I repeat these litanies of thought because I heard them not only in occasional remarks and suggestions, but because they were familiar to me from the deepest insights one can have into human nature. The interesting thing about them is the perpetual division, the sharp alternations between light and shade, understanding and doltishness, fear and loathing, foolishness and impetuosity, suspicion and self-doubt. If her thinking had been less scatty, her emotion less erratic, then it would never have knocked her over. But her inner distractedness extended even to her pain, so at disconnected moments that were drifting like pieces of cork on an agitated sea, she was capable of being good and cheerful. Admittedly, the intervals when she was permitted to sit there half-extinguished and dream, and paint herself a rosy future, grew ever fewer and further between. Blow after blow was delivered to her psyche; life bared its teeth at her. It cut her to the quick when she learned that I had read part of my new work to Bettina and her friends. The fact that I hadn’t asked her to come, even once, aroused the bitterest envy she had ever felt, worse than any physical jealousy. She felt rejected and snubbed. But it was unfortunately the case with me that I didn’t want Ganna as an audience, because my friends didn’t want her. Ganna was unbelievably alien to them. She didn’t follow the rules, she didn’t know the routine, she was jarring. Nothing was said, but it was abundantly clear to me. I suffered for Ganna, with Ganna. There was nothing to be done. And then Ganna and Bettina in the same room, and me in the middle, even only as a voice – that would have been a lethal discord. To ease Ganna if only a little bit, I took refuge in a lie: her reactions and her judgement were so important to me, I claimed, that I had to be alone with her, I needed the immediate and undisturbed connection. Even though she didn’t altogether believe me, she did half-believe me, and maybe that got her over the worst, for a little while at least. But since it could only be for a while, in a deeper sense my lie was more cruel and traitorous than the most unsparing truth could have been.
If Ganna had been only a very little more sensible, if she had known a little more restraint and self-discipline, then it would not have been quite so hard for me to inculcate my friends with a little understanding for her baroque, volatile and unconventional ways; though there were other, more destructive traits of hers I was still in awkward denial of myself. But Ganna will do everything to make herself detested or, more, feared. Such tiny hands, and what is there they can’t uproot; such tiny feet, and what can’t they trample! One day she dashes over to the telephone, asks to be put through to Paul Merck, and tells him she has heard his two daughters have chickenpox and that in these circumstances our doctor thought any association between our respective families was unadvisable. And she closed with these incredible words: ‘Mr Merck, kindly keep your wife from seeing my husband until there is no longer any risk of infection.’ Paul Merck, who was a gentleman, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Forgive me,’ he stammered back, ‘I’m not in the way of telling my wife what she can and can’t do.’ He put aside the earpiece like something red-hot, so Bettina told me later, picked up a thick periodical and in his rage tore it into little scraps – something an athlete would have had trouble doing.
Cold shivers ran down my spine when I got to hear about this, and the next time I was with Paul Merck I went to great lengths to come up with some extenuating circumstances for Ganna.
Indeed, I went further; I spoke about Ganna’s eccentricity, her feminine genius, her rare spiritual and human depth, and talked myself into such a lather that both Paul Merck and Bettina were reduced to looking at me in silent astonishment. In the end, Merck was unable to suppress a sceptically amused smile, but that only heightened my advocatory zeal. In Bettina’s face not a muscle moved, there was no trace of doubt, or curiosity or sympathy. I might have been talking about some woman in New Zealand.
In the meantime, Ganna had decided to approach Bettina directly. She’s a sensible woman, was Ganna’s thought; perhaps she’ll understand my position. It did feel like going straight into the lion’s den but, convinced as she was of her superiority, she thought success was pretty certain, and so she had herself announced one day at Bettina’s house. Bettina approached the meeting with trepidation but gave no sign of it, greeting Ganna with the politeness with which she received any visitors to her house. She told me about the conversation later, but it was many months before she included certain details she wanted to spare me, under the depressing first impression.
A daintily laid table, tea prepared in accordance with a tested recipe, a plate of freshly cut sandwiches – the times would have allowed or expected nothing less, but in Ganna’s eyes it is a feast. She is starving. She looks wretched, tired and tormented. Her dress is at least three years old and fits her badly. Bettina feels a profound sympathy for her, prevails on her to have something to eat, keeps refilling her cup. Ganna eats and drinks. Her eyes scan the room. She appraises the tasteful furnishings with a woebegone demeanour.
‘Yes, you have good taste all right,’ she says sadly to herself, ‘there’s no denying that. But it all takes time.’
Gently Bettina indicates that she doesn’t think it’s a mistake to have time, or to take time.
‘No, but it leads one to have too strong a sense of one’s own interests,’ Ganna delivers the pedantic and well-prepared counter.
That depended on the nature of those interests, Bettina observes coolly. Ganna laughs, a little shrilly.
‘Well, as far as yours are concerned, I would imagine they are largely confined to your person,’ she says. Bettina is astounded to be offered so much insight into her nature so quickly.
‘I can see from Alexander how easy it is to fall for such frippery,’ Ganna continues; ‘ever since he met you, he’s become terribly pernickety; he used to be so modest, now all of a sudden he knows where to go and buy ties and he demands – it’s hysterical, really – that his trousers are pressed every week. I could die laughing.’
Bettina doesn’t understand quite why it should be funny, but is agreeable enough to chime in with Ganna’s rather forced laughter. Ganna thinks the moment has come to cut to the chase.
‘Frau Merck,’ she says, and her voice has a palpable edge to it, ‘please don’t suppose you can capture my husband with such blandishments. Oh, no. Better women than you have tried. Please understand – I’m telling you this out of niceness, to put you in the picture, in case you don’t know – my marriage to Alexander is a rocher de bronze. Alexander will never divorce me, not under any circumstances. My mind is perfectly at ease on that score. Don’t deceive yourself. I am not at all worried. All I want is to prevent you from entertaining false hopes.’
Bettina needs a little time to collect herself. Such a thunder-shower of horrors has never, in all the time she can remember, fallen on her. Once again she has the sense she needs to call out: ‘Woman, watch your mouth! Stop and think. You can’t talk to people like that.’ She forces a smile and replies as one might to a raving child:
‘I’m sure you’re right, Ganna. But there’s no need to tell me that. No one intends to take Alexander away.’
Ganna emits a sound like a menacing gurgle. ‘I don’t advise it either,’ she says coarsely, concludingly, and gets to her feet.
Bettina walks her out into the hall and helps her into her coat. She sends her regards to the children. Ganna is moved. She departs with gushing thanks. She has no idea how badly she has behaved. She carries her head high and takes pleasure in her victory. Once she’s alone, Bettina has a fit of vertigo. She pulls open the windows. Her feet are ice-cold, her nails are blue. She is chilled to the marrow. She goes into the bedroom, gets undressed and falls into bed. She feels a deadly wretchedness all day. She tries to forget the awful events. She has to get rid of them. She won’t keep them. When she told me about the visit a week later, she was still shaking, trembling, a-chill.
CIRCE
Since all my previous relationships fizzled out after a year, two at the most, Ganna – though at a greater level of up
set than at other times – still waited with reasonable confidence for this one to end too. When the end refused to come, she was completely unhinged. Grim old superstitions awoke in her. Sometimes she expressed, perfectly seriously, the suspicion that Bettina must have slipped me a magic potion. Anyway, the danger of a lasting bond seemed so great to her that she thought of ways and means of freeing me from Bettina’s toils. This was the basis of one of the most durable Ganna fictions, to which she resorted to keep herself afloat a little longer: that in her view I was trapped in a most reluctantly borne erotic dependency in which I was tormented by the longing to free myself from the bands of this heartless Circe, and sink back into the much more dearly beloved Ganna. Only my cruel seductress wouldn’t submit, she made me dozy with her sex potion and robbed me of my manhood to the extent that I even slandered my Ganna to her, which was all the easier as Circe of course had contrived to reinterpret all Ganna’s virtues as vices. But this relatively bland fantasy wasn’t enough for Ganna. By and by she became convinced that Bettina had had a hand in the forced sale of the meadow; and not her alone, but the whole of the ‘Waldbauer set’ had been involved, given that the sole desire of these people and their hangers-on was to slander Ganna and take me away from her, and utterly to destroy her.
This farrago of evident nonsense was proof against all arguments; no evidence, no straightforward appearance of things, no amount of pleading or imploring or head-shaking helped; it grew and grew, linked itself to other conspiracy theories, turning the air I breathed into a dirty soup and blackening the sky over my head.
BETTINA’S AND MY CULPABILITY
I ought really to write far more about Bettina than I have so far, but it’s not easy. My every picture of her straight away moves into such intense close-up that I am unable to make out any outline and am confined to listing, step by step, what changed in me and in my life through her entry into it. I hope that may give a clearer impression of her nature than if I were to cover pages with her qualities, her looks, or her various moods. The actual person with whom you live is bound to be, in a curious way, invisible, in just the same way as you yourself are invisible; all you can do is sense their presence, feel them within you, and in turn expand in them. The word love, compared to that, has little meaning.
It’s clear that, from the very beginning, Bettina’s marriage gave me much to ponder. Without our ever expressly talking about it, it seemed clear to me, and accepted, that in this matter she would not lower herself to half-measures and dishonesties. By and by I was able to make out how things stood between her and Paul. Basically, it was all very straightforward. They had fallen for one another when they were very young, and had got married, almost on a trial basis. They hadn’t fared too badly. Early on there had been a few blameless contretemps, and then they had sealed a compact and were now living harmoniously with and alongside each other. For a little while now, both had had the feeling their relationship was nearing a new status and clarity. They often discussed it, amiably enough, neither wanting to make trouble for the other. Bettina had no money: ‘I went into marriage like a church mouse,’ she once told me, ‘and if I have to, I’ll leave it in exactly the same way.’ Another time she said: ‘Marriage isn’t a form of public welfare: you decide what to do about the children – for their sake, if nothing else – and apart from that, why should I be concerned with the man who doesn’t want me any more, or I him?’ To be light-footed and free, that was all that mattered. Some friends who watched as she span her thread were inclined to describe her as trusting to providence. But that was probably a highfalutin way of putting it. She was, quite simply, not one to feel sorry for herself. She wasn’t afraid of life. She didn’t need a man with money to pay her way. She scorned the idea of security.
Those months in the city were hard for both of us. It was the time the carnage of the Great War was getting going. The belief that people were suffering for a just cause was being eroded from every side, and was soon to collapse altogether. Men dear to me, who had gone out with enthusiasm, returned wrecks in body and soul, useless for any occupation. At the Somme a half-brother of mine died, whom I had loved dearly in his youth. No letter, no farewell, just a silent death. Inflammatory lies from above and below and beyond the frontiers ground up my heart. The rich with their plenty, their bacchanalian orgies, offered a contrast not to be outdone in its brazenness. While they danced and whored the nights away, armies of mothers stood outside the bakers’ and butchers’ shops, patient files of lemurs. Many a time, Bettina and I would find ourselves wandering through unlit suburban streets; we were numbed by the extraordinary weight of misery. Once again, by letter and in person, I asked to be taken into the army; my petition was settled when I fell victim to a chronic gall-bladder colic. But for Bettina’s close participation in my life and work, I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself. ‘Is it permitted for two people to live for each other like us?’ I asked her anxiously. ‘Isn’t it tempting fate? Two wretched humans seeking to put off the end by a moment or two of snatched happiness; as if that were the point, and waking wouldn’t be the worse for it …’ Bettina didn’t bite. In her humility, she didn’t bite. There was a bird of ill omen that used to scream at night in the garden behind her house; she had called him Giglaio, in imitation of his cry, and when she heard him her every drop of blood would freeze. Luckily she had the blessed gift of forgetting bad and ugly things, that was the obverse of her courage; and when the first green shoots would show above the ground, and the sun rose above a certain gable, she would be desperate for spring and slowly climb out of winter, and the darkness and sickness associated with it. Evidently she had her own darkness in her as well. So-called cheerful people often have much darker hours to endure than self-proclaimed pessimists.
At the beginning of summer we were able to free ourselves from our melancholy existence in the city. It had become a regular thing with us that we would spend the weeks from early June to mid-September in Ebenweiler. Ganna would arrive with the children in July, after the end of the school year, but the weeks Bettina and I had the place to ourselves were the happiest of the year. There, in the valley that had become home to us, we were allowed to forget the world in flames. We weren’t mocking the war; rather it became subsumed in nature. When the guns’ thunder boomed up to us out of the south, it sounded like God’s anger about a humanity that vandalized His creation; the glaciated peaks were like bolted green gates at which human dying stopped. Everything belonged to the two of us, the forests, the lakes, the bridges, the white footpaths. There were starlit evenings when the trembling firmament sprinkled golden flakes on the bed of our love, and rainy nights that seemed they must quench all the flaring hatred of the world. I wandered back and forth, between Bettina’s house and mine, at all hours of night and day, in the evening when the cows were watered, in the morning when the farmer sharpened his sickle; the day was called Bettina, the night was called Bettina, Bettina was the whole of life.
But when Ganna is there, that all needs to be paid for. She arrives with endless boxes and cases, bags and bundles; each child has to have its own personal toys, she packs books for any whim she may have, there is enough there for five years of solitary confinement. I reproach her for bringing so much clobber, for the inundation. But that has the opposite effect: why should she have to do without, she asks feistily; where are her ball-gowns and her hats and her fourteen pairs of shoes, would I have the kindness to point them out to her? Is she to do without her deckchair? Her Schopenhauer? Behold the man set on putting his wife on the equivalent of bread and water!
I had often beseeched her to stay away from Ebenweiler. Didn’t she have her lovely house on the edge of the city, couldn’t she just send me the children on their own, with their governess? She dismissed the idea haughtily. She refused to be displaced. She was the lawful wife. ‘Do you want me to make it even easier for you and your mistress,’ she hissed, ‘so that people might think I’d given you over? No, I’m not going to do that person such a kindness.
What you are doing to me cries out to high heaven in any case!’
That first summer, Bettina had taken a farmer’s cottage a quarter of an hour away. It had been poorly thought out, taking somewhere within such easy range for Ganna. But she fell in love with the place, and not until the fourth summer did she decide to move to another house at the far end of the valley. For too long we failed to see our mistake in choosing as a refuge a place where I had had many years of business connections and was so to speak a public figure. But the landscape was more precious to me than any other; I owed it, in addition to my physical base, everything that nature in the form of atmosphere, water, stone and vegetation can give a sensitive and creative man; I could think of no other refuge and, had I done so, Ganna would have followed us there anyway. It was here, if anywhere, on the basis of my acquaintance with the locals, that we could hope to escape the otherwise unavoidable anathema and be a free couple.
Ganna accepted the advantage that was offered her. The fact that Bettina and I were flouting the bourgeois order represented a triumph for her. Her martyred expression appealed to the sympathy of others. If she had been a little less assiduous in creating a following, a Ganna party, then she would have had even more followers. Inevitably, there were circles in which Bettina was vilified. Cold glances brushed her; tongues wagged behind her turned back; slanders flung up in the air like rubbish when a wind strikes it. Every second or third day some bossy missive of Ganna’s, some peremptory note, was delivered to her. She ignored them. She refused to dignify them with her attention. With hasty stride she walked on, her ankle spattered by a little filth. What did it matter? The local ladies didn’t invite her to their jours and cut her when they meet; doesn’t bother her. She barely notices. Sometimes she feels a little jab; a person has their pride, they know who they are, but it’s soon overcome. The sight of a flower bed, half an hour on the violin are enough to cause her to forget it altogether. She is not the sort to lower her eyes in front of people. She has no comprehension of meanness, no ear for gossip. A timid acquaintance feels obliged to counsel her to be careful; surely there was no need for her to appear in public with me so much. She replies: ‘Why not? How else are we going to get people used to us?’
My First Wife Page 13