A Sad Affair (7 page)

Now and again, Sibylle would interrupt her pacing. She did so suddenly, and with unusual violence. She tossed away the end of her cigarette, crushed it underfoot like a man, and said: "Oh, you don't need to know any of that, really." Had she turned cowardly? She had taken a long run-up to an explanation, had wanted to speak, and now she was hesitating, behaving like a cat on a hot, as the proverb says, tin roof. She climbed back into bed [was it to drive off? She knew the game: a bed is a car, beepbeep, gangway] and balanced the breakfast tray, which had arrived, on her knees, which she had drawn up to her chest. Friedrich stood with his back to the window to watch her. The thought that she might have become a coward, full of subterfuges and secrets and not the courage to speak, now alarmed him. That, if that were indeed the case, would be a different Sibylle. She had never made a secret of anything, and had always owned up to whatever she had done. There was no Sibylle of lies. On the street in summer in bright sunshine, she might well try to persuade you: "We need to put up our umbrellas and buy new winter coats, it's snowing," but never did a lie that was not obviously a lie [for love of lying] spring from her lips. She had never used untruths or strategic evasions to gain a small, momentary advantage. Had that changed now, was she on the slippery slope, with herself no longer firmly in grip? Friedrich felt doubtful. Her face no longer had the tranquillity of the good girl. It was excited and looked somehow scraped, the face of a scout. Sharper in its lines and angles too. Was she looking straight ahead? Could she still steer her life, careful of every stone that might knock it off its course? Friedrich didn't know. He couldn't tell. As ever when he was confronted with Sibylle, he regretted that he wasn't a clairvoyant. What was going on behind her brow? It was a fortress, a bulwark, a concrete wall that kept repulsing him. If only he could manage to penetrate the windings of her brain, even once! That must be the key. He suffered from highly specific fantasies and saw an immaterial action as concretely as a blueprint in an educational film. He watched his thinking climb out of his head into hers, and he followed it, as like a red arrow it followed the mazy white tracks of her ponderings. He was palping the most sensitive nerves of her being. He wanted to know them. He wanted to find out: What am I to her, what is she thinking, where is salvation, can I right her and steer her [her misunderstanding!], and win her and make everything turn out well? What he wished to accomplish was a crime; the worst crime possible: to break into another's soul. But that's how it was between them. He was unable to withstand his desire to feel with her. So he was only thinking, as she always said, of himself and his own happiness. Maybe this thinking, this demented desire to possess that went far beyond the merely physical, was the reason why she refused to surrender her life to his claims, because his demands were too steep and too strange and caused a shudder to pass across her back. But: was he truly strange to her? It was to ascertain this, precisely this, that he was compelled to wish for a magical diving suit, his secret burglar's clothing, the devilish plan, to be able to inveigle himself into the chambers of her being. There she was, sitting in front of him, sipping tea in bed, and biting off a piece of croissant, and getting her mouth all jammy. What was her spell, why didn't he go, take his hat and pay the bill at the ridiculous hotel on the lake that wasn't his style, and travel on to the places listed on the ticket in his pocket? What was her spell? Was she beautiful, or rather, was she still beautiful? Friedrich remembered passing through the revolving doors of a café once, and, seeing her coming down from the upper story, so transcendently beautiful, so angelically delicate that he had to close his eyes lest they be blinded by such light, while a sea of tears—as deep as the tropical sea after the sun has gone down, and the forest breathes cinnamon, and cougars scream as they stare from waving palm fronds into the illimitable mirror—while a sea, then, of tears, a sweet ocean of happiness and emotion, fell from the bed of his closed eyes into his heart, splashy and soothing, so that it felt like dying, unconsciousness, sinking, subsiding, the death of a child of god that had seen her. That was how beautiful she was. And so young. A blue dragoon's coat with gray braid set off her face: head of Eros against idyllic Aegean backdrop. Now, for the last time, was she still as beautiful? He was able to behold her, so was the dazzling magic gone, and could he go? No! He loved her. Nothing changed. He was entranced. The longer he looked at her, the more profoundly he felt tied. She put the tray down on the ground, made a deliberate effort, and said: "So do you not like Fedor?"

A difficult question. He had to be careful not to offend her. He replied [and once more his heart was in the grip of another's hand] : "I hardly know him." And then, as the silence thickened in the room, and to take a little of the importance out of the subject (which irked him), he added: "I'm sorry, I'm not really interested in Fedor. I assume you've become friends, which I can understand in the situation you're both in, but I'm sure it'll pass."

To which she nodded, and said: "It's so stupid, you know he's like a child."

Friedrich was aghast when he heard that. An abyss opened at his feet. It was what he'd been terrified of. But he didn't want to jump into it. Not yet. He struggled for the self-mastery of the indifferent traveler, the man merely passing through. He said: "Well, never mind, that's not what's important," which was pretty stupid of him; and then came another question, in a voice that tried to mask the fact that it was shaking and slightly deranged: "And who do you love?"

"Who do I love? How can you ask?" She looked earnest and sure of herself and perhaps a little indignant: "I only love Bosporus, you know that!"

Friedrich made a feeble gesture of agreement and recognition. Bosporus was an officer who had been with the German troops in Turkey, and following the armistice, as they were returning through the Ukraine, had had his knee shattered by a bullet while he was perched on front of the locomotive, his rifle ready. "What about Doctor Magnus?" This question wasn't from Friedrich, it was just his voice, which had made itself independent of him, and to his own horror, put such a question.

"Magnus? I'm fond of him."

At that moment, there was a knock, and Fedor walked in. Friedrich had difficulty concealing his astonishment. So there was a Doctor Magnus, he must be alive for Sibylle to be fond of him, the plaque in the dining room over the buffet was more than just some dusty relic, this foundation for refugees from all countries, and this house, there was something in it, it was alchemy, and he, as if he hadn't sensed it already, had blundered into it! Fedor too was unchanged from the previous evening. He was in his sweater, as though determined he would greet the world always just like that. He kissed Sibylle's hand and shook Friedrich's firmly, like a friend. "How did you sleep?"

The question was directed at Friedrich, and Friedrich nodded: "Fine." What else was he supposed to say? Fedor simply expected that Friedrich would have slept well, that was a given, it was really the least you could expect if someone was staying at the Grand Hotel on the lake. Fedor was doing turns. He climbed onto the bedframe and balanced on top of it. Quite agile, but Friedrich thought: What do I do if he falls on to the bed? He wondered whether he would be able to endure that. But Fedor didn't fall, he vaulted back on the floor, and opened a little box of chocolates on the bedside table.

"They're from Magnus," said Sibylle. It was a request to him not to touch them. But Fedor was unable to hear that. He was insouciant [Sibylle called him naive] and he stuffed his mouth full of chocolates, and then he offered the box to Friedrich. Friedrich didn't feel like chocolate, but he didn't want to admit to himself that he was furious with Fedor for having failed to understand Sibylle's unspoken request; he helped himself to some of the chocolates, to make himself Fedor's accomplice. "You're behaving like swine," she screamed.

Fedor looked amazed: "What do you mean?"

Friedrich knew, and he felt sorry for Sibylle. It wasn't the chocolates, it was the breach of her prerogative that offended her. She always lived ringed by invisible pastures where no one was allowed to set foot. Why not do her the kindness, and agree to respect her boundaries? And, for the second time that morning, Friedrich felt like saying: "Little Sibylle."

But she had had enough of being at a physical disadvantage, the person lying in bed among others upright and dressed, and brusquely she leaped out of bed—making any feeling of tenderness quite inappropriate—ran over to the bathtub, turned on the faucets, supplementing the water with mixtures from mysterious bottles, was as enigmatically industrious as an apothecary or even an alchemist, and finally immersed herself completely, head and all, into the brimming water, and seemed not to want to come out of it, as if she were proposing to drown herself. Then she got dressed, little culottes, no top, powdered herself, wiped about her eyes, all with an animal agreeableness and naturalness and deliberateness, and when there was another, and this time a quieter, knock on the door, she called out: "Come in." It was Anja in her sheepskin.

With the entrance of this creature—this dreamy prince's daughter and clown of the troupe, soft mouth sucking rapidly and greedily on a cigarette—Sibylle transformed herself into a cavalier. She was as courtly as a well-brought-up young man from a prime regiment—no loutish heel-clack, but the soft, coaxing hand of an authentic gentleman, in whom politeness has softened into near-casualness—as she made room for Anja on her hurriedly made bed. So she was still that, a cavalier! Friedrich noted it happily. He knew that it was part of her manner, which he loved, to be courteous, friendly, and kind, to be solicitous to the few girls she allowed to come near her [she was more usually surrounded by men, but a girlfriend had been her dream from childhood on], just as a good rider flatters his horse and, with the respect he shows it, ennobles himself even as he tells it how to trot; and none of it done expressly or with any intention.

Fedor appeared oblivious of the style, the tone that prevailed between the girls. He tossed everything into one pan and assumed that whatever he ate from it must be good. And so he now proceeded to suggest a meal together in a restaurant that belonged to an organization and was supposed to be inexpensive. Friedrich saw Sibylle slipping away from him, lost to him all this day, he was fumbling for an excuse not to go to this organization restaurant, which seemed repugnant to him before he'd even seen it, but Sibylle had already taken the initiative and said "No." "No, Friedrich is only here for today, and he and I need to talk. Now run along and leave us alone."

That rough form of rejection was awkward for Friedrich. He would gladly have taken the edge off it with a word or two, perhaps an invitation for later on. He thought Fedor would blush and be furious. But all he did was laugh, and laughing, say: "You and your secrets!" And he walked over to Sibylle, kissed her on the forehead [she allowed it to happen; therefore, it was allowed], tried to put his arm round Anja too, but she pushed it aside, and went out, already humming to himself. He really was, as Sibylle called him, an uncomplicated fellow. Just a boy, thought Friedrich, it's too bad that I can't be equally nice and open and chirpy in my dealings with him. But there was the poison on Friedrich's side that got in the way of any friendly feelings he might have toward Fedor, the poison that had corrupted and tainted his soul, his body, his being such as it was from its very foundations: Fedor is one of those people who has the apple of felicity land in their lap, without having to go to any trouble to pluck it, he is one of those who wake up in the morning holding the diamond in their hands, one of those who don't understand what is being done to them, he is the man, one of the men, but they are a type, a species, the man for whom Sibylle is not intended, and [oh, unaccountable world!] still he holds her, even if he doesn't realize who it is [in his arms]. Wasn't Friedrich therefore bound to hate Fedor? Wasn't it natural that he thought the cloud is lifting, the day will be fine, when the door closed behind him?

Sibylle had sent Fedor away in order to remain alone with Friedrich. She, who hated writing letters, had, since she'd been living abroad, to his delight sent him letters regularly, sometimes quite long and detailed. Reading between the lines of the last of them, Friedrich had thought he took a "Won't you come visit?" and a violent confusion. He was right about both. Her handwriting, her large, solid, upright, almost printed roman hand had gone astray. The verticals no longer went so steeply up. The trunks of the letters seemed broken, and a shrill nervousness beetled madly across the pages in the guise of a wild scatter of dots, and of bizarrely twisted and contorted lines. These were letters that made Friedrich wildly agitated when they reached him. He replied with telegrams and screeds of his own, sent declarations of love, marriage proposals, offers of shared apartments, lengthy explanations, detailed news, desperate beseechings, and a thousand good wishes, out into the world, all bundled together into one long "Come back!" He hurried to train stations, to airfields, to telephone exchanges in order to be able to reach her promptly and immediately.

To Sibylle, he was a shadow. Her eyes barely took him in as a physical shape. He might stand before her, as now, or he might be far away from her in a different country—it made no difference, he was still a shadow. He was a piece of her past, a thing in her present, and whether he would be an item in her future, that remained to be seen. The shadow didn't offend her eyes, it could camouflage itself like a chameleon—since, in her eyes, he always seemed to take on the shade of the wallpaper, he was even a little less than gray, he was of a tonelessly discreet appearance. This had not always been the case. She had seen him once. At first even seen straight through him [as she thought] with terror and inexplicable desire. Then he had been a flame, a human torch, consuming itself. She thought of the Christians in the gardens of the Emperor Nero. Her terror had eaten up her [inexplicable, in any case] desire. He had turned into a vision, hurrying toward her through the myriad streets of the megalopolis. She would dream of him at night. Every owl's flutter outside her fifth-floor window was his ghostly knocking. She stopped sleeping at home. He was the reason that she went off to sleep away, he caused her to ask Beck to keep watch over her at night, it was Friedrich, who never took his eyes off her life. He was always ready. Running up like a sprinter. Breathless, pale, a pounding in his neck. To him it was like running for his life. Maybe like running for her life. No one knew which, back then.