The Torch in my Ear, page 20
One morning, he wasn’t there; no one stood at his place. I assumed he’d be late and I said nothing. Then I noticed how fidgety Eva was; she avoided my eyes. “All three of them are out,” she finally said. “Something must have happened.” No one was standing at Kohlberg’s or Horowitz’s place either, and I had failed to notice; she didn’t see him in such isolation as I did, she always saw him with the other two, the only people he talked with. Seeing him with them calmed her a bit; she didn’t want to fully admit his isolation, which I feared.
“They’re at some religious celebration,” I said. I tried to see a favorable sign in the absence of all three and not just him alone. But she seemed distraught precisely because all three were out. “It’s a bad sign,” she said. “Something has happened to him, and the other two are with him.”
“You think he’s sick,” I said, a bit annoyed, “but that wouldn’t keep both of them away from the laboratory.”
“Fine,” she said, trying to assuage me. “If he is sick, then one will look in on him and the other will come here.”
“No,” I said, “the two of them never separate. Have you ever seen either of them doing anything without the other?”
“That’s probably why they live together. Have you ever been to their room?”
“No, but I know they share a room. He lives very close to them, three doors away.”
“You certainly have ferreted out a lot! Are you a detective?”
“I once followed them from the laboratory. Kohlberg and Horowitz walked him home. Then they said goodbye to him very formally, as if he were a stranger, and they walked back a few paces to their house. They didn’t notice me.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to find out whether he lives alone. Maybe I figured that when he was finally alone, I’d suddenly pop up next to him, sort of by accident, and say hello. I’d have acted very surprised, as though it really were an accident, and then we’d definitely have gotten into a conversation.”
“But in what language?”
“That’s not hard. I can communicate with people who don’t know a word of German. I learned how from my grandfather.”
She laughed: “You talk with your hands. That’s not nice. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I wouldn’t do it normally. But that’s how we’d have broken the ice. Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to talk to him!”
“Perhaps I should have tried Russian. I didn’t realize it was so important to you.”
Thus we talked about nothing but him; and their places remained empty. The morning waned, and we made an effort to forget. I changed the subject and talked about a book I had started reading the day before: Poe’s tales. She didn’t know them, and I told her about one, “The Telltale Heart,” which had really terrified me. But while I tried to free myself of this terror by repeating the story to her, I kept feeling my fear grow and grow with every glance at the empty place, until Fräulein Reichmann said, “I’m so scared I feel sick.”
At that moment, Professor Frei appeared in the laboratory with his retinue (usually there were two, this time there were four people). He made a vague motion for us to come closer, waited a bit until most of the people in the laboratory were standing in front of him, and then he said, “Something very sad has happened. I have to tell you. Herr Backenroth poisoned himself with cyanide last night.” He stood there a while. Then he shook his head, saying: “He seems to have been very lonely. Didn’t any of you notice anything?” Professor Frei received no answer: the news was too horrifying; there was no one in the room who didn’t feel guilty, and yet no one had done anything to him. That was it: no one had made any attempt.
As soon as the professor left the room with his train, Fräulein Reichmann lost control and sobbed heartrendingly, as if she had lost her brother. She had none, and now he had become her brother. I realized that something had happened between us as well; but compared with the death of the twenty-one-year-old, it had little significance. I also knew, just as she did, that we had exploited the strange presence of the young man for our conversation. He had stood between us month after month; we had grown hot with his beauty; he was our secret, which we kept from ourselves, but also from him. Neither of us had spoken to him, not she nor I; and what excuses we had devised to justify this silence to each other! Our friendship shattered on the guilt we felt. I never forgave myself, nor did I forgive her. When I hear her sentences again today in my memory, the sentences whose strange tone enchanted me, I feel anger, and I know that I failed to do the one thing that would have saved him: instead of toying with her, I should have talked her into loving him.
The Rivals
There was someone else in the laboratory who rarely spoke. But in his case, it wasn’t due to ignorance of German. He came from the countryside, I believe from a village in Upper Austria, and he looked shy and hungry. The poor clothes he wore, always the same, hung baggily on him; perhaps they had been handed down to him from someone else. Or perhaps he had lost a lot of weight since living in the city, for he most certainly had nothing to eat. His hair didn’t shine; it was a wan, weary red, which fitted his pale, sickly face. His name was Hund [dog], but what an odd dog that never opened its mouth. He never even returned anyone’s “good morning.” If he did take notice of the greeting, then he merely nodded morosely, usually glancing away. He never asked anyone for help, he never borrowed anything from anyone, and he never requested information. He’ll collapse any moment, I thought to myself, whenever I looked in his direction. He was anything but skillful and spent a long time on his analyses. But his movements were so terse and meager that you couldn’t tell what a difficult time he was having. He never eased into anything; he would merely pull himself together, and no sooner had he commenced than it was already done.
Once, he found a sandwich at his place, still wrapped; someone had put it there, unnoticed. I suspected Fräulein Reichmann, who had a soft heart. He opened the package, saw what it contained, wrapped the sandwich up again, and took it from one person to another. He showed it to everyone, saying hatefully: “Is this yours?” And then went to the next person. He left no one out; it was the only time he ever spoke to everybody in the laboratory, but all he said was the same three words. No one claimed the package. Upon reaching the last person and obtaining the last “No,” he lifted the small package aloft and cried in an ominous voice: “Is anyone hungry? This is going into the wastebasket!” No one responded, if only so as not to be considered the perpetrator of the abortive deed. Hund furiously hurled the small package—he suddenly appeared to have excess energy—into the wastebasket. And when a few voices became audible, daring to say, “Too bad,” he hissed: “Why don’t you fish it out!” No one would have thought him capable of being so articulate, much less decisive. Hund thus gained respect, and the charitable gift had not been in vain.
A few days later, he entered the laboratory with a small package, which he put down in the place of that sandwich. For a while, he left it there unopened while he tackled some of his lengthy and futile procedures. I was not the only person to wonder about this package. I soon stopped conjecturing that he had gotten his own sandwich and was flaunting it; the package looked as if it contained something angular. Then he picked it up and came over to me, dangled it before my eyes, and said: “Photos! Look!” It sounded like an order, and that was quite all right. No one had expected him to show anything to anyone. And just as they had previously noticed that he did nothing that had anything to do with anyone else, they now all instantly realized that he was making an offer. They came over to my place and formed a semicircle around him. He waited quietly, as though this were something he frequently experienced, until they had all gathered. Then he opened the package and held out one picture after another: excellent photographs of all sorts of things—birds, landscapes, trees, people, objects.
Thus he transformed himself from a poor, starving devil into an obsessed photographer, spending all his money on his passion. This was why he was so badly dressed and this was why he was starving. He heard cries of praise, which he countered with more pictures; he had dozens of pictures; there must have been fifty or sixty this first time, and their contrasts were astonishing; a few of the pictures were alike, and then all at once there was something different. He thus held us in his power. And when one woman said: “Why, Herr Hund, you’re an artist!” and meant it, he smiled and didn’t contradict her. One could see the word artist sliding down his throat; no food and no drink would have been so delicious. When the demonstration was over, we were all sorry. The same woman said: “How do you find your subjects, Herr Hund?” Her question was serious, as serious as her earlier astonishment. And he replied, dignified, but terse: “It’s practice.” To which a lover of locutions spouted: “Practice makes perfect.” But no one laughed.
Hund was a master, and he sacrificed everything to his art. Food didn’t matter, so long as he could take photographs. And he even seemed uninterested in his studies. One or two months passed before he showed up with a new package. His colleagues instantly gathered around him. They willingly marveled. The pictures were as varied as the first time. And soon it was an established fact that Hund came into the laboratory only to surprise us, his public, with new photos from time to time.
Not long after this second demonstration by Hund, a newcomer entered the laboratory, drawing everyone’s attention: Franz Sieghart, a dwarf. He was well proportioned, his body fine, but delicate. The table was too high for him, so he set up his apparatuses on the floor. With his deft little fingers, he finished sooner than the rest of us. And while boiling and distilling down below, he spoke to us incessantly, indefatigably, in a penetrating, somewhat croaking voice, trying to convince us that he had experienced everything that a “big person” knew and a few things more. He announced the visit of his brother, who was taller than any of us, six feet four, a captain in the Austrian army. They resembled one another like two peas in a pod, he said; no one could tell them apart. When the brother came in his uniform, you wouldn’t be able to guess which was the chemist and which the officer. We believed a great deal that Sieghart said; he always knew better; his words had an enviable persuasive power; but we were skeptical about his brother’s existence.
“If he were five six,” said Fräulein Reichmann, “but six four! I just don’t believe it. And why should he visit us in uniform?” After just a few hours of fiddling around on the floor, Sieghart had succeeded in commanding everyone’s respect; and it wasn’t long before he impressed the assistants with the results of his first analysis. He was done with these rather tedious chores faster than was normal; his tempo was adjusted to the deftness of his fingers. But the early announcement of his brother’s visit was a mistake. We waited and waited. Of course, no one was so tactless as to remind Sieghart; but he seemed to read his neighbors’ thoughts; from time to time, he said something about his brother himself. “He can’t come this week. Military life is strict. You people don’t realize how well off you are! He’s often regretted going into the army. But he won’t admit it. He’s so tall, though—what else could he have done!” His brother’s difficulties with his height came up in all sorts of variations. Actually, Franz Sieghart felt sorry for him, but he did respect him and found words of reverence, because his brother had made it all the way up to captain, young as he was.
Eventually, however, it became boring, and people stopped listening. No sooner was the brother mentioned than people closed their ears. Sieghart, accustomed to making others listen, suddenly felt the blank wall around him and quickly changed the topic of his size. There wasn’t just the brother, there were also girls. All the girls that Sieghart knew were, if not gigantic like the brother, then a natural size. But here, the point was variety and number rather than height. Not that he was crass or revealed intimate details about their appearance; he was the perfect gentleman, protecting each one of his girls. He never mentioned their names. But in order to distinguish among them and to let people know whom he was talking about, he numbered them, preceding a number with his statement about that particular girl. “My girlfriend no. 3 is standing me up. She has to work overtime at her office. I’ll comfort myself and go to the movies with no. 4.”
He said he had photos of all of them. He photographed every single one. This was what his girls liked most: being photographed by him. The first question at every rendezvous was: “Listen, will you take a few photos of me today?”
“Be patient, just be patient,” he would then say. “There’s a time and a place for everything. Each one will have her turn.” They were especially keen on nude photos, he said. All of them decent pictures. But he could only show them, he said, if you didn’t see the faces. He wouldn’t be guilty of indiscretions. He would show us a few. Someday, he’d bring in a whole pile of photos. Nothing but nude photos of girls. But he was in no hurry. We would have to be patient. Once he got started, he said, people would badger him: “Sieghart, do you have any new nude photos?” However, he couldn’t think about such things; he had other things on his mind besides his girls. And we would have to learn to bide our time. When the day came, he would ask the female colleagues to step aside; this was nothing for their chaste eyes. This was strictly for men. But mind you, he emphasized, he took only decent photos.
Sieghart knew how to heighten the curiosity in the room. He brought a well-tied shoebox into the laboratory and locked it up in his locker for the time being. But then he wasn’t satisfied with the storage place; he took the box out, put it back in, thought about it, said, “It’s better here,” took it out again, and declared, “I have to be careful. I shouldn’t tell you people. It’s full of nude photos. I’m sure there’s no thief among you.” He kept finding new reasons to turn the box over and over in front of us. “No one’s going to open it behind my back. I know the way I tied it up. I know it precisely. If even the slightest thing happens to it, I’ll take the box home again, and I’ll never show you the photos! Does everyone understand?” It sounded like a threat, and it was a threat, for now everyone believed in the content of the box. Fräulein Reichmann, who was prudish, could repeat all she liked: “You know, Herr Sieghart, no one’s interested in your shoebox.” Sieghart responded: “Oho!” and winked at every male in the room. A few winked back, and everyone knew why she longed to see the content of the box.
Sieghart kept us on tenterhooks for weeks. He had heard about the master photographer among us, Hund, and had us describe Hund’s subjects in exact detail. He then made a face and declared: “Old-fashioned! It’s all old-fashioned! There were photographers just like that in the old days. Mind you, I’m all in favor of nature. But anyone can do that. All you have to do is go outdoors and snap, snap, snap, you’ve got a dozen photos right off. That’s what I call old-fashioned. It’s so easy! But when it comes to my girls, I have to seek them out. You’ve got to find them first. Then I have to court them. Mind you, in the summer, it’s not so hard when you’re swimming. But in the winter, you’ve got to warm them up. Otherwise, she just says no, and that’s that. I tell you, I’m experienced. No one turns me down. Every girl lets me photograph her. Now you people may think it’s because I’m small, because they think of me as a child. Wrong! Far from it. I let them notice what they’re up against with me. I’m just as much of a man for them as any other man. First, they have their triumph in front of the camera—you ought to see how proud they are!—and then they get a picture! One each, no more, one copy of each photograph, if it comes out well. I don’t ask for a thing. But I have to think of the overhead. If a girl wants more copies, she has to pay. Some of them do want more copies, for their boyfriends. I earn a pretty penny on them, I tell you, there’s nothing wrong with money.”
This shed light on the great number of Sieghart’s friendships. The “friendship” consisted of his being the girl’s personal photographer. But he made sure that this point didn’t get any clearer, and he had an original phrase for this purpose: “Please, not a soul will learn anything more definite from me. There is such a thing as discretion. For me, discretion is a matter of honor. My girlfriends know that. They know me as well as I know them!”
One morning, a uniformed giant stood in the doorway and asked for Franz Sieghart. So anxious were we to see the photos of girls that we had forgotten all about the brother, and we marveled at the tall captain, whose body ended in a very small head and who wore Franz Sieghart’s face—like a mask. Someone pointed to where the dwarf was working. He was kneeling on the floor, gingerly inserting a Bunsen burner with a small flame under a retort of alcohol. Recognizing his brother’s legs in the uniform, he sprang up and crowed: “Hi! Welcome. Chemistry Laboratory for Quantitative Analysis greets you. Let me introduce you to my colleagues. First, the ladies. C’mon, don’t be coy. We know all about you!” The captain had blushed. “He’s shy, you know,” the dwarf declared. “Chasing after nude photos—that’s not his cup of tea!”
This suggestive remark completely intimidated the brother. He was just trying to bow to one of our ladies when the dwarf mentioned the photos. The captain’s body flew up straight, in midbow, his face brick-red—a red that our dwarf could never have become. Now the faces of the two brothers were easy to tell apart. “Don’t worry,” said the little one. “I’ll spare you. He’s so polite, you just can’t imagine. Everything has to run smoothly, just like soldiers on review. Now, that was the Greek lady, and this is the Russian lady. And here, for a change, a Viennese girl, Fräulein Fröhlich [merry]. A credit to her name, always laughing, without anyone tickling her. But the Russian lady doesn’t care for such jokes. No man would dare tickle her calves, not even I, although I’m the right size to do it.” Fräulein Reichmann made a face and turned away. The captain shrugged lightly to express regret at his brother’s impudence; and the dwarf had already noticed that the captain liked Fräulein Reichmann’s restraint: “She’s a fine lady. Highly educated, an excellent family. But out of the question. What do you think? Every man would like to have a bite. You’ve got to control yourself. Pull yourself together, please. You’re accustomed to doing so as an officer.”
