The Torch in my Ear, page 19
They were grouped in such a way that anyone entering the kitchen could see both of them right in the eye. There was nothing to overlook: Ružena’s breasts and Ružena’s back, the furious expression on the Executioner’s hideous face, the whistling whip. But it didn’t sound as awful as it had sounded in my room. For when I saw it and didn’t merely hear it, I couldn’t believe it, it was like a stage play, but a lot nearer and so well arranged that you couldn’t help seeing it. I also knew it had to stop now, for I made sure to make myself noticeable, despite the noise. Instead of dropping the whip, the aunt held it up for a while. But Ružena made a mistake and squealed as though the whip had struck her again. The aunt yelled at her: “Aren’t you ashamed! Naked.” And then the aunt addressed me point-blank: “Bad girl! Won’t obey aunt. Must be punished.”
Ružena had stopped squealing. Having been ordered to feel ashamed, she squeezed both hands to her breasts, which welled up and became even more visible. Then she crawled behind the table as slowly as possible, a true floor monster, no less massive than the aunt, who was rooted in front of me. The aunt continued the parental scolding, which was supposed to explain the scene. “Must obey, child. Must learn has aunt only, no one in world. Bad child. Lost without aunt. But aunt looks! Aunt watches!”
These words didn’t come out quickly, they were heavy, weighty. And after every sentence, the helpful whip twitched. But she didn’t lash her victim now; the back of the culpable child, who was now cowering on the other side of the table, was out of reach. The child’s nakedness was even more perceptible in her hiding place. She was certainly excitingly feminine; but the childish words aimed at the luxuriant creature reduced her to something idiotic. Her humility, which was part of the scene, perhaps the most important part to be demonstrated, disgusted me no less than the executioner behavior of the aunt. I left the kitchen as though I believed the scene: the disobedient child had received her punishment. When I vanished from the kitchen without hinting at my embarrassment and returned to my room, I had become the idiot for the two of them. And this was what saved me from any further attacks.
Now, I had my peace and quiet, and I saw no more of them—whether in tandem or Ružena alone. I sometimes heard the aunt talking to Frau Weinreb in the next room. There was no whipping, but I was very surprised to hear the aunt talking in the same tone to the widow, as if to a child. However, it sounded more propitiatory than threatening. It was obvious that Frau Weinreb had done something she shouldn’t have; but I couldn’t imagine what, and I gave it no further thought. It wasn’t pleasant to hear the Executioner’s voice, separated from me by only a wall; and I was always prepared for an embarrassing outburst. But there was never a squealing or a whimpering; I only heard something that sounded like a solemn promise. Frau Weinreb had a deep, dark voice; I would have liked to go on hearing it; I was almost sorry when it stopped.
One night, I awoke and saw somebody in my room. Frau Weinreb in a bathrobe was standing in front of the picture of her husband; she gingerly took it from the wall and gazed behind it, as if searching for something. I saw her very clearly: the room was lit up by the street lights; the curtains weren’t drawn. She glided along with her nose very close to the wall; she kept sniffing while gingerly clutching the picture with both hands. Then, just as slowly, she sniffed the back of the picture. It was so still in the room that the sniffing was audible. Her face, which I couldn’t see because her back was turned, had always seemed canine to me. With a swift movement, she put the picture back and then glided along the adjacent wall to the next picture. This picture was much larger; it had a heavy frame; I wondered whether she was strong enough to hold it by herself. But I didn’t leap out of bed to help her. I thought she was sleepwalking; I didn’t want to frighten her. She took down this picture, too, and held it securely; but now, her sniffing on the wall behind it wasn’t as soft, I could hear her strenuously panting and moaning. Then she stumbled, she looked as if she were dropping the picture, but she managed to set it down on the floor, its face against the wall, without letting go of it entirely. She straightened up again, and while her fingertips still touched the top of the frame, she continued to sniff the place of the picture on the wall. Upon finishing, she crouched down again and tackled the back of the painting. I thought she was sniffing again, it was the same noise that I had gotten used to in this brief time. But now, I was astonished to see that she was licking the back of the painting. She licked it sedulously. Her tongue hung way out, like a dog’s. She had become a dog, and seemed glad. It took her quite a while to finish: the picture was big. She stood up, strenuously raised it, and, making no attempt to look at the front or even touch it, she hung the painting on its nail and glided silently and quickly to the next. In my room, there were four pictures of Herr Dr. Weinreb. She neglected none; she took care of all four. Luckily, the remaining two were the size of the first; so she could do her job standing; and since she didn’t crouch on the floor again, she was content to sniff.
Then she left my room. I thought of the many pictures of her deceased husband in her room, and I assumed that this same procedure could easily take half the night. I wondered whether she hadn’t come here on earlier nights, for the same purpose, without my noticing, because I had been fast asleep. I made up my mind to get used to sleeping more lightly, so that this wouldn’t happen again. I wanted to be awake when she was here.
Backenroth
In my third semester, I moved from the old “smoky” Institute at the beginning of Währingerstrasse to the new Chemical Institute at the corner of Boltzmanngasse. The qualitative analysis of the first two semesters was now followed by quantitative analysis under Professor Hermann Frei. Frei was a small, thin man, who, without tormenting others with it, consisted largely of a sense of order, thus being highly suitable for quantitative analysis. He had cautious, almost delicate, movements, liked showing how something could be performed in a very clean way, and, since analysis involved minimal amounts of matter, he seemed virtually weightless. His gratitude for goodness exceeded the normal measures. He had no talent for impressing his students with scientific sentences. His forte was the practical side, the concrete procedures of analysis; in this, he was deft, sure, and skillful; and for all his delicacy, there was something resolute about him.
Of his utterances, the most impressive were those evincing his devotion, and they were often repeated. He had been an assistant to Professor Lieben, who had furthered his career, and Frei sometimes quoted him, although only in the following emphatic and ceremonious way: “As my highly venerated teacher, Professor Dr. Adolf Lieben, used to say…” This chemist had left a good name behind. His fans had established a foundation bearing his name and devoted to the promotion of science and its adepts. On Professor Frei’s tongue, Lieben became a mythical figure, merely by the way that Frei spoke his name, without saying very much about him. However, there was a figure of the past who meant a lot more to Frei, although he spoke of him more seldom and never mentioned him by name. It was a specific sentence, always the same, with which he referred to him. And such intense ardor filled his small, thin body at those moments that you marveled, even though there was no one anywhere in the Chemical Institute who shared Frei’s faith.
“When my Kaiser comes, I will walk on my knees all the way to Schönbrunn!” Frei was the only person expecting and desiring the emperor’s return. And if we recall that the old emperor, Franz Joseph, had still been alive just ten years earlier, it is surprising that no one, literally no one, even understood this wish. Everyone, both his assistants and his students, regarded those dogmatic words as a symptom of madness. And perhaps this was why the sentence was uttered with such vehemence and resolution. For notwithstanding his naïveté, Professor Frei had no illusions: he was utterly alone in his ardent wish for the return of the Kaiser. I wondered whom he meant when he said, “My Kaiser”: the young one, with whom we associated nothing definite, or Kaiser Franz Joseph alive again.
Perhaps it was because of his highly venerated teacher, Professor Dr. Adolf Lieben, the scion of a prominent Jewish banking family, that Professor Frei didn’t show the slightest animosity toward Jews. He was anxious to be just and treated every student according to his merits. His sense of justice went so far that he never pronounced the names of Galician Jews any differently from other names; whereas there were one or two assistants who found such names irresistibly funny. If Frei wasn’t present, then it could happen that such a name was drawled and pleasurably melted on the tongue. There was one student, just imagine, named Josias Kohlberg, a smart, merry lad, whose mood was never ruined by any interrogative drawling of his name. He did his work deftly and ably, never sucked up to anyone, never cringed before anyone, and never felt the least desire to have anything but strictly professional dealings with any of the assistants. Alter Horowitz, who worked next to him, was his mournful antipode; his voice was muted, his movements were slow. While Kohlberg always reminded you of a soccer player, you pictured Alter Horowitz bent over a book, although I never once saw him with a book that he didn’t need for chemical purposes.
These two students complemented each other nicely and were inseparable; they did everything together, like twins, and you might have thought they didn’t need anyone else. But this was a mistake; for right near them, worked a third student who also came from their native Galicia: Backenroth. I never knew his first name, or else it has slipped my mind. He was the only beautiful person in our laboratory, tall and slender, with very bright, deeply radiant eyes and reddish hair. He seldom talked to anyone, for he knew almost no German, and he rarely looked into anyone’s face. But if he did ever look at you, you were reminded of young Jesus as he is sometimes shown in paintings. I knew nothing about him and felt timid in his presence. I knew his voice; he spoke Yiddish or Polish to his two fellow Galicians. And when I noticed him talking, I automatically drew closer, in order to hear his voice, though I understood nothing. His voice was soft and strange and extremely tender, so that I wondered whether it was the twittering sounds of Polish that feigned so much tenderness. But his voice sounded no different when he spoke Yiddish. I told myself that this, too, was a tender language, and I was no wiser than before.
I noticed that Horowitz and Kohlberg spoke differently to him than to each other. Horowitz didn’t let himself go in his melancholy and he sounded more businesslike than usual; Kohlberg made no jokes and almost seemed to be standing at attention and holding a soccer ball in front of Backenroth. It was clear that both of them looked up to him; but I never had the nerve to ask why they were so respectful or cautious. He was taller than they, but also more innocent and more sensitive; it was as if they had to initiate him into certain situations of life and protect him against these situations. Yet he never lost the light that radiated from him. A friendly colleague, with whom I discussed this matter and who wanted to escape this effect, which he too sensed, made an attempt at humor; he said the effect was nothing but the color of the hair, not really red, not really blond, but in between; that was why it shone like the rays of the sun. Incidentally, the assistants, too, were timid with Backenroth. Because of his language difficulties, they usually communicated with him via Horowitz or Kohlberg. And it was strange to hear how different his name sounded in their mouths, withdrawn, nay, timid; whereas they spread themselves mockingly over Horowitz and Kohlberg.
Unmistakably, both of them, especially Kohlberg, were trying to shield Backenroth from insults, which they could defend themselves against, which they were accustomed to. He struck me as being protected by his ignorance of German, but also by something that I rather hesitantly call radiance. Hesitantly, because at that time, I was not biased in favor of any superiority or sublimity, whether profane or religious, and I tended to carp and cavil at such things. Yet I never entered the laboratory without making sure that Backenroth was at his place, in his white smock, busy with retorts and Bunsens, which scarcely suited him. When working in the laboratory, he looked almost disguised; I didn’t trust this costume and waited for him to throw it off and emerge in his true shape. Yet I had no clear notion of his true shape. Only one thing was certain: in this very busy chemical milieu, where people were dissolving, boiling, distilling, weighing, he was out of place. He was a crystal, but not a hard, insensitive crystal. He was a feeling crystal, which no one should take hold of.
When I looked over at his place and saw him standing there, I felt calmed, but only temporarily. The very next day, I was uncertain again and feared his absence. My neighbor, Eva Reichmann, my Russian friend from Kiev, with whom I talked about everything, was the only person whom I could tell about my anxieties concerning Backenroth. I played with these fears a bit; I didn’t take them quite seriously. And she, who was bewitchingly serious—everything concerning human beings was holy to her—rebuked me, saying: “You talk as if he were ill. But he’s not at all ill. He’s merely beautiful. Why are you so impressed by male beauty?”
“Male? Male? He’s got the beauty of a saint. I don’t know what he’s doing here. What does a saint have to do in a chemical laboratory? He’s going to vanish suddenly.”
We deliberated for a long time on how he would vanish. Would he dissolve into red mist and rise to the sun from which he had come? Or would he give up chemistry and transfer to a different faculty? Which one? Eva Reichmann would have liked to see him as a new Pythagoras. The connection of geometry with the stars and the music of the spheres struck her as the right thing for him. She knew a lot of Russian poems by heart, which she liked reciting to me, but didn’t like translating. She was an excellent student, and had an easier time with physical chemistry than any of her male colleagues did. “This is the easiest part,” she would say about mathematics. “As soon as mathematics comes into it, it’s child’s play.”
She was tall and voluptuous; no fruit had a skin as seductive as her skin. While she emitted mathematical formulas with fascinating ease, as if they were part of conversation (not solemn, like poetry), one would have liked to stroke her cheeks. You didn’t dare think about her breasts, which heaved stormily during our verbal clashes. Perhaps we were in love. But since everything took place in a Dostoevsky novel and not in our world, we never admitted our feelings for one another. Only today, fifty years later, do I realize that we each had all the symptoms of being in love. Our sentences entwined like hair, the embraces of our words went on for hours and hours, the tedious chemical procedures left us enough time. And just as lovers deprive the people near them of their specific weight by drawing them into their love talk and misuse them to heighten their own excitement, so too our minds orbited around Backenroth. We kept saying how worried we were that we might lose him; and thus the danger he was really in evanesced.
I asked Eva Reichmann whether she wanted to talk to him. She resolutely shook her head: “In what language?”
She had been brought up in Russian. She was twelve when her family, one of the wealthiest in Kiev, left the city. They moved to Czernowitz, where she attended a German school; but her German still sounded soft, like that of a Russian. Her family had lost most of their wealth, though by no means all. But she never spoke resentfully about the Russian Revolution. She used to say with profound conviction: “No one should be that rich.” And though we were talking about inflation profiteers in Austria, one sensed that she was also thinking about the past wealth of her own family. She had never spoken Yiddish at home. I had the impression that this language was as alien to her as to me; she regarded it neither as something special, nor with the tenderness one feels toward a language that is about to vanish. Her fate was the great Russian literature: she was utterly obsessed by it; she thought and felt in terms of the characters in Russian novels. And though it would have been difficult to find a person with more natural and spontaneous feelings, everything assumed the forms that she knew from Russian books. She stubbornly resisted my suggestion to try Polish with Backenroth. I assumed that, with some goodwill, a Russian could understand Polish; but she refused—either because she really didn’t understand Polish, or because, having taken in Dostoevsky with her mother’s milk, she had also absorbed his prejudices against everything Polish. Whenever I tried pleading with her to make the attempt, she fought me with my own weapons: “Do you want me to speak a broken Polish to him? The Poles set great store by their language. I don’t know their literature. But they have one. So do the Russians.” This last sentence was brief, since she was fundamentally opposed to all chauvinism; that was why she didn’t say anything more than “So do the Russians.”
She avoided talking to Backenroth for lack of a common tongue. Sharing my “sublime” conception of him, she was slightly bothered when she heard him talking to Kohlberg or Horowitz. She despised Kohlberg because he looked like a soccer player and was always whistling some ditty. She found Horowitz uninteresting because he looked “like any Jew.” She took seriously those Jews who had totally assimilated to some language by way of the literature, but without becoming berserk nationalists. And since she consistently rejected national prejudices, she was left with only some against Jews who had bogged down on the road to this free mentality. She was not at all certain whether Backenroth had gotten this far. “Perhaps he’s just a young Chassidic rebbe,” she once said, to my dismay, “but doesn’t realize it yet.” It turned out that she was no lover of the Chassidim. “They’re fanatics,” she said. “They’re devoted to their faith in miracles; they drink and hop around. They have no mathematics in their bodies.” It never crossed her mind that mathematics was her faith in miracles. However, she nourished our conversation about Backenroth. This was the love talk that we permitted ourselves. For I belonged to another woman, whom she had seen calling for me at the laboratory. Eva Reichmann was far too proud to yield to an emotion for someone who let on that he was attached. So long as we talked about Backenroth, our feelings remained unnamed and the fear of his suddenly vanishing became a fear for the extinction of our feelings for each other.
