Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  * * *

  Long before I first heard Ivan shout the word “gyerekek!” or “kuss, gyerekek!” he told me: I’m sure you’ve already understood. I don’t love anyone. Except my children, of course, but no one else. I nod, although I hadn’t known, and it’s obvious to Ivan that it should be obvious even to me. Jubilate. Poised over an abyss, it nonetheless occurs to me how it should begin: Exsultate.

  * * *

  However, since today is the first warm day of the year we’re driving to the Gänsehäufel. Ivan has the afternoon off, only Ivan has afternoons off, or an hour off, sometimes he has a free evening. We never discuss my time, whether my hours are free or not, whether I even know what free and unfree really mean. In the little free time Ivan does have we lie in the weak sun on the lawn in front of the pool at the Gänsehäufel, I’ve brought along my pocket chess set, and after an hour of wrinkling foreheads, trading pieces, castling, threats to the queen, many warnings of “check,” we again arrive at a stalemate. Ivan wants to invite me for an ice cream at the Italian ice cream parlor, but there’s no more time, the free afternoon is already over and we have to race back into town. I’ll get my ice cream next time. While we’re driving fast into town, over the Reichsbrücke and past the Praterstern, Ivan turns up the car radio very loud, though this doesn’t drown out his commentary on how other drivers maneuver their cars, but the familiar places and streets we are traversing all change as the music from the radio, the speeding, the sudden stops and starts evoke in me a feeling of great adventure. I hold tightly onto the handle and, so fastened, I’d like to sing in the car, if I had a voice, or say to him faster, faster, fearlessly I let go of the handle and stretch my arms behind my head, beaming out at the Franz-Josefs-Kai and the Danube Canal and the Schottenring, for out of sheer bravado Ivan is taking a tour through downtown, I hope it will take a lot of time to cross the Ring that we’re turning into now, we get into a traffic jam but force ourselves through, on our right is my old university, but it looks different somehow, less oppressive, and the Burgtheater, the Rathaus and the Parliament are all flooded by the music from the radio, this should never stop, it should last a long time, a whole film, which has never played before, but where I witness one marvel after another, because it is entitled Driving through Vienna with Ivan, because it’s entitled Happy, happy with Ivan and Happy in Vienna, Vienna Happy, and these rapid, dizzying sequences don’t stop when he brakes hard, or when warm swaths of exhaust come stinking through the open windows, happy, happy, it’s called happy, it has to be called happy, because the whole Ringstrasse is awash with music, I have to laugh at our jackrabbit starts, since today I’m not at all afraid and have no desire to jump out at the next light, I’d like to keep driving for hours, quietly humming along, just loud enough for me to hear but not Ivan, because the music is louder.

  * * *

  Auprès de ma blonde

  I’m

  You’re what?

  I’m

  What?

  I’m happy

  Qu’il fait bon

  Did you say something?

  I didn’t say anything

  Fait bon, fait bon

  I’ll tell you later

  What do you want later?

  I’ll never tell you

  Qu’il fait bon

  So tell me

  It’s too loud, I can’t talk any louder

  What do you want to say?

  I can’t say it any louder

  Qu’il fait bon dormir

  Go on, tell me, you have to tell me today

  Qu’il fait bon, fait bon

  That I have risen

  Since I’ve survived the winter

  Since I’m so happy

  Since I already see the Stadtpark

  Fait bon, fait bon

  Since Ivan has arisen

  Since Ivan and I

  Qu’il fait bon dormir!

  * * *

  At night Ivan asks: why is there only a Wailing Wall, why hasn’t anyone ever built a Wall of Joy?

  Happy. I’m happy.

  If Ivan wants it I’ll build a Wall of Joy all around Vienna, where the old bastions were and where the Ringstrasse is and as far as I’m concerned, a Happy Wall as well around the ugly Vienna Belt. Then we could visit these new walls every day and be so happy we would leap for joy, for this is happiness, we are happy. Ivan asks: Should I turn off the lights?

  No, leave one on, please leave one light on!

  Some day I’ll turn all the lights out, but now, go to sleep, be happy.

  I am happy.

  If you’re not happy —

  Then what?

  You won’t ever be able to accomplish anything good.

  And I tell myself that if I’m happy I’ll be able to.

  Ivan walks out of the room quietly, turning off each light as he goes, I listen to him leave, silently I lie there, happy.

  * * *

  I jump up and flick on the nightlight, in terror I stand in the room with my hair mussed up, biting my lips, then I rush out and turn on one light after the other, since Malina may already be home, I have to speak to Malina at once. Why aren’t there any Happy Walls or any Walls of Joy? What’s the name of the wall I walk into every night? Malina has come out of his room, he looks at me astonished and shakes his head. Is it still worth it, with me? I ask Malina, and Malina doesn’t answer, he leads me into the bathroom, takes a washcloth and runs warm water over it, then he uses it to wipe my face and says kindly: Just look at yourself, what’s the matter this time? Malina is smearing mascara all over my face, I push him away and hunt for a makeup remover pad, go to the mirror, the smears disappear, the black marks, the reddish-brown traces of cream. Malina looks at me, thoughtfully, he says: You’re asking too much too soon. It’s not worth it yet, but it might be worth it later.

  * * *

  Downtown I saw an old desk at an antique dealer’s near St. Peter’s Church, he’s not coming down with the price, but I’d like to buy it anyway, because then I could write something on some old, durable parchment, such as can no longer be found, with a genuine quill pen, such as can no longer be found, with some ink, such as is no longer manufactured. I would like to write an incunabulum standing up, for today twenty years have passed since I’ve loved Ivan, and it’s been one year and three months and thirty-one days on this 31st of the month since I’ve known him, but then I also want to write down a year with a monstrous Roman numeral which no one will ever understand, Anno Domini MDXXLI. Using red ink I would illuminate the majuscules with Turk’s-cap lilies and would be able to hide myself in the legend of a woman who never existed.

  * * *

  The Mysteries of the Princess of Kagran

  * * *

  Once upon a time there lived a princess of Chagre or Chageran from a lineage known in later times as Kagran. And it happened that the same St. George who slew the dragon in the swamp so that Klagenfurt could arise after the monster’s death, was active here as well in the ancient Marchfelddorf beyond the Danube, and a church in the vicinity of the flood plain commemorates his presence.

  * * *

  The princess was very young and very beautiful and rode a black horse whose speed exceeded that of all others. Her retainers conferred among themselves and begged her to stay back, for the land along the Danube they had entered was ever in danger, and no borders yet existed, where later there would be Rhaetia, Marcomannia, Noricum, Moesia, Dacia, Illyria and Pannonia. Neither was there yet Cisleithania nor Transleithania, because the great migrations were still under way. One day Hungarian Hussars rode up out of the Puszta, from faraway Hungaria whose expanses were yet unexplored. They overrode the land with their wild Asiatic horses which were as fast as the princess’s black horse, and all were greatly afraid.

  * * *

  The princess lost her dominions and fell into captivity several times, for she did not fight; however, neither d
id she wish to be given in marriage to the old king of the Huns or the old king of the Avars. They held her as booty and guarded her with many red and blue horsemen. Because the princess was a true princess, she preferred death to allowing herself be made the bride of an old king, and before the night was over she had to pluck up her courage, for her captors intended to bear her to the castle of the king of the Huns or even the Avars. She thought of fleeing and hoped her guards would fall asleep before dawn, but her hopes gradually faded. They had taken her black horse as well, and she did not know how to find her way out of the camp and back to the blue hills of her homeland. Sleeplessly she lay in her tent.

  * * *

  Deep into the night she thought she heard a voice, which did not speak but sang, it whispered and lulled, but then it stopped singing to strangers and sang only for her in a language which enthralled her, though she could not understand a word. Despite this she knew the voice was meant for her alone and that it was calling to her. The princess did not need to understand the words. Enchanted, she arose and opened her tent onto the unending dark night of Asia, and the first star she spied fell to the earth. The voice which had so pierced the night promised her one wish, and she wished with all her heart. Suddenly she saw a stranger before her covered in a long black cloak, he did not belong to the red and blue horsemen, he kept his face hidden in the night, but although she could not see him, she knew that it was he who had lamented her plight and had sung for her in a voice such as she had never heard before, so full of hope, and now he had come to set her free. He held her black horse by the reins and she moved her lips quietly and asked: Who are you? what is your name, my savior? how shall I thank you? He put two fingers to his mouth, she guessed this to mean she should be silent, he gave her a sign to follow and threw his black mantle around her so no one could see them. They were blacker than black in the night, and he led her and her horse, who kept his hooves quiet and did not neigh, through the camp and some way out onto the steppe. His wonderful song still rang in her ears, and the princess, who had fallen under the spell of this voice, yearned to hear it once more. She intended to ask him to head upstream with her, but he did not answer and handed her the reins. She was still in the utmost danger and he signaled her to ride on. She had fallen in love, although she had not even seen his face, since he kept it hidden, but she obeyed him, because she had to obey him. She swung onto her black horse, stared down at him dumbly, longing to say words of parting in his language and her own. She spoke with her eyes. Then he turned and disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  The horse began to trot in the direction of the river, where the moist air beckoned. For the first time in her life the princess cried, and later migrants found many river pearls there, which they presented to their first king, and which were later placed together with other most ancient gems in the holy crown of King Stephen, where they can still be seen today.

  * * *

  When she reached the open country, she rode upstream for many days and nights until she arrived at a place where the waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country became a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. The water was still at normal level, so the bushes could bend and rustle in the perpetual wind of the plain, which kept them crippled, forever unable to raise themselves. They swayed as gently as grass, and the princess lost her orientation. It was as if everything had swirled into motion, waves of willow wands, waves of grass: the plain was alive and she was the only human living there. Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube wandered about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters poured with a shouting sound. Listening carefully from amid the foaming rapids, eddies and whirlpools, the princess realized that the water was tearing at the sandy banks, carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps. Islands sank and piled up again, which shifted daily in size and shape, and so the flatland continued to live, ever in flux, until willows and islands would disappear without a trace under the rising flood. A patch of smoke could be discerned in the heavens, but nothing of the bluish hills of the princess’s native land. She knew not where she was, she did not recognize the Devín heights, the still unnamed spurs of the Carpathians, nor did she see the river March as it stole into the Danube; even less did she know that one day a border would be drawn through the water, between two countries with names. For at that time no countries existed, and there were no borders.

  * * *

  When her horse could go no farther, she dismounted on a gravel bank, she watched the waters grow more and more turbid and she was afraid, as this foretold a flood. She no longer saw any way out of this singular world of willows, winds and waters, and she led her horse along slowly, fascinated by this forlorn, bewitched kingdom of solitude she had entered. She began casting about for a suitable camping-ground for the night, as the sun was setting, and the river, that huge fluid being, amplified its sounds and voices, its clapping, its laughter that swelled up from the rocks along the bank, its faint sweet whisperings along a quiet bend, its hissing roil and, below all mere surface sounds, the steady thundering in its bed. In the evening, swarms of gray crows approached and the cormorants began to line the banks, storks stood fishing in the water and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with singing, petulant cries.

  As a child the princess had heard of this extreme, severe land along the Danube, about the magic islands where people died of hunger, hallucinating and enjoying supreme ecstasy in the fury of their ruin. She felt the island itself was moving along with her, yet it was not the roaring waters that she feared; rather it was the willows that left her awed and anguished, imparting an uneasiness such as she had never known. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the princess’s heart. She had come to the edge of the world. The princess crouched before her black horse who had stretched out exhausted and now uttered a plaintive sound, for he, too, felt there was no longer any way out, and with a dying glance begged forgiveness of the princess for no longer being able to carry her through and over the water. The princess lay down in a slight depression beside the horse, overcome with a dread she had never known, the willows whispered more and more, they hissed, they laughed, they screamed shrilly and sighed and moaned. No soldiers were pursuing her any longer, but she was surrounded by an army of strange beings, myriads of leaves fluttered over the bushy willow-heads, she was in the region where the river led into the realm of the dead, and her eyes were wide-open as an immense column of shadowy creatures advanced upon her, she buried her head in her arms to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind, then all at once she jumped up, alerted by the sounds of something brushing, tapping. She could move neither forward nor backward, she could merely choose between the water and the overpowering willows, but in this bleakest gloom a light appeared before her, and since she knew it could only be the light of a spirit, and not of any human, she strode forward, deathly afraid but wholly enchanted and enthralled.

  * * *

  It was no light; it was a flower which had not come from the earth but had blossomed in the raging night, redder than red. She stretched out her fingers toward the flower and at once felt the touch of another hand. The wind and the laughter of the willows grew quiet, and by the light of the moon, which rose white and strange above the stilling waters of the Danube, she recognized the stranger in the black mantle standing before her, holding her hand and covering his mouth with two fingers of his other hand so that she would not ask his name again; at the same time he smiled at her with dark, warm eyes. He was blacker than the black that had engulfed her, and she sank into his arms and onto the sand, and he lay the flower on her breast as if she were dead and covered them both with his cloak.

  * * *

  The sun was high in the heavens when the stranger woke the princess out of her deathlike sleep. He had quieted the elements, the true immortals. The princess and the stranger began to talk as in days
of yore and when one spoke the other smiled. They exchanged bright words and dark. The flood had ebbed, and before the sun descended the princess heard her black horse rise, snort and trot through the bush. She was terrified at heart and said: I must continue up the river, come with me, never leave me again.

  But the stranger shook his head, and the princess asked: Do you have to return to your people?

  The stranger smiled: My people is older than all peoples of the world and is scattered in the four winds.

  So come with me! the princess cried out of pain and impatience, but the stranger said: Patience, have patience, for you know, you know. The princess had acquired second sight during the night, and she therefore said through her tears: I know we will see each other again.

  Where? asked the stranger, smiling, and when? for only the everlasting ride is true.

  The princess looked at the faded, wilting flower left lying on the ground and said, closing her eyes, on the threshold of dreams: let me see!

  Slowly she began to relate: It will be farther up the river, once again there will be a great migration, it will be in another century, let me guess? it will be more than twenty centuries from now, you will speak as people do: beloved . . .

  What is a century? asked the stranger.

  The princess took a handful of sand and let it run quickly through her fingers, she said: twenty centuries are about like that, then it will be time for you to come and kiss me.

  So it will be soon, said the stranger, go on!