by Thomas Mann
“You see me truly impatient for your confession.”
“You’ve really heard it already. The girl—you don’t like the word—the woman, then, Marie—I am not indifferent to her either; and when I say not indifferent, even that is not quite the right way to put it. She is the nicest, loveliest feminine creature, I think, that has come my way. Even in Zurich—after I had played, I had played you and was feeling warm and susceptible, she already charmed me. And here—you know it was I suggested the excursion, and in the interval, as you do not know, I had seen her: I had tea in Pension Gisela, with her and Tante Isabeau, we had such a nice time… I repeat, Adri, that I only come to speak of it on account of our present talk and our mutual frankness.”
Leverkühn was silent a little. Then he said, in an oddly faltering and neutral voice: “No, I did not know that—about your feelings nor about the tea. I seem to have been so ridiculous as to forget that you ars flesh and blood too and not wrapped up in asbestos against the attraction of the lovely and precious. So you love her, or let us say, you are in love with her. But now let me ask you one thing: does it stand so that our intentions cut across each other, so that you want to ask her to be your wife?”
Schwerdtfeger seemed to consider. He said: “No, I hadn’t thought of that yet.”
“No? Did you think you would simply seduce her?”
“How you talk, Adrian! Don’t say such things! No, I hadn’t thought of that either.”
“Well, then, let me tell you that your confession, your open and gratifying confession, is much more likely to make me stick to my request than to put me off it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it in more than one sense. I thought of you for this service of love because you would be much more in your element than, let us say, Serenus Zeitblom. You give out something he has not got to give, which seems to be favourable to my wishes and hopes. But aside from this: it seems now that you even to a certain extent share my feelings, though not, as you assure me, my hopes. You will speak out of your own feelings, for me and my hopes. I cannot possibly think of a more ordained or desirable wooer.”
“If you look at it like that—“
“Do not think I see it only in that light. I see it also in the light of a sacrifice, and you can certainly demand that I should look at it like that. Demand it then, with all the emphasis you can summon! For that means that you, the sacrifice recognized as sacrifice, still want to make it. You make it in the spirit of the role that you play in my life, as a final contribution to the merit you have acquired for the sake of my humanity; the service which perhaps may remain hidden, or perhaps be revealed. Do you consent?”
Rudolf answered: “Yes, I will go and do your errand to the best of my powers.”
“We will shake hands on it,” said Adrian, “when you leave.”
They had got back to the house, and Schwerdtfeger had still time to have a bite with his friend in the Nikesaal. Gereon Schweigestill had put the horse in for him: despite Rudolf’s plea not to trouble himself, Adrian accompanied him to the station, bouncing on the seat of the little cart.
“No, it is the right thing to do, this time quite particularly,” he declared.
The accommodating local train drew up at the little Pfeiffering halt. The two clasped hands through the open window.
“Not another word,” said Adrian: “Only ‘nicely’!”
He raised his arm as he turned to go. He never again saw the traveller whom the train bore away. He only received a letter from him—a letter to which he denied all answer.
CHAPTER XLII
The next time I was with him, ten or eleven days later, the letter was already in his hands and he announced to me his definite decision not to answer it. He looked pale and made the impression of a man who has had a heavy blow. A tendency, which indeed I had noticed in him some time back, to walk with his head and torso slightly bent to one side was now more marked. Still he was, or purported to be, perfectly calm, even cool, and seemed almost to need to excuse himself for his shoulder-shrugging composure over the treachery he had been the victim of.
“I hardly think,” he said, “you expected any outburst of moral indignation. A disloyal friend. Well, what of it? I cannot feel greatly outraged at the way of the world. It is bitter, of course; you ask yourself whom you can trust, when your own right hand strikes you in the breast. But what will you have? Friends are like that today. What remains with me is chagrin—and the knowledge that I deserve to be whipped.”
I asked what he had to be ashamed of.
“Of behaviour,” he answered, “so silly that it reminds me of a schoolboy who finds a bird’s nest and out of sheer joy shows it to another boy who then goes and steals it.”
What could I say except: “It is no sin or shame to be trusting, surely; they are the portion of the thief.”
If only I could have met his self-reproaches with a little more conviction! But the truth was that I agreed with him. His whole attitude, the whole set-up with the second-hand wooing, and Rudolf of all people as go-between: I found it forced, devious, unseemly. I needed only to imagine that instead of speaking myself to my Helene, instead of using my own tongue, I had sent some attractive friend of mine to tell her my love, to see the whole equivocal absurdity of what he had done. But why then object to his remorse—if remorse it was that spoke in his words and manner? He had lost friend and beloved at one blow. And by his own fault, one must admit. If only one could have been quite certain—if only I myself had been certain—that we were dealing with a fault, an unconscious false step, a fatal lack of judgment! If only the suspicion had not stolen into my brooding mind that he had to some extent foreseen what would happen and that it had come about as he wanted it to! Could he have seriously conceived the idea that what Rudolf “gave out”—in other words the young man’s undeniable sexual appeal—could be made to work and woo for him, Adrian? Was it credible that he had counted on it? Sometimes the speculation arose in my mind that while putting it as though urging the other to a sacrifice, he had elected himself as the actual victim; that he deliberately brought together what really did belong together, in an affinity of “niceness” and charm in order to abdicate and retreat again into his fastness. But such an idea was more like me than it was like him. Such a motive, so soft and sacrificial, such abnegation might have sprung from my reverence for him and lain at the bottom of an apparent gaucherie, a so-called stupidity that he was supposed to have committed. But events were to bring me face to face with a reality harsher, colder, crueller than my good nature would have been capable of without stiffening in icy horror. That was a reality without witness or proof; I recognized it only by its staring gaze; and for all of me it shall remain dumb, for I am not the man to give it words.
I am certain that Schwerdtfeger, so far as he knew himself, went to Marie Godeau with the best and most correct intentions. But it is no less certain that these intentions had never from the first been very firm on their feet. They were endangered from within, prone to relax, to melt, to change their character. His vanity had been flattered by what Adrian had been at pains to impress upon him about his personal significance for the life and humanity of his great friend; he had accepted the interpretation, so skilfully instilled, that his present mission arose out of this significance. But jealousy worked against those first feelings. He resented the fact that Adrian, after the conquest he had made of him, had changed his mind; that he, Rudolf, now counted for nothing except as a tool and instrument. I believe that in his secret heart he now felt free, in other words not bound to repay with good faith the other’s disloyalty and egotism. This is fairly clear to me. And it is clear, too, that to go wooing for another man is an intriguing enterprise, particularly for a fanatical male coquette, whose morale must have been prone to relax in the anticipation of a flirtation even if only a vicarious one.
Does anyone doubt that I could tell what happened between Rudolf and Marie Godeau, just as I knew the whole course of the dialogue bet
ween him and Adrian in Pfeiffering? Does anyone doubt that I was “there”? I think not. But I also think that a precise account is no longer useful or desirable. Its issue, heavy with fate, however delightful it looked at first to others if not to me, was not, we must assume, the fruit of only one interview. A second was necessary and inevitable after the way in which Marie dismissed him the first time. It was Tante Isabeau whom Rudolf met when he entered the little vestibule of the pension. He inquired after her niece and asked if he might have a few words of private conversation with her, in the interest of a third party. The old lady directed him to the living-and working-room with a mischievous smile which betrayed her disbelief in the existence of the third party. He entered and was greeted by Marie with surprise and pleasure; she was about to inform her aunt when he told her, to her increasing if obviously not unpleasant astonishment, that her aunt knew he was here and would come in after he had spoken with herself on a weighty and wonderful theme. What did she reply? Something jesting and commonplace, of course. “I am certainly most curious,” or the like. And asked the gentleman to sit down comfortably for his recital.
He seated himself in an easy-chair beside her drawing-board. Nobody could say he broke his word. He kept it, honourably. He spoke to her of Adrian, of his importance and greatness, of which the public would only slowly become aware; of his, Rudolf’s admiration, his devotion to the extraordinary man. He talked of Zurich, and of the meeting at the Schlaginhaufens’, of the day in the mountains. He revealed to her that his friend loved her—but how does one reveal to a woman that another man loves her? Do you bend over her, gaze into her eyes, take in an appealing grasp the hand that you profess to hope you may lay in another’s? I do not know. I had had to convey only an invitation to an excursion, not an offer of marriage. All I know is that she hastily drew back her hand, either from his or only from her lap, where it had been lying; that a blush overspread the southern paleness of her face and the laughter disappeared from her eyes. She did not understand, she was really not sure she understood. She inquired if she had understood aright: was Rudolf proposing to her for Dr. Leverkühn? Yes, he said, he was; actuated by friendship and a sense of duty. Adrian, in his scrupulous delicacy, had asked him to represent him and he felt he could not refuse. Her distinctly cool, distinctly mocking comment, that it was certainly very kind of him, was not calculated to relieve his embarrassment. The extraordinary nature of his situation and role only now struck him, mingled with the thought that something not very complimentary to her was involved in it. Her manner expressed sheer surprise and umbrage—and that both startled and secretly pleased him. He struggled for a while, stammering, to justify himself. She did not know, he said, how hard it was to refuse a man like that. And he had felt to some extent responsible for the turn Adrian’s life had taken, because it had been he who had moved him to the Swiss journey and thus brought about the meeting with Marie. Yes, it was strange: the violin concerto was dedicated to him, but in the end it had been the medium of the composer’s meeting with her. He begged her to understand that his sense of responsibility had largely contributed to his readiness to perform this service for Adrian.
Here there was another quick withdrawal of the hand which he had tried to take as he pleaded with her. She answered that he need not trouble himself further, it was not important that she should understand the role he had assumed, She regretted to be obliged to shatter his friendly hopes, but though she was of course not unimpressed by the personality of his principal, the reverence she felt for the great man had nothing to do with any feelings that could form the basis of a union for which he had argued with so much eloquence. The acquaintance with Dr. Leverkühn had been a source of pleasure and an honour as well; but unfortunately the answer that she must now give would probably make further meetings too painful. She sincerely regretted being obliged to take the view that Dr. Leverkühn’s messenger and representative was also necessarily affected by this change in the situation. Certainly after what had happened it would be better and less embarrassing if they did not meet again. And now she must bid him a friendly farewell: “Adieu, monsieur!”
He implored her: “Marie!” But she merely expressed her amazement at his use of her first name and repeated her farewell—the sound of her voice rings clearly in my ears: “Adieu, monsieur!”
He went, his tail between his legs—to all appearance, that is. Inwardly he was blissful. Adrian’s plan of marrying had turned out to be the nonsensical idea it had been from the first, and she had taken it very ill indeed that he had been willing to espouse it. She had been enchantingly angry. He did not hasten to let Adrian know the result of his visit, overjoyed as he was to have saved his own face by the honest admission that he was not himself indifferent to her. What he did now was to sit down and compose a letter to Mile Godeau. He said that he could not submit to her “Adieu, monsieur”; for the sake of his life and reason he must see her again, and put to her in person the question which he here wrote down with his whole heart and soul: did she not understand that a man, out of veneration for another man, could sacrifice his own feelings and act regardless of them, making himself a selfless advocate of the other’s desire? And could she not further understand that the suppressed, the loyally controlled feelings must burst forth, freely, exultantly, so soon as the other man proved to have no prospects of success? He begged her pardon for the treason, which he had committed against nobody but himself. He could not regret it, but he was overjoyed that there was no longer any disloyalty involved if he told her that—he loved her.
In that style. Not unclever. Winged by his genius for flirtation, and, as I fully believe, all unconscious that in substituting his own wooing for Adrian’s, his declaration of love remained bound up with an offer of marriage which of his own motion, considering his nature, would never have entered his flirtatious head. Tante Isabeau read the letter aloud to Marie, who had been unwilling to accept it. Rudolf received no reply. But two days later he had himself announced to Tante by the housemaid at Pension Gisela and was not refused entrance. Marie was out. After his first visit, as the old lady with sly reproof betrayed to him, she had wept a few tears on her Tante’s breast. Which in my view was an invention of Tante’s. She emphasized her niece’s pride. Marie’s was a proud nature but full of deep feeling, she said. Definite hope of another meeting she could not give him. But she would say this much, that she herself would spare no pains to represent to her niece the uprightness of his conduct.
In another two days he was there again. Mme Ferblantier—this was Tante’s name, she was a widow—went in to her niece. She remained some time; at last she came out and with an encouraging twinkle ushered him in. Of course he had brought flowers.
What else is there to say? I am too old and sad to relish describing a scene whose details can be of moment to no one. Rudolf repeated his wooing, only this time not for Adrian but himself. Of course the feather-headed youth was as suited to the married state as I am to the role of Don Juan. But it is idle to speculate on the chances for future happiness of a union doomed to no future at all, destined to be brought to naught by a violent blow from the hand of fate. Marie had dared to love the breaker of hearts, the fiddler with the “little tone,” whose artistic gifts and certain success had been vouched for to her by so weighty an authority. She confided in herself to hold and bind him, in her power to domesticate the wild-fowl she had caught. She gave him her hands, received his kiss, and it was not four-and-twenty hours before the glad news had gone the rounds of our circle that Rudi was caught, that Konzertmeister Schwerdtfeger and Marie Godeau were an engaged pair. We also heard that he would not renew his contract with the Zapfenstosser orchestra but marry in Paris and there devote his services to a new musical group just being organized, called the Orchestre Symphonique.
No doubt he was very welcome there, and just as certainly the arrangements to release him went forward slowly in Munich, where there was reluctance to let him go. However, his presence at the next concert—it was the first a
fter that one to which he had come back at the last minute from Pfeiffering—was interpreted as a sort of farewell performance. The conductor, Dr. Edschmidt, had chosen for the evening an especially house-filling program, Berlioz and Wagner, and as they say, all Munich was there. Familiar faces looked from the rows of seats, and when I stood up I had to bow repeatedly: there were the Schlaginhaufens and their social circle, the Radbruchs with Schildknapp, Jeanette Scheurl, Mmes Zwitscher and Binder-Majurescu, and the rest, all of whom had certainly come with the thought uppermost in their minds of seeing Benedict the married man, in other words Rudi Schwerdtfeger, up there, left front, at his music-stand. His betrothed was not present; we heard that she had returned to Paris. I bowed to Inez Institoris. She was alone, or rather with the Knoterichs and without her husband, who was unmusical and would be spending the evening at the Allotria. She sat rather far back, in a frock so simple as to look almost poverty-stricken; her head thrust forward on its slanting stalk, her eyebrows raised, the mouth pursed in that look of not quite innocent mischief. As she returned my greeting I could not help the irritating impression that she was forever smiling in malicious triumph over that evening in her living-room and her exploitation of my long-suffering sympathy.
As for Schwerdtfeger, well knowing how many curious eyes he would meet, he scarcely during the whole evening looked down into the parterre. At the times when he might have done so, he listened to his instrument or turned over the score.