Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  * * *

  For some time, it was in Rome, I only had eyes for sailors, on Sundays they stand around some plaza, I think the Piazza del Popolo, where at night people from the countryside would try to walk to the Corso in a straight line, blindfolded, starting at the fountain with the obelisk. It’s an impossible task. Sailors can also be seen standing around in the Villa Borghese, but many more soldiers. They stare into space with this serious, greedy gaze fixed on a Sunday which will be over at any minute. It’s fascinating to watch these young men. And then for a while I was completely captivated by a mechanic from the Erdberg, he had to hammer out one of my car’s fenders and respray the body. For me he was impenetrable, of a deeply serious demeanor, just imagine these glances and those tedious, slow thoughts! I went back a few times and watched him at all sorts of jobs. I have never seen so much anguish in someone, so much earnest ignorance. Completely impervious. Sad hopes flashed up inside me, sad, oppressive desires, nothing more: after all, these men would never understand it, but then who really wants to be understood anyway. Who in the world wants that!

  I was always very timid, not bold by any means, I would have had to leave my telephone number and my address with him, but in his presence I was too engrossed in a riddle and couldn’t do it. It may be easy to guess, if not every thought, then every second thought of an Einstein, a Faraday, some shining beacon, a Freud or a Liebig, as they are men without true secrets. But beauty is far superior, as is its wordlessness. This mechanic was more important to me, this mechanic, whom I’ll never forget, to whom I made pilgrimages, only to ask for the bill in the end, nothing more. He was important to me. For it is precisely beauty that is more important, beauty which I lack and which I want to seduce. Sometimes I’ll be walking down a street and scarcely do I see someone superior to me than I feel myself being drawn in that direction, but is this natural or normal? Am I a woman or something dimorphic? Am I not entirely female — what am I, anyway? The news is often filled with such ghastly reports. In Pötzleinsdorf, at the Prater, in the Vienna Woods, in every outskirt of the city a woman has been murdered, strangled — it almost happened to me, too, but not in the outskirts — strangled by some brutal individual, and then I always think to myself: that could be you, that will be you. An unknown woman murdered by some unknown man.

  * * *

  I’ve made up a pretext and have dropped in at Ivan’s. I love to play with his transistor radio. Once again I’ve gone for days without news. Ivan advises me to at last buy a radio if I like hearing the news or listening to music so much. He thinks it would help me get up in the morning, the way it helps him for example, and at night I’d have something against the silence, I try turning the knob slowly, carefully searching for what might emerge against the silence.

  An excited male voice is in the room: Dear listeners, we now have London on the line, our permanent correspondent Doctor Alfons Werth, Herr Werth will be right here reporting to us from London, just a moment’s patience, we take you now to London, dear Herr Doktor Werth, we hear you loud and clear, I’d like to ask you in the name of our listeners in Austria about the mood in London following the devaluation of the pound, Herr Werth is now on the air . . .

  Turn that box off would you please! says Ivan, who right now has no interest in opinions from London or Athens.

  Ivan?

  What are you trying to say?

  Why don’t you ever let me talk?

  Ivan must have some history behind him, must have been in a cyclone, and he thinks I have my own story as well, the usual one, containing at least one man and an appropriate disappointment, but I say: Me? Nothing, I’m not trying to say anything at all, I only wanted to say “Ivan” to you, nothing more. I could also ask you what you think about insecticides.

  Do you have flies at home?

  No. I try to imagine myself as a fly or a rabbit being abused in some laboratory experiment, or a rat, which has been injected but which, full of hate, makes one final jump.

  Ivan says: Thoughts like that won’t make you happy either.

  I’m just not happy right now, sometimes I don’t feel any happiness or joy. I know I should be happy more often.

  (I just can’t bring myself to say to Ivan, who is my joy and my life: you alone are my joy and my life! since then I might lose Ivan even more quickly, I’m losing him on occasion as it is and that’s clear to me from the constant diminishment of joy these days. I don’t know how long Ivan has been shortening my life, and I have to start talking to him about it sometime.)

  Because someone has killed me, because someone has wanted to kill me all the time, and then I started killing someone in thought, that is to say, not in thought, it was something else, it never does have much to do with thoughts, so it happened differently, I overcame it, too, besides I no longer do anything in thought.

  Ivan looks up and says incredulously, as he loosens a screw with a screwdriver in his efforts to repair the telephone extension cord: You? Why you, my sweet little lunatic? And who did you have in mind! Ivan laughs and bends down over the phone outlet, once again twisting the wires carefully around the screw.

  Does it surprise you?

  Not in the least, why should it? In thought I already have dozens on my conscience, people who’ve annoyed me, says Ivan. His repair job is a success, now he couldn’t care less about what I wanted to say concerning myself. I dress hurriedly, I mumble that I have to be home earlier today. Where is Malina? My God, if I were only with Malina already, because once again I cannot stand it, I shouldn’t have started talking, and I say to Ivan: Please forgive me, I’m just not feeling well, no, I’ve forgotten something, do you mind, would you mind? I have to go home right away, I think I left the coffee on the burner, I’m sure I didn’t turn it off!

  No, Ivan never minds.

  At home I lie on the floor and wait and breathe, I hyperventilate more and more, causing more than a few extra systoles, and I’d rather not die before Malina arrives, I look at the alarm clock, hardly a minute goes by, and here my life is passing away before my eyes. I don’t know how I made it to the bathroom, but I’m holding my hands under the cold running water, it runs up to my elbows, I rub my arms and feet and legs with an ice-cold cloth, moving up toward my heart, time doesn’t pass, but now Malina has to come, and then Malina is there, and then I collapse at once, finally, my God, why are you so late getting home!

  * * *

  Once I was on a ship, we were sitting around in the bar, a group of people bound for America, I knew a few already. But then one began burning holes in the back of his hand with a glowing cigarette. He was the only one laughing about it, we didn’t know whether we were allowed to laugh too. Most of the time you don’t know why people do such things to themselves, they simply don’t say or else they tell you something completely different so you never actually discover the real reason. In a Berlin apartment I once met a man who was drinking one glass of vodka after the other but without ever getting drunk, he kept talking to me for hours, terribly sober, and when no one was listening, he asked me whether he could see me again, because he wanted to see me again at all costs, and I said nothing so clearly it indicated agreement. Then people started talking about the world situation, and someone put on a record, ascenseur pour l’échafaud. While there were only a few notes quietly purring and the conversation turned to the hotline between Washington and Moscow, the man casually asked me — as casually as he had before when he inquired whether I wouldn’t be better off wearing velvet, he’d like to see me dressed in velvet best of all — Have you ever murdered someone? I said equally light-heartedly: No, of course not, and you? The man said: Yes, I am a murderer. For a while I didn’t say anything, he looked at me softly and spoke once again: You can believe me, it’s true! I believed him, too, since it had to be true, he was the third murderer I’d sat with at a table, but he was the first and only one to admit it. The two other times were at parties in Vienna, and I only found out later, o
n my way home. Occasionally I’ve wanted to write something about these three evenings, which were spaced out over many years, and in an attempt to do so I wrote on top of a page: Three murderers. But then I didn’t manage any more, since I only wanted to sketch out these three murderers in order to hint at a fourth, for my three murderers don’t really constitute a story, I never saw any of them again, they’re still alive somewhere, eating with other people at dinner parties and doing things to themselves. One of them is no longer interned in the asylum at Steinhof, one is living in America under an assumed name, one is drinking to become increasingly sober, and is no longer in Berlin. I can’t talk about the fourth, I don’t remember him, I forget, I do not remember . . .

  (But I did run into the electric barbed wire.) I do remember one detail. Day after day, I kept throwing away my food, and secretly pouring out my tea, I must have known why.

  * * *

  Marcel, however, died in the following manner:

  One day all the clochards of Paris were to be removed from the city. The welfare office, which is also responsible for the city’s maintaining a decent image, entered the Rue Monge accompanied by the police, all they wanted to do was reassimilate the old men into life, first by washing them and getting them cleaned up for the same life. Marcel rose and went with them, a very peaceful man, moreover a wise, docile man after a few glasses of wine. Presumably their coming that day didn’t matter to him in the least, and maybe he also thought he’d be able to return to his good place on the street, where the warm air of the Metro wafted up through the ventilation shafts. But inside the washroom, with its many showers for the common good, his turn came too, they placed him underneath the shower which was certainly not too hot and not too cold, just that he was naked for the first time in many years and under water. Before anyone could understand what was happening and reach out to him, he had fallen dead on the spot. You see what I mean! Malina looks at me a little unsure, although otherwise he’s never unsure. I could have spared myself the story. But I can feel the shower once again, I know what it was they should not have been allowed to wash off Marcel. When someone is living in the vapors of his happiness, when he no longer has many words at his disposal, simply “God bless you,” “May God reward you,” then people should not attempt to wash him, should not wash off what is good for him, should not try and clean him up for a new life that does not exist.

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  In Marcel’s position I would have dropped dead at the first drop myself.

  Malina:

  So happiness was always . . .

  Me:

  Why do you always have to anticipate my thoughts? Right now I’m really thinking about Marcel, no, I hardly ever think about him anymore, it’s just an episode, I’m thinking about myself and now already about something else, Marcel just showed up to help me.

  Malina:

  — it’s the spirit’s beautiful tomorrow that never dawns.

  Me:

  You don’t have to keep reminding me about that school notebook of mine. It must have contained a whole lot more, but I burned it in the washhouse. I still have to have at least a thin patina of happiness, let’s just hope no shower comes to wash away a certain smell I can’t be without.

  Malina:

  Since when are you getting along so well with the world, since when are you happy?

  Me:

  You keep everything under observation and that’s why you don’t notice anything.

  Malina:

  It’s the other way around. I’ve noticed everything but I’ve never kept you under observation.

  Me:

  But occasionally I’ve even allowed you to live the way you wanted, without bothering you — that’s more . . . that’s more generous.

  Malina:

  I’ve noticed that as well, and someday you’ll know whether it was a good thing to forget me, or whether it isn’t better to take notice of me again. Except you’ll probably never have a choice, you already don’t have one.

  Me:

  Forget you, how could I ever forget you! I was only making an attempt, just pretending, to show you that I can get along without you.

  * * *

  Malina doesn’t consider this hypocrisy worth an answer, and although he won’t enumerate all the days and nights I have forgotten him, he’s a hypocrite, too, since he knows that for me his being so considerate was and still is much worse than any reproach. But we manage to find our way back together, for I need my double existence, my Ivanlife and my Malinafield, I cannot be where Ivan isn’t, just as I cannot return home when Malina isn’t there.

  * * *

  Ivan says: Just cut it out!

  I say once again: Ivan, someday I’d like to tell you something, it doesn’t have to be today, but someday I have to tell you.

  You’re out of cigarettes?

  Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you, I’m out of cigarettes again.

  Ivan is prepared to drive around the city with me to look for cigarettes, and because they are nowhere to be found we stop in front of the Hotel Imperial, Ivan finally gets some from the porter. Once again I’m in good standing with the world. It’s still possible to love the world, even if it is only love on demand, and there’s someone in-between acting as a transformer, but Ivan doesn’t have to know that, because once more he’s beginning to fear that I love him, and now as he is giving me a light and I can once again smoke and wait, I have no need of saying: Don’t worry a bit, as far as I’m concerned you’re just here to give me a light, thanks for the light, thanks for every cigarette you’ve lit for me, thanks for driving around the city, thanks for driving me home!

  * * *

  Malina:

  * * *

  Are you going to Haderer’s funeral?

  Me:

  No, why should I go to the cemetery and catch a cold? Tomorrow I can read in the papers what it was like, what they said and besides I don’t like funerals, these days no one knows how to behave at someone’s death or at a cemetery anymore. I also don’t want people constantly telling me that Haderer or someone else has died. They don’t constantly tell me that someone is alive. It’s all the same to me anyway, whether I liked someone or not, and the fact that there are only certain people I can and do meet, since some are no longer alive, doesn’t surprise me, though for other reasons. Do you want to tell me why I have to be informed that all of sudden as of yesterday Herr Haderer or some other famous person, some conductor or politician, some banker or philosopher is dead. I’m not interested. No one has ever died as far as I’m concerned and it’s rare that anyone is living, except in the theater of my thoughts.

  Malina:

  So for you I’m not living most of the time?

  Me:

  You are living. You’re even alive most of the time, but you also provide evidence that you’re alive. What proof do the others give me? None at all.