I Confess

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  She didn't answer.

  "So come on, let's be friends agam. If it's anything I did, I'm sorry." I knew very well that I hadn't done a thmg, certainly nothing to be sorry for, but I said it just

  the same. Anything to have peace. "There now, is everything all right?"

  "No."

  I drew a deep breath. She seemed determined to make a scene.

  "Why not?" '

  Dear God, how familiar I was with all this, the words, the looks, the hysteria. How unbearable it all was, and how ridiculous!

  "Because it doesn't suit me."

  "What doesn't suit you?"

  The same old dialogue, the same old sequence of events: phrases repeated, hstened to, concihatory smiles. And a headache. Above all, a headache.

  "Nothing suits me!"

  She jumped to her feet, slipped into a robe and began to pace back and forth. You could see how much good this Uttle outburst was doing her, how she was enjoying it. Her wide, green silk housecoat fluttered around her white thighs. She stumbled on one of her high heels and kicked off her slippers. "Nothing! What do you take me for anyway? How long do you think you can keep this up?"

  "Keep what up?"

  "This httle ritual. Love by timetable. Monday from four to eight, Wednesday evening in the olBBce, if you've got something you want to dictate, Thursday morning, and then the weekend, if your wife chooses to go away."

  I looked at her. I thought she had grown older in the three months we had known each other. She wasn't as pretty. I noticed several places on her body . . . This happened to me with all women, but usually it took longer. The best thmg might be to call it quits.

  "You know very well that this timetable, as you choose to call it, is the result of the difficult situation in which I find myself. After all, I'm married."

  "And you just sleep with me."

  "At your friendly invitation."

  "You're a louse."

  **It always gave me great pleasure." I got up and went over to her. She resisted when I put my arms around her, but I held her close, pressed her body to mine. For one short moment I felt something akin to desire move me. Then I could smell the beer and let her go. "Wasn't it perfectly clear from the beginning what our relationship would be?" I said. "Or have you suddenly fallen in love with me?"

  "By God, no!" She said it softly, and her green eyes glittered angrily.

  "Well, then—why all the excitement?"

  She walked up to me and looked me in the eye. She spoke hastily. "I'll tell you why, dear Jimmy. Because it has suddenly occurred to me that there is such a thing as dignity, a woman's dignity!"

  "Oh, come on. . . ."

  "Be quiet!" Now she was standing close to me, her body was touching mine, and I could smell not only the beer but also her hair, her perfume. "I'm not finished. I am of the opinion, dear Jimmy, fhat the pleasure I give you gives me certain rights. Rights of a social nature. The same rights as your wife. More!"

  "Yes, yes...."

  "You don't agree? What does she do for you? Give you pleasure? Help you?"

  "No."

  "But I did. Or didn't I?"

  **Yes, Yolanda. You did."

  '*We may not have loved each other, but we understood each other. From the very first moment. You could come to me whenever you liked. I was always there for you. I was faithful, although I didn't love you. And your wife? Was she faithful?"

  "No."

  "But you've got to pick her up."

  "Yes."

  Suddenly she was very far away, as if T were looking at her through the wrong end of an opera glass. Her voice

  too came to me as if through a wall of cotton wadding. Only the rain remained loud. And the blood pulsating in my temples. Pam-pampam ... pam-pampam...

  "You have to keep up a front."

  "That's right."

  "Nobody must notice."

  "Right."

  "Because you have social obligations.**

  "That's right."

  "Although you haven't loved her in years. Although she hasn't loved you in years."

  "Yes, Yolanda."

  "And why?"

  "Because she's my wife."

  I walked away from her. I could feel how the conversation was wearing me out. I had listened to it so many times, not only from Yolanda and not only in Munich. In other cities too. With other women. I was sick to death of the conversation as of so many other things.

  "Because she is your wife. That's all?"

  "That's aU."

  "That's why you can't leave her?"

  "No."

  "Then why not?"

  "Because I don't want to."

  I could just as well have said because I wanted to avoid a scandal. Or because I was a coward. But I didn't. These things were none of Yolanda's business. And my head ached.

  "But me ... me you want to leave.**

  "I don't want to leave you."

  "But you're going to."

  "What do you mean? When?"

  "Now. You're leaving me to go to her.*'

  "Yolanda, don't be childish. I'm picking Margaret up at the house of friends and taking her home. Tomorrow I'll see you again."

  "From four to eight.**

  "It's the best I can do."

  "It's not the best you can do. You could do something about the people who are saying filthy things about me. You could do something about the fact that we have to sit around in coffee shops and bars like college kids. You could see to it that this idiotic game of hide and seek comes to an end. That's what you could do. But you don't want to. Because she's your wife."

  All I could do was nod; it hurt me to speak.

  "Why don't you say something?"

  "Because my head aches."

  "Stop talking about your head."

  "I didn't start this. I have bigger and better worries."

  "Yes. Your poor wife."

  "Among other things."

  "You don't love her, she doesn't love you, but you worry about her. Because she's your wife."

  I nodded.

  "And of course that's something quite different. Because she's your wife she has to be treated with consideration. Because of her I have to put up with everything. Whereas I ... what am I? I'm nothing but a common, dirty little . . .".

  "Yes."

  ''What!" She turned on me.

  "That was what fascinated me in you," T explained, "Don't be angry, Yolanda. It was meant as a compliment. I thought it would please you."

  She came up to me. "It pleases me enormously," she said. Her smile was icy. "It was the nicest compliment you could have paid me. I'm sure it's a compliment you could never have paid your wife." Now we were standing close again, both of us were smiling. "If she'd been a common little whore, you would never have been interested in me, isn't that right, Jimmy?"

  "No, Yolanda."

  "If you could let yourself go at home, you'd never have come to me."

  "Certainly not."

  'Tor that I want to thank you, darling. It was sweet of you. And now / want to say something nice too." * "Yes?"

  "Yes. I want to tell you what you are."

  "That isn't necessary. I know what I am." - "No you don't. That's why it's time somebody told you, Jimmy. It's important for your development as a writer. Perhaps you can do something with it in your next film. That is—^if they decide to let you write another film." She smiled broadly; I could see her strong, white teeth. She came closer, threw her arms around me, laid her head against my cheek. "So listen carefully. You are a poor, miserable little bourgeois, Jimmy. One of the worst kind. One of the sad ones who get everything all wrong. A phoney. A sordid Uttle phoney." , "Thanks."

  "You're welcome. But I'm not through. You're one of those poor Johns who Jook at every woman with raunchy eyes, first at her legs, and then imagine her always in the same position. Only your imagination is much stronger than your talent. Which is why you're forever on the lookout for new flesh, forever disappointed and restless. As I just said—a pitifu
l little bourgeois, a very, very sad specimen. In love, as in your profession—mediocre." She stroked my cheek with hers and her hands moved caressmgly down my back. "An insignificant little bourgeois with mile-wide inhibitions and complexes."

  "Quite the opposite from you."

  "Quite the opposite from me."

  "Which is why you tendered your friendly invitation."

  *T tendered my friendly invitation because at the time I still thought something could be done with you, that it might be fun "

  "... and I had lots of money."

  "... and you had lots of money."

  **But I was a disappointment."

  "Yes, Jimmy."

  "Not financially."

  "No. Not financially."

  "But in other respects."

  "In other respects. I think I shall decide to give yon up. T don't want to say that you have no talent, but I don't think you're going to change. No, I'm sure you're not. You're going to stay just the way you are. With your wife whom you don't love, with your work that you don't enjoy, with your chronic dissatisfaction, your constant searching, your waking dreams . . ."

  "Yolanda," I said, "you can stop now."

  "Why? Why should I stop, dear Jimmy?"

  "Because enough is enough."

  "But is it enough? Shouldn't I go on to tell you that you're a sap, a failure, a nothing?"

  "No."

  "I think it would do you good."

  "I don't think so."

  "But I do."

  "Yolanda," I said, smiling, "if you say it once more I'll bash your head in."

  She smiled, then she said it again.

  I struck her in the face.

  The cheek I hit turned a fiery red. T had hit hard. Yolanda was still smiling, but her cigarette had dropped out of her hand. It lay on the carpet. She toed into one of her slippers and put it out.

  "Now you can go," she said.

  "I'll say."

  "And get yourself a new secretary."

  "I'll do that."

  I walked to the door, turned around once*more, asked, "Why did it have to end like this? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just tell me you'd had enough?"

  She shook her head, as if astounded. "You poor idiot," she said.

  "And why poor idiot?"

  "I didn't want to call it quits. I thought perhap**! could persuade you to end it—^with your wife."

  I didn't close the door behind me. I wenf ofut into the foyer where I had left my hat. In the mirror beside the front door I saw Yolanda once more. She was standing still in the middle of the room, examining her nails. Then I went down the stairs and out into the street. It was still raining. My temples felt swollen. Every step I took hurt my eyes. I had never felt so ill. I was afraid I wouldn't reach my car.

  The altercation with Yolanda had exhausted me more than I cared to admit. It was not the first of its kind. But it was going to be the last. Yes, I thought—the last! It was all too debilitating. I had to finish my script, then away to another city. Perhaps I could find another woman. Perhaps not. At the moment I didn't even find the thought of another woman attractive. When I got through, I'd take time off. Perhaps go fishing. Alone. I hke to fish. Something ran down my cheek. I was crying. I stopped and blew my nose. Nerves. During our quarrel I had grown terribly hot, and now I couldn't stop the tears. A httle girl was sitting on the stone path of the small garden in front of the house. She looked at me curiously.

  "Don't you feel well, Mister?"

  "I'm aU right."

  ''But you're crying." The little girl got up and looked at me delightedly. "Does anything hurt?"

  "No."

  "Then why are you crying?'*

  "Something flew in my eye."

  My car stood at the curb. I needed approximately twenty steps to reach it.

  "Please let me pass," I told the little girl. "I'm in a hurry."

  She stepped aside, then ran behmd me. "Mister . . . Mister . . .** I stopped* "Yes?"

  "I feel sorry for you," she said. "Here's a present for you."

  She took a dirty little paper bag out of the pocket of her apron and with her dirty little fingers fished out a dirty piece of hard candy. "It's filled," she said.

  "Thank you."

  "Put it in your mouth/*

  "Later."

  "No. Now. I want to see you do it."

  I put the sucker in my mouth. It felt sticky on my tongue. My stomach revolted. I tried to swallow. And with that a huge black arrow shot toward my eyes, split in front of my face and hit me squarely in both pupils. I screamed. I fell. The black arrow exploded into a blinding light. I could feel my head strike stone and the Uttle girl crying out in fear.

  And I hadn't called Hellweg, was all I could think before tumbling down the ever widening shaft of a deep faint.

  I had never fainted before in my life.

  I had often let the protagonists in my films—^preferably the heroines—^faint at an appropriately effective moment, but for me personally it was an absolutely new and fascinating experience. More than that—it was the most beautiful experience of my entire life. The period during which I was unconscious cannot be compared in perfection, in serenity and weightless detachment, with any other condition ever experienced. I was in paradise—if there is such a thing—and if death should turn out to be anywhere

  nearly as wonderful, then my last hours should be the happiest of my life and hopefully anticipated.

  I didn't dream. I saw no faces. I experienced no important impressions of the past as in a film flashback. I heard no voices, no music. I had no nightmares, no sense of oppression. / was at peace. The perfect beatific peace that I believe is mentioned frequently in the Bible as a promise. Perhaps this is the feeling drug addicts seek, the condition they prize and hoard like a secret treasure. If so, I understand them, all those who forge prescriptions and become thieves, who leave their families and go down into dirty cellars to soil and humihate themselves. I can understand all of them, if it is the longing for this condition of peace, this blessed salvation, that drives them. Since my faint I have become their brother. I feel as they do and I long to return to this moment of my most extreme enfeeblement, just as I yearn for the bliss of a happy childhood, gone under and forgotten long ago. I have no idea if all faints are so miraculous. Mine was. And I therefore wait for death almost impatiently, hoping that in some small way it will be similar. Because just before I came to I had the briefest feeling that death had caught up with me, that I ^ was in its realm. But I was wrong. Almost at once consciousness returned and with it the gates of paradise closed behind me. I had only been a guest.

  I was lying in a white bed in a big white room. Everything in the room was white—the walls, the furniture, the curtains, the doors. Even the man sitting at my bedside,

  watching me as I opened my eyes was white. He wore a white coat and had white hair.

  I looked at him for quite some time in silence. Then I looked across the room, to the window. The sun was shining. It hurt my eyes and I turned away.

  "Headache?" asked the man.

  "Yes."

  "Eyes too?"

  "Yes."

  "Hm," he said, then he smUed. "Mr. Chandler?"

  "Yes."

  "My name is Eulenglas."

  "Pleased to meet you," I said. Then at last T remembered what I had wanted to ask right away. "Where am I?"

  "In the Golden Cross."

  "In a ho ... ho .. . ho ...," I stopped, horrified. I wanted to say 'hospital,' but the word wouldn't come.

  Eulenglas sat motionless, watching me. "I beg your pardon?"

  "In a ho ... ho ... ho ...," I was sweating, my temples were throbbing, I was on the verge of tears. There I lay, a babbling idiot who couldn't say the word hospital. What in God's name had happened to me?

  "You can't say the word?" said Eulenglas, and I hated him for the stupidity of the question.

  I shook my head.

  "But you know what you want to say?"

  I nodded. />
  "Try again."

  I tried again. It was ghastly. The tears shot to my eyes. "So help me, for God's sake!" I screamed.

  "In a hospital, Mr. Chandler," said Eulenglas amiably.

  And now I could say the word too, and it was a blessing I felt physically. "In a hospital!"

  "There you are," said Eulenglas.

  "What does it mean?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "What is it that prevents me from saying certain words?"

  "It will pass, Mr. Chandler."

  "I want to know what it is."

  "It is called hteral paraphasia," he replied at once. He had recognized me as an intellectual. An intellectual always has to have everything explained to him. When he thinks he understands, he feels better. "Your brain is irritated. A certain muscle in your speech center is provoked and isn't functioning properly. It will right itself. That's all, Mr. Chandler."

  "Aha," I said. I thought I understood and at once felt better. Now I could see his face more clearly. My eyes, which at first had seemed streaked and veiled, now suddenly functioned properly. Eulenglas was wearing thick glasses and had a small, tanned scholarly head.

  "You had a minor accident. They brought you here, to Professor Vogt. I am his assistant."

  "Vogt?" Dimly the name registered. "The surgeon?"

  "Yes."

  "And what does that mean?" I sat up. "Why am I here?"

  "For an examination." He pushed me gently back onto my pillow.

  "Who brought me here?"

  "Your wife^ Mr. Chandler."

  "Oh," I said. Then I was silent for a while, trying to think. But my memor>^ was still blotted out.

  "You were taken to emergency first," said Eulenglas. "Then your wife was notified and she wanted you brought here."

  "When was that?"

  "Yesterday."

  Suddenly, like a gigantic wave, I could feel the whole misery and onus of life descending upon me again. I closed my eyes.

  "What day is it?"

  "Monday."

  "And what's the time?"

  "Qose to noon."

  "But that isn't possible. I can remember exactly...." then I stopped. I couldn't remember a thing.

  "You were brought to emergency yesterday afternoon at about five o'clock. You were unconscious, Mr. Chandler. For a considerable length of time."