The Tongue Set Free, page 16
She saw how preoccupied I was with this suicide, and to get my mind on something else, she asked Mother if she could take me along on her next Sunday outing to Neuwaldegg. She had a friend, with whom we rode out in the trolley car, a quiet young man, who gazed at her admiringly and barely said a word. He was so quiet that he wouldn’t even have been present if Paula hadn’t spoken to both of us at once; whatever she said was aimed at the two of us. She talked in such a way as to expect an answer from us, I replied and the friend nodded. Then we walked a bit through the forest to the Knödelhütte, and he said something that I didn’t understand: “Next week, Fräulein Paula, it’s only five days away.” We came to a radiant meadow covered with people, it was huge, it looked as if it had enough space for all the people in the world, but we had to walk around for a long time before we found a spot. Families were lying there, made up of women and children, occasionally young couples, but mostly whole groups of people who belonged together and were playing something that kept them all on the move. A few people basked in the sun, they seemed happy too, many laughed; Paula was at home here, this was where she belonged. Her friend, who greatly respected her, now opened his mouth frequently, one admiring word led to another, he was on furlough, but he wasn’t in uniform, perhaps he didn’t care to remind her of the war; he had to think about her more, he said, when he wasn’t with her. Men were rarer on the meadow than women, I saw no man in uniform, and if I hadn’t finally realized that Paula’s admirer had to return to the front next week, I would have forgotten there was a war.
That is my last memory of Paula, the meadow near Neuwaldegg, among very many people in the sunshine, I do not see her on the ride home. It is as though she had remained on the meadow to hold her friend back. I don’t know why she left us, I don’t know why she was suddenly gone. If only her smile did not leave her, if only her admirer came back; her father was no longer alive when we rode out in the trolley.
Mother’s Illness Herr Professor
It was the time when bread became yellow and black, with additions of corn and other, less good things. People had to line up at the food shops; we children were also sent, so that we got a little more. Mother began finding life more difficult. In late winter, she collapsed. I don’t know what her illness was, but she was laid up in a sanatorium for long weeks and recovered very slowly. In the beginning, I wasn’t allowed to visit her, but gradually she got better, and I arrived at her sanatorium on Elisabethpromenade with flowers. That was the first time I saw her physician, the director of the institution, in her room; he was a man with a thick, black beard, who had written medical books and taught at the University of Vienna. He gazed at me with honeyed friendliness from half-shut eyes and said: “Well, so this is the great Shakespeare scholar! And he also collects crystals. I’ve heard a lot about you. Your mama always talks about you. You’re quite advanced for your age.”
Mother had spoken to him about me! He knew everything about the things we read together. He praised me. Mother never praised me. I distrusted his beard and avoided him. I was afraid he might someday graze me with his beard, and I would then be instantly transformed into a slave, who would have to fetch and carry for him. His tone of voice, which was slightly nasal, was like cod-liver oil. He wanted to put his hand on my head, perhaps to praise me with it. But I eluded it by ducking swiftly, and he seemed a bit offended: “That’s a proud boy you have there, Madame. He won’t let anyone but you touch him!” That word, “touch,” stuck in my mind, it fixed my hatred for him, a hatred such as I had never experienced before. He didn’t do anything to me, but he flattered me and tried to win me over. From now on, he did it with inventive tenacity, he thought up presents to catch me unawares, and how could he have surmised that an eleven-year-old child’s will power was not only equal to his, but stronger?
For he was wooing my mother, she had aroused a deep liking in him, as he told her (but I learned this only later), the deepest in his life. He wanted to divorce his wife for her. He would take care of the three children, he said, and help raise them. All three could study at the University of Vienna, but the eldest should absolutely become a doctor, and if he felt like it, he could take over the sanatorium eventually. Mother was no longer open with me, she avoided telling me all that, she knew it would have destroyed me. I had the feeling that she was staying in the sanatorium too long, he wouldn’t release her. “Why, you’re completely healthy,” I told her at every visit. “Come home and I’ll take care of you.” She smiled; I spoke like a grownup, a man, or even a doctor who knew everything that had to be done. I would have preferred to carry her out of the sanatorium in my own arms. “One night, I’m going to come and abduct you,” I said.
“But it’s locked downstairs, you can’t come in. You’ll have to wait until the doctor allows me to go home. It won’t take much longer.”
When she returned home, there were many changes. Herr Professor did not vanish from our lives; he came to visit her, he came to tea. He always brought me a present, which I instantly threw away the moment he left the apartment. I never kept a single present of his longer than the extent of his visit, and some of them were books that I would have given anything to read, and wonderful crystals that were missing from my collection. He was quite clever about his presents, for no sooner had I started talking about a book that lured me than it was there, coming from his hands to the table in our nursery, and it was as if a mildew had fallen on the book: Not only did I throw it away, having to find the right places, which was not so easy, but I also never read the book of that title at any time afterwards.
At this point, the jealousy that tortured me all my life commenced, and the force with which it came over me marked me forever. It became my true passion, utterly heedless of any attempts at convincing me or pointing out a better way.
“Today, Herr Professor is coming to tea,” said my mother at lunch. For ourselves, we always used the Viennese word Jause, but for him it was “tea.” Her tea, he had convinced her, was the best in Vienna, she knew how to brew it from her days in England, and while all her supplies had melted down to nothing during the war, she still had enough tea in the house, by some miracle. I asked her what she would do when the tea ran out; she said it wouldn’t run out for a long time.
“How much longer? How much longer?”
“It will hold out for another year or two.”
She knew what I felt, but she couldn’t bear being supervised; perhaps she was exaggerating in order to cure me of asking, for she gruffly refused to show me the supplies of tea.
Herr Professor insisted on greeting me upon his arrival, and no sooner had he kissed Mother’s hand than she let him enter the nursery, where I was expecting him. He always greeted me with a flattering remark and pulled out his present. I looked hard at it in order to sufficiently hate it on the spot and I insidiously said: “Thank you.” We never got into a conversation, the tea, which was served on the balcony of the next room, was waiting, nor did he wish to disturb me in my perusal of the gift. He was convinced he had brought the right thing, every hair in his black beard shone. He asked: “What would you like me to bring you the next time I come?” Since I kept silent, he supplied the answer himself, saying: “I’ll find out, I’ve got my methods.” I knew what he meant, he would ask Mother, and although it was my greatest sorrow that she would tell him, I had more important things to worry about; the time for action had come. Scarcely had he closed the door behind him when I hurriedly grabbed the present and stuck it under the table, out of sight. Then I got a chair, dragged it over to the window, knelt on the woven straw of the seat, and leaned out the window as far as I could.
For to my left, not so far away, I could watch Herr Professor taking a seat on the balcony with all sorts of cordialities. He had his back to me; Mother sat on the other, the further side of the balcony, which formed an arc. I only knew she was there, I couldn’t see her, any more than the tea table standing between them. From his movements, I had to guess everything happening on the balcony. He had a beseeching way of leaning forward, turning slightly left because of the curve in the balcony; I would then see his beard, the object I hated most in the world, and I could also see him raising his left hand and spreading his fingers in elegant affirmation. I could tell whenever he took a sip of tea and I thought in disgust that he was now praising it—he praised everything connected with Mother. I was worried that, although she was very hard to win, his flatteries would turn her head because of her condition, which was weakened by illness. I now applied many things to him and her, things that I had read about and that didn’t fit into my life, and I had words like an adult for everything I feared.
I didn’t know what goes on between a man and a woman, but I watched to make sure nothing happened. If he leaned over too far, I thought he was about to kiss her, even though that would have been quite impossible, at least because of the tea table between them. I understood nothing of his words and sentences; the only thing I thought I heard, seldom enough, was: “But dear Madame!” It sounded persistent and protesting, as though she had done him an injustice, and I was delighted. The worst thing of all was when he didn’t speak for a long time; then I knew that she was talking on and on, and I assumed they were discussing me. I then wished the balcony would collapse and he would be smashed on the sidewalk below. It never occurred to me—perhaps because I didn’t see her—that she would have plunged down along with him. Only what I could see, only he, was to plunge down. I pictured him lying below and the police coming to question me. “I threw him down,” I would say, “he kissed my mother’s hand.”
He would remain to tea for something like an hour; it seemed much longer to me, I crouched stubbornly on my chair, never taking my eyes off him for an instant. As soon as he stood up, I jumped off the chair, moved it back to the table, got the present from underneath, placed it exactly where he had originally produced it, and opened the door to the vestibule. He was already standing there, he kissed Mother’s hand, took his gloves, cane, and hat, waved to me, more pensive and less eager than upon his arrival. After all, he had plunged down in the meantime and he was lucky to be walking on his legs. He disappeared and I ran to my window: I watched after him as he walked to the end of Josef-Gall-Gasse, a short street, turned the corner to the Schüttel, and vanished from my sight.
Mother still needed to recuperate, and our reading sessions were less frequent. She no longer acted anything out for me and only had me read aloud; I made an effort to think up questions that could arouse her interest. If she gave me a long reply, if she really explained something as in the past, I drew hope and was happy again. But she was often reflective, sometimes lapsing into silence, as though I wasn’t there. “You’re not listening,” I would then say, she started and felt caught. I knew her mind had drifted to other books, which she didn’t speak to me about.
She read books that Herr Professor gave her, and she sternly impressed upon me that they weren’t for me. Earlier, the key to the bookcase was always in the keyhole so that I could rummage inside to my heart’s content, but now she took the key away. A present from him that particularly absorbed her was Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. It was the first time I had ever known her to read poetry. She would never have dreamt of doing that before, she despised poetry. Plays had always been her passion, and she had infected me too. Now she no longer picked up Don Carlos or Wallenstein and she made a wry face when I mentioned them. Shakespeare still counted, he even counted a lot, but instead of reading him, she merely looked for certain passages, annoyedly shaking her head when she couldn’t find them right away, or else her entire face would light up with laughter, her nostrils quivering first, and she never told me what she was laughing about. Novels had interested her earlier, but she now read some that I hadn’t noticed before. I saw books by Schnitzler, and when she happened to tell me not only that he lived in Vienna and was really a physician, but also that Herr Professor knew him and that his wife was Sephardic like us, my despair was complete.
“What would you like me to be when I grow up?” I once asked her, in great fear, as if knowing what terrible answer would come. “The best thing is to be both a writer and a doctor,” she said.
“You’re only saying that because of Schnitzler!”
“A doctor does good, a doctor really helps people.”
“Like Dr. Weinstock, huh?” That was a malicious reply. I knew she couldn’t stand our family physician because he always tried to put his arm around her.
“No, not exactly like Dr. Weinstock. Do you think he’s a writer? He doesn’t think about anything. He only thinks about his pleasure. A good doctor understands something about people. Then he can also be a writer and he won’t write nonsense.”
“Like Herr Professor?” I asked, knowing how dangerous things were now getting. He was no writer, and I wanted to get that in at him.
“He doesn’t have to be like Herr Professor,” she said, “but he ought to be like Schnitzler.”
“Then why can’t I read him?” She didn’t answer, but she said something that agitated me even more.
“Your father would have liked you to be a doctor.”
“Did he tell you that? Did he tell you that?”
“Yes, often. He often told me that. That would have made him so happy.”
She had never mentioned it, never once since his death had she mentioned it. I did recall what he had said to me during that stroll along the Mersey. “You ought to be what you want to be. You don’t have to be a businessman like me. You’ll go to the university, and you’ll be what you like best.” But I had kept that to myself, never telling anyone, not even her. The fact that she now brought it up for the first time only because she liked Schnitzler and Herr Professor had ingratiated himself with her—that infuriated me. I leapt up from my easy chair, stood angrily in front of her, and shouted: “I don’t want to be a doctor! I don’t want to be a writer! I’m going to become an explorer! I’m going to travel far away, where no one can ever find me.”
“Livingstone was a doctor too,” she said derisively, “and Stanley found him!”
“But you won’t find me!”
War had broken out between us and it got more horrible from week to week.
The Beard in Lake Constance
The two of us were living alone at that time, without my little brothers. During my mother’s illness, both had been brought to Switzerland by Grandfather. Relatives had received them and put them in a boys’ boarding school at Lausanne. Their absence in the apartment could be felt in different ways. I had the nursery, where the three of us used to spend our time, all to myself. I could concoct anything I wanted to in peace and quiet, and the space for my fight against Herr Professor was not challenged by anyone. He courted only me and brought gifts only for me. While observing his visit from the chair at the window, I didn’t have to worry about anything going on in back of me.
I was free in regard to my disquiet and could talk to Mother at any time without having to consider the little bothers, from whom such friction would certainly have had to be hidden. This made everything more open and more savage. The balcony, which had once been the place of all earnest conversations during the day, utterly changed character: I no longer liked it. With my hatred for the tea-drinking Herr Professor linked to this place, I expected it to collapse. When no one could see, I crept out on the balcony, testing the solidity of the stone, albeit only on the side where he used to sit. I hoped for brittleness and was bitterly disappointed that nothing budged. Everything seemed as solid as ever, and my leaps did not cause any shaking, not even the slightest.
The absence of my brothers strengthened my position. It was inconceivable that we should be separated from them forever, and a removal to Switzerland was now frequently considered. I did everything to speed up this trip and made Mother’s life in Vienna as hard as possible. The resoluteness and fierceness of my struggle still tortures me in memory. I wasn’t at all certain of my victory. The irruption of strange books into Mother’s life frightened me far more than Herr Professor personally. Behind him, whom I despised because I knew him and was disgusted by his glib, flattering speech, stood the figure of a writer, of whom I was not allowed to read a single line, whom I didn’t even know; and never have I feared any writer so much as Schnitzler at that period.
Getting permission to leave Austria wasn’t all that easy in those days. Perhaps Mother had an exaggerated notion of the difficulties to be overcome. She still wasn’t fully healthy and was supposed to take a follow-up treatment. She had fond memories of Reichenhall, where she had quickly recuperated four years ago. Now she weighed going with me and spending a few weeks there. She thought it might be easier to obtain an exit visa for Switzerland in Munich. Herr Professor was willing to come to Munich and assist with the formalities. His academic connections and his beard would not fail to impress the officials. I was keen as mustard about the plan upon grasping how earnest it was, and I now suddenly supported my mother in every way. After the implacable enmity that she had gotten from me and that had paralyzed her at every step, she now felt great relief. We made plans for the weeks we would be spending alone in Reichenhall. I secretly hoped we would resume our drama readings. These sessions had grown more and more infrequent, finally vanishing because she was so absent-minded and feeble. I looked forward to wonders from Coriolanus if only I succeeded in reawakening him. But I was too proud to tell her how much hope I was pinning on the return of our evenings. In any event, we would go on excursions from Reichenhall and take a lot of walks.
I can’t recall the final days in Vienna. I don’t know how we left the familiar apartment and the fateful balcony. I have no memory of the trip either, I only see us again in Reichenhall. A short daily stroll took us to Nonn. There was a small churchyard in Nonn, very hushed, with which she had been smitten back then, four years ago. We wandered among the gravestones, reading the names of the dead, which we soon knew, and nevertheless rereading them. That was where she would like to be buried, she said. She was thirty-one, but I wasn’t surprised by her funereal cravings. When we were alone, everything she thought, said, or did entered into me like the most natural thing in the world. I came into being from the sentences she uttered to me at such times.
