My Marriage

by Jakob Wassermann

  It is therefore almost inevitable that a writer, a certifiable writer, would come to hold the meaning of the universe for Ganna, to save her from the repellent superficiality of the Mevis empire, the tarn with the five exemplary swans. She dreamed of the role and the mission of an Aspasia. But to be an Aspasia, you needed a Pericles and an Athens. Even to be a Rahel Varnhagen, you still needed a Goethe. But where was there a Pericles, or a Goethe, in the humdrum world of 1898? Well, that’s what dreams are there for, for changing phantasms into reality.

  Yours truly

  In May of that self-same year, it so happened that I left Munich for Vienna. I had just published a novel called The Treasure Seekers and the book had not gone entirely unnoticed. Some experts were even pleased to praise it at over its worth, and call its author a shining new beacon of light on the horizon, a rather tawdry form of words that was much in vogue at the time. Perhaps they were impressed by the darkness of the material and the seemingly inspired chaos of the narrative; today I can only say I am surprised by the many friendly voices and respectful opinions this unripe product of a twenty-five-year-old tyro managed to garner.

  It remained a so-called succès d’estime. My grim financial situation was unaffected. I left Munich in a hurry, firstly to get away from creditors, secondly because a love affair had stirred up so much gossip and odium towards me that my closest friends deserted me and respectable citizens crossed themselves on the pavement when I was pointed out to them. I knew hardly anyone in Vienna, half a dozen admirers, that was all, and admirers are only useful to you so long as you don’t need their help. I had no idea what I was going to live on, since I had only random earnings, and arrogantly rejected the idea of employment. Luckily, I met rich people here and there, who not only had some sympathy for me, but who also had a degree of snobbishness about them; they allowed me from time to time to borrow money from them.

  In a quiet part of town behind the Votivkirche, on Lackierstraße 8, I rented an enormous room for myself, furnished, it would appear, from a junk shop, and rather negligently at that. I slept through my days and spent the nights with professional colleagues either in cafes, or else (it being summer) in the Prater, home at the time of a curious institution called Venice-in-Vienna, a ridiculous aping of Venice’s bridges and canals. I walked home in the wee hours, singing loudly to myself in the deserted streets, or, like a drunken student, running the end of my cane clatteringly along the metal shutters of the shops.

  Then one day I had enough of the city, and I picked up my rucksack and went a-roving: over the Moravian plain, into the mountains in the south, into the Bohemian Forest, along the Danube, always on Shanks’s pony, rarely with more than ten crowns in my pocket, enjoying my own company or that of some comrade I found myself with. For instance, there was a young man by the name of Konrad Fürst, who had joined forces with me early on in my Viennese time out of a kind of fealty; he had writerly ambitions, though he was a pretty superficial fellow who liked best to play the cavalier, and had little going on upstairs but womanizing. I was impressed and somewhat surprised that he agreed to go on the road with me, and put it down to his admiration. I have always been vulnerable to such an approach. Then there was another man, David Muschilov, a red-haired Jew, who wrote theatre and exhibition reviews for the papers, and took himself for a witty writer, and oh-so incorruptible. He was by no means as incorruptible as he thought, and his wit soon got on my nerves. I have always been chary of witty people. But they were good companions, both of them, and I won’t forget them; they had faith in me, and were happy to share their bread and their money with me, and were always up for pranks of one sort or another.

  Overall, then, I was content with the change in my circumstances, and in the more relaxed atmosphere, and among the friendlier Austrians I felt myself reborn. When autumn came and put an end to my gipsy existence I returned to my uncomfortable quarters, which the landlady had let me keep in return for a small deposit, hired—on top of the sorry furniture I had—an old pianino with brown keys and, to the dismay of sensitive ears, would bang away on it for hours on end. Then, all of a sudden, I felt in the mood for another prose work. I had supposed my little rivulet had run dry, but now when I came home at night from the society of my motley friends, I would stay up and write for two hours each night and give myself over to my creations.

  The effect of a book

  Oddly it was through her father that Ganna first got to know about The Treasure Seekers. One of Professor Mevis’s colleagues had pressed my book into his hand, and told him this was something he absolutely had to read. The Professor growled back that he didn’t read novels, but agreed to take the book anyway. Reluctantly he started to read it, was captured in spite of himself, and when he had finished it he was forced to admit that it ‘had something’. So he said to me afterwards. A crime story was professionally interesting to him as a lawyer; admittedly, that was just the frame for a deeper narrative that was inaccessible to him. He had no feeling for the artistic qualities the book certainly possessed; the impassioned diction and the grim atmosphere of the whole were disagreeable to him. Even so he is supposed to have remarked to the colleague who recommended the book to him: ‘Not bad; someone worth keeping an eye on.’ Quite some praise from a constitutional lawyer.

  Ganna happened to walk into the room and saw the book on the table. She had heard about it, of course, it had been on her list for a long time. She picked it up; it was seven at night, and by three in the morning she had finished it. Gobbled it up. Avidly the way you guzzle an elixir, for fear of losing a single drop. What was it about it that so got to her? Why was she compelled to imbibe it so hungrily? I often asked myself that, later. After all, it was incredibly remote to her, it must surely have alienated her, been more off-putting than attractive to her—if beguiling, then only in a technical way, accessible only to one who had dwelt in a similar state himself. Whichever, her sense of the book was indelible and unquestionably genuine. She often talked about it afterwards, and it is not impossible that each time she slightly overstated her initial response, in roughly the way a lottery winner might, when describing the prophetic twitch in his fingers. Certainly, some sixth sense was involved, some sense of affinity. Shortly afterwards she came across my picture in a publisher’s catalogue. She cut it out and pinned it up on the wall next to her bookcase. As she did so, she claimed (and others of her literary set confirmed it) she swore not to rest until she had met me in person. The picture, I have to say, was rather flattering. It’s gone missing since, but unless I’m mistaken it made me look every inch a robber chief.

  A go-between is found

  Things developed as follows. In the summer of 1899, Ganna learned from one of her friends that I had been living in Vienna for more than a year. He is intensely private, though, she was told, and it’s not easy to get to meet him. Ganna had rather overblown ideas about writers, and her first notion was of a sort of court, surrounding some heir to the throne. When people in a better position to know broke it to her that I was a poor wretch, she ignored them. She hated to be disturbed in her fantasizing. She would have written to me had she not supposed my flat was awash with such letters, like a post office. If her letter remained unanswered, that would mean she had no chance of getting to me. She researched my circle and sought the acquaintance of individuals who had been named to her. She told me once she had no doubt she would be singed by a ring of fire that surrounded me. She heard more and more about me, met people who knew people whom I saw on a daily basis. She envied these people, she was jealous of them. In the first letters I got from her there was a lot about that. One day—by now it was the middle of winter—she happened to visit an old friend of her mother’s, one Frau von Brandeis. This lady kept a salon, as the expression goes, albeit in a rather modest way. I had taken a few meals there. Ganna’s mouth always spilled what was in her heart, and so she confessed to the old bluestocking what she so devoutly wished for. Frau von Brandeis said: ‘Well, if that’s all it is, help is at hand. I’
ll ask him round. Can you come to supper on Tuesday?’ She told me herself that Ganna in her happy shock changed colour and silently kissed her hand.

  First meeting

  An odd habit from which I still suffer compels me to follow each call, each summons, as if I was somehow afraid of hurting or even offending anyone who called out to me in vain. Sometimes there’s nothing behind it but my inertia: you carry on in the direction in which you’ve been pushed. So I accepted unhesitatingly when Frau von Brandeis invited me, even though I had been horribly bored at earlier visits to her house.

  I have no clear recollection of the impression Ganna made on me that first evening. I have a picture of a rather garishly clad, fidgety, restless young girl. I am unable to say whether she was well dressed or not. I didn’t have a way of telling. She loved loud colours, and a picturesque framing of little scarves and fluttering bows. Over supper, with a sidelong look at me, she told how she’d almost fainted on the stairs. Her hasty and excitable speech was disagreeable to me, but Frau von Brandeis had prepared me for the degree of excitement she would be plunged into by my presence, so I took a clement view of her excessive vivacity. Two or three times I glanced at her fleetingly. She had a plain face with strained features, freckled complexion and intensely peering blue eyes; the cheekbones were prominent; very attractive though were the sensuous mouth with splendid teeth, and a charming innocent laugh. Her uncommonly small, twitchy hands displayed recurring gestures that had something jagged and assertive about them, which she became aware of at intervals and tried to moderate.

  This fairly accurate portrait was probably a composite, based on a number of meetings. To begin with, my interest in Fräulein Ganna Mevis was slight. I was more mindful of my work than of my surroundings. I am said not to have been prepossessing or entertaining myself—hardly a man of the world, then. At that time, when I went out, I wore a knee-length set of tails, with shiny cuffs and elbows and not all that clean either, an ancient garment that was not improved by a picturesquely looped black necktie. The meal over, I adjourned to the smoking room, sat down in an uncomfortable little armchair and soon found myself joined by Ganna. I had expected her. We started talking. Much of what she said astonished me. I forgot her excitability, her electric movements. I thought she was original. There was a mixture of foolishness and acuity in what she said. The charmingly innocent smile sometimes made me smile. I was most moved by the seeker in her, the pleading suit, the groping about her as in a dream. Strange creature, I kept thinking. But by the time I was on my way home I had forgotten about her. And when I remembered her urgent words and looks, the burning devotion that imbued her whole being, I felt a pang of unease.

  Letters, hints, magical words

  The next day, I got a pneumatique from her. Why the rush, I asked myself. There was nothing pressing in it. The letters were just as urgent as her speech. Big, jagged, impetuous characters that resembled a meeting of conspirators. I can’t remember if I wrote back. It seems to me it was only the third or fourth letter that induced me to give her an answer. Because she wrote to me almost every day. Always pneumatiques. A few lines, with obvious attention to style. I thought sardonically: writing letters to a writer is surely an education in itself. And the content? Atmospherics: happy wonderment at the new turn in her life; a plea to me not to forget her; a friendly greeting because it was a nice day; anxious inquiries about my state, because she’d had a bad dream about me. She wasn’t short of things to say.

  And what possessed me to answer her? I don’t know. If you feel vastly, boundlessly admired, you drop your guard. Even the most resolute misanthrope has a spot where he falls prey to vanity. And I was anything but a misanthrope. Even after numerous bad experiences, I only started to get suspicious of someone after they’d wrung my neck, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps Ganna had little hope that I would reply, but from the moment I first wrote back she had acquired in perpetuity a right to be answered. And so a man gets ensnared.

  I had the bad habit of leaving letters carelessly lying about the place. At that time, I was involved with an actress, a nice, clever woman. One day she picked up one of Ganna’s notes to me, read it in spite of my objections, smiled ironically and said:

  ‘You’d best beware of her.’

  ‘Why, what do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t explain, it’s just a feeling I have. Watch yourself.’

  She was the first to warn me. Many years later, I still think about that.

  At a private view of the Secession, I ran into Frau von Brandeis. She asked me what I thought of Ganna Mevis. She sang her praises in the loftiest tones. A clever girl; ideal temperament; heart of gold; the family an impeccable collection of bourgeois virtues. She plucked at my sleeve and whispered that anyone who managed to land one of the Mevis girls was made for life; the Professor could afford to give each of his daughters a dowry of 80,000 crowns! I freed myself from the silly gossip, but I have to admit it didn’t do me any good, the number caught in my brain. It’s just the way it is: a man who doesn’t know how he’ll pay the rent at the end of the month can easily fall to calculating that a vast sum like that will keep him modestly in a garret for the next sixty or seventy years. A flip response, nothing more, and yet . . .

  In the meantime I had had a few more meetings with Ganna in neutral places. Complaisance breeds complaisance. But I must confess I liked her better with each further meeting. There was something irresistibly impetuous about her that appealed to my own rather viscid nature. I thought she was an uncommonly harmonious and consistent character. The only thing that bothered me was the continual hyperbole. One day she told me the reflection of the book I was working on was clearly visible in my brow. I replied chilly that I preferred people with dry hands and a dry manner, clamminess was apt to become slippery. She was alarmed—only to give me her rueful and passionate assent. Then that in turn became too much. It was like standing on the pedal while playing a simple folk tune. Another time, on a stroll together, I was thunderstruck when she told me about the book I was writing at the time. As I hadn’t discussed it with anyone, I had every reason to be surprised. It was a story of decline, set in a particular social stratum, and carried by a contemporary Parsifal. ‘Only you can write it,’ she said stirringly, ‘no one else.’ I had the uncomfortable feeling of a housewife finding a cat in her larder. The door was shut, the windows locked, there was no hole in the walls, therefore something inexplicable has taken place. Divination? Maybe. With Ganna it would have seemed possible. It was her way of saying: I am inside your work, it’s my destiny, it belongs to me. Perhaps I was overplaying some vaguer formulation of hers; also the expose was in the air; conceivably she had drawn some hint of the contents from me, though I can’t remember such a thing. Whatever, Ganna had something of a sorceress about her. I thought she was a white witch, or a strong, energetic and courageous little fairy. And the fact that she asked, with maidenly humility, to be close to me, my scant conversation, my austere instructions—that did me good, because I was not spoiled.

  What was bound to happen happens

  She persuaded me to visit her at her parents’ house. We agreed on a date and a time, and Ganna made preparations as for a visit from the Prince of Wales. She served notice to her sisters that her tête-à-tête with me was not to be disturbed at any price. Later on, I heard complaints from Irmgard and Traude about the quarantine that Ganna so rigorously imposed. They would have liked very much to meet me and talk to me, but Ganna hadn’t allowed it. When I stepped into the hall, a figure vanished with lightning speed through an open door, but a split second was enough for me to catch the astonished flash of a pair of black eyes. And when, some time later, I was back in the hallway, escorted by Ganna, I caught a glimpse of another fleeing shade and another astonished pair of eyes, this time blue.

  I became a regular visitor to the house. Ganna received me with delicious sandwiches and excellent tea. I had determined the episode would end by the time I set out on my next summer wanderings. But in that ca
se I shouldn’t have made Ganna privy to my plans; shouldn’t have told her the names of all the places where I was planning to stay. Not just that either; in my mindless indiscretion, I also told her that I had arranged to meet a few friends at the upper Mondsee in early autumn, and then go to ground in a farmhouse, to finish my book. Hot with joy, she replied how wonderful, her mother had rented a small villa nearby, on the Attersee, where she and her sisters would probably be staying until October, and if she got on a bike it was only half an hour. I was alarmed. My gabbiness annoyed me. But what should I have done? You have to talk about something, and if you have a certain respect for big subjects and questions that—even if you ask them with childish circumspection—are not really answerable because they take you into personal realms, then all that’s left are bald facts. Somehow Ganna always managed to draw me out; tears would spring to her eyes when I turned her down kindly or gave her an evasive reply. She had no one she could trust, she told me animatedly, she was a stranger in the bosom of her family, her sisters were her enemies, her parents didn’t understand her, she was lost if I didn’t give her more of the manna that was the only food for her soul. Such words moved me. I had seen that she was the Cinderella in her brood.