Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

I felt as if I had grown one hand taller overnight. By moving into the tower, I had gone among the men. At last I had outgrown the tormenting solicitude of my mother, the apron strings of governesses and tutors, whose extension into a collective was what the hated discipline of boarding school had been for me. Here, in the tower, free men dwelled, sovereigns who forged their own destinies, who knew the science of weapons, the last heroes and warriors. I settled, I breathed my way, into their rugged world.

In the mustiness of the attic rooms, you could still sniff cigar butts, and it did not take much imagination to picture the rest: the darkness of winter mornings with a wood fire crackling, the early bustle in the house and the courtyard, the jittery whimpering of the hounds, and the fragrance of strong coffee and toast, bacon and fried eggs. They all announced the hunting day: a long day, eagerly lived, a day of self-oblivion and pulse-throbbing suspense, with surprises at any moment, minutes of the most thrilling expectation, swiftest decision, actions as sure as in a dream … tingling alternations of triumph and disappointment, the breath flying with the second hand, the hours that paint the heavens from the clear, light-budding mother-of-pearl rosiness of the rising morn to the bloodbath of the evening…. The hunt is over, the lungs burst with stinging fresh air, the blood courses keenly through the veins, the hunters are going home, the runners of their sleighs crunching beneath them: burning cold on your cheeks and your body, snugly warm in your weatherproof gear, the night throwing its black cloth over the beautiful world, filling the woods with darkness as they loom up mightily on either side of the road, the horses steaming along, lifting their tails as they trot, the unscrewed rosettes of their anuses dropping moist, warm, smoking balls that remain between the gliding marks of the runners as nourishment for famished birds: a mysterious world of starry, spatial coldness and muck-born life — your hand has sown death today, this makes you feel alive…. A rumbling return to the festively illuminated house, the mug of grog glowing in your fingers, a well-turned compliment to the gracious femininity of the lady of the house, a nimble grab at the parlor maid’s behind when she brings hot water, delicious unwinding of the limbs in the bath, the delight of fresh white linen, of the light shoes for the evening dress suit, the grand meal, the many wines, the bag of hundreds of murdered creatures: stiff, hairy, blood-encrusted plunder that was playing at life a bare few hours ago, a flitting shadow play, lusterless eyes, outflared by torchlight, the blares of the hunting horn fading away in the cold mist of the night, then cognac in snifters, the men talking, reliving their experiences, the jokes, the teasing, the booming laughter…. All these things were waiting for me; soon they would be my life, my being.

I was all the happier because this male world quite obviously had a playful streak, belying the claim that we rather pitiably grow out of the wonder-fraught life-dreams of childhood into the earnestness of momentous tasks and duties that make adulthood somber, burdening it with responsibilities. On the contrary: I felt as if I had suffered through the ordeals of youthful boredom, tormenting restraint, and incessant vexation, finally to reach a never-never land of liberty, of equality among equals, of lighthearted fraternity. In the tower was gathered anything that had become superfluous in the house or, for reasons of good taste, had been sifted out of the house. Everything around me — from the carved-buckhorn furniture to the cheerfully gaudy crazy-quilt carpet, from the ashtray, presenting a deceptive porcelain replica of a cigarette butt and a half-spread hand of cards, to the ivory skull functioning as a letter weight on the desk — all these things parodied the usual furnishings, as in artists’ studios and student digs. The huge bearskin before the fireplace with its lifelike stuffed head, the glass case suspended over the mantel with a collection of unwontedly huge tropical butterflies, the English beer pots in the shape of seated drinkers, the cast-iron clothes tree, were likewise ironically exaggerated in their purpose. The last, like a Roman general’s trophy, was an emblem clustering together all the paraphernalia of hunting — nets, horns, shotguns, game bags, bowie knives. To me, at least, the tower seemed to express the cheerfully lived-out play instinct, these adults’ true sense of life, the true essence of their existence. This essence was only flimsily camouflaged by gestures of earnest morality — duty-laden, charity-conscious — and it was always near the edge of danger, of death.

Previously, when I had had my room next to Aunt Sophie’s boudoir, the dramatics of existence, especially childhood existence, had been presented to me in sentimental engravings that illustrated Paul et Virginie . I had often acted out the individual scenes — but it was a literary dramatics. The adventures of Paul and Virginie were events I could picture vividly in my imagination but I knew would never happen to me in real life. Here in the tower, however, the walls were covered with prints of the legendary equestrian feats of Count Sàndor (no one ever failed to mention that he was the father of Princess Pauline, daughter-in-law of Chancellor Metternich). These feats could be immediately enacted: I could go into the stable, have a horse saddled, and try to emulate the count. The jeopardy was no less mortal than in the calvary of Paul and Virginie, but it was easily sought out and thereby spiritualized into playfulness. The daredevil count would make his horse climb to the window-sill and gracefully lean upon it with one hoof while the rider calmly chatted with the beautiful damsel leaning out the casement. The possibility of his breaking his neck was as great as during a leap over a hurdle with a loosened girth, so that the horse well-nigh sprang away from under him, while the rider, keeping his perfect posture, remained in the stirrups and saddle, like Baron von Münchhausen on the flying cannonball. This image tallied perfectly with the ubiquitous souvenirs of the Great War, the shell cases and grenade splinters and heavy sabers and Uncle Hubert’s Uhlan shako, which had been shot straight through during the fighting in Galicia. (This circumstance provided his friends with matter for endless joking, although the incident had been quite serious: one half centimeter lower and the bullet would have not just singed his hair and scalp but pierced his brain.)

Often, I would stand motionless in one of the tower rooms for hours at a time, listening into the silence. If I had claimed to be working, they would probably have interpreted my answer as insolent and rebuked me. But it was true: I was working my way into a man’s existence. I did it instinctively, in the fashion of mystics — by trying to become as one with the things around me; after all, these objects contained the spirit of virile existence and thus had to have something of its substance.

This was not difficult to do among the temperas that showed mounted skirmishes between Uhlans and Cossacks in Galicia during the early years of the Great War. Exciting events could be relived effortlessly. But how could one penetrate the mystery of what it was that made a piece of furniture — for instance, a full-length mirror, a so-called psyché —quite unmistakably masculine, while a similar piece in Aunt Sophie’s bedroom, made in the same severe Empire neoclassic style, was just as unmistakably feminine? Piercing to the essence, the entity, of this maleness demanded such intense spiritual activity, such subtle mobilizing of the senses, that I was often virtually numbed and so oddly frightened that I had to flee from myself, out into the open.