So there goes our summer holiday, says Judith, summing up what there is to be said about poor, stupid Hans, who is asleep down on the sofa and ended the evening rather drunk. What a pity, Judith adds, I think I’m missing you already, even though the train doesn’t leave until 18.42 tomorrow. The times of departure and arrival are in a telegram that came at midday. Am meeting Max, it says, will be with you at 18.42. At first she thought, why so late? But now she is almost glad that they will meet in the evening, it will be a surprise, they will wonder if they are still the same as they were in Müritz.
When the train comes into the station she has forgotten Hans. The journey has been quite fast; there’s not much to be seen, but now that the train is braking the first outlines emerge: two or three baggage carts, couples, men bending to pick up suitcases, a child on his father’s shoulders. They are sitting in the last third of the train, so it is not surprising that she can’t see him at first; she keeps perfectly calm, waiting at the door until the passengers ahead of her have disembarked. Then at last she is standing on the platform, and still she doesn’t see him. She takes no more notice of Hans. She turns left to the way out, and only then does she see him, some way off, at first sight even thinner, not entirely strange. She waves and he waves back, smiles, hesitates, comes a couple of steps towards her. Did he really hesitate? No, that is only later, and yet almost at the same moment, when she is standing in front of him and doesn’t know how to greet him, isn’t really touching him but just briefly rests her head against his shoulder. Have you been waiting long? He shakes his head, the train came in on the dot, and at that moment he sees that she has a companion. Hans has put the luggage down on the platform. This is Hans, she says without even glancing at Hans himself, wishing she could add that the matter is of no importance. Hans is just any Hans, a friend, not even that, someone who kept her company on the journey. Pleased to meet you, Doctor, says Hans. He offers his hand in both greeting and goodbye, because as soon as he has shaken hands with the doctor he turns and has gone, walking away towards the S-Bahn.
She couldn’t say what she was expecting. Franz, she says. Let me look at you, he replies, he nods, so here we are. She feels rather unsteady on her feet, but now he embraces her there in the middle of the station, while the last passengers are making their way to the exit. At last, he says, we’ll take a car. In the car he repeats, at last, let me look at you, as if he were suddenly remembering something, and he also says something about his room, how very pleasant it is, but he is afraid it will ruin him.
Dora can’t remember when she was last in a car. They have to wait a few minutes, but then they are on their way; the driver is cursing because he has taken the route across Potsdamer Platz, and he goes on cursing half-way down Potsdamer Strasse, until the traffic gradually thins out. The first villas with gardens come into sight, they reach Friedenau, Steglitz Town Hall lies ahead, then they arrive. Dora has been holding his hand all the time. She can’t say much, and other things are involved now, their hands, their gently throbbing veins. Their fingers do the talking. Take your time. That’s the best of it, that at last they have time. For now, all she needs is his hand. Are they there already? She hasn’t even noticed him unlocking the front door of the building, and she hardly noticed the street either. Now they are standing outside this door.
She has almost forgotten how these things go, but now they are whispering. He unlocks the door of the apartment for her, and the first thing she sees is a short, dark corridor. But this corridor is all she needs. She has dreamed of this moment so often. I’m here, she whispers. Ah, you, she says. It was almost unbearable a little while ago, but not any more.
First she touches everything, to get used to it: the ugly curtains, the cushions on the sofa, the furniture, spends some time with the piano, which unfortunately will be taken away soon. She inspects the stove and the cupboard, sits down at his desk. She stands in the kitchen and turns the water tap on and off. I didn’t notice yesterday, she says, but look here, there’s even a nutcracker, pots and pans, all anyone could want.
Yesterday evening they spent forever standing in that funny corridor, as if it had been their destination for weeks, he and she in their coats standing on these few square metres. Half the evening she was thinking: now he will send me away, when we’ve eaten, when I’ve stopped expecting it.
She left very late, but now, next morning, she is back again. They eat breakfast, they go shopping together feeling happy, and silly in a cautious way. They laugh at all the zeros on the banknotes, they forget half their shopping and set out again. He tells her what it was like at his parents’, about the last night there, which must have been terrible, so that he didn’t know until the last minute whether he would be leaving.
All things considered, he is very cautious. More with himself than her; she has a feeling that he doesn’t really have to be cautious where she is concerned. She still isn’t quite herself, but she likes that, she is trying to grasp what has happened, she sees him at his desk, very close to her, and can’t grasp it.
On the second afternoon Emmy comes to visit. She isn’t sure whether she likes this excitable woman, who said she was coming at five but was over half an hour late, out of breath as if she had been running all the way. She had just been at a rehearsal, she says, she’s always late for things, Max could tell you a thing or two about that. Then she talks at length about Max, her joy and her sorrow, how terrible it is when he goes away, she simply can’t get used to it, every time the world collapses for her. Max sends you both his regards, of course, she says, he and the doctor had a long conversation at the Café Josty recently, do you know the Josty? Dora knows it only by name. Where is it anyway? Emmy asks, and now Dora is surprised. See you soon, he has written, but when they go over there they find him asleep on the sofa, face to the wall, his legs half drawn up so that he will have room, lying there without the slightest movement.
Two/Staying
1
The first few days are like a light sleep, an afternoon nap on the sofa, when he can’t tell for certain where the sounds are coming from: the street down below, the kitchen, or further inside the building – a kind of knocking sound, a voice that sounds like Dora’s, but it could be just his imagination, something that he can conjure up in his mind because he has heard it before.
If he is awake it is all pleasantly unfamiliar, the muted traffic of the suburbs outside the windows, the silence in the parks when they go there together. Most of it is still new to him and surprising, her face in the morning, the smell of her, the way she sits cross-legged on the sofa when she reads from the Torah. Yes? Would you like that? Do you feel all right here with me? The early days, when the questions were not really questions.
He is in Berlin, and he has this young woman with him. He can touch her any time he likes, but often he just looks, captivated by a position, the way she bends her neck, the swing of her hips as she walks across the room. It is all for him, she seems to be saying, whatever he likes in her he can have.
For a while they live as if isolated from the world, more or less indifferent to what is going on outside: the monstrous price rises that affect them all the same, the general uneasiness, the intellectual bankruptcy. Only the landlady really makes him anxious. When the key was handed over on Wednesday, he didn’t say a word to Dora about that, and now they have met several times, have introduced themselves in a friendly manner, but he guesses that the situation can change overnight.
He tells Emmy, in those early days: I’m still not entirely here. For instance, today is only the second time I’ve ventured into the city. They have agreed to meet at the bureau de change in the Zoo Station, where there is a great crowd. The sum of money to be exchanged is alarming, even though it amounts to less than twenty dollars. Emmy says: You two couldn’t have come here at a worse time, things can hardly go downhill any faster. But she sounds cheerful, makes a few remarks about Dora that please him, and then changes the subject to talk about Max, to whom she spoke on the tele
phone only yesterday. The poor air quality is giving the doctor trouble. He begins coughing as soon as he is here in the city centre. Emmy looks at him with concern, and is quick to take him away to the aquarium, where it is pleasantly dark and quiet, almost like being in the cinema. The creatures there are far away behind glass. Fish of all colours and sizes can be seen, luminous jellyfish that turn Emmy’s stomach, and further off in the tank, the sharks. Now she is frightened, or pretends to be frightened. The doctor puts his arm round her as if to protect her – well, why not? She smells delicious, and he thinks very briefly, while he has his arm round her, that she too might have been the woman for him in another life, although he really knows her only slightly.
He has already written to his parents. Elli answered, expressing her concern from a distance, because from a distance things soon seem dangerous, whereas on the spot they are almost habit by now. The opposite, however, is also true. You have only to open your eyes, or read the local papers, for instance the Steglitzer Anzeiger, spread out in the display case outside the Town Hall, which has become his daily reading. But he insisted on coming to Berlin. Usually he just skims the pages. That morning, he showed a positive mania for figures, but unfortunately that’s not all; he hasn’t read the paper properly yet. A group of girls pass him as he sits on a bench in the wonderful sunlight of the Botanical Garden. It is like the beginning of a love story. A tall, youthful, pretty blonde smiles flirtatiously at him, pursing her lips and calling something out. That seems to be the story. He smiles back in an exuberantly friendly manner; even later, when she turns several times to look back at him, surrounded by her girlfriends. He goes on smiling until it gradually dawns on him what it was she had said. Jew, she said.
The photograph that he has taken in the Wertheim department store at the beginning of October is for his parents. The price is alarming, and he is not satisfied with the picture either. There is an ugly crease on the right-hand side of his shirt collar, and unfortunately there’s nothing to be done about that now. So far his tie, suit and waistcoat seem to be in order. A photograph, he feels, seldom does anyone justice, but all the same he has to admit that this one shocks him. He looks like an elderly schoolboy. He looks terrible. His ears stick out, his large eyes appear sensitive in an odd kind of way. Not a trace of Dora. Why isn’t he smiling? Well, he does seem to show a tiny suggestion of a smile, making a gentle impression, a soft glow, you might call it, if he can summon it up on the return journey in the tram before he gets back to quiet Steglitz.
Ottla has sent a parcel of butter and wants to know how he is, imagining what his early days with that young woman are like. It is obvious that she has her doubts, gently expressed; the doctor has always had difficulty in getting really close to anyone, and furthermore he and Dora have not known each other long. Is she with you at the moment? Are you kind and nice to her? That sounds as if Dora has to be protected from him. But nothing is less necessary; there are no signs of any reservations. And yes, she is with him, not all round the clock but so often that he is used to her; there is a certain rhythm to their days, most of it arising of itself as if it had never been different.
Elli has written, sounding cross with him. She calls it sheer wilfulness on his part to go to Berlin, she doubts his reliability and truthfulness, founding her concern, as usual, on the question of his weight. He admits freely to some of her reproaches. He did not put on any weight in Müritz, or in Schelesen either, where he first gained weight and then lost it again, and just before it would have been too late he took the train to Berlin, and would do the same again. Doesn’t she understand that? Hasn’t she met Dora? He doesn’t want to write to her. Not in this way, as if he has to justify himself to her – to Elli, of all people, who was there from the first and saw what happiness the girl means to him.
He has asked the family for money, small sums sent in ordinary letters, which is why the umbilical cord can’t be cut for the time being.
Unfortunately the weather is very changeable. For the last few days it has hardly stopped raining; he has not directly caught a chill but he feels the influence of the city, which is anything but good for him. He has overstrained himself, and regrets going to see Puah in Steinmetzstrasse, particularly as he cannot shake off the impression that she was not glad to see him. He has made no progress worth mentioning with his Hebrew for months. She gives him an almost formal welcome, asking after Dora out of civility rather than interest. Doesn’t Dora speak good Hebrew? He thinks of their warm goodbyes in Müritz, disappointed to find so little of that left – it was only at the beginning of August. On the way back in the tram he feels curiously weary, and goes to bed early. He starts coughing at about eleven o’clock as if on cue, a cough that is harmless in quality but irritating in quantity.
Next day he hardly leaves his bed. As usual, he gets up after seven a.m., lies down again two hours later, and lets breakfast and a fork lunch pass him by in a drowsy sleep before he finally makes himself get out of bed at five. Dora is touchingly concerned for him, but inconspicuously, so that his sense of shame can be kept within bounds. She says he mustn’t go into the city in wet weather, and offers to do his shopping as well as hers, all in a light-hearted tone that is not entirely new to him. Ottla sometimes speaks to him like that when she is worried about him, showing how close they are.
I’m not looking after you very well, says Dora. I go out too much. Yet they see each other almost every day. It feels as if she is always there or absent at the right moment, for instance during the three hours that he spends in a consultation with Dr Weiss, before the latter suddenly excuses himself. Most of the time he was nervous or bitterly cheerful, except in the half hour when Dora was there.
He has no established routine to his days yet, and they fly by imperceptibly, inactively. He deals with his post, but that is all. He keeps having to go the bureau de change: you eat, he thinks, you have to talk, you get to know people. Nothing is really difficult. Not every reconnaissance trip is successful at once, there are sensitive points, obstacles within him that have to be cleared away, but they have nothing to do with that enchanting being Dora. Sometimes he feels full of pride, and would like to show her off everywhere – look what I have! – as if she were his prize. During Dr Weiss’s visit yesterday that feeling was very strong when she came in, bringing him something, and sat down for a little while.
So they are living more or less as a couple. The room is not very large, and if things go on like this they will have to look for a real apartment, but for the present he is perfectly happy with the conditions. When she leaves in the evening he is neither relieved nor sorry. She often leaves things lying about for him: a scarf, a ring that she took off to wash the dishes, a hair on the sofa cushion, a drift of Dora-perfume in the corridor, the echo of her voice as he abandons himself to the silence of the evening.
He will stay here, he thinks, until at least the end of the year.
When the weather allows, he continues going for walks, often in the Botanic Garden, where the rarest flowers and plants can be studied in the glasshouses. It is rainy but not particularly cold, you can go there now in just a jacket, but probably not for much longer. He will need something for the winter, a coat, other clothes, underwear, a dressing-gown, maybe a foot-muff. Max might be able to bring some of these things, or he will get on the train and fetch them for himself. When he left his parents’ house he told them it was only for a few days, and now weeks have passed; he has a guilty conscience, but not too guilty, and furthermore, if he went to see them now he would instantly be back in the role of their son, and he doesn’t want that on any account.
2
All is well with Dora for the time being. They spent that sleepless night together, and the cough has not come back since then, but she is going to keep a more careful eye on him. The weather is still cool and rainy, the sun comes out for a few hours and then it begins raining again. The exchange rate is four billion marks to the dollar, they have to scrimp and save, but she feels young; she is l
iving with this man she has known for just three months, who gives her every imaginable freedom. She can come and go as she likes, she works in the People’s Home at an hourly rate for a pitiful sum, she talks to Paul, she meets Judith. They both tell her how well she is looking, they ask her what it’s like. Is it what you dreamed of? Of course she could say a good deal on that subject, but she prefers to nod, smiling radiantly as if remembering something, a detail that she didn’t think of before, and for heaven’s sake, what business is that of anyone else’s?
For a while she really does think that when they leave the building together, other people can see everything about them: they leave traces everywhere, a kind of glow, a lingering aroma, an imprint on her skin that stays for a couple of hours at the place on her throat where he kissed her.
And much is strange to her as well. For years he has eaten poultry but no other meat, he chews every mouthful for an endlessly long time, according to the dictum of some doctor, he has odd times of waking and sleeping. He looks tired, there are shadows round his eyes because of his poor nights, which makes her wonder whether he cannot sleep because he is writing at night, or whether he writes first and then doesn’t sleep. At night in her room she thinks at length of the day behind her, their conversations about Palestine, a joke while they were shopping, how he will stand up in the middle of a meal and put his arms round her from behind. What they talk about is soon forgotten, and she remembers only vaguely his caresses, an up and down movement like a wave, their sighs, now and then a whisper, not in any precise sequence. She never really knew herself before, and she tells him so at every opportunity – she has known herself, she says, only since she has been with him. Everything in me was asleep, it was all waiting for you, except that I didn’t know you. Or rather: I knew you, but sad to say I never knew where to find you, and then at last I did, I found you on the beach.
The Glory of Life Page 7