The Glory of Life

by Michael Kumpfmüller

  The doctor is in no hurry to reacquaint himself with the city, particularly as he knows his first destinations: the reception desk of the Askanischer Hof hotel, with the liveried staff who will take his baggage to his room, the red and gold covers of the bed, the armchair and upright chairs, the heavy desk by the window. Although he has promised Elli to eat sensibly, he has not left the room again yet, but after a reasonably good night’s sleep and what, for him, is a lavish breakfast, he is full of purpose. He makes the acquaintance of the latest million-mark banknotes in a bureau de change at the railway station, where he buys all the newspapers in order to study the advertisements later in a café. The prices are horrendous, or at least that is how the figures make them sound. Dora has told him which districts to look in. Friedenau, she said; he likes the name, with its suggestion of peace and quiet, so he goes to Friedenau.

  After two hours he has more or less made up his mind. The surroundings are full of greenery there, it is very quiet, as if you were in the country; there are gardens everywhere, avenues, young mothers pushing prams, and several trams run from nearby Steglitz Town Hall so that if you want to reach the city centre you can get there in quarter of an hour. He sends Dora a telegram telling her of his safe arrival and giving his first impressions. Would you like to go to Friedenau with me?

  He visits Tile in the bookshop that afternoon, and tells her, too, about Friedenau, almost as if he had to reassure her, after the dreadful sights he has seen on the way: ragged figures begging in the middle of the road, and in addition the terrible noise, the crowds pushing and shoving because there are too many people everywhere. Tile has been expecting him; she shows him his books on display in the window, at the back on the left, beside Brenner’s new novel. She is glad, she has been thinking of him, she treasures the red scarf like the apple of her eye. She has made him a cup of tea. He is allowed to sit at the back of the shop in a cubicle that is used as an office, while she serves the last customers out in front, leaving him to his weariness or whatever it is now, a certain emptiness that is not unpleasant, a moment when things are just the way they are at present.

  Next day he walks round the streets again, discovers two parks, and sits for an hour on a bench in the shade, for it is very hot again, as it was yesterday, so he doesn’t really feel like walking. He is glad when he recognises something: a garden where mallows grow in the quiet streets near the Town Hall, a little blonde girl bowling a big hoop down the pavement with a stick. Early in the afternoon he orders an ice cream in an open-air café, begins a letter to Max, puts it down again, feels somehow forsaken. Every hour he has a stronger sense of the ill effects of being alone, although only for this one day. All around him are families with children, it is Wednesday, the garden of the café is not very full, a plump waitress returns a balloon to a tearful little boy, there are voices everywhere, chattering, sometimes laughter, and two tables away two couples are talking about money, something to do with needing safes these days. I was just now at the bank, says a blonde, and then they laugh as if these bad times were only a passing joke. The doctor feels almost comforted by her casual manner; he tries to admonish himself, yes, he is alone, but that is just what he wanted, and moreover he is not really alone, only yesterday evening he went to the theatre with Tile and two other girls, friends of hers, to see a production of Schiller’s The Robbers.

  He has hardly left Berlin when the doctor’s heart sinks. The city was bad, but what awaits him now is far worse. He sits on the train and has to be careful not to lose the memory of her, the way she stood in his room with him, devoted and yet at the same time proud, as if she were invulnerable.

  He tries to arm himself with that thought. Elli and Valli will have told them at home how much weight he has lost, saying the trip had failed; his journey in the spring had failed, and all the same it is a disappointment every time. They will force him to eat, they will not let him alone with a slight shake of the head at midday if he has not got up yet, as if he had never understood the right way to live.

  6

  She hadn’t really known what it was like; at the age of twenty-five she didn’t have the faintest idea. Dora can only marvel at herself, she skips and laughs, she was so stupid until she met him. Only now does she understand.

  She doesn’t think much about the time before him. This and that happened, most of it not worth mentioning, least of all that time with Albert, the afternoon in the hotel; at first she had hoped to live with Albert some time, and she was too late in grasping that he was only stringing her along, and then she thought it would be the ruin of her. In reality she hardly remembers him. She also hardly remembers herself, as if the doctor had extinguished her earlier life. How that could have been possible she doesn’t know. It’s not a matter of the kisses and embraces, she thinks, the silly remarks you make, which perhaps are true after all, now that he’s gone and they can all be said: I’m yours, I’m not going away, unless you send me away I won’t be going away any more. She doesn’t like the fact that he went, but it’s not unbearable. If she hadn’t visited him at the last minute it would be unbearable, but not this way; she has a pulling, tugging sensation like a pain, except that it isn’t a pain.

  Unfortunately she hasn’t heard anything except the telegram. A messenger brought it last Tuesday when he was in Berlin.

  She knows he doesn’t belong to her. At the most his hands do, she thinks, and the words he said to her while dusk was falling outside. She knows the things he said almost by heart. She knows half that evening by heart, the children’s voices making their way to them at first, the silence, his conscientiousness, how he remembered every single day spent with her, every first time, because with you everything is like the first time.

  His handwriting is a surprise, soft and with many flourishes. The letter is not very long, and there is no salutation, so that she has to search for her name, the place where he writes about their goodbyes. Most wonderful D., she finds, and further down: Please wait for me in Müritz, which sounds almost as if he would be back in a few days’ time.

  He can’t say much about his situation, the family has given him a kind welcome, he says, but all the same, all the same. If I weren’t so wretched I would have turned at the station and gone back to you on the next train. He mentions his visit to Tile, and then tells her what he now knows about Friedenau. He spent two afternoons strolling around Friedenau, feeling almost happy. It was Dora country everywhere, he writes, Müritz is Dora country, and wonderful Friedenau no less, so I travel back and forth between the two countries day and night. He hasn’t forgotten anything. There is much, he says, that he understands only now, how affectionate and clever she has been, as if she had always known everything about him.

  She took her answer to the post-box around midnight, doubting until the last moment, since at heart she was stammering as she wrote. So Friedenau is Dora country? Then let’s look for somewhere in Friedenau. By chance her acquaintance wrote recently saying he would be ready to help, but he needed precise information: the number of rooms, a price. Apart from that, she couldn’t say most of what she wanted to tell the doctor. She would have liked him to describe his room, the view from its window. He had once spoken of it, some time at the beginning. Hadn’t he mentioned a church? Something foreign, that’s all she knows. Do you remember Isaiah? She would like to read aloud to him, because it’s not the same with the children, nothing has been the same since he left, only yesterday she stood under his balcony for a long time. The room is occupied again, by an elderly woman, but what right does she have to be there?

  She doesn’t wait. She reads what he has written to her at every opportunity, she talks to him, she is restless but she understands, and in addition she has the children, three meals a day, she sits in the kitchen, feeling that he is still there, or on the beach in the afternoon, where the children laugh at her because she isn’t listening to them properly, because her thoughts are always wandering.

  He has sent her money, several bank notes in a strange cur
rency that she can’t explain to herself. At first she supposes they are a kind of advance for the rent of the room, but then she reads and finds out his intention: the money is for her, in a few weeks’ time she won’t have any more work in Müritz, so this is just in case he isn’t back by then. He sounds elated, as if he is sure he is doing the right thing, but she knows at once that she doesn’t want the money. It is late in the morning, and she has to see about preparing the midday meal, but all the same she goes on thinking of the money that she will send back this very day; the whole thing is a misunderstanding, please think about how I feel, it is a little insulting and anyway it isn’t necessary. In fact she has not stopped to think whether, if the occasion arose, it might be necessary; she has a residence permit until the end of August, and if he isn’t here by then … then what?

  Paul, one of the staff of the Home, has asked what’s the matter with her. Is something worrying you? Paul is a student, he likes her, maybe she ought to confide in him. But she can’t. Worry is the wrong word. She has discovered how easy it is to injure someone’s feelings. Then again, injure is also the wrong word, because she almost welcomes the fact that he can injure her feelings, indeed, if he could see her now she would say: Look, this is what you have made of me, and I’m happy for you to do even that.

  One of the girls has brought her post down to the beach. She has just been in the water and is sitting in the sand beside her basket chair, she sees the girl with the letter, sees his handwriting from a distance, then her name and the way he writes it, right across half the envelope, then the first lines, which immediately reassure her, not because he is apologising about the stupid money – rather faintly, not entirely sure why she won’t take it – but because he misses her, with every line that she writes to him, because he can’t live content without her. He doesn’t sound happy, she thinks, but the letter was written yesterday, he hasn’t settled down after arriving yet. I am seeing Max tomorrow, she reads, so for a while she takes it to mean tomorrow for her as well, and only on re-reading the letter does she realise that when he says ‘tomorrow’ it is today that he means, or even yesterday. Not a word about his room, when he gets up, how his parents are. Only Ottla gets a mention, when he says he is sitting at a table with a view from the window that, for his sister, isn’t a view. Instead, he writes: when I am running my fingers through your hair in my mind I am glad, but it is as if it weren’t true. My whole life at this time isn’t true. In a way it takes place only while life without you isn’t taking place, but that life is undoubtedly true.

  7

  Max left very late, just after eleven. They talked for a good three hours, with an initial sense of being strange to each other during the first half hour, when the doctor himself was the only subject of conversation. Max was visibly shocked by the sight of him, wanted to know how much he weighed, whether he was coughing at night, did he have a high temperature? The doctor, more or less truthfully, denied it all. He did feel weak, he said, that was why he spent quite a long time lying down, often until midday, and then half the afternoon. He read, he told Max, he tried to sleep, he went to the post, then back to bed. He tried to eat, he could hardly write anything, but in short he was doing his best. He had already written to Max from Berlin about the holiday colony, because since he came to know the colony the doctor hasn’t been the same.

  I’ve met someone, he says. A woman from the east. Dora. He trusted her at once, he tells Max; she’s very young, very Jewish, everything about her comes from far away, and all his hopes are placed on her, because she lives in Berlin. As soon as I have my strength back I’m going to join her there. That’s how he puts it, and he thinks it must sound crazy. Do you think I’m crazy? It’s like a miracle. His friend above all has always believed in such miracles; for Max half of life consists of miracles, and the only one who doubted them was the doctor.

  So that’s how things are for him. What do you say, he asks Max. Max can only say how glad he is; he never feels happier for anyone than for the doctor. As if to prove it, he embraces his friend. He asks whether the doctor has a photograph of her; he hopes to meet her soon. The doctor says: I never knew there could be anyone like her. She’s very gentle, if that tells you anything about her, she reads Yiddish and Hebrew fluently. I weigh 59 kilos, he says. Max, he says, can I go to Berlin weighing only 59 kilos? Of course he can’t, he must be patient. Berlin isn’t going to run away from you, his friend points out. The city is in a feverish state, says Max, because his Emmy has told him so; the worst is probably still to come there.

  He reads her letter standing by the window, relieved that she isn’t cross, and in fact the money is hardly mentioned. She is on the beach. He almost thinks he can see her sitting there, writing her letter, as if he himself were not far off. When she writes that a steamer is just putting in at the landing-stage he can conjure up the scene at once: all kinds of ladies with brightly coloured parasols on the arms of their bustling husbands, the children, spruced up, running ahead, a dog or two, a severely clad governess, a cheerful nursemaid. He has most of it before his mind’s eye: the milky horizon, the foam where waves break on the beach, although much has already been forgotten – the smell of the water early in the morning, the colours, details that, unfortunately, he failed to notice well enough, such as an old brooch Dora used to wear, her shoes, her toes, wasn’t there something about her toes? Her eyes are grey-blue. He knows what her gaze is like, or perhaps that’s not exactly it: it’s the effect that something has on him even now, as he reads what she has written to him, a woman in her mid-twenties from the east.

  M. too was in her mid-twenties when he met her. And F. before her was in her mid-twenties, and Julie only a few years older. For years, obviously, he’s met only women in their mid-twenties. He is forty now; what does that say about him? That he’s stayed young? That he refuses to grow up? He thinks about it for a while. It strikes him that nearly all of them were Jewish. The Swiss girl wasn’t Jewish, nor was M. It was because he met M. that he tore Julie’s heart out alive. Now, at a distance of all those years, it seems to him incredible that he could have been able to do that.

  Dora writes that she is thinking of him, and so is everything else there. The sand thinks of you, the water, the Home, the tables and chairs, the walls in my room when I can’t sleep at night and realise how much you are missed everywhere.

  It is Sunday evening, and the doctor is lying in bed listening to the street noises, his mother’s voice in the kitchen, his father’s footsteps, the striking of the grandfather clock, and in moments of silence his heart beating far away, the pulsing of the blood in his temples, or so he imagines it, not really tired, but lying there half in the twilight, without any precisely formed thoughts. He is glad that Dora can’t see him like this. He would leap out of bed with the shame of it, and ultimately that would be a good thing, because but for Dora he might never leave his bed again. He lies there, at the same time seeing himself, from the doorway, through the eyes of his mother, who is always bringing him something, most recently a mug of soured milk, because he has hardly been eating anything at table with the family.

  So far no one has asked him any questions about either his weeks in Müritz or the immediate future. Except for his mother, who has made casual inquiries, a little sympathetically, or perhaps with a touch of annoyance. She knows he did not come home willingly, he doesn’t feel well, he is merely getting through the days somehow or other. As usual, he underestimates her, too. For instance, she does not want to believe that his visit to the seaside was a failure. She says: I hope you found something to make you happy in Germany. Something you can remember. The doctor is surprised, says at once that she is right, there are things that make him very happy. And she says: That’s all right, then. I’m glad. She turns back once more in the doorway. Your father is concerned about you. We both are.

  She is approaching seventy, she looks tired and can often be heard sighing, more to herself than for any other reason, out of sorrow about everything and for every
one.

  He signed the agreement with the publishing firm days ago and sent it to Berlin. He just had to put his name to it, as if that were the first step that he must take so as not to lose faith in himself, although he feels only half justified in doing so.

  The newspapers are now writing daily about the apparently never-ending fall of the mark, and the way it is plunging the Germans deeper and deeper into the misfortune they have brought on themselves. The sheer tempo is uncanny. A litre of milk costs 70,000 marks, a loaf of bread costs 200,000, and the exchange rate is one dollar to four million marks. What will the room cost to rent, for heaven’s sake, if the room ever materialises?

  Ottla has written a card, asking how he is, what can she do for him? The doctor doesn’t really know how to reply to it. He began writing to her days ago, alluding to Müritz and what happened to him there, what it means to him. He hasn’t sent the letter. Ottla has concerns other than a confused and powerless brother. He hopes she won’t notice how he really is: she could take him away from here, that is exactly what he hopes for, to see her standing in the doorway saying: Come along, do, anywhere would be better than this room.

  Dora would like to know what kind of accommodation he was thinking of. Please will you write and tell me, so that my acquaintance in Berlin knows what to look for? As for Dora herself, she says, everything is the same as usual again; since he left she misses the right kind of spirit in the colony. Just this week and next week to go and then it will be over. What about sleep? Can you sleep? When I am on the beach I sleep like a top, but I don’t usually get time for that. Someone is always wanting me to do something, I’m always in the kitchen which reproaches me every day because it hasn’t seen you for so long. Do you remember when we were bathing in the water? When will you come? Please come soon. If you have a room then you can come.