Thomas Bernhard: My Prizes: An Accounting

In nineteen sixty-four the Julius Campe Prize, which the Hamburg publishers Hoffmann und Campe had funded in honor of Heine’s publisher Julius Campe, was split three ways and the prize money of fifteen thousand marks went to Gisela Elsner, Hubert Fichte, and me. It was the first time I was singled out for my work as a writer and above all I was enchanted that the distinction came from Hamburg and is indissolubly linked with Heinrich Heine’s first publisher, for Julius Campe was the first publisher of The Harz Journey and a whole series of the best of all the poems that a German poet has ever written. Julius Campe was not of course unknown to me, I had read Brienitzer’s biography of him. In truth the Julius Campe Prize of nineteen sixty-four was not awarded at all because the jury couldn’t agree on any one writer and the three equal shares of the prize money were described as so-called Work Stipendiums, but from that moment on, because I had such a stipendium in mind, this didn’t hinder me at all from thinking and saying that I’d received the Julius Campe Prize. I was very proud and probably for the only time in my life unequivocally happy to the bottom of my heart about an honor that came in this news from Hamburg and I tried to spread it around as fast as possible. I was living with my aunt in Vienna and I walked through the First District across the Graben and along the Kärtnerstrasse and across the Kohlmarkt and through the Volksgarten and I thought everyone who met me knew of my happiness at having won the Julius Campe Prize. When I sat down at a table differently from before, I held the newspapers in my hand differently from before, and secretly I wondered to myself why everybody in the street hadn’t remarked on it to me. And anyone who failed to ask me about it was enlightened by me about my having just won the Julius Campe Prize and I explained who Julius Campe was, which nobody in Vienna knew, and who Heinrich Heine was, for not a lot of people in Vienna knew that either, and what an exceptional honor it was. It’s an enormous honor, I said, to receive a prize that’s connected with the name of Heinrich Heine and also comes from Hamburg, the city I loved most at that time and has always been one of my favorite cities, even today I know of no other through which I can walk with such uninhibited and happy self-confidence. And in which I could actually live for long intervals, even, who knows, maybe even years. I came to Hamburg very early in my life and maybe it has to do with the fact that I spent the year after I was born on a fishing cutter in Rotterdam harbor that Hamburg was for me what is known in the vernacular as love at first sight. I was often, almost yearly, a guest in a brick house in Wellingsbüttel, not far from the source of the Alster, and I love the people of Hamburg into the bargain. The way the news of my participation in the Julius Campe Prize was announced to me was also, I can say, completely appealing. They wrote two or three sentences that they’d selected me for one of three portions of the prize and I could collect the five thousand marks whenever I wanted, they’d be ready for me in the Hoffmann und Campe offices on the Harvesterhuder Weg. There would be no ceremony, no event. So I actually had a good reason to go to Hamburg again, one day I went to the Westbahnhof and got on a train to Copenhagen and found what seemed the best compartment for me to lean back in and go to sleep. But going to sleep was out of the question because my excitement at being singled out for my work as a writer, for Frost , was too great. I got the prize from Hamburg, from Hamburg, from Hamburg, I kept thinking, and I secretly despised the Austrians who had not, until now, extended me even a trace of recognition. The news had come down from the north, from the Binnenalster! Hamburg now was not only the most beautiful of great cities to me but also the pinnacle of clear-sightedness, quite apart from the immense cosmopolitanism that has distinguished Hamburg from time immemorial. In Hamburg the Hoffmann und Campe people had reserved a big room for me in an old villa on the Binnenalster, and I had a taxi take me there. I had hardly reached the room before a newspaper called, wanting to interview me. I leaned back in an armchair and said yes. I unpacked my few things and already the phone rang and the people from the newspaper were there and had pulled out their pencils. It was the first interview I ever gave in my life, it’s possible I gave it to the Hamburger Abendblatt , who knows. I was so excited that I couldn’t finish a single sentence, I immediately had an answer for every question but I wasn’t happy with my skill in phrasing things. I thought: people are noticing you come from Austria, the back of beyond. The next day I saw my picture in the paper and instead of being on top of the world, as I’d expected, I was ashamed of the nonsense I’d talked to the people from the newspaper when I was giving it my best shot and I loathed my photograph, if I really look like I do in this photograph, I thought, it would be better for me to retreat into some dark valley deep in the mountains and never set foot in the world again. I sat there spreading a thick layer of marmalade on my breakfast bread and felt deeply wounded. I didn’t dare even open the curtains and spent several hours sitting in my armchair as if stricken by some indefinable paralysis in my whole body. I felt worse than I’d ever felt before. But suddenly I thought of my share of the prize, the five thousand marks suddenly dominated my mind, and I slipped into my jacket and ran to the offices of Hoffmann und Campe, it was a beautiful walk in the best air and I felt I was seeing the elegant world for the first time in my life. I looked at each of the comfortable villas on the Binnenalster with the greatest interest and the greatest attention. Finally I reached the offices of Hoffmann und Campe. I announced myself and was immediately welcomed by the head of the house in person. The gentleman shook my hand, invited me to sit down, and took an envelope that was already prepared out of the open desk drawer and handed it to me. The check, he said. Then he asked me if the place I was staying was comfortable. Then there was a pause, during which I kept thinking I should say something clever, something philosophical, or at least something sensible perhaps, but I said nothing, my mouth didn’t open. Finally I got the sense that the situation had become embarrassing and right at this point the gentleman said I must come and have lunch with him in the so-called English Club. And I went there for lunch with the gentleman, and ate one of the most outstanding meals I’d ever eaten until then. The meal ended with a generous shot of Fernet Branca and then I was standing in the street on the Alsterufer, and had already said goodbye to the head of Hoffmann und Campe. The main reason for my trip to Hamburg was herewith at an end. I spent another night in the old villa on the Alster and then went to Wellingsbüttel to my friends. I no longer know how long I stayed there. Now I was a famous person, said my friends, and if they went to visit people with me, they said to their hosts, this Austrian we brought with us is now a famous person. These people all made it hard for me to say goodbye to Hamburg. When I arrived in Vienna, I immediately made good on the decision I’d already reached on the journey to Hamburg: I used the entire amount of the prize to buy myself a car. The purchase of the car happened in the following way: In the display room of the car dealer Heller opposite the so-called Heinrichshof, surrounded by other luxury cars, I saw a Triumph Herald. It was brilliant white and upholstered in red leather. Its dashboard was made of wood with black buttons and its price was exactly thirty-five thousand schillings, i.e., five thousand marks. It was the first car I’d seen on my reconnoitering expedition to look for cars and it was the one I immediately bought. I spent around half an hour in total, coming and going in front of the showroom and looking at the car. It was elegant, it was English, which was already almost a given, and it was exactly the size that suited me. Finally I entered the showroom and went up to the car and walked around the car several times and said, I’m going to buy this car. Yes, said the salesman, he would arrange for a similar car to be delivered for me in the next few days. No, I said, not in the next few days, now, I said, right away. I said right away the way I’ve always said it, very firmly. I am not going to wait for a few days, I said, I can’t, I didn’t give any reason why, but I said I absolutely couldn’t and I said this is the only car I will buy, as is, standing right here. I was making as if to go, without closing the deal, when the salesman suddenly said all right you can have the car, this one, it’s a beautiful car. He said it with sadness in his voice but he was right, the car was beautiful. Now I myself, as was flashing through my mind at that moment, had never driven a motorcar in my life before, only heavy trucks, for I had originally taken the truck driver’s test because I wanted to go to Africa to deliver medicines to the Africans, but this fell through, driving heavy trucks was a requirement for my job in Africa, I was supposed to go to Ghana, but because of the death of the American manager who would have been my boss my job in Africa got postponed and finally made redundant, so, I thought, I don’t have any idea how to drive the car out of the showroom. Yes, I said to the salesman, it’s a done deal, I will buy the car but it has to be parked out front for me, in front of the showroom, I said, I would pick it up in the course of the day. Of course, said the salesman. I signed a contract and paid the purchase price. The entire Julius Campe Prize went on it. I had a little money left over for gas. For a few hours I crisscrossed the inner city in jubilation over owning a car, the first car in my life, and what a car! I congratulated myself on my taste. That I should have asked even one person for expert advice on whether the car was worth something under the hood never crossed my mind. I have a car! I have a white car! I thought. Finally I turned around and went back to the Heller dealership, which was one of the most elegant car dealers in Vienna, and when I came around the corner my car was already standing in front of the door. I collected my papers inside, got into the car, and drove off. In the event I had no difficulty steering the car, although it would incontrovertibly have been easier to steer heavy trucks than this little Triumph Herald. Now of course I drove to the Obkirchergasse and showed the car to my aunt. She was absolutely amazed that such an elegant car could be bought for five thousand marks. On the other hand, five thousand marks was an awful lot of money! Of course I couldn’t rest in peace until I made my first major trip, which took me first to the north across the Danube and then, because I couldn’t get enough, by way of Hollabrunn all the way to Retz. In Retz I’d already used up a lot of gas. I filled up the tank and drove back, it was a beautiful day. But when I was back and in the vicinity of the Obkirchergasse, I didn’t want to stop and get out and so I now drove east. First I drove through the entire city and then out into the Burgenland. Shortly before Eisenstadt it began to get dark and I thought if I keep driving I’ll be in Hungary in half an hour. I drove back. During the night sleep was not even to be thought of, it was a wonderful feeling to own a car, and an English car what’s more, white, with red leather seats and a wooden dashboard. And all that for Frost , I thought. The next day I took my aunt on an outing to Klosterneuburg and on the way we stopped at the cemetery in Grinzing. Two months later, I’d accustomed myself to being a car owner and trips in my Herald were already becoming normal, I drove to Istria and the coast of Lovran where my aunt had already gone to stay several weeks before. We were living as so often before in the Villa Eugenia, a villa of the gentry built in 1880 with splendid broad balconies and a pebbled path that curved gently directly down to the deep blue water. Gagarin had just completed his first space flight, I still remember. My white Herald was parked downstairs next to the gateway, it was no gate, it was a gateway and upstairs on the third floor, as the sole master of three large rooms with six large windows behind whisper-thin silk curtains that dated from before the war, I wrote Amras . When I’d finished Amras , I immediately sent it to my editor at Insel. Four or five days after dispatching Amras I was already up at three in the morning with a rush of energy, a feeling I had to head out, up and out, for it was a perfectly cloudless, clear, tangy day. Wearing only trousers and gym shoes and a sleeveless shirt, I climbed the rocky slopes of the so-called Monte Maggiore, now named Učka. Halfway up I lay down in the shade and looked at the sea in front of me, far below, crisscrossed by ships. I had never been happier. At midday, when I ran down the mountain again, laughing aloud, exhausted with happiness, I can say I felt once again that I wouldn’t change places with anyone in the world. In the Eugenia there was a telegram waiting for me. Amras outstanding, everything fine , was the text. I changed clothes and got into my car and drove into Rijeka, the ancient Croatian-Hungarian port town. I walked all around the little streets and I was quite unbothered by how gray all the people were, unbothered by the pollution in the air from hundreds of cars. I absorbed everything with the utmost intensity, I listened to everything, breathed everything in. Around five in the afternoon I drove back to Eugenia, the coast road, past the shipyards. I think I sang. Before Opatija, where the great rock face catches the harsh light of the evening sun, a car swung into my lane from the left, slamming heavily into the near side of my car and staving it in. It hurled me right out of the car but I just stood there and didn’t feel any pain. The car belonging to the Yugoslavian was completely demolished too. The driver had jumped out and run off screaming, pursued by a woman who kept screaming Idiota! Idiota! Idiota! after him. There was a pile of metal in front of me in the middle of the road and all the traffic coming out of the shipyards was blocked. The Idiota! Idiota! Idiota! faded away and I was standing there alone. Suddenly I saw people running toward me and screaming and I saw that my whole body was covered in blood. I had a head wound, the bleeding was so severe I thought I’d lost my scalp, but I still felt no pain whatever. Then someone who’d leapt out of a little Fiat 500 grabbed hold of me and put me in his car. He gunned the engine and raced me along the coast road to the hospital and he raced so incredibly fast that I thought this was when the real accident would happen. During this whole race I kept holding my head because I thought all the blood would pour right out of it. I also had the feeling I should at least write down my name on a piece of paper, for otherwise no one would know who was involved if I did actually bleed to death. And of course I also didn’t want to dirty the man’s car with my blood and I tried to keep directing the blood flow just onto me and between my knees. Soon I’m going to lose consciousness, I thought, and then that will be that. Once at the hospital, I was immediately put flat on a gurney by a nurse and taken away. In a washroom the nurse shaved half my skull. Then I immediately found myself in an operating room and I was in luck, for the surgeon spoke German and promptly asked me all the relevant questions in German — vomiting or no vomiting, et cetera. Then they gave me an anesthetic, only a so-called local anesthetic, and worked on me and sewed my head back together again. What I had thought was an enormous wound was only a laceration, after two days I was allowed to go back to Eugenia. Before, I had already been able to see my wreck at the police station right near the hospital. And to my amazement the police had been able to sketch an exact reconstruction of the accident. The Yugoslavian was one hundred percent responsible, and this was also stated in the report. The person who had kept screaming Idiota! as he ran away was his wife, who to her misfortune was a nurse at the hospital and, as I learned later, was instantly fired from her job in the nursing service because instead of helping me she had run away with her husband. I was sorry about this, but there was nothing I could do about it. My Herald was a lump of metal, I walked around it several times and I thought about how I’d only driven it for seven hundred and fifty miles. A shame. With a white turban around my head and my aunt and all her considerable luggage I set off on the journey home to Vienna. Not at all depressed, because finally I had by some miracle escaped with my life, but still very disappointed over the end to my automobile happiness. At the Heller car dealership they put me in touch with a Nobel-class lawyer who lived in the Heinrichshof. He would pursue the case with his renowned thoroughness, the lawyer said, while the people whom I told about my accident thought I’d never see so much as a cent from Yugoslavia, it was well known that they never paid a thing in such cases, even when the other party was one hundred percent guilty. I got angry that I’d taken on this, so it seemed to me, very expensive lawyer, I was furious over my own stupidity. Now I’ve not only lost my Herald, but I’m also paying the lawyer, who was set up like a prince in three or four enormous rooms with a direct view of the Opera. I’m really stupid, I told myself, a completely unrealistic person. Amras was typeset and I walked around the city of Vienna rather despondently. Nothing gave me pleasure, I missed my Herald, and I suddenly had a feeling again that I’d reached the end. Unlucky people never escape their bad luck, I said to myself, meaning me. It was unjust, but understandable. Every few days or weeks a letter from the lawyer fluttered in, in which he told me, always in the same words, that he was pursuing my case with the greatest diligence. Every time such a letter arrived, I went wild. But I no longer had the courage to go and see the lawyer and tell him he should give up the case, I was afraid of the enormous costs. In the Wertheimstein Park and the Zögernitz Casino I read the galleys of Amras . The book works, it’s romantic, something born of a young man who’d been reading Novalis for months. After Frost I’d thought I could never write anything again, but then, by the sea, I’d sat down and Amras was there. It was always the sea that saved me, I only needed to go to the sea and I was saved. One morning another of those letters from the lawyer fluttered in and I was ready to tear it up. The content of the letter was different. Come to my office, the lawyer wrote to me, I have been able to settle your case with the fullest satisfaction. The Yugoslavian insurance people had actually agreed to all my lawyer’s demands, without any restrictions whatever, it should be noted. Not only was my car replaced, but I also received damages. And a so-called compensation amount for my clothing that was unbelievably large. The lawyer had not admitted I was wearing nothing but cheap trousers, a shirt, and sandals, he’d stated I was in an expensive suit and most costly underwear. I left the lawyer’s office in the highest order of happiness, naturally. I bought myself a new Herald and drove it very frequently to Yugoslavia, which had shown itself to be so correct and indeed so very generous to me in my misfortune. I’ve written all this, because, as you can see, it’s all tied up with the dividing into thirds of the Julius Campe Prize. In the most self-evident way.