20
Tuesday,
August 25, 1970
Timewise, he did not get much sleep that
night. But the spells of sleep that he had, between love acts that ranged from
tender to frenetic, had been so deep and peaceful that when he woke up he felt,
at last, fully rested. It was almost half past seven, and Brigitte lay beside
him, awake, with that smile of satisfaction that she usually had on mornings
like this.
Shalom, she said to
him, laughing. He kissed her and said, Good morning. I know where I am.
You have some more to tell
me, she said. For example, what did Tzvi say to you before you punched him?
Are you ready for this? He
said that they he meant the Mossad had originally planned that the girl
named Ora would seduce me before telling me that she was my daughter.
Thats fabulous! She
laughed again. Worthy of James Bond! Did he say why they changed their plan?
I never gave him the
chance.
Too bad!
I think I know. They, or at
least she, understood that I wouldnt go for it.
Why not? Her question
surprised him
Well
because Im married to
you.
Nonsense.
What did she mean? What do
you mean, nonsense?
I mean that youre talking
nonsense. It doesnt matter that youre married, to me or anyone else, in such
a situation.
What in the world was she
telling him? All he could thing of saying was, Thats what Nili said to me, in
so many words.
Nili? Do you mean the real
Nili?
Yes. She actually tried to
seduce me, and when I told her that I am married, she said that to most men
that wouldnt matter.
Were you tempted?
What do you mean? We have
always been true to each other.
True yes. We havent lied
to each other.
I mean, we havent cheated
on each other.
She turned her blue eyes on
him with an intensity that he had not seen before. He felt something that was
almost like fear.
We havent deceived each
other, or at least I havent deceived you. I havent told you anything that
wasnt true. But if you mean having sex with other people
Yes, he said slowly,
thats what I mean.
She spoke even more slowly.
I am an actress, and I have had sex with every leading man I have ever been
with.
He wasnt sure what he was
hearing. Am I dreaming? Who is this woman?
You mean, metaphorically,
while doing it with me? he tried.
That too. But also with
them, physically.
In bed?
Sometimes in a bed, she
laughed. Sometimes on a sofa in the dressing room, or in an armchair, or
standing up.
With every one?
Yes, with every one. Had
there been an exception, I would not have forgotten.
He was silent, feeling
stunned.
Even
he began.
Theres no need for names.
Every one, even the ones who, in their private lives, are homosexual.
Of course, he thought. Why
should there have been any exceptions? What guy in his right mind, or even out
of it, would pass up a chance to get his prick inside Brigitte Wilner?
But I do need a name, he
said. Just one.
Of course. Helmut. Yes, at
the very beginning of the work on Goose-Liesel, just after hed been
hired, before you two had even met.
He was silent again.
Let me explain, she went on. Ive never loved anyone but you.
Ive never sought sexual satisfaction with anyone but you. And since Ive been
with you steadily, Ive never had what one could call an affair. Almost always,
it was just once; occasionally twice, and very rarely three times. My only
purpose is to get to know my fellow actors if and only if I am romantically
involved with them in the script in their sexual aspect.
So youve been true to
me, darling, in your fashion? he said in English, an ironic edge in his
voice.
Exactly, she said, ignoring
the irony though certainly not unaware of it. Thats why its my favorite
song.
Was she being ironic in turn?
He took a deep breath, then
another. This is going to be a conversation after all, he thought.
Do you have orgasms? he
asked, and sensed the tone of his question becoming that of an interviewing
journalist. The sensation made him relax a little.
I may or may not, she
answered in kind. Sometimes I cant help it, but it doesnt matter. And I tend
to be rather passive in these situations, she added with a smile as she began
to stroke his thigh, which is not like the Brigitte that you know.
Miki tensed again.
Involuntarily, he pushed her hand away as he took yet another breath. He was
suddenly struck by a thought.
You know, the mysterious
bleeding that you had five years ago
he began.
I know, she interjected.
Dr. Severs made the initial mistake of being too
too discreet with me.
Finally, after all the months of inconclusive tests, he had a frank talk with
me, and then I told him. He then knew exactly what to do, and after five months
I was fine.
And youve continued doing
it? he asked incredulously.
Yes, but always with a
condom, she said matter-of-factly, and smiled. Any other questions?
He thought for a moment.
When did it all begin? he asked.
The first summer that I was
in Norderney. You were in Israel. I didnt know if I was ever going to see you
again. The actor who played the Traveler in The Jews was supposed to be
a Jew, he was young, he even looked a little like you, and I really fantasized
that I was with you. The one who played Harras in The Devils General
was older, almost forty, and I thought it would be interesting to see how it
would be with someone like that.
Was it
interesting?
Yes. It made it so that,
when I was back at school, I wasnt interested in any of the boys. Besides, I
never stopped thinking about you. But then the next year in Norderney the same
actor was there as Tellheim, and it was quite natural to do it again. That, by
the way, was my last affair, she said, emphasizing the last word. And then
you came back.
And then?
We were together in Bad
Harzburg, and of course there was no one but you. But then, in Hanover, I was
doing the Romeo and Juliet scene, and the teacher criticized us for not
having what in English was called chemistry. After class my Romeo walked
me home and along the way he said, Maybe some biology would help the
chemistry, and I agreed on the spur of the moment. When we did the scene the
next day, it was so much better that I didnt feel the least bit guilty. You
saw the scene.
Yes, he said, it was
good.
Then, in the second Minna,
you told me that I had no rapport with Tellheim. That was the night before you
went to Canada
Yes, I know
And when I was with you that
night, I pretended that I was with him, and I told you so.
Yes.
That, by the way, she
smiled so as to acknowledge the repeated by the way was the first time
that I did that. But the next evening I imagined that you were on the Berlin
It was still called the
Gripsholm, he corrected her gently.
On the Gripsholm, flirting
with some girl, so I decided to flirt with my leading man offstage. And it
worked we had fabulous reviews. I have done it ever since. Its become the
most natural thing in the world.
Youve never told me.
Its part of my work. You
could say that its part of my rehearsal technique. Just as I start smoking for
practice when Im going to portray someone who smokes. I havent discussed
technical aspects of my work with you, ever since you told me, a long time ago,
that you didnt want to know how sausage was made. She smiled broadly, as if
to show that she knew that what he had said had been a joke.
He reflected her smile with
one of his own. But
but you must have known that I would feel differently
about this.
Of course. Thats why I
havent told you, because, with all of your philosophy, I wasnt sure that you
would understand. But I also knew that I would never lie to you if you ever
brought it up. I knew the time would come; I just didnt know when. And I feel
relieved of a burden.
Good for you, he said,
trying hard not to sound bitter. And how do you think I feel?
I can imagine how you feel
thats my profession, imagining how people feel but Id rather not. You
probably dont know it yourself yet. When youre ready to tell me how you feel,
then youll tell me.
I can tell you something
right now. Its going to be very difficult living with this knowledge, after
seventeen years almost half of my life of believing that we were faithful
to each other, in the vulgar sense of fidelity. Let me speak as a philosopher:
the problem is not an ethical one, but an epistemological one. The baffled
look on her beautiful face made him laugh.
She laughed too. Youre very
funny, my darling, she said, and kissed him lightly. She got out of bed,
saying, We have a train to catch, remember? And then Im going on to Paris. I
have to get ready. She left the bedroom in the direction of her dressing room.
He heard Frau Schmidts footsteps as she climbed the stairs to assist Brigitte.
He had not meant to be funny.
He had used the technical language of philosophy to her before, and she knew
what the terms meant.
He needed to think clearly,
and therefore to clear his mind. And the best way would be if he drove to
Göttingen, instead of going by train. It would take him longer well over
three hours, even longer with stops than if he were to take the
Frankfurt-bound express and have lunch in the dining car. But he did not want
Brigittes company the first time that he could remember ever feeling that
and, if he took a different train from hers, he might be distracted by reading
or conversation with fellow passengers. No, he needed to think, and to be
alone.
Brigitte! he called out.
Yes? the muffled voice came
back, as melodious as ever.
I wont be taking the train
with you. I will take my car.
Are you sure?
Yes.
All right, then.
He wondered for a moment
whether to offer to drive her to the Altona station, as he had done so many
times, but he remembered that NDR was sending a chauffeured car that would take
her there, and that he would have ridden with her. The car was due at 10:20, in
order to get her to the station in time for the train that left a little after
eleven.
It looked as if she would not
be ready much before the arrival of the car. They might as well leave around
the same time.
She came out of her dressing
room, looking like her film-star self, followed by Frau Schmidt, who then went
downstairs. He had, of course, seen his wife in this guise many times before,
and always felt a twinge of a feeling of detachment, as though this were not
really the woman that he was married to. He had always dismissed that feeling,
but this time he let it linger, and it led to another question in his mind,
this one ontological: Was Brigitte his wife, who happened to have become a film
star, or was she, by this time, a film star who happened to be his wife? If
someone had put such a question to him in the past, he would have dismissed it
as senseless, since Brigitte was a woman who simply was both of those things.
But this time he felt that he didnt know who she really was.
Youre looking beautiful,
he said. You look just like Brigitte Wilner.
Ive been told that before,
she said with a straight face. Is she an actress or something?
Im not sure, he said,
looking at her intently.
You should find out more
about her.
Is there more to find out?
The banter was beginning to feel like a scene from one of her films. Perhaps he
should become a screenwriter.
Theres always more to find
out. Dont you think so, Herr Doktor Wilner?
Sometimes. Other times I
feel that its of no use. Ignoramus, ignorabimus.
Dont you remember? she
said sweetly. I didnt take Latin.
We do not know, we shall not
know.
Frau Schmidts voice came up
the stairway. The car is here, Frau Wilner.
She gave him an abrupt,
extended, passionate kiss and started down the stairs without a word. Only when
she was halfway down did she call Good-bye!
He returned the good-bye in a
stage whisper, packed for two nights and went downstairs and out of the house
to get into his car.
As he drove through the
Blankenese business district, the open signs on the doors and in the windows
of the shops reminded him of the talk about open marriage during his American
book tour the previous year. He now realized that, unbeknownst to him, his had
been an open marriage all along, but open only on one side.
What if it had been open on
both sides? And even the four years before marriage, when he already felt
committed to her for life?
He thought back to the
Gripsholm. He had never told Brigitte about Louise, the French Canadian girl who
had so openly flirted with him, and whose seduction he had so resolutely
resisted. But a woman, and especially one like Brigitte who studied human
nature for a living, would sense that such things happen.
Leaping sixteen years to the
preceding Friday, he thought of Nili. If, during all these years, he was, in
some dim unexplored corner of his soul, spiritually unfaithful to Brigitte, it
was with Nili. Now there she was, offering herself to him again. And he turned
her down, on the basis of his illusory notion of what his marriage was.
For three days he had carried
an illusion of being a father. For fourteen years, that of being a husband in a
perfect marriage.
But how could he say that it
had not been perfect? He and Brigitte satisfied each other in every way, sex
included. There was no reason not to believe her when she said that she sought
no satisfaction with anyone but him.
Or was there? Perhaps
Brigittes artistic motivation might be a mere excuse, a mere cover for her
for her what? Nymphomania?
Now, if he had had
extramarital sex, what would his excuse have been? There would have been none;
it would have been motivated only by lust. Armed with the knowledge of
Brigittes activities, he would have allowed his normal male lust to come to
the surface instead of hiding it behind the image of the ideal marriage that he
himself had painted.
No matter. From now on, if
his marriage is to survive, the extramarital sex will have to be shared evenly.
Perhaps that very evening he could pick up some girl or young woman in
Göttingen. True, in August not many students would be there, but there were
foreign students attending summer courses, there were secretaries, there were
laboratory assistants. After all, the sexual revolution had been rampant over
the past decade, and he had been merely a passive observer.
As he entered the Elbe
Tunnel, the radio, which had been playing Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue,
went silent. The combination of silence and darkness abruptly changed his train
of thought, making it veer from his marriage to his experiences over the past
two weeks.
He had reconnected, in
various ways, with three important personages of his youth: Hanna, Nili and
Tzvi.
He had, in all likelihood,
killed Tzvi, or at least been a cause (perhaps even proximate) of his death.
He had been ensnared in a
plot that was unbelievable both in its sophistication and its clumsiness.
Sophisticated in concept, clumsy in execution. How Jewish, he thought again. The
concept is a product of someones ego, but the execution requires teamwork, and
a Jew, typically, will not subordinate his ego to the team or the community.
And not only a male Jew: Rosa Luxemburg, Golda Meir
He emerged from the tunnel,
and the sudden reappearance of daylight and music stopped his thoughts dead in
their tracks. He managed to hear the final strains of the music. The recording
had been by Leonard Bernstein, playing the piano and conducting. He had once
seen Bernstein do this, on tour with the New York Philharmonic, but it was in
Ravels Concerto in G, and he remembered Bernstein playing the opening
arpeggios just a decibel too loud, enough to drown out the piccolos playing of
the main theme. Another example of Jewish ego, he thought.
The eleven oclock news was
on, and he did not pay much attention to it until an item from Paris came on.
The French television system
ORTF has announced that a new series, coproduced with ARD, will be aired,
starting at the end of September, in both French and German versions, in
France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The series will
be titled The Terror, and the subject will be the French Revolution. The
German actress Brigitte Wilner will interpret the Austrian-born queen Marie
Antoinette, while the part of Louis
He abruptly turned the radio
off. He did not, at that moment, want to know the name of the next man that his
wife would sleep with.
Then he remembered that, on
that day in Norderney, she had told him that his next impersonation would be of
a man named Axel. Of course: Axel von Fersen, Marie Antoinettes Swedish lover.
He wondered how it was that
Brigitte got the part, and not Romy Schneider, who was already working in
France.
He also wondered if it had
been prearranged that the French made their announcement ahead of the Germans,
or if it was a case of what the English called one-upmanship. Perhaps
the French were the primary participants in the project, and therefore had the
right to make the announcement first. He had heard from Brigitte about the
complex politics of coproduction.
He speculated that a
German-French coproduction about French history was, this time, made possible
by the fact that De Gaulle was no longer president.
He further speculated about
the actor whose name he had cut off. If the reference was to Louis XVI, then in
all likelihood he was French. Michel Piccoli? Jean-Pierre Cassel?
For Fersen, it could be
anyone handsome enough, and of more or less the right age: Horst Buchholz,
Terence Stamp, Max von Sydow
He realized that, like a
mythological character who was condemned forever to carry a burden, he would,
from that day on, never be able to see an actor who had played opposite
Brigitte without imagining him fucking her.
Could his marriage survive
under such a burden? Can this marriage be saved?
He turned the radio back on.
The music was back, a concerto grosso by some Baroque composer whom he did not
recognize.
He saw the sign for the
Soltau South exit coming up in ten kilometers, and he decided that he would not
take the autobahn all the way to Göttingen. He would avoid the traffic
congestion of greater Hanover by taking the old highway, of the kind that was
now called a federal highway but that people still called Reich highway, by way
of Celle, past Hildesheim. It was a pretty road, wending its way through the
greenery of the Lüneburg Heath. Perhaps he would stop for lunch in Celle, in
one of the cafés on the Markt.
Can my marriage survive? he
asked himself again. Or, better yet, can I survive, my integrity intact, in
such a marriage? Can I reconcile myself to having been deluded for half of my
life, and go on as Brigittes husband?
What was the alternative?
Divorce, of course. Many people he knew were divorced. Margot and Helmut
(Helmut, who had acted opposite Brigitte!), for example, were both divorced
from their first spouses. And in her circle of show people, Brigitte, who was
still with the man who was not only her first husband but had been her
high-school boyfriend, was an absolute anomaly.
Divorce meant possible
remarriage and, for him, possible fatherhood. He finally admitted to himself
the mixed feelings he had experienced when he realized that the girl named Ora
was not his daughter. There was relief, to be sure, but with a tinge one that
he immediately suppressed of regret.
Remarriage! The mere
possibility of the thought startled him. And then a strange afterthought
followed: perhaps to a Jewess!
Suddenly, as he began to veer
off for the exit, the cluster of thoughts swirling in his mind was invaded by
one that came, cometlike, from an unexpected direction.
Perhaps Tzvi was not dead.
Perhaps, knowing his weakened
state, he had decided to lie face down in the water while holding his breath,
as he had no doubt been trained to do, and to wait until Miki left.
If that was the case, how
likely was Tzvi to tell his colleagues about Mikis unexpected appearance? Not
very. But would he concoct another plot against Miki, this time with yet
another motive for revenge? Quite likely.
But it would have to be
different: in all likelihood he would have to do it on his own, without the
resources of the Mossad. Otherwise he would have to admit to his superiors that
his scheme to entrap Miki was a failure.
When he got to Göttingen, he
decided, he would try to call Nili from his hotel room and ask her if she had
heard any news reports in Israel that might shed some light on the matter.
It would be nice to talk to Nili again. And,
some time in the future, it would be nice to see her again. In fact, it would
be only when he saw her in person that he could tell her what he had done.
Perhaps they could spend a
few days together in Cyprus.
A road sign announced 15
kilometers to Bergen. This meant that he would soon be passing very near the
Bergen-Belsen memorial site.
The reminder of the camp
where he was liberated propelled his thoughts in a backward direction, all the
way to the war, to his parents and his little sister Miriam, to Axel Hemme
Now that he had proved his
mettle as an undercover investigator, perhaps he could start a search for the
real Axel Hemme.
But the memory of his
liberation suddenly made him aware that, as filled with uncertainties as his
mind was, he was not experiencing any anxiety as a result. He felt as though he
had just undergone another liberation.
The sign for the
Bergen-Belsen turnoff was coming into view. It will be fitting, he told
himself, to make a stop there.
He was a survivor, and it was
the place of his liberation.
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