Spring was at hand, the Viennese spring, that none of the sentimental chansons could begin to do justice to. Not one of the popular tunes has the urgency of a blackbird’s song in the Votivpark or the Volksgarten. No rhymed strophes are as eloquent as the adorably rough cry of a barker outside a Prater booth in April. Who can sing the careful gold of the laburnum, trying vainly to conceal itself among the alert green of the other shrubbery? The sweet scent of elderflower was approaching, a solemn promise. In the Vienna woods, the violets were out. Young people paired off. In our regular café, we cracked jokes, played chess and dardel and tarock. We lost and won valueless money.
So important was spring to my mother that, from April 15, she redoubled the number of her excursions, and drove out to the Prater twice a month, not once as in winter. There were not many cabs left. The horses died of old age. Many more were slaughtered and made into sausages. In the storehouses of the old army, you could see parts of wrecked hackney cabs. Rubber-tyred carriages that may once have conveyed the Tschirschkys, the Pallavicinis, the Sternbergs, the Esterhazys, the Dietrichsteins, the Trautmannsdorffs. My mother, cautious by nature, and grown more so over the years, had come to an “arrangement” with one of the few remaining cabbies. He would come for her punctually twice a month, at nine in the morning. Sometimes I went with her, especially on rainy days. She didn’t like to be alone in adversity — and rain already counted as such. We didn’t speak much in the quiet penumbra under the rain roof. “Xaver,” my mother would say to the cabbie, “talk to me.” He would turn to face us, give the horses their heads for a couple of minutes, and tell us all sorts of things. “According to my son,” Xaver told us, “Capitalism is finished. He doesn’t call me Dad any more. He calls me: Let’s go, your Graces! He’s a sharp cookie. He knows what he wants. He doesn’t understand the first thing about horses.” Was she a capitalist, asked my mother. “To be sure, ma’am,” replied the cabbie, “all those that don’t work and that still manage to live are capitalists.” “What about the beggars?” asked my mother. “They might not work, but then they don’t go on excursions to the Praterspitz like you, ma’am!” replied Xaver. My mother whispered “A Jacobin!” to me. She thought she had spoken in the code of the owning classes. But Xaver understood. He turned round and said: “It’s my son who’s the Jacobin.” Thereupon he cracked his whip. It was as though he had applauded his own remark, with its historical culture.
My mother grew more reactionary by the day, especially the day I took out the mortgage on the house. Arts and crafts, Elisabeth, the lady professor, short hair, Czechs, Social Democrats, Jacobins, Jews, tinned meat, paper money, the stock exchange, my father-in-law — all these came in for her contempt and her vitriol. Our solicitor, Dr Kiniower, who had been a friend of my father’s, was now called, for simplicity’s sake: the Jew. Our maid was the Jacobin. The janitor was a sans-culotte, and Frau Jolanth Szatmary went by Keczkemet. A new personality turned up in our lives, one Kurt von Stettenheim, come all the way from Brandenburg and determined to bring arts and crafts to a waiting world. He looked like one of those men that these days pass for well-bred. By that I mean a mixture of champion tennis player and landowner from no fixed province, with a little maritime whiff of shipping magnate thrown in. Such men may come from anywhere: the Baltic, or Pomerania, or even the Lüneburg Heath. We were relatively lucky with ours: Herr von Stettenheim came from Brandenburg.
He was tall and sinewy, blond and freckled, he wore the inevitable duelling scar on his forehead, the sign of the Borussian fraternity and affected the monocle so anything other than indispensable that we had no option but to call it indispensable. I myself use a monocle on occasion for the sake of convenience, as I’m too vain to wear glasses. But there are certain faces — faces from Pomerania, from the Baltic, from Brandenburg — in which a monocle gives the appearance of being a superfluous third eye, not an aid to vision, but a sort of glass mask. When Herr von Stettenheim screwed in his monocle, he looked like Professor Jolanth Szatmary when she was lighting a cigarette. When Herr von Stettenheim spoke, and much more when he waxed wrathful, then the Cain’s mark on his forehead turned blood red — and the man got excited over everything and nothing. There was a perplexing contrast between his zeal and the words in which he expressed it, as for instance: “Well, I can tell you, I was gobsmacked,” or “I can only advise you: nil desperandum,” or “I’ll lay ten to one, and shake on it!” And more of the same. Evidently our mortgage wasn’t enough for my father-in-law. Herr von Stettenheim promised to invest heavily in the Elisabeth Trotta Studios. Once or twice my father-in-law brought us together. After all, because of the mortgage, he’d now “taken me on board,” as promised, in the arts and crafts industry. So he had to at least introduce me to the third member of our board. “I know a Count Trotta!” exclaimed Herr von Stettenheim after we’d barely exchanged two sentences. “You must be mistaken,” I said, “there are only Trottas raised to the barony — if indeed they are still alive!” “I remember now, he was a baron, the old Colonel.” “You’re mistaken again,” I said, “my uncle is District Commissioner.” “So sorry!” replied Herr von Stettenheim. And his scar flushed purple.
Herr von Stettenheim had the idea of calling our firm “Jolan Workshops.” And that was duly how it appeared in the company register. Elisabeth was drawing busily whenever I turned up in the office. She sketched baffling things, for instance nine-pointed stars on the walls of an octahedron or a ten-fingered hand executed in agate, to be called “Krishnamurti’s Benediction,” or a red bull on a black ground, called “Apis,” a ship with three banks of oars by the name of “Salamis,” and a snake-bracelet that went by “Cleopatra.” It was Professor Jolanth Szatmary who came up with the original ideas, and gave them to her to block out. Apart from that, there were the usual oppressive, hate-filled conventions of cordiality, all overlying our mutual resentment. Elisabeth loved me, of that I was certain, but she was afraid of Professor Szatmary, one of those fears that modern medicine likes to label and is helpless to explain. Ever since Herr von Stettenheim had joined the “Jolan-Workshops” as co-owner, my father-in-law and the Professor viewed me as a nuisance, a bump on the road to arts and crafts, capable of no useful labour and wholly unworthy of being made privy to the artistic and financial plans of the firm. I was just Elisabeth’s other half.
Herr von Stettenheim drew up prospectuses in many world languages, and sent them out in all directions. The fewer the replies, the more furious his zeal. The new curtains came in, two lemon yellow chairs, a sofa, ditto, with black and white zebra stripes, two lamps with hexagonal shades of Japanese paper, and a parchment map on which all cities and countries were marked by drawing pins — all of them, even the ones our company didn’t supply.
On evenings when I came to collect Elisabeth, we wouldn’t talk about Stettenheim or Jolanth Szatmary or arts and crafts. That was agreed between us. We spent sweet, full spring nights together. There was no doubt about it: Elisabeth loved me.
I was patient. I waited. I waited for the moment when she would tell me of her own volition that she wanted to be all mine. Our flat on the ground floor waited.
My mother never asked me about Elisabeth’s intentions. From time to time she would drop a hint, as for instance: “Once you’ve moved in,” or “when we’re all living under the same roof,” and suchlike.
At the end of summer, it turned out that our “Jolan-Workshops” were not bringing in any money whatsoever. Moreover, my father-in-law hadn’t had any luck with his “other irons.” On the advice of Herr von Stettenheim, he had taken a punt on the Deutschmark. The Deutschmark fell. I was to take out a second, much larger, mortgage on our house. I discussed it with my mother, who didn’t want to know. I talked to my father-in-law. “You’re useless, I always knew it,” he said. “I’ll have to have a word with her myself.”
He went to my mother, not alone, but in the company of Herr von Stettenheim. My mother, who was intimidated, sometimes even intolerant of strangers, asked me to wai
t. I stayed at home. The miracle happened; my mother took to Herr von Stettenheim. During the negotiations in our drawing room, I even thought I saw her leaning forward ever so slightly, to catch his abundant and superfluous speech more clearly. “Charming!” was my mother’s verdict. “Charming!” she said once or twice more, in response to perfectly ordinary remarks from Herr von Stettenheim. He too — it was his turn — gave a lecture on arts and crafts in general, and the products of the “Jolan-Workshops, Ltd” in particular. And my dear old mother, who surely understood no more about arts and crafts now than she had a long time ago from hearing Elisabeth discuss them, kept saying: “Now I understand, now I understand, now I understand!”
Herr von Stettenheim had the good manners to say,
“Columbus’s egg, ma’am!” And like an obedient echo, my mother repeated: “Columbus’s egg! We’ll take out a second mortgage.”
To begin with, our lawyer Kiniower was against it. “I warn you!” he said. “It’s a hopeless business. Your father-in-law, I happen to know, has no money left. I’ve made inquiries. That Herr von Stettenheim is living on the money you are managing to raise. He claims to have a share in Tattersall in the Berlin Tiergarten. My colleague in Berlin informs me that is not the case. As truly as I was a friend to your late lamented Papa: I speak the truth. Frau Jolanth Szatmary is as little a professor as I am. She has never studied at any of the academies in Vienna or Budapest. I warn you, Herr Trotta, I warn you.”
The “Jew” had little black watering eyes behind a skewed pince-nez. One side of his grey moustache was jauntily curled up, the other dangled despondently down. It looked like an expression of a divided nature. And indeed, he was capable of ending a long, gloomy conversation full of talk of my imminent financial doom, with the cry: “But everything will turn out for the best! God is a father.” That was a sentence he liked to repeat in any difficult circumstances. This grandson of Abraham, heir to a blessing and a curse, frivolous as an Austrian, melancholy as a Jew, full of emotion but only to the point where emotion can become a danger to oneself, clear-sighted in spite of his wobbly and crooked pince-nez, had over time become as dear to me as a brother. I often dropped in on him in his office, for no particular reason or occasion. On his desk he had photographs of his two sons. The elder had fallen in the war. The younger was studying medicine. “His head is full of social nonsense!” complained Dr Kiniower. “How much more important a cure for cancer would be! I’m afraid I’m maybe getting one myself, here, on the kidney! If I have a medical student for a son, then he should be thinking of his old father, and not of saving the world. Enough with saviour already! But you’re about to save the arts and crafts! Your Mama wanted to save the Fatherland. She put her fortune in war bonds. There’s nothing left but a paltry insurance policy. Your Mama probably imagines it’s enough for a ripe old age. She’ll get through it in a couple of months, I’m telling you. You don’t have a job. Probably you’ll never have a job. But unless you start earning money, you’ve had it. My advice to you is: you have a house, take paying guests. Try and make your Mama understand. This mortgage won’t be the last, I’m sure of that. You’ll be wanting a third, and then a fourth. Believe me! God is a father!”
Herr von Stettenheim called regularly on my mother, rarely announcing himself in advance. My mother received him warmly, sometimes even rapturously. With grief and astonishment I watched as the old, stern and pampered lady indulged his coarse witticisms, his tawdry expressions, his catchpenny gestures, and approved, praised and relished them. Herr von Stettenheim was in the habit of bringing his left wrist up to his eye to look at his watch, with a terrifying abrupt movement of his elbow. Each time he did it, I imagined him poking a neighbour in the eye. His way of extending the pinkie of his right hand when he picked up his coffee cup — that finger on which he wore his great lunk of a seal ring, with a seal that resembled some sort of insect — reminded me of a governess. He spoke in that guttural Prussian that sounds as though it’s coming out of a chimney instead of someone’s throat, and seems to hollow out even the occasional words of importance that he said.
And that was the man my dear old Mama had fallen for. “Charming!” she called him.
XXVIII
He gradually made an impression on me too, though to begin with I failed to notice. I needed him; if only for my mother’s sake I needed him. He represented a connection between our house and Elisabeth. In the long run, I couldn’t stand between two women, or even three if one included Professor Szatmary. Ever since Herr von Stettenheim had so surprisingly found favour with my mother, Elisabeth sometimes came to our house. My mother had merely intimated that she didn’t want to see Jolanth. Who, incidentally, was slowly distancing herself from Elisabeth. That too was partly to the credit of Herr von Stettenheim, and was another reason for me to be impressed with him. I got used to his unexpected manners (I found them less alarming, over time), his speech which was always two or three shades noisier than the room required. It was as though he didn’t understand that rooms came in different shapes and sizes, a sitting room and a station hall, for instance. In my mother’s drawing room, he spoke with that rather too hasty voice that simple people fall into on the telephone. On the street he frankly shouted. And since everything he said was invariably vapid, it sounded twice as loud. For a long time I was surprised that my mother, who could be caused physical pain by a loud voice, a needless sound, any display of street music or parades, was able to tolerate and even take enjoyment in the voice of Herr von Stettenheim. It was only a couple of months later that by chance I was able to find out why this was.
One evening, I returned home unexpectedly. I wanted to say hello to my mother, and let her know I was back. The maid said she was in the library. The door of our library, which opened off the drawing room, was ajar so that I didn’t have to knock. Evidently the old lady didn’t hear my initial greeting. I supposed at first she had fallen asleep over her book. She was sitting facing the window, with her back to me. I came nearer, she wasn’t asleep, she was reading and even turned a page just as I approached. “Good evening, Mama!” I said. She didn’t look up. I touched her. She jumped. “Where have you sprung from?” she asked. “Just passing by, Mama. I wanted to get Stiasny’s address.” “I haven’t heard from him for a long time, I think he must have died.” Dr Stiasny was a police surgeon, the same age as me; my mother must have misunderstood. “I mean that Stiasny,” I said. “Yes, of course. I think he’s been dead for two years now. He was over eighty.” “Dead. I see,” I repeated, and I was forced to realise that my mother was deaf. It was only thanks to her discipline, that unusual discipline that we, her juniors, had been excused from birth, that she achieved the extraordinary strength to suppress her infirmity during those hours when she was expecting me back, me and others. During her long hours of waiting, she was readying herself to hear. She must certainly know that age had struck her one of the blows it likes to deal out. Soon — so I thought — she will be quite deaf, like the piano without strings! Yes, perhaps even that occasion, when in a fit of confusion she had asked for the strings to be taken out, even that had been a sense of her approaching deafness alive in her, and a vague fear that before long she wouldn’t be able to hear notes any more! Of all the blows that old age has to give, this for my mother, a true child of music, must have been the worst. At that instant she attained for me an almost preternatural grandeur, moved into a different century, the epoch of a long-gone heroical nobility. Because to conceal and to deny frailty can only be heroic.
And so it was that she came to appreciate Herr von Stettenheim. Obviously she found it easy to understand him, and so she was grateful to him. His banalities didn’t exhaust her. I said goodbye; I wanted to go to my room to find Stiasny’s address. “Can I come at eight, Mama?” I called out, raising my voice a little. It was a little too much. “No need to shout!” she said. “Do come. We’re having cherry dumplings, even though the flour is maize.”
I tried desperately to dismiss the thought of a
boarding house. My mother running a B&B! What a truly absurd idea! Her deafness added to her dignity. Now perhaps she couldn’t even hear the knocking of her own stick or her own footfall. I understood what made her so kind to our blond, heavy-set, rather slow-witted maid, who was apt to crash about, a good dull child from the suburbs. My mother and house-guests! Our house with innumerable bells, dinning into my ears already, the more my mother was unable to hear their impertinence. I had (so to speak) to hear for both of us, and feel offence for both of us too. But what other solution was there? Dr Kiniower was right. The arts and crafts swallowed one mortgage after another.
My mother didn’t pay any attention to it. So I was left, as they say, with the responsibility. I and — responsible! Not that I was a coward, you understand. No, I was just not up to it. I wasn’t afraid of death, but such things as offices, notaries and bureaucracy alarmed me. I couldn’t count, it was all I could do to add. Multiplication made my head reel. So — yes. Me and responsibility!
In the meantime, Herr von Stettenheim was living his happy-go-lucky life, a ponderous bird. He always had money, he never had to borrow; on the contrary he treated all my friends. Of course we disliked him just the same. We suddenly fell silent when he wandered into the café. Moreover, he was in the habit of turning up with a different woman every week. He picked them up all over the place: dancers, checkout girls, seamstresses, milliners, cooks. He went on jaunts, he bought suits, he played tennis, he rode out in the Prater. One night I ran into him in our gateway on my way home. He seemed to be in a hurry, the car was waiting for him. “I have to go!” he said, and threw himself into the car.