The Torch in my Ear, page 24
We came to Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, which fascinated both of us. I was surprised that he, sixteen years old, couldn’t tear himself away from this painting. “Do you know why these heads are so true?” he said, and he then told me that Géricault had painted the heads of executed bodies to train himself for the figures on his Raft. “I couldn’t have done that,” I said; it was new to me.
“That’s why you didn’t become a doctor. You wouldn’t have been able to make it through an autopsy.” I saw he hadn’t given up the idea of studying medicine, and I was very happy. Philosophy was in the foreground now, but he wouldn’t remain with it. His sympathy, his knowledge of pain, his ability to endure the sight of death without falling prey to it, his patience, and also his fairness, which gave every person his share of respect—all these things made him appear to be a born doctor. And he would succeed at something that I had failed in despite my awe of this profession.
We vied with each other in thoroughness, and it was a bit comical of us to halt at paintings we were indifferent to, while others attracted us more, ones we were more familiar with because we liked them so much. Georg was cordial enough to ask whether I felt like visiting the Babylonian antiquities; he was alluding to my passion for Gilgamesh. He hadn’t forgotten this either; he hadn’t forgotten anything. The chaos on Radetzkystrasse had snuffed out none of his earlier experiences. I forwent the Babylonians, because they bored him. And as a reward, he took me to The Four Cripples, a very beautiful small Breughel. “So that you’ll visit us again,” he said. “Do you think I don’t know why you can’t get away from Vienna? It’s the Breughels and Karl Kraus and…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the last thing, which he would have said earlier.
We were closer than ever. Georg was worried about the person who had been the most important thing in the world for me, a person whom I had sinned against. And Georg’s concern gave me a sense of relief. I knew I was guiltless, for how else could the matter have developed? Nevertheless, I felt guilty. And it was only when I was alone with Mother and watched her blossom during her questions about “Maria” (because I answered them in such detail) that I felt free of guilt. Mother was interested only in Maria. She was not interested in the violinist, who was already giving concerts and receiving critical notice. Mother felt sorry for Maria, because Maria was far away from me. She had to live in Salzburg, and yet this great distance was good for her. Mother was impressed with how beautiful Maria was, and told me I was lucky. She was not too astonished that Maria liked me even though I, compared with our youngest, the handsome one, was really not attractive. “You’re a poet,” Mother said all at once, as I was spinning out my yarn for her. “You can invent things. You’re not boring, like so many young men. In a town like Salzburg, people are receptive to poets. She doesn’t think of you as a chemist. You’re lucky.”
I spent three weeks in Paris, at the apartment on Rue Copernic; and not a day passed without her coaxing something new about Maria out of me. Mother had a way of asking that I couldn’t resist. I didn’t conceal certain dubious items, for instance, the dreadful avarice of Maria’s mother, which made Maria suffer.
“It happens in the best families,” Mother replied. “Just think of Veza’s stepfather!” This alone demonstrated her change of mood. She must have occasionally thought about what an awful pressure Veza lived under at home. At my departure, however, half an hour before we ordered the taxi to take me to the station, she had a generous stirring, and spoke as she had spoken in the past: “Do not be hard on her, my son.” She meant Veza. “She has been struck down and is on the ground. Do not tell her everything. She does not have to know how beautiful your two loves are. Do not forget, she has to keep on living now, alone. It is difficult for a woman to preserve her self-respect after such a defeat. It is most difficult of all for a woman to live alone. She has done nothing wicked to you, for you have escaped from her toils. She won’t find another like you to catch in her toils, for no one else would be as callow as you were at that time. I brought you boys up pure, and she realized it instantly. It’s to her credit that you, my son, were the one at whom she cast her eye. Visit her from time to time, not too often; otherwise you will feed her pain. Tell her you cannot come because your studies are more demanding than in the past—you are preparing for life now, things are becoming serious, and you cannot fritter away your time.”
These words were in my head as I left. I was glad that the Burgtheater hadn’t died out entirely in her. But I was even gladder that her hatred had reversed into pity. She was so imbued with my tale that she could freely prefer one of the two women over the other. It wasn’t even certain which one I liked more; but she threw all her weight on Maria’s side. It was always better, she said, to think of someone far away. If people are too near one another, there’s too much friction; everything becomes insipid. Also, Erika’s violin brought something false into the relationship. After all, one loves a person and not his instrument; otherwise, one could be satisfied with his concerts. But I was not to think, said Mother, that she wanted to meet Maria. She considered it possible that I would stay attached to Maria until the end of my studies, another two years, simply because she was in Salzburg and not in Vienna. Mother admitted to being curious about Maria, by all means. She said I tended to exaggerate and perhaps she might not think Maria as beautiful as I did. But getting to know my mother would give Maria an importance in her own eyes that ill befitted her. One should not get attached, I had my whole life ahead of me. Nowadays, only a fool would get attached at twenty-two.
The View of Steinhof
In Kolmar, I spent an entire day in front of the Grünewald altar. I didn’t know when I had come, and I didn’t know when I would leave. When the museum closed, I wished for invisibility, so that I might spend the night there. I saw Christ’s corpse without plaintiveness; the dreadful state of his body struck me as true. Faced with this truth, I realized what had bewildered me about crucifixions: their beauty, their transfiguration. Transfiguration belonged to an angelic concert, not on the cross. The thing that people had turned away from, horrified, in real life, could still be grasped in the painting: a memory of the dreadful things that people do to one another. Back then, in February 1927, war and gassings were still close enough to make the painting more credible. Perhaps the most indispensable task of art has been forgotten too often: not catharsis, not solace, not disposing of everything as if it would end well, for it does not end well. Plague and boils and torment and horror—and for the plague that is overcome, we invent even worse horror. What can the comforting deceptions signify in the face of this truth, which is always the same and should remain visible to our eyes? All horror to come is anticipated here. St. John’s finger, enormous, points it out: this is it, this is what will be again. And what does the lamb mean in this landscape? Was this putrefying man on the cross the lamb? Did he grow up and become a human being in order to be nailed to the cross and called a lamb?
When I was there, a painter stood in front of the Grünewald, copying it. He did not seem fascinated or self-conscious, nor did he think very long about any stroke of the brush. I wished he were gone; no one else was there, and I figured he would start a conversation with me. But he didn’t start a conversation; he wanted peace and quiet himself. The only striking thing about him was that he ignored others. I tried to imagine that his copy wasn’t there. I stood in such a way as not to see it. But it was impossible not to think of it. Also, I was embarrassed at staying so long. Without doing anything, I kept standing there, a little like him: he never left either, but he held a brush in his hand and was making an effort at something. He was a solidly built man, middle-aged, his face was blank and not marked by pain, it was incredible that this face should be near the one in the painting, that it should be there at the same time, in the same room, occupied as with a craft with the immensity that it never lost sight of.
I was so ashamed in front of the copyist that I vanished in the back from time to time as though to see other parts of the altar. I had to escape the copy of the crucifixion, as well as the painting itself, and the painter must have thought I was being considerate of him. Perhaps he changed when alone, perhaps he made grimaces in order to endure this confrontation. He looked relieved when I reemerged from behind; he seemed to be smiling. I observed him observing me. Is it any surprise that one should notice a real human being in this presence? One needs that person because he is not hanging on the cross. As long as he is busy copying, nothing can happen to him. This was the thought that struck me most. You were shielded against what you saw only by never looking away. You were rescued by not turning your head away. It is no cowardly rescue. It is no falsification. But would the copyist be perfection in this salvation? No, for by seeing, he breaks down what he sees. He takes refuge in parts, whose connection to the totality is delayed. So long as he paints those parts, they are not part of the totality. They will be part of it once more. But there are times when he absolutely cannot see the totality, since he is absorbed in the detail, which must be accurate. The copyist is a semblance. He is not like St. John’s finger. The copyist’s finger doesn’t show, it moves and executes. The most unselfconscious thing about him is the way he sees, namely in such a way that it doesn’t change him. Were it to change him, he could not finish the copy.
I forgot the copyist only after several years, when I managed to find the large phototypes, which I hung up in my room. Upon returning from Kolmar, I had to find the room in which to hang the phototypes. I soon found the room, right off the bat and without being able to tell what good it would do me.
I wanted to have trees, many trees, and the oldest trees that I knew around Vienna were in the Lainz Park. The first advertisement I came across was for a room near the park. I went to Hacking, the last stop on the urban railroad, crossed the woeful rivulet known as the Vienna River (about whose dangerous past the most incredible stories were told), and climbed up the slope, crossed Erzbischofgasse (which began here, running along a wall until Ober Sankt Veit; I had always liked this street), and turned into Hagenberggasse. The advertised room was in the second house on the right, up the slope.
The landlady took me up to the third floor, which consisted purely of this room, and she opened the window. The instant I looked out, my mind was made up: I had to live here; I would live here a long time. The window showed an open playing field, and, beyond the field and Erzbischofstrasse, you could see trees, many trees, big ones. I assumed they belonged to the Archbishop’s garden. Beyond them, however, on the other side of the Vienna River valley, on a hill, I could see the town of madmen, Steinhof. It was surrounded by a long wall, inside of which there would have been enough room for a town in earlier days. Steinhof had its own cathedral. The dome of Otto Wagner’s church shone all the way over to me. The town consisted of many pavilions, which looked like villas from afar. Ever since first coming to Vienna, I had heard about Steinhof; six thousand people lived in this town. It wasn’t really nearby, but it seemed very distinct. I tried imagining that I could peer through the windows and into the rooms.
The landlady, most likely misinterpreting my gaze through her window (she must have been sixty, her skirt reached down to the floor), gave a compact speech on the youth of today and potatoes, which had already doubled in price. I heard her out, never interrupting; perhaps I sensed I would be hearing this speech frequently. But to forestall any misunderstandings, I immediately declared, when she was finished, that I would have to have the right to receive visits from my girlfriend. She instantly called her “the Fräulein Fiancée” and insisted it could be only one Fräulein Fiancée. I told her I would also have to bring my books, I had a lot of books. This seemed to put her mind at ease; she said books were proper for a Herr Student. I had a harder time with the pictures I wanted to hang on the walls; I didn’t care to part with the reproductions of the Sistine Chapel, which I had had about me since the Villa Yalta in Zurich. “Does it have to be tacks?” she said, but gave in. I had promptly agreed to the rent, which wasn’t high, and my books filled her with confidence. She didn’t like changing roomers, and anyone bringing a lot of books intended to remain.
So I came with the Sistine pictures, but I never forgot my real goal: to seek phototypes of the Isenheim altar and to nail them to the walls in all the details I could lay hold of. It took me a very long time to find what I was looking for. I spent six years in this room; and it was here, as soon as the reproductions of Grünewald hung around me, that I wrote Auto-Da-Fé.
I didn’t see much of the landlady, who lived on the ground floor with her husband and grown children: only once a month, when I handed her the rent, and right after that, when she brought the receipt up to my room. Occasionally, however, someone dropped by while I was out. The landlady would then catch me at the front door when I returned, and I was given a detailed account of the visitor’s appearance, manner, and wishes. She distrusted everyone who came by; and if it was some neighbor whom I had gotten to know by chance and who wanted to borrow something to read, she emphatically warned me against people with nasty intentions who came purely to check out what could be stolen. Anything the landlady had to tell me ended with her speech on the youth of today.
At the bottom of the house, in the basement, lived a sort of janitress, a forester’s widow, who had spent most of her life with her husband in the middle of the park. She was supposed to make my bed and clean up the room. On days when I didn’t go to the laboratory, remaining at home for the morning, I would see her, and she talked about her days in the Lainz Park. Frau Schicho was a friendly old woman, white-haired, very fat, with a red face. She broke into a sweat at the least strain, at every movement; and if I was present during her cleaning (which I wasn’t very often), the room was soon filled with a powerful smell, even though the window and the door stayed open, creating a draft that was supposed to ventilate. It was not a repulsively pungent smell; more like butter that was neither quite fresh nor quite rancid. I would have gone out, if only to avoid this smell. But Frau Schicho had a way of telling stories that I couldn’t resist. She didn’t talk about the forest and her forester house, unless I asked her about boars and owls, which she told me about willingly, but unemotionally. Instead, her thoughts went back to the high-ranking guests who had visited the park in the kaiser’s retinue. Proud, but not solemn, she talked about the Three Emperors’ Day, when the Russian tsar and the German kaiser, on horseback, had halted next to Kaiser Franz Joseph in front of the forester’s house, and she had served them a welcoming drink. She could see all three of them, as though they were still standing there; she described their panaches, their uniforms, their faces; she still knew what types of horses they had been riding and what words they had used when thanking her for the beverage. She didn’t sound servile, more as if everything were still present; and while her arms reached up to show me how she had offered the welcoming beverage to each of the emperors, she appeared a bit surprised that no one was taking the cup from her hands. Everything was gone. Where were the emperors? How was it possible that nothing was left? And while she never put these thoughts into words and also never betrayed any regret, I sensed it was no less enigmatic for her than for me, and that it was because of this enigma that she told me about the past so powerfully and graphically.
I never breakfasted in this room; I didn’t even keep fruit or bread here. I had always wished for a place free of food, undisturbed by anything that I found trivial or bothersome. I jokingly called this my “domestic purity.” And whenever Veza came by, she understood, and never tried to establish a household here, as women are apt to do. In her original and flattering way, she interpreted as follows my desire to keep my room free of such things: she said it was my respect for the prophets and sibyls, who were still on the walls, and perhaps also my respect for Michelangelo, who could work endlessly without thinking of food.
But this didn’t mean that I deprived myself of anything, much less starved. On Auhofstrasse, five minutes down the hill, there was a dairy shop, where you could buy yogurt, bread, and butter, and consume them in peace and quiet at the one table, while sitting on the one chair. Here, I ate my breakfast before going to the laboratory. If I stayed home, I would climb down during the day. Throughout those years, I gladly lived on yogurt and bread and butter, for anything I managed to save went for books.
Frau Fontana, who ran this branch of the dairy, had nothing in common with Frau Schicho. Her voice was as sharp as her nose, which she stuck into everything. During my repast, I learned details about every customer who left the shop and about every customer who would presumably appear. When this subject was exhausted, which didn’t happen all that swiftly, her marriage was next on the list. From the very start, her marriage hadn’t been quite right. Frau Fontana’s first husband had been a prisoner of war in Siberia, where he spent several years, eventually dying of some illness. A friend of his had come back from there very late, bearing final greetings, the husband’s wedding ring, and a photo—a group picture of the deceased, his friend, and other prisoners. It was a precious photo, with which its owner never parted, though he liked showing it. All the men had grown beards, and no one was recognizable. The owner used to point to one beard, the second from the right on the bottom, and say: “That was me! Don’tcha recognize me? Damn it, those were the days!” Then he assumed a solemn mien and pointed to another beard, the second from the left on the bottom, and declared: “And this was my friend and predecessor. Go ahead, you can say the first Herr Fontana, but naturally his name was different. You’d better ask my wife. She can sing his praises for you.”
For Frau Fontana could not sing the praises of her second husband. She got up very early, the store opened early. He slept all morning. He would come home in the middle of the night on the last train, sometimes even later, on foot, returning from his pub in town. By then, the wife was fast asleep, and he never saw her. During the afternoon, while she was in the dairy, he would get up and go back to his cronies in town.
