Group Portrait with Lady (8 page)

Because she feels that not even Rahel has told her enough about the biological differences between men and women, she does some intensive research on the subject. She thumbs through encyclopedias, with not much result, ransacks—with just as little result—her father’s and mother’s libraries; sometimes she goes to see Rahel on Sunday afternoons, taking long walks with her through the convent grounds and entreating her for information. After some hesitation Rahel relents and explains, once again without the slightest necessity for either of them to blush, further details that she had withheld two years earlier: the instrument of male sexuality, its stimulation and stimulability, with all the attendant consequences and pleasures; and since Leni asks for illustrated material on the subject and Rahel refuses to give it to her, saying it is not good to look at pictures of it, Leni telephones a book dealer for advice, speaking (quite unnecessarily) in a disguised voice, and is directed to the “Civic Health Museum,” where under “Sex Life” the main displays consist of venereal diseases: starting with ordinary clap and proceeding by way of soft chancre to “Spanish collar” and covering every phase of syphilis, all naturalistically displayed by
true-to-life colored plaster models, Leni learns of the existence of this unwholesome world—and is infuriated; not that she was prudish, what made her so angry was the fact that in this museum sex and venereal disease appeared to be regarded as identical; this pessimistic naturalism enraged her no less than the symbolism of her religious instructor. The Health Museum seemed to her a variation of the “strawberries and whipped cream” (witness Margret, who—blushing again—refused to contribute personally to Leni’s enlightenment).

Now the impression may have been given that Leni’s interests were confined to a wholesome and healthy world. Not at all: her materialistically sensual concretism went so far that she began to be less brusque in declining the numerous advances to which she was exposed, and she finally yielded to the ardent entreaties of a young architect from her father’s office whom she found agreeable, and consented to a rendezvous. Weekend, summertime, a luxury hotel on the Rhine, dancing on the terrace in the evening, she blond, he blond, she seventeen, he twenty-three, both healthy—surely there will be a happy ending or at least a happy night—but nothing came of it; after the second dance Leni left the hotel, paid for the unused single room where she had hastily unpacked her housecoat (= bathrobe) and toilet articles, and went to see Margret, whom she told that during the very first dance she had felt that “the fellow” did not have “tender hands,” and that a certain fleeting sense of being in love had instantly evaporated.

At this point there is a distinct feeling that the reader, thus far fairly patient, is becoming impatient and wondering to himself: For God’s sake, is this Leni girl supposed to be perfect? Answer: almost. Other readers—depending on their ideological point of departure—will put the question differently: For God’s
sake, what kind of dirty-minded hussy is this Leni? Answer: She isn’t one at all. She is merely waiting for “the right man,” who fails to appear; she continues to be pestered, invited for dates and weekend trips, never feels shocked, merely pestered; even the most embarrassing propositions—often phrased with considerable coarseness—that are sometimes whispered in her ear arouse no indignation, she merely shakes her head. She loves wearing pretty clothes, swims, rows, plays tennis, even her sleep is not restless, and “it was a real treat to watch her enjoy her breakfast—I tell you, it was just a treat the way she ate her two fresh rolls, two slices of black bread, her soft-boiled egg, a bit of honey, and sometimes a slice of ham—and the coffee, really hot, with hot milk and sugar—I tell you, you really should’ve seen it because it was a treat—a daily treat, to watch that girl enjoy her food” (Marja van Doorn).

She also likes going to movies, “so she could have a little cry in the dark in peace” (quotation via Marja van Doorn). A movie such as
Unshackled Hands
, for instance, makes two of her handkerchiefs so damp that Marja mistakenly assumed Leni had caught cold at the movie. A movie such as
Rasputin, Demon Lover
, leaves her completely cold, as does
The Battle Hymn of Leuthen
or
Hot Blood
. “After movies like that” (Marja van Doorn), “not only were her hankies not damp, they looked as if they had just been ironed, that’s how dry they were.”
The Girl from Fanö
, on the other hand, drew tears from her, but not quite as much as
Unshackled Hands
.

She gets to know her brother, whom so far she has rarely seen; he is two years older than she, was only eight when he went to the boarding school where he remained for eleven years. Most of his school vacations have been utilized to further his education: trips to Italy, France, England, Austria, Spain, because his
parents were so keen on turning him into what in fact he was turned into: “a truly well-educated young man.” Again according to M.v.D., young Heinrich Gruyten’s mother regarded “her own background as too low-class,” and since she herself, brought up and educated in France by nuns, retained a certain “nervous and at times excessive sensitivity” throughout her life, we may assume her to have wanted something similar for her son. On the basis of available information she seems to have succeeded.

We must devote a short time to this Heinrich Gruyten, who for twelve years, like a disembodied spirit; like a god almost, a blend of the young Goethe and the young Winckelmann with a touch of Novalis, lived a life apart from his family, occasionally—some four times in eleven years—making an appearance at home, and of whom all Leni knew thus far was that he “is so sweet, so terribly sweet and nice.” True, this is not much and does sound rather like her First Communion; and since not even M.v.D. has much more than Leni to say about him (“Very well educated, beautiful manners, but never proud, never”), and since Margret saw him only twice officially in 1939, when she was invited to the Gruytens’ for coffee, and once more—unofficially—in 1940, one rather chilly April night, the night before Heinrich was sent off as a tank gunner to conquer Denmark for the aforesaid German Reich, Margret, in view of Leni’s reticence and M.v.D.’s lack of knowledge, remains the sole nonclerical witness.

This reporter feels awkward about describing the circumstances under which he obtained information on Heinrich from a woman of barely fifty who is suffering from venereal disease. All Margret’s remarks have been typed verbatim from a tape, they have not been doctored. Well, let us begin: Margret became quite ecstatic, her face (already considerably disfigured) taking on a look of childlike fervor as she started right off by saying: “Yes, I loved that man. I really did love him.” Asked whether he
had loved her too, she shook her head, not as if to say No, rather as if to express doubt, certainly not—as is attested here under oath—in any affectation of martyrdom. “Dark hair, you know, and light eyes, and—oh, I don’t know—noble-looking, yes that’s it, noble. He had no idea of the extent of his charm, and for him I’d have literally walked the streets, literally, so he could read books, or whatever else it was he learned besides how to read books and judge churches, study chorales, listen to music—Latin, Greek—and all about architecture; well, he was like Leni—a dark version of her, and I loved him. Twice I was there in the afternoon for coffee and saw him—in August ’39; and on April 7, 1940, he phoned me—I was already married to that rich guy I’d hooked—he phoned me, and I went to him at once, to Flensburg, and when I got there I found the men had been confined to barracks, and it was cold outside; so I must have got there on the eighth. They were quartered in a school, everything packed so they could leave that night, whether they flew or went by ship—I don’t know. Confined to barracks. No one knew, and no one ever found out, that I was with him, neither Leni nor her parents nor anyone else. He got out of the building in spite of the orders to remain inside. Over the wall of the girls’ john into the school playground. No hotel room, not even one in a rooming house. The only place open was a bar, in we went, and a girl let us have her room in exchange for all the money I had on me, two hundred marks, and my ruby ring, and all his money, a hundred and twenty, and a gold cigarette case. He loved me, I loved him—and it made no difference that the room and all that was so tarty. Makes no difference, makes no difference at all. Yes” (the tape was carefully monitored twice to see if Margret had actually used the present tense: makes no difference, makes no difference at all. Objective conclusion: she did). “Well, and soon after that he was dead. What a crazy, crazy waste.” When asked how the surprising word “waste” had occurred to her in this context, Margret replies (typed verbatim from the tape): “Well you see, all that education, all those good looks, all that
masculine vigor—and twenty years old, how many times, how many times might we—could we—have made love, and not only in tarts’ rooms like that one, but out of doors, once it got warmer—and it was all so pointless—waste, that’s what I call it.”

Since Margret, Leni, and M.v.D. all persist in what amounted to an iconolatrous attitude toward Heinrich G., some rather more objective information was sought here too: it was obtainable only from two parchment-skinned Jesuit fathers, both over seventy, both seated in studies that were impregnated with pipe smoke, editing manuscripts which, although for two different periodicals, dealt with similar subjects (Opening to the Left or to the Right?), one a Frenchman, the other a German (possibly a Swiss), the first with graying fair hair, the second with graying black hair; both wise, benign, shrewd, humane, both exclaiming as soon as they were asked: “Ah yes, Heinrich, the Gruyten boy!” (identical wording, including grammatical and syntactical details, even punctuation, since the Frenchman also spoke in German), both put down their pipes, leaned back in their chairs, pushed aside the manuscripts, shook their heads, then, pregnant with memories, nodded their heads, sighed deeply, and began to speak: at this point total identity ends and a merely partial one begins. Since one of them had to be consulted in Rome, the other near Freiburg, preparatory telephone calls over lengthy distances in order to arrange appointments had been unavoidable, and the result was considerable expense which, it must be said, did not eventually pay off, aside from the “human value” of such encounters, a value that might be gained at much less expense. For these two fathers did no more than contribute to an enhanced idolization of the deceased Heinrich G.: one of them, the Frenchman, said: “He was so German, so German and so noble.” The other one said: “He was so noble, so noble and so German.” In order to simplify our report, the two men,
for as long as we require them, will be called J.[esuit]I and J.II. J.I: “We haven’t had another such intelligent and gifted student in the past twenty-five years.” J.II: “For the past twenty-eight years we’ve not had another such gifted and intelligent pupil.” J.I: “There was a potential Kleist in that boy.” J.II: “In that boy there was a potential Hölderlin.” J.I: “We never tried to win him for the priesthood.” J.II: “No attempts were made to win him for the Order.” J.I: “It would have been a waste anyway.” J.II: “Even those of the brothers who thought only of the Order refused to try such a thing.” Asked about scholastic achievements, J.I said: “Oh well, he simply got an A in everything, even in phys. ed., but there was nothing boring about it, and every one of his teachers—every single one—dreaded the moment when a choice of career would have to be faced.” J.II: “Well, needless to say his marks were very good all the way through. Later on we created a special category for him: Excellent. But what career could he have taken up? That was what frightened us all!” J.I: “He might have become a diplomat, a cabinet minister, an architect, or a jurist—in any case, a poet.” J.II: “A great teacher, a great artist, and—inevitably and always, a poet.” J.I: “There was only one thing he was not fitted for, one thing he was too good for: any kind of army.” J.II: “Only not a soldier, not that.” J.I: “And that’s what he became.” J.II: “And that’s what they turned him into.”

We know for a fact that between April and late August of 1939 this Heinrich, equipped with the proof of education called a matriculation certificate, made little use—possibly did not want to make use—of his education. He and a cousin joined an institution bearing the modest name “Reich Labor Service,” and starting in May 1939 Heinrich had periodic leave from 1
P.M
. Saturday to 10
P.M
. Sunday. Of the thirty-five hours granted
him, he spent eight on trains, used the remaining twenty-seven to go dancing with his sister and cousin, play a little tennis, take a few meals with the family, sleep approximately four to five, spend two or three arguing with his father, who wanted to do everything—everything—for him, and would have if he could have managed to get Heinrich exempted from the impending ordeal known in Germany as military service—but Heinrich would have none of it. Witnesses have testified to violent arguments that took place behind the locked living-room door, with Mrs. Gruyten whimpering softly to herself, Leni excluded, the only verifiable words being an outburst of Heinrich’s, clearly heard by M.v.D.: “Dirt, dirt, dirt—that’s what I want to be too, just dirt.” Since Margret is certain about having had coffee with Heinrich on two Sunday afternoons in August, and since it is also known (through Leni, for once) that his first leave did not occur until the end of May, it may be safely calculated that Heinrich was at home a total of seven times, i.e., spent a total of some one hundred and eighty-nine hours—approximately twenty-four of these asleep—at home, fourteen of these quarreling with his father. It must be left to the reader to decide whether H. is to be numbered among Fortune’s favorites. True: coffee with Margret twice. And a few months later a night of love with her. What a pity that, apart from “Dirt, dirt, dirt—that’s what I want to be too, just dirt,” there are no verifiable verbatim quotations of his. Did this person, who was equally outstanding in Latin and Greek, in rhetoric and history of art, never write any letters? He did. M.v.D., coaxed and cajoled, bribed with countless cups of coffee and a few packages of non-filter Virginia cigarettes (she took up smoking at the age of sixty-eight and finds “these things marvelous”), went to Leni’s inherited chest of drawers, which Leni seldom opens, and temporarily abstracted three letters that could be speedily photocopied.