Her father would say that the doctor is not really a Jew at all. He doesn’t observe the Sabbath, he doesn’t know the prayers – and you want my blessing on a man like that?
The landlady seems unhappy about them as well. She can be seen frowning when they meet late in the evening, after it was time to go to sleep long ago, or early in the morning, so that the question inevitably arises: Does the pretty young lady by any chance stay here overnight?
One day the landlady arrives with two furniture removers to take the piano away, as arranged. It is nine-thirty, they are sitting over a late breakfast, and the only embarrassing thing is that Frau Hermann acts as if there was something embarrassing about it, and even makes a comment: It looks, she says, as if she didn’t express herself clearly enough to the doctor, obviously things are not what they used to be, not since the end of the war, and there were other allusions of that nature. The two furniture removers, luckily, are thinking only of the piano. They are around thirty, two Berliners who habitually use bad language, but the strength and ease with which they manoeuvre the instrument towards the door is obvious. Franz is full of admiration. Even when they are down in the street he stands at the window watching the way they move, the way they laugh, and soon they drive away, so the awkwardness with the landlady is quickly forgotten.
Although they cannot really afford the expense, they have bought a large oil lamp. The small one gave out very little light, they were sitting in the dark practically all the time, and the days are getting shorter and shorter; after five in the afternoon it is black as night. Dora likes this dark season of the year, and they have plenty of time in the long evenings after her work at the People’s Home. However, the new lamp is troublesome. It cost a small fortune, but now it won’t burn properly, or at least not for Franz; all it will do for him is give off a lot of smelly smoke. He could hardly be any clumsier with it, but that in itself provides them with fun; he pays the lamp compliments to win its goodwill, praising its light to the skies, unfortunately to no avail. Evidently the lamp doesn’t like him. He leaves the room. Dora is to tell the lamp he isn’t here, and then perhaps it will burn – what ideas, for heaven’s sake, has that lamp taken into its head? And sure enough it does just as Dora wants when he isn’t there.
So far she has hardly registered the fact that he is a writer. He writes letters, postcards. Is that what a writer does? One day a letter arrives that upsets him. He says it is a list of the books that have been sold. He seems depressed, indeed devastated, for half a day but no longer. She leaves him in peace that afternoon, distressed about distress that is not hers, as if she has only to wait for him to notice her again, for the first thing he will say, or for his first smile during a meal.
One day they plan to go to the cinema. So far they have spent their evenings at home, but since a letter enclosing fifty crowns came in the morning, for once the money doesn’t seem important, particularly as there are cinemas on every street corner, even in Steglitz, with posters showing breathtaking scenes, good-looking men and women promising heaven knows what. But somehow or other it never happens. They are already on their way and, beginning to think better of it, they are standing in line at the cash desk, but at the last moment he claps his hand to his forehead. Not a trace of disappointment. Dora says she would still like to walk around, it will be enough fun for her to study the displays in the poorly-lit shop windows of Steglitz. Oh, Franz, she says. The cinema won’t run away from us, will it? She thinks not. We’ll go another time, she says, later, when all this is over, although she hasn’t the faintest idea when that will be.
If she were to write down the story of her life she would take note only of little things, for happiness is at its greatest, she thinks, when it is tiny, when he is tying his shoelaces, when he is asleep, when he runs his fingers through her hair. He is always doing something to her hair, he has combed it, he has washed it, which was as delightful as it was strange. Her hair, he says, smells of smoke and sulphur, of grass and sometimes of the sea. He says he can never feel that he has exhausted all her possibilities. If he ever did, some day, he would surely fall down dead on the spot, and so you see I’m really immortal.
The first food riots begin in the city. Bakeries in particular are targets; people want bread and gather in large groups in the street. Tile, who comes to visit them with a young painter one afternoon, has seen one such incident with her own eyes, or rather she heard it: the muttering of the crowd dazed, so to speak, by hunger, the occasional shouting when something seemed to move behind the barricaded doors of the shop, and the calling to the baker to bring out the bread.
Tile does not seem particularly happy on this occasion. Obviously she expected to find Franz on his own, and only when she sees Dora at the door does she understand that the two of them are a couple, like man and wife, while she is only a young girl, a summer acquaintance, who hardly opens her mouth for three hours. She seems to have brought the painter simply for form’s sake, he does not appear to have much to say, but then it turns out that he does: at the moment he is represented in an exhibition on the Lützowufer by a handful of water-colours showing seascapes, watery landscapes with dunes, towering clouds, all in different lighting conditions. What about Tile? Well, yes, it turns out that she is dancing, although her parents’ approval is still in the balance. Franz says he firmly believes in her, whereupon she asks about his work. Is he writing a new book? Franz seems to think about it for a moment, and then says no, a new book? Not that I know of.
His profession has never been writing. He was with that firm. Something to do with insurance. Now he is retired and has written some books that she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t need them for her love. If they went to Palestine, he says, his writing wouldn’t help them, he would have to learn some kind of trade, working with his hands, something that would be really useful to people.
When I’m writing I am unbearable.
Over the next few days they play the Palestine game: what would it be like for the two of them in a country entirely inhabited by Jews? The weather would certainly be wonderful, they could open a restaurant together in Haifa or Tel Aviv, so the dream goes, or something like that. Shall we do it? What do you think? Of course she would have to do the cooking, while he would be a waiter such as the world has never seen. The mere idea, absurd as it is, reduces them both to laughter. A little place on the beach, so that guests can sit outside. Just a few tables, as they picture it, which doesn’t mean that they believe in the idea.
Nor do they believe for long in the nursery garden in Dahlem. Franz has told her that years ago he tried working as a gardener, but he wasn’t so weak at that time. An acquaintance who knows the profession advises firmly against it; it is heavy manual labour, and he doubts whether anyone of Franz’s age would be taken on; there are plenty of people looking for work. Franz seems brought down to earth a little, particularly since, as usual, he himself is the stumbling block. Only recently the two men who came to take the piano away brought that home to him again.
One day they meet a little girl in the park. She is standing on the grass all alone, crying, so they speak to her. She is crying so much that she can hardly speak, but she has lost her doll somewhere in this park. At first they can’t make out a word she says. The child, in great distress, points in several different directions; obviously she has already looked for the doll everywhere. The poor little thing is six or seven years old, and she will never, ever have such a lovely doll again. She last saw it yesterday afternoon. The doll seems to be called Mia, or is that the little girl’s own name?
She gradually calms down. Now, listen. I know where your doll is, says Franz. He has bent down to the child, he is kneeling on the grass in front of her and making up his story as he goes along. She sent me a letter. I’ll bring it here tomorrow if you like. The little girl looks at him doubtfully. A letter? How can she have written a letter? Of course, she can’t really have written. A letter from my doll? What is your doll called, then? The little girl says she is
called Mia. Well, he had a letter from a doll called Mia in his post that morning. Her writing wasn’t easy to read, but still it clearly said Mia. Franz gives her time, smiles at her encouragingly; the scene is rather touching. After her initial reservations, the little girl seems to think it’s possible after all. She begins to believe. They agree to meet tomorrow afternoon. Franz is still kneeling in front of her on the grass, asking whether she will be sure to come. He sounds solemn, almost stern, just as he did in Müritz, and as if his life depended on it.
3
After four weeks he gradually becomes better able to cope. Although he is hardly writing, he has a surprising amount to do; he shows a devoted concern for Emmy, telephones her almost every day, and invites her to visit him in his room, where he makes her laugh as far as is possible, so that she doesn’t think only of Max. Max is going to his brother’s wedding instead of joining her in Berlin, and that is a great disappointment to poor Emmy.
All the time he is obliged to act as an intermediary, or conciliate someone, or justify himself. He writes to Max, who complains of hearing none of his news, and to the director of the insurance institute who must be prevented from reducing his pension because he has moved to Berlin. Last week he took Dora to a vegetarian restaurant in Friedrichstrasse; he would like to go to the cinema and the theatre again, but instead he has that little girl from the park on his mind. He is surprised to find how important her plight is to him, at least, he spends a remarkable amount of time on it, consulting Dora, to whom he reads the adventures of the doll aloud as soon as they are written.
For a while then, and in a certain way, they do have a child. The doll ran away from the park to the railway station, and took a train to the seaside. Unfortunately she has no money, so luckily for her a little boy buys her a ticket for the train. She spends several days beside the sea, and then she begins to find it boring; she would like to get to the other side of the ocean, and one night she boards a ship thinking that it is going to America. Sad to say, however, it comes ashore in Africa. By this time her adventures fill three letters.
They are regularly expected at the park in the afternoon. The little girl only recently started going to school, so she can’t read yet. She also has a name, Katja, which as she explains comes from Katharina. The weather is fine, they sit on the grass and then read the latest letter, which says that there is nothing to worry about, even if you are a doll you feel like an occasional change of scene, and she will be back by Christmas at the latest.
He has written nothing for weeks apart from these letters, and indeed hardly anything at all for the whole of 1923, although of course one always has to write something. He has various exercise books, his diary, loose sheets of paper on which he notes down this or that. In a letter to Max he has written in grand terms about the work he is continuing to write here in Berlin, but it consists only of essays, sketches for a new novel, beginnings, fragments, now and then a small detail that he has finished with, and had better throw on the fire at the first opportunity.
Katja asks: Suppose she decides she would rather stay in Africa, then what? In fact by now it is doubtful whether the doll will come back, because far away in Africa she has fallen in love with a prince, if they understand her hints correctly. Well, these things happen. Katja asks: Does she love the prince more than me? In one way she doesn’t want that to be true, and tears come into her eyes; in another she is beginning to accept the situation. She has heard about princes in fairy tales – but do they have princes in Africa too?
For a few days, then, it is delightful to see the child so happy, never forgetting any detail of the story, and arming herself for the possibility that one day the doll will confess she isn’t coming back as soon as expected. Imagine, the prince has asked for my hand in marriage! She has twenty-four hours to think it over, but she doesn’t need all that time, she wants to marry the prince. Dora would have preferred a different ending. They could buy a new doll and say it was the old one, say that Mia has changed on her travels, but she is still the same Mia. No? The doctor thinks not. The story must also teach a lesson. He will write a last letter, saying that the doll is very happy. If the little girl had looked after her better, she would never have met the prince. So is it a good thing that you didn’t look after me properly, isn’t it? He might as well say: If I hadn’t contracted tuberculosis years ago I might have married, and then I wouldn’t be in Berlin with you now. So it’s a good thing I contracted tuberculosis, isn’t it?
Otherwise they lack for nothing. They are together, they have time, that’s all that matters. Only the high rent still worries them, and the fact that it is only one room – in this beautiful district, yes, but still only a single room. Every few days the landlady is at the door putting up the rent. At the end of August it was four million, by now the price has risen to roughly half a billion. There has been tension over the lighting bill, there has been tension over Dora. He doesn’t really want to move from here, yet he has already been studying the advertisements for apartments to rent, and he would like to give Frau Hermann notice. One evening it comes to a head: they will need something new by the middle of November, if possible not far away. He says he wants two rooms. In case you don’t want to travel in the evening when you are too tired, when I don’t want to let you go right through the city every evening in these times. Dora liked these times. Ultimately the rooms don’t matter to her, nor do the Frau Hermanns of this world, even the city probably wouldn’t matter much to her. But now she is glad to hear him say: two rooms. She smiles radiantly, standing as she sometimes does over by the desk, leaning to one side, a picture of life in bloom.
As if the decision to move had given them fresh vigour, they venture into the city next day and go to the Jewish College together. It is in the middle of the Scheunen district. If there is a drawback to living here among so much greenery, it is that they are away from other Jews. The doctor would like to study; he knows so little about Jewish customs, laws and prayers. Dora too would like to study more, although she has known such things since early childhood, and she does not hesitate to tell him that she prays in her room in the evening, she keeps the Sabbath, she observes the rules and knows the scriptures that, to him, are only a collection of stories, with a message that means nothing to him.
He tries to go to the theatre again, but An Enemy of the People with Eugen Klöpfer is sold out for weeks ahead, and productions at the Schiller Theatre are beyond their means, so instead of the actor Kortner he sees the tearstained face of Emmy, who accompanied him that evening and whose demands on Max are rising as high as the price of theatre tickets. Max, she says, must finally make up his mind, by which she means that he must leave his wife; his visit to Berlin once a month is simply not enough for her. Once, when the word duty is mentioned, she waxes very indignant, but on the whole she is rather subdued, talks about his latest phone call, which made her happy, describes rehearsals, her prospects of singing in a church concert. He is not really interested, but he always likes looking at her, he likes her perfume, her demonstrations of affection, when she takes his hand and will not let go of it, when she looks at him as if there were a second Emmy who, while the first Emmy is bewailing her lot, has entirely different intentions. Perhaps he ought not to like it that she kisses him when she says goodbye, but then he thinks: What does it matter, after all? She is an actress, and actors and actresses have only one way of behaving.
And yet she is not really his type.
He has always been attracted by dark-haired women, women with deep, throaty voices, which is not the case with Emmy. Dora has a voice like that, and so did M., although as everyone knows it is difficult to remember voices.
The funny thing is that he is not afraid, not with this girl beside him, although prices are rising to dizzy heights. They have multiplied six times over this week alone, everything costs almost a hundred times what it did before the war. But they have a new place to live. He was lucky, for the advertisement in the Steglitzer Anzeiger could easily have bee
n overlooked, but then everything moved very fast. It took him only a brief telephone call and an appointment to see the apartment, and then it was all agreed.
The new apartment is almost just round the corner, two streets away in a little villa with a pretty garden, as he writes to his parents, two well furnished rooms on the first floor, one of them, the living-room, as sunny as his present room, while the smaller bedroom gets sun only in the morning. There is a third room between them, occupied by the landlady. But he hopes that they can come to terms with this minor inconvenience. Even Dora has been discussed, or at least he has made no secret of the fact that he is more or less living with a woman. Well, they will see how it turns out. Apparently Frau Rethmann the landlady uses the third room only for sleeping; she is a doctor, and works from morning to evening at her practice on the Rheineck.
It is the nicest apartment he has ever had.
Dora is delighted by the electric light and the heating that actually works, because winter is coming and it would have been freezing in Miquelstrasse, where the windows and doors do not fit their frames well and the gas doesn’t burn properly, not to mention the constant trouble with Frau Hermann. They think themselves very lucky. Dora has to go out soon, she has arranged to meet Judith, but first she has to say what she likes most. Yes, shall I tell you that? She has done something to her hair, so he says something about her hair, and for a moment he doesn’t want to let her go, but then he does; perhaps he will write something this evening.
The Glory of Life Page 8
