Jakob Wassermann - My First Wife

In pursuance of her claim, Ganna had obtained a temporary injunction with the court, freezing my bank account in the little local branch in Ebendorf. It didn’t much matter, I didn’t have any great sums there, I had sufficient cash for the time being; I would just have to see about getting the next advance. Still, it was disagreeable; and it gave ill-disposed people more ammunition for their gossip, and sooner or later we would need to refinance the household anyway.

At nine o’clock Hornschuch had put us in the picture. Thereafter, it was blow upon blow, like the fifth act of a melodrama. At nine twenty, the court usher turns up with a summons. At nine forty-five, Ganna’s Ebendorf lawyer invites Bettina and me by telephone to an ‘amicable’ discussion. At ten past ten a telegram from a Berlin lawyer with a demand to attend an all-day hearing on the such-and-such. At half past ten, a wild telephone call from Ganna: if we turned down the ‘amicable’ meeting, then all bets were off and nothing could avert the approaching calamity. I’d heard that sort of bombast before. Three minutes past eleven: express letter from a lawyer in Vienna, to the effect that Ganna Herzog had made over her allowance for the months of February and March to him. Eleven fifteen: a messenger with a note from Ganna repeating her phoned ultimatum, but in a form and using expressions that cause Bettina, now suddenly up on the brazen intricacies of the Ganna method, to shudder. The letter was addressed to her; she was the first to read it. She understands, full of repugnance, the knife-jabbing either-or in Ganna’s letter, but the claws have never come so close to her as now. She wants clarity, and calls Hornschuch. This is no harmless chit-chat, he tells her; Ganna is talking openly down in the village, wherever she meets her saloon bar friends, not only about the bigamous relationship in which I am allegedly living, but also about the ‘wangled’ leave to marry Bettina. What she meant by that was the expedited permission to remarry which I obtained from the consulate — an utterly lawful procedure, but which to Ganna’s criminally fouled brain lets it appear as though Bettina and I had obtained permission by false information and forged papers; a wonderful opportunity to squeeze off a coup de grâce in our direction. Bettina, who that morning is not feeling her best and brightest, is scared by the possible consequences: the malicious tittle-tattle, the confrontation with envy, jealousy and the burning embers of hatred. Hornschuch tries to ease her mind. She reads out one or two particularly informative sentences from Ganna’s squib. When she hears his reply: ‘Excellent: people will draw their conclusions from that,’ she all but slams down the receiver. ‘No,’ she cries disbelievingly into the mouthpiece. ‘They won’t draw the right conclusions at all. You forget that the woman’s name is Herzog.’ Pause. Thereupon Hornschuch again, drawling: ‘All right, then. Whatever you say.’

When I walk into the blue salon she’s lying on the sofa, swathed in blankets, looking pale and chilly. On foggy days she’s only a shadow of herself, and this day would be black as pitch, even if it were cloudless. I look mutely down at her; suddenly she says:

‘I’ve decided to speak to Ganna.’

I look at her as if she were mad. Suddenly she pulls herself up into a sitting position.

‘I’m going to ask her up, and I’m going to talk to her,’ she repeats in a high treble which reminds me of Helmut’s little squeaky voice, and which is always a sign with her that she’s nearing the end of her tether.

‘Why? What would be the use,’ I begin.

‘I’ve made a mistake,’ the high voice jingles back. ‘I can’t absolve myself … I thought I didn’t need to notice her … I was lazy, I was bad … It must be possible to get her attention with some human utterance … from woman to woman maybe …’

I stare at her in dismal surprise. ‘Do you really think that will work? You know how I kept … over all those years …’

She interrupts me. ‘At least I have to give it a try. I must be able to tell myself I tried.’

She jots down a couple of lines, and sends the gardener with a note to the inn in Ebendorf where Ganna is staying. A pleasurable shudder goes through Ganna when she reads the invitation to come up to the Buchegger estate. At last! Have the fools come to their senses? Have they seen the error of their ways? Or are they just running scared? She plunges to the telephone to talk to Bettina. She is so terribly excited, it’s hard to understand what she’s saying. She would love to have a conversation, she tootles, but not in the house, oh no, not that, but in some neutral place, to her heart’s content, and of course with her lawyer present. No lawyers, says Bettina with crisp decisiveness, absolutely not; if Ganna has inhibitions about coming to the house, she will meet her on the road and walk with her. Ganna gives in. They agree a time. An hour later — by now it’s a quarter to one — when Bettina sees Ganna on the snow-covered village road, in violation of the agreement, in the company of her lawyer, she stops dead. Her posture expresses such rigid unapproachability that the gentleman decides to bow and turn back. Not without a tasteless remark. Since he’s among the dozen or so lawyers working on Ganna’s legal challenge, he thinks, hat in hand, he owes her a word of apology:

‘I hope, dear Madam, you don’t assume I am working against the happiness of your marriage.’

To which Bettina replies — addressing her words to thin air:

‘I’d kindly ask you to leave the happiness of my marriage out of it.’

And with a gesture invites Ganna to proceed.

Robbed of her legal adviser and hence of her poise, Ganna is suddenly rather piano . Silently she shuffles along beside the striding Bettina. She is wearing a black, crumpled cloche hat and a mottled fur. In her hand she carries the capacious leather bag which goes everywhere with her. It contains all the files and documents she might require, much as a travelling salesman has his samples and price list. Whenever she runs into an acquaintance of any degree, she fills them in with tumbling garrulousness as to the state of her case, pulls out the deed, her bundled writs, the various legal opinions, the official documents relating to the Buchegger estate, comforting letters from her supporters, and waxes so prolix that she no longer remembers where she is, where she’s coming from, where she’s going, or whom she’s talking to.

Bettina, chatting — although chatting is really the last thing she feels like — glances at her from time to time. It’s thirteen years since she’s last seen Ganna; since that teatime meeting of disagreeable memory. Think of everything that happened in between! A whole lifetime. Beautiful things, noble things, pure things, indescribable joys, little Caspar Hauser, who would have imagined it — but also bad things, wretchedness, bitterness and an irreparable loss. Whether the woman walking beside her can guess any of it? Surely not: she doesn’t sense things, she grabs; people like that are purblind. She even walks like a blind person. How wretched she looks. If only it were possible to help her. It can’t feel good to be in her shoes. Someone like that is quite unapproachable, rigidly stuck inside themselves …

As she shows Ganna in, helps her out of her coat, conducts her to the living room and offers her a small snack, which Ganna gobbles down with grateful little exclamations, she keeps looking at her. With the crest of orange-dyed hair under which grey strands peek out as from under a wig, she looks like a peculiar idol. You would hardly notice she’s over fifty. Her form is compact, but a little thickened, her facial expressions and movements vibrate with an eerie force of will. The intensity of her regard is almost frightening. It shows an illimitable desire to dominate.