So listen, the owl says now: The more highly developed a society is, the more its written laws come to replace common sense. In Germany, I estimate that only two-thirds of our laws are still anchored in the emotional lives of the people, as it were. The other third are laws pure and simple, formulated with such a high level of precision and abstraction that all basis in human emotion has become superfluous and thus ceases to exist. Two thousand years ago, no one was more hospitable than the Teutons. Surely you are acquainted with the lovely section in Tacitus’s Germania devoted to our ancestors’ hospitality?
Yes, Richard says, nodding.
May I recall the passage in question for you?
You may.
The lawyer gets up, goes over to the bookshelf, his coattails flapping in the inexplicable office breeze, pulls his Tacitus off the shelf, and opens the small book at a page marked by a slip of paper.
Ithemba, who can see that the conversation with the lawyer is nearing its end, carefully gathers up his papers, stacking them neatly, and puts them back in the folder he brought with him expressly for this purpose. Richard nods to him, and now the lawyer begins his recital: It is accounted a sin to turn any man away from your door. The host welcomes his guest with the best meal that his means allow. When he has finished entertaining him, the host undertakes a fresh role: he accompanies the guest to the nearest house where further hospitality can be had. It makes no difference that they come uninvited; they are welcomed just as warmly. No distinction is ever made between acquaintance and stranger as far as the right to hospitality is concerned. As the guest takes his leave, it is customary to let him have anything he asks for; and the host, with as little hesitation, will ask for a gift in return. The lawyer claps the book shut and asks Richard: And nowadays?
And nowadays? asks Richard in return, feeling a faint sense of hope.
Now, two thousand years later, we’re left with section 23, paragraph 1 of the Residence Act.
The lawyer places one hand over his heart and bows as if he’s just completed a little theatrical performance. Then he opens the double doors and says: If you’ll be so kind, thus indicating that their appointment is over. Richard knows perfectly well how many Romanians, Vietnamese, and Africans are still waiting outside. As he passes the coat rack on his way out with Ithemba — there really is a top hat on the shelf above — he finds himself almost entirely convinced that this lawyer, who reminds him of an owl, must have flapped his way from some previous century into the twenty-first, this new and yet already so old century with its endless streams of people who, having survived the passage across a real-life sea, are now drowning in rivers and oceans of paper.
