Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

Of course, Minka knew about all this, and laughed when I told her that she had only to smile at Oskar and he’d immediately make her an honorary Aryan. “Aryans,” she said. “I can’t stand the sight of them any longer. The sooner I get my affidavit the better. I want to get out of here. It breaks my heart, but I simply have to.” She was waiting for her affidavit for England, as most of our friends were. It was not easy to get an affidavit. The English would take only people who wanted to be employed as servants, so very soon some clever man opened a butlers’ school on the Praterstrasse, where Jewish bankers and intellectuals were taught how to wait on the British. I once went there with Minka, and we laughed our heads off. Old stockbrokers were waddling around with aprons about their hips, balancing trays and opening bottles of champagne. My talent for imitating Jews made me invent a sketch in which a Scottish laird, reading in the newspapers about the sad destiny of the Viennese Jews, decides to dismiss all his wonderful Highland servants and replace them with Dr. Pisko-Bettelheim, Jacques Pallinker, Yehudo Nagoschiner, and such. Minka’s house had become a sort of center for the few Jews left in Vienna and some Aryans unfaithful to their new flag, like myself. My sketch was a great success.

During that summer and autumn of 1938, most of the Jews I knew went away. Some of them were arrested and locked up for a while, and came home with some rather gruesome stories about what was going on in the prisons of the Rossauerlände. Some disappeared, and we did not know whether they had been put in jail or had just fled at the last moment. All this was pretty awful, I had to admit. But one knew, after all, how people were — some being horrid, others really very nice — and those who got arrested were not always entirely innocent. A Jewish lawyer, telling about his cruel treatment at the hands of the SS, said proudly, “But I was not arrested for just being a Jew. I am a criminal.” However, I was becoming bored with the Nazi attitude of promise, hope, and expectation, as nothing really happened, and the whole thing was nothing but a great mess with some sordid highlights. Vienna had become a dreary place. Even Oskar complained; he didn’t enjoy the Heurigen anymore, God knows why. Then he said, “Do you remember our school library? Well, there was a book called The City Without Jews . Actually, I never read it. Have you? Anyway, I sometimes have the feeling that Vienna is just that. There’s nobody left to hate.”

There was a young boy of great musical talent around Minka in those days — not Herbert von Karajan but a little Jew by the name of Walter, whom I had come to like very much. He was intelligent, and funny, and extremely well read. Minka protected him, as, in happier times, she had protected me, and he showed me a touching affection and confidence that I could not resist. Since he had relatives in America, he got an affidavit rather quickly, and we decided to give him a farewell party. We chose an out-of-the-way place — a small winegrower’s cottage behind the Kobenzl — with the poetic name, in the Viennese dialect, of Häusl am Roan (Cottage at the Edge of the Vineyard). We were a party of sixteen, and there were some pretty girls. Someone still had a car, and it took two trips to get us all out there, and we were gay as in the old days. Walter played the nice old Viennese Heurigenlieder on the piano. I performed the butler Yehudo Nagoschiner, serving the wine and the fried chicken. Below us, beyond the hills that smelled of mown hay, lay the sparkling lights of Vienna. Suddenly this idyllic happiness was interrupted by a voice that roared, “I’ve finally caught you in the very act, you scoundrel!” I felt the marrow of my bones freeze. In the door stood Oskar, with a group of sturdy men in civilian clothes behind him. My poor Jewish friends stood or sat motionless as he came toward me, followed by his silent men. Then he threw his arms up and said, “But don’t let me interrupt your good time. I’m a schoolmate of Arnulf’s, and I wanted to show a few friends from the Reich what a true Viennese Heurigen looks like.”

It was true. He had not come to arrest me, or anything of the kind. When I asked him how he knew where I was, he said with a smile, “Old boy, there are very few things we don’t know.”

“Come on, don’t give me that. Who told you, really?”

“Your grandmother.”

“My grandmother ?”

“Well, that old witch with the trembling voice who answers the telephone at your house.”

Old Marie, then. I was a fool. For months I had told her where I could be reached when I went out, hoping that a call might come through from Bucharest to tell me that things had changed again and that my beloved was getting a divorce. I was more than a fool; I was blind to what was going on around me. I felt this very strongly when Oskar poked his elbow into my side and said, in a loud voice, with a glance toward his companions, “Now, how about introducing me to your beautiful Turkish girl friend?”

“She is my wife,” I said. “We are celebrating our wedding.”

The Germans were very pleased to hear this, and clicked their heels and congratulated us, shaking our hands so hard they almost pulled our arms out of their sockets. One of them sat down next to Minka in order to tell her about a cousin who lived in Istanbul. Oskar clapped my shoulder and said with a wink, “Don’t look so frightened. Tell that little Jew there at the piano to play some Heurigenlieder .”

The Germans soon got very drunk. The one with the cousin in Istanbul flirted with Minka, in competition with Oskar. The others danced with the pretty girls, and finally one of them performed a most courageous jump over a small stone wall in the garden, misjudged the distance to the ground, fell, and broke his leg. The Germans made a stretcher for him, so they could carry him to the nearest hospital, and then, in a great hurry, they shook our hands, clicked their heels, threw their arms up, shouting “ Heil Hitler! ” and “Long live Kemal Pasha Atatürk!” and disappeared as spookily as they had come, with Oskar waving and calling good-bye.

“You bastard,” Minka said to me. She went out into the vineyard and sat down on a stone. I followed her.

“I’m sorry, Minka. I know I am a mindless ass.”

“Never mind. After all, it was funny. Did you see darling little Walter playing the piano as if the devils were standing over him?” She laughed her enchanting laugh. “But still …” She sank back with a deep sigh.

It was dawn. Out of a mist in the valley Vienna rose, the peaks of its towers first, then the Riesenrad, the Ferris wheel, in the Prater, the monuments, the roofs, the streets. I sat beside Minka, looking down at all this. Suddenly I heard a strange sound coming out of Minka’s throat, and thought she was going to cry, but she was laughing instead. “Do you know what happened to Friedel Süssmann?” she asked. “I told you that in order to get her affidavit she got married at the British Consulate to an English sailor she had never seen before? Well, when she got to England, she was met by some gentlemen in black. They had come to break the news to her that her husband had fallen from the mast and broken his neck. She now has a widow’s pension — one pound a month.”

“Listen, Minka,” I said. “After all, I am a Rumanian. My hands are not tied. I need not tell you what it would mean to my parents, and you know that I love somebody else, but if it would help you — I mean, just in order to get you a passport that would enable you to get out of here, and, of course, with an immediate divorce afterward — if you want to, we could bloody well go and get married. You won’t get a pension, though, if I break my neck.”