I asked whether, if necessary, the visa could be extended. Yes, that would be possible, said Dr Christensen. If it turned out that my Georgian friend wanted or needed to stay longer than thirty days, he could apply to the Foreign Ministry for an extension of another thirty. It was even possible to get an annual visa, valid for a year, although it permitted a foreigner to be in the country for only ninety days of that year in all. In both cases it would be a good idea for me to go to the authority with the Georgian gentleman and speak to them myself, so that I could give the requisite explanation.
I asked what the requisite explanation consisted of. Well, said Dr Christensen, in the present case, making an application for any kind of visa, including one for business purposes, I would have to pledge myself, as the person inviting the Georgian, to meet without reservation any financial expenses that he might incur during his stay in the Federal Republic. That included the cost of any possible medical treatment of my guest in hospital. However, I could cover myself against that risk by taking out an insurance policy. The premium wasn’t astronomically high; he rather thought it came to about three marks per day of the foreign guest’s stay in this country.
I thanked Dr Christensen, hung up, and calculated the days since Ninoshvili’s arrival. If he knew about the terms for the extension of his visa, and it was to be assumed that he did, then he must have applied for it already, unless he was prepared to risk peremptory deportation.
I had hoped that in that point at least I could disprove Ralf’s suspicions. Knowing that I had been taken in yet again, and not I but Ralf was probably right, of course wasn’t enough to make me go along with everything else he had confided to me. I was still looking for a good reason to tell him off and disabuse him of a few of his confused ideas.
Once again Ninoshvili thwarted me, preventing me from straightening my family out. He had come home half an hour before Julia, passed my study door and disappeared into the spare room. As soon as Julia came in she started making supper, and she didn’t look in on me but called up the stairs, “Hello, Christian! I’m home, supper won’t be long!” and disappeared into the kitchen. Five minutes later Ralf came in as well.
I intercepted him in the corridor, silently beckoned him into my study and closed the door. He looked at me in silence. I asked, “Why did you run off like that? I called after you to come back.”
“Didn’t hear you.”
I sat down at the desk. “Ralf, I’d like to know exactly what you were insinuating before you left the house. You said you’d know what to do about Ninoshvili. And you said I was to leave it to you.” I looked at him. “What did you mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing special.”
“Ralf, don’t pretend to be stupid. I want to know what you’re planning.”
He snorted, and then said, “Why don’t you wait and see?”
“Because I don’t want you doing something stupid.”
“I won’t. You can rely on me.”
“In this case I’d rather not. Ralf, you mustn’t think that a man like Ninoshvili will let you drive him away as easily as that. I don’t want you to do anything rash that might just make the situation worse. And that might injure you yourself.”
He was looking out of the window. I said, “Come on, out with it. What have you been thinking up?”
He looked at me. After a while he lowered his eyes and scratched his cheek.
There was a knock. Ninoshvili opened the door, asked, “Am I disturbing you?” but before I could answer he came in, turned back the sleeve of his jacket, and with a happy smile showed me the timepiece on his wrist. “I just wanted to show you this watch I’ve bought myself. Isn’t it great? I never owned anything like this before!”
I said yes indeed, he had really bought an excellent watch. Ralf left the room without a word. “What’s the matter with him?” asked Ninoshvili, surprised. I said I didn’t know, but he was probably hungry and wanted to ask Julia when there’d be something to eat.
Chapter 55
It’s getting harder and harder for me to start a conversation with my wife. And when I bring myself to do it, I feel that she understands me less and less. I can’t believe she doesn’t want to understand me. And I won’t believe that she sometimes seems to understand me just to avoid further questions.
Not so long ago we understood each other almost without needing any words. A glance, a smile was enough to reassure us that we were in harmony. Perhaps it was being so certain I didn’t have to make lengthy explanations to communicate with her that bound me to her most of all. I remember that randy provincial court judge, hopefully for the last time. At the time it was enough to describe my trick with the red wine to Julia as an unintentional accident, and she knew at once what I’d been feeling and how I had coped. No discussion was necessary; she ended the chapter with a laugh and a kiss.
Of course our very different professions mean that we mix with slightly different circles of people. But we’ve always been able to bridge the distance easily. She and I both even felt a need to tell each other about our separate experiences. She always told me what was going on at her law practice and in court, and in the same way I told her about the school. Even when we have had arguments recently about our son and his disturbing tendencies, we’ve discussed them in the certainty that we both wanted the same thing, if in our own different ways.
I’ve wondered whether, perhaps, I’ve missed noticing an estrangement that’s been coming on gradually for some time. But I’m perfectly sure that only since Ninoshvili made himself at home here has the understanding between my wife and me stopped working.
When his letter announcing his visit came we did quarrel, yes, but even then neither of us hid anything from the other. She told me straight out that this guest was very unwelcome to her. However, it’s only from her behaviour that I’ve been able to tell how much her opinion of Ninoshvili has changed since he arrived. She hasn’t said anything about it to me.
And equally, I’ve kept what has been troubling my mind since then to myself. I haven’t said a word to her about my Georgian studies. I haven’t even confided in her about my latest crisis at school, the worst I’ve ever known. And the more my doubts about Julia, her relationship to me and our family haunt me, the more I shrink from breaking this oppressive silence. I only hinted at my fear that she may be carrying a heavy burden dating back to her youth in Halle, and she wouldn’t give me a clear answer. It can’t have escaped her that Ralf’s relationship to both Ninoshvili and to her, his own mother, has changed radically, yet she hasn’t said a word about that any more than I have.
Is our marriage, is our life together inexorably breaking up? I can’t reconcile myself to that idea. But I’m finding it harder and harder to hope that I’m deceiving myself.
As soon as we were finally alone and in bed this evening, I asked Julia what she thought about Ninoshvili’s purchase. She smiled, and then said he’d obviously dreamed of a watch like that for a long time.
I raised my eyebrows. After a moment’s hesitation, she said perhaps I’d be surprised, but she had even advised him when he was buying it—he’d asked her to. I wondered aloud if she shouldn’t have suggested a more sensible way to lay out his foreign currency. No, she said, far from it. He had explained that he could get this watch through into Georgia without much difficulty, and back at home there it would be worth many times its value here. So he had invested almost all his winnings from the chess tournament in the watch.
I felt tempted to put down my book, switch off my light, and thus demonstrate what I thought of this revelation. But I stopped myself. I certainly didn’t want to drive her into a corner, but nor could I just stand by in silence as she was drawn further and further into the toils of a deceiver, blindly approving of anything he did.
After a pause, I said that if Ninoshvili had been in such a hurry to invest his money, then he was obviously thinking about going home. Some time or other his visa would run out; I wasn’t sure how long it would be valid. She s
aid nothing. Looking at my book, I asked, “Do you know?”
She said, “His visa’s been extended by four weeks.”
I looked at her. “Doesn’t he need an invitation for that?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then who did he get it from?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then met my eyes. “Me.”
She said of course she ought to have told me before. But she shrank from the argument that would probably have been inevitable, and there she could understand me very well. However, she had hoped, and still did, that in a week or so Ninoshvili would be able to sign a contract for a reasonably good sum, and then set straight off for home. He was already almost ill with longing for his Matassi, she said. So she had hoped that we wouldn’t have to discuss this point.
I said nothing. Once again she became talkative, swamping me with details that I hadn’t asked for and that didn’t matter at all now, since she had already taken her decision without asking my opinion.
David had got the invitation for the first thirty days of his stay from Dr B. Unger, head of the Lyra publishing house. But Dr Unger had held out false hopes; he hadn’t wanted to take on one of David’s manuscripts at a good price, and after David gave him a piece of his mind about that, Dr Unger obviously lost interest in the idea. Anyway, he declined to extend the visa.
David was desperate, because of course he couldn’t ask one of the other publishing firms with which he was negotiating to see to that formality without exposing his own inadequacy, and then he would feel even worse. So she said she’d go to the local Foreign Citizens Office and Foreign Office branches with him, and provide the necessary signatures. It was only a formality. As long as he could stay with us, the Georgian Cultural Ministry’s travel fund would be enough to keep him going, and if he were to fall ill she had sensibly taken out insurance, no problems there, and it had cost only a few pfennigs.
I said nothing for a long time. She took my upper arm and shook it slightly. “Christian. Don’t you understand? Ought I to have said no, go away, clear off home, you’re a nuisance to us?”
I said perhaps I understood more than she thought. I wouldn’t even be surprised if it turned out next that our guest had asked for asylum and was planning to spend the winter with us waiting for the decision to come through.
“Are you crazy?” she said. “I told you he wants to get home as soon as he can. He’s tired of this country and the humiliations he’s had to put up with here. He’s sick with longing for home and his Matassi.”
I put my book down and switched off my lamp. She lay where she was, glancing sideways at me, then looking at the quilt. After a while she put her arm over her eyes.
Chapter 56
Manni Wallmeroth is being excluded from the school. The staff meeting held today took an unexpected turn. I hadn’t seen it coming.
I gave my account of the incident, emphasizing that Manni had come to me of his own accord, and there he had shown sense that did him credit, but I had stuck to my original line, arguing for Manni’s exclusion. The fact that if I didn’t I’d have had to eat my own words and come off my high horse, as Elke put it, had nothing at all to do with this judgement of mine.
Indeed, if I’d shown myself flexible here, I’d have been sadly short of evidence. I’d have had to give reasons why I wanted to allow an exception from the rule in the case of a certain student, and why this one in particular, and such a volte-face would have impressed no one, nor would it have done Manni any good.
However, the really crucial reason why I stood firm was that I thought I could afford it without doing much damage.
I was certain that the meeting would vote against Manni’s exclusion from the school, and I was ready to swallow my defeat.
But against my expectations, the discussion became more and more heated, it acquired a fateful dynamic that I couldn’t influence any more, even if I had retreated from my position in short order. I don’t know if it was because of the article that appeared in the local paper, which must have drawn its facts from a well-informed source—don’t ask me which source. The article—and Herr Heuberger had obviously been unable to stop its publication—cited Manni’s slogan word for word, and raised the question of whether the right-wing radicalism that has not yet made any appearance worth mentioning at our school was now gaining a foothold there too.
It didn’t surprise me that Frau Schacht, still resenting her broken chair leg, said at once that she entirely agreed with me: Manfred Wallmeroth must be excluded. But Frau Jellonek, who ought to know that a Christian is supposed to show mercy at all times, was also on Frau Schacht’s side, and even Philippovich wanted to see Manni Wallmeroth excluded.
I could have understood him if we’d been talking about a girl, since in his view we had too many girls at the school anyway. But Philippovich even brought up, as an argument against Manni, the boy’s strong enthusiasm for masculinity, the brute force he had shown when he tipped over the classroom cupboard, with his fellow student Lehmann inside it, in a manner liable to endanger life.
I was placing my hopes on Elke Lampert and motherly Frau Fasold, who both fought valiantly for Manni. But my optimism was in vain. The meeting closed with a majority of only three above the quorum necessary for the exclusion of Manni Wallmeroth, but it was three all the same. Elke left the staff room without looking at me.
I felt wretched for the rest of the day. Everything sickened me, most of all supper with my family and our long-term guest. I listened to the conversation going on around the table as silently as Ralf. I wasn’t interested when Julia announced that tomorrow evening, Friday, she would be late home because, after a long absence from the lawyers’ regular evening get-togethers, she thought she would go again. And it left me entirely cold to hear that on the same evening Ninoshvili had an appointment at the Lyra publishing house with the head of the firm, Dr Unger, with whom, according to Julia’s account, he had fallen out.
When Julia sat down in front of the TV set with Ninoshvili after supper, I said I had a headache. I went back to my study for while and then went to bed. I was still lying awake, but pretending to be asleep, when Julia, stepping cautiously, came into the bedroom late, undressed in the dark and got into bed.
Chapter 57
As soon as I was home from school this afternoon, I immersed myself in essays by my class of students who aspire to study German at university. It was a kind of escape strategy. I was looking for some peaceful area which I still ruled, and where no one would venture to cast doubt on my authority.
The class had taken the news that Manni Wallmeroth was being excluded from the school with curious stillness. I had feared they would involve me in discussion, and I’d tried to prepare for that. But no one asked if it was really necessary to throw him out, no one wanted to know if I was the person responsible.
They even kept quiet when I asked André Grothe there and then if he was prepared to take Manni’s place in the part of Benvolio. Even André, who so far had not been particularly interested in the drama group, didn’t fool around but just said okay.
Perhaps they were still too upset by the news. I don’t know what they may come up with over the weekend. The question was still on my mind for some time after I got home. But after an hour I managed to concentrate on the essays. My work was getting somewhere.
I heard Ralf come in and felt an urge to ask him into my study at once and impress it upon him, yet again, that he mustn’t try pitting his strength against Ninoshvili, whatever plan he may have thought up for that purpose. But I postponed the conversation, although it still seemed to me urgent. I didn’t want to abandon my occupation with something I understood, something that required meaningful activity on my part, instead of just having people pull the wool over my eyes.
I stopped when, in Günsel Özcan’s paper, I came upon the remark: “Although Herr von Briest may seem to us unjust and harsh, he is still a good father.” I was just wondering what she meant by this sympathetic judgement of Eff B
riest’s father in Fontane’s novel, when there was a knock. Ralf opened the door. He stood there holding the handle, jerked his head in the direction of the top floor, and asked, “Can you come up with me? Quickly, please.” I got to my feet and followed him.
He opened the spare-room door, went in, stopped in front of Ninoshvili’s leather suitcase and looked at me. Then he lifted the lid of the case and folded it back. He reached in and pushed aside the shabby knitted waistcoat. Underneath it lay the folder with the stamp of Julia’s law firm on it. He opened the folder and picked up the copies of Ninoshvili’s manuscripts. An application form for political asylum came into view, and with it a leaflet entitled Regulation of Rights to Asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany. The form hadn’t been filled in yet.
“Wasn’t the case locked?” I asked.
“Yes, but I got the locks open.”
“Are you out of your mind, Ralf ?”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry, he won’t notice.” He put his hand in his trouser pocket, brought out a small skeleton key and showed it to me.
The phone rang. I said, “Lock that case again at once! And get out of this room!”
I went down to my study and picked up the receiver. It was Erika. “Hello, Christian dear!” she said. “It’s me, Erika. I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I thought you might be alone at home at this time of day.”
Before I could stop her, she was telling me she’d been going to ring me ever since Monday, but something had always got in the way of it. And for the first few days she’d been too angry as well, although of course that hadn’t been my fault. Anyway, she wanted to tell me she had been very sorry to have to leave without saying goodbye to me.
I didn’t need to ask why she’d been so angry, she went on. She was sure I’d believe her when she said she’d have liked to hold me lovingly in her arms again, but on the Saturday Julia had simply thrown her out of the house, she’d said to her face that she couldn’t move back into the spare room because David would be needing it for some time to come, and if she wanted to stay any longer Julia was afraid she’d have to find a hotel room.
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