The Masses (periodical)/Volume 1/Number 1/The Fur Coat

by Ludwig Fulda

THE FUR COAT

 

A Humorous Story by one of Germany's Leading Contemporary Dramatists
By Ludwig Fulda

 

Illustrated by H. Berlin⁠Translated by Thomas Seltzer

 

PROFESSOR MAX WIEGAND to Dr. Gustav Strauch

Berlin, November 20, 1909.

Dear Gustav:—

I must tell you something that will astonish you tremendously. I have separated from my wife. Or, to be more precise, we have separated from each other. We agreed to separate peacefully. My wife went to her parents in Freiburg and will probably stay there altogether. For the present, I remain in our old home. In the spring I may look for another, smaller house, or I may not. I doubt whether it would be easy for me to find so quiet a room to work in as this, and I dread the idea of moving, especially when I think of my large library.

You want to know, of course, what happened. Nothing, believe me. The world will seek all possible and impossible reasons to explain why two persons who married out of love and who for eleven years lived a so-called happy marital life, should suddenly decide, to put an end to their life in common. The world, which thinks itself so very wise, though, as a fact, its understanding is most limited, will suppose, no doubt, that something has been concealed from it. It will put this case into one of the two or three pigeonholes which it keeps ready-made for every event, because it does not understand that life with its inexhaustible manifold variety never repeats itself and that even one and the same situation can assume infinitely diverse aspects according to the character of the dramatis personæ. You, dear Gustav, I need not tell all this. You will comprehend that two finely organized souls do not want to bind themselves to each other by external ties when after a thousand vain attempts they have reached the conclusion that on all large questions no understanding is possible between them.

We are too opposite in our natures, my wife and I. Between her conception of life and mine there is an unbridgeable gap. In the first years of our marriage I still hoped that I could guide her, direct her, and gradually harmonize her with myself. She seemed so flexible and pliable, took so warm an interest in my work and plans, and submitted so nicely to my teachings. It was not until after our boy's death that a change took place in her. The grief over his loss, from which neither of us will ever quite recover, matured her, and made her independent. Then a tendency to brood and ponder, from which she had been entirely free, got the upper hand, and confirmed her in her partly native, partly acquired ideas and prejudices, which my influence had thrust into the background, though it had never entirely rooted them out. More and more she wrapped herself up in a veil of mystic, ideas and sentimental, phantastic illusions. Stubbornly, doggedly, she demanded recognition for her point of view, insisting it had as much claim to consideration as mine. She bitterly repelled my scientific objections. She lost all interest in my specialty and regarded it with unexpressed but quite eviden aversion. To her my work was the enemy's camp, shielding hostile troops.

Finally there came to be scarcely a single subject in the whole wide sphere of nature, and human life on which we had the same opinion. It is true, there never was an open quarrel between us, but the more sparing we tried to be of each other, the worse became our ill humor. We felt more and more distinctly that we only walked together, but did not belong to each other. This feeling grew in us. It disquieted us, it tormented us. Finally, it pushed all other feelings into the background. If we had not loved each other so much before, if we had not continued to respect each other so much, we might perhaps have endured such a condition for several years more. But we both had too high a conception of marriage, too lively a sense of human dignity to be content with an imperfect makeshift. And so, finally, about a week ago we had it all out. It came about naturally, as over-ripe fruit falls from the tree. I can scarcely say which of us spoke first. A conviction we had both harbored for a long time liberated itself from our minds at the same instant. The fact that after so many years we could for the first time again discuss an important subject in perfect harmony, toned down and softened the harsh theme, and gave us the serene calm which we had not had for so long, and without which it was so painful to be.

Our parting yesterday was as dignified as possible. No word of reproach, no jarring. We both felt the necessity as well as the significance of our resolve. When we recalled our engagement, the long span of life we had travelled together, we could scarcely restrain an access of tenderness. And I confess never had my wife inspired me with greater respect than at that moment, when all pettiness seemed to drop away from her and the essential grandeur of her nature stood out in all its clearness. By her bearing, by what she said, and by what she left unsaid the whole scene was bared of its common, every-day aspect, and elevated to a higher plane of solemnity. Deeply moved we had difficulty in restraining tears, and shook hands on parting. And so we shall be able to look back to the end of our married life at least with unmitigated satisfaction.

With her consent I put all business arrangements into the hands of a lawyer, so that there should be no correspondence between us. It would only open up old wounds, and reveal new disagreements, and paralyse our energy, which we shall need for establishing our future separate existences.

We must begin life anew—she and I. For this we must free ourselves from the past, not only externally, but also inwardly.

I am breathing more easily already. The Rubicon is crossed. I think you may congratulate me.

*⁠*⁠*

Professor .Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch

Berlin, December 12, 1909.

Dear Gustav:—

Thank you for your prompt reply to my last letter. It shows such fine appreciation and friendly sympathy.

Excuse my delay in answering, but it was impossible for me to write to you before, and even now I still find it very difficult. You give your unqualified approval to the step I took, because you think it will be of extreme value to my well-being and further development. But you forget what it means to be separated from a person whom you have always had at your side day and night for eleven years. I myself have only gradually come to realize it in the course of the few weeks that I have lived alone. Habit is a mighty force, especially with men who—like you and myself—live in an intellectual world and require a solid foundation for it. For how can we survey the world from the height of the tower, unless the foundation of the tower is sure? Of course, these considerations are of no consequence when balanced against the weighty reasons that led me and my wife to separate. It goes without saying that I am still firmly convinced that our resolution was for our mutual benefit. But in this strange life there is no calculation that ever comes out exactly even.

A state of transition is in its very nature disagreeable and confusing. In my case it is downright torture. From early morning until late at night I must bother about trifles to which I have not given a thought since my bachelor days—things which I do not even want to mention to you. They are so absurd and insignificant. And yet they rob me of my time, rest, and temper out of all proportion to their importance. And I don't know what arrangements I could make to rid myself of those thousand and one trivialities, which my wife shielded me from. Those servants! Now that the cat is away, they carry on as they please. You have no idea of the stupid obstacles I stumble over continually, the miserable details that have to be attended to at every step. Here is one example out of many. It has been bitterly cold these past few days. I have been looking for my fur coat nigh and low, but can't find it. With the help of the maid I turned the whole house upside down, until finally it occurred to her that in the spring my wife put my coat in storage at the furrier's. But what furrier? I can't find out. I have inquired in vain at a dozen furriers.

If only I had not arranged with my wife that we should not write to each other. Then I could simply ask her. Yet it is better so. I want our separation to be free from banal commonplaces. No farce should follow upon a drama in the grand style. She may even think that I regret the step we took, that I miss her more than she misses me, that I have simply snatched at the first pretext to enter into communication with her again. Never!

To-day the thermometer registers five below zero.

*⁠*⁠*

Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand

Berlin, December 14, 1909.

Dear Emma:—

You will be greatly surprised to receive a letter from me contrary to our mutual agreement. Do not think I want to begin a correspondence. We terminated relations in too dignified a way and we will, not try to force open the door that separates us. I merely have a question to ask about a very slight matter, which you alone can answer. Who is the furrier to whom you gave my coat last spring? Lina cannot remember the address.

Thanking you in advance for your early reply,

Yours,

Max.

*⁠*⁠*

Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand

Freiburg, December 15, 1909.

Dear Max:—

The furrier's name is Palaschke, and his place is in the Zimmerstrasse. I cannot understand how Lina could have forgotten it. She took the fur coat to him herself. Emma.

*⁠*⁠*

Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand

Berlin, December 17, 1909.

Dear Emma:—

I must trouble you again—this will be the last time. Mr. Palaschke says he cannot let me have

 

"I hunted for the receipt the whole morning."

 

the coat unless I give him his receipt He has had several unpleasant experiences of late, and so has made it a principle never to let anything go from his shop without getting back his receipt. Where is the receipt? I hunted for it the whole morning. Lina, of course, hasn't the faintest idea where it is. When I dared to suggest in the gentlest tone in the world that she ought to know, she became impertinent. She is going to leave to-morrow. I prefer to let her have her wages until her time is up, including a Christmas gift, as I do not want to live under the same roof with such a good-for-nothing, impudent person.

Well then—please be good enough to let me know where the receipt is. I caught a good cold for lack of my fur coat. I hope you are well and found your family all right. Max.

*⁠*⁠*

Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand

Freiburg, December 19, 1909.

Dear Max:

The receipt is either in the chiffonier in the dressing room, second or third drawer from the top, or in my desk, right or left drawer. I could find it at once if I were there.

Lina has great faults, still she is one of the best. I doubt whether her successor will be an improvement. And now before Christmas you won't get any at all. You should have had patience with her a few weeks longer. But that does not concern me any more.

I hope you are rid of your cold. I am quite well. Emma.

*⁠*⁠*

Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand

Berlin, December 21, 1909.

Dear Emma:—

I can't find the receipt either in the chiffonier or in the desk. Maybe it fell out when you were packing, and was then carelessly removed. I can think of no other explanation.

I will go to Mr. Palaschke again to-morrow and by all sorts of securities and guarantees try to wheedle my own coat out of him. I must keep strictly to my room to-day, because my cold has been complicated by a severe attack of nerves.

I had a dreadful scene with the cook yesterday. By accident I found out she had been cheating me disgracefully ever since you left. When I mentioned it to her in a most delicate way, she turned on me and told me in the coarsest, vulgarest language that I did not know the first thing about housekeeping, that it was only for your sake, dear Emma, that she had consented to work for such low wages, and she would leave the house instantly. I replied calmly but firmly that it was her duty to stay until her month was up. Then she began to scream and gesticulate and had the superlative impudence to say that you had not been able to get along with me either, and had had to leave. I lost my temper, fell into a passion, and must have told her she was a "common woman." I do not know how I could forget myself to such an extent. I did not think such language could pass my lips.

When I rang for supper two hours later I found she had already packed up all her belongings and was gone. In the kitchen I discovered a "billet-doux" teeming with orthographical mistakes, in which she threatened that in case I put the least difficulties in her way and did not give her the good reference she deserved, she would sue me for having called her a "common woman."

Now I am without any help. The janitress shines my shoes and brings me my meals from a restaurant. The food is dreadful. As you say it is quite impossible to get anybody half-way decent before Christmas or New Year. However, I have written to a dozen employment bureaus, and will go to them myself as soon as my health permits.

This has turned out to be quite a long letter, dear Emma. When a man's heart is full, his pen runs away with him.

I have a suspicion, too, that that infamous cook of a woman has gotten away with my gold cuff buttons—an heirloom from my uncle Frederick. Or, maybe, you know where they are. In that case I should be very thankful to you for information.

Goodby, dear Emma. I hope you are getting along better than I am.

⁠Yours, Max.

*⁠*⁠*

Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand

Freiburg, December 23, 1909.

Dear Max:

Your description of the little unpleansantness you had with the cook struck a responsive chord in me. She often told me much worse things than she told you, but I swallowed everything, because her cooking was good. It is only the incompetents that are polite. With cooks the degree of their impudence is a fair measure of their efficiency.

Now at least you can see with what sort of things I had to cope year in, year out, and you have found out for yourself that in this sphere as in others, there are problems that all the sciences cannot solve.

From this distance I cannot give you any advice in the matters troubling you. Nor do I think I am justified in doing so after our inner relations, as you so well said in your first letter, were terminated in the most dignified manner.

As to the furrier's receipt and your cuff buttons, I wager I could find both in five minutes. You remember how often you would hunt for something high and low without being able to find it, and I would put my hand on it in an instant. Men can find a new truth now and then, but never an old button.

Since we have started a correspondence—at your inititative—I should like to ask you for something. Before I left, I forgot to ask you for the letters you wrote me during our engagement. At my request you kept them in your iron chest. They are my property, and I should like to have them back as a souvenir of a happy time. Will you please do me the favor to return them to me?

I wish you a Merry Christmas,

Emma.

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Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand

Berlin, December 25, 1909.

My Dear Emma:—

Your wish for a Merry Christmas was not full-filled. I never spent a drearier Christmas Eve in all my life.

You will sympathize when I tell you I could not accept our friends' invitations. I should have felt like an intruder looking on at other people's family happiness. So I remained at-home, if in the present circumstances I can still speak of a home. I was as lonely in the house as in a desert. In spite of the most desperate efforts I could not get any help before January. Yesterday I could not even induce someone to come in for the day. The Janitress served me a cold supper in the early afternoon, because she could not bother about me later in the day. She wanted to be with her children and give them their gifts. A flickering oil lamp took the place of the Christmas tree, which you always decorated so charmingly and tastefully. None of your pretty surprises, either, forestalling all my wishes before I knew them myself. There was nothing on the Christmas table except my old fur coat. Mr. Palaschke at last sent it to me mollified by my prolonged prayers, entreaties, and appeals and perhaps also by the holiday mood.

The room was as cold as a barn. The fire went out and to start it again was far beyond my power. So I put on my fur coat, sat down in the light of the flickering lamp and read my engagement letters to you, which I had taken from their eleven years' resting place to send to you.

Emma, dear, I cannot describe the impression the reading of those letters produced upon me. I wept like a child, not only because of the sad ending to so promising a tie, but also because of the change that has taken place in me. There is much in the letters that is immature, much that does not correspond to my present views. But what a fresh, free, warmblo ded fellow I was! How I loved you! How happy I was! How naïvely, completely I abandoned myself to my happiness! Yes, that was everything—the youthful faith in life, the reckless pursuit of life, the exuberant feeling, which overflowed like a vine in springtime. Until now I thought it was only you who had changed gradually. Now I see I have not remained the same either. And God knows, when I compare the Max of then with the Max of to-day, I needn't hesitate an instant to make up my mind which I prefer.

In the sleepless night lying behind me I tried in every possible way to get myself back into the Max of former years, and I began to have serious doubts whether the difference in your and my opinions and even sentiments are after all so important as they seemed to us; whether above and beyond all that there was not something neutral, something human, which we both had in common, and which we shall always have in common.

Search yourself, dear Emma, and see whether a similar voice does not speak in your soul, too. What happened cannot be undone. But nothing would bring me greater relief in this painful situation than a confirmation of this from you. For your departure has left a gap in my home and in my life which I shall never, never be able to fill.⁠Your very unhappy

Max.

*⁠*⁠*

Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand

Freiburg, December 27, 1909.

Dear Max:

When you asked me questions about receipts and buttons I was glad to answer them. But the questions you ask me in your last letter I must refuse to answer. Do you really believe, you old pedant, that I left your home, which was also mine, only because we disagreed in our opinions and sentiments? If you do, you are fearfully mistaken. I left you because I saw more and more clearly that you no longer loved me. In fact, I had become a burden to you. You wanted to be rid of me. I could see that in everything you said and did. If in that "dignified" scene of seperation you had found one loving word to say I might still have remained. But you always rode the high horse of a "world philosophy" from which you have now tumbled down so pitifully because you have no servants. I, too, served you faithfully, and you never saw it. I never let the fire go out in your home. It is not my fault if you could not get your home warm again.

Who knows whether you would have noticed the gap which my departure left if you had not happened to miss your fur coat. It was that which made you start to write to me. It seems to me only logical that now that you have happily gotten your fur coat back again, we should terminate our correspondence. I at least have nothing more to say.

Goodby—forever,

Emma.

*⁠*⁠* Professor Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch

Berlin, January 8, 1909.

Dear Gustav:—

I have something to tell you again which will astonish you tremendously. My wife came back yesterday. And that upon my repeated and urgent entreaties. I thought I could not live with her any longer, and I found I certainly could not live without her. I just learned from her that she was very unhappy during our separation. But she would never have confessed it, because she is the stronger of us two. I don't know how to explain the miracle, but we love each other more dearly than ever. We are having a new honeymoon. The great questions of life divided us. Is it really only the small ones that brought us together again? Would you have thought it possible that a man could find his half-dried heart in the pockets of an old fur coat?

The edifice of my world philosophy is shaken to its foundation. I shall have to learn everything over again.

 

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The chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest; so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw, failing, or undipped vulnerable part, where sarcasms may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies; and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always, if it may be, turned the wrong-way, and misunderstood: and while this is so, there is not, nor cannot be, any hope of achievement of high things; men dare not open their hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire.—Ruskin.

 

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Dr. Cook has discovered that the way of the transgessor may be paved with gold.—Pittsburg Gazette-Times.

 

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If we examine our present social order, we realize with horror how barbarous it still is. Not only do murder and war destroy cultural values without substituting others in their place, not only do the countless conflicts which take place between the different nations and political organizations act anticulturally, but so do also the conflicts between the various social classes of one nation, for they destroy quantities of free energy which are thus withdrawn from the total of real cultural values. At present mankind is in a state of development in which progress depends much less upon the leadership of a few distinguished individuals than upon the collective labor of all workers. Proof of this is that it is coming to be more and more the fact that the great scientific discoveries are made simultaneously bv a number of independent investigators—an indication that society creates in several places the individual conditions requisite for such discoveries. Thus we are living at a time when men are gradually approximating one another very closely in their natures, and when the social organization therefore demands and strives for as thorough an equalization as possible in the conditions of existence of all men.—Ostwald's Natural Philosophy.