I'm Not Stiller (42 page)

Right at the beginning of my artistic activity, perhaps, I was alone, or almost succeeded in being alone in a real sense in the hope of being able to realize myself in clay or plaster; but this hope did not last long before ambition raised its head, delight at the prospect of recognition, worry over possible rejection, for months all this clay and ambition and plaster kept me from seeing a single living soul, immersed in my art that never became real art, immured between the four walls of my studio, a hermit without a radio as in the Middle Ages, taciturn as a galley slave, a monk in relation to girls, but only in relation to them, a jubilant Rumpelstiltskin at the thought that nobody yet had any inkling of my genius; and I was as hard-working as a flogged beast, flogged by ambition. So I was not alone.

And I was not alone by my ferry across the Tajo; in the event of my death, I knew, Anya would not break down nor enter a convent, she would go on tending the living and go on letting herself be loved, but occasionally she would remember me. And when no one shot me, when they only tied me up with my braces, tied my hands and feet together and threw me into the gorse, I wasn't alone: I had my ignominy in front of Anya, I thought I should die miserably of thirst and never see Anya again; I shouted as long as I could, then I stopped shouting, but on the threshold of unconsciousness I had Anya, my searing ignominy in front of Anya. And I was not alone on my way back, although I already had a presentiment how foreign my homeland would seem to me; I spent whole nights on the march or in French waiting-rooms justifying myself to Anya, feeling ashamed before Anya, becoming indignant about her or piling up hostile thoughts about her. I wasn't alone.

And then, far away from her, I told my Spanish tale; my acquaintances believed it, more or less, but I knew who knew the truth—namely, Anya—so I wasn't alone. It's ridiculous but true: there was always a woman with whom I could delude myself. I had men friends, not many, sometimes one, sometimes others; that was friendship, but no delusion about the solitariness as individuals. I often thought of distant friends, curious about their ideas or glad of their contradiction or even in painful discord; but in the hour of horror, in the hour of inability to be alone, it was never with anyone but a woman, with the memory or the hope of a woman, that I escaped from my loneliness. Why wasn't I capable of being alone, why was I compelled to bore myself with this ballerina, so much so that I even had to marry this sea beast? The fault was in myself, no doubt about that, time and again I was governed by an iron will operating in reverse. A thousand and one nights, at least, I took my head in my hands and fell asleep: even in marriage I couldn't be alone. I deserted her; she humiliated me and I humiliated her; but I wasn't alone.

And I wasn't alone stowed away in the after hold of an Italian tramp steamer, an emigrant without papers bound for America; only a bribed stoker knew I was down below among the barrels, and it was dark, stinking, and so hot that the sweat ran out of my every pore (it would have run out of anyone's in my place!); I knew very well that the beautiful Julika would be disgusted by this sweat—so I wasn't alone. It was the chance of a lifetime to be alone, an opportunity of eighteen undisturbed days and nineteen nights with a calm sea most of the time, so I can't even make the excuse that I felt seasick. I was sick once, probably soon after we passed Gibraltar; the boat pitched for a few hours, then quietened down again. And what did I do with my chance, that was as big as the Atlantic? I lit a cigarette and saw by the flame of my lighter the labels on the nearest barrels, Chianti Italian Wine Imported, then nothing but blank darkness with a few slits of light between the planks and the throbbing of the propeller-shaft underneath me, day and night; it was enough to drive one mad; I didn't go mad, for in imagination I saw Julika on her
art nouveau
veranda and told her what still remained to be said. I was glad I should never see this woman again; that was my only pleasure down there in the hold. Was I alone? Every time I woke up after a longish sleep I was afraid the stinking tub was already homeward bound for Europe; it made no difference to my resolution not to see the beautiful Julika again. I had only to think, as I sat among the stinking barrels (I spent most of the time sitting down, because whenever I walked about in the darkness I kept stumbling over ropes and crane chains), of the letter she had sent me after her murder on the balcony, of the first sentence. 'There is not much point in returning to the conversation we had last week etc.' I only had to think of this opening sentence and I regretted nothing, not even if this tub were to run aground on a sandbank the very next moment and fill up with water. I had only to think of Foxli! Or of the famous gruel which this woman couldn't be bothered to make, and a hundred other trifles, each more ridiculous than the last; but eighteen days and nineteen nights in succession in the darkness, with water dripping through some crack between the planks—an eternity of dripping minutes—were not enough to summarize the waste land between this woman and me, even in the rapid shorthand of thought; again I stumbled round and grazed myself on a piece of rusty sheeting, again I squatted on a coil of rope and licked the warm blood from my hand, squatted there stinking of stale sweat and fresh sweat, seen by no one and as blind as a mole, deafened by the throb of the propeller-shaft, and not a single waking hour went by without my thinking of something against this frail woman at Davos, and nobody heard my loudest curses. But I wasn't alone.

In Brooklyn harbour the propeller-shaft fell silent at last. My heart beat. First they discharged the forward hold. After ten hours my stoker came at last with the advice to remain hidden for another two or three days, because there was a dock strike. Five days passed, and naturally five nights as well, and then at last I heard my valiant stoker's whistle as agreed; but still I wasn't through with the waste land between this woman and me.

Now I had to go ashore. Was I alone in New York? I pushed my way through the ant-like swarm in Times Square; for weeks my eyes were continually drawn to telephone booths, but I was resolved not to ring Sibylle. And I didn't ring, but boarded a Greyhound and headed west, no matter where to. The country varied, it was tedious and entrancing, repellent, delightful. I saw the prairie, the Chicago slaughterhouses, the Mormons, the Indians, the biggest copper mine in the world, the longest suspension bridge in the world; I talked to strange faces in a milk bar; I worked for a month in Detroit; I fell in love with the daughter of a Conservative senator, who had a Cadillac, and we swam in Lake Michigan; I travelled on; I saw forest fires, baseball, sunsets over the Pacific and flying fish; I rarely had any money, but I whistled with joy at being so far from Davos, and slightly less far from Riverside Drive, New York; at this time I could have been as much alone as on the moon. They said Hallo! and I said Hallo! I listened to the last radio announcers after midnight, merely in order not to hear the silence, for in the silence I was not alone, so I preferred to listen to all those persuasive commercials telling me the best soap, the best brand of whisky, the best dog food, interspersed with symphonies or at least Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker Suite
—so that I should not be so alone.

And if it wasn't my graceful ballerina, it was Little Grey, the graceful beast of a cat, that kept jumping on to my window sill although it had nothing to say to me. Haven't I written about that already somewhere in this heap of paper? I picked her up and shoved her into a refrigerator, then I tried to whistle and later on to sleep, but in vain; after a few hours I took her out of the refrigerator, well knowing that her death would prey on my mind; and when, after a while, she opened the slits of her eyes slightly, I was moved to tears that she hadn't inflicted her death in the refrigerator on me. I cared for her until she began to purr again and rub herself against the legs of my trousers, but at least she was alive, even if she bore herself like a victress and still had nothing to say to me; and then, as she began to exploit my bad conscience, I chucked her out into the not very cold night, where she hoisted her tail and spat; I shut the window, all the windows; she jumped on to the sill and spat, as though I had really killed her; I acted for a time as though I didn't see her; didn't hear her miauling, whereupon she maligned me throughout the neighbourhood (especially to Florence, the mulatto girl). 'Enough!' I cried, went to the window, took her by the scruff of the neck and flung the struggling bundle as far as I could. Catlike, she fell on her feet. To my surprise, she even remained silent and did not hop up on the window sill again. She left me alone, I admit, but every moment I knew that any moment she might jump back on my window sill. So I wasn't alone.

Am I alone now? I'm thinking of Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy in Paris. I see her in her black tailor-made costume, which suits her so wonderfully, and her little white hat on her red hair. It must be cold in Paris now. She had it in mind to buy a new coat. I see her (although I am not in the least acquainted with this autumn's models), in her new coat, which once again suits her splendidly. It may be that I fall in love very easily; but when I sit like this in my cell thinking of Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy, it is more than being in love; I can feel it by my hopeless dejection; Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy is my only hope. Quite apart now from her copper hair, her alabaster complexion, her greenish or water-grey or perhaps colourless, but anyhow exceptionally beautiful eyes—quite apart from all this, which anyone, even my defence counsel, can see, this woman (whatever the vanished Stiller may have against her) is a superb woman, not easy to love perhaps, a woman who has never been loved and has never loved. And for this reason, I believe, I am in no way deterred by what she and Stiller went through together. What has that to do with me? I don't want to be highfalutin and declare, I love her! But I may say, I should like to love her. And so long as Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy does not take me for her missing husband I dare to say, Why should it not be possible? On one of the next few days she will come back, according to her rather brief and reserved cards, wearing a Paris autumn model.

I shall admit to her that it is all untrue: I am incapable of being alone, I have tried, but in vain. I shall tell her openly that I have missed her. That is no exaggeration. And then, as soon as possible, I shall ask her whether she thinks she could love me. Her smile, the astonishment in her plucked eyebrows—I shall let none of this deter me; that's the way Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy is. An orphan at eighteen, one quarter Hungarian, three quarters German Swiss, a tuberculosis that proved to be quite real, and then the marriage with a neurotic Spanish volunteer—all that wasn't easy; her childlessness, her art, and the way she went through everything, not without self-pity, undoubtedly, not without a graceful kind of malice, but always with a head held high on her narrow shoulders—that is magnificent: a touch of arrogance (in the specifically feminine manner, namely as a tendency to 'forgive') is only too understandable. My open question, whether she thinks she can love me will not be answered by any maidenly Yes. Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy is too experienced for that, and so am I; nor is this cell with a prison bed a green snuggery under blossoming apple boughs. I hope I don't become solemn! For when I become solemn I inevitably become cowardly, if only for stylistic reasons: certain unsolemn things are then almost impossible to say. If Frau Julika Stiller-Tschudy does not answer me with an outright No, I must talk something like this:

'The fact is, Julika, you are my only hope, and that is the terrible thing about it. Listen to me! There is no need for us to talk about Jean-Louis Dmitritch, perhaps he loves you much more than I ever can, Dmitritch is a sensitive man, I take your word for it, a faithful half-Russian and a bit of an invalid. You haven't improved, my dear Julika; you're forever keeping an invalid. And in fact there is no chance of our improving, neither you nor I. That is the choice that remains to us, I believe: either we smash ourselves to pieces on one another, or we love one another. So, to be perfectly frank, I don't imagine it's going to be easy. In fact it will get harder year by year. Don't you agree? But there is nothing else left to us. At all costs, I think, we must start from the fact that neither of us has ever loved the other. And that, you see, is why we can't even separate. That's a very funny thing! You have parted from Jean-Louis, you say. Out of loyalty to your husband, you say. Let us treat your husband as vanished! But you were able to part from Jean-Louis, you see, so why can't we part? Every couple, who were once happy in their own way and realized their potentialities, can get divorced; it is sad, distressing, scandalous, incomprehensible, but neither of the two suffers harm to their soul: she has two sweet children, a recompense for her innocence that is visible from afar, and he becomes deputy chairman in spite of everything: who knows which of the two will be the first to remarry? And what about us, Julika, what have we got? The memory of Foxli, to put it in a nutshell. I know the little dog isn't personally to blame for the fact that we were never happy together. But you know what I mean. We were never through with one another. And I believe that is why, in spite of everything, we couldn't part. Poor Monsieur Dmitritch! He might possess every conceivable masculine quality, in vain, they would be of no avail to him against the vacuum that binds us together. I know that, Julika, I was loved, as you know, and it was simple to love that woman, it was joy. But it didn't work out. It didn't work out because I wasn't through with you, with us. She had a child recently, by the way, I wrote and told you, and she is now once more the wife of my only friend. That's another thing. I still love her. That is why I ask you if you think you could love me; it's anything but easy for you to love me either. At times, to be quite frank, it's like trying to walk on water, and at the same time I know, we both know, that the water is rising to drown us, and will go on rising, even if we don't try to walk on it. There's not a great deal of life left to us. Everything, really everything, that is left to us in life depends upon whether we, you and I, can succeed in meeting one another above and beyond all that has happened. That sounds rather despondent, I know; but it is just the reverse, it is the hope, the certainty even, that there is still a threshold for us through which we can enter life, you into yours and I into mine, but there is only this one threshold, and neither of us can cross it alone, you see, neither you nor I—'