I'm Not Stiller (34 page)

Rolf was standing in the kitchen by the refrigerator, drinking a glass of beer, and asking the distant Sibylle whether she had been to the building site in the meantime. Sibylle had made up her mind to slip quietly out of the house while Rolf stood in the kitchen drinking his beer, to go off somewhere, not to Stiller, but somewhere. Rolf must have heard the latch click; he came and found her in her overcoat, key in hand, pale or blushing, but with a strange presence of mind. 'The dog,' she said, the dog had to be let out. And Rolf put down his glass to take the dog out, more helpful than usual. Had he really no inkling? Was he shamming? Did he really not care? Or was he stupid, quite incredibly stupid, or so hugely conceited that he imagined no other man could possibly compete with him, or what did it all mean?

Sibylle sat there in her overcoat. And yet in a way Rolf was right, it didn't make any difference, it seemed to her: it took nothing away from him. But he must know. Every hour more, every quarter of an hour, poisoned everything that had been between Rolf and her. She was crying. Did she really regret it after all? And she felt ashamed before Stiller, who was now so far away, she was afraid that in the moment that was drawing ever closer when Rolf brought the dog back and she told him, she might diminish the night that was past, diminish it to the point of betrayal, betrayal of Stiller and herself. She could see it already: Rolf would put his arm round her shoulders with a kind of understanding and consideration that buried everything; he wouldn't take her rather silly little intermezzo seriously, and she, the betrayer, would hate him because of her own betrayal. Wouldn't it be more honest in the end to say nothing about it? And suddenly it seemed to her as though everything that went to make up a home had the sole purpose of rendering honesty impossible. Why wasn't Stiller there? Her husband appeared to her so strong, so invincibly strong, not because he had 'right' on his side, but simply through his personal presence: it was as though Stiller were hidden by a hundred things, by this piano, by furniture and carpets and books and the refrigerator and a mass of things, mere things, that seemed to come to Rolf's aid, obstinate, irrefutable. A home like this was a bastion, she thought, an elegant but underhand trick. On the point of ringing Stiller, just to hear his forgotten voice, she heard the dog barking and hung up; at last she took off her coat, utterly exhausted and ready to capitulate in the typical woman's way—to let everything be decided by which of the men conquered the other and thereby Sibylle. Rolf found her busy with household tasks. Not unreasonably, he found it unnecessary for Sibylle to check the monthly bills from the milkman and the butcher at this particular moment, he thought it unfair to a husband who had just arrived from London, and showed his ill-humour, yes, it looked as though the evening would go off in a state of marital ill-humour of an everyday kind, in other words pretty well.

That this was not the case, seems to have been due mainly to Rolf. He flung his beer glass into the sink. 'What's the matter?' she asked. He deduced from her unfriendliness that Sibylle, his dear wife with her old-fashioned ideas, once more suspected him; Rolf had had enough. He found it so petty, so narrow-minded; once more (but with a clear hint that it was for the last time) Rolf delivered his 'lecture' and refused to be interrupted, no, Sibylle must really develop a more generous conception of marriage, she must have confidence, must grasp the fact that Rolf loved her, even if he did occasionally meet another woman while he was travelling; besides, that hadn't even happened this time, but like all men he was particularly concerned about the principle of the thing, and he hoped to bring Sibylle to a more mature conception of marriage, to the realization that there must be a certain amount of freedom even in marriage. He forbade fits of jealousy. But this chance passed too. Sibylle wanted to assure him that she understood him as never before, that she felt no trace of jealousy; it would have been the truth but at the same time downright mockery, and she couldn't utter a word, not a word.

Sibylle's only wish was to be alone as quickly as possible. It was horrible, it was becoming farcical. When Sibylle gave him a hearty kiss on the forehead, she felt superior in a way that made her feel ashamed. Involuntarily, she locked her door. Her happiness wasn't a dream. As soon as Sibylle found herself alone, it filled her again in all its reality. Tact alone prevented her from singing. But her silent happiness was apparently audible through the walls, and her husband, although he had said everything that needed saying, could not rest. The locked door took him aback; he insisted on coming into her room, and only when he was sitting on her bed ready to play the Good Samaritan, having obviously expected a tear-stained face and dumbfounded to see a happy one, did the truth begin to dawn on Rolf. He asked, 'What's happened?' Sibylle couldn't find the right words in which to tell him a thing like that; she said, 'You know quite well.' Rolf's choice of words wasn't particularly fortunate either, 'You've been with a man?' Sibylle said Yes and was glad to be rid of her silence, relieved and now completely happy for the first time. Rolf stared at her. She begged him to ask no more questions now and to leave her alone. Rolf (says Sibylle) took it with remarkable composure. He even went away for a few days in order to leave Sibylle in peace, for which she was grateful to him from the bottom of her heart. After his return he was also (says Sibylle) remarkably composed.

***

It would ill become me to describe the lovers' happiness which Sibylle, my public prosecutor's wife, experienced or hoped to experience during the following weeks. Whether this happiness was as great as the other two partners—Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy on the one hand, and my friend and prosecutor on the other—imagined, seems to me dubious. A homeless love, a love with no dwelling-place in everyday life, a love that depends on hours of enchantment, we know what that amounts to; sooner or later it is a despairing affair, embraces in the growing corn or the nocturnal darkness of a wood—for a time it's romantic, exciting, then ridiculous, a humiliation, an impossible business all their joint sense of humour could not save, for they were no longer a couple of secondary-school children, but grown-up people, a man and a woman, both of them already married...

Sibylle (so she says) understood his hesitations about receiving her in his studio, where everything reminded him of his sick Julika. She regretted it, because, as I have said, his big, light studio appealed to her, but she understood. What would Sibylle not have given to have a healthy rival, a woman who was her equal, to whom she could have offered friendship or open conflict, yes, even a fury of jealousy, who laid moral mines for her everywhere in society, or a crazy woman who made ridiculous threats with the gas oven, a gallant fool who headed straight for counter-adultery—she would have preferred anything to this sick woman who retired to a sanatorium at Davos and immediately put the healthy ones in the wrong, and on top of this a woman Sibylle had never seen face to face, a phantom! But that's how it was, and so his studio was out of the question. Where else could they meet than in God's open air and a few inns? A rainy week was as disastrous for their love as will-o'-the-wisps and midsummer night's dreams are for other people's; the inns began to repeat themselves; the roads round the town began to lead nowhere; their conversations began to grow melancholy, witty, but melancholy—in a word, it couldn't go on like this...

And yet they really loved one another.

'Come,' said Sibylle one day, 'let's go to Paris.' Stiller laughed uncertainly. 'Don't worry, I've just been to the bank,' she said. 'All we have to do is to find out when the train leaves.' Stiller asked the waiter for a timetable. There was no lack of trains to Paris. And one day, it was in July, they actually got as far as the platform and sat on a bench underneath the electric clock, the tickets in their pockets and equipped with toothbrush and passport. 'Are we going or aren't we?' asked Stiller, as though the inhibitions were all on her side, not on his. The porter was already going from carriage to carriage. 'Take your seats,' he shouted. 'Take your seats please.' She felt sorry for Stiller. There could be no doubt about his resolution to put her wishes into action at last, but suddenly Sibylle found she had lost all desire to go; she was upset by the grimness of his determination. 'What about Julika?' she asked. Meanwhile the hand of the electric clock was jerking on from minute to minute. At bottom (so she says) Stiller was glad that the hesitation, in appearance at least, came from her, whereas he, with her suitcase in his hand, represented masculine ruthlessness personified. The doors were being shut of one carriage after the other. Sibylle sat where she was, she felt so clearly that the phantom was already sitting inside, and Sibylle had no desire to wander about Paris with a phantom...

The train left the station; they remained on the platform with the resolve that Stiller would first go to Davos and speak quite openly to the sick Julika—there was nothing else for it.

Stiller went to Davos in August.

For her part Sibylle felt perfectly free, even if her husband's remarkable composure (as she says) got on her nerves. Every time they sat down to black coffee, when little Hannes was no longer there, she waited for the heart-to-heart talk. In vain, Rolf merely said, if you're free on Thursday evening, there's that organ recital in the Fraumiinster...' Sibylle saw to the percolator. 'I'm not free,' she said, and that was the end of the organ recital. She could have killed Rolf: he allowed her a freedom, an independence that was downright insulting. It wasn't Rolf, but Sibylle, who burst out: 'I don't understand you, you know I love someone, that I see him practically every day, and you don't even ask what his name is. That's ludicrous!' Rolf smiled: 'What is his name then?' In response to such condescension Sybille naturally couldn't tell him, and they waited silently for the coffee. 'I think I told you,' remarked Rolf chattily, 'that they want to have me as public prosecutor...' Rolf always had something with which to evade the issue, something important, something objective.

At last the coffee boiled in the glass sphere, the steam whistled. It couldn't go on like this with Rolf either, she thought. Amongst other things, money was suddenly beginning to assume an importance: not for Rolf, but for Sibylle. She was secretly hurt at the way her dear Stiller took it as a matter of course that every stitch Sibylle wore had been paid for by Rolf; Stiller earned almost nothing, true, and he couldn't go and fetch money from the bank, she realized that, and yet it secretly hurt her, against all common sense. The most Stiller ever did was to call her a spoilt darling, feel the quality of her new material, and praise her choice of colours; but the idea—which Sibylle would straight away have affectionately talked him out of, that goes without saying—the idea that Stiller ought no longer to let Rolf buy her clothes for her, never so much as crossed his mind. It didn't worry Stiller, no, and it didn't worry Rolf either. Often (so she says) she found both men impossible. Then she felt an itch to take it out of him. 'By the way,' said Sibylle, 'I need some money, but rather a lot. The fact is, we are thinking of spending this autumn together in Paris—' She looked at him out of the corner of her eye after this remark; Rolf said nothing. The one thing she hadn't expected happened, to wit, nothing. She filled his cup and set it down in front of him. 'Thanks,' he said. Either Rolf, her husband, was opposed to her going to Paris with another man (and with Rolf's money), or Rolf wasn't opposed to it; there was no third alternative that she could see.

Sibylle filled her own cup. 'So you want to go to Paris,' was all he said. Sibylle didn't leave him without further explanation: 'I don't know for how long, maybe only a few weeks, maybe longer—' Rolf didn't jump up from his chair, he didn't smash a cup against the wall, this Rolf with his ridiculous composure, to say nothing of falling on his knees and beseeching Sibylle to come to her senses and stay with him. Nothing of the sort. Rolf blushed slightly for an instant; he had probably imagined that the affair with the fancy-dress pierrot was finished, and now he had to get used to the idea of her happy adultery all over again. But why did he have to, in heaven's name? Rolf stirred his coffee. Why didn't he throw a flowerpot at her, or at least a book? When she saw his cup trembling slightly, it aroused no remorse in her, not even pity, but rather disappointment, bitterness, scorn, sadness. 'Or have you anything against it?' she asked, passing him the sugar and explaining her reasons: 'You know what it's like here, there will only be gossip if people see me. It makes no odds to me. But it's unpleasant for you. Especially now that they want you for a public prosecutor. I'm sure it will be much better for you, too, if we live in Paris...' She looked at him. 'What do you think, Rolf?'

He took a sip, stirred, sipped, blew, and stirred, as though nothing else was so important at the moment as drinking this hot coffee. Quite casually came his matter-of-fact inquiry: 'Yes, well roughly how much money do you need?' Cowardly as men always are when they are not doing the attacking themselves, he immediately sought refuge in practical matters, whereas Sibylle wanted to hear what he felt, what he hoped. Was Sibylle in Paris with another man a matter of indifference to him? Did he find it quite in order? Did he find it unbearable? Sibylle asked him straight out: 'What do you think of it?'

Rolf was now standing at the big window, showing her his broad back, with both hands in his pockets like a bystander watching a fire. His back seemed to her so broad, his head so round and fat. She shot at his tranquillity: 'I love him,' she said unasked. 'We really love each other,' she added. 'Otherwise we wouldn't be going to Paris together, you'll believe me when I say that, I'm not irresponsible.' And then men always have to get back to work, yes, yes, it was already ten minutes past two; a sitting, the bastion of their indispensability, Sibylle knew all about that. If Rolf didn't go back to work now, law and order would break down all over the world. 'You must know yourself,' he said briefly, 'what is the right thing to do.' And then, after he had put on his overcoat and forced the buttons into the wrong holes, so that his wife had to button it up properly, he added in a rather melancholy tone, 'You must do what you think right,' and left ... And Sibylle, alone in her room, wept.