The Tongue Set Free, page 21
“History!” I cried indignantly. “Why, that’s not history! That’s just dumb knights and their armor!” That, to our mutual satisfaction, ended the brief Scott intermezzo.
In everything concerning my intellectual education, she paid little heed to what others said; but at one point, someone must have impressed her with something. Maybe she had heard something at school, where she came from time to time like other parents; maybe she was unsettled by one of the various lectures she attended. At any rate, she declared one day, that I would have to know what other boys of my age were reading, otherwise I soon wouldn’t be able to understand my schoolmates. She got me a subscription to Der Gute Kamerad (a boys’ weekly), and incomprehensible as it now seems to me, I read it not without enjoyment, at the same time as Dickens. There were exciting things in it, like “The Gold of Sacramento,” about the Swiss gold-hunter Sutter in California, and the most suspenseful thing of all was a story about Seianus, the minion of Emperor Tiberius. That was my first and authentic encounter with later Roman history, and this emperor, whom I despised as a figure of power, continued something in me that had begun five years earlier in England, with the story of Napoleon.
Mother did not read Strindberg alone, though he occupied her most at that time. A special group of books was made up of antiwar writings published by the Rascher publishing house. Latzko’s People in War, Leonhard Frank’s Man is Good, Barbusse’s Fire—those were the three she talked to me about most frequently. She had wanted these too, like Strindberg, as presents from us. Our allowances alone, being very modest, would not have sufficed, although we saved nearly all of them for this purpose. But I also received a few rappens every day to buy a doughnut from the school janitor for my morning snack. I was hungry, but it was far more exciting to save that money until there was enough to get Mother a new book. First, I had gone to Rascher to learn the price, and it was already a pleasure just to enter that very lively book shop on Limmatquai, to see the people, who often asked for our future gifts, and naturally to take in with one glance all the books that I would eventually read. It was not so much that I felt bigger and more responsible among these adults, it was really the promise of future things to read, which would never run out. For if, in those days, I felt anything like concern about the future, it was really in regard to the world’s supply of books. What would happen when I had read them all? Of course, best of all, I loved rereading the ones I liked, over and over, but this pleasure included the certainty that it would be followed by more and more.
Once I knew the price of the planned gift, the calculations began: How many ten-rappen morning snacks would I have to skip in order to have enough for the book? It always took several months: thus the book came together, bit by bit. The temptation to actually buy a doughnut just once, like some of my schoolmates, and eat it in front of them, was insignificant against this goal. On the contrary, I enjoyed standing close to someone consuming a doughnut and with something like a feeling of pleasure—I can’t put it any other way—I pictured Mother’s surprise when we handed her the book.
She was always surprised, although it was repeated. She never knew what book it would be. But if she sent me to get her a new book at the Hottingen Reading Circle and the book was already taken out because everyone was talking about it and wanted it—if she sent me again and became impatient, I knew that this would have to be the new present and I made it the next goal of my “politics.” This enterprise also involved consistently misleading her. I asked for the book again at the Reading Circle and returned with a disappointed expression, saying: “The Latzko was out again!” The disappointment grew as the day of the surprise approached; and on the preceding day, it might happen that I stamped my foot angrily and suggested that Mother leave the Hottingen Reading Circle as a sign of protest. “That won’t help,” she said pensively, “then we shan’t get any books at all.”
The very next day, she had a brand-new copy of the Latzko in her hand, so how could she help but be surprised! Of course, I had to promise never to do it again and to eat the doughnuts at school from now on, but she never threatened to withdraw the tiny sum for them. That may have been part of her policy of character-building, and perhaps the book especially delighted her because I had saved up for it by small daily acts of renunciation. She herself was a person who ate with gusto, her taste for refined dishes was highly developed. During our puritanical meals, she had no qualms about speaking of things she missed, and she alone suffered from her decision to accustom us to modest and simple food.
It must have been this special kind of book that ultimately politicized her intellectual interests. Barbusse’s Fire haunted her for a long time. She talked to me about it more than she considered right. I pestered her to allow me to read it; she remained firm, but she told me all about it in a somewhat milder form. Nevertheless, she was a loner and never joined any pacifist group. She heard Leonhard Ragaz speak and came home so agitated that the two of us stayed up most of the night. But her timidity about any public activities on her part remained invincible. She explained it away by saying that she only lived for us three, and what she couldn’t get done herself, because no one would listen to a woman in this male world of war, we three, when grown up, would advocate in her sense, each in terms of his own abilities.
All sorts of things were happening in Zurich at that time, and she did her best to follow up on everything she heard about, not just the antiwar things. She had no one to advise her; intellectually, she was truly alone; among the friends who sometimes came to visit, she appeared to be by far the most open-minded and most intelligent person; and when I remember all the things she undertook on her own, I can only be amazed today. Even when it came to her strongest conviction, she formed her own opinion. I recall the scornful way she came down on Stefan Zweig’s Jeremiah: “Paper! Empty straw! You can tell he hasn’t experienced anything himself. He ought to read Barbusse instead of writing this nonsense!” Her respect for real experience was enormous. She wouldn’t have dared to open her mouth about actual warfare, for she had never personally been in a trench; and she went so far as to say it would be better if women were conscripted too, then they could fight against it seriously. Thus, when it came to those very things, it must have been her timidity that prevented her from finding a way to like-minded people. Claptrap, whether spoken or written, was something she hated fiercely, and if I ventured to say something imprecise, she would pull me up sharply.
During this period, when I was starting to think myself, I admired her unreservedly. I compared her with my teachers at the canton school, more than one of whom I accepted or even revered. Only Eugen Müller had her fire, bound with her earnestness; only he, when speaking, had her wide-open eyes and gazed ahead, unswervably, at the topic, which overwhelmed him. I told her about everything I heard in his classes, and it fascinated her because she knew the Greeks only from the classical dramas. She learned Greek history from me and wasn’t ashamed to ask. For once, our roles were reversed, she didn’t read history books on her own because they talked about wars so much. But it could happen that when we sat down for lunch, she promptly questioned me about Solon or Themistocles. She particularly liked Solon because he refused to set himself up as a dictator and withdrew from power. She was surprised that there was no play about him; she knew of none that dealt with him. But she found it unjust that the mothers of such men were barely mentioned by the Greeks. She undauntedly saw the mother of the Gracchi as her own ideal.
It is hard for me not to list everything she was involved in. For whatever it was, something of it passed on to me. I was the only one to whom she could recount everything in every detail. Only I took her stern judgments seriously, for I knew what enthusiasm they sprang from. She condemned many things, but never without first expatiating on what she had against them with vehement but convincing reasons. The time of our readings may have been over, the dramas and great performers were no longer the chief substance of the world; but a different and by no means smaller “wealth” had replaced them: the monstrous events happening now, their effects and their roots. She was distrustful by nature and in Strindberg, whom she considered the most intelligent of all men, she found a justification for her distrust, which she grew used to and could no longer do without. She caught herself going too far and telling me things that became the source of my own, still very young distrust. She would then feel scared and, by way of balance, tell me about some deed that she particularly admired. Mostly it was something tied to incomprehensible difficulties, but magnanimity always played a part too. During such attempts at balance, I felt closest to her. She thought I didn’t perceive the reason for this change in tone. But I was already a bit like her and I practiced seeing through things. Acting naive, I took in the “noble” tale, I always liked it. But I knew why she was bringing it up now of all times, and I kept my knowledge to myself. Thus both of us held back slightly, and since it was actually the same, each of us had the identical secret from the other. It was no wonder that at such moments, feeling myself her mute equal, I loved her the most. She was certain that she had once again concealed her distrust from me; I perceived both things: her ruthless acumen and her magnanimity. At the time, I didn’t know what vastness is, but I felt it: being able to comprise so many and such conflicting things, knowing that seeming incompatibles can all be valid at once, being able to feel that without perishing of fear, having to name that and think about it, the true glory of human nature—that was really what I learned from her.
Hypnosis and Jealousy The Seriously Wounded
She went to concerts often; music remained important for her, though she seldom touched the piano after Father’s death. Perhaps she had also become more demanding by having more opportunity to hear the masters of her instrument, some of whom were living in Zurich. She never missed a recital by Busoni, and it confused her a bit that he lived nearby. At first, she wouldn’t believe me when I told her about running into him, and only when she learned from others that it really was Busoni did she accept it, and she upbraided me for calling him “Dschoddo-come-to-Papa,” like the neighborhood children, instead of “Busoni.” She promised she would take me to hear him some day, but only on condition that I never again call him by that false name. She said he was the greatest keyboard master she had ever heard, and it was nonsense referring to all the others as “pianists” just like him.
She also regularly attended the performances of the Schaichet Quartet, named after the first violinist, and she always came home in a state of inexplicable agitation, which I finally understood only when she once angrily said to me that Father would have loved to become such a violinist; it had been his dream to play so well that he could perform in a quartet. Why not do a solo concert, she had once asked him. But he had shaken his head and replied that he could never become that good, he knew the limits of his talent, he might possibly have been good enough for a quartet or for first violin in an orchestra if his father hadn’t prevented him from playing so early on. “Grandfather was such a tyrant, such a despot, he tore the violin away from him and beat him when he heard him play. Once, he punished him by having his eldest brother tie him up in the cellar overnight.” She was letting herself go, and to mellow the effect of her anger on me, she sadly added: “And Father was so modest.” It ended with her noticing my confusion—how was he modest if Grandfather beat him?—and instead of explaining that his modesty consisted in his not believing himself capable of becoming more than perhaps a concertmaster, she said sarcastically: “In that way, you really take after me!” I didn’t like hearing that, I couldn’t stand it when she spoke about Father’s lack of ambition, as though he had been a good person only because of that lack.
Hearing the Saint Matthew Passion put her in a state that I remember if for no other reason than because she was incapable of a real conversation with me for days afterwards. She couldn’t read all week. She would open her book, but not see a single line; instead, she heard Ilona Durigo’s alto. One night, she came into my bedroom with tears in her eyes and said: “It’s all over with books, I’ll never be able to read again.” I tried to comfort her, I suggested sitting next to her while she read, then she wouldn’t hear the voice anymore. That only happened, I said, because she was alone; if I sat next to her at the table, I could always say something, then the voices would fade. “But I want to hear them, don’t you understand, I never want to hear anything else again!” It was such a passionate outburst that I was frightened. But I was full of admiration for her and said nothing more. During the next few days, I sometimes gave her an inquisitive look, she understood and said in a blend of happiness and despair: “I can still hear them.”
I watched over her as she over me, and if you are close to someone, you gain an unerring sense for all emotions consistent with him. Overwhelmed as I may have been by her passions, I would not have let a false note pass. It wasn’t presumption on my part but familiarity that gave me the right to be watchful, and I didn’t hesitate to swoop down on her when I detected an alien, unwonted influence. For a while, she went to Rudolf Steiner’s lectures. What she reported about them didn’t sound like her at all, as though she were suddenly speaking in a foreign language. I didn’t know who had gotten her to attend those lectures, she wouldn’t let on, and when the remark escaped her that Rudolf Steiner had something hypnotic about him, I began storming her with questions. Since I knew nothing about him, I could gain an idea of him only from her own accounts, and I soon realized that he had won her over with frequent quotations from Goethe.
I asked her whether they were really new to her; after all, she must be familiar with them since she claimed she’d read everything of Goethe’s. “Well, you know, nobody’s read all of him,” she admitted, fairly embarrassed, “and I can’t remember any of these things.” She seemed very unsure of herself, for I was accustomed to her knowing every syllable of her writer; she always violently attacked other people for their defective knowledge of an author, calling them “chatterboxes” and “muddleheads,” who confused everything because they were too lazy to experience something thoroughly. I wasn’t satisfied with her answer and I then asked whether she would like me to believe these things too. After all, we couldn’t believe different things, and if she joined Steiner after a few lectures because he was so hypnotic, then I would force myself to likewise believe everything she said, so that nothing would keep us apart. It must have sounded like a threat, perhaps it was only a ruse: I wanted to find out how strongly this new power had grabbed her, a power that was utterly alien to me, that I had never heard or read about; it broke in upon us so suddenly, I had the feeling that now everything would change between us. Most of all, I feared it would make no difference to her whether or not I joined, which would have meant that what happened to me would no longer be so important to her. But things hadn’t gone that far at all, for she absolutely refused to let me “take part”; she vehemently said: “You’re too young. That’s not for you. You shouldn’t believe any of it. I’ll never tell you anything about it again.” I had just saved up some money to buy her a new Strindberg. Instead, on the spur of the moment, I purchased a book by Rudolf Steiner. Solemnly, I presented it to her with the hypocritical words: “You are interested in it and you can’t retain everything. You said it’s not easy to understand, it has to be properly studied. Now you can read it in peace and quiet and you’ll be better prepared for the lectures.”
But she didn’t care for that at all. Why had I bought it, she kept asking. She said she didn’t really know whether she wanted to keep it. Perhaps she wouldn’t like it. Why, she had read nothing of his. One can only buy a book if one is positive one wants to keep it. She was afraid I would read it myself and, she felt, be pushed into a specific direction much too early. She was hesitant about anything that didn’t come from completely personal experience and she distrusted hurried conversions, she made fun of people who let themselves be converted too easily, and she often said of them: “Just another reed in the wind.” She was embarrassed about the word “hypnosis,” which she had used, and she explained that she hadn’t been referring to herself, she had noticed that the other spectators appeared hypnotized. Maybe it would be better, she said, if we put all this off for some later time, when I was more mature and could understand it more readily. At bottom, she cared more about the things we could discuss between us, without distortions or contortions, without pretending anything that wasn’t already a part of us. That wasn’t the first time that I felt her coming halfway towards my jealousy. She also had no more time, she said, to go to those lectures; it was such an inconvenient hour for her, and they made her miss other things that she understood better. So she sacrificed Rudolf Steiner to me, never mentioning him again. I did not feel the unworthiness of victory over a man of whom I had not refuted a single sentence because I didn’t know a single sentence. I had hindered his ideas from taking root in her mind, for I sensed that they didn’t relate to anything we ever discussed; all I cared about was repelling those ideas from her.
But what should I think of that jealousy? I can neither approve nor condemn, I can only record it. It became part of my nature so early that it would be dishonest to conceal it. It always stirred whenever someone became important to me, and there were few such people who didn’t have to suffer from it. My jealousy developed into something rich and versatile in my relationship to my mother. It enabled me to fight for something that was superior to me in every way, stronger, more experienced, more knowledgeable, and also more selfless. It never struck me how selfish I was in this struggle, and if someone had told me that I was making Mother unhappy, I would have been highly astonished. After all, it was she who gave me this right to her, she attached herself so close to me in her loneliness because she knew no one who was her equal. Had she socialized with a man like Busoni, then I would have been doomed. I was absorbed in her because she presented herself totally to me, she told me all the important thoughts that were on her mind, and her reticence in covering up certain things because of my youth was only feigned. She obstinately kept all eroticism from me, the taboo she had placed upon it on the balcony of our apartment in Vienna remained as powerful in me as though it had been proclaimed by God himself on Mount Sinai. I never asked about sex, it was never on my mind; and while she ardently and intelligently filled me with all the things in the world, that one thing, which had confused me, remained blank. Since I didn’t know how greatly people need this kind of love, I couldn’t guess what she was deprived of. She was thirty-two at the time and living alone, and that seemed as natural to me as my own life. At times, when she got angry at us for disappointing or irritating her, she did say she was sacrificing her life for us, and if we didn’t deserve it, she would put us in the strong hands of a man, who would teach us what was what. But I didn’t realize, I couldn’t realize, that she was also thinking of her lonely life as a woman. I saw her sacrifice as devoting so much time to us, whereas she would much rather have read all the time.
