Marianne Fritz - The Weight of Things

“Leave him in peace. He doesn’t like to be spoken to while he’s thinking. And he’s almost always thinking.”

“So he’s a busy sort, then?”

“He visits the countess even more than her own daughter does. And listen up, Queen Penny-Pincher … Even when he’s busy all month long making his rounds among the rich and famous, he still meets one-on-one with his brother-in-law, and his brother-in-law is my estimable employer , whose tips are as bountiful as my salary is meager. And that’s one plus you’re in danger of minusing , dear Queen Penny-Pincher!”

“Fine. Fine,” Wilhelmine said morosely, and: “Don’t make a speech about it! How am I supposed to know what goes on in some bigshot’s head!”

Wilhelmine had a guilty conscience.

And, having just had her distinction as Queen Penny-Pincher called into question, she changed the subject: “We need a plan, Wilhelm! We can’t just both barge in there. You have to break the news about us to Berta as considerately as possible. Berta could be capable of anything, we don’t know what state she’s in. Give me a sign as soon as you’ve cleared everything up.”

But then: Wilhelmine was filled with anxiety. What if Wilhelm couldn’t find the right words and his ineptitude made Berta more distraught? What if Berta was already so far gone that she would no longer even understand what Wilhelm said to her? Indeed, it was a thoroughly heroic decision, her letting Wilhelm go in there alone, and hopefully Wilhelm would know how to appreciate the gravity of the responsibility she had conferred on him. Hopefully! Staying here, chained like Prometheus, waiting and hoping that Wilhelm would act reasonably despite the absence of her prudent guidance was a burden that could hardly be borne. Still, better that than having to hear another word about this Trimm and his tips! This “distinguished” personage who wandered about so deeply involved in his “important” problems that Your Lowliness, Trimm’s brother-in-law’s chauffeur and Come-hither-boy, dare not so much as utter a word to him, even here on the public grounds of Berta’s fortress!

In summary: Distinguished Dr. Primarius Gottfried Trimm headed for the parking lot; Wilhelmine headed for the courtyard, yanked first one way and then another by all sorts of misgivings; and Wilhelm headed into the fortress, still full of the hope that something unforeseen might occur and save him from having to drain this cup of sorrow.

I WAS COMPELLED TO COME UP HERE

And thus Wilhelm Schrei came skulking in, decked out in his Sunday best, with a bouquet of light pink roses, following on the heels of Head Nurse Gotaharda, who felt bound by duty to commemorate this highly unusual event: Ward 66 had a visitor. “Berta, my dearest child, do you know what the Head Nurse has for you today? You don’t? But it’s visiting hours, isn’t in Berta? And still you don’t know?” These were the words of this angel of angels, her baroque face beaming with those glorious feelings of triumph that sometimes fill people in the know when they have a chance to lord their secrets over their faintly hopeful, warily ignorant victims.

As Wilhelm Schrei sought out that forgotten face, he smiled soft and meek, and thought to add a pinch of embarrassment to his smile: “Forgive my coming here!” he was attempting to say, but without weighing down his declaration with words. “I just couldn’t do otherwise. I was compelled to come up here!” The smile he actually produced, however, when he finally found Berta Schrei, was a trifle softer, a trifle more embarrassed, as if to beg her pardon for being there at all.

Sitting on her bed, twirling her thumbs, Berta dared to look up briefly, only to drop her head in shame and twirl her thumbs more frantically while a very faint pink colored her cheeks.

And Wilhelm had a feeling he had often felt before: as if a hot and hazy pall of smog had gathered above the city of Donaublau, then sunk slowly down into the ravine between the houses of Allerseelengasse, as if wanting to settle in there for good.

WILHELM AND THE PALL OF SMOG OVER THE CITY OF DONAUBLAU

Wilhelm had long compared this pall of smog with a hippopotamus: “A spiteful beast that just has to come to rest right where I’m standing, lying, sitting, or walking! It’s trying to crush me with its tonnage!” he would yammer, and his imagination deluded him into believing this hulking hippopotamus really was stampeding toward him. Sleepless, he would toss and turn, sit up in bed, shout in terror to his Wilhelmine, who would be snoring away rhythmically. It usually took a number of formidable shoves to wake her, and then she would dismiss Wilhelm’s fears as more or less unmitigated gibberish.

“Wilmerl! Call the doctor! My little bride! I need help! Do you hear me! I need help! Wake up now!”

He’d gasp for breath, feel the heavy beat of his heart, which struck him as strangely irregular. It galloped like a startled racehorse, and he thought for a moment it would leap from his ribcage unless he kept his hand firmly pressed over the obstinate beast; if not, he would lose his best racehorse — his only racehorse, as it happened, so that its loss would be existentially catastrophic.

And yet no sooner had he managed to calm himself through this downward pressure of his hand than his heart would begin de celerating, beating slower and slower until it was barely detectable, and then, it seemed, vanishing completely.

At this stage of Wilhelm’s valiant struggles to stave off death, his wife would generally rouse herself and express her opinion on the matter, a bit impatiently, though not without a certain kindness: “Look, it’s not complicated. It’s the humidity, that’s all. Wait for the rain to come, then you’ll feel all better. You’re not going to die every time.”

Die: that was the operative word.

Wilhelm’s teeth began to chatter, his body to tremble; even the springs in their marriage bed started to quiver, and hefty Wilhelmine was rocked back and forth, just like a boat over choppy waves — as she noted to herself, with less bewilderment than irritation. She snatched at the small lamp on her nightstand, determined once and for all to snuff the life out of Wilhelm’s ridiculous fears. And indeed, as soon as the room was filled with the lamp’s soft half-light, Wilhelm left off with his chattering and trembling.

Once, Wilhelmine had dared to take a boat trip with Wilhelm on the lake, and on that occasion she’d become ill, as she soon alerted him, shouting, “Wilhelm dear! I’m seasick! I can’t take this constant rocking back and forth! The boat, Wilhelm dear! The boat is tipping over! I can’t swim! This is just horrible! Are you trying to do me in? This rocking has got to stop! Right now! Turn back right now!” It seemed she had a strong aversion to back-and-forth rocking of any sort — and thus she felt great relief in these moments as well when the rocking of her bed came to an end.

And yet no sooner had he gotten used to their bedroom, and grown calm again in the veil of half-light, than Wilhelm began to worry about the shadows cast by the dresser, the mirrored vanity, and the rubber plant, which filled the room with their ghostly apparitions.

Then Wilhelm’s chattering and trembling started up even more insistently than before.

WILHELM, THE SMILER, DISCOVERS TO HIS RELIEF THAT HE IS AN AVERAGE CITIZEN

But he knew what was and was not proper behavior in public, and so the brave Wilhelm who struggled valiantly against death in the nighttime remained a secret known only to his Wilmerl, while in Ward 66 there now stood a shell of a man wiping dollops of sweat from his forehead with a large white handkerchief before pushing it laboriously back into his pocket, then taking it back out immediately to extravagantly blow his nose. Once this nose-blowing procedure had been brought to an end, he turned his attention to his head of gray hairs, which he used his newly freed hand to smooth over, at which point there arose the possibility of tugging at his ear, at his nose, and then at his ear once more.