Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  * * *

  In the evening I tell Ivan: The children don’t look like you at all, maybe Béla does a little, if he didn’t have that shaggy brown hair and light eyes he’d look more like you! Ivan must have guessed that I was afraid of the children, since he laughs and says: Was it that bad? You were fine, no, they don’t look like me, but they also can’t stand it when people start in on them, when people ask them the kind of questions people ask, then they smell a rat! Quickly I suggest: If you’re going to the movies on Sunday, then I could go with you, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to the movies again, there’s a film at the Apollo called The Living Desert. Ivan says: We saw that last Sunday. Thus it remained unclear whether Ivan would take me another time or whether his statement about the film was an excuse, whether I could see the children again or whether Ivan wants to keep his two worlds forever separate, in case they are no longer worlds. We begin playing chess and don’t have to talk anymore, the game is tedious, involved, stagnant, we don’t get anywhere, Ivan is attacking, I’m on the defensive. Ivan’s attack comes to a stop, it is the longest, most speechless game we’ve ever played, Ivan doesn’t help me a single time, and today we don’t finish. Ivan has drunk more whiskey than usual, tired, he gets up, muttering Ivan-curses, he paces back and forth a few steps and keeps on drinking while standing, he doesn’t want to anymore, it was a hard day, no checkmate but there hasn’t been a stalemate either. Ivan wants to go home right away and go to bed, apparently I played so tediously it tired him out, his game was equally uninspired. Good Night!

  * * *

  Malina has come home, he finds me still in the living room, the chessboard is there, I haven’t even managed to take the glasses to the kitchen. Malina can’t know where I was sitting, because I’m rocking in the rocking chair in the corner next to the lamp, holding a book, Red Star over China, nonetheless, he bends over the board, whistles quietly and says: You would have lost by a mile! I ask what do you mean by that, and add that I might not have lost after all. But Malina thinks it over and calculates the next moves. How can he know that I was black, because black, in his opinion, would have ended up losing. Malina reaches for my glass of whiskey. How can he know it’s my glass and not the glass that Ivan left, also half-full, but he never drinks out of Ivan’s glass, he never touches anything Ivan has handled or used just before, a plate with olives or salted almonds. Malina extinguishes his cigarette in my ashtray and not the other one, which was Ivan’s ashtray this evening. I conclude nothing.

  I left China at: Enemy troops were racing up from the southeast, others approached from the North. A hurried military conference was summoned by Lin Piao.

  * * *

  Ivan and I: the world converging.

  Malina and I, since we are one: the world diverging.

  * * *

  Never have I had so little use for Malina, less and less does he know where to begin with me, but had he not come home on time and found me between the Long March through China and a train of thought about children who do not look like Ivan, I would fall back into bad habits, write letters, hundreds of them, or drink and destroy, think destructively, destroy everything and then some, I would not be able to hold on to the country I have acquired, I would regress and abandon it. Even if Malina is silent, it’s better than being silent alone, and it helps me with Ivan, too, when I can’t grasp what’s going on, when I lose my grasp on myself, because Malina is always there for me, steadfast and composed, and even in the darkest hours I am aware that Malina will never be lost to me — even if I were to get lost myself!

  * * *

  I say “Du” to Malina and to Ivan, but these two “Du’s” differ by an immeasurable, imponderable accent in pronunciation. From the beginning I never said “Sie” to either one, as is otherwise my custom. I recognized Ivan too instantaneously and there was no time to get closer to him through speech, I had already belonged to him before a word was said. Malina, on the other hand, had been the focus of my thoughts for so many years, my longing for him had been so great that our living together one day was only the affirmation of something which should have always been, something which had only been impeded too often by other people, bad decisions and actions. My “Du” for Malina is precise and well suited to our conversations and arguments. My “Du” for Ivan is imprecise, of varying hues, darker, lighter, it can become brittle, mellow or timid, unlimited in its scale of expression, it can be said alone at longer intervals and often, like a siren, always alluringly new, but nonetheless without that tone, that expression I hear in me whenever I cannot bring myself to utter a single word in front of Ivan. Not in front of him, but inside me I will someday perfect this “Du.” Perfection will have evolved.

  Otherwise I say “Sie” to most people, I have an indispensable need for saying “Sie,” also out of caution, but I have at my disposal at least two types of “Sie.” One “Sie” is intended for most people, the other, a dangerous, richly orchestrated “Sie,” which I could never say to Malina or to Ivan, is reserved for the men who might be in my life were it not for Ivan. Because of Ivan I retreat into this disquieting “Sie” and am myself withdrawn. It is a “Sie” difficult to describe, one that is sometimes — though all too rarely — grasped, yet still understood for the tension it carries, which the “Du” of camaraderies can never possess. For naturally I say “Du” to all sorts of people, because I was in school with them, because I studied with them, because I worked with them, but that doesn’t mean a thing. My “Sie” might be related to that of Fanny Goldmann, who ostensibly — of course just according to rumor — persisted in saying “Sie” to all her lovers. She also said “Sie” to other men who couldn’t be her lovers, and there is supposed to have been one man whom she loved to whom she said her most beautiful “Sie.” Women like Fanny Goldmann, whom people are always talking about, can’t do anything about it one way or the other, one day words simply begin to circulate in the city: Are you living on the moon? what, you don’t know that? she’s ended her biggest affairs with an absolutely inimitable “Sie”! Even Malina, who never says anything good or bad about anyone, mentions that he met Fanny Goldmann today, she was also invited to the Jordans, and he says, unsolicited: I never heard a woman say “Sie” so beautifully.

  But I’m not interested in what Malina thinks about Fanny Goldmann, he’s not about to make any comparisons, after all, this woman studied speech, and I never learned to breathe from the abdomen, I can’t modulate words according to whim and don’t know how to make artful pauses. In my anxiety over what to discuss with Malina, since it’s almost bedtime, where do I begin, I’ve only met two children who in turn are of no interest to Malina. All that transpires elsewhere, what he calls my little stories, are never allowed to be discussed. World affairs or city events may not be rehashed, not in front of Malina, after all we’re not sitting in a pub. I may talk about everything that orbits around me, that encircles me. Is there such a thing as the expropriation of intellectual property? Does the victim of such expropriation, should it indeed exist, have the right to some final difficulties in thinking? Is it still worth it?

  I might ask about the most impossible things. Who invented writing? What is writing? Is it property? Who first demanded expropriation? Allons-nous à l’Esprit? Are we of an inferior race? Should we get mixed up in politics, do nothing more and simply be brutal? Are we cursed? Are we going under? Malina gets up, he’s emptied my glass. I’ll sleep on my questions in a deep intoxication. I’ll worship animals in the night, I’ll lay violent hands on the holiest icons, I’ll clutch at all lies, I’ll grow bestial in my dreams and will allow myself to be slaughtered like a beast.

  * * *

  As I’m falling asleep my head jerks, flashing inside, sparkling, casting me in darkness, I again feel threatened, it’s the feeling of annihilation, and I say, very sharply, to Ivan who isn’t there: Malina never, Malina is different, you don’t understand Malina. I have never directed a harsh word at Ivan, will never do so out loud. Of cours
e Ivan hasn’t said anything against Malina either, he never gives him a thought, and why should Ivan be jealous of Malina’s living here with me? He doesn’t mention Malina for the same reasons you don’t talk about someone in prison or someone who is mentally ill, out of tact, in consideration of the family, and even if my eyes do go blank for a few minutes, then it’s only because a terrible tension is arising, while I’m thinking about Malina, and this benign misunderstanding, this clear confusion reigns over the three of us, it reigns and governs us. We are the only subjects to enjoy any well-being, the misapprehension we inhabit is so rich that no one ever raises his voice against the other or against the regime. That’s why the other people, outside, tend to incapacitate us, because they assume rights, because they have been deprived of rights or their rights have been usurped and because they are constantly remonstrating against one another, without any right. Ivan would say: They’re all poisoning one another, without any right. Ivan would say: They’re all poisoning each other’s lives. Malina would say: All these people with their borrowed opinions, which they’ve rented at such high rates, they’ll wind up paying dearly.

  My own borrowed opinions are already disappearing. It’s becoming easier and easier for me to part from Ivan, and then to find him again, because my thoughts about him are less domineering, I can also free him for hours from my mind, so that he won’t have to rub his wrists and ankles incessantly in his sleep, I no longer keep him fettered or, if I do, just very loosely. He no longer wrinkles his forehead so often, his creases are smoothing out since the dictatorship of my eyes and caresses has mellowed, when I cast a spell or a curse on him I do it briefly so we can part more easily, one of us walks out the door, one of us gets in the car and mumbles something: If it’s twenty to four right now then I’ll make it to the Messegelände just in time, and you? I’ll be all right, no nothing special, tomorrow I’m driving to Burgenland with somebody, no, not overnight, I don’t know yet what my friends . . . The quietest mumbling, since neither of us knows what’s going on with these friends, with the Messegelände or with Burgenland, to which life these words belong. I promised Ivan I would only wear clothes that make me both pretty and happy, I also added a quick promise to eat regularly and refrain from drinking. And even more hastily I gave Ivan my word I would get some sleep, that I would rest up, that I would sleep very deeply.

  * * *

  We do talk with the children, but we also quickly speak over their heads, using a desultory German full of allusions, with English sentences thrown in when it can’t be avoided, though if we happen to use this English Morse Code it doesn’t mean we’re dealing with an SOS, everything is going well with Ivan and the children, but when the children are there I hold myself back and at the same time talk more than I would were I alone with Ivan, for then Ivan isn’t so much Ivan for me as the father of Béla and András, only at first was I unable to pronounce his name in front of the children, until I noticed that they also call him Ivan (however, sometimes when he starts to whine András still cries out: Papà! it must be a word from an earlier time). At the last minute Ivan decided to take me along to Schönbrunn, naturally because András, who took to me right away, asked him: Isn’t she coming? she should come with us! But both kids hang on to me in front of the monkey house, András clutches my arm, carefully I draw him closer and closer to me, I didn’t know that children’s bodies were warmer and nicer to the touch than the body of a grownup, jealous Béla also presses closer to me, it’s only because of András, they’re pushy in a way I can’t get enough of, as if they had been missing someone a long time, someone they could hang on to and push and pull, Ivan has to help dole out the nuts and bananas because we’re laughing and hanging on to each other and Béla is throwing the nuts, missing. Eagerly I explain about the baboon and the chimpanzees, I’m not prepared for an hour in the zoo, I should have read up in Brehm’s Life of Animals, I’m at a complete loss when it comes to the snakes, I don’t know whether the adders in there eat white mice, which Béla claims to know, or bugs and leaves, as Ivan thinks, Ivan who already has a headache, I call to him: Just go on ahead! Because Béla and András still want to see the lizards and salamanders and since Ivan isn’t listening I invent unbelievable habits and stories about the lives of reptiles, unfazed by any question, I know which countries they come from, when they get up, when they go to bed, what they eat, what they think, whether they grow to be a hundred or a thousand years old. If only Ivan weren’t so impatient because of his headache, his lack of sleep, since we still have to see the bears, we feed the seals, and in front of the big aviary I make up everything about vultures and eagles, there’s no time left for the songbirds. I have to say that Ivan will treat us all to some ice cream at Hübner’s, but only if we leave at once, otherwise nothing will come of our ice cream, I say: Ivan will be very mad at us! But only the ice cream is effective. Please, Ivan, couldn’t you treat us to an ice cream, I’m sure you promised the children (over their heads, in English, “Please, do me the favor, I promised them some ice cream”), you better have a double espresso. Ivan orders grumpily, he must be exhausted, while the children and I nudge each other’s feet under the table, then start kicking more and more wildly, Béla laughs hysterically: What kind of shoes does she have, boy does she have stupid shoes! For that I give Béla a gentle kick, but Ivan gets annoyed: Béla, behave yourself or we’re going straight home! But we have to go straight home anyway, whether the children behave or not, Ivan tosses them onto the back seat of the car, I’ve stayed a second longer and bought two balloons while Ivan is looking for me in the other direction, I don’t have any change, a woman helps me break a fifty schilling note, she says with a plaintive friendliness: Those must be yours, you have such nice children! And I say embarrassed: Thank you, thank you very much, how very nice of you. Quietly I get in and press a string with a balloon into the hand of each of the nice children. While driving Ivan says, in English: “You are just crazy, it was not necessary!” I turn around and say: All your quacking today! you’re both unbearable! Béla and András double over laughing: We can quack, quack quack quack, we can quack! Whenever it starts to get wild like that Ivan starts singing, Béla and András stop quacking, they sing along, loudly and thinly, in and out of tune.

  Debrecenbe kéne menni

  pulykakakast kéne venni

  vigyázz kocsis lyukas a kas

  kiugrik a pulykakakas

  Since I still don’t know the song and can’t sing anyway, I sigh to myself: éljen!

  * * *

  Ivan drops us off at number 9, he has to pick up some documents at the office, and I play cards with the children, András, who is always wishing me well, advises me, whereas Béla says scornfully: You’re not playing right, you’re an idiot, mister, excuse me, lady! We’re playing Fairy Tale Quartet, but Béla is moping because the fairy tales are too stupid for him, he’s past fairy tales, that’s something for András and me. We play Animal Quartet and Airplane Quartet, we win and lose, I lose most often, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes on purpose, assisting the good fortune of Béla and András. When we get to City Quartet András doesn’t want to play anymore, he doesn’t know cities, I advise him, we whisper behind our folded cards, I say “Hong Kong,” András doesn’t understand, Béla throws his cards on the table, enraged, like a gentleman at a big, decisive conference who’s about to burst at the seams because the others aren’t up to speed, András wants to go back to fairy tales, and for a while we go back and forth until I suggest: Let’s play Old Maid. They must have played Old Maid a thousand times but they’re electrified once more, Béla shuffles, I cut, the cards are again dealt, drawn and played. In the end I get the Old Maid and Ivan comes in, Béla and András reel with laughter and roar with all their might: Old Maid, Old Maid! Now we have to play once again with Ivan, and in the end it’s between Béla and me, unfortunately Béla draws the Old Maid from me and throws his cards down, crying out hoarsely: Ivan, she’s a bitch! We exchange glances over the boys’ heads
. Anger begins to rumble in Ivan, and Béla pretends not to have said anything. Ivan proposes some aged cognac as a peace offering, Béla even asks if he may be allowed to fetch it, he runs twice, brings us the glasses and Ivan and I sit there in silence, our legs crossed, the children play Flower Quartet silently and cautiously at the table, and I don’t think anything of it. But then I do think of something, namely that Ivan is letting his eyes drift back and forth between the children and me, musing, questioning, but for the most part friendly.

  Must I forever? Must one forever? Must one wait a whole lifetime?

  * * *

  We’re supposed to meet in the garden patio of the Italian ice cream parlor. Ivan says, so that the children don’t notice anything: Hello! how are you? In front of the children I, too, act as if I hadn’t seen Ivan for weeks. We also don’t have much time, without asking Ivan orders four servings of mixed flavors, because Béla has to go to his infamous gym class, which is constantly causing a problem for Ivan’s mother and very often for Ivan, even for Béla who doesn’t like gym. Ivan criticizes our schools and their curricula, especially because of this crazy gym class, which is always held in a different place and always in the afternoon. What do you people over here think, that everybody has at least two cars and a couple of governesses! Normally I never hear Ivan say anything about living conditions in Vienna, he doesn’t make comparisons, he doesn’t talk about things, he seems to consider going into Here vs. There irresponsible and unproductive. He only lost his self-control because of this gym class, he said “you people over here” and said it to me, as if the gym class were the embodiment of a world to which I belong and should reject, but perhaps I’m only imagining something in my rising anxiety, I don’t know what gym classes are like over there in Hungary. Ivan has paid, we take the kids out onto the street and head toward the car, András waves, but it’s Béla who asks: Isn’t she coming? why can’t she come along? Then all three have disappeared through the Tuchlauben, rounded the corner, up to the Hoher Markt, obscured by a diplomat’s limousine. I look and am still looking when there’s no longer any trace of them, slowly I walk across Petersplatz to the Graben, in a different direction, I should buy some stockings, I could buy myself a sweater, especially today I would like to buy myself something nice, because they have disappeared, naturally Ivan couldn’t say in front of the children whether he’d call tonight.