The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man

THE MARRIED COUPLE

BUSINESS IS SO BAD at the moment that sometimes, if I’m just killing time in the office, I take the sample case and go see the clients myself. I’d also been meaning to go and pay a visit to N. for a while, because we used to work together all the time and in the past year, I don’t know why, it’s faded almost to nothing. Changes like that actually don’t have to happen for a reason; in today’s unstable conditions, a nothing, a mood, can make the difference, and in the same way a nothing, a few words, can get everything back on track. But it is a bit tricky going to see N.; he’s an old man, he’s been very sick recently, and even though he’s still in control of all his affairs, he hardly ever goes into the office any more; if you want to speak to him, you have to go to his apartment, and that’s the kind of business trip you’re happy to keep postponing.

Anyway, yesterday evening at six I set off for where he lives; it was certainly past the usual time for going to see someone, but it needed to be looked at from a business angle, not as a social visit. N. was at home; they told me in the front room that he’d just come back in from a walk with his wife and gone in to see his son, who wasn’t well and was lying in bed. I was told to go through; I hesitated at first, but then that feeling was overruled by the desire to get this painful visit over as quickly as possible, and so, still in my hat and coat and carrying my sample case, I let myself be led through a dark corridor into a dimly lit room where a small group had gathered.

I suppose out of instinct, the first thing I noticed was a sales rep I know all too well and who is also partly a competitor. He’d sneaked his way up here even before I had. He’d found a comfortable spot right beside the invalid’s bed, as if he were the doctor; in his lovely, fluffed-up, open jacket, he sat in his chair like he was in charge of the room; I’ve never met anyone so brazen; I thought the invalid might be thinking something similar as he lay there with fever-flushed cheeks and occasionally glanced up at him. Incidentally, he’s not young any more, the son, he’s a man my age with a short beard that’s become a little unkempt in his illness. Old man N. is big and broad-shouldered, and I was shocked to see that his slow suffering had made him gaunt, bent and uncertain. He was standing there just as he’d come in, still in his furs, and mumbling something at his son. His wife, small and fragile, albeit very animated, even if only towards him—she never looked at the rest of us—was busy helping him out of the furs, which was difficult because of the height difference between them, but she finally managed it. Perhaps the real difficulty was that N. was very impatient and kept reaching out his hands to demand the armchair, which his wife quickly pushed across to him once the furs were off. She took the furs away herself, even though she almost disappeared under them, and carried them out of the room.

Now it seemed that my moment had come, or rather, it hadn’t come and was probably never going to come; but if I was going to attempt something, I had to do it right away because I had the feeling that the circumstances were only going to get even less conducive to a business conversation; settling in here until the end of time, which seemed to be the sales rep’s plan, was not my style; and it wasn’t as if I was going to hold back on his account. So without much ado I started to present my thinking, even though I noticed that N. wanted to speak to his son. Unfortunately, I’ve got this bad habit that, if I work myself up with talk—something that can happen very quickly and that happened even faster than usual in that sickroom—I stand up and start pacing up and down while I speak. It’s no bad thing when you’re in your own office, but in a stranger’s home it really is a bit much. I couldn’t get myself under control, especially because I didn’t have my usual cigarette to hand. Now, everyone’s got their bad habits, and I would say that at least mine aren’t as bad as the sales rep’s. What can you say about someone who, for example, slides his hat slowly back and forth across his knees, but then suddenly, for no reason, puts it on his head; he’d take it off again right away, as if there was some mistake, but then a moment later he had it on his head again, and he kept repeating this routine, on and off. A performance like that you have to say is unacceptable. But in this moment, it doesn’t bother me, I pace up and down, completely caught up in my affairs, and ignore him; some people might have been thrown entirely off their stride by that hat business. Anyway, in my eagerness I don’t pay any attention to these distractions; in fact, I don’t pay any to anyone; of course I can see what’s happening but, so long as I’m not finished and not hearing any objections, I somehow don’t register it. So for example, I noticed that N. wasn’t very receptive to what I was saying; he had his hands on the armrests and was shifting awkwardly from side to side, not looking at me, but staring blankly into space, and his expression was as indifferent as if not a single word I was saying, nor even the fact that I was there, was getting through to him. I did see this distracted behaviour, which was far from encouraging, but I carried on talking regardless, as if there were some chance that the very advantageous offers I was presenting—I shocked myself with the concessions I made, concessions no one had asked for—as if this might bring everything back onto an even keel. It also gave me a certain satisfaction to see that the rep, as I noticed in passing, had finally left his hat alone and crossed his arms in front of his chest; my presentation, which was naturally also aimed at him, seemed to have put a big hole in his plans. And with the sense of well-being I got from that, I might have gone on talking even longer if the son, who until then I’d disregarded as irrelevant, abruptly lifted himself up in bed and shook his fist at me until I stopped. He apparently wanted to say something, or show us something, but didn’t have the strength. At first I thought he was just a bit delirious, but when I inadvertently glanced across at old N., I started to understand.

His eyes were open, glassy, bulging and only just still working, while he himself was shaking and leaning forward as if someone was pushing or hitting him in the back of the neck; his lower lip, his whole lower jaw, was hanging down loose away from his gums, his entire face seemed to be coming apart; he was still breathing, albeit heavily, but then he fell back into the chair as if liberated, closed his eyes, the expression of some great effort crossed his face at the last, and then he was gone. I quickly leapt over to him and took his cold, lifeless, shudder-inducing hand; there was no pulse. So, it was all over. An old man. May our own deaths come as easily. But there was so much that had to be done right now! And in this haste, what to do first? I looked around for help; but the son had pulled the covers over his head and you could hear his endless sobbing; the sales rep, cold as a frog, sat there in his chair, two steps from N., visibly determined to do nothing and wait for time to pass; so there was only me who might do something, and the thing to do was the hardest thing of all, namely to give his wife the news in some way she could take, that is, in some way that didn’t exist anywhere on earth.

She brought in—she was still in her street clothes; she hadn’t yet had time to change—she brought in a nightshirt that had been warmed on the oven and that she wanted her husband to put on. “He’s fallen asleep,” she said, smiling and shaking her head, when she found us in this tableau. And with the boundless trust of the innocent, she picked up the same hand that I’d just touched with revulsion and shame, kissed it with marital playfulness and—while the three of us stared—N. shifted, yawned, let her put the nightshirt on him, tolerated with ironic annoyance her tender criticisms about having overexerted himself on the long walk, and, strangely enough, in order to give a different reason for having fallen asleep, said something about being bored. Then, so as not to catch a chill going through into the other room, he lay down for a moment in the bed next to his son; his head was bedded down next to his son’s feet on a couple of cushions his wife quickly brought over. After what had just happened, I didn’t think there was anything odd about it. Then he asked for the evening paper, took it despite the presence of his guests, but didn’t yet start reading, just glanced across the pages and told us, with astonishing acumen, some deeply uncomfortable truths about the offers we’d made, all the while making a gesture with his hand as if throwing us away and clicking his tongue to show us what a bad taste our behaviour had left in his mouth. The sales rep couldn’t stop himself from making a few poorly judged remarks; even his dull senses seemed to feel that, after what had just happened, things had to be brought back on track in some way, but with his crude manners that was never going to work. I said my goodbyes quickly; I was almost grateful to the rep for being there; without him I might not have had the decisiveness to leave so fast.

In the hallway I met Frau N. Seeing the downtrodden figure she cut, I said straight out that she reminded me a little of my mother. And when she didn’t respond, I added, “Whatever you might say about it, she could work miracles. Things that we’d destroyed, she made whole again. I lost her when I was still a child.” I’d intentionally spoken very slowly and clearly because I suspected the old woman was hard of hearing. But she must have been all but deaf, because she asked me in reply, “And how does my husband look to you?” From the few words we exchanged as I left, I also realized that she had me mixed up with the sales rep; I wanted to believe that she would otherwise have been a bit more forthcoming.

Then I went down the stairs. The way down was harder than the way up had been, and that hadn’t been easy either. Oh, what futile paths we’re compelled to tread as we go about our business, and how much further we have to carry our burdens.