The blind side of the heart

Carl took Helene to the State Opera House, Unter den Linden. They heard Schreker’s The Singing Devil and stood applauding for twenty minutes, although shrill whistling from elsewhere in the audience rang in their ears, and while Helene’s hands hurt with clapping, she hoped Carl wouldn’t follow the crowd to the exits. But the inevitable happened. Outside the cloakroom, Helene asked Carl not to take her home yet. She wanted to walk a little way through the night first. Thick snowflakes were falling, but they hardly settled on the surface of the road, which was black as night. Carl and Helene walked past the Hotel Adlon. The snow melted on Helene’s tongue. Outside the entrance to the great hotel, handsome cars and a crowd of people suggested that some distinguished guest was expected to arrive.
You’re cold and tired. Let me take you home.
Please don’t. Helene stayed put. Carl put his hands inside her fur muff in search of warmth.
But we can’t just stand around here, said Carl.
I’ll come back to your lodgings with you. There, she had said it, just like that.
Carl drew his hands away from her. He couldn’t believe his ears. He had so often begged Helene to go back to his room, he had so often reassured her that he had all the keys and his landlady was hard of hearing. I’m glad, he said quietly and kissed her forehead.
On the way to Viktoria-Luise-Platz she insisted that they mustn’t phone her aunt. No one at Fanny’s apartment minded where she was; they probably wouldn’t even notice her absence. Helene knew Carl’s attic room. She had visited him before, but in the daytime. Now she hardly knew it again. The electric light made the colours look faded, his books were stacked on the floor, his bed was unmade. There was a smell of urine as if he hadn’t emptied his chamber pot. Carl had not been expecting her visit. Now he apologized and quickly put the bedspread on the bed. She could borrow one of his nightshirts, he said, and could he read something aloud to her? His voice was dry, his abrupt movements showed how important her presence here and perhaps her mere existence were to him.
Are you still reading Hofmannsthal? She took the nightshirt and sat down on his chair at the desk, with her coat still buttoned up.
He pointed to the books on the floor. I was reading Spinoza yesterday evening; in our class we’re comparing his ethics with Descartes and his dualist view of the world.
You haven’t told me anything about that yet. Helene looked suspiciously at Carl. She couldn’t wrinkle her smooth brow; the little lines that formed above her short nose if she did just looked funny.
Are you jealous? Carl teased her, although he must know that she meant it seriously and she really was jealous of his studies – not because she wanted to have him all for herself and didn’t want him to be studying, but because she would have liked to be studying too.
Your shoes are all wet, wait, I’ll take them off for you. Carl knelt down on the floor in front of her and removed her shoes. And your feet are cold, like ice. Don’t you have any winter boots? Helene shook her head. Wait a minute, I’ll get you some hot water, you need a footbath.
Carl disappeared and Helene heard him on the stairs. She looked at the nightshirt on her lap and took his absence as a request for her to undress. She draped her clothes over the back of the chair and rolled up her stockings in a ball, keeping nothing on but her new pair of knickers. In the corner under the window, Helene saw a terrarium with an orchid flowering in it. An orchid in bloom in an attic room, surrounded by the drab colours on which the electric light fell. She heard sounds on the stairs and quickly pulled the nightshirt over her head. It smelled of Carl. The second button from the top was missing, she did up the top button and held the nightshirt closed over the gap. Helene was trembling all over now. Carl brought in hot water, placing the basin on the floor and telling her to sit on the bed. Then he put his blanket round her and rubbed her feet until her toes weren’t blue any more. Helene gritted her teeth.
While Carl busily moved his books from stack to stack, he added more hot water to the basin twice. Only then did her feet warm up, and he went out to take away the basin and put on a pair of pyjamas that his mother had brought him for Christmas from a trip to Paris. Helene was already lying under the covers on her back, perfectly straight; it looked as if she were asleep. He drew back the covers and lay down beside her.
Don’t be surprised if you hear my heart beating, he said in a voice that wasn’t so dry any more, and he put out the light.
Didn’t you want to read to me?
He propped himself on his elbow, turned the light on again and saw that she had opened her eyes.
Right, I’ll read to you. He picked up Spinoza’s Ethics, lying on the bedside table, and leafed through it. In the days of Greek antiquity, he explained, licence and freedom meant complete indulgence in pleasure and the demand for happiness. But then the Stoics came along and lent God a hand; duty and virtue, all that is spiritual should be elevated above the lower pleasures, the flesh was anathema. The Middle Ages were a vale of woe. For that old moralist Kant there was still nothing but duty – bleakness wherever you look.
Why do you speak so disparagingly? You act as if happiness meant only physical union. Helene propped her own head up; she suspected that while Carl might be condemning Kant’s bleak outlook, he himself gave no more thought, however briefly, to the kiss she had owed him for months.
Carl dismissed her reproach. Not to speak of Schopenhauer, he went on, who saw the notion that we are here to be happy as an innate error in the education of mankind, a malformation, so to speak. But it doesn’t all depend on happiness, Helene, you know that, don’t you? Go on, then, yawn! Carl tapped her gently on the forehead with his bookmark.
Helene took the bookmark away from him. If I could read every book with you I’d be happy, do you believe that? Helene smiled. Most of all I’d like to read books with your eyes, with your voice, with your flexibility of tone.
Flexibility – what are you talking about? Carl laughed.
I like listening to you. Sometimes it’s as if you hurry over to the window while you’re reading, sometimes you crawl under the table.
And I’ll tell you how it seems to me – as if you climb trees and jump on the table when I’ve crawled under it, on principle.
Do I? Helene wondered what he meant. Did he think her annoying, didn’t he enjoy it when they measured up to each other, feeling the tension that sometimes existed between them?
Well, anyway, here we are lying under the same blanket, there’s an angel here with me – how did that happen? Now Carl looked at her so challengingly, with his mouth a whole millimetre closer, that Helene’s courage deserted her and her fear of the kiss was suddenly greater than her desire for it. So it doesn’t depend on happiness? Helene tapped Carl’s book. No lust and boundless licence?
Carl cleared his throat. What do you want, Helene? Do you want to learn to think?
Elbows in front of the book, chin propped on his hands, Carl was laughing into the cup they formed in front of his mouth. Schopenhauer consoles us: intellectual wealth will overcome even pain and tedium – our old friend Lenz obviously wasn’t clever enough there.
Helene put her head back on the pillow, exposing her throat to him; she deliberately turned on her side and watched his mouth as he spoke. His slightly pursed lips moved too much and too fast for her to follow. He noticed her glance and his eyelid began fluttering again, as if expecting her touch, as if it wanted nothing more. Suddenly he lowered his eyes, Helene saw his fingers trembling on the pages of the book, but he bravely read a couple of sentences that he had noted down on the first page: Happiness is not the reward of virtue, virtue is its own reward. We are not glad of it because we rein in our lusts, but because we are glad of it we can rein them in.
That sounds like good advice for future priests.
You’re wrong, Helene. It’s precious advice for all young men. Precious because we study for years to learn it and only when we’ve studied for years do we know a spark of happiness. Carl suddenly held back. He had been on the point of mentioning the importance of knowing there was a girl in bed beside you too, a woman, not just any woman but this one, his Helene. But he was afraid that might scare her. He didn’t want her putting her wet, cold shoes and stockings on again and going back to Achenbachstrasse through the night, to lie down there in bed beside her sister. So he turned back to where his forefinger had been holding the pages apart and read.
The desire arising from the knowledge of good and evil can be stifled or curbed by many other desires, which themselves arise from the emotions that assail us. Carl’s fingers made the whole page tremble.
Are you cold yourself now? Helene put her hand beside his, their little fingers almost touching.
Reason can overcome the passions by becoming a passion itself.
Helene, listening, said: You have lovely eyes.
In evidence we may cite the fact that emotion felt for a thing imagined in the future is weaker than emotion felt for something in the present.
Are you talking about us, are you talking about love? Now Helene did touch his finger with hers and noticed him start. He was so captivated that he didn’t even turn his eyes to look at her.
You wanted me to read aloud and I am reading aloud. Love, to Spinoza, is nothing but cheerfulness, cheerfulness contingent on the idea of its ultimate cause.
Your eyes are shining. I could lie beside you all evening just looking at your chin, your profile, your nose, the way the lids come down over your eyes. Helene drew up her knees; there was still the blanket between her and Carl.
Carl was going to explain something about desire in relation to love and the relation of both to reason, but he had forgotten the logic of it all; something else had taken him over, something that could not rest any more, could not be a subject for reflection, he wanted to be outside himself, beyond himself, with her. Words flew past. Her mouth was so sweet. He didn’t want to think any more, he had cast his will aside, there was no restraining him now. He felt naked. The touch of the blanket separating him from her excited him enormously. With pure desire, he looked at Helene and kissed her, kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, his lips felt the smooth skin of her curving forehead, his hand stroked her silky hair, the golden brightness of her hair shone through the narrow opening of his eyelids. His hand felt her collarbone, the curve of her shoulders, his fingertip felt the dimples that he knew so well by sight. Her arms seemed so long, her armpit was moist, he buried his hand in it, he lay close. He heard his breath gasping as he lay against her. Helene’s fragrance lured him so much it hurt. Her arms were folded over her breasts, he had to breathe deeply, he saw time unfurling before him, he could find peace with her if only he wanted to, if only he wanted to, but where was his will now? Reason, he called silently to himself, he saw the word before his eyes, plain and sober, he didn’t know its meaning any more. Nothing but letters with no sound. Sound and meaning were all gone. But his gasping breath was caught between his lips and her curves and hollows, and her breathing was carried to his ear.
The candle hissed, the wick collapsed and sank. The darkness was pleasantly cool. Carl stared into the dark. Helene’s breath came regularly, her eyes were probably closed. He could hardly sleep, her fragrance kept him awake, rousing him even if he did fall into a dream for a few seconds. She was not breathing as deeply as he was, perhaps she wasn’t asleep. He put his hand out to her.
She liked his gentle mouth, his lips, demanding in a different way from Martha’s, with a taste that was new to her.
It will be nice to see your hair grow longer, whispered Carl in the silence. Why was it so short?
So that I could meet you. Don’t you know that? It was long down to here a few hours before I first saw you. Leontine cut it for me.
Carl buried his face in her throat. He caressed her ear with the wingbeat of his lashes. Your hair shines like gold. If we’re ever left starving, I’ll cut it off in secret at night and sell it.
Helene liked the way he said we as she lay there in his arms.