Dr Storch’s revelation had some point, inasmuch as my divorce from Ganna was only carried out before an Austrian court of law, and not a German. As I had been a resident of Austria for decades, the divorce according to Austrian law was initially held to be perfectly sufficient. Even so, Hornschuch had anticipated that difficulties might come about one day and had insisted that Ganna deposit a letter in the file in which she declared herself ready, whenever it might be asked of her, to agree to the German divorce as well. She had forgotten all about the letter. When we jogged her memory later, she claimed it had been extorted from her.
But to stick to the sequence of events: Ganna went home from the meeting with Dr Storch with her heart palpitating. She was utterly bewildered by her good fortune. The lawyer’s cautiously advanced point was in her eyes as good as a victory in open court. A legal bit of jiggery-pokery meant the eradication of an irksome fact. A technicality meant: there was no divorce and Ganna remains the lawful Frau Herzog. She dealt with contracts she had no intention of abiding by as with servants she sacked if they stood up to her. Above all, though, she, the doting spouse, thought of the danger to which I was exposed. With a happy shudder, she reflected that by my second marriage I had committed a crime. As she walked out of Storch’s office she could see me in a highly embarrassing pickle, if I still refused to co-operate; by the time she boarded the tram I was practically behind bars. The day before, she had learned that I was expected in the sanatorium where I had to check in two or three times a year for my condition. She knew Bettina would be accompanying me. So much the better, she thought, then we’ll finally get the woman thrown out. She wanted as much as possible to spare me. She would break the news to me in a tête-à-tête, and with enormous restraint. Admittedly, after all that had gone before, she would have to be ready for the chance that I might refuse to see her; but in this case she trusted to the gravity of the news she had for me, seeing as it was about my honour, as she said, and my reputation. She could already hear my weeping pleading and see Bettina grovelling on the ground in front of her …
The morning my checking-in at the clinic had been reported back to her by whichever of her people did such things, she had me called to the telephone. She was informed the doctor had told me not to go to the phone; any negotiations were out of the question; my condition required extremely careful handling. In that case she had better speak to Bettina, an indignant Ganna replied; the matter she wanted to discuss could not permit of even one hour’s delay, it was a matter of life and death for me. Bettina was told. At that time Bettina was not as inured to Ganna’s ways of procuring conversations as she got to be later. She thought the vulgar commotion might have something in it and she went, reluctantly enough, to the telephone. Ganna was reduced to a stammer. She didn’t want to give away her plan of battle; on the other hand she was incapable of masking her triumph as concern. There had been a catastrophic turn in the tax business, she trumpeted in Bettina’s ear, more or less; we should all consult together; Bettina too should be in on the consultations; and of course the lawyers on both sides; delay was tantamount to suicide. Trying hard to remain restrained, Bettina asked what this was all about. Then — I could imagine her wide staring eyes — it bubbled out of Ganna: the divorce was invalid, my marriage to Bettina was unlawful, one of her sharpest lawyers, an eminent man as well, had broken the awful news to her; we all should quickly get round a table; three decent people; if three decent people sat around a table together to avert a disaster, there could be no doubting a satisfactory outcome; the first step would be to discharge the tax debt; other questions could be settled civilly and constructively. Bettina, dazed by the cascade of words, said: ‘Is that it, Ganna? Thank you, I’ll tell Alexander.’ And, half-irritated, half-amused, she repeated to me all that Ganna had dinned into her. I shrugged. I had no idea of the consequences it would have.
THIRTY OR FORTY LAWYERS
When her kindly peace call remained without echo, she poured her moral indignation into a letter. ‘I am beside myself,’ she wrote. I could hear the hollow voice and the accusatory emphasis on the two last words, with a stage pause left between them. What, they don’t respond, the fools, she said to herself disbelievingly, they knock back the hand of friendship? Has anyone ever known the like, to run to their own destruction?
She won’t allow herself to be accused of not having done what was humanly possible to avert the catastrophe from Bettina and me. In this spirit she writes a second letter to me, one of her masterly, Tartuffian, technical-ethical epistles. I don’t reply, even though the bearer is standing by waiting. She instructs Dr Storch to clarify me as to the legal position. I throw his letter in the waste-paper basket. Immediately afterwards she has a falling-out with the ex-cherub, for reasons I can’t divulge, and forms a new compact with one Dr Kranich, who also assails me with a lengthy screed, in which the tax matter and the divorce are cannily entwined. Dr Kranich is a onetime Socialist, as she has me informed by one of her agents, and she hopes his — albeit no longer current — political views will commend him to me. I don’t reply.
She goes to the sanatorium. She is not admitted. She yells at the porter, she insults the nurse, she complains to the director. Still she is not admitted. Now she really thinks she has done everything to save me from disaster. A seventh lawyer, Dr Schwalbe (no one can tell me why yet another one), communicates to Hornschuch about the impending test of the validity of the divorce. Hornschuch’s apparent sangfroid excites Ganna’s fury. She senses some peril must lie behind it, the man is an obstacle, she needs to get him out of the way first. She composes a twenty-three-page foolscap screed against him and has it delivered to the Bar association. She accuses him of dereliction of duty and of acting without instruction; to force her to agree to the divorce, he had without my orders and without my knowledge determined that her allowance be stopped. Blackmail again, hallo, hallo, is anyone home? Blackmail, are you there? No, I’m here. Hornschuch is compelled to take her to court for defamation. I am asked to appear as a witness, and of course I can’t avoid saying the accusations were frivolous and baseless. My appearance impresses the judge; I get a little carried away with myself; I paint a picture of the unending persecution I suffer at the hands of the woman; basically I make myself into a sort of knight of the sorrowful countenance. Ganna is sentenced to a hefty fine, that’s it. Since she doesn’t have a penny that doesn’t come from me, that doesn’t come from my work, it means that I now have a fine to pay as well. Once sentence has been passed, Ganna comes up to me, pulls a pear out of her handbag and whispers dramatically: ‘An Alexander pear … your favourite …’ What was it the last time? ‘I’m giving you a divorce for your birthday …’ Always the same breathy pathos in the intervals of delusion.