Marianne Fritz: The Weight of Things

He had the feeling there was something about this place that restricted his musculoskeletal options. And so he gave up on his fidgeting and settled on a single, unassailable declaration: “I’m here, Berta. Yes. I’m here.”

He laid his hand on his heart, though he didn’t dare press down firmly in public. Berta giggled, embarrassed, and glanced over at him, and he thought that if it weren’t this particular place — and on January 13, 1963—he might be justified in supposing that a heavy, hazy pall of smog really was bent on choking the life out of him. In view of the place and time in which he’d found himself, however, it seemed unlikely some sudden rain would blow in to save him, to clear the air and fill him with renewed cheer and well-being. On the other hand, who knows? There was surely much more between heaven and earth than an average citizen like Wilhelm could ever imagine.

Ever since stepping into Ward 66, Wilhelm’s brain cells seemed veiled in a thick waft of fog, so that he could make out his thoughts only vaguely, and he had to proceed slowly and carefully, feeling them out, to be able to tell one from another at all. He resolved to restrict his thoughts to a level appropriate to the circumstances, to concentrate his energies, like a chauffeur driving in the fog who has to focus his attention on the oncoming cars: on seeing them for what they are, on not drifting too near them, on recognizing trees in the roadside shadows, concrete dividers in the spectral darkness, on knowing the median isn’t just a harmless fringe, to grasping, above all, that what surrounds him is real space, not some sort of vacuum, as the fog would prefer him to think — to the extent that a fog prefers anything — and to understanding that this material world is more resilient than he, so that failing to respect it, approaching it with arrogant recklessness, incautious stubbornness, or dogmatic inflexibility, would be extremely dangerous.

Wilhelm, the smiler, discovered to his relief that he had been, was, and would remain an average citizen. He looked at Berta and thought to himself, “Am I a murderer? Am I a suicide? Both, even? No, I’m a chauffeur, a chauffeur above all else. My task is clear. I steer the car from one place to the other without putting myself, my passenger, or anyone else in unnecessary danger.”

WILHELM, THE CHAUFFEUR

Wilhelm, who had always compensated easily for the errors of other drivers and the behavioral abnormalities of pedestrians, animals, and suchlike, to the benefit of all parties concerned, was praised at times by one or the other of the gentlemen he steered through the city’s maze of streets — or even hundreds of kilometers into the countryside — and this praise would plunge him into deep uncertainty.

The question being, ought he to heartily accept or somehow disparage this praise of his automotive prowess? “Yes, it’s true, I’ve still never once had so much as a fender bender, nor have I caused anyone else to have a fender bender, or anything of the sort. You see? I am neither a suicide nor a murderer. I am a chauffeur. My duty is to preserve and protect the lives of distinguished gentlemen by means of my humble talents.” Then would come an unassumingly bashful smile, and thus would he parry the praise of the powerful business attorney Dr. Ulrich Reichmann, whose importance Wilhelm would often emphasize with the words: “For every five pages he writes, he’s earned 100,000 schillings!”

There had been a time when Wilhelm labored under the erroneous assumption that a good attorney must go to court as often as possible if he wants to make any money. Under his current employer, the great landowner and industrialist Mueller-Rickenberg, Wilhelm had also come to concern himself for the spiritual condition of his passengers — but back when he worked for Dr. Reichmann, he had once tried to express his admiration for that man’s professional accomplishment, only to be curtly interrupted with the observation: “A good attorney never stands before the court.” Wilhelm had not failed to notice the soft reprimand in Dr. Reichmann’s voice.

It wasn’t until later, sometime after Dr. Reichmann had come to rely upon Wilhelm and his pleasant, dependable smile, that Wilhelm understood the favor the attorney had done him in highlighting a decisive gap in his education. He discovered that Dr. Ulrich Reichmann belonged to a particular group of people, well-versed in the law, whose profession consists of merging business enterprises, or organizing corporations into their ideal legal form — the ideal legal form being, it goes without saying, the one in which the least taxes are paid and the company is least vulnerable to any official prying. In brief: Wilhelm came to understand it was pure nonsense to think a good attorney must go to court as often as possible if he wanted to make any money.

And so Wilhelm the chauffeur could now confidently sum up Dr. Reichmann’s character with the same words that had formerly caused him such confusion: “A good attorney never stands before the court.” Whenever he uttered these words, he would nod knowingly and not without satisfaction. Indeed, he took great pleasure in springing this sentence on the uninitiated.

Regarding his own profession, however: one passenger, the poet Fonderstrassn, had once waxed so lyrical in his praises of Wilhelm that the chauffeur felt duty-bound to put a damper on his enthusiasm.

“Maestro! Maestro! Don’t offend a chauffeur! I’ll admit that there may indeed be some artistic skill to driving through the fog, to recognizing a stag for a stag and not some trick of the mind, some phantom seen through windshield wipers that a driver might ignore or not, as he likes, without suffering any damage … That much I’ll give you wholeheartedly! But sir, don’t scatter your genius at the feet of such triviality. Your eloquence is, if I may venture a most deferential criticism, too lofty for a chauffeur’s quite inconsequential duties. Only great men, men of significance, men struggling with complicated, contradictory, nay, tragic intrigues— that is what should inspire you, that is what makes you a maestro. Not a little, undistinguished man, a nobody, a faceless, colorless Come-hither-boy … a simple chauffeur.”

BERTA SCHREI HAD THOUGHT ABOUT WILHELM A GREAT DEAL

Since 1958 Berta’s doubting and brooding compulsion had centered solely on Wilhelm. The administration at the fortress found nothing objectionable in this; in fact they encouraged Berta’s reflections on Wilhelm with utterly unbounded broadmindedness. As it happens, everything Wilhelm had ever disclosed to her bore some relation or other to his métier of chauffeur and Come-hither-boy. Even his child-rearing maxims would eventually wend their way back to his experiences as a chauffeur and Come-hither-boy.

“Berta. You need to teach your children to be more flexible. The world is one obstacle after another — and it’s in man’s nature to put himself in harm’s way. You have to pay close attention, like a good chauffeur, and take care to avoid collisions. What do you think would happen if I said to myself sometime, Hey, look at that fellow driving right down the middle of the street, does he think he owns the road? Well, I’ll show him! What would be the outcome then, Berta? No, for better or for worse, I have to swerve out of his way. And if the other children continue to beat our little Berta black and blue, well, then our little Berta simply has to learn. If I go out looking for a collision, I too will end up black and blue; if, however, I know how to avoid a collision, then I will not end up black and blue. It’s a question of wits, Berta. And we’re all responsible for having that kind of wit.”

Wilhelm dispensed generic philosophical advice of this character in hopes of raising their children, Little Rudolf and Little Berta, as competent citizens with both feet on the ground. Berta, his then-wife, might complain as often and in as many ways as she pleased: Wilhelm would just smile and philosophize away all her questions about upbringing, and Berta would twirl off back into her mind, where she would wrestle with the endless “ifs” and “buts,” the “on-the-one-hands” and “on-the-others,” today forbidding what tomorrow she would naturally allow (constraining this naturally with an “if” and a “but,” an “on-the-one-hand” and “on-the-other”), and the next day permitting what she would saddle with a stern prohibition one day later.