‘Do you want him to grow up without a name, as a bastard?’
‘Those are archaic notions,’ replied Bettina, glowing with the spirit of the anti-kraal; ‘anyway, what do you mean, without a name? He’ll have my maiden name, it’ll cost a petition as Hornschuch says; the name of my father, it’s no worse than the name Herzog.’
I looked at her in consternation. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no. You’re right.’
But nothing changed: in terms of Bettina’s sense of things, Ganna might as well have been living under the same roof as her. Ganna’s high parrot squawk filled the rooms, the whiff of greed and lust for possessions came in through the doors and windows, and there was no man in the house to keep them out, no master, no strong hand. Maybe in some far corner of my soul I could feel her disappointment, but I know I closed my eyes to it. I had yet to abandon my hope of getting Ganna to see sense, though it was absolute folly. I stopped telling Bettina about my meetings with Ganna. When I went to see her — part of this time, she was staying in a nearby mountain resort — I needed all kinds of get-outs, even resorted to bare-faced lies, and went to her in secret, an absurd parody of the lover slinking off to his beloved. There was something so warped about it. But the meetings with her left their trace in my features. When Bettina saw the leaden shadows under my eyes, she knew. She, who had always slept like a baby, eight or nine hours straight through, now sometimes lay awake until dawn. She was helpless in the face of my suicidal and traitorous doings. She didn’t talk to Hornschuch about it either. Ganna, who had wanted to make him see that she and I were one heart and one soul, didn’t shrink from writing him the occasional letter, claiming we were well on the way to a peaceful solution; of course, all lies.
I went to Ganna each time with a feeble, half-witted hope and each time left her numbed and bruised. At night I started up out of my demon-haunted sleep, in which bitterness, like a toxin in my blood, had kept me tossing and turning, and sixteen to twenty Gannas stood around my bed to fill my ears till they rang with her glibly stereotypical sentences: ‘I will make you a binding offer when you come back.’ ‘It’s mean of you to call me wasteful. I keep a household book with numbered bills in it.’ ‘I want to do what you say in everything. Just don’t make it possible for me to say no.’ ‘Since it’s happening against my wishes, at least let me tell myself that it’s not to my disadvantage.’ ‘You can curse me, you can slander me, I don’t care a bit, my conscience is almost oppressively clear.’ ‘It’s all up to you, Alexander. For the sake of your peace and quiet, I’ll give you your liberty, but it’ll have to be on the correct basis.’ ‘If the heating pad gives you palpitations, you should try putting a damp flannel underneath.’ ‘There can’t be many women in my position who are concerned with nothing but making their husbands feel even better off.’ ‘I’m going to walk hand in hand with you under the Lord’s arc on Judgement Day.’ ‘Bettina must understand that if the bond between us breaks, you won’t survive it.’ ‘Your behaviour vis-à-vis me is doing you untold harm …’ And so on and on and on. The Cassandra makes way for the flatteress, the greedy market woman for the concerned spouse, prophecies alternate with threats, pleas with violent quarrels; there’s one Ganna that has a soulful Madonna face, another has the wild eyes of a witch; one turns up in a dirty chequered wool jacket, the other in the fake kimono, with the stockings bagging down under it like empty sausage skins; one talks with her throat full of flour, the other has a vulgar squawk; one is continually calling out ‘Hallo-o’ to make herself heard, the other is looking vainly for money, kneeling on the carpet in tears; one has a look that is fixed on the fourth dimension, having failed in the other three, the other scribbles out sentences on pliant paper; and each one insists that I account for myself, to each one of them I have to prove and explain something. Why? Prove what? Explain what? That I am a fool, and ripe for the madhouse?
GANNA GIVES ME A DIVORCE FOR MY BIRTHDAY
Hornschuch had quietly and efficiently made his preparations. He was like a hawk, a tiny dot hanging in the upper air, only to swoop down once he was sure of his victim. He was in correspondence with Herr Heckenast, who had taken over Ganna’s interests and had stepped forward to speak on behalf of the kraal. He had also got in touch with Ganna’s new lawyer, Dr Fingerling. (Ganna had turned down the idea of merging our agendas and leaving them in the hands of Hornschuch; a lawyer, like a husband, was someone you wanted all to yourself.) Hornschuch appeared not dissatisfied with the choice of Dr Fingerling. It looked as though he had been able to exert some influence on Ganna. Even though Dr Fingerling got his information from Heckenast in Berlin, who in turn referred to the decisions of his sister-in-law Ganna, the fog of dispute seemed to lift slightly and permit a glimpse of a structure that might be an agreement.
No sooner did things approach the stage of possible realization, though, than Ganna was seized by increasing anxiety. Her situation was like that of someone followed by the police, who has changed his abode so often and so long, till one day he finds himself fingered by a cunning detective. She tried everything to give him the slip. For sure, the new deed that had been doing the rounds now for weeks between her, brother-in-law Heckenast and the two lawyers — being added to, cut, critiqued and commented on — included payment demands and other commitments from me that made it difficult to contemplate its signature. But could one be sure? Bettina had only to stamp her little foot. All at once, Ganna felt uneasy. The danger was that she herself was caught in the trap she had festooned with bacon. Also, she didn’t know what to do about her debts. Dr Stanger-Goldenthal insisted on payment like some latter-day Shylock, and threatened to have the half of the house that was registered in her name held as surety. She begged Hornschuch to see that Dr Stanger’s demands might be at least partly met, and then she would certainly expedite the settlement out of gratitude alone. But Hornschuch came back coolly: no cash before the deal.
In her extremity, Ganna decided to quit the scene for a while and go abroad. Her thinking was primitive: if two people are to be divorced, then they both have to be present; therefore, if I’m away, they won’t be able to get my signature. So in a tearing rush she packed her suitcases, scraped together all the money she could and hauled Elisabeth and Doris off to the French Riviera. Two days prior to going she had told me of her intention; her purpose was quite transparent to me, even though she had made a play for sympathy by talking of her asthma attacks, which required nothing less than a trip to the south. I could hardly keep her from going; I would have had to lock her up. But I had forbidden her to take Doris. After many unhappy attempts and trials, a suitable school had at last been found for the girl, now eleven, in the autumn just past; the one who was happiest about it was Doris herself. Now, in the middle of term time, she was going to be plucked out of her setting and taken to a foreign country. My angry veto was answered by Ganna with a cheeky message, followed by an express letter, about how Doris was overstrained and required sea air; the school was making her unhappy — the poor mite had to get up at six thirty — so she had had the wonderful idea of putting her in a dance school in Nice; the little darling’s delight was probably more than I could imagine. I tore up the letter and asked Hornschuch to convey my absolute and categorical opposition to Ganna. With that I thought the matter was at an end. Later that same day I had to attend a business meeting in Munich. No sooner had I gone up to my hotel room than I received a telephone call from Ebenweiler. It was Bettina. She begged me in pressed tones not on any account to go to Nice. In confusion I asked her why I should want to go to Nice. She told me a telegram had arrived from Ganna, who was already in Nice with our daughters, and — how could it be otherwise — was in need of money. ‘But Bettina,’ I cried into the telephone, ‘why would I want to go to Nice, I had no idea the woman was going there … So she took Doris … well, that takes the biscuit.’ When Hornschuch’s voice then proceeded to boom from the earpiece, warning me with uncustomary seriousness not to do anything rash — because if I did, he couldn’t, as he put it, vouch for Bettina’s reaction — I didn’t know what to say. What did he mean? Gradually it dawned on me. Bettina was afraid I would pursue Ganna to rescue Doris and then would get caught up in some further round of negotiations. During the conversation I suddenly had the sense that she didn’t believe my assurance that I had no idea of Ganna’s whereabouts, and that tipped me into a fit of panic. I went back to Ebenweiler as quickly as I could.