Despair (8 page)

I remember, I shook off that numbness, put the little book back into my pocket, took out my keys, was about to lock up and leave—was leaving, but then stopped in the passage with my heart going pit-a-pit.… No, it was impossible to leave.… I returned to the room and stood awhile by the window looking at the house opposite. Lamps had already lit up there, shining upon office ledgers, and a man in black, with one hand behind his back, was walking to and fro, presumably dictating to a secretary I could not see. Ever and anon he appeared, and once, even, he stopped at the window to do some thinking, and then again turned, dictating, dictating, dictating.

Inexorable! I switched on the light, sat down, pressed my temples. Suddenly, with mad fury, the telephone rang; but it proved a mistake—wrong number. And then there was silence once more, save for the light patter of the rain quickening the approach of night.

“Dear Felix, I have found some work for you. First of all we must have an eye-to-eye monologue and get things settled. As I happen to be going to Saxony on business, I suggest that you meet me at Tarnitz, which I hope is not far from your present whereabouts. Let me know without delay whether my plan suits you. If it does, I shall tell you the day, the hour and the exact place, and send you such money as your coming may cost you. The traveling life I lead prevents me from having any fixed abode, so you had better direct your answer ‘post office’ (here follows the address of a Berlin post office) with the word ‘Ardalion’ on the envelope. Goodbye for the present. I expect to hear from you.” (No signature.)

Here it is before me, the letter I finally wrote on that ninth of September, 1930. I cannot recollect now if the “monologue” was a slip or a joke. The thing is typed out on good, eggshell blue notepaper with a frigate for watermark; but it is now sadly creased and soiled at the corners; vague imprints of his fingers, perhaps. Thus it would seem that I were the receiver—not the sender. Well, so it ought to be in the long run, for haven’t we changed places, he and I?

There are in my possesssion two more letters written on similar paper, but all the
answers
have been destroyed. If I
still had them—if I had, for instance, that idiotic one which, with beautifully timed nonchalance, I showed to Orlovius (and then destroyed like the rest), it would be possible now to adopt an epistolic form of narration. A time-honored form with great achievements in the past. From Ex to Why: “Dear Why”—and above you are sure to find the date. The letters come and go—quite like the ding-dong flight of a ball over a net. The reader soon ceases to pay any attention whatever to the dates; and indeed what does it matter to him whether a given letter was written on the ninth of September or on September the sixteenth? Dates are required, however, to keep up the illusion.

So it goes on and on, Ex writing to Why and Why to Ex, page after page. Sometimes an outsider, a Zed, intrudes and adds his own little contribution to the correspondence, but he does so with the sole aim of making clear to the reader (not looking at him the while except for an occasional squint) some event, which, for reasons of plausibility and the like, neither Ex nor Why could very well have explained.

They, too, write with circumspection: all those “do-you-remember-that-time-whens” (detailed recollections follow) are brought in, not so much with the object of refreshing Why’s memory as in order to give the reader the required reference—so that, on the whole, the effect produced is rather droll, those neatly inscribed and perfectly unnecessary dates, being, as I have already said, especially good fun. And when at last Zed butts in suddenly with a letter to his own personal correspondent (for it is a world consisting of correspondents that such novels imply) telling him of Ex’s and Why’s death or else of their fortunate union, the reader finds himself feeling that he would prefer the most ordinary missive from the tax collector to all this. As a rule I have always been noted
for my exceptional humorousness; it goes naturally with a fine imagination; woe to the fancy which is not accompanied by wit.

One moment. I was copying that letter and now it has vanished somewhere.

I can continue; it had slipped under the table.

A week later the answer arrived (I had been to the post office five times and my nerves were on edge): Felix informed me that he gratefully accepted my suggestion. As often happens with uneducated people, the tone of his letter was in complete disagreement with that of his usual conversation: his epistolary voice was a tremulous falsetto with lapses of eloquent huskiness whereas in real life he had a self-satisfied baritone sinking to a didactic bass.

I wrote to him again, this time enclosing a ten-mark note, and asking him to meet me on the first of October at five
P.M
. near the bronze equestrian statue at the end of the boulevard which starts left of the railway-station square, at Tarnitz. I did not remember either that bronze rider’s identity (some vulgar and mediocre
Herzog
, I believe), or the name of the boulevard, but one day, while driving through Saxony in the car of a business acquaintance, I got stranded for two hours at Tarnitz, my companion trying to perform some complicated telephoning; and as I have always possessed a memory of the camera type, I caught and fixed that street, that statue and other details—quite a small-size photo, really; though if I knew of a way of enlarging it, one might even discern the lettering of the shop signs, for that apparatus of mine is of admirable quality.

My letter of “Sept. the 16th” is handwritten: I dashed it off at the post office, being so excited by receiving a reply to “mine of the 9th inst.,” that I had not the patience to
wait till I got to a typewriter. Also, there was yet no special reason to be shy of any of my several hands, for I knew that I should prove the recipient eventually. After posting the letter, I felt what probably a purple red-veined thick maple leaf feels, during its slow flutter from branch to brook.

A few days before the first of October I happened to walk with my wife through the Tiergarten; there on a foot bridge we stopped, with our elbows upon the railing. Below, on the still surface of the water, we admired the exact replica (ignoring the model, of course) of the park’s autumn tapestry of many-hued foliage, the glassy blue of the sky, the dark outlines of the parapet and of our inclined faces. When a slow leaf fell, there would flutter up to meet it, out of the water’s shadowy depths, its unavoidable double. Their meeting was soundless. The leaf came twirling down, and twirling up there would rise towards it, eagerly, its exact, beautiful, lethal reflection. I could not tear my gaze away from those inevitable meetings. “Come on,” said Lydia and sighed. “Autumn, autumn,” she said after a while, “Autumn. Yes, it is autumn.” She already wore her leopard-spotted fur coat. I lagged behind and pierced fallen leaves with my cane.

“How lovely it ought to be in Russia now,” she said (similar utterances came from her in early spring and on fine winter days: summer weather alone had no action at all upon her imagination).

“… There is no bliss on earth.… There’s peace and freedom, though.… An enviable lot long have I yearned to know. Long have I, weary slave—”

“Come on, weary slave. We are dining a little earlier.”

“… been contemplating flight.… You’d probably find it dull, Lydia—without Berlin, without Ardalion’s vulgar rot?”

“Why, no. I want awfully to go somewhere too.… Sunshine,
sea waves. A nice cosy life. Can’t understand why you should criticize him so.”

“… ’Tis time, my dear, ’tis time.… The heart demands repose.… Oh, no, I’m not criticizing him. By the way, what could we do with that monstrous portrait? It is an absolute eyesore. Day after day flits by …”

“Look, Hermann, people on horseback. I’m sure she thinks she’s a beauty, that female. Oh, come on, walk. You are dragging along like a sulky child. Really, you know, I am very fond of him. I have long wanted to give him a lot of money for a trip to Italy.”

“… An enviable lot … Long have I … Nowadays Italy would not help a bad painter. It may have been like that once, long ago. Long have I, weary slave …”

“You seem quite asleep, Hermann. Do let us buck up, please.”

Now, I want to be quite frank: I did not experience any special craving for a rest; but latterly such had become the standing topic between me and my wife. Barely did we find ourselves alone than with blunt obstinacy I turned the conversation towards “the abode of pure delight”—as that Pushkin poem has it.

Meanwhile I counted the days with impatience. I had put off the appointment till the first of October, because I wanted to give myself a chance of changing my mind; and I cannot help thinking today that if I
had
changed my mind and not gone to Tarnitz, Felix would still be loitering about the bronze duke, or resting on a neighboring bench, drawing with his stick, from left to right and from right to left, the earthen rainbows drawn by every man with a stick and time to spare (our eternal subjection to the circle in which we are all imprisoned!). Yes, thus he would still be sitting to
this day, and I would keep remembering him, with wild anguish and passion; a huge aching tooth and nothing with which to pull it out; a woman whom one cannot possess; a place, which, owing to the peculiar topography of nightmares, keeps agonizingly out of reach.

On the eve of my departure, Ardalion and Lydia were playing patience, whereas I paced the rooms and surveyed myself in all the mirrors. At that time I was still on admirable terms with mirrors. During the last fortnight I had let my mustache grow. This altered my countenance for the worse. Above my bloodless mouth there bristled a brownish-red blotch with an obscene little notch in the middle. I had the sensation that it was glued on; and sometimes it seemed to me that a small prickly animal was settled on my upper lip. At night, half asleep, I would suddenly pluck at my face, and my fingers did not recognize it. So, as I was saying, I paced about and smoked, and out of every speckly psyche in the flat there glanced at me, with eyes both apprehensive and grave, a hastily made-up individual. Ardalion, in a blue shirt with a pseudo-Scotch tie, clapped down card after card, like a tavern gambler. Lydia sat sideways to the table, legs crossed, skirt up to above stocking line, and exhaled the smoke of her cigarette upward, with her underlip thrust out and her eyes fixing the cards on the table. It was a black and boisterous night; every five seconds there would come, skimming across the roofs, the pale beam of the Radio Tower: a luminous twitch; the mild lunacy of a revolving search-light. Through the narrow window ajar in the bathroom there arrived from some window across the yard, the creamy voice of a broadcaster. In the dining room the lamp illumined my hideous portrait. Blue-shirted Ardalion clapped down
the cards; Lydia sat with her elbow on the table; smoke rose from the ashtray. I stepped out on to the balcony.

“Shut the door—there’s a draught,” came Lydia’s voice from the dining room. A sharp wind made the stars blink and flicker. I returned indoors.

“Whither is our pretty one going?” asked Ardalion without addressing either of us.

“To Dresden,” replied Lydia.

They were now playing
durachki
, dupes.

“My kindest regards to the Sistine,” said Ardalion. “No, I can’t cover that, I’m afraid. Let’s see. This way.”

“He’d do better if he went to bed, he’s dead-tired,” said Lydia. “Look here, you’ve no right to feel the pack, it’s dishonest.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Ardalion. “Don’t be cross, pussy. And is he going for long?”

“This one too, Ardy dear, this one too, please, you haven’t covered it, either.”

So they went on for a good while, talking now of their cards and now about me, as though I were not in the room or as though I were a shadow, a ghost, a dumb creature; and that joking habit of theirs, which before used to leave me indifferent, now seemed to me loaded with meaning, as if indeed it were merely my reflection that was present, my real body being far away.

Next day in the afternoon, I got out at Tarnitz. I had a suitcase with me, and it hampered my movements, for I belong to that class of men who hate carrying anything; what I like is to display expensive fawn gloves, spreading my fingers and swinging my arms freely, as I saunter along and turn out the glistening toes of my handsomely shod feet, which are small for my size and very smart in their mouse-grey
spats, for spats are similar to gloves in that they lend a man mellow elegancy akin to the special cachet of high-class traveling articles.

I love those shops where suitcases are sold, smelling good, creaking; the virginity of pig leather under the protective cloth; but I am digressing, digressing—maybe I
want
to digress … never mind, let us go on, where was I? Yes, I resolved to leave my bag at the hotel. What hotel? I crossed the square, looking about me not only for a hotel, but also attempting to recall the place, as I had passed there once and remembered that boulevard yonder and the post office. I had no time, however, to exercise my memory. All of a sudden my vision was crowded with the signboard of a hotel, its entrance, a pair of laurel bushes in green tubs on either side … but that hint at luxury proved to be a deception, for as soon as you went in, you were knocked silly by the reek from the kitchen; two hirsute nincompoops were drinking beer at the bar, and an old waiter, squatting on his haunches and wagging the end of the napkin under his armpit, was rolling on the floor a fat, white-bellied pup, which was wagging its tail too.

I asked for a room (adding that my brother might spend the night with me) and was given a fair-sized one with a couple of beds and a decanter of dead water on a round table, as at the chemist’s. The waiter gone, I stood there more or less alone, my ears ringing and a feeling of strange surprise pervading me. My double was probably already in the same town as I; was already waiting, maybe, in that town; consequently, I was represented by two persons. Were it not for my mustache and clothes, the hotel staff might—but maybe (I went on, skipping from thought to thought) his features had altered and now were no longer like mine, and
I had come in vain. “Please, God!” I said with force, and failed to understand, myself, why I said so; for did not the sense of my whole life consist now in my possessing a live reflection? So why then did I mention the name of a nonexistent God, why did there flash through my mind the foolish hope that my reflection had been distorted?