The Clown (25 page)

“A very good principle too,” he said, “what is the trouble?”

“I am concerned about the CDU,” I said, “I trust you invariably vote CDU?”

“I should hope so,” he said indignantly, and I said: “Then I can stop worrying,” and hung up.

I really should have insulted the fellow, I should have asked him whether he raped his own wife, whether he had won no-trumps with two aces, and whether he had already had the mandatory two-hour chat about the war with his colleagues at the Ministry. His voice had been that of the masterful husband, the true German, and his “Well, it’s about time” had sounded like “Shoulder arms!” Sabina Emonds’ voice had made me feel somewhat better, she had sounded a bit short-tempered and harassed, but I knew she really did think Marie had behaved badly and that the bowl of soup would always be waiting for me on the stove. She was a very good cook, and when she was not pregnant and handing out her “Oh-you-men-looks” right and left she was a cheerful soul, and Catholic in a much nicer way than Karl, who had retained his strange seminarist’s ideas on the Sextum. Sabina’s reproachful glances were actually directed at the entire male sex, but they took on a specially somber tone, almost thunderous, when she looked at Karl, the originator of her condition. Usually I had tried
to distract Sabina, I would do one of my turns, this made her laugh, she would laugh long and hard, till the tears came, then she generally got trapped by her tears, and there was no more laughter in them.… And Marie would have to take her out and comfort her, while Karl sat beside me looking glum and guilty, till in desperation he would start correcting papers. Sometimes I would give him a hand by marking the mistakes with a red ballpoint, but he never trusted me, looked through everything again and was furious every time because I hadn’t overlooked anything and had marked the mistakes quite correctly. He simply couldn’t imagine that I would carry out a job like that fairly and the way he would do it himself. Karl’s problem is only a problem of money. If Karl Emonds had a seven-room apartment, the feeling of irritation, of pressure, would probably disappear. I had once had an argument with Kinkel over his conception of “subsistence level.” Kinkel was supposed to be one of the cleverest experts in this field, and I believe it was he who worked out that the subsistence level for a single person in a city, not including rent, was eighty-four marks, later increased to eighty-six. I didn’t even bother to point out that he himself, to judge by the disgusting story he had told us, apparently regarded thirty-five times that sum as
his
subsistence level. Such objections are considered too personal and in poor taste, but what’s really in poor taste is that a man like that should tell other people what their subsistence level is. The eighty-six marks even included an amount for cultural needs: movies probably, or newspapers, and when I asked Kinkel if they expected the person in question to see a good film for that money, a film of educational value—he lost his temper, and when I asked him what was meant by the item “Replacement of Underwear,” whether the Ministry specially hired a kind old man to run all over Bonn and wear out his underpants and report to them how long he took to wear out his underpants—his wife said I was being dangerously subjective, and I told her I could see the point of Communists setting up plans, with test
meals, maximum lifetime of handkerchiefs, and all that nonsense, seeing that Communists did not have the hypocritical alibi of a “spiritual nature,” but that Christians like her husband should lend themselves to such presumptuous madness seemed to me fantastic—so then she said I was an out-and-out materialist and had no sense of sacrifice, suffering, fate, the nobility of poverty. With Karl Emonds I never have the impression of sacrifice, suffering, fate, the nobility of poverty. He has quite a good income, and all that was to be seen of fate and nobility was a constant irritation, because he could calculate that he would never be able to afford a big enough apartment. When I realized that of all people Karl Emonds was the only one I could approach for money my situation became clear to me. I didn’t have a single pfennig.

I also knew I would never do any of those things: go to Rome and talk to the Pope, or pinch cigarettes and cigars, stuff my pockets with peanuts, at Mother’s At Home tomorrow afternoon. I no longer even had the strength to believe in it, the way I had believed in sawing through the wood with Leo. All attempts to retie the puppet strings and pull myself up by them would fail. The time would even come when I would ask Kinkel for a loan, and Sommerwild, and even that sadist Fredebeul, who would probably hold up a five-mark piece and make me jump for it. I would be glad when Monika Silvs asked me over for coffee, not because it was Monika Silvs but because of the free coffee. I would give that silly Bella Brosen another call, butter her up a bit and tell her I wasn’t going to bother about the amount, that any amount, never mind how small, would be welcome, then—one day I would go to Sommerwild and prove to him “convincingly” that I was repentant, had seen the light, was ripe for conversion, and then the worst thing of all would happen: Sommerwild would stage a reconciliation with Marie
and Züpfner, but if I became a Catholic my father would probably never do another thing for me. Apparently this was for him the worst of all. I had to think it out: my choice was not
rouge et noir
, but dark brown or black: brown coal or church. I would become what they had all been expecting of me for so long: a man, mature, no longer subjective but objective and ready to sit down to a brisk game of skat at the Union Club. I still had a few chances left: Leo, Heinrich, Behlen, Grandfather, Zohnerer, who might build me up into a schmaltzy guitar player, I would sing: “When the wind plays in your hair, I know that you’ll be mine.” I had sung it to Marie once, and she had put her hands over her ears and said it was ghastly. Finally I would do the very last thing of all: go to the Communists and perform all those turns which they could so nicely classify as anti-capitalist. I actually had gone there once and had met with some cultural Joes in Erfurt. They put on quite a welcome for me at the station, with huge bouquets of flowers, and afterwards at the hotel there was brook trout, caviar, strawberry parfait, and vast quantities of champagne. Then they asked us what we would like to see of Erfurt. I said I would like very much to see the place where Luther defended his doctor’s dissertation, and Marie said she had heard there was a Catholic theological faculty in Erfurt and that she was interested in the religious life. They obviously didn’t like that but couldn’t do anything about it, and it all became very embarrassing: for the cultural Joes, for the theologians, and for us. The theologians must have thought we had something to do with those donkeys, and none of them spoke frankly with Marie, not even when she discussed matters of doctrine with a professor. Somehow or other he realized that Marie was not properly married to me. In the presence of the functionaries he asked her: “But you really are a Catholic, aren’t you?” and she went scarlet and said: “Yes, even though I am living in sin I’m still a Catholic.” It got really terrible when we realized that even the functionaries didn’t like our not being married, and on our way back to the
hotel for coffee one of the functionaries said there were certain manifestations of petty-bourgeois anarchy which he didn’t approve of at all. Then they asked me which turns I was going to perform, in Leipzig and Rostock, whether I couldn’t do the “Cardinal,” “Arrival in Bonn” and “Board Meeting.” How they ever found out about the Cardinal we never discovered, for I had rehearsed this number just for myself and the only person I showed it to was Marie, and she had asked me not to do it in public seeing that Cardinals wore the red of martyrs, and I told them no, I would first have to study living conditions here, for the whole point of comedy was to present people in abstract form with situations taken from their own reality, not from that of others, and in their country Bonn, Boards of Directors and Cardinals obviously didn’t exist. They became uneasy, one of them turned pale and said they had thought it would be quite different, and I said so had I. It was appalling. I told them I could look around a bit if they liked and do a turn such as “Session of the Zone Committee” or “The Cultural Council Meets,” or “The Party Conference Elects its Presidium”—or “Erfurt, City of Flowers”; unfortunately it so happened that around the station Erfurt looked like anything but a city of flowers—but then the boss got up and said they couldn’t possibly permit any propaganda against the working class. By this time he was no longer pale, he was white in the face—a few of the others at least had the guts to grin. I replied that I didn’t see that it would be propaganda against the working class if I did a quickly rehearsed number such as “The Party Conference Elects its Presidium,” and I made the stupid mistake of saying Barty Gonference, that infuriated the white-faced fanatic, he banged on the table, so violently that the whipped cream slipped off my cake onto the plate, and said, “We have been mistaken in you, very much mistaken,” and I said, in that case I could leave, and he said, “Yes—by all means, by the next train.” I added that I could call the number “Board Meeting” simply “Session of the Zone Committee” as presumably there too the
only matters they decided on would be the ones which had been decided in advance. Then they got thoroughly unpleasant, left the room, didn’t even pay for our coffee. Marie was in tears, I was ready to hit someone over the head, and when we went across to the station to get the next train back there wasn’t a porter in sight, and we had to carry our own bags, which I loathe. Outside the station we were lucky enough to run into one of the young theologians Marie had been talking to that morning. He flushed when he saw us, but he took the heavy suitcase from the tearful Marie, and Marie kept whispering to him that he must please not get himself into trouble.

It was dreadful. We had been a total of only six or seven hours in Erfurt, but we had got on the wrong side of everyone: the theologians as well as the functionaries.

When we got out at Bebra and went to a hotel, Marie cried all night, in the morning she wrote a long letter to the theologian, but we never found out whether he actually got it.

I had thought a reconciliation with Marie and Züpfner would be the end, but to hand myself over to the white-faced functionary and perform the Cardinal for that lot would really be the very end. I still had Leo, Heinrich Behlen, Monika Silvs, Zohnerer, Grandfather and the bowl of soup at Sabina Emonds, and presumably I could make a little money baby-sitting. I would guarantee in writing not to feed the children any eggs. Evidently that was more than a German mother could bear. What other people call the objective significance of art I couldn’t care less about, but to poke fun at Boards of Directors where Boards of Directors don’t exist seems pretty low.

I had once spent a lot of time rehearsing a fairly long number called “The General,” and it turned out to be what is known in our circles as a success: that is, the right people laughed, and the right people were angry. When I went to my dressing room after the show, my breast swelling with pride, I found an old, tiny woman waiting for me. I am always short-tempered after
a show, the only person I can bear near me is Marie, but Marie had let the old lady into my dressing room. She began talking before I had even finished closing the door, and told me her husband had also been a general, he had been killed and had written her a letter beforehand asking her not to accept a pension. “You are still very young,” she said, “but you’re old enough to understand”—and then she left. After that I could never do the “General” again. Whereupon the press calling itself Left Wing wrote that I had apparently been intimidated by the reactionaries, the press calling itself Right Wing wrote that I had doubtless realized I was playing into the hands of the East, and the independent press wrote that I had obviously renounced radicalism and personal involvement in any form. All utter drivel. The reason I couldn’t do the number any more was because I always had to think of the little old woman, who probably had a hard time struggling along, mocked and scorned by everyone. When I no longer enjoy something, I stop doing it—to explain that to a journalist is probably much too complicated. They must always be “sniffing around,” “nosing out a story,” and wherever you go you find the malicious type of journalist who can never reconcile himself to the fact that he is not an artist himself and doesn’t even possess the makings of an artistic person. Those people, of course, don’t even have a “nose,” and they talk nonsense, preferably when there are pretty girls around who are still sufficiently naive to idolize every hack writer who happens to have a column in a paper, and “influence.” There are some strange unrecognized forms of prostitution compared with which prostitution itself is an honest trade: at least you get something for your money.

Even this path—finding my salvation through the compassion of commercial love, was barred to me: I had no money. Meanwhile Marie was trying on her Spanish mantilla in her hotel in Rome in order to make the right impression as the first lady of German Catholicism. Back in Bonn she would attend countless tea parties, smile, go on committees, open
exhibitions of “religious art” and “look around for a suitable dressmaker.” All the women with husbands in official positions in Bonn “looked around for a suitable dressmaker.”

Marie as the first lady of German Catholicism, a teacup or a cocktail glass in her hand: “Have you seen the sweet little Cardinal who is going to consecrate Krögert’s Column of the Virgin? It seems that in Italy even the Cardinals are gallant. It’s too sweet for words.”

I couldn’t even hobble properly now, I could really only creep along, I crept out onto the balcony to breathe in some of my native air: that didn’t help either. I had already been in Bonn too long, nearly two hours, and by that time the Bonn climate loses its beneficial effect.

It struck me that they really had me to thank for the fact that Marie had remained a Catholic. She had some terrible religious crises, due to disillusionment over Kinkel, as well as over Sommerwild, and a fellow like Blothert would probably have turned even St. Francis into an atheist. For a time she even stopped going to church, wouldn’t hear of our being married in church, she withdrew into a kind of obstinate defiance, and it wasn’t till we had been gone from Bonn for three years that she met the group again, although they were always inviting her. I told her at the time that disillusionment was insufficient reason. If she believed the thing as such to be true—a thousand Fredebeuls couldn’t make it untrue, and after all—I said—there was Züpfner, whom I had to admit I found a bit stiff, not my type at all, but who as a Catholic was convincing. There must be a lot of convincing Catholics, I told her, I named pastors whose sermons I had listened to, I reminded her of the Pope, Gary Cooper, Alec Guinness—and it was by clinging to Pope John and Züpfner that she managed to climb up out of the pit. Strangely enough, Heinrich Behlen no longer appealed to her during this period, she said she found him smarmy, was always embarrassed when I mentioned him, so that I began to suspect he might have “made advances” to her. I never asked her about
it, but I had my suspicions, and when I thought of Heinrich’s housekeeepr I could understand that he “made advances” to girls. I found the idea repulsive, but I could understand it, just as I understood a lot of repulsive things that went on at boarding school.