A Man in Love

by Martin Walser

  “Sometimes I think that the world and time have extinguished more than was ever there,” said Goethe.

  And Lili recited the line as only an enthusiastic fan who had studied voice could: “I feel it, I swear! I still have power!”

  And Goethe: “Superb, Lili. Hearing you, I could believe I don’t need to worry about my posthumous reputation.”

  “You’re still alive, Herr Privy Councilor,” she cried. “I can feel it through and through.”

  He said that Zelter was always writing about his beautiful voice students, and now he knew what he meant.

  Lili turned to face him straight on and said, “You are much more handsome than one would gather from Rauch’s bust of you.”

  “Oh my, oh my,” Goethe said, sounding distressed.

  “It’s better than the other way around, though,” said Lili.

  “If you say so, you’re right, even though it might not be true at all,” he said.

  “I think it’s superb the way you talk just like you write,” she said.

  But he hadn’t said anything, he protested.

  “Yes you did,” she said. “You said ‘Last week I was still young, and hence cruel.’ What a sentence, and the way you say it, it goes right through me.”

  It was a conversation, Goethe heard himself talking and saw that his visitors were charmed. When it emerged that he had been to Berlin only once, and for much too short a stay, he had to promise that he would come again soon. He said that his son August and daughter-in-law Ottilie now spent the winter months exclusively in Berlin and every year talked with more enthusiasm about driving through the Brandenburg Gate.

  And what about him?

  All right, as soon as he got the urge to travel this winter, he’d promise … and as he still hesitated, Lili turned to face him again, even took his hands in hers, and cried, “Forgive me, but you must come, for the sake of Zelter, for the sake of Berlin. For my sake.” She had tears in her eyes and suddenly let go of his hands. Now she was abashed. How dare she have done that? All she could say, with a sob, was “Forgive me, please, please, please. She jumped up, struck a pose, and sang “Only the yearning know how much I suffer” to Zelter’s melody. And sang it so that Zelter’s simple setting expressed more feeling than Schubert’s pretentious music.

  He could not remain seated. Julie von Hohenzollern also stood up. Standing, they listened. Then both embraced the singer. He bent to kiss her hand. As he straightened up, she drew him to her, kissed him on the mouth, gave an almost shrill laugh, and said, “Zelter told me to do it. As a greeting—ein Gruss—he said, and then give him what rhymes with it, by which he must have meant einen Kuss.” She looked enquiringly back and forth from the princess to Goethe.

  They both nodded. Goethe stepped closer to Lili and said as off-handedly as possible:

  Dear Lili, if I did not love you,

  How delightful would be your gaze!

  And yet, dear Lili, did I not love you,

  What misfortune would haunt my days.

  Lili spun around in a sort of pirouette and cried, “A thousand thanks, Excellency.”

  Goethe, in his brightest tone, “That was 1775.”

  “It certainly was, the year you moved to Weimar,” cried the princess.

  Lili ran to the door, turned back and said, “Adieu, before I commit any more stupidities!” And very quietly, almost pleadingly, “Until Berlin.” And then even added, “Give my best to Ulrike.” And out the door.

  The princess nodded and said, “That was Lili Parthey,” and spelled her name. Then she said, “Life is not trivial.”

  “Ah yes,” Goethe agreed.

  “You’re a success,” said the princess. “All you need to say is ‘Ah yes.’”

  And Goethe, as if he were surprised, “Ah, yes!?”

  And the princess, “Which proves the universal utility of Ah yes.”

  “Ah yes,” he almost sighed.

  The princess took her leave. He went to the window and waved to the pair who waved back up to him. Then they were gone and all he saw was the Klebelsbergs’ palais. What a pleasant thunderstorm, that Lili, and so …? And nothing. Conversation. Routine. Even when she was singing the song, he was thinking only of Ulrike. Was he lost? If he could get loose from her, he would be lost. Because he had lost her. To a fellow without a given name. Now in the daylight, the loss was much more bitterly painful than during the night. The night had been merciful with him. But now, the fullness of light, the surrounding heights, the allée down there that led to the Kreuz Spring, every tree along it a witness to how he strolled with Ulrike. If he now went down there, every tree would ask, What’s wrong? Where is she? He would never walk along that allée again, never again go the Kreuz Spring. He did not want to have to bear the amused glances or malicious whispers of the promenaders. Awful things are only as awful as they are thanks to their surroundings. And still, he stood at the window.

  Sure enough, over there on the Klebelsbergs’ terrace, she appeared. Ulrike. He didn’t move. She’d already seen him in any case. She looked over and up. Then she slowly raised her arms, effortlessly raised them as high as only she could raise them. Thanks to the independence of her limbs, she made it look like human arms were not meant to hang down right and left, but were in the position that Nature wanted only when lifted high in the air. Gravity didn’t apply to those arms, that was it, it certainly was. Just as the entire creature was so light that one feared exposing it to any strong wind. And now at the end of her upraised arms, her hands were waving. That, too, looked involuntary. They were waving by themselves. Perhaps in a breeze. He now raised his arms, his hands, so slow, so heavy, as if it wasn’t certain when his arms and hands would ever fall back again, but then forever. She pointed to herself with one hand and to him with the other. He understood and answered with a gesture: Please, come on up. And she came. She almost ran. He even heard her running up the stairs. And came in and said, “You just disappeared, Excellency. One loses sight of you for an instant, and you’re gone.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  “To whom?” she said.

  “To you,” he said.

  “Oh yes?” she said inquiringly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “A bother,” she said. “Excellency, you’ve never learned how to be that.”

  Exactly, that’s why he left. If he hadn’t left, he would have been a bother. And mentioned the name right away. She’d just have to bear it.

  “De Ror,” she repeated. “A swift person, that Herr de Ror,” she said. And she said the man without a given name was only nameless till midnight. Wherever he was at midnight, he divulged his first name.

  “Interesting,” said Goethe.

  “Let’s not think about that velocitanical fellow anymore,” she said. She stressed “velocitanical” so that he would hear that she was using a word she learned from him. And she added that she loved that word, loved it a lot, velocitanical. And please, she didn’t love the man she called that, but only the word. She loved words that sounded like what they meant and you understood them right away. Words that still left something to the imagination.

  He offered her a seat. She sat down on one of the chairs at the round table. Now he could really ask her where the fellow without a given name—which he must be again in the daylight—where he was.

  “Gone,” she said, “and good riddance.”

  Goethe gave her a look to let her know she had to explain.

  Herr de Ror had wanted to take her with him, into his suite. First, he said, he was going to tell her his first name. Then he told her his first name. Then he said that telling her his first name put him entirely in her hands. He didn’t know how he was going to survive the night without her. Let me out of here—she knew that much. Tore herself away, had freed herself from him, but he—surely without a second thought—cried out, Not so fast! Caught her, took hold of her, pulled her to him, against him, already had her head between his hands, pressed
against her, his face on hers, his mouth. That gave her the strength she had lacked at her initial attempt to break free. She was gone, was in her room; locked the door, trembled, didn’t know for how long. She was still standing at the door, listening to hear if he had followed her. She doesn’t know how she made it into bed, and then couldn’t fall asleep. She would like to ask Herr Privy Councilor something.

  “Of course.”

  She had done all the wrong things. She treated de Ror like a madman or a savage. And that’s what made him insane and savage. Ought she to have played along with him at first? “Rococo, Excellency? Rococo instead of Beethoven right away?”

  Goethe said nothing. He tried out several kinds of facial expression and couldn’t find one.

  “Ex-cell-en-cy,” she cried. “I’m still here.”

  In him the scene was being reenacted, word for word, emphasis for emphasis, exactly as she had described it. She had also expressed in gestures the fix she was in. Now he had to know if he was allowed to ask the given name of Herr Nameless till Midnight.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “He made me promise not to tell anyone his first name. Not until I was his wife before all the world, only then was I allowed to tell the whole world his first name.” And now she couldn’t abuse the trust he had so tempestuously placed in her. She had the feeling she would be injuring him personally if she abused his trust. He’d made her feel that a breach of trust meant a personal and even physical injury. She should have immediately refused to be burdened with this trust. But she was unable to in the face of his extraordinary condition. “How can I rid myself of this nightmare now, Excellency? I have the feeling that I need you, Excellency.”

  He stood up, walked back and forth, hands clasped behind him. His right hand firmly held the wrist of his left hand. That’s how he always walked when it was important to seem not the least bit stooped. That’s how he walked when he needed the erect posture he was so famous for. Must she grasp, could she grasp, that right now he could not react any other way? He looked toward her. And was astonished. She was in a completely different mood than he.

  Once again, she cried “Ex-cell-en-cy!” She mimicked calling to someone hard-of-hearing. She had stood up, too, and stepped into his path. They stood facing each other, and Goethe said, “Oh yes.”

  She said, “This morning, a note that he was on his way to Paris. And he wished me a happy life and a happy reencounter. Et il-y-a quelque chose dans l’air. Entre nous. De Ror. Without his first name, thank goodness.”

  Goethe said—and suddenly he felt combative—“How nice to see you, Ulrike.”

  “So I’m rescued,” she said in pure jollity, almost mischievously. Adorably mischievous.

  She reached for his hands. She lifted his hands. That brought him closer to her, which may not have been her intention. If he kissed her now, he would be imitating the other fellow, competing with him. He’d become comparable. With that man. He pulled her a little bit, which she didn’t need to feel if she didn’t want to, but she pulled him a little in return. Then they were so near each other that without letting go of his hands, she reached him with her mouth. Their mouths remained on each other an instant like two beings who don’t yet know what language to speak to each other.

  She still held his hands in hers as she said, “Ah, Excellency.”

  He was still able to say, “I’m supposed to give you regards from Lili Parthey.”

  “Oh,” she said, “how sweet of her.”

  Then she was out the door, downstairs, across the street. He got to the window in time and waved back when she waved. He will never forget that when she left that morning he was at the window in time to wave, and she waved back. What are Egyptian pyramids by comparison! Then he sat and thought for a while. The most beautiful thing was that when their mouths approached and then touched each other, she had closed her eyes. He had never experienced an intimacy as intense as those closed eyes.

  At this moment, he could allow nothing to interfere with those closed eyes. And yet he had to give in to a veritable howling storm of thoughts: himself as a kisser who’d never been pushed away. He had never pulled a woman or girl to himself, never pressed his mouth to hers, his into hers. He’d never kissed without initial shyness, true. There was reverence no matter what they’d been talking about beforehand. His mouth and her mouth grew toward each other, involuntarily, without a hint of drama. Herr Nameless plays the passionate lover. What was that like for Ulrike? What does she think about it now? What does she think about him now? Asking her is out of the question. He can only observe. Is she still the Ulrike she was before that scene? The first time he kissed Frau von Stein, she said, “You kiss brilliantly, dear sir.” And Ulrike—the way Ulrike had closed her eyes as her mouth and his mouth brilliantly approached each other—that was the most profoundly beautiful response to Herr Nameless’s theater of passion. Perhaps Ulrike and he would never have drawn so close without his brutal theater. He will play that scene over with Ulrike, and when their mouths smash violently together as in the play by de Ror, they will pull apart, look at each other, and laugh. A comedy by August Wilhelm Iffland, an imitation of the Paris boulevards. That’s where he got it from. They will laugh. Together. This idea made him happy. From now on, instead of Oh yes, he would say, Oh Ulrike. And say it so that the whole world could hear. High and bright and cheerful, a signal of never-ending bliss! Oh Ulrike! The i in her name like a long-drawn-out cry.

  Chapter Five

  AND SO IT went. Once again he was inseparable from Ulrike, Ulrike inseparable from him. On the day of that first kiss, when he had watched her leave and she had waved and he had waved back, he sat down at his desk knowing that writing was the only answer to the storm of his emotions. At first, he simply let routine guide him, i.e., he started rhyming until the paper before him read …

  Long ago you captured me

  (New life astir is hard to miss).

  A lovely mouth’s a friendly thing to see

  When it has given us a kiss.

  He sent this routine outpouring right off to three recipients: to Lili who was still in town, to his daughter-in-law Ottilie in Weimar, and across the street to Ulrike. He explained the triple transmission to himself by treating it like nothing more than one of the hundreds or thousands of occasional poems that simply crop up and must be written—a social obligation. To be sure, the poem goes only to individuals who know why they’re receiving it. Even between him and Ottilie there had been a kiss, during the maiden ride in his new coach, that miracle of lightness. That’s what she was supposed to recall. Yes, he thought to himself, Metternich himself couldn’t have arranged it more diplomatically.

  He included a letter to Ottilie saying how amiable everyone was here. Stadelmann was out in the hills wielding his hammer. The King of Württemberg was giving one more ball and then the ball gowns would be packed away. Women were looking for a way to transport their hats undamaged, and then the curtain would come down on this fairy tale. He would stay until the twentieth; the solitude would help him catch up on several things he had neglected because of all the conviviality. He also wrote a harmlessly conventional letter to his son August: that he was enjoying watching from his window all the goings-on on the terrace across the street, that the grand duke was returning from a duck hunt, that the weather was very pleasant, that Count Sternberg had gone to Hungary for a few days but would be back soon, that John was keeping a record of atmospheric phenomena, and that he was always capitally fed from the six little tureens the catering house sent over. His dietary regimen was functioning, he had been able to protect himself from too many public appearances, otherwise one couldn’t be one’s own master. He hoped thus to lull to sleep any alarming reports and rumors that may have leaked out.

  The fact that his mouth and Ulrike’s mouth had been so close remained his secret. But he wasn’t satisfied with his kissing poem. Inside him another scene was playing: She breaks away, he catches her, pulls her to him, crushes his mouth against hers, int
o hers, and only then she really breaks away. He could send his kissing poem to Lili and Ottilie, but not to Ulrike. Its harmlessly cheerful rhymes all but thrust her into that nocturnal scene with the passionate leading man.

  He must write the Duke of Leuchtenberg, Prince of Eichstädt. It was his duty. He began a draft: His behavior toward the esteemed count at Rehbein’s engagement must not continue to go without an apology. He cannot think of a single person who can have participated in so much history as the Duke of Leuchtenberg. His father guillotined, his mother Napoleon’s consort. He’d been in every war with the emperor, then was Viceroy of Italy, married the daughter of Max I, King of Bavaria, was adopted by the emperor Napoleon who made him a gift of Italy. What had he not done to deserve that gift and what had he not salvaged for his stepfather in the midst of the Russian catastrophe and finally in Vienna, at the congress? And in the crush of the ballroom he, Goethe, had so much neglected a man with such a powerful history and capacious character that ever since, he turns red with shame whenever he thinks about it. Which is all too often. And hence this earnest request to see each other as soon as possible in order to discuss the count’s thrilling vision of peace, the Rhine–Danube Canal, and reach some decisive conclusion.

  It was all an attempt to not be constantly thinking of Ulrike. In anything that had nothing to do with her, he sensed malevolent meaninglessness and boredom. It was always painful to distract himself from her. But the fact that at the most, hours would have to pass before he saw her again made all his privations bearable. They were the seasoning for the meal of their next encounter.

  The letters arriving from Weimar were letters from a world that he wished never to return to. That he had to return to. As unimaginable as it was, it would certainly come to pass. He refused to think it possible. Even when he returned, he would not be where he then is. He invented ambiguous temperaments in which those who sought him, would not be allowed to find him. His vision: to have escaped. Modes that would make him unlocatable. He must not admit anything and not deny anything. Either would be fatal. Besides that, Ulrike’s presence would put an end to all reproachability. He had to enter Weimar with Ulrike and with a novel he would need to write—or at least begin—at once. A novel that no man or woman could contest. A novel that legitimized him and Ulrike. Not just in Weimar, but in the whole world. All at once, its title stood on the page: