Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

For the sake of old friendship, which was going to end anyhow the day we went to different schools, I once more followed Wolf Goldmann to his home. His father was out for the day, making calls in nearby villages, so we had all the time we wanted to look at his office undisturbed. Finally I had a chance to have a good look at the famous skeleton: it struck me as sinister because its bones were so shiny I couldn’t believe they had ever been hidden in a human body. But even more I was fascinated by an electrostatic machine, which was meant for nervous ailments. As Wolf explained, the patient was made to hold two metal rods in his hands. They were connected with the electric current, which could be regulated from low to very high voltage, giving him either a gentle tingling and prickling or a powerful shock.

Wolf wanted me to try it, but I was too cowardly to grasp the rods. “What’s wrong?” he asked derisively. “The goyish hero isn’t big enough for a little tickling?” He took the two metal rods into his hands and nodded at me to switch on the machine. “Push the little button forward — but slow!”

Later on, I was unable to tell what had driven me to push the switch not slowly but with a brutal thrust up to the highest degree. But at the moment, in any case, the effect was comical: Wolf reared up, twisted convulsively, kicked his legs without really managing to move them, and his red hair stood on end like a scarecrow’s. What delighted me most of all was his pleading look when he held out his hands with the metal rods, trying to get me to liberate them. All his smug self-confidence was gone and his ram-face was now the face of a sacrificial lamb — the face of the slaughterhouse cattle his grandfather had grown rich on.

Despite later accusations, I do not believe I hesitated long before pushing the switch back so that he could drop the rods. In any event, when I released him, he was on his knees, holding out the hands from which the metal grips had fallen, and piteously crying, “My hands! My hands!”

The summer was waning, while I was virtually suspended in my relatives’ home — or, in the parlance of the dueling fraternities, I was “under beer blackball.” That is to say: I lived in a generally shared awareness of having committed a transgression of which I most likely could not exonerate myself, no matter how hard I dueled. True, Uncle Hubi resolutely took my side, treating my delinquency as a bagatelle — which it was, when all was said and done, for after a few weeks Wolf Goldmann’s precious pianist-hands were as agile as ever. But Wolf’s insinuations about my uncle’s secret motives for his friendliness toward me made me suspicious, no matter how hard I tried not to think of them. Involuntarily I withdrew from Uncle Hubi, too. Aunt Sophie treated me with an even, cool matter-of-factness. She did not mourn her dream; she let everyone know that it had simply been a dream and she had awoken from it. For, needless to say, Wolf Goldmann no longer came to the house. His father treated his hands very carefully with special massages and baths, and then sent him back to his mother earlier than scheduled. Nor did Wolf come to say good-bye to Aunt Sophie, much less to me.

I would have liked to ask Stiassny for news of the Goldmann house. He was presumably the only one still in contact with the doctor. But I made a point of not bringing up this delicate topic. I feared lest my parents might learn about my failures here too, among my loving and tolerant kinfolk; and oddly enough, I imagined that Stiassny was merely waiting for the right moment to tell them. I no longer saw him as baiting me with those ironically exaggerated courtesies, those repulsive homages full of dark allusions to my penitent’s role. Instead of responding to them sedulously and in confusion, as in the past, I was as matter-of-fact and cool to him as I could learn from Aunt Sophie’s example. Stiassny commented on my altered conduct, whispering into my ear, “Bravo! Now one is even developing character. Keep up the good work! Personality, after all, is nearly always the result of seizing the bull by the horns.”

Naturally, I also avoided the smithy. My slingshot hung in the tower from a hook on the rifle stand; I did no more shooting with it, or with a bow and arrow. I resumed my protracted scouting in the countryside, accompanied by Max, who agreed with me about everything; we were reunited as a twosome. I did not resent him for his disloyal love for Wolf Goldmann, who, after all, had been my friend. It did smart a bit, to be sure, that Max’s love had been so tempestuous; but I forgave him because he was young.

I was, however, resolved to make Max really tough and fierce. Character was the result of seizing the bull by the horns. I was convinced that a reckless dog would have to develop the virtue of unconditional loyalty to his master.

In a corner of the yard, under huge dark acacias, an old and now almost unused bowling green was decaying. A small kiosk of aged, rotting wood, the so-called gazebo, contained equipment for all sorts of lawn games: baskets and quoits, croquet mallets and badminton nets. The place was a paradise for countless stray cats, who had their kittens there, played with each other, and dozed in the shade. As they did in the mangy groves outside Dr. Goldmann’s villa, the cats had multiplied here into a true plague; they stank to high heaven and sang all night long. I would always sic Max on them when I passed, and he stormed, intrepid, into their midst; they would climb up to the gazebo roof or into the acacias or over the fence and away to the village. Now I devised an installation to train Max for more earnest encounters. Taking a long, narrow crate which had once housed mallets, I buried it in such a way that it led into the earth like a slanting adit — an artificial foxhole, only with a pipe ending in a cul-de-sac. I removed the one wall of the narrow side to form the entrance hole. It was not all that difficult to capture one of the felines and put her in — then I added my dachshund Max.

The result was lamentable. There was a very brief and blustery racket under the earth; then Max shot yowling out of the hole, whimpering as he licked his scratched-up nose; and neither imperious commands nor friendly coaxing could get him to go back inside. Furiously, I stuck my arm all the way in to pull out the cat and have her continue fighting with Max in the open. I clutched something moving, hairy, and warm, but simultaneously I felt a violent pain in my hand. The cat had sunk her teeth between my thumb and forefinger. Unable to fling her off, I closed my hand as tight as I could and dragged her out of the foxhole. Her teeth were too deep in my hand for me to shake her away, so I just closed my hand all the more tightly; now she was kicking all four legs against my lower arm, baring her sharp claws. My shirt was shredded as quickly as my flesh.

To my misfortune, Florica, the Rumanian chambermaid, happened along at that moment. Catching sight of me smeared with blood and with the cat on my hand, she began to shriek at the top of her lungs. Now my bad conscience made me panic. I did not want everyone in the house to see this misdeed as well. The cook was already dashing into the courtyard; Katharina, the housekeeper, came running up; and Haller, alarmed by Florica’s yells, raced over from the smithy. I did the stupidest thing I could. With the cat on my hand, I ran through the gates into the village. There, on the road, by the camomile-covered edge of the ditch, I knelt down on the cat’s chest. Now she had to let go. I felt her ribs cracking; her fangs opened wide; I pulled out my hand. But when I got to my feet, I was surrounded by a swarm of yowling street urchins.

My arm was in a bad state. The cat had not exactly been clean, and an infection was very likely; I certainly had to get a tetanus shot without delay. That, at least, was Aunt Sophie’s opinion, uttered authoritatively against the prattle of all the people around me — the Jewish urchins, nearly all the house servants and farm workers, and the tenants of the houses near the courtyard gates. They stood around me, full of hostility.