“It’s thawing again,” said Martha. “Today my cough is much less harsh.”
Franz thought for a moment and said: “Yes. But there are still some cold days ahead.”
“Possibly,” said Martha.
When they entered the empty house, Franz had the impression they had returned from a funeral.
8
She began teaching him obstinately and fervidly.
After the first embarrassments, stumblings, and perplexities, he gradually began to understand what she was communicating to him, doing so with almost no words of explanation, almost entirely through pantomime. He gave his full attention both to her and to the ululating sound which, now rising, now falling, accompanied him constantly; and already he perceived, in that sound, rhythmic demands, a compelling meaning, regular breaks and beats. What Martha wanted of him was proving to be so simple. As soon as he had assimilated something, she would nod silently, looking down the while with an intent smile, as though following the motions and growth of an already distinct shadow. His awkwardness, that feeling of having a limp and a hump, which tormented him in the beginning—all this soon disappeared; instead, the erect poise, the specious grace and pace she was teaching him enslaved him totally: now he could no longer disobey the sound whose mystery he had solved. Vertigo became a habitual and pleasurable state, an automaton’s somnambulic languor, the law of his existence; now Martha would gently exult, and press her temple against his, knowing that they were at one, that he would do the proper thing. While teaching him she restrained her impatience, the impatience he had once noticed in the flash and flicker of her elegant legs. Now she stood before him and, holding up her pleated skirt between finger and thumb, she repeated the steps in slow motion so that he might see for himself the magnified turn of toe and heel. He would attempt a scooping caress but she would slap his hand away and go on with the lesson. And when, under the pressure of her strong palm, he learned how to turn and spin; when his steps had finally fallen in with hers; when a glance at the mirror told her that the clumsy lesson had become a harmonious dance; then she increased the pace, gave her excitement its head, and her rapid cries expressed fierce satisfaction with his obedient piston slide.
He came to know the reeling expanse of parquetry in huge halls surrounded by loges; he leaned his elbow on the faded plush of their parapet; he wiped her powder off his shoulder; he saw himself and her in surfeited mirrors; he paid predatory waiters out of her black silk purse; his mackintosh and her beloved moleskin coat embraced for hours on end in the darkness of heavily laden hangers under the guard of sleepy cloakroom girls; and the sonorous names of all the fashionable ballrooms and dancing cafés—tropical, crystal, royal—became as familiar to him as the names of the streets of the little town where he had dwelt in a previous life. And presently they would be sitting out the next dance, still panting from amorous exertions, side by side on the drab couch in his dingy room.
“Happy New Year,” said Martha, “our year. Write to your mother, whom I certainly would like to know, that you are having a splendid time. Think how surprised she will be later … afterwards … when I shall meet her.”
He asked: “When? Have you fixed a deadline?”
“As soon as possible. The sooner the better.”
“Oh, we mustn’t dawdle.”
She leaned back on the cushions, her hands behind her head. “A month—perhaps two. We have to plan very carefully, my dear love.”
“I’d go mad without you,” said Franz. “Everything upsets me—this wallpaper, the people in the street, my landlord. His wife never shows herself. It’s so strange.”
“You must be calmer. Otherwise nothing will work out. Come here.…”
“I know it will turn out wonderfully,” he said, pressing against her. “Only we must make sure of everything. The smallest mistake.…”
“Oh, how can you doubt, my strong, stout Franz!”
“No, of course not. God, no. Oh, my God, no. It’s just that we have to find a sure method.”
“Fast, darling, much faster—don’t you hear the rhythm?…”
They were no longer coupling on the couch but foxtrotting among gleaming white tables on the bright-lit floor of a café. The orchestra was playing and gasping for breath. There was among the dancers a tall American Negro who smiled tolerantly as one passionate pair bumped into him and his blonde partner.
“We’ll find it, we must find it,” continued Martha in a rapid patter in time to the music; “after all, we are within our rights.”
He saw her long sweet burning eye, and the geranium lobe of her little ear from beneath her sleek bandeau. If only he could glide thus forever, an eternal piston rod in a vacuum of delight, and never, never part from her.… But there still existed the store, where he bowed and turned like a jolly doll, and there still were the nights when like a dead doll he lay supine on his bed not knowing whether he was asleep or awake, and who was that, shuffling and two-stepping, and whispering in the corridor, and why was the alarm clock jazzing in his ear? But let us say we are awake, and here comes bushy-browed old Enricht bringing two cups of coffee—why two? And how depressing those torn silk socks on the floor.
One such blurry morning, a Sunday, when he and Martha in her beige dress were walking decorously about the snow-powdered garden, she wordlessly showed him a snapshot she had just received from Davos. It showed a smiling Dreyer, in a Scandinavian ski suit, clutching his poles; his skis were beautifully parallel, and all around was bright snow, and on the snow one could distinguish the photographer’s narrow-shouldered shadow.
When the photographer (a fellow-skier and teacher of English, Mr. Vivian Badlook) had clicked the shutter and straightened up, Dreyer, still beaming, moved his left ski forward; however, as he was standing on a slight incline, the ski went further than he had intended, and with a great flourish of ski poles he tumbled heavily on his back while both girls shot past shrieking with laughter. For a while he could not get the damned skis uncrossed, and his arm kept going into the snow up to the elbow. By the time he got up, disfigured by the snow, and put on his snow-crusted mittens, and cautiously began to glide down, his face bore a solemn expression. He had dreamed of performing all kinds of Christianias and telemarks, flying downhill, turning sharply in a cloud of snow—but apparently God had not willed it. In the snapshot, though, he looked like a real skier, and he admired it before slipping it into the envelope. But that morning as he stood by the window in his yellow pajamas and looked at the green larches and the cobalt sky he reflected that he had been there two weeks, and yet his skiing and his English were even worse than the previous winter. From the snow-blue road came the jingle of sleighbells; Isolda and Ida were giggling in the bathroom; but enough was enough. He remembered with a pang of pleasure the inventor, who must already be at work in the laboratory set up for him; he also remembered a number of other entertaining projects connected with the expansion of the Dandy store; he pondered all this, took a look at the snowy slope crisscrossed with shiny ski tracks, and decided to depart for home ahead of time leaving his girl friends to their own devices, which were not negligible; and there was another amusing thought that he deliberately kept in the back of his mind: it would be fun to come home unexpectedly, and catch Martha’s soul unawares, and see whether she would let escape a radiant smile of surprise or meet him with her usual ironic morosity as she certainly would if warned of his arrival. Despite his keen sense of humor, Dreyer was too naively self-centered to realize how thoroughly those sudden returns had been exploited in ribald tales.
Franz ripped the photo into little bits which the wind carried across the wet lawn.
“Silly,” said Martha, “why did you do that? He’s sure to ask me if I pasted it in the album.”
“Some day I’ll tear up the album too,” said Franz.
An eager Tom had come running toward them: he hoped Franz might have thrown a ball or a pebble but a rapid search revealed nothing.
A couple of days later Frieda was
allowed to spend the weekend with the family of her brother, a fireman in Potsdam and the brightest Rembrandtesque gleam in her gloomy light. Tom was compelled to spend more time than usual in the gardener’s quarters next to the carless garage. Martha and Franz, yielding to the agonizing desire to assert themselves, to be free, to enjoy their freedom, decided, if only for one evening, to live as they craved to live: it was to be a dress rehearsal of future happiness.
“Today you are master here,” she said. “Here’s your study, here’s your armchair, here if you want is the paper: the market has rallied.”
He flung off his jacket and sauntered through all the rooms as if reviewing them upon returning to his own comfortable house from a long and difficult journey.
“Everything in order? Is my lord happy?”
He put his arm around her shoulder and they stood side by side before the mirror. He was poorly shaven that evening, and instead of a waistcoat had put on a rather casual dark-red sweater; there was something homy and quiet about Martha too. Her recently washed hair did not lie smoothly, and she wore a woollen jumper that was unbecoming but somehow right.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bubendorf. You know, once we were standing like this, and I was sure you’d kiss me for the first time, but you didn’t.”
“I’m now an inch taller,” he said with a laugh. “Look, we are almost the same height.”
He sank into the leather armchair, and she sat in his lap, and the fact that she had gained weight and was quite bottom-heavy made things all the more cozy.
“I love your ear,” he said, lifting up a strand of hair with a nose-wrinkling horse-nuzzle.
A clock began chiming gently and tunefully in the next room. Franz laughed softly.
“Imagine if he were suddenly to come in now—just like that.”
“Who?” asked Martha. “I don’t understand whom you’re speaking about.”
“I mean him. If he should come home all at once. He has such a stealthy way of opening doors.”
“Oh, you are speaking of my late husband, oh, I see,” said Martha in a smoky voice. “No, my deceased was always a man of precision. He would let me know—no, no, Franz, not now, after supper, perhaps. I think he meant to be an example to his little wife, who otherwise might visit him—I said no—without warning in that little room with the couch he has at the back of his office.”
Silence. Matrimonial well-being.
“The deceased,” chuckled Franz, “the deceased.”
“Do you remember him well?” murmured Martha, rubbing her nose against his neck.
“Vaguely. And you?”
“The red fur on his belly and—”
In atrocious, disparaging and quite inaccurate terms she described the dead man’s private parts.
“Pah,” said Franz. “Don’t make me throw up.”
“Franz,” she said, her eyes beaming, “no one will ever find out!”
Well accustomed by now to the idea, by now quite tame and bloodthirsty, he nodded in silence. A certain numbness was invading his lower limbs.
“We did it so simply, so neatly,” said Martha, slitting her eyes as if in dim recollection, “not the merest shadow of suspicion. Nothing. And why, sir? Because destiny is on our side. It could not have been otherwise. Remember the funeral? Piffke’s tulips? Isolda’s and Ida’s violets bought from a street beggar?”
He mutely acquiesced again.
“It was during the final thaw. We had forsythias in the bay window. Remember? I was still coughing but it was already a soft wet delicious cough. Ah, getting rid of the last thick gob.”
Franz winced. Another pause.
“You know, my knees are getting sort of tired. No, wait, don’t get up. Just move over a little. That’s right.”
“My treasure, my all,” she cried, “my darling husband. I never imagined there could be such a marriage as ours.”
He passed his lips along her warm neck and said:
“Isn’t it time for us to lie down for a bit, eh?”
“What about some cold cuts and beer? No? Okay, we shall eat afterwards.”
She rose, leaning hard on him as she did so. Then she stretched herself.
“Let’s go up,” she said with a contented yawn, “to our bedroom.”
“Is that all right?” asked Franz. “I thought we’d do it here.”
“Of course not. Oh, come on, get up. It’s already past ten.”
“You know.… I’m still a little scared of the deceased,” said Franz, biting his lip.
“Oh, he won’t be coming for a week yet. That’s as sure as death. What’s there to be scared of? Little fool! Or don’t you want me?”
“Oh, I do,” said Franz, “but you must cover his bed; I don’t want to see it. It would put me off.”
She turned off the lights in the parlor and he followed her up an inner staircase that was short and creaky; then they passed through a baby-blue corridor.
“Why on earth are you walking on tiptoe?” exclaimed Martha with a loud laugh. “Can’t you understand—we’re married, married!”
She showed him the mangle room which she used for her Hindu-kitsch exercises, her dressing room, his and her bathroom, and finally their bedroom.
“The deceased used to sleep on that bed there,” she said. “But of course the sheets have been changed. Let me put this tiger rug over it. So. Would you like to wash or something?”
“No, I’ll wait for you here,” said Franz, examining a soft doll on the night table.
“All right. Undress quick and hop into my bed. I have a great need.”
She left the door ajar. Her pleated skirt and cardigan were already lying on a chair. From the toilet across the corridor came the steady thick rapid sound of his sister making water. It stopped. Martha passed into the bathroom.
He suddenly felt that in this cold, inimical, unbearably white room where everything reminded him of the dead man, he was unable to undress, let alone make love. With revulsion and fear he gazed at the next bed.
Then he strained his ears. He thought he heard a door slam downstairs followed by creeping steps. He darted to the corridor. Simultaneously Martha came out of the bathroom stark naked.
“Something’s happened,” he said in a spitting whisper. “We’re not alone any more. Listen to that noise.”
Martha frowned. Wrapping herself in a negligee, she went down the corridor and stopped with her head bent sidewise.
“I’m telling you!… I’ve heard.”
“I too had a bizarre feeling,” said Martha in a low voice. “I know, darling, you are terribly disappointed, but we’d better not go on with this madness. It won’t be long now. You’d better go. I’ll come tomorrow as usual.”
“But if I meet somebody downstairs?”
“There’s no one there, Franz. Here, take my keys. You’ll return them tomorrow.”
She accompanied him as far as the main staircase, still listening. Now she was as puzzled and upset as he.
Oh! Down in the hall harsh bangs resounded. Franz stopped, clutching at the banister, but she gave a laugh of relief.
“I know what it is,” she said. “That’s the downstairs toilet. It sometimes bangs at night if there is a big wind, and if you don’t close it well.”
“I’ll admit I was a little frightened,” said Franz.
“All the same, you’d better go, darling. We mustn’t take risks. Close that door in passing, will you.”
He embraced her. She let herself be kissed on a bare shoulder, drawing back herself the lace of her negligee to grant him that farewell treat. She remained standing on the landing of the theatrically illumined blue staircase until with a winky-winky he was gone.
A strong clean wind hit him in the face. The gravel path crunched pleasantly and securely beneath his feet. Franz inhaled deeply; then he cursed. She was so sinful and beautiful! She made him feel like a man again. Why was he such a coward? To think that a specter, a cadaver, had turned him out of the house where he, Franz, was the real master
! Muttering as he went (something that happened to him rather often of late), he walked swiftly along the dark sidewalk, and then without looking right or left began diagonally crossing the street at the place where he always crossed it on his way home.
A taxicab’s horn, nasal and nasty, made him jump back. Still muttering, Franz turned the corner. Meanwhile the taxi braked and uncertainly pulled up to the curb. The driver got out and opened the door. “What number, did you say?” he asked. No answer. The driver, reaching into the darkness, shook his fare by the shoulder. Finally the latter opened his eyes, leaned forward. “Number five,” he replied to the driver’s question. “You’re a little off.”
The bedroom window glowed. Martha was arranging her hair for the night. Suddenly she froze, still with raised elbows. Now she heard quite distinctly a loud clatter as if something had fallen. She darted toward the stairs. From the front hall came peels of laughter—familiar laughter, alas. He was laughing because, having turned awkwardly with the long skis on his shoulder, he had dropped one of them while knocking off with the other the white brush which flew up like a bird from the looking-glass shelf, after which he had tripped over his own suitcase.
“I am the voyageur,” he cried in his best English. “I half returned from shee-ing!”
The next instant he knew perfect happiness. There was a magnificent smile on Martha’s face. Oh, no doubt, he was pretty to look at, tanned, trimmed by gravity, shedder of at least five pounds (as if Martha and Franz had already started to demolish him), but she was looking not at him: she was looking somewhere over his head, welcoming not him, but wise fate that had so simply and honestly averted a crude, ridiculous, dreadfully overworked disaster.
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