Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

Malina and I, since we are so distinct, so unalike, and this isn’t a question of sex or kind, the stability of his existence and the instability of my own. Of course Malina has never lived as convulsively as I have, he’s never wasted his time on trivialities, by phoning around, letting events take over, he’s never gotten into trouble, much less spent half an hour staring at himself in the mirror only to rush off somewhere, always late, stammering excuses, perplexed by a question or embarrassed by an answer. I guess even today we don’t have much to do with one another, we put up with each other, are mutually amazed, but my amazement is curious (is Malina really ever amazed? less and less, I think), and there’s tension precisely because my presence never upsets him,

Me and Quinn

Then it seems to me that his calm comes from my ego being too familiar, too unimportant for him, as if he had rejected me as waste, a superfluous something-made-human, as if I were merely the dispensable product of his rib, but at the same time an unavoidable dark tale accompanying and hoping to supplement his own bright story, a tale that he, however, detaches and delimits. Thus I am the only one who has anything to settle, and above all I must and can explain myself, but only to him. He has nothing to settle, no, not him.

While we’re working things out so effortlessly, the carnage continues in the city — insufferable remarks, commentaries and scraps of gossip circulate in restaurants, at parties, in apartments, at the Jordans’, the Altenwyls’, the Wantschuras’ or else they’re distributed for the more needy in magazines, newspapers, in movies and books where things are discussed in such a way that they depart, retreat into themselves, and withdraw into us, and each wants to stand there naked, eager to undress the others to the bone, every secret disappears, forced open like a locked drawer, but where no secret existed nothing shall ever be found, and the helplessness increases following the break-ins, the strippings, the searches and the interrogations: there is no burning bush, nor is even the smallest light illumined, not in ecstatic delirium, not in fanatic sobriety, and the law of the world lies upon everyone, more misunderstood than ever before.

But once it does ring — and who knows what a telephone does and what its outbursts should be called? — as long as it allows me to hear his voice then it’s all the same to me whether we understand each other well, barely, or not at all due to a breakdown in the Viennese phone network, which lasts for minutes, it’s also unimportant what he has to say, so expectantly, with renewed vigor or complete fatigue: I start the conversation up again with a simple “Hello?” But Ivan doesn’t realize that, he either phones or he doesn’t phone, yes, he phones.

So Ivan doesn’t have any time, and the receiver feels like ice, not plastic, but metal, and it slides up to my temple, since I hear he’s hanging up, and I wish this sound were a shot — short, fast, so it would all be over — I don’t want Ivan to be that way today and, since he’s always that way, I wish it were the end.

Let it stay tangled. I keep the black telephone in view while I read, before going to sleep, when I place it next to the bed. Of course I could exchange it for a blue, red or white one, but it won’t ever come to that, since I won’t allow anything else in my room to change, so that nothing distracts me except Ivan, the only new thing there is, and so nothing diverts my attention from waiting, as the telephone stays still.

But I survive and think. And I’m thinking it will not be Ivan. Whatever’s ahead, it will be something different. I live in Ivan.

since a sentence doesn’t convey anything to itself, it has to “convey” something to the reader. I couldn’t “work my way through” a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading . . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn’t read and doesn’t want to, a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands such a state of innocence, really unless people are truly capable of reading they ought not to read at all.

But it’s not tomorrow yet. Before yesterday and tomorrow arrive, I have to silence them inside me. It is today. I am here and today.

This is the cemetery of the murdered daughters.

My father, I say to him who is no longer there, I wouldn’t have told anyone, I would not have betrayed you. There’s no resistance going on here.

all my teeth have fallen out, they stand in front of me as two curved mounds of marble blocks, insurmountable.

The call is from America, and I say, relieved: Hello. It’s dark, I hear crackling all around me, I’m on a lake where the ice is beginning to melt, it was the deep-deep frozen lake, and now I’m hanging in the water by the phone cord, only this cable is keeping me connected. Hello! I already know it’s my father calling me. The lake may soon be completely open, but I’m here on an island far in the water, it’s cut off, and there are no more ships. I’d like to scream into the phone: Eleonore! I want to call my sister, but at the other end of the phone can only be my father, I’m extremely cold and wait with the phone, submerging, surfacing, the connection’s still there, I can hear America well, in the water you can still phone across the water. I say quickly, gurgling, swallowing water: When are you coming, I’m here, yes, here, you know where, it’s really awful, there’s no longer any connection, I’m cut off, I’m alone, no, no more ships! And while I’m waiting for an answer, I see how gloomy the island of the sun really is, the oleanders have keeled over, the volcano is covered with ice crystals, even it is frozen, the old climate no longer exists. My father laughs into the phone. I say: I’m cut off — come here, when are you coming? He laughs and laughs, he laughs as they do in the theater, that’s where he must have learned to laugh so hideously: Hahaha. Nothing but: Hahaha. Nobody laughs like that anymore, I say, nobody laughs like that, stop it. But my father doesn’t stop his s...

Malina: It’s war. All you can have is this little intermission, nothing more. Me: Peace! Malina: There is no peace in you, not even in you. Me: Don’t say that, not today. You’re terrible. Malina: It’s war. And you are the war. You yourself. Me: Not me. Malina: We all are, you included. Me: Then I don’t want to be anymore, because I don’t want war, then put me to sleep, make it end. I want the war to end. I don’t want to hate anymore, I want . . . I want . . .

At the exit my long white gloves fall on the floor, and Malina picks them up, they fall to the floor on every step, and Malina picks them up. I say: Thank you, thank you for everything! Let them fall, says Malina, I’ll pick everything up for you.

My father is beating Melanie, then, because a large dog begins to bark in warning, he beats this dog who completely submits to his thrashing. In the same way my mother and I also allowed ourselves to be thrashed. I know that the dog is my mother, absolute submissiveness.

I contradict him quietly, no, no, I’m all he has, I start to cry because Malina has left, I don’t know what I am supposed to do anymore, I have to remove all the traces, I gather the shards from the street, with my hands I shovel all the flowers and soil into the gutter, tonight I lost Malina and Malina almost had to die tonight, both of us, Malina and myself, but this is stronger than me and my love for Malina, I will go on in denial, a light is burning in the house, my father has fallen asleep on the floor, in the middle of the devastation, everything has been laid waste, destroyed. I lie down beside my father, amid the devastation, for my place is here next to him, who is sleeping, limp, sad and old. And although it disgusts me to look at him, I must, I have to know what danger still is written in his face, I have to know where the evil originates, and I am frightened, but in a different way than usual, because the evil is in a face I do not recognize, I am crawling over to a strange man whose hands are sticky with dirt. How did I get into this, how did I fall into his power, in whose power?