In the same manner, she treated every one of her missives as a Papal Bull. ‘Did you not get my conciliatory letter of the 16th?’ she might write. ‘I’m waiting for your decision on my very modest proposals. It seems to me, my letters aren’t reaching you. Please wire back to confirm that you have received and read the letter in question.’ And so we had the myth of Bettina intercepting letters. It was a charge that could not be defended. Dr Chmelius was a plant. She could never forgive me for having turned that man into her beadle, she said; that had thoroughly opened her eyes. I mustn’t count on a divorce any more; practically it was impossible and morally it was unhuman. Only if I sent Dr Chmelius packing could there be a chance of resuming negotiations. If I continued to knuckle under to those parties terrorizing me, I had wrecked things with her. My hopes had, in any case, gone down to nil. If Jesus Christ in person had turned up to represent Bettina and me, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.
There was no peace for her anywhere; not in any house, any room, with any person, in any book, in any bed. She had problems with her gall bladder, her heart, her breathing; she consulted specialists and quacks, used ointments and teas, scooted off to Karlsbad, to the Adriatic, to her sister Traude in Berlin; spent the whole of one day on her feet, claimed to be dying the next; but that illness was another fiction, it was refuge from her ghastly restlessness.
In the chaos of her affairs, the failure of the film review barely showed. The printer had sued for his outlay. Presumably she had taken on more debt in the effort to partly buy him off. She told Dr Chmelius she hadn’t. But where would all that money have gone? A black hole. Did she have secret acquaintances she spent it on, leeches who sucked it out of her? Was it just the sinister will-to-destruction compounded of things hard to itemize: various impulses of love, hate, jealousy, self-assertion, self-destruction and wish-fulfilment? Dr Chmelius told me he had done the sums and informed her that in the past year more than half my income had gone to her; whereupon she had hissed at him and talked of deception and cheating — she knew from reliable sources that I had earned five times what I claimed. I said:
‘I know, I’ve heard that sort of talk, but how can I convince her that she’s wrong? How do you ever persuade someone that you don’t own something when they believe you do?’
Dr Chmelius replied gloomily: ‘I’m afraid you can’t persuade the lady of anything at all. Except by jumping back into bed with her. Not otherwise.’
And so the conversations Ganna, seeming willingly, agreed to were all without exception shadow-boxing. In her endless nights of scheming and pondering she came up with three stipulations whose impossibility she surely couldn’t for one moment doubt but which she needed so as to play the innocent afterwards, once the meetings had failed, so that she could say to herself: I have done everything with the best will in the world — the tricksters and the double-crossers are you lot.
Since these three points are in a certain sense unique ‘sanctions’, let me list them. First, I am to renounce parental authority over my younger daughter. A legal innovation of Ganna’s; no jurisdiction on earth would have ever recognized such a renunciation. Second, for each daughter I had to deposit a substantial sum for a dowry. I had no idea where I was to take such a sum from. The kraal decided it. The kraal’s imperative was: provide for your brood, man; first and foremost your brood, we don’t give a hoot about what happens to you; let the deserter work himself to the bone; let him fail to come to his senses; let him and his mistress fail ever to free themselves from the shackles. Hence: provide, provide until your dying day. And third: Bettina was to sign a fully notarized agreement that she would never stand in the way of my spending part of each year with Ganna. Ganna saw such an arrangement not only as legally binding, and as practicable; she also saw in it a way of dragging her rival into the courts whenever she chose. When Dr Chmelius was presented with these three textbook instances of Ganna’s garrotting methods, he cried out: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in all the years I’ve practised, and I’ve seen some things.’
ATE
In the course of the proceedings which the printer of the film review had brought against Ganna, there was a falling-out between her and Dr Schönlein. I never found out the exact cause; I only learned that certain scenes had taken place in Schönlein’s office, and that one day the lawyer threw in his power of attorney. She complained bitterly to Dr Pauli, who sought to calm her and, seeing as Dr Grieshacker had long since given up representing her, suggested she take her case to Dr Stanger-Goldenthal, a known tiger at the Bar and a specialist in divorce cases. This was exactly the man for Ganna. Thus far, if I may so put it, she had not yet found the lawyer of her dreams. Now, Dr Stanger-Goldenthal filled the vacancy to a nicety. He knew at a glance what Ganna wanted from him. He sniffed a great cause. It is in the nature of the law that it keeps those who have recourse to it in suspense, until they have lost their fortune, their life and their belief in right and justice. All this, admittedly, applies more to me than to Ganna. She had already shown herself to be insensitive to evil; whatever she had had by way of mind, dignity, pride and heart had already drowned in that circle. ‘Just leave it to me, Madam,’ said Dr Stanger-Goldenthal, once he had read the file, ‘we’ll get everything to come out nicely.’ From his expressions Ganna saw that she had nothing to fear. She sensed a twin soul. A great weight fell from her bosom. The reverence with which she used to speak about this man in the early days had something cultish about it.
Dr Chmelius was dismayed by her choice. He made no secret of his worry from me; he had had a few brushes with Herr Stanger-Goldenthal himself. He even tried to warn Ganna against employing him. But Ganna smiled slyly, in the manner of someone who has the philosopher’s stone and is being told that its possession will cost them dearly. Dr Chmelius went as far as he could; he went to Dr Pauli to discuss the case with him. Since he put a written record of their conversation in the file, I am able to reproduce it in its essentials.
‘It will not have escaped you,’ he began, ‘that Madam Ganna by her inscrutable and unpredictable behaviour is tormenting my client, is harming his ability to work and thereby, as the saying goes, is killing the hen that lays the golden eggs.’
‘And yet the only person who can secure a divorce from Ganna Herzog is Alexander Herzog,’ replied Dr Pauli.
‘Maybe in two or three years,’ Dr Chmelius quipped back, ‘maybe …’
‘The mistake is,’ Dr Pauli replied, ‘that the other side claims it wasn’t a happy marriage. That upsets and provokes the wife.’
‘Why would Herr Herzog wish to end a happy marriage?’
‘External influences. It’s perfectly clear.’
‘My dear colleague; I do hope you haven’t allowed yourself to be influenced by a fanatic.’
‘And what if I have? Isn’t a fanatic an ideal match for a poet? Madam Ganna has shown me countless letters of his. Love letters. The genuine article. She has shown me printed and handwritten dedications in his books that pay honest tribute to her qualities as a companion and colleague. I don’t think you have a leg to stand on.’