A Sad Affair (4 page)

WINTER
HAD
come fierce and early. I had been looking around 
for a job, probably out of instinct,
 the way I've often done things to stay alive, things I really didn't want to do, and that I must have done out of instinct, or pure will, or because it was my destiny to go on living, and so I was the tester in a big lightbulb factory in the north of the city. Not a scientifically qualified rank, like the gentlemen who hand in their reports at the patent office, just a low-grade observer, someone who [put in a room full of circuits where thousands upon thousands of electric lightbulbs were coupled to copper rails, and were left to burn night and day, giving out a dry, stinging, disagreeable heat] had to watch and write down the time when a bulb burned out. The university's labor exchange had fixed me up with that when I'd gone looking for some night work. They said: "You're a literature student, but for this you just need eyes in your head."

I had pictured the job as being pleasanter than it turned out to be. I thought I would have leisure to think about one or two things that had been occupying me for some time. I had assumed the night in the lamp room of the sleeping factory would be like a watch on a clipper ship, gliding along under the trade winds, bringing peace and contemplation to even the most neurotic characters. In the end I had to pay attention like a hawk. Even though I wore dark glasses, I found the light dazzling. I ran around like a madman, investigating shadows that turned out to be purely imaginary, in constant danger of being caught napping by some works inspector, or in an excess of zeal getting too close to one of the heavily laden copper circuits and receiving a possibly fatal shock.

Also, it turned out to be a disadvantage, more psychologically than actually, that I understood so little of how the place functioned technically, because before long I lived in terror of some unforeseen accident, something that an expert would be able to remedy safely and perfectly easily, but to someone with my ignorance less easy and, in fact, potentially catastrophic. A short circuit, a failure in the transformer unit, a spark in the oil switch, bits of equipment that were nothing but names to me but still names that stood in some relation to various catastrophes, these made me tremble, and I carefully memorized the route to the alarm, so that in the event of my being plunged into darkness—deeper and more impenetrable darkness than you could find anywhere else in the world—even then, I would be sure to find it. Following these exertions, I came home in the morning exhausted, in an empty streetcar with three empty carriages attached to it to bring workers to the factory district when the shift came on, rumbling through the gloaming, and then to bed with the morning paper, which slipped from my grasp, sleeping, sometimes dreaming of the time clock with its cogs, until from the yard that my room opened on, the beating of carpets and the calls of the rag and bottle men would wake me.

For this, as it transpired, enervating work I was paid a hundred marks per month. That represented my entire income. Except for what I needed to pay for my room, I had all day to spend it in.

I got up at around noon and went into art school, not to study but to eat. There was a cafeteria there that was a little bit the way I imagine a bohemian restaurant in nineteenth-century novels. You could watch them come down from their ateliers in their paint-spattered overalls, their faces still radiant with creativity, casually picking a bowl off the rack and taking huge mouthfuls, and with them their models, noisy and full of themselves, and showing in their faces, too, some association with paint.

It was in this cafeteria, which was always lively and always full, that I first met Beck. That is, I'd met him before, but this was where we got to know each other properly. In the summer I'd been swimming in the river near where Beck lived, and, not knowing the currents, I would have drowned if Beck hadn't pulled me onto his boat as he happened to be passing. He saved my life, I suppose you could say, although he hadn't done much beyond grabbing hold of me when he saw I was in trouble. And then, as luck would have it, Beck knew the man I was staying with, who specialized in fish paintings. They were all over the walls, these fishes, fishes out of water and fishes swimming; the painter would stand in front of them and stretch, and his hair would shoot up into the air, and he would say: "My paaaintings," and as he said the long
a
sound, he would stick out his tongue. Beck supported this painter by bringing him food from his mother's kitchen. From that point on, I referred to Beck as the art dealer, because I thought, as later proved to be the case, that he had a gift for these art-related business transactions. But the real reason for his fondness for the fish painter, and this speaks for him [and will always, whatever happens, speak for him], was that he wanted to see another picture that was hidden behind the fish paintings, and which had so far escaped my notice. This was no paaainting [tongue stuck out during the long
a
sound] but a pastel of a delicacy and feeling that one would not have thought the artist had had in him, a pastel of a girl, little more than a child, leaning against a chimney breast with a lyre in her hand, dressed like a fairy-tale prince. And that was Sibylle! Her parents lived in a country house a little way upriver, and the painter had been to visit them. He said the girl had been ill at the time and sitting up in bed and, following a sudden whim, and to cheer her up, he had done the drawing of her as described. I would have liked to have taken it with me, but Beck had a prior claim on it. The model didn't interest me much, and when I left, I learned, not that I was interested, that Sibylle was presently in the capital and would probably make her way in films, and not until Beck one day spoke to me out of the blue in the art school cafeteria, did I remember the Sibylle in the picture.

Beck was agitated. He started talking about Sibylle right away, I didn't have to ask. I was sure he was in love with her. He said: "Please don't laugh, she looks just like an angel." He had gone to see her, bringing greetings from the painter, and she had received him in an apartment that according to his description seemed to be chockablock with cushions and stuffed toys and other movie-starlet flimflam. I didn't like the sound of that, and I supposed she must be a stupid and shallow person. "No, no," Beck replied, "she's just a child!" She had received Beck in a diaphanous robe, and asked him whether she'd done her lipstick right. I had nothing more to say but felt my suspicion of her brainlessness confirmed, when I heard Beck trying to talk to her on the telephone. He picked up the receiver, dialed the number, and said: "Hello, Sibyllchen"; so that meant she was on the other end, and had answered it herself, and what ensued was a dance on coals. Beck was fumbling for words, tried to start up a conversation [just to hear the sound of her voice], but every new topic foundered on her monosyllabic replies.

"It's impossible to talk to her," I observed. "I mean, you can tell; she's nothing but a doll out of a fashion review, an empty-headed creature, and her idea of conversation is some cocktail bar chitchat about the latest cut of the shoulder, or at the most, some matinée idol, and she only talks to well-dressed younger sons of aristos, pimps, or film extras [none of which you are, Beck]." Beck denied this, and we drank wine, wine in the afternoon, though it didn't feel particularly wicked, partly because Beck was so miserable and partly because the wine was some he had brought with him from his own vineyard at home. Then it was time for me to go on to my fairy grotto, and Beck took hold of the bottle he had drunk, broke off its neck, and scrawled "I love you" on the label [Hochberger Krötenmilch], and packed the bottle in a basket and addressed it to Sibylle. He saw me to the streetcar stop on his own way to the post office.

That night I was even more jumpy than usual at work. I had the feeling that the electricity all around was somehow getting to me, and I felt envious of Beck for his wealthy background. I wasn't as bad as I got to be later, when I saw nonexistent sparks and practically yearned for thunderous explosions, but it was certainly a feeling that I'd been warned, that I'd had some notice of the impending calamity.

I'd no sooner gone to bed the following morning than there was a knock on the door, and Beck came into my room. He said: "My dear friend," and for a while that was all, and he walked back and forth. No apology, not a word of explanation, just that pacing to and fro, from the stove to the window, from the window to the stove. I lay there thinking I'm coming down with something. I didn't have the strength to move or to put up any fight, he could have done anything he wanted with me, I just lay still. He had something he wanted to confess, and given time he would speak, but for now he was just pacing back and forth in front of my bed, all I could see were lightbulbs and copper wire and sparks. "I've seen her," he finally said, and came to a stop. "I've seen her, I was in the Völkstheater, up in the circle, and she was sitting down in the stalls. She was with a man whom everybody greeted, he must have been a drama critic, maybe you would have known who he was, you're interested in those kind of people." That sounded hostile to me. He just tossed out that "you're interested in those kind of people" as if writing theater reviews were a contemptible activity, and as if he thought it was just about my level—when only the day before he'd had to loan me a couple of marks. Then he suddenly jerked upward with a cry of rage, picked a book off my bedside table, and flipped it up in the air. "Do you think," he yelled, "do you think she's sleeping with him?"

Of course I thought she was, and I thought it must be a nice thing to sleep with someone. I was perfectly candid with him, but I wasn't thinking about sex. I had never felt solitude so keenly as it revealed itself to me now. There I was, lying between my already dusty sheets, and in front of me there was a man getting all steamed up about something. What was my connection with him? I lay there, as though on insulating layers. Who would care if I died? Oh, if only there were another human being lying at my side, so that I could feel another's breath, another's heart, the feeling of another's skin, the stirrings of some dream that wasn't mine, because even my dreams were dreadful.

"Of course she's sleeping with him," I said to Beck. "He'll want that and require it of her, because the life of the mind doesn't make anyone happy, not even a critic; and didn't you yourself say Sibylle was beautiful and sexy?"

Yes, I was crude. I admit I was, and I can completely understand Beck stalking out of the room with a glare that pierced me to the marrow, that's how hurt he was, and slamming the door in a fury. "I'm ill!" I shouted after him, but probably he didn't hear me. Why did he have to come to me with his grief? I had no experience of these matters. Grief, yes, but not love. On that morning, I was of the view that not having a piece of bread in the house was a far, far worse thing altogether.

I can't remember if I managed to get off to sleep after that. All I know is that at about noon I got up, feeling shaky and tired, and did one or two exercises in the cold room [I couldn't afford heating], without really believing they accomplished anything. Finally, I began to shave; and even that with a hollow feeling of duty and habit, unenthusiastic, and not expecting the least improvement to come from the activity. Damnit, it was the beginning of a fatuous day which was certain to end as fatuously. I decided I would devote myself to my studies again, and hang on to my nighttime job; what else was I going to live off? But I had to find a way of getting through it that didn't take so much out of me.

I still had my face full of shaving foam when there was a knock.
"
Avanti
," I called out, because poor people have nothing to fear from a surprise. "
Avanti
, come on in," and I sounded a lot more chipper than I felt. I was surprised to see Beck walk in. I hadn't expected him back following this morning's scene, and I had already decided I would apologize the next time I saw him in the cafeteria. As he stopped in the doorway, I supposed that he too felt the awkwardness of the situation, and I called out once more: "Please come in, there's a draft, and I'm sorry I'm not dressed yet, I haven't felt well all day." The apology for my being undressed and the reference to feeling unwell was also intended to cover and apologize for my rudeness earlier that morning. But Beck was still hanging back in the doorway, I wanted to reach out my hand to him and pull him into the room, but then behind him in the dark corridor I heard giggling, and laughter, and finally loud laughter, and then he got a shove from behind, that was unmistakable, because he stumbled in and fell, fell right on top of the chair that had all my clothes on it, which he promptly upset, my God they were dusty, and who would brush them for me, and then I heard another voice: "Come on, he's an idiot, you can see that, hello, I wanted to visit you," and a hand was extended in my direction, and behind it there emerged from the darkness an arm, a dress, a body, a neck and head and eyes and a mouth [especially a mouth], and there was Sibylle standing in my room, a little shorter than me, and smiling and lovely.

It was the first time in my life that I found myself thinking and acting utterly conventionally. I felt sandbagged or hexed, I mean, I could have been the headmaster of the Christian Ladies' Academy of the Sacred Heart. I saw Sibylle in front of me, and my true nature showed perhaps a little in my look, I looked at her, looked past the disguise of the ladies' hat, and past the ruff at her throat, I disregarded them, and I saw her figure and her face, I saw her hands, and if I'd been able to think at that moment, then I would have thought: Yes, but God sees into the heart. I knew everything, none of what happened later remotely surprised me. I knew: I love her, I love her! But my room! That ugly furnished room at the back of the house, the wallpaper tent, sun-bleached and full of sputum and bedbugs. The bareness and the poverty. I saw them as well. And my stubble under the drying soap. And the heap of possible/impossible clothes on the floor, and the decrepit chair and the narrow bed. It all seemed terribly important suddenly, which normally it didn't at all. I looked around at everything, and finally, out of the paralysis that had befallen me, I stammered: "Here, please, won't you sit down!" The formal "
Sie
" I stressed, as if I were giving orders to a whole regiment. It surprises me today, after I've spent many hours thinking about the state of paralysis I got into then, that I didn't actually go on to say "Miss," but that must have been just a little too remote from me then as an idea, otherwise I'm certain I would have done it.