The Torch in my Ear, page 22
“It makes no difference today
Whether I have cash or hay!”
He shouted it with conviction, and with a nervous gesture, as though he wanted nothing more to do with his shirts, as though he wanted to throw all of them away. So peasant women kept coming over to his stand, to grab some of the shirts that had been chucked away. A few of the women skeptically examined a shirt, as if they knew something about shirts; he would yank the shirt out of their hands and throw it back at them, as if he wanted to give it away. And no woman who grabbed hold of a shirt failed to take it along; it was as if the shirt had stuck to her hands. When she paid, he didn’t even appear to see the money. He tossed it away, into a large box, which filled up very quickly. The piles of shirts melted in a very brief time. I watched him from my window, which was right over his head; I had never seen anything so fast; and I kept hearing his shout:
“It makes no difference today
Whether I have cash or hay!”
I noticed that the seeming frivolity of his words infected the farmers’ wives; they forked over their money as though it were nothing. Suddenly, not one shirt was left. His stand was bare. He raised his right arm, shouted, “Stop! One moment!” and vanished around the corner with the cardboard box of money. I couldn’t see where he went; I thought he was done; and I left the window. But I hadn’t even reached the door of my small room, when I heard that same call, even louder than before, if possible:
“It makes no difference today,” etc.
Piles of shirts were lying on the table again. He held them up with a bitter grimace and scornfully tossed them back. The farmers’ wives approached from all sides and walked into his trap.
It was no huge fair. When I passed among the booths, I kept turning up at his stand again. No one else was as good a huckster. He did notice me; he had already noticed me in the window, and in one of the rare moments when he was alone at his stand, he asked me whether I was a student. I wasn’t surprised, he looked like a student, and he was already pulling out his registration booklet from the University of Vienna and holding it under my nose. He was in his fourth semester of law and earned his living at fairs. “You see how easy it is,” he said. “I could sell anything. But shirts are best. These dumb broads think you’re giving them something.” He despised his victims. After a week, he said, the shirts were in tatters, you could wear one four or five times, but then … He didn’t give a damn. By the time they’d find out, he’d be a thousand miles away.
“What about next year?” I asked.
“Next year! Next year!” He was dumbfounded at my question. “By next year, I’ll have kicked the bucket. And if I haven’t kicked the bucket by next year, I’ll be somewhere else. Do you think I’ll come back here? I’ll make damn sure I won’t. Are you coming back here? You’ll make damn sure you won’t either. You won’t because you’re bored, and I won’t because of the shirts.” I thought of the swallows, I thought of coming again for their sake, but I made damn sure not to say so, and he turned out to be right.
There were all sorts of other things to see at the fair, but the only person I made friends with was a red-haired man with a wooden leg. He was sitting on the steps in front of the old tavern; a crutch lay next to him, and his wooden leg was stretched out before him. I wondered what he was doing here; it would never have occurred to me that he was begging. But then I noticed that passersby occasionally handed him a coin, and he, without compromising himself, said, “Thank you kindly!” I would have liked to ask him where he came from. He looked foreign with his enormous red mustache, which seemed even redder than the hair on his head. However, the words “Thank you kindly” sounded utterly Austrian. I was embarrassed to ask him, a beggar, what he did, as if I hadn’t noticed. For the time being, I gave him nothing, planning to make up for it later on. I’m sure my question didn’t sound condescending when I asked where he came from. But he named neither a town nor a country. Instead, to my great astonishment, he said: “I am a Mormon.”
I hadn’t realized there were Mormons in Europe. But perhaps he had been to America and had lived among Mormons there. “How long were you in America?”
“Never been there!” He knew his answer would surprise me, and he waited a bit before enlightening me about Mormons in Europe and even in Austria, and not so few at that. They had their meetings, he said, and kept in touch with one another. He could show me their newspaper. I had the feeling I was disturbing him at work; he had to watch out for the people who went in and out of the tavern. And so I left him, saying I’d come back later on. But by then, he was gone, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen him leave. There was no possibility of overlooking him with his wooden leg and crutch and fiery redness.
I stepped into the tavern, which was filled to the rafters. And there, in the huge front room, I suddenly saw him, among many other people at a huge table, with a small glass of wine the color of his hair. He seemed alone; no one talked to him, or perhaps he talked to no one. It was odd to see him mingling with all the other customers, from whom he had only just been begging. He didn’t appear to be bothered by this. He sat there quiet and upright; there may have been more room on either side of him than between any two other people. He stood out because of his fiery hair and especially the mustache. He was the only person I would have noticed at his table, even if I hadn’t spoken with him earlier. He looked pugnacious, but no one was arguing with him. The instant he noticed me, he gave me a friendly wave and invited me to join him. He didn’t have to shift very much to make room for me: there was even a chair nearby since someone got up and left. Finally, we were sitting close together, like old buddies, and he insisted on treating me to a glass of wine.
He had the feeling, he said, starting right in, that I was interested in Mormons. Everyone was against Mormons, he said. No one wanted to have anything to do with him, just because of that. They all thought he had a lot of wives. This was the only thing that people knew about Mormons, if they knew anything at all. It was so silly. He had no wife at all; she had skipped out on him, and that was why he had joined the Mormons. They were good people, all of them worked. They didn’t loaf around, they didn’t drink any alcohol, absolutely none, not like here, he angrily pointed to my glass—his was already empty, or else he’d forgotten all about it—and with a motion of his arm, he embraced all the glasses in the room. He liked talking about it, he said; he always repeated it; the Mormons were good people. But other people were simply annoyed about it; no sooner did he open his mouth than they said: “Shut up!” or “Go to your Mormons in America!” He had already been kicked out of taverns, just because he had started talking about the Mormons. Everyone had something against him, just because of that. He didn’t want anything from these people; he never took anything from anybody when he was inside here, only outside. That was none of their business. Was he hurting them in any way? But they couldn’t stand anyone finding something good about the Mormons. For them, the Mormons were heathens or heretics, and he had even been asked whether all redheads were Mormons. His wife had always told him: “Don’t come near me with your red hair. You’re drunk. You stink.” Back then, he had drunk a lot, and sometimes he had gotten furious at his wife and hit her a couple of times with the crutch. That was why she’d left him. It was the fault of the liquor. Then someone had told him: the Mormons could get people off alcohol: none of them drank at all. So he had gone to them, and it was true; they had cured him, and now he didn’t touch a drop of liquor. And again, he stared furiously at my glass, which I didn’t dare empty.
I sensed the hostility of the others at the same table. He didn’t stare at their glasses, but he was all the more audible. His sermon against alcohol grew louder and more violent. He had long since drunk up, but ordered nothing else. I didn’t dare offer to treat him. I left for an instant and asked the waitress to bring him a new glass, but not right away, only after I’d be sitting a while. I sensed her question on the tip of her tongue, but forestalled her and payed instantly. Then, suddenly, the full glass was in front of him again; he said, “Thank you kindly” and downed it in one gulp. You had to drink to people’s health, he said, even the Mormons did that. You just couldn’t imagine what good people they were. Every one of them would give you something; they still had a heart for poor devils; a whole tableful of them would keep ordering a fresh glass for a poor devil, and they’d keep toasting him until they were all drunk, but out of commiseration. This was altogether different; you were allowed to drink out of commiseration. Why didn’t I bump glasses with him? He had ordered a wine for me out of commiseration, and now, someone else had sent him a wine out of commiseration, so we could certainly drink. The Mormons did the same and they were strict, and if those strict people allowed it, then no one could say anything against it.
But it didn’t occur to anyone to say anything. As soon as he drank, no one was hostile to him. The looks of the men at the table (there were a couple of strong young guys among them, and they had been raring to beat him up) became friendlier and less baleful. They toasted America with him. He said I came from there; I was visiting him. He told me to say something, so they could see how well I knew the language. Totally embarrassed, I blurted out a few English sentences. They bumped glasses with me, perhaps to check whether I was really drinking. For because of him, they plainly regarded me as an envoy of the Mormons.
The School of Hearing
Returning to Vienna, I continued living in Frau Weinreb’s apartment on Haidgasse; and against my will—I couldn’t help it—I listened to the evil sounds of the “Executioner” in the kitchen. Since Frau Weinreb’s nocturnal visit, I slept more lightly, expecting recurrences of the incident. What particularly unnerved me was her hectic relationship with her husband’s pictures, which hung everywhere. There were so many of them, almost indistinguishable from one another except in size and layout; but each single one was important, each had its effect. Frau Weinreb paid her homage in rotation; but since I wasn’t at home during the day, I couldn’t tell what the routine was. I had the feeling that she was in my room every day; how could she have neglected the pictures hanging in my room?
When she had come at night, she had been in a kind of trance. What was she like during the day, when the Executioner wasn’t asleep, and anything that Frau Weinreb did was observed and inspected? Perhaps she was always in the same state; perhaps her state was determined by the sight of the pictures, which she could see on the wall at any time. One pair of eyes replaced another; they were always the same eyes, and always gazing at her. Herr Weinreb was old in every picture; there seemed to be no photographs of his youth. She probably hadn’t known him without his full beard; and if any pictures of his youth had turned up at his death, they had been discarded, like the pictures of a stranger. It would be wrong to assume that his gaze was strict. He had a kind, mild look, always the same. He didn’t appear ominous even in a group of colleagues, but rather assuaging, a peacemaker, a mediator, an arbitrator. Hence Frau Weinreb’s disquiet was all the more incomprehensible. What was it that drove her restlessly from picture to picture; what order had he left her, an order that kept her moving, that kept renewing itself as in a “multiple” hypnosis in front of every pair of eyes?
Once, when I ran into her in the vestibule and exchanged a few words with her, I had to force myself not to ask how Herr Weinreb was. Yet every time, she asserted what a dear, good, fine, what an educated gentleman Herr Dr. Weinreb had been. I once said regretfully: “How terrible that he has been deceased for such a long time.”
To which she broke in, terrified: “It hasn’t been such a long time.”
“How long has it been?” I asked, trying to look as friendly as Herr Weinreb; but I didn’t succeed without a beard.
“I can’t say,” she said. “I don’t know.” And she quickly vanished into her room.
No sooner did I enter the apartment than I became nervous, like her; only I didn’t show it, and I tried not to see the pictures, which I felt a distaste for. The frames were always dusted and the glass plates always freshly washed. I looked at them as if they consisted purely of frames and glass plates. I believe I was waiting for a catastrophe, a destruction of the pictures as a dreadful solution.
Once, I dreamt that the Executioner was in my room, the cook, Ružena’s aunt, who actually never entered my room. In my dream, she was grinning from ear to ear and holding an enormous burning match, as she moved from one picture of Herr Weinreb to another, very calmly setting fire to all of them. She kept her arm, hand, and the match at the same level and she glided rather than walked. I couldn’t see her feet; they were hidden under the long skirt, which reached down to the floor. The pictures instantly burned, but very quietly, like candles. The room was transformed into a church; but I knew that my bed was still there and that I was lying in it; and then I woke up, terrified at blasphemously lying abed in a church.
I told Veza about this dream. She took dreams seriously, never debilitating them with current interpretations. She hadn’t failed to notice how eerie I found Frau Weinreb’s picture worship. “Perhaps,” she said, “it’s the Executioner who demands this cult. She knows about it and she keeps her employer dependent on her by means of these pictures. It’s the church of Satan, and you live and sleep right in the middle of it, and you’ll never have peace again so long as you stay there.” I sensed that with a few words she had translated my dream into our more intimate language without confusing the finer dynamics of the dream.
I knew I had to get away from this room, this apartment, this street, this neighborhood. Yet it was no more than ten minutes to Ferdinandstrasse, where Veza lived; and this was the true reason why I had taken this room. I could appear unexpectedly on the street in front of Veza’s room and whistle up to her; fidgety as I was, I exercised a kind of supervision over her. Not only did I know whether she was at home or out, whether she was alone or had company, but even whether she was reading or studying by herself; no matter when I felt like showing up, she had to ask me in. She never made me feel I was intruding; perhaps I never did intrude, but it was a constraint: for her, because she could never be sure I might not suddenly come by; for me, because my motives were unworthy: I wanted to know exactly what she was doing.
I would have been drawn there in any event, for nothing was lovelier than being with her, admiring her, and, in the midst of this admiration, telling her what I had thought or done. She listened, nothing escaped her, she caught every word; but she reserved the right to voice her opinion. Nothing could hold her back. If she found anything intelligent, she noted it; it came up again in our talk. It wasn’t idle or arrogant to deal with intellectual matters, it was perfectly natural. There were thoughts by other people that responded to you like echoes and strengthened you. She knew them; she opened Hebbel’s Journals and showed you what you had just said, and you weren’t ashamed, for you hadn’t known he’d said it. Her quotations were never paralyzing: they came only if their effect was animating. She also had her thoughts, inspired by the many she was familiar with. It was she who brought Lichtenberg into my life at that time. I was opposed to other things, so I soon noticed that she felt something like a chauvinism for everything that was female. She gave in unresistingly to glorifiers of women; and Peter Altenberg, whom she had often seen (sometimes running into him in the Town Park when she was a little girl), was a man she worshipped as much as he had worshipped women and little girls. I found this ridiculous and I made no bones about my feelings. It was good that there were things that helped me stake off my territory against her; otherwise, I would have gradually surrendered to her rich literary background. I opposed Altenberg with my Swiss writers: Gotthelf’s The Black Spider and Keller’s “The Three Just Kammachers.”
We had a few important pairs of opposites: she loved Flaubert, I Stendhal. When she, annoyed at my distrust or my immense jealousy (which she enjoyed in small doses), was looking for a fight, she would hit me over the head with Tolstoy. Anna Karenina was her favorite female character; and in regard to her, Veza could get so violent that she actually declared war against Gogol, my great Russian. She demanded an amende honorable for Anna Karenina, whom I found boring, because she had absolutely nothing in common with Veza. And since I wouldn’t give in (as steadfast as a martyr in such issues, I would rather have been torn limb from limb than sacrifice to a false goddess), she unhesitatingly reached for her torture instruments and raked Gogol over the coals instead of me. She knew his weaknesses, and she instantly pounced on Taras Bulba, the Cossack, who reminded her so much of Walter Scott.
I wasn’t about to defend Taras Bulba. But when I tried to turn the conversation to the grand, the enormous things, “The Overcoat,” Dead Souls, she hypocritically regretted that so little of the second part of this novel had survived. Perhaps this part would have improved after the first few chapters. And just what did I think of Gogol’s Russian years after his return home, when he became terrified at his own impact and tried to prove at any cost how pious and how devoted to the government he was, writing those woeful “Letters to His Friend” and tossing his real works into the fire.
She said she knew of nothing more horrible in world literature than those final years of Gogol’s; yet he was only forty-three when he died. Could one still respect this epitome of cowardice—even if it was fear of the fires of hell? And what did I think—in comparison with that—of the later development of Tolstoy, who had grown twice as old, and written Anna Karenina, which I absolutely didn’t understand at all (said Veza), and had then produced various works that even I, an inveterate misogynist, would have to respect? But until the very last hours of his life, he had demonstrated an unparalleled stubbornness, courage, even magnanimity—what the English call “spirit.” She just couldn’t take a person seriously if he had a higher regard for Gogol than for Tolstoy.
