The Clown

  It was dreadful. We had been a total of only six or seven hours in Erfurt, but we had got on the wrong side of everyone: the theologians as well as the functionaries.

  When we got out at Bebra and went to a hotel, Marie cried all night, in the morning she wrote a long letter to the theologian, but we never found out whether he actually got it.

  I had thought a reconciliation with Marie and Züpfner would be the end, but to hand myself over to the white-faced functionary and perform the Cardinal for that lot would really be the very end. I still had Leo, Heinrich Behlen, Monika Silvs, Zohnerer, Grandfather and the bowl of soup at Sabina Emonds, and presumably I could make a little money baby-sitting. I would guarantee in writing not to feed the children any eggs. Evidently that was more than a German mother could bear. What other people call the objective significance of art I couldn’t care less about, but to poke fun at Boards of Directors where Boards of Directors don’t exist seems pretty low.

  I had once spent a lot of time rehearsing a fairly long number called “The General,” and it turned out to be what is known in our circles as a success: that is, the right people laughed, and the right people were angry. When I went to my dressing room after the show, my breast swelling with pride, I found an old, tiny woman waiting for me. I am always short-tempered after a show, the only person I can bear near me is Marie, but Marie had let the old lady into my dressing room. She began talking before I had even finished closing the door, and told me her husband had also been a general, he had been killed and had written her a letter beforehand asking her not to accept a pension. “You are still very young,” she said, “but you’re old enough to understand”—and then she left. After that I could never do the “General” again. Whereupon the press calling itself Left Wing wrote that I had apparently been intimidated by the reactionaries, the press calling itself Right Wing wrote that I had doubtless realized I was playing into the hands of the East, and the independent press wrote that I had obviously renounced radicalism and personal involvement in any form. All utter drivel. The reason I couldn’t do the number any more was because I always had to think of the little old woman, who probably had a hard time struggling along, mocked and scorned by everyone. When I no longer enjoy something, I stop doing it—to explain that to a journalist is probably much too complicated. They must always be “sniffing around,” “nosing out a story,” and wherever you go you find the malicious type of journalist who can never reconcile himself to the fact that he is not an artist himself and doesn’t even possess the makings of an artistic person. Those people, of course, don’t even have a “nose,” and they talk nonsense, preferably when there are pretty girls around who are still sufficiently naive to idolize every hack writer who happens to have a column in a paper, and “influence.” There are some strange unrecognized forms of prostitution compared with which prostitution itself is an honest trade: at least you get something for your money.

  Even this path—finding my salvation through the compassion of commercial love, was barred to me: I had no money. Meanwhile Marie was trying on her Spanish mantilla in her hotel in Rome in order to make the right impression as the first lady of German Catholicism. Back in Bonn she would attend countless tea parties, smile, go on committees, open exhibitions of “religious art” and “look around for a suitable dressmaker.” All the women with husbands in official positions in Bonn “looked around for a suitable dressmaker.”

  Marie as the first lady of German Catholicism, a teacup or a cocktail glass in her hand: “Have you seen the sweet little Cardinal who is going to consecrate Krögert’s Column of the Virgin? It seems that in Italy even the Cardinals are gallant. It’s too sweet for words.”

  I couldn’t even hobble properly now, I could really only creep along, I crept out onto the balcony to breathe in some of my native air: that didn’t help either. I had already been in Bonn too long, nearly two hours, and by that time the Bonn climate loses its beneficial effect.

  It struck me that they really had me to thank for the fact that Marie had remained a Catholic. She had some terrible religious crises, due to disillusionment over Kinkel, as well as over Sommerwild, and a fellow like Blothert would probably have turned even St. Francis into an atheist. For a time she even stopped going to church, wouldn’t hear of our being married in church, she withdrew into a kind of obstinate defiance, and it wasn’t till we had been gone from Bonn for three years that she met the group again, although they were always inviting her. I told her at the time that disillusionment was insufficient reason. If she believed the thing as such to be true—a thousand Fredebeuls couldn’t make it untrue, and after all—I said—there was Züpfner, whom I had to admit I found a bit stiff, not my type at all, but who as a Catholic was convincing. There must be a lot of convincing Catholics, I told her, I named pastors whose sermons I had listened to, I reminded her of the Pope, Gary Cooper, Alec Guinness—and it was by clinging to Pope John and Züpfner that she managed to climb up out of the pit. Strangely enough, Heinrich Behlen no longer appealed to her during this period, she said she found him smarmy, was always embarrassed when I mentioned him, so that I began to suspect he might have “made advances” to her. I never asked her about it, but I had my suspicions, and when I thought of Heinrich’s housekeeepr I could understand that he “made advances” to girls. I found the idea repulsive, but I could understand it, just as I understood a lot of repulsive things that went on at boarding school.

  It was only now that I realized I had been the one to offer Pope John and Züpfner as a source of comfort in her religious doubts. I had been scrupulously fair in my attitude toward Catholicism, that was just where I had gone wrong, but to me Marie was Catholic in such a natural way that I wanted to help her retain that naturalness. I woke her up when she overslept so she could get to church on time. How often had I paid for a taxi to get her there on time, I phoned around for her, when we were in Protestant areas, to try and find a Holy Mass, and she always said she found that “particularly” sweet, but then I was supposed to sign that damned paper, guarantee in writing that I would have the children brought up as Catholics. We had often talked about our children. I had looked forward very much to having children, had talked to my children, held them in my arms, beaten up raw eggs in milk for them, the only thing that worried me was that we would be living in hotels, and in hotels it is usually only the children of millionaires or kings who are treated well. The first thing children—at least the sons—of non-kings and non-millionaires get shouted at them is: “This isn’t your home,” a triple insinuation since it assumes that you behave like a pig at home, that you only enjoy yourself when you are behaving like a pig, and that in no circumstances are you supposed to enjoy yourself as a child. For girls there is always a good chance of being regarded as “sweet” and being nicely treated, but boys always start off by being shouted at if their parents aren’t around. For Germans, every boy is a naughty child, the always unspoken adjective naughty is simply merged with the noun. If anyone should ever hit on the idea of testing the vocabulary most parents use when talking to their children, he would find that it makes the vocabulary of the comic strip look like a complete dictionary. It won’t be long before German parents speak only in Kalick-language to their children: Oh, how sweet, and Oh, how awful; now and again they will decide to make use of such variations as “Don’t argue” or “That’s none of your business.” I have even discussed with Marie how we would dress our children, she was all for “jaunty, light-colored raincoats,” I preferred parkas, since it seemed to me that a child couldn’t very well play in a puddle in a jaunty, light-colored raincoat, while a parka was ideal for playing in puddles, she—I always thought first of a girl—would be warmly dressed but with bare legs, and when she threw stones into the puddle the water need not necessarily splash her coat, it might only splash her legs, and when she scooped out the puddle with an empty can and the dirty water happened to run out of the side of the can, it wasn’t bound to go on the coat, in any case the chances were that it wo
uld only dirty her legs. Marie felt she would be more careful just because she was wearing a light-colored raincoat, the question of whether our children would actually be allowed to play in puddles was never completely clarified. Marie would just smile, be evasive and say: let’s wait and see.

  If she was to have children with Züpfner she wouldn’t be able to dress them in either parkas or jaunty, light-colored raincoats, she would have to let her children run around without coats, for we had gone thoroughly into the matter of coats of all kinds. We had also discussed long and short pants, underwear, socks, shoes—she would have to let her children run naked through the streets of Bonn if she didn’t want to feel like a whore or a traitor. I also had no idea what she could give her children to eat: we had gone into all the various types of food, of feeding methods, we had agreed we didn’t want stuffed children, children who are forever getting porridge or milk stuffed or poured into them. I did not want my children to be forced to eat, it had disgusted me to watch Sabina Emonds stuffing food into her two oldest children, especially the eldest, whom Karl had unaccountably named Edeltrud. I had even had an argument with Marie over the tiresome matter of eggs, she was not in favor of eggs, and when we argued about it she said they were rich people’s food, then she had blushed and I had had to comfort her. I was used to being treated and regarded differently from other people merely because I am one of the brown-coal Schniers, and it only happened to Marie twice that she made a silly remark about it: the first day, when I came downstairs to her in the kitchen, and the time we talked about eggs. It’s an awful thing to have wealthy parents, especially awful, of course, when one has never benefited from the wealth. At home we very seldom had eggs, my mother regarded eggs as being “distinctly harmful.” In Edgar Wieneken’s case it was embarrassing the other way round, he was always brought in and introduced as a child of the working class; there were even some priests who, when they introduced him, used to say: “A genuine child of the working class,” it sounded as if they had said: Look, he has no horns and looks quite intelligent. It is a racial matter that Mother’s executive committee ought to look into one day. The only people who behaved naturally to me over this were the Wienekens and Marie’s father. They didn’t hold it against me, my being one of the brown-coal Schniers, nor did they make any special fuss of me because of it.

  23

  I suddenly realized I was still standing on the balcony looking out over Bonn. I was hanging on to the railing, my knee was hurting like mad, but the coin I had thrown down worried me. I would have liked to get it back, but I couldn’t go down into the street now, Leo was bound to arrive any minute. They couldn’t sit forever over their plums, whipped cream and grace. I couldn’t spot the coin down there on the street: it was quite a long way down, and it is only in fairy tales that coins glint clearly enough to be found. It was the first time I ever regretted anything to do with money: this discarded mark, twelve cigarettes, two streetcar rides, a wiener. Without remorse, but with a certain wistfulness, I thought of all the express and first-class surcharges we had paid for grandmothers from Lower Saxony, wistfully, the way you think of the kisses you gave to a girl who married someone else. There was not much to be hoped for from Leo, he has strange ideas about money, rather like a nun’s ideas about “married life.”

  Nothing glinted down there on the street, through everything was well lit up, there was no fairy coin to be seen: just cars, streetcar, bus and citizens of Bonn. I hoped the mark had stayed on the roof of the streetcar and that someone at the depot would find it.

  Of course I could throw myself on the bosom of the Protestant church. Only: when I thought of bosom I shivered. I could have thrown myself on Luther’s breast, but “bosom of the Protestant church”—no. If I was going to be a hypocrite I wanted to be a successful hypocrite and get as much fun out of it as possible. I would enjoy pretending to be a Catholic, I would “keep to myself” entirely for six months, then start going to Sommerwild’s evening sermons, till I began to warm with catholons like a festering wound with germs. But this would mean giving up my last chance of getting into Father’s good books and of being able to sign non-negotiable checks in a brown-coal office. Perhaps my mother would find a place for me on her executive committee and give me a chance to present my race theories. I would go to America and lecture to women’s clubs as a living example of the remorse of German youth. The only thing was, I had nothing to be remorseful about, nothing whatever, and so I would have to pretend remorse. I could also tell them about the time I threw ashes from the tennis court into Herbert Kalick’s face, and how I was locked up in the shed and afterwards had stood before the court: before Kalick, Brühl, Lövenich. But the moment I told them that, it would be hypocrisy. I could not describe those moments and hang them around my neck like a decoration. Everyone carries the decorations of his heroic moments around his neck and on his chest. To cling to the past is hypocrisy, because no one knows those moments: how Henrietta in her blue hat had sat in the streetcar and gone off to defend the sacred German soil against the Jewish Yankees near Leverkusen.