Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

My supple tongue had won me the friendship of Pepi Olschansky, the luckless journalist. I could never quite decide whether I liked or loathed him. He was a small, wiry fellow, reddish blond, with devilishly vivacious brown eyes, a pointed nose, a pointed chin, and a thin-lipped mouth that could twist itself into the most perfidious smile I’ve ever seen. As a German from the Bukovina, he’d served in the former Imperial Austrian Army, and quite famously, apparently; talk had it that he’d been awarded the Silver Cross of Valor. Some rays of this glorious past were still around him; although I had never seen him in anything but rather shabby civilian clothes — hatless, even in those days; no stick, let alone gloves — I envisaged a first lieutenant’s star glistening on his collar when I thought of him, but that may well have been because certain aspects of his glamor aroused unpleasant memories of my rowing relative in Vienna. Olschansky was not so militantly brash as the other blade, though, and was light years ahead in intelligence and education. His literary taste was impeccable. He even composed verses himself, a talent that had led to his dismissal as editor from a German-language newspaper in Bucharest.

A romantic story. A privately printed edition of his poems had found its way into the hands of the Queen Mother, Maria, who was something of a poetess herself. Pepi was summoned to Cotroceni Palace and received graciously, indeed on an equal footing; thereafter her resplendent majesty commanded Pepi’s undying devotion. When in the course of a political intrigue a certain statesman persuaded the publisher of Pepi’s newspaper to launch a slanderous campaign against Queen Maria, and the publisher in turn commissioned Pepi to write the articles, Pepi adamantly refused. It came to a flaming row, news of which leaked out and caused a public scandal: the statesman resigned, the newspaper temporarily ceased publication and came under public fire when eventually it returned to press; Pepi was sacked, branded a traitor by the Germans in Bucharest, and snubbed by them thereafter. This gave him a rather dubious aura, which he sensed not without guilt and which he tried to make up for with insolence. At the same time, there was something of a martyr about him: after all, if a man is a true outcast, then he isn’t much helped by the reputation of being the gentleman who never betrays a lady — especially since the queen could not compromise herself and therefore could not express her gratitude. Which was why she never again received him at the palace. All of this made him intensely interesting for me, of course.

Since he had just as little to do as I, we took to going for long walks together, and I learned a lot from him. He knew his Bucharest, a city I had till then regarded as a sloppy conglomeration of Balkan disorder and faceless modernity, but under Pepi’s tutelage, hearing his expert account of its history, I came to see it in a different light, began to apprehend it, as one does a new language. Its jumble of junk came to life and started to speak, told a story of boyars and Phanariots, monks, pashas, and long-haired revolutionaries who had descended from the mountains. I was given the code to the Rumanian arabesque and found much that complemented my own character, by birthright, which till then had been blurred by the stamp of my Austrian education.

Löwinger’s Rooming House stood near a park that bears the sweet-sounding name “Cismigiù.” I was used to rising early since childhood, and my equestrian period had strengthened this habit. While the Löwinger rafters were still ringing to the snort of snores, I stole away to walk in that park. It was fall. Nowhere in the world have I seen colors to match those of Rumania in this season. It may well have been the fact that Pepi Olschansky came with me on these matinal marches that finally endeared him to me. He was a bad sleeper since the Great War, when a howitzer shell had exploded right beside him and buried him; although the shrapnel had not struck him, the blast had peppered his back full of particles of earth which now, after so many years, still kept festering their way out.

Not that this heroic misfortune alone made his company welcome, but it did prompt me to be civil, and his apparent liking for me did the rest. With the same indulgence I imagined he’d shown with his cadets in the good old days of the Imperial Army, First Lieutenant Olschansky did me the honor of allowing me to pay for his umpteen tzuikas in the bars on our way along the Calea Victoriei, winding up with his marghiloman at the Café Corso, then returned the compliment by accompanying me to the racetrack, where I nostalgically stuck my nose into the stables, chatted with the jockeys and trainers, and gave Pepi hot tips on how best and quickest to lose my money at the betting windows.

These visits helped me close a chapter of my life; I realized that my career as an amateur jockey was at an end, not so much on account of my fractured spine, not even because the few weeks’ participation at Löwinger’s table d’hote had sent my weight rocketing to a level I knew I would hardly even have the energy to reduce. Even if I had — to ride for three hours at the crack of dawn, drink six cups of hot tea, don a rubber vest, shirt, one lightweight and one heavyweight sweater, a leather jacket, and pound the pedals of a bicycle for an hour, then collapse into a steam bath and eat nothing but potatoes with a sprig of parsley for the rest of the week — I knew that it would be impossible to pick up again where I’d left off. And since turning points have always fascinated me — a change of time’s quality, so to say, when a mere change of atmosphere can alter the course of one’s own life or that of a whole epoch — this change from the open-air solitude on my roof above the Biserică Albă to the lusty carnivalesque existence at Löwinger’s Rooming House became a part of my biography that has recurred in my thoughts ever since. As I’m unable to put my finger on any one circumstance that would logically explain the tangent, I am inclined to think that a new chapter began with the day that I was released from my plaster collar.

Löwinger’s was agog with excitement that day, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I kept the whole company of long-term lodgers from going with me to the clinic. Still, my escort was large enough: all four Löwingers; Pepi Olschansky, of course; the rear end of the horse, named Dreher; and a salesman who had a car.

“I had no idea you’d such a large family,” said the assistant doctor I’d made friends with over the months.

“Yes, a colorful bunch, aren’t they?”

“At a guess I’d say that with the exception of the blond one with the pointed nose and the fellow with the gray forelock, they’re all from Galicia?”

“No, from Temeshvar.”

“Watch out that the doctor doesn’t see them. He eats Jews on toast for breakfast, bones and all.”

“He can hardly make more of a botch of my neck.”

“True, but he can add a couple of digits to your bill.”

I can still feel the coldness of the big scissors blade as it slipped underneath my cast. “Please be careful,” I requested. “Remember I put a sweater on underneath to keep the cast from hurting. I wouldn’t want it ruined.”

He applied pressure and began cutting. It went much easier than I’d imagined; there was a dull grating sound and the cast fell apart. The sweater was nowhere to be seen.

“You’ve absorbed it,” the assistant said. “Must have been good wool, pure lanolin. It’s protected your skin, all right.”

I felt oddly naked and chilly. “Will my head fall off if I nod?” I asked.

“Give it a try.”

I did. My head stayed put. I gingerly turned it first to the left, then to the right.