I'm Not Stiller (50 page)

'Take it away,' said Frau Julika. 'I don't need a cushion, really I don't.' Stiller felt rejected, to judge by his brief glance at Julika, unjustly rejected. If I had been asked to act as arbiter, I should have had to take Frau Julika's part as regards the superfluousness of the proferred cushion. 'Where are you going to set up your kiln?' I asked, to change the subject; but Stiller didn't hear. 'Why don't you want this cushion?' he insisted, until poor Frau Julika finally took it for the sake of peace, without thanking him, and instead of putting it behind her head pushed it under her knees, where it was less in the way. Two well-meaning people! I thought and praised the delicious wine.

For no particular reason I recalled the little story someone had told me recently. 'You once discovered Mexico,' I said, 'this will interest you. Some chap was breeding pigs there, I don't know where exactly, anyhow it didn't pay, he sweated his guts out, but to no avail, and he had invested all his means and half his life in it, and all his ambition; to cut a long story short, the business simply didn't pay, and then on top of everything else there came a devastating drought. That happens, doesn't it? The river dried up, I don't know which one; and then apparently things got so bad that the crocodiles migrated over land to the nearest water. One fine day a convoy of these crocodiles started heading straight across his pig farm. What was he to do? The unfortunate fellow could have climbed up on to a roof, for example, and shot the crocodiles dead. But he didn't. He let them eat all his pigs, which had never paid anyway, made a stronger fence round the whole place, acquired a crocodile farm, went into the handbag business and made a fortune.' Stiller laughed loudly. 'It's supposed to be true,' I added. 'Isn't that wonderful?' exclaimed Stiller, turning to Frau Julika. Her laugh was completely forced, and as a matter of fact, when I look back, I can't remember this woman ever laughing in any other way. Her laughter always stayed on her face; it was as though she had no inward laughter, as though she had lost it. It was quite useless trying to cheer Frau Julika up; afterwards one felt utterly silly.

Now I was annoyed at myself. What was the point of all this talk? It was a late afternoon in autumn with a gentle sun, the hour Stiller had described in his letter: '—and then, my dear sir, when we sit outside and the autumn sun is enough to make you happy, when there are grapes again, when a metallic haze hangs over the lake, but the mountain-tops are clear and bright with golden woods against a Mediterranean sky and the light lies across the lake in a pathway of pure quicksilver, later of gleaming brass, then of copper—' The quicksilver phase was already over, the lake was at the brass stage.

Every now and then I had to look round again; the ever jolly garden gnomes, the chalet with its turret, the weeds, the grey Aphrodite, the empty, moss-grown fountain with its basin choked by dead leaves and its rusty water-pipe, the veranda with its
art nouvtau
leaded windows, the ivy, the funicular railway blood-red in the setting sun, all this remained pretty incredible. They themselves, Stiller and Frau Julika wore this environment like an alien suit of clothes with the unexpressed awareness that ultimately every suit of clothes is alien and provisional. I admired them. What really belonged to them was the sun with its vast radiance on the surface of Lake Geneva, the pottery down below in the underground chamber, all kinds of difficulties such as are usual among human beings, and no doubt also their helpless guest. As soon as one left Frau Julika in peace everything went smoothly. Now, however, Stiller wanted to know whether I believed in the educational value of eurhythmies. Frau Julika pleaded its cause without any real conviction, Stiller was of the opinion that Julika should devote herself to purely artistic work again and start a ballet school of her own at Lausanne. The discussion never got as far as a consideration of the practical obstacles; Frau Julika was positively vehement, Stiller sorrowful because she would accept nothing from him, neither a cushion nor his belated belief in her artistic gifts. He rose disconsolately to fetch the other bottle...

'Rolf,' she said the moment we were alone, 'you must talk him out of that idea! I beg you, talk him out of it! He's driving me crazy with this scheme!' My attempt to examine the idea from a practical standpoint, to consider what Stiller hoped Frau Julika might gain from it, and to ask what future Frau Julika herself desired, fell on totally deaf ears; since it was impossible to talk to me either, she had thrown herself back in the chair again and was shaking her head as she lay. 'What does he want of me?' she said at last, in a tired voice, as I remained silent. Her eyes were glistening; with her slender, pale hands she was grasping the arms of the chair as one does at the dentist's to stop oneself trembling. Her whole behaviour, I must admit, struck me as overwrought and I felt I was being called upon to take sides in a long-standing argument, something I had no wish to do, particularly as I lacked all expert knowledge in the matter. 'Stiller has made a pretty fool of me with his
ferme vaudoise,'
I said. She didn't react at all. 'But this position!' I chatted on, 'what I like most about Lake Geneva—' She heard neither my small talk nor my effort to pass beyond it to a genuine conversation: 'Talk him out it!' she begged again, just as excited ps before. 'How do you imagine I could do it?' she protested with a violence that was also directed against me and which she toned down by adding in a gentler voice: it's impossible, believe me. Impossible.' And soon afterwards: 'Of course, he can't know,'—'What can't he know?'—'Don't ask,' she begged, pulling herself together and taking another cigarette. I clicked my lighter. 'I shouldn't smoke all the time,' she remarked as though frightened or something, as though I were forcing her, in any case without thanking me for the light, which she did not use. 'He can't know,' she said to herself, 'I've been to see the doctor—' I'm sure Frau Julika did not intend to talk to anyone about it and was sorry she had started: naturally I waited to hear more, though in silence. 'The whole of my left lung,' she said. 'I don't want him to know yet. It's got to be done. As soon as possible.' Her sudden calm, a kind of composure that made me think the unhappy woman had no idea what it was all about, although she herself subsequently employed the medical expression, which she had learnt not from her doctor, but from her own common sense; her lack of complaint amazed me, so that I stared at the ground, as though searching for something in the gravel, and dared not look her in the face for fear of showing by my expression what I could not help thinking. 'Yes,' she said drily, 'that's the way it is.' I assumed the same dry tone. 'When is the operation to be?' I asked. 'I don't know yet. As soon as I am no longer afraid.'

A moment later Stiller arrived with the other bottle. He was just going up to Glion, he said, to fetch some grapes...

'Talk him out of it!' repeated Frau Julika, as though the ballet school idea was still the topic of conversation. She was lying back with her head cushioned in her girlish hair again. I don't think I've seen a lonelier person than this woman. Between her suffering and the world there seemed to be an impenetrable wall, not merely detachment but rather a kind of certainty she would not be heard, an old and hopeless, absolutely indelible conviction derived from experience, unreproachful but incurable, that her partner could hear only himself. I wanted to ask whether she had never been loved in her life. Of course I didn't ask. And did she herself love? I involuntarily tried to picture her as a child. Was it due to the fact that she was an orphan? Expecting every minute that Frau Julika would begin to pour her heart out, I too remained silent, listening to her regular, muffled breathing. What had happened to this woman? I found it impossible to believe that any human being could have been like this from the outset, so completely unable to express herself even at a moment of agonizing misery. Who had made her like this? Stiller had been gone a quarter of an hour already, in another quarter of an hour he would be back. 'Are you too waiting for me to say something now?' she began at last. 'I've nothing to say. How can I change? I am as I am. Why does Stiller always want to change me?'—'Does he want to?'—'I know,' she said, 'he probably means well, and he is convinced he loves me.'—'What about you?' I asked, 'do you love him too?'—'I understand him less and less,' she replied after painful thought. 'Do you know what he's always wanting me to do, Rolf?'...

After this, to take my mind off what she had said, but of course without being able to forget her horrifying revelation, I tried to put into words my current ideas about Stiller, about his human disposition, his actual make-up and his potentialities, his development during the last few years as I had sensed it. I tried to express myself in a way that neither blamed nor defended and scarcely excused, and for a long time I was under the impression that Frau Julika was listening to me. Certainly, I found it easier to 'understand' Stiller than Frau Julika, and after her last question I felt that in any case this was my task for the moment. As I spoke I drew with a twig in the gravel. When I glanced up to try at least to read from her expression her opinion about an idea, a question, which I as a man could not decide, I saw an utterly distorted face. I shall never forget this face that was no longer a face. Her mouth was open as in antique masks. She was trying in vain to bite her lips. Her mouth remained open as though paralysed, trembling. I saw her sobs, but it was as though I was deaf. Her eyes were open, but unseeing, blurred by silent tears, her two little fists in her lap, her body shaking—there she sat, unrecognizable, beyond the reach of any cry, with no personal characteristic left, no voice, nothing but a despairing body, flesh screaming soundlessly in the terror of death. I can't remember what I did...

Later, when I held her two little fists that were still trembling convulsively, while her face had grown calm with exhaustion, she said: 'You mustn't tell him.' I nodded in order to give her some sort of feeling of support. 'Promise me!' she begged.

Soon afterwards Stiller arrived with his grapes. Frau Julika rose quickly to her feet with head averted; from the distance she said something about sweets and was gone. Stiller absolutely insisted on my trying the grapes, which were for dessert. Whether he really saw no signs of what I had been through, or only acted as though he didn't, I could not decide. Stiller said how glad he was I had come and promised himself a jolly evening. I steered the conversation on to the subject of the wine when Stiller asked casually what I thought of Julika. 'I mean, as regards her health,' he said. 'Isn't she looking splendid?' We stood drinking, our left hands in our trouser pockets. When Julika finally came back with the sweets, she was wearing a woollen jacket and looking splendid. She had powdered her face; but that wasn't the only reason. She herself seamed to know nothing. I had the irritating feeling that it wasn't the same person at all; as though I had merely dreamed of this woman. It really was growing cool, and we went indoors. I couldn't imagine how we were going to get through the evening; but to Stiller everything was just as usual, and so it was to Frau Julika.

***

At that time I had not yet read the foregoing notes, though I knew that Stiller had written something like a diary in custody. It is not my purpose in the postscript to rectify Stiller's statements. The mischievous element in Stiller's notes, his subjectivity which occasionally did not shrink from falsification, seem to me obvious enough, as the report of a subjective experience they may be honest. The picture which these notes give of Frau Julika amazes me; it appears to me to reveal more about the person who drew the picture than about the person who is so grossly misrepresented by it. Whether there is not something inhuman in the very attempt to portray a living human being is a major question, and one that applies substantially to Stiller. Most of us do not keep notebooks, but perhaps we do the same thing in a less manifest way, and the result is in every case bitter.

My visit to Glion naturally exercised my mind for a long time. Soon after my return I received a letter from Frau Julika in which, without giving any reason, she once more adjured me to say nothing. Whatever might be my own opinion, I had no right to break from without this silence between a couple, unasked, merely because I happened to have come into possession of the facts by chance and probably against the will of the person concerned. Did the unhappy Julika fear that Stiller would lose his head and bring about an impossible situation? I don't know. Or had she reason to hope that perhaps the operation would not be necessary after all?

The other thing that occupied my mind was, of course, Stiller himself.
Something had happened to Stiller, it seemed to me. The dresome question of whom we took him for had lapsed, so had his fear of being confused with someone else. In his company I felt as though I had been liberated from some hitherto barely conscious constraint; I myself became freer. As long as a person does not accept himself, he will always have this fear of being misunderstood and misconstrued by his environment; he attaches much too much importance to how we see him, and precisely because of his own obtuse fear of being pushed by us into the wrong role, he inevitably makes us obtuse as well. He wants us to set him free; but he doesn't set us free. He doesn't permit us to confuse him with somebody else. Who is misrepresenting whom? On this point much could be said. The self-knowledge that gradually or abruptly alienates a person from his previous life is merely the first step, indispensable but by no means sufficient in itself. How many people we know who come to a halt after this first step, who are satisfied with the melancholy that comes of mere self-knowledge and who make this melancholy look like maturity! Stiller, I believe, had already passed beyond this stage when he first disappeared. He was in the process of taking the second and much more difficult step, of emerging from resigned regret that one is not what one would so much have liked to be and of becoming what one is. Nothing is harder than to accept oneself. Actually only the naive succeed in doing it, and I have so far met few people in my world who could be described as naive in this positive sense. In my view Stiller, when we met him in custody, had already achieved this painful self-acceptance to a pronounced degree. Why did he nonetheless defend himself in such a childish way against his whole environment, against his former companions? I had the good fortune never to have been directly acquainted with that earlier Stiller. This made a sensible relationship much easier: we were meeting for the first time. In spite of all his self-acceptance, in spite of all his will to self-acceptance, there was one thing our friend had failed to achieve, he had not been able to forego recognition by those around him. He felt himself a different man—quite rightly, he was a different man from that Stiller as whom people immediately recognized him—and he wanted to convince everyone of this: that was the childish thing. But how can we forego being recognized, at least by those nearest to us, in the reality that we ourselves do not know, but at best can only live? This renunciation of recognition will never become possible without a certitude that our life is directed by a supra-human authority, without at least the passionate hope that such an authority exists. Stiller reached this certitude very late. Had he reached it? After my visit in autumn I gained the impression that he had, although Stiller never mentioned the subject—perhaps precisely because he never mentioned it. Stiller himself—and this, no doubt, was an essential reason for his silence—had absolutely no desire to announce his metamorphosis. His new work did not serve the purpose of expression either; he made plates and cups and bowls, useful things which in my opinion showed a great deal of good taste, but this work was no longer a form of self-portrayal. He was free from the fear of not being recognized, and in consequence one felt freer in one's attitude to him, as though released from a spell. Now I could understand why, in spite of all my friendly feelings towards him, I had always felt rather afraid of meeting Stiller. The word 'silence' may be misleading. Naturally, Stiller was by no means untalkative. But like everyone who has arrived at himself, he looked at people and things outside himself, and what surrounded him was beginning to be world, something other than projections of his self, which he no longer had to seek or conceal in the world. He himself was beginning to be in the world. That was my impression after my first visit to Glion, and incidentally it was confirmed by his letters, in so far as they did not concern Fraujulika.