The Clown (16 page)
I went into the bathroom, dried myself off, dressed again, went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Monika had thought of everything. There were matches on the gas stove, ground coffee in an air-tight jar, filter papers next to it, ham, eggs, canned vegetables in the refrigerator. I only like working in the kitchen when there is no other way of escaping from certain forms of adult chatter. When Sommerwild starts talking about “Eros,” Blothert spits out his Ca . . Ca . . Cabinet, or Fredebeul gives a cleverly involved lecture on Cocteau—then I must say I prefer to go out to the kitchen, squeeze mayonnaise out of tubes, slice olives in half, and spread liver sausage on bread. When I want to get something for myself alone in the kitchen I feel lost. My hands become clumsy from loneliness, and the necessity of opening a can, breaking eggs into the pan, depresses me deeply. I am not a bachelor. When Marie was ill or went to work—she worked for a time at a stationer’s in Cologne—I didn’t mind so much doing things in the kitchen, and when she had the first miscarriage I even washed the sheets before our landlady got home from the movies.
I managed to open a can of beans without gashing my hand, I poured boiling water onto the filter, while I thought about the house Züpfner had built for himself. I had been there once, two years ago.
I imagined her coming home in the dark. The sharply swept lawn looked almost blue in the moonlight. Next to the garage, cut twigs, stacked up by the gardener. Between the forsythia and the hawthorn, the garbage can, ready to be carried away. Friday evening. By now she would know what the kitchen was smelling of, fish, she would also know what messages she would find, one from Züpfner on the TV set: “Urgent call to go to F. Love. Heribert,” the other from the maid on the icebox—“Gone to movies, back at ten. Greta (Luise, Birgit).”
Open garage door, switch on light: on the whitewashed wall the shadow of a scooter and a discarded sewing machine. The Mercedes in Züpfner’s stall was a sign that Züpfner had walked. “Get some fresh air, get a bit of fresh air, air.” Mud on the tires and fenders indicated drives into the Eifel Mountains, afternoon speeches to the Youth Union (“keep together, stand together, suffer together”).
A glance upward: everything dark in the nursery too. The houses next door separated by double driveways and wide
borders. Sickly reflection of the television sets. There the homecoming husband and father is considered a nuisance, the return of the prodigal son would also have been considered a nuisance; no calf would have been slaughtered, not even a chicken would have been broiled—he would have been told to go to the refrigerator for the remains of some liver sausage.
Saturday afternoons there was fraternization, when shuttlecocks flew over hedges, kittens or puppies ran away, shuttlecocks were thrown back, kittens—“oh, how sweet”—or puppies—“oh, how sweet”—handed back at garden gates or through hedge gaps. The irritation in voices was subdued, never personal; only sometimes it strayed from the smooth curve and scratched notches in the neighbors’ sky, always from trivial causes, never from the true ones: when a saucer shattered, a rolling ball broke off flowers, gravel from a child’s hand was tossed onto car paint, newly washed, newly ironed laundry wetted by garden hoses—then voices become shrill which are not permitted to become shrill when it’s a matter of betrayal, adultery, abortion. “Oh, your ears are just too sensitive, you’d better take something for it.”
Don’t take anything, Marie.
Open the front door: quiet and pleasantly warm. Little Marie asleep upstairs. It doesn’t take long: wedding in Bonn, honeymoon in Rome, pregnancy, confinement—brown curls on snow-white baby pillow. Do you remember how he showed us the house and virilely announced: There’s room for twelve children here—and how he sizes you up now in the morning at breakfast, the unspoken Well? on his lips, and how simple-minded church and party friends shout after the third glass of brandy: “From one to twelve, leaves eleven to go!”
They are whispering in town. You were at the movies again, on this beautiful sunny afternoon at the movies. And again at the movies—and again.
All evening alone in the group, at Blothert’s, hearing nothing but Ca Ca Ca, and this time it wasn’t even finished off
with—binet but with—tholon. The word rolls around in your ear like a foreign body. It sounds as if it might be a clicker, also sounds a bit like a carbuncle. Blothert has the Geiger counter which can track down the catholon. “He’s got it—he hasn’t—she’s got it—she hasn’t.” It’s like picking off petals: she loves me, she loves me not. She loves me. Football clubs and party friends, government and opposition, are tested for catholon. Like a racial feature he looks for it and doesn’t find it; Nordic nose, Mediterranean mouth. One of them has it for sure, he’s swallowed it, the longed for, the ardently looked for. Blothert himself, watch out for his eyes, Marie. Belated lust, a seminarist’s idea of the sixth commandment, and when he speaks of certain sins, then only in Latin.
In sexto, de sexto
. Of course, it sounds like sex. And the darling children. The oldest ones, Hubert, eighteen, Margret, seventeen, are allowed to stay up a little longer, to reap the benefits of the adult conversation. About catholon, corporative state, capital punishment, which produces such a strange flicker in Mrs. Blothert’s eyes, sends her voice up to a stimulated pitch where laughter and tears erotically unite. You have tried to console yourself with Fredebeul’s stale Left-wing cynicism: in vain. In vain will you have tried to get angry at Blothert’s stale Right-wing cynicism. There is a lovely word: nothing. Think of nothing. Not of cabinet and catholon, think of the clown who weeps in the bath, and whose coffee drips onto his slippers.
I could place the sound but didn’t know the proper response, I had heard it many times but had never had to react to it. At home the maids reacted to the sound of the front door bell, the shop bell at Derkums’ I had heard often but I had never got up. In Cologne we had lived in a boarding house, in hotels the only thing that ever rings is the phone. I heard the ringing but didn’t register it. It was unfamiliar, I had only heard it twice in this apartment, once when a boy delivered some milk and once when Züpfner sent Marie some roses. When the roses arrived I was in bed, Marie came into the room, showed them to me, thrust her nose ecstatically into the bouquet, and an awkward scene followed because I thought the flowers were for me. Women admirers had sometimes sent me flowers to the hotel. I said to Marie: “What lovely roses, you keep them,” and she looked at me and said: “But they are for me.” I flushed. I was embarrassed, and it occurred to me that I had never ordered any flowers for Marie. Of course I brought back for her all the flowers given me on stage, but I had never bought
her any, usually it was I who had to pay for the flowers presented to me on stage. “Who are they from?” I said. “Züpfner,” she said. “Damn it all,” I said, “what’s the idea?” I remembered how they had held hands. Marie colored and said: “Why shouldn’t he send me flowers?” “The question should be the other way round,” I said: “Why should he send you flowers?” “We’ve known each other a long time,” she said, “and perhaps he admires me.” “All right,” I said, “let him admire you, but all those expensive flowers, it’s overdoing it. To my mind it’s in poor taste.” She was offended and left the room.
When the boy came with the milk we were sitting in the living room, and Marie went out, opened the door to him and gave him the money. The only visitor we ever had in our apartment was Leo, before he converted, but he had not rung the bell, he had come up with Marie.
In an odd sort of way the ringing sounded both diffident and stubborn. I had a terrible fear it might be Monika, perhaps even sent by Sommerwild on some pretext or other. I immediately got my Nibelung complex again. I ran out into the hall in my soaking wet slippers, couldn’t find the button I had to press. While I was looking for it, I remembered that of course Monika had the front door key. I finally found the button, pressed it and heard a sound like a bee buzzing against a windowpane. I went out on the landing and stood by the elevator. The In Use signal went red, the figure One lit up, then the Two, I stared anxiously at the numbers, till I suddenly noticed someone was standing beside me. I jumped, and turned: a pretty woman, very fair, not too slim, with charming light gray eyes. Her hat was a little too red for my taste. I smiled, she smiled too and said: “You must be Mr. Schnier—I am Mrs. Grebsel, your neighbor. I am so pleased to meet you in the flesh”—“I am pleased too,” I said—I really was pleased. In spite of her hat being too red, Mrs. Grebsel was a sight for sore eyes. I saw she was carrying a newspaper, “The Voice of Bonn,” she saw my glance, blushed and said: “Don’t let it bother you.” “I’ll give
that dirty dog a punch in the nose,” I said, “if you only knew what a miserable, hypocritical creature he is—and he cheated me too, did me out of a whole bottle of schnapps.” She laughed. “My husband and I would be delighted,” she said, “if we could really become neighbors. Will you be here for some time?” “Yes,” I said, “I’ll drop in one day, if I may—is everything in your flat terra cotta too?” “Of course,” she said, “terra cotta is the trademark of the fifth floor.” The elevator had paused for a minute at the third floor, now the Four showed red, the Five, I flung open the door and took a step back in my astonishment. My father came out of the elevator, held the door open for Mrs. Grebsel as she went in, and turned toward me. “Good God,” I said, “Father.” I had never said Father to him before, just Dad. He said “Hans,” made an awkward attempt to embrace me. I went ahead of him into the apartment, took his hat and coat, opened the door to the living room and pointed to the sofa. He seated himself ponderously.
We were both very embarrassed. Embarrassment seems to be the sole means of communication between parents and children. Probably my greeting him as “Father” had sounded rather dramatic, and that enhanced the embarrassment, which was inevitable in any case. My father sat down in one of the terra cotta armchairs, and shook his head as he looked at me: with my soaking wet slippers, wet socks, in the bathrobe which was not only much too long but unfortunately also flaming red. My father is not tall, he is slight and so expertly yet casually well-groomed that the television people will do anything to get hold of him when there are economic matters to be discussed. He also radiates kindness, good sense, and is now more famous as a television star than he could ever have been as one of the brown-coal Schniers. He loathes every kind of brutality. You would expect him, when you see him like that, to smoke cigars, not fat ones but light, slim cigars, but for him to smoke cigarettes seems surprisingly dashing and progressive for a capitalist of nearly seventy. I can understand why they send
him along to all the discussions which have to do with money. You can see that he not only radiates kindness but is kind too. I offered him cigarettes, gave him a light, and as I bent forward he said: “I must admit I don’t know much about clowns, but I do know a few things. I had no idea they bathed in coffee.” He can be very witty. “I don’t bathe in coffee, Father,” I said, “I just wanted to make some coffee and didn’t quite succeed.” It was here at the latest that I should have said Dad again, but it was too late. “Would you like a drink?” He smiled, looked at me suspiciously, and asked: “What have you got?” I went to the kitchen: in the refrigerator there was the cognac, there were also a few bottles of mineral water, lemonade and a bottle of red wine. I took one bottle of each, carried them into the living room, and lined them up on the table in front of my father. He took his glasses out of his pocket and studied the labels. Shaking his head he pushed the cognac aside first. I knew he liked cognac and said, somewhat hurt: “But it seems like a good brand.” “The brand is excellent,” he said, “but the best cognac is no good when it is ice-cold.”
“Good God,” I said, “shouldn’t you keep cognac in the refrigerator?” He looked at me over the top of his glasses, as if I had just been convicted of sodomy. In his own way he is an esthete too, he is quite capable of sending the toast back to the kitchen three or four times till Anna produces exactly the right shade of brown, a silent battle renewed each morning, for anyway Anna regards toast as “Anglo-Saxon nonsense.” “Cognac in the refrigerator,” said my father contemptuously, “did you really not know—or are you just pretending? One never knows where one is with you!”
“I didn’t know,” I said. He gave me a searching look, smiled, and seemed convinced.
“And to think of all the money I spent on your education,” he said. It was meant to sound ironical, the way a father of nearly seventy talks to his grown-up son, but the irony misfired, it froze on the word money. With a shake of his head
he rejected the lemonade too, and the red wine, and said: “In the circumstances it seems to me that soda water is the safest drink.” I fetched two glasses from the sideboard, opened a bottle of soda water. That at least I seemed able to do properly. He nodded benevolently as he watched me.
“Do you mind,” I said, “if I stay in my bathrobe?”
“Yes,” he said, “I do mind. Please get properly dressed. Your attire and your—your odor of coffee lend a certain comical aspect to the situation which is not in keeping. I wish to have a serious talk with you. And besides—forgive me for being so frank—I detest, as you no doubt recall, any evidence of sloppiness.”
“It isn’t sloppiness,” I said, “it’s just a sign of relaxation.”
“I don’t know,” he said, “how often during your lifetime you have really obeyed me, now you are no longer obliged to do so. I am merely asking you to do me a favor.”
I was amazed. My father used to be rather shy, almost taciturn. Television had taught him how to discuss and argue, with a “compelling charm.” I was too tired to dodge this charm.
I went into the bathroom, took off the coffee-soaked socks, dried my feet, put on my shirt, trousers, jacket, went into the kitchen in my bare feet, heaped the warmed-up white beans onto a plate and simply broke the soft-boiled eggs over the beans, scraped the remains of egg out of the shells with a spoon, took a slice of bread, the spoon, and went into the living room. My father looked at my plate with an expression which accurately conveyed a blend of surprise and disgust.
