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The Death of Walter Benjamin

Erik Harper Klass | Fiction, Spring 2026

On this evening of 26 September 1940, in a little Spanish town somewhere just across the

border, where he has fled over mountains (the Nazis hot on his heels), a town of green

hills falling steeply into the sea, in a fourth-floor hotel room containing a narrow bed, a

small bureau, and, next to a curtained window, a round table, upon which sits a tiny little

pipe with a mouthpiece made of what could be amber, a leather case for a pair of nickel-

frame eyeglasses (the case empty), a large golden grandfather watch, open on a little board

(the watch of no great value), a spherical vial made of silver that rattles when shaken

(morphine), and a vase of green glass holding a small bouquet of scorpion grass, the

violet-blue petals fallen and scattered on the table’s surface (the flowers near death),

Walter Benjamin lies atop a light-gray counterpane and listens to the song of a walker’s

steps, a quarrel, a flapping of wet linen, a clatter of boards, a baby’s bawling, a clacking of

buckets, and his memory now begins, and he is in a Riga apartment with orange walls,

and his memory begins with a game of dominoes begun, on a square table supporting a

vase of yellow glass holding a single pale-yellow flower of the Nymphaea genus, and his

memory begins with a game of dominoes surrendered, and his memory begins with her

face—ah yes, here she is—green eyes, auburn hair falling over her right eye (she is on a

love seat, the kind where the lovers sit back to back, which itself is next to a little potted

pine tree), and his memory begins with the way she lets an ochre-yellow Italian scarf fall

to the floor, the way she rises and stands now on the love seat and turns to her side, the

way she almost loses her balance, waving her arms around comically like a tightrope

walker playing up the crowd (they are both drunk as skunks), and his memory begins

with the way her brassiere comes loose (clothing is already strewn around the room, for

this is where his memory begins (there is love, there is nakedness in these memories—

turn away now, if you must)), the way she holds the brassiere to her body with her arms

crossed—she teases him—then lets it fall (her breasts are small and the color of moths’

wings, her areolae are small and the color of carnations), he remembers nothing of what

came before, and now his memory begins with the way she very slowly pulls down her

briefs (they must be of silk, the way the light plays), and his memory begins with the way

the briefs slide down her thighs, past her knees, until they fall of their own weight to her

ankles, and his memory begins with a lifted foot, and his memory begins with a lifted foot,

and his memory begins with her briefs (shiny (of silk?)) kicked across the room, and his

memory begins (all else is forgotten) with the shining streak of her briefs flying across the

room like a shotgunned bird, and the way she turns to him and stands, shakily, naked,

defenseless, the darkness of her pubic hair like a blinding klieg, and his memory begins

with the way she stands and looks into his eyes, he is sitting now—how did he get here?—

at the edge of her bed, a simple bed, comfortable, nondescript, saffron sheets askew, and

now yes now yes now his memory begins: he removes his eyeglasses (nickel frames), a

kind of ecstatic surrender, a surrender for what? ah yes, she is here, suddenly, standing

before him, naked, all else is forgotten, and he is about to somehow perform the miracle of

rising, of moving toward her, he will lift her (Asja Lācis will wrap her legs around him, she

is as light as air), and his memory begins as he folds and puts his eyeglasses in a leather

case and turns to his side and sets the case on a square table, upon which sits, among other

objects, a vase of yellow glass holding a single pale-yellow flower of the Nymphaea genus,

no no no, the vase is of green glass, and holds a small bouquet of scorpion grass, the

violet-blue petals fallen and scattered (the flowers near death), and his memory begins

with a spherical vial made of silver that is now as silent as a swarm of ravens settling in the

newly fallen snow (the vial rolls off the table, falls to the floor), and his memory begins

with the faint ticking of a large golden grandfather watch, and his memory begins with the

strange sounds of the night, the song of a walker’s steps, a quarrel, a flapping of wet linen,

a clatter of boards, a baby’s bawling, a clacking of buckets, and his memory begins with

what could be the sound of the sea, and a moving blue light filling the room, yes the sea is

coming over him, heavy and cool, we are past memory now, this moment, and a kind of

humming, like a voice, and then he is safe, and then she is gone.

Notes:

a tiny little pipe with a mouthpiece: see Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary (scriptum 1926–27), trans. Richard Sieburth (Harvard University Press, 1986), 18.

a pair of nickel-frame eyeglasses: see Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave (The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 10.

a large golden grandfather watch: see Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 674.

the song of a walker’s steps . . . a clacking of buckets: see Walter Benjamin, “Marseilles” (1929), in Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Schocken Books, 1978), 132.

a love seat, the kind where the lovers sit back to back: see Benjamin, Moscow Diary, 105.

an ochre-yellow Italian scarf: ibid., 16.

silent as a swarm of ravens . . . : see Benjamin, “Moscow” (1927), in Reflections, 100.

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Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

"Walter Benjamin wrote: 'He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.... For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, [a trace fossil!], which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from earlier associations, that stand—like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’ gallery—in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.' —'A Berlin Chronicle' (scriptum 1932), in Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 26."

Erik Harper Klass's stories and essays have been published (or are forthcoming) in a variety of journals, including New England Review, Ninth Letter, West Branch, The Baltimore Review, South Carolina Review, Yemassee (Cola Literary Review), Summerset Review, and many others. His novella Polish Poets in Beds with Girls is now available from Buttonhook Press. Erik writes in Los Angeles, CA.