Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  * * *

  At midnight I return to the large parlor and raid Atti’s library: The ABC of Sailing, From Bow to Stern, Weather and Lee. Somewhat fearful titles, they don’t fit Atti either. I also got hold of a book, Knots, Splices, Rigging, it seems to be the right one for me, “the book makes no assumptions . . . is treated with the same systematic clarity . . . easily understood instructions for tying decorative knots, from the Hohenzollern knot to chain sinnets.’’ I read part of an easily understood book for beginners. I’ve already taken my sleeping pills. What will become of me, if I am only now beginning? When can I leave, how? I could still quickly learn how to sail here, but I don’t want to. I want to leave, I don’t think I’ll need anything more, I don’t think that for a whole life I need to understand what trimming, trimming in, trimming up mean. My eyes have never closed while reading before, my eyes won’t close now either. I have to go home.

  * * *

  At five o’clock I sneak into the large parlor to the telephone. I don’t know how I’m supposed to pay Antoinette for the telegram, since she shouldn’t know anything about it. Telegrams please hold, please hold, please hold . . . I wait and smoke and wait. There’s a clicking on the line, a lively female voice asks: subscriber’s name please, and number? Fearfully I whisper the Altenwyls’ name and their phone number, the woman will call right back, I lift up the receiver at the first ring and whisper, so that no one in the house can hear me: Dr. Malina, Ungargasse 6, Vienna III. Text: urgently request telegram calling for urgent return to Vienna stop arrive tomorrow evening stop greetings . . .

  * * *

  A telegram from Malina arrives the next morning, Antoinette has no time and is fleetingly surprised, I drive to Salzburg with Christine, who wants to know exactly how things were at the Altenwyls’. Antoinette is said to have become completely hysterical, and Atti is a truly kind and intelligent man, but this woman must be driving him crazy. Oh, I say, I didn’t notice anything like that, it would never have occurred to me! Christine says: Naturally if you prefer such people . . . of course we would have been happy to invite you, at our place you would have really had some peace and quiet, we live so terribly simply. Straining, I look out the car window and cannot find an answer. I say: You know, I’ve known the Altenwyls for a very long time, but no, it’s not that, I like them very much, no, they’re really not such a strain, what do you mean by strain?

  * * *

  During the drive I’m too strained, always on the verge of crying, Salzburg has to appear sometime soon, only fifteen more kilometers, only five kilometers. We’re standing at the station. Christine remembers that she still has to meet somebody and has to go shopping beforehand. I say: Please don’t wait, for heaven’s sake, the stores are about to close! At last I’m standing there alone, I find my compartment, this person is constantly contradicting herself, I am contradicting myself as well. Why haven’t I noticed before that I can hardly stand people anymore? Since when has it been like that? What has become of me? I ride bewildered past Attnang-Puchheim and Linz, with a book bouncing up and down in my hand: Ecce Homo. I hope Malina is waiting for me at the station, but there’s no one there, and I have to phone, except I don’t like calling from train stations, phone booths or from post offices. Especially from booths. I must have been in prison at some time, the booths remind me of a cell, I can’t call from cafés anymore either, or from friends’ houses, I have to be home when I phone, and no one can be nearby, or at most Malina, because he doesn’t listen. But that’s something entirely different. I call from a phone booth at the Westbahnhof, sweating with claustrophobia. It can’t happen to me here, I’m going crazy, it can’t happen to me in a booth like a cell.

  * * *

  Hello you, it’s me, thanks a lot

  I can’t make it to the station before six

  Please come, I beg you, leave a little early

  You know I can’t, I might

  Just forget it then, I’ll manage

  No please, what is it, you sound like

  It’s nothing, please, just forget it, I’m telling you

  Don’t complicate things so much, just take a taxi

  So we’ll see each other this evening, so you are

  That’s right, tonight I’m, we’ll see each other for sure

  * * *

  I forgot that Malina had the night shift tonight, and I take a taxi. These days who even wants to look at that cursed automobile in which Franz Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo, and that bloody military cloak? I have to look it up in Malina’s books, just once: Passenger car, make: Graef & Stift, license plate: A III — 118, Model: Double-Phaeton body, 4 cylinders, 115 mm bore, 140 mm stroke, 28/32 horsepower, motor no. 287. Rear wall damaged by shrapnel from the first bomb, on the right wall can be seen the hole made by the bullet that caused the Duchess’s death, the Archduke’s standard carried on June 28, 1914 mounted to the windshield . . .

  * * *

  I carry the catalog of the Army Museum through all the rooms, the apartment looks as if it hadn’t been inhabited for months, for when Malina is by himself no disorder arises. When Lina is frequently by herself in the morning, all signs of my presence vanish into the cabinets and closets, no dust falls, it’s only me who causes dust and dirt to appear within hours, books to become jumbled, little notes to litter the apartment. But there’s no litter yet. Before my departure I left Anni an envelope for the mail that might be sent to me in St. Wolfgang, there will be a postcard, no big surprise, still I need the card in order to place it in a drawer next to letters and cards from Paris and Munich, with a letter from Vienna on top that did go to St. Wolfgang. I’m still missing the Mondsee. I sit down by the telephone, wait and smoke, I dial Ivan’s number, I let it ring, he won’t be able to answer for days yet, and for days I could walk around this deserted and dead Vienna, Vienna flushed with heat, or I could just sit here, I’m absentminded, my mind is absent, what is absence of mind? Where is the mind when it’s absent? Absentmindedness inside and out, the mind here is absent everywhere, I can sit down where I want to, I can touch the furniture, I can rejoice at my escape and once again live in absence. I have returned to my own land which is also absent, my greathearted country, where I can make my bed.

  It must be Malina calling, but it’s Ivan.

  * * *

  So why did you, I tried there

  I suddenly had, it was urgent, I just

  Is something, we’ve, right, they say hello

  I had wonderful weather as well, it was very

  Of course you’re still, but if you absolutely

  Unfortunately I really have to

  I have to get off, we’re just about to

  Did you send me a, you haven’t yet, then

  But I’ll write you at the Ungargasse, for sure

  It’s not all that important, if you have time, then

  Of course I have time, take care of yourself and don’t

  Of course I won’t, I have to go now!

  * * *

  Malina has entered the room. He is holding me. I can hold him once again. I cling to him, cling to him more tightly. I almost went insane there, no, not just at the lake, in the phone booth as well, I almost went insane! Malina holds me until I calm down, I’m calm, and he asks: What are you reading? I say: I’m interested, it’s beginning to interest me. Malina says: You don’t really believe that yourself! I say: You still don’t believe me, and you’re right, but one day I just might become interested in you, in everything you do, think and feel!

  Malina smiles peculiarly: You don’t really believe that yourself.

  * * *

  The longest summer can begin. All the streets are empty. I can cross this wasteland in a deep delirium, the great gates at the Albrechtsrampe and at Josefsplatz will be closed, I can’t recall what I once sought here, pictures, pages, books? I wander through the city aimlessly, because when I’m walking I can feel it, I can feel it most distinctly, and on the
Reichsbrücke where I once threw a ring into the Danube canal, I feel it with a shock. I am wedded, it must have come to marriage. I will no longer wait for postcards from the Mondsee, I will increase my patience, if I stay bound to Ivan in this way, I can no longer shrug it off, for it has happened to my body against all reason, my body that now only moves in one continuous, soft, painful crucifixion on him. It will be this way for my whole life. In the Prater a park watchman says obligingly: You better not stay here any longer, with the riffraff that comes here at night, you better go home!

  * * *

  I better go home, at three o’clock in the morning I’m leaning against the entrance to Ungargasse 9, with the lions’ heads on either side, and then, for some time, at the entrance to Ungargasse 6, looking up toward number 9, in my Passion, with the stations of my Passion before my eyes, stations I have again willfully traversed, from his house to my house. Our windows are dark.

  * * *

  Vienna is silent.

  Two The Third Man

  Malina shall ask about everything. But I answer, unasked: This time the Place is not Vienna. It is a place called Everywhere and Nowhere. The Time is not today. In fact, the Time no longer exists at all, because it could have been yesterday, it could have been long ago, it could be again, it could be forever, some things will have never been. The units of this Time, into which other times are compressed, have no measure, and there is no measure for the non-times in which things enter that were never in Time.

  * * *

  Malina shall know everything. But I decide: they shall be the dreams of this night.

  * * *

  A large window opens, larger than all the windows I’ve seen, however not onto the courtyard of our building in the Ungargasse, but onto a gloomy field of clouds. A lake might lie below the clouds. I have a suspicion as to what lake it could be. But it’s no longer frozen over, it’s no longer Fasching and the hearty men’s glee clubs which once stood on the ice in the middle of the lake have disappeared. And the lake, which cannot be seen, is lined with many cemeteries. There are no crosses, but over every grave the sky is heavily and darkly overcast — the gravestones, the plaques with their inscriptions are scarcely recognizable. My father is standing next to me and takes his hand off my shoulder, since the gravedigger has come over to us. My father looks at the old man commandingly: fearful of my father’s gaze, the gravedigger turns to me. He wants to speak, but merely moves his lips for a long time in silence, and I only hear his last sentence:

  This is the cemetery of the murdered daughters.

  He shouldn’t have said that to me, and I weep bitterly.

  * * *

  The chamber is large and dark, no, it’s a hall, with dirty walls, it could be in the Hohenstaufen castle in Apulia. For there are no windows and no doors. My father has imprisoned me, and I want to ask him what he intends to do with me, but again I lack the courage, and I look around once more, because there must be a door, one single door leading outside, but I already understand, there’s nothing there, no opening, no more openings because now each one houses a black hose, hoses are fastened all around the walls, like gigantic leeches wanting to suck something out of them. Why didn’t I notice the hoses earlier, as they must have been there from the beginning! I was so blind in the semi-darkness and groped my way along the walls so as not to lose sight of my father, so that with him I might find the door, but now I find him and say: The door, show me the door. My father calmly takes the first hose off the wall, and I see a round hole, something is blowing into the room, and I duck, my father walks on, removing one hose after the other, and before I can scream I’m already inhaling the gas, more and more gas. I am in the gas chamber, that’s what it is, the biggest gas chamber in the world, and in it I am alone. There’s no defense against the gas. My father has disappeared, he knew where the door was and didn’t show me, and while I am dying my wish to see him once more and tell him just one thing dies as well. My father, I say to him who is no longer there, I wouldn’t have told anyone, I would not have betrayed you. There’s no resistance going on here.

  * * *

  When it begins the world is already mixed up, and I know that I am crazy. The basic elements of the world are still there, but more gruesomely assembled than anyone has ever seen. Cars are rolling around, dripping paint, people pop up, smirking larvae, and when they approach me they fall down, straw puppets, bundles of iron wire, papier mâché figures, and I keep on going in this world which is not the world, my fists balled, my arms outstretched, warding off the objects, the machines which run into me and scatter, and when I’m too afraid to go on I close my eyes, but the paints — glaring, gaudy, raging colors — spatter me, my face, my naked feet, I again open my eyes to see where I am, I want to find my way out of here, next I fly high up because my fingers and toes have swollen into airy, skycolored balloons and are carrying me to the heights of nevermore, where it’s even worse, then they all burst and I fall, fall and stand up, my toes have turned black, I can’t go on anymore.

  Sire!

  My father descends from the heavy downpour of paint, he says sardonically: Go on, just go ahead! And I cover my mouth — all my teeth have fallen out, they stand in front of me as two curved mounds of marble blocks, insurmountable.

  I can’t say anything, since I have to escape my father and get over the marble wall, but in another language I say: Ne! Ne! And in many languages: No! No! Non! Non! Nyet! Nyet! No! Ném! Ném! Nein! For even in our language all I can say is no, I can’t find any other word in any language. Some rolling structure, perhaps the giant Ferris wheel that dumps excrement from the gondolas, is headed my way me and I say: Ne! Ném! But to stop me from crying out my no, my father drives his short, firm, hard fingers into my eyes, I am blinded, but I have to go on. It’s unbearable. So I smile, since my father is reaching for my tongue and wants to pull it out so no one here, too, will hear my no, although no one does hear me, but before he can tear out my tongue something horrible happens, a huge splotch of blue gushes into my mouth, so that I can no longer utter any sound. My blue, my glorious blue, in which the peacocks walk, my blue of faraway, my blue fortune on the horizon! And the blue reaches deeper down inside, into my throat, and my father now helps things along and tears my heart and entrails out of my body, but I can still walk, I first hit slushy ice before arriving at the permanent ice, and an echo within me asks: Isn’t there anyone left, isn’t there anybody left, in this whole world, isn’t there anybody and among brothers isn’t there one who is worth something, and between friends! What’s left of me is frozen inside the ice, a clump, a clod, and I look up where they, the others, are living in the warm world, and Siegfried the Great calls me, at first quietly, then loudly, impatiently I listen to his voice: What are you looking for, what kind of book are you seeking? And I am voiceless. What does the great Siegfried want? He calls from above more and more clearly: What kind of book will it be, what will your book be?

  Suddenly, atop a polar summit from which there’s no return, I am able to shout: A book about Hell. A book about Hell!

  The ice breaks, I sink beneath the pole into the center of the Earth. I am in Hell. The wispy yellow flames wreathe about, the fiery curls hang down to my feet, I spit the fires out, swallow the fires down.

  Please set me free! Free me from this hour! I’m speaking with the voice of my school days, but I’m thinking with great awareness, I realize how serious it has already become, and I collapse on the smoldering ground, still thinking, I’m lying on the ground thinking that I should still be able to call for people, and with my full voice — people who could save me. I call my mother and my sister Eleonore, following the proper order exactly, so first my mother, using the first nickname from my childhood, and then my sister, then — (Upon awakening I realize I did not call my father.) Having come from the ice to die in the fire, with a melting skull I gather all my strength since I must call people in the proper order, for the sequence is the counter-spell.

 
It’s the end of the world, a catastrophic fall into nothingness, the world — in which I am crazy — is finished, I clutch at my head the way I do so often, but am terrified to discover it is shaven and that there are metal plates and I look around in shock. Several friendly-looking doctors in white coats are sitting around me. Concurring, they state I have been saved, the plates may also be removed, my hair will grow back. They have performed electric shock therapy. I ask: Do I have to pay right now? Because my father isn’t paying. The gentlemen remain friendly, there’s still time. The main thing is you’re saved. Once again I fall, I wake up for the second time, but I’ve never fallen out of bed before, and no doctors are there, my hair has grown back. Malina picks me up and lays me back on the bed.