And at this point she brought her dissatisfaction and her appeal to bear. As usual, she insisted she had been deceived. She declared the clause was unjust and invalid. She demanded a third of my actual earnings. When it was pointed out to her that the deal she had secured was better, because years might come that would give her cause to regret her agitating, she laughed disbelievingly. She could afford to; she after all still had her lien. If and when hard times came over me again, then she could simply revert to the fixed allowance; and if I refused, she could foreclose on the Buchegger estate. For the moment, though, getting a share of my earnings not only seemed more lucrative to her, but the inspection and supervision of my financial circumstances gave her an entrée into my life and allowed her to establish herself in it as a controlling instance. With this in mind, she set up an extensive network of spies. She had herself informed about my expenditure, the standard of living of Bettina and myself; she knew at all times how many servants were in my employ, how many guests I had; she kept tabs on the size of my editions and the sums I realized for sale of translation rights to my books abroad; and on the basis of such material she raised her noisy claims, appealing always to morality, humanity and justice. Since I wouldn’t get involved in any dealings with her, the flood of memoranda started up again and lawyers’ letters. Presumably it was the extension of the house that had got her into renewed financial trouble. But in order to avoid that, she had taken out mortgage after mortgage. Matters grew ever murkier and more desperate. My only concern was Doris. She was now fourteen; the money earmarked for her largely went on Ganna’s hopeless efforts to pay off her debts, and so I finally agreed to raise the sum for the child considerably, while reserving the right to end the arrangement if it became the basis of legal argument. This reservation angered Ganna. She saw in it evidence of suspicion on my part. The agreement was drawn up in March. In March I paid the increased sum for the first time. By October Ganna thought I owed her for the first quarter as well. An avalanche of letters. Two new lawyers appeared on the scene. At Hornschuch’s, the files of Herzog vs. Herzog were menacing the ceiling. He shook his head in perplexity. In perplexity he came to me, in perplexity stood in front of Bettina, and said: ‘I don’t understand this.’
BETTINA HOMELESS, MYSELF UNDER PRESSURE
How could I have allowed it to happen: I didn’t notice that Bettina lost heart, lost hope and, worst of all, lost trust. I didn’t notice that she turned away from me in pain; felt lonely, disappointed, betrayed as never before. Didn’t notice that she no longer took pleasure in the house, that the flowers died under her hands, that the beautiful things faded away. Didn’t notice that she was cold, that her fingernails were often blue with it. With far-sighted care, she attended to the upbringing of little Helmut, concentrating on not showing him any excess, avoiding displays of feeling; but the fact that I was the deterrent instance of what not to do — I didn’t notice that.
Had Ganna succeeded — already succeeded — in destroying our strong and tender union? Bettina was never one to cry easily. She doesn’t follow Kierkegaard’s saying that it’s dishonourable for a Christian to live without tears. Everything takes place out of sight, behind a smiling face. She is like the goose-girl in the fairy tale, who makes the prince go and hide in the oven before she agrees to lament her woes. And I very much doubt that she made up her mind in the oven. Not-noticing was made all too easy for me. I remember one occasion when I almost awoke; in a letter she suggested in a shy, veiled way that she often had bold notions of independence buzzing round her brain; and when she thought of the freedom she had had when she was growing up, then she felt like dropping everything and fleeing into the world, relying on herself only. Her confession surprised me, but in my obtuseness I didn’t understand it. I knew her too poorly. Never would she have managed to say: enough, let’s separate. Remote from believing in her irreplaceability, the way most women do, she knew nevertheless that I wouldn’t have got over her desertion — not even understood it. Rarely can a human being have been as generously considerate and forbearing as she to me. She took it as given that I needed her. Well, she let it happen. I needed her and used her, as I needed and used everything in my life, everything that protected me, confirmed me and gave me quiet. Including her. I know she felt my love for her. This love she was all too familiar with, there was a whole block of it, a mountain of love; but it was trackless, wild, inaccessible, strangely savage. You needed to master it somehow; learn to look after it, find your way around in it, sometimes find it in the first place. But had she ceased loving me? Sometimes I put the question to myself, the way a hypochondriac in his imaginary agonies thinks of death. Because Bettina was not able to love without respect — that was clear to me. The early admiration she felt for her father shaped her subsequent relationships and her life as a woman. Since her subtle sensuality only responded to stimuli in the imagination, in love she can only exist in a lofty spiritual realm. And without love she is incapable of existing at all. I should have realized why she felt alienated in her own home. She did her domestic chores, she procured peace and quiet for me, she looked after Ferry, Elisabeth and Doris when they came to stay, she was happy to see her own daughters when they came in the holidays; but all of that seemed somehow to take place outside of herself. Now I see that. A person who does his duty, as well as he can, but only his duty, may be an example and a paragon to others, but to himself he will be a burden and a curse; in solitary hours the artificial props snap, and a sea of sadness will close over his head.
Now I can also understand her growing need to spend time away from the house. She wanted to collect herself, to regroup. She hiked in the mountains on her own; on occasion she travelled to Vienna to shelter with her friend Lotte Waldbauer, or to Salzburg for a couple of days to stay with her old composition teacher. She enjoyed the speed and separation of being in a car; often, after a sleepless night, she would go for a drive and leave a note on my desk saying she’d gone. Then I would miss her, a little as I missed my hat when the tempest had blown it off my head. She went out, she came back, to ‘keep an eye on things’ as she derisively put it, disappeared again, suddenly missed little Caspar Hauser and when she had him in her arms again she might have taken him with her, if it had been possible. She was no longer at peace, no longer felt herself in fortune’s good graces, she felt homeless.
Yes, I missed her — missed her like my hat. There is a remarkable ignorance in men that makes them think they have a woman when they have a woman. Even the most sensitive of them fall for the crude mistake of the body. Even the most ethereal of them are animals that think the byre and the cave are taboo.