The first few days are like a country holiday. They sit on the balcony and enjoy the warmth. Franz is wearing a suit for the first time in many days, and he is full of energy, so after breakfast they go into the garden, where there is no one at this time of day apart from a youngish woman lying in the sun, a baroness, as it turns out, famous for her large appetite. At the far end of the garden there is a wrought iron gate through which you can reach a little valley full of the rushing of the brook and the sound of birdsong in the air that is redolent of spring. They turn left, following the brook for a while, until after a few minutes they reach the village. Although it was not a long way, they stop to rest on a bench, still in good spirits. There are all kinds of people out walking, families with children in their Sunday best, going to have lunch in one of the two restaurants. Franz would like to go for a drive; a stout driver praises his one-horse carriage and takes them, for a low price, to nearby Klosterneuburg, where the streets are even livelier. Franz laughs, he is cheerful and in high spirits, as he was last year on the beach, he keeps putting his arm round her and kissing her, her hands, forehead and nose, as if once again he cannot understand that she is here and will stay with him. Max has sold not only the mouse story but the story about their first landlady in Berlin – it is appearing this very day in a Prague newspaper. Of course they do not have a copy, but it is a reason to feel cheerful and reminisce. Berlin is an eternity ago, who knows if they will ever see it again; all the same, they talk about Berlin now. Yesterday evening she wrote to Judith at last, which was not easy for her, since she has no words for her present life as it races past her, in the hours when she is not with him, in her new room, which is just an ordinary room, a provisional place to stay that she will leave at the first opportunity.
On Easter Monday they walk in the valley where the brook runs again, but this time going right and on towards the wood, a steep climb to a height from which there is a wide view over vineyards and woods. Franz is out of breath but full of a desire for activity. He would like to go to an inn selling the new wine of the locality and sit in the sun over a glass of it, why not? They could even go to Vienna if the opportunity offered itself, should the country life become boring. It is only a short walk that they take, but almost as soon as they are back they have to admit it would have been better not to go. Franz is totally exhausted, he feels cold, and he goes to bed at once and merely acknowledges Felix’s goodbye visit. Dora does not know much about this Felix. He works as a librarian at the university. She likes his thoughtful manner, his wordless consolation, the way he talks about his daughter Ruth. They are sitting in the reading room. Most of the time they talk about Franz and his dream of Palestine, which is Felix’s dream as well. She accompanies him to the door, where to her surprise he awkwardly embraces her and says how he dislikes leaving her. All alone like this, her days must be rather long. Oh no, she says. We do each other good, we get on well, we had plenty of practice in Berlin.
Luckily the holidays are over. Franz would like some fresh fruit, and now she can go shopping again and cook for him. At least that gives her something to do. She discusses the division of labour with the cook, a cheerful Silesian lady, so that they will not get in one another’s way, but it is all settled without any difficulty. There is a family atmosphere in the house, people stop to exchange greetings on the stairs and in the corridors, and she already knows most of those staying here: four men and two women. Once she spends some time talking to the baroness, who is considered a hopeless case, but not by Dr Hoffmann, who encourages her to eat as much as she can. She positively stuffs herself with food. If there is cucumber salad, she helps herself to not one but four servings, hoping to overcome her illness like that. She says all this laughing, adding that she is engaged to a lawyer and she wants to marry him soon. Franz’s temperature is high again, especially in the evening, and he is depressed because he can’t go outside. But he has a good appetite, and he is always so grateful when she comes for all the work she does for him. Do you remember that vegetarian restaurant in Friedrichstrasse?
So far she has no very clear impression of Dr Hoffmann. He is an affable, middle-aged man, but has very firm opinions, for instance rejecting all unorthodox methods of treatment. This is a dig against Dora, who would like to send to Vienna for a doctor practising natural therapy, but cannot get his permission. He understands her desire to try every possible means in the present situation, he says, but he is the one who bears responsibility for his patients. Franz seems almost relieved, because every doctor costs a huge sum of money, and then there is the expense of the sanatorium itself, Dora’s room, and everything they buy. He is morose half the day, complaining that he has nothing to read because his parents don’t send any newspapers. In the evening she telephones his mother, and of course hears that the things they asked for are on their way, including the down quilt that Franz wanted. In spite of the brochures his mother can’t picture life at that place Kierling; I hope you have some time to yourselves, I am sure you need if after all your ups and downs. She uses the familiar plural you pronoun for Dora and Franz, and Dora is really moved because it shows that his parents in Prague understand that they are a couple who belong together, and that even here in the sanatorium, in spite of everything, a kind of life goes on.
Judith has sent two large packets from Berlin, containing the clothes and underwear that Dora asked for. There are no more hints that she may be going back to Berlin. Dora packed the clothes up weeks ago, and is surprised by all the things she finds: two dresses for the in-between season, her skirt suit, a few books, jewellery. She changes at once to put on the brightly coloured dress for Franz’s sake, even if he doesn’t notice it, but he notices it at once, and knows when she first wore it in their early days in Berlin: in the Botanic Garden, he says. She bought the dress shortly before going to Müritz. She likes its pleated collar and the floral pattern, which may be a little too girlish, but that is just what he likes about it. He asks her to walk up and down in front of his bed and turn slowly in a circle, as if she were dancing. She has never danced with him, and doesn’t even know if he can dance – earlier, perhaps, she thinks, when he was a student – but he shakes his head, laughing, no, never, but he’ll learn if she likes. For that evening it is almost like the past. They eat an omelette together and begin dreaming again, dreaming of a summer in Müritz and what they would do differently. Not a great deal, it turns out, for fundamentally most of what they did last summer was right for them. Of course Dora wouldn’t be working, and they would have a room together, closer to the beach, because it had been quite a long way to walk down to the sea, although Franz had liked his lodgings very much. Do you remember the room? She does remember the terrible rain and how wet she was at the least little movement. How he went over to her. She remembers all that. Their kisses, how excited she was. It is so long ago, but their feelings are still there, the echoes of them, the anxiety that was part of it from the first, something lurking in the background, something that she overlooked as far as possible.
7
He finally seems to have stopped writing. By now he can barely keep up with his correspondence, let alone writing creatively for himself. He thinks of the coming night, the visits ahead of him, the arrangements from hour to hour, the next meal. He wonders whether he can get up today, looks to see what the weather is like in the morning and whether he will be able to sit on the balcony, waits for Dora – he would have been done for long ago without her – thinks of the coming visit by the lung specialist, who is to be here tomorrow. He is rather afraid of him, but apart from that he feels surprisingly well. He doesn’t have to leave here, at least not as long as the money lasts, and they can sit on the balcony together and dwell on the past. He doesn’t usually get beyond Berlin in his reminiscences. His hopes are not extravagant, but he can dream of another drive into the countryside or be glad of the small items of news that Dora brings, messages from Prague or Berlin, because they do come from Berlin as well, from Judith to whom he owes the deli
ghtful arrival of Dora’s clothes. Dora writes letters and talks on the telephone, and sometimes he is surprised by her strength, particularly as, God knows, he is not good company. More and more frequently he is too hoarse to speak, he feels tired at the most impossible times of day, and to Dora’s disappointment he eats far less than he should.
It is said of the expert from Vienna that he was going to treat a patient here once before, but then, since he had asked a fee of three million, at the last minute he didn’t come. That was in autumn last year, when the price of everything was rising to dizzy heights here as well as in Germany. They wait all morning for him, and when he finally appears his visit lasts for less than half an hour. To the expert, Franz is only another consumptive, one case among thousands, but now that he is here he makes a brief speculum examination of the larynx, probes it for a while, and finally travels back to Vienna leaving a note of his fee behind. Dora turns pale for a moment when she sees the amount, although she does not say anything, but goes out of the room for a while. It is obvious that her mind is preoccupied with the professor’s visit. He did not say so, but it is clear that like all the other patients here Franz is a hopeless case, so at least he knows he is in good company, while Dora acts as if it were just another stupid visit. But she needs help. Shouldn’t he have noticed that much earlier? Once she alludes to having discussed it, apparently, with Robert, for suddenly she is talking about Robert all the time, saying how good it would be for him to have someone here he could talk to at those times when she is in the kitchen or has to go shopping in the village. Furthermore, he has tuberculosis like Franz, but luckily at an early stage. However, he knows about the disease, and that in itself would certainly be a help. Very well, says the doctor, although he has been at loggerheads with Robert for some time; there is something about him that he has never liked – his challenging manner, and then his readiness to capitulate.
For the time being he comes only on a visit. Dora fetches him from the railway station while the doctor lies on the balcony in the shade, half naked, with the day before yesterday’s newspaper that came in the post from Prague. It is three years since he and Robert met in their sanatorium. The war was over long ago, but all the same they talk about it a great deal, for Robert was on the eastern front and then in Italy for a few years, during which time he contracted the disease. When they had met he seemed fresh and youthful, a little soft, especially in the face, where his expression had a touch of bitterness in it because his tuberculosis meant he had had to give up studying medicine. As might have been expected, he has not changed much since then. He arrives in a suit and waistcoat, his hair parted on one side as always: a good-looking man in his mid-twenties. Obviously he and Dora have been talking, so there are hardly any questions. However, he is ready to help, and says that he is glad, as if he had been waiting for an opportunity like this. To Dora, his presence is very welcome. She shows him the view from the balcony, the room, where they stand talking for a while, and they even look at the dining-room, the kitchen where she cooks for Franz, her own little domain. He will stay for a few days here in the house, where luckily there are still rooms vacant, and so they are all content, difficult as everyday life continues to be for Franz. He finds talking more and more difficult, and reading too. Days ago the latest novel by Franz Werfel arrived, so he is reading now and then, extremely slowly but regularly, just a few pages at a time.
A new calm mood sets in, at least he himself feels calmer, but outwardly there is plenty going on: he has compresses and must inhale, but that is his only treatment at the moment because of his high temperature. He resists having the arsenic injections suggested by Dr Hoffmann, and indeed he seems less feverish since yesterday. Now, in the morning, for instance, he has only a raised temperature, his throat is the same as before, and so is the hoarseness that sometimes makes it difficult for him to talk. Above all, he is glad for Dora’s sake. She is a different woman since Robert came. Sometimes they alternate with each other beside the doctor, sometimes they all three sit together, talking about the latest gossip from Prague – the post has just arrived, and recently Dora has taken over answering it. His parents expressly asked her to write, and she is very proud of that, and asks, cautiously, about the quilt, saying she had already thought of buying one in Vienna, but then he would throw her out. The doctor laughs when he reads that. He likes the way she writes, the remarkable way she puts things, and if he complains of how little space she leaves for him to write anything too that serves him right. He likes her handwriting, which she claims is getting more and more like his, he likes the serious way she thanks them for letting her take over the task of writing to them. Sometimes it reminds her of the old days in the office, there are letters to be answered almost every day and the envelopes are stacked up on the desk. She bends down over the paper as she writes, her back bent as if under a burden that she is glad to carry, as if writing letters were a sacred act.
In bed in the evening he asks himself what will become of her, in what direction she will move when he is not there any more. It is sad and strange to think of her like that, on her own, without him, although she was without him for all of her first years in Berlin, and has never complained of that. He thinks he knows, with his eyes closed, that she will be all right, because she is delicate but at the same time robust, or so at least he has come to know her. He could have married her, yes, he still could. So why, then, doesn’t he marry her? The idea occurs to him rather late, he must admit, with a sense of ease now, when he hardly understands why he didn’t ask her back in Berlin. He doesn’t stop to think of her answer. He thinks of F. and why she was the wrong woman for him from the first; he thinks from a distance of M., without much pain, as if M. were the logical answer to the mistake of a betrothal. He is in a cheerful mood until evening. There is an author’s copy from the Prague Press with his Josefine story in it on his bedside table; that is a reason for rejoicing, too, as well as Dora in her new dress, and even the food is welcome to him, he can’t remember when he last ate with such a good appetite.
He thinks it over half the night, not so much whether as how to ask her, because he does not want to make any mistakes, there are rules that he intends to stick to, and also the usual reservations about parents, although he is not much bothered about his own. He mustn’t do it because he has a guilty conscience – because he often has a guilty conscience – about bringing her into his life back in Müritz, when he ought to have seen most of this coming. Above all, he must not marry her out of gratitude. There is no doubt of his gratitude, but it would not be a good reason on its own; her father’s blessing suddenly seems to him important, since it may also be about a new beginning as a Jew. Next morning he proposes to her. He doesn’t have to say much, she says yes at once, she has just brought his breakfast, and now this. But why? she asks, as if she would never in her dreams have thought of it. Do they need reasons to get married? It can’t have been for nothing that you are young for me, your kisses, the stammered words, all the nights, all the confessions. Well, no, she says, and then again: yes, although she cannot imagine her father giving his consent. Perhaps I’m dreaming, she says. Did you really ask me? But as for her father, unfortunately he doesn’t know her father. Weeks ago I thought of him now and then, I write to him about us, what has happened to us, the way we live. After the first few sentences she didn’t know how to go on. But why did you say for nothing? My dearest, she says, just as Robert knocks on the door. She has difficulty in preserving her self-control; the doctor has been running his fingers through her hair again and again, so she looks rather dishevelled. Luckily Robert hasn’t noticed anything, although he seems to stop short, as if there were good news, and then he tells Dora what the good news is.
It takes him until the next morning to write the letter. It is not very long, about two pages, in which he introduces himself, age, profession, his years with the insurance institute from which he retired over a year ago, then something about his family, parents, sisters, his relationship with Juda
ism. He does not try to conceal that this is not a very strong bond, but says that thanks to his meeting with Dora he has learned a great deal. He mentions his university attendance, perhaps a little too humbly, and why he thinks he is now on the right path. He writes about his illness only in passing, saying that at the moment he is having treatment at a sanatorium near Vienna. Dora is with him, she has been told everything about him, so now he is asking for her hand with the firm intention of making her a good husband. Since he doesn’t even have a photograph of Dora’s father, it is difficult to hit upon the right wording when he does not know the man he is addressing; but Dora agrees to everything. To her, all that counts is that he has asked her. She has never been to a wedding, she says, the first wedding she goes to will be her own, in May, she hopes, when they can go out, down in the garden. Ottla must come, of course; Elli and the children, their parents if it is not too far for them to come, and also Judith and Max, or perhaps just Max and Ottla. It could be something like that, couldn’t it? The letter hasn’t gone to the post yet, she will post it later, she has written the address on the envelope, and then they just have to wait.
8
Ever since he asked her, Dora has been a different woman. She thinks she senses entirely new powers in herself, she cannot give up fighting for him and making sure he is in the right hands at long last. They need a competent doctor, someone who will not give him up as a hopeless case but will think what can be done. Over the telephone Max has told her of someone to whom she can turn, so at the beginning of May she finds a pretext for going to the hospital in Vienna, and books another doctor to come and see Franz that afternoon. She writes to Elli on her way back in the train, openly confessing what she has done; Franz, she says, must never hear of it, especially what she is asking now, because she urgently needs money just this once. When the doctor has examined Franz she is sure he will set everything necessary going. Professor Neumann, unfortunately, cannot come himself, but instead he is sending a Dr Beck, who appears punctually, a stocky man who takes his time and gives Franz a complicated alcohol injection to dull the pain. But little more is possible. The larynx and part of the epiglottis have largely disintegrated, and unfortunately deadening the nerve will not be adequate. That does not sound good, but what does it mean? Dora takes Dr Beck into the reading-room, where there is no one else at the moment, and he tells her the truth. Three more months, says Dr Beck. He advises taking Franz to Prague, an idea that she immediately rejects, because if she takes him to Prague he will know at once that he is finished. Of course he will leave the decision to her, says Dr Beck. He obviously thinks she is Franz’s wife, and she nearly corrects him as she desperately considers what exactly he has said. Is three months the minimum or the maximum? She takes Dr Beck to the door, wishes him a good journey back to Vienna, and as if numbed watches him go, leaning in the doorway, until she gradually begins to take it in.
The Glory of Life Page 16