The Glory of Life
Page 1
The Glory of Life
A Novel
Michael Kumpfmüller
Translated by Anthea Bell
For Eva
We may well imagine that the glory of life lies around everyone, and always in its full richness, but obscured, down in the depths, invisible and far away. There it lies, however, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you use the right word, calling it by its right name, it will come. That is the essence of the magic that does not create but calls.
Franz Kafka, Diaries (1921)
One/Coming
1
The doctor arrives late on a Friday evening in July. The last part of the journey from the railway station seemed never-ending – it is still very hot and he is exhausted – but now he is here. Elli and the children are waiting for him in the front hall. He hardly has time to put his luggage down before Felix and Gerti fall on him, talking nineteen to the dozen. They have been beside the lake since early morning, they’d like to go straight back there and show him the enormous sandcastle they have built. Oh, do leave him alone for now, Elli tells them, holding Hanna half-asleep in her arms, but they keep chattering on about their day. How was the journey, asks Elli, would you like something to eat? The doctor wonders whether he would like anything to eat, because he has no appetite. All the same, he briefly goes upstairs to the holiday apartment, and the children show him where they are sleeping. They are eleven and twelve, and are thinking up all kinds of reasons why they can’t go to bed just yet. The governess has prepared a plate of nuts and fruit, there is a carafe of water ready, he drinks some and tells his sister how grateful he is to her. Over the next three weeks he will be eating here with the family, they will spend plenty of time together, and those weeks will surely show what the long-term prospects for his health are.
In fact the doctor has no great hopes of this visit to Müritz. He has some bad months behind him – he didn’t want to stay at home with his parents any longer, so the invitation to go and stay on the Baltic coast was very timely. His sister found the accommodation in a newspaper advertisement promising excellent beds and reasonable prices, along with balconies, verandas and loggias, on the outskirts of a high-lying forest and with a wonderful sea view.
His room is at the far end of the corridor. It is not very large, but there is a desk, the mattress is firm, and on the woodland side of the house it also has a narrow balcony promising peace and quiet, although children’s voices can be heard coming from a nearby building. He unpacks his things: a couple of suits, underwear, books, writing paper. He could write to Max and tell him how the conversation in his new publisher’s offices went, but he can do that some other time during his stay here. It was strange to be in Berlin again after so many years, and twenty-four hours later here he is in Müritz, in a house that calls itself ‘Good Luck’. Elli has already made a joke of that, saying she hopes it means that the doctor really will put on a little weight in the sea air, although they both know how unlikely that is. Everything repeats itself, he thinks, his summers have been spent in some hotel or sanatorium for years now, followed by long winters in the city, where he is sometimes confined to his bed for weeks on end. He is glad to be alone; for a little while he sits on the balcony, where he can still hear the voices, and then he goes to bed and falls asleep without any difficulty.
When he wakes next morning, he has slept for over eight hours. He knows where he is at once; he is at the seaside, in this room, far from all that he knows only too well. The children’s voices that lulled him to sleep yesterday are back again, singing a song in Hebrew, it’s not difficult to work that out. They’re from the east, he thinks, there are holiday homes for such children. Two days ago in Berlin, Puah, who is teaching him Hebrew, mentioned that there is a home like that in Müritz, and here it is next door. He goes out on the balcony and looks across at the children. They have stopped singing now, they are sitting at a long table outside the house having breakfast, sounding very noisy and cheerful. A year ago, in Planá, such noises disturbed him badly, but now he is almost glad of their chattering. He asks his sister whether she knows anything about them, but Elli says no, and seems surprised to find him suddenly showing such a lively interest. She asks about last night, whether he likes the room; yes, he does indeed like it, he’s looking forward to going down to the beach.
It’s a longer way than he thought; you have to walk for almost quarter of an hour. Gerti and Felix carry the bags with the bathing things and the picnic, they run ahead and then come back to him as he follows more slowly. The sea lies silvery and calm in the sunlight, there are children in colourful beach clothes everywhere, splashing about as they paddle in the shallow water or play ball. Luckily Elli has hired a wickerwork beach chair specially for him to the right of the landing-stage, so he has a good view of everything. Sandcastles up to knee height have been built all round the striped wicker chairs, and at least every other castle is decorated with a Star of David picked out in seashells.
Gerti and Felix want to go in the water, and are glad that he will come too. The sea is comfortably warm near the shore, but then he swims out with the two of them, until they meet colder currents. Gerti wants him to show her how to float and play dead, which isn’t difficult, and so they drift for a while in the glittering water, until Elli calls to them from the beach. He mustn’t overdo things, she warns him. Wasn’t his temperature slightly raised yesterday evening? Yes, the doctor agrees, it was, but it’s gone down again this morning. All the same, it does him good to sit quietly in the beach chair now; the temperature must be well over thirty degrees, and it is almost unbearable out of the shade. Gerti and Felix shouldn’t spend too long in the sun either. Just now they are busy laying pine-cones out in the sand to form the initials of his name. He simply sits there for a long time, watching the children from the holiday home, now and then hearing a scrap of Yiddish or an admonishing voice from one of the staff, who themselves are only in their mid-twenties. Gerti has made friends with a group of girls, and when asked about them she says yes, they’ve come from Berlin, they’re on holiday here like us, in a holiday home not far from our apartment.
The doctor could sit like this for hours. Elli keeps asking how he is feeling, always in the tone of maternal concern that he has noticed in her before. He has never been able to talk to Elli as he can talk to Ottla, yet now he mentions Hugo and Else Bergmann, who have invited him to go to Palestine with them. To Tel Aviv, where there is also a beach with laughing children, just like this one. Elli doesn’t have to say much, the doctor knows what she thinks of such plans, and at heart he doesn’t believe in them himself. However, these children are delightful, and he is happy and grateful to be here among them. He even manages to sleep for more than an hour in the midday heat, amidst all the activity, before Gerti and Felix come back to get him to go into the water again.
On the second day he begins to distinguish faces for the first time. His eyes no longer wander at random, he develops preferences, sees a pair of long girlish legs, a mouth, hair, a hairbrush passing through it, now and then a glance, over there the tall, dark girl who sometimes glances his way and then acts as if she hadn’t. He knows two or three of the girls by their voices now, he watches them jumping into the water, quite far out, running through the hot sand, hand in hand, and giggling all the time. He has difficulty in guessing their age. Sometimes he would put it at seventeen, then they seem to be still children after all, and this changeability is part of the pleasure of watching them.
He has taken a particular liking to the tall, dark girl. He could ask Gerti her name, because Gerti has already talked to her, but he doesn’t want to show too much of an interest. He would like to make her laugh which, sad to say, she never does. She has a defiant look about he
r, as if something has been weighing on her mind for a long time. Late in the afternoon, he sees her from his balcony as she sets the table in the garden of the holiday home, and then he sees her again in the evening, acting the female lead in a play performed by the children. He can’t hear her words, but he sees the way she moves, and the ardour with which she plays her part, obviously the role of a bride who is to be married off against her will, or so at least he concludes from watching the action. He hears the children’s laughter and the applause, which the dark girl acknowledges by bowing several times.
Even as he is telling Elli and the children about it, he is overcome by melancholy. He knew theatrical people before the war: that wild man Löwy, whom his father despised so much, and the young actresses who had barely memorised the Yiddish text of their parts – but how forcefully they played them, he had thought at the time.
When Gerti brings the girl over to his beach chair next morning, he sees her smile for the first time. She is shy at first, but when he tells her that he saw her acting in the play she is soon ready to trust him. He learns that her name is Tile, he pays her compliments. She looked like a real actress, he tells her, to which she replies that she hopes she looked like a bride, because she wasn’t playing the part of an actress. The doctor likes her answer, they laugh, and begin to get better acquainted. Yes, she says, she’s from Berlin, and she also knows who the doctor is, because weeks ago she put one of his books in the window display of the bookshop where she works. She doesn’t seem to want to say any more about herself, or not as long as Gerti is there with them, so the doctor suggests a walk along the landing-stage together. It turns out that she would like to be a dancer, which also explains why she is troubled; she is at odds with her parents, who won’t entertain the idea at any price. The doctor doesn’t really know how to console her; dancing is a profession as beautiful as it is demanding, he says, and if she really believes in herself, then she will be a dancer some day. He thinks he can see her flying over the stage, bending, her arms and legs pleading with an audience. Ever since she was eight, she says, she has known with her whole body that she wants to dance. For a long time the doctor says nothing, as she looks expectantly at him, half child, half woman.
They go walking again the next day, and the day after that. The girl has spent a long time thinking about the doctor’s remarks, but she is not sure if she really understood what he meant. In retrospect, he is not satisfied with his reply to her. Perhaps he is wrong to encourage her dream, perhaps he has no right to do so. He talks about his work at the insurance institute, and what it is like at night when he is writing, although he is not writing anything at the moment. He isn’t working for the insurance institute any more either, he retired from it a year ago, and that is how he comes to be sitting here on the landing-stage, with a pretty girl from Berlin who will be a dancer in a few years’ time. Now she is smiling again, and she invites the doctor to come for a meal at the holiday home tomorrow; there is always a little celebration there on Friday evening, she has already asked the staff if she may invite him. He says yes at once, for one thing because it is a Friday, so now at the age of forty he will be celebrating the Sabbath eve for the first time.
He can see preparations for it from his balcony that afternoon. He has retreated to his room, where he is writing postcards about the sea, and the ghosts from which he seems to have escaped for now. He writes to Robert Klopstock and the Bergmanns, using the same phrasing some of the time; he writes at length about the children. He knows from Tile that the holiday home goes by the name of ‘Children’s Happiness’, so he writes: With the idea of testing my mobility, after many years of ill-health spent bedridden and with headaches, I have risen from my bed to pay a little visit to the Baltic. And I for one have been happy and in luck, he writes, as fifty yards from my balcony there is a holiday home run by the Jewish People’s Home in Berlin. If I look through the trees, I can see the children playing. Happy, healthy, passionate children. Jews of the east, saved by Jews of the west from the dangers of Berlin. The holiday home, the forest and the beach are full of singing half the day and half the night. When I am with them I am not exactly happy, but on the verge of it.
There is still time for a little walk, and then he slowly begins getting ready for the evening. He takes his dark suit out of the wardrobe, checks his tie in front of the mirror. He is curious to find out what awaits him at the holiday home, and how exactly the evening party will go – the songs, the children’s faces – but that is all, he hopes for nothing for himself.
2
Dora sits at the kitchen table, gutting fish for supper. She has been thinking of him for days, and suddenly here he is. Tile, of all people, has brought him, and he’s alone, the woman she saw on the beach isn’t with him. He stands in the doorway, looking first at the fish, then at her hands, a little censoriously, she thinks, but there is no doubt about it, this is the man from the beach. She is so surprised that she doesn’t hear exactly what he is saying, but it is something about her hands, such delicate hands, he says, doing such bloody work. At the same time he is looking at her full of curiosity, amazed to see her busy with what, as a cook, it is only her job to do. Unfortunately he doesn’t stay for long. Tile wants to show him the rest of the holiday home. He lingers beside the table for a moment, and then he is gone.
Briefly, she feels stunned, hears the voices outside, Tile’s laughter, footsteps retreating. She wonders what is going on, and imagines him standing in Tile’s room, unaware that Dora shares it with her. Does Tile tell him so? She suspects not. She thinks of the first time she saw him on the beach, with that woman and the three children. She didn’t take much notice of the woman, she had eyes only for the young man and the way he swam, the way he moved, the way he sat in his wicker beach chair reading. At first she thought he might be part-Indian because of his dark complexion. He’s married, she has told herself, what are you hoping for? But all the same she goes on hoping. Once she followed him and his family into the little town, and she dreamed of him: she also dreamed of Hans, but she doesn’t think of Hans now, or only with a vague sense that she ought to be thinking of him.
Two hours later, at supper, she meets the doctor again. He is sitting a long way off, at the end of the table beside Tile, who is almost bursting with pride, because but for Tile he wouldn’t be here. She has been talking about the doctor at every opportunity for two days, the doctor is a writer, you’ll all meet him on Friday, and now the doctor also turns out to be the man from the beach. Tile introduces him at once: then come the words of blessing, the wine, the sharing of bread. The doctor looks as if most of this were entirely new to him, and glances at her again and again all through the meal, with that wistful expression that she feels she already knows. Later, before he leaves, he comes over to her and asks her name. She knows his already, she has to help him get the hang of hers. He looks at her with his blue eyes, nods, and thinks about her name – he obviously likes it. She tells him in far too much of a rush: I saw you on the beach with your wife – although she knows it can’t have been his wife, or why has she felt so light-hearted since he came to stand close to her in the kitchen? The doctor laughs and confirms it: no, not his wife, his sister. And the children are also his sister’s. He has another sister here at the resort as well, Valli and her husband Josef, she may have noticed them already. He asks when he can see her again. I’d like to see you again, he says, or maybe it was: I hope we’ll meet again. She feels like calling her reply out loud: as soon as you wake up, whenever you like. He suggests the beach, after breakfast, although she would rather have had his company all to herself in the kitchen. He invites Tile to go for the walk with them. She hadn’t realised that Tile was still around, but unfortunately there she is; anyone can see that she is enamoured of the doctor, although she is only seventeen and has as good as no experience at all of men.
Dora liked the girl from the first, for they are rather similar. Tile too is always saying whatever comes into her head. Tile is not really as
pretty as all that, but anyone can see how full of life she is, at ease in her body with its long, slim legs, the figure of a dancer. Dora has seen her dance, and knows how she can shed tears and then laugh the next moment, sun and showers like April weather.
Tile talks to her until well after midnight, going back over all the details of the doctor’s visit, spelling out exactly what he said about the Home here, the food, the solemnity of the occasion, the way they were all so happy. Dora does not comment. She has made her own observations, and followed them up, indulging in her thoughts as if this man and the brief moments she spent close to him were something to which she must abandon herself. Tile has been asleep for some time when a sensation begins to spread through Dora, something like a musical note or a perfume, almost imperceptible at first, then taking possession of her as if with a mighty roar.
Next morning on the beach he offers her his hand in greeting. He has been waiting for her and thinks she looks tired. He seems to be asking: What’s the matter? And since Tile is there and his niece Gerti, she just manages to smile at him, says something about the sea, about the light surrounding them; now, in this light and although they have spoken only a few sentences to each other, she must live with those sentences, those glances. He obviously doesn’t want to go into the water, but Tile does, so they have a few minutes to themselves. Over there, his sister has already seen them. How could she have thought the woman was his wife?
And now they talk, and forget that they are talking, for as soon as one of them has said something the words are gone; they are sitting on the beach as if beneath a dome that instantly swallows up all sounds. The doctor asks her question after question – where she comes from, how she lives – looking at her mouth, looking at it all the time, whispering something about her hair, her figure, what he has seen, what he sees now – all without a single word. Now she is talking about her father, how she ran away, first to Krakow, then to Breslau, as if she had left home only to be here with this man someday. She talks about her first weeks in Berlin, so she remembers later, and then she suddenly stops talking when Tile comes back. It is only because Tile arrives and startles her by putting wet hands around her from behind that she remembers she must go back to the kitchen. The doctor stands up at once and asks if he may go with her. Unfortunately Tile wants to come too, but never mind, she invites him to supper again.