by Heinz Rein
Lassehn himself doesn’t understand that he wanted to convince this woman, he just shrugs and puts the newspapers back in his pocket.
‘I trust the Führer!’ Mrs Niedermeyer says. ‘We are too small to see through his intentions.’
Lassehn is close to exploding, but he doesn’t get the chance, because at that moment the door opens.
II
17 April
Of middle height, slender but full-figured, confident and self-assured, Irmgard Lassehn, née Niedermeyer, comes in, wearing a colourful dressing gown over her pyjamas. Her hair is soigné, she hasn’t neglected to wear powder and lipstick, and the high arches over her eyebrows are delicately drawn.
Lassehn rises to his feet as if pulled up by the strings of a marionette, and stares her in the face. So this is the woman, this is his wife. A strange mixture of feelings takes hold of him, astonishment, helplessness, resistance, estrangement, he runs through the full range of his feelings, but there is one that he can’t find: affection. No, there is no affection. A moment ago, when he was standing by the door to the flat, the memory had set his blood racing, but now there is nothing between them. She is a complete stranger to him. She looks at him coolly, with a friendly but matter-of-fact expression, and with measured movements she closes the door behind her, after asking Mrs Niedermeyer, with a brief movement of her eyebrows, to leave the room.
‘Heil Hitler!’ she says, and raises her right hand slightly in a salute. ‘Please, sit where you are!’
She really doesn’t recognize me, the thought passes through Lassehn’s mind, not even now that I am sitting opposite her, fully exposed to her view.
‘So you’ve brought news of my husband?’ Irmgard Lassehn asks, her voice is calm, almost indifferent, without the slightest tremor of anxious agitation.
‘Yes,’ Lassehn says, controlling his voice, while his heart hammers wildly in his chest. She asks in such an indifferent and matter-of-fact voice as if she were asking about a suitcase at a left-luggage office.
‘So, what’s happened to him?’ There is no impatience in her voice, her beautiful, narrow face beneath the thin layer of bronze powder is still indifferent.
Lassehn hasn’t yet worked out what he wants, something in him resists identifying himself, he feels as if he is being lured on a journey into the unknown. ‘Your husband is alive,’ Lassehn says, avoiding her questioning eye.
‘Where is he now?’ Irmgard Lassehn asks.
‘Very nearby,’ Lassehn replies ambiguously.
‘Then why doesn’t he come himself,’ she probes, her voice now a little more animated. ‘Is he wounded, or is something else holding him back?’
‘That’s not very easy to explain,’ Lassehn says, evading the question; he wants to gain time, because only now is he beginning to understand the situation he has put himself in, that a return to reality is going to be more difficult the longer he continues this conversation.
‘You have a slight look of my husband,’ Irmgard Lassehn says. ‘At first glance …’
‘You didn’t know him for very long?’ Lassehn asks.
‘Did he tell you that?’ Irmgard Lassehn looks at him quizzically.
Lassehn nods; ‘… in those circumstances a face is easily forgotten,’ he goes on, ‘even if it was very close to you for eight days.’
‘Did he tell you that as well?’ Irmgard Lassehn asks again. ‘I suppose he doesn’t remember what I look like either?’
Lassehn shakes his head. ‘He has often described you to me,’ he says. ‘I don’t think he’s forgotten.’
Irmgard Lassehn smiles faintly. ‘You don’t forget a wife, even if you were only married to her for eight days,’ she says casually, as if describing a quite impersonal matter, ‘but that’s not really what I meant.’ She pauses and looks past Lassehn. ‘But that’s not for now.’ Her words sound slightly hesitant, as if she expects to be contradicted.
Lassehn gestures vaguely and leans slightly forward.
‘Why not? I know your husband very well, we were quite close …’
She turns her face slowly towards him again. ‘I meant,’ she says, resuming the sentence she had just begun, ‘whether he remembers what I look like, whether he would recognize me. But you can’t know that.’
‘Why not?’ Lassehn says. ‘We talked about it together.’
Irmgard Lassehn nervously clenches her spread fingers. ‘And what conclusion did he come to?’
‘He was sure that if you met him in some new place he mightn’t recognize you,’ Lassehn replies. He feels almost numb, something inside him is forcing him to keep the conversation running on the same track, it is as if he is hypnotized by the phenomenon of talking about himself, and hearing himself talk about himself, in the third person.
For a few seconds there is silence between them. Lassehn furtively studies the strange woman who is his wife and reaches the conclusion that he is familiar with neither the details of her face nor those of her body. A memory is sparked when he sees her bare feet, which she has slipped into a pair of sandals, the toenails carefully clipped and painted a deep red. Incredible that one can sit so calmly, almost indifferently, opposite a woman who welcomed you into her bosom for eight long nights, whose breath passed moaning into your mouth, whose body burned like embers against yours …
‘You were a comrade of my husband’s?’ Irmgard Lassehn asks after a while.
‘Yes,’ Lassehn replies and looks her full in the face. ‘We were comrades, very good comrades.’
‘You stress that so oddly, Mr …’
‘Winter,’ Lassehn finishes her sentence. ‘Forgive me, I forgot to introduce myself.’
Irmgard Lassehn notes the name with a brief nod of her head. ‘You stress that so oddly, Mr Winter,’ she repeats.
I really did, Lassehn thinks, not deliberately, because I would like to find out some things about myself from her. ‘Oddly?’
‘As … as if you were trying to hint at something,’ she says, explaining her question, and there is a brief flicker in the back of her eyes as if something is lurking there.
‘I just meant that … that Joachim and I talked about a lot,’ he says stoutly, ‘which is how I know some things …’
Irmgard Lassehn suddenly leans forward. ‘What do you know?’ she asks quickly, almost threateningly.
‘I meant that I know you, madam, even though you are a complete stranger to me,’ Lassehn replies. ‘It sounds paradoxical, but that’s how it is.’ Inside him a feeling wells up, a strange mixture of cheerfulness and grief.
Irmgard leans back again and smiles ironically. ‘A few years ago I happened to read a book by Leonhard Frank, Karl und Anna, and it was about two soldiers who were also good, very good comrades. Do you know the book?’
‘No,’ Lassehn replies. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘One of the two soldiers was married as well,’ Irmgard Lassehn goes on, ignoring his question, ‘and he told his friends everything about his wife, including the most intimate details of their conjugal life. Do you understand, Mr Winter?’
Lassehn nods. ‘I understand, but Joachim didn’t go into details of that kind,’ he says, as if pardoning himself.
‘So just how confiding was my dear husband?’ Ironic wrinkles appear around her mouth. ‘You can tell me everything, Mr Winter. You won’t hurt me, or make me annoyed.’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Lassehn asks truculently.
‘Psychological interest to some extent,’ she replies.
The cheerfulness prompted by the tragi-comedy of the situation fades away. ‘You speak of your marriage as if it were a trivial matter, madam,’ he says irritably.
Irmgard Lassehn shrugs. ‘You seem to be of the opinion, Mr Winter,’ she replies, ‘that an eight-day marriage establishes a lasting state, or that it is a guarantee of eternal love. You are remarkably naïve, and in that, incidentally, you are like my husband, who also saw the relationship between the sexes as a mystery.’
‘Isn’t it?’ L
assehn asks.
Irmgard Lassehn smiles, showing her teeth. ‘I see it as a biological matter,’ she says, as if instructing him.
So that’s what you’re like, Lassehn thinks, and looks again at her feet, delicate, slender feet, immaculately white with a hint of tender pink, fine veins, smooth toes, slim ankles, springing on the tips of the toes and stretching their muscles. Lassehn sees these feet in front of him like a vision, the way they pushed themselves out of bed in the morning, established a connection with the world outside the bed, beautiful, slender, girlish feet. And that is what’s left, no face, no body, no soul, just a pair of beautiful, slender, girlish feet.
Lassehn suddenly pulls himself together. ‘I just don’t understand why you married Joachim. You don’t need to get married for the sake of the … biological function.’
Irmgard Lassehn gives him a superior look. ‘The biological functions, Mr Winter, are closely linked to material things, in case you are not aware. To put it in concrete terms: a soldier who goes back to the front is closer to death than life, so a girl must logically expect that he can no longer fulfil the obligations produced by the relationship. Now do you understand?’
Lassehn nods. ‘Completely, madam.’ He feels anger rising up inside him, anger that is no longer far from hatred. So this is my wife, a synthesis of lust and a sense of commerce. Is that possible, is there nothing else there? Have I come here to argue about love and marriage? No, I’m here to gain some clarity …
‘I don’t see why we women always want to take the risk,’ she goes on. ‘We women are no longer the weaker sex, and in material terms we have also become more independent, but unfortunately nature has seen to it that in biological terms the greater burden falls on us, which is why we are allowed to stay out of harm’s way.’
‘So your marriage to Lassehn was, if I may put it this way, a safety valve,’ Lassehn says.
‘You could say that,’ Irmgard Lassehn confirms. ‘Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn’t have married, a friendship would have done just as well.’
Lassehn keeps his arms clasped behind his back and avoids his wife’s eye. ‘I know from Joachim that he put much more into this marriage, it wasn’t just an erotic experience for him.’
‘Did he talk about it?’ she asks, and smiles ironically.
‘Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to claim as much.’
‘Interesting,’ Irmgard Lassehn says, and raises her eyebrows in surprise.
‘You don’t seem to understand,’ Lassehn says almost bitterly, ‘what that means. He gave you a soul, you only gave him your body, a very uneven – if you’ll forgive me – deal.’
Irmgard Lassehn leans far back in her chair and crosses her legs. ‘Do you read a lot of romantic novels, Mr Winter?’
Lassehn stares at her. The dressing gown has parted a little to show the beginning of her full breasts and reveal her slender neck, but nothing stirs in Lassehn. The breasts that seem to be breathing there under her dressing gown, the body hidden under the thin, colourful silk, are only part of a wax figure.
‘If I may be allowed to ask a question, madam,’ Lassehn says at last.
Irmgard Lassehn gestures her consent.
‘Why did you marry him?’ he asks, and quickly corrects himself. ‘I don’t mean the legal formality, but …’ He falls into an embarrassed silence, having forgotten for a moment that he is facing his wife in the guise of a complete stranger, and that he therefore mustn’t ask excessively probing questions.
‘Well?’ Irmgard Lassehn says encouragingly. ‘Feel free to ask, I’m not a prude, and I’ll also be granting you the pleasure of an erotic conversation.’
Lassehn gives himself a push. ‘You know what I mean, madam,’ he says, and pauses for a few seconds, but Irmgard Lassehn doesn’t come to his assistance, she looks at him expectantly and rocks her crossed leg back and forth. ‘Why you took Joachim, of all people …’ Lassehn takes a deep breath and violently expels the question – ‘into your bed?’, he exclaims uncontrollably.
Irmgard Lassehn isn’t angry, she still has a superior smile on her face. ‘You seem to be of the opinion,’ she says slowly, ‘that I made a bad choice.’
‘Not at all,’ Lassehn disagrees, ‘I meant something else.’
‘Which is?’ Irmgard Lassehn doesn’t look at him, she rocks her foot back and forth, legs still crossed, and swings it from side to side, a motion designed to indicate her complete impartiality.
‘I mean that you and Joachim are complete opposites, that you aren’t suited to one another at all,’ he says, ‘and since I know that Joachim is very passive by nature, I must assume that you took the initiative.’
‘You’re not far off the mark, psychologist that you are,’ Irmgard Lassehn says. ‘So to answer your question, in which you seem to take so keen an interest: my husband was very much alone at the time, he was rather desperate, and I felt sorry for him, that was it, all the rest happened of its own accord. The fact that I married him, well, that was … how did you put it so beautifully? Oh, yes, a safety valve.’
‘So not love?’ Lassehn repeats the question and gives her a penetrating look.
‘All these questions of yours are getting tiresome,’ Irmgard Lassehn says, and throws back a lock of hair that has fallen onto her forehead with a violent shake of her head.
Lassehn senses that the conversation has reached a crucial point, and that the speeches, questions and answers that they exchanged were just the preliminary skirmish.
‘But I haven’t nearly finished,’ he says harshly.
Irmgard speaks violently for the first time. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ll hear in a moment!’
Irmgard Lassehn gets to her feet. ‘I don’t want to hear anything more,’ she says impatiently, ‘I’ve spent far too much time with you already. There’s just one question that I would like to have answered, and then you can go. Where is my husband right now?’
‘Your touching concern does you proud. Has that question only just occurred to you?’ Lassehn mocks, then he too stands up and walks up to the woman, looks her attentively in the face and then says slowly, ‘He’s standing in front of you, Irma.’
‘Stop this nonsense,’ Irma Lassehn commands, pulling away from him. ‘If you absolutely need something sentimental, then make yourself comfortable, young man, there are plenty of women and girls around who don’t have a man and who would be happy to make you up a nice soft bed, pressing you to their forlorn hearts, but please leave me in peace. Or perhaps my husband has described his nights with me with such fire that you are absolutely determined to go to bed with me?’
Lassehn is hurled back and forth by wild emotions, hatred, rage, contempt, fury, his hand twitches as if in spasm, he has to fight with himself to make sure that it doesn’t fly into her pretty, impertinent face.
‘I am Joachim Lassehn,’ he says, struggling to control his voice. ‘Do you really not recognize me?’
Irmgard Lassehn bursts out laughing. ‘So you’ve got the formula from Karl und Anna, and you want to follow that, you want to present yourself as the woman’s husband because her fool of a husband has blurted out their marital secrets.’ She laughs again. ‘That’s not going to work with me, no sir, not me.’
Lassehn stands there in confusion for a moment, suddenly seeing that a fiction, once it has become a concrete reality, can no longer be revoked, least of all by the truth.
‘I really am Joachim Lassehn, Irma,’ he says again.
‘Don’t talk such nonsense,’ Irmgard Lassehn says impatiently. ‘You do bear a certain resemblance to my husband, I grant you, and you want to exploit that now.’
‘I don’t want to exploit anything,’ Lassehn says angrily. ‘You needn’t imagine that I’m after my so-called conjugal rights, you can happily go on using your bed on your own, or sharing it with whoever you like …’
‘Shut up!’ Irmgard Lassehn breaks in.
‘… our marriage is only on paper an
yway,’ Lassehn continues unperturbed, ‘and once this glorious war is over we will have a legal dispute to sort out.’
The words do make a certain impression on the young woman, but she persists in her refusal to acknowledge that Lassehn is her husband. ‘You are not my husband,’ she says, ‘I just don’t believe you.’
Lassehn shrugs, all at once he sees no point in identifying himself as Irmgard’s husband, all of a sudden he doesn’t understand what he’s doing here, why he took this journey to Charlottenburg. ‘In the end I don’t really care whether you believe me or not …,’ he begins listlessly.
‘If you really are my husband,’ Irmgard Lassehn interrupts, ‘then I’m sure you have papers that will identify you as Joachim Lassehn.’
The papers are long gone, Lassehn thinks, I’m now Horst Winter from Strasburg in the Uckermark, I forgot that I’m an outlaw who can’t get back to his former life, that in the moment when I became an outlaw I died to my old world, that I have to make my own life with my new papers, that I can have no relationship with my former self.
‘My papers all went to hell,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t have guessed that I would need to identify myself to my own wife.’
‘Just a moment,’ Irmgard Lassehn interrupts him and opens the door. ‘Aunt Else, come here, please.’
‘What are you trying to do?’ Without meaning to, he has addressed her formally again. Irmgard Lassehn doesn’t need to reply, because Mrs Niedermeyer comes in and looks back and forth between the two.
‘What is it, Irmy?’
‘Take a good look at this gentleman, Aunt Else,’ Irmgard Lassehn says, ‘look at him very closely.’
‘What’s going on, Irmy?’ Mrs Niedermeyer says, amazed. ‘You know I don’t enjoy pranks.’
‘Please, examine him very closely,’ Irmgard Lassehn says impatiently. Mrs Niedermeyer has stopped contradicting her, she is apparently used to submitting to the will of her niece, she looks at Lassehn with great attention and then turns back to Irmgard Lassehn. ‘And now?’ she asks.