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Malina

Page 29

by Ingeborg Bachmann


  * * *

  Malina:

  * * *

  Why are you thinking about that? I had the impression that that time was completely unimportant as far as you were concerned.

  Me:

  There’s a reason they call the oral exams the Rigorosum, and they were unimportant but rigorous nonetheless, and the other candidate had died of a stroke, twenty-three years old, and afterward I had to walk from the Institute to the Universitätsstrasse, past the university, groping my way along the entire wall, I also managed to cross the street, since Eleonore and Alexander Fleisser were waiting for me in the Café Bastei, my face must have looked very downcast, I must have been on the verge of collapse, they’d already spotted me through the window before I caught sight of them. As I approached the table no one said a word, they thought I hadn’t passed the exams — and as it was I really only passed in a certain sense — then they shoved a cup of coffee in my direction, and I said, into their dismayed faces, that it had been extremely easy, child’s play. For some time they kept on asking questions, then they finally believed me, I was thinking about the embers, the possible fire, but I don’t remember, I don’t remember exactly . . . I’m sure we didn’t celebrate. Shortly thereafter I had to place two fingers on a scepter and say some words in Latin. I was wearing a black dress that I’d borrowed from Lily, too short, a few young men and I stood lined up in the Auditorium Maximum, then I heard my own voice, just once, loud and clear, the other voices were scarcely audible. But I wasn’t alarmed at myself, and later on I again spoke quietly.

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  (lamentandosi) So what have I learned or discovered in all these years, considering all the sacrifices, and think about the effort I’ve gone to!

  Malina:

  Nothing at all of course. You learned what was already inside you, what you already knew. Isn’t that enough?

  Me:

  Maybe you’re right. I sometimes think now that I’m recovering myself, the way I used to be. I’m all too glad to think about the time when I had everything, when my cheerfulness was truly full of cheer, when I was serious in the good sense of the word. (quasi glissando) Then everything became worse for the wear, damaged, used and used up and ultimately destroyed. (moderato) I slowly improved myself, more and more I made up for what was missing, and I consider myself healed. So now I’m almost like I used to be. (sotto voce) But what purpose did the journey serve?

  Malina:

  The journey doesn’t serve any purpose, it’s available to everyone but not everyone must take it. However someday people should be able to switch back and forth between their newly-recovered self and a future version that can no longer be the old one. Without strain, without sickness, without regret or pity.

  Me:

  (tempo giusto) I no longer pity myself.

  Malina:

  I expected at least that, you were bound to come to that conclusion. Who wants to cry over you, to cry over the likes of us.

  Me:

  But why do people cry over others at all?

  Malina:

  That too should stop, for other people deserve to be cried over as little as you deserve my crying over you. What good would it have done you back then if someone in Timbuktu or in Adelaide had cried about a child in Klagenfurt who’d been covered with rubble, who had lain down on the ground under the trees along the lake promenade during an attack of low-flying aircraft, and who then had to see dead and wounded bodies for the first time, all around her. So don’t cry over others, they have enough to do saving their skin or getting through the few hours left before they’re murdered. They don’t need tears Made in Austria. Besides, the tears come later, in the middle of peace, as you once called this time, in a comfortable armchair, when no shots are being fired and nothing is burning. People go hungry at other times too, on the street, among the well-fed passersby. And fear is first felt during some stupid horror film. People don’t freeze in winter, but at the beach on a summer’s day. Where was it? When did you feel the most cold? It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm October day by the sea. So you can either stay calm for the others or be constantly agitated. You won’t change a thing.

  Me:

  (più mosso) But even if there’s nothing to be done, even if we are powerless to intervene, the question nonetheless remains: what is to be done? It would be inhuman to do nothing.

  Malina:

  Calm the commotion. Disturb the calm.

  Me:

  (dolente, molto mosso) But when will the time finally come for me to accomplish this, when I can do and do nothing more, all at once? When will the time come when I can find time for that? When will it be time to stop all false differentiation and categorization, to stop false fear and suffering, senseless empathy, this constant, senseless pondering and musing! (una corda) I want to think my way out slowly. (tutte le corde) Is that the way it is?

  Malina:

  If that’s how you want it.

  Me:

  Should I no longer ask you?

  Malina:

  Even that is another question.

  Me:

  (tempo giusto) Go and work until supper, then I’ll call you. No, I’m not going to cook, why should I waste my time with that. I’d like to go out, that’s right, walk a few steps to a small place to eat, somewhere loud, where people are eating and drinking, so that I can again imagine the world. To the Alter Heller.

  Malina:

  I am at your command.

  Me:

  (forte) I’ll command you yet. Even you.

  Malina:

  We’ll see about that, my dear!

  Me:

  Because in the end I will be in command of everything.

  Malina:

  That is megalomania. So you’re only passing from one mania to another.

  Me:

  (senza licenza) No. To act is to abstain from action, if it keeps going on the way you’re demonstrating. In which case my mania is no longer growing but decreasing.

  Malina:

  No. On the whole you are gaining, and if you stopped weighing it over and over, if you stopped weighing yourself, you’d be able to gain even more, and more and more.

  Me:

  (tempo) Gain what, if there’s no strength left?

  Malina:

  You gain in fear.

  Me:

  So I frighten you.

  Malina:

  Not me, but yourself. This fear stems from the truth. But you will be able to watch yourself. You’ll hardly be participating, you’ll no longer be here.

  Me:

  (abbandonandosi) Why not here? No, I don’t understand you! But then I don’t understand anything anymore . . . I’d have to get rid of myself!

  Malina:

  Because you can only be of use to yourself by hurting yourself. That is the beginning and the end of all struggle. You have hurt yourself enough. It will help you a lot. But not the you you’re thinking of.

/>   Me:

  (tutto il clavicembalo) Oh! I’m somebody else, you’re trying to say that I’ll become someone completely different!

  Malina:

  No. That’s nonsense. You most certainly are yourself, and you can’t change that either. But a self is moved, is carried away, and a self does things, it acts. However you will act no longer.

  Me:

  (diminuendo) I’ve never liked acting anyway.

  Malina:

  But you have acted. And you have allowed others to act on you, against you, use you in their own actions and transactions.

  Me:

  (non troppo vivo) But I never wanted that. I’ve never even acted against my enemies.

  Malina:

  Don’t forget that not one of your enemies has ever seen you, and you have never seen one of them.

  Me:

  I don’t believe that. (vivacissimamente) I have seen one of them, and he has seen me, but not properly.

  Malina:

  What a strange endeavor! You really want to be seen properly? Maybe even by your friends?

  Me:

  (presto, agitato) Stop it, who ever believed that, there are no friends, maybe temporary ones, friends of the moment! (con fuoco) But people do have enemies.

  Malina:

  Maybe not even that . . . not even that.

  Me:

  (tempo) Oh yes, I know.

  Malina:

  So you might be looking at your enemy this very minute.

  Me:

  Then you would have to be my enemy. But you’re not.

  Malina:

  You should stop fighting. Against what? You should now go neither forward nor back, just learn a new style of combat. The only style of combat you’re allowed.

  Me:

  But I already know how to fight. Ultimately I’ll strike back, since I’m gaining ground. I’ve gained a lot of ground in these years.

  Malina:

  And that makes you happy?

  Me:

  (con sordino) Pardon me?

  Malina:

  What a charming way you have of avoiding questions! You have to stay where you are. This must be your place. You should neither press forward nor retreat. Because then you shall conquer, in this place, the only place where you belong.

  Me:

  (con brio) Conquer! Who’s talking about victory anymore or conquering anything, now that the sign is lost in which to conquer.

  Malina:

  Nevertheless the word is: conquer. You will succeed without a single trick and without force. Furthermore you will not conquer with your self, but rather —

  Me:

  (allegro) But rather — you see?

  Malina:

  Not with your self.

  Me:

  (forte) What makes my self worse than anybody else’s?

  Malina:

  Nothing. Everything. Because your actions are only ever futile. That is what’s unforgivable.

  Me:

  (piano) Even if it is unforgivable, I’m still always wanting to spread myself too thin, to lose my way, to lose my self.

  Malina:

  What you want doesn’t count anymore. In the proper place you’ll have nothing more to want. There you will be yourself so much you’ll be able to give up your self. It will be the first place where someone has healed the world.

  Me:

  Do I have to start with that?

  Malina:

  You’ve started with everything, that’s why you have to start with this as well. And you’ll stop with everything.

  Me:

  (pensieroso) Me?

  Malina:

  You still want to take this into your mouth, this “Me”? Are you still weighing it over? Go ahead and weigh it on a scale!

  Me:

  (tempo giusto) But I’m just now beginning to love this self.

  Malina:

  How much do you think you can love it?

  Me:

  (appassionato e con molto sentimento) Very much. All too much. I shall love it as my neighbor, as you!

  * * *

  Today I walk through the Ungargasse and think about moving elsewhere, an apartment’s supposed to be opening up in Heiligenstadt, someone’s moving out, friends of friends, but the apartment isn’t very roomy by any means, and how am I supposed to inflict this on Malina, to whom I wanted to suggest a larger apartment before, on account of his many books. But he’ll never leave the Third District. A single tear forms, just in the corner of one eye, but it doesn’t roll down my cheek, it crystallizes in the cold air, then grows bigger and bigger into a second giant globe that doesn’t want to orbit with the world — it breaks off from the planet and plunges into infinity.

  * * *

  Ivan is no longer Ivan, I look at him like a clinician studying an X-ray, I see his skeleton, spots on his lung due to smoking, but I no longer see Ivan himself. Who will give Ivan back to me? Why does he let me look at him like that so suddenly? I’d like to collapse on the table when he asks for the check, or under the table, tearing off the tablecloth with all the plates and glasses and silverware, and even the salt, although I’m very superstitious. Don’t be that way with me, I’ll say, don’t do that to me, or else I’ll die.

  I went dancing yesterday, in the Eden Bar.

  Ivan is listening to me, but is he really listening? He ought to hear me telling him that I went dancing, I wanted to destroy something, because I ultimately danced with a disgusting young man and I looked at him in a way I’ve never looked at Ivan, since he kept dancing more and more wildly and with increasing precision, clapping his hands and snapping his fingers. I say to Ivan: I’m dead tired, I was up too late, I can’t keep it up anymore.

 

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