‘You’re to blame, it’s your fault!’ she cried.
‘Maybe so,’ I allowed, ‘even though there’s no single responsibility in these things.’
I put it to her that I wouldn’t easily get over my disappointment with her if she stuck to her unworthy perspective; surely she had the potential for good- and great-heartedness in her, she had read the poets, loved painting, loved philosophy; I believed in her, had always believed in her, but what had come of all that? She blinked in despair. She was so all alone in the world, she lamented, as she wrung her tiny, wizened, always-old-looking hands, she didn’t have a soul she could rely on. Solitude would strengthen her, I offered her Jesuitically; I needed her; I had a mission for her; distance would take the edge off the shadows and gild her sufferings. She was moved. She gave me her hand and promised with trembling voice to do all that I said; I didn’t know her; I had no idea of what sacrifices I would find her capable. I kissed her brow with gratitude. What I failed to notice was that my great effort at persuasion succeeded only in persuading her that she must not leave a man who addressed her in such lofty, deeply felt language. ‘What shall I do? Just tell me what to do,’ she whimpered. I: there could surely be no doubt about that. She: she would willingly pour out her heart’s blood for me, but there was one thing that in the name of God I must never ask of her: a divorce. I: she need only to relax her grip, bear the new condition with dignity and not burden me with a responsibility that was strictly speaking hers.
This last thing I should not have said; with that I gave her a recipe by which she slowly poisoned me. She had always been a loyal friend to me, she said, beginning again; there was nothing petty about her, not a bone in her body; others were, she wasn’t; and that other woman who made her suffer for no reason –
‘For no reason, Ganna? Now you’re tearing down everything we’ve just laboriously built up!’
‘Because you’re thinking of a divorce,’ she breathed, ‘and divorce would be the death of me.’
I caught her burning eye. In my foolishness, I thought the moment had come for me to remind her of the oath she had sworn to me on the lakeshore nineteen years before.
‘You swore by God to let me go if I asked; don’t you remember, Ganna?’
‘Of course, of course I do,’ she said, gulping.
‘Well, then, was that a meaningless vow?’
She cast her eyes down. She knew perfectly well that a vow given by an inexperienced girl couldn’t really matter, but at the same time she understood that, morally, it couldn’t be denied.
‘If you’re fair, you’ll have to admit that I kept my word,’ she said at last, with her martyr’s upward look (she had avoided the word ‘vow’ I noted), ‘or have you any complaints about the freedom you’ve been given, you Don Juan, you.’ And stroked my hand in a motherly sort of way.
It was unending. Ganna couldn’t get enough of the dispute. It was pleasure, pain, spur, hope. She talked the lungs out of her body. To secure an extension of the debate, she would appear to give ground at crucial moments only, an hour later, to take back all her concessions. When I left she would accompany me, often for long distances, tried to keep pace with me, to disarm my old complaint that she was too slow, and breathlessly blabbed out her reasons, false reasons, promises, complaints and litanies of my sins in ever new versions. She couldn’t understand what I saw in Bettina. Bettina was just a woman, and — quite honestly — no better than Ganna. Couldn’t I tell her what it was about her that had turned my head; perhaps she might be able to offer me the same thing; maybe there was some trick to it; she would try and learn it; she was willing to take instruction. Every night I fell into bed like a dead man.
THE COUNTER-IMAGE
Bettina had gone back to the city a week after me, to wind up her household. One evening I called on her in her apartment and found her in the half-cleared dining room in her furs. The weather had turned cold, and she had run out of wood and coal. Her children were already in Ebenweiler in the Wrabetz villa. I kept my own coat on. There was no need to tell her what was currently going on in my life. She knew it anyway. She could tell from looking at me. I asked after Paul. She said he had left. ‘Where to?’ I asked. ‘To the factory,’ she replied. I noted a brittleness in her, like an over-wound violin string, jingling. She had accompanied him to the station, she added; the train had left at half past five. Then she abruptly asked if I was cold. ‘Yes, I am,’ I said. She ran out of the room and came back with four pairs of cobbler’s lasts, which she took out of already packed pairs of boots. Kneeling down, she set light to a small pile of paper and put the lasts on it. Since they were made of hard wood they produced some heat after a while, and I praised Bettina for her skill. ‘Once we burn the table and chairs it’ll be quite cosy in here,’ I said. She smiled vaguely. I eyed her uncertainly. I wondered if she had had a falling-out with her husband and asked her how things stood with him.
‘How things stand? They don’t,’ she said.
‘How do you mean, they don’t? What did he say?’
She didn’t reply immediately; she got out a whole lot of empty boxes and crates, and fed them to the failing fire. Suddenly she said, with a strangely squeaky treble:
‘As of twelve o’clock today we are divorced.’
Bright tears sprang from her eyes and ran down towards her mouth. I stared at her. So, it is possible, I thought, real people can do it.
‘What about the children?’ I asked.
‘He left them with me. Of course.’
I stared at her and shook my head in wonderment and envy.
THE SUCCESSION OF FICTIONS AND PHANTASMS
One sleepless night, Ganna had a saving idea. Early the next morning she sent a messenger with a note to me where I was staying. She told me to come right away; she had something to tell me that would remove all our difficulties at a stroke. What was it? I couldn’t believe my ears. A ménage à trois. She meant it. She was besotted with the idea.
‘Oh, come on, Ganna,’ I said glumly, ‘that’s childish. What world are you living in? That’s not a serious suggestion.’
She was offended and perplexed.
‘Why not?’ she retorted. ‘Think of Count von Gleichen.’
References to fairy tales wouldn’t get us anywhere, I interrupted her in annoyance.
‘Fairy tales? I don’t see that at all. It’s just an example. Aren’t we modern people?’
‘If by that you mean an unappetizing combination of feelings and a ridiculous situation, then: no.’
Bitterly, she called me a bourgeois who didn’t have the courage to try out in his life what he was happy to promulgate in his books. I couldn’t remember exactly having set Count von Gleichen up on a pedestal, but that’s what Ganna seemed to think.
She persisted with her plan. While she stalked up and down excitedly, still unmade-up, in a grey woollen jacket whose sleeves went down to her knuckles, she talked wildly into space:
‘With goodwill, everything is possible; everyone has to make concessions in a case like ours; why should one person get everything he wants? My rights antedate hers; Bettina needs to learn to suppress her egoism; we have enough room in the house, God knows.’