Clara Mondschein's Melancholia

by Anne Raeff

  “My first husband insisted on inviting my father and sisters to dinner. He thought he was being charitable; it made him feel that all his fine suits and his apartment and the maids in black dresses and white aprons could do some good in the world. He even bought a special set of dishes for their visits and ordered his maids to go all the way to the Second District to buy kosher meat.

  “We didn’t talk much because he was rarely home. He left me in his large apartment with the shy maids from the countryside and would return only in the evenings and often not until long after dinner. He said he frequented communist meetings, but he never took me with him, and I never asked to be taken. Instead, he brought me fancy clothes in which I waited for his return. Every once in a while, he took me to the opera or the theater and out to an expensive dinner. He always requested a dark, private table in the back.

  “When he came home, he often had those same tiny stains on his shirt or jacket or pants, just like on the first day. When he was gone, I would dream about tearing him apart like a wild beast and leaving him to bleed to death on the carpet, but then he would take my hands and kiss me, move me to the bed, untie my nightgown and cup his hands over my breasts and leave them there patiently. Excuse me, Tommy. I shouldn’t be so self-indulgent, but look! My hands are trembling. How can I still be angry after all these years?”

  “It’s good to be angry, Mrs. Mondschein, and I am a big believer in self-indulgence. Please continue.”

  So I continued although my hands did not stop trembling. “He knew he would not have to wait long before my breasts began rising up to be tighter in his hands, and he would sit there quietly, and I would have to pull him down to me and force my tongue into his mouth and press myself against him. Often, he would not take off his clothes. It seemed that he preferred the cigarette and cognac that came afterwards. He was like that about everything—didn’t really enjoy his dinner but liked the silver cutlery and the maids who fussed over him saying mein Herr this and mein Herr that. He treated them very well—gave them long holidays and gifts to take to their families. They were very grateful.

  “If something was disturbed or imperfect, if the food was slightly salty or he found a bit of cork in his wine, he would grow more and more restless and then the only thing that would calm him would be to knock billiard balls around until dawn. Yet he never noticed those tiny dots on his clothing. The stains were what finally did it. The stains on his suits, the stains in the bed—little accidents that you can’t avoid. In a way, I liked the stains—they made him human—but I knew that if I ever pointed them out, he would clench his fists and stiffen his back, and I would have to listen to the sound of billiard balls cracking against each other all night. I would have preferred him to smell and come home every night tired with dirty fingernails. I missed the odor of onions hanging in the air, the grease stains on the wall over the stove, and my sisters’ silly chatter while they knitted.

  “This is my punishment for going with a gentile, for thinking that I could escape the darkness of our little apartment, I thought to myself as I waited all afternoon in my fancy bed. I started spending more and more time in bed. I grew thin and bony, and my husband stopped coming to me. He left me to myself. I refused to see my family, though I knew they must be worried. Gertrude, the youngest, prettiest maid, brought me eggs and apples every morning without ever looking me in the eyes. At night, I heard her laughter coming from the next room where my husband lay.

  “I started smelling my own stink. It filled the room, but I would let no one open the windows. I would wake up and almost vomit from my own smell, but after a few minutes, that would pass, and I would concentrate on the odor and the sheets that were a pale yellow from my sweat. All this was my only comfort. I could have stayed like that for a long time, but one day he came to me and said he had had enough, that I was contaminating his house, that he smelled me when he was trying to eat his dinner and in the mornings when he was shaving. I said nothing because there was nothing to say. His jaw muscles twitched in anger, his manicured nails dug into his palms, and then he dragged me out of bed, threw my coat over my shoulders, held my head up so as not to bang it as he dragged me down the stairs. In the taxi, I knew he was taking me to my father’s house, and I felt neither regret nor relief, but part of me was laughing. I had managed to upset him after all. Now he would know not to take the daughters of crouched, dingy families into his almost odorless house with brass doorknobs and tea cakes.

  “He left me at the door without an explanation. I waited until he had driven off in the taxi and only then rang the bell. My father and sisters did not dare look at me, so I went directly to my old room and my old bed where I used to dream of my mother kissing army officers. All through the night, I heard the regular noise of billiard balls cracking against each other in my head. I pitied my husband because he missed the easiest shots and because he could not stop himself from finding solace in the earthy-smelling arms of Gertrude. And I laughed thinking about all those handsome gentlemen at their Communist Party meetings sipping wine and underlining important passages in Das Kapital. My father and sisters must have trembled all night listening to my hysterical laughter.

  “In the morning, however, there was a new smell in the air that made me think of school excursions. Someone had come into my room and opened the window after I had finally fallen asleep. I was enraged by that fresh smell of wind and spring-around-the-corner, but at the same time couldn’t help breathing in deeply. And then I realized I was hungry. It wasn’t a stirring morning hunger but rather one that grabbed at my guts and spread all over my body. I felt it in my arms and legs; my throat called out for food. I tried not to surrender to the whiff of air that brought the message of spring. I battled against it, but I couldn’t push the thought of noodles and chicken and thick rye bread out of my mind. I called to my sisters and they brought me food, mountains of food—potatoes, noodles, stringy meat and boiled carrots with dill, and a whole box of cookies. And still I was hungry. I ate more and my sisters called for the midwife Mrs. Blumstein, a short woman with skinny legs and big breasts, who felt my forehead, looked at my empty plate, examined the brown area around my nipples, and smiled. Within an hour, the entire district was informed that the oldest Feinberg girl had returned home and was with child. So I, the oldest Feinberg daughter, had once again justified their dark, righteous homes, with their fat mothers, arthritic before fifty, and their quiet fathers who scurried through the streets selling rolls of cheap fabric. ‘The bad blood in that girl comes from her mother,’ they would say, feeling sorry for my father, who carried his burdens so quietly, so heroically, although his eyes were always fixed on the ground.”

  “I knew so many men like your first husband.” Tommy spoke as if from a dream. “Beautiful men in business suits, but they never took me home. I waited for them behind the bleachers at the baseball field near the train station. They seemed to have passed the word among themselves—there’s a scrawny guy with hair covering his eyes who’s willing to suck cock or take it up the ass for free. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t talk like that, but there’s no other way to say it. Not that I know of. Sometimes their suits were brushed lightly with cigarette ashes; sometimes they smelled of martinis; sometimes they were fat, sometimes they weren’t. That was a very long time ago before I learned to take refuge in the warmth of the baths. The funny thing is I never liked the baths half as much as my little spot behind the bleachers. Only now have I stopped despising myself for it. Why should I despise myself when, if it hadn’t been for me, all those suited men with the Wall Street Journal in their briefcases would never have been able to keep themselves from falling off the edge and into the abyss of Long Island loneliness? We kept each other from that abyss just like your first husband saved you.”

  “Saved me? Saved me from what?”

  “Only you can know that. Only you.”

  “Did you ever have a . . . longer relationship?”

&nb
sp; “Ah, Mrs. Mondschein. Didn’t you say you were bringing me some Mozart?”

  “Of course, I almost forgot. Good thing you reminded me.”

  “Yes, a day without Mozart is like a day without . . . Please, Mrs. Mondschein, don’t leave just yet. Stay and listen with me. Your story is making me so very emotional.”

  “Perhaps it is too much for both of us.”

  “No, but we have to pace ourselves, don’t you think?”

  So we listened to Mozart until Tommy fell asleep, and then I headed home, tired. It was a good tired, though, like after a long walk in the winter.

  The next morning I was the first volunteer to arrive and Tommy was the first patient to wake up, so there was a strange peacefulness in the hospice that I had never experienced before and the usual smells and noises were muffled and almost friendly. Tommy wondered why I had come so early.

  “I was up before dawn and sometimes I cannot bear being in the apartment. I actually thought I might make the trip to New Jersey to visit Clara, but when I called, Deborah answered the phone and told me that Clara would not speak to anyone, not even to Simon, so I happily got myself ready to visit you. You see, I prefer talking to you because you can really appreciate my story.”

  “Why?” Tommy asked.

  “No reason, really,” I said.

  “You know very well, Mrs. Mondschein, that there is a reason for everything. Is it because I won’t tell anyone since I have no one to tell, no one who cares?”

  “No, I’m just afraid that others would misinterpret everything.”

  “And it doesn’t matter if I misinterpret things since I’ll be dead soon.”

  “Tommy, that might work with some people but I’m beyond guilt,” I told him.

  “Why? Do you have so much to feel guilty about?”

  “Didn’t you want to hear about Karl?”

  “Of course I do. I dreamt about him last night.”

  “What did you dream?”

  “I dreamt that he was my doctor and he was examining me very gently, caressing me more than examining, and then all of a sudden he saw the lesion on my stomach and he recoiled. Then I woke up.”

  “How can you be sure it was Karl?”

  “I just know. When I woke up, I felt as if I had betrayed you. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  “Perhaps not. But I don’t want to get ahead of my story.”

  “And I, Mrs. Mondschein, don’t want your story ever to end. It gives me something to fantasize about besides my death.”

  “You remember that I was pregnant. The life I was carrying inside me was like spring. My whole life I have hated spring when it first arrives, bringing life and hope that something new will happen. I always tried to hold onto winter—dark, cold, familiar winter when a warm bed makes you feel like the luckiest person in the world. Yet the more I tried not to let hope into my darkened room, the more I felt an uncontrollable urge to open up the windows and let it in. So I got out of my bed and announced I was going to visit the sea. My father, in his usual baffled and acquiescent way, pressed money into my hand at the station.

  “At the sea, it was windy and cold. I took a small room facing the water with neat wooden furniture and a warm goose-feather quilt, and I fell asleep to the sound of waves, feeling so wonderfully alone—as if nothing, no one, could ever bother me again because I was protected by crashing waves and a plump matron who kept watch downstairs with pink cheeks and uninquisitive eyes. I brought books with me because I had always loved to read before I met my first husband and became a slave to lethargy and bitterness.”

  “Where did you go, Mrs. Mondschein? I have to know the country for an exact picture.” Tommy’s eyes were closed very tightly as if he were trying to conjure up my seaside escape.

  “Italy, a little town. I don’t remember the name, near Venice.”

  “Thank you. I have always wanted to go to Venice. Perhaps you could rent Death in Venice and we could watch it here together. Have you seen it?”

  “No, I know the book, of course.”

  “We must watch it together. How could I have forgotten to watch Death in Venice again? Yes, I must see it one more time.”

  “I would like that, too. Yes, the little hotel in Italy. I had never been to another country before, so I was happy to listen to Italians chattering in the bar downstairs without being able to understand them. Not understanding made my solitude more complete, more perfect, while the cheerfulness kept me from sinking into a depression and worrying about my condition—‘husbandless and with child,’ as my neighbors would say.

  “On the fourth morning, I arose with that same all-embracing hunger. I took a table near the window and ordered a whole basket of warm rolls, butter, and jam. Yet I could feel something disturbing in the room, something that didn’t belong in my little paradise. Far away in a corner, far away from the windows and the view of the sea was a table that should have been unoccupied because there were so many free tables in the restaurant from which you could see the water and feel the warm sun on your face while you dined. A solemn couple had chosen the darkest spot and they were sitting opposite each other not talking. It was their silence in all that gaiety that disturbed me, that made it obvious they were neither Italians nor happy vacationers. I noticed the woman first—her large eyes, long, slightly frizzy dark hair, big bones, large hands, high forehead, sharp features, and high cheekbones. She was taller than the man was. He had a small face and wore horn-rimmed glasses, but his hands were beautiful—elegant and veined but not muscular. That was the first time I realized that men could have such beautiful hands. It was as if I knew this couple intimately—knew their unhappiness, the bitterness between them. I kept trying not to stare, but I couldn’t help it.

  “After breakfast, I went for a long walk on the beach and picked up unbroken sea shells. Then, when I was good and tired, I sat in the sitting room reading Madame Bovary, which was too appropriate and too dull. It was almost impossible to keep my mind on my book; every two minutes I would look up hoping to see the silent couple until finally, towards evening, I dozed off. During dinner, the silent couple took their table while I sat at mine, trying not to stare but staring nonetheless while they ate in silence and left half their food on their plates.

  “The next morning, they found the body of the big-boned woman on the beach. All the vacationers responded to the uproar, running out to see what was going on, crossing themselves nervously when they saw her inflated body clothed in wet tweed. The slight man with the glasses and elegant hands walked up and down the beach kicking pebbles. Mothers watched the man sadly and sent their children off to play. Men stared at the dead woman and then went off to have a drink. I wanted to speak to the man but thought we probably didn’t speak the same language, so I wandered off to the village and bought a very expensive silk scarf that didn’t go with any of my drab clothes. When I was in sight of the hotel, I removed the scarf since I kept thinking that everyone was staring at my neck.

  “By the time I returned, someone had found a bottle with a note in it that read: ‘The writer of this note died on March 7, 1937.’ The policeman handed the bottle and the note over to the man, who put the note back into the bottle and walked towards the hotel. An hour later, I watched the man walking down the road towards the village with a travel bag in each hand. I wondered if the woman had hoped that her message would be carried overseas, or if she had wanted it to be washed up, like her body, onto the shores from which it had come.

  “I left the next morning. There was the train ride between the sea and my father’s house. In the compartment, there were three other people—a woman with her young niece and a salesman who kept looking at his watch. Every once in a while, the aunt coughed daintily, and every once in a while, the salesman cracked his knuckles, and every once in a while, the girl bounced up and down on her seat until
the aunt told her, in some Slavic language, to stop. At night, we turned out the lights, and everyone slept except me. Every hour or so, the salesman woke up and lit a cigar. I had expected so much from the sea, but nothing had come of it. I was going back to my father’s house, pregnant and alone. But where else could I go?”

  “So the man at the sea was Karl?” Tommy interrupted.

  “Karl? Oh no, that wasn’t Karl. How could that have been Karl?”

  “So who was he?”

  “Just a man whose wife or lover had committed suicide. Remember, I already told you that Karl was the doctor. That’s why I hate to tell the story out of order. Then you’ll never remember it correctly.”

  “The doctor,” Tommy said thoughtfully. “That’s right, I don’t know how I could have forgotten. It’s not because you told the story wrong. Maybe it’s the dementia setting in. I never forget what people tell me.”

  “It’s not the dementia, Tommy. I’m afraid my story wanders more than necessary, but I cannot tell it any other way. You know, there are some people who never go through that phase.”

  “Ah! Are you telling me that I might be one of the lucky ones?”

  “I didn’t say anything about luck or the lack of it.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nasty. It just comes over me after all these years of practice. So when does Karl finally enter the picture?”

  “I’m getting to that, but you must allow me to take my time or it will come out all wrong and you’ll never understand.”

  “I want you to take your time. I want you to take all the time in the world. It’s just that suspense is difficult for me. I used to find it so terribly attractive, but I don’t have the patience for it anymore.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make it suspenseful, but this is the only way to tell the story.”