Somewhere in Germany Page 21

  From the beginning he had been true to his impulsively given word and he had, to his editors’ surprise, albeit after some time not without the nodding agreement of male tolerance, taken the only female in his office under his until-then untested wings. Emil Frowein had not assigned Regina to the kind of tasks that were usually regarded as good job experience for interns. After not being able to get his reason back, and after the balance of his emotions had been upset so unexpectedly by their first meeting, he did not find it too difficult to change his rules of authority and justice either. As he had promised in the unusual job interview, he actually allowed Regina to work only in the feuilleton office during the two years of her internship.

  He was very quickly convinced that his decision had been the right one, even though he knew that it soon became the subject of rumors. Regina, excessively encouraged in her one-sidedness by an editor who was obsessed with the theater and defended his resort like a furious giant against even the slightest assumption that there were occasions that required extensive reporting other than just opening nights, learned nothing but to write reviews. They were acknowledged as displaying expertise, wit, and a very palpable love for the theater.

  It was, however, a casual remark that resulted in consequences that none of the people involved had foreseen. When Regina was sent to her first opening night and was given two tickets by the secretary, she asked how she should return the one she was not going to use. Frowein was standing behind her and asked her to come to his office.

  “The theaters always send two tickets for the critic. But, of course, I cannot allow a young woman to be out on the streets at night by herself,” he said and spared neither Regina nor himself the tone of concerned paternity. “If it is all right with you, I will accompany you.”

  It was the completely natural beginning of an old story—newly experienced by people who were lonely, introverted, in search of a way out of their isolation, and unaware how much they were attracted to each other. Both suspected it and did not protect themselves. Regina’s longing for warmth was too big; her interest in the man, who had trusted her in an hour of truth, had already turned into too much fascination and affection to leave her with scruples, which she readily dismissed as small and unworthy of herself.

  Frowein, who had always been interested in the theater and had not been able to get to one in years because he considered it a crime not to take part in the headline meetings at the editorial office, had a harder time with morality and conscience.

  At first he tried to analyze his behavior, which struck him as most unusual, as the long-overdue revival of an old passion and after that as the duty of a responsible mentor.

  Very soon, however, he gave up trying to deceive himself and his editors. When it became a mockingly accepted habit that with Regina he even visited plays that had already been reviewed, Frowein himself, the reserved, hesitant skeptic who had made every effort to stay free from emotions, realized that he had not only the role of an intellectual advisor in mind. During the greater part of Regina’s internship, he had managed to maintain, at least in moments of an all-too-merciless confrontation with his conflicting feelings, the illusion that he was nothing but a well-meaning boss who, only because of the subject matter, did not exercise a possibly even outdated restraint.

  He was thus actually unpleasantly surprised when he discovered that he had not fallen in love with the theater again, but with the young woman, who sat next to him with wide-open eyes, whom he got champagne for during the intermission, whom he drove home after the performance, and who, in spite of all the years she had lived in Germany, was still a child from a world where enthusiasm and rejection, incredulity and astonishment were expressed in a way that life had made him give up long ago.

  Frowein liked the fact that this woman had never learned to distrust romanticism, sweetness, and predictability, and that she was not blinded by beautiful classic words. She cried into Frowein’s handkerchief when watching the Little Tea House, excitedly pinched his arm during the Caucasian Chalk Circle, recited verses in English during Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and asked during the intermission to The Robbers: “Did you know that Schiller wrote such extraordinary plays?”

  “You must have read The Robbers in school.”

  “No, during the time when German students read Schiller I sat under my guava tree and read Dickens to my fairy.”

  “What did your fairy and the tree look like?”

  “The fairy wore a dress of leaves from a white water lily, the tree smelled like honey, and the bees sang songs only the fairy and I were able to hear.”

  It was Regina’s glance—filled with a suddenly revived longing—more than her laughter that Frowein could not forget. Six weeks later during the Rain Maker he accidentally addressed her with the familiar “du” and apologized, stuttering like a high school boy. A month later during Georg Kaiser’s Colportage, he asked if he could call her by her first name—“only in the theater, obviously.”

  “But you have done that for quite a while.”

  “But not in the office.”

  “No, in your head.”

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “Oh, no. My head does not have as much trouble as yours with words that are not allowed to enter my throat.”

  “You said that beautifully, Regina.”

  “That was not me. I only translated from Swahili, the language of my old homeland.”

  “I didn’t know that you speak Swahili.”

  “I don’t anymore, bwana lala,” Regina said as she got into the car. “I only think in Swahili when it helps.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against almost everything except a sore throat,” she contemplated and thought about the long distance their first shared laughter had traveled and that it was not good if laughter reached its destination too early.

  “What you said a moment ago with the many beautiful vowels—what does it mean?”

  “I spoke about a sleeping man.”

  “When the man is awake and nobody hears it, may he call you ‘du’?”

  “Why would he want to say anything at all if nobody hears it?”

  When The Diary of Anne Frank was performed in Frankfurt and the audience was as moved as if it had only now heard about the tragedy, Frowein had tears in his eyes. Regina sat next to him, her body stiff and paralyzed with pain, and thought about the father who through the fame of one of his daughters had to once more accompany the other to her death.

  She told Frowein about the meeting. He only interrupted her once and then with an almost inaudible sigh. It was loud enough to reassure Regina that in this Germany, which so readily and quickly, yet reluctantly, spoke about “collective shame,” there was at least one man who approved of the meaning of these two words. This alone was important to her.

  When Frowein turned into the Rothschildallee, he upset the dream of harmony a last time and said, “We would like to contact Otto Frank.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “The editorial office. Do you have his address?”

  “My father does. Why?”

  “We should interview him. It would make us look good.”

  “Unfortunately, I am the wrong person for the job. I am not the type who has her friends grilled by people like the ones in our office. Besides, I am allergic to curiosity.”

  “Not curiosity, Regina. This is contemporary history. You have to understand that if you want to become a good journalist.”

  “If that is the price, I pass. I cannot turn death into a current affair. Have you forgotten that I am going to run home from a burning theater to reassure my parents of my safety and will not think about writing a report?”

  “How could I?” Frowein asked. “This is how it all began.” He knew that this was not the right moment to speak about himself. But he did so anyway. Looking at the windshield, he said, “I have fallen in love with you, Regina.”

  “I know.”

  “I have fought and lost.”
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  “I have not fought,” Regina realized, “but I am going to lose anyway. You are not a man who can live with the fact that he first lost his head and then his good conscience. Especially not as a boss. Only how are you going to explain it in the office that you have to fire me?”

  “Don’t ever say that again. Do you really think I would let you suffer because I am an old fool? Nobody in the office is ever going to find out what I have done. I promise you.”

  “You,” Regina said and felt more compassion for him than for herself, “should not count on that. And besides,” she said, and was unable to restrain her tongue in time, “you haven’t done anything to me yet.”

  During the months after this conversation, which perplexed her even more in retrospect than she had been aware of at the time, she often asked herself, with a curiosity that she thought disgraceful and that to her horror steadily increased, if she welcomed Frowein’s behavior or if it insulted her vanity. He never tried, not even when he went to the theater with her and took her home, to repeat the intimacy of that particular moment.

  In the editorial office he was the reserved, mocking boss who had started to treat a young female colleague, after she had stood the test, no different from the men who valued an open word and occasional coarse story. In her presence, he more often now allowed crude male jokes, which he had previously prevented by clearing his throat and simultaneously pointing to the only woman in the office. In the cafeteria he openly called Regina to his table. Most of the time, they talked about the theater.

  She admired his skill of perfect concealment and pretext of sovereignty, and she was grateful for the levity of his tone and the way he included her through his wit in the community of her colleagues. But when she was not in the office and allowed her emotions to resist, neither reason nor logic was able to release her from a fortress of provocation. Frowein’s behavior then seemed to her like an indifference that deprived her of spontaneity, confidence, and courage. The restriction to such impersonal behavior hurt her pride, which she in melancholy moments and even then vaguely defined as the wish to have the right to make her own decisions.

  It took a long time until Regina was ready for the truth. She was surprised when she became aware of the detours she had made before realizing that her reactions were those of a woman who wanted words to be followed by actions. She did not want the openness of the first meeting with Frowein, which still moved her very much; she didn’t want his confessions; and she didn’t even want his gratifying encouragement when he talked about her talent that she herself doubted.

  She only wanted him and not because she loved him. She wanted just once to free her heart and especially her pride from the burden of renunciation. When she realized what had really bothered her since that one night, which had left her with wounds that neither time nor insight could heal, she also understood very quickly that she was not going to wait long to lure Frowein from the comfortable position of a mentor into the reality of a man.

  He was faster. The Hersfeld festival started the first weekend in July, the day before the regular critic, who had previously covered the first two nights, broke his leg. After the last editorial meeting Frowein came to Regina’s tiny office, which he had avoided for weeks. He stood at the window for a moment, then sat down on her desk and put his arm around her shoulder. First he said, “How about you?” Then, in an extremely good mood, he added “No objections.” And finally, in an even better mood, he promised, “I am going to give you a ride. My wife is going to be gone for the weekend anyway.”

  “It is going to be fine,” Regina said.

  It is going to be fine,” he whispered when Mary Stuart, exactly twenty-four hours later, mounted the scaffold under the open sky of the cloister ruins on a warm night, accompanied by the twitter of birds disturbed by the brightness of the stage lights.

  “Why don’t they allow any applause at Hersfeld?” Regina asked when they were leaving.

  “This was a church at some point. We Germans have great reverence for a house of God. We have always shown that.”

  Regina enjoyed the derision in his voice and noticed that the connection she felt to Frowein was turning into a feeling that would make it easier for her to look into the mirror after all. “Thank you,” she said.

  They walked silently, holding hands, released from the days of dishonest glances and dishonest words, down the candlelit path through the park to the Kurhaus, past half-timbered houses to the small hotel where the secretary had booked two rooms. Frowein asked the surly porter for the keys.

  Even though the lobby was dark, Regina noticed that his face was burning. His hand was hot and moist when it touched hers. She smiled at him when he opened the door to her room and hoped that he, too, would not say anything. He remained standing for a moment and waited till she had turned on the light and taken off her jacket. Then he spoke after all. His voice reminded her of that of the young birds in the parched thorn acacias that had not yet learned to wait for the first beam of the sun.

  “Your room is bigger,” he said. “I will be back in five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” Regina repeated.

  “Is that too fast?”

  “No, too slow.”

  Regina pondered, while Frowein reluctantly undressed, if she was not too young to want only to be a hunter or already too old to be allowed to forget that the wrong prey can make a hunter weaker than a dim-witted child for a long time. When his breath became heavy and indicated to her that he, too, knew of the inevitability of desire, she determined that she was not going to mistake tenderness for love, nor excitement for fulfillment. She woke up during the night and was not sure if she had not done it anyway, but the face she saw was not that of the man who was sleeping next to her. The day was already dawning and a trace of deceptive pink shone through the open window when the pain of awareness started and gave her the certainty that she had ended up in her own trap. She had not really forgotten anything that she had wanted to forget.

  Frowein heard her sigh and said, “We cannot let this happen again.”

  Regina was just about to tell him not to worry and that she had experience with nights that leave nothing behind but the power of unwanted images at the wrong time. But without the effort of a long deliberation she succeeded in oiling her throat with the softness of a merciful lie, the way she had learned to as a child when someone was about to steal her face.

  “Never again,” she reassured him.

  When she came back to Frankfurt on Monday, everyone was already at dinner. Her mother had put down a plate with open-faced sandwiches for her and, like every night, said, “One with cream cheese, one with liverwurst, and one with tomatoes. The way you like it best.”

  Regina saw Ulysses appearing between the glasses and silver bowls behind the freshly polished windows of the cupboard and hesitating for a long while before he moved on. As a child her father had told her that the much-loved Ulysses, too, had found a plate with open-faced sandwiches on his return and only knew then that he would never have to travel again. She repressed the urge to wash the dirt of the day from her hands and the heavy burden of the night from her head, sat down, and said, “I am going to eat the tomato sandwich last. I like that best.”

  “You always did that as a child,” Jettel said.

  “Only then,” her Walter remarked, “you did not go on random trips with strange men.”

  “I went to Hersfeld; that is work for me,” Regina said, getting prepared for a fight, “and the strange man happens to be my boss.”

  “A fine boss,” Walter said.

  17

  JETTEL WAS WORRIED AND DISHEARTENED when Walter rang the doorbell earlier and longer than usual one afternoon in November. She thought that the pains, which he had been complaining about a few days ago but which had disappeared after a hot bath, might have returned again. Concerned, she looked over the railing down the staircase and tried to hear if her husband was gasping more than usual. She called, “What is the matter?” There was
no answer.

  There was a stool on every floor; Walter usually sat down on the second floor and rested till he was able to catch his breath again. But Jettel saw that he had already reached the third floor. She was amazed. Walter was not gasping at all, he was not pale, and his face also did not show the kind of unhealthy red that indicated exertion. He was carrying a bouquet of red roses and was whistling Jettel’s favorite aria from Carmen when he effortlessly got up from the little stool.

  Without taking even a few seconds to explain to herself why the red roses were more disturbing to her than the heart attack she had expected, she got angry. She spontaneously remembered that Walter had last brought her flowers in Breslau. It had been three days before their engagement and she had been naïve enough not to notice that he had bought the beautiful bouquet (roses, too, although yellow ones) for a hospital visit only to find that the patient had already left the hospital. He had told her about this unromantic point years later—on the farm and moreover during one of those unnecessary fights about her unwillingness to try to pickle cucumbers in brine in a country where gherkins were tiny and completely dry to begin with. Jettel had no illusions.

  Even though she still fought the bitter truth that had just hit her fully, she had to smile disdainfully when she thought about how much her naïve husband was mistaken this time. She was no longer the young, merely beautiful, inexperienced bride with the silly dreams of a protected daughter, but was now an experienced woman, quick to react, with an unfailing sense for those situations in a long marriage in which one had to keep a cool head and composure. Thanks to the many articles in magazines, which lately no longer shied away from discussing the most intimate problems between men and women, she knew exactly what she had to do.

  Jettel did not doubt for a moment that Walter had deceived her and now wanted to confess his faux pas, but she was perplexed and speechless nonetheless. Before getting married she had realized that Walter’s deeply religious beliefs and his strict morals were the best guarantee for his marital faithfulness. She had especially liked this in a man whose character her mother, too, had always termed “very decent.”