The Jewish Wife

Frankfurt 1935. It is evening. A woman is packing suitcases. She is choosing what to take. Now and again she removes something from her suitcase and returns it to its original place in the room in order to pack another item instead. For a long while she hesitates whether to take a large photograph of her husband that stands on the chest of drawers. Finally she leaves the picture where it is. The packing tires her and for a time she sits on a suitcase leaning her head on her hand. Then she gets to her feet and telephones.(...)

She hangs up and calls another number.

Anna? It’s Judith; look, I’m just off. – No, there’s no way out, things are getting too difficult. – Too difficult! – Well, no, it isn’t Fritz’s idea, he doesn’t know yet, I simply packed my things. – I don’t think so. – I don’t think he’ll say all that much. It’s all got too difficult for him, just in everyday matters. – That’s something we haven’t arranged. – We just never talked about it, absolutely never. – No, he hasn’t altered, on the contrary. – I’d be glad if you and Kurt could look after him a bit, to start with. – Yes, specially Sundays, and try to make him give up this flat. – It’s too big for him. – I’d like to have come and said goodbye to you, but it’s your porter, you know. – So, goodbye; no, don’t come to the station, it’s a bad idea. – Goodbye, I’ll write. – That’s a promise.

She hangs up without calling again. She has been smoking. Now she sets fire to the small book in which she has been looking up the numbers. She walks up and down two or three times. Then she starts speaking. She is rehearsing the short speech which she proposes to make to her husband. It is evident that he is sitting in a particular chair.

Well, Fritz, I’m off. I suppose I’ve waited too long, I’m awfully sorry, but . . .

She stands there thinking, then starts in a different way.

Fritz, you must let me go, you can’t keep . . . I’ll be your downfall, it’s quite clear; I know you aren’t a coward, you’re not scared of the police, but there are worse things. They won’t put you in a camp, but they’ll ban you from the clinic any day now. You won’t say anything at the time, but it’ll make you ill. I’m not going to watch you sitting around the flat pretending to read magazines, it’s pure selfishness on my part, my leaving, that’s all. Don’t tell me anything. . .

She again stops. She makes a fresh start.

Don’t tell me you haven’t changed; you have! Only last week you established quite objectively that the proportion of Jewish scientists wasn’t all that high. Objectivity is always the start of it, and why do you keep telling me I’ve never been such a Jewish chauvinist as now? Of course I’m one. Chauvinism is catching. Oh, Fritz, what has happened to us?

She again stops. She makes a fresh start.

I never told you I wanted to go away, have done for a long time, because I can’t talk when I look at you, Fritz. Then it seems to me there’s no point in talking. It has all been settled already. What’s got into them, d’you think? What do they really want? What am I doing to them? I’ve never had anything to do with politics. Did I vote Communist? But I’m just one of those bourgeois housewives with servants and so on, and now all of a sudden it seems only blondes can be that. I’ve often thought lately about something you told me years back, how some people were more valuable than others, so one lot were given insulin when they got diabetes and the others weren’t. And this was something I understood, idiot that I was. Well, now they’ve drawn a new distinction of the same sort, and this time I’m one of the less valuable ones. Serves me right.

She again stops. She makes a fresh start.

Yes, I’m packing. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed anything the last few days. Nothing really matters, Fritz, except just one thing: if we spend our last hour together without looking at each other’s eyes. That’s a triumph they can’t be allowed, the liars who force everyone else to lie. Ten years ago when somebody said no one would think I was Jewish, you instantly said yes, they would. And that’s fine. That was straightforward. Why take things in a roundabout way now? I’m packing so they shan’t take away your job as senior physician. And because they’ve stopped saying good morning to you at the clinic, and because you’re not sleeping nowadays. I don’t want you to tell me I mustn’t go. And I’m hurrying because I don’t want to hear you telling me I must. It’s a matter of time. Principles are a matter of time. They don’t last for ever, any more than a glove does. There are good ones which last a long while. But even they only have a certain life. Don’t get the idea that I’m angry. Yes, I am. Why should I always be understanding? What’s wrong with the shape of my nose and the colour of my hair? I’m to leave the town where I was born just so they don’t have to go short of butter. What sort of people are you, yourself included? You work out the quantum theory and the Trendelenburg test, then allow a lot of semi-barbarians to tell you you’re to conquer the world but you can’t have the woman you want. The artificial lung, and the dive-bomber! You are monsters or you pander to monsters. Yes, I know I’m being unreasonable, but what good is reason in a world like this? There you sit watching your wife pack and saying nothing. Walls have ears, is that it? But you people say nothing. One lot listens and the other keeps silent. To hell with that. I’m supposed to keep silent too. If I loved you I’d keep silent. I truly do love you. Give me those underclothes. They’re suggestive. I’ll need them. I’m thirty-six, that isn’t too old, but I can’t do much more experimenting. The next time I settle in a country things can’t be like this. The next man I get must be allowed to keep me. And don’t tell me you’ll send me money; you know you won’t be allowed to. And you aren’t to pretend it’s just a matter of four weeks either. This business is going to last rather more than four weeks. You know that, and so do I. So don’t go telling me ‘After all it’s only for two or three weeks’ as you hand me the fur coat I shan’t need till next winter. And d on’t let’s speak about disaster. Let’s speak about disgrace. Oh, Fritz!

She stops. A door opens. She hurriedly sees to her appearance. The husband comes in.