Death of a Lubyntski
The transatlantic leaves at midnight. Lubyntski, majestic mustache furrowing against the salty winds, curled up on his upper lip like a placid domestic cat, stands on deck already, hands behind his back, and reminisces , mostly pleasantly, a life well spent, with few regrets.
He must, with a certain bother, betrayed by a spastic movement of the hand, that Prussia isn’t what it used to be anymore - as if History, the one which happens, were a fastidious mosquito he could catch in flight and squish to death. As if this single, passingly cruel gesture could revert its course, and make place for Lubyntski here where the estuary died down, and died.
Friedrich Wilheln grows older and more incapable. No one knows how long he will be able to hold watch over the country, beautifully single, land of iron and fight. Lubyntski remembers as the King discarded the crown. As children, they played fetch together: here, then there, one only needed to follow. And follow he did. Now that the tides are changing, gathering in dark swirls down below, where the ship's bottom meets the waters, now that the paws move across their stupid board, Lubyntski feels nauseous of their movements. Prussia will change, soon, and with it all of Europe. To hell with it. May the old world burn! It is almost a cheering feeling, one that arises directly from the months of blue that preceded tonight. The transatlantic must hurry, now, before the flames catch Lubyntski’s coat, and bring away from certain death, into the territory of surprise and horror: America.
Such is the state of this great man tonight - full of memories and heavy feelings. At this point I must be truthful, dear reader; I had meant to flesh out a more epic tale, of the Tolstoyan kind: to cut through the epoch and find just how Lubynski, the last, measured time, transversally defined the age and place Destiny placed him into, needing a little help. But I am aggravated tonight, in no mood altogether for historicisms, because I must battle with the grief of a departure of my own, and you must choose yourself whether to believe me. It might suffice to say this: if you wanted to know more about Lubyntski, his age-splitting fist, a plaque about him slumbers in crestfallen Berlin, the old capital. Such was his influence. The plaque invites you to a game of fetch. If you followed its instructions, you would find yourself moving across this desolated city, where the winters are cold and the summers sticky, into shady corners of Schoeneberg, dark alleys in Steglitz and slumbering dungeons in Dahlem, where the moss talks, too, in perfect Swiss accent. If you followed all of this, dear reader, you’d find your way towards History, or backwards to it, and you’d make it to a desolated alley. Herein lies a minor museum (and let me say, in passing: a public museum so small as to have avoided scrutiny for public funds and the stint of antisemitism, for which we are grateful). Here you will find a small and wrinkly man who, if brought chocolate and tea, will tell you of Lubyntski, the last of his kind, in full vivid detail, as if he had verily met him. He is a lonely man, much less than that nowadays, and you'll be doing him a favor by asking him of this man, the old Prussian, which he will still call Friend. This sodden creature will lead you through the house (because, in truth, it cannot be called a museum) and show you his official painting, where vibrant copper and gold colours catch him standing in line against the curtain of history, and some smaller family portraits, with his siblings smiling in perfect teeth. All of this, the guide will tell you, is a mark of time, a story known by few. And if you're kind enough, the crinkled man will tell you the truth, of the lesser archival kind: he will tell you how deeply this great man touched everyone who met him, how no life which truly crossed with his was left unchanged, a little truer, and for the better, always for the best. If you're kind enough to ask, and listen, the old man will let you steal one of the small golems he keeps into the one-room museum shop, and let you believe in your own skill. It is a kindness he had learnt from the old man, too.
My limitations declared, or rather performed, Let us come back to this man in the star-lit hour of his doom.
The Lithuanian slaves are bringing his belongings to his cabin, watched over, and eventually flogged, by his wife, the most gorgeous Dutch princess, with a secret talent for fiction. In the chests, fearsome objects, really, of fated value. But only memory and splendid artwork bring them back to Lubyntski’s life: and even though they are splendid indeed, and made to represent it in masterful woodcarving and resplendent arazzo, the Prussian thinks, tonight, that they do not resemble his years, the true ones, that which no craftsman nor member of the general public could ever know. A life is a full thing, in moonshone nights like this, and men like Lubyntski, at the start of the big jump, before a great divide, always have the feeling of being able to hold it in their fists, as it dribbles down. All of a life: its insecurities and trials, triumphs and avoidances, handmade and almost palpable. But it is just a feeling; if you hold on too tight, the milky powder of the stars slips away, and you're left with nothing but the vague feeling of the necessity of leaving. All hours before it are blue, and worth remembering and celebrating.
With a thunder and a resounding cheer, the transatlantic leaves. Lubyntski watches until the land - this old, this tired land - gets smaller, ever the less important, and (unbeknownst to him) loses one of its best men. In a moment of clarity, Lubyntski fears that he will not come back from his fateful trip. Beyond the capacity of his eyes, here where the night engulfs the water and the sky, America awaits: the land of beginnings and endings, with whom we must all deal with. We know what happens next, what kind of years await him. The legacy he will leave: good salesmen, frank housewives, perverted bookkeepers, poets. But even if we could tell him - if by force, which is also love, we might be able to cut through the curtains of time, and alert him to the future which awaits him, we wouldn't do so. After all, everything a man can do is walk towards his future, and leave as many memories of him whenever he goes, so that his life might extend, become a story. This one walks so proudly, and we salute him.
15.08.2024