‘I’ll manage it,’ I said; ‘after all, if the worst comes to the worst, we can always flog the place.’
I added that to me it was a comforting idea that she and the child she was expecting would have a refuge and a piece of property in the event of my death. Bettina smiled.
‘If we’re talking about your death,’ she replied, ‘do you really think … Can you see me as a chatelaine? Look at my fingers.’
In surprise I looked down at her hand, which she held out to me.
‘These fingers are no good at keeping hold of things,’ she said. ‘Once it was prophesied that I would never be in debt, but nor would I have anything to call my own either.’
For all her fears, it was a happy thought for her that our baby would have a place it wouldn’t have to leave at six-monthly intervals. A fortress sure, in a world out for aggression. She herself didn’t need any fortress. She could look after herself. But the little person who was on the way (she was convinced from the outset that it would be a boy) would need to be given shelter, like a little Caspar Hauser. And if — as Ganna wished — it were his lot to grow up without his father’s name, then there was a double need to put some protective space between him and Ganna’s world bristling with laws. Suddenly, she was no longer afraid. Early on in her pregnancy she had sometimes — most unusual for her — cried with fear. That was when she wrote her ‘Song of an Unborn Child’, one of her loveliest compositions; when she played it to me the first time I still had no idea of her condition.
That same evening, she was lying in bed, I was sitting reading by the lamp; she called me over and asked me to sit with her. She took my hand and broke the news to me. Hesitantly, half-audibly; she couldn’t predict, after all, how I would react to news of such a disruption.
I was shocked. Straight away I realized a new situation had been created in which I must show no weakness. Our little Caspar Hauser wanted his place in the world. Our eyes met, and we gazed at each other deeply and earnestly. I clearly saw the flecks of grey in Bettina’s blue irises. I knelt down beside the bed and kissed her hands, first one, then the other, many times …
INTERVAL OF BEING DIFFERENT
I can only guess what Ganna felt when she heard about the purchase of the Buchegger estate. What later transpired suggests such a confused mixture of rage, bitterness, agitation, sympathy and murky hope that any attempt to describe it would be doomed from the start. At first she felt humiliated and duped. Her agents had run to her with the information that I had paid half the purchase price, or perhaps more, in cash; and since every rumour that circulated about me, even the least well founded, not only turned into an axiom with her, but by and by passed through every form of exaggeration and distortion, to the point of the nonsensical — yes, the ridiculous — so the sum I was said to have shelled out, not batting an eyelid, swelled into the fantastical. Naturally she will have said to herself: he saves and economizes on me, but he has a fortune to lavish on ‘that woman’. That it was Bettina who wanted the palatial house for herself, and that I had been driven to buy it for her by her subtle tricks — that was an established fact from the start, which only the malicious unbeliever would dare to question.
At the same time, she wrote me a letter in which she expressed her pleasure at the splendid acquisition in the most gushing terms. If there was the least drop of wormwood in her joy, then it was over the fact that she had been told the wonderful news by strangers and had asked herself sadly what she could have done to lose my trust. What had made her especially glad was the fact that I had got together such a huge sum of money; that allowed her to conclude that I was in more than easy circumstances, and the laments and fears I had brought to her, thank God, lacked any real cause. But she wasn’t upset with me about this little dishonesty on my part; all she cared about was that I should be happy and flourishing.
I made haste to correct Ganna’s misunderstanding. She didn’t believe me. I referred her to the property register, to put an end to the malicious false reports on the purchase. She didn’t believe what she saw there. She preferred her fantasies of my vast wealth and a rosy fog of money hocus-pocus. The fact of my wealth gave her claims such an air of entitlement that she fell for her own golden mania, like a woodworm in the hole it has itself tunnelled.
But I didn’t really care if she took me for a successful gold-digger who was cheating her of her just deserts. Enough of the scheming, the cards held to the chest, the black arts of lawyers. She must be made to understand the inevitability of what was happening. It was make or break time, I said to myself, as I sat down in the train on my way to see her.
My news that Bettina was expecting hit her like a bolt from the blue. She looked at me in utter disbelief.
‘A baby,’ she whispered, ‘she’s having your baby! I can’t quite believe it yet. I promise to look after it as if it were one of my own. I promise. Do you believe me?’
She wept with emotion. I indicated that her looking after it didn’t really come into things.
‘You know what this means,’ I said.
She nodded enthusiastically. She assured me she would go to see Dr Stanger-Goldenthal this very day; she would call him immediately; then we would sit down together and talk everything over amicably and in peace, no terror, no duress; she would prove to me that she was still the old Ganna … What would I say to a nice bowl of soup in the meantime? No, I said, please not, please no soup …
Her large blue eyes were humid with tears; she was overcome by the notion of herself as devoted self-sacrificial spouse and friend; stripping away all reality, she fled into the sweet interval of being different. And I believed her.
STANGER-GOLDENTHAL
She kept her impulsively given word, inasmuch as she went to see Dr Stanger-Goldenthal that same day, to inform him of the new development. But it wasn’t, as she had promised me, to instruct him to prepare for the divorce. Hardly. Her showing me goodwill was enough. The idea that ‘goodwill’ needed to be followed by action was baffling and a little repugnant to her.
I told Dr Chmelius:
‘Thank God, Ganna has changed her mind. I think you can go ahead and prepare for the next stage.’
Dr Chmelius, no little surprised, made report of this to Dr Stanger.
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Stanger replied to the still greater bewilderment of Dr Chmelius. ‘Your client must have misinformed you.’
‘I’m afraid you took her at her word again,’ Chmelius said to me.
I went to see Ganna.
‘Your lawyer insists you haven’t given him any new instructions.’
‘That’s a wicked lie,’ yelled Ganna. ‘I talked and talked to him till he promised me — and we shook hands on it. Everything will be sorted out in three days.’
I believed her. Obviously, it was Dr Stanger who was responsible for the delay. I asked Dr Chmelius for leave to write to Dr Stanger myself. He had no objection. I sat down and wrote Dr Stanger-Goldenthal one of the most straightforward letters that can ever have been written, a letter of a kind that you write to a human being, not to a lawyer for the other side. It was a minor epic, the story — filling many pages — of my marriage, and the presentation of the grounds that made it impossible for me to remain with Ganna.
His reply was highly ironic. ‘Let us assume for the moment,’ he wrote, ‘that the complaints you level at your wife are justified. This begs the question: were you really lord and master in this union, as the law and the wider organization of society expects? I leave the yea or nay to your conscience. Your exquisitely written, logically constructed memorandum I view not as a legal weapon but as a human document. [That finally proved to me that the two were utterly antithetical.] The weight of the moral responsibility for the discord in your marriage is yours. If my client expressly requests a divorce, I will execute her wish. If she decides against a divorce, then I will support her to the best of my ability in the legal battle that may be expected to ensue.’