My First Wife

by Jakob Wassermann

  A couple of days later I ran into her on the tram, and we fell into conversation right away. Again I took her lively cheerfulness as a sort of challenge, because it was in such contrast to me and the people I was used to. I had the absurd feeling she wanted to catch me off guard. It really was an absurd feeling: there was nothing of the sort in her mind. I can remember watching in astonishment when her stop came, and she said goodbye, and I saw her cross the street. It was her dancing walk that caused me to be astonished. Is it lawful to walk like that, I thought, and I wrapped myself in my sour mood as in a fur wrap I had merely cast aside for a few moments, because it was warm.

  I don’t remember how it was that shortly afterwards we started meeting and going for walks together. I think I must have suggested it; perhaps I telephoned her. But I can’t say what prompted me to do so. It’s often the way that the origins of earth-shaking developments remain so obscurely trivial that they can’t even be identified afterwards. It was a tone of voice, a look, a movement of the hand, a smile, a casual word; I can’t remember. Nor can I remember if it happened after we had known each other for a short time or for longer, that I gave her the proof of my new novel to read – the book that represented my breakthrough. It was a novel about a town, a provincial town in the middle of Germany, all of a piece, balladesque where the characters were concerned, and, like most of what I have written, sombre in its mood but with plenty of popular touches, which explains its subsequent success. It was my dues to my German background, a sort of physical tribute to the German people – a war book in a certain sense, since I wasn’t permitted to bear arms myself.

  As I say, I am unable to recall the circumstances in which I presented it to Bettina, but I have a pretty good recall of what she said about it once she’d read it – not least because it was not at all what I’d expected her to say. I had hoped she would be enthusiastic. With my naive author’s vanity I hadn’t doubted she would be, knowing as I did that she had followed my output to date and openly declared herself to be part of my devoted readership. That had helped overcome my initial resistance to her, I may as well admit, even though it doesn’t say much for my objectivity. Now, though, instead of the enthusiastic endorsement I had hoped for, I encountered a disconcerting dryness. I had yet to meet a woman with such high standards. Accustomed as I was to Ganna’s unbounded admiration, forever expressed in superlatives, I found myself unhappily impressed by Bettina’s brave reservations. She didn’t deny that parts of the book moved her, some of the characters convinced her, but overall it was too heavy for her – not intellectually, but in its feeling and construction, too heavy and – the word gave me pause – too barbaric even. There was of course no comeback to that, but a man wants to justify himself, to explain; and I can still see the strangely firm and alert expression of her blue eyes when I told her what I had intended. She understood me straight away, her intellect really was extraordinary; and what most struck me was her intuitive grasp of rhythm, of the subtlest nuances and harmonies. But she would not be reconciled to the petty bourgeois world I laid out; it was too involved, too full of masks and ghosts, not elevated enough, too fusty in its eroticism, too befogged, too straitened. It was at this time that she came to speak of the opposition between the Austrian and what was now held up as German, and what to her and her friends was neo-German, also of the condescension and criticism with which the Prussians responded to Austrian form, lightness, softness and urbanity: that was more than she could stand. I listened to her, I looked at her, I said to myself: not only is this woman the daughter of an artist, she is an artist in her own right. Yes, she was, through and through, in every fibre of her being, in every breath, with a force and a consequence I had yet to find in a woman. No wonder she soon became my confidante and friend. Our relationship was based on nature and on my spiritual situation.

  Now I have something odd to say. For a long time I remained ignorant of the nature of my understanding with Bettina. I couldn’t even have said if I liked her as a woman or not. When I very gradually, in my obtuse way, discovered that I loved her, I saw to my astonishment that I as yet felt no trace of passion for her. And when my love finally took me over, body and soul, heart and spirit, I still believed in some sort of sublime comradeship, without consequences for the future, without entailing any commitment. How could such a thing be? It had never happened to me before. Perhaps it was because there was nothing darkly grasping in her, nothing that wanted to conquer and possess, nothing that insisted on vows and promises; she simply left me in my freedom, and waited calmly and patiently for whatever might be. Perhaps because she wasn’t cramped and addicted and greedy and purposeful, consumed by some splendid notion of what it was that would make and keep her happy. It was this, the lightness and cheerfulness, which I had initially rejected so grimly, that now entered my life, changing all its stresses and emphases. There was always something about the others that hadn’t been right – their corporality or their views or their characters or their preferences or their sense of life – and I had always ended up feeling beached and washed up. Here, not only was everything right, but with each new day it made more sense. It was like finally looking up after decades under a louring grey sky and seeing blue overhead, an almost cloudless blue. Sometimes I would reflect in alarm: will things stay the way they are? Can they? Won’t she absorb the poison of my darkness into herself?

  ONE NOVEMBER EVENING

  For a long time Bettina refused to come to our house. Since there were people who refused to see anything in me except a man who breakfasted on young virgins, at first it was her self-respect that kept her from running to me dutifully like a little dog that comes when called. That was how she put it mockingly, later, once. Also, I had neglected to ask her husband as well when I invited her, and she took against me for that. Then we had a proper soirée once at which Paul Merck, and the Waldbauers, and some other friends turned up. They only thawed out a little once Ganna, who didn’t feel easy among such people, had withdrawn.

  Bettina didn’t like our house. She didn’t talk about it, but I could sense she didn’t. She shivered when she set foot in it. Sometimes I would ask her why, but she would only shake her head. The fact that the rooms didn’t appeal to her, that there was something extravagant about the layout – that seemed clear, in the light of her conservative tastes; but I was afraid that it might be the lady of the house with whom she couldn’t get along. And so it was, she was unable to keep it hidden from me for long: Ganna was for her the strangest creature under the sun, and when I tried to explain to her what great moral and spiritual qualities Ganna in my view had, she would hear me out in silence with a curious, patient expression in her eyes, but without once demurring. She would never have permitted herself to take such a liberty.

  And yet I knew her to be an exceptionally acute observer – to the degree that I was sometimes left gawping like a small boy at the speed and certainty of her judgements when she explained some sequence of events, with details of which I had registered precisely none. Nor was she one of those people who dine out on such a gift. She was able to keep her silence until speech became a matter of urgency. Also, she saw and heard many things that she had decided, for one reason or another, not to hear or see. From the choice of what she observed or didn’t observe, registered or allowed to pass, it would be possible to construct a pretty detailed description of her character. For example she knew, as everyone knew, that Ganna didn’t just allow me to deceive her (Bettina called it ‘deceive’, even though there was really no question of deception, in view of my modus vivendi with Ganna), but even used to brag about my adventures, as a way of indicating to anyone who cared to hear that all other women were nothing but provisionally favoured courtesans compared to her. Bettina knew this, and simultaneously tuned it out in her awareness. She did so, as it were, in the name of all women who were offended thus, including even Ganna. It was her view that it was too humiliating to people not simply to ignore the way they chose to lower themselves. I, with the rotten at
titude of a libertine I affected at that time, shrugged my shoulders and thought Ganna’s attitude had something to be said for it.

  Unluckily (unluckily for me, because I was anxiously set on keeping Ganna high in Bettina’s esteem), the following once happened in Bettina’s presence. Ganna had dinned it into the maid to check that Elisabeth’s piano teacher didn’t end a lesson early, as she had reason to fear she might. When she was told the young lady had left the room eight minutes before the set time, she hurried out into the corridor where Bettina was just slipping into her coat and confronted the trembling piano teacher. ‘I insist on proper time-keeping,’ she barked. ‘I pay you to come on time and leave on time. If that’s too much for you, then you can save yourself the bother.’ I have to say, it was like water off a duck’s back to me, I was much too inured to such scenes. A man deadens; I had heard it too often. But Bettina went pale. ‘I pay you’: to say those words to a fellow human being! She felt giddy. Much, much later, when she recalled the scene to me, she confessed that she felt like seizing Ganna by the wrist and calling: ‘Woman, woman, get a grip on yourself! That’s no way to behave!’ I didn’t really get it. For me it was an outburst, nothing more. Ganna’s just like that, I would comfort myself and others; you have to take the rough with the smooth. And so I failed to see, wouldn’t see, what was brewing.

  I say that, and yet I knew all the time that the situation was radically changed from what it had been before. From a certain point on, I could no longer show Ganna the sort of openness that during the worst times of our marriage had kept alive the illusion of an indestructible union, and had preserved Ganna in the faith that she was the presiding female presence in my life. I kept out of her way. I lowered my eyes. I was hurtful and cold. And above all: I neglected my marital obligations entirely. That had never happened before. There had always been some leftover scraps for Ganna: an hour of comfort, a little bribe of affection. Now it was no longer possible. Bettina made it impossible. Not that she had demanded or expected such a thing; not a bit. But her whole being was against it, a way of being in honesty and truth. A way of being that flowed into me as what was right for me and shaped me.

  One November evening is caught in my memory like a scene of dread.

  It’s late when I get home. I have experienced something wonderful. Bettina has played for me on her violin, the first time in the seven months I’ve known her. An entire Bach suite, ending with the chaconne. It wasn’t masterful; the ultimate per cents of the maestro were lacking; but how much song, how much sweetness, how much force and fire; and how secretly altered my pulse beat and my heart, as though I myself had been playing and had invented the rhythms. An unforgettable hour, which had shown me another Bettina hidden behind the cheerful child of the world.

  And now the whitewashed walls of our hall, which is at the same time our dining room, stare at me soberly and the grotesque lamps threaten me with their outraged arms. Quickly in to see little Doris, to cast an eye on the little sleeper, quickly choke down a few bites of something, then on to work. But at the other side of the table sits Ganna, her eyes shining with reproach, her lips quivering, her arms folded, the whole woman a single mute accusation and indignity.

  I ought to go. I ought to say goodnight to her and disappear up into my eyrie. My loitering just makes the q. and a. unavoidable.

  ‘Why are you so late? Where have you been?’

  Of course she knows where I’ve been.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Alexander? Have you forgotten me? Do I not mean anything to you any more?’

  Then more urgent, pleading: ‘You spend all your time with that woman now. You’re practically inseparable, you and her. Complete strangers are talking about it.’

  Still I don’t say anything. I stalk around and stare into the corners. Ganna continues:

  ‘You know I’ve nothing against you satisfying your urges? Have I ever shown myself ungenerous? But just because I am, I’m now being tortured to death.’

  My silence provokes her. She wrings her hands.

  ‘Alexander, how can you! A man like you! That woman can do what she likes with you. Have you no pity?’

  Another evening’s going to go to waste, I think; if I go out now and say a friendly goodnight, then she’ll be content, she has such an oddly selective memory. But I can’t. I can’t walk out and abort the brewing scene before it can get properly started. What stops me is fear. Naked fear. Let me explain, as best I can. Ganna has the frightful gift of unsettling my imagination. No one else has such an effect on me. That explains her hold on me, which, far from weakening, is getting ever stronger. She knows it too. She knows I’m incapable of leaving her alone to brood in solitude. If I am within hailing distance then it’s still possible that, in spite of the ‘selective memory’, she will manage to produce a catastrophe. That’s what the voice inside me tells me, even if I can’t say what manner of catastrophe it will be. After all, it would be enough if she smashes a mirror and wakes the maids in the attic with her shouting; it’s not out of the question that she will do herself a mischief. Everything is possible. From one instant to the next she will quite deliberately turn off her consciousness – it’s really quite extraordinary – and then be responsible for nothing she does. Once, in Ebenweiler, she ran out into a storm following an argument, up the mountain, and I had to get up a search party of hunters and farmers. Once something like that happens, it means the end of any chance of working for several weeks; the ability to do work is always somehow the first to go. That’s what I dread. What I’m thinking is this: hold things together at all costs, until the work in progress is done; after that my hands will be free and we can sort it out. Of course I’m deluding myself here. Because seeing as I plunge from book to book, like someone swimming for his life in the ocean, from wave to wave, it’s impossible to see when I could be able to ‘sort it out’. Still, this is how the notion came to be established in my brain that my presence is the only thing that will prevent Ganna from mounting a successful coup against my existence. (In a certain sense, this notion turned out to be perfectly correct.) At the same time, I know that my mere presence is sufficient to give Ganna the courage to go wild. What’s the way out of this dilemma? What reasonable man would leave a woman alone at a painful juncture, when he knows that her life feels dire and she will collapse into a bundle of misery? And so I turn myself into the object, the victim, of her emotional excesses. To avoid the theoretical worst, I accept what is truly unbearable. It’s like a sulphur cloud. Ganna pours out wild tirades against Bettina. I lose my calm. I shout at her. Which is exactly what she wants, to wrest me out of my equanimity – that’s her satisfaction and vengeance. The words fly back and forth like so many poison darts. The door opens silently. Elisabeth, startled awake, is standing in the doorway in her nightdress. In deep, half-asleep confusion she looks at her father and mother. The look of those child’s eyes! It condemns me for ever. I pick her up and carry her back to bed, with silent caressings. When I return to Ganna she is sitting there in tears. She at least is able to cry. I cannot.

  GANNA DEFENDS THE FORTRESS BY MOUNTING AN ATTACK

  There’s no mistaking it: a beaten dog doesn’t suffer worse than Ganna. Her world is askew. Her world is me. She can’t understand what’s happened. It’s as though the heart has slowly been cut out of her breast. At night she lies there sleepless, thinking about everything, her tear-dimmed eyes are incapable of seeing anything. She is pondering what she may have done wrong. Because, try as she may, she can see no fault in herself. She has always done her duty, she thinks, her intentions were always of the best. She thinks, if life is too much for two weak arms like hers, then one should have pity on her. My supposed ‘pitilessness’ skews her take on everything. An evil charm has taken me over, otherwise I could not have been able to forget her love and the fact that there is no other woman in the world who is so endlessly obedient to me. It remains her unshakeable conviction that I will never leave her – after all, haven’t I said so often enough, i
n so many words – she tells me with an alarming flaring of her eyes, but then why do I not take her by the hand and lead her out of the labyrinth of her great sorrow? And she builds herself a little hope. I am just setting a test for her, she thinks; I am testing her craft for buoyancy. Surely it doesn’t need such an extreme test, not such a heartbreaking one, she says with the charmingly innocent smile that her face still, on rare occasions, breaks into; I need only indicate to her now and again that she would be my Ganna again, once she has passed the test, take her for a walk again as she yearns to be taken, say something sweet and affectionate to her, as in former times. She is continually perplexed at the wrong-headedness of men. They could have it so easy with women, but they go about it so badly. But this philosophical musing about ‘men’s’ foolishness does nothing to alter the fact that her breast is burning with woe, and I am standing there like St Sebastian, shot full of arrows …

  Then why this sudden agitation, this panic, this dread of losing me, after so many years of benign indifference to my infidelities, as she termed them? It hasn’t escaped her attention that everything is different with other women. So she finds herself confronted by a conundrum. What can be so special about this Bettina Merck, she asks herself – sometimes she asks me as well. She studies her. She wants to be fair to her. But she fails to see the attraction. To her, Bettina is neither beautiful nor intelligent. If only she were at least intelligent. Nor is she even in the first flush of her youth. Evidently (thus Ganna full of woe) she avails herself of cunning amatory arts; I in my simplicity and straightforwardness fail to see through them; she is endlessly subtle; subtlety is the thing; I wish I could learn to be it, but I am too honest for that; besides, she’s an unscrupulous man-chaser who doesn’t care what the world thinks of her. Or she bores, like this: she’s the lucky one, a wealthy background; husband away at work all day; nothing to worry about except how to do herself up, and what instructions to give her cosmetician and her hairdresser; whereas I, worked to the bone, with no time to think of myself. Didn’t I always say so: I should be hard, unscrupulous, stop at nothing, deny the heart or soul in my body – with a man hungry for experience and sensation it never fails …