Malina

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Malina Page 19

by Ingeborg Bachmann


  * * *

  My father wants to take me away from Vienna, to another country, he’s quite persuasive, I have to leave here, my friends are all bad influences, but I realize he doesn’t want any witnesses, he doesn’t want me to talk to anybody, he doesn’t want anything coming out. But it could come out. I no longer defend myself, I only ask whether I’m allowed to write home, he says that remains to be seen, it doesn’t look favorable for me. We have left for a foreign country, I do have permission to walk on the street, but I don’t know anyone and I don’t understand the language. We live high up where I get dizzy, no house can be that high, I’ve never lived that high and spend the whole day in bed as a preventive measure, I am imprisoned and not imprisoned, my father looks in on me only rarely, most of the time he sends a woman with a bandaged face, all I can see are her eyes, she knows something. She gives me food and tea, soon I can no longer get up, because everything starts spinning the first step I take. Similar cases come to mind, I have to get up, since the food must be poisoned or the tea, I make it to the bathroom and pour the food and tea down the toilet, neither the woman nor my father have noticed, they’re poisoning me, it’s terrible, I have to write a letter, but can only manage some beginnings, which I hide in my handbag, in the drawer, under the pillow, but I have to write and get a letter out of the house. I shudder and drop the pen, for my father is standing at the door, he’s guessed long ago, he looks for all the letters, he takes one out of the wastebasket and screams: Speak up! What’s this supposed to mean! Pipe up, I say! He screams for hours and doesn’t stop, he won’t let me speak, I start crying louder and louder, he screams better if I cry, I can’t tell him I’m no longer eating, that I throw my food away, that I’ve already caught on, I hand him the crumpled letter from under the pillow as well and sob. Pipe up! With my eyes I tell him: I’m homesick, I want to go home! My father says mockingly: Homesick! That’s a fine thing, homesick! And even if these are letters I’ll make sure they’ll never be dispatched, your dear letters to your dear friends.

  * * *

  I am emaciated to my bones and can’t support myself, but then I manage, I take my suitcases down from the attic, quietly, in the middle of the night, my father is sleeping soundly, I hear him snore, he’s gasping and wheezing. In spite of the altitude I have leaned out and looked down, Malina’s car is parked on the other side of the street. Although he didn’t receive any letters, Malina must have understood, he sent me his car. I put the most important things into the suitcase, or just whatever I can grab, it has to be done quietly and with the utmost haste, it has to be tonight, or else it will never succeed. With the suitcases I stagger onto the street, I have to put them down every few steps and wait until I catch my breath and can carry them again, then I sit in the car, I’ve shoved the suitcases onto the back seat, the key is in the ignition, I start the car, I zigzag down the empty nighttime street, I have a vague idea where the main road to Vienna must be, I know the direction, but I can’t drive and so I come to a stop, it won’t work. I should at least make it to a post office and immediately telegraph Malina to come get me, but it won’t work. I have to turn around, it’s already getting light, the car is no longer under my control, it glides back to the place where it was parked and stops there, stands there facing the wrong way, just once more I’d like to give it some gas and drive into the wall, into my death, since Malina isn’t coming, it’s day, I’m slumped over the steering wheel. Someone pulls my hair, it’s my father. The woman, who shifts the cloth wrap on her face, drags me from the car and leads me back into the house. I have seen her face, she hastily covers herself again as I start to howl, I know who she is. Both of them are going to kill me.

  * * *

  My father has brought me inside a tall house, there’s even a garden upstairs, to pass the time he lets me plant flowers in it and little trees, he makes jokes about the many Christmas trees I’m cultivating, they’re from the Christmases of my childhood, but as long as he’s making jokes it’s all right, there are silver ball ornaments and everything is blooming violet and yellow, but they aren’t the right flowers. I also plant many things in ceramic pots, I sow seeds, but the flowers which result always have the wrong, undesired colors, I’m not satisfied, and my father says: You must think you’re a princess! Who do you think you are, you think you’re better than everybody else, don’t you! You’ll get over that, you’ll be cured of that, and that and that — he points at my flowers — all that’s also going to end soon, what a ridiculous waste of time, all this green stuff! I hold the garden hose in my hand, I could aim it at him so his face would catch the full force of the water, so that he’d stop insulting me, because he did leave the garden to me, but I drop the hose, covering my face with my hands, he should go ahead and tell me what I’m supposed to do, the hose is running on the ground and I no longer want to water the plants, I turn off the water and go inside. My father’s guests have arrived, I struggle to carry all the plates and trays with glasses back and forth, then I sit there and listen, I don’t even know what they’re talking about, moreover I’m supposed to converse, but whenever I search for a reply, they look at me sharply, I stutter, nothing is right anymore. My father smiles and treats everyone with charm, he claps me on the shoulder, he says: She wants you to think she’s only allowed to work in my garden, look at this hardworking gardener, show your hands, child, show your beautiful little white paws! Everybody laughs, I, too, force a laugh, my father laughs the loudest, he drinks a lot and a lot more after the guests have left. I have to show him my hands once again, he turns them over, twists them and I jump up, I’m still able to break away from him since he’s drunk and starts swaying when he gets on his feet, I run out and want to slam the door, hide myself in the garden, but my father comes after me, and his eyes are terrifying, his face has turned reddish-brown with rage, he chases me up to a railing, it can’t be that same house once again, so high up, he tears at me, we wrestle with each other, he wants to throw me over the railing, we both start to slide, and I lunge to the other side, I have to make it to the wall or jump on the roof next door or even run back into the house, I start to lose my mind, I don’t know how to escape, and my father, who may also be afraid of the railing, doesn’t want to follow me any closer to the edge, he picks up a flowerpot and hurls it at me, the pot breaks on the wall behind me, my father takes another, soil splashes in my face, the pots crash and splinter, my eyes are full of dirt, my father can’t be like that, he is not permitted to be like that! The doorbell rings, fortunately for me someone must have been alarmed, it rings again, or else one of the guests has returned. Someone is coming, I whisper, stop it! My father says with sarcasm: Someone’s coming to see you all right, for you of course, but you are staying, do you hear! Since it goes on ringing, since it’s bound to be my rescue, since I can’t see anything with my face smeared with dirt and since I’m trying to find the door, my father starts throwing whatever flowerpots he can find over the railing, so that the people leave instead of coming to my rescue. Nonetheless I must have escaped, for suddenly I’m standing by the entrance on the street, with Malina before me in the darkness, I whisper, he still doesn’t understand, I whisper, don’t come now, not today, and Malina, whom I have never seen pale and bewildered, asks, bewildered, what’s the matter, is something wrong? I whisper: please go, I have to calm him down. I hear the police sirens, the policemen are already jumping out of a squad car, utterly afraid, I say: help me now, we must get rid of them, we have to. Malina speaks to the policemen and explains that there’s a party going on, that spirits have become just a little too high, high spirits and very good ones, too. He has pushed me into the darkness. The police actually drive away, Malina comes back, he says urgently, now I understand, he sent that thing flying down, it missed me by a hair, you’re coming with me now, or else we’ll never see each other again, this has got to stop. But I whisper, I can’t come, let me try just once more, I want to calm him down, he did that because you rang the bell, I have to go back at once. Pleas
e don’t ring anymore! But understand, says Malina, we’ll see each other again, but not before all this is over, because he wanted to kill me. I contradict him quietly, no, no, I’m all he has, I start to cry because Malina has left, I don’t know what I am supposed to do anymore, I have to remove all the traces, I gather the shards from the street, with my hands I shovel all the flowers and soil into the gutter, tonight I lost Malina and Malina almost had to die tonight, both of us, Malina and myself, but this is stronger than me and my love for Malina, I will go on in denial, a light is burning in the house, my father has fallen asleep on the floor, in the middle of the devastation, everything has been laid waste, destroyed. I lie down beside my father, amid the devastation, for my place is here next to him, who is sleeping, limp, sad and old. And although it disgusts me to look at him, I must, I have to know what danger still is written in his face, I have to know where the evil originates, and I am frightened, but in a different way than usual, because the evil is in a face I do not recognize, I am crawling over to a strange man whose hands are sticky with dirt. How did I get into this, how did I fall into his power, in whose power? In my exhaustion I have a suspicion, but the suspicion is too great, I strike it down at once, he cannot be a stranger, this cannot have been in vain and can never have been a deceit. It cannot be true.

  * * *

  Malina is opening a bottle of mineral water, but at the same time holds a big glass with a swallow of whiskey in front of my face and insists I drink it. I don’t like drinking whiskey in the middle of the night, but since Malina looks so worried and since his fingers are pressing into my wrist, I assume I’m not doing so well. He feels for my pulse, counts and seems dissatisfied.

  * * *

  Malina:

  * * *

  You still don’t have anything to say to me?

  Me:

  Something is dawning on me, I’m beginning to see some logic, but I don’t understand anything in particular. Some things are half-true, such as my waiting for you, or that I once ran down the stairs to stop you, the business with the police is also almost correct, except you weren’t the one who told them they should go, that there’d been a misunderstanding, rather I told them myself, I sent them away. Isn’t that right? In my dream the fear was greater. Besides, would you ever call the police? I couldn’t. In fact I didn’t, the neighbors did, I covered up all the tracks, I gave false testimony, that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?

  Malina:

  Why did you cover up for him?

  Me:

  I said it was a party, a turbulent one like any other. Alexander Fleisser and that young guy Bardos were standing downstairs, they were on their way out when Alexander was almost hit by something, I won’t tell you what it was, just that it was big enough to kill a person. Bottles were also thrown down but no flowerpots, of course. I said it was by mistake. Things like that happen. Admittedly not often, not in every family, not every day, not everywhere, but it does happen, at a party, just imagine the mood everyone was in.

  Malina:

  I’m not talking about everybody, you know that. And I’m not asking about moods.

  Me:

  What’s more you’re not afraid when you know it might actually happen, it’s not like that at all, the fear comes later, in another form, it will come tonight. But naturally you want to know something else. The next day I went to Alexander’s, something might also have hit Bardos whom I hardly knew, but he was a hundred yards away by that time. I told Alexander I was extremely, somewhat, to some extent, devastated, absolutely speechless, nonetheless I talked a whole lot, Alexander already had his own ideas, you see, and I felt he might notify the authorities but you have to understand that couldn’t be allowed to happen! I also said that “whoever” was throwing things had thought the street was empty, who could have imagined Bardos would be standing there as well at that late hour, and maybe “whoever” had seen him, I’m sure “whoever” did, but I was the only one who knew that, so I started going on about hard times, except you could read in Alexander’s face he didn’t think hard times could excuse that type of behavior, so in addition to the hard times I invented a critical illness and kept on making things up. Alexander wasn’t convinced. I hadn’t intended to convince him but just wanted to prevent the worst thing from happening at that moment.

  Malina:

  Why did you do that?

  Me:

  I don’t know. I just did. At the time it was the right thing for me to do. Later you don’t remember anything anymore. Not even a single reason, since they’re moot anyway.

  Malina:

  How would you have testified?

  Me:

  I wouldn’t have. At most I’d have said the one word I was still able to pronounce — although I didn’t know what it meant anymore — I could have shot down any and all questions. (Using my fingers I sign to Malina in the International Language of the Deaf.) Don’t you think that would have been enough to get me through all right? Or I could have claimed I was related and not obliged to testify. It’s easy for you to laugh, nothing happened to you, you weren’t standing right there by the gate.

  Malina:

  Am I laughing? You’re the one who’s laughing. You should get some sleep, there’s no sense talking to you as long as you’re holding back the truth.

  Me:

  I gave the police some money, they don’t all take bribes, but these did, that’s for sure. They were happy they could go back to the station or back to bed.

  Malina:

  What do I care about these stories? You’re dreaming, you know.

  Me:

  I’m dreaming but I can assure you I’m beginning to understand. That’s when I also started distorting everything I read. Instead of “Summer Fashion Exhibition” I would read “Summer Fashion Execution.” That’s just one example. I could name hundreds of others. Can you believe it?

  Malina:

  Of course I can, but then I can believe a lot of things you still don’t want to.

  Me:

  Such as . . .

  Malina:

  You forget that tomorrow I’m on stand-by. Please get up on time. I’m dead tired. And I’d appreciate it this time if my egg weren’t too soft or too hard. Good night.

  * * *

  The winter fashion executions showing the latest designs are on display in all the important execution houses. My father is the city’s number one couturier. Despite my refusals I’m supposed to model the bridal gowns. In any event white dominates all the exe­cutions this year, with very few black lines, the white ones are kept at 60 degrees below zero in the Ice Palace, there the models are wed alive in public and for the public, with frozen veils and iceflowers. All bridal couples must be naked. The Ice Palace is located where the skating club used to be and where they hold wrestling matches in the summer, but my father has rented the entire area. I’m supposed to be joined in matrimony to young Bardos, they’ve booked an orchestra which is scared to death of playing at such temperatures, but my father has the widows insured. They are still the wives of the musicians.

 

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