Marianne Fritz - The Weight of Things

There was one positive thing to be said for this vow, at least from a certain perspective: it provoked an uncommon stirring in Wilhelmine’s body, in a manner that was much to his benefit.

But now he worried: what if she took his vow too seriously? In view of Wilhelmine’s inclination to demand fulfillment of every last verbal concession she’d wrung out of him, usually without warning, he might have done better to vow henceforth never to make his vows so hastily, and to leave himself more ways out.

“It just so happens that the 13th of January, 1963, is not only our third wedding anniversary, but is also Berta’s fortieth birthday,” said Wilhelmine. “This is what I’ve meant all this time I’ve been saying to you: something has to be done! I’ve meant, of course, that we should pay Berta a visit and cheer her up. We’ll have to do it sooner or later anyhow, if only for decency’s sake. And if not now, then when?”

“I knew it,” groaned Wilhelm, and then a breadcrumb slipped down his throat and he absolutely could not cough it out, and tears welled up in his eyes, and his extravagantly robust circulation colored his face red, right up to his thinning hair.

“What’s that, Wilhelm? You knew what? You mean that you yourself had already taken Berta into consideration? Well, I’m not at all surprised! When Wilhelm promises something, he comes through. It’s no coincidence that you and I have the same name — no coincidence! We are simply one heart and one soul, right to the very end.”

And Wilhelmine, who so relished stripping every hint of subtlety, every ambiguity from a conversation, felt her pulse race, and her eyes, her mouth, and the wings of her nose quiver, so that her well-nourished face suddenly flushed with an autumnal beauty. And it was only after she’d given Wilhelm a full dose of this Indian-summer glow that she decided at last to take note of his struggle with the breadcrumb.

“Wilhelm! Were you choking on something?” she exclaimed thoughtfully, once he had coughed it out.

“No. No,” Wilhelm said, then hacked again, dried his eyes with a napkin, ran his right hand over his prematurely gray hair, hacked once more into this same hand, which he was now holding out in front of him, trying to bring his perturbation to an end as gracefully as possible and to thereby recover the self-restraint proper to a self-possessed man of the sort who faces life’s many ups and downs without fear.

“It was nothing,” he said, and with a gracious, singularly discreet nod of the head, he acknowledged the last-but-one interjection of his Wilhelmine, whose morning mood, cheery though it already seemed to be, no doubt held plenty of room for improvement: “I agree with you entirely!”

After a long pause in the conversation, he proceeded: “You know, Wilhelmine, at first I did have the impression I was choking on something. Now, however, it appears I must have been mistaken.”

And Wilhelm went out and picked the most beautiful rose from the rosebush to underscore the solemnity of this 13th of January, 1963, and he passed it with a smile to his bride, who could do nothing but giggle virginally, coquettishly, blushing: this was how touching it was to her.

“You shouldn’t have, Wilhelm,” Wilhelmine gasped. “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” She interpreted Wilhelm’s smile, and the gesture that accompanied it, as absolute submission to her plan, albeit with an “if” and “but,” an “on-the-one-hand” and an “on-the-other.” Her sordid ulterior motive, the slightly indecent exhilaration she felt in connection with the idea of at last paying Berta a visit, all this she kept prudently to herself.

And so Wilhelm’s failure to speak up had at least been successful in staving off Wilhelmine’s ill humor. Over the course of that afternoon, and even right there at the table eating lunch, he concocted many new ideas, some remarkably good ones, for managing the coming visit as painlessly as possible. Yet somehow none of these ideas made the prospect seem better or the pain less inevitable: there was no getting around the menace in Wilhelmine’s words.

“You’re perfectly right, Wilhelm. Your suggestion is an excellent addition to our plans for our third anniversary. Really, a lovely thought. A remarkable thought. After all, something has to be done! It has to! It has to! We can’t just think of ourselves, Wilhelm. We can’t act as though Berta’s already dead and buried!”

A MAN, A WORD, AND THEN YOU’RE LOST

Ward 66 was equipped with a cage. This cage divided the left-hand row of beds visible from the door into two sections.

Before Berta Schrei lost her voice, she often used to say, “A man, a word, and then you’re lost. But still, Little Mother, if I may be allowed to speak,” and she would reach out with her twitching crone-hands toward the cage bordering her bed, looking at the old woman with bulging eyes — eyes in which fear, indeed raw dread, was flickering — and would speak further only when the old woman granted her permission with a nod.

“Don’t I have pretty wallpaper? Little Mother, I know. I know. A man, a word, and then you’re lost. I know I shouldn’t speak. But, I mean. If I might be permitted to make such a remark, does the Little Mother agree?”

Each time, the old woman would nod graciously.

“Yes. Yes. Pretty wallpaper,” Berta would say, staring enraptured at the bars of the cage around her. At that, the old woman would praise Berta’s observance, and express her pleasure that Berta was beginning to gain control of the dreadful specter of her morbid imagination. And this was yet one more reason for the Little Mother to give Berta her blessing, and so she did give her blessing to her dear Berta.

Basking in the glow of this blessing, Berta would murmur to herself at short intervals the lesson she had drawn from life: “A man, a word, and then you’re lost.”

WILHELMINE, THE MODEL BOOKKEEPER

It was in one such moment, as a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta was striving to conjure up some more beautiful truth for her cage, that Wilhelm and Wilhelmine, entering the courtyard of the fortress where she was held, crossed paths with a distinguished man of around fifty with a half-bald head, hamster cheeks, and little pig’s eyes.

Wilhelm, the chauffeur, removed his hat with the utmost reverence, and blood rose into his cheeks.

Confounded, Wilhelmine cried, “What are you …?” She couldn’t resist gawking a bit at the little half-bald orb approaching.

“This is the Distinguished Dr. Primarius Gottfried Trimm,” Wilhelm whispered, looking imploringly, if not quite with outright horror, at his wife, who in general had little understanding of social hierarchies.

“Aha,” Wilhelmine said, adding: “He’s a bit of a porker.”

“Wilhelmine!”

“Or does he have a glandular condition?”

Wilhelm squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and stared at Wilhelmine, feeling a prisoner to his destiny.

“Wilhelmine,” he said, and then, as if not even he believed that his words would have any effect: “He is a highly distinguished man.”

“And what’s that to me?” Wilhelmine hissed.

They stood perplexed in the courtyard of the fortress, with Wilhelmine pointing first to its northern wing and then to its eastern one.

“Berta is either there or there. She has to be around here somewhere. Wait! I’ll ask the good Dr. Primarius.” And Wilhelmine turned in the direction of the parking lot. Suddenly, Wilhelm became a man; his doubting and brooding compulsion vanished entirely; he grasped Wilhelmine by the arm and said, “That is out of the question. That I will not accept.”

So much resolve puzzled Wilhelmine and gave her pause.

“Don’t drag me around like that.”