A Man in Love

by Martin Walser

  “How so?” I asked.

  And you said, “When I disagree, I walk faster than when I agree.”

  And I said, “Since you always contradict me, we never need more than 430 steps.”

  And you said, “I had the impression that you’ve been too seldom contradicted in your life.”

  Then I had to remind you of the enemies of my theory of colors.

  And you, quite sharply: “Forgive me, Excellency, for momentarily forgetting to think about your theory of colors.”

  “It’s absolutely unforgiveable,” I cried, infected by your high spirits.

  And then you said, with only apparently playful imperiousness, “Change of topic!”

  And I, in the same tone, “Coward!”

  You almost came to a standstill, but in any case, turned completely toward me and said, “When you make me so addicted to submission.”

  Then I said, “Ah, Contresse Levetzow.”

  “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” you said. “Now I’ve said it four times and you can leave it out four times today.”

  How could that not make me happy, Ulrike! It was the most drastic revival in my life. Returning to life, I wrote to Zelter, the only person I can tell everything to. Almost everything. A postscript apropos the theory of colors: You are the only person, Ulrike, who has ever gotten me to be jocular on the subject.

  Weimar, December 18, 1823

  Dear Ulrike,

  Yesterday I was rudely interrupted. She barely knocked before she burst in. She ran over and scattered a few bits of paper onto the table. Paper with writing on it. Right behind her, little Walther, crying because his Mama had taken away what he was playing with. He had carefully torn up a sheet of paper and was going to make something out of the pieces. You could distinguish: a ship, a tree, a church, a house. He was going to paste them onto something and then color them. Still crying and blaming his mother, he managed to explain that much. I had no need to put the pieces back together. One glance and I knew what they were: a little poem I’d written down a few days ago. I’d been looking for it, hoping it would fall into my hands again. As we know, a house doesn’t lose things, not this one anyway, especially not something like this. Here’s how the poem goes:

  Her lovely face by day and night

  I constantly recall.

  She thinks of me, I think of her—

  And it does no good at all.

  At first, Ottilie was incapable of uttering a word. She stood there hissing, pale as a candle and stretching her arms out toward me, half threatening and half begging. At last, she managed to utter two words: “Tartuffe. Lier.” As soon as she got that out, the dam was broken: “Hypocrite. You play the great renunciant for us and in reality you’re writing little poems no better than a nineteen-year-old.” And more in the same vein. As often, her last words were “You impossible person.” I’m gradually beginning to take pride in that. I said, “Come, Walther.” He came over to me. I asked him what he was going to make. “Weimar in winter.” That made sense, because despite the writing on them, the scraps were white. I always keep some paste in my drawer, so he and I pasted together Weimar in Winter. We pasted the scraps so the writing still showed, but in a way that created a new text. Walther already knows how to read, of course. Later we added a church and houses and a boat. The scraps said “day and night … good at all … she thinks … of me … her lovely face … to recall.”

  Ottilie had screamed her parting, “You impossible person,” and left the room. She saw us engaged in sensible pasting. Walther was proud of his work, and rightly so. When I was alone again, I wrote down the poem I could no longer consider “little” since that’s what Ottilie had contemptuously called it. And I read it to myself sotto voce:

  Her lovely face by day and night

  I constantly recall.

  She thinks of me, I think of her—

  And it does no good at all.

  How could I have misplaced, no, lost that sheet of paper? Now she knows what’s going on again. Now all day long, no matter if I again play the sensible, even-tempered person, the patient participant in everything, the Sage of Weimar—that simple poem has betrayed me. I must be allowed to write such a thing, mustn’t I? I can’t destroy myself by swallowing my feelings. But then … then I must be careful, much more careful. I’m living in enemy territory. Chancellor von Müller, the only one with whom I can sometimes, in a late-evening chat, come close to the truth about the state I’m in (although he too marvels at how well I’ve gotten over everything!)—Chancellor von Müller sometimes tells me what’s still flitting around in the way of conjecture and rumor. The rumors are fading, he says. What he means is: we can be content. But I cannot spare you the most recent thing he told me, since I found it almost moving. Caroline von Wolzogen, the sister of Schiller’s widow and one of the worst of the Carolines, tried to put it about that if Goethe really wanted to take in that young Levetzow girl but couldn’t get her past Ottilie, then she—Caroline von Wolzogen—would be more than happy to put up the Levetzow girl at her house. She was obviously ready to take into account that she would thereby become the center of interest for the educated world.

  I must really not forget that what I stared at longest in your letter were the last four words. They have burned themselves into my soul. They shine forth day and night as soon as I cast the least thought in your direction, and what a lovely sound they make: “Your devoted friend, Ulrike.”

  I could write them down a hundred times and read them aloud a hundred times and each time differently. Why don’t you come and test me, count the times since you are unsurpassable in counting. And what aren’t you unsurpassable in! Your devoted friend, Ulrike. People who laugh at me for not being able to forget you, know nothing about you. They think I’ve lost my mind over such a young person. For them, it’s no more than a comedy by Iffland. Because they don’t know the Contresse Levetzow! Don’t know her rich repertoire of answers, of disagreements! When I think of our conversations, I know that I had never before experienced the like of them, being either challenged or worshipped. You, Ulrike, you, you—as far as I am concerned, you were born so that I could lose myself in another person and experience how that person gave me back to myself, happy. And am I never to see you again? We must not believe that, you and I. Herr de Ror or no Herr de Ror … I must close, otherwise … Ah, Ulrike! Could you please supply me with the opposite of one of my pronouncements: If one cannot despair, one doesn’t need to live. The opposite, please, Contresse Levetzow. Is it: If you don’t need to live, you can despair? Is that true, Contresse? That was the point I had reached yesterday. On the point of despair. And I noticed—I have to admit it—that my hands were trembling. And there is no trembling unless the fellow without a first name has four actors throwing their trembling hands into the air. And I heard those brief little screams coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t just my hands trembling—I was trembling up to my shoulders, and from my shoulders it reached for my neck. I raised my hands, put them on Stadelmann’s shoulders as if they would get better there. Stadelmann had come in. Perhaps my brief little screams had gotten too loud. But I couldn’t leave my hands lying there. I put my arms around Stadelmann, laid my head on the big man’s chest (he must be over six feet tall), and wept. And hoped he wouldn’t notice. “Excellency,” he said. He led me into my room and put me into the Egloffstein armchair. I needed to let the pain drain off, the pain that was moving from my shoulders into my arms and down my arms into my hands as far as my fingertips. It was not the flow of a fluid but the tug of something immaterial, something, however, that produced a most pronounced physical effect, namely, pain. A hot weight remained for I don’t know how long in my arms and hands. I feel it. I swear I do.

  The final words remain: Your devoted friend Ulrike. And: You impossible person.

  So I will believe Ottilie, dearest Ulrike, and will also close this as Your impossible person. How could I stop writing to you, dearest, when except for you, nothing exists. And you don’t exist. Ecco. But now
there is a New Covenant, the Covenant of the Elegy. Its members are Ulrike von Levetzow, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Carl Zelter, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

  Chapter Five

  SINCE HE HAD received one letter from Ulrike, he waited every day for another. Which had to be even less noticeable than all the other things he kept secret. Whenever he heard Stadelmann or John coming with the mail, he immediately took a piece of paper and began writing so he wouldn’t have to pay attention to the one bringing the mail. At the most, he indicated with a gesture where to put the letters. The frozen sea between people. Luckily, we know nothing about one another. When the letter finally arrived, he saw the lavender blue envelope immediately. He also knew he shouldn’t open the letter. He knew she couldn’t write him the only thing he wanted to read. But he also knew she would always write everything she possibly could. Everything beautiful, good, with the promise of happiness, everything in place of happiness. Ulrike always went further than she ought. She was full of love. She certainly was. It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t write, Tomorrow I’ll come and put my arms around your neck and whisper something fresh, naughty, wonderful into your ear! So please, no criticism of Ulrike! Don’t forget: Your devoted friend Ulrike. When a young woman with a weakness for machines writes something of the sort, she knows what she’s writing. Every day that he waited for the next letter, he had imagined what would be in such a letter. He had fooled himself into thinking he was prepared for anything. Another October 31st wouldn’t come again. It’s simply not fate’s way to send the same blow twice, so he could feel safe from a second October 31st. And what he had received from Ulrike since then was soothing, healing. At least that’s how she meant it. Your devoted friend Ulrike.

  Although he knew perfectly well that one can never know anything ahead of time and that the reality will always outstrip everything—even what one could only guess at—he was once again taken completely by surprise. He could not have guessed what he learned from the letter. Ulrike is now wearing jewelry. An emerald on a golden chain. A deep green emerald that echoes and darkens her eyes. A gift, but not only in the de Ror sense of the word, no, a real gift. A gift she could not refuse because he hadn’t given it to her forever, but only to try out. She is supposed to wear the stone—or try wearing it—and the next time he comes through Strasbourg, he’ll ask for her opinion. Then they’ll see. Let’s wait and see. What can she do if she doesn’t want to be deliberately impolite? And she doesn’t want to be. He didn’t deserve that at all, the passionate jewelry-monger. He gives the impression that it actually pains him to look at a woman wearing no jewelry. Actually, at the latest by the age of twelve, a girl’s desire for jewelry should awaken. But no norm is universally applicable. However, if a woman is approaching twenty and the desire for jewelry is still slumbering, then it’s the duty of her friends and relatives to put her abstinence to the test. That’s how the conversation went, for a while in the presence of her mother and the count. Let’s not forget that he had particularly bewitched her mother with his mocha gift. Yes, it was the genuine, one hundred percent mocha coffee, specially purloined by his connections directly from the harem of the Egyptian pasha, not yet mixed and blended but selected bean by bean. When her mother drank some she nearly swooned with delight.

  Then the jewelry-monger requested a solo audience, which was granted him more by her mother than by her. Probably because he’d said that when a young woman had such an outstanding model as her mother (and not just vis-à-vis jewelry), then a kind of delay in the natural wish for jewelry was quite understandable. He did not speak in a loud voice. He wasn’t exactly presumptuous, he was more pensive. But he never stopped talking. You had to experience it: he can’t help himself. He has to say that. For her sake. The whole time he kept his eyes on her, observing or perhaps just inquisitive. Obviously ready to discover something, for example, the effect of the talk that was fed by his observation. So it was unfortunately impossible to simply rebuff so much benevolent attention, for example with her wonderfully well-practiced, brusque announcement on the promenade: Change of topic! Impossible for her, she had to concede. But the apostle of jewelry hadn’t deserved to be insulted, either. He really had a talent for amiability and could make one feel he had nothing but good intentions. A certain someone was already practically a grown-up woman, and no woman in her circle between Constantinople and London runs around with a bare neck and naked ears. In any case, she is soon due to appear at the debutante ball in Vienna and must be ready to answer a hundred questions about her abstinence. And so on and so forth.

  I was thinking of you the whole time, Excellency. That is, listening to him I was with you. Goethe had been her great master of conversation for forty-nine days—yes, with his permission she had counted them—for forty-nine happy days she had learned how to talk as others learned how to ride, learned it from him, and so far there was nothing she had ever learned that was so beautiful and so important, so fulfilling, so utterly moving, so enhancing. As for riding, back home at Trschiblitz Castle my bay is waiting for me. We can clear hedges and ditches and feel like a veritable autumn windstorm—I knew how to ride long before I wanted to learn how to read. And now she could both ride and speak. She was in excellent health, she said. When midnight had passed, Herr de Ror had indeed offered his second first name, another name she was not allowed to tell anyone else until she bore his entire name in the light of day. That’s where she called Stop and refused to honor a contract she had not signed, which was being imposed on her without her consent. He seemed to be insulted. One confidence deserves another, he said. And so on and so forth. All that to-do about first names was so lacking in substance that she should never have starting telling Excellency about it. But although she had promptly raised an objection, the apostle of jewelry—who then promoted himself to an apostle of life—had put her in such a state with his first-name hocus-pocus that she’d like to know how to extricate herself. But how? Indeed, she now felt herself bound by the so-called confidence into which he had drawn her without asking permission. Especially since he again seemed upset and spoke of a disappointment he had experienced that had almost cost him his life. He couldn’t go through that a second time. It had been a betrayal of trust that had brought him to the brink of his existence. And so on and so forth. Now Excellency certainly knew more than she did since Excellency was utterly wise and from his distance could register everything much more calmly than she, buffeted as she was by a whirlwind. Yes, she did feel buffeted. If that was so-called life, she didn’t know whether she wanted to participate in it yet. Although there was a sort of adventurousness about it, too, which was—if her feelings weren’t deceiving her—not entirely unpleasant. She hadn’t worn the emerald in public yet. She had tried it on, but only when she was by herself. She couldn’t say anything about it yet. In any case, in color, size, and setting the stone was understated. But according to the apostle of jewelry, its style was comparable to the emerald worn by the Duchess of Devonshire. It had become apparent to her that the entire jewelry offensive had been planned by her mother and Count Klebelsberg. Klebelsberg had just given her mother a chain with Bohemian garnets that she could wrap four times around her neck, the stones more black than red, and along with it two equally heavy, equally blackish-red chains of garnets as bracelets and equally dusky earrings. The count is somehow involved in a garnet mine in Brux and has threatened to bury her under a load of jewels, too, perhaps as an engagement present. She understands: her mother wants to get married, but not with a grown-up daughter in her entourage. So Ulrike, begone! Put some jewelry on her and send her off to the debutante ball. That has certainly occurred to the count. And Herr de Ror is top of the line. A gold-edged future. But that’s all for now, and in the hope that he can hear her calling—as she often does—Ehhhhhxcellency. And then once again: Your devoted friend Ulrike.

  He knew at once that this salutation was now worth nothing. Her torrent of jewelry talk had invalidated everything. Nothing was left. Now he had been expelled to
where he belonged, whence he should never have allowed himself to be lured away. But how was he supposed to have known, in those thousands of moments, that it was all nothing. Nothing but … but what? Stop it. There is nothing to understand, nothing more to rehash—where did I go wrong? From what point on …? Throw it away, throw everything away, including yourself. No set phrases, thinking only about what you should do now. It’s all just words—words begone! Concealment, nothing else. You are in enemy territory, to expect to produce anything is all in vain. You are the renunciant as never before, you have nothing to broadcast but renunciation! Not loudly, but quite softly, quite wisely, as it should be, the great renunciant, the noblest cultural edifice in Germany, Europe, the entire world, a model of renunciation for ages to come. All the unfortunate should look up to you as to a constellation: here is how to deal with enormous pain, you see, so that the pain is pain no longer, does not hurt anymore, a smile, a cultural grimace that makes your face more beautiful. Pain is an occasional poem, not too light, but much lighter than the elegy. The elegy stays in the safe. Of course, it hurt. Now that it’s over, completely over, you can admit that it hurt, since it’s all over, it may even have hurt a lot, it depends on its being over, over, over, over. Above all, you must see to it that the news reaches her! She has to see that you are not a writhing worm. It should make her feel better to see that the old fellow has gotten over it. Together you were summer theater. It hurt him—a nice touch that it hurt him. It would have been even better … but he’s gotten over it. He has renounced, is even rewriting his journeyman novel, again with the subtitle The Renunciants, but now so that everyone can see how renunciation works: Let man be noble, useful, and good. And if things go wrong, a god gives him the power to say what he’s concealing … no wait, not that …