Philip Hensher - The Emperor Waltz

At present Frau Mauthner was moving about downstairs. Her normal departure from the house was no later than nine o’clock. It was now nearly ten to ten, and the sound of her movements had a stealthy, suspicious air. It was not at all unlikely that Frau Mauthner knew perfectly well that Katharina was in Fritz’s room, as she had been for four of the last ten nights. She could have found this out in many ways, although the most likely was that her maid Sophie had told her. Fritz had been obliged to take Sophie into his confidence after an encounter on the stairs in the morning. Frau Mauthner was moving about directly below, in the dining room she barely used; she seemed to be changing the position of some furniture, but so slowly. Fritz was sure she was moving about and listening, establishing her evidence for some future confrontation. He shifted his attention from Frau Mauthner’s stealthy tread to the five objects on the table. They had been there for weeks now.

These objects were for Fritz’s non-representative found-object sculpture. It was a task in class. He had found five objects, with the intention of using four, but he could not decide which to leave out. There was the long, thin blade of a saw, slightly rusting along its flat edge, like the hackles of a cornered fox. This was a fierce object. There was a square of steel wool, pocketed from Frau Mauthner’s kitchen when no one was looking. This was a Protestant object. There was a very old piece of black bread, now curling up at the edges slightly. This object, Fritz could not decide what it represented. Some days it was a nursery object, some days it was funereal, like the feast at a crow’s wake. There was a block of cedarwood, the size of two clenched fists together, and that was a virtuous object, but virtuous in an admirable way, not virtuous in a way you felt lectured at by it. And there was a piece of beautiful red glass, lovely vivid red glass, changing the world as you looked through it, making it warm and strange. The piece of red glass was the fall of Austria-Hungary. He had found it on the street. Where it had come from, and what its original purpose was, Fritz did not know and could not guess. Why it was the fall of Austria-Hungary Fritz did not understand. But it had presented itself to him in the way that a woman might introduce herself and say, ‘I am an only child’, and you thought, Yes, you are, indeed you are. The piece of red glass looked like a pane from a piece of church stained glass, but that was impossible. It had once occurred to Fritz that it might be a discarded fragment of another student’s non-representative found-object sculpture. He did not like to think of that.

They would not go together, no matter which of the five he omitted. Now he moved over to the table and picked up the piece of red glass. The other four things – the bread, the cedarwood block, the saw, the steel wool – he moved about in an undecided way. Now the bread sat upon the cedarwood, which was coiled about by the flexible saw – but the bread looked stupid, and what to do with the steel wool? It had an undecided, irrelevant air. He started again, resting the saw on the bread and the steel wool at either end. They could be made to stand upright. But what to do with the cedarwood? The same as the other things, and that was no good. It had been growing in Fritz for some time that he had made a terrible mistake when he first chose the objects of his sculpture. He had concentrated entirely on contrasts in texture – the luminous smoothness of the glass, the rusty saw, the fibrous wood, the knitted piece of steel wool, and the miniature honeycomb of the bread – and forgotten altogether about the shapes. He had thought that some kind of arabesque could be made out of the saw to counteract the prevailing squareness of the other three, or four. But the squareness seemed to dominate and to bring everything down, even the lovely piece of red glass. He could change all his objects and start again. But he had been contemplating these objects for weeks now. As Itten had instructed, he had penetrated the essence of these five objects by long observation. But he had come to understand through observation that they did not like each other and did not live in the same world.

In a dejected way, Fritz raised the piece of square red glass to his eye, closed the other, and prepared to see the world through Austria-Hungary and its fall.

At first it was merely red. There was nothing distinct about the entities in the room. But then the forms began to emerge. There were square forms, and lines, darker and blacker than the air. The air had a flexible form that would take up the space allotted to it by the solid forms. When the world was seen, red, through the eyes of Austria-Hungary, the eye was drawn to the naked body of Katharina, lying face down on the bed.

But the eye was not drawn to a naked body when it looked through a red filter. It did not look at her bottom and rounded shoulders, the tress of hair falling across her face-down head. What it looked at were pleasing curves and lines: a convex and a concave arch, and then another, longer, deeper, arch. There was no lechery, or love, or any sentimentalizing psychological structure.

‘Stop staring at me,’ Katharina said. ‘Stop it. It makes me shiver.’

He took no notice of what It had said. The lines and volumes had weight, and movement, and an innate direction and energy, but they did not have sound or speech. It was a fascinating phenomenon to find in the room he had rented from Frau Mauthner. He looked for a second above the form at the line drawings, if that is what they are when viewed through a red square. They had retreated into the insignificant, along with the smells, the sounds of the room, and the bad metallic taste in his mouth that came from a broken tooth he could not afford to have removed. He lowered the red square from his eye. The hierarchies disappeared. Without the help of Austria-Hungary, Katharina was Katharina again. Her hair was blonde and her body was rumpled and warm and delicious, a bread smell in the morning, and she was sleepy and open and a little disgruntled. He made an effort, without the red filter. The lines started to re-emerge; the arc; the concave form; you did not have to see the animal confusion that filled them.

Fritz stood up. He dropped the square of red glass onto the floor; it fell harmlessly on his white shirt, where he had left it when he had undressed the night before. He went to the oil lamp, and quickly removed the glass form that protected the lit flame from wind and draught. It was straight, circular from above, and towards the bottom bulged out like a brandy glass. It contained air in a form. With steady concentrated fury, he took the glass; inside it he fastened the thin saw, with a dab of glue, which would be good enough for the moment; he made a spiral. Working quickly, he tore apart the square of steel wool until it looked like wild morning hair, and attached it to the end of the saw. The piece of black bread remained where it was, at the end of the piece. The cedarwood would stand behind, supporting it. Anyone could see what a sentry it was. In fifteen minutes the piece was done. Fritz walked back, critically. He picked up the piece of red glass from the shirt where he had dropped it. He raised it to his eye. It was no longer Austria-Hungary. It was just a red filter. On the other side of the filter, the room had changed. It now had two important sets of curves, lines and volumes in it. There was the Form on the bed. There was a new Form. It filled the room.

‘You have been busy,’ Katharina said admiringly. ‘All that grunting and pulling and sticking things together. I don’t know why you can’t do things in a normal way like normal people. Now I want to go and have something to eat.’

‘You’re so …’ Fritz said. He wanted to tell her how she was. But language would not stretch to it.