“What’s that, Wilhelm? You knew what? You mean that you yourself had already taken Berta into consideration? Well, I’m not at all surprised! When Wilhelm promises something, he comes through. It’s no coincidence that you and I have the same name—no coincidence! We are simply one heart and one soul, right to the very end.”
And Wilhelmine, who so relished stripping every hint of subtlety, every ambiguity from a conversation, felt her pulse race, and her eyes, her mouth, and the wings of her nose quiver, so that her well-nourished face suddenly flushed with an autumnal beauty. And it was only after she’d given Wilhelm a full dose of this Indian-summer glow that she decided at last to take note of his struggle with the breadcrumb.
“Wilhelm! Were you choking on something?” she exclaimed thoughtfully, once he had coughed it out.
“No. No,” Wilhelm said, then hacked again, dried his eyes with a napkin, ran his right hand over his prematurely gray hair, hacked once more into this same hand, which he was now holding out in front of him, trying to bring his perturbation to an end as gracefully as possible and to thereby recover the self-restraint proper to a self-possessed man of the sort who faces life’s many ups and downs without fear.
“It was nothing,” he said, and with a gracious, singularly discreet nod of the head, he acknowledged the last-but-one interjection of his Wilhelmine, whose morning mood, cheery though it already seemed to be, no doubt held plenty of room for improvement: “I agree with you entirely!”
After a long pause in the conversation, he proceeded: “You know, Wilhelmine, at first I did have the impression I was choking on something. Now, however, it appears I must have been mistaken.”
And Wilhelm went out and picked the most beautiful rose from the rosebush to underscore the solemnity of this 13th of January, 1963, and he passed it with a smile to his bride, who could do nothing but giggle virginally, coquettishly, blushing: this was how touching it was to her.
“You shouldn’t have, Wilhelm,” Wilhelmine gasped. “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” She interpreted Wilhelm’s smile, and the gesture that accompanied it, as absolute submission to her plan, albeit with an “if” and “but,” an “on-the-one-hand” and an “on-the-other.” Her sordid ulterior motive, the slightly indecent exhilaration she felt in connection with the idea of at last paying Berta a visit, all this she kept prudently to herself.
And so Wilhelm’s failure to speak up had at least been successful in staving off Wilhelmine’s ill humor. Over the course of that afternoon, and even right there at the table eating lunch, he concocted many new ideas, some remarkably good ones, for managing the coming visit as painlessly as possible. Yet somehow none of these ideas made the prospect seem better or the pain less inevitable: there was no getting around the menace in Wilhelmine’s words.
“You’re perfectly right, Wilhelm. Your suggestion is an excellent addition to our plans for our third anniversary. Really, a lovely thought. A remarkable thought. After all, something has to be done! It has to! It has to! We can’t just think of ourselves, Wilhelm. We can’t act as though Berta’s already dead and buried!”
A MAN, A WORD, AND THEN YOU’RE LOST
Ward 66 was equipped with a cage. This cage divided the left-hand row of beds visible from the door into two sections.
Before Berta Schrei lost her voice, she often used to say, “A man, a word, and then you’re lost. But still, Little Mother, if I may be allowed to speak,” and she would reach out with her twitching crone-hands toward the cage bordering her bed, looking at the old woman with bulging eyes—eyes in which fear, indeed raw dread, was flickering—and would speak further only when the old woman granted her permission with a nod.
“Don’t I have pretty wallpaper? Little Mother, I know. I know. A man, a word, and then you’re lost. I know I shouldn’t speak. But, I mean. If I might be permitted to make such a remark, does the Little Mother agree?”
Each time, the old woman would nod graciously.
“Yes. Yes. Pretty wallpaper,” Berta would say, staring enraptured at the bars of the cage around her. At that, the old woman would praise Berta’s observance, and express her pleasure that Berta was beginning to gain control of the dreadful specter of her morbid imagination. And this was yet one more reason for the Little Mother to give Berta her blessing, and so she did give her blessing to her dear Berta.
Basking in the glow of this blessing, Berta would murmur to herself at short intervals the lesson she had drawn from life: “A man, a word, and then you’re lost.”
WILHELMINE, THE MODEL BOOKKEEPER
It was in one such moment, as a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta was striving to conjure up some more beautiful truth for her cage, that Wilhelm and Wilhelmine, entering the courtyard of the fortress where she was held, crossed paths with a distinguished man of around fifty with a half-bald head, hamster cheeks, and little pig’s eyes.
Wilhelm, the chauffeur, removed his hat with the utmost reverence, and blood rose into his cheeks.
Confounded, Wilhelmine cried, “What are you …?” She couldn’t resist gawking a bit at the little half-bald orb approaching.
“This is the Distinguished Dr. Primarius Gottfried Trimm,” Wilhelm whispered, looking imploringly, if not quite with outright horror, at his wife, who in general had little understanding of social hierarchies.
“Aha,” Wilhelmine said, adding: “He’s a bit of a porker.”
“Wilhelmine!”
“Or does he have a glandular condition?”
Wilhelm squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and stared at Wilhelmine, feeling a prisoner to his destiny.
“Wilhelmine,” he said, and then, as if not even he believed that his words would have any effect: “He is a highly distinguished man.”
“And what’s that to me?” Wilhelmine hissed.
They stood perplexed in the courtyard of the fortress, with Wilhelmine pointing first to its northern wing and then to its eastern one.
“Berta is either there or there. She has to be around here somewhere. Wait! I’ll ask the good Dr. Primarius.” And Wilhelmine turned in the direction of the parking lot. Suddenly, Wilhelm became a man; his doubting and brooding compulsion vanished entirely; he grasped Wilhelmine by the arm and said, “That is out of the question. That I will not accept.”
So much resolve puzzled Wilhelmine and gave her pause.
“Don’t drag me around like that.”
“Leave him in peace. He doesn’t like to be spoken to while he’s thinking. And he’s almost always thinking.”
“So he’s a busy sort, then?”
“He visits the countess even more than her own daughter does. And listen up, Queen Penny-Pincher … Even when he’s busy all month long making his rounds among the rich and famous, he still meets one-on-one with his brother-in-law, and his brother-in-law is my estimable employer, whose tips are as bountiful as my salary is meager. And that’s one plus you’re in danger of minusing, dear Queen Penny-Pincher!”
“Fine. Fine,” Wilhelmine said morosely, and: “Don’t make a speech about it! How am I supposed to know what goes on in some bigshot’s head!”
Wilhelmine had a guilty conscience.
And, having just had her distinction as Queen Penny-Pincher called into question, she changed the subject: “We need a plan, Wilhelm! We can’t just both barge in there. You have to break the news about us to Berta as considerately as possible. Berta could be capable of anything, we don’t know what state she’s in. Give me a sign as soon as you’ve cleared everything up.”
But then: Wilhelmine was filled with anxiety. What if Wilhelm couldn’t find the right words and his ineptitude made Berta more distraught? What if Berta was already so far gone that she would no longer even understand what Wilhelm said to her? Indeed, it was a thoroughly heroic decision, her letting Wilhelm go in there alone, and hopefully Wilhelm would know how to appreciate the gravity of the responsibility she had conferred on him. Hopefully! Staying here, chained like Prometheus, waiting and hoping that Wilhelm
would act reasonably despite the absence of her prudent guidance was a burden that could hardly be borne. Still, better that than having to hear another word about this Trimm and his tips! This “distinguished” personage who wandered about so deeply involved in his “important” problems that Your Lowliness, Trimm’s brother-in-law’s chauffeur and Come-hither-boy, dare not so much as utter a word to him, even here on the public grounds of Berta’s fortress!
In summary: Distinguished Dr. Primarius Gottfried Trimm headed for the parking lot; Wilhelmine headed for the courtyard, yanked first one way and then another by all sorts of misgivings; and Wilhelm headed into the fortress, still full of the hope that something unforeseen might occur and save him from having to drain this cup of sorrow.
I WAS COMPELLED TO COME UP HERE
And thus Wilhelm Schrei came skulking in, decked out in his Sunday best, with a bouquet of light pink roses, following on the heels of Head Nurse Gotaharda, who felt bound by duty to commemorate this highly unusual event: Ward 66 had a visitor. “Berta, my dearest child, do you know what the Head Nurse has for you today? You don’t? But it’s visiting hours, isn’t in Berta? And still you don’t know?” These were the words of this angel of angels, her baroque face beaming with those glorious feelings of triumph that sometimes fill people in the know when they have a chance to lord their secrets over their faintly hopeful, warily ignorant victims.
As Wilhelm Schrei sought out that forgotten face, he smiled soft and meek, and thought to add a pinch of embarrassment to his smile: “Forgive my coming here!” he was attempting to say, but without weighing down his declaration with words. “I just couldn’t do otherwise. I was compelled to come up here!” The smile he actually produced, however, when he finally found Berta Schrei, was a trifle softer, a trifle more embarrassed, as if to beg her pardon for being there at all.
Sitting on her bed, twirling her thumbs, Berta dared to look up briefly, only to drop her head in shame and twirl her thumbs more frantically while a very faint pink colored her cheeks.
And Wilhelm had a feeling he had often felt before: as if a hot and hazy pall of smog had gathered above the city of Donaublau, then sunk slowly down into the ravine between the houses of Allerseelengasse, as if wanting to settle in there for good.
WILHELM AND THE PALL OF SMOG OVER THE CITY OF DONAUBLAU
Wilhelm had long compared this pall of smog with a hippopotamus: “A spiteful beast that just has to come to rest right where I’m standing, lying, sitting, or walking! It’s trying to crush me with its tonnage!” he would yammer, and his imagination deluded him into believing this hulking hippopotamus really was stampeding toward him. Sleepless, he would toss and turn, sit up in bed, shout in terror to his Wilhelmine, who would be snoring away rhythmically. It usually took a number of formidable shoves to wake her, and then she would dismiss Wilhelm’s fears as more or less unmitigated gibberish.
“Wilmerl! Call the doctor! My little bride! I need help! Do you hear me! I need help! Wake up now!”
He’d gasp for breath, feel the heavy beat of his heart, which struck him as strangely irregular. It galloped like a startled racehorse, and he thought for a moment it would leap from his ribcage unless he kept his hand firmly pressed over the obstinate beast; if not, he would lose his best racehorse—his only racehorse, as it happened, so that its loss would be existentially catastrophic.
And yet no sooner had he managed to calm himself through this downward pressure of his hand than his heart would begin decelerating, beating slower and slower until it was barely detectable, and then, it seemed, vanishing completely.
At this stage of Wilhelm’s valiant struggles to stave off death, his wife would generally rouse herself and express her opinion on the matter, a bit impatiently, though not without a certain kindness: “Look, it’s not complicated. It’s the humidity, that’s all. Wait for the rain to come, then you’ll feel all better. You’re not going to die every time.”
Die: that was the operative word.
Wilhelm’s teeth began to chatter, his body to tremble; even the springs in their marriage bed started to quiver, and hefty Wilhelmine was rocked back and forth, just like a boat over choppy waves—as she noted to herself, with less bewilderment than irritation. She snatched at the small lamp on her nightstand, determined once and for all to snuff the life out of Wilhelm’s ridiculous fears. And indeed, as soon as the room was filled with the lamp’s soft half-light, Wilhelm left off with his chattering and trembling.
Once, Wilhelmine had dared to take a boat trip with Wilhelm on the lake, and on that occasion she’d become ill, as she soon alerted him, shouting, “Wilhelm dear! I’m seasick! I can’t take this constant rocking back and forth! The boat, Wilhelm dear! The boat is tipping over! I can’t swim! This is just horrible! Are you trying to do me in? This rocking has got to stop! Right now! Turn back right now!” It seemed she had a strong aversion to back-and-forth rocking of any sort—and thus she felt great relief in these moments as well when the rocking of her bed came to an end.
And yet no sooner had he gotten used to their bedroom, and grown calm again in the veil of half-light, than Wilhelm began to worry about the shadows cast by the dresser, the mirrored vanity, and the rubber plant, which filled the room with their ghostly apparitions.
Then Wilhelm’s chattering and trembling started up even more insistently than before.
WILHELM, THE SMILER, DISCOVERS TO HIS RELIEF THAT HE IS AN AVERAGE CITIZEN
But he knew what was and was not proper behavior in public, and so the brave Wilhelm who struggled valiantly against death in the nighttime remained a secret known only to his Wilmerl, while in Ward 66 there now stood a shell of a man wiping dollops of sweat from his forehead with a large white handkerchief before pushing it laboriously back into his pocket, then taking it back out immediately to extravagantly blow his nose. Once this nose-blowing procedure had been brought to an end, he turned his attention to his head of gray hairs, which he used his newly freed hand to smooth over, at which point there arose the possibility of tugging at his ear, at his nose, and then at his ear once more.
He had the feeling there was something about this place that restricted his musculoskeletal options. And so he gave up on his fidgeting and settled on a single, unassailable declaration: “I’m here, Berta. Yes. I’m here.”
He laid his hand on his heart, though he didn’t dare press down firmly in public. Berta giggled, embarrassed, and glanced over at him, and he thought that if it weren’t this particular place—and on January 13, 1963—he might be justified in supposing that a heavy, hazy pall of smog really was bent on choking the life out of him. In view of the place and time in which he’d found himself, however, it seemed unlikely some sudden rain would blow in to save him, to clear the air and fill him with renewed cheer and well-being. On the other hand, who knows? There was surely much more between heaven and earth than an average citizen like Wilhelm could ever imagine.
Ever since stepping into Ward 66, Wilhelm’s brain cells seemed veiled in a thick waft of fog, so that he could make out his thoughts only vaguely, and he had to proceed slowly and carefully, feeling them out, to be able to tell one from another at all. He resolved to restrict his thoughts to a level appropriate to the circumstances, to concentrate his energies, like a chauffeur driving in the fog who has to focus his attention on the oncoming cars: on seeing them for what they are, on not drifting too near them, on recognizing trees in the roadside shadows, concrete dividers in the spectral darkness, on knowing the median isn’t just a harmless fringe, to grasping, above all, that what surrounds him is real space, not some sort of vacuum, as the fog would prefer him to think—to the extent that a fog prefers anything—and to understanding that this material world is more resilient than he, so that failing to respect it, approaching it with arrogant recklessness, incautious stubbornness, or dogmatic inflexibility, would be extremely dangerous.
Wilhelm, the smiler, discovered to his relief that he had been, was, and would remain an average citizen. He loo
ked at Berta and thought to himself, “Am I a murderer? Am I a suicide? Both, even? No, I’m a chauffeur, a chauffeur above all else. My task is clear. I steer the car from one place to the other without putting myself, my passenger, or anyone else in unnecessary danger.”
WILHELM, THE CHAUFFEUR
Wilhelm, who had always compensated easily for the errors of other drivers and the behavioral abnormalities of pedestrians, animals, and suchlike, to the benefit of all parties concerned, was praised at times by one or the other of the gentlemen he steered through the city’s maze of streets—or even hundreds of kilometers into the countryside—and this praise would plunge him into deep uncertainty.
The question being, ought he to heartily accept or somehow disparage this praise of his automotive prowess? “Yes, it’s true, I’ve still never once had so much as a fender bender, nor have I caused anyone else to have a fender bender, or anything of the sort. You see? I am neither a suicide nor a murderer. I am a chauffeur. My duty is to preserve and protect the lives of distinguished gentlemen by means of my humble talents.” Then would come an unassumingly bashful smile, and thus would he parry the praise of the powerful business attorney Dr. Ulrich Reichmann, whose importance Wilhelm would often emphasize with the words: “For every five pages he writes, he’s earned 100,000 schillings!”
There had been a time when Wilhelm labored under the erroneous assumption that a good attorney must go to court as often as possible if he wants to make any money. Under his current employer, the great landowner and industrialist Mueller-Rickenberg, Wilhelm had also come to concern himself for the spiritual condition of his passengers—but back when he worked for Dr. Reichmann, he had once tried to express his admiration for that man’s professional accomplishment, only to be curtly interrupted with the observation: “A good attorney never stands before the court.” Wilhelm had not failed to notice the soft reprimand in Dr. Reichmann’s voice.
The Weight of Things Page 2