Group Portrait with Lady (53 page)

Of what nature this suffering might be became clear during the indispensable visit to Pelzer, who meanwhile—in the space of the approximately five days in Veitshöchheim, Schwetzinger, and Nymphenburg—had become quite haggard; he was with his wife Eva, who with a weary but appealing melancholy served coffee and cake, made an occasional, usually resigned, remark, failed to look entirely genuine in her paint-daubed artist’s smock, and carried on an elegiac conversation—on such topics as Beuys, Artmann, the “meaningful meaninglessness of art,” quoting liberally from one of the more high-toned papers—then had to go back to her easel, “I just have to, please excuse me!” Pelzer’s appearance gave cause for concern. He looked at Klementina as if considering her as “a bird in the hand,” and when she disappeared for a while, for urgent and understandable reasons (between three and six o’clock she had drunk four cups of tea at Scholsdorff’s, three at Schirtenstein’s, and so far two cups of coffee at Pelzer’s), Pelzer whispered: “They thought at first it was diabetes, but my blood-sugar level is completely normal, so is everything else. It’s the truth, though you may laugh, that for the first time I’m conscious of having a soul and that this soul is suffering; for the first time I’m finding that not just any woman, only one woman, can cure me; I could wring that Turk’s neck—what can she see in that country bumpkin reeking of mutton and garlic, besides, he’s ten years younger than she is; he’s got a wife and four kids, and now he’s got her pregnant too—I—you’ve got to help me.”

The Au., who has developed a certain liking for Pelzer, pointed out that in such desperate situations the mediation of
a third person always turns out to be a mistake, in fact even has the opposite effect,
this
was something the injured party had to cope with alone. “And yet,” thus Pelzer, “every day I fork out a dozen candles for the Madonna, I—just between us men—seek consolation with other women, I don’t find it, I drink, go to casinos—but
rien ne va plus
is all I can say. So there you have it.”

To say here that Pelzer made a pathetic impression is not to imply even a trace of irony, especially since he supplied a very apt comment on his condition himself: “I’ve never been in love in my life, I’ve always played around with bought women, yes, I’ve always gone to whores, and my wife, well, I was very fond of her, still am in fact, and I don’t want her to suffer as long as I live—but I was never in love with her, and Leni, well, I desired her from the first moment I saw her, and some damn foreigner is forever coming between us, I wasn’t in love with her, I’ve only been that since I saw her a week ago. I … I’m
not
to blame for her father’s death, I—I love her—I’ve never said that about a woman before.” Just then Klementina returned and made it clear, discreetly yet unmistakably, that it was time to leave. Her comment was rather disdainful, at any rate cool and quite matter-of-fact: “You can call it whatever you like, Pelzer’s disease or Schirtenstein’s disease.”

The expedition to Tolzem-Lyssemich provided an occasion to kill two birds with one stone: Klementina, who consistently calls herself a dedicated mountain-lover and a Bavarian and only reluctantly admits that congenial people live north of the Main too, could be introduced to the charms, indeed the fascination, of the flat country, such
wide
flat country, which would remind her enthusiastically; she admitted to never having seen such
flat
flat country, such
wide
flat country, which would remind her of Russia “if I didn’t know that here this
only extends for two or three hundred miles whereas in Russia it’s in the thousands, but you must admit it reminds one of Russia.” She would not allow the qualification of “except for the fences,” in the same way that she rejected any lengthy meditations on fences, hedges, in fact all border markings, as too “literary,” any allusion to their Celtic origin as “too racial,” but eventually, albeit again reluctantly, she did admit that “it has a horizontal pull whereas where I come from it’s a vertical pull; here you always get the feeling you’re swimming, even in a car, and probably on a train too, and you’re afraid you’re never going to reach the other shore, or is there such a thing hereabouts as another shore?” A reminder of the visible elevations of the foothills and the first slopes of the Eifel drew from her merely a disdainful smile.

Marja van Doorn, on the other hand, was a total success.
Pflaumenkuchen
with whipped cream (Comment: “You people eat whipped cream with everything.”), coffee, freshly roasted and ground by M.v.D. (“the only proper way”) proved irresistible, “fabulous, the first real coffee I’ve ever tasted, now at last I know what coffee is,” etc., etc. And: “You people know how to live, I must say.” M.v.D. had her farewell comment to make too: “A bit late but not too late, and God bless you,” then in a whisper: “She’ll teach you how.” (Correction, blushing, also whispered:) “I mean, she’ll bring a bit of order into your life and so on.” Then tears: “A real old maid, that’s all I’ve ever been and all I’ll ever be.”

At the home, Bogakov was reported as “moved away” and, surprisingly, “with no forwarding address.” All he had left behind was a note saying: “Don’t have them look for me, thanks for now, I’ll get word to you,” but in four days this word had not come. Belenko thought Bogakov had started “whoring around
again,” while Kitkin thought he had most likely been sent off somewhere as a “Red informer”; the kindly sister frankly admitted to missing Bogakov and told them casually that this happened almost every spring. “He simply has to take off then, all of a sudden, only it’s getting more and more difficult, you see, because he needs his injections. Let’s hope he’s warm enough.”

Although she had now heard of and about Leni from such many-angled perspectives, some forceful, some direct, some indirect (e.g., B.H.T., who had at least been able to confirm her existence), K. was now all agog to meet her “in the flesh, to touch her, smell her, see her.” The time was now ripe for this encounter with Leni, and it was with some trepidation that the Au. asked Hans Helzen to arrange it. It was agreed, since Leni was so “uptight” about it, to allow only Lotte, Mehmet, and “you’ll be surprised who” to be present at this encounter.

“Ever since the first few walks with Mehmet,” said Hans Helzen, “she’s been in such a state of tension that she can’t bear the presence of more than five people. That’s why neither my wife nor I will be there either. What upsets her especially is the presence of someone in love and the erotic anticipation or tension that goes with that, the kind that emanates from Pelzer and Schirtenstein and is even slightly noticeable in Scholsdorff.”

Since K. interpreted the Au.’s own tension as jealousy, he explained to her that while he did know all about Leni he knew almost nothing about her—K.; indeed, on the basis of much intensive and tedious research he was familiar with Leni’s most intimate spheres of intimacy, making him feel like a traitor or a conniver; but that while she—K.—was close to him, Leni, despite his affection for her, seemed like a stranger.

It is freely admitted that the Au. was glad of K.’s company, of her philological and sociological curiosity, for without her—
for whom, when you came right down to it, he had Leni and Haruspica to thank—he would certainly have been in danger of succumbing to the incurable Schirtenstein or Pelzer disease.

Fortunately his agitation and anticipation were distracted by a surprise: who should be sitting there on the sofa, openly holding hands with a delightfully blushing Lotte Hoyser, so embarrassed that he was not smiling but grinning? None other than Bogakov! One thing was certain: the kindly sister at the home from which he had fled had no need to worry about him, he was warm enough! And lest there be anyone who doubts that Lotte is capable of radiating warmth, let him stand corrected.

And there sat the Turk too, surprisingly, almost disappointingly unoriental-looking; rustic, stiff, not embarrassed, wearing a dark-blue suit, starched shirt, unobtrusive (mid-brown) tie, there he sat, holding Leni’s hand in a pose that suggested he was sitting, about the year 1889, opposite the giant camera of a portrait photographer who had just pushed in the plate and asked them not to move, before he pressed the rubber ball that clicks the shutter. Leni—well, there was still much trepidation before the Au.’s eyes turned toward her and then fastened fully on her: it must not be forgotten that in the course of his tireless research the Au. had set eyes on her only twice, a mere fleeting glimpse on the street, from the side, never
en face
, had admired her proud walk, but now evasion was no longer possible, reality must be looked in the eye, and the simple understatement: it was worth it! must be permitted here. It was a good thing K. was present, otherwise jealousy of Mehmet might have been a distinct possibility; some vestige remained anyway, a slight pang of regret that it was in his arms and not the Au.’s that she dreamed of harrow, draftsman, and officer. She had cut her hair and tinted it slightly gray and could easily have passed for thirty-eight; her dark eyes were clear, not without sadness, and although she is known to be five foot six and a half she seemed
more like six foot two, although at the same time her long legs prove that she is equally beautiful standing and sitting down.

It was charming the way she took charge of the coffeepot, while Lotte put cake onto the plates and Mehmet distributed the inevitable whipped cream, “One spoon? two? three?” according to taste. Leni, it became clear, was not only taciturn and reticent, she was downright laconic, and so shy that her face wore a constant “nervous smile.” Her expression—something that filled the Au. with pride and joy—as she looked at K. was one of satisfaction and benevolence; asked by K. about Haruspica, she pointed to the picture on the wall, which was indeed impressive and—not colorful but colored—hung, five feet by five, over the sofa, and—although still incomplete—radiated an indescribably cosmic force and tenderness; the design of her uncompleted life’s work was not merely multi-layered but (they could be counted) eight-layered—of the six million cones she had by now entered perhaps thirty thousand, of the one hundred million rods perhaps eighty thousand—instead of taking a cross-section she had designed it horizontally, like an endless plain over which one might march toward a still unformed horizon. Leni: “There she is, maybe a thousandth part of her retina, when it’s finished.” She waxed almost talkative in adding: “My great teacher, my great friend.” That was all she said during the thirty-five minutes the visit lasted.

Mehmet seemed rather humorless, even when he was serving the cream he did not let go of Leni’s hand with his free hand, and when Leni poured coffee he forced her to do it with one hand by hanging on to her free hand. This hand-holding was so infectious that finally K. started holding the Au.’s hand, as if she were keeping her fingers on his pulse. There was no doubt about it: K. was moved. All trace of her academic arrogance had vanished, it was quite obvious that she had known about Leni but not believed in her; she figured in the Order’s dossiers, but the fact that she existed and, what was more, genuinely
existed, stirred her profoundly. She gave a deep sigh and transmitted her heightened pulse to the Au.

Has the impatient reader noticed that quantities of happy endings are now taking place? Holding hands, alliances formed, old friendships—such as that between Lotte and Bogakov—being renewed, while others—Pelzer, Schirtenstein, and Scholsdorff, for example—thirsting and hungering, were getting nowhere? That a Turk who looks like a farmer from the Rhön mountains or the central Eifel has won the bride? A man who already has a wife and four children at home and on account of polygamous rights, of which he is aware but of which he has so far never been able to make use, has shown not the remotest trace of a guilty conscience, in fact may well already have acquainted some Suleika with the situation? A man who, compared with Bogakov and the Au., appears maddeningly clean, positively scrubbed: with creased pants, a tie; who finds bliss in a starched shirt because for him it is all part of the solemnity of the occasion? Who continues to sit there as if the imaginary photographer in artist’s beret and artist’s cravat, a painter
manqué
somewhere in Ankara or Istanbul about the year 1889, still had his finger on the rubber ball? A garbage collector who rolls, lifts, empties garbage cans, bound in love to a woman who mourns three husbands, has read Kafka, knows Hölderlin by heart, is a singer, pianist, painter, mistress, a past and future mother, who causes the pulse of a former nun who has spent her life wrestling with the problems of reality in literary works to beat faster and faster?

Even the glib Lotte was silent, as if she too were touched, moved, deeply stirred; bit by bit she told them about Lev’s imminent release and the resultant accommodation problems, the owner of the building having refused to accept “Turkish
garbage-truck drivers,” while the Helzens, since Grete Helzen “earned a bit on the side” in the evenings as a cosmetician in one of their rooms, could not relinquish a room, and it was impossible to “squeeze their five Portuguese friends into one room,” yet she wanted to, must, remain—with Bogakov, whom she frankly called “my Pyotr”—close to Leni; all of which meant that she was forced to “stand up to” her sons and her father-in-law. “It’s merely a postponement, it’s not over yet.” That she was willing to marry Bogakov and he her but that there was no evidence of his being either a widower or divorced.

Eventually Leni did contribute to the conversation by murmuring “Margret, Margret, that poor Margret,” her eyes first moist, then weeping. Until finally Mehmet, by an indefinable movement causing him to sit even more upright than he already was, made it unmistakably clear that he regarded the audience as at an end.

The good-byes—“not final, let’s hope,” K. said to Leni, who responded with such a sweet smile—followed and were protracted in the usual manner by the guests’ commenting kindly on the photos, the piano, the apartment in general, enthusiastically on the painting, and the group continuing to stand around for a while in the hall, where Leni then murmured, “well, we must just try and carry on with the earthly vehicle, the unearthly horses,” an allusion that not even K., with her apparently inadequate education, understood.