I'm Not Stiller (18 page)

Once Julika asked:

'What do you mean, defeat in Spain?'

No answer.

'And did you know it!' exclaimed Stiller. 'How well you knew it! That's quite obvious. From the very first evening on; you were in love with my secret anxiety. You liked that, my dear—a man who didn't just come and embrace you, but trembled, an anxious man, a somehow broken man, who thought he had to prove himself with you, a man with a bad conscience from the start, an idiot who always thought it was his fault when something went wrong. Wasn't it like that? I was even responsible for the weather. I can just see you, Julika, as you suddenly stretched out your hand and said, not looking at the sky but at me, "Now it's raining!" And I put up with the look—'

Julika let him go on talking.

'Wasn't it like that?' asked Stiller. 'Why did you never go to a doctor all those years? You wouldn't be lying on this wretched veranda, Julika. Why didn't you want to be a healthy woman? It's ridiculous but true, Julika, you didn't want to be healthy. You thought me heartless because I once found to my delight that you had no temperature for a change. It annoyed you. Think of the countless evenings when you disappeared into you room to lie down, just so we shouldn't forget to think, "poor Julika", and so you didn't have to compete with all those healthy women. You were dead scared of that. I know—you had very strenuous rehearsals, yes, yes, and I had an easy time with my clay bashing, where it didn't matter whether I worked or not, living like a pasha; I know—your work was not to be compared with any other, not to be compared with the work of a children's specialist, for instance, and it was quite unfair even to hope, or wish, that you should not be more delicate than other women. Your consumption of consideration (from all sides) was shameless. And how everyone gave in to you, not only your idiot, everyone, even those who were not in love with you, heaven knows why they apologized to you, and then you fell asleep in company, because your ballet was not being discussed, they simply thought you a brave woman, covered you up so you shouldn't be cold, because you couldn't even cover yourself up, a company of Good Samaritans, and we all whispered, for who didn't know that Julika had a strenuous rehearsal next morning? They were all at your beck and call, Julika, just like me. And when I didn't understand why you couldn't slip out and make our friends a bowl of gruel, it was my fault, of course, you have to take your wife as God gives her to you. Again and again I forgot how frail you were, how much in need of looking after! And no sooner had our friends gone than you pulled yourself together, exhausted as you were, and made Foxli some warm milk. Because Foxli is you!'

Once in his stride, Stiller brought out a whole string of complaints like this, mere trifles, each more petty than the last; Julika could only feel amazement.

'You just lie there and say nothing as usual,' he said. 'I know, you think you're love and devotion personified, but I think you're narcissism personified. And arrogance personified—that above all. I've gone on my knees before you, Julika, I've wept before you, as a man does weep under certain circumstances. I've felt ashamed before you. I've repented before you, and you forgave me, certainly, you forgave me non-stop. I know, without a moment's emotion, without really thinking for a moment that perhaps you too were destroying me, and really trembling. Why should you? You are the patient sufferer, all our friends know that, a noble being, who never shouts reproaches, no. I had to reproach myself. You never lowered yourself to such an act. But just think it over: Did you ever set me free from my guilt, when I thought I had to reproach myself? You forgave me. And that confirms the reproach, more than anything else. There is a satanic quality about feminine forgiveness, my dear, which is alien to you, of course, anything of that kind is alien to you; I just took it like that because I'm so hypersensitive, and you can perish of hypersensitivity just as well as of tuberculosis. I talk and talk, Julika, and you blow the snow off the rug!'

Stiller went on:

'Yes—I sometimes ask myself why I never jumped up and simply boxed your ears in all those years. Seriously, that was a mistake that can never be made good now; a mistake, of that I'm convinced. How much it would have spared us both! For instance, your ill-fated journey to Landquart, I believe. Of course you knew from the start that you would collapse somewhere along the line, but you no longer shrink from paying any price to make sure of my bad conscience. You're mistaken! But the terrible thing is that in a different sense it's really my fault you're in this sanatorium. But there you've got nothing more to forgive me. I often think, if I hadn't made you my test the idea of fettering me with your ill health would never have occurred to you, and we should have loved each other in a natural manner, I don't know, or parted in a natural manner. You ought to have met a man who had no guilty conscience and yet plenty of patience, free patience, anyhow a man who could only be won and held by natural love. Who knows, my dear Julika, how healthy you might have been—all the time...'

Stiller fell silent.

'Go on,' she said. Stiller merely gaped at her.

'So that's how you see me,' said Julika. 'You've made an image of me, that's quite clear, a complete and final image, and there's an end of it. You just won't see me any other way, I can feel that. Aren't I right?' Stiller lit a cigarette. 'I've also done a good deal of thinking lately,' said Julika continuing to blow the snow crystals from her rug even though it was now her turn to speak, '—not for nothing does it say in the Commandments "Thou shalt not make unto thee any image"...Every image is a sin. All those things you've been saying are exactly the opposite of love, you know. I don't know whether you realize that. When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image such as you have made of your Julika. I can only tell you, it's not like that. You always talk yourself into believing things—Thou shalt not make unto thee an image of me! That's the only answer I can give you.'

Stiller smoked away to himself.

'Where did you get all that from?' was all he asked. It was impossible to talk to Stiller any more, it seems he only listened to himself. He had come from Pontresina with the fixed determination to tear everything to the ground. 'Love?' he laughed, 'let's not talk about love, not in our case, and not about fidelity either—you too would probably have left me long ago, Julika, you never lacked opportunities, I know, merely confidence in your ability to hold a real man. Let's be frank. Our comparative fidelity was fear of defeat at the hands of another partner, such as I have suffered now, nothing else. Don't let's kid ourselves. It's all over now between us also. I think, Julika, we're seeing one another for the last time.'

Julika wept.

'It's horrible,' remarked Stiller very soberly, 'that it has to be in this sanatorium. You're by no means past the crisis, your head physician tells me. But perhaps it's a good thing, Julika, that from this day on you should know, without any shadow of doubt, that your illness no longer impresses me. That may sound thoroughly mean to your ears. Look, the truth is that I was always full of secret reproach towards you, that's why I was so ridiculously considerate: I was forever trying to make amends for something, something unspoken, you understand; and now for the first time, it seems to me, I stand before you without being angry with you. The fact is, I know now that it isn't you who have hindered me up to the present from really living. Thank God, I know at last! The tears in your eyes, Julika, are a threat that no longer works. The fact is, we've all got to die.'

At this Julika said.

'I'd like you to leave me alone now.'

Stiller stood a little while longer beside her bed, his hands in his overcoat pocket after he had thrown his cigarette over the railings, rather embarrassed. And then, as though Julika was already in her coffin, he merely kissed her on the brow, without waiting for her arms, and quickly left the wintry veranda...

Since then (says Julika) he has disappeared from her life. Stiller was still seen in the town during December. Only then, after a varnishing-day followed by a midnight carouse, did he also disappear for the others, imperceptibly at first, not from one day to the next; people only noticed gradually that he was not to be seen in the coffee-bar and other places where they used to meet him, and each one shrugged his shoulders when the other casually inquired after Stiller. They waited well on into January before someone, worried by Stiller's permanently closed studio, informed the police, who began with a fruitless search of all the drawers and today, six, nearly seven, years later, know as little as they did then.

Y
ESTERDAY
(among other things) paid a visit to a Swiss quartermaster's stores to look at the military equipment of their missing man. A long wait in a Nissen hut. No smoking. I sat down on a bundle of Swiss trousers. Couldn't I stand up? The place smelt of leather and camphor and of horses from the stables next door. Just for something to say, I asked the young lieutenant, who looked rather awkward in his shining boots and found this waiting just as tedious as I did:

'Do you still have cavalry?'

'No,' he answered curtly.

Finally they brought me a packet tied with string, which contained the ragged uniform of their missing man, and told me to undo it. Of course I should have refused; every act of politeness on my part, however minor, confirms them in the opinion that they can do what they like with me, as they could with Stiller. As I unpacked the mildewed and, at its best, rather ridiculous kitbag, all the property of Machine-Gunner Stiller fell on the floor, and naturally it was I who had to pick it up. I said:

'What has this to do with me, gentlemen?'

'Jump to it.'

Two Swiss quartermaster's storekeepers, both of them fat and pale from a lifetime in this martial atmosphere, tried to counter-balance their unsoldierly appearance by a curt and irritable tone. All without any form of address. Then they held up a field-grey greatcoat against the rainy light, looked at the lieutenant, who examined the garment conscientiously, and waited' for my dismay.

'There—don't you see anything? Eh?'

Cockroach holes, admitted, a positive Milky Way of cockroach holes. I felt the materials and said:

'It isn't waterproof anyway.'

They all looked at me as though I were a Communist, just because I had uttered this simple truth. I took hold of the raincoat worn by the young officer, who was standing nearby in the role of silent supervisor.

'Here,' I said, 'that's the proper stuff.'

Later I had to look down the barrel of a Swiss rifle. They compelled me. For some strange reason I let them compel me. I wonder why. I looked into the foreign rifle as though it were a telescope, but I couldn't see anything, a small hole full of grey light, nothing else. And all the time they were waiting for me to sink through the concrete floor with shame. A little mirror was attached.

'Can you see anything?'

I saw rust, and as I hadn't asked how much the barrel of a Swiss rifle cost I wasn't in the least interested in the young officer's lecture, to which I listened out of politeness. I hadn't dreamed of buying a Swiss rifle. A revolver, yes, or a sub-machine-gun; but what could I do with a rifle as long as a walking-stick? The young liuetenant seemed somehow ill at ease, as though he thought I might also be an educated man; he kept on saying:

'I don't have to explain that to you.'

Then, purely from a sense of duty, as though he himself were being put through an examination by the two storekeepers, he explained it just the same, embarrassing though he found it. Somehow I had the feeling he was trying to show me that he too had higher interests, but the only way he could do so in this quartermaster's hut was now and then to look out of the window at the pouring rain—while the two storekeepers, who now regarded me with ever growing hate, were not prevented by my manifest indifference from laying on the table everything they considered necessary for waging war. To wit: two brushes, knife and fork, a reel with field-grey thread, leather-soap, a very exact number of buttons, each one of them bearing the Swiss cross, a mess tin, a water-bottle, of which the cork ought not to stink, shoes laces, a paint brush with a case, a steel helmet, a so-called tie, a bayonet with a sheath, as well as two needles, which the missing Stiller had also irresponsibly allowed to rust. In short, there was a whole table full of stuff, at which I stared in amazement, though keeping my hands in my trouser pockets.

'I don't need to give you a lecture,' said the young lieutenant. 'You know that you will have to pay for the damage.'

'I?' I laughed. 'Why ever should I?'

'Who else do you think is going to?' I didn't get a chance to speak. I even had to put on their missing man's battledress tunic. I simply didn't get a chance to speak; therein lay part of their power, and to my surprise I actually knuckled under, although reluctantly. It didn't occur to them to hold the tunic for me, and when I couldn't find the attachment on the collar they just exclaimed, 'Jump to it.' Nor did they pay any heed to my innocent remark that in a tunic like this a soldier would be exhausted before he ever caught a glimpse of the enemy. I had to turn round like a tailor's dummy.

'You've grown thinner,' affirmed the young lieutenant, who was seeing me for the first time in his life. 'It's baggy everywhere.'

In the meantime one of the storekeepers had stepped over to a rack and dragged out another tunic, which he threw to me: 'Try this one?'

'What for?' I asked. Again I received no answer, but only another tunic of a different size and a lecture from the young officer: up to the age of forty-eight I was a member of the Swiss militia, and I was liable for military service until the end of my sixtieth year; of course I was entitled to go abroad, but it was my duty first to ask the State for leave and to report my departure to the local command, as laid down in standing orders; furthermore, in the event of such leave being granted, the military equipment issued to every male Swiss citizen should not be left lying about in a loft, but handed in, so that the quartermaster's men could guard it from moths; and furthermore, on arriving in a foreign country it was my duty to report immediately to the nearest Swiss legation, so that I should not evade the military tax, and also to report my departure from there and so on...