Later on I went to the pharmacy for Marie, got her some sleeping pills and sat by her bed till she fell asleep. I still don’t know what was the matter with her and what complications the gynecological business had involved. Next morning I went to the public library, read everything I could find on the subject in the encyclopedia, and felt relieved. Then toward midday Marie left for Bonn alone, taking only an overnight bag. She never even mentioned my coming along. She said: “We’ll meet the day after tomorrow then, in Frankfurt.” In the afternoon, when the vice squad arrived, I was glad Marie had left, although the fact that she had left caused me a lot of embarrassment. I assume the manager had reported us. Naturally I always said Marie was my wife, and only two or three times did we have any trouble. In Osnabrück it became awkward. Two police officers, a woman and a man, arrived, in plain clothes, very polite, punctilious in a way which had probably been drilled into them as producing “agreeable” results. There are certain forms of politeness on the part of the police which I particularly dislike. The policewoman was pretty, nicely made up, did not sit down until I asked her to, even accepted a cigarette, while her companion was “unobtrusively” sizing up the room. “Miss Derkum is no longer with you?” “No,” I said, “she has gone on ahead, I am meeting her in Frankfurt, the day after tomorrow.” “You are an artiste?” I said yes, although it was not true, but I thought it would be simpler to say yes. “Please understand,” said the policewoman, “we have to do a certain amount of spot-checking when people traveling through are taken ill”—she cleared her throat—“abortively.” “I quite understand,” I said—I hadn’t read anything about abortive in the encyclopedia. The police officer declined to sit down, politely, but continued to look around unobtrusively. “May I have your home address?” asked the policewoman. I gave her our address in Bonn. She stood up. Her colleague glanced at the open wardrobe. “Are those Miss Derkum’s clothes?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. He gave his colleague a “speaking” look, she shrugged her shoulders, so did he, looked once more attentively at the carpet, bent down over a spot, looked at me, as if he expected I would now confess to the murder. Then they left. They remained extremely polite to the very end of the performance. As soon as they had gone I hurriedly packed all the suitcases, sent for the bill, and a porter from the station, and left by the next train. I even paid the hotel for the full day. I checked the luggage through to Frankfurt and got onto the next southbound train. I was afraid and wanted to get away. While I was packing I had seen spots of blood on Marie’s towel. Even on the station platform, before I was sitting in the Frankfurt train at last, I was afraid I would suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder and a courteous voice would ask me from behind: “Do you confess?” I would have confessed anything. It was already past midnight when the train went through Bonn. It didn’t occur to me to get out.
I traveled all the way to Frankfurt, arrived there toward four in the morning, went to a much too expensive hotel and telephoned Marie in Bonn. I was afraid she might not be home, but she came to the phone at once and said: “Hans, thank heaven you called, I was so terribly worried.” “Worried,” I said. “Yes,” she said, “I phoned Osnabrück and found you had left. I’ll come right away to Frankfurt, right away.” I had a bath, ordered breakfast in my room, fell asleep and was woken about eleven by Marie. She was like a different woman, very affectionate and almost gay, and when I asked: “Have you breathed enough Catholic air?” she laughed and kissed me. I didn’t tell her anything about the police.
13
I wondered whether I should let in some more hot water, but it was all used up, I felt I had to get out. The bath hadn’t done my knee much good, it was swollen again and almost stiff. As I got out of the tub I slipped and nearly fell onto the splendid tiles. I wanted to phone Zohnerer then and there and suggest he get me into an acrobatic troupe. I dried, lit a cigarette, and looked at myself in the mirror: I had lost weight. At the sound of the telephone I hoped for one moment it might be Marie. But it was not her ring. It might have been Leo. I hobbled into the living room, lifted the receiver and said: “Hullo.”
“Oh,” said Sommerwild’s voice, “I hope I didn’t disturb you in the midst of a double sommersault.”
“I am not an acrobat,” I said, furious, “I am a clown—there is a difference, at least as much difference as between Jesuits and Dominicans—and the only double thing which could happen here would be a double murder.”
He laughed. “Schnier, Schnier,” he said, “I’m really worried about you. I suppose you’ve come to Bonn to declare war on us all over the phone?”
“Look, did I call you,” I said, “or did you call me?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” he said, “does that really matter?” I did not reply. “I am well aware,” he said, “that you don’t like me, it will surprise you, I like you, and you must admit I have the right to straighten out the things which I believe in and which I stand for.”
“By force if necessary,” I said.
“No,” he said, his voice sounded quite clear, “no, not by force, but firmly, as the person concerned has a right to expect.”
“Why do you say person and not Marie?”
“Because I am anxious to keep the matter as objective as I possibly can.”
“That is your great mistake, Prelate,” I said, “the matter is as subjective as it could possibly be.”
I felt cold in my bathrobe, my cigarette had got damp and wasn’t burning properly. “I shall not only kill you, I shall also kill Züpfner if Marie doesn’t come back.”
“For God’s sake,” he said impatiently, “leave Heribert out of this.”
“Very funny,” I said, “some fellow takes my wife away from me, and he is the very person I am supposed to leave out of it.”
“He is not some fellow, Miss Derkum was not your wife—and he didn’t take her away from you, she left.”
“Entirely of her own free will, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said, “entirely of her own free will, although conceivably in a conflict between the natural and the supernatural.”
“And where does the supernatural come in?” I said.
“Schnier,” he said impatiently, “in spite of everything I believe you are a good clown—but you know nothing about theology.”
“I know this much,” I said, “that you Catholics are as hard on an unbeliever like me as the Jews are on the Christians, and the Christians on the heathen. All I ever hear is: law, theology—and when you come right down to it, this is all on account of a stupid bit of paper which the state—the state, mind you—has to issue.”
“You are confusing motive and cause,” he said, “I understand what you mean, Schnier,” he said, “I understand.”
“You don’t understand anything,” I said, “and the result will be double adultery. The one Marie commits when she marries your Heribert, and the second one she commits when one day she goes off with me again. I suppose I am not sufficiently sensitive and not enough of an artist, above all not enough of a Christian, for a prelate to say to me: Schnier, if only you had just kept her on as a concubine.”
“You misunderstand the theological essence of the difference between your case and the one we were arguing about that evening.”
“What difference?” I asked, “I suppose you mean that Besewitz is more sensitive—and a kind of faith dynamo for your lot?”
“No,” he actually laughed. “No. The difference is one of ecclesiastical law. B. lived with a divorced woman whom he couldn’t possibly have married in church, while you—well, Miss Derkum was not divorced and there was nothing to stop your getting married.”
“I was prepared to sign,” I said, “even to convert.”
“Prepared in a contemptible way.”
“Am I supposed to pretend to feelings, to a faith, that I don’t have? If you insist on justice and law—purely formal things—why do you accuse me of lacking certain feelings?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.”
&nbs
p; I was silent. He was right, I realized, and it hurt. Marie had left, and of course they had welcomed her with open arms, but if she had wanted to stay with me, no one could have forced her to leave.
“Hullo, Schnier,” said Sommerwild. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m still here.” I had pictured my phone conversation with him quite differently. Waking him at two thirty in the morning, insulting and threatening him.
“What can I do for you?” he asked gently.
“Nothing,” I said, “if you will tell me that those secret conferences in the hotel in Hanover were aimed simply and solely at encouraging Marie to be faithful to me—then I’ll believe you.”
“You evidently fail to realize, Schnier,” he said, “that Miss Derkum’s relationship to you had reached a crisis.”
“And you people have to get into the act right away,” I said, “and show her a legal and ecclesiastical loophole allowing her to leave me. I always thought the Catholic church was against divorce.”
“For God’s sake, Schnier,” he shouted, “you can’t expect me as a Catholic priest to encourage a woman to persist in concubinage.”
“Why not?” I said. “You are driving her into fornication and adultery—if as a priest you can be a party to that, go ahead.”
“Your anti-clerical outlook surprises me. I have only come across that in Catholics.”
“I am not in the least anticlerical, don’t kid yourself, I am merely anti-Sommerwild, because you have been unjust and you’re two-faced.”
“Good God,” he said, “in what way?”
“To listen to your sermons, anyone would imagine your heart is as big as a barn, but then you go around whispering and conniving in hotel lobbies. While I am earning my daily bread by the sweat of my brow, you are having consultations with my wife without listening to my side. Unjust and two-faced, but what else can you expect from an esthete?”
“Carry on,” he said, “abuse me, malign me, I can understand you so well.”
“You don’t understand a thing, you have made Marie swallow some damned synthetic stuff. I happen to prefer pure drinks: I’d rather have pure applejack than synthetic cognac.” “Please,” he said, “do go on—you really sound as if you were emotionally involved.”
“I am involved, Prelate, emotionally and physically, because it concerns Marie.”
“The day will come when you realize you have done me an injustice, Schnier. Over this as in everything—” his voice became almost tearful, “and as for my synthetic stuff, maybe you forget that many people are thirsty, just plain thirsty, and that they might prefer something synthetic to drink rather than nothing at all.”
“But in your Holy Scriptures there is this business about pure, clear water—why don’t you pour out some of that?”
“Possibly,” he said, his voice shaking, “because—to keep to your metaphor—I am at the end of a long chain of people who are drawing water from a well, I may be the hundredth or thousandth in line and the water is not quite so fresh any more—and besides, Schnier, are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“You can love a woman without living with her.”
“Is that so?” I said, “I suppose now you’re going to talk about the Virgin Mary.”
“Don’t mock, Schnier,” he said, “it doesn’t suit you.”
“I am not mocking,” I said, “I am quite capable of respecting something I don’t understand. I simply regard it as a fatal mistake to offer the Virgin Mary as a model to a young girl who does not intend entering a convent. I even gave a lecture about it once.”
“Did you?” he said, “where?”
“Right here in Bonn,” I said, “to some girls. To Marie’s group. I came over from Cologne on one of their club evenings, I did a bit of clowning for the girls and talked to them about the Virgin Mary. Ask Monika Silvs. Naturally I couldn’t talk to the girls about what you call desires of the flesh! Are you still listening?”
“I am listening,” he said, “and I am amazed. You are becoming very drastic, Schnier.”
“Damn it all,” I said, “the procedure which leads to the conception of a child is a fairly drastic affair—if you prefer we can talk about the stork. Everything which is said, preached and taught about this drastic business is pretense. In your heart of hearts you people regard it as something obscene which is permissible in marriage as a form of self-defense against nature—or you kid yourselves and separate the physical from that other part of it—but it is precisely that other part of it which complicates matters. Not even the wife who merely tolerates her lord and master is merely a body—and not even the filthiest drunk who goes to a whore is merely a body, neither is the whore. You all treat this thing like a Christmas cracker—and it’s dynamite.”
“Schnier,” he said in a subdued voice, “I am astonished at how much thought you have given the matter.”
“Astonished,” I shouted, “you ought to be astonished at the thoughtless bastards who regard their wives simply as legal property. Ask Monika Silvs what I told the girls about it. Ever since I found out that I am a member of the male sex I have given more thought to this than almost anything else—and that astonishes you?”
“You have simply no idea whatever of justice and law. These things—however complicated they may be—have somehow to be governed by regulations.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I’ve had a dose of your regulations. You shove nature onto a track which you call adultery—and when nature intervenes in marriage, you get scared. Confessed, forgiven, sinned—etc. All governed by regulations.”
He laughed. His laugh sounded unpleasant. “Schnier,” he said, “I see now what’s the matter with you. You are obviously as monogamous as a donkey.”
“You don’t even know anything about zoology,” I said, “let alone homo sapiens. Donkeys are not in the least monogamous, although they look pious. Donkeys are completely promiscuous. Crows are monogamous, stickle-backs, jackdaws and sometimes rhinoceroses.”
“But not Marie, evidently,” he said. He must have realized how this brief sentence wounded me, for he went on softly: “Sorry, Schnier, I would have gladly spared you that, do you believe me?”
I was silent. I spat out the burning cigarette butt onto the carpet, watched the glow spread, burning small black holes. “Schnier,” he called imploringly, “at least believe me when I say I don’t like telling you.”
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