I Confess (23 page)

Yolanda had walked up to us. Her eyes were still shining with tears. She was smiling. "You were great, all of you," she said and shook hands with the entire cast of six.

Felix came over and thanked me. "We are going to pay you back, Mr. Frank, we really are. You can count on it. And we'll never forget what you did for us today." Wilma was standing beside him, looking at me, radiant. Suddenly

she began to cry. "What's the matter?" Felix asked her, looking startled.

"Nothing," she sobbed. "Nothing. I'm just being stupid, but I'm so happy!" And she took Felix's handkerchief and blew her nose.

After that all of us went upstairs to the cafe. We pushed three tables together and celebrated our friendship. Everybody participated, including the (one) stagehand, the toilet attendant and the owner of the cafe with his wife. We looked like the members of an oflSce outing, or a middle class wedding party, or perhaps more Uke a small investment club at their yearly meeting. I sat between Yolanda and Wilma. We ate frankfurters—two pairs each—with mustard, and we drank Pilsner beer. The cafe was overheated, everybody talked at once, the mustard stood around in small bowls, we dipped our frankfurters into it and ate with our hands. All of us ended up with greasy fingers.

I can't remember when I became conscious for the first time of the fact that I loved Wilma. It probably didn't happen suddenly. Things like that occur without one noticing them. They grow bigger and stronger, and by the time one is aware of them, one is already a victim. At first one is beset by a pleasant feeling of umest One doesn't know the cause of it yet but one's entire system becomes attuned to it and is altered as it prepares for something new. One's brain is interested independently in things of which one isn't conscious. How old was Wilma? Nineteen. I was forty-five. Twenty-six years older. The whole thing

was ridiculous! When I would be fifty, she would be half my age. Then it occurred to me that I was never going to be fifty. Not even forty-six! It was insane, absolutely crazy! But it was sweet insanity, and it intoxicated me like the finest wine. In the week following our viewing of their play, I saw her almost daily. I watched the rehearsals. With the shamelessness of a Maecenas, who since the beginning of time has seen fit to tyrannize the artists he is sponsoring, I asked questions, expressed ideas and gave unasked for advice. Everybody was wonderful to me, and my word was law.

"Yes, Mr. Frank, you're quite right. The decor in the second act is poor. But Susy doesn't have any more canvas for the backdrop."

"Why doesn't she have any more canvas?" I asked.

"No money," said Susy, laconically. She was the pony-tailed stage manager. She wore large tortoiseshell rimmed gjasses.

"Here's money," I said. "Go get your canvas."

"Oh, but that's awfully nice of you, Mr. Frank!"

"We'll pay you back. Every schilling!" This, of course, was Felix.

"You're just wonderful, Mr. Frank!" And this was .Wilma.

Yes, for her T was wonderful. I was the iairytale told to children to make them go to sleep. A wave of my hand and Susy came running back, lugging a roll of canvas. I paid a minor employee and the presses rolled, printing posters, red and blue on good white paper, which was then pasted on the advertisement columns. "Studio 52," they announced, "presents the world premiere of The Dead Have No Tears, a play in three acts by Felix Reinert," and underneath that the names of the actors in alphabetical order. Her name too. Parisini. Wilma Parisini. On the Ringstrasse, between trees that were already beginning to lose their leaves, we saw the advertisement on a column for the first time, she and I. Together. I was

walking her home from a rehearsal. "There," she said breathlessly. "Look!"

She gestured toward the other side of the street, then tore herself loose from me and ran like a child across it, just missing a bus. "Wilma!" I screamed. But she didn't hear me, and the next thing I knew I was running after her, I, James Elroy Chandler, alias Walter Frank, wanted by the police, I, Walter Frank, dead in a year, if I was unlucky—^with luck, earlier; I, Walter Frank, forgot everything the minute I reached her and stood beside her, just as breathless as she, and saw her joy, her glowing cheeks, heard her laughter. ...

"Oh, Mr. Frank, I'm so happy! So happy! And we have you to thank for everything! And when I think of how frightened I was when I went to see you, just a few days ago...."

"Were you frightened, Wilma?"

"Of course I was. Terribly." And then we laughed again, and I took her hand and we walked on over the asphalt and the fallen yellow leaves, past many strange houses, in a strange city that seemed as familiar to me as if I had been born in it.

Yes, I was a miracle man in her eyes. One evening it was raining. I raised my hand and a taxi stopped for us. She sat in it beside me, the street lights passed across her face while she told a thousand stories of which I listened to none because I could think of nothing but of how wonderful it must be to kiss her. But I didn't kiss her. I said goodbye to her in front of her house and walked alone through the rain, back to Reisnerstrasse and the couat-egs's quiet apartment where Yolanda was waiting for mc.

I was a miracle man. For Wilma, for her friends, and in my own eyes. Wherever I appeared, I spread good cheer, I, of all people! The curtain was old and ugly so— let's get a new one! Too few comfortable chairs? Nonsense! Buy comfortable ones. Felix didn't have a dark suit for the premiere? Felix got a dark suit. And he got it

from the best taUor in town. In three days. My money worked miracles. Not I. My money.

It came to me suddenly one afternoon as I sat in the auditorium watching them put up the new curtain amid yells and laughter. My money was the source of all these good things, the money I had embezzled, the money Jacob Lauterbach had exchanged for me illegally. The damned, filthy money I had run after all my life and of which I had never had enough until this moment in my life. It was the money, not I! Ah yes, if I had always had money, the world would have been mine for the taking. I could have bought women and men, love and power. Money, money, money!

Not I.

I laid my head on the imitation marble top of the table in front of me and closed my eyes. I felt Uke a sentimental fool. Then I heard her voice. "Aren't you feeling well, Mr. Frank?"

There she stood in front of me, in costume, rouge on her cheeks, her wide mouth painted, the lashes thick with mascara. She was leaning over me; I could see the concern in her eyes. "Fm all right," I said. "What is it?"

"Oh Mr. Frank, we've changed our minds. We don't hke the new curtain, and it's much too expensive. We're going to return it and Susy's going to gild the old one. It will look like new."

"You bet it will," said stage manager Susy, age seventeen. "And think of the money we'll be saving."

"You reaUy think so?" I asked.

"Wait and see," said FeUx. "We're not going to let all this extravagance become a habit just because we found you and you're so willing to help us."

I got up and felt a heaviness in my legs and a pleasant weariness in my head as if I had drunk too much sweet wine.

"Watch me," said Susy. "You couldn't buy the curtain I'm going to paint anywhere. Not with all the money in the world."

"Not with all the money in the world?" I repeated. "You don't believe me?"

"I?" I looked around me, at all of them. "I love you. •' "And we love you too," said Wilma.

10

Yes, I think that's how it all began during those late autumn days before the opening night. She had come to see me on a Wednesday, and from that day on I lived as in a dream. It was a short dream; it lasted three weeks, then it was over. But it was the most beautiful dream of my life. And when I think of all the things that happened afterwards, all the vileness and betrayal of the last months fall away like a shell when I recall these three happiest weeks of my life. I think of them at night when I lie awake and during the day when I sit at my desk. They shine brightly amid all the evil, and when I close my eyes I can see it just as it was, every detail, every smile, every pressure of her hand.

I never possessed her, but she was closer to me and I loved her more than any woman in my life. And I think she knew it. We never talked about it, but in the way she sometimes looked at me and spoke to me, I could tell that she sensed what I never mentioned because the time was too short and death was stalking me.

I don't know where she is today, but if there is a God in heaven, then he wiU give her happiness in return for the happiness she gave me before everything went cold and dark around me. If there is a God in heaven, then he will reward her for the good she did me without knowing it.

During the day, from nine to four, she was in Lauter-bach's office and I couldn't see her. But I used to call her from a booth, secretly and with a false voice so that no one would recognize me. "Please may I speak to Miss Parisini for a moment?" Like a schoolboy. As if I were still calling my girlfriend, Claudette, who had worked as a dental assistant. "Just a minute," said the office boy who always answered. He also always sounded suspicious, but I don't think he had any idea who was calling. And then I heard her voice, a child's voice with a Uttle break in it, answering with an undertone of astonishment. "Hello?"

"Frank speaking."

"Oh. How are you?"

She never called me by my name—that was a tacit agreement—and we therefore shared a secret, the sweetest and most innocent secret imaginable.

"I happened to be passing by and wondered if we couldn't meet?"

"Oh yes, that would be nice."

"As usual? Around the comer in the tea shop?"

"Yes, please."

I had to work out all the important details of the conversation, she couldn't say much, the office boy kept a sharp eye on things.

"At four?"

"Yes, please."

"I'm looking forward to it, Wilma."

"Yes, please."

"Take care."

^'Yes, please."

And at four I was sitting in the little tea shop around the comer which was always empty and smelled strongly of naphtha soap. There were always the same cakes in the window and the same cat paraded majestically through the room, imperturbable and aloof. There I sat and drank vermouth, and with every footstep on the silent side street outside I shot up out of my seat, and with every woman passing by and stopping to look at the cakes in the win-

dow, I half-raised myself out of my chair, until at last she came, her handbag slung over her shoulder in which she carried the most unlikely things such as a breakfast roll, half-eaten, radio scripts, silk stockings that needed mending.

The owner of the tea shop was a fat old lady who looked like a madam. She grinned from ear to ear when she came up to our table and asked the same question every afternoon, "And what will the young lady have today?" And every afternoon she received the same answer, "Hot chocolate with whipped cream and a piece of strawberry cake." There were afternoons when Wilma managed to down four pieces. It was her favorite cake. But every reorder was preceded by a few words from her guilty conscience, "Oh, Herr Frank, I really shouldn't have another piece!"

"Why not, Wilma? You enioy it so much."

"I know. But it's so expensive."

"I can still afford it," I'd say, and she would order another piece and I would have another vermouth.

"I know I shouldn't," she'd say again.

"Oh, come on now, Wilma."

"I mean it. And not just because of the money. But as an actress I've got to watch my figure."

''You have to watch your figure?"

"Yes, I do, Mr. Frank. Can you imagine it—^IVe gained a whole kilo in this last month."

"Never!"

"Yes, I have. And it's awful. And where is it going to end? My clothes are getting too tight for me."

"But that's ridiculous!"

"It's the truth. Just look at my skirt!"

She unbuttoned her jacket, got up and pirouetted in front of me. "There. And my sweater. Here."

She stood before me, within reach, and pointed to where her sweater was too tight, and I sat there and looked at her firm little breasts which stretched the

Stitches at two points so that I could see her white underwear. "Now you can see what I mean, can't you?" Dear God, I thought! Dear God in heaven!

11

On Saturdays she didn't have to go to the office. Lauter-bach gave her the day off. She told me on that first Friday when I was taking her home.

"I have the day off tomorrow, too," I said. I thought of Yolanda but couldn't seem to care. "Can't we spend the day together?"

"Well, I wanted to " she began.

"What did you want?"

"I have a radio show coming up," she said.

We were standing in the entrance of the house in which she lived. It was raining again, and she was wearing the same coat she had had on when I saw her for the first time and the same kerchief. It drove me so crazy to see that kerchief again, my heart ached with every breath. "So?"

"I was going to learn my part."

"Well, let's do that together."

*'Yes, but I don't know... :'

"What don't you know?"

"I always go out in the woods when I'm studying a part," she said. "At home I make too much noise. The walls are thin and it bothers the neighbors."

"The idiots!" I said angrily.

She nodded. "Would you beheve it, but once they called the poUce."

"No!"

"Yes. I was studying Hannele's Himmelfahrt, you know—the scene in which her grandmother dies. And I guess I was a little loud. 'Grandmother,' I screamed, *don't die! Grandmother, you must not die. Can you hear me, Grandmother?'"

My heart ached so I thought I was going to die, I decided to breathe less deeply. "And?" I asked.

"And twenty minutes later the poUce were there. They thought my grandmother was really dying."

"Hm," I said.

"And she's been dead ten years."

"I'm sorry about that," I said politely.

"Thank you," she said. "So we'll meet tomorrow morning at eight at the streetcar stop, right?"

"What streetcar stop?"