The Torch in my Ear, page 34
I knew that someday I’d get into a conversation with him; since I hoped to be living here for a long time, I was patient. No one in the area was more on my mind than he. I asked everyone whether they knew anything about him, and I had been told certain things that I couldn’t really believe. I was told he was studying, his subject was philosophy; hence, the heavy tomes that always lay on the pillow next to him. He was so gifted, they said, that professors at the University of Vienna came all the way to Hacking merely to give him private lectures. This struck me as sheer nonsense until one sunny afternoon when I saw Professor Gomperz—the long-bearded man who looked like my image of the Greek cynics—sitting next to Marek’s wagon. I had heard his lecture on the pre-Socratics some time ago. His way of speaking had not been as inspiring as the subject matter, but the latter was abundant. When I actually saw him sitting in front of young Marek, talking to him with vast, slow gestures, I was so startled that I swerved from my route and made a detour to avoid coming near the professor and having to greet him. Yet this would have been the best and most dignified occasion for finally getting to meet the paralyzed man.
Now, it was past midnight and very dark out. At the top end of the narrow footpath, I stretched my arm toward Marek’s house and asked my uncouth companion, who was more than one head taller than I, whether he knew the paralyzed man. Poldi was amazed that I was pointing in that direction—to the right of the path. To make sure I meant this direction, he slowly—as was his wont—stretched out his huge paw in the same direction. “There’s nothing there,” he said, “there’s no house there.” But there was a house, a single one, number 70, albeit a low, humble, one-story house, no villa. The villas, the only houses that Poldi was interested in and knew about, were on the left side of the hill, forming Hagenberggasse, where I lived.
Poldi wanted to know what was wrong with the paralyzed man, and I talked about him. I told Poldi everything I had learned about Marek. Very soon after I started, it occurred to me that the two men had very similar faces: Marek’s was a lot narrower and looked like the face of an ascetic; Poldi had a bloated face, and perhaps the resemblance struck me only because I couldn’t see him so well in the darkness. However, I had a very clear memory of him from our conversation that earlier night in the tavern; I had noticed him especially, because of his evocative dark eyes, which contrasted so greatly with his clumsy paws.
“You look alike,” I now said, “but only in your faces. He’s totally paralyzed. He can’t move his arms or legs. But don’t think he’s sad. He’s brave, it’s unbelievable. He can’t move, but he studies. The professors come all the way to Erzbischofgasse and give him lessons. He doesn’t have to pay them. He couldn’t pay them anyway. He doesn’t have any money.”
“And he looks like me?” asked Poldi.
“Yes, you’ve got the same eyes. The very same eyes. If you ever come to see him, you’ll think you’re looking into a mirror.”
“But he’s a cripple!” he said, somewhat irritated. I sensed that he was starting to get annoyed at the comparison.
“But not in his mind!” I said. “He’s smarter than any of us! He can’t go anywhere and he studies! The professors come to him, so he can study. It’s unheard of. He must have something on the ball, all right, otherwise they wouldn’t come. Do you know what? I’ve got the greatest respect for him! I really admire him!” This was the first time that I waxed enthusiastic about Thomas Marek. Yet I didn’t even know him. Later on, when we had become friends, I couldn’t have spoken with more enthusiasm about him.
We had stopped. We hadn’t gone any further after I’d pointed toward Marek’s house. Thomas Marek’s physical state penetrated Poldi very slowly. He asked several times whether the man really couldn’t move on his own. “Not at all,” I said. “He can’t walk a step. He can’t even put a piece of bread in his mouth. He can’t even bring a glass to his lips.”
“But he does drink, doesn’t he? And chew? Can he swallow, can he swallow his food?”
“Yes, he can do those things. He can gaze, too! You can’t imagine how beautiful he looks when he opens his eyes!”
“And he resembles me?”
“Yes, but only your face! He’d be happy if he had your big hands! Imagine how much he’d like to walk people home the way you’re walking me home now! He couldn’t do it even when he was a little boy.”
“And you like him! A cripple!”
I was annoyed at this word now; after everything I had said, he shouldn’t have used it. “He’s not a cripple for me!” I said. “I think he’s wonderful! If you don’t understand, then I feel sorry for you. I figured you’d understand!” I was so annoyed that I forgot whom I was talking to, and I became vehement. I kept singing Marek’s praises. I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop. When I no longer had anything concrete to add, I began inventing further details, which, however, I believed in. I believed in them so intensely that Poldi just listened, and only now and then would he throw in the same sentence: “And he resembles me?”
“His face, I told you, his face looks just like yours.”
And then it came over me, and I kept on talking. I said women came from far away merely to see Marek. “They stand in front of his wagon and look at him. His mother brings chairs out for them to sit down. I could swear they’re in love with him. They wait for him to look at them. He can’t caress them, he can’t do anything with them. But he can look at them, with his eyes.” Everything I said was true, even though I made it up that night. A short time later, when I became friends with Marek, I saw the women and girls who came to him; I saw them with my own eyes, and anything I didn’t see he told me.
But that night, Poldi and I didn’t go a single step further. He had grown quieter and quieter, he didn’t use the word cripple again. He forgot that he had planned to walk me to the garden gate of my home and look about in his way. He forgot the villas. He was preoccupied with the young man who resembled him but couldn’t stand or walk. I shook hands with him but only after my praises were exhausted. He took my hand rather restrainedly, not crushing it as he usually did. He turned and walked down the footpath, which we had climbed together. I had lost all fear of him.
The Provider
My shyness about Marek vanished that night. I had spoken so much about him that I no longer avoided him. My praises had made him seem more familiar. Nor had I failed to notice that my enthusiastic remarks about Marek had tamed the rough customer who had tramped up Erzbischofgasse with me after midnight. I was no longer interested in him and his buddies. I barely noticed them when I went to the tavern. We nodded at one another from a distance, and they were no longer curious about me. I don’t know in what form my behavior that night was communicated to them. Whatever they may have thought about the matter now, there was nothing to be gotten from someone who dealt with such poor devils. Nor did their original interest change into scorn or hatred; they left me alone. They left me so utterly in peace that I felt something like a quiet liking in them, albeit a quite undemonstrative, barely perceptible liking—enough, however, to arouse the tavern keeper’s hostility.
He hadn’t failed to notice that the strongest and most intractable of the men had followed me that night, and he wanted to know what had happened. Nothing, I said, to his disappointment. “But he walked you all the way home?” he said, and it sounded almost like a threat.
“No, only till Erzbischofgasse.”
“And then?”
“Then he turned back.”
“And he didn’ ask you anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
“If it weren’ you, Herr Doktor, no one’d believe you.”
He was convinced I was hiding something, and he was right; for I didn’t say a word about the actual topic of our conversation. I didn’t feel the tavern owner was good enough for that. Perhaps I didn’t want to hear him—especially him—come out with derogatory comments about people who couldn’t stand or walk and were ultimately just a burden on the taxpayer. “He walked along with you and didn’ talk. That’s not like him.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t talk, but he didn’t question me. I wouldn’t have known anything anyway.”
Perhaps it was this sentence that made him even more distrustful. What did I mean I didn’t know anything! I’d been living there for two or three years already. You hear all sorts of things, after all. And in any case, I was shielding the fellow when I stated that he hadn’t questioned me, thus hadn’t shown any criminal intentions.
I now saw that Herr Bieber carefully noted the time whenever I entered the tavern. When had they come? When did I come? Why didn’t they talk to me anymore? Why didn’t I ever talk to them? Something must have happened. Since there was no public communication between us, Herr Bieber assumed that there must be a secret communication; and since it was so consistently secret, it had to signify something. He was absolutely convinced that he was on the trail of something, and he waited for the glorious revelation.
I would seldom come to his tavern in the morning. But once, when I did show up that early, he came over and said: “So it didn’ work.”
“What didn’t work?”
“Well, you must have heard about it. They caught all of them! First, they let them into the house, and then the mousetrap closed. All four are in jail already. They’ll get years for this! What can you do, they’ve all got records! It had to end badly. They’re hunting for Seel now. He’s vanished—the writer!”
He spoke that last word with genuine scorn, which was meant either for me, whom he often saw writing, or for my claim that I knew of a book that Seel had written. Herr Bieber saw that I was stunned by the news, and he crowned his report with the precautionary words: “You see how good it is that I warned you. Otherwise you’d be in trouble now, too.”
I pictured my powerful and vigorous escort of that night in a narrow cell; and now I understood why my account of the paralyzed man had affected Poldi so deeply that he forgot about his plans and went home empty-handed. He really hadn’t asked me anything, not a single question. He hadn’t had a chance, he had gotten so involved in the story, which I had cast over his head like a reflecting net. I had talked about someone who resembled him, but who could move neither his arms nor his legs—a man who was worse off than Poldi in a cell.
Everything had happened rather swiftly; only a few months had passed from the nocturnal conversation to the cell in which the man with the tremendous hand was confined. But my image of the paralyzed man had been animated and aroused so vehemently that a real meeting would have to take place. I no longer made a detour when I saw someone talking to him at his wagon; I would walk by with an audible greeting and was surprised and delighted the first time I heard the paralyzed man’s voice returning my greeting. His voice sounded breathy, as if coming from deep inside him, it gave color and space to his greeting. It stuck in my mind and I wanted to hear it again. The next day, as luck would have it, I saw Professor Gomperz sitting there. I recognized him from far away by his long beard and his physique, which looked high and straight even when he was seated. I didn’t know whether he would recognize me. In his course, I had always been among very many students when I had spoken to him, and only once had I gone to see him about some matter or other.
However, he now instantly became attentive as I drew near, and he gave me such an astonished look that I was unabashed about stopping and holding out my hand. He only nodded but did not hold out his hand, and I turned crimson with embarrassment about my want of tact. How could I offer someone my hand in the presence of the paralyzed man! However, Professor Gomperz spoke to me in his slow, affable way, asking me my name, which, he said, had slipped his mind; then, upon learning my name, he introduced me to Thomas Marek. “My young friend often sees you passing here,” said the professor. “He could tell that you’re a student, too. He has an infallible instinct for people. Why don’t you visit him sometime? After all, you live close by.”
Marek had told him everything while I approached. He had noticed me, no less than I him, and he had found out where I lived. Professor Gomperz explained that Thomas Marek was majoring in philosophy, and that he, Gomperz, came to see him once a week for two hours. He was so satisfied with Marek that he would like to come more often, but, alas, he didn’t have the time. It was quite a long trip, taking him an entire afternoon. However, said the professor, Thomas Marek merited his coming twice a week. It didn’t sound like flattery, though it was meant to be encouraging; it sounded as direct and clear-cut as one might expect the words of a cynic philosopher to sound. However, the paralyzed man declared with his powerful breath: “I don’t know anything now. But I will know more.”
From here on, things moved quickly. It was early May. The paralyzed man often basked in the sun outside his house. I visited him. His mother brought me a chair from inside so that I might not leave too soon. I remained for quite a while, one hour the first time. When I was about to say goodbye, Thomas said: “You must think I’m tired already. I’m never tired when I can have a serious conversation. I like talking to you. Do stay!” I was frightened by his hands, which I had never noticed when casually passing by. The fingers were cramped and crooked, he couldn’t move them voluntarily; they had reached the twined wire of the garden fence and had twisted around the wire and were clutching it so tightly that they couldn’t get loose. When Marek’s mother came out again, she carefully loosened his hand from the wire, finger by finger, which was no easy job. Then she moved Thomas’s wagon a bit away from the fence, so that his fingers wouldn’t get caught again. She gave me a scrutinizing look with her deepset eyes, a prematurely aged woman, and she let me know tacitly, merely with her eyes, that she wanted me to make sure the wagon didn’t roll against the fence anymore.
Thomas always kept moving slightly, thus making the wagon move. His mother poured his medicine into his mouth. He took it several times a day, he said after she’d left; he had such powerful convulsions that he couldn’t do anything peacefully without this medicament: he couldn’t read or talk. But, he said, the medicament was good. He’d been taking it for many years. The effect always lasted for several hours. They had no idea what sort of disease he had. Something totally unknown. He had spent many long periods at the Neurological Hospital. Professor Pappenheim had personally examined him because his was such an interesting case. But the professor couldn’t make head or tail of it either. It was a unique disease; it had no name as yet. Marek repeated this several times. It was important for him that no one else had the same disease. Since it had no name, it remained a secret for him, too, and he didn’t have to be ashamed of it. “They’ll never find out,” he said, “not in this century. Maybe later on, but then it won’t concern me.”
He had had trouble standing as a child, but his limbs weren’t twisted. There was nothing special about them. When he was about six, his arms and legs had begun to twist and shrink, and from then on his condition got worse and worse. He never said anything about the time when the convulsions had started. Perhaps he no longer knew about it; and we had a tacit agreement that I would never ask his mother anything. Whatever I learned about him came from his lips and was thereby weightier than if someone else had told me; for the strength of his breath, which came from deep inside him, gave his words their own respiratory shape. They were words in statu nascendi, they spread like warm steam when they left his mouth, and they never fell out as finished detritus like other people’s words.
The first time we spoke, he told me about a philosophical work he was planning, but he didn’t tell me what the subject was. For the moment, he wanted to finish his studies and get his doctorate; this was necessary, he said, if his work was to be taken seriously later on. He didn’t want people to read him out of pity when the time came. He wanted to be judged according to merit, like anyone else. On the pillow next to him lay a volume of Kuno Fischer’s History of Philosophy. Marek had made up his mind to read every sentence of this ten-volume opus, and he was up to the volume on Leibniz, a very thick tome. He was about halfway through. He wanted to show me a typographical error, which he found very comical. His tongue suddenly shot out and leafed back lightning-fast through ten pages. There, there it was. He had the passage, and with a jerk of his head he asked me to see for myself. I didn’t know whether to take hold of the book, it didn’t seem proper to lift it from the pillow, I was timid about the leaves, all of which—at least the ones he had read—had been touched by his tongue and were soaked by his spit. I hesitated; he said: “You can hold it if you like. It comes from Professor Gomperz’s library. He has the greatest philosophical library in Vienna.” I had heard about it, and I was deeply impressed that Professor Gomperz’s volumes from this library had been made available for Thomas Marek’s studies.
“He doesn’t mind my keeping the books for so long. The Spinoza volume is still inside the house. He says it’s an honor for his books to be read so emphatically.” Thomas stuck his tongue out and laughed. He sensed how deeply moved I was by everything connected with his way of reading, and he was radiantly happy because he had something so strange to offer me. He wanted to enjoy it before I grew used to it. He had many visitors, as he later told me, but after a visit or two, people felt they had exhausted what was unique about him, and then they didn’t come back. This hurt him, for he could have told them so many things that they had no inkling of. But it didn’t surprise him; he knew what people were like. He had an infallible method for discerning a person’s character: he observed the way a person walked.
