My First Wife (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jakob Wassermann

Author:Jakob Wassermann [Wassermann, Jakob]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141389363
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

POETRY

I didn’t mention any of this to Bettina. I couldn’t bring myself to. Shame sealed my lips. To condemn Ganna was tantamount to condemning myself. But nor can I claim that Bettina knew nothing about it. What did she need gossip for? My silence was as transparent to her as tissue paper. I’m not the sort of man who can keep a secret. My moods, my experiences, even my thoughts are in plain view. Friends have often made fun of my futile attempts at discretion. And Bettina sensed what was happening in my life before I had even crossed the threshold. She didn’t need to ask me any questions. There was no point. What she wanted was to help me get over my depression and anxiety. It wasn’t her view that two people who love each other should spend all their time wailing and moaning. Better to ease it away. At that time, nothing so terrible could happen to her that it quite clouded over her sky; there was always a ray of sunshine somewhere. If you pulled yourself together, remained true to your better nature, didn’t give yourself airs, then the powers could be reconciled. With violin in hand, it might even be possible to secure some improvements from them; enough to live by for a while to come.

I can’t express how much it meant to me, this belief in a way out, in destiny, in the victory of goodwill over life’s glooms and travails. I watched her in astonishment and not a little envy. Everywhere were people who were well disposed to her and others whom she did everything to help: a poor seamstress for whom she found work; a friend who had returned from the war ill and infirm, and whom she tended and fed. She was always on her way somewhere or other to do something helpful and purposeful – not like a do-gooder, that wasn’t her at all, but more like someone who sees it as a challenge, almost a game, quietly to iron out some of the little kinks in fate. And for all that, I know no one who was as regularly and maliciously misunderstood, with her bonny blitheness and her honesty. It often gave me pause. Perhaps it was because she was too quick with words, too certain of her judgement and fearlessly coming forth with her own brave truths. Of course that was bound to upset a lot of people. It’s a good thing to have someone you can think about without being at loggerheads with them. An inexhaustible wealth of perspectives, when she would talk to me about her day, material for conversations deep into the night.

At that time I wrote a whole string of sonnets for her.

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