Read Online Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson - Free Book Online

thought that he might not get through his illness, it was the idea that his defenses weren’t strong enough. What could she do?
    When he was still healthy and stuck in his room, in recent days and weeks, she had never forgotten to put on a happy and confident face when she walked in. She had read somewhere or other, in a housewives’ magazine that was still appearing at irregular intervals, that you had to stay positive. Positive! That was supposed to be the best way to overcome difficult circumstances. Without her exactly realizing it, this thought had lodged deep inside her and revealed itself first through her attitude toward Nico. Stay positive! But after he fell sick, it didn’t seem to work for her anymore. Carefully, timidly, she crept into his room and watched his feverish, sweaty face with its closed eyes and half-open mouth struggling for breath. In his illness and helplessness, his whole being—or at least so she felt—expressed itself more clearly, and she had never perceived it more deeply than she did now. Sick and helpless, wasn’t this his true state? His behavior before was what was remarkable: playing chess—with himself—practicing French and English, reading books. All of it, all of it, was nothing but a kind of medicine to try to heal his affliction. And Wim andshe had often wondered at his behavior. Sometimes it seemed to her almost uncanny. It stood like a wall between him and them, which slowly, slowly crumbled as the war dragged on and everything aberrant and inhuman became typical and everyday.
    “I have to go look in on him again,” she said one night after she and Wim had gone to bed.
    “He’s probably already asleep—you’ll wake him up . . .”
    She insisted: “I’ll be very quiet.”
    Even before she had finished closing the door to his room behind her, she heard a breathless, congested voice: “Marie . . .”
    She turned on the light; the bed stood outside its dim circle of illumination. His beard had grown and it covered his chin and cheeks, so that he looked older and more emaciated. She stood next to his bed.
    “Should I fluff the pillow for you again?”
    “Ah, yes.”
    She helped him sit up. He supported himself with great difficulty on the mattress while she hurriedly pounded the pillow with both hands. It was limp with heat. Then she helped him as he let himself fall back. It visibly did him good. His hair was a confused tangle on his head, like the absolute mess after a downpour. It hung damp and sticky over his forehead and temples. The half darkness of the room gave his face an ashy coloring. Two feverish eyes were wide-open in his face, asthough gathering all the shadows of the bedroom into themselves.
    “Marie . . .”
    “Yes?” She spoke very softly as though afraid to make his condition worse with any loud noise. But he didn’t say anything else. He closed his eyes and lay there as though he had just that moment fallen asleep. Only his arms, stretched out on the blanket but lying right up against his body, trembled now and then. Then he raised them gingerly, straight up, and let them fall again, like wings that he wanted to unfold but then, tired and powerless, just curled up again. It was almost as if he were not breathing anymore. Only the blanket on his body moved, almost imperceptibly, up and down.
    Marie bent down over his stubbly face so that she could pick up the softest sound from his lips in case he looked like he was about to speak. She waited like that for a time. She saw the beads of sweat on his forehead and the little rivulets slowly dripping down his face and neck and sinking into the cavities above his collarbone. His pajama top was half open, and a warm, strong smell rose up toward her from the damp shining skin under the hair on his chest. When she felt under his armpits, she noticed that the fabric was soaked through with sweat, the fabric at his sides and his elbows too.
    She took a washcloth and first wiped his face and head; then,