I met my father-in-law in the bar of the hotel where they were bound to remember me. To make absolutely sure, I conducted a little scouting expedition half an hour before. Yes, they were all still with us, two of the waiters had got through unscathed, and the barman too. Yes, they even remembered I had a few debts outstanding — and even that did me good to hear! It was all very calm and peaceful. The light fell sweetly through the glass roof. There were no windows. There were still good old drinks from before the War. When my father-in-law arrived, I ordered cognac. They brought me Napoleon, as of yore. “What a terror!” said my father-in-law. Well, hardly.
I told him I needed to arrange my life, or rather our lives. I was, I said, not one to put off difficult decisions. I needed to know. I was a man of method.
He listened to me calmly enough. Then he began: “I’ll be perfectly frank with you. First, I have no idea whether Elisabeth still wants to live with you, that is, if she still loves you. That’s one thing, and that’s for the two of you to work out. Second, what will you live off? Is there anything you can do? Before the War, you were a rich young man from good society, which is the same society my laddie belonged to.”
“My laddie!” He meant my brother-in-law. The one I had never been able to stand. I had completely forgotten about him. “What’s he doing?” I asked. “He’s dead,” replied my father-in-law. He stopped, and drained his glass. “He fell in 1916,” he added. For the first time he felt like someone I might have some feeling for. “Anyway,” he went on, “you don’t have money, and you don’t have a job. I’m a Commercial Councillor, and even ennobled. Not that that means anything any more. The government owes me hundreds of thousands. They won’t pay. All I have is credit, and a little something in the bank. I’m still young. I can get something off the ground. That’s what I’m doing right now, as you saw, with the arts and crafts. Elisabeth studied under that renowned Jolanth Szatmary. ‘Jolanth Studios’: with that label, you could export the stuff all over the world. Also” — at this point a dreamy look came into his eye — “I have a couple more irons in the fire.”
That turn of phrase was enough to put me off him again. He must have sensed it, because he quickly went on: “Your family is broke, I know that, your mother doesn’t. I can get you on board somewhere, if you like. But you need to talk to Elisabeth first. Servus!”
XXV
So I talked to Elisabeth first. It felt like exhuming something that I had myself consigned to earth. Was there a feeling driving me on, did I have some passion for Elisabeth? I know I was inclined by birth and breeding to take responsibility, and as a strong protest to the new order all round me, where I felt ill at ease, I felt compelled to put some order into my own affairs.
Elisabeth came at the agreed time to the café in the city centre where we had once met during the time of my first love for her. I was waiting for her at our old table. Memory, even mawkishness, had me in its grip. I thought the marble table top must still bear traces of our clasped hands. A childish idea, a laughable idea. I knew it, but I forced myself to it, drove myself to it, in a way to be able to supplement my desire to “put my life in some sort of order” with a measure of emotion, and hence provide a balanced justification for my wanting to talk to Elisabeth. It was at that time that I made the discovery that our experience is fleeting, our forgetting rapid, and our existence evanescent, as that of no other creature in this world. I was afraid of Elisabeth; the war, prisoner of war camp, Viatka, my return were all but extinguished in me. All my experiences stood in some relation to Elisabeth. And what did she mean, compared to the loss of my friends, Joseph Branco, Manes Reisiger, Jan Baranovich, and my home, my world? Elisabeth wasn’t even properly my wife, not in the full bourgeois and biblical sense of the word. (In the old Monarchy, it would have been a simple matter for us to get divorced — no doubt even simpler now.) Did I desire her still? I looked up at the clock. She would be here in five minutes, and I wished it might be another half an hour. In my panic I started eating the little chocolate cakes put together from cinnamon and chicory that deceive our eyes but cannot take in our palates. (This Konditorei had no schnapps.)
Elisabeth came. She did not come alone. Her friend Jolanth Szatmary was with her. I had assumed of course that she would come alone. Now when Jolanth Szatmary turned up as well, I wasn’t even surprised. It was clear to me that Elisabeth would not, could not, have come without the woman, and I understood.
It wasn’t that I was prejudiced, oh no! In the world in which I had grown up, prejudice was vulgar. To make a public display of something that was viewed askance didn’t seem right to me. Probably Elisabeth would not have come to our rendezvous with a woman with whom she was not in love. At this point she had to obey.
There was an astonishing resemblance between the two of them, even though they were of such different types, and had such utterly different features. It came from the similarity in their clothes and gestures. You might have said they resembled one another like sisters — or like brothers. As men tend to do, they both hesitated outside the door, to see which of them would agree to go in first. There was another hesitation at the table, to see which of them would sit down first. I didn’t even try to kiss their hands. I was a ridiculous thing in their eyes, the sprog of a wretched sex, an alien, unimpressive race, unworthy all my life of receiving the distinctions of the caste to which they belonged, or of being inducted in their mysteries. I was still caught in the wicked belief that they belonged to a weak, even a lesser sex, and impertinent enough to try and express this view through gallantry. They sat next to me resolute and contained, as though I had challenged them. Between them there was a silent but perfectly apparent bond against me. It was clearly visible. I made some bland remark, and they exchanged glances, like two who had long known my type, and the sort of things I was capable of saying. Sometimes one of them would smile, and then a split second later, the same smile would appear on the lips of the other. From time to time I thought I noticed Elisabeth incline towards me, try to send me a secret look, as though to show me that she really belonged to me, only to be compelled, against her own will and inclination, to obey her friend. What was there to talk about? I asked her about her work. I got a lecture in return about the reluctance of Europe to appreciate the materials, intentions and genius of the primitive. It was essential to reroute the whole misguided taste of the European in art, and return it to nature. Ornaments were, I was given to understand, useful. I didn’t question what I was told. I freely conceded that European taste in arts was misguided. Only I couldn’t understand how this aberrant taste had caused the end of the world: wasn’t it a consequence, or at any rate a symptom?
“Symptom!” exclaimed Jolanth. “Didn’t I tell you right away, Elisabeth, that he’s a blue-eyed optimist! Didn’t I recognize it immediately?” With that, she put her small stubby hands on Elisabeth’s hand. As she did so, Jolanth’s gloves slipped from her lap onto the floor, I stooped to pick them up, but she pushed me away with some force. “Forgive me,” I said, “it’s the optimist in me.”