Free Three Balconies by Bruce Jay Friedman

as part of the Theatretreffen Berlin Festival. The play was thrown immediately into production. Baum waited tensely for the reviews, which were tepid. “The Great Man Stumbles . . .” said one. No sooner had Baum taken a grateful breath then it was announced that Albert Wiener’s play would be mounted in a grand production in Petersburg.
    â€œHere we will do it properly,” said the Russian impresario.
    En route to attend rehearsals, Wiener announced to the press that he had signed a contract with the Pflaume/Kunstler Presse to do the first revisionist biography of Benjamin Disraeli. This was yet another venture that Baum had thought wistfully of tackling. Wiener had already completed four hundred pages. The rest was in meticulously organized notes.
    Each mention of Wiener’s name or one of his projects was like a spear lodged in Baum’s side. Only on those rare days when his rival was absent from the news was Baum able to draw a clean breath. In mid-semester, he gave up his teaching job. “I’m not
worthy of it,” he told the headmaster, and tossed his classroom keys on the man’s desk.
    The following day Baum experienced a coup d’age. Virtually overnight, he became short of breath and developed roving stomach pains. His knees swelled to twice their size. A doctor reported that he had lost an inch and a half in height. He walked with two canes and was easily jostled in crowds.
    Baum attributed this sudden decline to a single item of gossip in Bunte Illustrierte. Wiener was reported to be dating Lotte Frietag, a blonde and exquisite nineteen-year-old who was a rising star of the German cinema. There was a grainy photograph of the couple in matching bikinis, “frolicking” on the beach in St. Tropez. Though Wiener had a modest paunch, he looked surprisingly well-toned. He had, of course, enjoyed a glittering career. For him to possess the ravishing Frietag as well was unconscionable. Baum imagined himself saying to his rival: “Wiener, you go too far.”
    Baum followed his wife’s advice; the couple moved to a small village outside of Schwernitz, where he would no longer be caught up in the turmoil of city life. The twins rented an apartment in Berlin, sponsored by the dwindling residuals of Baum’s Italian film career.
    â€œYou lived a wild life,” said one. “Why shouldn’t we?”
    In the years that followed, Wiener continued to produce books at an infuriating pace. Even a wild novelistic foray into science fiction was bought by the films.
    â€œWhat I have in mind,” said the director who had been assigned to Wiener’s project, “is a grand trilogy that will be faithful to the master.”
    A single heartening note – from Baum’s point of view – was that Wiener and the exquisite Lotte Frietag had agreed to separate and to remain good friends. But this, too, was taken away.
    â€œI finally realized” she told a tabloid interviewer “that it was only the sex that kept us bound together. The man was voracious. I could no longer keep pace.”

    For his part, the white-haired Baum followed the same routine each day: he rose early, spent as much time as possible with his breakfast and the newspapers, then took a nap. When he awakened, he walked – or rather trudged – up a little hill to a shed he referred to as his “office.” There, he reviewed notes for works that he had set aside. Why push on with them when he could never catch sight of Wiener, much less draw abreast of him. It crossed his mind that a single small classic might do the trick – but Candide had already been written. After making a feeble and fruitless pass at a new venture, he reread the fables he had written as a young man. Then he called it a day.
    And then one morning, as he prepared a tasteless but healthful breakfast of oatmeal and berries, he glanced at the newspaper. A banner headline announced the death of the