She asked if the others were aware of the smells, because she was, even as she spoke.
But the others paid no attention to her. What she was feeling now, what was guiding her, was a terrible dream she was having about her husband. She could not have imagined he would be so starved for this common kind of love or that he could tenderly love anyone. She had no tender feelings for him. They respected each other and had no reason to be dissatisfied with that. And yet she now had to witness his meltdown, his disgusting hankering for this hysterical Hungarian woman, virtually devouring her with his eyes. Baroness Erika was convinced that neither of them needed intemperance like this breaching their obligatory mutual respect. Life was ruled by a strict agenda, and she had never thought there was a nobler or morally more satisfying task than to carry out that agenda, a task that required a complete human being.
Saturday nights were the only times when she was assailed by a physically somewhat burdensome and potentially sordid anxiety: about moments when, accompanied by a long moan, her husband reached the end of his all-too-short pleasure. The baroness would have wanted more. Which she would never have dared to wish. Instead she tolerated what there was, if that was how it had to be, and offered no initiatives. She was careful not to fidget afterward with the inexplicably deep currents of her wildness, not to awaken the man who, having wiped his member, wet with sperm and vaginal secretions, on the edge of his silk-poplin nightshirt, dropped into a deep sleep as if on schedule. The nightshirts had to be hidden in different places so the maid would not find them, and every week she would sneak them into a batch of clothes to be soaked so the washerwoman would not notice them either. After his aggressively large and satisfied body relaxed in sleep, he often and for long periods continued happily to pass wind, of which he was wholly unaware. Or, if he was startled awake by it, for the sake of them both he pretended not to notice. Twice it happened to the baroness that just as she lay there helplessly on her back, disgusted and rigid in the fetor emanating from under the cover and with her very wet thighs trembling, perhaps because of the strength of the aversion she felt for the man, rumbling waves of her own gratification swept across her. Her body made itself independent. It was as though her insides sensed a tectonic movement and then her entire disciplined and pampered state of mind dissipated like the crest of a gigantic wave into individual drops.
Without her being able to do anything about it.
She could not even scream, yell, or bellow exultantly.
When her consciousness returned, she felt filthy again.
She could barely wait for Monday, when she could change her nightclothes and her husband’s stained and sperm-smelling nightshirt. The washerwoman did not understand why she had to starch the professor’s nightshirts more heavily than his shirts. So he wouldn’t wipe it on them, let it hurt if he does things like that. The baron did not dare say anything about the stiffened nightshirts, because then he might have to specify what he did with them. The baroness would not have liked to acknowledge a human organ and its attendant physiological phenomena of which, even after the births of three children, she knew hardly anything. Later, though, she always hoped that maybe it would happen to her again, and so she did not mind that the man dropped off into satisfied sleep, always at the same moment and always in the same way.
While she listened, mildly disgusted though not completely denying her moderate interest either, to the bursting bubbles of his gases and to his snoring, all she had to do was touch herself, just barely, the temptation was great for it to happen again, but she did not do it, she resisted, no.
She thought it best not to have it happen, for she was ashamed of pleasure and ashamed of her readiness for it.
Occasionally, Otmar wanted it several times.
She could not reject him on every occasion.
That was another reason it seemed more correct for her to remain calm and not to tremble.
Whenever Otmar awakened himself by farting too loudly because of his efforts, in a developing dream, to stop his falling body at the edge of a precipice, he would grab wildly at his wife to stop her trembling, pry her thighs apart, and, bent on satisfying her, brutally penetrate her. Although he did not much feel like it, he did it because he was aroused by his wife’s heavy body trembling vulnerably under the covers, and he would keep pushing and thrusting like an obstinate willful child who wants everything and at once, because he lived in the belief that the more expediently he pushed and the deeper and more brutally he penetrated, the greater his wife’s pleasure would be.
During such moments there was no room for formal tenderness or obligatory attentiveness, which otherwise functioned flawlessly between the two of them.
Schuer believed that the male had to struggle with the tempting resistance of the female for the sake of propagation, and her eternal frustration from not being satisfied was temptation itself.
That was the brick wall he had to break through.
And when that happened, Baroness Erika’s knees and thighs would go on trembling mildly into Sunday morning.
Which ruined her entire day.
She never talked to her husband about her Sunday migraines; she never connected the aches in her ovaries and her irregular menstruation with these terrible nocturnal scenes, and that is why she could not mention them.
But even if she’d known what she might naturally discuss with her husband she still wouldn’t have done it.
She didn’t want to spoil their lovely family life with such matters.
Now, however, she was witnessing a nightmare from which she had to wake herself immediately. It won’t last much longer, she told herself, she will concentrate on the children until it passes, she said to herself. She wants to wake up so she won’t scream because of the pain.
What are you doing to me.
She couldn’t imagine herself capable of suffering so much mental anguish; her heart was nearly breaking, yet this slightly alleviated her painful Sunday headache.
What have you done to me, and what more are you going to do to me.
The children behaved best, though they were exhausted by the adults’ peculiar behavior; Miss Bartleby found herself very busy with them. Mainly, she had to restrain the two little girls. Ortrud, sitting on plumped-up pillows, the smallest of the three children, cried out or made gurgling sounds when she sensed tension among the grown-ups, and this elicited quieting hisses and lengthy admonitions from Miss Bartleby. Children were forbidden to speak at the table. And Sieglinde began to swing her legs like a bell’s clapper under the table. Which in the Schuer household was also strictly forbidden. Both Miss Bartleby and the nanny were told not to put up with it even for a moment. They were given permission to hit the children’s bare feet with a stick. They often voiced their view that a little child should never be unsupervised and should never become irresponsibly absorbed in himself, whether in company or alone. These views referred to something the children did not understand.
We do not cut boiled potatoes with a knife on our plate; we break them up with our fork.
This, however, the children knew.
We do not spread jam on black bread, only on white. They did not understand that, but they had to accept it.
In fact, the adults assumed that the uncontrolled monotonous swinging of legs would lead the children into bad habits. Too strong and uniform a pleasure, for too long a time, would travel from the muscles of their little legs to the base of the thighs, and then the child would be doing it all the time. Miss Bartleby had to check for reddening of the girls’ little vaginas, because that would be the telltale sign. Or the boy’s little penis might grow erect as the result of the seemingly innocent foot dangling, which applied continuous steady pressure to his two little testicles. But the Englishwoman was now so busy with the scandalous sight before her and with her own politically motivated agitation that she did not notice what was happening under the table, what was brewing among the children.