The Play of the Eyes, page 7
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It seems worthwhile to take a look at the time when this modern-music festival took place—a few weeks after the burning of the books in Germany. For six months the man with the unpronounceable name had been in power. Ten years earlier, Germany had been shaken by uncontrollable inflation. Ten years later his troops were deep inside Russia and had planted their banner on the highest peak of the Caucasus. Strasbourg, the city that played host to our festival, was a French-administered city where a German dialect was spoken.
Its streets and buildings had preserved a “medieval character” which, thanks to a garbage collectors’ strike that had been going on for weeks, lost no time in assaulting the visitors’ noses. But the Cathedral spire rose high above the stench, and we were all free to seek relief on the platform. Though as a conductor he had taught himself dictatorial habits, H. refused to perform in the new Germany, where, thanks to his spotless lineage and Teutonic energy, he would have achieved high honor. In this he was one among not very many, a point decidedly in his favor. In that month in Strasbourg he managed to assemble a kind of Europe consisting entirely of musicians engaged in new experiments, a courageous, confident Europe, for what would have been the point of experiments if they didn’t reckon with a future?
* * *
At that time I lived in very different worlds. One focus was the Conservatory, where I spent most of my time during the day. On entering the building, I was engulfed by a deafening din. Practicing was going on in every room, which, I suppose, is only natural in a conservatory, and much of the music being practiced was most unusual. In other conservatories you think you can identify the compositions you hear, and most often you get a jumble of familiar dribs and drabs. Here, on the contrary, everything was strange and new, the details as well as the overall sound. This may have been just what fascinated me and made me go back time and again. I was amazed at the endurance of those musicians, who in addition to mastering difficult new scores managed to practice in this hell and somehow, in the midst of such pandemonium, judge whether they were improving or not.
Maybe I left the Conservatory so often for the pleasure of going back often. For on leaving the noise, I would plunge into the stench of the streets. I never got used to it, I was always aware of it, I had never experienced such a smell. It got worse from day to day and the only thing that could assail the senses with comparable force was the acoustic chaos of the Conservatory.
It was then and in those streets that I began to think about the Plague. Suddenly, without transition or preparation, I was in the fourteenth century, a period that had always interested me because of its mass movements, the flagellants, the plague, the burnings of Jews. I had first read about all this in the Limburg Chronicle, and since then I had read many other accounts. Now I myself was living in the midst of it. One step from Dr. Hamm’s elegantly furnished house took me into the streets, where garbage and its smell reigned supreme. Instead of avoiding them, I invested them with images of my horror. Everywhere I saw the dead, and the despair of those who were still alive. It seemed to me that in the narrow streets people avoided contact with one another, as though fearing infection. I never took the shortest route from the Old City to the pretentious new quarter where the Conservatory was located. I zigzagged through the streets; it’s amazing how many itineraries one can devise in so limited an area. I breathed in the danger and was determined to stay with it at all costs. Every door I passed was closed. I never saw any of them open; in my mind’s eye I saw interiors full of the dead and dying. What in Germany, beyond the Rhine, was felt to be a fresh start struck me here as the consequence of a war that had not yet begun. I did not foresee—how could I foresee?—what lay ten years ahead. No, I looked six hundred years back, and what I saw was the Plague with its masses of dead, which had spread irresistibly and was once again threatening from across the Rhine. The processions of supplicants all ended at the Cathedral, and against the Plague they were useless. For in reality the Cathedral existed for its own sake; you could stand in front of it, you had been inside it, that was the help it provided: it was still there, it hadn’t collapsed in any of the plagues. The movement of the old processions communicated itself to me; we had assembled in every street and made our way together to the Cathedral. And there we stood, perhaps not to entreat but to give thanks, thanks that we could still stand here, for nothing had fallen on us, and the glory of glories, the spire, was still pointing heavenward. Last but not least, I had the privilege of climbing it, of looking down on everything that was still intact, and when, looking down, I breathed deeply, it seemed to me that the Plague, which was once again trying to spread, had been thrust back into its old century.
Anna
H.’s power over women was amazing. He seemed to conduct them into loving him, and dropped them before they had even settled into their new position. They accepted their fate, because in their musical activity they remained in contact with him. In their work together, he would be as precise and conscientious as before. Some of the old atmosphere was saved, and there was always hope that one day his desire would be rekindled. There was little jealousy among them; at every possible opportunity each felt distinguished by him, but did her best to keep the secret of his favor to herself. It was more important to protect her good fortune from the public eye than to nurture the jealousy and hatred of her rivals. Jealous scenes would have had no effect on him. He saw himself as an autocrat who did just as he pleased, and he saw right.
But there was one exception: a woman who, for historical reasons as it were, was in duty bound to be jealous and did her duty to the full. Gustel, who was his official companion during the days in Strasbourg, was his fourth wife. She hadn’t been his wife for long, she had taken the plunge only a few weeks before. She had hesitated for quite some time before becoming his fourth wife, and with good reason, as she had also been his first. In his early Berlin period, she had stood by him when he was still a nobody trying to get ahead by sheer hard work. She was his Indian slave and the reddish hue of her skin even made her look like an Indian. She had a weather-beaten look induced by her long-suffering loyalty. She spoke little, but when she did, the tone was tart and crisp. She made the impression of a martyr at the stake, resolved to concede nothing and gritting her teeth to the end. From the first she helped with his clerical work; all his correspondence, contracts, etc., went through her, and she helped him to track down prospects. Even when the prospects became reality and she saw that every success brought her incalculable torment, she stood firm at her stake and invited new torment. For he too was taciturn, and it was impossible to get any more out of him than out of her. She kept her unhappiness to herself, he never breathed a word about his good fortune. Both had thin, tightly closed lips.
When, still quite a young man, he came to Frankfurt as Furtwängler’s successor and took over the management of the Saalbau Concerts, he made the acquaintance of Gerda Müller, the Penthesilea of my youth, one of the most fascinating actresses of her day. He soon left Gustel for her. Gerda Müller was utterly different from Gustel. In her he found intense, outspoken passion, a vitality that was a law unto itself and subservient to no one; to her, martyrdom was not a virtue but would have signified ineptitude. Scherchen’s interest in the theater may have dated from this time. It was a turbulent, though not the most turbulent, period in his private life. Thus thrust aside, Gustel was forced to attempt a regular, untortured life. She found a lover and lived happily with him for seven years.
H. didn’t tell me much about Gerda Müller, but he had more to say of the next woman to play a major part in his life, the only one who left him against his will. She too was an actress, but while Gerda Müller took refuge in drink, Carola Neher lived for adventures, and of the wildest sort.
A year or two after Strasbourg I spent some time in Winterthur, where H. was conducting Werner Reinhardt’s orchestra. Late at night, after attending one of his concerts, I sat with him in his room. I sensed the man’s nervous tension, but it was not of the usual kind, springing from an urge to dominate, to crush someone. He himself seemed crushed. Yet the concert had gone off well, certainly no worse than usual. It was very late, but he asked me not to leave just yet. He looked around the room in a strange way, as though seeing ghosts; his eyes never came to rest for long but roamed restlessly back and forth. All he wanted was for me to listen to him. I kept calm, though I was rather troubled by his darting eyes; I had never seen him like that. Suddenly it burst out; with a passion I wouldn’t have expected of him, he said: “It was here, right here in this room, that we had our last talk. We talked all night.” And then by fits and starts, almost panting, he told me about his all-night talk with Carola Neher.
She announced her intention of leaving him and he begged her to stay. She wanted to do something big, this life was too small for her. She had decided to drop everything, her acting, her fame, and him, H., whom she ridiculed as a puppet. She despised him, she said, because he catered to a concert audience. The sweat dripped off him when he conducted; whom was he sweating for, what kind of sweat was that? It was phony sweat, it meant nothing, what had meaning for her was a Bessarabian student she had recently met, who was ready to stake his life, who feared nothing, neither prison nor the firing squad. H. realized that she was serious, but he was sure he could hold her. Thus far he had always dominated, women as well as men; if anyone left, it was he. When he felt like it, he walked out. He tried every argument. He threatened to lock her up to save her from herself. This would be her death, he told her. Her student was a nobody, a young whippersnapper with no experience of life. He reviled him, paid her back for all she had said about his conducting. When he attacked the student as an individual, she seemed to waver. But then she countered that what she took seriously was the cause, not the man. If he were someone else, but as deeply committed to a similar cause, he would mean just as much to her. The battle went on all night. He had thought he could wear her down with fatigue; she was incredibly tough, she cursed as she yielded to his physical assault. Finally, it was already dawn; she fell asleep and he thought he had defeated her. He gave her one last look of satisfaction before falling asleep in his turn. When he awoke, she was gone and she hadn’t come back.
For weeks and weeks he waited for her to return. He waited for news but none came. He had no idea where she was. Nor had anyone else. He made inquiries and found out that the student had vanished too. So she had run away with him, just as she had threatened. Every theater where she was known sent the same answer. She had vanished without a trace. He felt as if she had been snatched away from him. He couldn’t bear it, he was unable to work.
His condition was so hopeless that he asked Gustel to come back to him. He said he needed her; he swore he would never leave her again; she could impose any condition she wished; he would never again be unfaithful. But she must come at once, or it was all up with him. Gustel broke off her seven years’ friendship with a man who had never given her anything but kindness, and returned to H., who had always treated her like dirt. She set hard conditions and he accepted them. He would always tell her the truth, she would always know what he was up to.
* * *
My perception of H. during the weeks in Strasbourg was sharpened by certain circumstances, the full bearing of which escaped both of us. In Vienna he had used me as a messenger, sending me to Anna with a letter. That was how I met her. The content of the letter was unknown to me, but he had made it plain that I must put it into her own hands. I called her on the phone and she asked me to come to her studio in Hietzing.
I saw her before she saw me. I saw her fingers. They were pressing the clay of a larger-than-life figure. Her back was turned, and I couldn’t see her face. The crunching of the gravel sounded loud to me, but she didn’t seem to hear it. She was so deeply immersed in her still-unformed figure that perhaps she didn’t want to hear it. Possibly this visit was unwelcome to her. Still, I had undertaken to deliver this letter. When I entered the greenhouse that served her as a studio, she turned abruptly and looked me in the face. By then I was fairly close to her and I felt enveloped by her eyes. From that moment on, they held me fast. It was not a surprise attack, for I had had time to come close, but a surprise it was, I hadn’t been prepared for such superabundance. She was all eyes; anything else one might have seen in her was illusory. This I sensed at once, but where would I have found the strength or insight to own it to myself? How was I to acknowledge a reality so prodigious: that eyes can be more spacious than the person they belong to? In their depth there is room for everything one has ever thought, and since there is room for it, it all demands to be said.
There are eyes that you fear because they are out for blood; they are on the lookout for prey which, once sighted, can only be prey; even if it manages to escape, it will still be marked as prey. The rigidity of this merciless gaze is terrible. It never changes; no victim can influence it, it is foreordained for all time. Anyone who enters its field becomes its victim, he can offer no defense, and his only hope of saving himself would be total metamorphosis. Since such metamorphosis is impossible in the real world, it demanded the creation of myths and mythical figures.
Another myth is the eye that is not out for blood, though it never releases what it has once caught sight of. This myth can come true, and anyone who has experienced it must think back with fear and trembling to the eye that has forced him to drown himself in it. What spaciousness, what depth! Plunge into me with everything you can think and say; say it and drown.
The depth of such eyes is infinite. Nothing that falls into them reaches the bottom. Nothing is washed up again. What then becomes of it? Such an eye is a lake without memory. What it demands it obtains. You give it everything you have; everything that matters, your innermost substance. You cannot withhold anything from this eye, though no force is used, nothing is snatched away. What is given is given happily, as though it had become aware of itself for no other reason, come into being for no other reason.
When I gave Anna the letter, I ceased to be a messenger. She did not take it, she only wagged her head in the direction of the corner table, which I had not noticed before. I went over to it in three steps and reluctantly put the letter down, reluctantly perhaps because I then had a hand free for her and couldn’t give it to her. I extended it halfway, she looked at her right hand, which was smeared with clay, and said: “I can’t give you a hand like this.”
I don’t know what was said after that. I’ve tried to recall our first words, hers as well as mine. They have gone under. Anna was all in her eyes, otherwise she was almost mute; her voice, though deep, never meant anything to me. Perhaps she didn’t like to talk; she used her voice as little as possible, she always borrowed other people’s voices, in music and among people. She preferred action to words, and since she had no gift for her father’s kind of action, she tried to create form with her fingers. I have preserved my first meeting with her by stripping it of all words, hers because they may have contained nothing worth preserving, mine because my amazement over her had not yet found audible words.
Still, I know that something had been said before she asked me over to the table and we both sat down. She wanted to read some of my writing, and I said there was no published book; I had only the manuscript of a long novel. Could I bring her the manuscript someday soon? Yes, she liked long novels, she didn’t care for short stories. She told me the name of her teacher, Fritz Wotruba, who taught her sculpture. I had heard of him, he was known for his independence and feared for his violence. But he was not in Vienna just then. Previously she had painted and had studied with Chirico in Rome.
She ignored H.’s letter. It lay unopened on the table, she couldn’t fail to see it. I remembered my mission, the orders, as it were, that H. had given me, and said hesitantly: “Aren’t you going to read the letter?” She picked it up with distaste and glanced through it as one would a three-line note. Though it was quite a long letter and though, as I knew, H.’s handwriting was hard to read, she seemed to have taken it all in at a glance. She put the letter down with a gesture of disparagement and said: “It’s without interest.” I looked at her with surprise. I had supposed there was some sort of friendship between them, that he had something important to communicate, something too important to be entrusted to the mails. “You may read it,” she said. “But it’s hardly worthwhile.” I did not read it.
Why would I bother with a message that she thought so little of? I was aware of her rudeness, of the contempt she was showing for the man who had sent me. But I wasn’t a messenger anymore. I was now a free agent, for she had relieved me of my mission. The ease with which she thrust his letter aside, showing no sign of anger or displeasure, communicated itself to me. It didn’t even occur to me to ask if she wished to send H. an answer.
When I left, I had a new mission: to come back soon with my manuscript. I came three days later, it was hard for me to wait that long. She read my novel at once, I don’t believe anyone else read it so quickly. From then on, she regarded me as an individual in my own right, and treated me as if I had all the necessary attributes, even eyes. She told me she expected many such books from me and spoke of my book to others. She urged me to come and see her and sent letters and telegrams. I had never known that love could begin with telegrams, I was amazed. At first I found it hard to believe that a message from her could reach me so quickly.
