A Sad Affair

A Sad Affair

WOLFGANG
KOEPPEN

TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MICHAEL HOFMANN

Granta Books

London

Granta Publications,
2/3
Hanover Yard, Noel Road, London
NI
8BE

First published in Great Britain by Granta Books
2003
First published in the US by W. W. Norton
&
Company, Inc.

Originally published in German as
Eine unglückliche liebe

Copyright
© 1977
by Suhrkamp
Verlag
Frankfurt am Main

Introduction and translation copyright
© 2003
by Michael Hofmann

INTRODUCTION

I
T
WA
S
the first time Friedrich had ever crossed a border into another country. That said, the idea of borders was not new to him. As a child in a war-ravaged village behind a line of fortifications to the east, he had seen a border go up in flames. Later on, as a young man, in the town on the coast, he had often climbed the lofty spire of St. Nicholas to gaze across the sea, where in the flickering air between water and sky you could follow the ships, till way out they merged into the haze of the horizon and became invisible, so that only your longing could accompany them beyond the line of red buoys that marked the limits of the territorial waters, and out onto the deep swell. Those were borders, the one a nightmarish display of smoke and flames, devastation and dead horses impaled on ripped wire entanglements, and the other beckoning like a dream of distance. This new border, though, was different again, it was marked by passport and customs controls, alien uniforms and language, official stamp and jingle of unfamiliar coins, a switch of locomotive to pull the train that as it snuffled on, surprised you by pulling scenery past the window that seemed like the identical twin sister of the scenery of the homeland you had just left behind. Hills and valleys under a thin layer of snow, green winter wheat, people on the streets, houses, villages, animals, cars and bicyclists all familiar and jolly, until night descended, and in the darkness, the country seemed to acquire a rougher aspect. And then the train pulled into the renowned foreign city.

As he set down his suitcase on the platform, he asked himself whether the city whose name he read on the platform was his final destination or just a way station on his progress south. It was his intention to go on traveling south, and he had in his pocket a ticket that would take him farther; but it was his desire [his secret desire, that he hadn't admitted to anyone] to be welcomed here, and to be permitted to stay.

Sibylle was living in the foreign city. She had written to him, and he had seen her name in the newspaper as well, in a review of a troupe of actors that she belonged to. He had come on her account. She was the only person he knew in the city. It was idle to hope that she might have been on the platform to greet him. He knew that she was not fond of arrangements that compelled her attendance in a certain place at a certain time, yes, that she suffered from them, as a child suffered from having to go to school, and he had therefore been careful not to tell her the time of his arrival, or even the date of it.

He thought of telephoning but reflected that it was getting on for eight o'clock, and that Sibylle would most likely be on her way to the theater. As he wandered through the station hall, suitcase in hand, he thought he was probably the picture of indecision. Hotel agents came up to him, appraised him from his hat to his heels, which were probably somewhat worn, and commended their various establishments to him. But what did those names mean to him? Did he know whether he could afford the Grand Hotel, beside the lake? Or was the Three Kings more realistic? He wanted to see Sibylle. Of course he did. She was staying at St. Peter's Hostel, and that was the name he finally gave the taxi driver.

The streets were full of light and life. I am wealthy, proclaimed the city. It wished for visitors to know. The street that led away from the station was a kind of fanfare. The city had remained neutral during the War, unscathed by shells and crises, spared any reparations, war debts, and inflation, its banks stood there like fortresses sure. Gray massive stone structures, wrought-iron grilles in front of the windows and doors, caryatids representing the god Mercury and the giant Atlas climbed ornamentally up the facades, all compressed into a strongbox, just as Thomas Cook's traveler's check bureaux were depicted on the witty posters in the form of a handy suitcase: Your traveler's check is the bank in your pocket. Then came glittering plateglass windows. Jewelers, tailors, luxury leather goods of crocodile, snakeskin, and buffalo, and carefully softened lights caressing silk from Lyons. Friedrich took it all in, rolling about in his barge of a taxi, while the horns of enormous, black-lacquered, powerful droning limousines wailed on all sides, and, just as they were about to turn up a little side street, he once more felt uncertain, felt anxious, wondered whether it would be sensible to take a room at the St. Peter's right next to Sibylle's. Everything was so unpredictable, and the terror that Sibylle had represented to him, and that perhaps was still only dormant, could perhaps take possession of him again, if they were staying in adjacent rooms. Hurriedly, he drew aside the little window to the drivers cab, and said: "I'm sorry, I've changed my mind," and gave him the name of the big hotel on the lake instead.

The change of mind, initially, felt like a liberation. It meant a prolongation of the drive that demanded nothing of him other than that he accept a reposeful confinement while progress was made on his behalf. From the long curve of a bridge, tall arc lamps cast part of their shimmer on the lake to either side, along whose right-hand shore the road was now leading. Through chinks in the doors and windows a smell of damp now came in and mingled with the faint smells of petrol and rubber inside the taxi. Over the shore promenade on the opposite side, fog lamps flowered in milky bubbles of glass. Wraiths of mist rose in wild dances from the black mirroring water. To look out from the shore onto the deep was to catch an intimation of monsters. As one gurgling wave climbed over another, it was as though a human being had been thrown into that maelstrom, was dragged in the undertow, until bubbles rose up, and he finished tethered to the spongy bed of some hibernating amphibious creature. The chauffeur was driving faster now, the car skidded on the slick asphalt, the city seemed to want to go on forever, and suddenly Friedrich was afraid his hotel would be too far away from the action.

Even though his room was pricey, it looked cheap. The hotel management, one could see why, had amused itself by installing a penal cell for second-class guests whose meager circumstances meant that their holdings were entered in no bank, that they didn't belong in this hotel, and had overstretched themselves by coming here. There were grilles in front of the window here too, but in this case they had probably been put there to keep the occupant from the temptation to leap clear not only of an unpaid bill but of all the other demands a life might put on him.

In the hall page boys had stood with scarlet facings on white satiny uniforms. They were the equerries of the lord [who sat enthroned on a lofty dais in formal black], and had been chosen for their straight bearing and their comeliness, gifts that they made much of in their gait and their expression. They were terrestrial angels, bathed and scrubbed, sweet boys who played soccer outside the kitchen windows when they weren't on duty in the lobby or the corridors with the ice-blue eyes of an old extortioner over the last silverware of a terminally ill widow. They took receipt of the guest on his arrival, forming a cordon that conducted him quite irresistibly to the head porter. He in turn waited in the cheerful attitude of an American film star, of whom every child knows that under his respectable jacket he is packing a gun. He asked how long the guest cared to stay, for a longer sojourn it might be necessary to apply to the Police Prefecture for permission.

This is a mistake, Friedrich realized, and it's not bringing me any nearer to her. Behind the window bars was the magnificent and silent lake, an eerie field under drizzly fog and uncertain illumination. There were no mountains to be seen but they must be there, obscured by the dark, pure white crowns, above the clouds, clearly visible from under the stars.

I'm not going to turn up there, I'll send a note, he thought. Friedrich was afraid he might suffer bedazzlement in the theater, lightnings that would unambiguously expose the falsity of his position here, find himself thrown out and blinded and back in the maelstrom of terrible need, out of which, injured, certainly, he had thought he had managed to drag himself. I'll send her a note, she can write back, and we'll meet somewhere that's not a jungle of stage props. He suggested she might like to have lunch with him in a bright, friendly café of her choosing. He rang, the way a gentleman rings in a big hotel, and gave one of the precocious pages an instruction to take a letter to the Diana Variety and wait for a reply. Then he turned on a thick stream of water from the gold-colored faucet that flowed into the marble shower-bath and stuck his head under it, snorting under the bubbles and froth.

Once he had rubbed himself dry, he tried to wait patiently. He wanted to remain calm, to pace back and forth, hum a tune, but his heart wasn't playing. It was skipping in his breast, and sometimes it leapt up into his mouth—hurrah, hurrah—it was hard to bear. He took out the telephone directory of the foreign city and read the names of strange people. Then he envied anyone who might live here, be it as a dentist or a plumber, because it looked as though the troupe and Sibylle would be remaining in the city for a good while yet. He still loved her, then, that was certain, and it didn't come as a surprise to him. He had never ceased to love her, but his passion with all its peaks and troughs had grown calmer once Sibylle had left and stayed away. It is my destiny to love her, and I must accept it. That had become his conviction, the scrap of comfort that he clung to, ever since he had attempted to pull a star down from the sky to be accepted by her. She, however, had not accepted him, not caught him, but let him lie there with a broken back, and then not before shouting to a few people who happened to be listening as she turned away, "There lies the man who wanted to pluck me a star from the sky!" And he had writhed on the ground like a worm.

It was too awful to contemplate, if she reacted negatively to his letter this time. It had been wrong of him to write, but simply turning up wouldn't have been right either. It was a hopeless situation. But was it certain that she would react negatively? He would act a part now, that of the man who's had enough, who stops by on his way to more important errands and more ravishing adventures to see, just out of curiosity really, how an old girlfriend is keeping. Then the hotel might be a good place to start from after all—if only the attitude, the point of view, had been genuine. He wavered again. Was she not tender and sweet? Just a girl really? And everything else awful misunderstandings that, once they had been cleared up, would no longer darken his sky?

At ten o'clock the scarlet-and-white-satin page boy knocked on the door, and pushed no letter into the hand that Friedrich extended. He said: "The lady will be waiting for you at the stage door at half past eleven tomorrow morning." That was both a bombshell and a relief, just as he was feeling a little less shaky, and it gave him an excuse to leave his room and go out into the unfamiliar city.

The Diana Variety, they said, was in the Old Town. He walked along the shore, in the direction of the lights, and all the chill off the lake, which so far he had felt only through the windows, now blew in his face. By the time he reached the frosted railing of the long, wide bridge, he was already chilled to the marrow. He felt as though the cold had thrown dank nooses of cold water at him. He was trembling, but that might also be attributable to his excitement. He stopped to ask a passerby for directions and couldn't get a word out. The man looked at him and took a step away, fearfully and suspiciously. At last Friedrich was able to blurt out "Diana" like a cry. The man stepped nearer and laughed. He said: "Straight on, and then it's up the lane on your right." Friedrich thought: He'd like to pat me on the back. The man's expression showed solidarity. "You don't need to be ashamed of yourself, we're pretty tolerant people here," and with those words he went off.

The lane on the right was crooked and old. The gabled houses recalled old Frankfurt and the docklands of Hamburg, districts for which Friedrich felt a romantic affection, and yet he was surprised to find the Variety in what was probably a poor area. All around there were bars. Tinted lights twinkled behind curtained windows. Each time a door opened, there was a warm whiff of people, beer, wine, cigar smoke, and the sweat of bustling waitresses. The pubs were so packed, they seemed about to burst, and Friedrich had the sense that when a door opened, all those within grabbed hold of each other so as not to fall out. There were little clusters of people that wanted to remain as they were. Whereas there was hardly anyone out on the pavement. It was hard to say how people went into the pubs, or left them. Did they use back entrances that led into the courtyards of other buildings, had they come up through trapdoors, or could it be that this clientele had arrived early and planned on spending the night? A policeman stood out. In his cloak he resembled a snail in its carapace of shell. He was protected, nothing could befall him, he stared indifferently into the gutter at his feet, and Friedrich once more asked: "Diana?"