My First Wife

INTERVAL OF BEING DIFFERENT

I can only guess what Ganna felt when she heard about the purchase of the Buchegger estate. What later transpired suggests such a confused mixture of rage, bitterness, agitation, sympathy and murky hope that any attempt to describe it would be doomed from the start. At first she felt humiliated and duped. Her agents had run to her with the information that I had paid half the purchase price, or perhaps more, in cash; and since every rumour that circulated about me, even the least well founded, not only turned into an axiom with her, but by and by passed through every form of exaggeration and distortion, to the point of the nonsensical — yes, the ridiculous — so the sum I was said to have shelled out, not batting an eyelid, swelled into the fantastical. Naturally she will have said to herself: he saves and economizes on me, but he has a fortune to lavish on ‘that woman’. That it was Bettina who wanted the palatial house for herself, and that I had been driven to buy it for her by her subtle tricks — that was an established fact from the start, which only the malicious unbeliever would dare to question.

At the same time, she wrote me a letter in which she expressed her pleasure at the splendid acquisition in the most gushing terms. If there was the least drop of wormwood in her joy, then it was over the fact that she had been told the wonderful news by strangers and had asked herself sadly what she could have done to lose my trust. What had made her especially glad was the fact that I had got together such a huge sum of money; that allowed her to conclude that I was in more than easy circumstances, and the laments and fears I had brought to her, thank God, lacked any real cause. But she wasn’t upset with me about this little dishonesty on my part; all she cared about was that I should be happy and flourishing.

I made haste to correct Ganna’s misunderstanding. She didn’t believe me. I referred her to the property register, to put an end to the malicious false reports on the purchase. She didn’t believe what she saw there. She preferred her fantasies of my vast wealth and a rosy fog of money hocus-pocus. The fact of my wealth gave her claims such an air of entitlement that she fell for her own golden mania, like a woodworm in the hole it has itself tunnelled.

But I didn’t really care if she took me for a successful gold-digger who was cheating her of her just deserts. Enough of the scheming, the cards held to the chest, the black arts of lawyers. She must be made to understand the inevitability of what was happening. It was make or break time, I said to myself, as I sat down in the train on my way to see her.

My news that Bettina was expecting hit her like a bolt from the blue. She looked at me in utter disbelief.

‘A baby,’ she whispered, ‘she’s having your baby! I can’t quite believe it yet. I promise to look after it as if it were one of my own. I promise. Do you believe me?’

She wept with emotion. I indicated that her looking after it didn’t really come into things.

‘You know what this means,’ I said.

She nodded enthusiastically. She assured me she would go to see Dr Stanger-Goldenthal this very day; she would call him immediately; then we would sit down together and talk everything over amicably and in peace, no terror, no duress; she would prove to me that she was still the old Ganna … What would I say to a nice bowl of soup in the meantime? No, I said, please not, please no soup …

Her large blue eyes were humid with tears; she was overcome by the notion of herself as devoted self-sacrificial spouse and friend; stripping away all reality, she fled into the sweet interval of being different. And I believed her.

STANGER-GOLDENTHAL

She kept her impulsively given word, inasmuch as she went to see Dr Stanger-Goldenthal that same day, to inform him of the new development. But it wasn’t, as she had promised me, to instruct him to prepare for the divorce. Hardly. Her showing me goodwill was enough. The idea that ‘goodwill’ needed to be followed by action was baffling and a little repugnant to her.

I told Dr Chmelius:

‘Thank God, Ganna has changed her mind. I think you can go ahead and prepare for the next stage.’

Dr Chmelius, no little surprised, made report of this to Dr Stanger.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Stanger replied to the still greater bewilderment of Dr Chmelius. ‘Your client must have misinformed you.’

‘I’m afraid you took her at her word again,’ Chmelius said to me.

I went to see Ganna.

‘Your lawyer insists you haven’t given him any new instructions.’

‘That’s a wicked lie,’ yelled Ganna. ‘I talked and talked to him till he promised me — and we shook hands on it. Everything will be sorted out in three days.’

I believed her. Obviously, it was Dr Stanger who was responsible for the delay. I asked Dr Chmelius for leave to write to Dr Stanger myself. He had no objection. I sat down and wrote Dr Stanger-Goldenthal one of the most straightforward letters that can ever have been written, a letter of a kind that you write to a human being, not to a lawyer for the other side. It was a minor epic, the story — filling many pages — of my marriage, and the presentation of the grounds that made it impossible for me to remain with Ganna.

His reply was highly ironic. ‘Let us assume for the moment,’ he wrote, ‘that the complaints you level at your wife are justified. This begs the question: were you really lord and master in this union, as the law and the wider organization of society expects? I leave the yea or nay to your conscience. Your exquisitely written, logically constructed memorandum I view not as a legal weapon but as a human document. [That finally proved to me that the two were utterly antithetical.] The weight of the moral responsibility for the discord in your marriage is yours. If my client expressly requests a divorce, I will execute her wish. If she decides against a divorce, then I will support her to the best of my ability in the legal battle that may be expected to ensue.’

I was in consternation. What was the fellow on about? Ganna said she was in agreement. It couldn’t be that, at this vital juncture, she would slip back into her old duplicitousness. I read her the passage in Dr Stanger’s letter, where he said everything had been left up to her. She was clearly embarrassed, gabbled a bit, played the doe-eyed innocent; but inside she was shaking with fury and later she went on to make a ghastly scene with Dr Stanger, in which she set things out as though he had gone over her head and given me a binding agreement. That was bound to rile the man up against me, and he wrote to me crudely: ‘Sir, it is not right that you tell my client things about me that are half-truths at best. Such things confuse my client. She thinks I am in favour of a divorce. I am against a divorce. She must have the freedom to act. She must not feel any pressure, not even, or especially not, from her legal adviser.’

Now nothing made sense to me any more. The walls and the buildings were spinning around me. I conferred again with Dr Chmelius and reached the acme of folly when I expressed to him the wish to meet Dr Stanger-Goldenthal in person in his office; a personal conversation, I blethered, would clear up all the misunderstandings. I believed in talking and in clearing the air; I believed there had been a misunderstanding. I believed in the effectiveness of my person and its truth; it’s as if someone being mugged made great play of the fact that he has studied Greek. Dr Chmelius shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Try it. It can’t hurt.’ Seeing me so put upon, he wanted to leave every avenue open, even the least likely; he himself was out of ideas.

Dr Stanger let me know it would be an honour to receive me. Our conversation went on for an hour and a half. The man wore an invisible gown. He was berobed in the full dignity of a champion of the ethical idea of marriage. A consummate actor. I had the sense I was stepping on air and speaking clouds. For the most part it was he who did the talking. With emphasis, dignity and from the elevation of his legal pedestal. I felt giddy, and then a little sick. When he saw me out, with many assurances of esteem, I knew that I had suffered a defeat and a humiliation.

Dr Chmelius now thought it right to inquire politely of Ganna whether she had come to a decision and, if so, what it was. We got back the twining phrases of Ganna: the assurance she had given me remained in force, but she couldn’t permit herself to be cajoled or bullied, as there were a series of upcoming birthdays in the family and her family piety forbade her from taking on anything so distressing as the modalities of a separation; moreover, her heart was giving her trouble and on doctor’s orders she was to avoid excitement. I, for whom time was breaking up into shards because I was so impatient, was smoothly put off until January. It was now September. She gave me her ‘sacred’ word of honour that by January she and Dr Stanger-Goldenthal would have drawn up the final deed; at that time I must allow myself four weeks to talk everything through with her lovingly; if I managed to fulfil that essential condition, then all obstacles would have been overcome. The daily attrition of those meaningless and perspectiveless conversations with Ganna and the lawyers had exhausted my strength; I wanted to go home to Bettina; what was I supposed to do, give Ganna a new heart? Myself a better head? I returned to Ebenweiler with a head like a beehive and nothing accomplished, and duly told my apparently credulous and not terribly interested consort that Ganna would agree to a divorce in January.

Then, when I appeared on the battlefield in January, Dr Chmelius really did hand me the Stanger-Goldenthal-composed, Ganna-inspired ‘final’ deed. Without a word of commentary. With face set in grim expressionlessness. I read the document carefully, folded it up and returned it to the lawyer without a word. I had the feeling I had landed among horse thieves.

Must I really list what that piece of paper looked to me for? I’m afraid it’s beyond me. My pen jibs. Before long I will have to talk, in any case, about the thumbscrews and leg-irons which were applied to me when I resolved to make an end to this disgraceful process, whatever the cost, and which (in my psychologically easily understandable blindness) struck me as acceptable and even comparatively humane — certainly compared to the murderous sequence of paragraphs that Dr Stanger and his obstinate amanuensis caused to march before my staring eyes. For the first time I could see my situation with complete clarity and received such a horrifying picture of Ganna’s true being that for a while I felt turned to stone, like those individuals in mythology who behold the face of the Gorgon. But no, that wasn’t it; there was no true being and no false being, there was only an illusory zone in between, something abyssal and cloven, shadowy and derelict, and in its proposed coherence arbitrary and illogical. Hence no Gorgon either. The Gorgon may be harsh and severe, but she is infinitely preferable. She offers solid outlines and fixed positions, not the ghastly unpredictability that gives the outstretched hand a sensation of dipping into some slimy brown primal soup.

‘Tell me,’ I said, turning to Dr Chmelius, ‘what am I supposed to live on if I manage to pay off this mountain of obligations in their entirety? How does she think I can do it?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied Chmelius drily, ‘let’s ask her.’

‘The way things are,’ I resumed, ‘she confiscates not only all my goods and chattels, but beyond that she asks for gifts that bleed me dry. It’s as if you knock someone out, and chop him up and eat the pieces. Have you ever known anything like it?’

‘Would you care to see my files?’ Chmelius asked me mockingly.

‘But I have to get to the end, I have to!’

‘Very well. Then in God’s name sign this Treaty of Versailles. But count me out.’

‘Is there no judge, no law, no mercy that can free me?’

‘Only in your dreams.’

I left, feeling utterly distraught.

WHAT IS BETTINA WAITING FOR?

The remaining two years it took while the divorce was finalized were a grisly, sickening tussle. It was about money and money and more money, and about files and deals, and guarantees and security; and when I thought a final settlement must be close, everything turned out to be flim-flam and fake. The peaceful Buchegger estate was no good; Bettina’s courage and her mastery of the day-to-day of living, no good; immersion in work achieved nothing; conversations with friends, nothing; even the little new person, Helmut, the son we had prayed for from heaven, born at his allotted time, and solace and balm to our souls from the very first hour, nothing.

My depression remained in place and deepened. My shame at my helplessness was like a canker in my flesh, like prussic acid in my vitals. And Bettina watched and watched. I didn’t know what she was going through; there was something, but I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that joy was no longer an issue, nor were laughter and smiles; there was something else, I couldn’t say what. She let Ganna’s letters rain down, and the writs snowed down, and she watched. They were bad winters in those years …

On one occasion, when I was in Berlin, I suffered a breakdown. An organic malady had snuck up on me. The doctor who saw me recommended rest and taking it easy. But how could I rest and take it easy while a raving Ganna ripped through my world, and I was forced to look like a toy in the hands of an evil hobgoblin to my beloved companion, while the innocent eyes of my youngest child gazed up at me and asked: where is my birthright? While those obtained, I could neither rest nor die.

HORNSCHUCH

For all my liking for Dr Chmelius I could no longer blind myself to the fact that this overburdened man was lacking in dynamism. He could feel it himself; on several occasions he had made the friendly suggestion that I relieve him of his brief, if there was someone else I would prefer. Then a young lawyer was enthusiastically recommended to me, one Hornschuch, who had moved into our area and within a short time had built up a large practice among the local farmers. He had served on the Front for four years and people said he had displayed exemplary courage as an officer. When the war was over, he felt no inclination to return to the city and the circles he had formerly frequented; a passion for solitude unusual in a man in his prime, bursting with energy, had prompted him to go into voluntary exile and live by his own lights and following his own rough-hewn and unconventional methods.

In his service of justice he now displayed exactly the same cheerful positive attitude that he had previously shown in the army. Almost all the cases he took on involved some striking injustice that his clients had suffered. He saw it as his duty to shed light on public maladministration, and to jolly along the snail’s pace of bureaucracy by his forthright and occasionally dangerously eccentric campaigns. It was no surprise that he was not the authorities’ favourite. But everything I heard about him made sense to me, and so one day I went along to see him. He lived and worked out of a tiny house about an hour away. There was no sign on the door, no office; it was a civilian receiving a visitor. He was a boyish-looking man with Tartar features and a stubborn expression in his blue eyes. Silently and almost impassively he listened to me. Then he said: ‘I’ll take a look at the papers. Perhaps colleague Chmelius will be kind enough to have them sent to me.’

Which duly happened. For a couple of weeks I didn’t hear from Hornschuch; he didn’t write, didn’t call. Then, one afternoon in late autumn, he had himself announced and the following conversation took place between us:

‘Having traded my colleague Chmelius for your humble servant,’ he began, ‘you should try and see that the other party dispenses with Dr Stanger-Goldenthal. One good turn deserves another.’

‘And how am I supposed to do that?’

‘Very simple. Who do you think will end up paying for the services of the double-barrelled one?’

‘Presumably I will.’

‘And do you have much hope that his bill will be moderated by his appreciation of your work?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Do you want to proceed on that assumption?’

‘All right.’

‘I would.’

‘And then?’

‘Then you tell him: I will pay you, but only within reason and not until after the divorce is concluded.’

‘Won’t he laugh at me?’

‘Never mind that. Let him laugh, and I’ll see to the rest.’

‘You mean, he needs to see that delay isn’t in his interest?’

‘Exactly. Either he will compel his client to take an irreversible step, or else he will give up representing her.’

‘That’s a possibility. But then Ganna will just go to someone else, and who knows whether we’ll be any better off.’

‘You should leave that to me, Sir. Allow me to operate as your brain for a while.’

‘So tell me what will happen.’

‘Since, as you rightly predict, Mme Ganna will not take the irreversible step, you will ask my colleague at the appropriate time for the bill, while pointing out to him that he will have to talk to his client about the size of the sum. He will not be gentle with her once that’s on the table, you may be sure of that. He will take her by the throat and then, if she wants to breathe, she will have to accept a lawyer of our choosing.’

Columbus and the egg. That, more or less, is precisely what happened. I had often appealed to Ganna to give up an adviser who used all his cunning and experience to stir things up between us instead of calming them, to tangle the threads instead of combing them out, but she believed in Dr Stanger-Goldenthal as in the Bible — no, what am I saying, more than she had ever believed in the Bible. When two individuals, whose pleasure and art it is to fish in troubled waters and intone abracadabras, join forces, their relationship will be closer than most real friendships, just as bonds between thieves — ‘thick as thieves’ — tend to be firmer than those between honest men. But when Ganna was suddenly presented with the bill for her entente cordiale, when the vast sum showed her how much she was paying for personal and legal support, that every telephone call was rated as highly as dinner at Sacher’s, that a single one of the delightful and stimulating conferences swallowed more money than she spent in a week — she screamed blue murder about villainy and extortion. There was only one comfort that remained to her: that she could tell herself and persuade me that it was all for my sake that she had broken off relations with her star lawyer. There followed a brief interregnum, a time of no lawyers; to her it felt like a time of no drugs to a morphinist. Disturbed and bitter, she wrote to me: ‘There, now you’ve achieved what you wanted to with your tactics, and I’m to be put under pressure of an inadequate lawyer.’ And when I brought up Hornschuch, and suggested using him as our mutual counsel, the name sounded like the rumble of thunder from a black storm cloud. An unknown; she didn’t know the first thing about him, and yet she already hated him with the consuming hatred of the maniac, whom fear of the unknown drives to the most desperate and dangerous pre-emptive efforts.

SIXTEEN TO TWENTY GANNAS

At one of my frequent conversations with Hornschuch he gave me to understand that the greatest obstacle to a rapid settlement lay in my continued personal dealings with Ganna. He advised me to stop answering Ganna’s letters and not to arrange any more meetings. I told him I had to look after my children, Doris especially.

‘In that case, why don’t you have the children stay with you if you need to be in the city every four to six weeks anyway?’ asked Hornschuch.

‘That’s not much good. If I call them, it’s Ganna I get on the phone.’

Thereupon Hornschuch made a remark that caused me to fold in on myself as if I’d been pricked with a pin. He asked me if I had ever considered how hurtful my continual dealings with Ganna were to Bettina. I denied this most vehemently. That wasn’t possible. He was surely mistaken. I wasn’t aware of the least sign of that being so. He smiled, in his ironic way.

He wasn’t mistaken. When I think about it today, my stupidity or sheer blindness of that time astounds me. If I’d been given the gift of awareness, I should have realized long ago that these regular assignations with Ganna, the regular, repeated visits to her, the meetings in the city and in various places between Ebenweiler and Vienna, must have been mystifying to Bettina.

She had seen that the — to her — repugnant fight she had got involved in against her will was destroying far more in the way of life and happiness than it could ever create. The dubious victor’s prize meant nothing to her. She wasn’t in the least tempted by the status of certificated bourgeois and wife, that wasn’t where her ambition lay, it wasn’t even possibly her style; and under no circumstances would she have condescended to bend the knee to Ganna or become indebted to her. It went against her pride, it went against her dignity as a woman. One day she said as much to me quite openly.

‘You know, I don’t really care whether you get a divorce or not,’ she said, ‘in fact, I don’t give a damn either way.’

I was shocked. ‘What about our son?’ I countered.

‘What about him? What’s it got to do with him?’

‘Do you want him to grow up without a name, as a bastard?’

‘Those are archaic notions,’ replied Bettina, glowing with the spirit of the anti-kraal; ‘anyway, what do you mean, without a name? He’ll have my maiden name, it’ll cost a petition as Hornschuch says; the name of my father, it’s no worse than the name Herzog.’

I looked at her in consternation. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no. You’re right.’

But nothing changed: in terms of Bettina’s sense of things, Ganna might as well have been living under the same roof as her. Ganna’s high parrot squawk filled the rooms, the whiff of greed and lust for possessions came in through the doors and windows, and there was no man in the house to keep them out, no master, no strong hand. Maybe in some far corner of my soul I could feel her disappointment, but I know I closed my eyes to it. I had yet to abandon my hope of getting Ganna to see sense, though it was absolute folly. I stopped telling Bettina about my meetings with Ganna. When I went to see her — part of this time, she was staying in a nearby mountain resort — I needed all kinds of get-outs, even resorted to bare-faced lies, and went to her in secret, an absurd parody of the lover slinking off to his beloved. There was something so warped about it. But the meetings with her left their trace in my features. When Bettina saw the leaden shadows under my eyes, she knew. She, who had always slept like a baby, eight or nine hours straight through, now sometimes lay awake until dawn. She was helpless in the face of my suicidal and traitorous doings. She didn’t talk to Hornschuch about it either. Ganna, who had wanted to make him see that she and I were one heart and one soul, didn’t shrink from writing him the occasional letter, claiming we were well on the way to a peaceful solution; of course, all lies.

I went to Ganna each time with a feeble, half-witted hope and each time left her numbed and bruised. At night I started up out of my demon-haunted sleep, in which bitterness, like a toxin in my blood, had kept me tossing and turning, and sixteen to twenty Gannas stood around my bed to fill my ears till they rang with her glibly stereotypical sentences: ‘I will make you a binding offer when you come back.’ ‘It’s mean of you to call me wasteful. I keep a household book with numbered bills in it.’ ‘I want to do what you say in everything. Just don’t make it possible for me to say no.’ ‘Since it’s happening against my wishes, at least let me tell myself that it’s not to my disadvantage.’ ‘You can curse me, you can slander me, I don’t care a bit, my conscience is almost oppressively clear.’ ‘It’s all up to you, Alexander. For the sake of your peace and quiet, I’ll give you your liberty, but it’ll have to be on the correct basis.’ ‘If the heating pad gives you palpitations, you should try putting a damp flannel underneath.’ ‘There can’t be many women in my position who are concerned with nothing but making their husbands feel even better off.’ ‘I’m going to walk hand in hand with you under the Lord’s arc on Judgement Day.’ ‘Bettina must understand that if the bond between us breaks, you won’t survive it.’ ‘Your behaviour vis-à-vis me is doing you untold harm …’ And so on and on and on. The Cassandra makes way for the flatteress, the greedy market woman for the concerned spouse, prophecies alternate with threats, pleas with violent quarrels; there’s one Ganna that has a soulful Madonna face, another has the wild eyes of a witch; one turns up in a dirty chequered wool jacket, the other in the fake kimono, with the stockings bagging down under it like empty sausage skins; one talks with her throat full of flour, the other has a vulgar squawk; one is continually calling out ‘Hallo-o’ to make herself heard, the other is looking vainly for money, kneeling on the carpet in tears; one has a look that is fixed on the fourth dimension, having failed in the other three, the other scribbles out sentences on pliant paper; and each one insists that I account for myself, to each one of them I have to prove and explain something. Why? Prove what? Explain what? That I am a fool, and ripe for the madhouse?

GANNA GIVES ME A DIVORCE FOR MY BIRTHDAY

Hornschuch had quietly and efficiently made his preparations. He was like a hawk, a tiny dot hanging in the upper air, only to swoop down once he was sure of his victim. He was in correspondence with Herr Heckenast, who had taken over Ganna’s interests and had stepped forward to speak on behalf of the kraal. He had also got in touch with Ganna’s new lawyer, Dr Fingerling. (Ganna had turned down the idea of merging our agendas and leaving them in the hands of Hornschuch; a lawyer, like a husband, was someone you wanted all to yourself.) Hornschuch appeared not dissatisfied with the choice of Dr Fingerling. It looked as though he had been able to exert some influence on Ganna. Even though Dr Fingerling got his information from Heckenast in Berlin, who in turn referred to the decisions of his sister-in-law Ganna, the fog of dispute seemed to lift slightly and permit a glimpse of a structure that might be an agreement.

No sooner did things approach the stage of possible realization, though, than Ganna was seized by increasing anxiety. Her situation was like that of someone followed by the police, who has changed his abode so often and so long, till one day he finds himself fingered by a cunning detective. She tried everything to give him the slip. For sure, the new deed that had been doing the rounds now for weeks between her, brother-in-law Heckenast and the two lawyers — being added to, cut, critiqued and commented on — included payment demands and other commitments from me that made it difficult to contemplate its signature. But could one be sure? Bettina had only to stamp her little foot. All at once, Ganna felt uneasy. The danger was that she herself was caught in the trap she had festooned with bacon. Also, she didn’t know what to do about her debts. Dr Stanger-Goldenthal insisted on payment like some latter-day Shylock, and threatened to have the half of the house that was registered in her name held as surety. She begged Hornschuch to see that Dr Stanger’s demands might be at least partly met, and then she would certainly expedite the settlement out of gratitude alone. But Hornschuch came back coolly: no cash before the deal.

In her extremity, Ganna decided to quit the scene for a while and go abroad. Her thinking was primitive: if two people are to be divorced, then they both have to be present; therefore, if I’m away, they won’t be able to get my signature. So in a tearing rush she packed her suitcases, scraped together all the money she could and hauled Elisabeth and Doris off to the French Riviera. Two days prior to going she had told me of her intention; her purpose was quite transparent to me, even though she had made a play for sympathy by talking of her asthma attacks, which required nothing less than a trip to the south. I could hardly keep her from going; I would have had to lock her up. But I had forbidden her to take Doris. After many unhappy attempts and trials, a suitable school had at last been found for the girl, now eleven, in the autumn just past; the one who was happiest about it was Doris herself. Now, in the middle of term time, she was going to be plucked out of her setting and taken to a foreign country. My angry veto was answered by Ganna with a cheeky message, followed by an express letter, about how Doris was overstrained and required sea air; the school was making her unhappy — the poor mite had to get up at six thirty — so she had had the wonderful idea of putting her in a dance school in Nice; the little darling’s delight was probably more than I could imagine. I tore up the letter and asked Hornschuch to convey my absolute and categorical opposition to Ganna. With that I thought the matter was at an end. Later that same day I had to attend a business meeting in Munich. No sooner had I gone up to my hotel room than I received a telephone call from Ebenweiler. It was Bettina. She begged me in pressed tones not on any account to go to Nice. In confusion I asked her why I should want to go to Nice. She told me a telegram had arrived from Ganna, who was already in Nice with our daughters, and — how could it be otherwise — was in need of money. ‘But Bettina,’ I cried into the telephone, ‘why would I want to go to Nice, I had no idea the woman was going there … So she took Doris … well, that takes the biscuit.’ When Hornschuch’s voice then proceeded to boom from the earpiece, warning me with uncustomary seriousness not to do anything rash — because if I did, he couldn’t, as he put it, vouch for Bettina’s reaction — I didn’t know what to say. What did he mean? Gradually it dawned on me. Bettina was afraid I would pursue Ganna to rescue Doris and then would get caught up in some further round of negotiations. During the conversation I suddenly had the sense that she didn’t believe my assurance that I had no idea of Ganna’s whereabouts, and that tipped me into a fit of panic. I went back to Ebenweiler as quickly as I could.

Next, I blocked Ganna’s monthly payments. Hornschuch informed her of my step by letter. She protested in a blazing forty-word telegram. A second, even longer telegram went to her brother-in-law Heckenast. He in turn addressed a lordly and insulting telegram to me, and another to Hornschuch. Hornschuch wrote to Dr Fingerling that he was astounded that he, Fingerling, had not only allowed his client to absent herself during a crucial phase of the talks, but had seen fit to send her money abroad. Fingerling wrote a piqued letter on the high-handedness of his client to Heckenast. Heckenast wrote a cross letter to Ganna, summoning her home. Ganna wired back saying she wouldn’t think of it; she wasn’t going to allow herself to be violated. I was surprised the lines between Nice and Berlin and Nice and Ebenweiler didn’t self-combust with her pathetic ranting. In the meantime, she was running out of money. She couldn’t pay the hotel bill and was forced to borrow money from strangers. The strangers became suspicious when she didn’t keep her repayment date and threatened her with disagreeable steps. She wired, threatening to take legal action against me. Ganna letters and Ganna wires were raining down like shrapnel in a battle. Our little post office had its work cut out.

While this whole crazy fuss was going on, the deed was being worked out. Beset by her lawyer, who in turn was being pressed by Hornschuch, Ganna saw herself forced to quit the Côte d’Azur. Hornschuch travelled to Vienna to meet Heckenast in Dr Fingerling’s office. I was told to keep myself available and be ready to go to Vienna at a moment’s notice. The signal came and I went.

The scene: Heckenast’s hotel room. Dramatis personae: Heckenast, Hornschuch, Dr Fingerling and I. The burden of the drama: the big haggle. We haggled over every single point. There were so many points that, at the end of three hours, there was still no end in sight. My brother-in-law Heckenast was a man of Prussian laconism. He gave us to feel that by his presence he was dignifying all Austria, which was such a small, poor country. He was as passionless as a paperknife. Although considerably younger than I, he behaved towards me like an uncle swelled with his own moral rectitude, dismissing a naughty nephew from his affections; his bourgeois sensibility was lastingly offended by the reprehensible behaviour of this runaway from the kraal. Cold and impermeable, he placed himself before the rights of his sister-in-law Ganna like a wall. He was utterly objective. Ever allow the implacably objective to come to power, and that will spell the end of compassion and imagination on earth.

Dr Fingerling was a gaunt, red-haired, polite gentleman who would have liked to settle the case to the satisfaction of all. Furthermore, he was anxious to trouser his fee. Ten thousand schillings had been agreed for him, quite a chunk of change. From time to time he beckoned Hornschuch over to whisper something in his ear. He, keen-eyed, alert, brisk in attack and on guard, reminded me of a foil fencer. More like a student than a fully fledged lawyer, it wasn’t hard for him to back the rigid Prussian into a corner, though admittedly that had little effect on the toughness of the conditions. Even though he was seeking to secure a deal for me somewhere at the upper limit of what I could bear, I still thought he disastrously overestimated my circumstances and resources. But there was nothing I could do. Things had gone too far. It was like a landslide: if you try to push against it, you’ll be crushed.

I stood the whole time leaning against the window and allowed the hail of paragraphs, figures and punitive clauses to pass over me. My thoughts followed one of two tracks. One was remote from this slaughterhouse, in which I was playing the bullock; what is all this to do with me, I thought, this chain-rattle of punishments, what is it to do with me, it’s just money, let them have it, I’ll chuck it in their faces, let them fight each other over my hide, they won’t get my soul, that’s for sure. But the other track was black with worry, the question kept coming up: where am I going to get it from, all this money, year after year, welded to a contract that’s more like a guillotine than a piece of paper, my whole life a coolie’s service, my whole future fenced in with sanctions and reparations, my own personal Versailles; how can I prevent the work of my mind and imagination being diminished to an endless series of instalment payments and personal guarantees for Ganna?

At last there was agreement. The notary was standing by. Heckenast ordered up some brandy, we all formally shook hands and as I walked down the stairs with Hornschuch he said:

‘I think congratulations are in order.’

‘It’s by no means certain that Ganna will sign,’ I replied cagily.

Hornschuch said he thought Heckenast didn’t look as though he would stand for any more monkey business, while Master Fingerling was pretty hard up. On the pavement he took my hand and said with a strange giggle, because he really was proud of his triumph:

‘Pack money in your wallet! Lots of money! Money for Fingerling, money for Goldenthal, money for Ganna’s debts, blood money, ransom money … Have you got enough? I am at your service.’

‘I’ve scraped together everything I’ve got,’ I said.

This conversation took place at two in the afternoon. At four, as arranged, Ganna came to Fingerling’s office with her brother-in-law in tow. The notary had been summoned. One might have supposed the formalities would be over in minutes. In the event it took five hours before Ganna, with floods of tears and sobs, set her name to the document. ‘It was like an amputation,’ said Dr Fingerling when he told his colleague Hornschuch about the scene. As late as five o’clock, Ganna had shouted that she wouldn’t agree under any circumstances. After everyone had talked at her for an hour, she seemed to be on the point of passing out and a cordial was brought. At seven o’clock she demanded a series of changes. Not possible, she was told, they had committed themselves as fiduciaries by handshake and word. She swore on the lives of her children she wouldn’t sign any deed that made her the unhappiest woman in the world. She accused her brother-in-law of being bribed by Bettina and me. She threatened to take an overdose. She claimed to be the victim of blackmail. The sweat was beading on Dr Fingerling’s brow. For the first time Heckenast lost control, grabbed her by the shoulders and roared that if she didn’t see sense he would have her committed. At that she turned very quiet. With shyly fluttering eyelids and lowered head, she sat down at the desk and signed. Then, once she had signed, she heaved up a groan like a dying person from the deepest recesses of her heart, flung herself on the sofa and howled for twenty minutes in such tones that the three men present looked into one another’s pale faces and didn’t know what to do.

The following day, the day of the court appearance, I turned fifty-three. In the anteroom of the assizes Ganna walked up to me and said in dulcet tones and with the charming innocent smile of her girlhood days: ‘I’m giving you a divorce for your birthday, Alexander.’

I was speechless — as speechless as I was an hour later when, with shaking hands, she stashed the many thousands of schillings I had counted out onto a table in front of her into her leather handbag. I stared intently at her ancient, wizened hands. Had they really opened to release me? We shall see.

A LOOK AT THE DEED

While all this was going on Bettina was sitting in Ebenweiler and waiting. So as not to be completely alone, she had invited Lotte Waldbauer to keep her company. At twelve noon Hornschuch phoned through news of the divorce. When she returned to Lotte in the blue salon, Lotte leaped up because her friend was staggering so. Bettina was indeed on the point of collapse. ‘It’s too much,’ she stammered, ‘too dear,’ and she lost consciousness. It wasn’t money and price that she was referring to with her ‘too dear’, because she only got to hear of the financial conditions I had been forced to accept the following day, when Hornschuch brought her the divorce agreement.

She read it with her typical attentiveness. Then she remained silent for a while, with head down. Then she softly said: ‘But that’s awful.’ Hornschuch made a disappointed face. He thought he deserved thanks. Feebly Bettina held out her hand to him. ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate your effort and goodwill,’ she said, ‘but look at what that man is taking upon himself! How could he set his name to it! A man who lives off his intellect and imagination!’ Hornschuch didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t able, not then and not for a long time afterwards, to question the excellence of his legal edifice. Most men are a little like that. It’s the gambler and the player in them all, and in their professions. The gifted and honest ones are dazzled by their idea, the mean and brutish ones by success and profit. So between them they rule the world. That’s how Bettina saw them. Besides, from the very beginning she was under no illusion about the situation. She knew with prophetic certainty that the garrotting agreement, as she called it, hadn’t shooed the ghost out of our house. And she said: ‘I’d sooner love in a hut than share a palace with a ghost.’

However embarrassing and chilling it is, I must still, as briefly as I can, talk about the conditions imposed upon me in that notorious deed. There was, first of all, the payment of Ganna’s debts run up over many years. Then, I was accountable for all the legal bills; these, including the demands of Dr Stanger-Goldenthal and the cost of drawing up the deed itself, came to 48,000 schillings. Ganna’s monthly allowance comfortably exceeded the salary of a government minister. In addition there was a considerable sum that I had to raise within the next three years, which was described as Ganna’s emergency fund. That I was also responsible for the upkeep of the children was only to be expected and need not have appeared in the deed as a further compulsory obligation. But Ganna wanted it there and so, from the look of things, I was also in hock to my children. A further condition was clearing the house my friends had given me fourteen years ago of all mortgage debt and making it over to Ganna unencumbered. Very well; one might very well come to terms with such clauses. It was a huge material burden; an investor, a bank director, a captain of industry presumably wouldn’t have sought to oppose it, still greater sums wouldn’t have cost them their sleep; after all, freedom costs money, bourgeois society makes a business transaction out of divorce and a person’s freedom into an object of trade. Very well. The last two clauses were different: that Ganna was to inherit one-third of all sums realized from my writings and my possessions after my death; and further, that, as a guarantee for her allowance, a lien on the Buchegger estate to the tune of 100,000 schillings was to be conceded to her. The first clause was tantamount to disinheriting Bettina, since there were four children plus Ganna who had to share the estate; the second devalued the house in Ebenweiler by loading it with debt, which would help make it unsellable.

The gift of the one house, the lien on the other and the claim on a third of my worldly goods all derived from the marriage contract that, if you’ll remember, I had signed rather skittishly twenty-five years before. Now at last I learned what the so-called ‘revocability’ was all about: namely that, in the event of the marriage ending in divorce, I would not only have to return the dowry of 80,000 schillings, but pay it back twice over. And this doubled capital, with inflation, now came to some 200,000 schillings. You will concede that the kraal knew their business. They had succeeded in taking the naif, who with culpable innocence had run into their toils, and wringing him out. Honour and respect the kraal. A little curtsey to the age of security. And so Ganna took no harm from her sortie into the terrain of literature and the ‘higher life’, while Bettina and Caspar Hauser, beggars both of them for the foreseeable future, will have to look out for themselves. Ganna will sleep peacefully on her securities, as on a pillow of rose petals. Or am I wrong? I know it defies credulity; but all those ‘securities’ only served to shred their lives and mine with them.

MONEY

At first money was a whip, driving me on, without opening any deep visible wounds. My capacity for work multiplied. The experiences of the last few years had ravaged me to such a degree that they seemed to have renewed me intellectually and spiritually, and transformed my picture of the world. All you need is to understand the suffering of a single being, through and through, for him to be the source and focus of everything there is to know about humans. The thing that eats us up inside becomes our fuel, if we are strong enough to keep going. Almost every sickness refines the organism. I no longer allowed myself to be guided by the sweet whims of a spirit loitering in remote imaginings; I heard the call of the now which pierced me more deeply in my solitude than if I’d been in the world’s hubbub. Also, fortune had given me the gift of shutting myself away in working hours against worries and pressures, admittedly only — once the bolts were undrawn and I was a human being again among other human beings — for me to succumb to my fears, my existential panic, my gloomy forebodings, all of them exacerbated by my periods of solitude.

The seeming tranquillity that Bettina and I enjoyed early on in our marriage glossed over the oppressive obligations with which it had been bought. In order to meet them, to finance our own lives and the payments to the Dutchman and to my friend who had helped me to acquire the Buchegger estate, not to mention taxes, I had to earn a vast sum every year; and although, by some freak of fortune and a delirium of creative work, I even managed to top that for the first couple of years, it wasn’t long before I saw myself under pressure and was forced to take out a considerable loan at extortionate rates of interest.

Since my income at the beginning seemed able to keep step with our outgoings, I got into something of the mood of a gambler, trusting to luck, risking ever higher stakes; or of a man who is so deeply indebted, and has given out so many promissory notes that in his life he will have nothing to do with economy of any kind, remains oblivious to rising consumption and greets each inner prompting to prudence with anger and contempt. So I expanded my lifestyle, I ran a household, added to my library, bought a car and took Bettina abroad. The all-too-evident result was that Ganna, who of course remained minutely informed of all of this, was confirmed in the belief that I was in possession of vast means, that she had been crudely deceived and practically criminally deprived of the possibility of securing her fair share by the divorce agreement.

My relationship to money at the time could perhaps best be described by the paradox ‘selfish indifference’. Like anyone who has climbed out of poverty, I was devoted to the pleasures and advantages conferred by money; but not only did I not love money itself, I despised it. Which is to say, I despised it when I had it and couldn’t imagine what it must be like not to have it. I had never been avaricious, but neither had I been carefree. Without my being by nature a lover of luxury, a certain dull sensuality in things I had become accustomed to made it exceedingly difficult for me to do without.

With Bettina it was different. She neither loved nor despised money. To her balanced sense, it was a means to satisfy a few basic needs. Sometimes, admittedly, for luxuries as well, inasmuch as they were presented to her in terms of aesthetic value — that classical simplicity that causes more heart-searching and trouble than any pomp. In the years in which I didn’t allow her to see into my finances and she — partly so as not to burden me, partly awed by my creative furor — declined to question me or rein me in, she gave herself up with a secret reservation, just as I did, to the illusion of an overflowing horn of plenty. She decorated herself, she decorated our home, decorated the garden and was happy that she could surround herself with beautiful things, which she chose with discernment, because she has the most incorruptible eyes of anyone in the world. To have visitors made her very happy, and for the most part it was old friends whom we had to stay; she was loyal and devoted to them. Never was she immodest, much less rapacious in her wishes. She didn’t care about having possessions. To know that the beautiful thing was there, to be communed with and to make her richer inside, not to plume herself with it — that was her style of ownership; and in any case the two things that remained dearest to her were music and our little Caspar Hauser.

Till one day these brilliant dreams of beauty, peace and art burst, and a baleful reality eyed us like a hyena that had crept out from under the bed.

GANNA IN PREPARATION

And Ganna? The severing of the formal bonds between us failed to persuade her that privately, in our hearts, we were now separated as well. The mood in which she returned to her now barren life was glum. It was as though the lights had gone out and all the visitors suddenly disappeared. A hush descended. Suddenly it was dark. She was all alone. Yes, there were the children. But apart from Doris, they were grown up and didn’t need their mother, not in the sense Ganna understood: as provider, comforter, protector. They lived in the baffling world of people. They had opinions, experiences, friends and who knew what attachments.

And, like someone clearing out an old flat before moving into a new one, she ransacked wardrobes, boxes and chests of drawers and pulled out all the memories and souvenirs she had of me, old photographs, gifts from the early years of our marriage. She couldn’t get enough of these things. She used them to remind herself how happy she had been then, when she received them. In her imagination it was a happiness beyond computation — such as she had never really felt. She leafed through her girlhood diaries and refused to accept that things had turned out so differently from the way she had dreamed they would. She made the upsetting discovery that dreams lie. Admittedly, this only happened in brief little intervals of consciousness, as when a persistent beam of light forces its way through a shuttered window. She hurried to seal it up again.

Her chief resource was the letters I had written to her in those first ten years. Greedily she supped full of them. She put them in chronological order and numbered them. So as to make them even more strongly present to her imagination than by merely reading them, she copied them out by hand, one after the other. When she was finally finished, weeks later, she took the copies to a stenotypist and had the whole collection typed up in several copies. One of which, nicely bound, went to me. I didn’t see what I was supposed to do with it. The hidden purpose of the exercise was presumably to tell posterity the truth about the relationship between Ganna and Alexander Herzog. Posterity was a sort of fire insurance firm for her.

Every day was like a holey curtain. Through each hole, a piece of the past peeped through. What could she do, to fill up the dreary days? There were no files, no documents, no nail-biting negotiations any more. Sometimes she took down the books of her favourite poets and philosophers. It was a hollow gesture. A real counter-factual as-if. There is pleasure to be had in as-if. To its devotees it allows a rush of seeming existence after periods of feeling dead. Over the summer she read everything I had written, in sequence; and when we met at the end of that time claimed, half with feigned regret, half with unconstrained satisfaction, that the books I had written while I was living with her were incomparably better than those I wrote since falling in with Bettina. She was on the point of saying: I always knew God would punish you and He has. The old formula. The conversation took place one fine evening in the garden of her house. She was wrapped in numerous blankets when I arrived, had made herself comfortable on her chaise-longue and looked up into the sky where, one by one, the stars popped out. I asked myself: what is she looking for up there? She was capable of lying there for hours on end, looking up at the sky, almost like a person of faith, all the while foolish and resentful notions crowded her mind. What does she look to the stars for? What was she wanting, craving, overarched by the eternal canopy?

There was one thing she couldn’t be reconciled to, and she gnawed at it like a poisonous wound. I had promised her my friendship, had sworn to cherish her, if only she would agree to a divorce. Well, now she was waiting to be cherished. But since I gave no appearance of being ready to do so, an anxious disappointment came up in her. Whatever time I devoted to her, it wasn’t enough. I talked about all kinds of things, in her view, only not about friendship. When I got up to go, she asked me with a troubled expression why I didn’t spend the whole day with her. When I had spent the whole day with her, she wanted me to keep tomorrow for her as well. Sometimes I had the car parked outside the house. She smiled and passed remarks that were intended to show how free from jealousy she was, but that on the contrary betrayed the fact that she was consumed with regret. She regretted that she had agreed to the divorce, regretted it with every thought she had, day and night; bitterly she gave me to understand that she felt she had been outwitted and ambushed, by Hornschuch and by Bettina. The notion that I was gadding around the world with Bettina, while she sat there in her own four walls, mocked and betrayed to her scorn, almost drove her mad.

I asked her in what form the promised friendship was to be realized, if not in tentative efforts at renewal, as I was honestly attempting, the gradual forgetting and removal of her unhappy past. Forgetting? Unhappy past? She was beside herself. ‘How can you say such a thing, Alexander! How really mean of you!’ Absurd, the idea that I was going to her to find out how to convince her of my friendship. Nothing easier: going to the theatre together, to a concert, just to demonstrate to the world that a divorce between two fine characters like her and me didn’t mean anything and didn’t change anything; we could go on little spring or autumn jaunts together; I could come and stay with her when I had to be in the city; she will give teas and soirées at which I can meet her new friends. That was what she insisted and insisted on; that was the wonderful thing, the only thing that could compensate her for her monstrous sacrifice. Instead of which she was being fobbed off with charity; it was a disgrace, a disgrace …

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That was it, the ambitious wishing on the stars as they opened. What did she care about the stars? She was carrying on the great process against the wrong that had been done her. Many years before, I once summed her up like this in one of my notebooks: ‘A being with a blind heart, a salamander.’ It was just a scribbled jotting. In her blindness of heart she never was aware of what tied her, of what was seemly, of what was right. In her salamandrine nature, she slipped out of time and space and every form of law and instruction. She was like a figure outside of any mathematical order — what the mathematicians call an unreal number. Something unthinkable. But in matters of morality and ethics one can come across the unthinkable readily enough, because to a human being nothing is impossible.

In the preceding pages I have consistently been at pains to write a chaotic sort of love into her that broke all bounds and turned destructively in the end against herself. A psychological aberration, in short. Don’t we handle the term love as though it were some jemmy or crowbar that could open any lock? Don’t talk to me about love/hate, or the chase or such things, it wasn’t that. ‘Amor demens’ would be closer to it. But delusion is a mysterious, underexplored element; no mirror has ever caught its reflection, no pen has described it utterly, because it reaches down into the lowest depths of humanity.

Everything that now happened was preformed, prefigured in Ganna. There was no scheme, no fierce unspeakable determination, but it was resolved in her, just as it is resolved that when heat is applied to a boiler steam will seek to escape through the vents. Since she couldn’t have me physically, she had to have me every other way. How, you may ask. Meet me. In every sense of the word. Meet me where I was most vulnerable: she felt herself chosen by destiny for that purpose. If she couldn’t be by me and with me, then within me — if not for my good, to which she firmly believed she was contributing, then to my ill, to which she really did contribute. Madness can do anything.

PSYCHE BLEEDS

I must take care not to fluff the connections. There is a mixture of triviality and breathtaking audacity informing the events which makes it difficult to set them out in hindsight. The sober truth of things runs smack into the pandemonium they created when the brain that bore them followed them through to the end with fanatical logic.

It began one fine day when she told me that she and a journalist friend of hers had adapted my Treasure Seekers of Worms for the cinema. When telling me this, she reminded me of the written permission I had given her to do this eight years before. In the meantime, however, I had sold the book to an American firm. I thought I had told her about this, either verbally or in writing; she claimed I hadn’t. I suppose it was just possible that with everything going on I did forget to mention it to her. In alarm, I warned her against trying to place it anywhere; one couldn’t sell the same thing twice. She claimed she had a right to make the film sale. The fact that I had neglected to tell her about it (the possibility that I might have suppressed the news had the status of a fully fledged fact for her), was to her proof that I was always out to deceive her about my income. I replied that it was only by such windfalls that I had been able to provide for her and the children during the years of the Inflation. She wasn’t interested. She totted up my supposed wealth; the fact that she had benefited from all of it, if not taken the lion’s share, was not thought to be worth mentioning. She refused to withdraw the screenplay. She said her co-author, with whom she had a contract, insisted on his share and was even threatening to sue. I remarked in surprise: how can you sign a contract relating to something that doesn’t belong to you? She replied that her lawyer saw matters differently. Hence I found out that she once more had a lawyer engaged for her, one Dr Mattern. I was left with no alternative but to assign the conduct of the unwanted case to my own lawyer. Hornschuch was back in business. During the final stages of the dispute, I was abroad with Bettina. I was sent newspaper articles in which the quarrel about the screenplay was vulgarly sensationalized with nasty jabs at myself. At the same time, Ganna was again bombarding me with long telegrams in which she swore blind that she was not to blame for the press attacks, which were the work of people who wanted to damage her in my eyes. ‘How does she always know where we are?’ asked Bettina, shaking her head. I had to confess I had told her where we were going. After that, Bettina said nothing.

Hornschuch came up with a settlement. I had to pay Ganna’s journalist friend a considerable sum to compensate him for work he was neither qualified nor hired to do. Ganna herself finally declined the sum she had first demanded, even though she claimed the state of her finances was not such that she could do so with an easy heart; however, for my sake and that of the peace between us, she would give in. At this time she spoke of literary plans and showed me some of her work, asking me to help to secure its publication; she badly needed to earn money. I didn’t understand the urgency, given that she drew an allowance that permitted a person to live comfortably; but I did what I could, if only to be helpful to her, and I did it too against my better judgement, because what she had written struck me as neither entertaining nor useful. I concealed my opinion from her to avoid pointless debates and so as not to disturb her in an occupation that at least kept her from others that might be more destructive.

I was mistaken. It wasn’t long before she came to me with a new project. In order to make money from her house, she decided to add another storey to it and rent out the lower part. Not a bad idea, ceteris paribus; but to put it into effect was an expensive business and involved drawing on her reserves (in case she still had any at the time), and taking out expensive loans. I thought it my duty to warn her. I pointed out the dangers of falling into debt. With smug superiority she dismissed my concerns. There was a disagreeable tendency in her whereby she would take something she was determined to own but didn’t own, and so mortgage it and load it with debt that by the time she did own it, if she was successful, she was left with nothing but the title and the illusion of possession. She resembled a person desperately racing against her shadow, trying and trying to overtake it. Then once the folly of her enterprise struck her, in blind fury she lashed out at the shadow and demanded to be compensated for her effort, her disappointment and the investment of trouble and money. But the shadow was only a stand-in for me, and so it was the living Alexander who had to cough up; there was no getting out of it, he had to pay and pay.

The conversion of the house hadn’t, as I’d supposed, got in the way of her other work. From time to time she made mysterious references to me to some sort of book that she was writing, for which she had the loftiest expectations. So far as I could glean from her words what she had in mind was a prose narrative, an account of her life and sufferings, a memoir of spousal love and constancy. Often she said, wide-eyed, that in the conception of the work she’d above all had me in mind, the only thing that mattered to her being to free me from the error I’d committed; once I’d read her book, seriously and attentively, as she stipulated, then there would be no question but that I, shaken by the truthfulness of her account, would return to her forthwith. All this she said in her typical fashion — threatening, flattering, accusing — in which she had such mastery.

Earlier on in these reminiscences I had occasion once to mention the mischief done by literature. The world I was referring to then was decent and harmless, blatant in its deceits, pathetic even in its efforts to use art and intellect as a figleaf for its nakedness. Since then, three decades have passed. The amateurish belletristic Ganna world of that time is as different from today’s heady iconoclasm as a water pistol is from a Gatling gun. It used to be that they played with their innocent weapons at literary teas; now they are shooting in deadly earnest. They set word-bombs, they throw word-grenades, they poison the world with printer’s ink; every frustrated idiot, every publicity-crazed complainer dumps his revenge complexes from his desk onto the street below; there’s no question of any inner calling, or truth and honesty; paper is cheap, the setter willing, the word costs nothing; the call to arms of the epoch is write and howl down all the other misery of humankind, which gradually gurgles its last under a mound of paper.

Hardly surprising then that Ganna too was contaminated by the plague, sought her salvation in the production of printed matter; after all she was born with a pen in her mouth, writing had always been the essence of her being, her most living expression, her emphatic insistence, her refuge and her consolation. And this passion, which was so close to being a vice, in the same way that a good book from the outside may resemble a bad one, grew unstoppably. I think it was the source of all her unhappiness, her disorder, her godlessness, because it replaced the mirror in her heart wherein every soul-endowed creature can recognize itself — itself with death over its shoulder, the way it is shown in old paintings. She didn’t think about death, she knew nothing of God and over the mirror of her heart she had stuck a ream of paper, so that she could write and write and write …

The slim volume, a novella, had the nauseating title Psyche Bleeds. There was already a publisher who had agreed to take it on, probably in the hope of a minor scandal. It didn’t pan out; there was a storm in a teacup, nothing more. The letter which Ganna enclosed with her product was a sort of written cringe. Further insistence on her love, further humiliating reference to the need to make money. All in all, the blurting of an uneasy conscience.

I opened the book. I read grotesque absurdities. My first instinctive act was to hide it so that Bettina didn’t see it. But once I was alone in my study I would sometimes get it out of the heap of books I had put it in with, in the way that one might look at some obscene pornography after first throwing it away in disgust. What was this thing so palpably on paper! Behind a cloud of emotional gush and saccharine romance I could make out a dirty distortion of Bettina’s likeness, the depiction of her ostensible sins and sly contrivances, with the addition of a shameless bed and adultery scene in which the cheated husband is supposed to excite the sympathy of the reader. Bleeding Psyche was — you guessed it — Ganna, the white archangel Ganna, pursued and violated by the tribadic monster of a Bettina.

Friends and acquaintances occasionally came to me to express their sympathy. Here and there, from the holes which lurking enviers and haters had crept into, there was a malignant murmuring. Ganna did publicity for her opus and spurred her journalist chums to praise it in the papers. In the end it was inevitable that I spoke about the book with Bettina, especially as she had heard about it first from Hornschuch, then from divers other sources. I have never witnessed anything finer and nobler than the way she disregarded the squalid demeaning of her person. Of course she was bound to feel contaminated, she hated talk, whether it was well meaning or not; but there was no power on earth that could get her to read the book, or so much as touch it with her little finger. For her there was only one thing that mattered, as I understood only far too late — namely what I thought of it and what consequence I would draw from it.

WITH THE ROSES

Bettina stood in the garden, dabbing the murderous greenflies off her roses. Sometimes, when a bloom had been especially ravaged, she would mutter crossly under her breath. Next to the container with the insecticide was a tin bath of water with a syringe floating in it. Little Helmut was larking about, babbling and crooning. You couldn’t imagine a finer opportunity for mucking about with water.

All at once he gave a blood-chilling scream. He had fallen into the tub. I heard it too and ran out with my hair on end with terror. By the time I got there Bettina had already dragged the little wriggler out of the water. Calmly she stood him in the sun to dry off. And to me, standing there looking haunted, afraid our adored offspring had come to harm, she said, with a glance at the dripping little man: ‘Don’t worry. It won’t be the last time he gets a drenching.’ And with that she went back to her greenflies.

GUERRILLA WARFARE

I wrote to Ganna to say that for the time being I wanted nothing further to do with her. She was to apply to Hornschuch on all financial and domestic matters. Five lines. But why ‘for the time being’? Wasn’t that half a step back already? And wouldn’t Ganna, with her unerring sense of my weakness, draw courage from it for further stunts? For the time being! Puzzle me that one out, if you can; I can’t. I know I’m not the ‘never darken my doors again’ type. Maybe it was my principle, inevitable in one who always sees himself confronting the two faces of the world, the No and the Yes. There are mysterious insistences and persistences at play, and the mental and intellectual is as close to the traitorous as thinking is to not-doing.

Ganna didn’t accept the breach. Her letters were sweetness and light. Since I didn’t reply, she wrote an extensive defence of her literary work and had it sent to me, along with reviews from reputable critics, via Dr Mattern. Since I still didn’t respond, she instructed other intermediaries to plead her cause with me. I said to her people, if you eat garbage you first need to give your digestive system time to clean itself out. For a while Ganna kept silent, but before long the demands for money started coming again. Her allowance was too small for her to be able to live off it. The clothing and schooling of our two daughters cost several times more than what had been allotted for the purpose. Our old friends the ‘imprévus’ cropped up again. Considerable ‘backlogs’ had been run up; she had instructed Dr Mattern to send me the ‘vouchers’. Some of the backlogs dated from the time before the divorce; clearly, it had not come up to expectation.

I asked her why official seals and promises which for me had an absolute validity shouldn’t equally apply to her. I rejected the demands, but the continual ranting made me ill; I wanted quiet, peace from her. Medical opinion prescribed a lengthy stay in Marrakesh. I wrote to inform the children; Ganna begged me for a meeting before I left. I gave in to her pressure and agreed. Then one wasn’t enough, it got to be several. Ganna, riddled with anxieties, petitioned me for money, the housekeeping book put in an appearance, the numbered bills were produced, the ‘vouchers’ turned up. I could have said: what does it all have to do with me, I’ve paid and overpaid your bills and on the first of the month you’ll have my next instalment, ciao. But I wanted quiet, I didn’t want bickering and kvetching behind my back; I had enjoyed some unexpected successes that year, I was on the point of leaving on an expensive journey and even though I had intended to put something by for an emergency, I thought: damn it, and said very well, I was prepared to give her 10,000 schillings, of which she could have 8,000 right away. A couple of weeks later I opened a newspaper where one of her journalist friends worked, and saw an interview with her all about how she had to fight for money for her youngest child. Obviously she had got talking in front of some irresponsible fellow, and when she saw her froth set in the form of newsprint she was suddenly afraid and fired off a cable to me, where for the umpteenth time she swore by all that was high and holy that she was not to blame. I remained cool, but to chastise her for her lie I now held back the last 2,000 I had promised her. By now she had forgotten that the money was a gratuity and she demanded the rest, as if it had been a debt owing to her. She had already promised the money to a third person, and once again threatened to take me to court. Having received such a significant sum of money from me already, without any entitlement to it, she saw my pliancy as proof of her entitlement; above all it removed the least doubt in her about my Rockefeller-like wealth, her enjoyment of which had been hindered by the stupidity and wickedness of her lawyers. The deed was made the object of ceaseless study. She carried it around with her wherever she went by day, at night it lay on her bedside table. She knew its terms by heart and even so she immersed herself in it like a devout Jew in his Talmud. She was looking for a point she might attack. She found it soon enough in the clause relating to her monthly allowance. Her representatives had before the divorce argued that she should take a one-third share of everything I earned. This, however, I had rejected emphatically; I knew Ganna and saw that such a condition would have given her an opening for incessant nosing-around and demands for me to furnish her with my accounts. In its place a lifelong appanage had been agreed upon, at a fixed amount that was described as equivalent to one-third.

And at this point she brought her dissatisfaction and her appeal to bear. As usual, she insisted she had been deceived. She declared the clause was unjust and invalid. She demanded a third of my actual earnings. When it was pointed out to her that the deal she had secured was better, because years might come that would give her cause to regret her agitating, she laughed disbelievingly. She could afford to; she after all still had her lien. If and when hard times came over me again, then she could simply revert to the fixed allowance; and if I refused, she could foreclose on the Buchegger estate. For the moment, though, getting a share of my earnings not only seemed more lucrative to her, but the inspection and supervision of my financial circumstances gave her an entrée into my life and allowed her to establish herself in it as a controlling instance. With this in mind, she set up an extensive network of spies. She had herself informed about my expenditure, the standard of living of Bettina and myself; she knew at all times how many servants were in my employ, how many guests I had; she kept tabs on the size of my editions and the sums I realized for sale of translation rights to my books abroad; and on the basis of such material she raised her noisy claims, appealing always to morality, humanity and justice. Since I wouldn’t get involved in any dealings with her, the flood of memoranda started up again and lawyers’ letters. Presumably it was the extension of the house that had got her into renewed financial trouble. But in order to avoid that, she had taken out mortgage after mortgage. Matters grew ever murkier and more desperate. My only concern was Doris. She was now fourteen; the money earmarked for her largely went on Ganna’s hopeless efforts to pay off her debts, and so I finally agreed to raise the sum for the child considerably, while reserving the right to end the arrangement if it became the basis of legal argument. This reservation angered Ganna. She saw in it evidence of suspicion on my part. The agreement was drawn up in March. In March I paid the increased sum for the first time. By October Ganna thought I owed her for the first quarter as well. An avalanche of letters. Two new lawyers appeared on the scene. At Hornschuch’s, the files of Herzog vs. Herzog were menacing the ceiling. He shook his head in perplexity. In perplexity he came to me, in perplexity stood in front of Bettina, and said: ‘I don’t understand this.’

BETTINA HOMELESS, MYSELF UNDER PRESSURE

How could I have allowed it to happen: I didn’t notice that Bettina lost heart, lost hope and, worst of all, lost trust. I didn’t notice that she turned away from me in pain; felt lonely, disappointed, betrayed as never before. Didn’t notice that she no longer took pleasure in the house, that the flowers died under her hands, that the beautiful things faded away. Didn’t notice that she was cold, that her fingernails were often blue with it. With far-sighted care, she attended to the upbringing of little Helmut, concentrating on not showing him any excess, avoiding displays of feeling; but the fact that I was the deterrent instance of what not to do — I didn’t notice that.

Had Ganna succeeded — already succeeded — in destroying our strong and tender union? Bettina was never one to cry easily. She doesn’t follow Kierkegaard’s saying that it’s dishonourable for a Christian to live without tears. Everything takes place out of sight, behind a smiling face. She is like the goose-girl in the fairy tale, who makes the prince go and hide in the oven before she agrees to lament her woes. And I very much doubt that she made up her mind in the oven. Not-noticing was made all too easy for me. I remember one occasion when I almost awoke; in a letter she suggested in a shy, veiled way that she often had bold notions of independence buzzing round her brain; and when she thought of the freedom she had had when she was growing up, then she felt like dropping everything and fleeing into the world, relying on herself only. Her confession surprised me, but in my obtuseness I didn’t understand it. I knew her too poorly. Never would she have managed to say: enough, let’s separate. Remote from believing in her irreplaceability, the way most women do, she knew nevertheless that I wouldn’t have got over her desertion — not even understood it. Rarely can a human being have been as generously considerate and forbearing as she to me. She took it as given that I needed her. Well, she let it happen. I needed her and used her, as I needed and used everything in my life, everything that protected me, confirmed me and gave me quiet. Including her. I know she felt my love for her. This love she was all too familiar with, there was a whole block of it, a mountain of love; but it was trackless, wild, inaccessible, strangely savage. You needed to master it somehow; learn to look after it, find your way around in it, sometimes find it in the first place. But had she ceased loving me? Sometimes I put the question to myself, the way a hypochondriac in his imaginary agonies thinks of death. Because Bettina was not able to love without respect — that was clear to me. The early admiration she felt for her father shaped her subsequent relationships and her life as a woman. Since her subtle sensuality only responded to stimuli in the imagination, in love she can only exist in a lofty spiritual realm. And without love she is incapable of existing at all. I should have realized why she felt alienated in her own home. She did her domestic chores, she procured peace and quiet for me, she looked after Ferry, Elisabeth and Doris when they came to stay, she was happy to see her own daughters when they came in the holidays; but all of that seemed somehow to take place outside of herself. Now I see that. A person who does his duty, as well as he can, but only his duty, may be an example and a paragon to others, but to himself he will be a burden and a curse; in solitary hours the artificial props snap, and a sea of sadness will close over his head.

Now I can also understand her growing need to spend time away from the house. She wanted to collect herself, to regroup. She hiked in the mountains on her own; on occasion she travelled to Vienna to shelter with her friend Lotte Waldbauer, or to Salzburg for a couple of days to stay with her old composition teacher. She enjoyed the speed and separation of being in a car; often, after a sleepless night, she would go for a drive and leave a note on my desk saying she’d gone. Then I would miss her, a little as I missed my hat when the tempest had blown it off my head. She went out, she came back, to ‘keep an eye on things’ as she derisively put it, disappeared again, suddenly missed little Caspar Hauser and when she had him in her arms again she might have taken him with her, if it had been possible. She was no longer at peace, no longer felt herself in fortune’s good graces, she felt homeless.

Yes, I missed her — missed her like my hat. There is a remarkable ignorance in men that makes them think they have a woman when they have a woman. Even the most sensitive of them fall for the crude mistake of the body. Even the most ethereal of them are animals that think the byre and the cave are taboo.

I have no other excuse than that my eyes and ears were commandeered by the pursuer. Things had come to such a pass that each time there was a letter from her in the post I would feel my temples throb. The notion of having to see her was a nightmare, but sometimes the incredible thing happened and on my visits to town I would go to see her, if only to prevent her from coming to me. I experienced the most terrible form of sleep there is. You lie there shattered, your chest sliced open, suffering unendurable agonies from the unexampled wickedness of fate. And you sleep. And in your sleep you deal with your fate. Resist, justify yourself, get nowhere, talk for nothing, your throat choked with pleas and wails, with rage and astonishment, and you wake up with a shattered head. While I worked, I felt like someone with two loaded revolvers pressed to his head, one on either side. When I left the house I would be frightened for my son. A limitless dread of the Ganna devils. I walked around, waiting to see what she would come up with next, where the next lightning would strike. It had been going on for years now and no end in sight. I fervently wished I could turn back time, so that I would never have met the woman. What right did she have to wreck my life, on whose instructions was it? What sort of being was she that she could overturn any human agreement with impunity and rampage through a world that she saw as hers to despoil, a mad world with mad agreements and mad battles?

But I am getting a little ahead of myself.

THREE DECENT PEOPLE

Thanks to the canny logic that often inheres in events, it was at this time that the tax authorities discovered that Ganna had neglected to pay any tax since her divorce, and demanded immediate back payments. It was a very large amount, almost doubled by the fine slapped onto it. Ganna objected, but in the teeth of the State’s determination to fleece its citizens there is no objection possible. The most she could do was secure a postponement. She ran to several lawyers, but m’learned friends were unable to help either. They tried the usual methods of obtaining further delays, thereby only adding to the costs and interest. If she had still had the money she was supposed, by the terms of the divorce agreement, to have set aside as an emergency fund, then nothing bad would have happened, she would simply have had to use it for that. But there was nothing left of the money. Nor could she load the house with more debt; the mortgage interest payments were eating into her monthly allowance as it was and her other debts were going up all the time.

In her predicament she quite naturally turned to — me. We had a meeting at which she begged me to take on her tax debt. She claimed one of her lawyers had told her it was the only way of getting the sum asked for down to manageable proportions. She had previously written to me along these same lines; I had taken soundings with Hornschuch, who sensed illegal manipulations and advised me against allowing myself to be lured into a possible legal minefield. But even if there hadn’t been any risks, I still couldn’t have got Ganna out of this pickle; I told her my circumstances had deteriorated so much of late that it was difficult enough for me to meet my existing obligations. She sniggered contemptuously. It was as if I’d asked her to pick up the bill for lunch. Then I made the ill-advised suggestion that I might be able to help her if she renounced her lien on the Buchegger estate; then I would be in the position of being able to borrow money against the property. To hear this, to stare at me with burning eyes and to burst into a long loud shriek were all one and the same for Ganna. She carried on as though the lien were the apple of her eye and I was trying to steal it. In her tantrum I kept hearing the one word: blackmail. My suggestion was blackmail to her. She was prepared for everything, but not that. The fact that I looked to her to abandon her most powerful lever showed her just who she was up against. I was simple-minded enough to stick up for myself. In addition to the lien she also had the deed, I pointed out, and quoted the saying of a lawyer friend of mine who had once said: a deed is like a razor blade, the least movement and you start to bleed. Of course, she retorted, with difficulty keeping the triumph out of her voice, the lien was part and parcel of the deed, and to seek to interfere with it was an attempt on her life. And while she went on frothing at the mouth and babbling about blackmail, I took my hat and left.

Several weeks passed, during which she wriggled piteously. The tightening screw of the tax people took her breath away. Little part-payments gained her brief periods of respite. In order to quiet the rest of her creditors, she had chosen the system of partial consolidation. She paid One out, and agreed to even more oppressive conditions from numbers Two, Three and Four. She took to hocking her allowance and the rent she made on the house for months in advance. The lawyers she had engaged and who ran round the houses for her, and put in applications (there were already three or four of them at this time), didn’t want to do their work gratis either. She put them off by writing IOUs. I asked myself and I asked others how such a thing was possible; IOUs are not legal tender, how long can someone go on issuing IOUs? Till someone who knew explained: if you are in possession of a deed, you can string along one loan after another, since one lender doesn’t need to know about the existence of others, and in this case takes Alexander Herzog Ltd for a flourishing business. Aha, I thought, so a deed isn’t just a razor blade, but also a golden-egg-laying goose; good to know; I wonder what further qualities it will turn out to possess?

Even though it was a wretched life that Ganna was living, besieged by creditors, constricted by debt, under fire from the tax authorities, she could have taken all these calamities — which she was used to, to which she had fully adjusted — fatalistically in her stride, were it not for the serious threat to her ownership of the house. If there should be a forced sale, through foreclosure of the mortgages, she was lost. At least that was her mantra to herself, and at the thought she gibbered with panic. I had occasion to watch her, and more yet to sense how her relationship with property was taking shape within her. The house that was hers and the lien on the Buchegger estate both gave rise to ferocious feelings of possessiveness in her, puffed up with which she steered confidently over the surging waves of her life. As long as she had those two in her grasp, she felt inured to storm and shipwreck. The house she lived in and the estate that Bettina owned (as for me, I seemed to be a kind of chattel to be pushed here and there) — they were like a treasure found and one still only dreamed of; but one knows where it is to be found and all that is needed to secure it is the knowledge of the correct phrase or formula. An extraordinary serenity came over her at times, when she pictured to herself how eventually she would move into the fairy-tale palace by the lake and watch her rival legging it out through the back door with a hatbox or two.

Meanwhile, the pressures on her were increasing daily. After Drs Sperling, Wachtel, Greif and Tauber had all tested their teeth on the tough revenue nut without achieving any notable breakthrough, the fifth to be consulted by Ganna, one Dr Storch, was illuminated by a flash of genius. In the course of a protracted consultation with her he pointed out that, were she still living with me as my wife, she would not be facing any tax demand. Ganna nodded sorrowfully. She didn’t need any learned commentary to remind her of the sorry circumstance. But the lawyer had something else in mind. He had carefully reconsidered the case, he said, and while reading the files he had come upon a small technicality. Technicality? Ganna was positively giddy with excitement; she asked, stammering, what the lawyer — now suddenly transformed before her eyes into a celestial cherub — had in mind with his mysterious remark. With a smile he told her. Everything seemed to suggest that — probably in the haste of the final official dealings — my German nationality had been left out of regard. Pressing her hand to her bosom and breathing hard, Ganna asks what consequences that might have. At the very least it provided grounds for challenging the divorce, replies Dr Storch. At those words, Ganna gives a start — a pleasurable start, admittedly, but a start nonetheless. She reminds the cherub that I had since contracted another marriage. To which the cherub replies that that didn’t change anything. Whereupon Ganna, with the same voluptuous feeling of panic, gave a little scream: that means, oh my God, that means it’s bigamy. Whereupon the cherub, dampening down her exuberance, asks her to be cautious in the use of such terms. For the moment, he saw in this interesting circumstance nothing more than the means to put a little pressure on the tax authorities.

Dr Storch’s revelation had some point, inasmuch as my divorce from Ganna was only carried out before an Austrian court of law, and not a German. As I had been a resident of Austria for decades, the divorce according to Austrian law was initially held to be perfectly sufficient. Even so, Hornschuch had anticipated that difficulties might come about one day and had insisted that Ganna deposit a letter in the file in which she declared herself ready, whenever it might be asked of her, to agree to the German divorce as well. She had forgotten all about the letter. When we jogged her memory later, she claimed it had been extorted from her.

But to stick to the sequence of events: Ganna went home from the meeting with Dr Storch with her heart palpitating. She was utterly bewildered by her good fortune. The lawyer’s cautiously advanced point was in her eyes as good as a victory in open court. A legal bit of jiggery-pokery meant the eradication of an irksome fact. A technicality meant: there was no divorce and Ganna remains the lawful Frau Herzog. She dealt with contracts she had no intention of abiding by as with servants she sacked if they stood up to her. Above all, though, she, the doting spouse, thought of the danger to which I was exposed. With a happy shudder, she reflected that by my second marriage I had committed a crime. As she walked out of Storch’s office she could see me in a highly embarrassing pickle, if I still refused to co-operate; by the time she boarded the tram I was practically behind bars. The day before, she had learned that I was expected in the sanatorium where I had to check in two or three times a year for my condition. She knew Bettina would be accompanying me. So much the better, she thought, then we’ll finally get the woman thrown out. She wanted as much as possible to spare me. She would break the news to me in a tête-à-tête, and with enormous restraint. Admittedly, after all that had gone before, she would have to be ready for the chance that I might refuse to see her; but in this case she trusted to the gravity of the news she had for me, seeing as it was about my honour, as she said, and my reputation. She could already hear my weeping pleading and see Bettina grovelling on the ground in front of her …

The morning my checking-in at the clinic had been reported back to her by whichever of her people did such things, she had me called to the telephone. She was informed the doctor had told me not to go to the phone; any negotiations were out of the question; my condition required extremely careful handling. In that case she had better speak to Bettina, an indignant Ganna replied; the matter she wanted to discuss could not permit of even one hour’s delay, it was a matter of life and death for me. Bettina was told. At that time Bettina was not as inured to Ganna’s ways of procuring conversations as she got to be later. She thought the vulgar commotion might have something in it and she went, reluctantly enough, to the telephone. Ganna was reduced to a stammer. She didn’t want to give away her plan of battle; on the other hand she was incapable of masking her triumph as concern. There had been a catastrophic turn in the tax business, she trumpeted in Bettina’s ear, more or less; we should all consult together; Bettina too should be in on the consultations; and of course the lawyers on both sides; delay was tantamount to suicide. Trying hard to remain restrained, Bettina asked what this was all about. Then — I could imagine her wide staring eyes — it bubbled out of Ganna: the divorce was invalid, my marriage to Bettina was unlawful, one of her sharpest lawyers, an eminent man as well, had broken the awful news to her; we all should quickly get round a table; three decent people; if three decent people sat around a table together to avert a disaster, there could be no doubting a satisfactory outcome; the first step would be to discharge the tax debt; other questions could be settled civilly and constructively. Bettina, dazed by the cascade of words, said: ‘Is that it, Ganna? Thank you, I’ll tell Alexander.’ And, half-irritated, half-amused, she repeated to me all that Ganna had dinned into her. I shrugged. I had no idea of the consequences it would have.

THIRTY OR FORTY LAWYERS

When her kindly peace call remained without echo, she poured her moral indignation into a letter. ‘I am beside myself,’ she wrote. I could hear the hollow voice and the accusatory emphasis on the two last words, with a stage pause left between them. What, they don’t respond, the fools, she said to herself disbelievingly, they knock back the hand of friendship? Has anyone ever known the like, to run to their own destruction?

She won’t allow herself to be accused of not having done what was humanly possible to avert the catastrophe from Bettina and me. In this spirit she writes a second letter to me, one of her masterly, Tartuffian, technical-ethical epistles. I don’t reply, even though the bearer is standing by waiting. She instructs Dr Storch to clarify me as to the legal position. I throw his letter in the waste-paper basket. Immediately afterwards she has a falling-out with the ex-cherub, for reasons I can’t divulge, and forms a new compact with one Dr Kranich, who also assails me with a lengthy screed, in which the tax matter and the divorce are cannily entwined. Dr Kranich is a onetime Socialist, as she has me informed by one of her agents, and she hopes his — albeit no longer current — political views will commend him to me. I don’t reply.

She goes to the sanatorium. She is not admitted. She yells at the porter, she insults the nurse, she complains to the director. Still she is not admitted. Now she really thinks she has done everything to save me from disaster. A seventh lawyer, Dr Schwalbe (no one can tell me why yet another one), communicates to Hornschuch about the impending test of the validity of the divorce. Hornschuch’s apparent sangfroid excites Ganna’s fury. She senses some peril must lie behind it, the man is an obstacle, she needs to get him out of the way first. She composes a twenty-three-page foolscap screed against him and has it delivered to the Bar association. She accuses him of dereliction of duty and of acting without instruction; to force her to agree to the divorce, he had without my orders and without my knowledge determined that her allowance be stopped. Blackmail again, hallo, hallo, is anyone home? Blackmail, are you there? No, I’m here. Hornschuch is compelled to take her to court for defamation. I am asked to appear as a witness, and of course I can’t avoid saying the accusations were frivolous and baseless. My appearance impresses the judge; I get a little carried away with myself; I paint a picture of the unending persecution I suffer at the hands of the woman; basically I make myself into a sort of knight of the sorrowful countenance. Ganna is sentenced to a hefty fine, that’s it. Since she doesn’t have a penny that doesn’t come from me, that doesn’t come from my work, it means that I now have a fine to pay as well. Once sentence has been passed, Ganna comes up to me, pulls a pear out of her handbag and whispers dramatically: ‘An Alexander pear … your favourite …’ What was it the last time? ‘I’m giving you a divorce for your birthday …’ Always the same breathy pathos in the intervals of delusion.

In her grim compulsion to unmask and destroy the ‘plot’ between Hornschuch and Bettina, Ganna instructs an eighth lawyer, Dr Fischlein, to bring charges against Bettina, who, in company and before witnesses, had apparently accused her, Ganna, of being a liar. Another farrago of nonsense, product of hateful dreams; Bettina would never even say Ganna’s name in public. But Ganna doesn’t let facts get in her way, this is wash day, the lawyers are so many washerwomen, everything goes. The unreasonable couple (Bettina and I) won’t be persuaded that all is lost, she says to herself; very well, they have only themselves to blame, my conscience is clear; and finally, with the assistance of a ninth lawyer, Dr Pelikan, she ignites the principal bomb: the legal questioning of the divorce, simultaneously challenging the legality of my marriage to Bettina. Hornschuch counters with a demand that she ‘show cause’, which goes as far as the administrative court and plunges Ganna into deep disquiet, because everything she has undertaken against Bettina and me strikes her as lawful, and pleasing unto the eyes of God and man — whereas everything that is undertaken against her is a criminal violation, as she tells the world with her shrill cry. There is nothing for it; I have to go to Vienna to make preparations and pick up a legal opinion from a legal eagle that both divorce and remarriage were perfectly lawful. It costs time, it costs money, it costs nerves, it costs concentration. It does me in. I can no longer speak about anything else. Running into friends in town, I talk to them blurtingly and incomprehensibly about horrible things I am drowning in. I sit at a table in my hotel room for hours, laying patiences.

But then, for some reason, Ganna suddenly breaks off her vengeance, offers to withdraw her suit in return for some ‘conditions’, apologizes for her pitiful desperation. There’s no more to it than that; it’s a fit of weakness, the pyromaniac’s momentary hesitation before tossing the lit match on the dry straw. The Count von Gleichen idyll appears in a new version; she offers to share me with Bettina. (How’s that going to work — it would be like two cats sharing a mouse.) Ganna is to be the lawful wedded wife in Vienna, Bettina is to have the same role in Ebenweiler; their spheres of influence can be kept nicely separate. When this great-souled proposition is again met with baffled silence, she turns to a minister who has been presented to her as an enlightened and philanthropical sort, and asks him to effect a conciliation between us. God only knows what she said to him; the man of God writes me an extraordinarily pompous letter. I think to myself it would be wrong to ignore the words of a priest; but instead of keeping to ten lines (see Stanger-Goldenthal), I fill seven pages with a description of Ganna’s character and my predicament.

Shaking off her fit of weakness or her crisis of confidence or whatever it was, Ganna swings into action with renewed vim. Who is the enemy most to be dreaded? Why, Hornschuch. So she tackles him first. She bombards him with suggestions to try and tempt him to deal with her. She treats him like a wildcat you throw a hunk of meat to from time to time, so that he doesn’t bite you. She hates him with every fibre of her being, but the category ‘lawyer’ — in any guise — fills her with such superstitious awe that she loses her head and does the most irrational things. She conducts expensive long-distance phone calls with him. In the midst of her usual dealings and agenda, it suddenly occurs to her to travel to Ebendorf, where Hornschuch is now living, the seat of the district court, four miles from Ebenweiler. An amusing little jaunt. To spend six hours on the train, by night if need be, is a breeze to her. The woman has nerves like bell-ropes. The final justification of the journey is threefold. First, she wants to inveigle Hornschuch into her toils and get the better of him; she flatters herself that she will be able to persuade him of the justice of her cause. Second, the proximity of the district court is like a sort of aphrodisiac to her; of course she’s already taken on a local lawyer, the eleventh or twelfth, a political enemy of Hornschuch’s, through whom she hopes to bring down her detested foe. Third, she’s made some useful acquaintances in the bar of the hotel where she’s staying — all sorts of local politicians and small-town dignitaries whom she flatters, stressing her conservative views and involving herself in Party business. On cosy beer evenings she tells anyone who cares to listen — and of course, they’re all dying of curiosity — tear-jerking tales from her tortured marriage, or of how a certain lady up in Ebenweiler has it in for her and is making her life a misery.

Between Christmas and New Year she tried another ambush on Hornschuch. She implored him to induce me to pay the allowance for Doris that I hadn’t paid her — Ganna — for months now. The fact that I paid out every penny of the money on Doris discretion keeps her from mentioning. When Hornschuch reminded her of the fact, she replied with irrational fury that she was the mother and, if the money were not paid to her, she would see it as not having been paid.

‘I understand,’ Hornschuch replied with the smile that Ganna liked to call Mephistophelean, ‘your daughter is a sort of walking promissory note that you can present to the father when you’re short. Good idea!’

‘No!’ screamed Ganna, white with fury. ‘What I won’t have is Bettina deciding how much support my child gets from her father. It’s disgraceful.’

‘No one’s talking about Bettina here,’ remarked Hornschuch coolly.

She went on chuntering away to herself, then all at once she was as soft as a sponge that you throw in water, began sobbing and painted such a heart-wrenching picture of her situation that, as he admitted to me, he was speechless for a while. He said perhaps an accommodation could be reached between her and her creditors; to that end, she would have to admit her debts openly, the full extent of them, and above all she needed to get rid of her lawyers. That got him a good reception. She went wild. Conditions? No, Sir, she wasn’t that desperate, nor for a good time yet. See off her lawyers? That was the last thing she would do. And leave herself open to Bettina’s persecution? No, thank you very much. That was one thing she wasn’t going to do. There had been an attempt to have her declared non compos mentis, but thank goodness that had failed. (She gave a cackling laugh and sent Hornschuch a penetrating look like a detective on the point of catching a murderer out.) How failed? asked Hornschuch sympathetically. Yes, she had looked up a famous psychiatrist, who at the end of a twenty-minute conversation had issued her with a splendid certificate of mental health; if Hornschuch cared to see it: voilà! And already she was rummaging through her bag for the piece of paper, which obviously filled her with glee, as a little sub-magician might be at the sight of a licence to practise issued by the great chief magician.

Since the meeting with Hornschuch had failed, she hired a sleigh and half an hour later reached the Buchegger estate. Our maid knew who she was and didn’t admit her. We were just having tea, Bettina and I, with Doris, who was there for the Christmas holidays. We could hear Ganna ranting and shouting outside. Bettina drummed her fingers on the tablecloth and said: ‘Don’t go out. Please don’t go out.’ But I went out. I had to see the woman off. I shouted at her. What did she think she was doing? What she was doing? She had come for money. She was groaning, howling, gurgling for money. Interspersed with that, a few insults and reproaches. The sleigh stood a few yards off; the coachman on his box was continually shaking his head, which made an oddly profound impression on me. In the hall, the servants stood around in a state of shock. Infected by Ganna’s yelling, I started yelling back. No one in the house had ever heard me yell before. There is only one person in the world capable of making me yell and that is Ganna. I no longer remember how I induced her finally to get back in the sleigh. I stood at the top of the stairs and waited till the horse caparisoned with bells and its head-shaking coachman had disappeared into the darkness. Back in the house, I called Bettina. She had locked herself away in her room. Doris stood in front of the tea table, looking at me with round, frightened, sympathetic eyes. I went to my room and threw myself on my bed.

But all this was mere skirmishing for Ganna. A little later, she had worked out that I owed her 25,000 schillings. I don’t know where this nice round figure came from. It could as well have been half a million. Doctors’ bills, tailors’ bills, ‘backlogs’ from other years, ‘imprévus’ by the dozen, expenses on the children, a column of figures like a lottery draw. It’s my belief that merely writing down numbers gave her as much satisfaction as actual money. The local district court rejected the case for want of evidence, even though two diligent new lawyers threw themselves into the fray for her. Without stopping to think for a moment about the irrecoverableness of the debt and the frivolousness of her suit, Ganna told herself: if I can’t obtain justice in this country, then perhaps there where, according to my passport and as Alexander Herzog’s wife, I belong. She made for Berlin, found some willing lawyers — three of them — and presented her claim in a splendidly stylish brief. But lo and behold, the 25,000 were become 39,000, a leap explained by the addition of her tax debt. I saw with satisfaction that her charming number-drunkenness didn’t get in the way of a certain residual accuracy in Ganna. At the same time, in Berlin, where she set up a sort of dépendance, and where m’learned friends were charmed down from the trees, she attached her suit to the attack on the divorce. She was, it seemed, in the right place. The uncertainty between the two countries in point of matrimonial law made this entertaining legal adventure possible; it was one of the many breaches where canny lawyers like to wedge their crowbars.

But she also enjoyed social success in the German metropolis. She got to meet people to whom she could sing her song of woe. Since none of them were acquainted with the facts, she found credit and sympathy at every turn. Doling out copies of her Psyche Bleeds to all and sundry, she confirmed her role as an ideal wife, who had been sent to the brink of starvation by a cruel husband and his chit. She assiduously visited writers’ cafés, where she could advertise her noble unhappiness. ‘Even the moneylenders start to cry when I tell them of my predicament,’ she once said, to the understanding murmurs of a bookish set at table. It may even have been true. It’s not out of the question that the soul of the contemporary usurer has opposed the trend of petrifaction to which all other souls have been subject, and has humanized itself since the days of Balzac and Dickens. The result of her sentimental journey to the Prussian Olympus, at any rate, was that I received many anonymous letters full of insults and insolent instructions to me to better myself. Plus of course lawyers’ letters, too many to count. They struck me as scouting patrols before the battle, these resolute gentlemen marching out to meet me with fists clenched. One wrote to say simply that if I didn’t pay up 39,000 schillings by a certain date, he would have my royalties confiscated at the publisher’s. I threw the letter away, with two or three hundred others of the same type and import. I had to laugh. My lifestyle and the pyrrhic divorce had set me back so much with my publisher that the tiny hands would find nothing left to confiscate. (What a great word, ‘confiscate’; especially made for the little hands.) But Ganna told her people that by some financial manipulation I had contrived to smuggle money abroad, and hence fabricated my debt to my publisher. A story that made it possible to drag him into court as well. On top of everything else, she was now bandying the bigamy charge about. A few friends who got to hear of it wrote to beg me not to let it come to that. But what else could I do? Whimper for mercy? Run to court and say: protect me from the lawyers, otherwise they’ll eat me alive, arrest that she-devil, otherwise I’ll be done for? Nonsense. The courts would have arrested me first.

One day I remarked to Hornschuch: ‘Can you explain it to me — excuse the naive question — but all these lawyers, they’re thoughtful, experienced, no doubt honest men; don’t they understand what’s going on and how they’re being misused?’ Hornschuch listened. He raised his eyebrows and looked at me with a sardonic smile on his lips. His way of not giving an answer was uncommonly eloquent.

At that time there were a mere sixteen or seventeen lawyers whom Ganna had retained, some of whom she had already paid off, or hadn’t paid off and was afraid to dismiss. Today, the number is closer to forty; it’s not possible to be exact since I’ve mislaid some of the names in the welter of paper. These people surely had to realize that the support they were giving the woman only served to exacerbate her addiction, not to quench it. What was it that drove them to give their brains, their knowledge, their time to a person who, with morbid determination, sought to twist the rigid paragraphs of the law to suit herself? Presumably they said to themselves: we’ll take in the winnings once the other side can no longer speak and will pay any money to be left in peace. That characterized the jurisdictional uncertainty, the ambiguity of the laws, the deadly rigidity of the process, the remoteness of the ivory-tower judiciary, the via dolorosa of appeals — and on top of everything, helpless and tyrannical, the State, a Chronos devouring his own children.

It accomplished nothing and explained nothing when I or others attempted to come up with a clinical category for Ganna’s case. An army of three and a half dozen lawyers is a one-off. The idea of a mysterious dependency suggested itself to me ever more strongly. It couldn’t but be that, in the atmosphere of confidential talk, expectation, advice, attack, subterfuge, statement and counter-statement, Ganna found a source of erotic satisfaction, a replacement for intimacy with another being; replacement also for the pleasure of tormenting another being, and no less pleasurable if one thinks one is the undeserving sufferer. The time spent in lawyers’ offices, the smell of ink, dust and blotting-paper unquestionably had an aphrodisiac effect on her. With each new lawyer she entered a sort of new marriage, a marriage of torment. When she talked to one of them — in court, in his office, in her house — a strange, saccharine flirtatiousness came out in her, a slavish gratitude that admittedly could at any moment curdle into bickering and quasi-marital dispute. It had become her habit to call her current lawyer first thing every day, to ask perfectly ridiculous questions, to make quite useless dispositions, as if she wanted only to hear his voice, as though to check that he hadn’t been unfaithful to her overnight. The telephone was another source of pleasure. Telephone and telegraph were magical gadgets with which, short of essence and existence as she was, she forced an entry into the time and consciousness of people attached to her, borrowed time and consciousness from them, in order to exist a little herself. How deeply into chaos and old night one is taken when one follows such a soul’s vagaries into its depths!

CONVERSATIONS IN ANOTHER WORLD

One day, Bettina and I had to go to Munich to discuss the legal challenge to our marriage with a lawyer there. Helmut was sitting with us at the breakfast table as we were about to go. He was complaining forthrightly.

‘Why are you going away again?’

I explained that it was necessary.

‘But why do you both have to go, why not just Papa?’ he persisted.

Bettina stroked his hair and said I wanted her to go with me. He thought for a long time, then a roguish expression came into his blue eyes and he said to her:

‘I think I know why.’

‘Why’s that then, darling?’ I asked him.

To which he, full of pride: ‘It’s like with the animals.’

Bettina and I looked at each other in surprise.

‘What do you mean, Helmut?’

And he, the twinkle still in his eyes: ‘Safety.’

He was lost in thought for a while, and then:

‘Isn’t that right, Mama, the three of us are a proper family, you and Papa and me, we all belong together?’

‘Yes, little Helmut, of course we do.’

‘Was I there when you got to know each other?’

‘No, darling.’

‘Was God there, then?’

‘Oh, yes, He was.’

‘Did He laugh, then?’

‘Why do you think He would have laughed?’

‘Because He was looking forward to me, maybe?’

At that point the cat, which had been stalking around the table with tail up, jumped into his lap. He looked at it tenderly and asked, to indicate his human superiority, with a cooing voice:

‘Have you got eyes? Have you really got eyes?’

‘He makes it impossible to say goodbye,’ Bettina said to me afterwards.

TWO WOMEN

Even before the eventful January day I am coming to, I had had the feeling there was something going on with Bettina. But I didn’t have the courage to ask her. For some time now we had been living in a strange silence, side by side, almost like two convicts who have been cellmates for too long. What was alarming was that this was so unlike Bettina. On the day in question, Hornschuch had already rung in at nine to say that Ganna was back in Ebenweiler. She had hurried down from Berlin to attend a hearing at the district court. What was at issue was the suspended money for Doris, also the monthly allowance for the girl for the summer, during which time she had been staying with me in my house. By the letter of the deed I was in the wrong; in my own lay opinion I was being required to pay twice over, along the lines of the kraal’s principle of ‘revocability’ — and ‘revocability’ in my present circumstances was more than I could afford.

In pursuance of her claim, Ganna had obtained a temporary injunction with the court, freezing my bank account in the little local branch in Ebendorf. It didn’t much matter, I didn’t have any great sums there, I had sufficient cash for the time being; I would just have to see about getting the next advance. Still, it was disagreeable; and it gave ill-disposed people more ammunition for their gossip, and sooner or later we would need to refinance the household anyway.

At nine o’clock Hornschuch had put us in the picture. Thereafter, it was blow upon blow, like the fifth act of a melodrama. At nine twenty, the court usher turns up with a summons. At nine forty-five, Ganna’s Ebendorf lawyer invites Bettina and me by telephone to an ‘amicable’ discussion. At ten past ten a telegram from a Berlin lawyer with a demand to attend an all-day hearing on the such-and-such. At half past ten, a wild telephone call from Ganna: if we turned down the ‘amicable’ meeting, then all bets were off and nothing could avert the approaching calamity. I’d heard that sort of bombast before. Three minutes past eleven: express letter from a lawyer in Vienna, to the effect that Ganna Herzog had made over her allowance for the months of February and March to him. Eleven fifteen: a messenger with a note from Ganna repeating her phoned ultimatum, but in a form and using expressions that cause Bettina, now suddenly up on the brazen intricacies of the Ganna method, to shudder. The letter was addressed to her; she was the first to read it. She understands, full of repugnance, the knife-jabbing either-or in Ganna’s letter, but the claws have never come so close to her as now. She wants clarity, and calls Hornschuch. This is no harmless chit-chat, he tells her; Ganna is talking openly down in the village, wherever she meets her saloon bar friends, not only about the bigamous relationship in which I am allegedly living, but also about the ‘wangled’ leave to marry Bettina. What she meant by that was the expedited permission to remarry which I obtained from the consulate — an utterly lawful procedure, but which to Ganna’s criminally fouled brain lets it appear as though Bettina and I had obtained permission by false information and forged papers; a wonderful opportunity to squeeze off a coup de grâce in our direction. Bettina, who that morning is not feeling her best and brightest, is scared by the possible consequences: the malicious tittle-tattle, the confrontation with envy, jealousy and the burning embers of hatred. Hornschuch tries to ease her mind. She reads out one or two particularly informative sentences from Ganna’s squib. When she hears his reply: ‘Excellent: people will draw their conclusions from that,’ she all but slams down the receiver. ‘No,’ she cries disbelievingly into the mouthpiece. ‘They won’t draw the right conclusions at all. You forget that the woman’s name is Herzog.’ Pause. Thereupon Hornschuch again, drawling: ‘All right, then. Whatever you say.’

When I walk into the blue salon she’s lying on the sofa, swathed in blankets, looking pale and chilly. On foggy days she’s only a shadow of herself, and this day would be black as pitch, even if it were cloudless. I look mutely down at her; suddenly she says:

‘I’ve decided to speak to Ganna.’

I look at her as if she were mad. Suddenly she pulls herself up into a sitting position.

‘I’m going to ask her up, and I’m going to talk to her,’ she repeats in a high treble which reminds me of Helmut’s little squeaky voice, and which is always a sign with her that she’s nearing the end of her tether.

‘Why? What would be the use,’ I begin.

‘I’ve made a mistake,’ the high voice jingles back. ‘I can’t absolve myself … I thought I didn’t need to notice her … I was lazy, I was bad … It must be possible to get her attention with some human utterance … from woman to woman maybe …’

I stare at her in dismal surprise. ‘Do you really think that will work? You know how I kept … over all those years …’

She interrupts me. ‘At least I have to give it a try. I must be able to tell myself I tried.’

She jots down a couple of lines, and sends the gardener with a note to the inn in Ebendorf where Ganna is staying. A pleasurable shudder goes through Ganna when she reads the invitation to come up to the Buchegger estate. At last! Have the fools come to their senses? Have they seen the error of their ways? Or are they just running scared? She plunges to the telephone to talk to Bettina. She is so terribly excited, it’s hard to understand what she’s saying. She would love to have a conversation, she tootles, but not in the house, oh no, not that, but in some neutral place, to her heart’s content, and of course with her lawyer present. No lawyers, says Bettina with crisp decisiveness, absolutely not; if Ganna has inhibitions about coming to the house, she will meet her on the road and walk with her. Ganna gives in. They agree a time. An hour later — by now it’s a quarter to one — when Bettina sees Ganna on the snow-covered village road, in violation of the agreement, in the company of her lawyer, she stops dead. Her posture expresses such rigid unapproachability that the gentleman decides to bow and turn back. Not without a tasteless remark. Since he’s among the dozen or so lawyers working on Ganna’s legal challenge, he thinks, hat in hand, he owes her a word of apology:

‘I hope, dear Madam, you don’t assume I am working against the happiness of your marriage.’

To which Bettina replies — addressing her words to thin air:

‘I’d kindly ask you to leave the happiness of my marriage out of it.’

And with a gesture invites Ganna to proceed.

Robbed of her legal adviser and hence of her poise, Ganna is suddenly rather piano. Silently she shuffles along beside the striding Bettina. She is wearing a black, crumpled cloche hat and a mottled fur. In her hand she carries the capacious leather bag which goes everywhere with her. It contains all the files and documents she might require, much as a travelling salesman has his samples and price list. Whenever she runs into an acquaintance of any degree, she fills them in with tumbling garrulousness as to the state of her case, pulls out the deed, her bundled writs, the various legal opinions, the official documents relating to the Buchegger estate, comforting letters from her supporters, and waxes so prolix that she no longer remembers where she is, where she’s coming from, where she’s going, or whom she’s talking to.

Bettina, chatting — although chatting is really the last thing she feels like — glances at her from time to time. It’s thirteen years since she’s last seen Ganna; since that teatime meeting of disagreeable memory. Think of everything that happened in between! A whole lifetime. Beautiful things, noble things, pure things, indescribable joys, little Caspar Hauser, who would have imagined it — but also bad things, wretchedness, bitterness and an irreparable loss. Whether the woman walking beside her can guess any of it? Surely not: she doesn’t sense things, she grabs; people like that are purblind. She even walks like a blind person. How wretched she looks. If only it were possible to help her. It can’t feel good to be in her shoes. Someone like that is quite unapproachable, rigidly stuck inside themselves …

As she shows Ganna in, helps her out of her coat, conducts her to the living room and offers her a small snack, which Ganna gobbles down with grateful little exclamations, she keeps looking at her. With the crest of orange-dyed hair under which grey strands peek out as from under a wig, she looks like a peculiar idol. You would hardly notice she’s over fifty. Her form is compact, but a little thickened, her facial expressions and movements vibrate with an eerie force of will. The intensity of her regard is almost frightening. It shows an illimitable desire to dominate.

Eventually, Bettina and Ganna start talking. Suddenly Bettina takes Ganna’s hand — her tiny, freckled, ancient hand, really, just exactly as she’d wanted to take it so many years ago — she takes it and she says:

‘Woman! Woman! What are you doing! You’re destroying everything around you! Take pity on yourself, why don’t you!’

At that Ganna looks at her in shock, her mouth quivers, her eyelids tremble, she cries. She nods — a sort of pagoda — to herself and she cries, cries, cries.

‘I have to,’ she stammers, ‘what else can I do?’

What else can she do! And again Bettina thinks: poor, poor soul, what is she that we are so frightened of her? Suddenly she has so much courage and confidence, she feels she can get anything she wants from Ganna. She chooses her words terribly carefully, so as not to hurt her. She is tender, considerate, sisterly, even though inside she is continually fighting down feelings of nausea and dread; but I mustn’t give in to that, she tells herself, everything is at stake here. Also, she tells herself the woman must have something; there must be something to her to explain how the man lived with her for nineteen years. This something is what she wants to locate and dig up and touch and address herself to: there it is, woman, the thing you owe him: decency, dignity, reasonableness, gratitude — yes, a little gratitude, there it is, hold onto it, can you feel it? And with a mixture of childishness and superiority she proceeds to court Ganna — as an older, experienced friend might. But Ganna turns suspicious right away and, when Bettina talks about giving in, she arches her back with the customary retort: ‘Why should I have to give in? I’ve been giving in all my life.’ And when Bettina talks about my worries, which are hanging over her and me like heavy clouds, Ganna takes it as a bad joke and replies with her cunning I-know-better smile that she had certain information that I was hoarding a large fortune in foreign banks. Bettina claps her hands at this; she has to laugh, she can’t help it, and that gives Ganna pause, and she stammers; something undefined in the regard and expression of the younger woman strikes her as being true — albeit in a dim and washed-out way, and almost fading back into oblivion again, because how can she live with such an inconvenient truth. It’s impossible, she thinks, with a puzzling pout, as if she’d been offended by the contact with truth; perhaps his life is no bed of roses, and she murmurs a couple of mildly sympathetic words. But when Bettina reproaches her for the indignity of mounting a legal challenge to my divorce and our marriage, and says that she is doing herself irreparable damage in the eyes of all decent people, then she gets angry: ‘Now I must draw the line there, Bettina, you’re quite mistaken about that,’ and she rattles off the names of a score of friends who are standing by her, and would be with her through thick and thin. Bettina cuts her off; suddenly she’s the stern judge, slender and upright, stressing moral order, natural trust, without which the whole world would fall apart. At that Ganna is alarmed; she sobs pitifully and says she could do nothing else, people were so mean to her, every single day began and ended in despair, no one had as much goodwill as she did, or loved goodness and nobility as she did, she yearned so deeply for a little happiness and a little respect; what was she to do? What did Bettina want? Drop it, says Bettina, stop fighting! And she takes the sobbing woman in her arms, however difficult it is for her, feels her wiry hair, the utterly alien skin, the painfully other smell, the smell of unaired clothes that have lain around in suitcases, the smell of cheap powder and cheap scent, of trains and dirty hotel rooms; she takes her in her arms and talks to her sweetly: ‘But you just keep making things worse for yourself. Everything you try to prevent keeps happening. It crumbles away in your hands and when you reach for it it turns against you, don’t you know that?’ Ganna, dissolved in tears, says through her teeth, yes, she thinks so too, she can see what mistakes she has made. She says it audibly and aloud; it’s the first time in her conscious life that she’s admitted to having made mistakes. Bettina pricks up her ears; she appreciates the gravity of what is happening, she thinks something true has happened, she won’t let her go, she spends fully seven hours closeted with her, from one o’clock till eight at night, and they come to a sort of agreement, which is immediately put into writing and signed by them both. Ganna will be paid a part of the sums she is suing for and where the figures have not simply been plucked out of thin air, in instalments (Bettina itemizes the sums in question); the payments for Doris will go to her as previously; I will reach out my conciliatory hand to her, and we will support her in any way possible and cease to cut her. In return, Ganna promises to withdraw all pending claims, to lift the block on my account and other legal distraints, and expedite the divorce in a German court.

After this pact has been concluded, Bettina calls me into the room. Ganna walks towards me, her arms outstretched, wailing: ‘Alexander, you look awful, what’s the matter with you!’ I ignore it, but catch my reflection in the mirror in passing. ‘We’ve been busy,’ says Bettina, and points to the piece of paper with the two signatures on her desk. I look at Bettina, look at Ganna, say nothing. Then Ganna comes out with a plea. She would like some money. She admits glumly that she can’t even pay her bill at the hotel. Bettina shakes her head. ‘First you must do what you promised, Ganna,’ she says, motioning with her chin at the piece of paper on the desk. Meanwhile, not attending to her piercing admonitory look, I had pulled out my wallet and passed Ganna three notes, a full third of the sum she should only have been paid after fulfilling the points on the agreement. Bettina turned away with a despondent look. She understood the idiotic mistake right away. I might have known: if Ganna has money in her hands, she’ll forget the agreement, signature, promise, oath, the lot. Bettina understood my gesture — what was there about me that she didn’t understand — thus: begone, begone, begone; money, begone, woman, begone; but, she wondered, is it possible to be so thoughtless, so unthinking, so destructive with regard to the nervous resources and humanitarian work of another?

I walk Ganna to the door. She stops on the doorstep and looks at me with big eyes full of reproach and complaint. I bow, take her hand and press it to my lips. Bettina is barely able to disguise her astonishment. What is he doing now, she thinks, why is he kissing her hand? Well, this is too much for her to understand. Again, it’s a case of ‘begone, begone, begone’. It’s a farcical gesture of respect, by which Ganna becomes a stranger to me, a stranger in this house, a stranger in my world. An instinctive act in the form of an empty ceremony that means nothing but the last inner break with Ganna.

THE DEVIL RIDES OVER THE RUINS

The upshot of this turbulent happening was — nothing at all. My account was not unblocked and the distraints not taken off. There was no mention of the German divorce. But surely you don’t think Ganna was responsible for the breach of promise? Please. She washed her hands so assiduously in innocence that the bubbles got everywhere. Did she not give her lawyer in Ebendorf ‘appropriate instructions’? Did he not overweeningly, for ‘certain jurisprudential technicalities’, refuse to carry out her instructions? Are you sure that Hornschuch didn’t offer ‘passive resistance’ for obscure motives of his own? Hornschuch? What did he do? We’re not told. The mere claim is sufficient. Then, in a pedantic memorandum to Bettina: ‘Everyone knows that I am entirely scrupulous in all my dealings. I indignantly reject the claim that I didn’t stick to the terms of our agreement; there can be no doubt that in this, as in every previous instance, it was the other party that is in violation.’ Thus Ganna. And finally, the latest sanction, a veritable somersault of condescension: she can only make up her mind about granting the German divorce at the end of a trial year, once she has been convinced that my offer of peace and friendship is in good faith. The badger slips out of its sett, leaves its little malodorous pile and grins to itself when the dogs bark.

Bettina, though, felt like someone who with mortal daring and the last of her strength has carried a person out of a burning house, only to be spat at by them afterwards. She was unable to get over it. She suffered a strangely Bettina-esque collapse, very quiet, very discreet, but every bit as bad as a serious illness.

In sum: fourteen court orders, twenty-two payment orders, eleven forced sales, three official valuations of the Buchegger estate, four suits for defamation, two suits before the wardship authorities, five temporary injunctions, distraint of my car, forced sale of my desk, fifty-seven lawyers’ letters in the space of six weeks, the blocking of my account with my publisher since I am unable to pay Ganna’s monthly allowance any more and my earnings have dwindled to next to nothing; Ganna goes to court against my publisher; Ganna in Berlin, Ganna in Munich, Ganna in the district capital, Ganna in Ebendorf, always unexpected wherever she goes, as though she travelled everywhere by aeroplane; always with sword drawn, always gurgling in the fists of usurers; offers of conciliation, financial plans; yelling I had better make it up to her, or else …

Not one stone was left standing on another.

Ganna’s legal bills alone amount to a fortune. When I think that these monstrous amounts are there to pay for her mercenaries in her war against me, that the money I scrape together month after month literally by the sweat of my brow all goes to the avenging fury to keep her army of lawyers together, then the whole world has turned into a grisly farce, a dance of death starring forty law offices and their entire staffs of typists and stenographers, legal drafters and researchers. When I turn to Ferry and ask him to try and make his mother see sense before it’s too late, he drives up from Milan where he works as an engineer in an automobile factory and implores her by all that’s holy to desist from her lunacy. She goes wild. She accuses him, her own son, of being in Bettina’s employ. When news of it reaches my ears, it makes me feel as though the devil is shaking my living soul out of my body.

But a wonderful thing has also happened since then. From a certain vantage point, it was a big experience for me. It began with Bettina saying to me one day: ‘You know, you’re not up to this. It’s killing you. Take a look at yourself. From now on, I’m going to take the whole matter in hand myself.’ Such resolutions, with her, were the outcome of lengthy and mature reflection. They were always followed up. Once she had taken a decision, she saw it through with implacable consequence. Her force of will has something shining and compelling about it. A busy nature through and through; only facts command her respect; at bottom her spirit doesn’t like dreamers; and I have often noted to my surprise that, while seeming to dream, she was actually thinking — and not in any loose sense of the word, but with philosophical stringency and in strict chains of logic. Suddenly the feeling had come over her that, in spite of her better self, she had led a pampered princess’s life for years of balmy ease, a life on the sidelines; she flushed red with shame. From one moment to the next she changed. That was her gift; that was the miraculous thing about her before which I stood awestruck and uncomprehending. To anyone who lives entirely in contemplation, transformation in action is a mystery. From one moment to the next she dropped everything as if it had never existed — her music, her violin, her books, her correspondence with friends, her pretty things — everything that made life tolerable in the wild uplands, as she had called it in brief fits of irritation. Yes, even little Caspar Hauser was forced to get by on his own; and without holding anything back, without allowing herself any pleasures or distractions, she gave herself over to this one thing. She went to work radically. She studied the contracts, the documents, the relevant laws and ordinances. She sat closeted with Hornschuch for hours, whole days at a time. She replied to the writs and the lawyers’ letters, dealt with the courts, with the tax authorities, oversaw the finances and reformed our whole household, as to whose sloppiness her eyes had finally been opened, with the strictness of a paid cost-cutter. Day and night she was on duty, to protect me from ambushes and sudden attacks. Every attack from Ganna she warded off with an adroitness and care as though she had been in jurisprudence for decades. Her clear intellect, her intuitive understanding of real life always showed her the one and only way that could be followed. There was no danger she was afraid of, she shunned no strain, she didn’t try to keep her time, her sleep, her health; the moral courage that filled her to the fingertips seemed to give her an almost masculine appetite for struggle. She went to Vienna to deal with persons of influence whose support might be important; she went to Berlin to take on a lawyer and to put my publisher in the picture as to what really was going on; and however speedily and instantaneously she made up her mind, still she never neglected to tell me what she was doing and to obtain my consent, so that the Ganna corner — suddenly alarmed — weren’t able to claim that she was running my affairs by herself, without my knowledge and approval. She weighed up everything in her mind, she caught the tiniest advantage; with nervous vigilance she did everything to take the wind out of the enemy’s sails. The whole woman was fight and flame. It was a spectacle the like of which I had never seen nor hoped to see.

And yet it had a frightening, even an alarming aspect too. Bettina was tied to me in a different way from the Ganna world. In the spirit of the anti-Ganna, I could say. She was the absolutely sane human being. The person destiny gave me so that I could share in truth and reality, instead of perishing in lies and illusion. That was the purpose of everything we’d gone through, if an existence like mine could ever be crowned by anything like a purpose. And now — was it a trick of fate, was it a higher testing, whose outcome still hung in the balance — now the anti-Ganna was being drawn into Ganna’s orbit, was being asked — against her inner nature — to fight with Ganna’s weapons, to confront her, to shadow her in her darknesses and thickets. Could that all be to the good? Was it good of itself? ‘My Diana, tenderly rapt,’ I had once written about Bettina; but would I not end up becoming the murderer of my tender goddess? True, Diana is the huntress, but her hunting-ground is not populated by phantoms, she doesn’t hunt nightmares, she doesn’t suffer her course to be set by Ganna ghosts — if she did, she would herself become the quarry.

And then, as if events were only waiting to confirm these endlessly frightened thoughts, I started to see Bettina’s slow physical collapse. She became sensitive, irritable, prone to sudden fevers; she lost weight; sometimes she gave the impression some unknown toxin had been administered to her. Her mainspring was broken. In my service. Through my fault. In a certain sense, through my fault. So Ganna was the stronger after all. The nightmare had bewitched my Diana on her campaign and made her lame. From the dreadful moment I first saw it, just three weeks ago now, I had only one concern, which was how to lead Bettina back out of the poisoned land. But when I talked to her about it, she laughed at me. The courage that inspirited her was like a glass bell, melodious, uncontaminated, ringing pure.

Yesterday, 26 June, I received for the fourth time a summons to give the oath of disclosure which Ganna was trying to extort from me. I content myself with recording what happened. It was all to do with the alleged hidden fortune I am supposed to have tucked away somewhere. On previous occasions, I had objected to swearing such an oath. Once, taking Bettina’s advice, I had gone away; another time I brought a doctor’s letter. I have never sworn an oath in my life. It struck me as monstrous, a violation of honour, of sense, of all human feeling, that I was to use the name of God to assure Ganna that I did not own the treasures that she, in really the most literal way, wanted to squeeze out of me. I admit I was foolish enough to be afraid of it, as of an attempt on my life. Bettina shook her head over me. She said: ‘What’s the matter, what’s so frightful about it? You don’t have anything to hide. It’s just an empty formality.’ I answered that it was much more than a formality; it was an act of duress, in which the spoken word became fact; and by swearing it you gave yourself utterly into the hands of someone like Ganna. She would never drop her suspicion; every single day, every time I spent a banknote, she and her associates would sniff it; she would nail me to the sworn oath every bit as much as to my signature on the marriage contract thirty years before. Bettina said: ‘Perhaps you’re right. Then the only other possibility is that you go away somewhere. Go away.’

But where was I to go? Back up into the mountains? […] If such a way doesn’t lead to death or to an utterly changed life, then it is a farce. After the conversation with Bettina I wandered around the house and garden all afternoon, I was unable to read, to work, to think, I couldn’t even properly see. Basically it isn’t that endlessly foolish oath that frightens me, it’s all the futility, all that endlessly foolish futility that is destroying my life. […]

But in the end it’s just words on paper, which can be turned and twisted and perhaps challenged by a higher instance. There remains a residue of division and human frailty. The other day I said to Bettina this whole enterprise feels as though I have a hammer that will not do what I want, which is to drive one nail into another, smashing the head of one, the point of the other.

So what do I need? A hand to help me past an obstacle whose nature I cannot ascertain. A human breath to imbue me with the spirit of understanding. Understanding would surely illumine me like a flash of lightning ripping apart the sheet of darkness. And then the devil riding over the wreckage of my life would disappear with a howl into the gulch of his hell. A slightly overdone image. But then I’ve lost all sense of measure. […]