There was silence for a moment. Then my mother asked me: “Have you suffered much, boy?” “Not so very much, Mama.” “Did you miss your Elisabeth?” (She didn’t say: your wife, she said: your Elisabeth, and with the stress on the “your.”) “No, Mama!” “Are you still in love with her?” “Too much water under the bridge, Mama.” “Don’t you even want to ask after her?” “I was just about to!” “I’ve hardly seen her,” said my mother. “I’ve seen more of your father-in-law. He was last here a couple of months ago. A little downcast, but still full of plans. He’s done well out of the War. They knew you were a prisoner. I think they’d have preferred to see you on the list of casualties, or so-called missing feared dead. Elisabeth . . .” “It’s all right, I can imagine,” I interrupted her.
“No, you can’t imagine,” my mother persisted. “Guess what became of her?”
I tried to think of the worst, or what in my mother’s eyes might be the worst thing that could have happened.
“Maybe a dancer?” I suggested.
My mother shook her head solemnly. Then she said slowly, almost grimly: “No — arts and crafts. Do you even know what that is? She sketches, or who knows, maybe she even carves — these crazy necklaces and rings, those modern gewgaws, you know, all jagged, and brooches of fir. I think she can weave straw carpets too. The last time she was here, she gave me a lecture, like a professor, about African art, I think it was. Once, without asking me, she came with a friend. It was” — my mother paused for a while before bringing herself to say the word: “it was one of those hoydens, with short hair.”
“Is that so bad?” I asked.
“It’s worse, boy! Once you start making valuable-looking things out of worthless material! Where’ll it end? Africans go around in seashells, that’s another matter. If you cheat people — fine. But these people try to make something virtuous out of the deception. Do you understand, boy? No one can persuade me that cotton is as good as linen, or that you can make laurel wreaths out of pine cones.”
My mother spoke slowly, in her usual quiet tone. Her face flushed.
“Would you have liked a dancer better?”
My mother pondered for a while, then to my great astonishment said:
“Certainly, boy! I wouldn’t want a dancer as a daughter-in-law, but at least you know where you are with one. Loose morals are unambiguous. There’s no cheating, no deception. The likes of you can have a relationship with a dancer. But an interior designer craves legitimacy and marriage. Now do you see, boy? Once you’ve got over the war, you will. Anyway, you’re to go and see your Elisabeth first thing tomorrow. Where will you live, I wonder? And what will become of you? She’s living with her father. What time shall I wake you?”
“I’m not sure, Mama!”
“I breakfast at eight,” she said.
“Then what about seven, Mama!”
“Go to bed, then, boy. Good night!”
I kissed her hand; she kissed me on the forehead. Yes, that was my mother! It was as though nothing had happened, as though I hadn’t just come home from the war, as though the world didn’t lie in ruins, as though the Monarchy hadn’t been destroyed, our old Fatherland with its numerous, baffling but immutable laws, customs, habits, practices, inclinations, virtues and vices still extant. In my mother’s house, one got up at seven, even if one hadn’t slept for the past four nights. I’d arrived at midnight. Now the old clock on the mantel with its tired, tender girlish face was striking three. Three hours of tenderness were enough for my mother. Or were they? At any rate, she didn’t permit another quarter hour. My mother was right; before long I was asleep with the comforting sense that I was home, in the midst of a wrecked Fatherland; I was falling asleep in a fortress. My old mother with her old ebony crutch warded off the confusions.
XXIV
As yet I wasn’t afraid of the new life that was awaiting me; as they nowadays like to say: I hadn’t “clocked” it. Rather, I kept to the little hourly tasks I had to perform; I was like someone standing at the foot of an intimidating flight of stairs, who takes the first one for the most daunting.
We no longer kept a manservant, just a maid. The old janitor did duty for a butler. At nine in the morning, I sent him with flowers and a note to my wife. I announced myself for eleven o’clock, which I thought seemly. I got gussied up, as we used to say. My civilian clothes were as they were. I set off on foot. I was there by quarter to, and killed time in a café opposite. On the dot of eleven, I rang the bell. “The master and mistress are both out!” I was told. My flowers and note had been delivered. Elisabeth left word that I was to see her in her office in the Wollzeile. So I made for the Wollzeile. A little plate on the door announced: Atelier Elisabeth Trotta. Seeing my name gave me a shock.
My wife greeted me with a “Servus” and: “Let’s have a look at you then!” I tried to kiss her hand, but she pushed my arm away, which instantly robbed me of my composure. The first woman to push my arm away was my wife! I felt something of the ill-at-ease that always befalls me at the sight of freaks of nature or machines performing human movements: lunatics or hermaphrodites, for instance. But it was Elisabeth all right. She wore a high-necked green blouse with floppy collar and a long masculine tie. Her face was still covered by faint down, I remembered the angle of her neck when she lowered her head, and the nervous drumming of the strong, slender fingers on the table. She was sitting in a bright yellow wooden office chair. In fact, everything here seemed to be bright yellow, the table and a picture frame, and the window surrounds on the large windows, and the bare floor. “You can perch on the table!” she said. “Help yourself to cigarettes. I’m not completely moved in yet.” And she told me she had built all this up herself. “With these two hands,” she said, showing me her lovely hands. In the course of the week, the rest of the furniture should arrive, and some orange curtains, who could deny that yellow and orange went together. When she had finished giving her report — she still spoke in her old, hoarse voice that I had loved so much! — she said: “And what have you been doing with yourself?” “Oh, I’ve been here and there.” “Thank you for the flowers,” she said, “you sent me flowers — why didn’t you telephone?” “We don’t have a phone!” “Well, tell me all about it!” she commanded, lighting a cigarette. She smoked in a way I’ve since seen in many other women, the cigarette jammed in the corner of the mouth, and a grimace when they light it, which gives the face the aspect of that paralysis doctors call facies partialis, and a hard-won appearance of casualness. “I’ll tell you later, Elisabeth,” I said. “Whatever you say,” she replied. “Have a look at my portfolio!” She showed me her designs. “Very original!” I said. She designed all kinds of things: carpets, shawls, ties, rings, bracelets, light fittings, lampshades. Everything looked somehow jagged. “Do you understand?” “No!” “And how could you!” she said. And looked at me. There was pain in her expression, and I sensed she was thinking of our wedding night. All at once, I felt guilty too. But what could I possibly say? The door flew open, and a dark creature blew in, a gust of wind, a young woman with short black hair and round black eyes, tawny face, and the makings of a moustache over red lips and strong gleaming teeth. The woman roared something into the room that I couldn’t understand, I got to my feet, and she sat down on the table. “This is my husband!” said Elisabeth. A couple of minutes later, I realized that this must be “Jolanth.” “Haven’t you heard of Jolanth Szatmary, then?” asked my wife. So I discovered that this woman was famous. She was even better than my wife at designing all those things that the arts-and-crafts business seemed to want. I apologized. It was true, neither in Viatka nor on the transports there and back had I come across the name Jolanth Szatmary.
“Where’s the old geezer?” asked Jolanth.
“He’ll be here soon!” said Elisabeth.
The old geezer was my father-in-law. And soon enough he arrived. He emitted the usual “Ah!” when he saw me, and embraced me. He was sound and healthy. “Back in one piece!” he called ou
t triumphantly, as though he had brought me back himself. “All’s well that ends well,” he added a second later. Both women laughed, and I could feel myself blush. “Let’s have something to eat!” he decreed. “See this,” he said to me, “all built up from scratch with my own hands!” And he showed me the hands. Elisabeth pretended to be looking for her coat.
So we went for lunch, or rather drove, seeing as my father-in-law still had his car and driver. “The usual place!” he ordered. I didn’t dare ask what restaurant was his usual place. Well, it was my own stand-by, where my friends and I had eaten so often, one of those places in old Vienna where the maître d’ knew the guests better than the waiters who worked for him, and where a diner wasn’t a paying customer but a hallowed visitor.
It was all changed. New waiters served us who didn’t know me, and who shook hands with my garrulous father-in-law and brought him to his “special table.” I felt very much a stranger here, stranger than strange. I mean to say, the space was familiar, the walls were my friends, the windows, the smoke-blackened ceiling, the wide green-tiled stove and the blue-rimmed earthenware vase with dried flowers on the windowsill. But strangers served me, and I was seated with strangers at one table eating. I couldn’t follow the conversation. My father-in-law, my wife Elisabeth and Jolanth Szatmary were talking about exhibitions; they wanted to start magazines, print posters, attain international fame — what do I know. “We’ll take you on board!” my father-in-law would say to me from time to time; and I had no idea what he wanted to take me on board of. Yes, the very idea of being taken “on board” pained me.
“Put it on my tab!” called my father-in-law when we were finished. At that instant Leopold turned up behind the bar, Grandpa Leopold as we used to call him. Six years ago we had called him that. “Grandpa!” I called out, and he emerged. He was probably over seventy now. He walked on trembly legs and those turned-out feet that always give away a long-serving waiter. His pale, red-rimmed eyes behind the wobbly pince-nez identified me straightaway. His toothless mouth broke into a smile, already the white wings of his whiskers spread. He paddled towards me and took my hand tenderly in his, the way you might pick up a bird. “Oh, I’m so happy you’re back, sir!” he crowed. “Please come again soon. I’ll do myself the honour of serving you in person!” And without bothering about the feelings of the clientele, he called out to the landlady at the till: “A real guest at last!” My father-in-law laughed.
I had to talk to my father-in-law. Now, I thought, I had a view of the whole staircase ahead of me. It had an endless number of steps, getting ever steeper. Of course, I could always abandon Elisabeth and not think about her any more. But I didn’t even consider it. She was my wife. (Even today I have the sense that she is my wife.) Possibly I had transgressed against her, certainly I had. Perhaps it was my old, only half-smothered love that was trying to persuade me that it was just a question of my conscience. Perhaps it was my need, the foolish need of all young and halfways young men to take the woman they had once been in love with, then forgotten, and who has now changed, and at any price change her back to what she once was; for reasons of vanity. Well, I had to talk to my father-in-law, and to Elisabeth.
I met my father-in-law in the bar of the hotel where they were bound to remember me. To make absolutely sure, I conducted a little scouting expedition half an hour before. Yes, they were all still with us, two of the waiters had got through unscathed, and the barman too. Yes, they even remembered I had a few debts outstanding — and even that did me good to hear! It was all very calm and peaceful. The light fell sweetly through the glass roof. There were no windows. There were still good old drinks from before the War. When my father-in-law arrived, I ordered cognac. They brought me Napoleon, as of yore. “What a terror!” said my father-in-law. Well, hardly.
I told him I needed to arrange my life, or rather our lives. I was, I said, not one to put off difficult decisions. I needed to know. I was a man of method.
He listened to me calmly enough. Then he began: “I’ll be perfectly frank with you. First, I have no idea whether Elisabeth still wants to live with you, that is, if she still loves you. That’s one thing, and that’s for the two of you to work out. Second, what will you live off? Is there anything you can do? Before the War, you were a rich young man from good society, which is the same society my laddie belonged to.”
“My laddie!” He meant my brother-in-law. The one I had never been able to stand. I had completely forgotten about him. “What’s he doing?” I asked. “He’s dead,” replied my father-in-law. He stopped, and drained his glass. “He fell in 1916,” he added. For the first time he felt like someone I might have some feeling for. “Anyway,” he went on, “you don’t have money, and you don’t have a job. I’m a Commercial Councillor, and even ennobled. Not that that means anything any more. The government owes me hundreds of thousands. They won’t pay. All I have is credit, and a little something in the bank. I’m still young. I can get something off the ground. That’s what I’m doing right now, as you saw, with the arts and crafts. Elisabeth studied under that renowned Jolanth Szatmary. ‘Jolanth Studios’: with that label, you could export the stuff all over the world. Also” — at this point a dreamy look came into his eye — “I have a couple more irons in the fire.”
That turn of phrase was enough to put me off him again. He must have sensed it, because he quickly went on: “Your family is broke, I know that, your mother doesn’t. I can get you on board somewhere, if you like. But you need to talk to Elisabeth first. Servus!”
XXV
So I talked to Elisabeth first. It felt like exhuming something that I had myself consigned to earth. Was there a feeling driving me on, did I have some passion for Elisabeth? I know I was inclined by birth and breeding to take responsibility, and as a strong protest to the new order all round me, where I felt ill at ease, I felt compelled to put some order into my own affairs.
Elisabeth came at the agreed time to the café in the city centre where we had once met during the time of my first love for her. I was waiting for her at our old table. Memory, even mawkishness, had me in its grip. I thought the marble table top must still bear traces of our clasped hands. A childish idea, a laughable idea. I knew it, but I forced myself to it, drove myself to it, in a way to be able to supplement my desire to “put my life in some sort of order” with a measure of emotion, and hence provide a balanced justification for my wanting to talk to Elisabeth. It was at that time that I made the discovery that our experience is fleeting, our forgetting rapid, and our existence evanescent, as that of no other creature in this world. I was afraid of Elisabeth; the war, prisoner of war camp, Viatka, my return were all but extinguished in me. All my experiences stood in some relation to Elisabeth. And what did she mean, compared to the loss of my friends, Joseph Branco, Manes Reisiger, Jan Baranovich, and my home, my world? Elisabeth wasn’t even properly my wife, not in the full bourgeois and biblical sense of the word. (In the old Monarchy, it would have been a simple matter for us to get divorced — no doubt even simpler now.) Did I desire her still? I looked up at the clock. She would be here in five minutes, and I wished it might be another half an hour. In my panic I started eating the little chocolate cakes put together from cinnamon and chicory that deceive our eyes but cannot take in our palates. (This Konditorei had no schnapps.)
Elisabeth came. She did not come alone. Her friend Jolanth Szatmary was with her. I had assumed of course that she would come alone. Now when Jolanth Szatmary turned up as well, I wasn’t even surprised. It was clear to me that Elisabeth would not, could not, have come without the woman, and I understood.
It wasn’t that I was prejudiced, oh no! In the world in which I had grown up, prejudice was vulgar. To make a public display of something that was viewed askance didn’t seem right to me. Probably Elisabeth would not have come to our rendezvous with a woman with whom she was not in love. At this point she had to obey.
There was an astonishing resemblance between the two of them, even though the
y were of such different types, and had such utterly different features. It came from the similarity in their clothes and gestures. You might have said they resembled one another like sisters — or like brothers. As men tend to do, they both hesitated outside the door, to see which of them would agree to go in first. There was another hesitation at the table, to see which of them would sit down first. I didn’t even try to kiss their hands. I was a ridiculous thing in their eyes, the sprog of a wretched sex, an alien, unimpressive race, unworthy all my life of receiving the distinctions of the caste to which they belonged, or of being inducted in their mysteries. I was still caught in the wicked belief that they belonged to a weak, even a lesser sex, and impertinent enough to try and express this view through gallantry. They sat next to me resolute and contained, as though I had challenged them. Between them there was a silent but perfectly apparent bond against me. It was clearly visible. I made some bland remark, and they exchanged glances, like two who had long known my type, and the sort of things I was capable of saying. Sometimes one of them would smile, and then a split second later, the same smile would appear on the lips of the other. From time to time I thought I noticed Elisabeth incline towards me, try to send me a secret look, as though to show me that she really belonged to me, only to be compelled, against her own will and inclination, to obey her friend. What was there to talk about? I asked her about her work. I got a lecture in return about the reluctance of Europe to appreciate the materials, intentions and genius of the primitive. It was essential to reroute the whole misguided taste of the European in art, and return it to nature. Ornaments were, I was given to understand, useful. I didn’t question what I was told. I freely conceded that European taste in arts was misguided. Only I couldn’t understand how this aberrant taste had caused the end of the world: wasn’t it a consequence, or at any rate a symptom?