Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

I was dragged off to Dr. Goldmann.

Dr. Goldmann may have already been told of the circumstances of my injury by the incredibly swift system of information typical of a small provincial town; sternly he declared he would not treat me. In stating this to Aunt Sophie, who confronted him for the first time, he was so gruff and insulting that later on, even those witnesses who fundamentally approved of his conduct had to admit that his vehemence had been excessive and unprofessional.

Alas, the affair was not without repercussions, although they were not grave so far as I was concerned. First, I was taken to the apothecary, who cleansed, disinfected, and bandaged my mangled arm as best he could. Next, I had the satisfaction of seeing Geib get the Daimler out of the garage just for me and drive me off in a kind of somber triumphal procession, followed by my old enemies the street urchins, as well as the not exactly friendly or sympathetic gazes of the adult inhabitants of the village. Upon reaching Czernowitz, I received medical care plus much tenderness from my mother. Instead of going back to my kinfolk, I stayed in the city until it was time for me to return to Vienna for the makeup examination, which, incidentally, I passed with flying colors thanks to my studying during my “beer blackball” period. I took all these things for granted, like the passing of my childhood in the scarcely perceived course of days.

For Aunt Sophie and Uncle Hubi, however, certainly for Dr. Goldmann, and presumably also for my friend Wolf, indeed even for Stiassny, the incident caused far-reaching changes. It may well have been Stiassny who brought up the absurd idea that Uncle Hubi ought to challenge Dr. Goldmann to a duel because of his unconscionable behavior toward Aunt Sophie; in fact, my uncle was supposedly obliged to do so both as a member of a dueling fraternity and as a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. But whether Stiassny suggested it or not made no difference. Uncle Hubi refused; and his refusal was supported by my father, who claimed it was a downright impertinence, expecting someone to duel with a Jew. In the end, my father drove out with a specially chosen dog whip in order to “catch the filthy Jewboy in the middle of the street and teach him what’ll happen to him if it crosses his mind to get cheeky.” Luckily things did not go that far.

It seems out of the question that Uncle Hubi’s refusal was due to a certain shyness regarding Dr. Goldmann’s fencing ability, since the insult was serious enough to challenge Dr. Goldmann to pistols, which my uncle could certainly handle more effectively. Still, the rumors about his backing down circulated so stubbornly that the case was brought before a court of honor in Uncle Hubi’s fraternity at Tübingen. The court would not accept the argument that as a Jew, Dr. Goldmann was not worthy to duel with. Although an intellectual, he was indubitably an academic as well, and consequently had some claim to defend his honor with a weapon. Uncle Hubi, until then a highly honored alumnus, was declared guilty of cowardice by the court of honor and “expelled,” and in the most humiliating form to boot: namely “c.i.”— cum infamia . It nearly broke his heart. Most of his old hunting buddies deserted him.

Aunt Sophie changed. Her blunt, crusty, warmhearted realism became sharp, occasionally gross. Instead of endorsing every statement of Uncle Hubi’s, as she had done all her life, she now frequently contradicted him; and her “Well, Hubi’s perfectly right again” was gradually transformed into an equivalent stereotype: “Well, naturally, that’s one of Hubi’s typical idiocies again.”

I learned all this from hearsay, for I was never to see them again. I spent the entire school year in Austria, traveled during the vacations, and, above all, went more and more eagerly with my father on his hunting trips. Aunt Sophie died while I was preparing for my final school examinations; I could not even manage to get to her funeral. A few months later, Uncle Hubi also died. The estate passed to one of his distant relatives. I never went there again.

Sometimes, when I was in Vienna, I thought of tracking down Wolf Goldmann. It would certainly have been possible to find him through his mother — who, as I knew, was head ceramicist at the Wiener Werkstätten — or at the Academy of Music, which he must have been attending. But I did not look for him, partly out of laziness and partly because of a rather heavily burdened conscience. Although Dr. Goldmann had triumphed as a man of honor over poor Uncle Hubi, his refusal to give me medical treatment stood him in ill stead. The medical commission excluded him from its ranks, his license was revoked, and supposedly the district attorney wanted to look into the matter. Dr. Goldmann moved out of the village in which his father had “erected his house” as in a land of promise. Deserted and unsellable, the bepennoned red-brick villa soon went to ruin.

The only person from whom I had any sign of life was Stiassny. He moved from my relatives’ home — I never knew where he went — but shortly after he left, at the Christmastide following the events I have narrated here, I received a package from him. When I unwrapped it, out came two small busts made of wood and ivory, which I had always beheld with as much fascination as disgust whenever I went into his room. The busts were a male and a female head from the Rococo period, both with wigs, very pretty and dainty and lifelike. But they were sliced in half, and while you saw their charming profiles and fresh cheeks on one side, you could peer at the anatomy of the skull on the other side, with bones, muscles, veins, and even the cerebral convolutions. My parents felt this was no Christmas gift for a boy my age; the two busts were taken away from me, vanishing somewhere, never to be seen again. In regard to Stiassny, too, the only thing left was a memory, and memories are all I have retained of that faraway time.

When I saw her, two things happened to me. First, an impulse to hide gripped me; the vehemence of my movement was such that I could conceal it only by acting as though something across the street had suddenly caught my attention. At the same time, I felt the erection in the tautness of my trousers.

The second struck me as more peculiar than the first. At nineteen, one lives in the utter idolatry, therefore the extreme superstition, of sex. Monstrously exaggerated tales about sexual feats, which we listen to greedily, determine our expectations. The disappointments are correspondingly great. My reactions to the mere sight of a woman were not usually so obvious as this. Needless to say, I was worried.

I was afflicted by awareness of my inadequacy. I desired any even halfway attractive woman, whether alive or in a photograph; promptly, in my imagination, I saw her before me naked and myself on top of her. Every female whom I passed, whether a child who was barely a girl or a matron ripened almost to decay, I immediately saw as a partner for an imaginary sexual act. Of course, reality was woefully in arrears. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I was totally paralyzed by shyness. Therefore, even if a woman was willing, I affected a cold indifference that would have seemed rude. Fortunately, in most cases she saw through it; then her knowing smile pained me like a whiplash.

Now and then I did go to bed with someone. The points I chalked up to confirm my virility were probably not much under the average of any boy my age. But I knew every time that the point had been scored dishonestly. It was not that I, the he-man, had conquered the woman but, rather, that she had picked me. It was not that some irresistible stud quality on my part succeeded over and over again but, rather, that my little cock would once again fall into a trap.