Jakob Wassermann - My First Wife

Eventually, Bettina and Ganna start talking. Suddenly Bettina takes Ganna’s hand — her tiny, freckled, ancient hand, really, just exactly as she’d wanted to take it so many years ago — she takes it and she says:

‘Woman! Woman! What are you doing! You’re destroying everything around you! Take pity on yourself, why don’t you!’

At that Ganna looks at her in shock, her mouth quivers, her eyelids tremble, she cries. She nods — a sort of pagoda — to herself and she cries, cries, cries.

‘I have to,’ she stammers, ‘what else can I do?’

What else can she do! And again Bettina thinks: poor, poor soul, what is she that we are so frightened of her? Suddenly she has so much courage and confidence, she feels she can get anything she wants from Ganna. She chooses her words terribly carefully, so as not to hurt her. She is tender, considerate, sisterly, even though inside she is continually fighting down feelings of nausea and dread; but I mustn’t give in to that, she tells herself, everything is at stake here. Also, she tells herself the woman must have something; there must be something to her to explain how the man lived with her for nineteen years. This something is what she wants to locate and dig up and touch and address herself to: there it is, woman, the thing you owe him: decency, dignity, reasonableness, gratitude — yes, a little gratitude, there it is, hold onto it, can you feel it? And with a mixture of childishness and superiority she proceeds to court Ganna — as an older, experienced friend might. But Ganna turns suspicious right away and, when Bettina talks about giving in, she arches her back with the customary retort: ‘Why should I have to give in? I’ve been giving in all my life.’ And when Bettina talks about my worries, which are hanging over her and me like heavy clouds, Ganna takes it as a bad joke and replies with her cunning I-know-better smile that she had certain information that I was hoarding a large fortune in foreign banks. Bettina claps her hands at this; she has to laugh, she can’t help it, and that gives Ganna pause, and she stammers; something undefined in the regard and expression of the younger woman strikes her as being true — albeit in a dim and washed-out way, and almost fading back into oblivion again, because how can she live with such an inconvenient truth. It’s impossible, she thinks, with a puzzling pout, as if she’d been offended by the contact with truth; perhaps his life is no bed of roses, and she murmurs a couple of mildly sympathetic words. But when Bettina reproaches her for the indignity of mounting a legal challenge to my divorce and our marriage, and says that she is doing herself irreparable damage in the eyes of all decent people, then she gets angry: ‘Now I must draw the line there, Bettina, you’re quite mistaken about that,’ and she rattles off the names of a score of friends who are standing by her, and would be with her through thick and thin. Bettina cuts her off; suddenly she’s the stern judge, slender and upright, stressing moral order, natural trust, without which the whole world would fall apart. At that Ganna is alarmed; she sobs pitifully and says she could do nothing else, people were so mean to her, every single day began and ended in despair, no one had as much goodwill as she did, or loved goodness and nobility as she did, she yearned so deeply for a little happiness and a little respect; what was she to do? What did Bettina want? Drop it, says Bettina, stop fighting! And she takes the sobbing woman in her arms, however difficult it is for her, feels her wiry hair, the utterly alien skin, the painfully other smell, the smell of unaired clothes that have lain around in suitcases, the smell of cheap powder and cheap scent, of trains and dirty hotel rooms; she takes her in her arms and talks to her sweetly: ‘But you just keep making things worse for yourself. Everything you try to prevent keeps happening. It crumbles away in your hands and when you reach for it it turns against you, don’t you know that?’ Ganna, dissolved in tears, says through her teeth, yes, she thinks so too, she can see what mistakes she has made. She says it audibly and aloud; it’s the first time in her conscious life that she’s admitted to having made mistakes. Bettina pricks up her ears; she appreciates the gravity of what is happening, she thinks something true has happened, she won’t let her go, she spends fully seven hours closeted with her, from one o’clock till eight at night, and they come to a sort of agreement, which is immediately put into writing and signed by them both. Ganna will be paid a part of the sums she is suing for and where the figures have not simply been plucked out of thin air, in instalments (Bettina itemizes the sums in question); the payments for Doris will go to her as previously; I will reach out my conciliatory hand to her, and we will support her in any way possible and cease to cut her. In return, Ganna promises to withdraw all pending claims, to lift the block on my account and other legal distraints, and expedite the divorce in a German court.

After this pact has been concluded, Bettina calls me into the room. Ganna walks towards me, her arms outstretched, wailing: ‘Alexander, you look awful, what’s the matter with you!’ I ignore it, but catch my reflection in the mirror in passing. ‘We’ve been busy,’ says Bettina, and points to the piece of paper with the two signatures on her desk. I look at Bettina, look at Ganna, say nothing. Then Ganna comes out with a plea. She would like some money. She admits glumly that she can’t even pay her bill at the hotel. Bettina shakes her head. ‘First you must do what you promised, Ganna,’ she says, motioning with her chin at the piece of paper on the desk. Meanwhile, not attending to her piercing admonitory look, I had pulled out my wallet and passed Ganna three notes, a full third of the sum she should only have been paid after fulfilling the points on the agreement. Bettina turned away with a despondent look. She understood the idiotic mistake right away. I might have known: if Ganna has money in her hands, she’ll forget the agreement, signature, promise, oath, the lot. Bettina understood my gesture — what was there about me that she didn’t understand — thus: begone, begone, begone; money, begone, woman, begone; but, she wondered, is it possible to be so thoughtless, so unthinking, so destructive with regard to the nervous resources and humanitarian work of another?

I walk Ganna to the door. She stops on the doorstep and looks at me with big eyes full of reproach and complaint. I bow, take her hand and press it to my lips. Bettina is barely able to disguise her astonishment. What is he doing now, she thinks, why is he kissing her hand? Well, this is too much for her to understand. Again, it’s a case of ‘begone, begone, begone’. It’s a farcical gesture of respect, by which Ganna becomes a stranger to me, a stranger in this house, a stranger in my world. An instinctive act in the form of an empty ceremony that means nothing but the last inner break with Ganna.

THE DEVIL RIDES OVER THE RUINS

The upshot of this turbulent happening was — nothing at all. My account was not unblocked and the distraints not taken off. There was no mention of the German divorce. But surely you don’t think Ganna was responsible for the breach of promise? Please. She washed her hands so assiduously in innocence that the bubbles got everywhere. Did she not give her lawyer in Ebendorf ‘appropriate instructions’? Did he not overweeningly, for ‘certain jurisprudential technicalities’, refuse to carry out her instructions? Are you sure that Hornschuch didn’t offer ‘passive resistance’ for obscure motives of his own? Hornschuch? What did he do? We’re not told. The mere claim is sufficient. Then, in a pedantic memorandum to Bettina: ‘Everyone knows that I am entirely scrupulous in all my dealings. I indignantly reject the claim that I didn’t stick to the terms of our agreement; there can be no doubt that in this, as in every previous instance, it was the other party that is in violation.’ Thus Ganna. And finally, the latest sanction, a veritable somersault of condescension: she can only make up her mind about granting the German divorce at the end of a trial year, once she has been convinced that my offer of peace and friendship is in good faith. The badger slips out of its sett, leaves its little malodorous pile and grins to itself when the dogs bark.