Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

Recollecting the previous night, the night before my departure, the night of that certain yesterday — I hasten to emphasize this, because my encounter with the sea shifted the temporal dimension of all my previous experiences into such a soothing perspective that I would not have been at all surprised if someone had told me, "Oh no, you're quite wrong, you arrived not this afternoon but two weeks, nay, two years ago" — I must reassure myself that very little time had elapsed between my departure from Berlin and that stroll on the beach, and though this does not mean that the pleasant confusion about time could untangle my snarled emotions, the sight of the stormy sea in the night did provide a haven in which I could reflect on what had happened; so I thought of that previous night, now fading into a gentle distance, of arriving home at not too late an hour and in the dark stairway — they still hadn't repaired the lights— fumbling so long with my keys that of course Frau Kühnert, always in the kitchen at that hour, fixing her husband's sandwich for the next day, pricked up her ears; alarmed at hearing her hurrying down the long hallway, I still could not fit the key into the lock, and she stopped for a second, but then, beating me to it, threw the door wide-open and, holding a green envelope in her hand, smiled at me as if she had been long preparing to welcome me, as if she'd been waiting for this very moment, and before I had a chance to step inside, say good evening, and thank her for her trouble, she handed me the envelope, blushing as she did so; and at that instant, thanks to the ludicrous protection which the proximity of the sea raging in that starless night may have given me, I ceased to feel the faintness, bordering on loss of consciousness, which had gripped me while I was standing in the doorway and which had not left me until now; I was even amused, because the scene of my taking the envelope from a shouting Frau Kühnert registered as an overly sharp, totally unfamiliar picture.

"Telegram, my friend, you've got a telegram, a telegram!"

If at that moment I had not glanced at her rather than at the telegram — one automatically glances at anything thrust into one's hand — I might have failed to notice how strange and unusual her smile was, not that she hadn't smiled on other occasions, but with this smile she was trying to conceal her eagerness, an insatiable curiosity which despite all her theatrical experience she could not conceal; the moment the telegram reached my hand — suppressing my emotions I barely glanced at the name and address — I looked at her again, but the smile had vanished: from behind her thin, gold-rimmed glasses, her huge eyes, bulging morbidly from their sockets, seemed to be fixed on one point, my mouth, which she stared at intently and sternly, as if expecting to hear a long-delayed, thorough confession; an expression, maybe not of raw hatred, but of compassionless scrutiny, spread over her face; she wanted to see how I would react to what had to be shocking, though to her incomprehensible, news, and I had the feeling that she had already read the telegram, and felt myself growing pale, at that moment overcome by terrible faintness, though the very thought of giving myself away made me go on controlling myself, because I knew that whatever the telegram said, wherever it came from, this woman already knew or meant to find out too much about me for me to stay here; there was nothing I would more strenuously guard against than someone trying to pry into my life, so in other words, not only was I facing some sort of blow, which I had to endure with dignity, but I also had to find a new place to live.

Frau Kühnert was an astonishingly, fascinatingly ugly woman: tall and bony, with broad shoulders, from the back, especially when wearing pants, she looked very much like a man, because not only did she have long arms and big feet but her backside was as flat as an old clerk's; her hair, which she cut and bleached herself, was combed straight back, which became her but hardly made her look more feminine; her ugliness was so pronounced that it could not be mitigated even by the cunning placement of light sources in the old-fashioned, spacious apartment: during the day the sun was blocked out and heavy velvet drapes covering the lace curtains created a glimmering semidarkness; in the evening, light was provided by floor lamps with dark silk shades and wall fixtures whose glow was dimmed by little caps made of stiff waxed paper; because the chandeliers were never turned on, Professor Kühnert was forced to adopt rather peculiar work habits: he was a short man, at least a head shorter than his wife, and in build her total opposite, almost feature for feature: thin-boned, fragile, and delicate, his skin so translucently white that one could see pulsating purple blood vessels pressing against it on his temple, neck, and hands; his eyes were small, deep-set, and as insignificant and expressionless as his quietly unobtrusive way of doing his scholarly work in his poorly lit study — work that, by the way, many people judged quite significant — for there was no lamp on his huge black desk, either, and whenever Frau Kühnert called me to the telephone, I could see him rummaging with his long, thin fingers, like a blind man, among piles of newspapers, notes, and books until, by touch alone, he would identify the sought-after piece of paper, pick it out, take it across the room, past the bluish glare of the TV screen, stop under one of the small wall lamps, placed rather high up, and under its pale yellow light begin to read— sometimes leaning against the wall, which I could tell had become a habit with him, because during the day a spot, traces of regular contact left by his head and shoulders, was clearly visible on the yellow wallpaper — until, spurred on by an unexpected idea or simply by protracted brooding, he would interrupt his peaceful reading and return to his desk by the same route to jot something down; Frau Kühnert, enthroned in her comfortable armchair, seemed as unaware of the professor's repeated crossings before the television screen as the professor seemed undisturbed by the incoherent noises emanating from it or by the perpetual dimness of the apartment; I never heard them exchange a single word, though their silence did not seem to be the result of some petty, calculating revenge, and what had turned them mute to each other was not resentment — flaunted conspicuously yet indicating a very fervent attachment between man and wife, the kind of silence which rancorous couples often give as a present to each other in order to extort something — no, their silence had no express purpose, but it is possible that a slowly cooling mutual hatred had stiffened them into this neutral state, although nothing seemed to allude to its cause, since they appeared perfectly content and well-adjusted, behaving in each other's presence like two wild animals of different species, acknowledging each other's presence, but also acknowledging that the laws of the species were far stronger than the laws of the sexes, and since each could be neither a mate nor a prey, communication was also impossible.

There I was, watching Frau Kühnert's face with a certain resignation, in spite of my emotional state, for I knew from experience that I couldn't get rid of her easily, since the more I tried, the louder and more insistent she'd become; I kept on looking in her eyes and decided to suffer this one skirmish, since it would be the last; black-stemmed, bleached-blond hairs like brush bristles poked out of the fleshy welts of her low brow— my fingers were telling me the envelope was open — her nose was long and narrow, her lipstick cracked, and of course it was unavoidable that my glance would stray farther down to her breasts, the only part of her body that offered some compensation for so much ugliness: huge, disproportionately large breasts which, without a brassiere, might be somewhat disappointing, but the nipples pressing hard against the tight sweater were certainly no deception; as we were standing in the door of the almost totally dark hallway — at the same moment she began shouting again and Professor Kühnert emerged from the living room, with his white shirt opened to his waist (he always wore white shirts, and when reading or taking notes he would first yank off his tie, then slowly unbutton his shirt so he could stroke his youthfully hairless chest while pacing and ruminating) for he was going to bed.