Homo Faber

by Max Frisch

  ‘Walter,’ she said, ‘you’re terrible.’

  She said it twice.

  I kissed her.

  Hanna only stared at me, until I took my hands away, she said nothing and didn’t even tidy her hair, she said nothing – she cursed me.

  Then the taxi arrived.

  We drove into the town to buy a fresh shirt, that is to say Hanna bought it, I had no money and waited in the car, to avoid having to show myself in my old shirt. Hanna was touching; she came back after a time to ask my size. Then we drove to the Institute, where Hanna, as arranged, picked up the Institute’s car, an Opel, after which we set off for the sea to fetch Elsbeth’s clothes and my wallet, or rather my jacket (chiefly for the sake of the passport), and my camera.

  Hanna took the wheel.

  In Daphni, that is to say a little way out of Athens, there was a grove where I could have changed my shirt, it seemed to me; Hanna shook her head and drove on. I opened the parcel.

  What was there to talk about?

  I talked about economic conditions in Greece, outside Eleusis I saw the great building site with a notice saying GREEK GOVERNMENT OIL REFINERY, all leased to German firms, which did not interest Hanna just then (or at any other time); but our silence was also unbearable. Only once she asked:

  ‘Don’t you know the name of the place?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Theodohori?’

  I didn’t know, we had come by bus from Corinth and got out at a spot where the sea looked inviting, forty-one miles from Athens, I knew that; I remembered the milestones in an avenue of eucalyptus trees.

  Hanna, at the wheel, relapsed into silence.

  I was waiting for an opportunity to put on the clean shirt; I didn’t want to do it in the car.

  We drove through Eleusis.

  We drove through Megara.

  I talked about the watch I had given to the lorry-driver and about time in general; about clocks that were able to make time run backwards…

  ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘This is it.’

  Hanna stopped.

  ‘Here?’ she asked.

  I only wanted to show her the slope where I had laid her down until the lorry with the iron pipes came along. A slope like any other, rock, covered in thistles interspersed with red poppies and beside it the dead straight road, along which I tried to run with her in my arms, black, gravelled tar, then the well with the olive tree, the stony field, the white huts with corrugated iron roofs.

  It was midday again.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘go more slowly.’

  What had been an eternity walking barefoot took less than a couple of minutes in the Opel. Otherwise everything was the same as yesterday. Only the gravel cart with the donkey was no longer standing by the well. Hanna believed every word; I don’t know why I wanted to show her everything. The point at which the cart emerged with its dripping gravel was easy enough to find, we could see the wheel ruts and the donkey’s hoof marks.

  I thought Hanna would wait in the car.

  But Hanna climbed out and then walked along the hot, tarred road. Hanna followed me, I looked for the pine tree, then turned down through the gorse, I couldn’t understand why Hanna wouldn’t wait in the car.

  ‘Walter,’ she said, ‘there’s a trail!’

  It seemed to me, however, that we hadn’t come here to look for trails of blood, but to find my wallet, my jacket, my passport, my own shoes…

  They all lay there untouched.

  Hanna asked for a cigarette.

  It was all the same as yesterday.

  Only twenty-four hours later – the same sand, the same surf, gentle, just a succession of little waves running up the beach and scarcely breaking, the same sun, the same wind in the gorse – except that it wasn’t Sabeth standing beside me, but Hanna, her mother.

  ‘Did you go for a swim here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ she said.

  It was dreadful.

  *

  As regards the accident I have nothing to conceal. It was a flat beach. You had to wade out at least thirty yards before you could swim, and at the moment when I heard her shriek I was at least fifty yards from the shore. I could see that Sabeth had jumped to her feet. I shouted: ‘What’s the matter?’ She ran. After our sleepless night on Acro-Corinthus we had been sleeping in the sand, then I felt the desire to go into the water for a time in order to be alone while she slept. Before leaving I covered her shoulders with her underclothes, without waking her; for fear of sunburn. There was very little shadow here, an isolated pine tree; we made our bed in a hollow. Then, as was to be expected, the shadow, or rather the sun, moved, and I think that is what woke me up – I was in a sweat and all around lay the noonday silence, I woke with a start, perhaps I had had some sort of dream or imagined I heard footsteps. But we were utterly alone. Perhaps I had heard the gravel cart, the shovelling of gravel; but I couldn’t see anything. Sabeth was asleep and there was no cause for alarm, it was ordinary midday, hardly any surf, just the low swish of waves seeping away into the shingle, occasionally the faint rolling of shingle, almost like the tinkling of a bell, apart from this there was silence broken by an occasional bee. I wondered whether it was sensible to go swimming when I had palpitations. For a time I stood irresolute; Sabeth noticed there was no one lying beside her and stretched, without waking up. I sprinkled sand over the back of her neck, but she was asleep. Finally I went for a swim – at the moment when Sabeth cried out I was at least fifty yards from the shore.

  Sabeth ran without replying.

  I didn’t know whether she had heard me. Then I tried to run in the water! I shouted to her to stay where she was, feeling paralysed myself when I got out of the water at last; I stumbled after her until she stopped.

  Sabeth was now on the top of the embankment.

  She held her right hand on her left breast and waited without replying, until I climbed up the embankment (I had quite forgotten that I was naked) and came closer – then for some crazy reason, although I only wanted to help her, she slowly backed away from me, until (although I stopped at once) she fell backwards over the embankment.

  That was the tragedy.

  It was less than six feet, the height of a man, but by the time I reached her she was lying unconscious in the sand. She had probably struck the back of her head. It was only after several minutes that I noticed the bite, three tiny drops of blood, which I immediately wiped away; I at once put on my trousers, my shirt, no shoes, and then ran with the girl in my arms to the road, where the Ford shot past without hearing me.

  *

  Hanna stood at this scene of disaster smoking a cigarette, while I told her, as exactly as I could, what had happened, and showed her the embankment and everything; Hanna was amazing, like a friend, I had expected her, the mother, to curse me up hill and down dale although, looking at it objectively, I really wasn’t to blame.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘take your things.’

  If we hadn’t been convinced that the child was out of danger, of course, we shouldn’t have talked like that on the beach.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘that she is your child?’

  I knew.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘take your things.’

  We stood there with the things on our arms; I was carrying my dusty shoes in my hand, Hanna our daughter’s jeans.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to say.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’

  I asked her:

  ‘Why did you hide it from me?’

  No answer.

  Again the blue heat-haze over the sea – as yesterday at this time, midday with low waves that scarcely broke but only ran frothing up the beach, then the chink of shingle and the same thing over again.

  Hanna understood very well what I meant.

  ‘You forget,’ she said, ‘that I’m married.’

  Another time:

  ‘You forget that Elsbeth loves you.’

  I found
it impossible to take everything into account at the same time; but there must be some solution, I thought.

  We stood there for a long time.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I find work in this country?’ I said. ‘Technologists are needed everywhere, as you have seen, Greece too is being industrialized.’

  Hanna understood exactly what I was getting at, I wasn’t thinking along romantic or moralistic lines, but in practical terms – of living under the same roof, pooling our resources and spending our old age together. Why not? Hanna had known at a time when I couldn’t have had any idea, she had known twenty years ago; nevertheless she was more astonished than I.

  ‘Hanna,’ I asked, ‘why are you laughing?’

  There is always some sort of future, I thought, the world never comes to a stop, life goes on.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But perhaps without us.’

  I had taken her by the shoulders.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’re married, Walter, married. Don’t touch me.’

  Then we went back to the car.

  Hanna was right, I always forgot something; but even when she reminded me, I was determined at all costs to get myself transferred to Athens or give notice, so that I could settle in Athens, even though at the moment I couldn’t see myself how we could manage to live under the same roof; I’m in the habit of looking for solutions until they are found…. Hanna let me take the wheel, I’ve never driven an Opel Olympia and Hanna hadn’t slept all night either; now she pretended to be asleep.

  In Athens we bought some flowers.

  Just before 3 p.m.

  As we sat in the anteroom, where we were kept waiting, we still had no inkling whatever, Hanna unwrapped the paper from around the flowers.

  Then we saw the deaconess’s face!

  Hanna stood at the window as yesterday, we didn’t exchange a word, didn’t even look at one another.

  Then Dr Eleutheropulos came.

  It was all in Greek; but I understood everything.

  She died just before 2 p.m.

  ... Then Hanna and I stood beside her bed, we simply couldn’t believe it, our child lay there with closed eyes, exactly as if she was asleep, but white as gypsum, her long body under the sheet, her hands by her hips, our flowers on her breast, I wasn’t trying to comfort her, I really meant it when I said: ‘She’s asleep.’ I still couldn’t believe it. ‘She’s asleep,’ I said – not speaking at all to Hanna, who suddenly screamed at me and struck out at me with her little fists, she was unrecognizable, I didn’t defend myself, I didn’t even notice her fists striking my forehead. What difference did that make? She screamed and hit me in the face until she could go on no longer, all the time I merely held my hand over my eyes.

  *

  As we know today, our daughter’s death was not caused by the snake bite, which was successfully counteracted by the serum injection; her death was the result of an undiagnosed fracture of the base of the skull, compressio cerebri, resulting from her fall from the little embankment. There was injury to the arteria meningica media, a so-called epidural haematoma, which (I have been told) could easily have been put right by a surgical operation.

  WRITTEN IN CARACAS, 21 JUNE TO 8 JULY

  Second Stop

  HOSPITAL, ATHENS

  NOTES BEGUN ON 19 JULY

  They have taken my Baby Hermes away and shut it up in the white cupboard, because it’s the middle of the day, because it’s the rest period. I’m supposed to write by hand. I hate handwriting. I’m sitting on my bed stripped to the waist, and my little electric fan (a present from Hanna) swishes from morning till night; otherwise there is deathly silence. Today it’s 104 degrees in the shade again. These rest periods 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. are the worst. I have very little time left in which to bring my diary up to date. Hanna visits me daily, I jump with fright every time there is a knock on the white double door; Hanna, in black, comes into my white room. Why does she never sit down? She visits the grave every day, that is all I know about Hanna at the moment, and she goes to the Institute every day. The way she stands by the open window, while I have to lie down, gets on my nerves, and her silence. Can she forgive me? Can I make restitution? I don’t even know what Hanna has been doing since it happened; she hasn’t mentioned it once. I asked why Hanna didn’t sit down. I don’t understand Hanna at all, her smile when I ask her a question, the way she looks past me, at times I fear she is going mad. It was six weeks ago today.

  8 June, New York.

  The usual Saturday-night party at Williams’s place out of town. I didn’t want to go, but I had to; that’s to say no one could really force me, but I went. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Fortunately I had now heard that the turbines for Venezuela were at last ready for assembly and that I was to fly on as soon as possible – I wondered whether I was up to the job. While Williams, the optimist, had his hand on my shoulder, I nodded; but I wondered.

  ‘Come on, Walter, have a drink!’

  The usual business of standing around…

  ‘A Roman holiday, oh, how marvellous!’

  I didn’t tell anyone my daughter had died, for no one knew this daughter had ever existed, and I wasn’t wearing a black armband because I didn’t want people to ask questions, because it didn’t concern them.

  ‘Come on, Walter, another drink!’

  I was drinking too much.

  ‘Walter is in trouble,’ said Williams to those standing around. ‘Walter can’t find the key of his home!’

  Williams thought I ought to act a part, better a comic part than none at all. You can’t simply sit in a corner eating almonds.

  ‘Fra Angelico, oh, I just love it!’

  Everyone knew more than I did.

  ‘How did you like the Masaccio fresco?’

  I didn’t know what to talk about.

  ‘Semantics? You’ve never heard of semantics?’

  I felt like an idiot.

  I was staying at the Times Square Hotel. My name-plate was still on the apartment; but Freddy, the doorman, didn’t know anything about a key. Ivy was supposed to have delivered it, I rang the bell at my own front door. I was in despair. Everything was open – offices and cinemas and the subway – everything except my home. Later I went out on a sightseeing boat, just to pass the time; the skyscrapers reminded me of tombstones (they always had), I listened to the loudspeaker – Rockefeller Center, Empire State, United Nations and so on – as though I hadn’t lived in Manhattan for eleven years. Then I went to the cinema. Later I travelled by subway, as usual. IRT, UPTOWN EXPRESS, without changing at Columbus Circle, although I could get closer to my flat with the INDEPENDENT, but I had never changed in eleven years, I changed where I had always changed, and on my way I dropped in at my Chinese laundry, where they still remembered me. ‘Hello, Mr Faber.’ Then back with three shirts that had been waiting for me for months to the hotel, where there was nothing for me to do, where I rang my own number several times – naturally without success! – then unfortunately I went to that party.

  Nice to see you, etc.

  Before that I went to my garage to ask whether my Studebaker was still there, but I didn’t have to ask, I could see it from a distance (lipstick-red) in the yard between black fireproof walls.

  Then, as I have said, I went to the party.

  ‘Walter, what’s the matter with you?’

  As a matter of fact, I’ve always hated these Saturday-night parties. I haven’t the gift of being witty. But that doesn’t mean I need a hand on my shoulder…

  ‘Walter, don’t be silly!’

  I knew I wasn’t up to my job. I was drunk, I knew that. They thought I hadn’t noticed. I knew these people. Nobody would notice if you weren’t there any more. I wasn’t there any more. I was crossing Times Square (for the last time that night, I hoped) to ring my number again from a public callbox – to this day I can’t understand how it was that someone answered.

  ‘This is Walter,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Walter Faber,�
�� I said, ‘this is Walter Faber.’

  ‘Never heard the name.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  Perhaps it was the wrong number; I took the enormous Manhattan directory, checked my number and tried again.

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  ‘Walter,’ I said, ‘Walter Faber.’

  The same voice answered as before, so that I said nothing for a moment or two; I didn’t understand.

  ‘Yes – what do you want?’

  Nothing could really happen to me if I answered. I pulled myself together, before the other hung up, and asked, simply for something to say, what his number was.

  ‘Yes – this is Trafalgar 4–5571.’

  I was drunk.

  ‘That’s impossible!’ I said.

  Perhaps my flat had been let, perhaps the number had been changed, there were all sorts of possibilities, I could see that. but it didn’t help me.

  ‘Trafalgar 4–5571,’ I said, ‘That’s me!’

  I heard him put his hand over the mouthpiece and speak to someone (Ivy?), I heard laughter, then.

  ‘Who are you?’

  I asked back:

  ‘Are you Walter Faber?’

  In the end he hung up, I sat down in a bar, feeling dizzy, I couldn’t take whisky any longer, later I asked the barman to look up Mr Faber’s number and dial it for me, which he did; he handed me the receiver; I heard it ringing for a long time. then it was lifted.

  ‘Trafalgar 4–5571. Hello?’

  I rang off without uttering a sound.

  My operation will rid me of all complaints for ever, according to statistics it is an operation that is successful in 96.4 out of 100 cases, and the only thing that makes me feel jittery is this waiting from one day to the next. I’m not used to being ill. Another thing that makes me jittery is the way Hanna comforts me, because she doesn’t believe in statistics. I’m really full of confidence and at the same time glad I didn’t have it done in New York or Düsseldorf or Zurich; I must see Hanna, or rather talk to her. I can’t picture to myself what Hanna does outside this room. Does she eat? Does she sleep? She goes to the Institute every day (8–11 A.M. and 5–7 P.M.) and to our daughter’s grave every day. What else does she do? I have asked Hanna to sit down. Why doesn’t she speak? When Hanna sits down, not, a minute passes before she needs something, an ashtray or a lighter, so that she gets up and stands again. If Hanna can’t bear me, why does she come? She straightens my pillows. If it was cancer they would have got the knife to me at once, that’s only logical. I explained that to Hanna and it convinced her, I hope. No injection today! I shall marry Hanna.