A Sad Affair by Wolfgang Koeppen

Author:Wolfgang Koeppen [Koeppen, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

AND THAT was the hell into which he had delivered her. Friedrich remembered Sibylle's first public appearance. It was a drama school production. He had taken her to it. Better, he had dragged her there, like a calf to the slaughter. Of course, like everyone who had trained under the old director, she had to play Lulu, Act I, the scene in the Pierrot costume in the painters atelier. She had been like a wild animal, beside herself with fear, excitement, and the vague pain of having to reveal herself. Early that morning, Friedrich had gone to collect her from the bed she had shared with Bosporus, still carrying the smell of him on her skin, and she was already ablaze. She had driven Friedrich out of bed for a "day of the naughty Sibylles." [On such days, they called each other the "S twins" and carried on like a variety act, swinging on trapezes in a winter garden.] On streetcars, they had been strangers calling each other names. In coaching inns, they discoursed in foreign tongues. On the escalator of the department store, Sibylle had contrived a fainting fit, and with wild gestures, Friedrich had dragged her backward downstairs, which had taken some doing, calling out: "My wife always suffers these attacks when she sees the rayon bosses in their frock coats." They had undertaken mysterious and highly suspicious measurement of civic buildings. They turned vague acquaintances into victims by walking up to tell them they had just been invited by telephone to attend a feast of shark fins newly flown in from Asia. Such days were wonderful, but they cost something too. They walked into cinemas, glanced at the screen, and said: "Dear me, how inappropriate, that woman's décolletage," and walked out again. They crisscrossed the city on open-top buses for the purposes of organized inverse theft. They had armed themselves with cheap children's watches and tried to stuff them undetected into other people's pockets. They thought how much more exciting it must be to find someone else's watch on you than to be missing your own. "Naughty Sibylle" days were days of happiness for Friedrich. Sibylle laughing, Sibylle merry, what did it matter that he tottered home exhausted, feverish, poor, hungry, penniless, and with no prospects? On the day of her first public appearance, however, it wasn't fun that drove Sibylle to these tricks but nerves. They had gone to Sibylle's apartment, and Sibylle had thrown herself on her—during the Bosporus period largely unused—bed. "Feel my heart," she had said. And her heart had lain under his hand. "Little Sibylle"—and even so he had delivered her. They had taken a taxi to the theater in the city center. Sibylle, who, for a laugh, was prepared to try the most risqué, exhibitionistic improvisations in front of partygoers, was now so shaky at the prospect of her debut that he had had to lie on top of her to calm her down. They had some brandy with them in a flask, and Sibylle drank it, and got drunk, without becoming any more valiant.

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