by Peter Nadas
Bouncing and bumping on our seats, the car puffing and sputtering, we sped out of the city.
If on the eve of my final departure from Berlin I hadn't destroyed all the notes I took at rehearsals, I'd have a daily record of the changes I felt were taking place in Thea; toward the end she spoke less and less, grew more quiet and dignified, and we generally rode in the car without talking.
Destroying my notes, burning them in Melchior's white tile stove, had a great deal to do with Frau Kühnert: seeing that my relationship with Thea had become more intimate, she lit into me with the seething anger of barely concealed jealousy, but also with the slyly submissive honesty of one bowing before the inevitable, and let me know that what I took to be a singular exciting change in Thea was nothing of the sort, nothing worth mentioning, oh, how sick and tired she was of all this talk about change, luckily for me I hadn't noticed that I was only a tool in Thea's hand, something she needed in her work, she was using me, didn't I see, and when the time came she'd discard me, luckily, she repeated, because this way, at least I relieved her of some of her burdens, actually replaced her for a while, she had known Thea for twenty years, might say she'd been living with her for that long, and so could tell me precisely, with the accuracy of a train schedule, in fact, down to the day, hour, minute, what Thea would do next, and I should know, she said, that if she hadn't noticed how attached Thea had become to me, she wouldn't be so frank with me.
For first rehearsals she always shows up quietly, solemnly, unapproachably, Frau Kühnert went on, trying to charm me with her Theaological knowledge, leaning very close to me, speaking almost into my mouth; though she was never truly beautiful herself, I'd have to agree that she was always able to create indescribable beauty around her, out of nothing, if we want to be blunt about it; before the first rehearsal she'd do something with her hair, dye it, cut it, let it grow, and wouldn't talk about it to anyone, not even to her, spending every free moment with Arno, with whom she was in love again as she'd been in her youth, she'd rush home to him, go on hikes and excursions with him, which Arno, being a professional climber, could certainly do without; and she'd become a regular Hausfrau, making jam, cleaning and painting the apartment, sewing dresses, but by the end of the second week of rehearsals or the beginning of the third, she'd start with these impulsive getaways, just like now, with me, she'd wave her over and they'd ride someplace where she would get soused, behave like any man at his worst, pick fights, sing, belch, quarrel with waiters, fart, throw up all over the table, Frau Kühnert had seen it all, I couldn't tell her anything new, she'd had to pick her up and take her home from some of the most awful places imaginable, and then the next day either she'd send word she was deathly ill, not to expect her, she felt terrible about it, but the doctor said it might take months to recover, a nervous breakdown or an attack of ulcers, something very serious, no, she didn't want to talk about it, it was very personal, a feminine problem, probably a tumor in her uterus, she was bleeding buckets, and she had a kidney infection, her vocal cords were inflamed, or she'd drag herself to the theater, bearing up well, thank you, so well that in the middle of rehearsals she'd have a crying fit and offer to quit the role, and then of course they had to plead with her, tell her how indispensable she was, console and beg her, and she would let herself be persuaded but then sink into the darkest depression, and that was no longer a joke, she couldn't get up, couldn't get dressed, let her hair get all greasy and stringy; and whenever this happened, Frau Kühnert even had to cut her finger- and toenails for her, but through it all Thea felt terribly guilty about letting down her friends and colleagues, who were all so sweet and nice and talented, she ought to be grateful, she would say, to be working with a fine director like Langerhans, who could bring out the best in her, the very best.
She would become attentive, buying presents for everyone, there was nothing she wouldn't do for you, she would want to have a baby though she was getting bored to tears with Arno, who spent all his time puttering about in that dreary high-rise flat of theirs when he should have been up in his real world, on top of mountains; if she could only buy him a little house somewhere with a garden, she felt sorry for him all right, but even more sorry for herself for having to live out her life with someone so miserable; and she, Frau Kühnert went on, had to fight her every afternoon, almost coming to blows as she practically shoved her into her car to make her go home, and if she had an evening performance, not only would she not go home but she would roam the streets with someone until morning, or sleep with some stranger, fall in love, or want a divorce because she'd had enough; she'd keep babbling and showing off, trying to captivate everyone, male or female, it didn't matter, and she'd begin to hate those who wouldn't respond, because maybe they were also in the throes of getting into their roles, she'd make rehearsals difficult for them, threaten to denounce them, and then the others would start hating her, too, torment her and denounce her, because I shouldn't think for a moment that this regularly repeated process was only her specialty, they were all like that here, this was a madhouse; but now we were into the next phase—so, as I could see, there was no change here at all—when Thea had to retreat; with opening night fast approaching, she put herself on hold, because she realized she was all alone once again, no one would or could help her, or rather, she should use the raging emotions stirred up by real, living people only onstage and if she used them offstage she'd end up destroying herself; and she wasn't at all as intuitive and spontaneous as I might think, but managed her resources very carefully, calculating and using them with great economy, because in the final analysis she didn't care about anything except what happened onstage, how she'd bring things off there, so if I really insisted on seeing some changes in Thea, I should see only that each new role demanded a different way of arousing her crazed emotions, and an infinite number of ways were possible; she herself did not exist, no matter how hard I tried, I could never see her; now, for example, in her current role, what I saw was not her but the difference, that clear gap or whatever, that separated Thea from the cold calculating bitch onstage who, even while standing over the dead body of her father-in-law, wanted to remain queen, which a sane person would never do; what always made Thea different from her own self was that she kept looking for herself in roles that didn't really suit her; she herself was nothing but a giant absence, a blank, and if I really meant to be of any help, I must never forget that about her.
But since I did not want to be of any help, in anything—it must have been my attentiveness and exaggerated politeness, my obliging, nearly servile humility that gave Frau Kühnert the wrong idea—my behavior stemming from an acute interest, which I was flattered to see Thea showed similarly in me, and if there was anybody I wanted to help, it was Melchior, which is why I felt I was using Thea and not the other way around, Frau Kühnert did not succeed in disillusioning or offending me, because I was shrewdly and obsessively determined to reach the moment of my desired goal, taking into account that its circumstances might be shaped by the characters of the two women, and went about considering and anticipating these eventualities with the cool detachment of a professional criminal preparing for a really big job.
All the same, it took some time before I could predict on any given day whether we were going to give Frau Kühnert a lift or just leave her at the theater, since Thea never said a word about where we were going, as if she didn't know or knew so well she didn't have to say it, the important thing was to go away from here, be somewhere else, alone, or rather with me, which for her had become a peculiar form of solitude: if we were going to end up at the Müggelheim Ridge, near the Köpenick Castle, or in the nature preserve south of Grünau, or in Rahnsdorf, then we'd take Frau Kühnert along and drop her off at Steffelbauerstrasse, which was on the way—of course Thea may have chosen these destinations with Frau Kühnert in mind in the first place, as a polite gesture toward her friend—but when we headed west, toward Potsdam and the gently flowing Havel River, or east, toward Strausberg or Seefeld, then
we simply forgot her at the stage door; Thea would only wave goodbye to her, sometimes not even that, which Frau Kühnert, wrapped in the indifference of her jealousy and deep hurt, pretended not to notice, just as Thea pretended that her little wave or lack of it was the most natural gesture in the world.
These acts of betrayal were not without consequences, but as far as I could see, they were consequences their friendship could easily withstand.
Basically, I had no reason to doubt anything Frau Kühnert told me about Thea; after all, she had known her longer, more intimately, and from a different perspective, but she didn't necessarily know her better, because she knew her only as well as one woman might know another; the hidden little currents and secrets, the subtle signals of her gestures, words, and body which Thea sent out meant exclusively for men, Frau Kühnert could see only as an outside observer, while I, an initiate, instrument, or victim, could experience them on my skin, in my body; anyway, our perspectives on Thea were entirely different, and besides, I knew Frau Kühnert well enough to find my way around the labyrinth of her intentions, to understand the method and meaning of her exaggerations.
I had to conclude, for instance, that when it came to years she invariably resorted to overstatement; just as the age difference between Thea and Melchior wasn't twenty years, neither was it true that she had known Thea for so long—it was only ten years, yet these little lies and exaggerations aside, I had no reason to doubt her credibility, and my feelings told me that, for her, brazen lies and exaggerations no less than scrupulous honesty were all part of the same elaborate and formidable—in its passion rather moving—emotional strategy.
Her superstitious insistence on the magic number wasn't necessarily the result of cunning female rivalry: the reason she said twenty years instead of ten was not to put her friend in her place or at least in the right age bracket—it's true she was a few years younger than Thea but far less remarkable in every way—and was the same reason she was so frighteningly candid with me, shamelessly betraying their friendship by calling attention to Thea's age and revealing the agonies and craziness that went with her profession as an actress: Frau Kühnert was alluding to biological, aesthetic, and ethical realities she hoped would keep me away from Thea.
And I couldn't help noticing that these realities, even if I hadn't attributed much importance to them, did succeed in dampening my interest, thrusting me back from the role of emotionally involved participant to the castrated one of observer; Frau Kühnert stepped between us at a crucial moment, when our mutual attractions were about to converge, and, with her jealousy poured into a seemingly innocuous monologue, ventured into enemy territory, which according to the rules regulating the war of love between men and women she had no business entering.
But with great skill and nearly mythic calm Thea managed to drive back these unwarranted incursions.
No strategic move or subtle emotional maneuver by Frau Kühnert went unnoticed by Thea, who was always on guard, like on that windy late October afternoon when Frau Kühnert got hold of me in one of the narrow passageways connecting the dressing rooms, to pant and whisper at me the emotionally enthralling and professionally quite well-done grand monologue about the process of creating a role and maintaining a distance between actor and character, and when Thea emerged from her dressing room, it took only one look at her friend's flushed face for her to know what had been going on and what had to be done about it: putting her quick wits and absolute power over her friend to immediate good use, she grabbed my hand, turned on Frau Kühnert with the words You've been yakking to him long enough, and—brushing her face against Frau Kühnert's, which may or may not have been a peck of a farewell kiss, and if it wasn't, well, it was only because she had no time—she was off, had to run, with me of course, she got me out of a very tight spot by literally pushing me out the door, which was both an act of revenge and a deliberate humiliation from the standpoint of Frau Kühnert, who with the kiss she did and did not receive was left in a state of outraged shock and utter physical helplessness, as though she'd just been stabbed through the heart; I could almost see blood spurting from her chest.
Thea was carried across the street by the momentum of her resolve, but as soon as we were in the car I could see that the little scene had upset her and put her in a bad mood.
She said nothing until sometime after we got out again—I don't remember which way we left the city because, as I did with Melchior when he was driving, I relied completely on her knowledge of places, and in this way every feature of her face, every move she made, became part of the unfamiliar landscape I was always delighted to rediscover; first we sped down an almost empty highway, then unexpectedly she turned off onto a dirt road, where the area's unusual flatness under the sky's silent dome was relieved only by the soft outlines of occasional woods, razor-sharp outlines of lakes, canals, or other bodies of water, and the dirt road we were driving on seemed to be leading straight to the center of the earth's flat dish; the car rattled and jerked and began to cough as it tried to make it up a very gentle rise; not wanting to push her luck, Thea let the motor die and engaged the handbrake.
Once we were out of the city, it didn't really matter where we ended up.
It was one of those deceptive inclines that will have you believe, with their long, gradual rise, that they won't take much to climb, yet by the time you get to the top you're out of breath; from the dirt road a narrow wellbeaten trail led to the top, then although it disappeared near the flat crest, it seemed to continue somewhere up in the sky, appearing to the eyes like a gentle invitation the feet could not resist; sinking her hands comfortably into her coat pockets, Thea proceeded slowly up the hill, lost in thought, while I looked down, wondering who trod here before us and packed the dirt so hard, and also trying to figure out how such trails are formed.
I seemed to be stuck with having to ponder the useless questions of how one ensnares the world in the net of one's secret desires and how one becomes captive in the net cast by others.
The westering sun appeared for brief moments behind enormous, swirling, spiraling, dark-gray clouds, through the opening between which the sky's dome shone through in yellows, blues, and reds; a strong wind was blowing, but since it had nothing to cling to on this flat terrain except us, the whole landscape appeared to be silent.
Only now and then could the sound of birds be heard; long, blurry shadows and deeply burning cold lights streaked by.
In the mistless air, the distant horizon with its gentle curves and dips appeared to the eye sharp and close up, and our bodies sensed the air's chill in a similar way; it wasn't an unpleasant cold, because it nicely encircled each limb, gave strength and vigor to our movements.
It's in the northern regions that one experiences this, where the clear transparent cold has a way of isolating the body's warmth, which can then transmit its inner energies, endow one's acts with firmness and simplicity.
She stopped for a moment, I followed a few paces behind; being closer to her in the infinite distances of this vast open space would have seemed out of place; she didn't wait for me to catch up, only turned around to make sure I was still there before walking on, and then she said, You must never be angry at her, Sieglinde is a very decent girl, and she is always right, always, in everything.
When we reached the top of the leisurely sweeping rise, beauty stretched its new face before us with such serene majesty that words would only have marred it.
From here the trail descended more precipitously to the softly undulating land directly below, beneath a sheer drop, as if pulled down by its own immense weight, where deep in its lap it harbored a shimmering little pond, while farther on, bright strips of farmland and dark-crested woods stretched to the horizon, the intimate grandeur of their smooth lines made even lovelier by the orbs of a few solitary bushes.
For a while we stood on this seemingly lofty though rather low hilltop, admiring nature's spectacle from that well-known pose of casual strollers who usually report, in emotion-fil
led voices, with phrases like No, it was so beautiful, so infinitely beautiful, I thought I could never tear myself away, I had to stay to the end of my days! which, whether we like it or not, is also an admission, full of nostalgic pain, that much as we may like such a spectacle of nature, we don't know what to do with it, can't identify with it, we'd love to but can't, it's too vast, too distant, we ourselves are too alien in it, maybe too alive, and maybe in death we'll be able to move away and look for a different vantage point, perhaps the ultimate one, though we really ought to stay here because, with or without us, this is nature's ultimate landscape; then, after taking that steep trail down to the pond, to the more reassuring and more prosaic level, where the view was no longer so infinitely beautiful and inhuman, Thea stopped and turned to face me.
Sometimes I could scratch her eyes out, she said in a very calm, deep, earnest voice.
As if with her voice she were continuing the tranquillity of the wind, the clouds, and the undulating lines of the land; the sound of her voice was also twisting and winding, though in the opposite direction, back to the very near present.
