with foolish pride. The Dean gave me a long hard look before terminating the interview. With an uneasy, almost unapologetic smile he declared, ‘Thank you, Professor. That’ll be all for now.’
‘For now?’ I did not realise that, like my own comments, he’d meant it, quite literally. The intention of turning myself into a book was sufficient to have me relieved of all contact with literature, the art of letters held captive by academics in discourse and analysis. Fiction for dissection, writing that could be taught.
Suddenly various statements were attributed to me and reported to university authorities (by whom?). It was alleged I had repeatedly made disturbing remarks such as ‘I don’t open the door, I am the door’, and ‘I don’t use a pencil, I am the pencil’. I can’t recall having said that to them. To appease the university I let myself be examined by medical experts, including a staff psychiatrist who suggested my exotic behaviour was a case of autism, rather than dementia or psychosis. Things came to a head when a Faculty panel was established to interview me. ‘We need to get to the bottom of this,’ a concerned Dean had supposedly advised his colleagues. One outcome of the interview was that by agreeing I was indeed ‘not myself’ I had mocked the committee and shown disrespect to my host university. I had claimed my heavy workload resulted from a division of labour: during lectures I was professor and student, developing my thoughts as I spoke while busily taking notes. Again, I deny ever having expressed anything of the kind, but will admit it is a thought that seems perfectly sound and attractive to me. It made no difference. Discreetly and not so discreetly, everyone around me became convinced I had succumbed to insanity.
The phone is ringing. I’ll never get used to the shock of being caught unawares. It seems so intrusive, having to answer an unknown caller. Why should someone be able to demand my instant attention no matter what? Even my silent number back home fails to protect me from
