Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

"Please show her in, Frau Hübner," I said stiffly, a bit louder than necessary, trying to make amends for her rudeness and hoping that the guest waiting in the hallway would hear these more polite words, although my appearance and dress at the moment made me totally unfit to receive a guest, least of all a lady; I couldn't imagine who this inappropriately early visitor might be, but soon thought of several disturbing possibilities: for a moment it even occurred to me (maybe that is why I didn't rush out to see for myself) that it was an emissary of my dearest friend turned deadliest enemy, here to carry out the promise to annihilate me, hiding a pistol in her fine fur muff—"Even fashion is on our side," my friend had said to me laughingly when women began wearing muffs, which did indeed increase opportunities for criminal activity, and I knew for a fact he was surrounded by so many loose women that it could have been easy enough to find one who'd do anything for him; maybe my visitor wasn't even a woman but one of his assistants dressed as a woman — and none of these assumptions could be so fanciful as to be untrue, because, knowing as I did all the means at his disposal, I couldn't help taking seriously my friend Claus Diestenweg's carefully considered promise, couldn't simply shrug it off, if only because from his standpoint I was in possession of discomfiting, incriminating evidence and thus a potential traitor to his cause: "You must die. We'll bide our time and come for you when the moment is ripe," he wrote in a letter not penned by his own hand, but what should have surprised me more was why he hadn't yet acted on his threat, why he'd decided to do it now, though it did occur to me that this uncertain reprieve might have been part of the punishment, which he meant to impose only after he had first allayed my fears and suspicions and made me believe he had finally let me go; I was like a hunted animal, hoping to escape by darting from the open field into the forest, not noticing the gun barrels concealed in the foliage; no wonder, then, that the beast too is perplexed, why is this happening now, on this peaceful autumn morning; the lack of suspicion is what makes this death terrible, for in different circumstances the end may have been accepted with equanimity; for several months I had also felt shielded by foliage, no longer so defenseless, and by changing addresses several times I hoped that finally I was beyond his dreaded reach and that in due course he would forget about me; indeed, after a time, the messages and letters stopped coming, and getting engaged not only had afforded me emotional relief but also enabled me to return to that sensible and civilized way of life I had broken away from for a few years, mainly because of my passionate attachment to Diestenweg; at the moment I had to grasp the back of my armchair to support myself against the impact of a single, unexpected, and dizzying thought: words said out loud can never be taken back — but then, I had no real desire to take anything back, because I didn't feel like pretending my past didn't belong to me; if I must die, I must, so be it, let it come, but let it come now, quickly, I'm ready; but nothing happened, and Frau Hübner didn't make a move either, as if she'd not only sensed but was actually experiencing the fear that had suddenly seized me; she stood petrified under the gently curving arch separating my room from the always dim hallway.

"My dear Frau Hübner, let's not keep the lady waiting, please, do show her in" — I repeated my request, more softly but more emphatically, evincing a presence of mind that came as a surprise even to me, and in spite of that fleeting terror, I managed to remain cool and objective, my voice keeping the required dignity; I felt what I was going through was nobody's business: but I could see it was hopeless, and for some incomprehensible reason, the unusual situation so paralyzed Frau Hübner that, though she had had ample opportunity to learn it from me, she couldn't perform the simple ceremony of showing the guest in and behaved as if the gun was really pointed at her; quickly pulling my robe together and, like one resolved to face whatever awaited him, I turned without delay to welcome my guest, whoever she might be.

In spite of this resolve, stepping from the sunlit room into the hallway's pleasant dimness, whence I could see the entrance hall through the open door, I had to stop and cry out, "Is it really you, Helene?" for seeing her in this drab, almost wretched, though for me more or less natural setting, suddenly made my poor landlady's stupefaction not only understandable but almost palpable, as if I'd gone through the same experiences as this hapless widow, who had not had many opportunities to behold such visions — for that's how Helene appeared, standing in the hall, like a vision, and in these dreary surroundings it seemed that even I couldn't have had much to do with such an affluent, angelically pure, exquisite yet fallible human being; she was wearing a silver-gray dress trimmed with lace which I hadn't seen before and which, according to the fashion of the day, most artfully concealed and at the same time cunningly emphasized her body's slim and shapely features, carefully not highlighting one to the detriment of another, which would have made her indecently conspicuous — the effect was created by the totality, whose excessive artificiality was offset by the naturalness of the underplayed details. She was standing with her head slightly bowed, a posture that immediately brought to mind those afternoons when she'd sat at the piano or leaned over the embroidery hoop, and her neck, emerging in startling nakedness from the high, closed collar of her dress, was made to appear acceptably chaste and covered simply by stray curly ringlets escaping from a carefully combed bun of hair gathered up at the back; yet she appeared more exciting now, and not only because the deep crimson ringlets accentuated the bareness of her neck — what fires our imagination is never mere nakedness, which only evokes a feeling of vulnerability, painful defenselessness, but everything that is almost covered or barely concealed, urging us, by its very suggestiveness, to lay it bare, implying always that we and only we are entitled to view and touch such a vulnerable body, that only to us does it surrender its nakedness, for only a mutual thrill of discovery and possession makes it possible to tolerate, indeed enjoy, whatever is coarsely natural; although I could not see her face — the huge rim of her hat cast a shadow over it and she hadn't lifted her veil — I could sense her embarrassment, and I was thoroughly embarrassed myself, partly because the surprise was simply too great, and partly because I was overwhelmed by the unexpected joy that rapidly replaced my initial fright; I knew I should speak first, sparing her the further embarrassment of having to talk in front of strangers, for in the meantime two uncombed, pale-faced young girls, Frau Hübner's granddaughter and a friend, had stuck their heads through the slightly open kitchen door and with utter amazement were gaping at the tableau presented by Helene, a tableau in which they, too, were now involuntary participants, yet I could not bring myself to speak, for whatever I might have said would have been too obviously intimate and emotional for utterance in public, so I could only extend my arm toward her, whereupon she grasped her long-handled, pointed umbrella with one gloved hand, lifted her train with the other, and, gliding almost silently, began to move toward me; "What's come over you, my dear?" I said — it may have sounded like a stifled cry — after I finally managed to dislodge Frau Hübner from her spot, and having closed the door, we were left to ourselves under the arch between my room and the dim hallway, "or is there something wrong? What happened? Speak to me, Helene, I'm most anxious to hear!"