I'm Not Stiller

  He stayed in Genoa four days.

  Rolf (so he says himself) had never foreseen that his marriage, his own, might go on the rocks like so many other marriages around him. He saw no reason why it should. He loved Sibylle and lived in the belief that he had found his own solution to the marriage problem. It had long since ceased to be a marriage in the classical sense of monogamy. But that was how it was, and to make up for it Sibylle had the child, a boy named Hannes, who made up for a great deal during the first few years of his" life. It wasn't the life Sibylle had dreamed of, but it wasn't hell either—just a marriage like so many others, and every year they went for a fine trip together, to Egypt for example. The idea of separating had never occurred to them, and in all the troubles they had passed through up to now both parties had obviously felt at bottom absolutely sure of one another. A fancy-dress ball flirtation, of which Sibylle made a demonstration, he granted his dear wife with magnanimity. He had other worries just then: the problem was whether to become a public prosecutor or not, a crucial decision, and it occupied his mind a good deal more than the fact that Sibylle was going for walks with her fancy-dress pierrot. Rolf didn't even ask his name. And then he had always been of the opinion that one shouldn't be narrow-minded about marriage; he evidently had a very serious theory as to how much freedom should be introduced into a marriage — a man's theory, Sibylle called it. She couldn't stand this theory, it seems; and yet it was based on the knowledge afforded by various sciences. And naturally this theory presupposed complete equality of the sexes. It wasn't simply a clever male excuse, as Sibylle frequently said—not merely a clever excuse. Rolf was really perfectly serious about it: his profession had shown him the misery, the hypocrisy, that springs from a view of marriage which has nothing to do with reality, and what he cared about was the idea of a viable marriage and avoiding the indignity of a life of self-deception. Rolf had a great deal to say on this subject; Sibylle called these talks his 'lectures', but when asked for her opinion—and she was asked very often, because Rolf didn't want to entrench himself in a private doctrine—she merely answered with the feminine argument that life couldn't be solved with theories...

  It seems that the fancy-dress pierrot was still on his mind, even if this preoccupation was unexpressed and perhaps even unconscious. Rolf had suddenly decided to build his own house — a house of their own had been Sibylle's fondest wish from the beginning, and Rolf, a man of action, had already bought the land. Sibylle was strange. She knew the land, they'd been after it for years; now he had bought it, and Sibylle showed no sign of jubilation. A week later he brought the young architect to black coffee, a certain Sturzenegger, who raved about consistent modernism and called upon Rolf's obviously abstracted wife for an exact statement of her requirements. A double bedroom or two single bedrooms, for example, and everything was now extremely urgent. In the middle of the discussion (says my public prosecutor) came a telephone call, Sibylle answered it as usual, fell silent, said No and Yes and No, quickly hung up again, asserted it was a wrong number, and was very jumpy. Well, well, thought Rolf, the fancy-dress pierrot; and the discussion of sketches proceeded. Sibylle took refuge in a studied interest, and everything seemed all right to her, whether like this or like that, as though she were never going to live in the projected house at all.

  At the end of the black coffee (my public prosecutor cannot remember how the subject cropped up) the young architect talked about an Eskimo who offered a white stranger his wife, in order to be hospitable, and was so offended when the stranger did not make use of her that he seized his guest by the throat and banged his head against the wall of the igloo until he was dead. Everyone laughed, of course. Thereupon the young architect came out with another funny story of something that had happened to a friend of his called Stiller during the Spanish Civil War. This was the first time my public prosecutor had ever heard Stiller's name. He remembered little of the story from the Spanish Civil War—only something about a Russian gun that failed to go off. On the other hand he clearly recalls that his wife, who had previously been so abstracted, showed a boundless interest in this Russian gun. And when the architect had gone, she went humming through all the rooms. Rolf imagined her joy was connected with the new house, but could not refrain from remarking, 'It sounds as though you're in love.' And as she didn't deny it, he added, 'You like the young architect, eh?' It was a joke. 'Do you think so?' she asked, 'Admit it!' said he. 'You're hurting me!' said she. 'I admit it, but let go of me!' It was a joke, as I said, and Rolf had to get back to work; Sibylle put the three coffee cups on the tray, and that was that...

  The four days in Genoa:

  This (so my public prosecutor says) was the most ludicrous ordeal of his life, but not the most useless. He learnt a number of things about himself: First, an unsuspected amount of sentimentality, of which he had previously had no inkling—he drank and drank, until he had to leave the restaurant because he was crying; then the primitive nature of his reactions—he stared after every reasonably clean skirt and took refuge for hours at a time in thoughts of the cheapest sort of revenge; then the shallowness of his emotions—in four days and four nights (so he says) he only achieved a few minutes of real suffering that threw him to his knees in the flowery hotel bedroom, without it being a pose or the effect of alcohol, and consumed the last residue of reproach and the last residue of self-pity; but above all, his inability to love a woman if he was not her idol, to love her without claiming gratitude, consideration, admiration, and so forth. It was an ordeal.

  Lying fully dressed on his iron bed smoking, he tormented himself with shamelessly precise imaginings of his wife giving herself to the other man. This was not the ordeal, but the relaxation he allowed himself. The ordeal was the realization, the involuntary admission, that up till then he had been very much mistaken about the level of his emotions, about his maturity. Not even his will (so he says) stood up to this test: he had gone off without a word, but was later unable to restrain himself from sending his secretary a sealed letter to be handed to his wife if she asked for news of him, a letter with his address in case of need. For four days no such case of need seemed to have arisen. He wasn't missed! Day after day, always half an hour after the arrival of the northern trains, he asked for posta restante, in vain. In between there were hours of solemn dignity, certainly: he managed to read Churchill's memoirs in English, he sat in the guise of a neatly shaved man of leisure in the morning sunshine, drank his red campari and learnt what went on behind the scenes during the Second World War—and without looking at the clock; but at bottom he was only waiting to be missed and sought with every possible means, indeed, he wouldn't have been surprised to meet the ruefully searching Sibylle somewhere in the streets of Genoa. Her 'contemptuous' silence, which presented itself to him in the shape of the marble hall of an Italian main post office, made him turn pale every time. How often did this woman force him to the same discovery—how incapable he was of living according to his own theories.

  On the fourth day, at last, there was a telegram. With the typical collapse of the man who has been saved, who is at first completely overcome by the relaxation of tension, he sat for a while before opening it, wearily calm with relief, whatever his wife might have written. But it wasn't from his wife at all: his secretary merely had to know when he was coming back. That was enough. He laughed. It affected him (so he says) like a very cold shower. He stuffed the telegram into the waste-paper basket and resolved without further reflection to take the next train. Only he hadn't got the twenty thousand lire with which to pay the hotel bill.

  What was he to do? He must see how and where he could sell his security, the American gent's suiting cloth, and as quickly as possible. The best train went at noon. At all costs not another night train! It was about ten in the morning when Rolf went out through the vestibule of his hotel, feeling rather embarrassed, because the parcel under his arm was very tattered, and determined despite his inhibitions to find a clothes shop—not too high-class of course—and try
his talent as a salesman. It was very hot again; but he kept his tie on in order to make a better impression. He gathered from the half insolent, half pitying way in which he was turned away from the first shop, that he would do better to find an even poorer district. It was already striking eleven o'clock when he entered the fourth shop, where at least he was not immediately shown the door, but allowed for the first time to untie his parcel. He was lucky, there were no customers in this shop. A corner of his American gents' suiting was enough: the owner of the shop, a pale dandy with a thin moustache, laughed in his face. Rolf didn't want to make a profit, but just to recover some of the money he had lost, so that he could pay his hotel bill; he was cheap, perhaps too cheap, to judge by the treatment he received. The dandy with the thin moustache went on reading his paper as though Rolf were no longer there. In this shop, for the first time, he didn't talk about a unique opportunity, but about his actual situation. The man behind the counter just turned away and yawned into his rustling paper, without showing the slighest interest even of a purely human kind, without even showing any sign of a sympathy that would have cost him nothing, till Rolf went away of his own accord with his parcel under his arm.

  He felt rather dejected even without imagining his wife's expression of happy superiority. In fact, to judge by the corner, it was a pretty lousy piece of cloth, rough, anything but wool, no question of half and half, and on top of that a pattern such as he (my public prosecutor) wouldn't have worn at any price, a loud, vulgar pattern—and pink!

  He sat down on the steps of an old church, surrounded by cooing pigeons with rings of blue, green, and violet iridescence round their necks, and considered—or tried to consider—what was to be done under the circumstances. Behind him stood a delightful baroque façade—Sibylle understood more about these things than he did. Now there was nothing to prevent him from taking off his tie and rolling up his cuffs (which were probably pretty dirty anyway) under his coatsleeves. He was glad at least his wife couldn't see him—the rest of mankind could stare if it wanted to. Up above, in the baroque façade—the sun was shining on the upper volutes and their glaring ochre yellow stood out against the noonday blue of the sky—it struck twelve. His train left in two hours. His gold watch also had to be put out of sight, that was it, before he went to the old-clothes-men in the back streets round the harbour, where the goods hung on the peeling walls—shirts, trousers, socks, hats. He was no longer concerned (so he says) about the lire, but about his bare self-confidence, which he was carrying around under his arm in the shape of an increasingly tattered parcel. Why hadn't he gone to these old-clothes-men in the first place!

  He felt more confident than at any other time that morning, positively exhilarated by the thought of what a story this would be to tell at parties. He whistled, or rather he heard himself whistling, although he was well aware that he did not feel at all easy. It was a back alley near the port, a district where fist law prevailed. For fear of being beaten up as a swindler, here where there were no police, he undid his parcel for the first time in a side-alley to make sure there was really enough of the material for a gentleman's suit. Yes, it was quite long enough. So Rolf rolled the cursed material up again, which was no easy matter if it was not to touch the pavement and so stink of urine. Then he approached an old-clothes-man and opened the conversation by asking the way to the station, offered him a cigarette, chatted good-humouredly, and referred in a casual way to a piece of suiting he had bought yesterday to have made up by an Italian tailor, but you know the way it is, he'd just received a telegram and had to leave in a hurry, then he cursed the customs who wouldn't let a piece of cloth through—a long and stupid story which he thought crafty, positively oriental. But his own suit with the unmistakable traces of trouser-creases, his all too faultless shoes, not to mention the golden seal ring, which had naturally been carefully noted, were not calculated to arouse comradely trust in this neighbourhood. There was nothing to stop him unpacking his wares in the open, however. A few women with babies at the breast and glances which Rolf did not consider impartial, followed the transaction with suspicious curiosity. The secondhand-clothes dealer, an old man with brown teeth and garlicky breath, felt the cloth very fully, which gave Rolf a faint hope—so faint that he dared not quote a price, but asked how much the dealer would give for it.'Niente.' Rolf would have been satisfied with a thousand lire, a thousand lire for his self-confidence. In order to get at least that much, he said two thousand was his rock-bottom price. 'No.' One thousand then? 'No.' Very well, how much? 'Niente.' The women with the babies grinned and walked off. Rolf rolled the cloth up again. For the seal ring, however, said the old-clothes-man, he would give thirty thousand. Rolf laughed. For the faultless shoes the old-clothes-man, without having to feel them, offered seven thousand lire, as though he (my public prosecutor) could walk home bare-foot. He was spared nothing in this city of Genoa!

  Finally there was only one thing left for it: to give the parcel away. As quickly as possible. For instance to a young man standing beside an advertisement pillar playing a mouth-organ, obviously out of work, his empty cap lying on the pavement. At the last moment, however, when Rolf noticed his black wooden leg, he couldn't do it. Forward once more. A young ragamuffin begging for cigarettes, and an old grandfather with a pram held together with wire didn't seem the right people either. To give away a piece of material one would under no circumstances wear oneself wasn't so easy, and Rolf wandered in all directions through a neighbourhood whose poverty was anything but picturesque. It's always a shock to see the ragged condition in which the majority of all mankind lives. Rolf came to a halt. He felt how bourgeois was his desire to be fair, to find the person who most deserved his gift; he made up his mind to turn down the next street and present the first person he met with the material for a gent's suit. The first person he met was a young woman shuffling along in her slippers. Forward once more. The next was a whistling policeman, and then the street came to an end. In a small square with a tree they were playing football. Rolf was only in the way and through standing in the goalkeeper's line of vision the obvious cause of one side shooting into its own goal, as the result of which a violent quarrel broke out between the youthful teams. Forward once more. He was utterly exhausted again. His train left in forty minutes. But where could he get rid of his gift? A drunken man staggered out of a noisy tavern, but he was too truculent, too dangerous to be given it. Of course Rolf could simply have thrown his parcel down in the street—but that would have been capitulating. Later, he circled for some time round a blind beggar with outstretched hand. That wouldn't do either he thought.

  In the last resort he could pay his hotel bill by post later on—besides, his overcoat was still at the hotel. But of course it wasn't a question of whether he could pay his hotel bill at all. It was a question of how he was to rid himself of this parcel. What real reason was there why he shouldn't throw it away? Rolf tried. Nothing could be easier, he thought, than to lose a parcel; nevertheless, his temples were pulsing when, pushed by his common sense, he put the project into execution. He dropped it in the crowd in front of a red traffic light, squeezed across the street in the general crush and thought he was saved—for just then the policeman blew his whistle, the traffic changed and the street behind him was temporarily blocked. To have his hands free at last gave him a feeling of relief, a new joie de vivre, as though nothing had happened to Sibylle either.

  Rolf lit a cigarette, without looking back to see what had happened to the nightmare parcel, and he didn't need to, for a poorly dressed but attractive young woman pulled at his sleeve and handed back to the absent-minded gentleman the parcel which she had picked up. Rolf dared not deny that it was his, this shabby parcel with its dirty paper and cheap string that scarcely held the pink cloth together any more. Was he condemned to carry this pink cloth through the rest ofhis earthly-life? Ten minutes before the train left, he was still standing helplessly with the parcel under his arm—five minutes before it left. He put off the capitulation (as h
e calls it) until the last minute. The carriage doors were already shut when Rolf stepped on to the footboard, and the train was just starting. As though the empty seats were not for him, not for defaulters and deserted husbands, Rolf stoodoutside in thecorridor as far as Milan. What would Sibyllesay to him? Naturally hestill grossly overestimated her need to concern herself with him. After Milan he was not alone in the corridor: a Swiss got into conversation with him, talkative as most people are when they run into a fellow-countryman abroad. Fortunately they soon reached the frontier.

  After the train left Chiasso he sat in the dining-car, staring out of the window all the time, so that no one passing along the train should recognize him. It never struck him how noticeable he was gazing out of the window all the time, regardless of whether the train was passing through a tunnel or not. With the active imagination that accompanies self-pity, Rolf, more than ever before on a journey, was gazing into the past, and as he looked back he could remember no happiness without Sibylle, not a single significant hour without Sibylle. Everything else was chaff, not worth a thought. Rather suddenly Sibylle had become the whole meaning and content ofhis life, and now this meaning had passed over to another man, had been transferred to a fancy-dress pierrot, or a Genoese with jet black hair, or a young architect, or whatever it was, had simply been transferred. From Goschenen on, rain splashed diagonally across the window-panes.