“Well, yes,” she said, smiling.
He had to admit to himself: it had never even occurred to him.
“Your letter . . .” he said. “Your letter, I was very pleased to receive it.”
She looked at him with a slightly sulky turn to her mouth, which aged her by ten years.
“Very pleased . . .” she repeated, making a face like a cross child, “and has he got no more than that to say to me?”
In this instant, Herr Saxberger felt that what he would most like to do was throw her out. It struck him very distinctly that only while she was reading his poems had she been at all tolerable.
She saw by a slight twitching of his lips that he was getting anxious, but took it for another sign that he was moved within . . . She stood up and, as if she had just earned the right to do so, started to go around the room and view the individual pieces of furniture. She did this in an unconstrained, childish manner. She stopped in front of his cupboard and ran her finger across it as if wanting to check for dust. She considered the small smoking table and took the ashtray in her hand to look at it more closely. She stopped in front of the desk and stroked her fingers across the dark-green folder that lay on it. And all the while—this was what irritated Saxberger the most—she was still wearing that abominable yellow jacket.
While she stood in front of his desk, she said under her breath, as if talking to herself: “So this is where he muses and writes . . .”
Saxberger feared he would lose his composure, but replied with passable self-control: “No, Fräulein, I don’t muse here and I don’t write here. I haven’t mused and written for thirty years!”
She lifted her gaze and looked with big, sad eyes at the old gentleman—who forced himself to smile, to mitigate the obstinate tone of what he had said—and then spoke with the serene and irrefutable tone of a prophetess:
“You will write again!”
“No!” he almost shouted.
She started at his words, then looked at him timidly.
“No,” he repeated more mildly. “I will—unfortunately—not write any more. I can’t write any more.”
“You don’t know that,” she replied, “because you don’t know the effect that the applause of hundreds of enthusiastic listeners, that the praise of the press—that fame will have on you.”
She said this without any exaggeration of tone—with warm and quiet certainty. “Fame”—he made a dismissive gesture and said no more.
“Yes, fame,” she said again. He shook his head, but felt strangely reconciled to her.
Just then there was a ringing at the door to his apartment.
“Were you expecting a visitor?” asked Fräulein Gasteiner.
“Not that I know of,” replied Saxberger.
The housekeeper came in and reported that Herr Grossinger wished to speak with him.
Fräulein Gasteiner had meanwhile begun to put on her gloves.
“I won’t disturb you any longer,” she said. “And as for the poems, I think you’re happy with the ones I read today.”
“Yes, absolutely,” responded Herr Saxberger, who had become a little shy, and accompanied her to the door. To Grossinger, who was just walking in, he said, “Please excuse me for just one moment,” and he saw the Fräulein as far as the door of his apartment. She pressed his hand almost violently in goodbye. He returned to his room and greeted Grossinger.
“Well, blow me down!” said the delicatessen owner. “Here was I thinking you were dead or at least seriously laid up because you haven’t shown your face in the restaurant for more than a week—and all the time . . .you’ve been . . . doing so well!” He glanced meaningfully at the door.
“I’m always well,” answered Saxberger in a slightly exasperated voice. “It was very kind of you to make the effort to come up . . .”
“Actually,” interrupted Grossinger, “I’m a deputation—I was supposed to tell you to get better soon from all of us. But I can see that you couldn’t really get any better!!” Saxberger decided to preempt any more drollery.
“The lady you just met is an actress,” he said hastily. “Yes indeed,” he added in response to a mischievous smile from Grossinger. “And if you must know why she was here with me, then . . . then . . .well, then a week tomorrow go to the recital put on by the ‘Enthusiasm’ society, where that actress will be reading from my”—he hesitated, and then said firmly: “from my oeuvre.”
“What?” asked Grossinger in astonishment—“are you having a laugh?”
“It’s quite serious,” said Saxberger. “I don’t usually speak about it, but I had to discuss some things with the Fräulein, that’s why she was here.”
“Your oeuvre??” cried Grossinger. “Go on with you! Give over! A public reading? But what’s she reading?”
“Poems,” said Saxberger . . .“Here,” he added, picking up from his desk a copy of the Wanderings that now always lay there.
Grossinger took the book in his hand. “No joke!” he said, “these are rhymes!” And as he looked up laughingly at Saxberger: “That makes us colleagues!” Saxberger knew that Grossinger was thinking of his recent rhyming toast, and answered with dignity: “Almost!”
“And that actress is reading it out?” said Grossinger, shaking his head in wonder. “Hey, Saxberger, we’ve all got to come. Yes, of course! It’ll be a hoot!”
Saxberger clenched his teeth: “You will not come,” he said vigorously, “and you will please be so good as not to say anything about it to the others. Oh—not on my account. But there’s a whole crowd of gifted youngsters who are putting on the recital, it’ll be an artistic, serious audience that comes to the performance—it’s a culturally significant event—[he was getting angry because Grossinger was laughing wholeheartedly at what he was hearing]—and there’ll be no space for people who don’t understand anything about it.”
“Don’t get yourself worked up! It’s already settled! I won’t come! Wouldn’t dream of it!! I’ll be happy not to have to sit through all that palaver! And especially if they’re getting old bags like that one to do their declaiming.” Again he glanced at the door.
Saxberger said nothing. He disdained this person. Admittedly, this was one of those among whom he had previously lived and whose “conversation” he had shared. And yes, this was one of the least educated among them. But they were all cut from the same cloth. Old philistines! How young he—the “venerable poet”—was when set beside them . . . He understood that among these people he had had to go into a decline. And with that, his anger dissipated. He felt excused before himself. The Grossingers had made the atmosphere around him thick and dull. In it, his free poetic soul could not but suffocate. As he stood there for a full half-minute not saying anything, the good Grossinger began to feel sorry for his mocking words and tried to soften them.
“Well, no harm meant,” he said. “She,” and he again indicated the door, “she’s not bad at all! . . . An actress, you said? What theater’s she performing at?”
“I don’t know,” said Saxberger uninterestedly, “where she last was.” And feeling that he was allowed to, he added: “I think in Berlin.”
“Smashing, smashing,” said Grossinger. “Right, then,” he continued after a brief pause, “a friendly suggestion! Why don’t you come with me to the coffee house?”
“Now?!” said Saxberger.
“Of course! It’s almost six. The major must already be waiting for me. And Steininger and Hildebrand’ll be there, too. So, are you coming? Seriously, Saxberger, we really were worried about you.”
Saxberger decided to go with Grossinger to the coffee house—though not to allay their fears, but because he felt a strange longing rise up in him when Grossinger said these names: a longing to watch and to comment on a game of billiards, and even to keep score. He didn’t quite understand it himself, but today he felt more like seeing a game of billiards with these dull philistines than listening to the conversation of his enthusiastic young friends.
“Let’s go,” he said to Gross
inger. “I’ll come along.”
“Well said!” cried Grossinger, and bit the end off his Cuban cigar.
•
The recital came closer. And the mood was exalted despite the many adversities that the “Enthusiasm” society had to overcome. Mainly that the newspapers were not taking enough notice of the imminent performance. Each had had the program sent to it, but they contented themselves merely with writing: “There will be an evening of readings by the ‘Enthusiasm’ society on such and such an evening in the rooms of the Silver Cross.” Only one newspaper, whose editor Blink knew well, printed the program in full. Ticket sales, which Staufner and Meier took care of, were initially very sluggish. Some of the young people’s relatives had ordered tickets and little Winder, who had made great efforts in his family circles, bought ten tickets for which he paid cash up front.
The evenings in the coffee house passed in passionate discussion. Partial rehearsals were held in the restaurant. Bolling read poems by Meier and Fräulein Gasteiner presented a monologue from Christian’s “Zenobia.”
She was loudly acclaimed. Saxberger was always among them. He was treated with great friendliness and high esteem. Albeit that he couldn’t help noticing the deferential tone they had taken at first was no longer present. But he explained that to himself. He had reached such friendly terms with the young people that their deference, which did after all imply a certain unfamiliarity, had necessarily fallen away. He felt very content among them. Fräulein Gasteiner did not come regularly. But when she was there, she almost always sat at his side and looked at him with a gaze in which something faithful and heartfelt was supposed to be communicated. Sometimes she addressed him as “maestro” and once, when they were walking along the street beside each other, she called him “My dear, dear maestro!”
On the day before the recital, when they all stayed long together, she spoke for the first time about her visit to him. “How is my dear little writing room?” she asked. “Is it still as cozy as once it was?” Saxberger found this “as once it was” incongruous, as it had only been a few days, but was otherwise pleased by the question. He treated the actress respectfully, but with deep reserve. Overall, he vacillated in his feelings towards her. Sometimes he thought her very congenial. But he also found that at times he suddenly experienced a violent aversion against her—particularly when she fixed him with her “faithful” gaze.
On this last evening, he was asked by Meier whether he had made an effort “among his friends.” At first, he didn’t really understand. Then he realized that he, too, had been meant to contribute some ticket sales. “I don’t have any friends,” he said. “But,” objected Meier, “in your circles you must have a lot of admirers?”
“My circle,” he said—“as if they were interested in—poetry!” And he told the young man about his conversation with Grossinger.
Meier smiled. “You shouldn’t have been so dismissive. What goes through their heads is all the same to us. Once they’re sitting in there, they’re the public and the public’s what we need . . . the more, the better.”
The evening again ended late and very jovially, with a toast of Staufner’s to “our” Saxberger.
He spent the next day in a quiet, agreeable mood. He was looking forward to the recital, to the reading of his poems, to the applause. About the others he thought very little. How much did they still have ahead of them! A whole life. But he, too, might still have a few things ahead of him. If Fräulein Gasteiner had indeed been right and if fame . . . no, no, he didn’t want to expect too much.
In the late afternoon, Saxberger left his apartment. It was so warm that he wore his surtout open over his black frock coat.
He reached the Silver Cross half an hour before the recital was due to begin. He had to walk through a hallway, the courtyard and then a short corridor, where the cloakroom was, to reach the doors to the function room. Meier and Winder were already standing there. Beside them was one of the Cross’s serving staff, in slightly too long, machine-made white gloves, who was to collect the tickets. The corridor still seemed to hold all the odors of the recent carnival. (Small dances were also frequently held there.) It smelt of beer, tobacco, faded perfume, of damp clothes, moldy wood and gas.
Meier led the old gentleman through the function room, which was still hardly lit: only three, four low gas flames were burning in their brackets on the walls. The tables were laid. In the background, on the platform, stood a smaller table with two candles on it. Meier accompanied Saxberger into a little back room. The friends were gathered there, all in black frock coats of a more modern cut.
Saxberger was greeted with a “hurrah” that sounded a touch muted. Meier immediately took off again. Friedinger and Blink were sitting at a committee table in the middle of the room and drinking beer. Linsmann, the manuscript of his speech in his hand, was pacing up and down, and kept knocking into the stand on which they’d hung their hats and coats. As Saxberger came in, Blink was discoursing to Staufner, who was sitting on the table and swinging his legs. Christian and the actor Bolling were standing in a corner, where they were embroiled in an emphatic debate to which they returned right after the “hurrah.” Saxberger went over to them with the words, “Well, kids, what’s got into you?”
“This person,” replied Bolling, pointing at Christian, “is quite simply an idiot.”
“You don’t want to—that’s all there is to it,” said Christian.
“I can’t give a monologue without preparation—and a female one at that, it won’t work! I’ll embarrass us both.”
“Oh,” asked Saxberger, “what monologue is that?”
“The one from ‘Zenobia,’” said Bolling . . .“because that wench . . .” he corrected himself, “because Fräulein Gasteiner doesn’t feel like it.”
“What?” exclaimed Saxberger in concern. “What’s happened to Fräulein Gasteiner?”
“She’s ill,” said Christian. “She might not come.”
Saxberger was intensely shocked. “And this is something you tell me just like that? Who’s going to read my poems?”
“Right!” said Bolling. “That number would have to be dropped as well.”
“But what’s wrong with Fräulein Gasteiner, when did she fall ill?” cried Saxberger.
“It’s not dangerous,” responded Christian, “a migraine, which might still get better.”
“Might!” repeated Saxberger, almost in tears. “Oh, come on,” said Bolling, “they’ve had another spat and she wants to wind him up, that’s all it is! Migraine! Haha—Gasteiner’s migraine—haha!”
“But it’s totally inconsiderate,” cried Saxberger. He was no longer thinking of anything but his own part of the program. He was wholly indifferent to everything else.
Blink, without coming any closer to them, joined in the conversation. “Don’t worry, Herr Saxberger—Gasteiner will come, you can be sure of that.”
“But if she doesn’t come,” cried Saxberger, “who’s going to read my poems?”
No one spoke. They were all wholly indifferent to Saxberger’s poems.
In that instant, Saxberger hated the whole company. The way he saw it, they should have greeted his arrival in sheer despair, should have clustered around him: “Do you already know, Gasteiner can’t come, we’ll have to cancel the recital, we’ll have to postpone it.” None of that. They couldn’t have been cooler, not even—no, not even if it was just that Friedinger hadn’t come to read his comic novelette.
Then Blink said coldly: “Here she is.” And already they could see floating out of the half-dark of the function room a white female figure, who approached the door and finally, Meier at her side, walked in smiling. It was Ludwiga Gasteiner in a white, deeply décolleté evening dress. Round her shoulders hung a slightly shabby raincoat. In her hand she carried a pair of very long light-yellow gloves.
“Can it be that I’m the last one here?” she said harmlessly, while waving a bright greeting to all sides. And, letting herself sink at once into an ar
mchair, she sighed deeply and said: “Oh, kids, I really thought I was going to have to cancel on you! My skull was about to burst. I’ve had six antipyrine sachets.”
Meier left again and closed the door behind him. In the function room, they were beginning to turn up the gas lamps. The first guests had arrived.
Saxberger was now vexed with himself for having expressed his fears so undisguisedly. Especially as he could feel Blink giving him an ironic look.
Friedinger half opened the door, glanced into the function room and turned back to the others. “People!!” he said.
“I’m just curious,” opined Staufner, “about how the papers will cover it. Whether the Neue Freie, for example, will send someone.”
“Surely not,” said Fräulein Gasteiner, “even if only because my name’s in the program. If they could, they’d have destroyed me long ago.”
“In any case, the papers aren’t the main thing,” said Blink. “It’s about the audience.” Through the half-opened door came a noise of chairs being shifted. Staufner had a look. “It’s filling up,” he said. “But it’s still crazy of you,” said Bolling, “to have had tables laid out. It’ll spoil the atmosphere if they’re all eating.”
“On the contrary,” retorted Staufner. “And they’ve been given strict instructions not to serve anything during the performance.”
“So,” Fräulein Gasteiner turned to Saxberger, “are you already very excited?”
He was annoyed by the question. “Don’t worry,” said Blink, taking the old gentleman encouragingly by the arm, “there’s not much that can happen!”
He really was being treated like someone making his debut, someone whose spirits had to be buoyed up, who needed to have allowances made . . . He did not reply. Fräulein Gasteiner put the book on the table in front of her and appeared to be reading over the poems. From time to time she looked up at Saxberger with a smile. Linsmann began to declaim loudly:
“Ladies and gentlemen . . . For years, a battle has been raging in the blossoming meadows of German art. For years . . .” he mumbled again.