The blind side of the heart

The unexpected advent of Carl Wertheimer on the scene passed largely unnoticed in Fanny’s apartment. He did not call Helene on the telephone, but a messenger brought her flowers. Helene was surprised, alarmed, happy. She placed her hand protectively round the flowers, round the air encircling them, which seemed too dense to carry their faint fragrance. Like a treasure, she carried the anemones to her room. She was alone there and felt glad that Martha would not be back until late. She wondered where he had found anemones still in bloom now. She looked at the flowers; their blue changed during the day and the delicate petals grew heavy.
The anemones faded that evening, but she wouldn’t let Otta take the flowers out of their vase. Helene couldn’t sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw only blue. Her excitement was caused by something she had never known before, an encounter with someone with whom she shared mutual ideas, a mutual curiosity and, indeed, as she confided to Martha, a mutual passion for literature.
Martha yawned on receiving this confidence. You mean in common, little angel, not mutual.
Helene knew clearly now that something unique had happened to her. She wouldn’t mind what Martha thought any more; her meeting with Carl was an incomparable experience, something she didn’t seem able to communicate to anyone like her sister.
When the bell finally rang on Sunday, and Helene heard Otta’s voice clearly and politely repeating his name as if it were a question – Carl Wertheimer? – Helene leaped to her feet, picked up the silk jacket that Fanny had only recently stopped wearing and given her, and followed Carl out into the summer morning.
They took the train to Wannsee and then walked to the smaller St?lpchensee nearby. Carl dared not hold her hand. A hare leaped along the woodland track ahead of them. The water of the lake below them glittered through the leaves, white sails swelled in the distance. Helene’s throat felt tight; she was suddenly afraid that she might start stammering, that her memory of the interests they shared and her delight in them would turn out to be a single occurrence, never to be repeated.
Then Carl started talking: Isn’t the enjoyment of nature for its own sake, the autocracy of the moment, as Lenz shows it to us, a true hymn of praise to life?
That sounds like sacrilege.
You mean doubt, Helene. Doubt is allowed, doubt isn’t sacrilege.
Perhaps you see it differently. It’s not like this for us Christians.
You’re Protestant, am I right? There was no mockery in Carl Wertheimer’s tone, so Helene nodded slightly. Suddenly what she said about her adherence to the Lutheran faith and its nature seemed invalidated, not because she remembered her mother’s atheism and her different origins, but because her God seemed so far away here. Büchner had routed him. Who wanted to recognize God as the Universal?
May I tell you something in confidence, Carl? Helene and Carl stopped where the path forked; to the right it went to the bridge, to the left deeper into the wood. They were still wondering which way to go when she told him what was weighing on her mind. You know, these last few years, since we’ve been in Berlin, I’ve felt ashamed whenever I thought about God, and I knew I’d forgotten him for days and weeks on end. We haven’t set foot in a church here.
And did you find a substitute?
What do you mean, Carl?
Has something given you pleasure? And can you believe in that?
Well, to be honest, I’ve never asked myself that question.
Carl clenched one hand into a fist and shook it at the sky: and he felt, he said, quoting Büchner again, as if he could crush the world between his teeth and spit it out into the Creator’s face: so Lenz swore, so he blasphemed.
Don’t laugh. You’re making fun of me.
Helene, I’m not making fun of you. I’d never dare do that. Carl controlled his merriment as well as he could.
Go on, laugh. It was through laughter that atheism got its grip on Lenz.
You think I’m an atheist? It isn’t as simple as that, Helene. It’s a fact that God doesn’t know anything about laughter. Isn’t that a pity? Carl put his hands in his trouser pockets.
I’d never have thought of confusing you with Lenz. Helene winked at him. At last she knew why she had been standing in front of the mirror with the lily-patterned rim for hours on end, practising winking one eye: it was for this moment. Then she turned serious again and looked sternly at Carl. I was going to tell you something in confidence.
I know, I’ll keep quiet. And Carl did stop talking.
It seemed an eternity before Helene could bring herself to break the silence.
I’m not ashamed any more, that’s what horrifies me. Do you understand? I haven’t been to church here, I’ve forgotten about God; for a long time I’ve felt ashamed when I remembered him. And now what? Nothing.
Let’s walk on. Carl chose the path leading to the bridge. Clouds were towering up, big white clouds sailing singly in the unchanging blue sky beyond them. On the other side of the bridge stood an inn with a garden. There was hardly an empty table in the garden, parties with sunshades and children were talking in loud voices, they too seemed to have forgotten about God. Carl found them a place. He said this was his table, well, once it had been his parents’ regular table, and when he came here by himself now and then it was his. Helene imagined that a life in which you and your parents went to an inn with a garden would be wonderful. Pointing to another table, Carl whispered to her that the painters often sat at that one. The magic of this world seemed to Helene so strange that she felt like standing up and leaving, but now Carl took her hand and told her she had a lovely smile, he’d like to see it often.
Carl Wertheimer was from a good family, prosperous and well educated. His father was a professor of astronomy, so in spite of the financial difficulties of the last few years, his son had been able to study. The waiter brought them raspberry sherbet to drink. Carl pointed to the north-east: his parents’ house was over there, he said, on the other bank. His two brothers had been reported missing in the war; the eldest had been killed and his belongings sent home, but his parents still refused to believe he was dead. Helene thought of her father, but she didn’t want to talk about him.
He himself hadn’t had to join the army, to his mother’s relief. His sister was finishing her university studies this year; she was the only woman studying physics. And she was getting married next year. Carl was obviously proud of his sister. He was the youngest, there was plenty of time for him, so his mother said. Carl clicked his tongue as if deploring this, although his eyes were twinkling and his regret seemed anything but serious. A sparrow came down to perch on their table, hopping back and forth, and pecking up crumbs left by the last occupants.
This glimpse of Carl’s peaceful world by the Wannsee aroused a vague sense of uneasiness in Helene. What could she set against that, what could she add to it? A wasp had fallen into her raspberry sherbet and was struggling for its life there.
Carl must have noticed that Helene, on the other side of the table, had fallen silent. He told her: your eyes are bluer than the sky. And when he had struggled to coax a difficult smile from her, perhaps he thought, she’s ashamed after all, she hasn’t forgotten her God. No wonder when I seize her hand. Probably to get her out of her difficulty, he said, quoting Büchner yet again: My love, is there some terrible crack in your world?
Helene saw the mischief in his eyes and recognized that aspect of his character. It was as if she knew him a little now, and that in itself comforted her. Now he couldn’t stop rummaging around in his memories: To drop the subject of Lenz for a moment, may I advise you to let abstract words crumble to nothing in your mouth like mouldy mushrooms? Even Hofmannsthal recovered from his ennui. And what is it but ennui if a void stretching out before us fills us with discomfort?
There it was again, the idea of discomfort. Helene felt that his words were too importunate, something threatened to go wrong, the wasp in her raspberry sherbet tumbled down inside the glass, Helene felt a headache coming on. There was loud laughter at the next table. Helene had forgotten to answer Carl’s question.
I’d like to take you out in a boat. You can lie in the boat with the water rocking you, and you must look up at the sky. Will you promise me that? Carl waved to the waiter, asking for the bill.
There was a Mercedes cabriolet standing outside the inn, with people crowding round it, gaping, stroking, patting the carriage-work as if it were a horse. Helene was glad when she and Carl finally got to their feet, leaving the wasp to its own devices.
Carl took her hand now. His own was unexpectedly slender and firm. No leaden shadow, she thought, returning to that poem of Laske-Schüler’s, no leaden shadow heavy as the grave weighed her down now, the world was a long way from coming to an end. A clattering noise in the sky made them stop. Helene put her head back.
Can I tell you something in confidence too, Helene?
Go ahead. Helene shielded her eyes with her hand; the sunlight was dazzling. You have a weakness for aeroplanes, isn’t that so?
Carl took a step towards her. Junkers F 13 planes. She felt his breath against her throat as he spoke.
Without taking her hand from her brow, Helene lowered her head and her hand almost touched Carl’s eyebrows.
Carl stepped back again. I can’t talk when I’m so close to you. No, it wasn’t my weakness for planes I was going to tell you about. Carl stopped. Your mouth is beautiful. And I can’t think of a quotation. Why use someone else’s words anyway? I’m the one who would like to kiss you.
Some time, perhaps.
You mean next year? Did you know that Junkers are planning a flight across the Atlantic?
That’s failed often enough, said Helene, sounding knowledgeable.
All the way from Europe to America. But I can’t wait as long as that for your kiss.
Helene went ahead, pleased that Carl couldn’t see her smile. They walked in silence for a long time, deep in their own thoughts, each knowing the other was there. Helene was surprised now at the momentary sense of strangeness that she had felt at the inn, and hoped Carl hadn’t noticed. She felt far from strange with him at the moment. The man hiring out boats was sitting on a folding chair, reading the evening paper; passed on to him, perhaps, by one of his customers. He was sorry, he said, all the boats were out on the water, and when one came back he didn’t want to hire it out again. After eight no one goes rowing on the lake, he said. As they walked along the bank, taking off their shoes and surprised by the warmth that the sand had stored up during the day, Carl talked about the theatre. In a few brief words they had agreed on a shared preference for classical tragedies onstage and Romantic literature at home, but their understanding nods and agreements were mainly due to their impatience; they didn’t want to keep their distance from each other any more, they wanted to come close, they were in search of a way to bring what they were both thinking to its natural conclusion. Helene liked the reddish trunks of the pine trees here in the Mark Brandenburg; you didn’t see them at home, only in Berlin. The long needles felt pleasant between her fingers. Why did they always come in pairs? A fine little filament connected the two pine needles under their hard exterior. It seemed to her as if the evening sun were setting the woods on fire. The day was coming to a close, the pines gave off a heavy scent, Helene felt dazed; she wanted to sit down on the woodland floor and stay there. Carl crouched down beside her and said he wasn’t going to let her stay in the woods, there were wild animals here and she was too delicate for him to allow it.
Martha was very happy to know that Helene had a boyfriend, so that she herself could live even more openly with Leontine. But it was as if Carl Wertheimer’s appearance had robbed the sisters of their conversations. They no longer had anything to say to each other. Aunt Fanny’s apartment, which she had liked so much until now, seemed to Helene more and more unwelcoming every day. That was not so much because Fanny was taking one object after another to the pawnbroker’s, first the little samovar which, she said, she didn’t like as much as the big one, then the picture by Lovis Corinth, which she claimed she’d never liked – she had always felt the young woman with the hat repellent, she said, she’d rather have had his self-portrait with a skeleton – and finally the gramophone went; there was no denying the value of the gramophone, or the fact that she really did like it.
On many days Fanny sat with Erich on her little veranda at noon, arguing over plans for the day. When he rose to his feet because he’d had enough of her and would rather spend the rest of the day without her, she called after him in a loud voice that carried all over the ground-floor apartment: I wish I could feel an infatuation! Take me by storm, somebody!
It sounded both pleading and derisive, and Helene took care not to cross either Erich’s or Fanny’s path. She closed the door to her room. How sweet the hours she used to spend alone in the apartment had once been. But it seemed they were gone for ever, because whenever Helene came home someone was bustling about in the kitchen, someone else was shouting down the telephone, or sitting on the chaise longue and reading.
You don’t love me! The words rang through the rooms. Helene couldn’t help overhearing; the silence knew no mercy, it followed the long, slow, apparently never-ending definition of Fanny’s conjecture. Helene hurried along the corridor on tiptoe when she had to go to the bathroom. Only when Fanny was lying on the floor, claiming that she couldn’t live without love, did Erich reach his hand down to her. He pulled her up from the floor and pushed her into her bedroom ahead of him. Helene counted up her savings; they wouldn’t even rent an attic room for a month. The books for her classes were expensive, and Fanny made it clear that she couldn’t afford the money any more. Helene should be glad to have had the first two years of her course paid for her, she said; Fanny’s money was running out and, sad to say, she didn’t know what to do about it. Helene had stopped bringing drugs home from the pharmacy; it had proved impossible to forge a bond of confidence between her and her aunt, and Fanny’s kindness to Helene was wearing a little thin too. Sometimes Helene came into the apartment, Otta took her coat and Helene went into the living room to say hello to Fanny, but Fanny either did not look up from her book or pretended to be fast asleep, although a glass of steaming tea stood beside the chaise longue.
Nights in her narrow bed beside Leontine and Martha were a torment, since the pair never seemed to tire of their love and their lust. The Baron had begun writing Helene anxious letters. He saw her so seldom now, he said, his heart was both bleeding and freezing. His life was a poor thing without her. But the object of his affections did not reply. After her original bafflement in the face of his expectations, and his announcement of a love she did not share, Helene took to putting the letters she found pushed under the door of her room inside the lid of the big trunk that stood under her bed, still unopened. A first attempt by two Junkers to fly from Europe to America over the Atlantic had failed in August; the autumn storms and winter clouds were regarded as insuperable obstacles, so the next attempt to fly the Atlantic was postponed until spring. Carl and Helene were alone in waiting no longer.