19
Without giving it much thought or knowing what I wanted to say to her, I dialed Monika Silvs’ number. The first ring was hardly over when she lifted the receiver and said: “Hullo.”
Just the sound of her voice was enough to give me a lift. It is intelligent and firm. I said: “Hans speaking, I wanted …” but she interrupted me and said: “Oh, it’s you …” It sounded neither unkind nor unpleasant, only it was obvious she had been expecting someone else’s call, not mine. Maybe she was waiting for a call from a friend, from her mother—still, my feelings were hurt.
“I just wanted to thank you,” I said, “for being so kind.” I could distinctly smell her perfume, Cuir de Russie, or whatever it was, much too sophisticated for her.
“I am so sorry about everything,” she said, “it must be terrible for you.” I didn’t know what she meant it: the Kostert review, which all Bonn had read apparently, or Marie’s marriage, or both.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” I said, “you could come over here and take pity on my soul, on my knee too, it’s pretty badly swollen.”
She was silent. I had expected her to say Yes at once, I dreaded the thought she might really come. But she only said: “Not today, I’m expecting a visitor.” She should have told me who she was expecting, she might at least have said: man or woman. The word “visitor” depressed me. I said: “Oh well, perhaps tomorrow, I shall probably have to stay in bed for at least a week.”
“Isn’t there anything else I can do for you, I mean something I can do by phone.” She said this in a voice which made me hope her visitor might be a woman after all.
“Yes,” I said, “you could play me Chopin’s Mazurka in B Flat, Opus 7.”
She laughed and said: “What an idea!” At the sound of her voice I wavered for the first time in my monogamy. “I don’t care much for Chopin,” she said, “and I play him badly.”
“Never mind,” I said, “that doesn’t matter. Have you got the music there?”
“It must be around somewhere,” she said. “Just a moment.” She put down the receiver on the table, and I could hear her walking across the room. It was a few minutes before she came back, and I remembered what Marie had once told me, that sometimes even saints had had girl friends. Only spiritually, of course, but still: whatever the thing had of a spiritual nature, these women had given them. I didn’t even have that.
Monika picked up the receiver. “Yes,” she said with a sigh, “I have the mazurkas here.”
“Then please,” I said, “play the B Flat Opus 7 Number 1.”
“I haven’t played Chopin for years, I would have to practice a bit.”
“Maybe you don’t want your visitor to hear you playing Chopin?”
“Oh,” she said with a laugh, “I don’t mind him listening.”
“Sommerwild?” I asked, almost in a whisper, I heard her exclaim in surprise and I went on: “If it really is him, slam the piano lid down on his head.”
“He hasn’t deserved that,” she said, “he’s very fond of you.”
“I know,” I said, “I believe it too, but I wish I had the guts to kill him.”
“I’ll practice a bit and play you the mazurka,” she said quickly. “I’ll ring you.”
“Yes,” I said, but neither of us hung up. I could hear her breathing, for how long I don’t know, but I could hear it, then she hung up. I would have gone on holding the receiver for a long time just to hear her breathe. My God, at least a woman’s breathing.
Although the beans I had eaten still lay heavily on my stomach and I was getting more and more depressed, I went into the kitchen, opened the second can of beans, tipped the contents into the saucepan in which I had heated the first lot, and lit the gas. I threw the filter paper with the coffee grounds into the garbage pail, took a clean filter, put four spoons of coffee into it, put the kettle on, and tried to tidy up the kitchen. I threw the floorcloth over the coffee puddle, the empty cans and eggshells into the pail. I hate untidy rooms, but I am incapable of tidying them up myself. I went into the living room, took the dirty glasses, put them into the sink in the kitchen. Now there was nothing untidy any more in the apartment, yet it didn’t look tidy. Marie had such a clever, swift way of making a room look tidy, without doing anything to it which you could put your finger on. It must be something to do with her hands. The thought of Marie’s hands—just the idea that she might put her hands on Züpfner’s shoulders—heightened my depression to the point of despair. A woman can express or pretend so much with her hands that men’s hands always seem to me like glued-on hunks of wood. Men’s hands are handshaking hands, hitting hands, and of course shooting hands and signing hands. Shake, hit, shoot, sign non-negotiable checks—that’s all men’s hands can do, and, of course, work. Women’s hands have almost ceased to be hands: whether they spread butter on bread or smooth hair away from the forehead. No theologian has ever thought of preaching about women’s hands in the Gospels: Veronica, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha—all those women’s hands in the Gospels which treated Christ tenderly. Instead they preach about laws, principles of order, art, state. In his private life, so to speak, Christ dealt almost entirely with women. Of course he needed men, because, like Kalick, they have a relationship to power, a sense of organization and all that crap. He needed men, the way you need packers to move house, for the heavy work, and Peter and John were so kind they could hardly be called men, while Paul was as virile as befitted a Roman. At home we had the Bible read to us on every possible occasion, because our family swarms with pastors, but not one of them ever talked about the women in the Gospels, or about something as intangible as unjust Mammon. It was the same with the Catholics in the “group,” they never wanted to talk about unjust Mammon, Kinkel and Sommerwild always smiled self-consciously when I mentioned it to them—as if they had caught Christ out in an embarrassing lapse, and Fredebeul spoke of the abuse this expression had suffered at the hands of history. What worried him about it was its “irrational aspect,” as he put it. As if money were something rational. In Marie’s hands even money lost its dubious quality, she had a wonderful way of handling it carelessly and yet at the same time very carefully. Since on principle I refused checks and other “means of payment,” I always got my fee in cash, so we never needed to plan ahead for more than two or at most three days. She gave money to almost everyone who asked her for it, sometimes even to people who hadn’t asked her for it at all but who, as it turned out during the conversation, were in need of money. Once she gave some money to a waiter in Göttingen to buy a winter coat for his son who was just starting school, and she was always paying the surcharge for helpless grandmothers who had strayed into first-class compartments on trains on their way to funerals. There is no end to the number of grandmothers who travel by train to the funerals of children, grandchildren, daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, and who—at times, of course, with a certain coy grandmotherly helplessness—stumble laboriously into a first-class compartment, weighed down with heavy suitcases and parcels stuffed with smoked sausage, bacon and cakes. Marie would then make me stash away the heavy suitcases and parcels in the luggage rack, although everyone in the compartment knew that Granma only had a second-class ticket in her purse. She would then go out into the corridor and “arrange” things with the conductor, before Granma’s attention was drawn to her mistake. Marie always began by asking how far she was going and who had died—so she could pay the right surcharge. The grandmothers’ comments usually consisted of some such gracious remark as: “Young people are not nearly as bad as they’re made out to be,” the fee took the form of hefty ham sandwiches. Especially between Dortmund and Hanover—so it always seemed—there are a great many grandmothers traveling every day to funerals. Marie was always ashamed of our traveling first class, and would have thought it intolerable if someone had been thrown out of our compartment because he only had a second-class ticket. She had unlimited patience when it came to listening to long-winded descriptions of family relationships and looking at photos of complete strangers. Once we spent two hours sitting next to an old peasant woman from Bückeburg who had twenty-three grandchildren and a photo of each one of them in her purse, and we listened to twenty-three life stories, looked at twenty-three photos of young men and young women who had all done well: municipal inspector in Münster, or married to a railway official, manager of a sawmill, and another one had “an important job in this party we always vote for—you know the one I mean,” and of another one, who was in the army, she maintained he had “always played safe.” Marie was always completely absorbed by these stories, she found them tremendously thrilling and talked about “real life,” I found the element of repetition tiring. There were so many grandmothers between Dortmund and Hanover whose grandsons were railway officials and whose daughters-in-law died young because they “don’t give birth to all their children, the women nowadays—that’s what it is.” Marie could be very kind and nice to old people who needed help; she was also constantly helping them to telephone. I once told her she ought to have worked at the Catholic Travelers’ Aid, and she said, somewhat nettled: “And why not?” I hadn’t meant it at all unkindly or disapprovingly. Now she really had landed in a kind of Catholic Travelers’ Aid, I believe Züpfner married her to “save” her, and she married him to “save” him, and I was not sure if he would allow her to use his money to pay for express and first-class surcharges for grandmothers. He was certainly not stingy, but in a maddening way, like Leo, his needs were small. Not like St. Francis of Assisi, who could picture the needs of others though his own needs were small too. I found the idea of Marie now having Züpfner’s money in her purse unbearable, like the word honeymoon and the idea that I might fight for Marie. Fight could only be meant in the physical sense. Even a clown out of training like me was better than either Züpfner or Sommerwild. Before they had even got into position I would have already done three somersaults, come at them from behind, got them down on their backs, and clamped a half-nelson on them. Or were they perhaps thinking of real brawls? I wouldn’t put even such perverse variations of the Nibelung saga past them. Or did they mean it in a spiritual sense? I was not afraid of them, and why was Marie not allowed to answer my letters, which were after all a kind of spiritual challenge? They used words like wedding trip and honeymoon and dared call me obscene, those hypocrites. They should listen to what waiters and chambermaids tell each other about honeymoon couples. Every scruffy bastard in the train, in the hotel, wherever they show themselves, whispers “honeymoon” as they go by, and everyone knows they do the thing constantly. Who takes the sheets off the bed and washes them? When she puts her hands on Züpfner’s shoulders, surely she must remember how I warmed her icy hands in my armpits.
Her hands, which she uses to open the front door, to straighten the covers on little Marie’s bed upstairs, plug in the toaster downstairs in the kitchen, put the kettle on, take a cigarette out of the pack. This time she finds the maid’s message on the refrigerator instead of the kitchen table. “Gone to movies. Back at ten.” in the living room on the TV set, Züpfner’s message. “Urgent call from F. Love and kisses, Heribert.” Refrigerator instead of kitchen table, love and kisses instead of love. In the kitchen, while you are spreading lots of butter, lots of liver sausage on slices of toast, and putting three spoons of cocoa in the cup instead of two, you are aware for the first time of what a slimming diet does to your nerves, do you remember the way Mrs. Blothert exclaimed, when you took the second piece of cake: “But that’s a total of over fifteen hundred calories, can you afford it?” The way the butcher looks at your waistline, a look that silently says: “No, you can’t afford it.” O Holy of Holies, Ca-ca-ca-, Thou -binet and -tholon! “Oh yes, you’re beginning to put on weight.” They are whispering it in the city, the city of whispers. Why this restlessness, this desire to be alone in the dark, in movies and churches, now in the dark living room with cocoa and toast. How did you reply to the young chap at the dance who shot out the question: “Tell me quickly what it is you love, Madam, quickly!” You will have told him the truth: “Children, confessionals, movies, Gregorian chant and clowns.” “And not men, Madam?” “Oh, yes, one” you will have said. “Not men as such, they’re stupid.” “May I print that?” “Oh no, for goodness’ sake, don’t.” If she could say one, why didn’t she say which one? If you love one man, surely you can only mean your own, the one you are married to.
The maid returns. Key in the lock, open the door, close the door, key in the lock. Light on in the hall, off, on in the kitchen, open the refrigerator door, close it, light off in the kitchen. In the hall a gentle knock at the door. “Good night, Madam.” “Good night. Has Marie been a good girl?” “Yes, very.” Light off in the hall, footsteps going upstairs. (“She was sitting there all alone in the dark listening to church music.”)
With those hands that washed out the sheets, that I warmed in my armpits, you touch everything: record player, record, lever, button, cup, bread, child’s hair, child’s bedclothes, the tennis racket. “Why don’t you play tennis any more, I wonder?” Shrug of the shoulders. Don’t feel like it, just don’t feel like it. Tennis is so good for wives of politicians and prominent Catholics. No, no, the two terms are not quite that identical yet. It keeps you slim, supple and attractive. “And F. loves playing tennis with you. Don’t you like him?” Yes, of course. There is something so sincere about him. Indeed there is, they say he got to be Minister with sheer “B.S. and push.” Everyone says he is a scoundrel, a schemer, and yet his affection for Heribert is sincere: the corrupt and the brutal sometimes take to the conscientious and the incorruptible. How touchingly scrupulous it was, the way Heribert went about building his house: no special credits, no “assistance” from party and church friends with connections in the building trade. It was only because he wanted a “hillside lot” that he had to pay a bonus, which he considered actually corrupt. But it was precisely this hillside lot that proved to be troublesome.
Anyone who builds on a hillside has the choice of a garden sloping up or a garden sloping down. Heribert chose to have it slope down—this turns out to be a disadvantage when little Marie starts to play ball, the ball is forever rolling down toward the neighbor’s hedge, sometimes through it and into the rock garden, snaps off twigs, flowers, rolls over delicate, costly mosses, and necessitates awkward scenes of apology. “How can you possibly be cross with such an adorable little girl?” You can’t. Silvery voices gaily pretend unconcern, mouths strained by slimming diets, tired throats with tense muscles, give out gaiety, where only a good row with sharp words flying would relieve the situation. Everything swallowed, covered up with false neighborly gaiety, till some time later on quiet summer evenings behind closed doors and drawn blinds fine china is thrown at embryo ghosts. “I wanted to have it—it was you who didn’t.” Fine china does not sound fine when it is thrown against the kitchen wall. Ambulance sirens scream up the hill. Snapped-off crocus, damaged moss, a child’s hand rolls a child’s ball into the rock garden, screaming sirens announce the undeclared war. Oh if only we had chosen a garden sloping up.
The phone ringing made me jump. I lifted the receiver, flushed, I had forgotten Monika Silvs. She said, “Hullo, Hans?” I said: “Yes,” still didn’t know why she was calling. It was only when she said: “You will be disappointed” that I remembered the mazurka. I couldn’t go back now, couldn’t say “I’d rather not,” we had to go through with this terrible mazurka. I heard Monika put the receiver down on the piano, begin to play, she played extremely well, the tone was superb, but while she played I began to cry from sheer wretchedness. I should not have attempted to repeat that moment: when I came home from being with Marie, and Leo was playing the mazurka in the music room. You can’t repeat moments or communicate them. That autumn evening, in our garden, when Edgar Wieneken did the hundred meters in 10.1. I clocked him myself, measured the distance for him myself, and he ran it that evening in 10.1. He was in top form, in just the right mood for it—but of course nobody believed us. It was our mistake to speak of it at all and so try to perpetuate the moment. We ought to have been content to know he really ran 10.1. Afterwards, of course, he kept running his usual 10.9 and 11.0 and nobody believed us, they laughed at us. It is bad enough to talk about such moments, to try and repeat them is suicide. It was a kind of suicide I was committing when I listened on the phone now to Monika playing the mazurka. There are certain ritual moments which contain their own repetition: the way Mrs. Wieneken cut the loaf—but I had tried to repeat this moment with Marie too by once asking her to cut the loaf the way Mrs. Wieneken had. The kitchen in a workman’s home is not a hotel room, Marie was not Mrs. Wieneken—the knife slipped, she cut her left arm, this experience made us ill for three weeks. This is what sentimentality can lead to. One should leave moments alone, never repeat them.
I was so miserable I couldn’t even cry any more when Monika came to the end of the mazurka. She must have sensed it. When she came to the phone all she said, in a low voice, was: “There, you see.” I said: “I am to blame—not you—forgive me.”
I felt as if I were lying drunk and stinking in the gutter, covered with vomit, my mouth full of foul curses, and as if I had told someone to photograph me and had sent Monika the picture. “May I call you again?” I asked quietly. “In a few days perhaps. I only have one explanation for my terrible behavior, I feel so utterly miserable I can’t even describe it.” I heard nothing, only her breathing, for a few moments, then she said: “I’m going away, for two weeks.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Into retreat,” she said, “and to do a bit of painting.”
“When are you coming over here,” I asked, “to make me a mushroom omelette and one of your decorative salads?”
“I can’t come,” she said, “not now.”
“Later on?” I asked.
“I’ll come,” she said; I could hear her crying, then she hung up.