Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

In any event, the heroes and warriors of the tower, Uncle Hubi’s good friends from the great hunting days, were indubitably of a different stripe. They had a respectful but decisive reserve even toward academics who were, they said, “professionally trained people such as physicians and lawyers and similar cerebral workers who are forced to live on the fruits of their thinking, not men who just playfully ventured into the boundless realms of knowledge,” by which they meant amateurs like Uncle Hubi. And if someone was not only wildly different because an intellectual but on top of it also a Jew — and this was not rarely the case — then bridging the social gap was beyond all possibility. It was an established fact that Dr. Goldmann was a Jew and an intellectual. It even turned out that he maintained a lively intellectual exchange with Stiassny.

Nevertheless, I was bold enough to tell myself that the tower had been assigned to me as virtually unassailable digs, where I could entertain whomever I wished. So I told Dr. Goldmann’s red-headed son that he could come and look at the butterfly collection. “By the way, what’s your name?” I asked him.

He was called Wolf. My reaction to this name was mixed. On the one hand, I was glad that my new friend had a name that did not have to be embarrassing, like Moishe or Yossel. On the other hand, it did not strike me as quite proper for his name to be like that of a knight in a German heroic saga. He did, however, explain to me that Wolf was a rather common name among Orthodox Jews; his father’s name was Bear. Bear Goldmann … I had to laugh. What was my name? my new friend Wolf asked. I had to admit that I was called Bubi. He began to giggle, as stupidly as the chambermaid Florica had giggled when she first saw me in my getup. “If you had a sister, would her name be Girlie?” Probably, I had to admit. “And your parents would be Manny and Wifey?” It took him a while to regain his composure.

He had a similar reaction to the tower when I proudly led him into it. “Why is this a tower?” he asked on the steps. And when we were upstairs: “This is a tower? Lemme show you a real tower.” He pointed out the window, where the merloned roof of Dr. Goldmann’s villa could be seen above the treetops. And, indeed, a beflagged turret loomed up. I had to admit to myself that I had often gazed at it, fretting at how much better the romanticism of that neo-Gothic house matched my German mood than the garret that had aroused it.

“Is your room in the tower?” I asked a bit apologetically.

“I’m gonna be dumb enough to shlep up the stairs?” Wolf retorted. “What do you think I am? A goy?”

It embittered me that he used the Yiddish word for “Gentile” to designate clumsy stupidity per se. I told myself it was probably normal usage in his world, and I was glad he felt relaxed enough with me to speak as though he were among his own. If he wanted to, he could speak proper German very well (he was attending school in Vienna), but he spoke it like something carefully rehearsed. He used his mixture of bad German with Yiddish and Polish — in a word, he “yiddled”—because this linguistic carelessness, rich in astute, colorful, and witty expressions, was more in keeping with his character, his swift, supple mind, and his unimpeachable self-confidence. I, for my part, had been trained in a rigorously correct speech, despite all the Austriacisms of my family, who among themselves spoke a kind of unbuttoned German; but they could also speak crystal-clear High German if they liked, and theirs did not sound rehearsed. I listened with amused attention to my new friend Wolf, gauging him linguistically.

He was almost bored when looking over the objects in my tower. True, his interest was briefly held by the case of butterflies, but I had anticipated a more explosive effect. He found the ivory skull anatomically wrong: his father had a genuine skeleton on which he could show me the mistakes. Coming to the ashtray with the modeled playing cards and cigarette butt, he shook his head, turning away with a shrug. In front of the Uhlan and Cossack skirmishes from Galicia he nodded. Even Count Sàndor’s riding feats captured his attention only for a moment: “Was he a circus director?” he asked, moving on, without waiting for my answer.

He focused more thoroughly on Uncle Hubi’s crossed sabers and “little keg.” “Do you guys wear the little cap under the fox hats?” he wanted to know. No, I said, it was not like the yarmulke , the small black skullcap worn by Orthodox Jews under their hats (incidentally, for students who were not fox-majors, the hat was a colored cap with a visor, known as a “ couleur ”). The so-called “little keg” was worn as a sign of veteran fraternal dignity at festive drinking bouts. I became heated, flaunting the wealth of my newly acquired knowledge about the manners and mores of dueling clubs at German universities. I informed him that the new pledges were called “foxes” and they were under the care of the “fox-major”—the very brother who, as a sign of his dignity, could sport the headgear that reminded Wolf Goldmann of a rabbi’s hat. And I launched into detail about the “beer commentary,” the rigorously regulated ceremony of drinking, the so-called “boozing,” an important educational procedure: after all, a man had to learn how to hold his quantum of liquor decently and without loss of bearing.

Wolf Goldmann listened to me with that grimace of a young ram staring into fire. “And you sing songs about the pretty blonde combing her hair over the Rhein rapids?”

Yes, indeed — he meant “The Lorelei.” By the way, this was a poem by Heinrich Heine, who, as everyone knows, was a Jew, I added significantly. My words had no visible effect on him, and I was annoyed at my possibly making it seem that I was trying to get familiar with him in such a grossly goyish way.

“Is that why the G-clef is embroidered on the cap, because you guys sing?” he asked.

That was no G-clef, I told him, that was the so-called corps cipher. I unraveled the tangle of letters.

He nodded again. His blazing ram-face stayed earnest. “But the swords? If they’re supposed to pierce, how come they have no points?”

I could inform him about that too: those were no swords, or sabers or épées, but light rapiers, used only in student duels. You didn’t pierce with them, you fenced. Standing with legs astraddle, motionless, your body swathed to the ears in leather and cotton armor, one hand behind your back, you dueled with your other hand, likewise heavily swathed, lifting it over your head and aiming only at the opponent’s skull and cheeks. If you struck in such a way that the rapier’s edge cut into him, then the seconds interrupted the match and inspected the wound. The referee was asked to verify a “bloody” for either participant. When such “bloodies” were sewn up, their scars became the “cicatrices” which a German academic could be proud of. The duel consisted of fifteen rounds, each with a fixed number of exchanges. It was settled by the number of “bloodies,” unless one “bloody” was so serious that the physician — the “barber-surgeon,” as he was known in corps lingo — stopped the duel and declared the wounded party “disabled.” It was not shameful to be “disabled.” But woe to either of the duelers if, upon receiving a “bloody,” he twitched even slightly or actually tried to withdraw — that is, evade the adversary’s stroke with his head. If that happened, he was instantly suspended, put under “beer blackball” for the length of his suspension. He was not allowed to take part in any drinking session or wear the colors, namely the cap and the ribbon across his chest; and he was most certainly ostracized from the drinking bouts — all this until he had purged himself of his shame by fighting a new and more difficult match. But he was not granted such a chance for rehabilitation twice. If he chickened out a second time, then he was expelled. His erstwhile brothers cut him dead. He was no longer “qualified to give satisfaction.”