The Weight of Things by Marianne Fritz (translated by Adrian Nathan West).
Title: The Weight of Things.
Author: Marianne Fritz (translated by Adrian Nathan West).
Genre: Literature, fiction.
Country: Austria.
Language: German.
Publication Date: 1978.
Summary: This frantic, feverish narrative jumps back and forth in time and introduces Berta, a young woman who gets pregnant by a German music teacher who then dies in the Second World War, leaving Wilhelm, his best friend, to marry her instead. As Berta gives birth to her children, neither of whom have much wit or will to survive, her unhappiness and fears begin to weigh down on her, as her precarious and fragile mental state wavers and slips. In the present day, as Wilhelm is preparing to marry Berta's best friend, the narrative illuminates a shocking act of violence that permanently changes the course of the all characters' lives.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ Wilhelm's smile told Johannes Mueller-Rickenberg that Wilhelm was meek and a little dumb, but also discreet, and that in his work as a chauffeur and Come-hither-boy he was quick, agile, and dependable. It reminded Johannes Mueller-Rickenberg that he could be sure of his Wilhelm seeing both everything and nothing, hearing both everything and nothing, understanding everything and grasping nothing. In a nutshell: Wilhelm was a storybook chauffeur and ideal Come-hither-boy. It was to reinforce this image of himself, in the eyes of Johannes, that Wilhelm's smile was cultivated. He knew just when to sneak a pinch of acquiescence into the recipe and when to leaven his stupidity with a dose of wit, knew when and in what place and under which circumstances his smile should suggest presence of mind, how his smile should corroborate for this or that passenger what the passenger already knew. He had a skeptical smile, a brooding smile, a sly smile, a moronic smile and a shrewd smile, a clear-eyed and a purblind, a dutiful smile, the smile of a deferential and devoted spirit, as well as the smile of an obstreperous spirit prone to criticizing everything, and then yet another that was never indelicate or frank, always "on-the-one-hand... on-the-other," already ready to let one or another nuance recede, dwindle, or simply vanish. Nor was the pursuit of his bonus the sole motive for Wilhelm's really quite cunning talent for smiling. His thoughts were already inclined by nature to "ifs" and "buts," to "it merits consideration" and "in view of the circumstances," to "on the one hand, when you consider" and "on the other hand, you have to bear in mind," and this reticence enriched the vast range of his smiles. He believed all and nothing, doubted all and nothing, was a born dreamer who never dreamed. In a nutshell: he was a worthy representative of his nation.
♥ Basking in the glow of this blessing, Berta would murmur to herself at short intervals the lesson she had drawn from life: "A man, a word, and then you're lost."
♥ Wilhelm squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and stared at Wilhelmine, feeling a prisoner to his destiny.
♥ He'd grasp for breath, feel the heavy beat of his heart, which struck him as strangely irregular. It galloped like a startled racehorse, and he thought for a moment it would leap from his ribcage unless he kept his hand firmly pressed over the obstinate beast; if not, he would lose his best racehorse-his only racehorse, as it happened, so that its loss would be existentially catastrophic.
And yet no sooner had he managed to calm himself through this downward pressure of his hand than his heart would begin decelerating, beating slower and slower until it was barely detectable, and then, it seemed, vanishing completely.
At this stage of Wilhelm's valiant struggles to stave off death, his wife would generally rouse herself and express her opinion on the matter, a bit impatiently, though not without a certain kindness: "Look, it's not complicated. It's the humidity, that's all. Wait for the rain to come, then you'll feel all better. You're not going to die every time."
Die: that was the operative word.
Wilhelm's teeth began to chatter, his body to tremble; even the springs in their marriage bed started to quiver, and hefty Wilhelmine was rocked back and forth, just like a boat over choppy waves-as she noted to herself, with less bewilderment than irritation. She snatched at the small lamp on her nightstand, determined once and for all to snuff the life out of Wilhelm's ridiculous fears. And indeed, as soon as the room was filled with the lamp's soft half-light, Wilhelm left off with his chattering and trembling.
♥ Regarding his own profession, however: one passenger, the poet Fonderstrassn, had once waxed so lyrical in his praises of Wilhelm that the chauffeur felt duty-bound to put a damper on his enthusiasm.
"Maestro! Maestro! Don't offend a chauffeur! I'll admit that there may indeed be some artistic skill to driving through the fog, to recognizing a stag for a stag and not some stick of the mind, some phantom seen through windshield wipers that a driver might ignore or not, as he likes, without suffering any damage... That much I'll give you wholeheartedly! But sir, don't scatter your genius at the feet of such triviality. Your eloquence is, if I may venture a most deferential criticism, too lofty for a chauffeur's quite inconsequential duties. Only great men, men of significance, men struggling with complicated, contradictory, nay, tragic intrigues-that is what should inspire you, that is what makes you a maestro. Not a little, undistinguished man, a nobody, a faceless, colorless Come-hither-boy... a simple chauffeur."
♥ Thrice she made the sign of the cross with her right hand, staring straight at the grating over the window, thrice more made the sign of the cross staring straight into the bars of the cage, and then turned back to Berta: "Life, so say the wise, appears incurable."
♥ The newness of the sound remained new, and it raised gooseflesh up and down Viktoria's spine. Eulalia's body began to rock back and forth, faster and faster, and her guilty conscience overwhelmed her to temper her tears, she kept glancing at the cage, beseechingly, and this helped her to banish her sickness back inside her body. Eulalia felt the old need, so long in abeyance, but now vital, even urgent, for self-recrimination, to still the gods' wrath and arrive at some insight capable of striking a decisive blow against her illness.
"Eulalia, Eulalia, behave yourself. Eulalia. Eulalia. Don't take more blame on your shoulders. Eulalia. Eulalia. It's just your disease. You can't give in. Eulalia. Eulalia. Speak the words that will banish your sickness. Speak them yourself, or else let the gods speak them. Eulalia, Eulalia. Everything is fine. What's trying to come out of you isn't you, Eulalia. No. It's the sickness. Eulalia. Eulalia."
It seemed the Wise Little Mother had successfully initiated a general rebellion against life-which just today had wormed its way with such shameful presumption into Ward 66.
♥ Wilhelm looked down at his right hand and concluded he had five fingers on it, and the same for the other one too: not three, seven, or twelve. This somehow impressed and emboldened him a great deal; he almost felt himself the sort of man who could face life's ups and downs without fear.
♥ Keeping it safe will be an almost impossible task! To accomplish it will require constant attention and watchfulness and great cleverness too-for the man who makes light of what he's won is never able to defend it, and the man who doesn't know how to defend what he's won will lose far more than just his treasure!"
♥ Berta contemplated the boy's profile. Rudolf drowsed, the corner of his mouth tending softly downward. She didn't need to lean over to know that the other corner of his mouth was likewise tending downward and that two steep wrinkles of displeasure were etched between his brows, and this knowledge triggered the same sensation that always beset her in late autumn, when she would lose herself staring at the barren branches of the trees that writhed so strangely toward the heavens, giving an impression of such extraordinary muteness that even the din of the city seemed to die away, and she would strain her ears, then, listening only for a scream. A scream always bored into Berta like a bark beetle through wood before finally, freed from the clutches of decay and death, it would echo off into the sky. Berta was afraid of late autumn, which she used to call the leafless season, and felt relieved, in a certain way heartened, when the first snowfall came, bringing with it the perennial hope that the bare branches, writhing strangely heavenward, would soon be covered by a blanket of ice.
♥ ..a painting with a ponderous gilded frame: the Madonna with the Christ child. The Madonna's face had long troubled Berta. In all the time she'd looked at it, not a single wrinkle had ever crossed the Madonna's face. Why should it be free from even the slightest trace of life's hands, their pounding and molding? The Madonna seemed untouched by those thick fingers, their rolling, pressing, flattening-untouched, that is, by daily life, by the weight of the earth itself, or by the weight of those circumstances that Berta referred to, simply, as life as such.
"Inwardness. Inwardness is what eludes me. I'm too caught up in the world, too concerned with surfaces..." Thus Berta often rebuked herself, and frequently and sincerely tormented herself, trying to get at something, the thing she could never quite reach, the truly inward gaze.
♥ The giddy thaw of youth was still on Berta's face, the belief that the present is always the best time to spread your arms wide and embrace the whole world, all at once, as best you can.
♥ The next morning, the thirty-three-year-old bachelor with an irascible character, who had so passionately deflowered the twenty-two-year-old neighbor girl Berta Faust, promised himself he would make sure that-as soon as this nightmarish war was over-the broodingly shy Berta with the vast astonishment in her eyes would get a man with Alban Bergian faithfulness and Beethovenesque vigor.
♥ The likeness really was astounding. When Little Berta slept, she was the perfect image of the Madonna.
"When she's asleep, you know, she's not so caught up in the world, so concerned with the surface of things. The stamping and molding hands of life, the rolling, pressing, and flattening fingers-the weight of things, life as such, it can't hurt her so long as she's asleep. It's that simple. Sleep startles everything away. Everything and everyone."
.."When Berta sleeps, she looks just like our Madonna. Not just outwardly, not just superficially. It is the inward gaze of sleep. It's what silence does for her," she murmured to herself.
♥ "We don't raise our voices, Rudolf. One doesn't raise one's voice. People who raise their voices often have something to hide. People who raise their voices are often in the wrong and that's why they yell so loudly."
♥ Little Berta looked at her mother, full of reproach, threw back her head, stomped one foot, and said, "You're not right in the head!" And she added, her features twisting into a grimace: "Everyone knows it. Aunt Wilhelmine knows it, and Papa knows it, and me, I know it too!" Little Berta stuck her tongue out at her mother, and the hate from her eyes collided with Berta's despair. Little Berta threw the kitchen door open and slammed it closed over and over. And Berta winced each time, as though someone were lashing her with a whip. This loud, portentous exit served its purpose. Berta did not dare follow her children into the bedroom.
♥ That evening Berta decided, without a single "on-the-one-hand" or "on-the-other," no longer to dole out further lessons to her children about the weight of things. Instead, she would try to introduce them to life as such through stories she would invent more or less from scratch and tell them night after night, and Berta Schrei was a good storyteller, at least at these moments. She would tell these stories of her own invention-they hardly ever had happy endings-and then she would wait an hour, two hours, three. After the third she felt secure in her hope that the weight of things had given up its pursuit of her children, and that Rudolf and Little Berta, ferried over now to the realm of dreams, were safe and sound, far from the grasp of the wrenching and molding hands of life.
"That's all it is. The three of us are just too caught up in the world, too superficial, somehow. What we lack is inwardness, a belief in ourselves."
♥ Ferdinand Wolf nodded knowingly and said, "So it is, Mrs. Schrei my dear, so it is. If you keep your eyes open and have a bit of common sense, the improbable becomes probable."
♥ Rudolf yelled down from the cross, "But I'm not a bad person!"
And the headless ones answered him in a chorus, "You are good for nothing."
The people put on their helmets, now they had heads again, only one still stood there headless, then stepped forward and pointed at the sun, saying, "It is done. The sun is at its zenith," and then it threw its helmet on Berta's grave, and a tremor bore through Rudolf's body like a bark beetle through the wood. But the scream that Berta always waited for in the leafless season, that one definitive scream, never came.
And Berta Schrei shouted for her son, and a ghastly thousandfold echo rang out of the earth, and the mass of people, already dissolving, scattered in all directions, with each person running for dear life. Voiceless Berta shouted down the hurricane-like storm that seemed to have driven, in a matter of seconds, grayish black banks of clouds from all four corners of the earth to gather above the cross where Rudolf was hanging.
When the clouds burst and the rain began to lash down, everyone had already fled into their homes and hovels, and Berta's cry told them that Rudolf's life had slipped away. His head hung down, and the hard rain battered shut the lid of Berta's coffin, which had finally, momentarily, come open. Berta knew she had died before she'd been able to shelter Rudolf from the terrible weight of things.
♥ "So. So," said Little Berta, and grinned maliciously; but then she hunched over and shivered with an overwhelming sense of defeat. Rudolf rose up from his corner, walked stiffly over to Little Berta, patted her shoulders, awkwardly caressed her hair, looked down at his sister with the expert eye of a specialist-for he was a specialist in the matter of defeat-and said, "Don't take it like that. You get used to it." A moment later, the little boy, the specialist in matters of defeat, crashed past his mother and out of the bedroom. He ran through the living room and off down the hallway.
He was truly frantic. At that time of year, diarrhea permeated his day-to-day life as breathing permeates prayer
♥ And though she had been yearning for weeks now for Wilhelm's return, with ever-mounting intensity, yet she had also thought it better not to mention her yearning.
Instead, she set down the receiver each time hoping quietly that Wilhelm might come home soon, and that he would be able to explain to Little Berta how her transfer at school was of hardly any significance in her life to come, and to explain to her-to Berta-how to help her children put up with their benighted existence, and how she herself might maneuver through the leafless season that was ineluctably approaching.
♥ Rudolf patted his sister several times one the back and said, "Nothing can kill the gravedigger-he always keeps his word. When he says he's coming home from the war, then he'll come. And you know why?"
His sister, bored, answered, "Of course!"
"Then say it! Say it, if you know why!"
Little Berta, insulted, remained silent. Berta answered in her stead: "Because I'm a gravedigger. And we must have gravediggers if order is to be kept. That means I have no choice but to survive. It may be I'm the last one who still knows this craft! What happens to a craft when none of its masters return from the front?"
♥ ..and Berta thought how very close she and her children had become over those past three days. She didn't know exactly why, but somehow it seemed right to stay up through the rest of the night. Either to avoid the nightmares, or to sift through her own life and the lives of her children.
Maybe it was all of those things, maybe none of them.
♥ He laughed, pleased with both himself and the circumstances, and just then, his eyes fell on the blue envelope on the table.
"I have brought my cursed creations to an end. Your Berta, who loves you."
He read and smiled, read again and smiled again. At first he didn't understand, nor would he manage to understand later, when every trace of Berta Schrei had been struck from his life, and his children were lying the ground.
It wasn't until the second year following these events that the notion gradually dawned on him that the Earth's shadow wasn't simply passing him by, like a dream; that the Earth was a place he could make his home. He arrived somehow at the sense that he was a fully fledged resident of the Earth, and beyond that, the son of a nation, and not just of any nation, but the Isle of the Blessed.
It was with the aid of this feeling, as vague as it was pervasive, that he managed eventually to accept that, at a given moment in his life, a person existed who was capable of anesthetizing her children with sleeping pills and strangling them with her bare hands, only to fall on a butcher knife afterward with all her weight. It came to light that what she'd supposed to lie behind her left breast was instead concealed behind her right: a medical rarity. This circumstance assisted the doctors, who did still want to do their best to save this person's life.
And in fact Wilhelm could just manage to accept it, so long as he allowed the events before the leafless season in 1958 to remain for him as shadowy and ghostly as the war years.
Much later, when he heard Wilhelmine's decisive proviso to the proposal he'd never actually made-"If you want to marry me, then it must be on January 13th"-he understood, then, it was time to ask for Wilhelmine's hand.
Somehow, it was Wilhelmine's insistence on that date that restored to him the reality of that person, aforementioned, and she recovered her proper name, Berta.
♥ And when the elder Berta saw that Little Berta, as she lay there still, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Madonna from the painting, even though she'd finally been salvaged from the molding hands of life, she understood then that her delusion, founded on the casual resemblance of an image and a face, had been dispelled the moment it was carried out, and that reality was now spiraling into absurdity. Rudolf looked nothing like the Christ child either.
Berta Schrei roared at the Madonna and the Christ child. Her yearning for an ideal, her wish to shelter Little Berta and Rudolf from the weight of things, had ended in a madwoman's double murder and her own failed suicide.
♥ Rudolf brushed off his objection. The gesture was curt, but brimming with contempt. "Go tell Goebbels that. Maybe he'll see the contradiction between making babies and waging war... You'll never be a proper soldier, you know. You can't use logic to win a game of chance. Not your kind of logic, in any case!" Private First Class Rudolf began to pontificate as if he were once again Music Teacher Rudolf, in the days when he'd pronounced upon the arcana of harmony before his students' baffled eyes: "The front has its own logic, and it's as simple as can be. Them or us. Period. If a single one of them is left, that's one too many. Whoever grasps that has grasped the essence of the matter. Do you see, Wilhelm? This is the secret of politics by other means." And Rudolf chucked his friend on the chin, snickered, and concluded, with something that nearly resembled mirth: "No, you'll never grasp that. You could never understand a thing like that.
Wilhelm answered gently, "If I understood it, I would stop it."
At this new instance of Wilhelmish logic, Rudolf cackled and threw back his head.
"That is what I would do. If it had a logic, I mean. Because in that case, a person could stop it by being logical. That seems reasonable," Wilhelm continued.
Now it was Rudolf who patted Wilhelm's thigh: "You clearly think madness has no logic. But that's a decisive misapprehension! Everything has its logic. Everything."
♥ "Be patient with me. I'm learning. Believe me, I really am," he objected, and Berta simply smiled.
This smile he attributed to whimsy rather than contempt. And with time, Berta managed to convince him that she wouldn't trade him for any man in the world. Not even for the best fiddle player.
♥ The a-man-a-word-and-then-you're-lost Berta had really believed that the only thing she needed was to get the Madonna necklace back from the fortress depository, after which she'd be able to figure out whether or not the molding hands of life had played a filthy trick on her. Or perhaps she simply needed the Madonna trinket as a barrier to shield her from what she'd seen as she carried out her deed.
But even once she had it, a-man-a-word-and-then-you're-lost Berta had still never mastered the inwardly turned gaze she had believed was her only means of finally triumphing over the molding hands of life. Only when she hung her Madonna around Wilhelmine's neck did her doubting and brooding compulsion fall away from her like withered autumn leaves, and then she understood that she had lost, and that life, with its molding hands, the weight of things, had won. Was the longing still there, and the burning silence? Giggling Berta's inward haze gave no indication one way or the other. Only on occasion did the thing the old woman called the wound of life still flare up in Berta's eyes.
♥ On January 14, 1963, the Wise Little Mother stood witness to Berta's final deliverance, a responsibility the old woman accepted with great solemnity.
On January 14, 1963, Berta washed the man, the word, and all her lostness out of her life. This is according to the words of the old woman who watched her do it.
Berta stood at the sink and washed herself slowly and deliberately. Then a-man-a-word-and-then-you're-lost Berta swam down the drain with the sweat from yesterday's nightmare and into the fortress's sewers.
"This is your awakening, Berta dear, a blessing from our fortress. Here is where you sweat out life, that awful dream. Isn't that true, Berta dear? That life is no more than an awful dream?"