I nodded.
"That's why I didn't dare to ask him for the money."
I nodded again.
"Because he's furious about all this theatre business anyway."
I nodded for a third time and noticed that Yolanda was nodding too.
"Can't your parents help?"
"They're not at all well off either. My father is a librarian. He doesn't earn very much." She got up and came over to me. "Mr. Frank, please don't think that we want you to give us the money. All we want is a loan. A short term loan. Felix said to teU you we want to pay interest."
"Hm," I said, looking very serious. Yolanda turned away.
"Five percent," WUma said softly.
'Whatr
"Or more," she said quickly. "Felix and the others said I could go as high as ten percent. That's what the loan sharks charge."
My Ups parted but I found I couldn't utter a word. Yolanda found her handkerchief and drowned her laughter by blowing her nose. I could see her shoulders shaking.
"Miss Wilma," I finally managed to say, "you are offering me ten percent interest on a loan of four thousand three hundred and fifty schillings?"
"Yes," she said. "Felix feels there should be something in it for you, otherwise you wouldn't do it."
I cleared my throat. "Felix is quite right. For how long do you want the loan?"
"For six or eight weeks." She sounded a little more hopeful. Her Kps were parted and her eyes were shining as she looked at me.
"For six or eight weeks," I repeated slowly, turning my back on her, and began to pace up and down. Every now and then I mumbled something to myself. Then I stopped and looked at her sternly. "And what sort of security can you give?"
"The box office receipts," she said quickly.
"You call that security?"
She blushed. "Herr Frank," she said, "Felix's play is wonderful. We're going to have a full house every night."
"Have you ever had a full house?"
"No, but. .."
"And how many seats can your full house hold?"
"Forty-nine," she said softly. "But we can put in at least twenty extra seats. Besides, the Vienna administration has promised us a subsidy. And . . ."
"Yes, yes," I said, feeling like Santa Claus. I had to stop myself from rubbing my hands with satisfaction! "That's all well and good, but it's hardly what I would call security. I'm a business man. Miss Wilma, and unfortunately I lack an artistic viewpoint. All I can deal with are figures and guarantees."
To my astonishment, I felt positively gay! The shadows of the past month were gone. It was a miracle! This young girl who had come to borrow money from me was capable of making me happy! This strange girl with the light eyes and her hair brushed back in a bun. I saw her beauty, her youth, her innocence. . ..
"How about references?" I asked and could feel my blood warming me, my heart beating fast as I was filled with a deep, inner well-being. "Do you have any references?"
She shook her head dejectedly. She had no idea how close she was to the fulfillment of her request. "No, Mr. Frank, we don't have anybody. We're all alone. Fifteen of us, counting the lighting technician and the lavatory girl, and I really don't think anybody would sign a guarantee for us. I mean nobody with money. We just don't know anybody with money. We could guarantee for each other, but that wouldn't be any good to you."
"No," I said, "that wouldn't be any good to me."
"Felix thought," she began again, but stopped, thoroughly discouraged. She didn't know what else to say; she ji had tried everything. i
For a moment there was silence in the room, then Yo- i^ landa walked over to the window and opened it. If I ever t loved her, it was at that moment. "Felix!" she cried out ji into the dark. f
The young man standing beside the lantern looked up. "Yes?"
"Come on up and have a cognac with us," Yolanda called down to him.
8
That evening a performance was given in Vienna just for Yolanda and me. It took place in the basement of the Cafe Schubert in a hall that was five times ten meters, on a stage that was five times two. On the walls there were plaques made of wire, colored paper and sequins, very modem and quite comical. Along three of the four walls ran a line of lettering. The walls were dark grey and the letters had been cut out of white paper. One after the other they spelled out the names of theatrical greats: Tairoff, Piscator, Jessner. Reinhardt, Stanislawski. There were no rows of seats, only small tables and chairs. Before the performance a waiter came and asked what we would like. We ordered a bottle of wine. We sat in approximately the middle of the room on two hard wooden chairs that had been painted white and gold. All the tables around us were empty, their chairs tipped up against them. Yolanda drank most of the wine, I drank only one glass. I looked at the ridiculous miniature stage, at what was to pass as scenery and at the half dozen young people acting-out their parts on it. And they could act. There wasn't one among them who didn't have talent. Moreover, the play was good. The scene was Vienna today, the characters people who were afraid. The play cried out against fear. Felix Reinert was the author, age twenty-two. His mop of dark hair stood away from his
long, bony, weathered head and hung down over the premature wrinkles in his forehead. The play he had written, which I saw that night, was titled The Dead Have No Tears,
"How did you hit upon that title?" I had asked him after he had accepted Yolanda's invitation to come up and have a cognac with us. He spoke very fast. I found it difficult to understand him; also he had a shght stammer. It was as if his thoughts came to him faster than his words, as if the former were always one jump ahead of him.
"From mythology," he said.
Wilma was sitting beside him on our recently acquired baroque sofa and was watching him with undisguised admiration. For her he was a great man. "I'm sure you know the story," he went on. "The Uving must suffer much, the dead less. But that doesn't mean we should consider death desirable! On the contrary. Life is stiU the better thing. Because as long as one is alive, one can defend oneself, one can act. One can weep over-disaster and injustice."
"And the dead can't cry anymore?" asked Yolanda.
"No. The dead can't act, can't defend themselves and they can't cry anymore. They know everything, they are everywhere, they remain young—but they can't cry any more. Not even if they have once been happy. The dead have no tears."
"So your play eulogizes tears and life?"
"Yes."
And this it did. I sat in the cold cellar auditorium. We hadn't taken off our coats, but still I was freezing, and I could feel compassion overwhelm me as I faced these young people who were making propaganda for hope and tears, who had no money, a dubious future and no past yet who were willing to express loud and clear that the worst of Ufe was still better than the most beautiful death and that there was only one sin in our tune: to give up hope.
I accepted the experience gratefully. For two hours I
forgot that I had to die and that the police of an entire continent were looking for me, that I had had to desert my wife and had proved incapable of ridding myself of my mistress, that actually my life was senseless and worthless.
I watched Wilma. She had a small part and T thought she was wonderful. She had the delicacy of Audrey Hepburn and the robust energy of Shelley Winters. She believed what she had to say; it came from the heart. Here—of this I was convinced—if I had learned anything in Hollywood were the makings of a great actress.
Vienna. What a strange city it was, with talent pouring forth out of every comer, seeping out of the ground unceasingly, to manifest itself in attics and cellars; a city four times divided, the heart of a land four times divided, that was far too small for all the talent it contained and had produced so extravagantly for centuries.
The play was in three acts. During the last act T saw Yolanda push her glass away, lean back and look in her purse. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away with her handkerchief, carefully, so as not to smear her mascara. W
hen the lights went on again, both of us applauded and smiled at the actors who were bowing ceremoniously. They even drew the curtain up and down. Then I went "backstage" and walked up to Wilma. "There you are," I said and gave her an envelope with the money. She screamed with joy and threw her arms around me only to let go right away and look at Yolanda, horrified. "Please, please forgive me, gnddige Frau"
Yolanda had walked up to us. Her eyes were still shining with tears. She was smiling. "You were great, all of you," she said and shook hands with the entire cast of six.
Felix came over and thanked me. "We are going to pay you back, Mr. Frank, we really are. You can count on it. And we'll never forget what you did for us today." Wilma was standing beside him, looking at me, radiant. Suddenly
she began to cry. "What's the matter?" Felix asked her, looking startled.
"Nothing," she sobbed. "Nothing. I'm just being stupid, but I'm so happy!" And she took Felix's handkerchief and blew her nose.
After that all of us went upstairs to the cafe. We pushed three tables together and celebrated our friendship. Everybody participated, including the (one) stagehand, the toilet attendant and the owner of the cafe with his wife. We looked like the members of an oflSce outing, or a middle class wedding party, or perhaps more Uke a small investment club at their yearly meeting. I sat between Yolanda and Wilma. We ate frankfurters—two pairs each—with mustard, and we drank Pilsner beer. The cafe was overheated, everybody talked at once, the mustard stood around in small bowls, we dipped our frankfurters into it and ate with our hands. All of us ended up with greasy fingers.
I can't remember when I became conscious for the first time of the fact that I loved Wilma. It probably didn't happen suddenly. Things like that occur without one noticing them. They grow bigger and stronger, and by the time one is aware of them, one is already a victim. At first one is beset by a pleasant feeling of umest One doesn't know the cause of it yet but one's entire system becomes attuned to it and is altered as it prepares for something new. One's brain is interested independently in things of which one isn't conscious. How old was Wilma? Nineteen. I was forty-five. Twenty-six years older. The whole thing
was ridiculous! When I would be fifty, she would be half my age. Then it occurred to me that I was never going to be fifty. Not even forty-six! It was insane, absolutely crazy! But it was sweet insanity, and it intoxicated me like the finest wine. In the week following our viewing of their play, I saw her almost daily. I watched the rehearsals. With the shamelessness of a Maecenas, who since the beginning of time has seen fit to tyrannize the artists he is sponsoring, I asked questions, expressed ideas and gave unasked for advice. Everybody was wonderful to me, and my word was law.
"Yes, Mr. Frank, you're quite right. The decor in the second act is poor. But Susy doesn't have any more canvas for the backdrop."
"Why doesn't she have any more canvas?" I asked.
"No money," said Susy, laconically. She was the pony-tailed stage manager. She wore large tortoiseshell rimmed gjasses.
"Here's money," I said. "Go get your canvas."
"Oh, but that's awfully nice of you, Mr. Frank!"
"We'll pay you back. Every schilling!" This, of course, was Felix.
"You're just wonderful, Mr. Frank!" And this was .Wilma.
Yes, for her T was wonderful. I was the iairytale told to children to make them go to sleep. A wave of my hand and Susy came running back, lugging a roll of canvas. I paid a minor employee and the presses rolled, printing posters, red and blue on good white paper, which was then pasted on the advertisement columns. "Studio 52," they announced, "presents the world premiere of The Dead Have No Tears, a play in three acts by Felix Reinert," and underneath that the names of the actors in alphabetical order. Her name too. Parisini. Wilma Parisini. On the Ringstrasse, between trees that were already beginning to lose their leaves, we saw the advertisement on a column for the first time, she and I. Together. I was
walking her home from a rehearsal. "There," she said breathlessly. "Look!"
She gestured toward the other side of the street, then tore herself loose from me and ran like a child across it, just missing a bus. "Wilma!" I screamed. But she didn't hear me, and the next thing I knew I was running after her, I, James Elroy Chandler, alias Walter Frank, wanted by the police, I, Walter Frank, dead in a year, if I was unlucky—^with luck, earlier; I, Walter Frank, forgot everything the minute I reached her and stood beside her, just as breathless as she, and saw her joy, her glowing cheeks, heard her laughter. ...
"Oh, Mr. Frank, I'm so happy! So happy! And we have you to thank for everything! And when I think of how frightened I was when I went to see you, just a few days ago...."
"Were you frightened, Wilma?"
"Of course I was. Terribly." And then we laughed again, and I took her hand and we walked on over the asphalt and the fallen yellow leaves, past many strange houses, in a strange city that seemed as familiar to me as if I had been born in it.
Yes, I was a miracle man in her eyes. One evening it was raining. I raised my hand and a taxi stopped for us. She sat in it beside me, the street lights passed across her face while she told a thousand stories of which I listened to none because I could think of nothing but of how wonderful it must be to kiss her. But I didn't kiss her. I said goodbye to her in front of her house and walked alone through the rain, back to Reisnerstrasse and the couat-egs's quiet apartment where Yolanda was waiting for mc.
I was a miracle man. For Wilma, for her friends, and in my own eyes. Wherever I appeared, I spread good cheer, I, of all people! The curtain was old and ugly so— let's get a new one! Too few comfortable chairs? Nonsense! Buy comfortable ones. Felix didn't have a dark suit for the premiere? Felix got a dark suit. And he got it
from the best taUor in town. In three days. My money worked miracles. Not I. My money.
It came to me suddenly one afternoon as I sat in the auditorium watching them put up the new curtain amid yells and laughter. My money was the source of all these good things, the money I had embezzled, the money Jacob Lauterbach had exchanged for me illegally. The damned, filthy money I had run after all my life and of which I had never had enough until this moment in my life. It was the money, not I! Ah yes, if I had always had money, the world would have been mine for the taking. I could have bought women and men, love and power. Money, money, money!
Not I.
I laid my head on the imitation marble top of the table in front of me and closed my eyes. I felt Uke a sentimental fool. Then I heard her voice. "Aren't you feeling well, Mr. Frank?"
There she stood in front of me, in costume, rouge on her cheeks, her wide mouth painted, the lashes thick with mascara. She was leaning over me; I could see the concern in her eyes. "Fm all right," I said. "What is it?"
"Oh Mr. Frank, we've changed our minds. We don't hke the new curtain, and it's much too expensive. We're going to return it and Susy's going to gild the old one. It will look like new."
"You bet it will," said stage manager Susy, age seventeen. "And think of the money we'll be saving."
"You reaUy think so?" I asked.
"Wait and see," said FeUx. "We're not going to let all this extravagance become a habit just because we found you and you're so willing to help us."
I got up and felt a heaviness in my legs and a pleasant weariness in my head as if I had drunk too much sweet wine.
"Watch me," said Susy. "You couldn't buy the curtain I'm going to paint anywhere. Not with all the money in the world."
"Not with all the money in the world?" I repeated. "You don't believe me?"
"I?" I looked around me, at all of them. "I love you. •' "And we love you too," said Wilma.
10
Yes, I think that's how it all began during those late autumn days before the opening night. She had come to see me on a Wednesday, and from that day on I lived as in a dream. It was a short dream; it lasted three weeks, then it was over. But it was the most beautiful dream of my life. And when I think of all the things tha
t happened afterwards, all the vileness and betrayal of the last months fall away like a shell when I recall these three happiest weeks of my life. I think of them at night when I lie awake and during the day when I sit at my desk. They shine brightly amid all the evil, and when I close my eyes I can see it just as it was, every detail, every smile, every pressure of her hand.
I never possessed her, but she was closer to me and I loved her more than any woman in my life. And I think she knew it. We never talked about it, but in the way she sometimes looked at me and spoke to me, I could tell that she sensed what I never mentioned because the time was too short and death was stalking me.
I don't know where she is today, but if there is a God in heaven, then he wiU give her happiness in return for the happiness she gave me before everything went cold and dark around me. If there is a God in heaven, then he will reward her for the good she did me without knowing it.
During the day, from nine to four, she was in Lauter-bach's office and I couldn't see her. But I used to call her from a booth, secretly and with a false voice so that no one would recognize me. "Please may I speak to Miss Parisini for a moment?" Like a schoolboy. As if I were still calling my girlfriend, Claudette, who had worked as a dental assistant. "Just a minute," said the office boy who always answered. He also always sounded suspicious, but I don't think he had any idea who was calling. And then I heard her voice, a child's voice with a Uttle break in it, answering with an undertone of astonishment. "Hello?"
"Frank speaking."
"Oh. How are you?"
She never called me by my name—that was a tacit agreement—and we therefore shared a secret, the sweetest and most innocent secret imaginable.
"I happened to be passing by and wondered if we couldn't meet?"
"Oh yes, that would be nice."
"As usual? Around the comer in the tea shop?"
"Yes, please."
I had to work out all the important details of the conversation, she couldn't say much, the office boy kept a sharp eye on things.
I Confess Page 18
