Have you known Dr Leontine long?
Our aunt invited us to stay. She has lots of friends. Helene made a vague gesture. I’m afraid I have to leave now.
Of course. May I accompany you? I don’t think you ought to be limping home alone through the empty streets.
Yes, please. I’d like that. I’m afraid, she said, thinking of the pigeons picking seeds out of the ashes in the Cinderella story, that I don’t have either ashes or pigeons to lend me charms. Then she realized that her ears were burning; she had meant to suggest not so much charms as virginal patience.
Helene said goodbye to her aunt. Fanny didn’t even deign to look at the young student Wertheimer, but assured Helene that Otta would open the door to her when she got home.
It was light now outside. The birds were twittering softly to greet the summer day, although it had dawned long ago and the street lights were out. A cab was waiting for custom. Clearly people must be beginning to go to work. A newspaper boy stood on the corner offering the Morgenpost and the Querschnitt.
The Querschnitt on the street so early in the morning, said Carl, smiling and shaking his head.
Helene was enjoying her encounter with Wertheimer, and as they asked each other the first tentative questions about their lives she did not tell him how close they were to where she was staying. One foot shod, the other bare and touching the paving stones, Helene felt the sticky surface of the street. The lime trees had been dropping their nectar overnight.
Come, let’s conceal ourselves more closely… Wertheimer looked enquiringly at Helene to see if she recognized his quotation from the poet Else Laske-Schüler.
Life lies in all our hearts. Quickly, casually, Helene tossed the next line back to him.
As if in coffins. Wertheimer happily completed the second verse of the poem. But Helene said no more; she just smiled.
What is it? he asked. Won’t you go on?
I’ve forgotten how the rest of it goes.
I don’t believe that. He looked surprised and a little sorry, but she mollified him.
You say it so cheerfully, but ‘The End of the World’ is a sad poem, don’t you think?
You call it sad? It’s optimistic, Helene! What can be fuller of promise than devotion, a kiss, a longing that embraces us and brings us to the point of death?
You believe she was thinking of God when she wrote it?
Not at all, the divine is closer to her. How does the poem begin? Why, with many doubts! She speaks of weeping as if the good Lord God were dead. But if she believed in God she’d assume he was immortal, so it’s a double rejection of faith; she doesn’t believe in the good Lord any more than an evil Lord or any other kind of god. Is the death of God supposed to make the world weep for him or because it’s rid of him?
Helene looked at Wertheimer. She mustn’t forget to close her lips. Didn’t Martha keep telling her to shut her mouth or insects would fly into it? She had never heard anyone discuss a poem like this.
But wasn’t the poem hers, all hers? Waxing enthusiastic, Helene was talking away now, for her poem rather than her life, although with a man like Wertheimer you couldn’t draw sharp distinctions between the two.
Laske-Schüler doesn’t regale herself on God, she doesn’t regale herself on mankind and their sufferings either, she grants them only a kiss before dying. Believe me, her own mortality, looking her in the face — whether she’s to die of longing and in tears or not — human mortality, her understanding that it’s inevitable, all that’s clearly opposed to God’s immortality.
Do you always read poems backwards?
Only if I meet someone who insists on linearity.
The young man was going to take the tram or a bus and turned the corner.
So you, with your Latinate terms — regaling yourself on them, in fact! — you accuse me of insisting on linearity? I like to take a winding path myself, but I won’t insist on anything, certainly not to you. There was severity in Wertheimer’s words, but the next moment mischief was sparkling in his eyes. How about all that cultural and scientific stuff? Tell me, don’t you think all our efforts are shocking presumption? Doesn’t a club where anyone can be chairman have the biggest membership? Is Dada a wastepaper basket for art?
Helene thought about it. What’s wrong with differences, can you tell me that? It was an honest question, after all, Helene thought. Who was bothered by all the clubs, so long as everyone could found one and go there as often as he wanted?
At the Kurfürstendamm they let the first tram pass; it was crowded, only brave souls would clamber aboard and their conversation would admit no pause, wouldn’t be interrupted even for the courage to try a kiss.
You know Büchner’s Lenz, what is Lenz suffering from, Helene?
Helene saw the curiosity with which Carl awaited her answer. She hesitated. From being different. Is that what you mean? But difference doesn’t always cause suffering.
It doesn’t? Suddenly Carl Wertheimer seemed to know what he was getting at; he wasn’t waiting for her answer any more. You’re a woman, I’m a man — do you think that means happiness?
Helene had to laugh. She shrugged her shoulders. What else, Herr Wertheimer?
Yes, of course, you’ll say that, Helene. At least, I hope so. That’s permitted. But only because happiness and suffering aren’t mutually exclusive. Far from it. Suffering embraces the idea of happiness, keeps it safe inside itself, so to speak. The idea of happiness can never be lost in suffering.
Except that the idea of happiness and happiness itself are different things. Helene felt that she was walking slowly, hobbling along. Briefly, she noticed how her feet hurt. But Lenz has everything, his clouds are rosy, the heavens shine down — everything that others only dream of.
Helene and Carl boarded a bus going east and sat down. The wind was blowing in their faces and Carl put his coat round Helene’s shoulders to keep her warm.
But that makes Büchner’s Lenz suffer, objected Carl. What are the clouds or the mountains to him if he doesn’t win Pastor Oberlin over?
Win him over? Helene thought she had spotted something vague in Carl’s chain of thought; she was paying close attention and couldn’t help noticing. Perhaps he had misunderstood her.
What brings you and your sister to Berlin? Just a visit to your aunt?
Helene nodded firmly. A long visit; we’ve been here three years now. Helene snuggled her chin into the fur collar of his coat. How soft it was, how nice it smelled; a fur collar in summer. Martha works at the Jewish Hospital. I used to be a nurse too, I passed my exams while we were still living in Bautzen, but it isn’t easy for a nurse to get a job here in Berlin if she’s very young and doesn’t have any references. Helene’s feet were sore. She wondered whether to tell him that today was her birthday and she was going to begin an evening course in grammar-school education for girls, adding that she would like to study at college after that, but she decided not to. After all, her birthday was eight hours in the past and the morning sun now shining in her face, the first summer sunlight since the solstice, was more important while she felt that fur collar against her cheek.