I'm Not Stiller (35 page)

In this sense, then, Sibylle was free.

Stiller, on the other hand, came back from Davos having settled nothing and acted as though his ballerina were on the point of death; under these circumstances a trip to Paris was out of the question. Once more they sat at the edge of a wood—all round the ripe corn had already been cut, summer was passing, thunder clouds were gathering above the blue lake, a bumblebee zigzagged humming through the summer stillness, the heat haze quivered over the fields, hens were cackling in the farmyards, and the world was a faultless, perfectly arranged, positively inspiring affair. Only their happiness (or what they expected from their love) was very complicated. They sat silently on the ground, two adulterers with their hands tenderly interlocked, each with a blade of grass between lips stretched tight with care, and the only thing in this world that was not complicated seemed to them to be marriage, not marriage with Rolf and not marriage with Julika, but marriage to one another.

***

In the entirely rancourless recollection of this magnificent woman—I can see her before me while I write, in her blue wicker chair as she was the other day in the nursing home when I brought her the gladioli, with her lemon-yellow dressing gown and black hair—there is one point that would cause the missing Stiller no little astonishment, namely the fact that this summer or autumn, without ever saying a word to Stiller, she expected a child by him (it would now have been six years old)...

I will record the facts:

It was in September, and Stiller was very busy with all sorts of arrangements for an exhibition; important personages considered it desirable, indispensable, that Stiller should make another public appearance. 'Am I in the way?' asked Sibylle, as Stiller, after greeting her with an almost perfunctory kiss, went on sawing at a stand. She looked at him. A man never looks so handsome, she thought, as when he is working with his hands. 'I don't want to hold you up,' she said, 'but I just had to see you today...' She gave away nothing else, especially as Stiller did not inquire why she felt this need. The important things now were the stands. 'When is he coming,' asked Sibylle, 'this man from the art gallery?' She tried to take an interest. Outside it was a mild, blue September day. There were at least nine more stands to be made and then painted or varnished—quite an undertaking; the wrong stand can make a great deal of difference and what a lot of stands still needed varnishing, while from others, which were fortunately already varnished, the varnish had to be removed! That was the job at the moment.

'What about your wife,' asked Sibylle, 'are you going to exhibit her?' She had put on a kettle for tea and it was already boiling, so she was also occupied. 'I've brought you something,' said Sibylle. 'I've been baking.' And she showed him a fresh cake, a so-called seed cake; Stiller was touched, without looking at it, and talked about humbug. Sibylle couldn't see any difference in his sculptures; so why had they suddenly become humbug? And there was a letter from a curator, a hymn to Stiller, so that one might almost feel afraid Stiller would disappear in a cloud of fame.

'The tea's ready,' she announced and waited; she would never have thought that an art exhibition called for as much preparation as an invasion (Rolf had been talking to her about Churchill's memoirs over coffee), and she was sorry for Stiller. 'How do you like the poster?' he asked, rubbing away at a stand with glass-paper. Sibylle hadn't even noticed the sketch on a piece of packing paper. 'There's to be a poster as well?' she exclaimed in astonishment, and true enough, it was a proper poster like they have for Furtwangler or Persil. She thought it frightful—A. Stiller, his beloved handwriting on every hoarding, enlarged as though under a microscope. Hadn't men any shame? If he'd enjoyed it, at least; but Stiller cursed the whole exhibition. Then why did he do it? He drank his tea standing up and ate her cake while he talked, not even noticing the showers of crumbs that were falling everywhere....

Sibylle soon left him; it seemed to her that this was no moment to win him over to fatherhood, and she was glad he hadn't simply let her go, but had arranged to go sailing with her at five o'clock. She was happy to be able to meet him again that day. Merely to pass the time, she strolled along the Bahnhofstrasse in the September air, from window to window, from shop to shop, until she had found the nicest tie in Zurich. Unfortunately, it struck her, Stiller had no shirt that would go with this tie. She bought a shirt to go with it.

When sailing (says Sibylle) Stiller was always like a boy, so serious, without brooding, so relaxed, so happy with his toy; he handled the tiller and rope, while Sibylle lay in the bows, a hand or a foot in the rippling water. Here on the lake she was free from the phantom. The shores were lost in the autumn mist, their sail gleamed in the pale light of the declining sun, in the east the sky was already turning to purple dusk, and the water beside their gliding boat was shadowy, almost black under a light surface. Sibylle rested her head on her elbows so as to have the ever more oblique rays of the sinking sun full in her face, heard the gurgling under the boat when it rocked in the waves of a steamer, and looked at Stiller, her busy steersman, out of screwed-up eyes—his face, his narrow head, his pale hair in the wind, yes, she liked him very much, this man who was perhaps already the father of her second child. How would Rolf take it? Actually she felt quite indifferent. Apropos of Rolf: tomorrow he would take up his duties as public prosecutor. How able they were! Each in his own way. And Sibylle made up her mind to be sensible, to be content. In spite of everything. She was still young, and there was plenty of time. Something would happen. Perhaps she would have a child, perhaps Julika would die, perhaps a star would fall from heaven, and straighten everything out.

As always when they were sailing, they spoke little. Above the lake hummed the town with its traffic, schoolchildren waved from a homeward-bound steamboat, and seen like this with one's head lying flat the world consisted entirely of colours, of highlights, reflections, and shadows, of sound and silence; this was not the moment to reach decisions. Why shouldn't it be possible to love two men? Stiller was her intimate friend, he was not a man who subjugated. Rolf subjugated. That could be terrible, but in many respects it was simpler. Rolf didn't make sisters of women. At one point they scraped against a buoy, so that there was a grating noise, and Stiller, who had been talking about his exhibition and not watching out, apologized. Rolf never apologized; Rolf was self-righteous. One could be frightened for Stiller—not for Rolf. Both of them rolled into one, that would have been the ideal! Rolf often seemed to her like a big dog, a St Bernard, which it was better not to put on the lead for fear of being pulled over. Stiller seemed to her like a brother, almost like a sister...

It had imperceptibly grown cool, and Sibylle stood up, walked along the swaying boat to Stiller, took his head between her wet hands, and kissed him over and over again. He let go of the rope, so that the sail flapped, and asked, 'What's the matter?' Sibylle didn't yet know herself.

***

'Men are funny,' Sibylle still thinks so today: 'You with your seriousness! For hours and days, sometimes for weeks, one could imagine you want nothing else than the nearness of a woman you love, you seek this nearness thoughtlessly, you'd shrink from nothing, one supposes, from no danger, from no ridicule, and certainly not from brutality, if anyone stood in your way, there is only the woman, it seems, the woman you love—and then, in the twinkling of an eye, it's quite different, suddenly it turns out that a sitting is important, so important that everything has to be fitted in with it. You suddenly become edgy, you find the woman a fond burr that you can't shake off. I know this silly consideration for all sorts of strangers, for everyone but the woman who loves you. You and your serious affairs of life! An international conference of lawyers, the curator of an art gallery—suddenly there are once more things that must on no account be neglected. And woe to the woman who doesn't understand that, or even smiles! And then, in a twinkling of an eye, you're like little Hannes during a thunderstorm again. Isn't that true? These same men have to put their heads on our shoulders, so as not to despair, to feel that they are not entirely lost in this serious world, not entirely superfluous with all their legal eminence and art exhibitions ... God knows,' she laughed, 'you're a queer lot!'

***

One day at the end of September Stiller said over the telephone, 'Get ready, we're going to Paris.' She couldn't believe her receiver. 'Are you serious?' The cheerful voice answered, 'Why not?' Still half in doubt whether Stiller was not joking, already half joyously serious she asked, 'When?' The cheerful voice answered, Tomorrow, today, when you like.' (They knew the trains to Paris by heart; there was a night train that came in through the suburbs of Paris at first light, then breakfast with the early workmen in a bar at the Gare de l'Est, coffee and
brioches,
followed by a stroll through the great covered market full of vegetables and fish—and suddenly, as in a fairy tale, all this was within their grasp?) 'I'm coming over right away,' said Sibylle; but it wasn't as simple as that, for in the morning Stiller was receiving another visit from his curator, and in the afternoon Sibylle had to take little Hannes to the circus. 'After the circus then,' she said and put down the receiver, as dizzy as a person who has just won a prize, empty with happiness...

At last things seemed to be moving.

'What shall we say,' asked Rolf over coffee, 'we must order the removal van, when would it suit you? I've no intention of making the whole move by myself. Will you be here next week?' Sibylle quite understood his urgency, troublesome as she found it. 'Yes, yes,' she said, 'I know, but I can't tell you today.'—'When will you be able to tell me?'—'Tomorrow.'—'Why are you so on edge?'—'I'm not on edge,' she retorted. 'Why should I be on edge?' Sibylle had hoped she would be able to let her decision mature; now she suddenly had a twenty-four-hour ultimatum. After all, it concerned everything in the world that mattered to her, Stiller, Rolf, Hannes, it concerned a life that was not yet born, people to whom her heart was bound, it concerned herself, it involved the question whether Sibylle would be capable of choosing her life for herself. All this was in the balance. And Rolf wanted to know by tomorrow, so that he could order the removal van, tomorrow over coffee...

The children's performance at the circus (says Sibylle) was anything but a distraction for her; on the contrary, this was where she reached her decision—for Paris, for Stiller, for the risk. By daylight, thought Sibylle, these circuses look much shabbier, downright pathetic; the dilapidation behind the showy façade is visible everywhere; this makes the light under the tent with the sun shining on it all the lovelier, a light like amber, and on top of this the stands filled with a motley crowd of children and the buzz of their voices, and then the brass band, the stench of beasts, and every now and then a roar as though from the jungle. Sibylle found it magnificent. In Paris, she thought, there would be some kind of a job she could do, any sort of job, that was part of the risk. Sibylle was not afraid. The clown who opened the performance evidently took the children for stupid adults, his success was meagre, and little Hannes, at the circus for the first time, stared at the silly man without smiling, only glad when he stumbled, and didn't want him to come back. Sibylle was to tell the clown not to come back. But then came the leaping tigers! The crack of a whip and hoarse growling—Sibylle was fascinated, and for a few minutes she even forgot Paris, while Hannes sucked a sweet and asked why the nasty animals had to keep jumping through the hoop. He couldn't see any proper point in it. The seals, on the other hand, enchanted him, and on top of all the decisions she had to make, Sibylle now had to decide whether she wouldn't like to be a seal. While the horses were waltzing Hannes wanted to go home. Now Sibylle could easily have gone to Stiller. She didn't do so. Not yet. And then, as the lives of seven men hung from the smiling teeth of a girl on the trapeze, Hannes spotted down below through the stands a scruffy-looking man in boots, who was dressing up all kinds of dogs in quaint little jackets, black dress suits, and white bridal veils, and the dogs could scarcely wait. After this, Sibylle had to take little Hannes on her knees, so that he shouldn't fall down between the scaffolding. By this time, it seems, she had made up her mind. And yet all her attention was on the daring act on the glittering trapeze. She would manage somehow, she thought. Suddenly the children all round yelled their approval with a single voice: the silvery trapeze lady had just left her celestial swing with a
salto mortale,
bounced up and down in the net, and just look, she hadn't broken her neck, and the orchestra blared out Verdi. Interval. Hannes wanted to go outside like all the other children, but Sibylle sat as though spellbound: A person in fancy dress, who obviously earned her living like this, was selling chocolates, and this was doubtless the biggest attraction of the afternoon for Sibylle: an independent woman—

Just before seven o'clock, after bringing Hannes safely home, she came to Stiller, who was whistling in his studio like a reed-sparrow, the trunk with the hinges pulled out and already packed. Of course, he was quite serious about the trip to Paris. Why had Sibylle come without her luggage? Now it turned out that Stiller had to go to Paris 'anyway', not today, not tomorrow, but soon—on account of a bronze that could only be cast in Paris and was absolutely indispensable for the forthcoming exhibition, as the curator agreed. What about Julika? He had such a magnificent pretext for going to Paris, and Julika had no excuse to excite herself and send her temperature curve up on account of this trip. Sibylle understood. She said simply:

'No.'

Stiller was offended.

'I'm going—'

'Yes,' she said. 'Do.'

He thought her strange. For months they had been talking and dreaming of Paris, and now—