The Clown (27 page)

I flung open the door of the wardrobe so as to avoid the mirror: there was nothing left of Marie, nothing, not even a shoetree or a belt, the way women sometimes leave them on a hanger. Scarcely even a trace of her perfume, she ought to have been merciful and taken my clothes too, given them away or burned them, but my things were still hanging there: green corduroy trousers, which I had never worn, a black tweed jacket, some ties, and three pairs of shoes on the shoerack at the bottom; in the small drawers I would find everything, everything: cufflinks and the little white collar stays, socks and handkerchiefs. I might have known it: where property is concerned, Christians are relentless, fair. I didn’t even need to open the drawers: everything of mine would be there, everything of hers would be gone. How kind it would have been to take along my stuff too, but here in our wardrobe it had all been done fairly, with excruciating justice. No doubt Marie had felt sorry for me too, when she took away everything that would remind me of her, and no doubt she had wept, the tears that women in
divorce films weep when they say: “I’ll never forget the years I spent with you.”

The tidy clean wardrobe (someone had even gone over it with a duster), was the worst thing she could have left behind for me to find, tidy, divided, her things divorced from mine. The inside of the wardrobe looked like after a successful operation. Nothing left of her, not even a button off her blouse. I left the door open, to avoid the mirror, hobbled back into the kitchen, put the bottle of cognac in my coat pocket, went into the living room and lay down on the sofa and pulled up my trouser leg. My knee was badly swollen, but the pain got less as soon as I lay down. There were four cigarettes left in the box, I lit one of them.

I thought about which would have been worse: if Marie had left her clothes here, or this way: everything tidy and clean and not even a message anywhere: “I’ll never forget the years I spent with you.” Maybe it was better this way, and yet she might at least have left a button or a belt on a hanger, or have taken the whole wardrobe with her and burned it.

When we got the news of Henrietta’s death, the table was just being set at home, Anna had left Henrietta’s napkin, which she didn’t think was quite ready for the laundry, in the yellow napkin ring on the sideboard, and we all looked at the napkin, there was a bit of marmalade on it and a small brown spot of soup or gravy. For the first time I sensed how terrible are the objects left behind when someone goes away or dies. Mother actually made an effort to eat, no doubt it was supposed to mean: Life goes on, or something of that sort, but I knew very well: that wasn’t so, it isn’t life that goes on but death. I struck the soup spoon out of her hand, ran into the garden, back again into the house where the screaming and shouting was in full swing. The hot soup had scalded my mother’s face. I tore up Henrietta’s room, flung open the window and threw everything I could lay hands on into the garden: boxes and dresses, dolls, hats, shoes, caps, and when I flung open the
drawers I found her underwear and among it some queer little things which must have been precious to her: dried ears of wheat, stones, flowers, scraps of paper and whole bundles of letters tied up in pink ribbon. Tennis shoes, racquets, trophies, as fast as I picked them up I threw them out into the garden. Leo told me later I had looked like “a madman,” and that it had all happened so fast, so terribly fast, that no one had been able to stop me. Whole drawersful I just tipped out over the windowsill, ran into the garage and carried the heavy spare can of gasoline into the garden, tipped it over the things and set fire to it: everything that lay scattered around I kicked into the tall flames, gathered together all the scraps and pieces, dried flowers, ears of wheat and the bundles of letters and threw them into the fire. I ran to the dining room, took the napkin with the ring from the sideboard, threw them into the fire! Leo said later that it was all over in less than five minutes, and before anyone realized what was happening the flames were burning skyhigh and I had thrown the whole lot in. An American officer even appeared on the scene, he thought I was burning secret documents, records of the German Werewolves, but by the time he arrived everything was scorched, black and hideous and stinking, and when he tried to grab one of the bundles of letters I struck his hand and tipped the remains of the gasoline in the can into the flames. Then even the fire trucks turned up with ridiculously big hoses, and in the background someone shouted in a ridiculously high voice the most ridiculous command I have ever heard “Water—forward march!” and they were not ashamed to play their hoses on this pathetic funeral pyre, and because a window frame had caught fire a bit one of them turned his hose on it, everything inside was awash, and afterward the parquet floor warped, and Mother moaned about her ruined floor and phoned all the insurance companies to find out if it was water damage or fire damage or whether it came under the heading of general insurance.

I took a drink from the bottle, put it back in my coat
pocket and gently felt my knee. When I lay down, it hurt less. If I was sensible and put my mind to it, the swelling and pain would go down. I could get myself an empty orange crate, sit in front of the station, play the guitar and sing the Litany of Loreto. I would lay my hat or my cap—as if by chance—on the step beside me, and as soon as it occurred to anyone to throw something into it, others would be encouraged to follow suit. I needed money, if only because I was almost out of cigarettes. The best thing would be to put a few nickels and pennies into the hat. Surely Leo would bring me at least that much. I pictured myself sitting there: my white face in front of the dark station façade, a blue jersey, my black tweed jacket and the green corduroy trousers, and I “lifted up my voice” against the street noises:
Rosa mystica—ora pro nobis—turris davidica—ora pro nobis—virgo, fidelis—ora pro nobis
—I would be sitting there when the trains from Rome came in and my
conjux infidelis
arrived with her Catholic husband. The wedding ceremony must have required a great deal of agonizing thought: Marie was not a widow, she was not divorced, she was no longer—this I happened to know for a fact—a virgin. Sommerwild must have been tearing his hair out, a wedding without a veil was enough to ruin the whole esthetic concept. Or did they have special liturgical regulations for fallen girls and former clowns’ concubines? What had the bishop who performed the ceremony thought? They wouldn’t settle for anything less than a bishop. Marie once took me along to a bishop’s vestry, and all that back and forth with take off miter and put on miter, put on white band and take off white band, put the crosier there, put the crosier here, put on the red band, take off the white, had made a great impression on me, my sensitive artistic nature has a feeling for the esthetics of repetition.

I also thought about my pantomime with the keys. I could get some Plasticine, press a key into it, pour some water in the hollow form and bake a few keys in the refrigerator; it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a small portable one in which
every evening before my show I would bake the keys which were to melt away during the performance. Perhaps the idea was worth something, for the moment I discarded it, it was too complicated, made me dependent on too many props and technical contingencies, and if some stagehand happened to have been swindled during the war by a Rhine-lander he would open the icebox and spoil my show. The other was better: to sit on the Bonn station steps, with my true face, painted white, sing the Litany of Loreto and srike a few chords on the guitar. My hat beside me, the one I used to wear for my Chaplin imitations, all I needed was the come-on coins: a nickel would do, a nickel and a dime would be better, but best of all three coins: a nickel, a dime, and a penny. People must be able to see that I was not a religious maniac who would spurn a modest donation, and they must see that every mite, even a copper one, was welcome. Later on I would add a silver coin, it must be apparent that larger donations were not only not despised but also given. I would even put a cigarette into the hat, most people found it easier to reach for their cigarettes than for their wallets. At some point, of course, someone would turn up to put forward principles of order: streetsinger’s license, or someone from the Anti-Blasphemy Executive Committee would take exception to the religious content of my offering. In case I should be asked for identification I would have a coal briquette beside me, everyone knew the inscription “Warm up with Schnier,” I would underline the black Schnier with red chalk, maybe draw an H. in front of it. That would be an impractical, but unmistakable, visiting card: How do you do, my name is Schnier. And there was one thing my father really could do for me, it wouldn’t even cost him anything. He could get me a streetsinger’s license. All he needed to do was call up the mayor, or speak to him about it when he played skat with him at the Union Club. He must do that for me. Then I could sit on the station steps and wait for the train from Rome. If Marie could bring herself to walk past me without putting her
arms around me, there was always suicide. Later I hesitated to think of suicide, for a reason which may appear presumptuous: I wanted to save myself for Marie. She might leave Züpfner, then we would be in the ideal Besewitz situation, she could remain my concubine since in the eyes of the church she could never be divorced from Züpfner. All I needed then was to be discovered by television, acquire new fame, and the church would close its eyes. After all I didn’t feel the need of being married to Marie in church, and they wouldn’t even have to let off their worn-out Henry the Eighth cannon at me.

I was feeling better. My knee was less swollen, the pain was less, headache and depression remained, but I am as used to them as to the idea of death. An artist always carries death with him, like a good priest his breviary. I even know exactly what will happen after my death: I shall not be spared the Schnier vault. My mother will cry and maintain she was the only person who ever understood me. After my death she will tell everyone “what our Hans was really like.” To this very day and probably to all eternity she is firmly convinced that I am “sensual” and “grasping.” She will say: “Yes, our Hans, he was gifted, but sad to say very sensual and grasping—unfortunately completely undisciplined—but so gifted, so gifted.” Sommerwild will say: “Our good friend Schnier, a remarkable man, unfortunately he was hopelessly anticlerical and had absolutely no feeling for metaphysics.” Blothert will be sorry he didn’t get his capital punishment through in time to have me publicly executed. For Fredebeul I shall be “a unique type, of no sociological consequence whatever.” Kinkel will weep, sincerely and without restraint, he will be completely bowled over, but too late. Monika Silvs will sob as if she were my widow and be sorry she didn’t come to me at once and make me that omelette. Marie will simply not believe I am dead—she will leave Züpfner, go from hotel to hotel and ask for me, in vain.

My father will make the most of the tragedy, full of regret
that he did not secretly leave at least a few notes on the hall table as he left. Karl and Sabina will weep, uncontrollably, in a manner which all those at the funeral will find offensive. Sabina will grope furtively in Karl’s coat pocket because she has forgotten her handkerchief again. Edgar will feel obliged to hold back his tears, and after the funeral perhaps he will pace out the hundred-meter stretch in our garden again, go back alone to the cemetery and lay a big bunch of roses at the memorial tablet for Henrietta. Apart from me no one knows that he was in love with her, no one knows that the bundles of letters I burned showed only E.W. as sender. And there is one other secret I shall take with me to the grave: that I once watched Mother go secretly into her storeroom in the basement, cut herself a thick slice of ham and eat it down there, standing, with her fingers, hurriedly, it didn’t even look disgusting, only surprising, and I was touched rather than horrified. I had gone into the basement to look for old tennis balls in the luggage room, which was forbidden, and when I heard footsteps I switched off the light, I saw her take a jar of homemade applesauce off the shelf, put the jar down again, saw merely the cutting movement of her elbows, and then she stuffed the rolled-up slice of ham into her mouth. I never told anyone and I never will. My secret will rest under a marble slab in the Schnier vault. Strangely enough I like the kind to which I belong: people.

When one of my kind dies, I am sad. I would weep even at the grave of my mother. At the grave of old man Derkum I lost all self-control; I kept shoveling more and more earth onto the bare wood of the coffin and heard someone behind me whisper that it was indecent—but I kept right on shoveling, till Marie took the shovel away from me. I never wanted to see the shop again, the house, wanted nothing to remember him by. Nothing. Marie was sensible, she sold the shop and put the money aside “for our children.”

By this time I could go into the hall without hobbling and fetch my guitar. I undid the cover, shoved two armchairs
together in the living room, pulled the phone toward me, lay down again and tuned the guitar. It did me good to hear the few sounds. As I began to sing I felt almost myself again:
mater amabilis—mater admirabilis
—I intoned the
ora pro nobis
on the guitar. I liked the idea. With the guitar in my hand, with the open hat lying beside me, with my true face, I would wait for the train from Rome.
Mater boni consilii
. After all, Marie had told me, when I came back with the money from Edgar Wieneken, we would never, never be parted again: “Till death do us part.” I was not dead yet. Mrs. Wieneken used to say: “If you can sing you’re still alive,” and “As long as you have an appetite, there’s still hope for you.” I sang and I was hungry. The last thing I could imagine was Marie settling down in one place: together we had gone from town to town, from hotel to hotel, and when we stayed anywhere for a few days she would always say: “The open suitcases are staring at me like mouths wanting to be fed,” and we would feed the mouths of the suitcases, and whenever I had to spend a few weeks in one place she would run through the towns as if they had just been excavated. Movies, churches, popular newspapers, parchesi. Did she really want to be present at the great ceremonial high office when Züpfner was made a Knight of Malta, surrounded by chancellors and presidents, and at home with her own hands iron out the drops of wax in his robes? A matter of taste, Marie, but not your taste. It is better to put your trust in an unbelieving clown, who wakes you early enough for you to get to Mass on time, who will even pay for a taxi for you to go to church. You’ll never need to wash out my blue jersey.