A Sad Affair (14 page)

Then, on the other side of the equator, as Sibylle called the strip of the room that was nearest the heater, someone moved, a man. He moved away from the desk he'd been hunched over, with his back to the door, and turned to face Friedrich. His face showed he'd been hard at work. Friedrich stood rather stunned by the ravages of the concentration that flickered in little flames around the man's eyes. He couldn't be any older than forty, but his slumped posture, his gray jowls and thinning hair, all spoke of a man used beyond his years. "That's Walter," said Sibylle. Friedrich wanted to shake hands with the famous critic, but the man made no move toward him. He didn't budge from his desk, and betrayed the signs of a tension that seemed to have seized him like a cramp. He's not a happy man, thought a shocked Friedrich. He's famous, respected, and admired; he is a power in his particular field, the theater people and the playwrights all tremble when they know he's writing something about them; he makes enough money for food and clothes and to keep this splendid room with all its books and animals; and he is allowed to be with Sibylle, he takes her to restaurants and theaters, he lives with her, though she isn't predestined for him, and he isn't happy.

Friedrich was disappointed by Walter, and furious at him. Without having thought about it before, he had expected the man to leap out and fling his arms around everyone and exclaim: "Look at her, isn't she lovely!" And then Walter did call out her name: "Sibylle!" and it was a cry, and Friedrich understood that this man loved her, and he saw in him torments that he knew were soon to be his as well. Walter had, as they said in the circles in which they moved, "had" Sibylle, and he remained someone she respected, but since he loved her, and didn't merely want to "have" Sibylle but to keep her for himself, he was bound to quit the field having lost her. The cry "Sibylle" didn't deserve her retort: "If you're feeling like that, why don't you go?" Friedrich blushed to witness such a parting. It affected him in spite of himself that a man would risk one cry, then nothing more, and walk away from his room and his work.

Sibylle explained. She said: "He's not the type to vault over the table at you. It takes him time. He's ambitious and slaves away like a student before final exams. It's unbearable. He insists he can only give of his best here in my room. I need to be there for it to happen. He always wants to be near me. First I had to sit in front of him in the window, and now in winter I'm at least allowed to lie behind him on the equator. Its sooo boring. I invite people round to see me, and that makes him so furious he can't write another line. So he has to go out and drink, even though it means he gets trouble from the newspaper later." No one had accused her of anything, but she justified herself: "He's so jealous, I simply have to deceive him. It's nothing to me, but when he takes me home at night and then stands by the door and looks at me like a dog and begs me to go to my little beddie-byes and stay there, he's really forcing me to sneak back down the stairs in the dark a few minutes later, and go off somewhere. And afterward word gets out. Of course, I'm not trying to do anything behind his back. Once as I was leaving the house, I saw him lurking behind the kiosk. He followed me. I was aware of him. I could have driven off in a taxi, or turned round and gone back inside and just pretended I'd wanted to take a little walk. Maybe I really didn't want to do anything more. But his shadow trailing after me forced me to go to this man who had asked me to see him. He's as possessive as a cannibal of a white virgin."

"Then will he hate me too?" asked Friedrich.

"Sure. He sees me falling into bed with everyone. His friend Franz once said ideally he would carry me in his wallet."

Walter the critic's love for Sibylle on that day was still a way for Friedrich to reach her. All he needed to do was conjure up for her the picture of Walter in the lowest pub in the area still tasting the touch of her lips, which, in Walter's aroused condition was steady and obscene. Sibylle could have acted in accordance with Walter's mistaken notions. She always did as she pleased, with the single exception that she never did the worst thing that was expected of her. That law could be made to work in his favor. But Friedrich was still shocked by the expression and the cry of the great man, and was unable to do anything to hurt him. All he wanted was to put his case, and Beck's case, next to Walter's. Then Sibylle could decide between them. He thought himself wise and just, and he was the victim of youthful, romantic mistakes. He didn't understand that he was dealing falsely by his rivals [he thought it was wise; in fact, it was stupid] by putting his trust in the strength of his love (
she is destined for me)
and was full of hope that he might win her by these methods he called fair. Sure, Walter loved Sibylle, but his love was certainly not as all-embracing as Friedrich's, because how, Friedrich went on to think, could Walter confine his jealousy to other men, while Friedrich was already envious of the air in the room for being allowed to touch Sibylle?

Evening had arrived in all its pomp. An advertisement danced up and down the front of the department store, and a fiery red glow jumped sporadically into Sibylle's room. They were lying on the equator. Friedrich too had lain down. He held her left hand in his right. Though slender and delicate, it felt firm. He said: "I love you, Sibylle," and he supposed the passion that prompted him to say the words must cross over from his heart, through their hands, and reach her's. Later on, he would mock himself with a bitter taste in his blood: Just then, I must have been a good person, an open character, and that made me defenseless, naked and open to ridicule. He deemed it necessary to talk about himself, to present himself, to unmask himself. He told her about a boy he had been in love with at school, he talked about the Swedish girl student with her blond hair under a white cap that was like a breaking wave in the summer sea outside the town, he talked about sensitivity, about how he'd fallen in love with a gesture, a walk, a scent, a laugh, he admitted the temptations of sore dreams in the hour of falling asleep, and reported to her of the joy of a readiness to be in love, though always under the control of his will. He didn't dissemble or improve anything. He described his early years, the sacrifices he'd made and the pleasures foregone, an asceticism that was voluntary because he was too proud to take part in the pleasures of the cloddish young people at the university, and too poor to pursue the slender dancers that he'd worshiped from afar in the theater, from up in the gods. And he talked about work he had undertaken, of difficulties that stood in the way of his getting a good job, and endlessly of his hopes and desires and future dreams, and that the sum of this picture and of his days now no longer mattered, and had been invalidated, thrown over, broken, redirected, by his understanding that he loved Sibylle, by the certainty of his feeling that he had to love her, her of all women, and only her. The portrait that had been placed in front of Sibylle wasn't that of a standard contemporary young man. Nor was it like the youth of any young man of Sibylle's wide acquaintance. She felt the urgency that was expressed in the claim: You were meant for me. Never at any time in the future would she claim not to have understood the passion that had filled Friedrich, and to which he had subordinated his whole self and being. She felt addressed. It was she who raised her hand, and pulled him down toward her, but it was she as well who firmly and decisively pushed away the head as it flew down toward her, and let him fall, in her fear that she might be lost to herself. There are some who say she wasn't yet ready for love, she hadn't yet slept around sufficiently, but it is Friedrich's belief that at the moment he was to receive the woman who was destined for him, his own devil got control of the girl's soul and endowed it with ever more magnificent attractions, with understanding and cleverness, with fun and kindness and courage and all the qualities that lead us to love, lead us to love wholly and profoundly, to give ourselves without holding back anything, not only to the body of the other— the pretty larva that fades, that passes, the breasts whose roses wither, the soft skin that under the bloom of sweet seventeen already bears in itself the gray pigmentation of age, the arms and legs and torso, whose firm flesh one day will be flabby or bloodlessly scrawny—fallen not just for the appearance but much more for the beloved's soul, a need to loiter in her breath and her bloodstream, to be a child in her womb.

"Be a good fellow and call Beck. I like it when it's the three of us, together. I want to go out and eat." Sibylle had leapt to her feet. She reached for a coat, and draped it over her shoulders. The "be a good fellow" was somehow ladylike. She said it in a tone of: "I'm not really like that, but it's the way I talk to you." Were they playing "puss in the corner"? No, the war had broken out, and it wasn't just a little girl's revenge: Yesterday it was your turn to be stiff and aloof, today it's mine. The war had broken out and he had lost. Friedrich called Beck. They agreed to meet in the wine bar. He no longer had the willpower to go away and leave Sibylle alone with Beck. And that wasn't what Sibylle wanted to happen either. She didn't want to be with Beck any more than she wanted to be with Friedrich. And consequently, she found them an agreeable team together. And Beck came up trumps. In those days, he pulled his weight valorously. Friedrich and Beck didn't want to be themselves. That was embarrassing to each of them. And so they metamorphosed, addressed one another by outlandish names, held conversations in languages they didn't know. Russian was especially good to mimic. They attained such mastery, even when they were by themselves walking down the street or in a bar, that they could speak in their imaginary language and understand one another. Sibylle was as happy as a little girl at a funfair. "I've wet my undies," she screamed, and let them feel for themselves, because when she was laughing she couldn't remain decent, she was so happy and she really was a child, and neither Beck nor Friedrich found anything odd or obscene about her. They played drunk. They drank water from little vodka glasses and shuddered after each swallow. "Ha, ha, ha," they went, reeling, clutched at the tablecloth and pulled the whole thing down on top of them. "God, that was great!" Sibylle hadn't had so much fun in ages. They took a taxi and shouted abuse at the pedestrians. Sibylle stuck her legs out the window: "People need a treat from time to time," or else Friedrich and Beck would mechanically doff their hats, like foreign potentates going down a receiving line of well-wishers and admirers. They danced in a bar, and people came up to them who knew Sibylle, they were nondescript men, and all three of them united in despising them and played tricks on them, so for instance when one of them wanted to dance with Sibylle, then Beck or Friedrich would stand up and fling himself into the arms of the man, as if that had been what was proposed, and waltzed the startled, hapless, desperate man away across the floor. Secretly, however, Friedrich and Beck never lost sight of each other. Each thought he was in with a sliver of a chance. They were no longer confederates. They were like men having to fight with daggers, but who still hadn't lost their respect, sympathy, and friendship for the other, and certainly they understood what it was that compelled him to thrust and jab. They never left Sibylle's side. Friedrich's hands performed little ecstatic dances in the air. Their limbs were controlled by love. They were like wolves, baring their teeth, they had the smell of prey in their nostrils, but it was the law of their love that they would do nothing to harm the child. They walked her home. Their desire was not to quit her side, not to be cast out in the night; they craved to lie at the foot of her bed like dogs, that to them was bliss. But there was a light on in her room. It glimmered through the curtains into the night. "That'll be Walter," said Sibylle. "He's spying on me, so whatever happens from now on is his fault." Her expression darkened. Her voice grew harsh. She said: "You've got to come up with me now, we'll have a nightcap, it's early yet." Beck and Friedrich went along, thinking they were her protectors. To shield her from an attack of Walter's. Friedrich also with the intention of reassuring him about the childishly silly course of the evening.

Walter stood there, looking injured. He was hoarse. "We've got to talk," he said. He stressed the "we've."

"No, I can't, I've got friends here. I'm not so rude as you, not even saying 'good evening.' You're welcome to drink a schnapps with us, if you like."

"Sibylle!" That yell again. Naked and unprotected.

Something snapped in Sibylle: "I've had it, I've had it, I've had it, I'm not your creature, I'm not your slave, I'm not your dog, I can do what I want, and if you don't want to stand over me while I sleep with someone off the street, then you'd better get out and leave me alone." They were terrible words. Sibylle was in a towering rage.

Friedrich attempted to intercede. He said: "It was all perfectly innocent."

To which, facing Walter, she now added: "Yes, of course it was, of course it was harmless, but you're filth, everything around you is filth, and we're all drowning in it." Was it the cry of a girl who had been seduced? It was absurd and preposterous to think it was deliberate. But perhaps unconsciously? Was it a yearning for a condition that, by mistake, was gone and irretrievably gone? They were words that had the effect of opposing Friedrich to Walter, for whom in other ways he felt a lot of empathy. It was only some weeks later that he began to admire the critic who had found in this night of chaos the strength to free himself [but then Sibylle was never intended for him]. Walter spun off into a rage. Talked to her as though she was a common whore. Smashed tables and chairs and gramophone records, and played soccer with the books. Sibylle was laughing, laughing manically. The laughter spilled out of her like a torrent. Beck was laughing too. Friedrich joined in. The laughter was irresistible. Hell was ablaze. Walter slammed the door behind him and stormed down the stairs. It was the end of her relationship with Walter. She was free. Beck and Friedrich eyed each other. "Go, for God's sake, why don't you go?!" screamed Sibylle. She was crying. She fell to the floor sobbing. Beck and Friedrich sprang to help. "Go away, go away, take your hands off me, I hate you." And they went. For a while through the night together. A woman propositioned them, only to shrink back from their faces, which bore the rigid expressions of policemen. With a few polite and dignified words of their imaginary Russian, Friedrich and Beck bade one another good-night outside the stylish church that catered to the expensive shopping precinct.