Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

To my surprise, Wolf Goldmann knew what that was. “They declared us Jews unsatisfactionable,” he said.

I did not know what to reply. The issue of being qualified came up only if someone was challenged to a duel, I said evasively. Duels were mostly so-called “encounters” and not affairs of honor. They were tests of courage and toughness to determine a brother’s grit. His decency was proved by the many scars he received.

Wolf Goldmann giggled: “Like Africans. But at least they carve pretty ornaments into their faces.” Besides, I wasn’t telling him anything very new, he said eventually. His father had belonged to a Jewish fraternity when he was a student — one without the ridiculous rites of duels and beer commentaries, but organized for sheer self-defense. It seems that the Jewish students had been harassed so much by fraternity members that they too formed associations, responding to challenges with decisive combat readiness. Each of these Jewish fraternities featured one outstanding fencer who defended the assaulted honor of his brothers. And they did not fence with light rapiers against skulls and cheeks; they fought naked from the waist up with heavy sabers, and they were so nimble that these duels required true swordsmanship — a keen eye, quick wits, and agility. If a dueler was “disabled,” then it was usually because of true inability. The nationalistic German fraternities preferred to avoid encounters with such master swordsmen. That was one of the reasons, said Wolf Goldmann with a grin, why Jews had been declared unsatisfactionable. His father had told him that. Dr. Goldmann himself had been featured as the best swordsman in his club.

“Are you going to learn how to fence too?” I asked.

“I’m not crazy,” said Wolf Goldmann. “I need my hands for other things.”

At that time, it was not yet apparent to me what he needed them for. In any event, he treated them with conspicuous care. The skills at which boys normally try to excel left him cold. I had presumed that he would not, like myself, attempt to emulate Count Sàndor on horseback; and indeed I hesitated to expect the stableboy to saddle a mount for a Jewish boy from the village. But Wolf showed no ambition in other respects: he did not climb trees, he made no effort to excel in throwing rocks, he did not idly whittle sticks, he did not shoot with a slingshot or a bow and arrow, he did not even whistle through his fingers. My dexterity in these disciplines (my talent with the slingshot had always impressed people) gave me no sense of superiority now; his indifference toward such matters was too great. In fact, I began to feel childish in front of him.

We established that we were of the same age, nearly to the day. But his sophistication was so far ahead of my own that I had to admit reluctantly that while if I passed the ominous makeup examination in the autumn it might at best smooth the way to my becoming an academic, he indubitably was already a budding intellectual.

I continued to have qualms about bringing Wolf to my relatives’ home, although I visited his home regularly. The treasures he had to show me there did not have the desired effect on me, either. He acted sulky for the first time. He was disappointed. But try as I might, I could not find anything homey in those dark, disorderly rooms filled with papers up to the ceilings. For all the grand bourgeois airs — the heavy black furniture, the plush upholstery, and the artfully draped and betasseled curtains of ribbed silk — there was something of the dubious and unventilated confinement of petit bourgeois homes. The furniture might have appealed to me (like all normal children, I tended toward bad taste), for these ornately carved wardrobes and sideboards, tables, and armchairs were in the old German style of the turn of the century, which did, after all, fit in with my leanings. Yet not only was the quality low, the wood stained, and the carving poor, but the pieces had been neglected, moldings were chipped, locks missing, and books, newspapers, and magazines were heaped upon every horizontal surface.

Wolf did tell me that extraordinarily valuable collector’s items could be found in these piles. His grandfather’s library, he said, had contained many first editions with personal dedications by the authors, some of which were now hard to come by. And his father had a priceless collection of documents on Jewish persecutions from the early Middle Ages to the most recent times. If anyone had the courage to take up this theme and write about it, said Wolf, he would find an inexhaustible and scientifically pure source here.

I did not like Dr. Goldmann. He had the same freckled flame-lit ram-head as his son, he was curt with me, and I was a bit afraid of his tremendous hands, which were spotted like salamander bellies and covered with lion-red hair. As for the memory of Grandfather Goldmann, I was biased. Uncle Hubi’s gentle irony had had its effect.

It was owing to Stiassny that the grandfather had been mentioned at all. One day, I was surprised to run into Stiassny at the home of my friend Wolf Goldmann. Strangely enough, he acted as though he did not notice me. We — that is, Wolf and I — were about to cross the room leading to Dr. Goldmann’s office. Since the doctor had usually been in the house when I was there, I had not yet viewed the skeleton that Wolf Goldmann had bragged to me about. We were going to see whether we could inspect it while Dr. Goldmann was out paying house calls. Stiassny stood in the room that led to the office. The room was a kind of library, if one could use that word in a house where every room was bursting with books. Stiassny was leaning over a couple of volumes on a table. He held a pencil in his teeth, his beautifully curved red lips curling into a smile I had never seen on him before — an utterly relaxed, slightly reflective, blissful smile. For the first time, I saw his face undisguised, and even his eyes did not have that veil of feigned blindness or at least sightlessness which they normally assumed when he lapsed into his repulsive role of “Who-am-I.” And he really did not appear to see us now. He was totally absorbed in what he was reading and what he thought about it — or rather, was thinking — for his lips moved slightly as though repeating or framing a sentence; then he leaned again over the works on the table in front of him.

We automatically wheeled around and tiptoed out. “Is he here a lot?” I asked. He had been coming regularly for many years; he was practically more at home in Dr. Goldmann’s than in my relatives’ house. But I was certain that Aunt Sophie and Uncle Hubi scarcely knew about this or would not admit it. I did not expect that he would mention our encounter, especially since he had scarcely been aware of it.

I was all the more surprised when at the next meal he quite demonstratively turned to me and said, again with the old blind gaze and ashen smile, “The development of our heir apparent is taking a delightful turn. One is abandoning one’s defiant isolation. One is becoming sociable. Nay, even more: one is spanning bridges across social chasms, reestablishing relationships that were broken off or, regrettably, never taken up in the first place. This will not win applause in circles whose Weltanschauung and national sensibilities are shaped by the Kyffhäuser Association. Indeed, people sharing the convictions of the Schönerers and Wolffs might view it as an outright betrayal of the sacred cause of Aryan thinking. But then, who am I to point out that one thereby evinces all the more agreement with the ideas of Fichte and Jahn and other Church Fathers of the student fraternity movement: the ideas of the Scheidlers, Riemanns, Horns, and whatever their names may be, all the Armins and Germans, whose goal, in the mighty blaze of nationalism after the Wars of Liberation, was simply freedom and thus, needless to say, the emancipation of the Jews as well! Why, they too would have found it unendurable to have a Heine or Mendelssohn or Rachel Varnhagen in the ghetto, nicht wahr? …”