The Tongue Set Free, page 13
He was unable to force any interest out of me in the place of my birth, but Mother succeeded just like that. During one of our evening sessions, she abruply said, when talking about a book that she particularly loved: “I first read that up in the mulberry tree in my father’s garden.” Once she showed me an old copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables; it still had stains from the mulberries she had eaten while reading. “They were already very ripe,” she said, “and I climbed up very high to conceal myself more effectively. When I was supposed to come to lunch, they didn’t see me. I kept reading all afternoon and then suddenly I got so hungry that I stuffed myself on mulberries. You have an easier time of it, I always let you read.”
“But I do have to go to meals,” I said, and started getting interested in the mulberry tree.
She would show it to me, she promised; all our conversations now revolved around travel plans. I was against the idea because our evening sessions would have to pause for a while. But then—I was still under the impact of the myth of the Argonauts and the figure of Medea—she said: “We’ll also travel to Varna, on the Black Sea.” My resistance collapsed. Kolchis may have been at the other end of the Black Sea, but still and all, it was the same sea, and to lay my eyes upon it I was ready to pay even the high price of interrupting our readings.
We traveled by train, past Kronstadt and through Rumania. I had tender feelings for this country because my family greatly praised the Rumanian woman who had wetnursed me. I was told she had liked me as much as her own child and had subsequently not hesitated to sail from Giurgiu across the Danube just to see how I was getting on. Then they had heard that she had drowned after tumbling into a deep well, and Father, as was his way, had tracked down the family and, secretly, without letting Grandfather find out, he had done whatever he could for them.
In Ruschuk, we did not stay in the old mansion; that would have been too close to Grandfather Canetti. We settled in with Aunt Bellina, Mother’s eldest sister. She was the most beautiful of the three sisters and enjoyed some renown for this reason alone. The misfortune that haunted her later, until the end of her life, had not yet broken in upon her and her family; but it was already announcing itself. I remember her as she was then, in the prime of her beauty; I subsequently found her again as Titian’s La Bella and Venus of Urbino, and so her image within me can never change.
She lived in a spacious yellow mansion in Turkish style, right across from her father, Grandfather Arditti, who had died during a trip to Vienna two years earlier. She was as kind as she was beautiful; she knew little and was regarded as stupid because she never wanted anything for herself and always gave presents to people. Since everyone so well remembered her avaricious and money-conscious father, Aunt Bellina was anything but a chip off the old block; she was a wonder of generosity, unable to look at a person without reflecting how she could do something special for him. There was nothing else she ever reflected about. When she fell silent and stared into space, heedless of questions from others, somewhat absent, and with an almost strained look on her face—which did not, however, lose its beauty—people knew she was thinking about a present and was dissatisfied with any that had already flashed into her mind. She would give presents in such a way as to overwhelm the recipient, but she was never really glad, for the present always struck her as too meager, and she even managed to excuse herself for it with honest words. It was not the proud manner of giving that I know from Spanish people, a manner with a certain claim to nobility; it was simple and natural, like breathing in and out.
She had married her cousin Josef, a choleric man, who made life hard for her, and she suffered more and more from him, without ever giving the least hint of it. The orchard in back of the house, where the trees were laden with the most marvelous fruit, enchanted us almost as much as my aunt’s presents. The rooms in her house were bright and yet cool, there was far more space than in our apartment in Vienna, and there were all sorts of things to discover. I had forgotten what life was like on Turkish divans, and everything impressed me as new and strange, almost as if I had gone on a voyage of discovery after all, to an exotic land—something that had become the most intense desire of my life. The mulberry tree in Grandfather’s garden across the way was disappointing; it wasn’t all that high, and since I pictured my mother as tall as she was now, I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t noticed her in her hiding place. But in the yellow mansion, in my aunt’s company, I felt fine and didn’t insist on leaving for the Black Sea, which was meant to be the highlight of the trip.
Uncle Josef Arditti with his fat red face and squinting eyes kept pumping me; he knew all sorts of things and was so satisfied with my answers to his questions that he patted my cheeks, saying: “Mark my words! He’ll go a long way. He’ll be a great lawyer like his uncle!” My uncle was a businessman, not a lawyer, but he knew about the laws in many countries, citing them in detail from memory, and in a great variey of languages, which he then instantly translated into German for me. He tried to catch me by quoting the same law again, perhaps ten minutes later, but slightly altered. He would then eye me a bit insidiously and wait. “But that was different before,” I would say, “it was like this!” I couldn’t stand that kind of language, it filled me with a deep disgust for anything connected with “law,” but I too was a know-it-all, and besides, I wanted to reap his praise. “So you paid attention,” he would then say, “you’re not a moron like all the others here,” and he pointed towards the rooms where the others were sitting, including his wife. But he didn’t mean just her, he found the whole city stupid, the country, the Balkans, Europe, the world, with the exception of a few renowned lawyers, who might just barely be a match for him.
People whispered about his fits of rage. I was warned about them, they said he was absolutely horrible when he lost his temper. But I needn’t be scared, he always calmed down again, you only had to sit there very quietly, and not say a word, God forbid, and if he looked at you, just nod humbly. Mother warned me that she and my aunt would also keep still if it happened, that’s the way he was, there was nothing you could do. He particularly aimed at my dead grandfather, said Mother, but also at his surviving widow, my grandmother, and at all my mother’s surviving sisters and brothers, including herself and Aunt Bellina.
I heard this warning so often that I anxiously looked forward to it. But when it did come one day, during a meal, it was so terrible that it became the real memory of that trip. “Ladrones!” he suddenly shouted, “Ladrones! Do you think I don’t know that you’re all thieves!” The Ladino word ladrones sounds much heavier than “thieves,” something like “thieves” and “bandits” together. He now accused every single member of the family, first the absent ones, of robbery, and started with my dead grandfather, his father-in-law, who had excluded him from part of the legacy in favor of Grandmother. Then it was my still-living grandmother’s turn; powerful Uncle Solomon in Manchester, he’d better watch out. He was going to annihilate him, he knew more about the law, he would bring suits against him in all the countries in the world, not a loophole would be left for him to wiggle through!
I felt no sympathy whatsoever for that uncle and, I can’t deny it, I was delighted that someone dared to stand up to him, who was generally feared. But then it went on, now it was the turn of the three sisters, even my mother, even Aunt Bellina, his own wife, who was such a kind-hearted person—they were secretly conspiring against him with the family. These scoundrels! These criminals! This riffraff! He would crush them all. Tear their false hearts out of their bodies! Feed their hearts to the dogs! They would remember him! They would beg for mercy. But he was merciless! He only knew law. But he knew it well! Let anyone just try and challenge him! These lunatics! These morons! “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” he suddenly turned to my mother. “But your little boy is a thousand times smarter. He’s like me! Some day he’ll drag you into court! You’ll have to cough up your last penny! She’s educated, they say, but your Schiller won’t help you a bit! The law is all that counts,” he banged his knuckles on his forehead, “and the law is here! Here! Here! You didn’t know that”—he now turned to me—“you didn’t know your mother’s a thief! It’s better that you know it now, before she robs you, her own son!”
I saw Mother’s pleading eyes, but it was no use, I leaped up and shouted: “My mother’s no thief! Aunt Bellina’s no thief either!” and I was so furious that I burst into tears, but that didn’t stop him. He twisted his face, which was terribly bloated, into sweetly piteous creases, and came closer to me: “Shut up! I didn’t ask you! You stupid brat! You’ll see! I’m sitting right here, your Uncle Josef, telling you straight to your face. I pity you with your ten years, that’s why I’m telling you in time: Your mother’s a thief! All of them, they’re all thieves! The whole family! The whole town! Nothing but thieves.”
With that final “ladrones,” he broke off. He didn’t hit me, but I was done for, as far as he was concerned. Later on, after calming down, he said: “You don’t deserve my teaching you the law. You’ll have to learn by experience. You don’t deserve any better.”
Most of all, I was amazed at my aunt. She took it as though nothing had happened and was already busy with her presents that very same afternoon. In a conversation between the sisters, whom I eavesdropped on without their knowledge, she told my mother: “He’s my husband. He wasn’t always like that. He’s been this way since Señor Padre died. He can’t stand any injustice. He’s a good man. You mustn’t go away. That might hurt his feelings. He’s very sensitive. Why are all good people so sensitive?” Mother said it wouldn’t do because of the boy, he mustn’t hear such things about the family. She had always been proud of the family, she said. It was the best family in town. Why, Josef himself was part of the family. His own father had been the elder brother of Señor Padre, after all.
“But he’s never said anything against his own father! He’ll never do that, never! He’d rather bite off his tongue than say anything against his father.”
“But then why does he want that money? He’s a lot richer than we!”
“He can’t stand injustice. He’s gotten this way since the death of Señor Padre, he wasn’t always like this.”
We did go to Varna soon, after all. The sea—I can’t remember any earlier sea—wasn’t the least bit wild or stormy. In honor of Medea, I had expected it to be perilous, but there was no trace of her in these waters; I believe that the agitation in Ruschuk had repressed all thoughts of her. As soon as really awful things began happening among the people closest to me, the classical figures, whom I was otherwise so filled with, lost much of their color. Once I had defended Mother against her brother-in-law’s disgusting accusations, she was no longer Medea for me. On the contrary, it seemed important to take her to safety, to be with her and personally keep an eye on her so that nothing disgusting would adhere to her.
We spent a lot of time on the beach; in the harbor, I was preoccupied with the lighthouse. A destroyer anchored in the harbor, and it was rumored that Bulgaria would enter the war on the side of the Central Powers. In my mother’s conversations with friends, I often heard people saying that this was impossible. Never would Bulgaria go to war against Russia, Bulgaria owed Russia her liberation from the Turks, the Russians had fought against the Turks in many wars, and whenever things had gone badly for the Bulgarians, they relied on the Russians. The general in Russian service, Dimitryev, was one of the most popular men in the country; he had been the guest of honor at my parents’ wedding.
My mother’s oldest friend, Olga, was Russian. We had visited her and her husband in Ruschuk; they struck me as warmer and more open than anyone else I knew. The two friends spoke together like young girls, they spoke French in a quick, jubilant tone, their voices rose and sank incessantly. They never paused for an instant; it was like a twittering, but of very large birds. Olga’s husband kept respectfully quiet, his high-buttoned blouse made him look a bit martial; he poured Russian tea into our cups and served us tidbits. Most of all, he made sure that the conversation of the two friends went on fluently without their wasting a minute of their precious time, for years had passed since their last meeting, and when would they see each other again? I heard the name Tolstoy, he had only just died a few years ago; the respect with which his name was uttered was such that I asked Mother later on whether Tolstoy was a greater writer than Shakespeare, which she hesitantly and reluctantly denied.
“Now you see why I won’t let anyone say anything against Russians,” she said, “They’re the most marvelous people. Olga reads every chance she gets. One can talk to her.”
“What about her husband?”
“Him too. But she’s smarter. She knows her literature better. He respects that. He prefers listening to her.”
I didn’t say anything, but I had my doubts. I knew that my father had considered Mother more intelligent and placed her far above him, and I also knew that she accepted that. She shared his opinion as a matter of course, and when speaking of him—she always said the nicest things—she also quite naively mentioned how greatly he had admired her intellect. “But still, he was more musical than you,” I would protest.
“That’s so,” she said.
“He also acted better than you, everyone says so, he was the best actor.”
“True, true, he had a natural gift for acting, he inherited it from Grandfather.”
“He was also merrier than you, a lot, lot merrier.”
That was something she didn’t mind hearing, for she set great store by dignity and earnestness, and the solemn tones of the Burgtheater had passed into her flesh and blood. Then came my punchline.
“He also had a better heart. He was the best man in the world.” There was no doubt or hesitation now, she always enthusiastically agreed. “You’ll never find a man as good as he anywhere in the world, never, not ever!”
“What about Olga’s husband?”
“He’s good too, that’s so, but you can’t compare him to your father.”
And then came the many stories about his good heart, stories I had heard a hundred times and kept wanting to hear over and over; how many people he had helped, even behind her back so that no one knew about it, how she found out and sternly asked him: “Jacques, did you really do this? Don’t you think you were overdoing it?”
“I don’t know,” was his answer, “I can’t remember.”
“And you know,” her tally would always end, “he really had forgotten. He was such a good person that he forgot the good things he’d done. You mustn’t think that he had a poor memory otherwise. If he did a part in a play, he wouldn’t forget it even months later. And he didn’t forget what his father had done to him when he took his violin away and forced him to come to the butica. He never forgot what I liked and he could surprise me with something that I had once wished for vaguely—even years afterwards. But if he did a good deed, he would keep it a secret, and he was so skillful at keeping it a secret that he forgot it himself.”
“I’ll never be able to do that,” I said, enthusiastic about my father and sad about myself. “I’ll always know.”
“You’re just more like me,” she said, “that’s not really good.” And then she explained that she was too distrustful to be good, she always instantly knew what people were thinking, she could see through them on the spot as though guessing their most secret impulses. On such an occasion, she once mentioned a writer who had been exactly like her in this way; like Tolstoy, he had died recently: Strindberg. She didn’t like saying his name, she had read some books of his a few weeks before Father’s death, and the physician in Reichenhall, who had so urgently recommended Strindberg to her, had prompted Father’s final and, as she sometimes feared, mortal jealousy. As long as we lived in Vienna, she always had tears in her eyes when she uttered Strindberg’s name; only in Zurich did she get so accustomed to him and his books that she could pronounce his name without excessive agitation.
We went on outings from Varna to Monastir, near Euxinograd, where the royal castle stood. We only viewed the castle from afar. For a short while now, since the end of the second Balkan War, it had no longer been in Bulgaria, it now belonged to Rumania. Border crossings in the Balkans, where bitter wars had been waged, were not regarded as pleasurable; in many places, they weren’t even possible, and one avoided them. But, while riding in the droshkey and later, when we dismounted, we saw the most luxuriant orchards and vegetable gardens, dark-violet eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, gigantic pumpkins and melons; I couldn’t get over my amazement at all the different things that grew here. “That’s what it’s like here,” said Mother, “a blessed land. And it’s a civilized land, no one need be ashamed of being born here.”
