I'm Not Stiller (53 page)

So I thought. For me it was a feast ... The whole of this winter we never managed another evening like that, she and I. We just sit, she there, I here. It's enough to kill me, but she's quite satisfied!'—'How do you know she's satisfied, Stiller?'—'Why doesn't she cry out?' he demanded. 'I'm proud am I? Isn't she? She waited. Do you hear? She waited for my understanding. For how many years? Two years, fourteen years. What does it matter. That's why she's worn out, do you see. I've made a wreck of her. And she hasn't done the same to me!'—'Who says that?'—'She,' he answered with a scornful laugh, resting his head on the wooden chair-back. 'I have humiliated her—hasn't she humiliated me?'—'Stiller,' I commented, 'it's no good feeling sorry for yourself now. What did you expect after all that had happened? That she would go down on her knees? To you of all people?' He kept silent, his head resting on the back of the chair, his eyes staring at the ceiling. 'I can quite believe, Stiller, that there are times when you feel ready for anything, for all kinds of things. Then you rise in revolt again—in self-pity, in hate, in hopelessness. Because you expect mercy from her—from a human being. Isn't that so?' I asked. 'Your occasional kneeling is out of place.'—'I hate her,' he said to himself, 'sometimes I hate her.' And then: 'What good is it to me, what she says to other people? I'm the one who is waiting for her. I! Not a wise friend or a venerable aunt, but I, Rolf, I'm the one who needs a sign!' He was enjoying his anger, it seemed to me. 'Why didn't you separate?' I asked. 'You know, that's what most people do when things don't work out. Why did you come back like that? I suppose it was because you love her. And because we can't just switch over to another life when things go wrong. After all, it's our life that has gone
wrong.
Our one and only life. And then—' Stiller made as if to interrupt me; but when I stopped, he said nothing either. 'I don't know,' I said, 'what you mean by guilt. At least you've reached the point of no longer seeking it in other people. But perhaps, I don't know, you think it could have been avoided. Guilt is the sum total of one's own faults that could have been avoided, is that how you mean it? Anyhow, I think guilt is something different. Guilt is ourselves—' Stiller broke in: 'Why did I come back? You've never seen anything like it. Sheer lunacy, nothing else, utter pigheadedness! Can't you understand? When you've stood half a lifetime knocking at a door, great God, unsuccessfully as I stood before this woman, absolutely without success, great God—then see if you can pass on! See if you can forget a door like that, after wasting ten years knocking at it! Give it up and move on!...Where does love come into it? I couldn't forget her. That's all. As one can't forget a defeat. Why did I go back? Out of drunkenness, my dear chap, out of spite. You with your noble views! Go into a casino and just watch the way they go on playing when they lose, the way they keep on sitting there. It's just the same. Because there comes a point when it simply isn't worth while giving up. Out of spite, out of jealousy. Youcan lose a woman when you've won her. Let someone else come along! But when you've never won her yourself, never made contact with her, never fulfilled her? Forget a door like that, let others go in, pass on! You're quite right: Why didn't we separate? Because I'm a coward.'

Stiller tried to laugh. 'You're saying just the same in different words,' I commented, 'only I don't consider it cowardly.'—'A sacrifice, you think? A reciprocal sacrifice, in which both perish!'—'Of course, there are cases where people can separate,' I said, 'where they ought to separate, and if they don't it's cowardice, inertia. How many there are who I wish would separate, the quicker the better; there are certainly episodes, inside or outside marriage, and when they're over you can finish with them. Not every couple become one another's cross! But when it is like that, when we have made it like that, when it isn't an episode, but the central theme of our lives—' Stiller protested: 'Cross!'—'Call it what you like.'—'Why don't you say it frankly?' he asked. 'You don't say it openly in your letters either.'—'What?'—'What you mean: His will be done! God has given, and blessed are they who accept, and dead they who cannot hear, like myself, who cannot love in the name of God, the accursed like myself, who hate because they want to love by their own efforts, for God alone is the love and the power and the glory—that's what you mean, isn't it?' He didn't look at me, but sat with his head resting against the wooden chair-back and the same vague smile on his face once more. 'And lost are the proud,' he went on, 'those with the murderous pride who seek to bring back to life
what they have slain, those with the miserly regret, who calculate and lament at a time like this when things take a different course or don't move at all, the deaf and the blind, who hope for mercy at a time like this, the small-minded like myself, those with a childish spite against suffering, yes, let them get drunk, the arrogant who sin against hope, the stubborn, the unbelieving, the greedy, who want to be happy, yes let them get drunk and chatter, those who refuse to be broken in their pride, the unbelieving, those who put their earthly hope in Julika! But blessed are the others, blessed are those who can love in His name, for in God alone ... Is that it?' he asked, is that what you've been trying to say all the time?'—i'm your friend,' I answered, i'm trying to tell you what I think about Julika and you, about your loneliness with each other. That's all.'—'Well, what do you think then?' he asked, his head against the wooden chair-back. 'I've told you.' Stiller seemed unable to remember. 'You love her,' I repeated. 'That's what you think,' he retorted. 'But you expect from your love something like a miracle, my dear chap, and that is probably what you feel hasn't worked out.'—'I love her?'—'Yes,' I asserted, 'whether it suits you or not. You would rather have loved someone else. I know. And she knows too! Perhaps Anya, or whatever her name was, your Polish girl in Spain, or Sibylle upstairs ... Only it's not Julika's fault that she isn't the girl you might have made happy.'—'No,' he said. 'Julika can't help that either.'—'You love without being able to make the creature you love happy. That is your suffering. A real suffering—apart from all our vanity, for one would like to play God Almighty a bit, to take the world out of one's pocket, to conjure life on to the table, hey presto! And then, certainly, we should like to be happy ourselves when we love ... That doesn't always happen!' I said, and as he did not smile, I added: 'That's roughly what I think, and if you ask me what you should do—' His thoughts were elsewhere. 'Since autumn!' he said, and his lips were trembling. 'She has known since autumn. I found out today from the doctor. Since autumn! And there was I whistling away in my underground chamber with no idea at all, no idea at all ... What am I to do!' he exclaimed, vigorously on the defensive against me. 'I can't walk on the water!'—'Who's asking you to?'—'Yesterday afternoon, when I thought she was dying ... Rolf,' he said, 'I wept! And then I asked myself whether—if that might save here—I should be willing to go through it all over again with her, all over again. And I shook my head, I wept, for fourteen years she's been dying day by day, sitting at the table with me...' I felt sorry for Stiller. 'You know she went to the hospital alone?' he asked. 'Without me.'—'Why without you?'—'Her things were all packed. There was another hour to wait. We didn't know what to talk about. Flowers don't help, I know. But I just had to get some. There was nothing she would have liked in Territet. So I went on to Montreux. In forty minutes I was back at the house, in forty minutes—well, she went to the hospital alone.' He forced himself to smile. 'Perhaps you think nothing of it,' he added, 'you with your common sense?'—'What do you think of it?'—'Without me!' he answered, 'Without me! That gave her more of a kick than flowers, you see. To leave this house perhaps for the last time, alone, unescorted, oh yes, that lasts longer than all the flowers in the world!' I didn't accept his explanation. 'Rolf,' he retorted, 'that woman is spiteful. Perhaps I made her spiteful. One day, you can't believe in love any more ... I was too late!'

Stiller had risen to his feet. He looked as though he would fall down any minute, I didn't know what kept him upright at all. 'Have a white brandy,' he said, 'and then we'll go to bed.' But he couldn't find the glasses, which I could see on a tray lower down, and seemed to forget what he had meant to do. He just stood there, the brandy bottle in his hand, lost in silent thoughts. 'There is no one who is more of a stranger to me than that woman,' he said. 'I don't want to bore you, Rolf, but I must just say this: I shall be grateful, I shan't wait for a miracle. I shan't wait for some other Julika, I shall be grateful for every day if she comes back to this house again—now, yes, now, when I can't sleep, can't stay awake Yor fear it's all too late, now—Rolf!' he said, but he was so weak that he had to sit down on the nearby window sill in order to continue; he spoke like a frightened child after a nightmare: 'What will happen when she is sitting there again? She there and I here? Suppose everything is just the same as it was? Exactly the same? She there and I here—' He sat, still holding the brandy bottle in his hand, and looked
at the room, at the two empty armchairs. 'What then?' he asked himself, and a few moments later he addressed the same question to me: 'What then, my dear chap, what then? Am I to dissolve in smoke, so as not to be a nuisance to her? Or what? Shall I fast until she gives a sign, and show her that one can die ofhunger waiting? Or what?'—'Stiller,' I replied, 'things won't be as they were before. Things won't be the same for you, even if Julika never changes. Yesterday afternoon you thought she was dying—' As soon as he realized what I was leading up to, he broke in. 'I know what you mean,' he said. He showed me he was feeling sick, to stop me from talking, so I said no more. 'How many revelations I've already had, how many decisions I have reached!' he said. 'But what will happen when she is sitting here again? I'm gradually getting to know myself. I'm weak'—'Once you know you're weak,' I commented, 'that is already a big step forward. Perhaps you have only just found out. Since yesterday afternoon, when you thought she was dying. Often you hate her, you say? Because she, too, is weak and poor? She can't give you what you need. Quite true. And her love is so necessary to you. More so than any other. There are things which are very necessary, Stiller, and yet we can't manage to do them. Why should Julika be able to manage it? Do you idolize her—still—or do you love her?' Stiller let me talk. 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'but speaking practically, when she's there and I'm here, what am I to do? Quite practically?' He looked at me. 'You see, Rolf, even you can't answer that!' he said, and it seemed to satisfy him. 'You've gone a long way,' I said, 'I sometimes have the impression that one more step is all you need.'—'And we'll be sitting here in the middle of a wedding, you mean?'—'And you will no longer expect Julika to be able to absolve you from your life or the other way round. You know what that means in practical terms.'—'No.'—'There'll be no change,' I said, 'you will live together, you with your work in the underground chamber down there, she with her one lung, God willing. The only difference will be that you won't go on tormenting yourselves day after day with this crazy notion that we can change people, somebody else or ourselves, with this presumptuous despair ... Quite practically—you will learn to pray for one another.' Stiller had risen to his feet. 'Yes,' I concluded, 'that's really all I can say to you on the subject.' Stiller put the brandy bottle down on the little table, and we looked at each other; the vague smile he had worn before did not reappear. 'One has to know how to pray!' was all he said, and there followed a lengthy silence...

Later, much later, I often wondered how I ought to have behaved that night, unexpectedly confronted with a task that went beyond the powers of a friendship. When Stiller left the room to relieve himself at last, I stood there helpless. I felt my lack of any official status, for whatever I might have said remained merely my personal opinion. At best I could do no more than offer friendly resistance whenever my friend, who was being tested, tried to evade the test...

I poured myself out a glass of white brandy, and when Stiller returned about ten minutes later—unfortunately not without bumping into a piece of furniture in the dark hall and causing a clatter—he found me with the empty glass in my hand. 'How do you feel?' I asked. Stiller only nodded. He had emptied his stomach, and obviously also washed his face, which was green with inflamed eyes. 'What time is it?' he inquired afresh, sitting down on the clothes press and supporting himself on his outspread arms. 'You're right,' he said, 'this idiotic drinking—!' Stiller seemed to want to forget our unfinished conversation. It seemed that in order to go upstairs to bed all we needed was an appropriate phrase, an optimistic cliché—Tomorrow is another day, or something like that. The clock struck half past two. Of course we both thought of time in the hospital. There time was important, not here. I involuntarily visualized the sick-room, the night nurse sitting by the white bed taking her pulse—let's hope she doesn't have to ring the doctor—and for the first time I felt afraid. I saw the telephone on the clothes press, which might ring at any moment, and felt that the worst was possible. I remembered the doctor's refusal to let Stiller pay Julika an evening visit. 'What are you thinking about?' asked Stiller, and I had to say something. 'All you have to do now is to be sensible, Stiller, not to see ghosts. You love her. You have begun to love her, and Julika isn't dead, everything is still possible...' I felt slightly ashamed, but this was just the sort of hackneyed phrase that seemed to pacify Stiller. 'Have you got another cigarette?' he asked to avoid going to bed and being alone. I was in pyjamas: I had no cigarettes. 'I'm sure your wife won't have been able to sleep,' remarked Stiller, 'I loved your wife—I still love her,' he added to get everything straight, 'but you know that.' His silences grew longer and longer. 'Leave them,' he muttered, as I pushed the empty bottles a little to one side, so that Stiller shouldn't fall over them and make a fresh clatter. 'Or do you think I've never loved at all?' he asked uncertainly. 'Never loved at all?' His face was now visibly disintegrating with fatigue, if only I weren't so damned wide awake!' he expostulated and looked as though he were on the point of vomiting. 'You must rest,' I said. 'You'll see her at nine tomorrow morning—' His cigarettes, the blue Gauloises, were lying on the carpet by the chair. 'Thanks,' said Stiller when I offered him his own packet, and put a Gauloise in his mouth; but he took it out again, in spite of the lighted match I held out to him. 'I shall see her at nine tomorrow!...' Then he smoked as though the smoke were a food.