My First Wife

by Jakob Wassermann

  SIXTEEN TO TWENTY GANNAS

  At one of my frequent conversations with Hornschuch he gave me to understand that the greatest obstacle to a rapid settlement lay in my continued personal dealings with Ganna. He advised me to stop answering Ganna’s letters and not to arrange any more meetings. I told him I had to look after my children, Doris especially.

  ‘In that case, why don’t you have the children stay with you if you need to be in the city every four to six weeks anyway?’ asked Hornschuch.

  ‘That’s not much good. If I call them, it’s Ganna I get on the phone.’

  Thereupon Hornschuch made a remark that caused me to fold in on myself as if I’d been pricked with a pin. He asked me if I had ever considered how hurtful my continual dealings with Ganna were to Bettina. I denied this most vehemently. That wasn’t possible. He was surely mistaken. I wasn’t aware of the least sign of that being so. He smiled, in his ironic way.

  He wasn’t mistaken. When I think about it today, my stupidity or sheer blindness of that time astounds me. If I’d been given the gift of awareness, I should have realized long ago that these regular assignations with Ganna, the regular, repeated visits to her, the meetings in the city and in various places between Ebenweiler and Vienna, must have been mystifying to Bettina.

  She had seen that the – to her – repugnant fight she had got involved in against her will was destroying far more in the way of life and happiness than it could ever create. The dubious victor’s prize meant nothing to her. She wasn’t in the least tempted by the status of certificated bourgeois and wife, that wasn’t where her ambition lay, it wasn’t even possibly her style; and under no circumstances would she have condescended to bend the knee to Ganna or become indebted to her. It went against her pride, it went against her dignity as a woman. One day she said as much to me quite openly.

  ‘You know, I don’t really care whether you get a divorce or not,’ she said, ‘in fact, I don’t give a damn either way.’

  I was shocked. ‘What about our son?’ I countered.

  ‘What about him? What’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘Do you want him to grow up without a name, as a bastard?’

  ‘Those are archaic notions,’ replied Bettina, glowing with the spirit of the anti-kraal; ‘anyway, what do you mean, without a name? He’ll have my maiden name, it’ll cost a petition as Hornschuch says; the name of my father, it’s no worse than the name Herzog.’

  I looked at her in consternation. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no. You’re right.’

  But nothing changed: in terms of Bettina’s sense of things, Ganna might as well have been living under the same roof as her. Ganna’s high parrot squawk filled the rooms, the whiff of greed and lust for possessions came in through the doors and windows, and there was no man in the house to keep them out, no master, no strong hand. Maybe in some far corner of my soul I could feel her disappointment, but I know I closed my eyes to it. I had yet to abandon my hope of getting Ganna to see sense, though it was absolute folly. I stopped telling Bettina about my meetings with Ganna. When I went to see her – part of this time, she was staying in a nearby mountain resort – I needed all kinds of get-outs, even resorted to bare-faced lies, and went to her in secret, an absurd parody of the lover slinking off to his beloved. There was something so warped about it. But the meetings with her left their trace in my features. When Bettina saw the leaden shadows under my eyes, she knew. She, who had always slept like a baby, eight or nine hours straight through, now sometimes lay awake until dawn. She was helpless in the face of my suicidal and traitorous doings. She didn’t talk to Hornschuch about it either. Ganna, who had wanted to make him see that she and I were one heart and one soul, didn’t shrink from writing him the occasional letter, claiming we were well on the way to a peaceful solution; of course, all lies.

  I went to Ganna each time with a feeble, half-witted hope and each time left her numbed and bruised. At night I started up out of my demon-haunted sleep, in which bitterness, like a toxin in my blood, had kept me tossing and turning, and sixteen to twenty Gannas stood around my bed to fill my ears till they rang with her glibly stereotypical sentences: ‘I will make you a binding offer when you come back.’ ‘It’s mean of you to call me wasteful. I keep a household book with numbered bills in it.’ ‘I want to do what you say in everything. Just don’t make it possible for me to say no.’ ‘Since it’s happening against my wishes, at least let me tell myself that it’s not to my disadvantage.’ ‘You can curse me, you can slander me, I don’t care a bit, my conscience is almost oppressively clear.’ ‘It’s all up to you, Alexander. For the sake of your peace and quiet, I’ll give you your liberty, but it’ll have to be on the correct basis.’ ‘If the heating pad gives you palpitations, you should try putting a damp flannel underneath.’ ‘There can’t be many women in my position who are concerned with nothing but making their husbands feel even better off.’ ‘I’m going to walk hand in hand with you under the Lord’s arc on Judgement Day.’ ‘Bettina must understand that if the bond between us breaks, you won’t survive it.’ ‘Your behaviour vis-à-vis me is doing you untold harm …’ And so on and on and on. The Cassandra makes way for the flatteress, the greedy market woman for the concerned spouse, prophecies alternate with threats, pleas with violent quarrels; there’s one Ganna that has a soulful Madonna face, another has the wild eyes of a witch; one turns up in a dirty chequered wool jacket, the other in the fake kimono, with the stockings bagging down under it like empty sausage skins; one talks with her throat full of flour, the other has a vulgar squawk; one is continually calling out ‘Hallo-o’ to make herself heard, the other is looking vainly for money, kneeling on the carpet in tears; one has a look that is fixed on the fourth dimension, having failed in the other three, the other scribbles out sentences on pliant paper; and each one insists that I account for myself, to each one of them I have to prove and explain something. Why? Prove what? Explain what? That I am a fool, and ripe for the madhouse?

  GANNA GIVES ME A DIVORCE FOR MY BIRTHDAY

  Hornschuch had quietly and efficiently made his preparations. He was like a hawk, a tiny dot hanging in the upper air, only to swoop down once he was sure of his victim. He was in correspondence with Herr Heckenast, who had taken over Ganna’s interests and had stepped forward to speak on behalf of the kraal. He had also got in touch with Ganna’s new lawyer, Dr Fingerling. (Ganna had turned down the idea of merging our agendas and leaving them in the hands of Hornschuch; a lawyer, like a husband, was someone you wanted all to yourself.) Hornschuch appeared not dissatisfied with the choice of Dr Fingerling. It looked as though he had been able to exert some influence on Ganna. Even though Dr Fingerling got his information from Heckenast in Berlin, who in turn referred to the decisions of his sister-in-law Ganna, the fog of dispute seemed to lift slightly and permit a glimpse of a structure that might be an agreement.

  No sooner did things approach the stage of possible realization, though, than Ganna was seized by increasing anxiety. Her situation was like that of someone followed by the police, who has changed his abode so often and so long, till one day he finds himself fingered by a cunning detective. She tried everything to give him the slip. For sure, the new deed that had been doing the rounds now for weeks between her, brother-in-law Heckenast and the two lawyers – being added to, cut, critiqued and commented on – included payment demands and other commitments from me that made it difficult to contemplate its signature. But could one be sure? Bettina had only to stamp her little foot. All at once, Ganna felt uneasy. The danger was that she herself was caught in the trap she had festooned with bacon. Also, she didn’t know what to do about her debts. Dr Stanger-Goldenthal insisted on payment like some latter-day Shylock, and threatened to have the half of the house that was registered in her name held as surety. She begged Hornschuch to see that Dr Stanger’s demands might be at least partly met, and then she would certainly expedite the settlement out of gratitude alone. But Hornschuch came back coolly: no cash before the deal.
r />   In her extremity, Ganna decided to quit the scene for a while and go abroad. Her thinking was primitive: if two people are to be divorced, then they both have to be present; therefore, if I’m away, they won’t be able to get my signature. So in a tearing rush she packed her suitcases, scraped together all the money she could and hauled Elisabeth and Doris off to the French Riviera. Two days prior to going she had told me of her intention; her purpose was quite transparent to me, even though she had made a play for sympathy by talking of her asthma attacks, which required nothing less than a trip to the south. I could hardly keep her from going; I would have had to lock her up. But I had forbidden her to take Doris. After many unhappy attempts and trials, a suitable school had at last been found for the girl, now eleven, in the autumn just past; the one who was happiest about it was Doris herself. Now, in the middle of term time, she was going to be plucked out of her setting and taken to a foreign country. My angry veto was answered by Ganna with a cheeky message, followed by an express letter, about how Doris was overstrained and required sea air; the school was making her unhappy – the poor mite had to get up at six thirty – so she had had the wonderful idea of putting her in a dance school in Nice; the little darling’s delight was probably more than I could imagine. I tore up the letter and asked Hornschuch to convey my absolute and categorical opposition to Ganna. With that I thought the matter was at an end. Later that same day I had to attend a business meeting in Munich. No sooner had I gone up to my hotel room than I received a telephone call from Ebenweiler. It was Bettina. She begged me in pressed tones not on any account to go to Nice. In confusion I asked her why I should want to go to Nice. She told me a telegram had arrived from Ganna, who was already in Nice with our daughters, and – how could it be otherwise – was in need of money. ‘But Bettina,’ I cried into the telephone, ‘why would I want to go to Nice, I had no idea the woman was going there … So she took Doris … well, that takes the biscuit.’ When Hornschuch’s voice then proceeded to boom from the earpiece, warning me with uncustomary seriousness not to do anything rash – because if I did, he couldn’t, as he put it, vouch for Bettina’s reaction – I didn’t know what to say. What did he mean? Gradually it dawned on me. Bettina was afraid I would pursue Ganna to rescue Doris and then would get caught up in some further round of negotiations. During the conversation I suddenly had the sense that she didn’t believe my assurance that I had no idea of Ganna’s whereabouts, and that tipped me into a fit of panic. I went back to Ebenweiler as quickly as I could.

  Next, I blocked Ganna’s monthly payments. Hornschuch informed her of my step by letter. She protested in a blazing forty-word telegram. A second, even longer telegram went to her brother-in-law Heckenast. He in turn addressed a lordly and insulting telegram to me, and another to Hornschuch. Hornschuch wrote to Dr Fingerling that he was astounded that he, Fingerling, had not only allowed his client to absent herself during a crucial phase of the talks, but had seen fit to send her money abroad. Fingerling wrote a piqued letter on the high-handedness of his client to Heckenast. Heckenast wrote a cross letter to Ganna, summoning her home. Ganna wired back saying she wouldn’t think of it; she wasn’t going to allow herself to be violated. I was surprised the lines between Nice and Berlin and Nice and Ebenweiler didn’t self-combust with her pathetic ranting. In the meantime, she was running out of money. She couldn’t pay the hotel bill and was forced to borrow money from strangers. The strangers became suspicious when she didn’t keep her repayment date and threatened her with disagreeable steps. She wired, threatening to take legal action against me. Ganna letters and Ganna wires were raining down like shrapnel in a battle. Our little post office had its work cut out.

  While this whole crazy fuss was going on, the deed was being worked out. Beset by her lawyer, who in turn was being pressed by Hornschuch, Ganna saw herself forced to quit the Côte d’Azur. Hornschuch travelled to Vienna to meet Heckenast in Dr Fingerling’s office. I was told to keep myself available and be ready to go to Vienna at a moment’s notice. The signal came and I went.

  The scene: Heckenast’s hotel room. Dramatis personae: Heckenast, Hornschuch, Dr Fingerling and I. The burden of the drama: the big haggle. We haggled over every single point. There were so many points that, at the end of three hours, there was still no end in sight. My brother-in-law Heckenast was a man of Prussian laconism. He gave us to feel that by his presence he was dignifying all Austria, which was such a small, poor country. He was as passionless as a paperknife. Although considerably younger than I, he behaved towards me like an uncle swelled with his own moral rectitude, dismissing a naughty nephew from his affections; his bourgeois sensibility was lastingly offended by the reprehensible behaviour of this runaway from the kraal. Cold and impermeable, he placed himself before the rights of his sister-in-law Ganna like a wall. He was utterly objective. Ever allow the implacably objective to come to power, and that will spell the end of compassion and imagination on earth.

  Dr Fingerling was a gaunt, red-haired, polite gentleman who would have liked to settle the case to the satisfaction of all. Furthermore, he was anxious to trouser his fee. Ten thousand schillings had been agreed for him, quite a chunk of change. From time to time he beckoned Hornschuch over to whisper something in his ear. He, keen-eyed, alert, brisk in attack and on guard, reminded me of a foil fencer. More like a student than a fully fledged lawyer, it wasn’t hard for him to back the rigid Prussian into a corner, though admittedly that had little effect on the toughness of the conditions. Even though he was seeking to secure a deal for me somewhere at the upper limit of what I could bear, I still thought he disastrously overestimated my circumstances and resources. But there was nothing I could do. Things had gone too far. It was like a landslide: if you try to push against it, you’ll be crushed.

  I stood the whole time leaning against the window and allowed the hail of paragraphs, figures and punitive clauses to pass over me. My thoughts followed one of two tracks. One was remote from this slaughterhouse, in which I was playing the bullock; what is all this to do with me, I thought, this chain-rattle of punishments, what is it to do with me, it’s just money, let them have it, I’ll chuck it in their faces, let them fight each other over my hide, they won’t get my soul, that’s for sure. But the other track was black with worry, the question kept coming up: where am I going to get it from, all this money, year after year, welded to a contract that’s more like a guillotine than a piece of paper, my whole life a coolie’s service, my whole future fenced in with sanctions and reparations, my own personal Versailles; how can I prevent the work of my mind and imagination being diminished to an endless series of instalment payments and personal guarantees for Ganna?

  At last there was agreement. The notary was standing by. Heckenast ordered up some brandy, we all formally shook hands and as I walked down the stairs with Hornschuch he said:

  ‘I think congratulations are in order.’

  ‘It’s by no means certain that Ganna will sign,’ I replied cagily.

  Hornschuch said he thought Heckenast didn’t look as though he would stand for any more monkey business, while Master Fingerling was pretty hard up. On the pavement he took my hand and said with a strange giggle, because he really was proud of his triumph:

  ‘Pack money in your wallet! Lots of money! Money for Fingerling, money for Goldenthal, money for Ganna’s debts, blood money, ransom money … Have you got enough? I am at your service.’

  ‘I’ve scraped together everything I’ve got,’ I said.

  This conversation took place at two in the afternoon. At four, as arranged, Ganna came to Fingerling’s office with her brother-in-law in tow. The notary had been summoned. One might have supposed the formalities would be over in minutes. In the event it took five hours before Ganna, with floods of tears and sobs, set her name to the document. ‘It was like an amputation,’ said Dr Fingerling when he told his colleague Hornschuch about the scene. As late as five o’clock, Ganna had shouted that she wouldn’t agree under any circumstances. After e
veryone had talked at her for an hour, she seemed to be on the point of passing out and a cordial was brought. At seven o’clock she demanded a series of changes. Not possible, she was told, they had committed themselves as fiduciaries by handshake and word. She swore on the lives of her children she wouldn’t sign any deed that made her the unhappiest woman in the world. She accused her brother-in-law of being bribed by Bettina and me. She threatened to take an overdose. She claimed to be the victim of blackmail. The sweat was beading on Dr Fingerling’s brow. For the first time Heckenast lost control, grabbed her by the shoulders and roared that if she didn’t see sense he would have her committed. At that she turned very quiet. With shyly fluttering eyelids and lowered head, she sat down at the desk and signed. Then, once she had signed, she heaved up a groan like a dying person from the deepest recesses of her heart, flung herself on the sofa and howled for twenty minutes in such tones that the three men present looked into one another’s pale faces and didn’t know what to do.

  The following day, the day of the court appearance, I turned fifty-three. In the anteroom of the assizes Ganna walked up to me and said in dulcet tones and with the charming innocent smile of her girlhood days: ‘I’m giving you a divorce for your birthday, Alexander.’

  I was speechless – as speechless as I was an hour later when, with shaking hands, she stashed the many thousands of schillings I had counted out onto a table in front of her into her leather handbag. I stared intently at her ancient, wizened hands. Had they really opened to release me? We shall see.

  A LOOK AT THE DEED

  While all this was going on Bettina was sitting in Ebenweiler and waiting. So as not to be completely alone, she had invited Lotte Waldbauer to keep her company. At twelve noon Hornschuch phoned through news of the divorce. When she returned to Lotte in the blue salon, Lotte leaped up because her friend was staggering so. Bettina was indeed on the point of collapse. ‘It’s too much,’ she stammered, ‘too dear,’ and she lost consciousness. It wasn’t money and price that she was referring to with her ‘too dear’, because she only got to hear of the financial conditions I had been forced to accept the following day, when Hornschuch brought her the divorce agreement.