Berlin Stories (14 page)

I have a photograph of Frau Scheer in which she is shown as a young woman and looks utterly charming. She married a happy-go-lucky, good-natured man who wished to enjoy his days upon this earth. His wife then manifested a truly demonic talent for speculating with fortune. She arrived in the capital during the great
Gründerzeit
period of industrial expansion, and here she found ample opportunity to develop her ingenious capabilities. In no time, she and her husband became rich. The money that now flowed into the pockets of this pleasure-seeking man drove him to carry on in the most hair-raising fashion. He surrounded himself with friends and pursued a dissolute lifestyle. He was a simple, good, innocuous man for whom the purpose of these riches was to squander them. This is much the way Asian and African princes comport themselves when they arrive in European cities. There are two sorts of people in the world: those who expend money on sensual debaucheries, and those who have a peculiar love of money and therefore manage it in the most faithful, cautious way. Frau Scheer was born to manage funds, while her husband was born to waste and squander them. Some cannot seem to value money, while others fail to value pleasure—and the life Scheer was leading verged on the monstrous. When it was getting on to evening, he would fill all his pockets with hundred- and thousand-mark banknotes, and thus excellently equipped he would betake himself off, as one says, and when this man—who was easily made drunk—had been plundered by dissolute women, villainous waiters, and other sorts of robbers and knaves, they would deposit him in a hackney cab to be driven slumberously home, and when his wife, this indefatigable businesswoman, saw her husband arriving in this state, docking wretchedly in the harbor of their marriage, in full knowledge of the fact that this miserable, base junket had once again cost enormous sums, she was seized with fury at the man's cloddishness, she felt soiled and offended, and all her limbs trembled with indignation, disgust, pain, and horror.

I am in no way capable of judging whether there is any truth to the rumor that came to me shortly before Frau Scheer's death from the mouth of the aforementioned personage who numbered among her friends, a rumor that sought to convince me that my unfortunate Frau Scheer had given some thought to arranging to have her imprudent husband murdered. According to this rumor, as the mischief being wrought by this frivolous man was becoming ever more serious, Frau Scheer entered into apparently quite close relations with a strange, romantic, exalted individual, a physician, meaning to avail herself of this overwrought dreamer and visionary as what we might refer to as a willing, chivalrously eager tool, so to speak, of revenge and retribution. Certainly the aggrieved woman had great and justified cause for her honest, deeply felt wrath; certainly she herself, as I had ample opportunity to observe, possessed an easily swayed, sensitive character and was ruled by a volatile temper, and yet I did and do not believe in the above so horrific and lugubrious claim. Frau Scheer was at the same time gentle, she had a visible streak of sweet kindness, and—despite everything, and then despite everything all over again—she did love, respect, and esteem her husband. Perhaps that harebrained adventurer, that dark midnight doctor had indeed once made her a sinister offer of this sort; but she most assuredly would have rejected it, admonishing her friend—if in fact she ever had one—to behave in a proper, sensible way. I do not doubt this for a moment, although I do concede that Frau Scheer was a peculiar and, as said before, utterly out-of-the-ordinary human being. Meanwhile Scheer fell ill, and it wasn't long before he died at what was by no means an advanced age but rather, relatively speaking, the prime of life, and Frau Scheer was left alone.

From this point until her own passing, the woman who is the object of this “study” led a life that could not possibly have been spent any more miserably, restlessly, and tormentedly by any other person. No beggar woman ever had so poor, lamentable, and shabby an existence. No poor worker or worker's wife ever led such a poor, sad life of woe as did this exceedingly wealthy woman, and if ever in this world, which is a mystery and will always remain one, there lived a hero or heroine of everyday life, this Frau Scheer was a heroine. She fought an unheard-of battle and suffered and endured unheard-of adversity. A single glance into her apartment revealed everything she endured. Was Frau Scheer mad? Often when I saw her chasing about or speaking, walking, or writing in such haste, making phone calls, running about and carrying on, this admittedly somewhat bold and audacious thought did occur to me. Obstinacy often comes awfully close to madness. Frau Scheer could have built herself a palace, a wonderful summer and a winter residence and dwelt there like a baroness, countess, or princess, but the human heart is a curious thing, and the heart of our peculiar lady was devoted entirely to her business ventures, and she had no interest in all the pleasures, splendors, and beauties of the world. Frau Scheer was shockingly tightfisted; stinginess and the earning of money were like two dear sons to her—she saw in them the best and the most precious of what the world had to offer. Yes, I must confess that this woman struck me as infinitely fascinating: I sympathized with her. Sympathies are strange things; sometimes they can scarcely be explained. I found this millionairess sympathetic although she was so ugly; her sorrow and misery cast a romantic spell that made her appear beautiful.

The way I made her acquaintance is quite simple. One day I joined a bizarre household to live as the tenant of a certain Frau Wilke, who died soon thereafter. The owner of the building—in fact my Frau Scheer—sent word to me that she was happy to allow me to go on living in my room. This news was welcome, since I was virtually in love with my little chamber, which was situated in a charmingly out-of-the-way corner. And so Frau Scheer became my new landlady. At the time, my own finances were in so sorry a state they could not possibly have been any worse; as a result of this, I was quiet, moody, and withdrawn, and thus at the beginning I paid no attention at all to this in her own way highly significant woman. I sometimes saw her when I peered out my lovely window, walking up and down in the garden in bizarre, gypsylike attire, her hair disheveled, and I was honestly astonished at the sight of this carelessly clad female figure. As for the rest I took no notice of her whatever, wicked fellow that I was, even though, as it later dawned on me, the woman had no doubt wished to keep me in her apartment above all for the sake of having some human being near her. Loneliness, what a fearsome wild beast you are! But what sort of heedful attentiveness might I have bestowed on this woman at a time when I was occupied exclusively with paltry, naked thoughts of how I might possibly manage to improve my own lot even a little. In those days I myself resembled a half-starved beast of prey casting about with wildly flaming eyes for a suitable opportunity to hunt down some quarry to improve its precarious position. Venture into that savage metropolis, dear reader, and you will see for yourself how abruptly glamour and good fortune alternate there with deprivation and worry, and how people undermine each other's subsistence, as each does his best to cast down the other's successes and tread upon them so as to make success his own.

“I am poor, and I am steeling myself for even more poverty,” I wrote, as I recall, to delightful Auguste, who had been my sweet little lady friend, “and you will probably never again respond to a letter containing such doleful confessions. I understand you womenfolk; you are only lovely, good, and kind to those who visibly enjoy good fortune in this world. Penury, indigence, and misfortune repulse you. Forgive the anguish that is not ashamed to write such things. What am I capable of offering you when I am scarcely able to keep my own head above water? Clearly things are over between us, no?, for you will surely find it expedient to shun me. This I can understand. And I as well am joyfully taking leave of you today, because now it is time for me to invest what strength I possess in fighting an all too unlovely struggle for survival. Oh, all those rose scenes, that divine, gay exuberance you bestowed on me, that laughter! I shall always be prepared to think back on a happiness whose mischievous originator you were. Let me kiss you once more in thought, tenderly, as if we were still entitled to dally thus. No doubt you have already begun to forget me. And so adieu forever.” —I have interposed this letter in order to offer the reader a brief, elegant diversion. The letter remained unanswered, and this is what I'd expected, well-acquainted as I was with my clever little Auguste. Despite all her amusing diminutiveness, she was a soul of great resolve. She went on her way, and this pleased me. But now back to Frau Scheer. Back to the matter at hand.

Around the neighborhood, in the shops, at the grocer's or hairdresser's, on the street and on the stairs, people spoke of that stingy old witch, that “Scheer,” and all too cheap and superficial phrases were invoked to condemn her. The picture of her being sketched out had nothing at all to do with reality and truth. Later on it was an easy matter for me to see through it all. Meanwhile I was gradually coming into contact and acquaintance with this so widely discussed and disparaged woman. She complained about my taciturnity and reticence, but I found it appropriate to continue to be reticent and taciturn. I realized she was utterly abandoned. Apart from a lady of quite elegant appearance who came to the house now and then, and apart from Emma, her former maid, who came every day to offer her a small amount of assistance in the household, no one ever visited. The visitors she did receive—who made their presence known with larger and smaller amounts of noise—were workmen and businessmen of all sorts; Frau Scheer was a landowner and real estate investor on a grand scale. Or else there would be a ring or a knock at the door, and tenants would uneasily enter, either coming to pay the rent that was due or bounding up to declare that they were in no position to pay. Or then I would suddenly hear shouting and hurled invectives in the hall. This would be some person who believed himself unfairly treated. And so Frau Scheer had to telephone the local police station for help, whereupon policemen appeared, and thus the dwelling of a woman who had enormous sums of money at her disposal witnessed one unlovely scene after another, countless unfortunate incidents, so that the lady and mistress of this home found it a comfort and experienced the greatest refreshment and relief when she was able to sit quietly in her room in the evening and weep, simply that: weep undisturbed.

My room and Frau Scheer's writing and living room lay side by side, and often I heard through the thin wall a sound that I was only ever able to explain to myself with the thought that someone was weeping. The tears of a wealthy, stingy woman are surely no less doleful and deplorable, and speak a surely no less sad and moving language than the tears of a poor little child, a poor woman, or a poor man; tears in the eyes of mature human beings are appalling, for they bear witness to a helplessness one might scarcely believe possible. When a child cries, this is immediately comprehensible, but when old people are induced or compelled to weep despite their advanced years, this reveals to the one hearing and seeing this the world's wretchedness and untenability, and such a person cannot escape the oppressive, devastating thought that everything—everything—that moves upon this unfortunate earth is weak, shaky, and questionable, the quarry and haphazard plaything of an insufficiency that has entwined itself about all that exists. No, it is not good when a human being still weeps at an age when one should consider it a divinely lovely activity to dry the tears of children.

With the exception of her niece, wife of the Cantonal Executive Councillor So-and-so, with whom she maintained, or so it seemed, amiable relations, Frau Scheer seemed to be on irrevocably bad terms with all her relatives. Some of them, I was later told, were her mortal enemies as a result of a vicious and deep-rooted feud. If what I heard people saying immediately following Frau Scheer's death is true—namely, that one of her sisters had been living in the most squalid circumstances without receiving any support whatever from wealthy Frau Scheer, and that she even tormented and oppressed this sister so as to mock her misery on top of everything else while remaining utterly unmoved by it—of course this information casts a peculiar light on this friend of mine, and I am wondering with some degree of urgency whether she truly was capable of such dastardly, merciless conduct. Her relatives seemed to have the worst possible opinion of her. To be sure, one mustn't underestimate the role played in this by personal animosity. They tried to present Frau Scheer to me as a heinous actress whose mind was entirely filled with insatiable egotism. Hatred, distrust, wickedness, and duplicity, they averred, were the purpose and meaning of her depraved, corrupt existence. I listened to all these things without saying much in reply, but meanwhile was thinking thoughts of my own, for these people who were doing their best to make me think of the unfortunate woman in bad and bleak terms by no means struck me as being so terribly pure of heart and good themselves. At the same time it pained me that Frau Scheer no longer had even a good remembrance in this world where she had so struggled and suffered. But here I must draw attention to yet another strange circumstance, for I may not leave anything important unmentioned that might be able to give life to or illuminate my subject. In Frau Scheer's immediate neighborhood, a young, pretty girl—a real goose, by the way, the little daughter of a police inspector—was generally thought to be poised to inherit Frau Scheer's fortune. I often saw this girl at the apartment, and I have to say that this rather silly little thing of eighteen who was presumptuous enough to surround herself with all sorts of fond, happy illusions, did not make a particularly favorable impression on me. If the gullible parents of this girl indulged frivolous hopes with even more frivolous complacence, then they found themselves utterly deceived in a quite instructive way. For later on not so much as a single dotted
i
was found in favor of Little Miss Cheeky, and the hope-filled damsel inherited not a penny. This should be the fate of all those who are not ashamed to base their prospects on the death of a fellow human being.