Louis Roney: Schadenfreude (a true story)

She was a pretty German girl. An important young actress. I’ll call her “Lili.”

He was an American baritone; I’ll call him “Jason.”

He and I sang in productions of 15 or 20 different operas in the big German opera houses. For one season, Jason and Lili were a handsome couple in the German theatrical world. They worked most of the time in the same big theater, an hour from Heidelberg, where opera (“oper” in German) was on one stage, drama (“schauspiel” in German) on another. Over coffee or beer Jason and Lili often told colleagues that they planned to get married.

Jason, being American, could not marry in Germany. Jason found out they could have a civil wedding in Switzerland. To keep him company, I drove with him one day down to Basel, a Swiss town near the German border. I had often sung opera in Basel.

In an Autobahn coffee break, I phoned the mayor of Basel, a guy I had met at opera receptions. He told me where Jason could get a Swiss marriage license. A polite lady who spoke English took Jason’s and Lili’s passports, and typed out a form. She asked him to select a day to bring Lili to Basel for the mayor to marry them. Jason found a day, about a month away, when neither he nor Lili had performances. He set the date then and there.

In the canteen of the big German theater Jason and Lili made marriage plans. They took a large apartment near the theater. They picked out new furniture they would need, and arranged for it to be delivered to the apartment before they were married.

Lili, an intense, ambitious girl of many moods, appeared to me to be in good moods all the time.

Jason, on the other hand, seemed increasingly quiet and withdrawn as the days and weeks went by. He and I did “Otello” together in his theater in the week before he was to marry Lili.

When I went in the canteen to cool off after the show, Jason was nowhere to be seen but he phoned me the next morning early and asked me to eat lunch with him in a nearby restaurant.

Jason said suddenly, “I can’t marry Lili.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. I just can’t go through with it. I’ll tell you about it someday.”

“You don’t owe me any explanation. Have you told her?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m trying to come up with any reason I can to put it off until the season is over.”

After the wedding was “postponed,” Lili and Jason continued to see each other for a while. Then they broke it off entirely.

Jason was under contract to the Hamburg Staatsoper.

Two months later, I went to Hamburg to sing a guest performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo.”

We met over coffee in the canteen after the performance.

“I really miss her,” he said.

“Well, she was all yours if you wanted her,” I answered.

“Do you always destroy your best-laid plans?” I asked. “When I think of all that gushy talk of yours in the car going to Basel.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“You’re gonna think I’m nuts,” he started out…

“In one word, it was Schadenfreude,” he said.

“Schadenfreude?” I asked. “Tell me what the hell Schadenfreude has to do with your not marrying a beautiful, talented girl?”

Even as a kid, I didn’t think it was funny in a movie if somebody slipped on a banana peel and damned near broke his neck. I disliked “The Three Stooges.” I didn’t think it was funny when Moe slapped Curly in the face. Don Rickles has always turned me off completely. Can’t stand him.

What’s funny about insulting people? Hurting them? Laughing at people’s troubles — even pain — that’s what Schadenfreude is all about.

“Well, that’s what killed my future with Lili. I loved her. I still love her. But I couldn’t face living with her.”

“Care to elucidate?” I asked.

“Lili used to laugh herself sick whenever I dropped anything. I bumped my head one day getting in my Porsche. Lili howled with laughter. Tears streamed down her face. The last straw came a week before we were to get married. Lili and I went over to the new apartment to take some measurements. As I got out of the car, I dropped the apartment key. It fell through a metal grill in the street. I couldn’t fish it out.”

“Did Lili think that was funny?” I asked.

“Funny?! She stood on the sidewalk, doubled over, and screamed with laughter. Like a maniac.”

“And....?” I asked.

“My whole future flashed before me in a few seconds. Believe me, pal, for a guy as clumsy as me, it wasn’t a funny scenario.”

“No... Did Lili have any idea how you felt?”

“She must have known after I paid the building’s super for the lost key, and didn’t ask for a new one.”

“Looking back, do you think you blew it when you broke off with Lili?” I asked.

“Who knows? One thing, though.... When I told her it was ‘quits, with us’ Lili didn’t laugh at all.”