They rode in the gondola, and both of them perceived it as a coffin, as they glided along the little canals with their hands on the black, lacquered wood. They sat side by side like the lovers of a thousand descriptions, and they both perceived it at the same time, and they both separately started for the other seats in the middle and upset the balance of their craft, which began to wobble violently. They looked at one another as they laughed. Once again, Friedrich attempted to fathom what was going on behind the smooth oval of her forehead [oh, how he would have liked to place his hand over it]. He knew nothing of the torment of her last days in the foreign city, but he sensed: She is all alone in the world now. In her face exhaustion from her train journey mingled with the excitement of having arrived and the stimulus of the new place. Might he not cover it with his kisses—it was more alabaster pale than the faces of the young sailors on the train to Rome—the brow, the eyes, the mouth? He watched her he stretched out on the floor of the gondola, and he was bent over her, breathing in her breath, and he wished the journey would never end.
The flowers in her room were a further reason to look away. Was he expecting thanks? Sibylle was angry because he indicated through signs what she already knew. "I would have come even if you hadn't called me," she said, and then she regretted having said it. She saw the shadows settle round Friedrich's eyes. She saw him striving to keep an expression of friendly equanimity on his face.
"See that bridge?" he said. "That's Shylock's bridge." Why did he say that? Who cared? Was it his way of luring her over to the window, to have them both looking out onto the canal, so that he could be cheek to cheek with her, and feel her hair, without them having to look at each other?
They made small talk. They exchanged observations. Sibylle filled her lungs, became alert and radiant; she was taking to Venice. They walked through the alleys, stood on bridges and squares, in cool courtyards, they felt the beauty of smooth pillars, ate in small tucked-away restaurants overlooking the small canals, drank strong black coffee in the sumptuous hall in St. Marks Square, and, where their imaginations were fired by a masked ball, they were tempted to dance. Days they spent in this way. In the mornings, they played at getting lost. They plunged out of the hotel into the tangle of serpentine alleyways, and tried to keep going in the same direction. They passed through lanes and courtyards that were so narrow that their shoulders brushed against the damp masonry on either side. Then Sibylle would walk in front of him. Seen from behind, she was a boy. He loved having her near enough to touch. After wandering for hours, they sometimes reached the edge of the city. The ground fell away steeply. Ahead of them was the lagoon. It was a visible frontier. Beyond, an abstract geometrical rectangle, was the cemetery island. Gondolas ferried the coffins across from the mainland. The steamer wailed a warning that did not interrupt the sleep of the dead.
Gradually, Friedrich and Sibylle came to hate Venice. If they were to avoid the assault, the horrible nakedness of its ending, then there was only the piazza with its cafés, its tourists, its brazen waiters, postcard sellers, and tour groups outside the garish fairground of St. Marks. Sibylle took against the pigeons, referring to them as "overfed gluttons." She favored the cats. She would go up to them wherever she saw them, and told them of a campaign they should mount one morning, all the cats of the city together, to storm the piazza in an almighty phalanx and eat up the pigeons. Friedrich would sometimes go into the church, while Sibylle stayed outside and returned the glances of the officers—who would ceremonially carry their polished sabers in front of them in black or blue or gray cloth—with such calm, seriousness, openness, and frank appraisal as to confuse and terrify these cavaliers. Friedrich no longer prayed. Full of revulsion, he watched the tourists fill the nave with their field glasses and cameras. He turned to look at the choir. In their low seats sat old men—white, crumpled ancients with red caps on their bald heads—mumbling their litanies. They too were among the dead of this city. Could they help him? The place was infected by the chill of dead hearts. The patterned tile floor had been worn concave by the knees of innumerable worshipers who had long since departed this life.
Once, they crossed the lagoon to the Lido. They rented bicycles and bowled along the promenade behind the beach and the bathing huts. Sibylle seemed to float on the shiny metal. She flew in front of him, and he gave chase. He would catch up, but then she would craftily give him the slip once more. They tumbled breathless onto the sand, in the midst of a group of bathers who, in spite of the early season, had already ventured out. They were a mixed company of young people, playing gramophone records in the sun, and they extended a jolly welcome to Friedrich and Sibylle. The pleasant wistfulness of English dance tunes seemed especially thin and delicate against the beat of the waves. The boys and girls danced together on a wooden pier. They laid their brown arms round their hips, in stark contrast to the white of the bathing suits. The girls pressed themselves against the boys. Sometimes one would throw her long arms around her friend's neck, while he spun her round in a circle, till she dropped on the sand with a breathless squeal. Friedrich and Sibylle had the same thought. Why could they not join in? They didn't dare hold hands, they knew it was an impossibility. They leaped up, as though they'd seen a ghost, and without saying good-bye, hurriedly pedaled off.
The past was brushed over. They didn't talk about it. Sibylle didn't mention Fedor or Magnus, the cabaret or the foreign city. Friedrich didn't mention Anja. They tried to exist like two people who happened to have run into each other in Venice. There was a wall of glass between them. It was only in the evenings that it sometimes became a little thinner. Then they would go upstairs, laughing about the hotel manager who, in unctuous front-of-house fashion welcomed Sibylle with an "I kiss your hand, Madame." The manager liked Friedrich and Sibylle. He treated them with the respect that two young people deserve, [he was touched by them] who, for the sake of appearances, he thought, and out of nervousness, rent two rooms instead of just the one. Each time he bade them good-night, it was with benevolence and irony. He would have liked to spread his arms over them in benediction like a priest. Sibylle was laughing herself silly. Friedrich laughed as well. But in his heart he wasn't laughing. Bedtime followed a long-established routine between them. Sibylle was shown up to bed. Once she was under the blankets, in her realm, it was forbidden to sit on the bed. Friedrich had to draw up a chair, and read her a fairy tale. "Another one," she would say when it was over. "Another one, please, I want another one," and she reached out her hands imploringly, and he wasn't allowed to seize them. They were always the same fairy tales. Sibylle had heard them when she was little. She lay there and dreamed. Friedrich had already devised a technique that permitted him to read the story and gaze at Sibylle at the same time. Her face was never lovelier than in these dreamy hours before sleep. Friedrich loved that hour, loved reading aloud, and loved the fairy tales, because he loved Sibylle. He read her to sleep. After the third fairy tale, she would be away. Her breath had fallen into the lovely easy rhythm of her nights. Her nose pointed to him; her mouth pouted, and between her lips there was a shimmer of white teeth. He watched her breathe. Her throat rose and fell. Her blood pulsed. Nothing in the world to Friedrich was as lovely or desirable as Sibylle's face asleep. For seconds at a time, though, when the thirst for her lips overcame him, he would hate her; but her sleep was sacred. Was it not in his keeping? Friedrich was afraid Sibylle might wake if her lips felt the touch of his. He was afraid of her scream. Her horror that would wash over him. Above all, he feared betrayal. Only after hours spent watching did he leave her room, feeling utterly reduced.
His room was below. It was the identical room. His bed was below her bed. He knew when he lay on it that he was directly underneath her. Why did God not answer his prayers? His body burned in the sheets. The bed was in flames. He was a man on a spit. Gone out of her room, out of her sleep, he damned himself for not being a beast. He talked nonsense. He yelled up at the ceiling. It remained immovably gray white. Had Sibylle not come to
him? Had she not been sent to him? She was destined for him, wasn't she? But, because she had come instead of being seized, she enjoyed the protection of the laws of hospitality. He came up with these antique notions, at which the whole planet would have laughed. His devil in her guise had come to call.
Sibylle awoke. Was that the door? Was someone in the room with her? She thought she heard footsteps and the sound of someone breathing by her bed. Was it Friedrich? Sibylle didn't dare put out her hand; she was afraid of the dark, dangerous space over the bedclothes, where it might be seized by unseen hands. Did she want any confirmation of that? She lay there, listening. There was nothing to be heard. She knew: Friedrich is in his room downstairs. She knew: He is lying under me, unable to sleep, and his love is trying to drill through the ceiling and the floorboards. She knew: He is on fire. The blood fled from her lips; they grew pale; the blood shrank back into the heart. She felt her face turn chill. A river of ice crept under the blankets; it flowed over her throat, across her breasts and belly, and she felt it moving further down, covering her skin with little goosebumps and freezing her thighs. What if she went to Friedrich now? The thought mustn't be spoken out loud. She pressed her lips together so hard that her mouth was like a dam. The teeth bit into her flesh, and she tasted the salty, teary taste of blood, and felt a brief, thin stream trickle down her chin. I'd sooner let my blood flow than scream! She had a sense of bright blood. She would have liked to look at herself in a mirror, to study her face, to scrutinize its every pleat and fold, all its planes and elevations, but her arm didn't trust itself to go on the short journey from its cave under the bedclothes to the switch of the little lamp on the bedside table. Sibylle saw she had made a mistake. The mistake was to have come here. But whom else could she have turned to, if not to Friedrich? She thought about Bosporus, and knew that she could only have gone to Friedrich. She missed him when he was far from her. He was the person who belonged to her. Did she love him after all? No, no, no, she did not! But when she wasn't forced to see: He loves me, he's suffering [even though she needed the feeling that Friedrich loved her], perhaps she loved him then. "I see him looking at me, and it kills him," she said to herself, and then she hated him. Was it her fault that he loved her? Did she intentionally cause him to desire her? Once again, she wished she could have a mirror and light. Like all young women, she sometimes had a dreadful feeling that she was growing old and ugly. She knew that on the day Friedrich failed to notice her, on that day she would be old. She longed for him to come; she was sorry now that there was no one in the room; but she also thought: If he does come, he'll look at me, and I won't be able to stand being looked at. Why wasn't she an animal, a bird, a cat, a small dog, just some animal that he liked? In those nights, she thought she could have slept with any man off the street, only not with Friedrich. She thought: There will be another great Flood, and everyone will die; only Friedrich and I will be spared. And she saw two figures pursuing one another. They ran after each other shouting, on a green, blue, and brown globe that spun round on an axis, just like the globe in geography class at school.
After such nights, they were both tetchy and irritable. Since each was expecting an attack from the other, they both reacted oversensitively, like delicate instruments, to every sound they thought they heard. Their speech became coarse and aggressive.
"Stop staring at me," cried Sibylle. "Take your hand off me!"
"Who would want to stare at you," Friedrich shouted back, and he spluttered over the sarcastic laugh he tried to produce.
Sibylle was writing a letter to Bosporus: "It's impossible for me to stand Friedrich any longer. It's just impossible."
Friedrich took the letter to post it. While she'd been writing it, Sibylle had worn her inscrutable expression. Did this letter contain the thoughts behind her brow? Did Friedrich at last have her thoughts in his hand? He saw himself in a mirror in a barber's shop, and he blushed. He hated the squalid and petty transgressions of curiosity, little landlady nosiness about the post of her lodgers. Friedrich had caught himself out. He despised himself. His red face looked swollen. The flesh round his eyes was all puffy. He went right up to the mirror. He asked himself: "How can anyone love me?" He inspected his hair. The people all around didn't bother him in the least. He lifted strands of it. Was it thinning already? Was he making a mess of his life by clinging so desperately to Sibylle? He was twenty-seven. The blood left his face again. It was thin and pale and no longer puffy. He walked on, and saw Sibylle's face like a white mask in front of him. What if she'd set down her secret and written out the wish that might animate the mask? Was the letter he was holding in his hand the thought behind her brow? Friedrich tugged at the paper. Perhaps he was seeing ghosts, perhaps his eye was deceived, perhaps she did love him after all and was merely caught up in some obstacle? Of course, she loved him, the misunderstanding must be set aside; Friedrich opened the envelope, and the letter lay open before his eyes under the green shade of the post office lamp: "It's impossible for me to stand Friedrich any longer. It's just impossible."
"She must die. She must die." He whispered the sentence to himself, in the way that simpleminded old people play the same thought over and over again. What was he guilty of? What had he done, what had he done to her? Didn't he do everything for her?
Didn't he live for her? Would he not give up his life for her? He clutched the counter. A man eyed him, curiously, inquiringly— maybe a doctor, maybe a plainclothes policeman. Friedrich let go of the counter. It sailed away from him. He staggered in a vast emptiness. The man supported him. "No!" said Friedrich. "I just need an envelope." He pulled a white envelope out of a dispenser, and, not disguising his handwriting, wrote out Bosporus's name and address. Then he put Sibylle's letter in the envelope, stuck it and stamped it and dropped it in the box.
At the counter for poste restante, he asked if some money had arrived for him. The official shook his head. "Niente," he said, "niente," continuing mechanically to sort letters into various files. Friedrich was on the street again, buying four large children's balloons from a vendor. One was blue, another green, the third was red, and the fourth yellow. Also, he bought fruit and some peeled almonds, because he knew Sibylle liked those.
She was happy, smiling, beaming, nibbling. Friedrich tied the balloons to Sibylle's bedposts. They hung in the room's still air like four moons. The almonds crunched behind Sibylle's lips, and he could smell their sweet fragrance. It's impossible for me to stand Friedrich any longer. It's just impossible. The lines felt as though they had been crammed down his throat. He felt full of them. His heart struggled to beat past them.
"What's the matter?" asked Sibylle.
"Nothing," he replied, "nothing," and he tried hard to imitate the indifferent expression of the postal employee automatically sorting mail.
He was quite certain: I don't hate her. He didn't curse her; he cursed the sinister powers of dark forces. Where was the transgression? What was he being punished for? "I love you! I love you!" he said suddenly. He screamed it to her. She sat on a chair, and looked up at him.
They had spent all the money they had, and didn't have a penny left for food; all the houses suddenly put their kitchens on show and sent sizzling sounds out into the streets, and spicy aromas. The sun covered St. Mark's Square, and the bells on a hundred clock towers chimed noon. Sibylle and Friedrich covered long and pointless distances. Friedrich drilled his toe into the stone slabs of the square. He was choked with shame and rage, and he felt like digging his way into the earth. Was Sibylle hungry? He felt as though his skin was pierced by thousands of needles. The pigeons hovered just over their heads in a dense swarm. A man in a cap scattered corn for them. The camera shutters clicked and clacked. Sibylle and Friedrich didn't say a word. They looked coolly off into the distance, like superior people who take their meals late, and like to stroll to work up an appetite.
And as they walked, it happened—after a long time, and they were standing before the lagoon facing the Lido—that the silence be
tween them had grown so huge that it filled the canopy of the sky quite to bursting. And then Friedrich said: "Little Sibylle." And he stopped at the foot of a bridge and saw the water of a canal flowing into the lagoon, and he saw how young and beautiful she was, a fine, courtly figure on the quay next to the water's edge, a line of shadow in the bright air that was worth more to him than any and all air, and he took her and held her in his arms and kissed her, in the full bustle of the roadway, full on the mouth. He tasted something he couldn't quite place, it brushed his lips, he inhaled its fleeting fragrance, an aroma of almonds and sea air, and it was happiness. He looked into Sibylle's face. It was so near that he could feel the fluff of invisible little hairs on her skin, but so far that he could see it entire, round and full. It was perfect. A face without any flaw. Her eyes were open wide, her gaze calm and fixed. He felt her life. He held it wrapped in his arms. He could lift her up into the light. It all took a fraction of a second, and he was flooded with the miraculous.
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