Stiller came in while we were still comfortably breakfasting. Our immediate but rather anxious question, how's it going? naturally referred to Frau Julika; our friend had not come from the hospital, however, but from his underground chamber. Stiller hadn't slept a wink; he had probably spent the rest of the night in the garden and the early morning in his pottery. Of course he looked pale and exhausted. Why he hadn't gone to the hospital at nine o'clock I don't know; he was still unshaven too. Was he afraid? With apparent optimism, as though Frau Julika was on the point of being discharged from the hospital, he talked about something else. He hadn't even telephoned. He asked me to call at the hospital and tell his wife he would come around eleven o'clock. Not one of his excuses would hold water. He had to shave! Then again we heard that some V.I.P. who was passing that way had asked to see his pottery and was arriving at about ten—which was true, but not an adequate excuse. Perhaps Stiller felt ashamed to stand beside the sick-bed stinking of liquor. He kept his distance from my wife too, in a way that couldn't be overlooked. 'I stink,' he said. A real or fancied odour of wine was no reason for not at least ringing the hospital, but Stiller didn't want to. I couldn't force him.
In the end my wife and I drove to the nearby Val Mont Hospital, where my wife waited in the car; it was bound to be only a short visit, if a visit from someone not a relative was allowed at all. I felt a real desire at least to see Frau Julika before we drove on. The moment I announced myself I knew what had happened. I had to wait another anxious quarter of an hour in a sunny corridor with flower vases standing in front of the doors and silent nurses hurrying this way and that, before the young doctor informed me of her decease. At my urgent request he promised that Herr Stiller should not be notified over the telephone. Death had supervened half an hour earlier, and it had obviously come as a surprise to the doctor. My other wish, to see Frau Stiller, was at first refused. But in the end my face (I was probably crying) was sufficient to make the doctor change his mind—or was it my identity papers? Anyhow, the matron was told to take me to the dead woman.
'Her hair is red, very red in fact, in keeping with the new fashion, not like rose-hip jam, however, but more like dry minium powder. Very curious. And with it a very fine complexion—alabaster with freckles. Also very curious, but beautiful. And her eyes? I should say they are glittering, somehow watery, even when she is not crying, bluish-green like the edges of colourless window-glass. Unfortunately her eyebrows have been plucked to a thin line, which gives her face a graceful hardness, but also a slightly masklike appearance, as though perpetually miming surprise. Her nose looks very aristocratic, especially from the side; there is a great deal of involuntary expression in the nostrils. Her lips are rather thin for my taste, not without sensuality, but they must first be aroused. Her loose hair is gloriously silky and as light as gossamer. Her front teeth are splendid, not without fillings, but otherwise gleaming like mother of pearl. I looked at her as though she were an object; as though she were just any unknown woman...' That was exactly how she lay on the deathbed, and I suddenly had the monstrous feeling that from the very beginning Stiller had only seen her as a dead woman; for the first time, too, I felt the deep unqualified consciousness of his sin, a consciousness no human word would obliterate.
The only thing left was to bring the heavy tidings to my friend. A few words were enough; Stiller already knew. Although almost an hour had passed since I left the hospital, they had not telephoned; but he knew the moment he saw me, and I believe Stiller uttered my news himself; I won't say 'calmly', for it was the terrifying calm of someone whose mind is wandering. I waited a long time to drive Stiller to the hospital. He went up to his room, to fetch his coat, so he said. We heard nothing, no footsteps, no sobs, only the noise of the birds outside, and after a time my wife was manifestly afraid our friend might have done something to himself. I didn't believe this for an instant, but as he still didn't come I went upstairs and knocked at his door. There was no answer, so I went in. Stiller was standing in the middle of the room, his hands in his trouser pockets as so often. 'I'm coming,' he said. I drove him to the hospital and waited outside in the car. The picture of the dead woman was so much stronger than anything I could see with open eyes—the picture of a being who was dead and had never been recognized by anyone while she was alive, least of all by the one who had striven for her with his human love. After a quarter of an hour Stiller came back and sat down beside me in the car, 'She is beautiful,' he said. I had my leave extended and remained in Glion for a few days, after my wife had left, to relieve him of all sorts of things that have to be done after a death. Moreover, I had the feeling that Stiller needed me, although there were no further conversations between us. The medical report did not interest him and there was little else to say; the decision had been reached. The evening after the little funeral in an alien cemetery, when I had to leave him, Stiller was working in his underground chamber, or at least trying to. He accompanied me to the little iron gate with the funny notice-board, his thoughts elsewhere, so that I had to shake hands with him two or three times. We saw one another now and then; he made no more late-night telephone calls and his letters were uncommunicative. Stiller remained in Glion and lived alone.
Max Frisch, I'm Not Stiller
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