My First Wife

by Jakob Wassermann

  The sentences stuck in my memory. But they didn’t have the effect that Fedora meant them to have. I was cold inside. I looked for reasons that were nothing to do with Fedora’s blameless nature. I put myself completely and not without anger on Ganna’s side. It appeared to me that it wasn’t enough to return her love; no, I also had to be her knight and protector. The next day, I heard Fedora and Riemann had left.

  GANNA SWEARS

  There’s something I’ve forgotten to tell, although it has no particular importance. Only at the time it had a certain significance for me, who was so short of worldly wisdom. The last evening before our separation, we were sitting by the lake. After a long silence I turned to her and said:

  ‘Well, all right, Ganna. We’ll do it your way. But on one condition. You must solemnly swear to release me if I should ever ask to be released.’

  Ganna, the innocent child, the offended and mistreated child, answered reproachfully:

  ‘Oh, Alexander, how could you think I would ever refuse! I wouldn’t be worthy of you if I was like that!’

  She looked at me with her maidenly eyes and hand upraised, and swore to God. I was eased.

  Believe it or not, I was eased. What a failure to understand the word, and the effect of the passage of time, and the meaning of God’s name in a philosophically enlightened soul like Ganna’s! It was a beginner’s error. Would a man in love have required such assurance, and would a woman, wanting to keep him, not have given it by the sun and moon and God and all his angels? The passing years make a mockery of the gravest oath, and memory is an eager bawd.

  Then, when she was gone, I thought of her very tenderly. There were moments in which I took my feeling for love, but then I would say to myself: love is a ball of mercury, the pursuit of which costs half a lifetime; if you try to pick it up, it breaks apart, you never get all of it. Comradeship appealed to me. Harmony of two souls, I tried to convince myself, makes love dispensable. It can’t be a sin to obtain love, not if you’re able to pay something for it. And what I was able to pay was in the form of tenderness, tender understanding, tender guidance, tender confidence. That was the way to go. I was convinced it was right. I didn’t notice that I was losing myself in emotional casuistry.

  ASTONISHMENT IN THE MEVIS HOUSEHOLD

  Ganna had promised me she wouldn’t talk about our engagement, but she couldn’t control herself, and after three days everyone knew – her sisters, her mother, her relatives, her acquaintances. Frau Mevis made no secret of her grave doubts. Today I see things differently from thirty years ago; lots of things that were absurd looked all right to me. It was one of the tasteless absurdities of the time that in rich middle-class homes they would speak of misalliances, as if in the upper reaches of the aristocracy. The only person who was kept in the dark was the Professor. Frau Mevis trembled night and day. If he should withhold his consent, hideous scenes were bound to result, and she would be the one to get the blame. She bore some responsibility: she had failed to keep Ganna properly chaperoned. Her fear of her husband, which she had had from the beginning of their marriage, had by and by eroded her personality. She was under as much pressure as a sunken ship, under the water. It’s only a matter of time till the hulk breaks into pieces. The more alert of her daughters had long observed the symptoms of mental illness in her. It was the illness suffered by maybe four-fifths of the women in bourgeois society, the illness of nothing to do, empty representation and constant pregnancies. The day Ganna went to her father to make her confession, and everything inexplicably passed off without éclat, the old lady heaved a deep sigh of relief. ‘I thought he was going to kill her,’ she said to Irmgard and Traude; ‘an author; a man who is nothing and owns nothing. Truth be told, I don’t understand my husband.’ Irmgard reported it to me later.

  How the Professor received his daughter’s news calmly and without ire is something for which I have no explanation. For sure, he had read my book. He won’t have taken me for quite such a hopeless and feckless individual as his wife did. But a writer of books with whom one might pass the time of day and an official son-in-law, those are two completely different human categories. Later, with deafening laughter, he assured me he hadn’t believed a single word of what Ganna said to him; he was firmly convinced the fantastical creature was the victim of delusions, and he had first decided to wait to see whether I would turn up at all. ‘Well, and then you turned up,’ he crowed, and whacked me on the shoulder, making all my bones hurt. That gave him away. I could tell how delighted he was to be rid of Ganna. The other girls couldn’t get over their surprise. They said: ‘She’s turned Alexander Herzog’s head, she’s turned Papa’s head, she must have worked some magic.’ In the swans’ terms, working magic was what I felt to be Ganna’s dark Pythian power.

  CELEBRATION

  I noted down the salient points of my conversation with the Professor in my diary at the time.

  ‘So you want to marry my daughter?’ he began, once I was sitting opposite him.

  ‘I don’t really want to,’ I said, ‘Ganna does.’ He looked at me in astonishment.

  ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘then let’s just say you have nothing against the idea in principle.’

  ‘No, in principle.’

  ‘Then we can move on to the practical side of the question. I assume you are able to provide for a wife.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must destroy your illusions there, Professor. I can’t even provide for myself.’

  ‘Admirable honesty. But surely that’s not an abiding inability?’

  ‘You’re wrong. I see no change in prospect.’

  ‘Why is that? You are a well-known and much-admired writer.’

  ‘But I still have no means.’

  ‘Then what do you live on now?’

  ‘Tick.’

  ‘How high are your debts?’

  ‘Around about 3,000 marks.’

  ‘That’s not so bad. You’re still young. One day you will become successful.’

  ‘Possibly so, but that would worry me.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘It would be a sign that I had compromised. With taste. With the fashion of the day. I don’t want to make any compromises.’

  ‘An admirable stance. But then how do you envisage a life with my daughter?’

  ‘To be frank, Professor, I wouldn’t be able to entertain the idea if I hadn’t known she was well-off.’

  The Professor laughed in his rackety way. ‘You mean to say that I’m well-off?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of the truth, are you?’

  ‘That’s my job, Professor. I don’t care about money. I don’t care about a certain standard of living. I want a life with Ganna. It’s my belief that we’re a good fit. But I would have to renounce her if it means I have to work for a living, in the bourgeois sense. Ganna understands that I must be free in that regard. Nor have I come to you to ask for Ganna’s hand in marriage, as the expression goes, though that’s maybe how it appears. I wanted to tell you frankly about my circumstances, because Ganna is utterly convinced that she will only be happy with me.’

  ‘All right, that’s Ganna. What about you?’

  ‘I am extremely fond of Ganna. I have very high expectations of her. But for me marriage is not essential.’

  ‘I understand. But you don’t mean to tell me that you don’t see yourself ever – even many years hence – attaining an income that accords with your gifts?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s very likely. Not impossible. There are a few instances. The intransigence of a writer is sometimes not an obstacle. But we live in barbaric times, Professor.’

  ‘I see. I didn’t know that. I had the sense we were living in the lap of a happy, blooming civilization.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s an illusion.’

  The Professor got up. ‘The interest on the capital sum I am giving my daughter should keep you both from starving. But that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all we need.�
��

  The Professor extended his hand to me and said warmly: ‘In that case, we seem to be agreed. Welcome to the family.’

  That same day he had a brief conversation with Ganna, at the end of which she left the room, laughing and crying with happiness.

  NEGRO VILLAGE

  Every family is its own hoover. Greedily it sucks into itself the stranger who has been enlisted into it and, inhibited by shyness, tries to resist. After I had met my five future sisters-in-law, my three brothers-in-law, all the various uncles and aunts, the grandchildren, the friends of the house, it took me a long time to sort them all out and remember their various names and titles. It was like a play with a large cast, where you have to keep the programme open on your lap to check who is onstage at any given moment. I forgot that I had a role myself. I had trouble with all this fraternization. I saw no good reason why I should suddenly be on ‘Du’ terms with people I didn’t know from Adam. The automatism with which it was expected that I should astonished me. I learned numerous new customs. Most of what I did or said turned out to be in breach of these. They were supposed to be something sacred, but in the first days and weeks I thought they were more like the customs in a Negro village, and sometimes I had the feeling I was visiting such a village. The whole bustle intimidated me. The meals, the family days, the joint undertakings, the conversations were as noisy as they were arduous. Gradually, I became desensitized. Getting accustomed to something is generally thought of as a blessing, but myself, I’m not sure if it isn’t rather a dulling of the senses and a blunting of the nerves. I was in their eyes a rough-edged individual and they enthusiastically went about filing me down. Eagerly and even a little flattered, they took me into the sacred ring of the family, but at the same time they were a little afraid of my stranger’s ways and accommodated me in a sort of invisible cage, like an exotic beast that is shown to the public for money, no matter how tame it actually is and how little thought it has of running away.

  These are all posthumous thoughts and I could add even more to them, were I not afraid that the roughness of my judgement today would contrast too much with the feelings and behaviour I had at the time. Because soon enough I completely belonged and was entirely theirs. In my new bod’s naivety I allowed myself to be ensnared and filled full of their interests, woven into their relations, taught to like their tastes and actually to believe that their bustling Negro village was the whole world. I was thrilled with them. The luxury in which I was allowed to participate fogged my vision. Each of the magnificent villas where I was introduced seemed palatial to me. Every bank manager I met looked to me a man of limitless power. The tedium of their society somehow escaped me; the faces with the dull tension of people blowing soap bubbles with a straw and vying with one another who can make the biggest and gaudiest, escaped me. The fact that they were completely undiscriminating; that all their business dealings were somehow inconsequential; that they stuck together externally like burrs, while within there was no cohesion: I didn’t see it, and if I did then I still allowed myself to be lulled to sleep by their lullabies. I didn’t yet understand the law of the kraal, the mysterious power of the kraal, even though I was caught in its clutches. It was the same in every family: sisters, brothers, in-laws and their trail, nephews and nieces, more of them with each year – their weal and woe were the weal and woe of the kraal, the world outside was hostile, suspect and basically unknown. What was I so fascinated with? If you throw a lasso round the neck of a wild mustang, it starts to tremble and stands perfectly still. But was that really my situation? Was I not more of a deserter, a turncoat? I didn’t account for myself. I can honestly say I didn’t know. Of course, I was never entirely sure of myself either. This secret uncertainty will have been why I introduced my friend Riemann into the Mevis circle. The occasion was easy enough: I had promised Ganna, her sisters and one of the brothers-in-law I especially liked that I would read them a few chapters from my new book. And so I did, and it seemed to me I could have no complaints about not being properly understood and appreciated. Or was it just Ganna’s passionate rapture that blinded me to the effect on the others? Were they not a little like grown-ups listening indulgently to the breathless rigmarole of a small boy playing cowboys and Indians? Or like people watching the angels and devils projected by a laterna magica? Admittedly, there was one soul present in whom the seed unexpectedly took root: in Irmgard’s. But that too I didn’t know until years later.

  GUSH

  Ganna, meanwhile, was quite transformed. No more rebelliousness, no more tantrums, no more coffin nail. An obedient daughter, a loving sister. When her father came home in the evening she would run to his bedroom, pick up his fleece-lined slippers, kneel down at his feet and unlace his boots. In the morning she would stay in the kitchen, a place she’d previously shunned, the theatre of the anti-spirit, and try to learn what can be magicked up with flour, oil, green leaves, sugar and spices. It wasn’t interesting, she was certainly never going to learn, she wouldn’t even learn how to boil an egg; but it had to be done, it was the custom, those in the know insisted it was part of a good marriage. Under the influence of the literature of the day, as a faithful disciple of Nietzsche and Stirner, she had deeply despised family and family traditions. Now, though, the happiness that she carried in her breast like a sun gilded the least member of the household, the lowest servant. Even the old Kümmelmann woman, with whom she had lived in enmity ever since she had been able to think, enjoyed new-found respect from her. ‘What have you done to our Ganna?’ the sisters and the mother would ask me. ‘She’s unrecognizable.’ When I was told stories of how disobedient, how difficult she had always been, of the mad pranks she would perform, I would assume an expression of disbelief, because I knew no other Ganna than the one I saw, my gentle, dreamy, smiling, mild and tender fiancée.

  There was one thing that struck me as odd. How could it be that her brain, thus far crammed full of poetry, of famous names and idealism and ambition, now suddenly became a repository of twenty or thirty birthdays, deathdays, honorific days and family anniversaries? That overnight she found in herself a mawkish piety for the most distant of relations and would pay calls on obscure, long-lost cousins, twice removed, or on various mothers of various in-laws? The swans said: she is putting her happiness on display, she wants to show off with her Alexander Herzog. A malicious interpretation. Perhaps it was to make amends for past neglect. She had seemed to be a cheeky minx and an enfant terrible for so long that she was now compelled to try and make a good impression.

  I don’t know why this new trait bothered me. To me there was something cramped and driven about it, a bad mixture of piety and politicking. It got on my nerves. But I didn’t have the courage to tell her. When she felt that I was displeased by something, she would lapse into despair and quiz me for so long until I chose to deny everything, so as not to see her woeful eyes any more. On one occasion, though, I was unable to repress my irritation. In a little lane in the old part of the city lived an ancient couple by the name of Schlemm, who in some hard-to-trace way were connected to a defunct branch of the Westphalian Lottelotts; there were other Lottelotts as well, but they hailed from Cologne. These Schlemms were incredibly dull; he was deaf and somewhat imbecile, she as chattersome as an old hen. Ganna was courting them, agreeing with everything they said, patting their wrinkled hands, calling them Uncle and Auntie, raving about their wise serenity and their terrific characterful faces. One day I let her talk me into going round to see them. She said the dear old folks had only one wish left in this life, and that was to see me before they died. That was some line she’d got from somewhere. Well, I went with her, what was the big deal? It was like a puppet theatre, where all the puppets were talking gobbledygook. It was only half an hour but it went on for ever. But what tormented me was Ganna’s absurd teariness. I just couldn’t understand it. Where was the reason, the cause? Two soulless silly bags of bones, and all that emotion? ‘I feel so sorry for them,’ she justified herself later, when I was unab
le to repress my anger; ‘Uncle has a bad liver and Auntie has been tending him for the past forty-three years.’ She sent me a melting look from her big blue eyes and I felt a little scared, I don’t know what of.

  THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

  Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, a few days before the beginning of 1901 and hence of the twentieth century proper, I was summoned by the Mevis family solicitor to his office at a given hour. When I turned up the Professor was already there, the solicitor, an efficient busybody with the face of a lance corporal, greeted me with a little show of ceremony, and on a leather sofa where he had cleared himself a little space free of legal files and law magazines sat the notary, with a Virginia cigar in a corner of his mouth. The last-named handed me a calligraphically perfect document – at that time typewriters were not yet in common use in law offices – and asked me to peruse it. I tried hard to oblige. The dowry was spelled out in figures; but the rights and duties of the respective spouses were described in utterly opaque legalese. There was also something about revocability in the event of a dissolution. I wasn’t familiar with the word. Since I didn’t ask, no one felt called upon to tell me. I was bored. I signed. I thought: the Professor is a man of honour, why shouldn’t I sign? It seemed unreasonable to me to ask questions. Twenty-five years later, I understood what it was I had put my name to. A quarter of a century had to pass before the light went on and I saw I had been duped. In the spirit of family, of course, and loyalty. I could have asked. I could have gone to a lawyer myself. It never occurred to me to do so. It was my first encounter with a notary. A notary, I thought, is the embodiment of the law; this is all above board. I had to pay for thinking so.