by Nancy Horan
She would walk until her feet were screaming, then rest in cafés where artists buzzed about Modernism at the tables around her. Or she might fall into a bookstore that could be counted on to appear just around the next corner. There she would rest her feet and read the free newspapers.
It was in such a bookstore that she looked up one afternoon and spotted a small volume with “Goethe” printed on its spine. She stretched to retrieve it, then sank down on a bench. Inside the battered leather cover, the pages were edged in black mildew spots, but the text was visible throughout. Hymn to Nature, the title page read. She had studied Goethe in college and pursued his works later, on her own. Yet she was unfamiliar with this piece, which appeared to be a long poem. The date on the cover was 1783.
“Is this an original edition?” Mamah asked when she approached the shopkeeper.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Will you take three marks?”
The man frowned. “You may have something important there.” He took the volume in his hamlike hands and studied it. “Twelve,” he said.
She lifted the book again and examined it. Then he did. They parried back and forth. In the end, she handed over ten marks.
WITH THE BOOK wrapped in brown paper and tucked in her bag, Mamah hurried back to the Adlon. The moment Frank walked in, she raced to show him her prize.
“It’s very old,” she said breathlessly. “Over a hundred years.”
“It smells that old.” He peeled apart pages that were stuck together.
“I’m quite sure it hasn’t been translated into English.” She glanced into his eyes. “Don’t laugh, but I feel as if I was meant to find it.”
“Perhaps you were.”
“Let’s translate it together,” she said. “We could actually bring this into English for the first time.”
Frank looked skeptical. “But my entire vocabulary is nein and ja.”
“That’s not true. You know guten morgen!”
“Ja.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you the literal words, and we’ll figure out together how to say it best. It’s more important that you’re a good writer in your own language. You happen to be a great writer. And the poem happens to be about nature.”
“Is that how it works, translating?”
“Well, it’s a little bit of alchemy, I think. It helps enormously to understand the culture you’re translating from, and then the one you’re taking it into.”
“And this is a poem.”
“Exactly, which makes it harder. Ideally, you’re Dryden, sitting there translating Greek poems into perfect English verse. But that’s not going to happen here. We’ll go for the soul of it.”
“I would love that.”
“There’s a caveat,” she teased. “You have to be humble, because no one ever regards it as yours, of course. The translator is merely the filter.” She looked at him over her spectacles. “Can you be a filter?”
“Now you’re throwing a wrench into the deal.”
“Let’s start on it over dinner.”
“Mmmm,” he said, “can’t do it tonight.” His voice was playful. “I have something even you would prefer to do.”
“What? Tell me right now. What is it?”
“Wasmuth and his wife have two extra tickets for the opera. They’ve invited us to go with them, then to Kempinski’s afterward. We’re due at the state opera house in about forty-five minutes.”
“You are willing to go to the opera?”
“Business.” He rolled his eyes.
Mamah whooped, swirling around the room in a little dance. “Which opera?” she called to him as she changed quickly into her dark blue evening dress. She couldn’t hear what he said. She positioned a jet-studded band around her neck.
“Stunning,” Frank said when she emerged.
Out in the hallway, a bald man in a mink-lapeled greatcoat waited for the elevator. When it arrived, he pulled back the folding gate and bowed slightly as Mamah and Frank stepped in. She could smell the man’s cologne and felt him studying them.
What picture do we make? she wondered. Do we look like a married couple, two parts of one machine? Or can he see the truth?
In the lobby, heads turned to stare. She knew she looked beautiful. But the Adlon was full of beautiful women. It was Frank people thought they should somehow recognize. He was not a tall man, but he was elegant in his black cape, his gray temples and bearing setting him apart and above the other men. The high-heeled leather boots and broad felt hat looked dashing.
They stepped outside just as a cold drizzle ended. Mamah’s skin tingled in the charged evening air of Pariser Platz.
“Which opera did you say?” she asked.
“Boito’s Mefistofele. Chaliapin is singing the lead.”
They walked silently for a block. What can he be thinking? she wondered.
“Does Wasmuth know?” she asked.
“About our circumstances? No. We’ve only talked about business.”
Mamah composed her face. I can manage this, she thought.
“I won’t make any more social commitments for us.” Frank sensed her disappointment. “I just thought it would be a chance for you to make some sense of what the man has been telling me. He has a fellow who translates, but I think I’m missing a lot.”
At the Opera House, an attendant led them to their seats at the front of the first balcony. Ernst Wasmuth, a smiling, well-fed fellow with an upturned brown mustache, leaped to his feet and kissed Mamah’s hand. He introduced them to his wife, a sober little mouse next to her fat Cheshire cat. Mamah settled in the seat at the end of the row, with Frank next to Wasmuth.
As the house lights began to dim, she glanced back at the audience behind her. The shoulders and necks of the women, dressed in velvet, silk, and feathers, glowed softly white in the dark. Some women waved fans like small wings in front of their breasts. The men leaned forward, their crisp shirts gleaming against black coats.
She hadn’t seen Mefistofele but knew it was a version of the Faust tale, a story she had seen in opera and play form and translated in college. She had wanted to turn around on the street when Frank told her. It had been a bad idea to come.
When the curtain finally rose, the huge chorus—a hundred people, at least—was already onstage. The white-robed heavenly choir sang “Ave Signor!”—Hail Thee, Lord! Angels and penitents and small cherubim wearing white feathers on their shoulders, arms, and fingertips crowded the stage, their voices swelling in one resounding “Ave!”
Mamah felt as if she were in a great cathedral, her very soul borne up by the achingly sweet voices of the children.
Then, without warning, Mefistofele strode into their midst. Half draped in a red cape and towering above all the others, Chaliapin was bare-chested and menacing, the muscles in his arms flexing with power.
“Do you know of Faust?” the Mystic Chorus sang.
“The strangest lunatic I’ve ever known!” Mefistofele thundered. “His thirst for knowledge makes him miserable.” The devil threw back his head and laughed contemptuously. “Such a feeble creature! I scarcely have the heart to tempt him.”
Mamah translated the first few lines in whispers to Frank. She leaned forward as Mefistofele wagered with God to win the soul of the professor.
“E sia.” So be it, sang the Mystic Chorus.
In the middle of a village celebration, bookish old Faust appeared used up, as he did in every version of the story, standing amid the beautiful young revelers. A big-bellied tenor sang Faust’s role. And what a Faust! His voice was a thrilling counterpoint to the booming basso profundo of Mefistofele.
Yes, he could be tempted, quite easily. Without much protest. Mamah knew well what would tempt Faust, and the tenor sang it poignantly.
If you could offer me
One hour of repose
In which my soul might find peace;
If you could reveal to the darkest recesses of my mind
My true self and th
e truth of the world.
Were it to come to pass, I would say
To the fleeting moment:
Stay, for thou art beautiful!
Then might I die
And let fearsome hell engulf me.
Mamah glanced at Frank. His face, so handsome, was lit, like those behind them; his forehead glowed.
“Arrestati, sei bello.” Stay. For you are so beautiful.
Mamah began to cry. She dabbed tears from her cheeks and blew her nose. She knew what was coming. Knew that Faust, made young in his bargain with the devil, would love and seduce a peasant girl, Marguerita, then desert her to go off on another adventure with Mefistofele. She knew Faust would return to find the girl in prison for poisoning her mother with a potion he himself had supplied to Marguerita. Only three drops, he had assured her, will plunge your mother into a deep sleep, so that we can be alone. But her mother dies from the potion. In the absence of her lover, Marguerita goes insane, drowning her baby—Faust’s baby.
What on earth made me think I could manage it? Mamah thought. She was angry that she had allowed herself to be drawn into attending. Marguerita’s madness chilled her, and the familiar old story line hit her like a blow to the sternum. For the past few days, left alone to ruminate, she’d feared that a kind of madness brewed only a step outside the golden circle she and Frank had drawn around themselves.
And yet…and yet. How could she, how could anyone, condemn Faust, so desperate for a piece of happiness that he would sell his soul in order to say, Yes, for a brief moment, I was truly alive.
Mamah slid down in her seat, trying to stop the tears.
Near the end of the opera, Faust fell in love again, this time with the beautiful Helen of Troy, when Mefistofele transported him back in time to ancient Greece. Mamah dabbed her eyes as the tenor sang “Ogni mia fibra, E’posseduta dall’amor.” My every fiber is possessed by love.
She placed her hand on Frank’s. His eyes were closed, and his head swayed with the music. It wasn’t his fault. The program was in Italian and German. What could he know? She was the one who had been obsessed with Goethe, after all.
Frank rested his head for a moment on her shoulder. He was humming, unaware of the emotional wreckage in the seat next to him.
KEMPINKSI’S WAS FULL of operagoers drinking champagne and throwing back oysters. There was euphoria in the room as the people around them talked about Boito and Chaliapin. Brilliant. Magnificent. A night to remember. The ache in Mamah’s head began to ease.
Wasmuth’s wife appeared emboldened by the success of the evening.
“Your eyes are swollen,” she said, taking Mamah’s hand. “I was moved, too, my dear.” Her voice was uncomfortably intimate. “Would you tell your husband, Mrs. Wright, that my husband considers it a privilege to work with a man of his genius?”
The anger Mamah had felt in the theater surged up inexplicably into her throat. Her temples pounded as she translated.
Frank bowed graciously toward the woman, then leaned back, considering the matter before he spoke. “Tell her a genius is merely the man who sees nature, and has the boldness to follow it.”
Mamah turned back to Frau Wasmuth and spoke softly to her. The woman’s neck began to redden from the collar up, until her face was nearly the hue of the port in her glass. She stood up and spoke privately with her husband. Wasmuth made a quick apology for his wife.
“Is she ill?” Frank asked.
“Yes,” said Wasmuth, calling for the check. “Yes. We must go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Strange,” Frank said when they were gone. “Did I say the wrong thing? I suppose I should have returned the compliment…some malarkey.”
“No, my love,” Mamah said, leaning over to kiss his brow. “It’s my fault. I told her I am not Mrs. Wright.”
CHAPTER 18
A Hymn to Nature
Nature!
We are encompassed and enveloped by her, powerless to emerge and powerless to penetrate deeper.
They sat on the sofa facing the window. The little Goethe book lay between them. Mamah moved her finger over the third line of the poem, then wrote quickly on the paper in her lap.
“‘Unbid and unforewarned…’” she read.
“Awfully stiff right off the bat,” Frank said, scratching his scalp. “How about ‘unbidden and unwarned’…”
“Sounds better.” She wrote the correction above the line, then translated the next line. “‘Into the gyrations of her dance she lifts us, whirling and swirling us onward, until exhausted from her arms we fall.’”
Frank looked over at the paper she held. “‘Gyrations’ is harsh, don’t you think? It suggests a dervish, that line. I think this whole idea of our dance with life—it’s gentler than that, more like a waltz.”
Mamah pensively tapped her mouth with the pencil.
“Don’t put lead on those lips,” he said.
She wrote some words, crossed others out. “How is this?” she said a minute later. “‘Unbidden and unwarned, she takes us up in the round of her dance and sweeps us along, until, exhausted, we fall from her arms.’”
He pushed a long strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Lovely,” he said.
SHE WENT WITH FRANK that morning to the office. Ernst Wasmuth seemed flustered to have her there as a translator now that he knew who—what—she was. He had stepped into their personal drama, and he didn’t want to be there. Wasmuth was refined, just enough, and solicitous—she was an attractive woman. But he was a businessman first. It was clear that he found it difficult to stand firm, let alone bully, through her. He had with him his associate, Herr Dorn, who evidently had no such compunctions.
They wanted nine thousand marks upon delivery of four thousand copies of the smaller project, the book of photographs. The big folio of Frank’s perspective drawings would be printed after that—five hundred copies for U.S. distribution, five hundred for European sales. They went back and forth about page counts, type size, duty costs for shipping.
“We have our hands full,” Mamah whispered to Frank when they left Wasmuth’s office.
“What do you make of Dorn?”
“I wouldn’t trust him entirely. Not yet.”
They stopped at the office reception desk, where mail was waiting for Frank. Mamah could see a small pile set out for him on the counter. On top was a postcard with a picture of Unity Temple on it.
“Do you have mail for a Mrs. Cheney, Mamah Cheney?” she asked Wasmuth’s receptionist.
The woman was dressed like so many others she had seen on the street—small bow at her neck, tiny eyeglasses. “We had some,” she said.
“I need to collect that mail,” Mamah said.
The woman looked confused, her eyes traveling from Mamah to Frank. “Oh, my,” she said, rifling through the basket. “It may have been sent back.”
“I forgot to alert them. It’s my fault,” Frank said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Mamah imagined the look on Edwin’s face on receiving a returned letter. She had given him the Markgrafenstrasse address of Wasmuth’s office.
The woman walked back to the mailroom, and Frank followed her. Mamah reached down and turned over the postcard depicting Unity Temple that sat on top of Frank’s pile.
Oct. 20, 1909
My Dear:
The children miss you, as do I. We hope your health is good and your work is going well.
Your loving wife,
Catherine L. Wright
When she looked up, Frank and the woman were walking toward her. Frank still wore a pained expression.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wright,” the woman said. “Your friend Mrs. Cheney, she is with you?”
“Yes.”
The woman handed her two letters, one from Edwin, one from Lizzie.
“There was a man here just a couple of days ago, asking after a Mrs. Cheney. I told him we had her mail but didn’t know who she was. I didn’t realize she was traveling with you.”
“A man?” Mamah
felt her throat constrict. “What did he look like?”
The clerk looked at the wall, recollecting. “He wore a big overcoat and was bald, a little brown hair around here.” She pointed to the sides of her head. “He spoke English. An American, I believe.” She paused, looking first at Frank, then at Mamah. “He asked after Mr. Wright, too.”
Mamah and Frank walked out to the hallway and leaned against the wall.
“Edwin,” Frank said.
“It has to be.” Mamah stared wide-eyed at him. “He must be in Berlin.”
“Jesus,” Frank muttered, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Look, don’t go back to the hotel without me. You’re touring, right? Just spend the day as you planned, then come back and meet me here.” He nodded in the direction of the reception desk. “I’ll figure out meantime if she told him where we’re staying.” He grasped her hands. “If he’s in town, we’ll both confront him. I don’t want you facing him alone.”
“He wouldn’t harm me in the slightest, you know that. And you? You know Edwin. He’s a gentle man at heart—he wouldn’t touch you, I don’t think.” She shook her head. “He’s desperate. Still, I can’t believe he’s come over here.”
“Open it,” Frank said, gesturing to the letter in her hand.
At that moment Wasmuth emerged from the waiting room. “Frank, I have the others at the table now. Are you ready?”
“Go,” Mamah said. “I shall see you this evening at the hotel, not here.” She squeezed his arm. “It will be all right.”
With the letters in her bag, she walked to the train station. The Charlottenburg line was crammed full of people, so she stood and held on to a pole. In front of her, an old man nodded, then woke in a jerk, nodded, jerked, over and over during the ride. Mamah glanced around the car and squinted at the people on the streets, looking for Edwin’s face.
SHE HAD FOUND the Café des Westens in her Baedeker’s the previous day when she’d mapped out her day, It was a café where the intellectuals were said to hold court. She had imagined a leisurely hour of soup, thick bread, overheard conversations borrowed from the tables around her.