Blog IV: “A Difficult Reconciliation” (Short Story Part II)
This is part II of the short story. For part I, see my previous blog post.
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[…] Thomas tried to get back to sleep, closing his eyes while listening to the noises around him. For a brief moment, he heard the engine of a distant car, then there was only the ticking of his alarm clock and Katja’s quiet breathing. After lying for half an hour on his back without falling asleep, he decided to get up. He grabbed his morning coat and walked to his study. Why am I so terribly exhausted? he thought, why am I unable to make a decision? All he conceded was that things could not go on as they were. There was a crisis, a much more serious crisis than he had realized when he read her last letter for the first time. He turned the desk lamp on and sat down gazing at her letter right in front of him. He put it aside, opening instead his folder with notes for the new novel. There was a chapter outline, still incomplete but enough to guide him through the early chapters, the composer’s youth, his first contact with music in the small German town for which he had already chosen the name Kaisersaschern. There were notes on the narrator, who was supposed to be a close friend of the main character, a schoolteacher and humanist.
He had hoped that studying the notes would get him away from Agnes and her letter. Instead, it got him right back to the core of the problem, his own problem, the question of the artist, his role and public responsibility. Of course, Leverkühn, the avant-garde composer would share many characteristics with himself. The work of the artist, of his complicity with radical political movements, exclusively through the radical methods of composing, would be his complicity, while he was doing everything in his power to defeat Hitler and his German followers by writing essays and giving public speeches. Adrian’s lack of love and empathy was his own lack, his fixation on his work, how everything in his life turned into material for his writing. Not even the members of his own family were excluded. Unlike in Goethe’s Faust, there would be no good ending. He was sure of that, but how exactly the novel would end was still undecided. Right now, he had to worry about the plot line and the many characters that were part of the hero’s life, his family and his friends. There would be a patron, a distant female figure, very rich and deeply interested in Adrian Leverkühn’s compositions. At one point, Adrian would visit her estate with his friend Rudi Schwertfeger, the violinist, while she was absent. The visit was a detail he had taken from Tchaikovsky’s biography. His informed readers were allowed to recognize this detail, yet there was another level to this motif that only he understood. Frau von Tolna, Adrian’s patron also was a hidden reference to Agnes, to her generous support and her deep understanding of the artist’s work. In the novel as in real life they exchanged letters discussing his work.
Thomas closed the folder and shut his eyes. This was, he intensely felt, the true dilemma: It had become extremely difficult to eliminate her from his life, from his artistic work, not to mention his political engagement, his essays and speeches that she had skillfully translated into English. She was his American voice. Moreover, he wanted her to be the translator of the new novel. Yet he could not allow her to push him and his family around. Her repeated implied criticism of his children, especially of his oldest son, angered him. He had hoped that she would extend her generosity to Klaus’s projects, especially his new journal for which he needed money. But that had not happened. Instead, there were appalling remarks in her communications. No direct attacks but small asides about Klaus’ lack of patriotism and his failure to join the army. These remarks hurt because they touched a sensitive spot. There was not a day when he was not worried about Klaus, his life style, especially his addiction, his future as a writer in the US, although his command of English was so much better than his own. He walked back to the bedroom, calmer than an hour before. But he was not closer to a resolution of his problem. Only his fatigue had grown. After a few minutes he fell asleep.
The following morning at the breakfast table Katja casually mentioned his time in the study, thereby inviting him to talk. She had noticed that he was absent-minded. He gazed at her, while she was seemingly completely occupied with her soft-boiled egg. He took a deep breath. The moment for a serious discussion had arrived, immediately the pressure on his stomach had returned. He could try to postpone this discussion by sidestepping the issue. He could talk about the problems he had with the new project, for instance the problem of convincingly linking the biography of his composer with the fate of contemporary Germany. This was indeed the question that worried him most about the Faustus novel. Yet it was not what depressed him at this moment. Katja remained silent. She gave him time to organize his thoughts. Finally, after putting his cup down, he responded. He mentioned Agnes’s letter, but only as a fact. He left it to Katja to inquire about its content, which she did immediately. This gave him the opportunity to put the difficult case on front of her. He expected an emotional response. But she remained completely calm. He was never quite sure how she felt about Mrs. Meyer, their patron and benefactor. For a few minutes both of them were busy with their meal. While she finished her egg and buttered toast, Thomas focused his attention on his oatmeal, which he had ordered for his still sensitive stomach. Only then she told him that she wanted to see the letter. “Tom, don’t answer this letter until you are really sure about the future of the relationship,” she said in a low voice after she had read it. He just nodded signaling his agreement. Of course, she was right, an impulsive reply would only make the problems worse. But what exactly was he supposed to write?
Instead of going to his study after finishing his breakfast, he decided to take a walk by himself. He needed fresh air and the wider space of the neighborhood to think about his answer. He decided to take the dog along, who was excited when he realized that his master was venturing out. Once he opened the front door, the dog pulled him forward. It took a while until he calmed down, allowing Thomas to follow his own thoughts. It was a foggy morning with a light breeze from the West touching his face. He was still not feeling well. While the stomach pressure had almost disappeared, his neck was hurting, telling him how tight his upper body was. There would be relief only once he had made up his mind and written the reply. Until then the stiffness would only get worse. As he knew, there would be no progress on the new project until he had solved this problem. And there was no easy answer. The explosion of anger in her last letter had surprised him, but he should have been more prepared he realized now. There had been signs of unrest and negative feelings in previous letters, never very serious, the element of support and cooperation had always been the core of her communications. Obviously, he had overlooked something in her understanding of their friendship. The defense of Paul Claudel against his son’s and his own criticism was not the real reason for her anger. She expected something he did not care about, something that did not mean much to him. He remembered her visit a year ago when she insisted on meeting with him separately in the bungalow where he read to her from his most recent writings. It had been an exhilarating experience for him as well, since she was an excellent listener, but then there was this brief incident when she was seeking physical closeness. It was no more than a very brief moment, which he had written off as a lapse that has passed. Now it seemed that he had possibly underestimated the importance of the incident. Still, even if this was true, he was determined not to return to this moment. It would not be part of his letter. There were aspects of his personal life he was not willing to share with her.
When he returned from his walk he was still far away from a reply. He needed more time, possibly he had to talk with Katja again. On the way to his study he met Katja who reminded him of the letter. He invited her to follow him. At his desk he looked for the letter under the folder giving it to her with a faint smile. He expected her to read the letter right away, but she just glanced at the paper and walked away suggesting that they should talk later. He sat down at his desk determined to compose his reply. An hour later he looked at the draft and acknowledged his failure. What he saw on paper in front of him he could not possibly send. It was too confused, there was no clear argument. He had been unable to make up his mind whether to break off or to minimize the relevance of her attack and to continue their relationship. This won’t do, he thought and crumpled the paper, throwing it into the waste paper basket. He got up and walked over to the kitchen where he poured himself a glass of Selzer water. In the hall on his way back to his study he ran into Katja who was getting ready to visit his brother Heinrich who was not well. He asked her in passing whether she had read the letter. “We will talk later,” she replied on her way out without further explanation. Back at his desk, Thomas turned his attention to the project folder. He had decided to use a personal narrator, a close friend of the composer who has immediate access to the biographical material. And there would be a sharp contrast between the conservative but moderate narrator, whose first name would be Serenus, and the radical artist Adrian Leverkühn. This device would allow the author to step back and keep a distance. His narrator would offer the all-important commentary on the political development of Germany between 1900 and the present. He had already begun to work on the first chapter, narrating the childhood and youth of the hero. The tricky part was his formation as a young composer, which required musicological knowledge, and his intellectual roots in the cultural atmosphere of his time, the very late nineteenth century. There would be a detour in his education. Before Adrian became a composer, he would study theology. This would allow him to introduce Martin Luther and the legend of Doctor Faustus. He had already decided to use parts of Nietzsche’s biography to prepare Adrian’s solitary life and his status as a genius. Like Nietzsche, Adrian would infect himself with syphilis in a bordello. The bordello scene was important for other reasons as well. Here he would introduce the young woman, the temptress, to whom Adrian would return later. He still had to find a good name for her. She would make an appearance in Adrian’s compositions later. There were many details that still had to be worked out. In particular, he was worried about the musicological aspect. How can one narrate advanced modern music? He was not even sure whether he really understood the principles of modern music. He had grown up with Wagner and had put that experience into his first novel, but Schoenberg? I will need help, he thought. I will have to contact Schoenberg or the young philosopher Wiesengrund whom I met through the Horkheimers. But right now, he had to push these concerns back, he could worry about them later. He had to focus his attention on Agnes’ letter, as much as he resented it. This immediate crisis had to be resolved before he could return to his Faustus novel.
The following morning, it was the 26th of May 1943, Thomas was finally ready to compose his reply…
[End of Part II]
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