The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (34 page)

The children laughed. At that moment they did not look down on him. They sat there at table in their low, luxuriously cushioned chairs, with their spoilt, dissatisfied faces. They sat in splendour and security, but their words rang as sharp as though sharpness, hardness, alertness, and pitiless clarity were demanded of them as survival values. Their highest praise was a grudging acceptance, their criticism deft and ruthless; it snatched the weapons from one's hand, it paralysed enthusiasm, made it a laughing-stock. ‘Very good,' they would say of some masterpiece whose lofty intellectual plane would seem to have put it beyond the reach of criticism. Passion was a blunder – it made them laugh. Von Beckerath, who tended to be disarmed by his enthusiasms, had a hard time of it – also his age put him in the wrong. He got smaller and smaller in his chair, pressed his chin on his breast, and in his excitement breathed through his mouth – beset on all sides by the brisk arrogance of youth. They contradicted everything – as though they found it impossible, discreditable, lamentable, not to contradict. They contradicted most efficiently, their eyes narrowing to gleaming slits. They pounced on some word, one single word that he had used, they worried at it, they tore it to pieces and replaced it by another so telling and deadly that it went straight to the mark and sat in the wound with quivering shaft. Towards the end of luncheon von Beckerath's eyes were red and he looked somewhat ruffled.

Suddenly – they were sprinkling sugar on their slices of pineapple – Siegmund said, wrinkling up his face in the way he had, as though the sun were making him blink:

‘Oh, by the bye, von Beckerath, something else, before we forget it. Sieglinde and I approach you with a request – metaphorically speaking, you see us on our knees. They are giving the
Walküre
tonight. We should like, Sieglinde and I, to hear it once more together – may we? We are of course aware that everything depends upon your gracious favour–'

‘How thoughtful!' said Herr Aarenhold.

Kunz drummed the Hunding motif on the cloth.

Von Beckerath was overcome at anybody asking his permission about anything. He answered eagerly, ‘But by all means, Siegmund – and you too, Sieglinde; I find your request very reasonable – do go, of course; in fact, I shall be able to go with you. There is an excellent cast tonight.'

All the Aarenholds doubled up over their plates to hide their laughter. Von Beckerath, shut out and blinking in his desperate attempt to find his bearings, joined in their amusement as best he could..

Siegmund hastened to say:

‘Oh, well, actually, it's a rather poor cast, you know. For the rest, be assured of our gratitude, but I am afraid there is a slight misunderstanding. Sieglinde and I were asking you to permit us to hear the
Walküre
once more
alone
together before the wedding. I don't know if you feel now that – '

‘Oh, certainly. I quite understand. How charming! Of course you
must
go!'

‘Thanks, we are most grateful indeed. Then I will have Percy and Leiermann put in for us  …'

‘Perhaps I may venture to remark,' said Herr Aarenhold, ‘that your mother and I are driving to dinner with the Erlangers and using Percy and Leiermann. You will have to condescend to the brown coupè and Baal and Zampa.'

‘What about seats?' asked Kunz.

‘Bought them long ago,' said Siegmund, tossing back his head.

They all laughed, all staring at the bridegroom.

Herr Aarenhold unfolded with his finger-tips the paper of a belladonna powder and shook it carefully into his mouth. Then he lighted a fat cigarette, which presently spread abroad a priceless fragrance. The servants sprang forward to draw back the chairs as he and Frau Aarenhold rose. The order was given to serve coffee in the winter-garden. Kunz in a sharp voice ordered his dog-cart brought round; he would drive to the barracks.

*        *        *        *

Siegmund was dressing for the opera; he had been dressing for a hour. He had an abnormal and constant a need for cleansing, to such an extent that he spent a considerable part of his time at the wash-basin. He stood now in front of his large Empire mirror with the white enamelled frame; dipped a powder-puff in its embossed box and powdered his freshly shaven chin and cheeks. His beard was so strong that when he went out in the evening he was obliged to shave a second time.

He presented a colourful picture as he stood there, in rose-tinted silk drawers and socks, red morocco slippers, and a quilted smoking-jacket in a dark pattern with lapels of grey fur. For background he had his large bedroom, full of all sorts of elegant and practical white-enamelled devices. Beyond the windows was a misty view over the tree-tops of the Tiergarten.

It was growing dark. He turned on the circular arrangement of electric bulbs in the white ceiling – they filled the room with soft milky light. Then he drew the velvet curtains across the darkening panes. The light was reflected from the liquid depths of the mirrors in wardrobe, washstand, and dressing-table, it flashed from the polished bottles on the tile-inlaid shelves. And Siegmund continued to work on himself. Now and then some thought in his mind would draw his brows together till they formed two black furrows over the bridge of the nose.

His day had passed as his days usually did, vacantly and swiftly. The opera began at half past six and he had begun to change at half past four, so there had not been much afternoon. He had rested on his chaise-longue from two to three, then drunk tea and employed the remaining hour sprawled in a deep leather armchair in the study which he shared with Kunz, reading a few pages in each of several new novels. He had found them pitiably weak on the whole; but he had sent a few of them to the binder's to be artistically bound in choice bindings, for his library.

He had, though, done some work in the morning. He had spent the hour from ten to eleven in the atelier of his professor, an artist of European repute, who was developing Siegmund's talent for drawing and painting, and receiving from Herr Aarenhold two thousand marks a month for his services. But what Siegmund painted raised nothing more than an indulgent smile. He knew it himself; he was far from having any glowing expectations in his talent as an artist. He was too shrewd not to know that the conditions of his existence were not the most favourable in the world for the development of a creative gift. The accoutrements of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every single accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention. Siegmund had been born into superfluity, he was perfectly adjusted to it. And yet it was a fact that this superfluity never ceased to thrill and occupy him, to give him constant pleasure. Whether consciously or not, it was with him as with his father, who practised the art of never getting used to anything.

Siegmund loved to read, he strove after the word and the spirit as after a tool which a profound instinct urged him to grasp. But never had he lost himself in a book as one does when that single work seems the most important in the world; unique, a little, all-embracing universe, into which one immerses and immures oneself in order to draw nourishment out of every syllable. The books and magazines streamed in, he could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. But he had the books bound in stamped leather and labelled with Siegmund Aarenhold's beautiful book-plate; they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

The day was his, it was given to him as a gift with all its hours from sunrise to sunset; and yet Siegmund found in his heart that he had no time for a resolve, much less for a deed. He was no hero, he commanded no enormous strength. The preparation, the lavish preliminaries for what should have been the serious business of life used up all his energy. How much mental effort had to be expended simply in making a proper toilette! How much time and attention went to his supplies of cigarettes, soaps, and perfumes; how much occasion for making up his mind lay in that moment, recurring two or three times daily, when he had to select his cravat! And it was worth the effort. It was important. The blond-haired citizenry of the land might go about in elastic-sided boots and turn-over collars, heedless of the effect. But he – he of all people – had to be unassailable and without reproach in his appearance from head to toe.

And in the end no one expected more of him. Sometimes there came moments when he had a feeble misgiving about the nature of the ‘real'; sometimes he felt that this lack of expectation lamed and dislodged his sense of it  …  The household arrangements were all made to the end that the day might pass quickly and no empty hour be perceived. The next mealtime always came promptly. They dined before seven; the evening, when one can idle with a good conscience, was long. The days disappeared, swiftly the seasons came and went. The family spent two summer months at their little castle on the lake, with its large and splendid grounds, and many tennis courts, its cool paths through the parks, and shaven lawns adorned by bronze statuettes. A third month was spent in the mountains, in hotels where life was even more luxurious than at home. Of late, during the winter, he had had himself driven to the University to listen to a course of lectures on the history of art which came at a convenient time. But he had had to leave off because his sense of smell indicated that the rest of the class did not wash often enough.

He spent the hour walking with Sieglinde instead. Always she had been at his side since the very first; she had clung to him since they lisped their first syllables, taken their first steps. He had no friends, never had had one but this, his exquisitely groomed, darkly beautiful counterpart, whose moist and slender hand he held while the richly gilded, empty-eyed hours slipped past. They took fresh flowers with them on their walks, a bunch of violets or lilies of the valley, smelling them in turn or sometimes both together, with languid yet voluptuous abandon. They were like self-centred invalids who absorb themselves in trifles, as narcotics to console them for the loss of hope. With an inward gesture of renunciation they cast aside the evil-smelling world and loved each other alone, for the priceless sake of their own rare uselessness. But everything that they uttered was honed to a glittering sharpness, striking the people they met, the things they saw, everything done by somebody else, to the end that it might be exposed to the unerring eye, the sharp tongue, the witty condemnation.

Then von Beckerath had appeared. He had a post in the government and came of a good family. He had proposed to Sieglinde. Frau Aarenhold had supported him, Herr Aarenhold had displayed a benevolent neutrality, Kunz the hussar was his zealous partisan. He had been patient, assiduous, endlessly good-mannered and tactful. And in the end, after she had told him often enough that she did not love him, Sieglinde had begun to look at him searchingly, expectantly, mutely, with an earnestness in her glisteninging black eyes, which spoke without words, like an animal's – and had said yes. And Siegmund, whose will was her law, had taken up a position too; slightly to his own disgust he had not opposed the match; was not von Beckerath in the government and a man of good family too? Sometimes he wrinkled his brows over his toilette until they made two heavy black furrows at the bridge of his nose.

He stood on the white bearskin which stretched out its claws beside the bed; his feet were lost in the long soft hair. He sprinkled himself lavishly with toilet water and took up his dress shirt. The starched and shining linen glided over his yellowish torso, which was as lean as a young boy's and yet shaggy with black hair. He arrayed himself further in black silk drawers, black silk socks, and heavy black silk suspenders with silver buckles, put on the well-pressed trousers of silky black cloth, fastened the white silk braces over his narrow shoulders, and with one foot on a stool began to button his shoes. There was a knock on the door.

‘May I come in, Gigi?' asked Sieglinde.

‘Yes, come in,' he answered.

She was already dressed, in a frock of shimmering sea-green silk, with a square neck outlined by a wide band of ecru embroidery. Two embroidered peacocks facing each other above the girdle held a garland in their beaks. Her dark brown hair was unadorned; but a large egg-shaped precious stone hung on a thin pearl chain against her bare skin, the colour of smoked meerschaum. Over her arm she carried a scarf heavily worked with silver.

‘I am unable to conceal from you,' she said, ‘that the carriage is waiting.' He parried at once:

‘And I have no hesitation in replying that it will have to wait patiently two minutes more.' It was at least ten. She sat down on the white velvet chaise-longue and watched him at his labours.

Out of a rich chaos of ties he selected a white piquè band and began to tie it before the glass.

‘Beckerath,' she said, ‘wears coloured cravats, crossed over the way they wore them last year.'

‘Beckerath,' he said, ‘is the most banal being into whose existence it has been my misfortune to gain some insight.' Turning to her quickly he added: ‘Moreover, you will do me the favour of not mentioning that Teuton's name to me again this evening.'

She gave a short laugh and replied: ‘You may be sure it will not be a hardship.'

He put on the low-cut piquè waistcoat and drew his tail coat over it, the soft silk lining caressing his hands as they passed through the sleeves.

‘Let me see which buttons you have chosen,' said Sieglinde. They were the amethyst ones; shirt-studs, cuff-links, and waistcoat buttons, a complete set.

She looked at him admiringly, proudly, adoringly, with a world of tenderness in her dark, shining eyes. He kissed the lips lying so softly on each other. They spent another minute on the chaise-longue in mutual caresses.