Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  * * *

  Among the men in Paris, but I don’t know whether it was he who had woken up in the night, there was one called Marcel, his name is all I remember, a key word next to other key words like Rue Monge, like the name of two or three hotels and room number 26. But I do know that Marcel is no longer alive, and that the style of his death was most unusual . . .

  Malina interrupts me, he is protecting me, but I think that his wanting to protect me is preventing me from telling. It’s Malina who isn’t letting me talk.

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  Do you think nothing else will ever change in my life?

  Malina:

  What are you really thinking about? About Marcel, or still about the same one thing, or about everything that’s made you feel like you’ve been double-crossed.

  Me:

  What’s that again about a cross? Since when do you use the same figures of speech as everyone else?

  Malina:

  Up to now you’ve always understood perfectly well, with or without figures of speech.

  Me:

  Give me today’s paper. You’ve spoiled the whole story for me, later on you’ll regret you didn’t hear the very amazing end of Marcel, since I’m the only one left who can tell it. The others are either living somewhere or they’ve died somewhere. Marcel is certainly forgotten.

  * * *

  Malina has handed me the newspaper he sometimes brings back from the museum. I skip the first pages and look at the horoscope. “With a little more courage you will be able to master upcoming difficulties. Be careful in traffic. Obtain abundant sleep.” In Malina’s horoscope there’s something about affairs of the heart taking a stormy turn, but that should hardly interest him. Apart from that he should spare his bronchia. I never thought that Malina might even have bronchia.

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  What are your bronchia doing? Do you really have bronchia?

  Malina:

  Why not? Why shouldn’t I? Everybody has bronchia.Since when are you concerned about my health?

  Me:

  I’m only asking. How were things today, was it very stormy?

  Malina:

  Where? Certainly not in the Arsenal. Not that I would know. I was filing documents.

  Me:

  Not even a little stormy? Maybe if you think back really hard, wasn’t it just a tiny bit stormy?

  Malina:

  Why are you looking at me so suspiciously? Don’t you believe me? This is ridiculous, and why are you staring that way, what is it you see? That’s not a spider and it’s not a tarantula either, you made that stain yourself a few days ago, when you were pouring coffee. What do you see?

  * * *

  I see that something is missing from the table. But what? Something used to lie here. There was almost always a pack of Ivan’s cigarettes, half-full, he always forgot one on purpose, so that if he needed a cigarette he could have one right away. I realize he hasn’t forgotten a pack for quite some time.

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  Haven’t you ever considered living somewhere else? Where there’s more green. For example in Hietzing a very nice apartment will be opening up soon, Christine knows about it from friends whose friends are moving away from there. You’d have more room for your books. Here there’s no more room at all, the bookshelves are all overflowing because of your mania, I don’t have anything against your mania, but it is manic. And you also claim you still smell cat urine in the hallway from Frances and Trollope. Lina says she doesn’t notice anything anymore, it’s just your sensitivity, you’re so sensitive.

  Malina:

  I haven’t understood a word you’re saying. Why should we pack up and move to Hietzing? Neither one of us ever wanted to live in Hietzing or the Hohe Warte or in Döbling.

  Me:

  Please not the Hohe Warte! I said Hietzing. I never imagined you had anything against Hietzing!

  Malina:

  One is just like the other, and they’re both out of the question. So don’t start crying right away.

  Me:

  I didn’t say a word about the Hohe Warte, and don’t think I’m starting to cry. I just have the sniffles. I have to obtain more abundant sleep. Of course we’re staying in the Ungargasse. Anything else is out of the question.

  * * *

  What would I like to do today? Let me think! I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to read or listen to music either. I’ll just have to content myself with you. But I’m going to keep you entertained, since it occurred to me that we’ve never talked about men, that you never ask about the men. However you didn’t do a very good job hiding your old book. I was reading it today, it’s not good, for example you describe a man, presumably yourself, just before he falls asleep, but really I’m the only one who could have been your model. Men always fall asleep right away. Furthermore why don’t you find men as profoundly interesting as I do?

  Malina says: Maybe I imagine all men are like myself.

  I reply: That’s the most absurd thing you could imagine. A woman could sooner imagine she’s like all other women, and a woman would have more reason to do so. Once again it has to do with men, you see.

  For show, Malina throws up his hands indignantly: But please no stories or at most just a few fragments, if they’re amusing enough. Say what you can without committing any indiscretion.

  Malina really should know who I am!

  I continue: Men differ from one another, you see, and every single one should actually be considered an incurable clinical case, consequently the textbooks and treatises don’t come close to explaining and understanding even a single man in his rudimentariness. It’s a thousand times easier to understand a man’s cerebral aspect, at least for me. And although this is supposed to be their common trait, it most assuredly is not. What a mistake! The material required to make such a generalization could not be compiled in centuries. A single woman has to come to terms with too many peculiarities as it is, and no one ever told her beforehand what symptoms she would have to accommodate and brace up for, you could say the whole attitude of men toward women is diseased, what’s more it’s so exceptionally diseased that men will never be completely freed from their diseases. At most it might be said of women that they are more or less marked by the contaminations they’ve contracted by sympathizing with the suffering.

  You’re in a very ornery mood today. It’s beginning to entertain me after all.

  I say happily: It must make a person sick to have so few new experiences that he has to constantly repeat himself, for example a man bites my earlobe, but not because it’s my earlobe or because he’s crazy about earlobes and absolutely has to bite them, he bites them because he’s bitten the earlobes of all the other women, whether small or large, purple, pale, sensitive or numb, he doesn’t care what the earlobes think about it. You have to admit that this is a serious compulsion if a man — who may be equipped with more or less knowledge but always only a limited possibility of putting this knowledge to use — if a man like that feels obliged to pounce on a woman, possibly for years and years, once would be all right, any woman can stand it once. That also explains this secret, vague suspicion men have, since they can’t imagine that a woman naturally has to behave completely differently with some other diseased man, since he has nothing but a shallow, superficial awareness of these different variations, mostly the ones passed around from mouth to mouth or those w
hich science casts in an exacerbatedly evil light. Malina really doesn’t have a clue. He says: I thought that some men must be especially talented, at any rate you occasionally hear talk about someone in particular or else more generally — about the Greeks for instance. (Malina looks at me slyly, then laughs, then I laugh as well.) I try to stay serious: In Greece I happened to be lucky, but just that once. Sometimes a person gets lucky, but I’m sure most women are never lucky. What I’m talking about has nothing to do with the supposition that there are some men who are good lovers, there really aren’t. That is a legend that has to be destroyed someday, at most there are men with whom it is completely hopeless and a few with whom it’s not quite so hopeless. Although no one has bothered to inquire, that is the reason why only women always have their heads full of feelings and stories, with their man or men. Such thoughts really do consume the greatest part of every woman’s time. But she has to think about it, because without her unflagging pushing and prompting of feelings, she could literally never bear being with a man, since every man truly is sick and hardly takes any notice of her. It’s easy for him to think so little about women, because his diseased system is infallible, he repeats, he has repeated, he will repeat. If he likes kissing feet, he’ll kiss the feet of fifty more women, why should he risk dwelling on or worrying about a creature who is right now enjoying letting him kiss her feet, at least that’s what he thinks. A woman, however, must come to terms with the fact that now, because her feet happen to have their turn, she has to invent unbelievable feelings and all day long has to shelter her real feelings in the ones she’s invented, on the one hand just to stand the whole business with the feet, but above all to stand the greater part that’s missing, because anyone who’s so hung up on feet is bound to be greatly neglecting something else. In addition to this there are the sudden readjustments, from one man to another a woman’s body must unlearn everything and once again adapt to something entirely new. But a man simply continues his habits in peace, sometimes that works out, if he’s lucky, mostly it doesn’t.

  Malina is not pleased with me: Now that is something completely new to me, I was so convinced you liked men, and you have always found men attractive, their company alone was indispensable for you, even if no longer . . .

  * * *

  Of course men have always interested me, but that’s precisely why they don’t have to be liked, in fact I didn’t like most of them, they always only fascinated me, just because of the thought: what’s he going to do once he’s finished biting my shoulder, what does he expect will happen next? Or else someone exposes his back on which, long before you, some woman once took her fingernails, her five claws, and left five stripes, forever visible, so you get completely distraught or at least discombobulated, what are you supposed to do with this back, which constantly reminds you of some ecstatic moment or attack of pain, then what pain are you still supposed to feel, what ecstasy? For the longest time I had no feelings at all, since during those years I was entering the age of reason. Nonetheless, like all other women I naturally always had men on my mind, for the abovementioned reasons, and I’m sure that in turn the men gave very little thought to me, only after work, or maybe on a day off.

  * * *

  Malina:

  * * *

  No exception?

  Me:

  There was just one.

  Malina:

  How was there just one exception?

  * * *

  That’s simple. You only have to make someone unhappy enough, just by chance, for example, by not helping someone make up for some stupidity. Once you’re sure you’ve really made someone miserable then he’s bound to be thinking about you. However, most men usually make women unhappy, and there’s no reciprocity, as our misfortune is natural, inevitable, stemming as it does from the disease of men, for whose sake women have to bear so much in mind, continually modifying what they’ve just learned — for, as a rule, if you have to constantly brood about somebody, and generate feelings about him, then you’re going to be unhappy. What’s more, your misfortune will grow with time, it will double, triple, increase a hundredfold. All someone who wants to avoid unhappiness needs to do is call things off every time after a few days. It’s impossible to be unhappy and cry over somebody unless he’s already made you thoroughly unhappy to begin with. No one cries over a man after just a few hours, no matter how young or handsome, intelligent or kind. But half a year spent with a full-blown blabbermouth, a notorious idiot, a repulsive weakling given to the strangest habits — that has broken even strong and rational women, driven them to suicide, just think if you will of Erna Zanetti, who on account of this lecturer in theater studies (can you imagine, on account of a theatrical scholar!) is said to have swallowed forty sleeping pills, and I’m sure she’s not the only one, he also got her to stop smoking, because he couldn’t stand the smoke. I don’t know whether she had to become a vegetarian or not, but I’m sure some other horrible things happened as well. Now instead of being glad that this idiot left her, instead of going out the next day and enjoying twenty cigarettes or eating whatever she wanted, she loses her head and tries to kill herself, she can’t think of anything better since she’s been thinking about him incessantly and suffering because of him for months, naturally also because of nicotine withdrawal and all those lettuce leaves and carrots.

  Malina pretends to be horrified but has to laugh: You’re not claiming that women are more unhappy than men, are you!

  Of course not, I’m only saying that women face an unhappiness which is particularly inevitable and absolutely unnecessary. I was only talking about the kind of unhappiness. You can’t compare, and today we weren’t claiming to talk about general unhappiness, which seems to hit all people so hard. I’m just trying to keep you entertained and tell you what’s funny or odd or amusing. I, for example, was very dissatisfied that I was never raped. When I arrived here the Russians had lost all desire to rape the Viennese women, and there were also fewer and fewer drunk Americans, whom nobody really considered proper rapists anyway, which is why there was so much less talk about their deeds than those of the Russians, for naturally there are reasons for a sanctioned, devoutly practiced terror. From fifteen-year-old girls to ninety-year-old grandmas, so the saying went. Sometimes you could still read something in the papers about two Negroes in uniform, but please, two Negroes roaming around Salzburg is richly inadequate for one province with so many women, and the men I met or didn’t meet and who only walked by me in the woods or saw me sitting on a stone at a brook, alone and defenseless, never had the idea. You wouldn’t believe it, but apart from a few drunks, a few sex murderers and others who get into the papers where they are designated as sex offenders, no normal man with normal drives has the obvious idea that a normal woman would like to be quite normally raped. Part of it is that men aren’t normal, but people lose sight of the full extent of the male pathology, so accustomed have they become to men’s aberrant behavior and their phenomenal lack of instinct. In Vienna, however, it could be different, it must not be that bad, since the city is made for universal prostitution. You probably can’t remember the first years after the war. Vienna was, to put it mildly, a city equipped with the strangest institutions. But this time has now been expunged from the city’s annals, no one talks about it anymore. It’s not exactly forbidden, but even so people don’t talk about it. On holidays, even church holidays such as Marian feast days or Ascension or days commemorating the republic, citizens were forced to the Stadtpark, on the side bordering the Ringstrasse, the Parkring, they had to go to this horrible park and do in public whatever they wanted or were able to do, especially when the horse chestnuts were blooming, but later as well, once the nuts ripened and opened and fell to the ground. There was hardly anyone who hadn’t run into every man with every woman. Although it all took place in silence, almost with complete indifference, you could still describe what went on as a nightmare, the whol
e city participated in this universal prostitution, every woman must have lain on the trampled lawn with every man or else they leaned against the walls, moaning and groaning, panting, sometimes several at a time, by turns, promiscuously. Everyone slept with everyone else, everyone used each other, and so today no one should be surprised that there are hardly ever any rumors, for today the same men and women greet one another politely, as if nothing had happened, the men doff their hats and kiss the hands of the ladies, who in turn stroll past the Stadtpark with a light gait and whispered greetings, looking flattered as they carry their elegant purses and parasols. But the round dance continues, this La Ronde that stems from that time, and which today is no longer anonymous. The relations which reign today must be seen as part of this epidemic, for instance why Ödön Patacki was first seen with Franziska Ranner, but then Franziska Ranner with Leo Jordan, why Leo Jordan later married twice more after his marriage to Elvira, who in turn helped young Marek, why young Marek ultimately ruined Fanny Goldmann, and why beforehand she had gotten along all too well with Harry and then went off with Milan, but young Marek started seeing Karin Krause, that petite German woman, but later on Marek was also with Elisabeth Mihailovics, who then fell in with Bertold Rapatz, who in turn . . . Now I know all that, and I know why Martin had this grotesque affair with Elfi Nemec, who later also ended up with Leo Jordan, and I know why everybody is connected with everybody else in the most peculiar way, even if only a few of them actually realize it. Of course no one knows the reasons, but I see why already, and one day everyone shall see! But I can’t tell everything, since I don’t have time for that. Even if I just consider the role the Altenwyls’ house played in all this, although they themselves were never aware — generally speaking none of the hosts ever knew, including Barbara Gebauder — of what was germinating and to what end, what all the foolish chatter was wreaking and to what end. Society is the biggest murder scene of all. In it the seeds of the most incredible crimes are sown in the subtlest manner, crimes which remain forever unknown to the courts of this world. I didn’t discover that because I never looked and never listened very exactly, and now I listen less and less, but the less I listen, the more I am shocked by the connections I am beginning to see. I was living immoderately, which is why I felt the full effects of these peace games — that’s how they’re passed off, as if they weren’t really war games — in all their monstrousness. By comparison all the worldwide and world-famous crimes — as well as the ones known all over town — seem simple by comparison: brutal, devoid of mystery, something for psychiatrists and mass psychologists, who are also unable to curb the misdeeds, since the riddles these crimes pose to the all-too-diligent experts are so terrifically primitive. But what was and still is happening here on the other hand was never primitive. Do you remember that one evening? Fanny Goldmann went home surprisingly early and unaccompanied, she got up and left the table, nothing had happened, but today I know, I know the reason. There are words, looks that can kill, no one notices, everybody is clinging to a facade, a complete distortion. And Klara and Haderer, before he died, but I’ll stop here . . .