The Torch in my Ear, page 18
“Yes, that’s true. It’s a wonderful conversation. She lives in Dostoevsky and takes it all very seriously. There’s no one else in the entire lab with whom she could talk about it.”
No sooner were we talking about literature again than I liked my mother. Of course, there was no mistaking why she had given the conversation this turn. She was reconnoitering, she wanted to find out how important my attractive colleague was in relation to any other woman. Did she mean something to me? Might she eventually mean even more? Mother came back to Dostoevsky and asked whether Eva had anything in common with female characters in Dostoevsky. This sounded like a harbinger of a new worry, but I could set her mind at ease, for the very opposite was true. Eva was exceptionally intelligent; her real talent was for mathematics. She knew more about physical chemistry than any of the male students. She had—this contradicted her intellectual faculties—a very rich emotional life. However, her feelings maintained their direction; any reversal into the opposite—which Mother had been thinking of with her question—was alien to Eva.
“Are you sure?” said Mother. “A person can be terribly mistaken. Would you ever have thought in the past that you would hate me someday?”
I ignored this first hostile remark since her arrival in Vienna and stuck to the actual topic of our conversation.
“Of course, I’m sure,” I said. “I spend so many hours with her, day after day. This has been going on for almost a year. Do you think there’s anything we haven’t talked about?”
“I thought you only talked about Dostoevsky.”
“That’s what we talk about mostly, it’s our favorite subject. Can you imagine a better way of getting to know a person than discussing everything that happens in Dostoevsky?”
We both clung to this peace dove. Eva Reichmann would have been astonished had she known what part my mother assigned her. She wouldn’t have cared to serve as a topic of conversation in this way; for all we were really after was to avoid the other topic. However, I said nothing about Eva that I didn’t mean, and my words made her dearer and dearer to me. Even though my Mother harped on her so much, I didn’t start disliking Eva. She was truly our peace dove. After my mother’s six-month absence, after our unbelievable correspondence, I had expected a terrible fight. It was obvious that we were both releasing our dislike and fear.
“Revenons à nos moutons,” my mother suddenly said. This was an idiom that she loved and that she had never once used during the last few years of our battles. “Now let me tell you my plans.” She intended to move to Paris in the summer. This would be a strenuous time for her. In order to be able to cope with it, she wanted to go off to a spa, to Bad Gleichenberg as in the previous year: it had done her good. Would I like to take care of my brothers during this time? They had to have a real vacation, for things would be difficult for them right after that: getting used to their new French school, and in fairly high classes at that, not so far from the bachot, the lycée degree. All three boys could go to Salzkammergut. This would put her mind at ease; I would be doing her and my brothers a real favor.
I realized what she had in mind and I agreed without hesitating. Nothing could give me greater pleasure. I wouldn’t be seeing my brothers again for perhaps a year. After all, I myself wanted to go on a holiday. We’d definitely find a nice place for us. She was flabbergasted. I sensed the question that was on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t come out with it. I almost came out with it in her stead. We reached a sort of compromise. She said: “You don’t have any other plans for the summer, do you?”
I said: “What kind of plans could I have for the summer?”
Thus this conversation could have ended, and it could have ended well for both of us. The only worry preying on my mind was that she might injure and endanger Veza. Now, Veza hadn’t been mentioned even once. But what would happen in our ensuing conversations, during the next four weeks or more that Mother would be spending in Vienna? It was a long time. I wanted to be absolutely certain and forestall anything. I felt good after our conversation about my colleague. Had the devil gotten into me, or was I really afraid for Veza? I said: “You know, Eva, my colleague, asked me whether I was going to the mountains for the summer. I didn’t tell her anything definite. Would you mind if she came to the same area? Not to the same place, of course; maybe an hour away. Then we could go on occasional outings together. She’d be sure to have a good influence on the boys. I’d only see her now and then, perhaps once or twice a week, and I’d devote the rest of my time to the boys.”
Mother was wild about my suggestion. “Why shouldn’t you see her more often? So you did have plans for the summer! I’m delighted you’ve told me. It could work out marvelously. She’s really a fine person. You can’t blame her for asking you first. In earlier days, it would have been unthinkable. But that’s the way women are today.”
“No, no,” I said. “You’re imagining things. There’s really nothing going on between us.”
“Anything’s possible,” said Mother. She wasn’t being very tactful. I’d never experienced something like this with her. She would have done anything to get me away from Veza. However, with my sudden idea I had hit on the one possibility of protecting Veza against my mother. I had to talk about other women. This time, I had been helped out by a colleague who happened to be working next to me in the laboratory. I really did like her, and it was indecent of me to feed my mother’s fancy that Eva was or could become my girlfriend. Even if I told Eva about it, and, even if, helpful and understanding as she was, she agreed to go along with my ploy, there was nevertheless something embarrassing about the matter. But it had happened, and it made me realize that something else had to happen: I had to invent women and entertain Mother with stories about them. Never again must she find out anything about Veza and myself. Mother would be far away in Paris and Veza would be in Vienna, and I would have saved Veza from all the horrible things my mother could do to her.
Frau Weinreb and the Executioner
Frau Weinreb, in whose home on Haidgasse I had rented a nice, spacious room, was the widow of a journalist, who had died a very old gentleman. She had been a lot younger than he and had already survived him by many years. The apartment was filled with pictures of him, a grandfatherly gentleman with a benevolent beard. The wife, with her dark, canine face, always devotedly talking about her husband, as if he, albeit dead, were vastly superior to her both intellectually and morally, transferred a small part of this veneration to students. Each single one of them could become something like a Herr Dr. Weinreb; she never referred to her husband in any other way; he was always a Herr and a Doktor. In group pictures with his colleagues—in front of which I had to stand and tarry for a while—he stuck out not only because of his beard, but also because of his central position. She rarely said “my husband”: even this long after his death, she still hadn’t gotten over the honor of this marriage. And if ever those words did pass across her lips, she broke off in terror, as if she had indulged in blasphemy, hesitated a bit, and then, virtually intoxicated, added the full name plus title: “Herr Dr. Weinreb.” She must have called him that for a long time before marrying him; and perhaps she had continued to call him that even during the marriage.
A friendly family had told me about this room, where their son had lived for a year. It had ended badly (more about this later). The shy young man, known for his gentleness, had gotten into an awkward situation and had even been hauled into court. I had been warned not against the widow, but against the two women who lived in the same apartment. I expected some sort of den of iniquity. But I wanted to live in this area, not too far from, but also not too near, Veza. And Haidgasse, a side street of Taborstrasse, was just right—it was no satellite of Praterstrasse (whose surroundings dominated my life), but it was close by.
When I came to look at the room, I was astonished at how clean and orderly the apartment was. It couldn’t have been more bourgeois; everywhere the picture of the venerable old gentleman, and in front of every picture, the panegyrical widow. Not even the room I was to live in was free of him; nevertheless, he appeared more sparingly here, three or four times in all. She said she preferred renting to students. My predecessor had been a bank clerk. Of course, he was already earning a living and was independent of his mother, but it was a modest living, and without a university degree nothing much could come of him. However, Frau Weinreb was careful to say no more; he was mentioned because he had lived there before me, and the room had remained empty ever since. However, she sided neither with nor against him. Her guard, who had brought the charges against him, was in the adjoining kitchen. All doors were open, and Frau Weinreb said nothing without instantly breaking off and anxiously listening in the direction of the kitchen.
Very soon, during this opening visit, I sensed that she was under some pressure from which nothing could free her. Since every other sentence, at times every sentence, was about her deceased husband, I figured this pressure had something to do with her being a widow. Perhaps she hadn’t taken as good care of the old man as he had wanted. This didn’t strike me as probable: no other man had played a part in her life; I was certain of this. But she was always listening for a voice whose orders she depended on, and it was not the voice of the dead man.
The housekeeper she lived with had opened the apartment door for me, handed me over to her employer, and then vanished into the kitchen. This housekeeper was a strong, massive, middle-aged woman; she looked like what I pictured an executioner to be. She had very prominent cheekbones and a grim face, which seemed a lot more dangerous because it smiled. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had received me with a slap. Instead, she made a catlike face, but one that was proportionate to her size, and therefore eerie. She was the person I’d been warned against.
When Frau Dr. Weinreb swung wide open the door to the room that was for rent (she always walked as if she were about to tumble forward) and then stepped in right after me, she made sure that the door remained wide open behind her and called “coming, coming!” which struck me as absurd, sort of like a chambermaid telling her mistress “I’m coming, I’m coming!” And then she began to praise the merits of this room, and especially the pictures of her deceased husband. She uttered no sentence without waiting for confirmation or encouragement.
At first, I thought she expected these things from me; but I soon realized she was waiting for confirmation from outside. And since I hadn’t seen anyone else in the apartment, I assumed that the person in question was the creepy woman who had let me in, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind throughout my inspection of the room. However, she remained in the kitchen, never interfering in our discussion.
I wondered where the third woman was who was supposed to be living here, the person who had been the subject of my predecessor’s trial. But she never appeared. Perhaps she no longer lived here. Perhaps she had moved, because of the scandal about her, which made it difficult to rent out the room again. I had heard a great deal, although nothing very definite, about her rustic beauty, her tremendous blond braids (when her hair was let down, I’d been told, it reached all the way to the ground), her seductive arts. Her name, which I liked, had lodged in my memory; I liked Czech names, and Ružena was one of my favorites. I had hoped that she would open the door; instead, her aunt, the executioner, stood there in front of me; and the slap I expected from the aunt was my just deserts for being curious about Ružena. Perhaps the grim reception was a warning. The affair had been in the newspapers, and it was obvious that people would come to see not the room, but Ružena.
However, it was quite all right with me that Ružena was nowhere in view. I liked the room, and I could rent it without fearing complications. Frau Weinreb was satisfied that I could move in immediately; she seemed relieved that I didn’t ask for time to think it over. She said: “You’ll feel fine in his atmosphere, he was an educated gentleman.” I knew whom she meant, without her adding the name. She took me out, calling into the kitchen. “The young man is coming right back. He’s getting his baggage.” The housekeeper (whose name I have forgotten, since I nicknamed her the “Executioner” on the spot) appeared and said, still smiling: “He doesn’t have to be afraid, no one’ll bite him here.” She stood in the doorway to the kitchen; huge and massive, she filled the space out completely as she leaned back with her arms against the doorposts, as though intending to leap out at you. I paid her no heed and went to get my things.
During the first few days that I spent in the new room, the apartment was very quiet. Early in the morning, I left for the Chemical Laboratory; at lunchtime, I stayed near the university, usually eating at the self-service section of Regina’s. In the evening, when the laboratory closed, Veza would pick me up. We would take a walk, or go to her place. It was very late, perhaps eleven, by the time I came back to Haidgasse. I always found my bed ready, but never knew who had prepared it for me. I never gave it a second thought; I must have taken it for granted that the housekeeper saw to it. At night, I never heard a sound. Frau Weinreb, who lived and slept in the adjacent room, moved soundlessly in soft felt slippers; I imagined her gliding on them from picture to picture, performing her devotions.
At the end of the week, I came home early one evening; I was invited to the theater and I wanted to change. I sensed that someone was in my room. I entered and froze. In front of my bed stood a peasant girl, leaning way over, her voluptuous white arms plunging into my featherbed, which she was puffing up. She didn’t seem to hear me come in, for she bent even deeper, turning a simply enormous backside toward me and powerfully banging the featherbed over and over, almost as if trying to thrash it. Her radiant yellow hair was twisted into thick braids and bound upon her head, which just touched the high featherbed in her bent position. Her rustic attribute was the pleated skirt, which reached down to the floor. I couldn’t overlook the skirt, it was right in front of my nose. She punched the featherbed a few more times, as though she had no inkling that I was behind her. Since I didn’t see her face, I didn’t want to be the first to speak. I cleared my throat in embarrassment. She decided to hear this, straightened up, and whirled around with such a full, swinging motion that she almost grazed me. There we stood, face to face, with perhaps just enough room between us for a sheet of paper, nothing more. She was taller than I and very beautiful, like a Northern Madonna. She held out her arms as if about to grab me in lieu of the featherbed; but then she slowly dropped them and blushed. I sensed that she was able to blush at will. A yeastlike smell emanated from her. I could feel her beauty. And had she been as naked as her arms, I would have lost my head, since I was so close to her; any other man would have lost his head, too. But I remained motionless and silent. She finally opened her very small lips and said in a chirping voice: “I am Ružena, sir.” The name, which I had been carrying about for a while, had its effect. And the “sir” was not in vain; for I didn’t deserve more than a “young sir,” according to Viennese usage. Her way of addressing me made me an experienced man whom a woman would give in to without resistance. However, the squeaky voice completely wrecked the impact of her appearance and devotion. It sounded like a tiny chick trying to speak. And everything that had been there earlier, the powerful white arms belaboring the featherbed, the radiant braids, the towering mountain of her behind, which had something enigmatic about it, although it didn’t lure me—everything dissolved in the lamentable sounds. And even the name, which had filled me with expectation, no longer existed; it could have been any name. Ružena’s magic was utterly wiped out. It must have been a woeful creature that she could seduce with that voice.
This thought flashed through my mind even before I returned her greeting. And my response was so cold and indifferent that she, squeaking more quickly, apologized for being in my room. She said she didn’t mean to be in the way, she was only making my bed; she had made it every evening, and hadn’t realized I’d be coming home so early. I grew more and more disdainful, merely saying, “Yes, yes.” And as she left, moving rather nimbly for her size, I recalled the entire story from the newspapers and also what I had learned by word of mouth.
The young man (my predecessor) had come home from the bank one evening and found her in front of the bed. She had involved him in a conversation and seduced him on the spot. He was very timid and inexperienced, and—a rare case in Vienna—he had never had a mistress. The aunt had recognized his helplessness and brought charges against him for breach of promise. He denied everything, and given the sort of man he was, the court would have believed his innocence. But Ružena was pregnant and he was sentenced to pay her a reparation. His helplessness made him the butt of universal mockery. Everyone felt he was innocent, but that was the very reason why the case created a sensation. The Viennese found it hilarious that this man of all people should be tried for seduction and breach of promise and found guilty.
Ružena made two or three more attempts with the bed in the evening. But she knew how unpromising the matter was. Her aunt had ferreted out long ago that I had a girlfriend, who sometimes called for me in the evening. And when the aunt saw that it was always the same girlfriend, she didn’t put much stock in Ružena’s making the bed. The few ensuing attempts were nothing more than routine. I soon forgot everything. And it was only a few weeks later, when I had a certain experience in the apartment, a very frightening experience, that I began to think about Ružena again.
One afternoon, coming home earlier than usual, I heard violent noises from the kitchen. A slashing as if on flesh, a squealing and squeaking, a pleading and begging, a whistling and whirring and slash, slash, slash! In between, a deep, very strict voice, whose words I could make out only when I recognized its owner. It sounded like a man’s voice, but it belonged to the aunt: “Take that! And that! And that, and that, and that!” The whimpering and squealing rose higher and higher. It wouldn’t stop, it actually increased. And the threats of the deep voice likewise grew stronger and quicker. I thought the noise would stop and I at first remained very quiet; but it didn’t stop, it only got worse. I dashed into the kitchen. There, Ružena was kneeling in front of the table, her upper body naked. Next to her stood the aunt, holding a whip, which she was just raising, and she then struck Ružena’s back with it, slash!
