The New York Stories of Elizbeth Hardwick (4 page)

I saw immediately that the young man from Kentucky hadn’t changed much, though he had become a little more self-consciously sedate. He spoke with extreme care and always seemed to be searching his mind for some epigrammatic nonsense that would relieve him of the obligation to pursue any thought beyond two sentences, unless he had engineered the conversational turn himself. His attempts at wit had always been forced and he had now become one of those boring people who tell anecdotes about historical personages. I could hardly make a statement without his interrupting to repeat what Mark Twain, Will Rogers, or G.K. Chesterton had said upon a similar subject.

It was this friend who asked me to go to Dr. Hoffmann’s for a sort of open house which the doctor occasionally held for students. I wasn’t averse to dropping in on my neighbors, especially since the affair was very informal and it wasn’t necessary to have an invitation, but I was puzzled that my friend should be anxious to take me along. During the course of the afternoon I came to the conclusion that he had fallen under the influence of Dr. Hoffmann and wanted to let me know that he had somewhat altered his opinions on a few of the issues that had separated us in college. He seemed to go out of his way to talk loudly enough for me to hear him say he thought the Negroes were treated shamefully in the South and once he even drew me aside and stated that perhaps we weren’t so far apart now because he considered himself a Christian Socialist. But he was still as dull as ever and I suspected he was no more popular in the theological school than he had been at home.

Because of a friend who had studied under him in Germany and who admired him extravagantly, I had read some of Dr. Hoffmann’s writings and was anxious to observe him. From the first I approached him as a rather romantic figure and I suppose I somewhat exaggerated the uniqueness of his personality. More than anything else I wondered how he could endure his students. Dr. Hoffmann had a youth of intense political activity behind him; he had been thrown out of his own country and in America had come to be considered a sort of symbolic representation of the potential virtues in the German character. His philosophy was a mixture of Christian despair — he was famous for an interpretation of original sin — and political idealism, but I could not understand either position in his terms without his belief in Christ as the ultimate reality. The students, on the other hand, were ordinary boys who would later be in the Presbyterian pulpits throughout America and they seemed as far away from the kind of violence Dr. Hoffmann had known as they were from the mysterious depths his theology sometimes reached. I thought, watching the boys, that I had never seen a healthier and more cheerful group of people. They were bursting with energy and self-confidence, a condition no doubt due to their lack of dissipation but which seemed foolhardy to me since they all accepted that, regardless of good works, each might be arbitrarily predestined for eternal damnation.

Physically, Dr. Hoffmann looked rather different each time I glanced at him. At first I had only noticed that he appeared somewhat corpulent, the typical family man, serious, settled, and a bit colorless. Later — perhaps it was the changing expression on his face — I was struck by his youthful charm that was not, at moments, without a slight suggestion of well-mannered and patient boredom. His students flattered him openly and it was apparent he enjoyed this attention even though he may not have taken it seriously. I don’t think he looked upon himself as a man of importance; a few times, when he was relaxed and on the outside of the conversation, he betrayed a downcast aspect of his nature, as if he were preoccupied with annoying problems. The Hoffmann apartment was pleasant and unremarkable. There were so many books, newspapers, and periodicals around that the living room had a haphazard appearance which as much as anything else made one feel comfortable there. I talked to Mrs. Hoffmann and found her a cordial woman who seemed to be intelligent, if rather smugly anti-intellectual. She was in every way as affable as she was undistinguished. The only complaint against fate she thought fit to mention was a sinus infection which had made her life in New York less gratifying than it might otherwise have been. Later in the afternoon the Hoffmann’s daughter appeared. She was about fifteen years old and her parents called her Elsa though she spoke of herself as
Elsie
, probably because the former was too German. Before the party was over Dr. Hoffmann and his wife had learned that I was a neighbor and they both asked me to visit them whenever I felt like it. They seemed entirely sincere in their wish to see me and I felt sure we would come to know each other better.

When I left, the young man from Kentucky told me, and with a touch of unaccountable pride, that Dr. and Mrs. Hoffmann were the most amazing couple he had ever met. His main reason for thinking this, apart from his admiration for the man, was that Mrs. Hoffmann was a resolute atheist and yet she and her husband had managed to make a happy life together. I shrugged my shoulders indifferently and my friend seemed disappointed by my weak response. Immediately I guessed that because I had broken away from the church in Kentucky he had supposed Mrs. Hoffmann’s lack of belief would impress me. For some reason I couldn’t help speaking sharply and saying, “I’m not interested in atheists. The world’s full of those. What intrigues me is whether or not Dr. Hoffmann believes in God.”

“Do you think there’s any question of it?” he said confidently. He looked down at me as if I were stupid past all belief.

Due to the fact that I had no respect for him I felt free to speak in the most dogmatic fashion and did so. “Well, you can’t have it both ways,” I said. “If you want to be religious nowadays you ought to give up all contact with the world because the two no longer mix. What sort of religion is it that is completely outside our daily life and the principles upon which our behavior is based?”

My friend had assumed his most lofty manner, but it was somehow lacking in authenticity. I suppose he felt that he looked like a serene and holy man, but I was reminded of the professional equanimity of skillful salesmen.

“I’ll have to talk to you about that sometime,” he said. We had now reached the door of my apartment and after a few strained attempts at civility we said goodbye.

I felt ashamed immediately because it was clearly not my duty to dissuade this boy and, furthermore, it was arrogant of me to take for granted that he and Dr. Hoffmann and the rest really didn’t have faith. I again thought of Dr. Hoffmann with his liberal magazines, his devotion to radical causes, and I couldn’t help but conclude that no matter what the man believed his source of action was the assumption that we are good or bad according to the luck of our worldly situation. I remembered his pleasant, heavy face, his generous sociability, and the singular brilliance with which he was credited. In thinking of him I realized that I had already begun to seek an explanation for his religiosity, that I was treating it as an eccentric character trait like, for instance, hypochondria. Though I had known him only a few hours, I couldn’t quite imagine him on his knees.

It took about a month for my friendship with the Hoffmanns to become established. When I ran into them in the hall we arranged meetings and after a while I felt completely at ease in their home — so much so that I was closer to them than to anyone I knew in New York that year. It wasn’t altogether strange that our friendship developed so rapidly. Though they were involved in the ordinary social obligations attendant upon a professorship and Dr. Hoffmann was quite busy with his writings, his lectures, and his committees, they still found time for me and kept asking me back. I discovered several reasons for this and one was that Dr. Hoffmann, like many contemporary religious people, was not really happy unless he was in the company of nonbelievers. Most of his colleagues and nearly all of his students bored him. The students tended to look upon their work as vocational training and Dr. Hoffmann often made little jokes about the seminary as a place for acting lessons, since many of the boys seemed more anxious to perfect their “delivery” than to pursue religious and philosophical studies. Also, I suspected he missed participation in political movements that had urgency and he used to tell me about fistfights between the Nazi and anti-Nazi students in Germany with such nostalgia that I was rather astonished. He had been in America since 1936 and was quite a success here, but one could not fail to sense that his personality was far from fulfilled by his life. The areas of emptiness he revealed struck me so deeply that I became absorbed in his private life and often forgot the perplexing matter of his religious convictions. Indeed it was hard for me to remember that he was a believer, because he no more demonstrated, except in a professional way, that crucial difference between him and me than a lawyer can be said to indicate a highly personal sense of justice by applying himself to his cases.

Another reason Dr. Hoffmann allowed so much of his time to be taken up by friends was that he was by nature enormously convivial. I became more and more conscious of his great need for diversion, so conscious in fact that I underestimated the other side of him until I heard one of his lectures. As a teacher he was aloof and solemn and wonderfully impressive. His lectures, like some of the sermons he gave me to read, were best when he was most mystical and theoretical. Once I told his wife that I thought his real flair for literary composition, the beautiful, wild tone that got into the expression of his thoughts, came from his reluctance to mention God in any specific sense. She made no comment upon my observation and I don’t know whether or not I understood him correctly. At first I accepted Dr. Hoffmann’s conviviality uncritically, until I began to notice there was something wrong in his relation to his wife and daughter. When I was the only outsider present I felt one thing quite strongly: Dr. Hoffmann and his wife really didn’t like each other. This condition was so clear and undeniable it somehow wasn’t at all dramatic. The Hoffmanns were constantly rebuking each other, but the sarcasm never got enough out of control to be definitely unpleasant and I think most people thought it proved their love rather than the contrary. These curious and intrepid scoldings had been indulged in for so long that I imagined they had come to accept them as the inevitable fate of earthbound men and women. The daughter, Elsa, was in league with the mother and whenever she was in the house I felt an extra tension. Everything was made worse by the fact that Dr. Hoffmann was pathetically devoted to his daughter and took extreme pride in her.

In my own private feelings toward the Hoffmanns I did not take sides in this unbalanced domestic situation. Dr. Hoffmann interested me much more than his wife did, but I found her extremely likable. At times I thought her a bit too even-tempered and wished she had more passion and vigor. Oddly enough she was most alive when she was talking about her headaches and physical distress because her intimacy with this pain seemed to give her a hold upon the world and its evil possibilities. Yet no matter what she said or how ill she became, she was essentially an ordinary woman without any sort of rebellion in her that could crystallize into action. If she was an atheist she was certainly a mild one and refused to take part, I gathered, in religious affairs, not because she was in opposition to her husband but due to her inability to organize enough mental energy to take either side. Still for all her indolence she was always precipitating the kind of quarrel that characterized the family after one got to know it. The quarrels, or at least those I had observed in the past, were meaningless and sterile because nothing was changed by them, they had no function beyond themselves, and no one was the victor. When I dropped in one afternoon I came upon one of these disputes.

Dr. Hoffmann looked rather tired and more withdrawn into himself than I was accustomed to seeing him. Mrs. Hoffmann, as if to explain his mood, said, “You missed it. Felix has just been talking to a friend from Germany. They were reminiscing about Mrs. Hoffmann, my husband’s mother, and what good times they used to have in her house.”

“Is your mother living?” I asked Dr. Hoffmann.

He was absentmindedly tapping his finger against his wristwatch and he didn’t look up to answer me. I could see the plump line of his jaw and could imagine him as a sturdy, industrious, and amiable youth in Germany. “Yes,” he said. “One gets so little word. Yes, thank God she’s alive.”

“Felix and his friend had out all the family pictures and they were talking about the way she sang and her amusing moods,” Mrs. Hoffmann continued. “I often grieve about her. She’s a good woman.”

Dr. Hoffmann suddenly jerked his head back and there was such a weary and oppressed expression on his face, one side of his mouth twitched in a brief, nervous spasm and his fingers still tapped against his watch, that I marveled at his ability to control his voice. “No hypocrisy, please! You didn’t think she was a good woman. As for your grieving, I can’t look inside your heart!”

I happened to notice Elsa as her father spoke. She had been sitting in her chair, lazily turning the pages of the schoolbook in her lap. Elsa was in every way a bright and typically American girl and at times it was hard for me to connect her with her parents or any European past. Though she was a bit too broad-faced to be called a beauty, she was strong and handsome and seemed to have every equipment for a successful life. When I looked at her she was trembling with anger and I was amazed her parents didn’t notice the state she was in. She was silent until her mother, still in that flat good humor that reduced every violence of emotion to nothing, said, “You will give our friend here the wrong impression. I always got along as well with your mother as she would allow.”

And then, as if to prove her good faith, she insisted upon opening the album of pictures, pointing to her mother-in-law’s image, and saying to me, “Look at her! Hasn’t she a fine figure? And you can just barely get an idea of her beautiful hair. The picture doesn’t do her justice!” Since I couldn’t see over Mrs. Hoffmann’s shoulder I was unable to judge.