Then why this sudden agitation, this panic, this dread of losing me, after so many years of benign indifference to my infidelities, as she termed them? It hasn’t escaped her attention that everything is different with other women. So she finds herself confronted by a conundrum. What can be so special about this Bettina Merck, she asks herself — sometimes she asks me as well. She studies her. She wants to be fair to her. But she fails to see the attraction. To her, Bettina is neither beautiful nor intelligent. If only she were at least intelligent. Nor is she even in the first flush of her youth. Evidently (thus Ganna full of woe) she avails herself of cunning amatory arts; I in my simplicity and straightforwardness fail to see through them; she is endlessly subtle; subtlety is the thing; I wish I could learn to be it, but I am too honest for that; besides, she’s an unscrupulous man-chaser who doesn’t care what the world thinks of her. Or she bores, like this: she’s the lucky one, a wealthy background; husband away at work all day; nothing to worry about except how to do herself up, and what instructions to give her cosmetician and her hairdresser; whereas I, worked to the bone, with no time to think of myself. Didn’t I always say so: I should be hard, unscrupulous, stop at nothing, deny the heart or soul in my body — with a man hungry for experience and sensation it never fails …
I repeat these litanies of thought because I heard them not only in occasional remarks and suggestions, but because they were familiar to me from the deepest insights one can have into human nature. The interesting thing about them is the perpetual division, the sharp alternations between light and shade, understanding and doltishness, fear and loathing, foolishness and impetuosity, suspicion and self-doubt. If her thinking had been less scatty, her emotion less erratic, then it would never have knocked her over. But her inner distractedness extended even to her pain, so at disconnected moments that were drifting like pieces of cork on an agitated sea, she was capable of being good and cheerful. Admittedly, the intervals when she was permitted to sit there half-extinguished and dream, and paint herself a rosy future, grew ever fewer and further between. Blow after blow was delivered to her psyche; life bared its teeth at her. It cut her to the quick when she learned that I had read part of my new work to Bettina and her friends. The fact that I hadn’t asked her to come, even once, aroused the bitterest envy she had ever felt, worse than any physical jealousy. She felt rejected and snubbed. But it was unfortunately the case with me that I didn’t want Ganna as an audience, because my friends didn’t want her. Ganna was unbelievably alien to them. She didn’t follow the rules, she didn’t know the routine, she was jarring. Nothing was said, but it was abundantly clear to me. I suffered for Ganna, with Ganna. There was nothing to be done. And then Ganna and Bettina in the same room, and me in the middle, even only as a voice — that would have been a lethal discord. To ease Ganna if only a little bit, I took refuge in a lie: her reactions and her judgement were so important to me, I claimed, that I had to be alone with her, I needed the immediate and undisturbed connection. Even though she didn’t altogether believe me, she did half-believe me, and maybe that got her over the worst, for a little while at least. But since it could only be for a while, in a deeper sense my lie was more cruel and traitorous than the most unsparing truth could have been.
If Ganna had been only a very little more sensible, if she had known a little more restraint and self-discipline, then it would not have been quite so hard for me to inculcate my friends with a little understanding for her baroque, volatile and unconventional ways; though there were other, more destructive traits of hers I was still in awkward denial of myself. But Ganna will do everything to make herself detested or, more, feared. Such tiny hands, and what is there they can’t uproot; such tiny feet, and what can’t they trample! One day she dashes over to the telephone, asks to be put through to Paul Merck, and tells him she has heard his two daughters have chickenpox and that in these circumstances our doctor thought any association between our respective families was unadvisable. And she closed with these incredible words: ‘Mr Merck, kindly keep your wife from seeing my husband until there is no longer any risk of infection.’ Paul Merck, who was a gentleman, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Forgive me,’ he stammered back, ‘I’m not in the way of telling my wife what she can and can’t do.’ He put aside the earpiece like something red-hot, so Bettina told me later, picked up a thick periodical and in his rage tore it into little scraps — something an athlete would have had trouble doing.
Cold shivers ran down my spine when I got to hear about this, and the next time I was with Paul Merck I went to great lengths to come up with some extenuating circumstances for Ganna.
Indeed, I went further; I spoke about Ganna’s eccentricity, her feminine genius, her rare spiritual and human depth, and talked myself into such a lather that both Paul Merck and Bettina were reduced to looking at me in silent astonishment. In the end, Merck was unable to suppress a sceptically amused smile, but that only heightened my advocatory zeal. In Bettina’s face not a muscle moved, there was no trace of doubt, or curiosity or sympathy. I might have been talking about some woman in New Zealand.
In the meantime, Ganna had decided to approach Bettina directly. She’s a sensible woman, was Ganna’s thought; perhaps she’ll understand my position. It did feel like going straight into the lion’s den but, convinced as she was of her superiority, she thought success was pretty certain, and so she had herself announced one day at Bettina’s house. Bettina approached the meeting with trepidation but gave no sign of it, greeting Ganna with the politeness with which she received any visitors to her house. She told me about the conversation later, but it was many months before she included certain details she wanted to spare me, under the depressing first impression.
A daintily laid table, tea prepared in accordance with a tested recipe, a plate of freshly cut sandwiches — the times would have allowed or expected nothing less, but in Ganna’s eyes it is a feast. She is starving. She looks wretched, tired and tormented. Her dress is at least three years old and fits her badly. Bettina feels a profound sympathy for her, prevails on her to have something to eat, keeps refilling her cup. Ganna eats and drinks. Her eyes scan the room. She appraises the tasteful furnishings with a woebegone demeanour.
‘Yes, you have good taste all right,’ she says sadly to herself, ‘there’s no denying that. But it all takes time.’
Gently Bettina indicates that she doesn’t think it’s a mistake to have time, or to take time.
‘No, but it leads one to have too strong a sense of one’s own interests,’ Ganna delivers the pedantic and well-prepared counter.
That depended on the nature of those interests, Bettina observes coolly. Ganna laughs, a little shrilly.
‘Well, as far as yours are concerned, I would imagine they are largely confined to your person,’ she says. Bettina is astounded to be offered so much insight into her nature so quickly.