A Book of Memories (6 page)

On my long walks back home (if I may still refer to the city of my birth as home), having had my fill of the narrow, chaotically bustling streets, I enjoyed cutting across the old city and resting my gaze on the fields stretching into the distance beyond the city gate, where I'd turn precisely and purposefully in the direction where, over the hills, I could make out Ludwigsdorf, the village that Hilde and I used to visit every Saturday afternoon; even though spending time in the cemetery was never part of my plans, I could not escape its attraction, and it also happened to be on the way, though I could have avoided it by not taking Finstertorstrasse, but it was so tempting to walk through the crumbling brick fence with little shrubs sprouting in the cracks and, like a frequent visitor, feeling at ease and glad to have returned, to roam about the moldering, weed-ridden crypts and bright, flower-covered mounds in this ancient cemetery until, finally, coming to our winged angel that was destined, rather tragically, to renew the appearance of our family vault
—but perhaps that was the very reason I went there: to see it.

It had to be some self-tormenting impulse that led me there, because for one thing this work, irritatingly amateurish in its own right, offended my good taste and my aesthetic sense, and for another, here in front of this statue the anger I felt toward Father, the revulsion and hatred could finally surface and be intensified by the trite sentimentality and calculated falsity with which the stonecutter had tried to reconcile his client's express wishes with his own so-called artistic concepts, for while he hadn't modeled the angel's head directly after my mother's but had augmented his own memories of her with the artistic ingenuity of using the portrait of her hanging on the dining-room wall, a rose-tinted image of Mother as a young girl, he nevertheless managed to slip some of Mother's characteristic features into that sweetly virginal, little-girl face: the angel's abruptly protruding brow and close-set eyes were reminiscent of Mother's forehead and eyes; the thin, gently curved nose, somewhat impudent lips, and charmingly pointed chin did bring to mind Mother's mouth and chin; but to make the confusion utter and complete, the crudely articulated stone cloak
—in itself completely alien to any human shape—revealed the outlines of such an ethereally fragile body—with high-set, small, barely budding, yet aggressive breasts, a round belly, softly bulging buttocks, and hips a little bonier than necessary—and the wind, blowing into the angel's face and dramatically sweeping back her hair, made the cloak cling to the deep groin of this slender, about-to-ascend figure with such intrusive shamelessness that a viewer, faced with this hodgepodge of coarse details, could not possibly contemplate death or the possibility of dying; oddly enough, the statue did not evoke anything lifelike or natural, unless one considered natural the pitiful imaginings of an all-too-accommodating, aging artisan; and the tomb was vulgar and tasteless, too vulgar and tasteless to waste words or feelings on it if its creation had been the result of an unfortunate accident—the stonecutter's inability to realize, with noble simplicity, what Father had asked him to do; but no, it was neither accident nor coincidence but, on the contrary, the secret nature of necessity—unmistakably signaling an imminent doom—revealed that this statue was more a monument to my father's depravity than a memorial to my mother's life.

But who could have foreseen then, in the mundane portents of our days, the future in its entirety?

"We'll be late for the train," Father said, still there on the seashore, and almost imperceptibly his expression changed, the ironic self-satisfied look he had worn while leaning on the parapet and looking at Mother now mingling with a kind of impatient embarrassment; Mother, however, appeared to ignore both the odd intonation and the unusual sentence
— unusual in that it was uttered at all; she made no reply.

She couldn't, unless she was going to interrupt her breathing exercise, because at this moment she was busy keeping her mouth open, her tongue stuck out, and with rhythmical, panting breaths she was trying to expel from her stomach the gradually inhaled, forcibly held-in air
—like many women, she found this abdominal breathing difficult; but there was also a sort of offended, provocatively didactic intent in Mother's silence, a suggestion of increased tension that chose silence as a means to indicate that what had just happened would not pass without consequences, because they had an agreement; they had an agreement, concluded sometime ago, in tones that for my benefit were meant to be jocular but turned out to be serious, fueled by heated emotions, for just such occasions, when Father could no longer endure this "bestial existence," as he liked to put it, and it came about during one of those fresh-air exercises when Father, totally unexpectedly and with his most unruly grin on his face, put an end to his sufferings, which he had tried to ease by much groaning, puffing, and wheezing, and glanced over at Mother: a transparently blatant curiosity appeared in his eyes, hovering like a cloud, a look neither amusing nor congruent with his otherwise laughing demeanor, a look I knew well even if at the time I did not understand it, and his face became frighteningly exposed, attractively vulnerable, as if every other facial expression of his, though perfected and deemed authentic for most social occasions, was a mere subterfuge, a mask to hide, guard, and protect him, and now he was revealed, the real he was freed at last, unable to hold himself back from himself any longer—and he was beautiful, he looked really beautiful then: his black hair curled over his gleaming forehead, dimples of silent laughter quivered on his round cheeks, his eyes turned a bluer blue, and his fleshy lips parted a little—and then, gliding with dreamlike swiftness up to Mother, he simply reached toward her mouth and, using three fingers with a sensitivity and daintiness that belied the abruptness of the move, seized the stuck-out tongue by its root, whereupon Mother, with the raw instinct of self-defense, first jerked her head back to keep from retching and then, probably surprising even herself, bit Father's fingers so violently that he cried out in pain; from then on it was agreed that during exercises Father was supposed to watch the sea "and not me, do you understand? not me, but the sea! you are unbearable, do you hear? your look is unbearable"—yet when the moment came and Father, bored with exercising, leaned on the parapet, I always sensed in the tension of Mother's body, along with fear and reticence, her wish that he not turn to the sea, that he do something to her, something startling and scandalous that would end those painful and pointless exertions which, because of her heavy menstruation that lasted for months, she had to continue if she wanted her health restored; she wanted to be free to follow Father to that secret region his dimpled smile and clouded glance so suggestively hinted at; yes, she wanted him to do with her as he pleased—yet she also may have suspected the situation was quite the opposite of what she wished for, because her fears and reticence were far stronger than her desires.

Since I was more inclined to comply with Dr. Köhler's instructions, Mother liked me to stand right next to her, quite close, I might say in the heat of her body's warmth, so close that the shoulder ruffles of her puffed-sleeve dress almost touched my face, but this certainly did not mean that in her frustration she sought solace in me or began to have impermissible and troubling feelings of tenderness for me
—I don't think she harbored such feelings for anybody—no, there was a purely logical reason we ended up next to each other: this way she could hear and then follow the rhythm of my breathing, and by the same token, if she faltered or was out of breath or, letting her mind wander, got confused, I could wait for her and help her get back on track; I was able to hold my breath for a long time, wait for and enjoy the slight dizziness that would displace my feelings while things I could only see before but not feel grew sharper and pervaded my senses; I could lose myself at last and be anything I wanted—a distant sound, the crest of a wave, a seagull, a falling leaf landing atop the stone wall, or just vacant air—until in the redness of the blood rushing to my brain everything would slowly turn dark, yet the instinct to breathe would still force me to hear distinctly and sense how Mother, with a few interpolated exhalations and inhalations, was reverting to our previous rhythm and how, her own breath balancing at a precarious standstill, she'd wait for me to take the lead again; we did not look at and could not see each other, our bodies did not touch, yet only incaution and inexperience could explain and excuse the blindness with which she allowed us to stray into such emotionally dangerous territory; she should have known that we were doing something we shouldn't have, and that in this instance she was the seducer, because mutual sensation, when deprived of tactile and visual contact, will resort to more receptive, more primitive, one might even say more animal-like means, and then the other body's heat, odor, mysterious emanations and rhythms can convey much more than a glance, a kiss, or an embrace ever could; this is true in lovemaking as well: the various positions and techniques are never an end but merely the means of descent into the depths, while the end keeps concealing itself in deeper and deeper regions, beyond ever heavier curtains, and if it allows itself to be caught and exposed at all, it will do so only in the experience of unfulfillable pleasure and unattainable hope.

And now, twenty years later, and only a few days before my thirtieth birthday, which, on the strength of an intuition, a persistent though inexplicable premonition, I had come to consider
—as it happened, correctly—to be a highly significant turning point in my life, I decided to forgo the pleasure of spending yet another pleasant afternoon with my fiancée and of being the guest of honor at my own birthday party, which her parents had arranged for me, and instead, seeking a refuge worthy of the supposed significance of the day, I turned to solitude, again to solitude, or rather to a more intimate tête-à-tête with my betrothed; delayed by some business engagement, my future father-in-law had not yet come home, and when the lovely Frau Itzenpiltz, using the excuse of having to see about supper, considerately withdrew, leaving the two of us alone in the room, I told Helene about my intention to travel; she had no objections at all—on the contrary, I felt she agreed and understood that it was imperative that the first chapters of the narrative I had been planning for years be committed to paper before our wedding day, to make certain that the expected change in our lifestyle would not divert me from my original ambitions or, worse, cause me to abandon them—"I feel, Helene, I really do, that you do not require a detailed explanation," I said to her in a whisper, and the sincerity of my words was no doubt enhanced by the fact that I clasped her hand gently, and our cheeks were so close I could feel whiffs of my own breath mingled with hers on my face; the red of dusk was playing with the patterns of the silk hangings on this warm autumn day, the windows were open; "Still, I find it necessary, Helene, to speak of something I can broach only with the utmost reluctance, for it is so dark and morally dubious .. . what I intend to tell you increases the perils of your undertaking as much as it does my own responsibility, please realize that; you can still change your mind," I said, and knowing full well she wouldn't, I laughed, teasingly; "What I intend to say, then, is that happiness, though it ought to be at the very center of my heart's desires, is not, for no amount of explaining and quibbling will make it conducive to artistic creation, so if I leave now, I am deliberately exchanging the happiness I know can be mine when I am with you for the unhappiness I always feel when not in your company, the unhappiness I knew before we met"—needless to say I was lying to her, while pleased to be affecting an air of sincerity, or, I should say, my confession was sincere inasmuch as it was a pretext only; and being able to deceive her, seeing her fall under my spell so easily, made her even more attractive to me, but at the same time, precisely because in her gullibility she laid herself so open, precisely because she couldn't be anything but what she was—tears of anguish were brightening her blue eyes—the real sentiment I wanted to express grew ever heavier within me; "Away from here, I don't ever want to see you again" is what I should have said to her, because I could not resist the deep-seated urge to escape and, in a sense, to disappear for good, as in fact once, while leaving their house, I did catch myself mumbling, completely unawares and spitefully, "It's finished, done with, I'm free"—and if now, having the luxury to fantasize, I try to imagine what would have happened if that afternoon before my departure I had not merely looked for a pretext but spoken candidly to her, what I see before me is the face of a young woman whose translucent white skin and soft round features give her an uncertain, almost ethereal look, though the pale freckles scattered around the delicate nose and the thick bronze-red hair imbue it with a curious vitality, and this face shows no surprise, on hearing my news, indeed breaks into a smile, as if it had been waiting for these words; when Helene smiles like this, with full-mouthed enjoyment, she looks older and more experienced, because in her moistly gleaming teeth there is a touch of wanton willfulness; she quickly wipes away the teardrop brought to her eyes by the moral superiority of knowing she has acquiesced obligingly to my plan, and yet she makes a gesture that, in the heat of the moment, excited by each other's breath, we both long for: it would have to have been a very common gesture, but this is the point where my imagination comes to a respectful halt, given Helene's then still untouched sensuality; leaving, then, after a supper spent in a convivial family atmosphere and a farewell which in the circumstances seemed almost too lighthearted, I may have carried away with me Helene's earnestly given consent, yet I could not but feel our future to be ominous and threatening, since all signs indicated we would have to build it on insincerity, insincerity in the guise of mutual attentiveness and consideration, because, on the one hand, it seemed that my unavoidable physical attraction to her would be nourished not by the kind of raw and inexplicable force that, as far as I knew, one felt in real love, but only by an exquisite sense of beauty, a titillating vulnerability, and on the other hand, I didn't think she would ever admit that to endure living with her own fragile emotional sensibilities, she herself needed those coarser gestures, a secret lewdness which she could not possibly expect me to provide and the presumed lack of which would not be compensated either by the mysteriousness of my obscure silences or by the lies of my playful fits of sincerity.