A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  My darling, my dearest, my one and only, wrote my bride, using words she had never used before, the unusual address falling like fiery slaps on my face and, along with the sudden rush of awful memories, making me dizzy; it took all my self-control to keep my head straight on my neck; and as I scanned the rest of the letter, I felt hot perspiration inundating my whole body under the robe; with my hands trembling, I slipped the letter back into the envelope, and to steady myself I grasped the back of a tall armchair, though what I really wanted to do was to flee.

  To escape, away from the chaos of my life! which was impossible, of course, if only because of the presence of my strange visitor, to say nothing of the fact that one can never satisfy the animal urge to escape, since from the chaos of one's soul there is no place to escape to.

  The reason this worthy officer of the law was standing there by the terrace door, and the reason I so readily complied with his audacious request that I open the freshly arrived letter in his presence, was that that very morning the young manservant, Hans Baader, with a single stroke of a razor had slit the throat of the young Swedish gentleman to whom I had been introduced the day after my arrival, at the luncheon table, in highly unusual circumstances, almost at the very moment Count Stollberg's death was announced; with his throat slit, the young Swede was lying in his own blood on the floor of the neighboring suite; police officials who rode over from Bad Doberan located the murderer in the pitch-dark coal cellar, where, evidently unhinged by his own deed, he was huddling and screaming frantically; within half an hour these same officials shed light on the intimate relationship that had developed between Gyllenborg, myself, and Fräulein Stollberg, and on Gyllenborg's and my special attachment to the young manservant himself; with my courteous and obliging behavior, not completely devoid of a certain condescending haughtiness, I intended to dispel the suspicion that I could have had anything to do with this sordid affair that led to murder.

  I thanked my good fortune and my stubbornness for not appearing in those ravishingly beautiful photographs, taken by poor Gyllenborg, that showed the young countess partially clad and the valet completely nude— photographs that might at any moment come into the hands of policemen who were just then rummaging through his belongings—even though my ill-fated friend had repeatedly asked me to pose, indeed beseeched me piteously, with tears in his eyes, saying that a triad was needed: next to the rough-hewn robustness of the valet's body, my own more delicate angularity, so that, as he put it, "these two extreme poles of health would flank what is so alluringly ill."

  I was able to reject categorically all allegations, couched in polite, convoluted legal phrases, according to which my relationship with the valet and Fräulein Stollberg was reprehensibly intimate and my knowledge of the motives behind the crime a virtual certainty; but there was not a shred of evidence that could be used against me; in point of fact, during the two months of our friendship, as if all along anticipating a possible discovery, I always used the terrace door to reach Gyllenborg's room, converted of late into a studio, just as Father, twenty years earlier, in pursuit of his nocturnal secret delights, used to slip into Fräulein Wohlgast's room; consequently, no one could have witnessed my afternoon or nighttime visits there; without making much of a fuss, or even being especially cautious, I characterized the allegations as slander, pure and simple, and with a nonchalant shrug of my shoulders assured the inspector that I had absolutely no idea whether the murdered gentleman carried on any intimate liaisons with the persons in question.

  It is true, I added, that I wasn't a close enough friend of the victim to have knowledge of the more intimate aspects of his private life, but I knew him to be a man of taste and breeding for whom it would have been unthinkable—howsoever he may have been inclined to behave—to enter into such a dubious relationship with a mere servant; I played the innocent, almost to the point of idiocy, but I had to be sure to avoid the dreadful snare, for, the valet not being of age, I could have been charged not only with indulging in perverse sexual acts but also with corrupting a minor; to give my professed naïveté some psychological support, I lowered my voice to a confidential whisper, shrugged my shoulders again, and asked the inspector whether he had had a chance to see Fräulein Stollberg's hands without gloves.

  The inspector's unblinking eyes were staring at me steadfastly, and they were the strangest pair of eyes I have ever seen: light and transparent, cold and with almost no color, a curious transition between vaguely blue and hazily gray; the two eyeballs were large and, because of some weakness or chronic ailment perhaps, constantly swimming in a bowl of tears, and this made it appear as if all his ostensibly plainspoken, unassuming questions, as well as my supposedly innocent replies, had filled him with profound sadness, as if everything had pained him—the crime committed, the lies, even the hidden truths—and all the while his face, and the eyeballs themselves, remained totally impassive and cold.

  Using only his eyes, the inspector now indicated that he did not understand my remark and would be grateful for an explanation.

  Naturally enough, I assumed that Fräulein Stollberg would not betray me, would hold her peace, perhaps even deny everything, although she herself was somewhat implicated by the photographs Gyllenborg had left behind.

  The inspector's silent request prompted me to remain silent myself, and I proceeded to show on my own hand how Fräulein Stollberg's fingers were fused together; that is why she had to wear gloves all the time; like hooves they were, I finally said.

  The inspector was a large, jovial man with an air of quiet, commanding professionalism; his powerful build must have been an asset in his line of work; he stood in the terrace doorway with his arms folded; we were both standing as we talked, which meant that this was not yet an interrogation, but no idle chitchat either; he broke into a smile, which his tearing eyes made look almost painful; and then lightly, as if tossing back my argument, he remarked that from his experience he knew that certain people, usually emotionally troubled or weak, not only did not find physical malformations or deformities repulsive but, on the contrary, were often attracted by them.

  I felt myself blushing all over and could tell from the teary glint in his eyes that the telltale change in my complexion did not escape his notice, though the sudden rush of emotion he unwittingly elicited in me affected him, too; the satisfaction he must have felt at having unmasked me for a moment caused such an abundant welling up of tears in his eyes that if he hadn't quickly pulled out a handkerchief from the pocket of his baggy trousers, with a movement that for him seemed almost too abrupt, the tears would have rolled down his plump, ruddy cheeks.

  I must be one of those emotionally weak people, then, I thought to myself, suddenly recalling the moment in that compartment when in the silence punctuated only by the clatter of the train, under the light of the swaying ceiling lamp, she pulled off her gloves, slowly and mercilessly, and, looking deep into my eyes, revealed the secret of her hands to me.

  Frozen, without breathing, I stared at the weirdly inhuman sight: on both her hands—nature's cruelty in her was symmetrical!—she had only four fingers; the middle and ring fingers on each hand were fused together in a single, thick digit ending in flat, hard nails; yet I must admit that the peculiar deformity did not really come as a surprise, and the inspector was right: I wasn't repulsed; if anything, the sight gave an attractive if cruel explanation of her delicate and vulnerable beauty, which during the long journey I had kept scrutinizing, entranced and mesmerized, and whose secret I had been unable to puzzle out.

  By revealing her defect, she seemed to be telling me that we carry all our physical qualities, abilities, gifts, faults, blemishes, and passions in the features of our face; modesty had but one duty: to cast a gentle veil over what was self-evident; her face, after all, was perfectly formed, exquisite, each of its fine lines and charming curves complemented other, equally fine and charming features, yet even before I saw those awful hands I felt as if all this perfection hung suspended over the chasm of
its own uncertainty, at any moment the finely cut features could unravel and become deformed; it seems incredible, but I felt that a law of nature was being embodied right before my eyes, I thought I could almost see how beauty could mature into itself only by going through the malformed and the ugly, that perfection was but the degeneration of the imperfect, and that is why beauty was engaged in a constant game of hide-and-seek with ugliness and degeneration; her lips were full, sensuous, yet quivering with gentle, soft currents, as if she had to stop some terrible violence or pain with them; and her eyes were wide-open and round, penetrating but also haughty, as if with each glance she were challenging, and at the same time trying to forestall, some imminent disaster; on her face I saw the dread of, as well as the longing for, annihilation; it was madness in the guise of beauty that excited me, so the gesture itself, the slowness and cruel dignity of the gesture with which she exposed the secret of her hands and that of her whole body racked with desire and the dread of desire, moved me to respond with a very rash, extreme gesture of my own: I seized the strange hand and, finding the root of my desires in this no doubt repugnant sight, kissed it.

  Not only did she tolerate my humble kiss but I could feel that for that brief moment she yielded her hand totally to it and then slowly, savoring the warm touch of my lips, she began to pull it away, yet I felt she did not really want to, she wanted something else, something more cruel, more extreme; in our clumsiness we let the gloves drop to the floor, but then she shoved her unspeakable, hoof-like fingers between my lips, and while we both remained silent, like thieves—with eyes not quite closed, her mother was sleeping right next to her and being bounced around by the moving train—she deliberately bruised my lips and my tongue with the sharp tips of her broad, flat nails, turning my quiet humility into my humiliation.

  The smile on her face then was unforgettable, and it was this smile that later Gyllenborg captured in his equally unforgettable photograph.

  The picture itself was dominated not by the two intimately familiar bodies but by a heavy, undulant drapery whose folds swept down diagonally from the upper edge of the picture toward its center, where it twisted around, concealing some kind of studio hassock or stool, swung down farther, less ruffled, until its graceful sweep finally vanished from view, giving the viewer the impression that he was looking not at a complete picture but at a random detail of a larger composition, and thus the models assuming their position against the background of the luxurious drapery also looked rather tentative; the young servant's unruly hair was adorned with a laurel wreath; his legs spread apart, his chest puffed out, he sat in the middle of the picture with his work-hardened hands resting on his knees, and though he didn't face the viewer, his body did; as if following the folds of the drapery, he was looking out of the picture, over the head of Fräulein Stollberg, who, down on one knee, positioned herself in front of the young valet in such a way that her slightly bowed head concealed his groin; at the same time her head and her face with a gracefully cruel and voluptuous smile were framed by his two enormous thighs and powerful legs.

  But with all this I haven't said anything about the photograph itself, which, naturally, revealed much more about its creator than about the people used as models; following some wise old rule of aesthetics, Gyllenborg uncovered the man's body, keeping the genitalia invisible, while the woman's body, with the exception of one breast, he draped with a sheet, slinging it over her shoulder in a classical manner; however, the sheet he used must have been soaked in water or oil first, because it clung to her, wet and shiny, accentuating even more, almost to the point of disgusting immodesty, what it so modestly covered up.

  The picture could have turned out disgusting, ludicrously precious, frighteningly contrived and tasteless, a textbook illustration of a strained, dilettantish performance that, in its attempt to achieve well-balanced proportions, obliterates just those human traits, thought to be imperfect, flawed, and unseemly, that are a natural and inalienable part of any example of human perfection; except that the young lady in the picture— and for this the artist deserves praise—folded her healthy fingers into her palm, and held those awful, hoof-like fused digits before her face, those unnatural, deformed fingers! and as if not even conscious of the warm closeness of the valet's open thighs—heavens, what fragrant warmth must have streamed from those thighs!—she was busy looking at the repulsive, malformed fingers, contemplating them with that cruel smile of hers, yes, a cruel smile that turned everything in the carefully arranged picture, every self-consciously aesthetic and voluptuous detail, into its own diabolical parody; nevertheless, it wasn't the two subjects that were mocked and laughed at but we, the peeping viewers, you and I, and everyone else who looked at the picture, even the person who made it, for what the picture was saying was that with a smile one can accept one's deformities, with a smile one had to accept the objective cruelty of things, that is what real innocence is, the rest is mere decoration, detail, convention, affectation, the smiling acknowledgment of the perverse turned the wreath on the valet's head into a devilish parody, the tense indifference with which he looked out of the drapery folds also had the effect of a parody, as did the raw sensuality which, in spite of their affected aloofness and pensive inwardness, still bound them together; in the final analysis, the gauchely displayed beauty of their bodies also became disillusioningly pathetic.

  I might have blushed more deeply and longer had the inspector not had the tact, or calculated cleverness, to wipe his eyes for a long time, dabbing them carefully with the corner of his handkerchief wrapped around the tip of his little finger, making sure he removed every bit of the yellow discharge which prolonged tearing always leaves in the corners; but his delicate little activity was nothing but pretense; rather than exploiting my momentary embarrassment, he wanted me to regain my composure; there was no hurry, he seemed to be saying, we had plenty of time, if not now, then later, and if not later, then I would tell him now what I had to tell, it was all the same to him; but in truth, his apparent tactfulness was his somewhat cruel way of making me nervous.

  And not without results, for at the moment, though still overjoyed at being able to suppress the outward signs of my inner turmoil, I did become unsettled, I felt I had lost my bearings, the ability to control the situation, and that he had gotten me to the point where he wanted me to be, more or less; so be it, I suddenly thought to myself, I shall tell him everything, if only to be done with it.

  It seemed so simple to tell everything, for it was really nothing: four people had been engaged in erotic games, and one of them wanted out, but another began to blackmail him with scandalous photographs he took of the two of them; if I could have found the first, simple little word needed to tell this nothing of a story, to formulate the first all-meaningful sentence, I could have told him the whole thing.

  Fortunately for me, a quiet knock on the door came just then; I know I gave a start, not because of the three soft raps, but because they brought me back to my senses.

  Thinking clearly again turned out to have a jolting effect; something inside me was trying to expand, shout out, and at the same time it fell back into itself; the battle of conflicting impulses, like an intermittent fever, made me turn so pale and faint that, while through the haze of my helplessness I watched the hotelier approaching us—his portly figure especially obsequious now because of the murder case—the inspector was ready to grasp my arm and help me into a chair; summoning the last remnant of my strength, I declined, and as if completing the same gesture, I took the letter from the tray offered to me, because I saw immediately whom it was from.

  I must have looked a pitiful wreck of a man, trying with every move to convince those present that I was in control of my actions, yet in this situation, in this room, nothing surprising enough could happen anymore that would justify such desperate behavior.

  Strangely, it wasn't the situation itself but certain details that stunned me: the sharp shadow the inspector's figure cast on me seemed more important than the words
spoken or suppressed; how close and how loud the sea sounded to me, even though the windows were closed; the cold winter light flooding through the windows, witness to the frenzied floundering of my soul.

  Although I knew perfectly well what had happened, I did not comprehend why the hotel manager himself and not the valet brought me my letter, yes, the valet, Hans, whom I had just moments earlier banished publicly from my heart, no, from someplace deeper than that, from all my senses; and I didn't understand where he was, where he could be, if his absence hurt me so much; it was my betrayal of him that hurt.

  And I didn't understand why this stranger standing before me, folding his arms across his chest again, was telling me to read the letter, and saying it as if somebody else in the room also had to read a letter; I didn't understand why he was saying out loud what at that moment was going through my mind; the servile cowardice with which I obeyed his command, put to me in the guise of a polite request, hurt me so much that in my pain I had the feeling it was a stranger acting the coward in my place, a stranger who nevertheless had to be me.

  Even now, as I write these lines, so many years after the event, I don't quite understand what happened to me then; the magnitude of the danger alone cannot explain my behavior; to be more precise, I do understand but am deeply ashamed of those little scenes of falling to pieces, of insanity, buffoonery, betrayal, and cringing, in which I hoped to find refuge; my shame is like a stuck blood clot, and no justifiable motivation or elaborate explanation can be the pill to dissolve it; the painful clot has remained proof positive of my fall from grace.

  It was a short letter, barely a page, conceived no doubt in a sudden paroxysm of happiness: My darling, my dearest, my one and only, it began, and this salutation, brimming with joy, caught my eyes immediately; I went over it twice, thrice, and again; I wanted my eyes to comprehend what they were seeing, because with this salutation, suddenly it was a ghost speaking to me from this letter, the ghost of a woman whom I've already mentioned on an earlier page of these recollections, a woman who even as a ghost is more alive in me than anyone living but about whom I mustn't talk, for I cannot; and it was her image, no, not her image but her smell, the smell of her mouth, of her secret parts, of her armpits, that wafted toward me from that opening line, a fragrance I could never quite reach, only she could write to me like this, only she loved me and called me tender names in this way, only she—even though I knew very well that I was reading Helene's letter.