I'm Not Stiller (37 page)

Rolf, her husband, remained mute.

When Stiller turned up at the hotel one day to find out what was really going on, he obviously hadn't strength enough to set this utterly confused woman free from her childish tone; Stiller let himself be hurt by this false tone, and this made the helpless Sibylle pitilessly superior. It was as though a mechanism was at work: no sooner did she feel that this man felt sorry for himself than she couldn't help hurting him. They walked across the plateau towards Samaden. Sibylle in black ski-ing trousers, elegant, athletic, suntanned, while Stiller wore his everlasting U.S. Army greatcoat and was as pale-faced as everyone from the lowlands. 'How's your exhibition going?' she inquired. 'Has your bronze been cast yet?' Her buoyant tone rendered him dumb and dull-witted. He could think of simply nothing to say. Then there was her gentleman from Düsseldorf, a wonderful fellow always shooting a line about his experiences as a fighter pilot on the Eastern Front and in Crete, a good deal more amusing than Stiller! She told him straight out. 'And I can tell you,' announced Sibylle, 'he knows how to live. He's rolling in money...' And Stiller had to listen while she told him how impressed she was by all the money he 'made', this son of a family in heavy industry who yet took life so lightly. 'But as a man he's not my type,' said Sibylle, and Stiller looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then he relapsed into his mute melancholy. The most he said was once: 'Pontresina makes me sick!' Sibylle had a twisted ankle and limped slightly. 'But yesterday I went dancing again,' she said.

Something was egging her on to delight in everything Stiller despised and to tell him all over again how witty this gentleman from Düsseldorf was, a knight of the Iron Cross, how manly and entertaining and full of ideas; if he felt he had hurt somebody's feelings, for example, whether it was a man or a woman, he made them a present of a Mercedes. 'Cross my heart!' Stiller only said, 'I quite believe you.' Or another example: There was a young girl in her hotel who had fallen in love with a Swedish student, and immediately this gentleman from Düsseldorf had the charming idea of bringing the Swedish student over—by aeroplane. 'Simply enchanting,' commented Sibylle, to show her tedious mope that men who make money are not on that account necessarily devoid of charm. Perhaps Stiller said once, 'Possibly.' Or he asked, 'Why do you tell me that?' But he was hurt; he had no means of stopping Sibylle. Moreover, on that walk Sibylle noticed for the first time that Stiller stammered, that there were certain words he couldn't say, words beginning with M.

Once a young fellow passed them, a coffee-brown face with the white poster smile of a Grison ski instructor; Sibylle greeted him with a Hallo, then she said, 'That was Nuot.' He asked with tired obedience, 'Who is Nuot?' So that was the ski-ing instructor who had actually carried her all the way to the nearest rescue sledge when she twisted her ankle. 'Isn't he a darling?' she asked. The conversation continued in this tone.

Of course Sibylle knew perfectly well what sort of inn he would have liked, some country pub used by the locals. But once the devil had got into her—and she was enjoying this feeling, as I have said—she immediately thought of a 'ripping' place. Why didn't Stiller resist? His lack of confidence was an insult to her; she felt shamed by it. Was this the man she had loved? The 'ripping' restaurant proved to be an orgy of'ye olde' Switzerland such as Stiller couldn't stand at any price, but they had already been relieved of their wardrobe by at least six hands and the Frau Doktor had been greeted as a regular customer. And all the rest of it—the way they were shown to a particular little table and handed two extensive menus printed in the style of the Gutenberg Bible, the head waiter in tails who was so kind as to recommend fresh lobster, a recommendation which he made in the most personal manner—all this was compounded of precisely the mixture of
noblesse
and blackmail that rendered the lower-middle-class Stiller, when he was not at his best, completely defenceless. On the table stood three roses, all included in the price, and everything, naturally, by candlelight. Stiller didn't even dare to tell Sibylle that he thought the prices grotesque. 'What will you have?' asked Sibylle in a motherly way, adding, 'I've got money on me.' A wine waiter was already standing there, dressed up as a cooper, and Sibylle was in favour of 'her' Chateauneuf-du-Pape at sixteen francs the bottle, but ready chilled. 'You'll see,' she told Stiller, 'the Chateauneufhere is a poem!' Sibylle listened to herself; the devil gave her the vocabulary of a person whom Stiller couldn't answer. And then, after she had ordered 'her'
filet mignon
with little more than a nod, she compelled the helpless Stiller to eat snails, though Stiller was a trifle doubtful whether snails and Chateauneuf-du-Pape went together; Stiller had never eaten snails, as he was forced to admit; this made him feel inferior and therefore not entitled to a contradictory opinion. All right then, snails!

And then a gentleman nodded to Sibylle and told her very briefly, so as not to interrupt, in French that he had passed his second-class test today; Sibylle congratulated him with a wave of the hand and informed Stiller that he had just been looking at 'Charles Boyer'. Stiller who was nibbling with shy hunger at a roll, asked, 'Who is Charles Boyer?' The heavenly dancer, the Frenchman, and while Stiller had to taste the Chateauneuf-du-Pape, she told him the 'sweet' story of how she had humorously addressed this Frenchman—who, incidentally, was in the diplomatic service—while they were dancing, as Charles Boyer—and his name actually was Boyer. 'Wasn't that funny?' she asked. Stiller looked at her like a dog that doesn't understand human speech, and Sibylle had half a mind to stroke him like a dog. She refrained from doing so in order not to arouse vain hopes. When she saw that Stiller had already drunk from his glass, she said gaily,
'Prosit!'
at which Stiller, filled with embarrassment, raised his almost empty glass,'
Prosit—'

And all the time, Sibylle felt so rotten that she could eat hardly any of the
filet mignon;
Stiller, on the other hand, whether it turned his stomach or not, had to get down his twelve snails. Meanwhile Sibylle—who had to make all the conversation, so dull was he—lit a cigarette and gave him an additional piece of news: 'Sturzenegger has written to me. He needs a secretary, what do you think of that, and me of all people.' Stiller poked about in his snail shells. 'He's in love with me,' added Sibylle. 'Even my husband noticed that. Seriously. And I like your friend...' In between she gave instructions; 'You must eat the juice, old chap, that's the best part of it.' Stiller obeyed and ate the juice. 'Seriously,' continued Sibylle, 'Sturzenegger has invited me. Apparently he loves it over there in California. A hundred dollars a week, what do you think of that, and my passage paid. A hundred dollars is a lot, I think, and in a quarter of an hour you're by the sea—'

And so on.

Not until they were on the way back to the hotel did they have a rather more real, though short and one-sided conversation. They walked through crunching snow, a cloud in front of their mouths; it was bitterly cold, but beautiful, to left and right walls of snow, the houses as though covered in white featherbeds, stars up above, a night of porcelain. 'Where are you staying?' inquired Sibylle when they stood in front of the ornate entrance to her hotel. 'Will you be here tomorrow?' she went on, trying to introduce the farewell, if possible the final farewell. '—it was simply too much of a shock for me,' she remarked, breaking into his silence. 'All of a sudden it suited you, now that you had to go to Paris anyway, now you had a good excuse, now you wanted me to come, now our Paris was suddenly possible. At that moment I felt like your mistress...' Stiller said nothing, and whether he understood what had snapped in her remained uncertain. What was he brooding over? And since she had no other declaration to make, Sibylle inquired the name of a constellation above the snow-covered entrance—she had to ask twice before Stiller told her.

'Yes,' she said then, as though it had some connexion with this constellation, 'where shall I be in a year? I've no idea. Perhaps really over in California!...It's funny,' she added, 'with you one knows perfectly well. I don't believe you will ever change, not even in your outward life.' She hadn't meant to be unkind, but felt the harshness of her words and tried to soften them: 'Or do you think you will ever become a different person?' This sounded no gentler, on the contrary. All speech was simply out of place now. 'Oh Stiller,' she said at length, I was really very fond of you—' A long-distance skier on a training run, somebody like Nuot, swept past the mute couple with vigorous movements of his softly pattering skis. They gazed after him, as though sport interested them above all else; unfortunately he soon vanished from sight and left them alone with each other again. And then no doubt the indecision simply became unbearable; they parted—not yet capable of saying farewell—after quickly agreeing to meet at breakfast next morning.

At breakfast Stiller did not appear.

Two days later, when Sibylle came out of the dining room accompanied by the gentleman from Düsseldorf, there he stood, without approaching Sibylle, like a ghost. 'Why didn't you come before?' she asked at once, not waiting to greet him first; Sibylle was taken aback. 'Have you already eaten?' he asked. 'Haven't you?' she asked back. Stiller was pale with fatigue and unshaven. 'Where have you come from?' she asked, and Stiller helped her into the fur coat which a bell-hop, a Grison boy in a circus livery, had carried after her. 'I expected you for breakfast the day before yesterday,' said Sibylle and repeated her question, 'Where have you come from?' She nodded to the gentleman from Düsseldorf, who had waited by the lift, busy lighting a cigar, a cavalier skilled in self-effacement, so that Stiller hadn't even noticed him, the wonderful fellow...

Stiller had come from Davos. She learnt this just as they were passing through the revolving door out into the cold. 'From Davos?' she asked, but the glass panel had already interposed itself between her and Stiller, who was following behind. 'From Davos?' she repeated when he emerged from the revolving door. In the meantime Stiller had spoken to his sick wife in the sanatorium. His account was brief and bald. 'That's all,' he concluded. 'Why are you so astounded?' It was true: the whole summer Sibylle had expected this, hoped for it, and silently encouraged it. And now it was a shock. She felt guilty. 'What about Julika?' she asked. 'What does she say about it?' This didn't seem to interest him. 'Separated?' she asked. 'What does that mean? You can't just leave her—' Stiller appeared to her brutal, inhuman; his action horrified her. Now suddenly, for the first time, Julika was not a remote phantom, but a flesh-and-blood woman, a sick, unhappy, deserted woman, a sister. 'Stiller,' she said involuntarily, 'you shouldn't have done that...' She corrected herself: 'We've no right to do that. I'm to blame myself, I know that. It's madness, Stiller, it's murder...' Stiller was unperturbed, he seemed almost to derive a malicious satisfaction from her concern. Stiller fancied himself free, completely free, and for the moment it was enough for him that he had acted.

'I'm hungry,' he said and showed clearly enough that he had no wish to think any more about Julika, and no cause. They entered an inn full oflocals, railwaymen enjoying their evening after work, each of them with a
Brissago
in his face and rather hushed by the lady's fur coat, till one of them said, 'Are we going to play or aren't we?' There was no menu printed in the style of the Gutenberg Bible here, but instead a fat innkeeper's wife who greeted them with a rather damp handshake, and then wiped a few small puddles of beer and some crumbs off the varnished wooden table. The price of the wines from the cask—Veltline, Kalterer, Magdalener, Dole—could be read on a blackboard attached to the wall, flanked by the laurel wreaths and cups of a rifle club and surmounted by the usual faded but colourful portrait of General Guisan. Stiller with his hunger was as confident as a woodcutter after a hard day's work, tired, unhurried, at one with himself, he immediately broke a loaf in two with his broad hands, while Sibylle, sitting on the bench by the tiled stove, suddenly found a purring cat on her lap waiting to be stroked. Stiller was delighted with the prospect of
Rb'sti
and
Bauernschüblig;
there was no salad here. While one of them shuffled the cards, the revelling railwaymen discussed the costly futility of a Big Four conference in a tone of conventional exasperation, without the least hint of real anger, and then became mute with concentration as the game started, diffusing a silence through the low bar-parlour that inevitably spread to Sibylle and Stiller. When the fat innkeeper's wife brought, not the impatiently awaited food, but the Veltliner, Stiller inquired about a room. 'Single or double?' asked the innkeeper's wife, as Stiller went out with her to look at the room...

For a time Sibylle was alone, the only woman in the bar, she turned the pages of a cycling magazine without reading it; a workman had sat down at her table; he licked the froth from his lips and eyed the lady with undisguised distrust, with downright contempt, as though he knew what the good Stiller did not for a moment suspect. How would Stiller take her confession, which seemed to her, as soon as she tried to frame it in words, simply incredible, monstrous! Sibylle was surprised that she had been able to look him in the eyes—she had no difficulty in doing so, even when Stiller came back and sat down beside her, gay with hunger but not in the least put out by the fact that Sibylle, who had already eaten, only drank a kirsch. There had been an avalanche somewhere near Bergtin, they heard from the railwayman. But the rumour was exaggerated; Stiller had seen the avalanche in question and told the rather pompous men with
Brissagos
in their brown faces that the line was already clear. Sibylle was surprised and somehow charmed, relieved, when she saw these revelling men, about whom there was something threatening in her eyes, disarmed by Stiller's nonchalant matter-of-factness. Sibylle felt protected. And the railwayman at their table had also stopped eyeing Sibylle with contempt; he even passed the ashtray without waiting to be asked. And later, after paying for his beer, he took off his cap and wished Stiller and Sibylle a good night 'together'. Once Stiller, as he ate, asked Sibylle: 'Is anything the matter?'—'Why?'—'You're very quiet today.'—'I'm glad you've come,' said Sibylle. 'I was so furious with you, I thought you'd just gone off and left me.' She lifted the purring cat from her lap and dropped it to the ground, where it stuck its tail in the air. 'Why didn't you leave me any message?' said Sibylie. 'I did something stupid, I must tell you, something very stupid...'