Malina
Page 21
Malina:
That doesn’t explain a thing. The Danube is full of rings, every day someone takes a ring off a finger and tosses it into the Danube somewhere between Klosterneuburg and Fischamend in the cold wind of winter or the hot wind of summer.
Me:
I didn’t take my ring off my finger.
Malina:
That’s not the point, I don’t want your story, you keep evading me.
Me:
The strangest thing was that I knew all the time he was going around with thoughts of murder, I just didn’t know how he was planning to get rid of me. Anything was possible. But he could have only come up with one possibility, and that’s exactly what I couldn’t guess. I didn’t know such a thing still existed here and now.
Malina:
Maybe you didn’t know, but you were in agreement.
Me:
I swear to you I was not in agreement, there’s no way you can agree, you want to get away, escape. What are you trying to make me believe? I was never in agreement!
Malina:
Don’t swear. Don’t forget, you never swear.
Me:
Naturally I knew he’d want to hit me where I’m most vulnerable, because then he wouldn’t have to do anything more except wait, wait until I myself, until I took my own . . .
Malina:
Stop crying.
Me:
I’m not crying, you want to make me think I am, you’re going to make me cry. It was completely different. Then I took a good look around, and I noticed that everybody was biding their time, both in my vicinity and also far away — they don’t do anything else, at least nothing in particular, they put sleeping pills in people’s hands, or razor blades, they make sure you lose your head while you’re walking along the edge of a cliff, that you’re completely drunk when you open the door of a moving train, or simply let you come down with some disease. If they wait long enough a breakdown is bound to occur, your end will be long or short. Some people survive that, but only just barely.
Malina:
But how much consent is required?
Me:
I’ve suffered too much, I don’t know anything anymore, I confess nothing, how am I supposed to know, I don’t know enough, I hate my father, God only knows how much I hate him, I don’t know why.
Malina:
Whom have you made into your idol?
Me:
No one. This can’t go on, I’m not getting anywhere, I can’t see anything, I just keep hearing a voice to fit the images, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, saying: Incest. It’s unmistakable, I know what it means.
Malina:
No, you really don’t. Once one has survived something then survival itself interferes with understanding, and you don’t even know which lives came before and which is your life of today, you even mix up your own lives.
Me:
I only have one life.
Malina:
Leave it to me.
I’ve reached the Black Sea, and I know that the Danube has to flow into the Black Sea. I will flow like it does. I’ve floated past all the riverbanks safe and sound, but before I reach the delta then I see a fat body half-covered with water, I cannot avoid it by wading into the middle of the river, since the river is too deep here and too broad and full of whirlpools. My father has hidden himself in the water before the mouth of the river, he is a gigantic crocodile, with tired, drooping eyes that will not let me pass. There are no longer any crocodiles along the Nile, they brought the last ones to the Danube. Now and then my father opens his eyes slightly, he looks as though he were simply lying there idly, as if he weren’t waiting for anything, but naturally he’s waiting for me, he knew I wanted to come home, that for me coming home means salvation. Sometimes the crocodile opens his huge, craving jaws, shreds of flesh are hanging inside, flesh from the other women, and I think of the names of all the women he has devoured, old blood is floating on the water, but fresh blood as well: I don’t know how hungry my father is today. Suddenly I see lying next to him a small crocodile, now he has found a crocodile after his own heart. But the small crocodile’s eyes are sparkling and it is not idle, it swims up to me and wants to kiss me on both cheeks in false friendliness. Before it can kiss me, I scream: You’re a crocodile! Go back to your other crocodile, after all you belong together, both of you are crocodiles! For I recognized Melanie at once, who once again lets her eyes droop hypocritically and who is no longer sparkling with her human eyes. My father screams back: Say that again! But I don’t say it again, although I should since he so commands. I can only choose between being torn to pieces by him or entering the deepest part of the river. At the mouth of the Danube I disappeared into my father’s jaws. But three drops of my blood, my last ones, did flow into the Black Sea.
* * *
My father enters the room, he is whistling and singing, standing there in his pajama bottoms, I hate him, I can’t look at him, I pretend to be busy with my suitcase. Please get dressed, I say, put something else on! For he is wearing the pajamas I gave him for his birthday, he is wearing them intentionally, and I would like to tear them off, but suddenly I have an idea, and I remark casually: Oh, it’s only you! I start to dance, I dance a waltz all by myself, and my father looks at me somewhat surprised, because his small crocodile is lying on the bed, dressed in silk and velvet, and he begins writing his will for silk and velvet, he writes on a large sheet of paper and says: You won’t inherit a thing, you hear, since you insist on dancing! I actually am dancing, di-dam da-dam, I dance through all the rooms and start to twirl on the carpet which he cannot pull out from under my feet, it’s the carpet from War and Peace. My father calls to my Lina: Take the carpet away from her! But Lina has the day off, and I laugh, dance, and suddenly call out: Ivan! It’s our music, now it’s a waltz for Ivan, for Ivan again and again, it’s salvation, because my father has never heard Ivan’s name, he’s never seen me dance, he no longer knows what to do, they can’t pull away the carpet during this whirling dance, they cannot stop me in my quick rotations, I call to Ivan, but he must not come, must not hold me, for with a voice no human has ever had before, with the voice of the stars, the sidereal voice, I beget the name Ivan and his omnipresence.
My father is beside himself, he screams indignantly: This lunatic should either stop or disappear, she should disappear at once, or else she’ll wake my little crocodile. Dancing, I come closer to the crocodile, I take back the Siberian shirt which had been stolen from me, and my letters to Hungary, remove whatever is mine from its sleepy, dangerous jaws, I also want my key back, and I am laughing already as I take it off the crocodile’s tooth and continue dancing, but then my father grabs the key away from me. He takes away my key on top of everything else, it’s my only key! I’m speechless, I can no longer cry out: Ivan, help me! He wants to kill me! A letter of mine is still hanging on the crocodile’s largest tooth, not a Siberian letter nor a Hungarian one, with horror I realize to whom the letter is addressed, since I can read the beginning: My beloved father, you have broken my heart. Crackcrack broken dam-di-dam my broken my father crack crack rrrack da-di-dam Ivan, I want Ivan, I mean Ivan, I love Ivan, my beloved father. My father says: Take this woman away!
* * *
My child, who is now about four or five years old, comes over to me, I recognize him immediately since he looks like me. We look in a
mirror and assure ourselves. My child tells me quietly that my father is getting married, to this masseuse who’s very beautiful but also pushy. Because of this my child would prefer not to stay with my father any longer. We’re in a large apartment belonging to some strangers, I hear my father talking to some people in another room, it’s a good opportunity, and quite suddenly I decide to take the child to my place, although I’m sure he won’t want to stay with me either, since my life is so disorganized, since I don’t have an apartment yet, as I must first leave the homeless shelter, and pay for the rescue service and the search party, and I don’t have any money, but I hold my child very close and promise him that I’ll do everything. He seems to be in agreement, we assure each other that we must stick together, I know that from now on I will fight for my child, my father doesn’t have any claim to our child, I don’t understand myself anymore, he just doesn’t have any right, now I take the child by the hand and want to see my father at once, but there are other rooms in between. My child doesn’t have a name yet, I feel he is nameless like the unborn, I have to give him a name soon and my name as well, I whisper a suggestion: Animus. My child would prefer not having any name, but he understands. In every room the most disgusting scenes are taking place, I cover my child’s eyes because I have discovered my father in the piano room, he’s lying with a young woman underneath the piano, it could be this masseuse, my father has unbuttoned her blouse and is taking off her bra, and I am afraid my child has seen this despite my efforts. We push our way into the next room through the guests who are all drinking champagne, my father must be completely drunk, otherwise how could he forget the child like that. In the other room, where we are seeking shelter, another woman is lying on the floor, threatening everyone with a revolver, I presume it’s a danger party, a revolver party, I try to play along with the woman’s ludicrous ideas, she aims at the ceiling, then through the door at my father, I don’t know whether in earnest or in jest, maybe she is this masseuse, since all of a sudden she asks, nastily, what am I doing here and who is this little bastard, and while she’s pointing her revolver at me, I ask whether it isn’t the other way around, whether she isn’t the one who doesn’t have any business here, but she shrieks in reply: Who is this bastard standing in my way? In mortal fear I don’t know whether to pull my child close to me or whether to send him off, I want to cry out: Run, run! Run far away from here! For the woman is no longer playing with the revolver, she wants to have both of us out of the way, it’s the 26th of January, and I pull my child close so that we die together, the woman ponders a moment, then takes exact aim and shoots the child. After that she no longer has to hit me. My father had only authorized one shot. The bells ring out the New Year as I fall over my child, and everyone clinks glasses and spills champagne, the champagne from New Year’s Eve runs over me, and I have buried my child not in the presence of my father.
* * *
I have entered the Falling Age, the neighbors sometimes ask if something has happened. I have fallen into a small grave and hit my head and wrenched my shoulders, everything has to heal before my next fall, and I must spend this time in the crypt, I’m already scared of the next fall, but I know the prophecy: I shall fall three times before I can rise again.
* * *
My father has taken me to prison, I’m not very surprised, since I know what good connections he has. At first I hope they’ll treat me well and at least allow me to write. After all, I do have plenty of time here and I am safe from my father’s persecution. I could finish the book I found earlier, on the way to the prison, I saw a few sentences in the rotating blue light of the police van, I saw some hanging between the trees, floating in the waste water, pressed by many car tires into the overly hot asphalt. I took note of all the sentences, and some I still remember, but from earlier times. I am led down long corridors, they want to try different cells to see which one I fit, but then it turns out I won’t receive any privileges. There’s a long back and forth between different officials. My father is behind it all, he’s had some of the files disappear, more and more documents in my favor vanish, and finally it turns out I’m not allowed to write. To be sure I do receive a solitary cell, as I had secretly wished, they also shove in a tin bowl with water, and although the cell is too dark and dirty my thoughts are only on the book, I ask for paper, I drum on the door for paper, because there’s something I have to write. It will be easy for me in the cell, I don’t regret being imprisoned here, I get used to it right away, only I keep trying to talk with the people passing outside who don’t understand me, they think I’m protesting and resisting arrest, whereas I want to say the arrest doesn’t matter, but I would like a few sheets of paper and something to write with. A guard rips open the door and says: It’s no use, you’re not allowed to write to your father! He slams the door shut against my head, although I’m already screaming: But not to my father, I promise, not to my father! My father has had it rumored about in the judiciary that I’m dangerous because I again want to write him. But it’s not true, I only want to write the sentence from the ground up. I am destroyed and so I even tip over the tin bowl with the water, I’d rather die of thirst because it isn’t true, and as I’m thirsting away the sentences rejoice around me, growing and growing in number. Some can only be seen, others only heard as in the Gloriastrasse, after the first injection of morphine. Crouched in a corner, without water, I know my sentences won’t leave me and that I have a right to them. My father looks through a peephole, all that can be seen are his glazed eyes, he’d like to copy my sentences and take them from me, but in the greatest thirst, after my last hallucinations, I know he is watching me die without words, I have completely hidden the words inside the sentence, sufficiently grounded, which is forever safe and secret from my father, so tightly do I hold my breath. My tongue is dangling far out, but it does not reveal a single word. Because I am unconscious they search me, they want to moisten my mouth, wet my tongue, so they can find the sentences and place them in custody, but then they find three stones beside me and don’t know what they mean or where they come from. They are three hard, luminous stones which have been thrown to me by the highest authority, where even my father has no influence, and I alone know what message each stone contains. Young lightning is constantly flashing inside the first reddish stone, which has fallen from heaven into my cell, it says: Live in wonder. The second blue stone, flashing with all possible hues of blue, says: Write in wonder. And I am already holding the third stone in my hand, white and radiant, whose fall can be stopped by no one, not even my father, but the cell grows so dark that the third stone’s message cannot be read. The stone can no longer be seen. I shall discover this final message after I am freed.
* * *
Now my father has my mother’s face as well. It’s an old, gigantic, washed-out face, in which the crocodile eyes may still be seen, but the mouth resembles the mouth of an old woman, and I don’t know whether he is she or she is he, but I have to speak to my father, probably for the last time. Sire! At first he doesn’t answer, then he grabs the telephone, then dictates to someone, and in the meantime he says it’s too early for me, I have no right to live yet, and I say, still straining, with difficulty: But it doesn’t matter to me, you should know I no longer care what you think. People are there once more, Professor Kuhn and Docent Morokutti force themselves between me and my father, Herr Kuhn attests to his humble devotion, and I say aggressively: Would you please leave me alone with my father for ten minutes? All my friends have appeared as well, the Viennese are lining the street in eager expectation, but quietly, on the edge of the street, a few groups from Germany are craning their necks impatiently, they always think everything in Vienna takes too long. I say resolutely: It must be possible to speak for ten minutes with one’s own mother about something important, at least just once. My father looks up in amazement, but still doesn’t understand. Now and then I lose my voice: I have permitted myself to live nevertheless. Sometimes my voice returns and can be heard by all: I am liv
ing, I will live, I claim my right to live.