The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

THE VERDICT

IT WAS A SUNDAY MORNING at the height of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young businessman, was sitting in his room on the first floor of one of those low, straight-forwardly built houses that run in a long line beside the river, differing from each other only in their height or colour. He’d just finished writing a letter to a childhood friend and folded it shut with whimsical attentiveness, then, resting his elbows on the desk, he looked out of the window at the river, the bridge and the pale green hills on the other bank.

He was thinking about how this friend, dissatisfied with the way his life was going at home, had all but fled to Russia several years ago. These days he ran a business in St Petersburg, which had got off to a very good start but now seemed to have been stagnating for some time, something the friend complained about on his increasingly rare visits. He was fruitlessly working himself into the ground in a far-off country, his foreign-looking beard only patchily covering his familiar face, which was developing a yellowish tinge that hinted at some emerging illness. From what he said, he didn’t have any real connections out there among the expatriate community, nor much social contact with Russian families, and so was preparing himself for permanent bachelorhood.

What could you write to a man like that, who had obviously made the wrong choices, someone you could sympathize with but not help? Should you maybe advise him to come home, to move his life back here, to take up all his old friendships again—there was no reason he couldn’t—and in general to put his trust in the fact that his friends would help him? But doing that would be tantamount to saying—and the more gently it was put, the more hurtful it would be—that all his efforts so far had failed, that he should finally let it go, that now he had to come back and let himself be stared at by everybody who knew he’d come back for good, that his friends had known better than him what to do with their lives and that actually he was just an overgrown child who should concentrate on imitating those who’d made a success of staying where they were. And was is it even certain that all the pain he’d have to go through would be worth it? Perhaps they wouldn’t even be able to convince him to come back—he said himself that he didn’t understand his home country any more—and in that case he’d stay abroad despite everything, embittered by his friends’ advice and alienated even further from them. Whereas if he did take the suggestion to come back and then ended up downtrodden at home—of course not on purpose, but just because it turned out like that—if he couldn’t get on with his friends or get by without them, found himself humiliated, friendless and more truly displaced than before, wouldn’t it be much better for him if he’d stayed abroad? Could you really expect, given all these considerations, that he’d be able to make a go of things back here?

That was why, if you wanted to keep up a correspondence with him, you couldn’t give him any actual news, the kind you would unthinkingly write to even your most distant acquaintance. His friend hadn’t been home for more than three years, offering the unconvincing explanation that it was because of the uncertain political situation in Russia, which apparently wouldn’t permit a small businessman to leave the country for a few weeks even while hundreds of thousands of Russians were traipsing around all over the world. For Georg, however, a lot had changed in those three years. The death of Georg’s mother, which had happened about two years ago and prompted Georg and his father to move back in together, was something he’d told his friend, who’d expressed his condolences in a letter so dry that it could only be because the sorrow of something like that becomes completely unimaginable from far away. Since that time, Georg had thrown himself more purposefully into the family business, as he had into everything else. Perhaps it was because, while his mother was alive, his father’s insistence on managing things at work had held Georg back from really taking it on as his own; perhaps it was because his father, although he did still come to the office, had now become more withdrawn; perhaps, and in fact very probably, certain far happier events had had an important role to play, but in any case, the business had made unexpected strides in these past two years, they’d had to double the staff, turnover had gone up fivefold and even greater gains were there for the taking.

The friend had no idea about this altered state of affairs. Previously, maybe the last time had been in that condolence letter, he’d tried to persuade Georg to emigrate to Russia and written at length about the opportunities there were for Georg’s line of business in St Petersburg. The numbers he’d mentioned were vanishingly small compared with the level that Georg’s business had already reached. But Georg hadn’t wanted to tell his friend about his commercial successes at the time, and to do so retrospectively really would seem bizarre.

So Georg limited himself to writing about the meaningless happenings that drift randomly into your mind if you sit and think on a quiet Sunday. All he wanted was to avoid disturbing the image of home that his friend must have created and come to terms with during his long absence. That’s how Georg ended up telling his friend about some completely uninteresting person getting engaged to an equally uninteresting girl three times in three different letters sent quite far apart, eventually piquing his friend’s interest in this strange affair.

But Georg would far rather write about things like that than admit that he himself had got engaged to a Miss Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family, about a month earlier. He often spoke to his fiancée about this friend and the unusual written relationship he had with him. “So that means he won’t come to our wedding,” she said, “even though I’ve got the right to meet all your friends.”

“I don’t want to put him out,” said Georg. “Don’t get me wrong, he would probably come if we asked him, but he’d feel pressured into it and annoyed, maybe jealous of me and certainly unhappy, and afterwards he’d have to go back to Russia by himself, feeling like he’d never be able to put that unhappiness aside, let alone overcome it. By himself—do you remember how that felt?”

“But might he not hear about our wedding from someone else?”

“I can’t guarantee that he won’t but, given the way he lives, it’s unlikely.”

“If that’s what your friends are like, Georg, you shouldn’t have got engaged in the first place.”

“Well, that’s both our fault, but now we’re here I wouldn’t have it any other way.” And when she, breathing quickly under his kisses, said, “But actually it does bother me,” he thought that it might be harmless after all to tell his friend everything. ‘This is who I am and he has to take me as I am,’ he said to himself. ‘I can’t take a pair of scissors to myself and cut out a person who’d be better suited to being his friend.’

And in the long letter he wrote that Sunday morning he did indeed tell his friend that the engagement had taken place, in the following words: “I’ve saved the best news for last. I’m engaged to a Miss Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a comfortably-off family that only moved here after you left, so the name probably won’t mean anything to you. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunity to tell you more about her, but for now just know that I’m very happy and that this changes nothing about our friendship, except that instead of having a completely normal friend you now have a very happy one. Also, in my fiancée, who sends you her love and will write to you herself soon, you now have a sincere female confidante, which is no small thing for a bachelor. I know there are all kinds of reasons that keep you from visiting us, but wouldn’t my wedding be the right moment to throw all the obstacles out of the window for once? But be that as it may, don’t worry about me and just do what you think is best.”

With this letter in his hand Georg sat at his desk a long time, facing the window. An acquaintance walking down the alley said hello and Georg barely responded, just giving him an absent smile.

Finally he put the letter in his pocket and, leaving his room, went straight across the little hallway into his father’s, which he hadn’t been in for months. There was no need to, since he was constantly in his father’s company at work, they had their lunch together at a local eatery every day and, although they did separate things in the evening, if Georg wasn’t out with friends or visiting his fiancée, as he usually was these days, they’d sit together for a little while, each with his own newspaper, in their shared living room.

Georg was amazed by how dark his father’s room was even on such a sunny morning. He realized for the first time how big a shadow was cast by the high wall on the other side of their narrow courtyard. His father was sitting by the window in a corner that had been decorated with various mementoes of Georg’s late mother and reading a newspaper, which he was holding at an angle to try and compensate for some weakness in his eyes. On the table were the leftovers from his breakfast, which he seemed to have hardly touched.

“Ah, Georg!” said his father and went over to him at once. His heavy dressing gown swung open as he walked, its ends billowing around him. ‘My father is still a giant of a man,’ thought Georg.

“It’s so dark in here,” he said.

“Yes, it’s dark, right enough,” responded his father.

“And you’ve got the window shut as well?”

“I prefer it that way.”

“When it’s so nice and warm outside,” Georg said as if carrying on with his previous comment, and sat down.

His father tidied away the breakfast dishes and put them on top of a sideboard.

“I actually just wanted to tell you,” Georg went on, distractedly following the old man’s movements, “that I’ve sent the news of my engagement to St Petersburg.” He pulled the letter slightly out of his pocket and let it fall back in.

“Why to St Petersburg?” asked his father.

“My friend there, you remember,” said Georg and tried to catch his father’s eye. ‘He’s so different at work,’ he thought, ‘look how solid he is at home, sitting there with his arms crossed.’

“Yes. Your friend,” said his father with emphasis.

“You know, Father, that at first I didn’t want to tell him about my engagement. Just to be considerate, not for any other reason. You know yourself he’s a difficult person. I said to myself, he might well find out from somebody else that I’m engaged, although it’s hardly likely given how solitary he is—there’s nothing I can do about that—but he won’t hear it directly from me.”

“And now you’ve thought it over again?” his father asked, putting the big newspaper on the window sill, his glasses on the newspaper and his hand on top.

“Yes, now I’ve thought it over again. If he’s a good friend to me, I said to myself, then the happy news that I’ve got engaged should make him happy too. And that’s why I stopped hesitating and told him about it. But before I post the letter, I wanted to mention it to you.”

“Georg,” said his father with a toothless grimace, “listen to me. You’ve come to me with this thing to ask my advice about it. That speaks in your favour, no doubt about it. But it means nothing, less than nothing, if you don’t tell me the whole truth about it. I don’t want to stir things up that shouldn’t come into it. Some less than pleasant things have happened since the death of dear Mother. Perhaps the time will come for them, too, and perhaps it will come sooner than we expect. I’m missing things in the business, perhaps it’s not that things are being done behind my back—I’m not at all saying that they’re being done behind my back—I don’t have the strength any more, my memory’s going, I can’t keep my eye on all the moving parts like I used to. That’s partly nature taking its course, first of all, and secondly the death of darling Mother perhaps hit me harder than it did you. But since we’re talking about this now, about this letter, I ask you, Georg, don’t lie to me. This is such a trivial question, hardly worth speaking about, so don’t lie to me. Do you really have this friend in St Petersburg?”

Georg stood up in embarrassment. “Let’s leave my friends for now. A thousand friends wouldn’t be enough to replace my father. You know what I think? You’re not taking care of yourself enough. And age takes a toll. You’re indispensable to me at work, but if the business ever put your health at risk, I’d close it down tomorrow. That goes without saying. We’ve got to start you on a different way of life. From the ground up. You’re sitting here in the dark, and in the living room it’s nice and bright. You’re picking at your breakfast instead of keeping up your strength. You’re sitting here with the window shut when the fresh air would do you so much good. No, Father! I’m going to fetch the doctor and we’re going to do what he prescribes. We’re going to swap rooms: you can move into the front room, I’ll move in here. You won’t have to change anything, we’ll move all your things across with you. But there’s plenty of time for all that, just have a lie down for the time being, I’m sure you need some rest. Here, I’ll help you get undressed, you’ll see that I can do it. Or if you want to move into the front room right away, you can just get into my bed. That would be very sensible.”

Georg was standing close in front of his father, who had let his head with its messy white hair sink to his chest.

“Georg,” his father said quietly, without moving.

Georg immediately knelt in front of his father. In his tired face he saw overlarge pupils in half-shut eyes, looking at him.

“You don’t have a friend in St Petersburg. You’ve always been a practical joker and you haven’t held back even with me. How could you have a friend there, of all places? You can’t expect me to believe that.”

“Just think back, Father,” said Georg, helping his father out of his chair and taking his dressing gown off him while he stood there, really quite weak on his feet. “It was nearly three years ago, my friend was here visiting us. I remember that you didn’t like him very much. I ended up disowning him to you, it happened at least twice, even though he was sitting right there in my room. I thought that disliking him was completely understandable; after all, my friend can be quite odd. But then after that you finally had a very good chat with him. I remember being proud that you were listening to him, nodding your head and asking him questions. If you think back, you’ll be sure to remember. He was telling us these unbelievable stories about the Russian Revolution. About how once when he was on a business trip to Kiev he got caught up in some pandemonium and saw a priest on a balcony cut a bloody cross into the palm of his hand, hold it up and shout to the mob. I’ve even heard you tell that story yourself from time to time.”

Meanwhile Georg had managed to sit his father down again and carefully take off the pyjama trousers he wore over his linen underwear, as well as his socks. At the sight of the not particularly clean underwear, Georg began to reproach himself for neglecting his father. There was no doubt it was his responsibility to oversee the regular changing of his father’s underwear. How to arrange his father’s future was something he and his fiancée hadn’t yet explicitly discussed, because they’d tacitly assumed that his father would stay on alone in the old apartment. But now he quickly and firmly decided that he would take his father with him into his new household. On closer inspection, it almost seemed as if the care Georg would then arrange might already be too late.

He carried his father to bed. A horrible sensation came over him when he realized, as he took the few paces across the room, that his father was playing with the watch chain hanging from Georg’s chest. He held on to it so tightly that at first Georg couldn’t put him down.

But as soon as he was in bed everything seemed fine. He got under the covers himself and then pulled the blanket up past his shoulders. He looked up at Georg with a not unfriendly expression.

“Isn’t that right, you’re already starting to remember him?” asked Georg, nodding at him encouragingly.

“Am I properly covered up?” asked his father, as if he couldn’t check whether his feet were sticking out.

“So you’re very happy in bed,” said Georg, and rearranged the blanket into a better position.

“Am I properly covered up?” his father asked again, seeming to pay especially close attention to the answer.

“Just rest easy, you’re properly covered up.”

“No!” his father shouted almost before Georg had finished speaking, threw back the blanket with such force that it unfurled itself in mid-air, and stood upright on the bed. He lightly held on to the ceiling with one hand. “You wanted to cover me up, I know that, sunshine, but I’m not buried yet. And even if this is the last of my strength, it’s enough for you, too much for you. Of course I know your friend. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve strung him along all these years. Why else? Do you really think I never wept for him? That’s why you lock yourself in your office, you’re not to be disturbed, the boss is busy—just so you can send your lying little letters to Russia. But luckily no one needs to teach a father how to see through his son. Now that you think you’ve done him down, done him so far down you can sit your arse on him and he won’t even move, my little lord of a son has decided he will marry!”

Georg gazed up at this terrible vision of his father. The fate of his friend in St Petersburg, whom his father suddenly knew so well, struck him as never before. He saw him lost in the Russian expanses. He saw him at the door of his empty, looted shop. Among the wreckage of the shelves, the shredded goods, the broken gas fittings, he was only just still standing. Why did he have to move so far away!

“But look at me!” cried his father, and Georg, almost losing his mind, ran over to the bed to grab on to something, but faltered halfway there.

“Because she lifted up her skirt,” his father began to warble, “because she lifted up her skirt like this, that horrible tramp.” And to demonstrate what he meant, he lifted his nightshirt so high that you could see the scar from his war years on his thigh. “Because she lifted up her skirt like this and this and this, you threw yourself at her, and so that you can gratify yourself without any interruptions, you’ve disgraced Mother’s memory, betrayed your friend and tried to stick your father in bed so he can’t move a muscle. But can he still move or can’t he?”

He stood totally unsupported and kicked his legs. He beamed with insight.

Georg stood in a corner, as far as possible from his father. A long time ago he’d resolved to observe everything that happened completely and precisely, so that he couldn’t be taken by surprise if something came at him from behind or dropped on him from above. Now he remembered that long-forgotten resolution and promptly forgot it again, just as you can unwittingly pull a short thread out of the eye of a needle.

“But your friend hasn’t been betrayed!” his father cried, waving a finger back and forth to reinforce what he was saying. “I’ve been his representative here on the ground.”

“Clown!” Georg couldn’t stop himself from shouting; he recognized the damage at once and, too late, his eyes fixed, bit into his tongue so hard he flinched in pain.

“Yes, I’ve been clowning! Clowning! Good word! What other consolation is there for a widowed old father? Well—and for the moment let’s say you’re still my living son—what else is left for me, in my back room, hounded by disloyal staff, old to the marrow? While my son merrily swans around, closing deals that I prepared, falling over himself with smugness, and parading about in front of his own father with the reserved expression of an honourable gentleman! Do you think I didn’t love you—I, the one you came from?”

‘Now he’ll bend forward,’ thought Georg, ‘if only he’d fall and shatter into pieces!’ This phrase whistled through his head.

His father bent forward, but didn’t fall. Since Georg didn’t come closer, as he’d expected he would, he lifted himself up again.

“Stay where you are, I don’t need you! You think you’ve still got the strength to come over to me and that you’re just holding yourself back because that’s what you choose to do. How wrong you are! I’m still the stronger of us by far. If I’d been on my own I might have had to give way, but Mother passed on her strength to me, I’ve made a lovely alliance with your friend, I’ve got your clients here in my pocket!”

‘Even in his shroud he’s got pockets!’ Georg said to himself, and thought that this observation would make it impossible for his father to exist. Only for an instant did he hold that thought, then as always he forgot it entirely.

“Just try coming to see me with your fiancée on your arm! I’ll swat her aside like you can hardly imagine!”

Georg frowned as if doubting that were true. His father just nodded towards Georg’s corner, asserting what he’d said.

“I found it so funny today when you came to ask whether you should write to your friend about your engagement! He already knows everything, you stupid boy, he knows everything! I’ve been writing to him, because you forgot to take my writing things away. That’s why he hasn’t come for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you do yourself, he scrunches up your letters unread in his left hand while he holds up mine in his right!”

He swung his arm over his head in enthusiasm. “He knows everything a thousand times better!”

“Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to deride his father, but as he said the words, they came out sounding deadly earnest.

“For years I’ve been waiting for you to come to me with this question! Do you think I care about anything else? Do you think I read the paper? There!” And he tossed Georg a page from a newspaper that had somehow been carried with him into bed. An old paper with a name that Georg didn’t even recognize.

“How long you hesitated before you were finally ready! Your mother had to die, she didn’t live to see the happy day, your friend has been falling apart out there in Russia, even three years ago he was so sick it was all but over, and me, well, you can see what condition I’m in. You’ve still got eyes for that!”

“You ambushed me!” shouted Georg.

His father said pityingly: “You probably wanted to say that earlier. Now it doesn’t make sense any more.”

And louder: “So now you know what else there is besides you; before now you only knew about yourself! You were an innocent child, really, but as a man you’ve been a fiend! — So pay attention: I now sentence you to death by drowning!”

Georg felt chased out of the room, with the crash of his father falling onto the bed ringing in his ears. On the stairs, which he rushed down as if they were a smooth slope, he bowled into his cleaning woman, who was just going up to tidy the apartment for the morning. She shouted “Jesus!” and covered her face with her apron, but he was already gone. He burst out of the door and raced across the road towards the water. A moment later, he was gripping the railing like a starving man grips food. He swung himself over it like the excellent gymnast he’d been in his teenage years, to the pride of his parents. He clung on, his hands weakening, until between the railing’s posts he saw a bus approaching that would easily cover the noise of his fall, then cried out softly, “Dear parents, haven’t I always loved you?” and let himself drop.

Meanwhile an almost endless stream of traffic went over the bridge.