Hans Reiter (Benno von Archimboldi) and Mr. Bubis

Hans Reiter, writing under the name Benno von Archimboldi, and Mr. Bubis sustain a consequential writer–publisher partnership across years of publication, disappearance, and return. It is built not on identical taste or regular contact but on a durable confidence: Bubis publishes books he doubts he can sell, increases advances when Archimboldi insists on their value, and responds to a long absence by inviting the author to name his terms. The relationship’s final movement is marked by both continuity and silence: Archimboldi continues to send novels to the publishing house, yet after Bubis’s death he chooses not to send the condolences he has imagined.

A Publisher Recognizes a Possibility

The partnership develops through Bubis’s attention to new writing and his interest in creating an imprint. In conversation with Lothar Junge in the garden, Bubis moves from discussing the writers being published in Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Berlin, Zurich, Bern, and Vienna to asking what Junge thinks of Archimboldi. The exchange places Archimboldi within Bubis’s active search for authors, even before the publisher explains what kind of imprint he has in mind.

When Archimboldi’s fourth book, Rivers of Europe, arrives, Bubis reads it in one sitting. Although the title suggests many rivers, the Dnieper is the book’s protagonist and the other rivers its chorus. Bubis laughs loudly as he reads and sends an advance larger than any he has previously paid Archimboldi. The amount is so striking that Martha, the secretary, checks twice whether the sum is correct. Bubis’s reply turns the payment into a statement of his own uncertainty about literary and financial measurement: sums are approximate, and publishers, like scientists, feel their way in the dark.

Disagreement Over Taste and Payment

Bubis’s commitment is tested by Bifurcaria Bifurcata, a book he does not finish reading. He nevertheless decides to publish it, supposing that Junge might like it. The baroness, asked for an honest opinion, also stops early, falling asleep before she gets beyond page four. These reactions establish that Bubis’s decision to publish is not simply a reflection of personal enthusiasm or a consensus about the book’s quality.

Archimboldi objects to the advance Bubis proposes. At first Bubis feels indignant; then the letter makes him laugh, and later it saddens him. He considers the objection while eating alone at a restaurant overlooking an estuary, where the river and landscape seem to be moving toward different times and spaces. His reflection leads him to distinguish his own boredom from a judgment that the novel is bad: disliking a book does not establish its lack of merit, even if he expects it to be difficult to sell and costly to store. The next day, he sends an advance slightly larger than the one for Rivers of Europe. The episode shows the partnership operating through frank disagreement, with Bubis accepting that his own taste is not a sufficient measure of what Archimboldi’s work deserves.

Absence, Manuscript, and Renewed Trust

For a long period after Archimboldi disappears, Bubis receives no news of him. Meanwhile, Rivers of Europe continues to sell and reaches a second edition; The Leather Mask also sells well enough for a second edition. Archimboldi’s name appears in essays on new German fiction, though only in passing, and his books become cult objects among some university students. The publishing relationship thus continues to have a public life even when its author is absent.

Four years after the disappearance, a package arrives from Venice containing Inheritance, a novel of more than five hundred pages, crowded with deletions, additions, and long, often illegible footnotes. In a short accompanying letter, Archimboldi says he has been working as a gardener. Bubis doubts that this account can be true, but does not let the question delay his response: that same day he asks what advance Archimboldi wants and requests an address where he can send the money that has accumulated over the four years.

Archimboldi gives an address in Cannaregio and sends New Year’s wishes to Bubis and his wife. Bubis reads the manuscript over the following cold days. Despite its disorder, it leaves him deeply satisfied because, in an essential but unarticulated way, Archimboldi has fulfilled the hopes he had placed in him. Bubis considers and rejects more obvious explanations: not merely the author’s steady production, his storytelling, or his contribution to the German language. He cannot name the source of his confidence, and does not need to. The manuscript renews the partnership without resolving its underlying mystery.

Later Work and the Final Silence

Bubis asks the baroness, who is in Italy, to visit Archimboldi in Venice because the publisher can no longer travel as he once did. The visit reconnects the author with the publishing household, and Archimboldi later returns to see Bubis to review the proofs of Inheritance. During that final visit, he works with the copy editor and adds about one hundred pages to the original manuscript. It is the last time he sees Bubis and the baroness in Hamburg. Bubis publishes four more of Archimboldi’s novels before his death.

Bubis dies in his office while reading a book by a young writer from Dresden. His laughter has carried through the publishing house; then, at eleven twenty-five in the morning, it stops. When the secretary eventually enters, she finds him dead among books scattered across the floor. His body is cremated, and his ashes are scattered over the Alster. The baroness takes over the publishing house and says she has no intention of selling it.

Archimboldi learns of Bubis’s death while reading a German newspaper on a terrace in Missolonghi. He reads the account again and again, then imagines writing a condolence card to the publishing house. He decides that it would make no sense and sends nothing. More than a year after Bubis’s death, a manuscript of Archimboldi’s latest novel, The Return, arrives at the publishing house. The baroness delegates its preparation for publication and travels to Venice, where she gives Archimboldi an advance for the new novel along with royalties from his earlier books. The work continues under new leadership, while the exchange between author and publisher is left with a final, unexpressed response to loss.