Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

In a few terse sentences, he evoked the celebration that had taken place in the village in 1893, on the occasion of the forty-fifth anniversary of Kaiser Franz Josef’s accession to the throne; he described the comical events that were bound to occur in a popular festival officially arranged in an East European Gotham: the confusion during the parade of the volunteer firemen, with the token Jew, his helmet sliding down over his crooked nose and his trousers over his knees; the dreadfully off key band; the mindless speech given by the sweaty mayor in a borderland German that distorted everything; the Alliance of Maidens dressed in white, eliciting ribald remarks from the boys; and so on and so forth. Uncle Hubi’s father, being, as it were, the local deputy of His Apostolic Majesty, was showered with tributes, and, imbued with the responsible dignity of this vicariate, he likewise doled out honors. Having just accomplished the chore of bestowing a medal, he was about to betake himself to the town hall, followed by the clergy and the notabilities, past school classes and associations — when old Goldmann blocked his path. I pictured the scene in which Wolf Goldmann had blocked my path the day I had ventured out on my abortive excursion in fraternity gear: I imagined the same fiery ram-face and the same unimpeachable self-confidence. He was no longer brand-new in the village, old Goldmann. His bepennoned red-brick castello had been adorning the townscape for some time now. He himself, however, because of his eccentric Weltanschauung , had not even made contact with the Jewish community, much less any of the other religious, ethnic, or social grouplets. Now, he felt, the moment had come for him to break out of this isolation. After all, they were celebrating the forty-five-year reign of a patriarch of nations, under whose broad-minded fatherliness any race, nation, and religion, of any spirit and character, had found protection.

Uncle Hubi could not stifle a titter when recollecting this historic encounter. “Well, I can still see Papa peering at the Jew with his fat woman behind him, and the Jew sticking out his hand and saying, ‘Excuse me, Herr Baron, but may I introduce myself on this solemn occasion: Goldmann’s the name, Saul Goldmann. The Herr Baron may perhaps not have overlooked the fact that I settled here some years ago, and here in this community, to which I desire to belong in every way, I have erected my house….’ Now he yiddled a bit — not a lot, mind you, but just enough, something you can’t get rid of altogether if you come from darkest Galicia. And when he said ‘house,’ it sounded like ‘trousers,’ and Papa, well, he turned around to the mayor and asked him, ‘What did he erect in his trousers?’ And then on he went, leaving the Jew standing there with his woman and his dumb face and his hat on his chest and his crooked legs and the pointed, turned-up clodhoppers …”

As usual, Aunt Sophie confirmed this tableau: “Well, that’s very true, he was no beauty, really, old Goldmann, with his carroty hair, even if he’d made millions like Rothschild. Yes, Hubi’s quite right. His wife wasn’t much better either, and at least twice as fat.”

So far, I had formed no notion whatsoever of the women in the Goldmann home. Mention of old Goldmann’s wife, my friend Wolf’s grandmother, was the first time I realized that females must indeed have existed there. I vaguely recalled seeing a photograph among the scores heaped on the Goldmanns’ piano; but it had not occurred to me that this could be Wolf’s mother. A few days later, when Aunt Sophie extracted a letter to Stiassny from the morning mail and asked me to bring it up to his room, I saw the same portrait in a silver frame on Stiassny’s desk. It was a regular face, almost too long, framed by a severe pageboy bob, with the expressive lips and soulful gaze that were typical in the era of the waning Jugendstil . Before it dawned on me that this was the same face I had seen on the piano at the Goldmanns’, I had assumed it was an actress admired by Stiassny. Now, she began to interest me. “Who’s that?” I asked Wolf about the photograph in his home at the next opportunity. “My birth-giver,” he said without the least sign of emotion.

I was not sure I had correctly understood him. “You mean your mother?”

“Who else? A second father?”

“Is she dead?” I asked, a bit unsteadily.

“God forbid! Why should she be dead?”

“I’ve never seen her here.”

“Divorced, of course. She lives in Vienna. Head ceramicist of the Wiener Werkstätten there.”

“Stiassny must have admired her. He has her picture on his desk.”

“Yes,” said Wolf casually. “I think he was one of her lovers. The most famous was Peter Altenberg.”

I did not know who Peter Altenberg was; in any case, I was shocked by the way my friend spoke about his mother.

“Do you ever see her?” I asked.

“When I’m in Vienna,” he said imperturbably, then turning fidgety in his way. “Anyway, you have to go now. I’ve got to work.”

This was not the first time that he abruptly terminated our time together with the same explanation — usually, so it appeared to me, when some naïveté on my part enervated him. I could hardly ignore these moments — and this was why I did not ask what work he had to do. It could hardly be homework now, during vacation; nor, I felt, was it likely that he had a makeup examination ahead of him, as I did. What little he let on about his school in Vienna suggested that it was a thoroughly modern institution with a curriculum far too intimidating for me to ask about, but easy for him to keep up with. Anyway, I knew it was useless to hold him back when he claimed he had to work. I had quickly given up trying, and I ultimately profited from his firmness by going back to the tower out of sheer boredom and sitting down to my schoolwork, with my dachshund Max, highly satisfied, at my feet.

Sometimes, of course, I did not much care to spend any more time with Wolf Goldmann. His smug self-assurance hurt my feelings; and he was so relentlessly prosaic that he often seemed trivial. For example, that someone could talk so scornfully about his own mother as the mistress of a man who was not his father (and not just one but several such men!) repelled me — like Stiassny’s ashen smile, which normally prefaced a remark that destroyed an illusion I had unthinkingly cherished. And although at the same time I was fascinated, this kind of attitude went against my grain, compelling me to question everything I had believed in. Now I resolved to do nothing to abolish the gap placed between me and young Goldmann by the fact that he had never been allowed into my uncle’s home. Nonetheless, this situation changed quite unexpectedly, and of its own accord.

One of the few things with which I might have impressed my blasé friend was Uncle Hubi’s Daimler — a car that was bound to quicken the pulse of any boy. Its paint-and-shining-chrome perfection, the clarity of its angles and proportions, its momentous solidity on the heavy, elephant-colored rubber tires, were undeniably erotic, something quite missing from today’s assembly-line products. But Wolf Goldmann, seemingly unmoved, said, “What’s so great about a car? My father could buy one too, if he felt like it. But that would be pretty crazy with the roads we’ve got here.” He was not so wrong; the car usually stood in the locked section of the coach house, and we used the carriages far more often. Seldom did Uncle Hubert and Aunt Sophie drive the car to Czernowitz, much less to Bucharest. Still, Wolf could not deny that he too felt the sensual pull of the vehicle; it was a symbol of distinction and wealth, and, like a winged steed or flying carpet in a fairy tale, it granted power over space and time.