Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘Ah, it’s you, Herr Lassehn,’ she says delightedly, and holds out her hand to him. ‘This really is a surprise. Please come in.’

  ‘Good evening, madam,’ Lassehn says, and takes her hand. He feels himself practically being dragged into the hall.

  Lassehn is embarrassed, he almost regrets accepting the invitation, after all she is a stranger to him, and even her smile doesn’t make her any more familiar. He lets her words run over him, trickling down on him like a light shower, as he sets down his hat and coat and follows her into a room. It is barely lit by the candle, and the woman’s face is also distant and remote. Recollection makes colours look either too fiery or too dull, it is never an exact match for reality, and that is the case here, when the colours in memory’s palette were too glorious. This is a pretty, friendly woman, but the erotic charm that previously emanated from her seems to have been lost. Lassehn is too inexperienced to know that a woman’s sensual appeal does not emanate always and in every situation, that it must first be ignited and is to a great degree dependent on the mental disposition of the onlooker. The willingness to embrace can be present in latent form, but it needs a spark to trigger it. And that spark does not burn in Lassehn.

  ‘You’re so unusually silent today, Herr Lassehn,’ Elisabeth Mattner says, and rests a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ Lassehn says, ‘but I’m a bit muddled today. How have you been in the meantime?’

  Elisabeth Mattner tells him a few details that Lassehn barely absorbs, he looks at her steadily like someone contemplating a photograph and examining it for familiar features. Elisabeth Mattner is in constant motion, straightening a doily or putting a crystal vase in a different place, sitting down for a few minutes or simply walking around.

  ‘Would you like to play me something?’ she asks at last, and points to the piano.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Lassehn replies, and immediately sits down at the piano. ‘Is there anything in particular you’d like to hear, madam?’ Elisabeth Mattner leans against the credenza, the flicker of the burning candle draws a grotesque shadow on the wall.

  ‘Something tender,’ the voice says quietly, ‘something gentle and tender.’

  Lassehn lets his hands rest on the keys for a few seconds, then he plays Mendelssohn’s Spring Song and Schubert’s Serenade, he plays with a very light touch, pianissimo, his hands only touch the keys very delicately, it is almost as if the keys were responding solely to his will. The notes float like cherry blossom through the semi-darkness of the room. Lassehn isn’t playing delicately because he can’t play as he is ordered to, or as people might wish him to. He is more of an emotional player than an intellectual one, he can only ever express what moves him at that moment, and right now that is loneliness, yearning and some kind of unfamiliar pain.

  Since notes do not possess the clarity of language and can be interpreted in different ways, Elisabeth Mattner hears his playing in her own way, as what she wanted to hear: as tenderness.

  Lassehn, who sits at the piano and, even after the first few notes, has forgotten where he is, immerses himself in the music as if in a warm bath. He doesn’t know that women’s erotic sense is often only rolled up like a flag and unfolds completely if only a breath of tenderness catches it. And now he is provoking just that.

  When the second piece is over, Elisabeth Mattner steps up behind him and leans the weight of her body over his shoulder, she brings her lips close to his ear and runs her hand over his hair. ‘That was wonderful,’ she whispers. ‘You play wonderfully.’

  Lassehn lowers his hands and turns his body half towards her. Suddenly everything that was there a few days ago has returned, suddenly Elisabeth Mattner is not a strange woman any more, he feels her hand again, warm and firm, her breast, soft and breathing, and her voice, quiet and tender. He sits there as if paralysed for a few moments, before desire wells up in him, but by then Elisabeth Mattner has straightened up again, she walks back and forth and says a few words, insignificant, trivial words.

  Lassehn sits there trembling. What previously made him nervous excites him now, his eyes follow every footstep the woman takes, everything she does, her breasts tremble beneath the thin silk of her blouse with each tiny move she makes.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that, Herr Lassehn?’ asks Elisabeth Mattner. Has she forgotten that she addressed him in a more familiar way just a moment ago?

  Lassehn’s throat is so choked with arousal that he can’t speak.

  Elisabeth Mettner brushes past him, and a mixture of perfume and the scent of her body confuses his senses.

  Lassehn stands up. ‘Madam,’ he begins, and doesn’t know what he wants to say, it is like a cry for help.

  Elisabeth Mattner immediately stops and turns round. ‘Well, what is it, my boy?’ she asks. ‘Are you always so irresolute?’ Now, Lassehn thinks, now I must pounce, she expects me to. But he stands there and can’t move, then he feels her arms around his neck and her mouth on his lips, at first it is just a tender, soft kiss, her lips are soft and warm, but then they become impetuous, they violently open his mouth, his teeth, their breath flows together and everything dissolves in an eruption of intoxication, there is not a thought within him now, only wild and reckless desire, frenzy, abandon. When thoughts flow back into Lassehn, he pulls away from the woman’s embrace.

  ‘Were you happy?’ she asks.

  Lassehn replies, stroking her hair. Was he happy? Is he still? Does happiness mean thoughtlessly slipping ecstatically into a woman’s body? That feeling that ripped through his body and still quivers inside him, is that happiness? He doesn’t know, he has gone mad since knowing that the happiness he thought he had found with Irmgard was nothing but an embrace, and everything else was merely an illusion. Has a wave of bliss put a pang in his heart? Strange that he has stopped calling her madam.

  ‘What can I call you?’ he asks, to keep the silence from becoming too insistent.

  ‘Say Lisa,’ she whispers close to his ear.

  What does she feel? Lassehn thinks. Love? Lust? He would like to look into her face, but it is completely dark in the room, a total blackness that makes it impossible even to see outlines.

  ‘I was very happy,’ Elisabeth Mattner replies.

  Lassehn is almost startled. Could there be something more here than the collision of two warm bodies? ‘Do you love me?’ he asks. It sounds stupid, clichéd, naïve, he rebukes himself and a moment later wishes he could pull his words back out like a fish-hook from water.

  Elisabeth Mattner laughs quietly, a series of little chuckles. ‘Silly boy,’ she says and pulls him tightly to her, ‘why do you always have to …’

  At that moment light bursts into the darkness of the room with the force of an explosion. Elisabeth Mattner quickly pulls a blanket over her body. ‘The electricity blackout has been lifted,’ she says and blinks in the light, her voice is quite calm, without an undertone of arousal. ‘There will be an air raid in a moment.’

  Lassehn sits up. ‘And what will we do then, Lisa?’ he asks. The name doesn’t fall easily from his lips, but he uses it so as not to insult her.

  Elisabeth Mattner pulls the cord that hangs on the wall above the wide bed and turns the ceiling light off again. ‘Nothing at all, my boy,’ she says, and turns on the bedside lamp. ‘We’ll stay up here. Nothing has ever happened here at night.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Lassehn asks.

  ‘Afraid?’ she asks back, and slowly shakes her head. ‘No, I’m not afraid any more, I overcame the feeling they call fear a long time ago, and a fatalistic surrender has taken its place. I don’t know what you’ve been through, my boy, tank battles or assault raids or flights into enemy territory or perhaps even torpedo fire, but I would still say you’re not much ahead of me.’

  ‘You mean in terms of acts of heroism?’ Lassehn asks ironically.

  Elisabeth Mattner’s face assumes a condescending expression. ‘What rubbish, acts of heroism,’ she says quickly, ‘you don’t believ
e in things like that, do you? Or do you?’

  Lassehn shakes his head.

  Elisabeth Mattner nods in response. ‘I wanted to say that you, and all those of you who are at the front, are no more exposed to danger than we are. Anyone who has been through all those heavy day and night attacks, anyone who has stood beneath the bright sails of the flare bombs and in spite of the dark, rainy night could clearly make out every detail in their daylight glow, saw every corner sharply lit, anyone who checked the attics during an air attack and heard the stick incendiary bombs crashing through the roof tiles on all sides, anyone who felt the scorching breath of a wall of flame for hours at a time and pumped water into it as if they’d gone mad, and afterwards had to stand guard for hours on the roof, watched with horror the city burning all around and fought a desperate battle against the showers of sparks, who ran for their lives, wheezing and half blind, anyone who has done all that is no longer afraid, my dear boy, they have walked through purgatory on earth, but they have not been cleansed by it …’

  ‘But?’ asks Lassehn.

  ‘It could be that there are people here and there who see it all as a trial or punishment from God, and who devote themselves to religion as a result,’ Elisabeth Mattner goes on, ‘but for most their moral conscience was consumed in the big fire, and the meaninglessness of all of life became so obvious that meaningless living is the only kind.’

  ‘Meaningless?’

  ‘Yes, meaningless, as if you’ve lost your mind, in a constant pursuit, always hot on the heels of life, to wring from it even the tiniest speck of happiness or pleasure or joy.’

  ‘Carpe diem, Horace said,’ Lassehn observes. ‘Carpe horam, that should be these days.’ He bends his arm under his head and looks into her face, strange, it is no more familiar than before, that pretty, regular face under its white-blonde shock of hair, with the dark-red mouth and the little nose that doesn’t get in the way when they kiss. Lassehn’s eye runs over every feature of her face. He can read no arousal, no happiness and no pain in it, but something in it has changed, it has lost the artificially excited expression from a moment ago, it is filled with contentment and satiety, and somewhere, hidden deep in the eyes, lust still lurks.

  ‘You look at me so strangely, my boy,’ Elisabeth Mattner says.

  ‘Don’t always say my boy,’ Lassehn says, somewhat disgruntled.

  ‘Why not?’ she replies, and runs her hand reassuringly over his hair. ‘You aren’t my husband. That is, you were a moment ago, but you aren’t.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Lassehn says defensively and pulls away from her, ‘I don’t think it’s very appropriate to …’

  Elisabeth Mattner smiles thoughtfully. ‘We’re not children,’ she cuts in. ‘What does my husband matter? He’s far away, and if he were here he would have to come to terms with it. I have something I want to tell you, Joachim, and you may take it as a justification or an apology, as you wish. When my husband was last home on leave, two or two and a half years ago, I can’t remember exactly, he was only with me for eight days.’

  Lassehn shakes his head. ‘Only eight days?’ he asks. ‘From Italy?’

  ‘All the way from Africa,’ she replies.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Lassehn objects. ‘Do you hear? Air-raid warning!’

  ‘Let the sirens wail,’ she says, and waves her hand dismissively, ‘you can only die once. Death in bed may not be a heroic death, but with a man in your arms … Are you afraid?’

  Lassehn shakes his head.

  ‘Well, then,’ Elisabeth Mattner says and smiles at him. ‘Yes, you say eight days of leave from Africa is impossible. Of course that’s true, but he tried to persuade me it could happen, he told me something about courier services, in very mysterious tones. And I almost took him seriously, until I found out that he’d spent another twelve days in Hanover, with his girlfriend, a member of the Wehrmacht assistance staff he’d met at the district air-force base. That’s my husband, the company paymaster. You see, my boy, I’ve changed since then.’

  Lassehn suddenly realizes that he doesn’t know very much about women, he is filled with questions, and he has to force himself not to let them all come spilling out.

  ‘Strange,’ Elisabeth Mattner says, as if talking to herself, ‘British planes are flying towards our city, and will soon spread their wings of death over our heads. The cannon will fire, millions of people will be crouching in bunkers, cellars, caves and trenches, with just the two of us in the middle, as you might say, between the planes and the ones under the ground, between heaven and earth, we lie naked in a bed, and all around everything is dark.’ She reaches her arms out from under the bedcover and stretches her body with her eyes closed.

  Lassehn stares in fascination at the blonde tufts in her armpits. ‘There’s something else I’d like to ask you, Lisa,’ he says slowly, ‘but you’re not to take it the wrong way.’

  Elisabeth Mattner is still lying there with her eyes closed. ‘Ask away,’ she says encouragingly.

  Lassehn is still hesitant, because he doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say in words that won’t hurt Elisabeth Mattner. ‘You’re … you’re certainly not a frivolous or flippant woman, and yet you … you made me come to you even though you don’t really know me.’

  Elisabeth Mattner opens her eyes and gives him a searching, penetrating look.

  ‘My dear boy,’ she says and smiles, her mouth closed, ‘I too was once a virgin with curly hair, romantic, dreamy and longing for love, in my first so-called great love it was six weeks before I gave him his first real kiss, and another eight months before I went to bed with him for the first time. Believe me, I’ve always reined in my temperament …’

  ‘They’re shooting,’ Lassehn says as she speaks, listening to the sounds beyond the window, ‘not very far away.’

  ‘That’s the Friedrichshain bunker,’ Elisabeth Mattner says, ‘it doesn’t matter to us. What was I saying? Oh, yes, I’ve always reined in my temperament, my boy, the incubation period between first meeting and intercourse has varied between four months and a year and a quarter, which shows unusual steadfastness for a hot-blooded woman, and you will have noticed that I am one of those. When I married seven years ago I had only had four friendships behind me. Not so many, is it?’

  So her husband was the fifth, and that’s not very many? Lassehn thinks. But instead of answering he nods, so as not to take the conversation down a side alley.

  ‘I was always faithful to my husband,’ the woman goes on, ‘that is, until I found out about the story of what happened when he was on leave. Then I yielded to the desires that slumbered in me, and as tends to happen when desires reach the realm of the possible and the attainable and the walls of moral inhibition are blown away, then inconstancy knows no bounds. I don’t wish to claim that that’s generally the case, but it is for me.’

  Lassehn almost holds his breath. ‘So I’m … I’m not the first?’ he says. ‘I mean, after you found out …’

  Elisabeth Mattner reaches her arms out to Lassehn and tries to pull his head to her. ‘Why are you interested in that?’ she says in a flirtatious voice. ‘Isn’t it enough for you that you can embrace me? You’ve possessed my body, as it is or as it was half an hour ago. Did it diminish your enjoyment that you weren’t the sixth, but the twelfth or thirteenth?’

  Lassehn gently frees himself from her grip. ‘You didn’t quite understand my question or fully answer it,’ he says. ‘What I was actually trying to get at …’

  Elisabeth Mattner folds her arms under her head. ‘I do know what you mean,’ she interrupts him. ‘My dear boy, we’re at war, even here in Berlin, for years our lives have only been returned to us for a short time, for the breaks between one bombing raid and the next. You know, when you have death in front of your eyes every day, when every wail of the sirens could at the same time be your death knell, then you are seized by a hunger for pleasure, you want to drain to the dregs the brief respite granted to you, and that applies as much to love as it
does to anything else. I call that the intensification of our feelings. Things that used to take months now take only days, and what once occurred over days now happens in a matter of hours. If I …’ She breaks off and listens to the window. ‘You hear that? The pre-all-clear!’

  Lassehn nods, he has been listening with excitement, and staring at the red mouth that is talking so calmly, almost indifferently, about death.

  The smile has faded almost entirely from Elisabeth Mattner’s face, and a hard seriousness now sits in the corners of her mouth. ‘If I meet a man I like these days, it isn’t as it used to be. The first informalities, the first kiss, then nothing for a while and then maybe bed, no, my boy, today death and mutilation lie in between. The man you fancy in the afternoon might by the evening have been turned into a charred corpse the length of your arm by a phosphorus bomb, or shredded into a thousand pieces by an aerial mine, but it could hit me too. So why should I wait and invoke my moral inhibitions? Today everything is different, today it all happens as if in time-lapse, meeting, kissing, abandon, parting, it must all be savoured in one go before the next air raid. Don’t you understand that greed for pleasure lurks behind you like fear, the fear that you might miss something, that you might not have lived your life to the full? What you might call moral degeneracy and intellectual neglectfulness is nothing but a narcotic for the soul.’ Elisabeth Mattner shivers and pulls the bedcover up under her chin. ‘Do you want to know something else?’ she adds.

  Lassehn shakes his head. Hasn’t she satisfactorily answered all the questions he had been burning to ask? ‘No,’ he says. ‘Or perhaps yes. So you’re of the opinion that there is no room left for love in our time?’

  Elisabeth Mattner stares hard at the ceiling. ‘Love,’ she says and sighs. ‘What is love? Do you require love before you possess a woman? Isn’t it enough for you to possess her body unrestrictedly and rest between her thighs?’

  ‘At the moment of union that is enough,’ Lassehn replies, ‘but afterwards … It’s like getting drunk, while the alcohol still fires me up, the wine still tastes good, but when I stop drinking I have a stale taste in my mouth, then I feel ill …’ He doesn’t finish the sentence, because the simile doesn’t quite catch what he was trying to say.