The Safety Net Read Online Free PDF Page A

with what penances?What was going on in their well-kept, spacious homes, in those fashionably furnished rooms which Rolf so bitingly and so mercilessly took to pieces? With their women and housekeepers and distant cousins and God knows what, and never a thought of explaining why matters were so arranged that male virility, joy, desire, and even lust were at their peak when you couldn’t—weren’t allowed to—didn’t have enough money to—get married, and were driven to whores or “loose women,” of which Gerlind was one, and forced to that joyless “alone” that he had never liked. Where, then, were the “others,” if a Gerlind didn’t happen along, a stroke of luck, of happiness—why on earth didn’t they make saints of the Gerlinds? Again and again, ever since he had entered the confessional after the last time with Gerlind, still that sense of gloating (although much restrained) when he invited himself for coffee at Kohlschröder’s—that mixture of triumph, disgust, and sorrow as it became increasingly obvious that Kohlschröder was shacked up with this Gerta, his housekeeper, with all that that entailed both physically and psychically. It was common knowledge, wasn’t it, never denied, it was plain to see, not merely to be sensed, when he brushed her dyed red hair with his hand in passing, or when she poured him his coffee, the way their hands met when she gave him a light—there was more intimacy and naturalness in that than if they had been caught in bed together; an understanding in look and gesture, a familiarity that was as embarrassing as it was touching, the buxom, blooming forty-year-old in the denim skirt and floppy blouse, which she allowed to reveal quite a bit—nothing was left of the magic of romantic love, it was all more indecent, whorelike. It never ceased to be a shock to him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been open, if they hadn’t kept on inveighing against the moral turpitude of others and defending their lousy celibacy, and thundering about the immorality of youth and the world—Kohlschröder, anyway. This carefully cultivated disintegration, this tastefully, stylishly guarded chaos, pained him, and damn it, what did they do not to have children, surely theyhad to do something which they forbade others to do? Damn it, who confessed what to whom, and who absolved whom from what? After all, he had never, not for a second, intended to become a priest, had never taken any vow of chastity and never lusted after another man’s wife; not even Edith had been married. This carefully cultivated decay, this chaos, in the very shadow of the church, but with all that there was one thing she was good at, making coffee, Gerta was, a person it was a real pleasure to look at, gentle, with a pleasant voice, dyed red hair—yet there was something bawdy about her that he resented precisely because she wasn’t living in a bawdy house. Sometimes he dropped in anyway, uninvited, and he no longer felt any desire to gloat, all that was left was sorrow and disgust; after all, at one time something had been there that meant a lot to many people—to Sabine and Käthe a great deal, even to him, even today, much more than could be dreamed of by those who were so gracefully skimming along a course on which they had allowed millions, if not billions, to lose their footing “alone or with others.” Chaos on all sides, disintegration behind carefully rouged, stylish façades.
    He couldn’t discuss that with Käthe. She was naïve and credulous in a way that he had no wish to destroy. And anyway there was nothing to be proved. Herbert always just laughed, for him the Church was no subject for discussion, whereas for Rolf it was. Rolf was fully aware that it had molded him, one way or another, as well as Katharina and Sabine—he was more worried about her than about Käthe in this respect, how often he had wished for a lover for Sabine, a nice, uncomplicated fellow, even, if need be, a member of