A Sad Affair (17 page)

Then Friedrich emerged from the labyrinth of alleyways into the long rectangular Piazza Municipio, where a slight little man in a short raincoat, approached him, swinging an umbrella. "
Inglese
,
Francese
,
Tedesco
?" asked the little man, and said: "I direct you." The man was very wet and very cold. It seemed he must have spent the entire rainy day, from morning till evening, standing in the Piazza Municipio, waiting for a tourist. All the more determinedly did he now latch on to Friedrich, firing the speech that like a bullet in a gun had been inside him. The speech was leveled at Friedrich's body, so uncommonly small was the man, and it almost knocked him over. "Ah, he spikka Tcherman and he spikka all di odda langwitches. He wanna da help gentleman visita, who no understanda Napoli. He offer him girls,
Mädchen
, from Campagna, from Capri, cheap, vair cheap, but yong, no bad women, ah no, he have di addresses, only small fee fa da guide,
niente piu
, vair respectable,
e tutto compreso"
He swung his umbrella in the direction and set off after it. "We go," he said.

"No," said Friedrich, and grieved the little man by staying where he was. "Sorry," he said, "I don't feel like it. I'm sorry to disappoint you. But maybe you'll let me recompense you for having stood here waiting for me."

"Ah, no, no, no," retorted the little man, and made motions with his umbrella as though to take flight. "Signor no understanna nathin. Napoli! Is beautiful! Tarantella, da famous tarantella, genuine! Nude! Wi' two girls. Da signor watch. All positions!
Dieci positione!. Dieci!"
In a gesture of utter self-sacrifice, the man let go his umbrella and waggled the fingers of both hands above his head, by way of demonstration.

You are a poor wretch, aren't you? thought Friedrich. Then why not go with the man and give him a sense of honest labor, instead of offending his self-worth by offering him charity? Friedrich dreaded the sights that awaited him. He could sense the thick gloom of a dirty bedroom with fly-spotted mirror and the shaming indignity of a show of maggoty pale flesh in a display of mechanical sex. He had never felt any curiosity about these things, and now, in his own upset, he felt he wouldn't be able to stand them. His own poor wretchedness stood revealed to him. Never had he felt so comprehensively hopeless. The city of Naples was a cloud that wanted to bear him away to some cloacal scrap heap. He could do nothing for the little man, and wanted to raise his arm in a farewell greeting to him and go, but the little man was trotting along beside him. But Friedrich was now taking the lead, and vaguely having his bearings, led them in the direction of his hotel.

"Oh," said the man, struggling with the wind, and trying to keep up, "oh, I understand the signor not like women. I have served an English milord. I know antique naked Ganymedes. Like Museo Nazionale.
Dieci lire senza proviggione!"

Friedrich thought: He's sweating now. He's afraid I may slip away, and he'll lose me. He's already lapsed into Italian. Then it occurred to Friedrich that he might take over the role of the tug, might cringe and wheedle and play a fiendish game with this man he couldn't shake off. "All right," said Friedrich, "ten lire it is. Now you come with me."

"No," the man was swinging his umbrella in passionate excitement, "no, there, there, we need to go there."

"No," said Friedrich, "I know where we're going, and we're going this way," and he stepped out even faster. Was this not the adventure of this city? Was this not a game that Sibylle would enjoy, that he could tell her about, suitably embellished, about how the desperate little fellow was jogging along, trying to keep up, and how they finally reached the hotel, and the little man stopped, and Friedrich took him by both hands and said: "No no, come on up, it's only ten lire," and in spite of his resistance pulled him, to the astonishment of the single hotel employee who had been dozing in the lobby, up the stairs to his room. This was the only adventure that Friedrich could have in Naples. He was playing "puss in the corner" again. He had always enjoyed that game. To Anja, sitting in the nest of cushions in front of the radiator, as if no time had passed at all, he said: "Guess what, I found someone in town who wants to see me in the guise of a classical statue of Ganymede, and is prepared to pay ten lire for the privilege!" He almost shouted it, and started rapidly taking his clothes off, in the manner of someone who is afraid he might miss a unique opportunity. The little man stood as straight as a guardsman against the door, and from the lowered standard of his umbrella, a little stream of water dribbled out on to the floor. "Take a seat, why don't you?" said Friedrich. "Make yourself at home. I'll dance the tarantella for you too, if you would like. Would you like it if the lady stripped as well? That will be another ten lire, I should tell you in advance."

The situation slowly dawned on Anja, who, at first hadn't understood what was happening. She perked up, like a rabbit with its nose quivering over a bunch of freshly plucked dandelion. "Ooh yes," she called out and jumped to her feet, "the gentleman is so nice, I'll only charge five lire. Five lire, special price," and already her hands were pulling at the cord of her dressing gown. Then the little man screamed. A shrill, piercing scream. A scream that cut to the bone, and blew away all the walls in the whole hotel. Then he hurled his umbrella at Friedrich, and ran out of the room. He crossed the corridor and flung open the door of the room opposite, as though to take shelter there. Standing framed in the doorway, under a bright pool of light stood a Japanese in a white kimono. In his hand, he was holding a scroll of paper and a short sword. His posture was that of an officer. He was evidently angry at the disturbance. The little man recoiled before the apparition of the Japanese as though he had hurtled into an invisible barrier, and he skidded on the linoleum floor, and lay there in the corridor.

Afterward, Friedrich never knew what he had thought in putting on this scene, or what he had intended to happen. He tried to explain it to the Japanese by saying: "I was acting on impulse. I wanted to find a victim I could sacrifice to my devil who had taken up residence in Sibylle." He picked the little man off the floor and gave him fifty lire. Friedrich wasn't a bad fellow. He had only seen himself so clearly in his poor wretchedness that when another poor wretch, his mirror image, had barked at him, he had to go and sink his teeth into him. In his heart he felt shame at being so poor and so small, but it wasn't the time to allow such a feeling to take hold of him. The Japanese still stood there in his white robe in the open doorway to his room. I gave him the cue for his entry, thought Friedrich, I must apologize for the disturbance I've caused him. He stepped into the other man's room and presented himself. He asked for forgiveness; he tried to explain; he felt driven to speak, to confess, to explain. The Japanese nodded. He listened. Polite, modest, outlandish only in his costume. He is a diplomat, Friedrich thought, and he said: "I can't be without Sibylle. Please understand, I can't." The Japanese inclined his wise head slightly. He understood Friedrich, he grasped the case, and he approved Friedrich’s conclusion that he could no longer exist without Sibylle.

The man said: "I have prepared tea, for a night in which I want to stay awake." He walked over to a kettle that was humming over a light alcohol flame. He took it off the flame and put it down on the table. From a suitcase he took out three flat cups and put them next to the pot. Then he crossed into Friedrich's room and brought in Anja, who had stayed behind, leaning on the doorjamb, observing the activity with a soft, dreamy expression. He performed nothing really more than a single gesture, but it was irresistible. "This is the drink of my country," he said. "It is offered to new arrivals as a sign of welcome. Do me the honor of taking tea with me." And with a grave smile, he bowed—a measured, European bow to Friedrich; to Anja very nearly down to the ground—and it all struck Friedrich as incredibly oriental and Asiatic. They sat down and drank their green tea. It was hot, almost scalding, and they quickly felt its reinvigorating properties. "You are Russian," the Japanese said, turning to Anja, and he said a sentence to her in Russian.

Warmth came over Anja's face. "Oh," she said, and then some words, broken, groping, weighing them, in her mother tongue.

"It does her good," the Japanese said to Friedrich, thus apologizing for the conversation which he was unable to follow.

Perhaps Japan is what she yearns for now, thought Friedrich. If he tells Anja about his island and the strange and rare things on it, then she will belong to him. Anja has no home, there's only the country ahead of her that she can see. He saw her again as he had the first evening, in the foreign city. She can be so tender, he thought, and once again he had the feeling: You have to love her, like you would love an animal with soft fur. He thought it was perfectly natural that she would want to go to Japan, even though not a word had been said about it yet; and he was also pleased that she was to have the journey, the experience, the country, and the man; he wanted the best for her; it was probably all right if things between them ended in this fashion; and yet there was a little pang, a slight feeling of melancholy; she's leaving again.

"She is tired," said the Japanese. In other words, he wanted to discuss her transfer with Friedrich, as man to man.

They laid Anja on the bed, and her eyes rolled up under the lids as they came down. Friedrich thought: I am dealing with Magnus's property. His situation was making him act dishonorably. I always had contempt for those fathers, who, because they were beaten as children, go on to smack their own children. The man who was kicked, kicks out at others. Was it cowardly of him not to try and avert Magnus's loss? Then again, could he stand in Anja's way? By what right? How could he take a hand? Was that the law? Did he know what the law was? Was there a law that applied to them, to himself and to Anja, and Magnus, and the Japanese? He was no more cowardly than anyone else who was looking for the law and wasn't able to see it. Only he wasn't as crass as the most ignorant people, who, merely to accomplish something and to set themselves up in some way, pass decrees against their neighbors. Who is allowed to say: "You may not!"? Who dares to determine that for others?

The Japanese poured more tea for Friedrich and for himself. His hands were deft and quick, like the hands of a good surgeon. He said: "Why don't you kill yourself? I don't understand how you can continue to live. When, after listening to what you told me, I think of your sad affair, it seems to me that you are already dead, and leading a shadow life." The words were spoken with such immaculate courtesy that any objection to them could only have sounded boorish. "Do you know our idea of the honor of an officer?" he continued. "An officer may be unlucky and lose the battle, but if he's convinced he's done his best, then he cannot live with the error on the part of fate or—as you're a Christian—the misjudgment by God. What happened must be a mistake. He has suffered a stain that he did not deserve. He must look into the matter and correct it, there must be justice and process in the world, and, to remove the injustice, he kills himself. Or would you deny that you have lost a battle? Love and war are the oldest terrors. From them come unhappiness and chivalry; and while it may seem easier to be a victorious knight, think whether you, the loser, should not prefer to a miserable life the possibility of a knightly death? My words may perhaps sound strange and terrifying to you. I understand Europeans think differently. What prompts my speech is merely the circumstance that you came to me with your story just as I was wearing the white robes of an all-night vigil. This is a custom with my people. I am going home. Tomorrow my ship will dock from London, and in three weeks, we will land in Yokohama. During the voyage, I will wear the costume in which you see me now. I will draw up my reckoning with myself. I came to Europe to serve my country, and I have lost face. As you have. I too am in love. I too love a human being. I too love without luck and without hope. And I too say: 'She is destined for me; it is all a mistake!' But we are not so advanced in our philosophy and theology. I am going home to kill myself." His voice had not left its calm, precise, and quiet natural range, and the smile was still on his face. "Anja," he said, after a moment pointing to her, and his gesture was so infinitely polite and respectful that any objection would have been embarrassing and not to be contemplated, "Anja will come with me. She would like to see my country; she has said so; and I will show it to her. I still have that much time. And then I will send her back to Europe."

"But," said Friedrich, "as long as Sibylle's in the world, surely the misunderstanding between us can be cleared up!" The Japanese propped his wise head against his chest, and his eye traveled down Friedrich's body, down to his feet. That seemed to say whatever needed to be said, and he opposed Friedrich's hopeful counter with nothing further than his smile. Already Friedrich felt the cool brass doorknob in his hand, and when he looked across at Anja, the prince's daughter, asleep on the diplomat's bed, and her face lying in a valley in a range of white pillow hills, she seemed to have become a dreaming child again.

A
ND
WHILE
Friedrich was only left with the memory of soft features behind a veil of smoke and a recollection of tendernesses that were already like the desperate clutchings of a drowning woman around her would-be savior's neck, Sibylle, in her vision of Anja, saw a stronger manifestation altogether, a creature not unlike the medlar
{3}
, gifted at exploiting its weakness, and in Anja's drifting in the swim of chance—from the day when still a babe in arms, she had seen Moscow in flames, or perhaps some other town on the Volga—she now saw the strangely purposeful steering of a wreck that had gone down, but not to the bottom, on an obstinate course that endangered all other shipping. Was she jealous, because Anja and Friedrich were traveling together? Sibylle was pretty sure she didn't love Friedrich. She loved Bosporus, but Friedrich was an object in her and no one else's possession that had newly got some color and had acquired visibility when it had left her orbit and, rejected by her, had removed itself with another party. Sibylle could see Friedrich and Anja strolling together in front of a body of water as blue as the sugar bags on the shelves of little corner grocery shops, under a sun of the lofty gold of a grandfather's fob watch. Meanwhile she herself was stuck in a perpetual shower-bath of gray rain. It was late evening, a public holiday. The houses were crammed with silence and inertia as with cotton wool. Even the barking of a dog outside a closed door had been reduced to a pathetic whimper. Sibylle hadn't left her room all day. She stood at her window, gazing down. There was no one on the street. It must have been fully an hour since the last person had stepped into the white pool around the streetlight.