As I say, I am unable to recall the circumstances in which I presented it to Bettina, but I have a pretty good recall of what she said about it once she’d read it — not least because it was not at all what I’d expected her to say. I had hoped she would be enthusiastic. With my naive author’s vanity I hadn’t doubted she would be, knowing as I did that she had followed my output to date and openly declared herself to be part of my devoted readership. That had helped overcome my initial resistance to her, I may as well admit, even though it doesn’t say much for my objectivity. Now, though, instead of the enthusiastic endorsement I had hoped for, I encountered a disconcerting dryness. I had yet to meet a woman with such high standards. Accustomed as I was to Ganna’s unbounded admiration, forever expressed in superlatives, I found myself unhappily impressed by Bettina’s brave reservations. She didn’t deny that parts of the book moved her, some of the characters convinced her, but overall it was too heavy for her — not intellectually, but in its feeling and construction, too heavy and — the word gave me pause — too barbaric even. There was of course no comeback to that, but a man wants to justify himself, to explain; and I can still see the strangely firm and alert expression of her blue eyes when I told her what I had intended. She understood me straight away, her intellect really was extraordinary; and what most struck me was her intuitive grasp of rhythm, of the subtlest nuances and harmonies. But she would not be reconciled to the petty bourgeois world I laid out; it was too involved, too full of masks and ghosts, not elevated enough, too fusty in its eroticism, too befogged, too straitened. It was at this time that she came to speak of the opposition between the Austrian and what was now held up as German, and what to her and her friends was neo-German, also of the condescension and criticism with which the Prussians responded to Austrian form, lightness, softness and urbanity: that was more than she could stand. I listened to her, I looked at her, I said to myself: not only is this woman the daughter of an artist, she is an artist in her own right. Yes, she was, through and through, in every fibre of her being, in every breath, with a force and a consequence I had yet to find in a woman. No wonder she soon became my confidante and friend. Our relationship was based on nature and on my spiritual situation.
Now I have something odd to say. For a long time I remained ignorant of the nature of my understanding with Bettina. I couldn’t even have said if I liked her as a woman or not. When I very gradually, in my obtuse way, discovered that I loved her, I saw to my astonishment that I as yet felt no trace of passion for her. And when my love finally took me over, body and soul, heart and spirit, I still believed in some sort of sublime comradeship, without consequences for the future, without entailing any commitment. How could such a thing be? It had never happened to me before. Perhaps it was because there was nothing darkly grasping in her, nothing that wanted to conquer and possess, nothing that insisted on vows and promises; she simply left me in my freedom, and waited calmly and patiently for whatever might be. Perhaps because she wasn’t cramped and addicted and greedy and purposeful, consumed by some splendid notion of what it was that would make and keep her happy. It was this, the lightness and cheerfulness, which I had initially rejected so grimly, that now entered my life, changing all its stresses and emphases. There was always something about the others that hadn’t been right — their corporality or their views or their characters or their preferences or their sense of life — and I had always ended up feeling beached and washed up. Here, not only was everything right, but with each new day it made more sense. It was like finally looking up after decades under a louring grey sky and seeing blue overhead, an almost cloudless blue. Sometimes I would reflect in alarm: will things stay the way they are? Can they? Won’t she absorb the poison of my darkness into herself?
ONE NOVEMBER EVENING
For a long time Bettina refused to come to our house. Since there were people who refused to see anything in me except a man who breakfasted on young virgins, at first it was her self-respect that kept her from running to me dutifully like a little dog that comes when called. That was how she put it mockingly, later, once. Also, I had neglected to ask her husband as well when I invited her, and she took against me for that. Then we had a proper soirée once at which Paul Merck, and the Waldbauers, and some other friends turned up. They only thawed out a little once Ganna, who didn’t feel easy among such people, had withdrawn.
Bettina didn’t like our house. She didn’t talk about it, but I could sense she didn’t. She shivered when she set foot in it. Sometimes I would ask her why, but she would only shake her head. The fact that the rooms didn’t appeal to her, that there was something extravagant about the layout — that seemed clear, in the light of her conservative tastes; but I was afraid that it might be the lady of the house with whom she couldn’t get along. And so it was, she was unable to keep it hidden from me for long: Ganna was for her the strangest creature under the sun, and when I tried to explain to her what great moral and spiritual qualities Ganna in my view had, she would hear me out in silence with a curious, patient expression in her eyes, but without once demurring. She would never have permitted herself to take such a liberty.
And yet I knew her to be an exceptionally acute observer — to the degree that I was sometimes left gawping like a small boy at the speed and certainty of her judgements when she explained some sequence of events, with details of which I had registered precisely none. Nor was she one of those people who dine out on such a gift. She was able to keep her silence until speech became a matter of urgency. Also, she saw and heard many things that she had decided, for one reason or another, not to hear or see. From the choice of what she observed or didn’t observe, registered or allowed to pass, it would be possible to construct a pretty detailed description of her character. For example she knew, as everyone knew, that Ganna didn’t just allow me to deceive her (Bettina called it ‘deceive’, even though there was really no question of deception, in view of my modus vivendi with Ganna), but even used to brag about my adventures, as a way of indicating to anyone who cared to hear that all other women were nothing but provisionally favoured courtesans compared to her. Bettina knew this, and simultaneously tuned it out in her awareness. She did so, as it were, in the name of all women who were offended thus, including even Ganna. It was her view that it was too humiliating to people not simply to ignore the way they chose to lower themselves. I, with the rotten attitude of a libertine I affected at that time, shrugged my shoulders and thought Ganna’s attitude had something to be said for it.
Unluckily (unluckily for me, because I was anxiously set on keeping Ganna high in Bettina’s esteem), the following once happened in Bettina’s presence. Ganna had dinned it into the maid to check that Elisabeth’s piano teacher didn’t end a lesson early, as she had reason to fear she might. When she was told the young lady had left the room eight minutes before the set time, she hurried out into the corridor where Bettina was just slipping into her coat and confronted the trembling piano teacher. ‘I insist on proper time-keeping,’ she barked. ‘I pay you to come on time and leave on time. If that’s too much for you, then you can save yourself the bother.’ I have to say, it was like water off a duck’s back to me, I was much too inured to such scenes. A man deadens; I had heard it too often. But Bettina went pale. ‘I pay you’: to say those words to a fellow human being! She felt giddy. Much, much later, when she recalled the scene to me, she confessed that she felt like seizing Ganna by the wrist and calling: ‘Woman, woman, get a grip on yourself! That’s no way to behave!’ I didn’t really get it. For me it was an outburst, nothing more. Ganna’s just like that, I would comfort myself and others; you have to take the rough with the smooth. And so I failed to see, wouldn’t see, what was brewing.