Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  I hear Béla saying: She should come along!

  * * *

  At the Graben I bought myself a new dress, a long casual dress, for an hour in the afternoon, for a few special evenings at home, I know for whom, I like it because it’s soft and long and means a lot of staying at home, even today. However I wouldn’t want to have Ivan here while I’m trying it on, even less Malina, and since Malina isn’t there I can only cast frequent glances in the mirror, I have to turn around in front of the long mirror in the corridor, miles away, fathoms deep, heavens high, fables removed from the men. For an hour I can live without time and space, in deep satisfaction, carried off into a legend, where the aroma of a soap, the prickle of a facial tonic, the rustle of lingerie, the dipping of puffs into pots of powder, the thoughtful stroke of a lip liner are the only reality. The result is a composition, a woman is to be created for a dress. What a woman is is being redesigned in complete secrecy, it is like a new beginning, with an aura for no one. The hair must be brushed twenty times, feet anointed and toenails painted, hair removed from legs and armpits, the shower turned on and off, a cloud of powder floats in the bathroom, the mirror is consulted, it’s always Sunday, the mirror, mirror on the wall is consulted, it might be Sunday already.

  * * *

  One day all women will have golden eyes, they will wear golden shoes and golden dresses, and she combed her golden hair, she tore her, no! and her golden hair blew in the wind, when she rode up the Danube and entered Rhaetia . . .

  * * *

  A day will come when all women will have redgolden eyes, redgolden hair, and the poetry of their sex, their lineage, shall be recreated . . .

  * * *

  I have stepped into the mirror, I vanished in the mirror, I have seen into the future, I was one with myself and am again not one with myself. I blink, once again awake, into the mirror, shading the edge of my eyelid with a pencil. I’m able to give it up. For a moment I was immortal and myself — I wasn’t there for Ivan and wasn’t living in Ivan, it was without significance. The water in the tub drains away. I close the drawers, I clean up the liners, the pots, the vials, the sprays in the medicine cabinet, so Malina won’t be annoyed. The dress is hung in the closet, it’s not for today. I have to go outside and get some air before going to sleep. Out of consideration I turn at the Heumarkt, threatened by the proximity of the Stadtpark, by its shadows and dark figures, I make a detour over the Linke-Bahngasse, rushing because I find this section creepy, but once I reach the Beatrixgasse I again feel secure, and from the Beatrixgasse I go up the Ungargasse to the Rennweg so I won’t know whether Ivan is home or not. I show the same consideration on my way back, in this way both number 9 and the informative Münzgasse remain hidden to me. Ivan should have his freedom, he should have his space, even at this hour. Racing upstairs, I take a few steps at a time, since a telephone appears to be quietly rattling, it could be our phone, it is our phone ringing in intervals, I burst through the door, leaving it open behind me, because the telephone is screeching in a state of alarm. I rip off the receiver and say breathlessly, amazed:

  * * *

  I was just coming, I was out for a walk

  By myself of course, what else, just a few steps

  So you are home, but how am I supposed to

  Then I must not have noticed your car

  Because I was coming from the Rennweg

  I must have forgotten to look up at your window

  I prefer coming down from the Rennweg

  I’m afraid to go all the way to the Heumarkt

  But that you’re home so early

  Because of the Stadtpark, you never know

  Where could I have been looking

  In the Münzgasse, I parked mine there today as well

  In that case I’d better call you, so tomorrow I’ll call

  * * *

  Reconciliation comes and drowsiness, my impatience softens, I wasn’t secure but am once again safe, no longer walking past the Stadtpark at night, jittery as I walk along the facades of the buildings, no longer on a detour through the dark, but already a little at home, already docked safely at the Ungargasse, already safe and sound in Ungargassenland, my head’s already a little above the water even. Already gurgling the first words and sentences, already commencing, beginning.

  * * *

  A day will come when people shall have redgolden eyes and sidereal voices, when their hands will be gifted for love, and the poetry of their lineage shall be recreated . . .

  * * *

  Already crossing out, perusing, throwing away.

  * * *

  . . . and their hands will be gifted for goodness, with their innocent hands they will reach for the highest goodness, they shall not forever, mankind shall not forever, they will not have to wait forever.

  * * *

  Already insight, foresight.

  * * *

  I hear the key in the door, Malina looks in at me questioningly.

  You’re not disturbing me, sit down, would you like some tea, a glass of milk, do you want anything?

  Malina himself wants to get a glass of milk from the kitchen, he makes a light, ironic bow, something amuses him enough to make him smile at me. He also can’t resist saying something to annoy me: If I see correctly, nous irons mieux, la montagne est passée.

  Please spare me your Prussian pronouncements, you shouldn’t have bothered me now, after all everybody has the right to have things go better sometime!

  * * *

  I ask Ivan whether he ever thought and what he used to think and what he thinks today about love. Ivan smokes, letting the ashes fall on the floor, looks for his shoes in silence, he’s found both and turns to me, he’s having difficulty finding the right words.

  Is that something people think about, what kind of thoughts should I have about it, do you need words for it? are you trying to set a trap for me, my fräulein?

  Yes and no. But if you don’t . . . And you never feel anything, no contempt, no aversion? But what if I didn’t feel anything either? I ask, on the alert. I’d like to throw my arms around Ivan so he can’t be far, not even a yard away from me when I ask him for the first time.

  What do you mean, aversion, are you joking? Why do you want to complicate things? It’s enough that I come over. My God what impossible questions you ask!

  I say triumphantly: That’s all I wanted to know, whether they’re impossible questions. I didn’t want to know anything more.

  Ivan is dressed and doesn’t have much time left, he says: You act pretty funny sometimes.

  Not me, I answer quickly, it’s the others, they’re the ones who led me to such wayward thoughts earlier on, I never used to think that way, I would never have come up with contempt or aversion, and it’s someone else inside me, someone who never agreed with me, someone who never allowed answers to be forced out of him to questions which had been foisted upon him.

  Don’t you mean foisted on her?

  No, him, I don’t confuse the two. Him. When I say him you have to believe me.

  My fräulein, we are, after all, very female, as I was able to ascertain in the very first hour, and that’s still true today, you can believe me.

  You’re so impatient, you don’t even have the patience to let me talk for once!

  Today I’m very impatient, I don’t keep all my patience just for you!

  You only have to have a little patience, then we’ll find out.

  But if you make me lose my patience!

  I’m afraid it’s my patience which is ultimately to blame for your impatience . . .

  (End of the sentences about patience and impatience. A very small sentence set.)

  * * *

  A day will come, when our houses will fall, all cars will have become scrap metal, we will be freed from all airplanes and rockets, renounce the invention of the wheel and the ability to split the atom, the fresh wind will come down from the bl
ue hills and swell our chest, we will be dead and breathe, it shall be our whole life.

  All water shall run dry in the deserts, once again we will be able to enter the wilderness and witness revelations, savanna and stream will invite us in their purity, diamonds will remain embedded in stone and illuminate us all, the primeval forest will take us out of the nighttime jungle of our thoughts, we will cease to think and suffer, it shall be the Redemption.

  * * *

  Dear Mr. President:

  You wish me, on behalf of the Academy, best wishes on my birthday. Permit me to tell you how appalled I was precisely today. To be sure I have no doubt as to your tact, since I had the honor of meeting you some years ago at the opening . . . since I had the honor of meeting you. However you are alluding to a day, perhaps even a specific hour and an irrevocable moment, which must have been a most private matter for my mother, my father too, as we may assume for the sake of propriety. Naturally nothing in particular was shared with me about this day, I just had to memorize a date which I have to write down on every registration form in every city, in every country, even if I’m only passing through. But I stopped passing through countries a long time ago . . .

  * * *

  Dear Lily,

  You will have heard in the meantime what happened to me and to my head. I say “in the meantime” though by now many years have already passed. Back then I asked you to come to me, to help me, it wasn’t the first time, it was the second time, but you didn’t come the first time either. You might know what I think about Christian love for one’s neighbor. But I’m not being very articulate, I only want to say that even Christian love for one’s neighbor surely does not exclude any particular possibility, though it may remain closed to someone like me, but I can also easily imagine that one acts on its account, and you might have acted on its account as well. Of course I would have preferred it had you done so on my account. Agreement is not necessary in emergencies, and this was definitely an emergency. Dear Lily, I know your magnanimity, your behavior that might be deemed extravagant in so many situations and I have always admired it. But now seven years have passed, and not even your intelligence was sufficient to avoid betraying your heart. If someone is well equipped with both heart and reason, but not quite enough, then any self-inflicted disappointment must be worse for him than the disappointment he causes his closest friends. I was completely prepared to assist Herr G. We had agreed to accept our differences of opinion on how to listen to music, at what volume, as well as what selection of course, because my sensitivity to sound had recently undergone a pathological increase, so that we would quibble day in and day out about all aspects of its use, at that point my sense of time was also beginning to suffer greatly, timing and time management struck me as pathological, but I was ready to admit that my own attitude toward time, or rather my lack of attitude, had itself acquired a diseased dimension. We had also agreed, in an emergency, to disagree on the subject of cats and dogs, I was prepared to say I was incapable of living with animals — especially cats — and him together in one apartment simultaneously, and he wanted to say that he was incapable of lying in bed with a dog or my mother and me. At any rate we had arrived at a very clear, harmonious settlement. You know my prejudices, I have carried over certain assumptions from my education, my background, but also from a certain hierarchy of premises. I was easy to deal with since I was accustomed to certain tones, to gestures, to a certain gentle manner, and the brutality with which my world — and yours as well — was injured would have itself sufficed to drive me half out of my mind. And so, because of my background, I was, in the end, beyond treatment, so to speak. I am not negotiable. I am not amenable to unfamiliar customs that cause me pain. Even the Thai ambassador, who wanted to make me take off my shoes, but you know that old story . . . I do not take off my shoes. I do not advertise my prejudices. I have them. I prefer to undress myself, down to my shoes. And if my custom should one day call for it, then I will say: Cast all thou hast into the fire, even unto thy shoes.

  Vienna, . . .

  * * *

  Dear Lily,

  In the meantime you undoubtedly know, against your worse judgment, for anything to be known in a bad way will have made the rounds. You yourself never believed it. Nonetheless you didn’t come. Once again it’s my birthday. Pardon me, it’s your birthday . . .

  * * *

  Dear Lily,

  Today I’ve reached the point where I never want to see you again. This wish is not the result of a first or final passion felt in the heat of the moment. During the first few years I still wrote many agonizing, accusatory, reproachful letters, every one of which, however, would have revealed more of my affection, despite their tremendous reproaches, than the insignificant letters we once exchanged, equipped with the most tender greetings, mutual embraces, and many lovely wishes for one another. Nor was this wish of mine preceded by much deliberation, I stopped deliberating long ago, but I notice that something in me is letting go of you, no longer courting you, not even looking for you anymore. Of course Herr G. or Herr W., or as far as I’m concerned Herr A., might have tried to separate us in some vile manner, but how can two people be split by one or more third parties? It would be easy to blame such a person or persons, to pin all the guilt on them — if such waggish guilt even exists, and I’m not sure it does — and anyway guilt is too unimportant. Where no wish for separation exists, it cannot occur, thus it can only have been your deep-seated desire, lying in wait for the slightest occasion. For me no occasion would have ever arisen, and therefore today there can’t be any either. You have merely regressed inside of me, you have passed into the time in which we were once together, and there stands your youthful likeness, no longer vulnerable to the damage of later events and my opinions of them. It may no longer be spoiled. It is standing in the mausoleum within me, next to the images of invented characters, figures soon revived, soon dying.

  Vienna, . . .

  An unknown woman

  * * *

  Whenever Ivan leaves the little devils, the rascals, the bandits, the rapscallions with me, these gyerekek, because he has to run another errand, just for a moment, and because I insisted, the apartment is subjected to a turbulence beyond Lina’s wildest dreams. First both demolish Lina’s marble cake, scarcely eating it, and I clear away all sharp and dangerous objects, all sticks and stones. I didn’t know my apartment was so full of them, furthermore, I left the door ajar for Ivan, but András has already escaped into the stairwell. I’ve taken on a terrible responsibility, I see new dangers arising every second, unsuspected, surprising, for if the slightest thing should happen to just one of Ivan’s children, I could never look Ivan in the eye, but there are two of them, and they are faster, more inventive, quicker of mind than myself. Fortunately András hasn’t run out into the street, but upstairs he rings and rings the soprano’s doorbell, she can’t get up and open the door because her four hundred pounds keep her in bed, later I’ll slip her a note with an apology, because this must have been very upsetting to her, with her fatty degenerative heart. I drag András back into the apartment, but now the door has closed shut and I’m stranded without a key. I hammer on the door, Ivan opens, Ivan has come! with two of us the gyerekek are easier to handle, at Ivan’s word Béla picks up the biggest cake crumbs without resisting, but now András has discovered the record player, already his hand is on the arm with the sapphire needle and scratching across the record. I say to Ivan happily: Let him go ahead, it doesn’t matter, it’s just the D-major Concerto, it’s my fault! But I do put the candelabra on the tall display case out of András’s reach. I dash into the kitchen and take the Coca-Cola bottles out of the refrigerator. Ivan, could you please at least open the bottles, no, the opener’s lying right over there! But Béla has run off with the opener, we’re supposed to guess where it is, and we play and guess: cold, lukewarm, cooler, hot, very hot! the opener is lying underneath the rocking chair. Today the children don’t want to drink any Coca-Cola, Bé
la empties his glass into a vase containing Herr Kopecky’s roses and the rest into Ivan’s tea. I say: But children, couldn’t you for just one minute, I have to talk to Ivan about something, for heaven’s sake just for a minute, please quiet down! I talk to Ivan, who tells me that he’s no longer taking the children to the Tyrol after all, but to the Mondsee, and earlier than expected, because his mother no longer wants to go to the Tyrol. I don’t have a chance to answer, because András has entered the kitchen on an exploratory expedition, I catch him while he’s still on the balcony where he is beginning to climb the railing, I pull him down without showing any emotion, I say: Come here, please, in here, I have some chocolate for you! Ivan continues unmoved: I couldn’t reach you yesterday, I would have told you sooner! So Ivan wants to go to the Mondsee, and isn’t talking about the Mondsee and me, I say quickly: That works out well, I have to visit the Altenwyls’ on the Wolfgangsee, I’ve already declined twice and have halfway accepted this time, I really should go, because otherwise they’ll be insulted. Ivan says: You should go, you’ve got to get out of Vienna for once, I don’t understand why you’re always declining, you have the time. Éljen! Béla and András have now found Malina’s and my shoes in the hall, they stick their little feet inside and come tottering in, András falls down bawling, I pick him up and take him on my lap. Ivan pulls Béla out of Malina’s shoes, we wear ourselves out fighting with the children, keeping an eye out for the chocolate that has also disappeared, it would save us, András is clutching the remnants in his hand and smears it all over my blouse. So they’re going to the Mondsee and I said I would go to the Altenwyls’. Béla cries out: Seven-league boots! with them I’ll cross the whole wide world, how far have I come? all the way to Timbuktu? But, Ivan, let him stay in the shoes if he insists on walking in seven-league boots, I add in our English code, “please, do call later, I have to speak to you,” the letter with the invitation to Venice, the reply, the telegram with prepaid reply, I still haven’t sent any of it, it’s not so important, Venice isn’t important, sometime later we can . . . Ivan has taken Béla to the bathroom, András is kicking and first wants to get down off my lap, then suddenly kisses me on the nose, I kiss András on the nose, we rub our noses together, I wish it would never end, that András would never get enough, just as I can’t get enough of our rubbing noses. I wish neither the Mondsee nor the Wolfgangsee existed, but what’s said is said, András pushes against me closer and closer, and I hold on to him, he must belong to me, the children will be all mine. Ivan comes in and sets a couple of chairs in order, he says: That’s it for now, there’s no more time, we have to go, once again you’ve behaved like two perfect little horrors! Ivan still has to buy the children a rubber boat before the stores close. I stand at the door with all three, Ivan is holding András by the hand, Béla is already romping down the stairs. Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein! Good-bye you little brats! “I’ll call you later.” Auf Wiedersehen!