The Safety Net (21 page)

But: where did this “breeding” come from? From the families of an underpaid schoolteacher and an even less prosperous gardener, the magazines knew all about that, also knew about the two sons, the “bad egg” and the “slightly nutty” one, and to her mind the “bad egg” seemed by far the more attractive. And the public was kept fully informed about daughters-in-law and grandchildren. About the manor in Tolmshoven, the bungalow in Blorr, everything. It wasn’t inconceivable that a person might then find his own little terrace house with its twelve hundred square feet of garden and thousand square feet (including corridor) of living area too cramped, his own wife no longer quite so careful about her appearance; not inconceivable that he should have been a bit smitten with her, it was only natural with a woman who had such an aura, yet it was impossible, unthinkable, that he should have “something going” with her. For weeks now, maybe even months—she didn’t know for sure—he had been around her, every day, and one kept seeing those rumors in the gossip columns that things weren’t going too well between her and Fischer. Too many trips, too many affairs on the trips—there were scads of pictures of him in the company of vulgar-looking women, dancing, or beside a swimming pool somewhere in the tropics. And it was constantly being said that she had already moved, or was about to move, back to her parents’, although she was expecting another child, and quite soon at that.

Well, that Mr. Fischer wasn’t a pleasant character, although he always did his best to look like one, smiling all the time—Karl said of that kind of smile: “People like that have a knife in their face, while a shark has only teeth in its face.” Fischer would never be a temptation for her, whereas for Hubert, his wife—that must be it, and she could understand it: he was smitten with her, smitten perhaps too with the luxury, the scents, the materials, the spacious rooms, and if—the rumor was described as unconfirmed—she was now moving to her parents’, to the manor house, where Hubert had been on duty for the past several
weeks, he would be close to her again. Mrs. Fischer-Tolm with a policeman—the mind boggled. Odd—she felt no jealousy, only fear because, if it were true, it must be so hard on him. He took things too seriously to get over an infatuation of that kind, it would be a reason to be afraid, increasingly afraid, for him. Perhaps this was the reason for his inability—for which there was another of those revolting scientific terms—to give her and himself fulfillment; and if she was aware of how this lack of fulfillment made her uneasy, what must it be like for him, if now he was to see her every day? That sobbing against her shoulder …

Jealousy would not come, fear remained, pity too, and a wish that greatly surprised her: that the woman, Mrs. Fischer, would yield to him—though of course he would first have to declare himself to her, which was unthinkable—and gave him fulfillment. This idea seemed to her doubly outlandish because it was she—his wife—who was desiring fulfillment for him by another woman, and that other woman happened to be a princess. And a third notion came into her head, and she blushed again: if—then where, how? He was always on duty, even now at the manor house. Was she a pervert or something? Had she become part of the porn wave without being aware of it?

Eventually she did go and see Monka, she could think of no one else to talk to. Whatever happened, even if Monka laughed at her, she would keep her mouth shut, she wouldn’t even tell Karl. After all, until Karl had appeared on the scene she had been in Monka’s confidence, Monka had told her everything, intimate things too, some of which had made her blush, which in their dark bedroom Monka fortunately hadn’t been able to see. She hadn’t told anyone else either, not even Hubert, though it had often weighed on her, the things Monka had told her, about lesbians where she worked, homos at school, stories about boys, stories about men—Monka had, as she herself described it, “flung herself” into the first porn wave, had “at
times sunk pretty low,” till Karl rescued her—firmly, and with arguments that Monka called “leftist, while the conservative arguments of other would-be rescuers had never made any sense to me.” Monka had been—in her own words—“pretty close to stripping,” but that was some while ago, four or five years, when Karl had grabbed her by the scruff of the neck. She had developed into a sensible young woman, a bit flighty and flippant: “Let’s hope our Silesian nightingale, our dear old ma, never finds out about my past.” She was now twenty-seven, designing and making chic blouses, panties, nightgowns, skirts, smoking a bit too much, probably drinking more than was good for her, and at times she looked old for her years, more like thirty-three or -five. She loved her Karl; he looked a bit puny but he wasn’t, he had turned out to be a good athlete, a longdistance runner, that little runt with his spectacles and pigeon chest who sometimes looked—as Hubert would say—“as if he had swallowed some ink.”

At first it had been difficult, almost impossible, with those two. Hubert simply didn’t care for “leftist talk”—“for God’s sake, can’t you see what it leads to?”—refused to listen to the complex arguments Karl used in trying to explain to him “what the alternative leads to.” Eventually they did play badminton together, went off on bike rides, taking turns with Bernhard on the pillion, almost ceased to argue, though the air tended to be a bit thick when Hubert called Karl a “leftist dreamer” and Karl called Hubert a “centrist dreamer.” Finally, while discussing a particular person, they found common ground in arguments which she had dreaded: that young Tolm, whom the newspapers called the “car arsonist”—it seemed that Karl had known him before, admitted that he had himself been “very close to setting fire to cars, but had been much younger than Tolm and still too scared.” He explained to Hubert that Tolm had deliberately renounced his privileges, had been in jail, and certainly there was one thing he had never been: an opportunist. And in all these conversations that word “fuzz” was never mentioned, and once Hubert told her he was sure Karl didn’t
even think that word; on the contrary, he was on the side of order too, even of the police, and one had to remember that he had rescued Monka “from the gutter”; Karl agreed that it was right for people to be protected, but banks: never. “D’you really want to get yourself killed maybe, for the sake of those clams, just for the sake of those clams, risk your life for those lousy clams lying around there?”

In some ways they even resembled each other. Not outwardly. Hubert was tall and blond, serious and proud, Karl was puny, swarthy, with thinning black hair. And when she got right down to it she would never—apart from all personal feelings and the fact that he was her husband, in other words looking at the whole thing from the outside, objectively—she would never exchange Hubert for that man Fischer, never; he was quite obviously a cold, ruthless windbag, and she could well understand that things were going wrong in that marriage—and if she assumed that Hubert was really smitten with Mrs. Fischer, then she even knew—painful as it was—why things were going wrong in her own marriage. Karl was a very, very nice fellow one could dance with without getting the creeps, as one did with Mittelkamp and old Hölster. Monka never got them, the creeps, not even with Mittelkamp and old Hölster, she would never stand for anything that might bring on the creeps, always supposing she was capable of getting the creeps; if it came to the worst—and she had witnessed that twice, once at the Hölsters’ and later at a studio party in Monka’s apartment—she would slap the fellow’s face, “to sober him up.” Monka was probably used to a lot and had had all kinds of experience, and Karl would laugh and shout: “Let ’em have it, girl, let those fumble-daddies have it!”

Monka wouldn’t blab even to Karl, who probably wasn’t even curious about such things. Bernhard was always happy when they went to Monka’s: he’d be given cake and cocoa, and lemonade, there were dressmaker dummies, and scissors, dress materials, needles, and thread lying around, things weren’t “so terribly neat”; in the next room were Karl’s models, and he
always got a present too: money, or a movie ticket, an invitation to the zoo, there was just one thing he had refused: to let Monka make his Communion suit. She had promised him something extra special. “Mini tails, if you like, or a mini cowboy suit—believe me, the Christ Child would get more of a kick from that than from those stiff blue suits!” But Bernhard insisted on a blue suit, wanted to look like the others, and Monka, who couldn’t help feeling a bit hurt, refused to make one.

Monka’s obvious delight when they arrived was in itself a comfort, a very great comfort, and it needed only a wink for Karl to grasp that he was to take care of Bernhard; make cocoa, get some ice cream from the kiosk, and some comics, and in his workroom there was plenty for Bernhard to look at, perhaps even to do: drawings and models of buildings, of city blocks, plans, wood, glue, plaster of paris, pots of paints, spatulas, and an enormous table on which Karl built models for architects’ offices; there might even be something in all that for school: helping to figure out proportions, the right scale. So she was rid of Bernhard for a while, and she could tell Monka over their coffee—hesitating, faltering, not finding the words, shy of mentioning “fulfillment,” talking around it and saying: “You know what I mean,” and Monka nodded, smoked, even went on with her work when she had finished her cake. Whenever she couldn’t put something into words, Monka would say: “I can imagine,” never once laughed, apparently didn’t even have to suppress a laugh, ventured only one question: “How long has this been going on?” and seemed relieved to hear it was only five months. Nodded, shook her head, didn’t laugh, and finally: “My God, Sis, you must be living in a dream world, a kind of sexual Silesia—not that I mean the Silesians don’t also have every sexual problem in the book—but you know what I mean: a sexual dream that reminds me of Mother’s dream-Silesia.” Looked very serious, shook her head, and said: “Why don’t you talk to Hubert about it?”

“How can I? I can’t say …”

“Can’t say what? Couldn’t you ask him, for instance, whether after nine years of marriage you’re no longer attractive to him? Forget about those magazine tricks—that’s not your style, or his, that’s not for you two, it hurts me just to think of it.… Oh, Helga, forget about all that—it wouldn’t even be my style now, it might have been, once—forget it. You’re such a dear, serious couple—no, that really hurts me.”

“Hurts you?”

“Yes, very much—what do you imagine? Do you believe I’m as hard-boiled as I always pretend—have to pretend? For God’s sake, what kind of a Silesian fantasy are you two living in? What do you imagine goes on sometimes in a boutique like this, with lesbians and thespians, with pushy traveling salesmen who pounce on you without so much as a by-your-leave because they think of themselves or of you as hot stuff? You simply have to be tough and, if necessary, hit out, and if things get really tough and I can’t handle them alone, they’re amazed when Karl—you know how they always call him Charlie Boy—suddenly makes a brief appearance and knows just where to hit. They’re all nutty—the porn wave rolls on, and they roll with it—maybe it’s also rolled over your poor Hubert, or at least he’s been swept along by it—let’s say: got a bit wet, and it’s no use your pretending that you’re on this wave—with your pathetic little tricks—forget it, please. I’m afraid Hubert’s been hooked, but how and who—do you really think it’s Mrs. Fischer? I can’t believe it.…”

“Who else? He never meets any other women, and he was there all summer.…”

“And she happens to have just left her mate. I don’t believe it, I can’t imagine it, although I can imagine a man—that I can understand—but she’s such a quiet, shy person, not all that keen, I’d say, on the circles she happens to move in.…”

“You know her?”

“I’ve read all about her, I’ve met her too, her mother sometimes buys things here, orders things, for her grandchildren or for herself, her daughter, her daughter-in-law, and I once made some beach outfits for Mrs. Fischer—I must say, she’s a goddess
when you see her with not much on—but it can’t be her, she’s a very serious young woman, kindhearted but serious, the no-nonsense kind, wouldn’t go for any funny business—I’m sure of that—although …”

“What?”

“Well, I’m thinking of her husband. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than these men who are publicly committed to beauty and virility—these extroverts, when they laugh it’s worse than when others crack nuts between their teeth—that grinding laugh, I remember that from my days at the Hummingbird. They’re the kind that throw themselves on your breast and start sobbing. Of course there are some real charmers among them, young Zummerling for instance, really nice, and when he laughed you weren’t scared, you had to laugh with him—a gay blade with only one ambition, to have fun, which he does—there’s that kind too, but those public smilers, the ones, as Karl says, with a knife in their face—their wives sometimes go nuts, I’ve seen it myself, I don’t want to talk out of turn, after all it was a kind of professional secret, like with the police, an official secret—no, but believe me, their wives sometimes go nuts.…”

“D’you know him too, Mr. Fischer I mean?”

“No, only from magazines and TV—and if you only knew the kind of wages he pays, not only in the Orient but also in the Socialist paradise: believe me, they know how to sting in the Beehive—he travels all over the map, stands there beaming beside big-breasted women in every latitude and longitude—and meanwhile your Hubert has to keep an eye on wife and daughter, in summer, by the pool—God, it quite scares me to imagine myself a man and seeing her there wearing less than she did in the shop! Maybe it wasn’t Hubert at all, maybe it was her, considering that her guy spends half his time flying all over the map looking for low-wage countries, and then, with those Thai and Hai and Phai girls—oh, Helga, I’m afraid it’s a bad scene, certainly a serious one—there’s nothing a police psychologist can do … there’s only one thing left: wait and pray.”

“What? Monka dear, you must be joking!”

“I assure you I’m not joking. I mean pray—you wouldn’t believe how often that’s helped me.”

“You? D’you mean because of Karl?”