The Torch in my Ear, page 5
It was impossible for her to have a frivolous or shallow relationship with others. So, at the sanatorium, her best quality, her seriousness, removed her from mankind at large, who, next to her sons, had been everything to her. She had come to prefer a narrower group, whom she could not regard as privileged, for they were ill. Perhaps she had relapsed into what she had been at home: the spoiled favorite daughter of rich people. The great period in her life, when she had felt both unhappy and guilty, when she had atoned for her guilt—which seemed vague and almost ungraspable—by means of a superhuman effort for the intellectual development of her sons, an effort that reached its high point in the war when her energy concentrated on a wild hatred of war—that great period may have been over long before I realized it. And the letters passing back and forth between Arosa and Zurich may have been a game of hide-and-seek, in which we seemed to be clinging to a past that no longer existed.
Now in the Pension Charlotte, I wasn’t really able to formulate all this with cool clarity, even though, after Herr Hungerbach’s visit, I began to understand certain things and interpret them correctly. It all took place as a struggle, a dogged attack, in which I tried to bring her back to the “real” things of the world, the things I considered real. The conversations at the boardinghouse table were often a welcome occasion for such attacks. I learned to conceal my true goal and begin quite hypocritically: with questions about something I hadn’t understood downstairs, with discussions about the conduct of boarders who weren’t her cup of tea. We were in total harmony about the Bembergs, the young parvenu couple at the boardinghouse table. Mother’s scorn for the nouveaux riches remained unshaken throughout her life. Had I realized that this scorn derived from her Sephardic notion of “good families,” I would have felt less comfortable in these moments of excellent rapport.
However, my best approach was to try and ask Mother about something. An anything but childlike cunning prompted me to inquire about things that—as experience taught me—she was up on. This provided me with a better entrée, and I could gradually get to what I was after. But often, I was impatient and badgered her thoughtlessly about something I was really interested in. This led, for instance, to the Van Gogh fiasco, when she failed utterly and tried to conceal her ignorance with the most hidebound attacks on “that crazy painter.” At such times, I lost my head and charged into her, provoking collisions embarrassing to us both. To her, because she was patently wrong; to me, because I mercilessly accused her of talking about something she knew nothing about—a conduct that she had always vehemently criticized in our discussions of writers. After these collisions, I felt such despair that I left the house and went biking—one great comfort in those Frankfurt years. My other comfort, far more necessary whenever she kept silence, when there was no collision, when nothing happened, was: the stars.
Something that she stubbornly denied, namely the responsibility for things happening around her, something that she warded off with a kind of deliberate, selective, and always available blindness, became so urgent at this point, so plain, that I had to discuss it with her; it grew into a permanent reproach. She feared my coming home from school, for it was quite certain that I would burst out with something new that I had seen or else heard from others. During my first sentence, I could already feel her closing off, and so my words came out all the more violently, assuming the reproachful tone that she could hardly endure. At first, I never rebuked her for causing things that were so unjust or inhuman as to infuriate me. But since she didn’t want to listen, developing her own way of only half taking my words in, my report degenerated into a reproach after all. By giving my words a personal form, I compelled her to listen and to make some sort of reply. She tried to say, “I know. I know,” or “I can imagine.” But I wouldn’t let her get away with that, I intensified what I had seen or heard, I reprimanded her for it. It was as if some power had assigned me to transmit a complaint to her. “Listen!” I then said, first impatiently and soon angrily. “Listen! You’ve got to explain this to me! How can it possibly happen with nobody noticing?”
A woman had passed out on the street and collapsed. The people helping her up said, “She’s starving.” She looked dreadfully pale and haggard, but other people walked by, paying no attention. “Did you remain?” my mother asked mordantly; she had to say something. And it was true: I had come home and sat down with her and my brothers at the round table at which we would have our afternoon tea. The full teacup stood in front of me, bread and butter lay at my place. I hadn’t taken a bite yet, but I had sat down at the table as usual, and I had begun my account only when I was seated.
The incident I had witnessed that day was no everyday event; this was the first time in my life that I had seen a person faint on the street and collapse because of hunger and weakness. It had shocked me so deeply that I entered the room wordlessly and sat down at the table wordlessly. The sight of the bread and butter, and then especially the jar of honey in the middle of the table, had loosened my tongue, and I began to say something. She speedily recognized the ridiculous aspect of the situation; but, as was her wont, she reacted too vehemently. Had she waited a bit—until I’d picked up the bread and butter and bitten in or even spread it with honey—her scorn, nourished by the ludicrousness of my situation, would have shattered me. But she didn’t take the situation seriously; perhaps she thought that since I was sitting, we would go through the usual process of afternoon tea. She had too much faith in established ritual, employing it like a weapon to strike me down as fast as possible; for she was annoyed that teatime should be disturbed by the picture of hunger and fainting—that was all, just annoyed. And so, in her lack of sympathy, she underestimated the earnestness of my frame of mind. I banged the table so hard that the tea splashed out of the cups onto the tablecloth, and I said: “I refuse to stay here!” And out I dashed.
I leaped down the stairs, jumped on my bicycle, and desperately pedaled in and out, through the streets of our neighborhood, as rapidly and senselessly as possible, without knowing what I wanted (for what could I have wanted?), but filled with abysmal hatred for our afternoon tea, haunted by the honey jar, which I bitterly cursed. “If only I’d hurled it out the window! Into the street! Not into the yard!” It would have had a meaning only if it had smashed on the street, in front of everyone; then everyone would have known that there were people here who had honey while others were starving. But I had done nothing of the sort. I had left the honey jar upstairs on the table, I hadn’t even knocked over the teacup; a bit of tea had splashed on the tablecloth, that was all. The event had upset me deeply, but I hadn’t really accomplished anything, there was so little violence in me—a peaceful lamb, no one hears its woeful bleating. And all that had happened was that Mother was annoyed because our afternoon tea was disturbed.
Nothing else had really happened. I finally went back. She punished me by sympathetically asking whether the event had really been all that bad; after all, a person recovers from fainting. It wasn’t the end. I had probably been so scared because I had happened to see the woman just when she was collapsing. It’s altogether different when you see people die. I was afraid she would start in again about the forest sanatorium and the people who had died there. She always used to say that those people had died right before her eyes. But this time, she didn’t say it. All she said was that I ought to get used to such things; after all, I often said that I’d like to be a doctor. What kind of a doctor would collapse at the death of a patient? Maybe it was good, she added, that I had seen this woman fainting, so that I could start getting used to these things.
And so, a woman’s collapse, which had infuriated me, became a general professional matter: a problem for physicians. She had responded to my brusque actions not with a reprimand, but with a reminder of my later life, when I would be bound to fail if I didn’t become tougher and more self-controlled.
Since that event, I was marked: I wasn’t fit to be a doctor. My soft heart would prevent me from ever getting used to such a profession. I was highly impressed—although I never admitted it—by this twist that she gave to my future plans. I thought about the matter and grew indecisive. I was no longer certain whether I could become a doctor.
Gilgamesh and Aristophanes
The Frankfurt period was not limited to my experiences with the sort of people I found in the Pension Charlotte. But since these experiences went on daily, as a steady process, they were not to be underestimated. You sat at the table, always at the same place, watching people who had become dramatis personae for you. Most of them remained the same; nothing unexpected ever came from their lips. But some maintained their fuller nature and could surprise you with leaps. It was a spectacle, one way or the other; and I never once entered the dining room without feeling curious and excited.
With one single exception, I couldn’t really warm up to the teachers at school. The choleric Latin teacher blew up at the least provocation and then yelled at us, calling us “stinking asses.” This wasn’t his only insult. His pedagogical methods, based on “model sentences” that we had to rattle off, were laughable. It was astonishing that my dislike of him didn’t make me forget the Latin I had learned in Zurich. Never in any school have I witnessed anything so embarrassing and vociferous as his outbursts. He had been deeply affected by the war. He must have been critically wounded; you said this to yourself in order to endure him. A number of teachers were stamped by the war, albeit not so dramatically. One of them was a hearty, stormy man, brimming over with feelings for the students. Then there was an excellent mathematics teacher with an air of distress, but his distress affected only him, never his students. He exhausted himself totally in teaching; there was something almost frighteningly conscientious about it.
One could feel tempted to depict the diverse effects of war on people by considering these teachers; but this would require some knowledge of their experiences, which they never talked to us about. All I had before me was their faces and bodies, and all I knew about them was the way they acted in class; everything else was mere hearsay.
However, I would like to speak about a fine, quiet man, to whom I am indebted. Gerber was our German teacher. In contrast to the others, he seemed almost timid. Because of the essays he assigned, a kind of friendship developed between us. At first, these essays bored me, whether the topic was Schiller’s Mary Stuart or whatever. But they cost me no effort, and he was satisfied with what I did. Then the topics became more interesting, and I came out with my real opinions, which, as reactions against school, were already quite rebellious and certainly didn’t fit in with his views. But he let me speak my mind. He wrote long remarks in red ink at the bottom, giving me food for thought; yet he was tolerant in these comments, never sparing his recognition for the way in which I said what I did. Whatever his objections, they never struck me as hostile; and even though I didn’t accept them, I was happy that he expressed them. He was no inspiring teacher, but he was very understanding. He had small hands and feet and made small motions; although he didn’t seem particularly slow, everything he did was slightly reduced. Nor did his voice have the pushy, virile tones that other teachers had when throwing their weight around.
As administrator of the faculty library, Gerber opened it up to me, letting me read anything I wanted. I was wild about ancient Greek literature, and I read one volume after another in German translation: the historians, the dramatists, the poets, the orators. I omitted only the philosophers—Plato and Aristotle. But I really read everything else, not only the great authors, but also those who were interesting solely because of their material, for instance Diodorus or Strabo. Gerber was surprised that I never stopped; I kept borrowing these books for two years. When I reached Strabo, Gerber inquired, with a slight shake of his head, whether I wouldn’t like something medieval for a change, but he didn’t have much luck.
Once, when we happened to be in the faculty library, Gerber asked me cautiously, almost tenderly, what I wanted to be. I sensed the answer he expected, but I replied, a bit unsure of myself, that I wanted to be a doctor. He was disappointed; after reflecting a bit, he hit on a compromise: “Then you’ll be a second Carl Ludwig Schleich.” Gerber liked Schleich’s memoirs, but he would have preferred to hear me say, plain and simple, that I wanted to be a writer. After that, he often brought up writer-physicians, discreetly and in some sort of context.
In his classes, we read plays aloud, each student doing a part; and I can’t say that these readings were pleasurable. But he was trying to have students without literary interests get excited about literature by taking over such roles. He seldom chose plays that were penetratingly dull. We read Schiller’s The Brigands, Goethe’s Egmont, and King Lear, and we got the chance to see performances of some of these plays at the Schauspielhaus.
The boarders at the Pension Charlotte talked a lot about theatrical productions. They discussed them in detail, and the connoisseurs always started with the reviews in the Frankfurter Zeitung, debating them even when they disagreed with the critics, but paying homage to the highbrow main opinion (printed). Hence, these conversations were on a high level and perhaps more serious than those on other topics. One sensed concern about the theater; they were also proud of it. If anything went wrong, they felt personally affected and weren’t content with just snide attacks. The theater was a recognized institution, and even people who otherwise were in enemy camps would have hesitated to cause any trouble. Herr Schutt hardly ever went to the theater because of his serious wounds; but you noticed, even in his few words, that he had Fräulein Kündig inform him about every performance. Anything he said sounded as sure as if he had been there himself. Whoever really had nothing to say held his tongue; the most embarrassing thing in the world was to compromise oneself in this area.
Since all other conversations appeared so uncertain—everything seesawing and opinions crossing not only because of the superficial chitchat—one had the impression, especially being so young, that at least one thing was regarded as inviolable: the theater.
I went to the Schauspielhaus fairly often, and I was so carried away by one production that I did all I could to go back several times. It starred an actress who was on my mind for a long time, and I can still see her before me today: Gerda Müller as Kleist’s Penthesilea. This passion entered into me. I never doubted it; my initiation into love was Penthesilea. The play overwhelmed me like one of the Greek tragedies I was reading, The Bacchae. The wildness of the battling Amazons was like that of the Maenads; instead of the furies who tear the king to shreds, it was Penthesilea who sicced her pack of hounds on Achilles, burying her own teeth in his flesh. Since then, I’ve never dared to see another staging of this play; and whenever I’ve read it, I’ve heard her voice, which has never weakened for me. I’ve remained faithful to the actress who convinced me of the truth of love.
I saw no connection between her and the lamentable events next door in the boardinghouse, and I still regarded A Fool’s Confessión as a pack of lies.
One of the actors who performed frequently was Carl Ebert; at first, he appeared regularly, and then subsequently as a guest. Years later, he became famous for very different things. In my youth, I saw him as Schiller’s Karl Moor, as Egmont. I got used to him in diverse parts. I would have gone to a production for his sake alone, and I can’t even be ashamed of this weakness; for I owe it my most important experience in the Frankfurt period. One Sunday matinee, Ebert was scheduled to read from a work that I had never heard of. It was older than the Bible, a Babylonian epic. I knew that the Babylonians had had a Flood; supposedly, the legend drifted from them to the Bible. This was all I could expect, and this one reason would never have moved me to go. But Carl Ebert was reading, and so, as a fan of a lovable actor, I discovered Gilgamesh, which had a crucial impact on my life and its innermost meaning, on my faith, strength, and expectation such as nothing else in the world.
Gilgamesh’s lament on the death of his friend Enkidu struck me to the core:
I wept for him day and night,
I let nobody bury him—
I wanted to see whether my shrieks
Would make my friend rise again.
Seven days and seven nights
Until the worms attacked his face.
When he was gone, I did not find life again,
I roamed the steppe like a brigand.
And then comes his enterprise against death, his wandering through the darkness of the celestial mountain and his crossing of the waters of death, his meeting with his forebear Utnapishtim, who escaped the Great Flood and was granted immortality by the Gods. Gilgamesh asks him how to attain everlasting life. It is true that Gilgamesh fails in his quest and even dies. But this makes the necessity of his enterprise seem all the more valid.
In this way, I experienced the effect of a myth: something I have thought about in various ways during the ensuing half century, something I have so often turned over in my mind, but never once earnestly doubted. I absorbed as a unity something that has remained in me as a unity. I can’t find fault with it. The question whether I believe such a tale doesn’t affect me; how can I, given my intrinsic substance, decide whether I believe in it. The aim is not to parrot the banality that so far all human beings have died: the point is to decide whether to accept death willingly or stand up against it. With my indignation against death, I have acquired a right to glory, wealth, misery, and despair of all experience. I have lived in this endless rebellion. And if my grief for the near and dear that I have lost in the course of time was no smaller than that of Gilgamesh for his friend Enkidu, I at least have one thing, one single thing, over the lion man: I care about the life of every human being and not just that of my neighbor.
