A Sad Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

I was interested, that Sibylle was presently in the capital and would probably make her way in films, and not until Beck one day spoke to me out of the blue in the art school cafeteria, did I remember the Sibylle in the picture.
    Beck was agitated. He started talking about Sibylle right away, I didn't have to ask. I was sure he was in love with her. He said: "Please don't laugh, she looks just like an angel." He had gone to see her, bringing greetings from the painter, and she had received him in an apartment that according to his description seemed to be chockablock with cushions and stuffed toys and other movie-starlet flimflam. I didn't like the sound of that, and I supposed she must be a stupid and shallow person. "No, no," Beck replied, "she's just a child!" She had received Beck in a diaphanous robe, and asked him whether she'd done her lipstick right. I had nothing more to say but felt my suspicion of her brainlessness confirmed, when I heard Beck trying to talk to her on the telephone. He picked up the receiver, dialed the number, and said: "Hello, Sibyllchen"; so that meant she was on the other end, and had answered it herself, and what ensued was a dance on coals. Beck was fumbling for words, tried to start up a conversation [just to hear the sound of her voice], but every new topic foundered on her monosyllabic replies.
    "It's impossible to talk to her," I observed. "I mean, you can tell; she's nothing but a doll out of a fashion review, an empty-headed creature, and her idea of conversation is some cocktail bar chitchat about the latest cut of the shoulder, or at the most, some matinée idol, and she only talks to well-dressed younger sons of aristos, pimps, or film extras [none of which you are, Beck]." Beck denied this, and we drank wine, wine in the afternoon, though it didn't feel particularly wicked, partly because Beck was so miserable and partly because the wine was some he had brought with him from his own vineyard at home. Then it was time for me to go on to my fairy grotto, and Beck took hold of the bottle he had drunk, broke off its neck, and scrawled "I love you" on the label [Hochberger Krötenmilch], and packed the bottle in a basket and addressed it to Sibylle. He saw me to the streetcar stop on his own way to the post office.
    That night I was even more jumpy than usual at work. I had the feeling that the electricity all around was somehow getting to me, and I felt envious of Beck for his wealthy background. I wasn't as bad as I got to be later, when I saw nonexistent sparks and practically yearned for thunderous explosions, but it was certainly a feeling that I'd been warned, that I'd had some notice of the impending calamity.
    I'd no sooner gone to bed the following morning than there was a knock on the door, and Beck came into my room. He said: "My dear friend," and for a while that was all, and he walked back and forth. No apology, not a word of explanation, just that pacing to and fro, from the stove to the window, from the window to the stove. I lay there thinking I'm coming down with something. I didn't have the strength to move or to put up any fight, he could have done anything he wanted with me, I just lay still. He had something he wanted to confess, and given time he would speak, but for now he was just pacing back and forth in front of my bed, all I could see were lightbulbs and copper wire and sparks. "I've seen her," he finally said, and came to a stop. "I've seen her, I was in the Völkstheater, up in the circle, and she was sitting down in the stalls. She was with a man whom everybody greeted, he must have been a drama critic, maybe you would have known who he was, you're interested in those kind of people." That sounded hostile to me. He just tossed out that "you're interested in those kind of people" as if writing theater reviews were a contemptible activity, and as if he thought it was just about my level—when only the day before he'd had to loan me a couple of marks. Then he