* Attributed to Pope Boniface VIII.
* Sometimes even the worthy Homer nods. Horace, Ars Poetica 359
* A flattish roll, marked on the top with a radial pattern of grooves.
* Friederich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), regarded in his time as a great religious poet, began The Messiah in 1745, completing it in 1773. Much influenced by Virgil and Milton, his odes and lyric verse helped inaugurate the golden age of German literature.
XIII
In which he appears as a benefactor.
He takes the part of an afflicted widow, but is finally obliged to strike her
because he is so sorry for her that he can do nothing else.
AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING HE WAS ABOUT TO TAKE A BATH.
He ran toward the bathroom just as he’d jumped out of bed, wearing short underpants, his chest and arms bare, no nightshirt, just pushing his feet into his green leather slippers.
In that old-fashioned apartment he had to pass through three rooms on the way.
In the third, which was a sort of reception room, stood a woman dressed from head to foot in black, heavily veiled.
At the sight of the total stranger Esti recoiled. He did not know how she could have gotten there.
His first thought was of his undressed condition. He pressed both hands to his hairy chest out of politeness.
The lady gave a squeal of alarm. She stepped back, bowing. She was appalled at meeting in this way the person whom she had called on so often and was now seeing in the flesh for the first time. She thought that this had ruined everything.
“I beg your pardon,” she apologized, embarrassed.
“What do you want?” asked Esti.
“Please,” she stammered, “if you don’t mind … perhaps I’d better come back later … I don’t know … I beg your pardon.”
“Please go into the hall.”
“This way?”
“That way,” said Esti brusquely, “in there.”
The woman floated off, like a black cloud that had been filling the room, and Esti went into the bathroom, where his lukewarm morning bath awaited him.
He rang the bell in a rage.
Along came the maid. She stopped at the bathroom door.
“Jolán,” he shouted in that direction, “Jolán! Have you all gone quite mad? You’re letting everybody in.”
“I didn’t let her in. It was Viktor.”
“Where did he put her?”
“In the hall.”
“But she was here, in here, I walked straight into her. It’s outrageous. What does she want?”
“She’s asking for you, sir. She’s been here several times.”
“What’s she after?”
“I don’t know. Something to do with literature, perhaps,” the maid added, naively.
“Something to do with literature,” repeated Esti. “Wants to sell her collected works. Scrounging. Some kind of swindler. Or a sneak thief. She could have taken her pick. Cleaned the place out. I’ve told you a thousand times, give beggars something and let them go and God bless. I only see people on Sundays from twelve to one. Never any other time. Understand? And then people who come have to be announced. I’m not in now. To anyone. I’ve died.”
“Yes, sir,” said the maid.
“What’s that?” asked Esti, somewhat startled at her accepting this so quickly and naturally. “So get rid of her. Tell her to come back Sunday. Between twelve and one.”
When she heard the water splashing as her master took his bath the maid went away. Her quiet steps rustled in the next room. Esti called after her:
“Jolán!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell her to wait.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be ready directly.”
He did not even soap himself but got out of the bath, dressed, and called into the anteroom.
The black-clad woman came in. Once more the reception room became full of her. The white glass chandelier, with all its bulbs burning on that overcast winter morning, dimmed because of her; she was like a black cloud.
Outside snow was falling softly.
“What can I do for you?” asked Esti.
The lady did not answer. She merely burst out weeping. She choked down her tears with a thin, whining, old woman’s whimper.
All that could be made out was “Help … help … help …”
So: assistance.
Meanwhile she lifted her veil to wipe her wet face. She had dark green eyes. Dark green eyes surrounded by frosted curls, which had not yet had time to become gray. Disordered, almost frenzied, these tresses burst from beneath the black rim of her hat.
“The widow,” thought Esti, “the widow brought down into the dust. Ghastly.”
The woman blew her nose loudly, paying no attention to the fact that this disfigured her, made her seem ridiculous. In her confusion she had brought her umbrella in with her, as if she dared not leave it outside. It was dripping a whole little pond onto the mirrorlike varnish of the floor.
Her shoes and clothes were soaking wet.
But where had she come from, from what quarter of the inhabited zone, what lousy prison, what suburban slum or wooden shack? And why to him, him of all people, without any introduction or letter of recommendation?
Because she knew him. Not personally. She knew his writing.
Esti realized that.
He could tell people that knew his writing.
The widow spoke. It was impossible for so good a man as he not to understand her.
“I’m not a good man,” Esti protested inwardly. “I’m a bad man. Well, not a bad man. Just like anybody else. The fact that I retain my old, pure feelings — only and exclusively for purposes of expression — is a trick of the trade, a piece of technical wizardry, like that of the anatomist who can keep a heart or a section of brain tissue that hasn’t had a feeling or a thought for ages in formaldehyde for years and years. Life has left me numb, like it does everybody who reaches a certain age.”
The caller alluded to the fact that she had read several of his books of verse.
“That’s different,” Esti continued his silent argument. “Let’s not confuse the issue. That’s literature. It’d be dreadful if everything I’ve written were true. I once wrote that I was a gas lamp, but I’d object strongly to being changed into one. And I mentioned somewhere how much I’d like to go to sea. When I’m in ten feet of water in a swimming pool, however, I never stop thinking that I’m out of my depth, and I feel definitely relieved when I reach the shallow end.”
And such a refined spirituality shone from those pages, a quite extraordinarily refined spirituality.
“Refined as Hell,” Esti continued to weave his thoughts, probably disturbed by the word “spirituality.” “If people knew how hard, how cruel, how crudely healthy you have to be to deal with feelings. Anybody that’s gentle has to be rough as well. Gentleness is just roughness in disguise, and roughness, on the other hand, is gentleness in disguise. Really, goodness and badness, mercy and cruelty have that kind of strange mutual relationship. They go together inseparably, you can’t even imagine the one without the other, it’d be like someone with excellent eyes being unable to tell blue from red, or the butterfly from the larva. They are opposites, two opposing poles, but they’re in constant natural interaction and change places according to circumstances, they take one another’s names, fluctuate, change shape, like alternating electric current. Well, let’s leave it. What feels ‘refined’ on paper, however, is only so because it’s precise, finely tooled, and I am behind it, I — curse it! — who write for hours, work my stubborn fingers every day, come rain come shine, whether I’m in the mood or not, hissing and grinding my teeth. I’m supposed to be refined? In that case, so’s the blacksmith. I’m more like a blacksmith, madam. I pound the anvil with a hammer, make shoes for my horse, fine steel shoes, so that it can gallop faster on the highway. Because take note, the grif n can’t fly, it only looks as if it does, it gallops on the ground, and how! So I’m a craftsman. Look at these bones, this wrist, this chest, which you saw naked just now as it emerged from the creative workshop. Tell me the truth, do I look like a nasty, finicky poet, or more like a blacksmith?”