‘Do you think it’s good? I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘What? What aren’t you sure of, Bettina?’
She plucked up all her courage. ‘I’m not sure I can do it. I’m afraid I can’t go on,’ she whispered.
I stared at the ground. My lips formed the words that were even now unthinkable:
‘Leave Ganna? Is that what you mean?’
Bettina had never explicitly raised the issue, but over the past few days I had had a sense that she was waiting for some initiative from me to relieve her. Only she couldn’t force herself to prompt me. Even now the yearning, the inner necessity for a decision were contained only in her agitated features, her expressive eyes. I had the feeling: now of all times, I mustn’t fail, everything is at stake.
‘What about the children?’ I asked. She laid her hand on mine.
‘The children, yes. It’s hard, I know. But I can tell myself, you’ve seen two grow up under your care …’
‘Doris needs me, Bettina.’
‘Of course she does. Well, you won’t lose her, will you? I’m sure she’ll want to spend as much time with us as possible.’
I heard only half of what she was saying, and that half with trepidation. I reproached myself for having let the children down. What is there more destructive than the presence of a mother taut as a wire, harassed, contradictory, at war with herself and mankind, ignorant of people? All the inner alarms are tripped, tenderness becomes a burden, punishment arbitrary, self-will fails to encounter the opposition it secretly hoped for, the kernel of the personality shrivels and, with some dim sense of its imperilment, conceals itself behind protective layers that don’t allow it to develop, but merely indurate it. And now I’m to leave them altogether, when the only thing shielding them from the worst was my presence?
Bettina said softly:
‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’m just making a suggestion. The past four years have helped both of us to mature. It no longer feels right to me, to have our relationship as a sort of open secret. It’s no longer true and it’s no longer defensible.’
‘Of course I agree with you, Bettina. But Ganna will never agree to a divorce, never.’
‘This isn’t about a divorce,’ Bettina replied gently, ‘it’s about an act of cleansing, my darling. At least, for now.’
‘What?’ I asked in astonishment, ‘you could … you would agree … in front of everyone …?’
She smiled. The cat was out of the bag.
‘Even if I stop short of the official legal step,’ I insisted, ‘do you have any idea of what we’re letting ourselves in for?’
She nodded. She knew.
‘And where would we live? There? Not possible. She would … No, you don’t really have any idea …’
She had thought about it all. She detailed her plan to me. We would stay in Ebenweiler. We would keep out of sight. There was an old Court Councillor, Wrabetz, who owned a spacious and comfortable villa which she would let out to us for an affordable rent for the winter months. In spring, admittedly, we would have to move out to a farmhouse, and in autumn return to the villa. She explained it all to me with calm certainty, the way you lead a child’s thinking, while all the time indicating to me that she knew herself to be led entirely by me.
My glance erred between two visions, the one blissful, the other hopelessly grim. I felt paralysed. My years came over me to warn me. Forty-six years and the whole of my life; to turn them upside down, I said to myself, so radically that not one stone would be left on another. Instinctively I looked for counter arguments. I pointed out to her shyly that she wasn’t at liberty either. She made one of her astonishing gestures that made all speech unnecessary; in this case, it meant I will be free on the day I have to be free for you. That slayed me. I said I would write to Ganna, this very day. She seemed to approve, but I could tell right away that she didn’t approve. I asked her what objections she might have to such a course. She said her objection was obvious: I needed to speak to Ganna. Definitely, I conceded, but it was better if she was prepared; that would take the edge off her shock. Above all, she needed to see it in black and white that divorce was at issue. Bettina didn’t understand my anxiety.
‘Aren’t you in charge of your own life?’ she asked. ‘Who has a stronger claim than you?’
‘All the same. It’ll be ghastly.’
Bettina said it was wrong — yes, positively dangerous — to awaken any false hopes in Ganna; I mustn’t make any more promises. She kept saying ‘in my view’ when she was talking of the solution to a problem, but I had long since discovered that this view of hers was almost invariably the correct one to take, and in fact the only solution. If for no other reason than that I would have to see Ganna, to prepare the needful next steps in my house, she enjoined me (and with that it was also settled where I would stay during my time in the city) to stay not in a hotel but with a mutual friend, for the sake of appearances. This plunged me into a new round of terrors. It was so brusque, so precipitate and final in its consequences. (As if it could have been anything other than final!) If a true Alexander-Bettina axis was to be created, then it wasn’t possible for me to return to my former home, to resume living there as Ganna’s husband. Otherwise Ganna would never have believed that I was serious. I said:
‘You’re right, Bettina. You’re completely right. There’s no more putting this off.’
In spite of that, I continued to fight the idea privately. I didn’t have the courage to follow her advice and beard Ganna without a preparatory letter. I was in favour of a gradual approach. I was no Gordian like my namesake. What Bettina had in mind was something terribly simple: to make me happy, to be happy with me, to take some of the weight off my shoulders. Strangely, though, I felt wrong-footed. I had never seriously contemplated detaching my life from Ganna’s. It didn’t matter that it had felt to me like a failed life for some time now, and that I even understood it to be such. It must have been my innate antipathy to action that kept me from taking a clear decision. There are two types of human beings, the doers and the procrastinators, and I am a typical case of the latter. Associated with that is a certain phlegmatism that, while it isn’t absolutely identical with spinelessness, does tend to be associated with certain other negative qualities, such as attachment to comfort and habit. Novelty has an alarming quality for us. Please, no changes, no new battles in my day-to-day life, we say to ourselves, the old ones are bad enough. A philistine loyalty to things can also play a part; the house that has become a haven; the bed one has become attached to; the old brown desk with its ink-spattered green baize and its dozen or so familiar knick-knacks. Some relationships that are even stronger. Take my daughter, little Doris, who was so attached to me that her whole world seemed to revolve around me. How to break it to the four-year-old that her father was moving to a different house to be with a different woman? Might it not cost me the love of my little princess? Might she not forget all about me? Wouldn’t it become a trauma for her?