Malina
Page 7
It will be in a city and in this city there will be a street, continued the princess, we will play cards, I will lose my eyes, in the mirror it will be Sunday.
What are city and street? asked the stranger, dismayed.
The princess began to sigh and said: Soon we shall see, I know only the words, but we shall see when you pierce my heart with these thorns, we shall stand before a window, let me speak! there will be a window full of flowers, one flower for every century, more than twenty flowers, then we shall know we are in the proper place, and all the flowers shall resemble this one!
The princess swung onto her black horse, no longer able to endure the clouds, for the stranger was quietly designing his and her first death. He sang nothing to her in parting, and she rode toward the blue hills of her country that began to appear in the distance; she rode in great silence, for he had already driven the first thorn into her heart, and in the castle yard, in the midst of her faithful followers, she fell from her black horse, bleeding. But she merely smiled and stammered in a fever: I know, I know!
* * *
I didn’t buy the desk because it would have cost five thousand schillings and came from a cloister, a fact that also bothers me, and I wouldn’t have been able to write on it anyway, since parchment and ink are not to be found, furthermore Fräulein Jellinek would not have been very enthusiastic as she is quite accustomed to my typewriter. I quickly stash the pages about the Princess of Kagran in a file so Fräulein Jellinek won’t see what I’ve written, besides, it’s more important that we finally “get something done,” and I sit down behind her on the three steps leading to the library, straighten some papers and dictate to her:
Dear Sirs.
Of course Fräulein Jellinek has undoubtedly put down the heading and today’s date, she’s waiting, nothing occurs to me and I say: Dear Fräulein Jellinek, please write whatever you want, although the confused woman can’t possibly know what I mean here by want. Exhausted, I say: Write, for example, that for reasons of health, oh I see, we’ve already had that? write something about other commitments, we’ve used that one too many times as well? then just thank you and best wishes. Sometimes Fräulein Jellinek is surprised but she doesn’t show it, she doesn’t know any dear Sirs, just Herr Dr. Krawanja, who is specializing in neurology and intends to marry her in July, which she confessed to me today, I’m invited to the wedding, she’ll go to Venice, but while her secret thoughts are in the Polyclinic or furnishing her new apartment, she is filling out forms for me, handling my accounts which are in an incredible mess, she is now unearthing letters by the kilogram from 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, she sees that all her attempts to establish any order with me are in vain, she invokes this order with incantations of “filing,” “putting away,” “organizing by subject,” she wants to proceed alphabetically, chronologically, she wants to separate business from private matters, Fräulein Jellinek would be capable of all of this but I can’t exactly explain to her that ever since I’ve known Ivan I consider any time spent on such activities wasted, that I first must put myself in order and that the idea of establishing order in this paper chaos interests me less and less. I pull myself together once again and dictate:
Dear Sirs:
Thank you for your letter of January 26.
* * *
Dear Herr Schöntal:
The person you address, claim to know and whom you are even inviting does not exist. I want to try, although it’s six o’clock in the morning, which seems to me the proper time for an explanation that I owe to you and so many others, although it’s six o’clock in the morning and I should have been asleep long ago, but there’s so much that never permits me to sleep. You did not invite me to a children’s party or just to play while the cat’s away and I’m sure the parties, the banquets, the receptions all stem from a social necessity. You see, I am trying very hard to look at things from your point of view. I know we had an appointment, I should have at least given you a call, but I lack words to describe my situation, moreover, propriety demands I do not call, as it forbids me to speak of certain things. The friendly facade you see and on which I myself rely from time to time has, unfortunately, less and less to do with me. You will not think I have bad manners and thus have kept you waiting out of rudeness, manners are about the only thing I still have, and if they had ever taught “manners” in school, it certainly would have been the subject that would have appealed to me the most and in which I would have had the best grades. Dear Herr Schöntal, for years now I have been unable — this often lasts for weeks — to answer the door or pick up the telephone or call someone, it’s impossible for me, and I don’t know how I might be helped, I am probably beyond help already.
I’m also completely incapable of thinking about things people tell me to think about, about deadlines, work, appointments, nothing is clearer to me at six in the morning than the immensity of my misfortune, since I am completely and justly stricken with unending pain that hits each and every nerve at each and every minute of the day. I’m very tired, may I tell you how tired I am . . .
* * *
I pick up the phone and hear the droning voice: Telegrams, please hold, please hold, please hold, please hold, please hold. Meanwhile I scribble on a piece of paper: Dr. Walter Schöntal, Wielandstrasse 10, Nuremberg. Unfortunately cannot come stop letter follows.
Telegrams, please hold, please hold, please hold. It clicks, the lively, well-rested voice of a young woman asks: May I have your number please?
Thank you, I’ll call back.
* * *
We have a whole bundle of fatigue sentences, Ivan and I, since he’s often terribly exhausted, even though he’s so much younger than I am, and I’m also very tired, Ivan stayed up too late, he was with some people at the Heuriger in Nussdorf till five in the morning, then he drove with them back into town where they had some goulash soup, that must have been at the same time I was writing to Lily for the two hundredth time and some other things as well, at least I sent a telegram, and Ivan calls during the day, after work, his voice barely recognizable.
* * *
Exhausted to death, completely exhausted
I’m simply dead
No I don’t think so, I’ve just
I’m lying down, I’m simply
At least I’ll be able to get some sleep this time, just this once
Tonight I’m going to bed very early, and you
I’m falling asleep already, but tonight
So go to bed earlier for once
Like a dead fly, I can’t tell you
Of course if you’re so tired
I was so tired just now I could have died
So it doesn’t look like tonight’s
Of course if you weren’t so tired now
I don’t think I’m hearing right
Then listen carefully for once
But you’re falling asleep
Obviously not right now, I’m just tired
You have to rest
I left the downstairs door open
Maybe I am tired, but you must be even more exhausted
. . . . . .
Right this minute of course, when do you think
. . . . . .
I want you here at once!
* * *
I throw down the receiver, throw my weariness away, run down the stairs and across the street, diagonally. The gate to number 9 is ajar, the door to the room is ajar, and now Ivan is repeating all the sentences about exhaustion one more time, until we’re too tired and too exhausted to be able to bemoan the extent of our exhaustions, we stop talking and keep each other awake despite the utmost fatigue, and in the half darkness I don’t stop looking at Ivan until the wakeup service 00 calls, when he can sleep for another quarter-hour, I don’t stop hoping, begging and believing to have heard one sentence which did not arise from weariness, one that provides me with some insurance in this world, but s
omething about my eyes draws tight, the secretion from the glands is so slight it won’t suffice for even a single tear in the corner of each eye. Is one sentence enough to insure the person for whose sake it was uttered? There must be some insurance that is not of this world.
* * *
If Ivan doesn’t have any time for a whole week, which I just realized today, I lose my composure. It comes without reason, it’s senseless, I’ve handed Ivan his glass with three ice cubes, but immediately I get up and cross over to the window with my own glass, I want to find a way out of the room, perhaps I could leave on the pretext of going to the bathroom, just in passing, as if I were looking for a book in the library, although book and bathroom cannot be said to be connected. Before I escape from the room, before I tell myself that after all Beethoven, being deaf, did compose the Ninth Symphony in the house across the street: but I’m not deaf — actually he composed a lot of other things there as well, I could tell Ivan what else besides the Ninth — but now I can’t leave the room anymore, for Ivan has already noticed, since my shoulders are tense, since the small handkerchief is no longer enough to soak up the tears, Ivan must be to blame for this natural disaster, even if he didn’t do anything, after all it’s impossible to cry that much. Ivan takes me by the shoulder and leads me to the table, I’m supposed to sit down and drink, and while crying I want to apologize for crying. Ivan is very surprised, he says: Why shouldn’t you cry, go right ahead, cry if you want, as much as you can, a little more, you just have to cry yourself dry.
I cry myself dry and Ivan drinks a second whiskey, he doesn’t ask me anything, he doesn’t intervene with consolation, he is neither nervous nor irritated, he just waits the way you do for a storm to pass, he hears the sobbing diminish, five more minutes and he can dip a cloth in some ice water for me, he places it over my eyes.
I hope, my fräulein, that we’re not jealous.
No, nothing like that.
I start crying again, but now only because it feels so good. Of course not. There isn’t any reason.
But of course there’s a reason. For me it was a week without any injections of reality. I wouldn’t want Ivan to ask me the reason, but he’ll never do that, he’ll just allow me to cry from time to time.
Cry yourself dry! he’ll command.
I inhabit this animated world of a half-wild woman, freed for the first time from the judgments and prejudices of my environment, no longer prepared to pronounce any sentence on the world, ready only for an immediate answer, for lamentation and pity, joy and happiness, hunger and thirst, because for too long I have been alive without really living. My imagination, richer than any Yagé-fantasy, is finally brought into motion by Ivan, inside me he has set off something immense, which is now radiating from me, without interruption I emit rays to the world which needs them, I beam out from this one point, which is not only the center of my life, but of my will “to live well,” to be useful once again, for I would like Ivan to need me like I need him, and for the rest of our lives. Sometimes he, too, needs me because he rings the doorbell, I open the door, he’s holding a newspaper, he looks around and says: I have to go right away, do you need your car tonight? Ivan has left with my car keys, and even this short appearance of his shakes reality once again, each of his sentences affects me and the oceans of the earth and the constellations, I chew on a sausage sandwich in the kitchen and put the plate in the sink, while Ivan is still saying “I have to go right away,” I clean the dusty gramophone and gently stroke the records lying around with a velvet brush, “I want you here at once!” says Ivan as he’s driving up to the Hohe Warte, because he has to see the children right away, Béla has sprained his hand, but Ivan said, “I want you here at once!” and I must accommodate this dangerous sentence between eating sausage sandwiches and opening letters and dusting, because a fiery explosion might occur at any moment among all the everyday things that are no longer everyday. I stare out into space and listen and write a list:
Electrician
Electric bill
Sapphire needle
Toothpaste
Letters to Z.K. and lawyer
Cleaners
I could put on a record but I hear “I want you here at once!” I could wait for Malina, only I better go to bed, I’m extremely tired, utterly fatigued, exhausted to death “I want you — ” Ivan has to go right away, he’s just bringing back the keys, it turns out Béla did not sprain his hand, Ivan’s mother was exaggerating, I hold onto Ivan in the hall, and Ivan asks: What’s the matter with you, why are you grinning like an idiot?
Oh nothing, it’s just that I feel so idiotically good, I’m turning into an idiot.
But Ivan says: you don’t mean idiotically good, just good, that’s all. What used to happen when you felt good before? Did you always turn into such an idiot?
I shake my head, Ivan raises his hand in jest, as if he were about to hit me, the fear returns, I say to him, choking: Please don’t, not my head.
After an hour the shivers are gone and I think I should tell Ivan, but Ivan wouldn’t understand something so irrational, and because I can’t talk to him about murder, I have to rely on my own resources, for evermore, I only try to cut out this abscess, to burn it off for Ivan’s sake, I can’t keep wallowing in this puddle of murder thoughts, with Ivan I’m sure I’ll manage to get rid of them, he shall cleanse me of this disease, he shall save me. But since Ivan neither loves me nor needs me now, why should he ever love or need me? He only sees my face getting smoother and smoother and is glad when he can make me laugh, and again he’ll explain to me that we’re insured against everything, just like our cars, against earthquakes and hurricanes, against theft and accidents, against arson and hail, but one sentence alone keeps me insured and nothing else. No policy in the world can cover me.
* * *
In the afternoon I pull myself together and attend this lecture in the Institut Français, of course I arrive late and have to sit in the back near the door, from a distance I am greeted by François, who works in the embassy and somehow sees to it that our cultures are exchanged, reconciled or mutually fructified, he himself doesn’t know exactly how, neither of us knows since neither of us needs this, but it helps our countries, he waves me closer, wants to get up, points to his seat, but I don’t want to walk up to François now and cause a disturbance, because elderly ladies with hats and many old gentlemen, also some young people standing by the wall next to me, are listening as though they were in church, slowly I take in this sentence or that, and now I, too, lower my head, I keep hearing something about “la prostitution universelle,” wonderful, I think, how absolutely correct, the man from Paris with a pale ascetic face is speaking with the voice of a choir boy about the 120 days of Sodom and now for the tenth time I’m hearing something about universal prostitution, the room with its pious listeners, with its universal sterility, starts spinning around me but at least I’d finally like to know whether universal prostitution will go on or not, and in this church of de Sade I cast a challenging glance at a young man who also glances back blasphemously and for an hour we keep looking at each other surreptitiously and conspiratorially, as if during mass in a church at the time of the Inquisition. Before I start laughing, with a handkerchief between my teeth, and before my stifled laughter becomes a coughing fit, I walk out, leaving a hall of indignant listeners. I have to call Ivan at once.
* * *
What did I think? Very interesting
Oh right, so-so, and you
Nothing much, it was interesting
You be sure and go to bed early
You’re the one who’s yawning, you should go to sleep
I’m not going to, I don’t know yet
No, but tomorrow I have to
Do you really have to tomorrow?
* * *
I’m sitting alone at home and thread a sheet of paper into the typewriter, without thinking I type: Death will come.
&nb
sp; * * *
Fräulein Jellinek has left a letter out to be signed.
* * *
Dear Herr Schöntal:
Thank you for your letter of last year, I am dismayed to note it is dated the 19th of September. Unfortunately due to many impediments it was impossible to answer earlier, and this year it will be equally impossible for me to take on any additional commitments. Many thanks and best regards.
* * *
I put in another piece of paper and toss the first in the wastebasket.
* * *
Dear Herr Schöntal:
Today I write to you in the utmost anxiety, in the greatest haste. Since I do not know you it is easier for me to write to you than to my friends, and since you are a human being, and I deduce this from your very friendly efforts —
Vienna, . . .
An unknown woman.
* * *
Everyone would maintain that Ivan and I are not happy. Or that we haven’t had any reason to call ourselves happy for a long time. But everyone isn’t right. Everyone is no one. I forgot to ask Ivan about the tax forms on the phone, Ivan has generously promised to do my taxes for next year, I don’t care about taxes and what these taxes this year want from me in some other year, my only concern is Ivan, when he talks about next year, and Ivan tells me today he forgot to mention over the phone that he’s had enough sandwiches and that he’d really like to find out what I know how to cook, and now I’m expecting more out of a single evening than from all of next year. For if Ivan wants me to cook, then it has to mean something, he won’t be able to scoot off so quickly anymore the way he can after a drink, and tonight while looking around my library, among all the books I can’t find a single cookbook, I have to buy some at once, how absurd, what have I been reading all this time, what good is it to me now, if I can’t put it to use for Ivan. The Critique of Pure Reason, read under 60 watts in the Beatrixgasse, Locke, Leibnitz and Hume, in the dismal light of the National Library under the little reading lamps, beguiling my mind with concepts from all ages from the pre-Socratic philosophers to Being and Nothingness, Kafka, Rimbaud and Blake read under 25 watts in a hotel in Paris, Freud, Adler and Jung read at 360 watts in a lonely Berlin street, to the quiet rotations of the Chopin Études, an inflammatory speech about the expropriation of intellectual property studied on a beach near Genoa, its pages full of salt flecks and warped by the sun, La Comédie Humaine read with a fairly high fever, weakened by antibiotics, in Klagenfurt, Proust read in Munich until daybreak and until the roofers burst into the attic room, the French Moralists and the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricists with my stockings hanging loose, everything from De Rerum Natura to Le Culte de la Raison at thirty French cigarettes a day, history and philosophy, medicine and psychology practiced, in the Steinhof asylum work on the anamneses of schizophrenics and manic-depressives, scripts composed in the Auditorium Maximum at only 43 degrees and notes jotted at 100 degrees in the shade on de mundo, de mente, de motu, Marx and Engels read after washing my hair and V. I. Lenin when completely drunk, newspapers and newspapers and newspapers read while distraught and escaping, newspapers read while still a child in front of the stove, while lighting the fire, and newspapers and periodicals and paperbacks everywhere, at all train stations, in all trains, in streetcars, buses, airplanes and everything about everything, in four languages, fortiter, fortiter, and everything understood that can be read, and freed from all I have read for one hour, I lie down next to Ivan and say: If you really want I will write a book for you which doesn’t yet exist. But you have to really want it, want it from me, and I’ll never demand that you read it.