Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  But is Ivan listening to me?

  Ivan asks in passing, since we haven’t seen each other in a long time, if I wouldn’t like to go with him and the children to the Burgkino, they’re showing Walt Disney’s Micky Maus. Unfortunately I don’t have any time, because now I don’t want to see the children anymore, especially not the children, Ivan anytime, but not the children he’s going to take away from me. I can’t see Béla and András anymore. They’ll have to get their wisdom teeth without me. I’ll no longer be around when they’re removed.

  Malina whispers inside me: Kill them, kill them.

  But inside me there is a louder whisper: never Ivan and the children, they belong together, I can’t kill them. When it happens — as it will happen — when Ivan touches someone else, then Ivan will no longer be Ivan. At least I have never touched a soul.

  I say: Ivan.

  Ivan says: Check please!

  There must be some mistake, after all it is Ivan, only I keep glancing past him at the tablecloth, the salt shaker, I stare at the fork, I could poke my eyes out, I look over his shoulder out the window and give perfunctory answers to his questions.

  Ivan says: You look pale as death, aren’t you well?

  Just lack of sleep, I ought to take a vacation, friends of mine are driving to Kitzbühel, Alexander and Martin are going to St. Anton, otherwise it’s getting impossible for me to recover, the winters are getting longer and longer, who can possibly survive these winters!

  So Ivan must really think it’s the winter, for he strongly advises me to leave soon. I’m simply not looking at him anymore, I see something else, a shadow is sitting next to him, Ivan is laughing and talking with a shadow, he’s a lot funnier, more exuberant, he was never so awfully exuberant with me, and I say that I’m sure Martin or Fritz . . . but that I still have so much to do, no, I don’t know. We’ll phone each other.

  Is Ivan also thinking how different it used to be, or does it only seem so to me, that things used to be different than they are today. An insane laughter sticks in my throat, but since I’m afraid I’d never stop laughing I don’t say a thing and grow more and more sullen. After coffee I am completely silent, I smoke.

  Ivan says: You sure are pretty blah today.

  I ask: Really? Really? Was I always like that?

  In front of the entrance to my building I stay seated in the car, hesitating, and suggest we phone each other when we get a chance. Ivan doesn’t contradict me, he doesn’t say, you’re crazy, what are you talking about, what do you mean when we get a chance. He already thinks it’s normal for us to phone each other when we get a chance. He’ll agree if I don’t get out right away, but I’m already getting out, I slam the door shut and shout: I’m really incredibly busy these days!

  * * *

  I never sleep anymore except for late in the morning. Who would want to sleep inside a forest of the night teeming with questions? With my hands clasped behind my head, I lie awake in the night and think how happy I was, happy, and after all I did promise myself I’d never complain again, never accuse anyone, if I might be allowed to be happy just once. But now I want to prolong this happiness, like anyone who’s experienced this good fortune. I want this happiness which has had its time and is now departing. I am no longer happy. It’s the spirit’s beautiful tomorrow that never dawns . . . But it wasn’t my tomorrow by any means, it was my spirit’s beautiful today, the today of my waiting after work between six and seven, of my waiting by the phone until midnight, and this today cannot be over. It can’t be true.

  * * *

  Malina looks in on me. Are you still awake?

  I just happened to be awake, I have to think about something, it’s awful.

  Malina says: I see, and why is it awful?

  * * *

  Me:

  * * *

  (con fuoco) It’s awful, it’s awful beyond words, it’s too awful.

  Malina:

  Is that all that’s keeping you awake? (Kill him! kill him!)

  Me:

  (sotto voce) Yes, that’s all.

  Malina:

  And what are you going to do?

  Me:

  (forte, forte, fortissimo) Nothing.

  * * *

  Early in the morning I’ve collapsed into the rocking chair, I’m staring at the wall, which is showing a crack, it must be an old crack that now is gently spreading because I keep staring at it. It’s late enough, I could get a chance to make a phone call, and I pick up the phone and want to say, are you already asleep? Then it occurs to me just in time that I’d really have to ask, are you already awake? But today it’s too hard for me to say good morning, and I quietly replace the receiver, I can feel the scent so distinctly with my whole face, so strongly that I think I’m buried in Ivan’s shoulder, in that indispensable scent I call cinnamon, the scent which always sustained me, which staved off all drowsiness, the only scent that let me breathe more easily. The wall doesn’t yield, it doesn’t want to give in, but I will force the wall to open along this crack. If Ivan doesn’t call me at once, if he never calls me again, if he doesn’t call until Monday, what will I do then? What has set the sun and all the other stars in motion is not some law of physics, I alone was capable of moving them, as long as Ivan was close by — not only for me and not only for him, but for the others as well, and I have to speak, I have to tell, soon there will nothing more to disturb my remembering. Except the story of Ivan with me will never be told, since we don’t have any story, there won’t be any 99 x Love and no sensational revelations from Austro-Hungarian bedrooms.

  * * *

  I don’t understand Malina, who is now serenely eating his breakfast before leaving the house. We will never understand each other, we’re as different as night and day, he is inhuman with his whispered suggestions, his silences and his detached questions. For if Ivan should no longer belong to me, the way I belong to him, then he will one day exist in some normal life, which will make him become quite normal, he will no longer be celebrated, but maybe Ivan doesn’t want anything other than his simple life, and I have only complicated a piece of his life with my silent stares, my flagrantly bad playing, my confessions constructed out of fragmented phrases.

  Ivan says laughingly, but just once: I can’t breathe where you place me, please not so high, don’t ever bring anyone else up here where the air is so thin, take my advice, learn your lesson! I didn’t say: But after you who else am I supposed to . . . But you can’t think that after you I’d . . . I’d still prefer to learn every lesson for your sake. Not for anyone else.

  * * *

  Malina and I have been invited to the Gebauers, but we’re no longer talking to the other people standing around the salon, drinking and getting into heated discussions, instead we suddenly find ourselves alone in the room with the Bechstein grand piano, where Barbara practices when we’re not there. I recall what Malina first played for me, before we really began talking to one another, and I’d like to ask him to play it once again. But then I go to the piano myself and clumsily begin to look for a few notes, still standing.

  Malina doesn’t move, at least he acts as though he were looking at the pictures, a portrait by Kokoschka ostensibly portraying Barbara’s grandmother, a few drawings by Swoboda, the two small sculptures by Wantschura, all of which he’s known for a long time.

  Malina turns around after all, crosses over to me, pushes me away and sits down on the piano stool. Once again I place myself behind him, like back then. He really does play and half speaks and half sings and is audible only to me.

  * * *

  We quickly say good-bye and are heading home on foot and in the dark, even crossing through the Stadtpark, where the heavy, gloomy, giant black moths circle and the chords are heard more distinctly underneath the ailing moon, once again there is
wine in the park, the wine which through the eyes we drink, again the nenuphar serves as a boat, again there is nostalgia and parody, atrocity and a serenade before the journey home.

  After a long hot bath in the morning I notice that my cabinets are empty, also only a few stockings and a bra are to be found in the wardrobe. A lone dress is hanging on a hanger, the last dress Malina gave me, which I never wear, it’s black, with some colorful diagonal stripes on top. Another black dress is lying in the wardrobe, in a plastic bag, black on top with colorful vertical stripes below, it’s an old dress I was wearing when Ivan saw me for the first time. I’ve never worn it since then and have preserved it as a relic. What has happened in my apartment? What has Lina done with all my dresses and my clothes? There wasn’t that much to take to the laundry or the dry cleaning. I walk around deep in thought, dress in hand, and I feel cold. Before Malina leaves the house, I say: Please take a look at my room, something incredible has happened.

  Malina comes in carrying a cup of tea, he’s in a hurry, he sips at the tea and asks: What is it then? I pull the dress over my head in front of him and start breathing too quickly, I’m hyperventilating, I can scarcely speak. It’s this dress, it has to be because of this dress, all of a sudden I realize why I’ve never been able to wear it. Don’t you see, the dress is too hot for me, I’ll melt in it, the wool must be too warm, isn’t there any other dress here! Malina says: I think it looks good on you, you look good in it, if you really want my opinion, it suits you exceptionally well.

  Malina has finished his tea and I hear him walking around, taking the usual few steps, gathering his raincoat, the house key, a few books and some papers. I go back in the bathroom and look at the mirror, the dress crackles and makes my skin red down to my wrists, it’s awful, it’s too awful, some hellish thread must be woven into this dress. It must be my Nessus tunic, I don’t know what it’s been soaked in. I never did want to wear it, I must have known why.

  * * *

  And how long have I been living with a dead telephone? No new dress can provide adequate consolation for that. Whenever the phone screeches or cries out, I still sometimes get up with a foolish hope, but then say: Hello? with a disguised voice, deeper than my own, as it always turns out to be someone with whom I can’t or don’t want to talk. Then I lie down and wish I were dead. But today the phone is ringing, the dress is chafing my skin, apprehensively I approach the telephone, I do not disguise my voice, and it’s a good thing I didn’t, because the phone is alive. It’s Ivan. It couldn’t happen otherwise, eventually it had to be Ivan. After one sentence Ivan has lifted me up again, he has uplifted me, has soothed my skin, gratefully I assent, I say yes. Yes, I said yes.

  * * *

  I have to get rid of Malina for this evening, I say something to persuade him, he does have his obligations after all, he can’t always decline, he promised Kurt he’d drop by one of these evenings, Kurt would be really happy if it were today, he’d like to show Malina his new drawings, and the Wantschuras are going over to Kurt’s, for that reason alone Malina really has to go, because if Wantschura starts to drink then things will get complicated, and without Malina all the old arguments will reemerge. In return I promise Malina that I’ll come along to the Jordans one of these evenings, after all we can’t keep declining, we have to visit Leo Jordan twice a year. Malina doesn’t cause any difficulty, he immediately realizes that he has to spend the evening at Swoboda’s. I am always right of course. If I hadn’t thought about it Malina would have simply forgotten. He’s really glad he has me, he never leaves home without a grateful glance, and I say to him as tenderly as I can: Please forgive me all that nonsense with the dress, today I want to wear it very much, I feel great in it! How do you always manage to get the right size, how is it you know the measurements? Thank you so much for the dress!

  * * *

  I read a book until eight o’clock. Because dinner is all ready, I’ve put on makeup and combed my hair. “For it is futile to try to feign indifference concerning inquiries whose object cannot be indifferent to human nature.”

  Then I got embroiled in the struggle against innate ideas, already decided. I’m also sulking because I no longer have all my books, whether it be the moral sense of Hutcheson or else of Shaftesbury, but today I have no sense of orientation, but for that I do have a summa cum laude, even if I do always look as though I’d failed. Language palatalization. I still know the words, they’ve been rusting on my tongue for many years, and I know very well the words which dissolve on my tongue daily or which I can scarcely swallow or get out. And it wasn’t the things that I was less and less able to buy and look at as time went on, it was the words for these things that I could not bear to hear. Half a pound of veal. How can you get that past your tongue? Not that I’m especially concerned about calves. But also: Grapes, one pound. Fresh milk. A leather belt. All made of leather. For me a coin, such as a schilling, doesn’t bring up the problem of cash commerce, devaluation or the gold standard, it’s just that suddenly I feel a schilling in my mouth, light, cold, round, an annoying schilling that I need to spit out.

  Ivan is still lying on the bed with an expression on his face I’ve never seen before. He is brooding, straining over something, he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, all of a sudden he has time to lie here quietly, and I lean over him, my arms folded over my chest, but then collapse so that Ivan can say: Today I’ve absolutely got to talk to you.

  Then he again says nothing. I cover my face with my hands so as not to disturb him, because he has to talk to me.

  Ivan begins: I have to talk to you. Do you remember? I once said there are some things I just won’t tell you. But if I . . . what would you, if I — ?

  If you? I ask. It can hardly be heard.

  And if you? I repeat.

  Ivan says: I think I have to tell it to you now.

  I don’t ask: What do you have to tell me? Because otherwise he might go on talking. But even if I stay silent a little longer he might ask: What would you, if . . .

  Since the silence can’t be allowed to go one for too long, I shake my head and lie down beside him, I keep stroking his face gently, so that he has to stop speculating, and so he won’t find the words for the end.

  Does that mean, that you . . . what do you know?

  I again shake my head, it doesn’t mean a thing, I don’t know anything either, and if I were to know or he were to tell me there would still be no reply, not here and not now and no more on earth. As long as I live there will be no answer to that. This lying quietly has to end sooner or later, I have to find one cigarette for him and one for me, I have to light both, and we’re allowed to smoke one more time, for ultimately Ivan has to go. I can’t watch the way he avoids looking at me, I look at the wall and try to find something there. It shouldn’t take so long for a person to get dressed, it might be longer than I can survive, and while Ivan, still straining, doesn’t know how he should go, with what word, I snap off the light and he manages to find his way out, since the hall light is still on. Behind Ivan I hear the door closing.

  * * *

  I am frightened by the more familiar noise of Malina’s unlocking the door. He stops for a minute outside my bedroom, and since I’d like to say something friendly, and since I’d also like to know if I’ve lost my voice, I say: I just went to bed, I was just about to fall asleep, you must be very tired yourself, go get some sleep.

  But after a while Malina comes back from his room and comes to me through the darkness. He snaps on the light, and once again I’m frightened, he picks up the small tin box with the sleeping tablets and counts them. They’re my sleeping pills, he’s making me furious, but I don’t say anything, today I’m not saying another word.

  Malina says: You’ve already taken three, I think that’s enough.

  We start to argue, I see it coming, we’re going to butt heads. That is now inevitable.

  I say: No, just one and a half, you can see that one’s been cut
in half.

  Malina says: I counted them this morning, there are three missing.

  I say: At most I took two and a half, and a half doesn’t count as a whole.

  Malina takes the tablets, sticks them in his jacket pocket and walks out of the room.

  Good night.

  I jump out of bed, speechless, helpless, he’s slammed the door, I can’t bear a door being slammed, I can’t bear his counting things, I didn’t ask him this morning to check, of course it’s possible I asked him earlier to count them during these days, since I’m no longer able to keep track of things. But how dare Malina come to me now to tally up these tablets, he has no idea what’s happened, and suddenly I cry out, ripping open the door: But you don’t have any idea!

  He opens his door and asks: Did you say something?

  I ask Malina: Give me just one more, I really need it!

  Malina says once and for all: You’re not getting any more. We’re going to bed.

  * * *

  Since when has Malina been treating me that way? What does he want? For me to drink water and pace up and down, make tea and pace up and down, drink whiskey and pace up and down, but there isn’t a bottle of whiskey to be found in the whole apartment either. One day he’ll even demand that I stop phoning, that I stop seeing Ivan, but he’ll never accomplish that. I sneak quietly into Malina’s room, I look for his jacket in the dark, reach inside all the pockets, but I can’t find the tablets, I feel my way around the room, touching every object and then finally locate them on top of a stack of books. I slide two out of the tin onto my hand, one for now and one for later in the night, as a precaution, and I even manage to close the door so quietly he cannot possibly hear me. Both tablets are lying next to me on the bedside table, the light is on, I don’t take them, they’re far from enough, and I have broken into Malina’s room and deceived him, he will soon know. But I only did it to calm down, for no other reason. Soon we will know everything. Because it can’t go on like this for very long. A day will come. A day will come, and there will be the dry cheerful voice of Malina, but no more beautiful words from me, pronounced in great excitement. Malina worries much too much. Simply for Ivan’s sake, so that Ivan is not affected, so that Ivan isn’t even grazed by a shadow of guilt, for Ivan isn’t guilty, I would not consume forty tablets, but how do I explain to Malina that all I want is to stay calm, that I won’t harm myself so as not to harm Ivan. I simply have to calm down more, because it isn’t out of the question that Ivan might call when he gets a chance.