She went in and stood to one side. Several people were standing in the pews, led in song by the priest; now and then someone coughed. A child was sitting in the midst of the standing singers with his thumb in his mouth. The organ droned. After a while the woman left.
On the way back to the colony, along the dark avenue of trees, she made gestures as though talking to herself.
During the night she got up, stood alone in the kitchen, and drank a glass of water. Then there was a stillness, with no other sound than the beating of her heart.
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At
midday the woman and Franziska, both bundled up, sat side by side on the terrace, in two rocking chairs. They watched the children, who were chopping up the dried-out Christmas tree and throwing the pieces into a fire.
After a while Franziska said, “I understand why you couldn't come in to our meeting. I, too, have moments, especially just before I have to leave my quiet apartment for a meeting, when the thought of going out among people suddenly makes me feel dead tired ⦔
The woman: “I'm waiting for your âbut.'”
Franziska: “I used to be the same as you. One day, for instance, I couldn't speak. I wrote what I had to say on slips of paper. Or I'd open a closet door and stand there for hours weeping, because I couldn't decide what to put on. Once I was on my way somewhere with a man, and suddenly I couldn't take another step. He pleaded with me and I just stood there. Of course I was a lot younger ⦠Haven't you any desire to be happy, in the company of others?”
The woman: “No. I don't want to be happy. At the most, contented. I'm afraid of happiness. I don't think I could bear it, here in my head. I'd go mad for good, or die. Or I'd murder someone.”
Franziska: “You mean you want to be alone like this
all your life? Don't you long for someone who would be your friend, body and soul?”
The woman cried out, “Oh yes. I do. But I don't want to know who he is. Even if I were always with him, I wouldn't want to know him. There's just one thing I'd like”âshe smiled, apparently at herselfâ“I'd like him to be clumsy, a regular butterfingers. I honestly don't know why.” She interrupted herself. “Oh, Franziska, I'm talking like a teen-ager.”
Franziska: “I have an explanation for the butterfingers. Isn't your father like that? The last time he was here he wanted to shake hands with me across the table and he stuck his fingers in the mustard pot instead.”
The woman laughed and the child turned his head, as though it were unusual for his mother to laugh.
Franziska: “By the way, he's arriving on the afternoon train. I wired him to come. He's expecting you to meet him at the station.”
After a pause the woman said, “You shouldn't have done that. I don't want anyone right now. Everything seems so banal with people around.”
Franziska: “I believe you're beginning to regard people as nothing more than unfamiliar sounds in the house.” She put her hand on the woman's arm.
The woman said, “In the book I've been translating there's a quotation from Baudelaire; he says the only political action he understands is revolt. Suddenly it
flashed through my mind that the only political action I could understand would be to run amok.”
Franziska: “As a rule, only men do that.”
The woman: “By the way, how are you getting along with Bruno?”
Franziska: “Bruno seems made for happiness. That's why he's so lost now. And so theatrical! He's getting on my nerves. I'm going to throw him out.”
The woman: “Oh, Franziska. You always say that. When you're always the one that gets left.”
After two or three attempts to protest, Franziska said with a note of surprise, “To tell the truth, you're right.”
They looked at each other. The children seemed to have fallen out; they stood with their backs to each other gazing at the air, the fat one rather sadly. The woman called out, “Hey, children, no quarrels today.”
The fat boy smiled with relief andâcircuitously, to be sure, and with downcast eyesâthe two of them moved closer to each other.
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The
woman and the child were waiting at the small-town station. The train pulled in and the woman's father, a pale old man in glasses, waved from behind a window. Years ago he had been a successful writer, and now he sent carbon copies of short sketches to the papers. He
couldn't get the door open; the woman opened it from outside and helped him down to the platform. They looked each other over and in the end they were pleased. The father shrugged, looked in different directions, wiped his lips, and said his hands smelled unpleasantly from the metal of the train.
At home he sat on the floor with the child, who took his presents out of his grandfather's bag: a compass and a set of dice. The child pointed at various objects in the house and outside and asked what color they were. Many of the old man's answers were wrong.
The child: “So you're still color-blind?”
The grandfather: “It's just that I never learned to see colors.”
The woman came in, carrying light-blue tea things on a silver tray. The tea steamed as she poured it, and her father warmed his hands on the pot. While he was sitting on the floor, an assortment of coins and a bunch of keys had fallen out of his pocket. The woman picked them up. “Your pockets are full of loose change again,” she said.
The father: “That change purse you gave me, it didn't last long. I lost it on the way home.”
Over the tea, he said, “The other day I was expecting a visitor. The moment I opened the door, I saw that he was drenched in rain from head to foot, and I'd just cleaned the house. While I was letting him in and shaking hands with him, I noticed that I was standing on the
doormat wiping my feet for all I was worth, as if I were the wet visitor.” He giggled.
“And you felt caught in the act. Does that still happen to you so often?”
The father giggled and held his hand before his mouth. “What will embarrass me most of all is lying on my deathbed with my mouth open.”
He swallowed some tea the wrong way.
Then the woman said, “Tonight you'll sleep in Bruno's room, Father.”
The father replied, “It doesn't matter. I'll be leaving tomorrow.”
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That
evening the woman was writing in the living room; her father was sitting at some distance from her, watching her over a bottle of wine. After a while he came closer, and she looked up, undisturbed. He bent over her. “There's a button missing on your coat. I've just noticed it.” She took off her coat and handed it to him.
As she went on typing, he sewed on the button with needle and thread from a hotel sewing packet. Again his eyes rested on her. She noticed and gave him a questioning look. He apologized. And then he said, “You've become so beautiful, Marianne!” She smiled.
She finished typing and made a few corrections. Her
father tried in vain to open a fresh bottle of wine. She came to his assistance. He went to the kitchen to get her a glass. She called out to tell him where the glasses were. She heard him puttering for quite some time, then silence. In the end she went in and showed him.
They sat across from one another, drinking. The father made a futile gesture or two. The woman said, “Go ahead and say it. That's what you came for, isn't it?”
The father gesticulated again and shook his head. “Shall we go out for a while?” He pointed in various directions. Then he said, “When you were a child, you never wanted to go walking with me. I had only to utter the word âwalk' to turn you against it. But you were always ready for an âevening stroll.'”
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In
The darkness they walked along the driveway, past the garagesâthe hoods of some of the cars were still giving off crackling sounds. When they reached the phone booth, the father said, “I've got a quick phone call to make.”
The woman: “You can phone from the house.”
The father replied simply, “My companion is waiting.” And then he was in the booth, a blurred, gesticulating figure behind the translucent glass.
They walked uphill past the sleeping colony. Once a toilet flushed; there was no other sound.
The woman: “What does your companion say?”
The father: “She wanted to know if I had taken my pills.”
The woman: “Is it the same one as last year?”
The father: “This one lives in another city.”
They walked along the upper edge of the colony, where the forest began. Small snowflakes fell rustling through the withered oak leaves and collected on frozen puddles of dogs' urine.
The woman and her father stopped walking and looked down at the lights in the plain. In one of the boxlike houses at their feet someone started playing the piano:
Für Elise
.
The woman asked, “Are you happy, Father?”
The father shook his head. Then, as though a gesture were not sufficient answer, he said, “No.”
“Have you some idea about how one might live?”
The father: “Oh, cut it out. Don't say such things.”
They started walking again, skirting the woods; now and then the woman leaned her head back and snowflakes fell on her face. She looked into the woods; the snow was falling so lightly that nothing moved. Far behind the thinly spaced trees there was a fountain; the thin stream of water that flowed into it tinkled as it fell.
The woman asked, “Do you still write?”
The father laughed. “You mean will I keep on writing till the day I die.” He turned toward her. “I believe that at some time I began to live in the wrong directionâ
though I don't hold the war or any other outside event to blame. Now writing sometimes strikes me as a pretext” âhe giggledâ“and then again sometimes it doesn't. I'm so alone that before I go to sleep at night I often have nobody to think about, simply because I haven't seen anyone during the day. And how can anyone write if he has no one to think about? On the other hand, I see this woman now and then, chiefly because if something happens to me I'd prefer to be found fairly soon and not lie around too long as a corpse.” He giggled.
The woman: “That's enough of your silly jokes.”
The father pointed up at the forest. “The mountaintop is back there, but you can't see it from here.”
The woman: “Do you ever cry?”
The father: “I did onceâa year ago, sitting at home one evening. And afterward I wanted to go out.”
The woman: “Does the time still hang as heavy on your hands as when you were young?”
The father: “Oh, heavier than ever. Once every day it seems to stop altogether. Right now, for instance. It's been dark for hours, and I keep having to remind myself the night is only beginning.”
He moved his hands around his head.
The woman imitated the gesture and asked him what it meant.
The father: “I've just wound heavy cloths around my head at the thought of the long night.” This time he didn't giggle but openly laughed. “You'll end up the same
as me, Marianne. And with this observation my mission here is fulfilled.”
They smiled, and the woman said, “Wouldn't you say it was getting cold?”
They went down the slope on the other side of the colony. Once the father stopped and raised his forefinger. The woman kept going but turned around to him and said, “Don't keep stopping every time you get an idea, Father. Even when I was little, that used to get on my nerves”.
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The
next day they passed through the women's clothing section of a large department store in a nearby shopping center. A foreign woman came out of a dressing room, wearing a green suit. The salesgirl said to her, “It looks just lovely on you.” The father stepped up and said, “That simply isn't true. The suit is hideous and it's not at all becoming to her.” His daughter hurried up to him and pulled him away.
They rode on an escalator, and he stumbled at the top. As they walked along, he looked at her and said, “We really must have our picture taken together. Is there a photo machine in this place?” When they found one, a man was busy changing the developer. The father bent over a strip of four sample photos on the side of the booth: in them a young man bared his upper front teeth
in a smile, and in one of the exposures there was a girl with him. The maintenance man closed the box and straightened up. The father looked at him, then pointed with an air of surprise at the photos and said, “That's you, isn't it?”