The Glory of Life

by Michael Kumpfmüller

  There’s no fish today, this time she is sitting in front of a bowl of beans. She’d hoped he would come. Oh, how lovely, so early, do sit down, I’m really glad to see you, she says. The doctor watches her at work preparing the beans, he says he likes to look at her, has she noticed that? He is sure, he adds, that a great many people look at her in Berlin, and for some rather vague reason she finds that she can say: yes, all the time, in the street, on the tram, in a restaurant if she goes to one, not that she means that’s the same as when the doctor looks at her. And that brings them to the subject of Berlin. The doctor loves Berlin, he even knows the Jewish People’s Home, and asks how she came to be a cook there. Later he wants her to say something in Hebrew, which he has been trying to learn these last few years from a woman called Puah, although he is afraid not very successfully. She has to think for a moment, and then says in Hebrew that she would like to sit next to him at supper, and he replies, also in Hebrew although not entirely fluently, that he has been thinking of that half the night. Then he bends down, takes her hand and kisses it, half-joking, so as not to alarm her. All the same, she does take fright. Later, too, while she is peeling potatoes, she jumps when he happens to touch her hand, alarmed less by him than by herself and her wild feelings, as helpless as if her commitment were entirely unconditional.

  After supper that Sunday they go for a walk. They had arranged it in a moment when they were on their own on the beach again, not wishing to hurt the feelings of Tile, who still acts as if the doctor were her property. In the afternoon, when they all go into the water, Dora catches herself in the act of comparing herself with Tile. Tile runs into the shallow water on her long legs, splashing it up, but the doctor, who looks to Dora even thinner and more delicate than before, isn’t really looking at her. He glances only briefly at Dora herself, but she thinks she senses him examining her, arms, legs, hips, breasts, and she is perfectly happy to think that he sees everything about her and brings it together to form an image, confirming rather than questioning that image as if he had known most of it long ago. The water is warm and shallow, for a while they hesitate to go in, and Tile is already getting impatient, it’s to be hoped that she didn’t observe the little scene.

  His sister is civil rather than friendly when the doctor introduces them that afternoon. They already know about one another from what he has told them. Elli knows that Dora is a cook, preparing the best food in Müritz over there in the holiday home, and Dora knows that but for Elli she wouldn’t have met the doctor. She likes the way Elli talks about him: sad to say, she tells Dora, he has a poor appetite, and it takes a lot of love and patience to get him to eat something now and then.

  Dora has put on her dark green beach dress for the walk. It is after nine in the evening, and still quite light, and it is a pleasure to walk beside him and know that he is enjoying it as well. They could sit down on one of the benches on the first landing-stage and watch people strolling about, but the doctor wants the two of them to go on. Dora has taken off her shoes, because she likes walking in the sand, the doctor offers her his arm, and soon they are talking about Berlin again. The doctor is familiar with the city from the pre-war years, she is surprised how much he knows; he mentions a couple of places that were important to him, and the Askanischer Hof Hotel, where he once spent a terrible afternoon, but all the same he would like to go back to Berlin all this time later. Would he really? she asks, having arrived in the city more or less by chance herself three years ago. He asks her where she lives in Berlin, what it is like there – he wants to know the strangest things, the price of bread and milk and fuel for heating, the mood there five years after the end of the war. The streets are rough and busy, she tells him, and full of refugees from the east, the area where she lives is crammed with them, singing everywhere, ragged families who come from the terrible east.

  By now their walk along the beach is over, and they are sitting on a narrow bench at the front of the second landing-stage, beneath the dim light of a lantern. They are still talking about Berlin, and the doctor tells her about his friend Max Brod, who has a lover called Emmy there. Now, unfortunately, she has to say something about Hans, a couple of sentences anyway, she must at least mention him, particularly as the doctor says something about a fiancée, but that was all a thousand years ago. The doctor begins to dream of what it would be like if he went to Berlin, to which she replies that it would be lovely, because then she could show him everything: the theatres, the music-halls, the crowds milling around on Alexanderplatz, although there are quiet corners as well, she adds, further from the centre, in Steglitz or by the Müggelsee, where the city comes close to the countryside. Who would have thought it, says the doctor, I travel to the Baltic and find myself in Berlin! He is very happy to be sitting here with her, he says. She is happy too.

  The others out walking late have gradually left the landing-stage – it must be nearly midnight, they see only an occasional couple here and there, the seagulls sleeping on the bollards, and further off the lights of the hotels. A slight breeze has risen, and the doctor asks if she is cold, would she like to go, but she prefers to stay here; she asks him to tell her about his fiancée, or about that afternoon, assuming that isn’t the same thing, and the doctor says yes, it does indeed practically amount to the same thing.

  She lies awake for a long time that night. He saw her home at about one-thirty, and soon afterwards a storm broke; it gives the impression of being directly above the house, for there are only seconds between the lightning and the following roll of thunder. Half the people staying in the holiday home seem to be awake, including Tile, who is lying in bed and immediately asks where she has been. Did you meet him? Dora says yes, we went for a little walk, and now just listen to all this noise. They wait until the storm passes over. It is noticeably cooler outside. Dora has opened the window to look across at his balcony, but all is dark there.

  It rains until the next morning, and then on until evening. The doctor does not come until afternoon, but by now it is almost a habit for him to sit there asking her questions, as if he would never run out of them. She likes the civil formality of their conversation, only a façade, as she knows, a disguise for the time being, and they will take it off one day. She says, using the formal Sie pronoun to him: I was thinking of you, we talked about you at breakfast today, are you still thinking of Berlin? She thinks of it all the time. Sometimes she has to reprove herself, because these are only dreams; in her mind she has already taken him to her room in Münzstrasse, although she does not like the room, it has no running water, it is essentially just four walls surrounding a wardrobe and a bed, with a dark back yard outside.

  She puts his age at the mid-thirties, which would make him about ten years older than her. He is not well, he has told her, his lungs caught a chill, hence the sea and the hotel in the forest; it is only because he hasn’t been well for years that he has met her.

  It’s his mouth, his voice as he pours it out for her to bathe in it. No man has ever looked at her like that before – he sees the flesh under the skin, sees it quivering and trembling, and she is happy with that.

  She is very happy one day when he tells her about a dream. In this dream he is going to Berlin, and he has been sitting on the train for hours, but for some reason or other it isn’t making any progress; to his despair they keep stopping, and he won’t arrive in time though he is expected at the station, expected to arrive at eight in the evening, and now it is seven and he hasn’t even crossed the border. That is the dream. Dora herself has had a similar kind of dream now and then, and thinks the most important part is that someone is waiting for him. She wouldn’t mind the waiting, she says, she would just sit on a bench for half the night. The doctor says: Oh, do you think so? Until yesterday he was addressing her as Fräulein, which she liked, but now he simply calls her Dora, for Dora means ‘a gift’ – he only has to take it, she will wait for that.

  3

  What surprises the doctor most is that he is sleeping well. He is abou
t to plunge into a new life, he ought to be afraid, he ought to have doubts, but he sleeps well, and the ghosts stay out of sight, although he is always expecting them, expecting to fight the old battles all over again in his mind. This time, however, there does not seem to be a battle, there’s a miracle, and the plan that is its result. He does not so much think about her as breathe her in, breathe her out – on the afternoons in the kitchen, as they walk through Berlin in their thoughts, during meals, when her fragrance drifts his way. In bed in the evening, he concentrates now and then on something she has said, a certain area of her skin, the hem of her skirt, the way she holds her fork as she eats, or he thinks of yesterday, when he asked her about her father, who is strictly observant and with whom she has been at odds for a long time. So far she has not appeared in his dreams. But he does not lose her when he is asleep, he knows at once in the morning that she is there somewhere, as if there were a rope between him and her, and they are slowly working their way along it towards each other. As yet he has hardly touched her, but he knows, and it is more than a matter of marginal importance, that a time is coming when he will touch her, although he does not hate himself for that, it is almost as if it were his right, and fear is a superstition that has been overcome.

  For a week they have been meeting every day. He sees his sisters and the children mainly at breakfast, and only yesterday they had blamed him for not having enough time for them. It was Elli who had said that, but as if she were really in perfect agreement with him and that girl Dora, with the fact that it gives him something to do in sleepy little Müritz, and he isn’t spending his nights writing his strange stories. The doctor has never liked talking about his work. If she were to ask, he would say that he isn’t even writing letters, not even writing to Max – he could always write to Max and say that he is thinking of going to Berlin. But that possibility is too frail, no more than a fleeting idea, something that can hardly be expressed in words, and he fears it would be put to flight by a single misplaced comment.

  Max would like her eastern origins. Since the cities have been full of refugees, everyone is talking about the east, including Max, who hopes for salvation for all Jews from those quarters, but there is no salvation coming, not from the east or anywhere else.

  People from the east have left their lives behind them overnight, so Dora is at much greater liberty than the doctor himself, torn further from the east and thus at the same time more bound to it; she knows where his roots are, all the more so because he has pruned them. To the doctor she does not look like a dark character, as Max would probably claim, a figure out of a novel by Dostoyevsky. Emmy too is anything but a dark character. Max’s lover is a typical Berlin girl, blonde and blue-eyed, and the only mystery about her is her relationship with Max, who says it was Emmy who first showed him what physical fulfilment means. He has several times said something of that nature to the doctor, fortunately not going into detail, but Max is his friend, he is married, and it seems that the enchanting Emmy has just tempted him a little way off the beaten track.

  Fortunately they don’t live in the same city, which is also, of course, bad luck, at least for Emmy, who complains that they don’t meet nearly often enough. She has complained to the doctor, among others; he visited her in her room near the Zoological Garden on the way here, and he asked her to put herself into Max’s position.

  Dora laughs at such stories. They are sitting on the beach, telling each other stories about waiting. The doctor himself has spent half his life waiting, or at least that is how he feels in retrospect: you wait, you don’t think someone will ever come, and suddenly that very thing has happened.

  Next morning it is pouring with rain. The doctor stands on the balcony, watching a great deal of coming and going in the holiday home, because half the children are travelling back to Berlin today. It is Sunday, and Tile is one of those who are to leave; at nearly eleven o’clock she is standing in the front hall in her raincoat, fighting back tears. The doctor has given her a goodbye present, a ruby-red scarf that she saw days ago in a shop window. She has mentioned that scarf often, so she is beside herself with delight. We’ll see each other in Berlin, promises the doctor, meaning only that he will visit her in her bookshop when he goes back. All the same, she is crying now. The doctor asks why, and she shakes her head and says because she is happy. Does he have the address? The doctor nods, he has written everything down, he will write to her as soon as he knows exactly when he is going to the city, because if it goes on raining like this his sisters will soon want to go home. Now the goodbyes take a long time. Tile strokes the red scarf, and the doctor encourages her to get on better with her parents – recently she hasn’t liked to envisage living with them any longer, but the doctor says: you must, think of your dancing shoes, you promised.

  He is almost relieved that she has gone. He wouldn’t say so in front of Dora, but Dora too looks relieved, although they immediately notice the effect of Tile’s absence. As long as the girl was there, they felt that they were being watched: they were not free, but they were less self-conscious.

  They have agreed to go for a walk, in spite of the bad weather. Dora had said she would come to fetch him at about ten, and the doctor is in his room reading when she arrives half an hour early. She ran through the rain, her heavy hair and her face are all wet. For a moment the doctor hardly recognises her, but that is because she is in his room. So this is where you’re staying, she says, still in the doorway; she hopes she isn’t disturbing him. She has no eyes for the room, she just stands there smiling, looking at him; the doctor would only have to get his coat, but instead, without any warning, he embraces her. Or rather he bends down – it is almost a gliding movement – he kisses her hair and forehead, whispering, even the kisses are more or less whispered, he is full of joy. Ever since first seeing her in the kitchen, he says, he has been full of joy. Yes, she says. She goes on leaning in the doorway as if still waiting for them to set off; his coat is hanging over there in the wardrobe, he would only have to fetch it, but he doesn’t. He talks about Berlin; if she likes, he will come to Berlin again this summer. Did he really say that? She nods, she kisses his hand, beginning with his fingertips, but then she finally has to take off that silly coat of hers. She seems to be cold, the room isn’t well heated, she is wearing a dress that he doesn’t know and in which she is bound to be freezing. Don’t go away, she says, when he begins to move back because of her coat, and then they stand there for a long time, at a slightly awkward angle, close together, pelvis to pelvis, like a couple. She longed for him at once, she says, back then on the beach, although she couldn’t believe it. Now she does. Can one believe in kisses? She wants to know what he is thinking, now, at this very moment, if he ever thought of this. No, don’t say it, she whispers, although it is not really clear why she is whispering. Dora has gone to the balcony and is shaking her head over the weather, she has terrible luck with the weather. Now she is sitting on the sofa near the balcony door, where the doctor sometimes sits to read, the doctor says something about her dress, she brought it from Berlin, which reminds him that for Dora there was a time before this summer, and also reminds him what he really wants to know about that time. He thinks, how young she is, her life is still ahead of her, he thinks, what right has he, then, to put out his hand for it?

  That night the doubts come. It is not a struggle of the kind he knows, yet he lies awake until early morning; the hours drag on, but sleep is out of the question. At the same time his thoughts pass slowly through his head, and he is surprised to find that he can examine them at leisure, without much emotion, like a bookkeeper drawing up a balance sheet and never doubting the figures. The sequence is the same: he takes the questions as they come, goes through them one by one, and then goes over it all again. He is not well, he is fifteen years older than her, all the same he could try living with her in Berlin, since luckily that is where she comes from, for he has never been attracted to any other city. Those are the circumstances that he thinks are half in favour o
f the idea, not counting this morning’s kisses. Everything else is against it: he has put on hardly any weight while staying here by the sea, he feels weak, he doesn’t know how he is to tell his parents that there is someone in his life, a young woman, and from the east at that, the east that his father despises so much. Is he to face his father and say, I met her there in Müritz, and I’m going to join her in Berlin? He devises various ways of broaching the subject, first with his mother, then with his father. He wonders what’s so difficult about it, and finally he is almost reassured, begins all over again from the beginning to see whether he has overlooked anything, the situation in Berlin, the question of a room, and then again: his failing strength, his lack of energy, for which he has reproached himself over the years without coming to any conclusion.

  He tells Robert about that night, not so much because he believes in it but because it is a habit of long standing for them to complain to one another about their nights. Two years ago in the sanatorium, when they met, they often spoke of going to another city. The doctor returns to that subject now, they should both get away quickly, next year at the latest, for instance to the dirty Berlin alleys where the Jews live, where Dora lives, although he doesn’t say a word about Dora.