“It’s all boring,” Lenz says. He turns her, turns her again. “Ennui,” he says.
“I pretend we’re Earth,” Iris says. “I’m the Western Hemisphere, and you’re the east. We revolve in a circle as we rotate around the room.”
Lenz glances to the center of the circle. “That makes Frau Geist the sun,” he says. This is very funny if you’ve ever seen Frau Geist, and they snicker through a few more turns.
Before the dance ends, Lenz has made two requests: one, that the next time they’re partnered, he gets to be the Western Hemisphere, and two, that Iris marry him. All the other boys are doing it—proposing—although what one does after one becomes engaged, he’s not entirely sure.
Iris seems not to know this game at all. “I’m too young,” she says, frowning, perplexed.
He rolls his eyes, though he, too, is perplexed. Improvising, he says, “Not now. Later.”
“When?”
He does some calculations. “Eighteen eighty-six,” he says. He’ll be seventeen, done with gymnasium.
“But what about university?”
“I’m not going. I’m going into my father’s business.”
She says, “I meant moi. What if I want to go?”
None too gently, he apprises her of the fact that girls can’t go to university. She shakes her head. She knows all that, she says. But her father says the rules will change by the time she’s sixteen, and if they don’t, her father says, well, then, by God, the two of them will change them.
“All right,” Lenz says. “We won’t get married until after you finish university.”
“Ça va,” she says.
The music stops. They’re back to the spot on the floor where they began. He bows. She curtsies. Frau Geist applauds. Lenz leans over to the couple nearest them, the second shortest boy, the second shortest girl. “Iris and I are engaged,” he confides.
“Good show,” says the boy.
When Iris returns home, she announces her betrothal at dinner. “That’s it,” her father says. “No more dancing for you.”
1879–1881
From the essay “A Word about Our Jews” by Heinrich von Treitschke, professor, historian, deputy to the Reichstag, and archconservative:
Year after year, out of the inexhaustible Polish cradle there streams over our eastern border a host of hustling, pants peddling youths, whose children and children’s children will someday command Germany’s stock exchanges and newspapers. . . . What we have to demand of our Israelite fellow citizens is simple: they should become Germans. They should feel themselves, modestly and properly, German.
From the pamphlet “Another Word about Our Jews” by Theodor Mommsen, professor, classical scholar, Nobel laureate, and ultraliberal:
Remaining outside the boundaries of Christendom and at the same time belonging to the German nation is possible, but difficult and risky. . . . He whose conscience does not permit him to renounce his Judaism and accept Christianity will act accordingly, but he should be prepared to bear the consequences. . . . The admission to a large nation has its price. It is the Jews’ duty to do away with their particularities. . . . They must make up their minds and tear down all barriers between themselves and their German compatriots.
From the mind of Lenz Alter, age twelve: Where’s the problem? Everyone’s taking sides, von Treitschke versus Mommsen, but it seems to Lenz the two men are in agreement. Yes, it’s true that von Treitschke hates the Jews, while Mommsen only suspects them, but they both advocate the same solution: hatred and/or suspicion will vanish if the Jews become truly, completely German. What’s there to debate, then? Where’s the disagreement? Where’s the conflict?
And given that both of these men, respected and learned men, German patriots, agree that what the Jew must do to become truly German is simply give up Judaism—well, Lenz doesn’t understand why it hasn’t already been done. En masse, as a celebration, a festival. Has a less onerous task ever been asked of a people? It’s not as if he or his father or his uncles or any of the Jews he knows use their Judaism for anything.
Heinrich and Lenz sit at the polished walnut table in the dining room, draperies drawn, observing their usual prandial silence. The new housekeeper sashays in, seventeen if a day, her soup tureen held low by her hip as if she’s a milkmaid coming in from the cow barn. Heinrich observes the excessively long and somewhat perilous arc of her ladle as it carries the hot broth from tureen to bowl. He’s wondering if he should correct her form when Lenz unexpectedly speaks.
“I have a question of philosophy and conduct,” he says.
“Do you?” says Heinrich.
“Oh, my,” says the housekeeper.
“I’ve been wondering, given the general consensus that two of my three fathers cannot happily coexist, which of those two should I please: Chancellor Bismarck or God?”
“I thought Bismarck was God,” the housekeeper says. Heinrich, who likes his housekeepers quiet and reverent especially vis-à-vis Bismarck, decides he will fire this one later that evening. As it turns out, though, after dinner he’ll become distracted rereading his Mommsen and will forget all about her. Then one thing will lead to another, and within a year he and the housekeeper will be married, and Lenz will have a stepmother a mere five years older than himself, which will require extensive revision to the fantasies he’d been enjoying since she arrived.
“It’s not a matter of either/or,” Heinrich says. “In this house we stick to our own flag. You’re a Prussian Jew who does what I say. And thus do your fathers coexist.”
It’s not until the next evening that Heinrich suddenly puts down his knife and fork and says, as if no time has passed since Lenz brought it up, “I’ll say only this and I’ll say it only once. Convert, and you no longer have this father.” He picks up the utensils again, attacks his dinner, the only violence life allows him.
The man who practices nothing of his faith clings to it nonetheless. It makes no sense to Lenz; it never will. For now, though, he backs down. “I didn’t say I was going to convert,” he mutters. What he wants to say, but can’t, not yet, is that if he converts, yes, he may lose Heinrich. And of course this Yahweh he’s heard so much about but has never really been introduced to—he would also go by the boards. But Lenz wouldn’t be completely orphaned. He’d still have the best of the lot.
Sometimes we picture it carved into the bark of a tree:
Otto von B. + Lenz A. = true luv 4-ever.
1890
From the article “Appropriate Dress for Dancing the New Knickerbocker” by Alan Dodsworth, Dancemaster:
Many ladies are wearing the instep skirt for the evening dance, while others still cling to the long sinewy train. But those who wear the train for round dancing are advised to hold it up . . . for to drag a train around the ballroom endangers the life of the gown, not to mention the lives of the other dancers.
Death by ball gown. Iris Emanuel wants no part of it. Anyway, you just have to look at her to know she’s an instep skirt kind of girl. The abbreviated hemline, the show of her boot. It makes her look a little taller, a little bit slimmer. Not that she cares about that sort of thing. What she cares about is that the short skirts allow her to peek at her feet while she’s trying to master a new step at Frau Geist’s. She also enjoys the new fashion’s ability to offend the type of woman who clings to the train—Frau Geist, for instance.
“Charmingly! Delicately!” Frau Geist, elderly now and fatter than ever, still wears her garish yellows. She bangs the floor with a cane. “Daintily, daintily! And here comes the glide!”
“And here comes the groom,” whispers Iris’s dance partner, her sister Lily.
Iris looks to the door. There stands Lenz Alter in his Prussian blue reservist uniform, chest out, shoulders squared, head held high. Iris lets go of Lily’s waist so she can wave to him. She hasn’t seen him since he left for university three years before. After completing gymnasium, he’d gone to work in the dye factory, just as he’d told her when they were childre
n, where he’d implemented some sort of clever innovation that caused some sort of unmitigated disaster that resulted in the loss of a full day’s production of synthetic crystal violet. His father had fired him and sent him to Berlin, which was where he’d wanted to go in the first place. There he studied chemistry, but only for a single semester. Next he’d gone to Heidelberg, where he lasted a mere summer. Now he’s finally making something of a go of it at the Technical College of Charlottenburg.
Even before he left Breslau, Iris had run into him only rarely. At parties or concerts they flirted in the parlors of mutual acquaintances or in the lobbies of theaters, leaning against walls softened with velvet damask. They discussed politics and the sciences. He liked to talk Goethe—she had outgrown Goethe long before—but she’d been happy to listen, to ask the occasional question. Eventually, though, he would bow (exaggeratedly, facetiously), kiss her hand, and return to whomever he’d come with, a different girl every time, but always a girl prettier than Iris and simmering with jealousy in a corner.
He’s here on his own now, and only Lily’s simmering. Lily holds on to Iris firmly, twirling her overenthusiastically. Focusing on keeping her balance prevents Iris from breaking away and heading to Lenz at once. When the music stops, Lily takes Iris’s arm and escorts her to him, an attempt to control her sister’s pace. But there’s only so much Lily can do. “Unteroffizier Alter,” Lily says, nodding at him, setting an example, but Iris cries, “Lenz!” and that’s it for propriety and restraint.
He beams at her. He kisses her cheeks. He’s taller than she remembers, though he remains a short man. Still, she’s now the one who raises her chin to meet his eyes, which are deep brown with golden spokes, pretty enough to help her overlook his less felicitous features: the light brown hair already thinning and receding, but what’s left of it so densely curly it grows upward like a shrub; the bridge of the nose so broad, so prominent, so Jewish, that his pince-nez seem a size too small, ready any second to lose their grip and spring into the air.
She doesn’t mind his plain looks, though. She’s charmed by his enthusiasm, by how glad he is to see her. “This is the last place I thought I’d run into you,” he says. “I thought you were banned from dancing years ago. Just like a Catholic on Good Friday.”
“It wasn’t dancing our father minded,” Lily says. “He just didn’t like her coming home talking of marriage at the age of six.”
“I was seven,” Iris says before turning to Lenz. “You didn’t expect to see me here?” she says. “Imagine how I feel. I thought you were at Charlottenburg.”
Yes, he says, turning from Lily, focusing on Iris. Yes, his studies. He’s finding Charlottenburg quite stimulating, both intellectually and socially. Of course his earlier work at Heidelberg with Bunsen was even more exhilarating. Thrilling to work with the old man himself. And now he’s taken a year off from school to complete his military service. The same reserve unit Bismarck once belonged to, as a matter of fact. It’s been a wonderful experience, the reserves. Travel, opera, the theater. An amazing country, Germany. No other like it.
“Quelle chance,” Lily says, “that we all happened to be born in it.”
He’s in Breslau for a few weeks now, he says. He thought he’d come to Geist’s, pick up the latest steps, bring them back to Berlin.
“Really?” Iris says. “You think this is where all the new dances originate?” He smiles. She blushes. “Oh. You’re teasing.”
“Well, in any event,” he says, “here we both are again.”
“Quelle coincidence,” Lily says. She turns away, takes a seat along the wall, folds her arms across her chest, does the unthinkable because she’s not really thinking: she crosses her legs.
“Don’t mind her,” Iris says. “She was hoping to learn the New Knickerbocker, but she knows I’d rather dance with you.”
“Are you sure?” he says. “I don’t even know the old Knickerbocker.”
This turns out to be untrue.
Lenz Alter, age twenty-one, puts his hand on the waist of nineteen-year-old Iris Emanuel. For the rest of the evening they revolve and rotate around the aged and bloated sun that is Frau Geist, occasionally glimpsing the cold distant planet that is Lily, her petulance increasing their pleasure by making them feel as if they’re misbehaving.
Older now, Lenz has learned patience. This time he waits a week to propose.
Tears and torment! She’s in love with him, she tells Lily. He’s so charming, so funny. They have so much in common. Two nearsighted, secular, and, of course, intellectual Jews from Breslau with a passion for the sciences and a sum total of four left feet. But the timing’s all wrong.
“Bien sûr,” says Lily. “You’ve known him for only seven days.”
“I’ve known him all my life.”
“You’ve glimpsed him on the street all your life. Every now and then you’ve spoken to him for ten minutes or so, at which point he returned to a girl he preferred. But you don’t know him at all. And now he’s come back, showing off about Bunsen. If he’s so intimate with Bunsen, why did he leave Heidelberg? Because he’s not as smart as he’d have you believe. Also, did you notice he’s already losing his hair? Take my advice. A girl like you should marry a brilliant man with a full head of hair.”
She does turn him down, but not because of anything Lily has said. “You’ve still got another year before you earn your doctorate,” she says as they walk along the river. “You shouldn’t marry until you have it in hand. And certainly I’m not going to marry anyone until I have mine. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“Given that women can’t attend university at all,” he says, “am I to assume this is your polite way of saying you won’t marry me unless hell freezes over?” As if by way of illustration, the Oder itself is concealed under a thick layer of scarred ice.
She shakes her head. She declares herself an optimist and a reformer. “The hell that’s the current university system is going to freeze and crack any day now. You’ll see.” He looks skeptical. She frowns. “Aren’t you still liberal on this matter?”
“I never really was,” he says, “but I am still German, and as such I’m sufficiently confident in my own worth to have no fear of educated women.” Without a moment’s hesitation he stops walking and recites, “Ladies heed this pithy sermon / Ne’er will you best a manly German,” and she asks if he’s just made that up on the spot, and he admits that indeed he has, right that moment off the top of his head, that it’s a little hobby of his, the extemporaneous heroic couplet, and she laughs and has to bite the inside of her cheek until the urge to throw herself at him, to press herself against him, to insist he take her somewhere for immediate, immoral, impassioned gratification, subsides.
She’s embarrassed to admit it, but the truth is that even when it comes to sex and the amount of time she spends thinking about it, wanting it, needing it, she’s more like a boy than a girl.
The Gay Nineties
A year later Lenz Alter completes his dissertation. Of it he writes to a friend, “It was a pitiful effort, but they’d had enough of me by then, so we all sat around a large table drinking champagne and pretending I’d done a superb job.”
He’s awarded the PhD in chemistry. It’s May 1891. He’s twenty-two.
Iris, meanwhile, mopishly attends, and two years later disgustedly accepts her degree from the local teachers’ seminary. It’s May 1894; she’s twenty-three.
Friends stop her in the streets. “Have you heard the latest about your Doktor Alter?” they say. She says she hasn’t and doesn’t care to. They tell her anyway.
He’s in Berlin, unable to find a university position: a shame. He’s back in Breslau, unemployed after being fired again from his father’s dye factory: an incompetent. Now back in Berlin, where he’s been turned away from officer training school: a Jew. Now in a mountain sanatorium: a complete nervous wreck.
“You ought to visit him,” they say. Even Lily says this. Even Lily pities him.
Iris takes
long walks by herself in the cold. She drinks her father’s liquor. She picks up an old volume of Goethe. Somehow he has begun speaking to her again, so much so that when she combines these activities—the liquor and Goethe—she sobs a great deal. She has regressed: she’s undone anew every time young Werther kills himself. She thinks about becoming an authoress, of committing a few literary murders herself. But she writes nothing, not even a letter to Lenz. She’s afraid he may take any word from her as encouragement to propose again. She doesn’t want to risk breaking anyone’s heart yet again. Not his. Not her own. I’m a stoic, she thinks, and develops a habit of clenching her teeth, which leads to a habit of migraines.
Finally Lily brings home news. Lenz has converted to Christianity and—quelle coincidence!—the next thing you know he was hired by the University of Karlsruhe. Oh—and he met someone there. He’s engaged.
“Quel soulagement!” Iris says.
She sleeps for a week, then reads Die Leiden des jungen Werthers for the fifth or sixth time—an experiment that results, this time, in no tears at all. “Quel soulagement,” she says again, this time to her bedroom walls. “I’m finally over romanticism,” she tells the wall nearest her dressing table. “From here on, it’s nothing but the life of the mind.” The life of the mind, clenched teeth, headaches, and grim self-pleasure. She’s a modern woman.
A few weeks later—talk of coincidences—Breslau University begins accepting women.
Is there a catch? Of course there’s a catch. Women may attend classes only as nonmatriculating auditors. But that’s better than nothing, and Iris immediately takes and passes the rigorous admission exam designed for the women alone. She proceeds to audit classes year after year. It’s 1896, ’97, ’98. She’s twenty-five, she’s twenty-six, she’s twenty-seven . . .
It’s 1898, and she’s twenty-seven and still a virgin. She has a teaching diploma, but no interest in teaching. She has a job as a governess, but doesn’t like her young charges. She attends classes at the University of Breslau, but has to sit in the back of the room. “If you could please speak a little less frequently,” the professors say. “If you could please defer to the actual students.”
A Reunion Of Ghosts: A Novel Page 8