The Play of the Eyes, page 20
But there was another who distinguished herself on this occasion. Though somewhat removed from the rest, she was hardly inconspicuous; not content to share the glory of the bereaved mother, she managed to display her own no less public sorrow. On a fresh grave mound, not too near but not too far away, knelt Martha, the widow of Jakob Wassermann, who had died a year before while still almost at the height of his fame. Deep in fervent prayer, she had chosen her grave mound wisely, it could be seen from everywhere. Her gaunt hands were clasped, now and then they trembled with emotion, her tightly closed eyes, much as they would have liked to observe the effect of her retreat, saw nothing of this world. A little less rigorous, her sorrow might have been credible. In this attitude of fervid prayer the narrow face was meant to suggest a careworn peasant woman, shrewd calculation had shaped her hat to look like a headscarf. The whole performance was just a bit overdone; if the hands had quivered a little less, if the eyes had opened now and then, if the freshly filled grave, which couldn’t very well be the angel’s, had not been so obviously well placed, one might have been tempted to take her emotion at face value. But it was all too good to be true; one didn’t even stop to wonder whom Martha might be praying for: for her late cardiac husband, who had worked himself to death, for the angel, who was beyond the reach of Hollensteiner’s unction and her mother’s stupendous tears, or for her own writing: she thought herself superior to her husband and after his death was grimly determined to prove it to the world.
The whole wretched performance in Grinzing cemetery was redeemed in my eyes by the opportunity to observe these two characters, the kneeling Martha, whom I saw as she was getting ready to kneel but not as she arose; the mother, whose great heart managed to produce such enormous tears. I did my best not to think of the victim, whom all had loved.
High Authority
In mid-October 1935 Auto-da-Fé appeared. In September we had moved to Himmelstrasse, halfway up the vine-clad slopes above Grinzing. It was a relief to be up here, away from the gloom of Ferdinandstrasse and at the same time to hold in my hands this novel sprung from the darkest aspects of Vienna. Himmelstrasse [Heaven Street] led to a hamlet known as Am Himmel [In Heaven], and I was so amused at the name that when Veza had stationery printed for me she gave the address as “Am Himmel 30” instead of “Himmelstrasse 30.”
To her, our move and the publication of my novel meant escape from the world of the novel, which had depressed her. She knew that I would never break away from it, and as long as I had the thick manuscript in my house, she saw it as a threat. She was convinced that while I was working on it something had snapped inside me and that The Comedy of Vanity, which she preferred to my other works, gave a better idea of what I could do. Tactfully, thinking I didn’t notice, she made it her business to find out to whom I was sending autographed copies of Auto-da-Fé. She saw I was sending only a few, hardly more than a dozen, and she was glad of that. She thought it inevitable that the critics would massacre me, but hated to see me alienate friends who thought well of me—there weren’t many—by giving them this depressing novel to read.
She expatiated on the difference between public readings and reading to oneself. Apart from the obligatory “Kind Father,” I had given readings of “The Morning Walk” (the first chapter) and some of the second part: “The Stars of Heaven” and “The Hump.” The main character in these passages was Fischerle, whose manic exuberance was always infectious. But audiences were also moved by “The Kind Father,” one could always feel pity for the tormented daughter. Some people might have been glad to read more, but the book was not in existence and thus they had been unable to subject themselves to the intolerably detailed presentation of the struggle between Kien and Therese. Having no reason for resentment against the author, they came to the next reading, which corroborated their previous opinion. Among the small groups of Viennese interested in modern literature, a deceptive reputation had been growing up; now, with the appearance of the book, it would receive a deathblow.
I myself had no fears, it was as if Veza had taken them all upon herself. My faith in the book had been reinforced by every publisher’s rejection. I felt certain that the book would be a success, though perhaps not an immediate one. I don’t know what gave me this certainty. Perhaps one defends oneself against the hostility of one’s contemporaries by unhesitatingly appointing posterity as one’s judge. That puts an end to all petty misgivings. One stops asking oneself what this one and that one are likely to say. Since it doesn’t matter, one prefers not to think about it. Nor does one stop to recall what in times past contemporaries said about the books one loves. One sees them for themselves, detached from all the bothersome trivia in which their authors were involved in their lifetime. In some cases the books themselves have become gods, which means not only that they will always be around but also that they always have been around.
One cannot be absolutely sure about this gratifying posterity. Here again there are judges, but they are hard to find, and some unfortunate writers may never meet the man whom they can with a good conscience appoint as their posterity expert. I had met such a man, and after long talks with him over a period of a year and a half my respect for him was so great that if he had sentenced Auto-da-Fé to death I would have accepted his verdict. I lived for five weeks in expectation of his sentence.
I had inscribed his copy with words which no one else could have understood.
“For Dr. Sonne [Sun], to me still more. E.C.”
In the copies I had sent to Broch, Alban Berg and Musil, I was not chary of expressions of esteem; I wrote clearly and plainly what I felt, in terms intelligible to all. With Dr. Sonne it was different. Since an “intimate” word had never been spoken between us, I had never dared tell him how greatly I honored him. I never mentioned his name to anyone without the “Dr.” This should not be taken to mean that the title meant anything to me, practically everyone you met in Vienna called himself “Dr.” The word merely served as a kind of buffer. One didn’t just come out with the man’s name, I prepared the way with a neutral, colorless word, which made it clear that I was not entitled to intimacy, that the name would always keep its distance. And it was thanks to this distancing title that so sacred a word as Sonne, luminous, searing, winged, source and (as still believed at that time) end of all life, did not for all its roundness and smoothness become a household word. I didn’t even think the name without the title; whether I was alone or with others, it was always “Dr. Sonne,” and only now after almost fifty years has the title begun to seem too stiff and formal. I shall not use it very often from now on.
At that time only the man to whom my inscription was addressed could understand that he meant more to me than the sun. For no one else did I reduce my own name to initials. The handwriting—witness the size of the letters—remained incorrigibly self-assured; this was not a man who wanted to disappear; with this book, which for years had existed only in secret, he was at last challenging the public. But he wished to disappear in the presence of him, the man who was concerned not with himself but only with ideas.
One afternoon in mid-October, at the Café Museum, I handed Dr. Sonne the book which he had never seen in manuscript, which I had never mentioned to him, of which he had heard only an isolated chapter at a reading. He may have heard more about it from others, perhaps from Broch or Merkel. Broch’s opinion in literary matters may well have meant something to him, but he would not have taken it on faith. He trusted only his own judgment, though he would never have dreamed of saying so. After that I saw him as usual every day. Every afternoon I went to the Museum and sat down with him, he made no secret of the fact that he was waiting for me. The conversations to which I owed my rebirth at the age of thirty continued. Nothing changed; true, every conversation was new, but not new in a different way. His words offered no indication that he had been reading my novel. On that subject he remained obstinately silent, and so did I. I burned to know if he had begun, at least begun, but I never once asked him. I had learned to respect every corner of his silence, for only when he began unexpectedly to speak of something was he at his true level. His independence, which he maintained quite openly, but always with tact and gentleness, taught me the meaning of an independent mind, and in my dealings with him I was certainly not going to disregard what I had learned from him.
Week after week went by. I kept my impatience under control. A rejection from him, however fully documented, however compellingly reasoned, would have destroyed me. It was to him alone that I accorded the right to pass an intellectual death sentence on me. He kept silent, and evening after evening when I came home to Himmelstrasse, Veza, from whom I couldn’t very well conceal anything so all-important, asked me: “Did he say anything?” I replied: “No, I don’t think he’s had time to look at it.” “What! He hasn’t had time? When every day he spends two hours at the café with you.” I would affect indifference and toss out lightly: “We’ve talked about dozens of ‘auto-da-fés,’” or try to divert her in some other way. Then she would lose her temper and cry out: “You’re a slave. That’s what he’s done for you. I’d never have expected you to choose a master! At last the book is out, but you’ve turned into a slave!”
No, I was not his slave. If he had done or said something contemptible, I would not have gone along with him. From him least of all would I have accepted anything base or contemptible. But I was absolutely sure that he was incapable of doing anything stupid or base. It was this absolute, though open-eyed trust that Veza regarded as slavery. It was a feeling she knew very well, because it was how she felt about me. In this feeling she now felt justified by three valid works. But what works had Dr. Sonne ever produced? If any, he had known how to conceal them. Why would he do that? Did he think them unworthy of the few people with whom he associated? She was well aware that what Broch, Merkel and others most admired in him was his self-abnegation. But it seemed inhuman that he should carry self-abnegation so far as to keep silent for weeks about my book, though we saw each other every day. She didn’t mince words. She attacked him in every way. Her usually ready wit seemed to forsake her when she spoke of him. Since she herself didn’t feel sure about the book, she was afraid his silence meant condemnation and she knew what an effect that would have on me.
* * *
One afternoon at the Café Museum—we had just exchanged greetings and sat down—Sonne said without preamble, without apology, that he had read my novel; would I like to know what he thought of it? And he proceeded to talk for two hours; that afternoon we spoke of nothing else. He illuminated the book from every angle, he established connections I had not suspected. He dealt with it as a book that had existed for a long time and would continue to exist. He explained where it came from and showed where it would inevitably lead. If he had contented himself with vague compliments, I would have been pleased after waiting for five weeks, for I would have known his approval was sincere. But he did far more. He brought up particulars which I had indeed written but could not explain and showed me why they were right and could not have been different.
He spoke as though taking me with him on a voyage of discovery. I learned from him as if I were someone else, not the author; what he set before me was so startling I would hardly have recognized it as my own. It was amazing enough that he had every slightest detail at his command, as though commenting on some ancient text before a classroom. The distance he thus created between me and my book was greater than the four years during which the manuscript had lain in my drawer. I saw before me an edifice thought out in every detail, which carried its dignity and justification within itself. I was fascinated by every one of his ideas, each one came as a surprise, and my only wish was that he would never stop talking.
Little by little, I became aware of the intention behind his words; he knew the book would have a hard life and he was arming me against the attacks that were to be expected.
After a number of observations that had no bearing on this purpose, he began to formulate the criticisms for which we should be prepared. Among other things, he said, it would be attacked as the book of an old and sexless man. Very meticulously he proved the contrary. It would be argued that my portrayal of the Jew Fischerle lent itself to misuse by racist propaganda. But, said Sonne, the character was true to life, as true to life as the narrow-minded provincial housekeeper or the brutal janitor. When the catastrophe had passed, the labels would fall from these characters, and they would stand there as the types that had brought about the catastrophe. I am stressing this particular, because in the course of subsequent events I often felt uneasy about Fischerle. And then I found comfort in what Sonne had said that day.
Far more important were the profound connections he revealed to me. Of these I say nothing. In the fifty years that have elapsed many of these have been discussed in print. It would seem as though Auto-da-Fé contained a reservoir of secrets, which would be tapped little by little until all were drawn off and explained. This time, I’m afraid, has not yet come. I still preserve intact within me a good part of the treasure Sonne gave me then. Some people are surprised that I still respond with wonderment to every new reaction. The reason is to be sought in this treasure, the one treasure in my life that I like to keep an eye on and that I knowingly administer.
The attacks I still get from outraged readers do not really touch me, even when they are made by friends whom I love for their innocence and whom for that reason I had warned against reading the book. Sometimes I succeed with earnest pleas in keeping someone away from it. But even for close friends whom I have been unable to deter from reading it, I am no longer the same man. I have a feeling that they expect to find the evil the book is replete with in me. I also know that they don’t find it, for it is not the evil I have in me now, but a different kind. I can’t help them, for how can I possibly explain to them that on that afternoon Sonne relieved me of that evil by picking it before my eyes from every nook and cranny of the book and piecing it together again at a salutary distance from myself?
PART FOUR
Grinzing
Himmelstrasse
While searching Grinzing for something that money cannot buy, I came across Fräulein Delug, who was to be our landlady for three years. We moved into the apartment, the best I had ever had, on a temporary basis, until someone should turn up who was prepared to rent the whole apartment. We had the use of four rooms including a large studio, and we had our own entrance. The four remaining rooms were unoccupied. We showed our visitors the whole apartment, including the empty rooms, and they were entranced by the location, the size and number of the rooms and the varied views from the different windows.
The unoccupied rooms were much coveted, but they were not for rent. Fräulein Delug’s unswerving honesty was our defense. She had rented us the part we lived in on one condition, namely, that if anyone should want the whole apartment, which was rather expensive, we would have to move. In the meantime we were left alone; she refused to move other people in with us, though it had often been suggested; she didn’t even tell us about such proposals, we heard of them only indirectly. Without hesitation she said no, though such an arrangement would have doubled her rent. That wasn’t what had been agreed between us, she said, and it wouldn’t be right. She was no great talker but one of the few words she used frequently was “right”; she said it with a guttural “r,” she was from the Tyrol, her dialect was something like Swiss, and that was one of my reasons for liking her. She was a small woman with an enormous bundle of keys; I couldn’t say how many rooms, occupied and unoccupied, there were in the building, which was originally planned as an art academy; her daily rounds took her to all of them, except when, as in our case, she was afraid of disturbing someone. Then she would announce her visit the day before. All the dimensions of this building were large. The entrance and the stairway with its comfortable low steps received you like a palace. But no lord and master was in command; the authority here was a small, stooped, white-haired old woman, who dragged herself about with a bundle of keys, and far too seldom gave voice to a few guttural syllables, which sounded harsh but were meant kindly.
She was all alone in the world; I never saw anyone who seemed connected with her; she may have had relatives in the South Tyrol, but if so, she never mentioned them; she never said anything to suggest that she had any ties at all. We saw her only in the house and garden, never on Himmelstrasse, the street that led to the village, and never in any shop; there was nothing to indicate that she ever went shopping, she carried a bag only when she went out to the garden for vegetables. We came to the conclusion that she lived on fruit and vegetables; she could get milk from the tenant who lived on the garden side of the ground floor, and he may have brought her bread as well. It was only when she paid the rent that Veza saw the big tower room where Fräulein Delug lived. There were a lot of antiques in it that might have come from a fine Tyrolean house, but they were jumbled all together, as though she had had to move them here for lack of space anywhere else, and yet there were quite a few large empty rooms in the house. The tower room was the nucleus, the nerve center so to speak, where Fräulein Delug labored to keep things together, an endeavor that was far beyond her strength. The building was more than twenty years old and every corner of it cried out for repairs. These she had to pay for out of the rents, for painter Delug had evidently spent all his money building the Academy, his lifelong dream. She never talked about her troubles. She never complained. At the most she would remark now and then that a lot of things needed repairing. As a peasant woman tries to keep up her farm, so she tried to preserve her brother’s dream. She was all alone and probably thought of nothing else.
