Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutters

artistic dinner is being given, at least until twelve thirty to get to the Gentzgasse. The Auersbergers invited their guests for half past ten — that’s monstrous, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair: they must have known that The Wild Duck went on till ten thirty and that consequently their Ekdal couldn’t be in the Gentzgasse before half past twelve. If I’d thought carefully about when this artistic dinner was actually going to start, I certainly wouldn’t have come, I thought. I go to the Graben to look for a tie, which naturally I don’t find, I thought, and at the most inauspicious moment I run into the Auersbergers. It’s as though time had stood still, I thought: all the guests at this artistic dinner are people who were their closest and most intimate friends thirty years ago, back in the fifties. Clearly none of these friends had ever severed their relations with the Auersbergers; throughout the twenty or thirty years in which I had had no contact with the Auersbergers, all these people had kept up with them, as they say. I suddenly felt like a deserter, a traitor. It’s as though I’d betrayed the Auersbergers and everything I associate with them, I thought, and the same thought must have occurred to the Auersbergers and their guests too. But that did not worry me — quite the contrary, for even now, sitting in their wing chair in their apartment, I found the Auersbergers utterly repugnant, and their guests equally so; indeed I hated all of them, because they were in every way the exact opposite of myself. And now, as I tried to sit it out in the Auersbergers’ apartment, anesthetized by a few glasses of champagne, I felt that my dislike of them had in fact always amounted to hatred, hatred of everything to do with them. We may be on terms of the most intimate friendship with people and believe that our friendship will last all our lives, and then one day we think we’ve been let down by these people whom we’ve always respected, admired, even loved more than all others, and consequently we hate and despise them and want nothing more to do with them, I thought as I sat in the wing chair; not wanting to spend the rest of our lives pursuing them with our hatred as we previously pursued them with our love and affection, we quite simply erase them from our memories. In fact I succeeded in evading the Auersbergers for more than two decades and avoiding any risk of meeting them, having devised a deliberate strategy for avoiding any further contact with these monsters ,as I could not help calling them privately, and so the fact that I had evaded them for over twenty years was in no way fortuitous, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Joana’s suicide alone is to blame for the fact that, in spite of everything, I quite suddenly ran into them in the Graben. Their abrupt invitation to their dinner in honor of the Wild Duck artist and my equally abrupt acceptance were a classic illustration of the irrational way one reacts under stress. After all, even though I’d accepted the invitation, I didn’t have to act upon it, especially as I’ve never been punctilious about keeping my promises to visit people, I thought. In fact during the whole of the interval between being invited to this artistic dinner and the dinner itself I had kept on wondering whether I would really go to it. At one moment I thought I would, at another I thought I wouldn’t; now I told myself I’d go, now I told myself I wouldn’t go. I’ll go, I won’t go — this word game went on in my head day after day, almost driving me insane, and even this evening, shortly before I finally set off for the Gentzgasse, I still wasn’t sure whether I would go to the Gentzgasse. Only a few minutes before I finally decided to go I said to myself, Since you’ve just seen all over again, at the funeral in Kilb, that the Auersbergers are as repulsive as ever, you naturally won’t go. The Auersbergers are repulsive people; it was they who betrayed you, not you who betrayed them, I kept thinking as I tried to freshen up in the bathroom, running ice-cold water over my wrists and at one stage trying to cool my face by holding it under the tap. Over the past twenty years they’ve run you down and denigrated you wherever they could, perverting the truth about everything connected with you and taking every opportunity to assassinate your character, I thought; they’ve told stories about you that aren’t true, they’ve spread lies about you, vicious lies, more and more lies, hundreds and thousands of lies in the last twenty years, telling everybody that it was you who exploited them at Maria Zaal, not they who exploited you , that it was you who behaved outrageously, not they, that it was you who defamed them ,not they who defamed you, that you were the traitor, and so on. I took into account all the reasons for not visiting them; I could find none in favor of doing so after being out of contact for twenty years, yet finally, despite my repugnance, despite the immense hatred I bore them, I made up my mind that I would visit them, and so I slipped on my coat and set out for the Gentzgasse. I’ve come to the Gentzgasse, I told myself, sitting in the wing chair, even though it’s the last thing I wanted to do. Everything was against my coming to the Gentzgasse, everything was against such a ludicrous artistic dinner, yet now I’m here. On the way to the Gentzgasse I keptsaying to myself, I’magainst this visit, I’magainst the Auersbergers, I’magainst all the people who are going to be there, I hate them, I hate all of them. And yet I kept on walking and finally rang the bell of their apartment. Everything was against my making an appearance in the Gentzgasse and yet I’ve made it, I said to myself as I sat in the wing chair. And again it occurred to me that I would have done better to read my Gogol and my Pascal and my Montaigne, or to play Schönberg or Satie, or just to take a walk through the streets of Vienna. And in fact the Auersbergers were even more surprised at my appearing in the Gentzgasse than I was myself, I thought. I could tell this from the way Auersberger’s wife received me, and even more clearly from the way Auersberger himself received me. You shouldn’t have come to the Gentzgasse, I told myself the moment I found myself facing her. It’s an act of insanity, I told myself as I held out my hand to him. He didn’t shake it — whether this was because he was drunk or because he was being abominably rude I can’t say, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They issued their invitation in the Graben in the belief that I wouldn’t come under any circumstances, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; perhaps they themselves didn’t really know why they invited me to their dinner, immediately referring to it as an artistic dinner —which was a fatal mistake, I thought, as it made them seem ridiculous. But the Auersbergers could have refrained from speaking to me in the Graben, I thought; they could have ignored me, as they had done for decades, just as I had ignored them for decades, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Joana’s to blame for this invitation, I thought, she’s the cause of my irrational behavior, the dead woman has this distasteful contretemps on her conscience. Yet at the same time I thought how nonsensical such an idea was, but it kept coming back — again and again I had this nonsensical notion that the dead Joana was to blame for that irrationalreaction in the Graben ,which finally led to my coming to the Gentzgasse, against my natural inclinations, to take part in this artistic dinner. It was because of Joana’s death that as soon as the Auersbergers saw me in the Graben they canceled the past twenty years, during which we had had absolutely no contact with one another, and issued their invitation, and for the selfsame reason I accepted it. And then of course they added that they had invited the Burgtheateractor ,who was enjoying sucha triumph in The Wild Duck ,as Auersberger’s wife put it, and I said I would come. Never in the last ten or fifteen years have I accepted an invitation to a dinner at which an actor was to be one of the guests, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, never have I gone anywhere where an actor was going to be present, and then suddenly I’m told that an actor is coming to dinner — an actor from the Burgtheater at that, and what’s more to a dinner party at the Auersbergers’ apartment in the Gentzgasse — and I go along. There was no point now in clapping my hand to my forehead. Actually I’m doing nothing to hide the revulsion I feel for all these people, and for the Auersbergers themselves, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair; on the contrary they can all sense that I loathe and detest them. They can’t just see that I hate them — they can hear it too. Conversely I had the impression that all these people were hostile to me; from what I saw of them and in everything I heard them say, I sensed their aversion, even their hatred. The Auersbergers hated me; they realized that I was the blemish they had wished on their dinner party by being so thoughtless as to invite me; they were dreading the moment when the actor would enter the apartment and they would ask us all to take our places at table and begin the meal. They saw that I was the observer, the repulsive person who had made himself comfortable in the wing chair and was playing his disgusting observation game in the semidarkness of the anteroom, more or less taking the guests apart ,as they say. They had always found it offensive that I should seize every opportunity of quite unscrupulously taking them apart, but in mitigation, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair, I could always plead that I took myself apart much more often than anybody else, never sparing myself, always dissecting myself into all my component parts ,as they would say, with equal nonchalance, equal viciousness, and equal ruthlessness. In the end there was always much less left of me than there was of them, I told myself. I had one consolation: I was not the only one to curse the fact that I had come to the Gentzgasse, that I had been guilty of such imbecility and weakness of character — the Auersbergers too were cursing themselves for inviting me. But I was there, and nothing could be done about it. Thirty years ago I used to share their apartment with them, going in and out of it as though it were my own home, I thought as I sat in the wing chair observing what was happening in the music room, which was so brightly lit that nothing could escape me, while I remained in the dark all the time, occupying what was without doubt the most favorable position I could possibly occupy in this disagreeable situation. I had known all the guests at this artistic dinner , as I had known the Auersbergers themselves, virtually for decades, except for the young people; among these were two young writers, but they did not interest me: I did not know them and so had no reason whatever to concern myself with them, except to observe them. I did not feel the slightest urge to go over and talk to them, to challenge them to a conversation or an argument. I was probably too tired, for I had been completely exhausted by the strain of the funeral, by what I had gone through in Kilb for Joana’s sake, I thought, above all the dreadful scenes after the funeral, which were so incredible that I shall only gradually be able to take them in; I still did not have the necessary mental clarity to comprehend them, and I thought I would need a thorough sleep before I could even begin. Sitting in the wing chair I was already starting to think that when I got home I would go straight to bed and not get up for the whole of the following day and the following night, perhaps even the next day and the next night too — so exhausted, so worn out did I feel as I sat in the wing chair. We imagine we are twenty and act accordingly, yet in fact we are over fifty and completely exhausted, I thought; we treat ourselves like twenty-year-olds and ruin ourselves, and we treat everybody else as though we were all still twenty, even though we’re fifty and can’t stand the pace any longer; we forget that we have a medical condition, more than one in fact, a number of medical conditions, a number of so-called fatal diseases ,but we ignore them for as long as we can and don’t take them seriously, though they’re there all the time and ultimately kill us. We treat ourselves as though we still had the strength we had thirty years ago, whereas in fact we don’t have a fraction of our former strength, not even a fraction, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Thirty years ago I would think nothing of staying up for two or three nights on end, drinking virtually non-stop, not caring what I drank, and performing like an entertainment machine ,playing the fool for several nights — round the clock, as they say — for all sorts of people, all of them friends, without doing myself the slightest harm. For years, as it now seems, I never got home before three or four in the morning; I would go to bed with the dawn chorus, yet it didn’t do me the slightest harm. For years I would turn up at the Apostelkeller or some other dive in the city around eleven in the evening and not leave before three or four in the morning, having used up every possible drop of energy, I may say, with the utmost ruthlessness, though it was a ruthlessness which at that time was second nature to me and, as it now seems, did me no harm at all. And I spent countless nights talking and drinking with Joana, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. I had no money or possessions of any kind, yet the truth is that for years I whiled away the nights talking, drinking and dancing with Joana and her husband, with Jeannie Billroth, and above all with the Auersbergers. In those days I had all the energy a young man could possibly have, and I had no scruples about letting myself be supported by anyone better off than myself, I recalled in the wing chair. I never had a penny in my pocket, yet I could afford whatever I wanted, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and observing the guests in the music room. And for years I would go out every day to the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse in the late afternoon to spend the night with Joana, calling at Dittrich’s on the way to pick up the wine, and then return in the early morning, either catching the No. 71 or walking back to Währing along the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse, down the Rennweg, and across the Schwarzenbergerplatz. In those days, I recalled, horse-drawn carts could still be seen parked at night in front of the dairies, and it was still possible to walk down the middle of the Rennweg, cut across the Schwarzenbergerplatz, and walk along the deserted Ring without being afraid of being run over. I seldom met another soul, and if I did it was sure to be one of my own kind — another late-night reveler — and it was a rarity to see a car cruising through the streets at that hour. Never in my life have I sung so many Italian arias as I did in those days as I walked from the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse to the Rennweg, then across the Schwarzenbergerplatz and back to Währing, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. At that time I had the strength to walk and sing; now I’m not even strong enough to walk and talk —that’s the difference. Thirty years ago I thought nothing of a ten-mile walk home at night, I recalled in the wing chair, singing all the way in my youthful enthusiasm for Mozart and Verdi and giving vent to my intoxication. It’s thirty years, I thought, since I made operatic history in this way — thirty years. The truth is, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, that my life would have taken a different course had it not been for Joana; perhaps I’d have pursued a diametrically opposed course had I not met Auersberger. For my encounter with Auersberger meant essentially a return to things artistic, on which I had turned my back completely — and definitively, as I then believed — after leaving the Mozarteum. At that time, after passing out of the Mozarteum, I suddenly wanted nothing more to do with the supposedly artistic, having opted firmly for the opposite of what I would call the artistic ,but then my meeting with Auersberger, I recalled in the wing chair, caused me once more to do a complete about-turn. And then I met Joana, I recalled, who was the quintessence of everything artistic. It was for the artistic, not for art, that I opted thirty-five years ago — only the artistic ,I thought as I sat in the wing chair, though I had no idea what that was. I opted for the artistic ,though I didn’t know what form it would take. I quite simply opted for Auersberger, for Auersberger as he was then, thirty-five or thirty-four years ago, and as he still was thirty-three years ago — for the artistic Auersberger . And for Joana, the quintessentially artistic Joana. And for Vienna. And for the artistic world, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I owe it to Auersberger that I executed an about-turn and returned to the artistic world, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and above all I owe it to Joana — to everything that was connected with Auersberger and Joana thirty-five years ago, and was still connected with them thirty-two years ago — that’s the truth, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Several times I repeated to myself the words the artistic world and the artistic life. I actually spoke them out loud, in such a way that people in the music room were bound to hear them — as indeed they did, for all their heads suddenly turned in my direction, from the music room to the anteroom — though they could not actually see me — on hearing me repeating the words the artistic life and the artistic world. I recalled what the notions artistic world and artistic life had meant to me then, and still meant to me today — more or less everything , I now thought, sitting in the wing chair, and I thought how tasteless it was for the Auersbergers to call this dinner of theirs — or rather this supper — an artistic dinner. How low they’ve sunk, I thought as I sat in the wing chair — these people who as far as I can see have been artistically, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt for decades. But to all these people in the music room, hearing me utter the words artistic world and artistic life ,it was of course as though I had said artistic dinner just as the Auersbergers might have done, and apart from being so audible they struck nobody as in any way unusual — nobody realized what they meant to me. At one time, of course, all these people had actually been artists, or at least possessed artistic talents ,I thought, sitting in the wing chair, but now they were just so much artistic riffraff ,having about as much to do with art and the artistic as this dinner party of the Auersbergers’. All these people, who were once real artists, or at least in some way artistic, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, are now nothing but shams, husks of their former selves: I have only to listen to what they say, I have only to look at them, I have only to come into contact with their products, to feel exactly the same way about them as I feel about this supper party, this tasteless artistic dinner. To think what has happened to all these people over the past thirty years, I thought, to think what they’ve made of themselves in these thirty years! And what I’ve made of myself in these thirty years! It’s unrelievedly depressing to see what they’ve made of themselves, what I’ve made of myself. All these people have contrived to turn conditions and circumstances that were once happy into something utterly depressing, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; they’ve managed to make everything depressing, to transform all the happiness they once had into utter depression, just as I have. For there’s no doubt that thirty or even twenty years ago all these people were happy, but now they’re unutterably depressing, every bit as depressing and unhappy as I am myself, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. They’ve transformed sheer happiness into sheer misery, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, unalloyed hope into unrelieved hopelessness. For what I saw when I looked into the music room was a scene of unmitigated hopelessness, both human and artistic, I thought, sitting in the wing chair — that’s the truth. All these people had come to Vienna in the fifties, thirty years earlier, some of them forty years earlier, hoping they would go far, as they say, but the farthest they actually went in Vienna was to become tolerably successful provincial artists, and the question is whether they would have gone any farther in any other so-called big city— they probably wouldn’t have gone very far anywhere, I thought. But when I reflect that they’ve got nowhere in Vienna, nowhere at all, I thought, I also realize that they’re unaware of this, for they don’t act as though they were aware of having got nowhere: on the contrary they behave as though they’d gone far in Vienna, as though every one of them had become something worthwhile; they think that all the hopes they placed in Vienna have been fulfilled, I thought, or at least most of the time they believe they’ve gone far — most of the time they believe fervently that they’ve become something worthwhile, although from my point of view they haven’t become anything. Because they’ve made a name for themselves, won a lotof prizes ,published a lot of books, and sold their pictures to a lot of museums, because they’ve had their books issued by the best publishing houses and their pictures hung in the best museums, because they’ve been awarded every possible prize that this appalling state has to offer and had every possible decoration pinned to their breasts, they believe they’ve become something, though in fact they’ve become nothing, I thought. They’re all what are termed well-knownartists,celebrated artists ,who sit as senators in the so-called ArtSenate ;they call themselves professors and have chairs at our academies; they are invited by this or that college or university to speak at this or that symposium; they travel to Brussels or Paris or Rome, to the United States and Japan and the Soviet Union and China, where sooner or later they’re invited to give lectures about themselves and open exhibitions of their pictures, and yet as I see it they haven’t become anything. They’ve all quite simply failed to achieve the highest ,and as I see it only the highest can bring real satisfaction ,I thought. Auersberger’s compositions don’t go unperformed, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; Auersberger,the successorof Webern,hasn ’ t failed to gainrecognition , I thought. On the contrary, not a moment passes without something of his being sung, without one of his compositions being performed by brass, woodwind, strings or percussion (he makes sure of that!) — now in Basel, now in Zürich, now in London, now in Klagenfurt — here a duet, there a trio, here a four-minute chorus, there a twelve-minute opera, here a three-minute cantata, there a one-second opera, a one-minute song, a two-minute or four-minute aria; sometimes he engages English performers, sometimes French or Italian; sometimes his work is performed by a Polish or Portuguese violinist, sometimes by a Chilean or Italian lady on the clarinet. Hardly has he arrived in one town than he’s thinking about the next, our restless successor of Webern, it seems, our mincing, globe-trotting imitator of Webern and Grafen, our snobbish, musical dandy from the Styrian sticks. Just as Bruckner is unendurably monumental, so Webern is unendurably meager, yet the meagerness of Anton Webern is as nothing compared with the meagerness of Auersberger, whom I am bound to describe as the almost noteless composer, just as the mindless literary experts have dubbed Paul Celan the almost wordless poet. This Styrian imitator doesn’t go unperformed, but thirty years ago, in the mid-fifties, he was already stuck in the Webern tradition; he’s never written so much as three notes without making some composition or other out of them. What is missing in Auersberger’s compositions, it seems to me, is Auersberger himself; his aphoristic music (which was how I described his derivative compositions in the fifties!) is nothing but an unendurable copy of Webern, who was himself, as I now realize, not the genius he was taken to be, but only a sudden — if brilliant — access of debility in the history of music. In fact I feel heartily ashamed of myself as I sit in the Auersbergers’ wing chair and reflect that Auersberger was never a genius, even though back in the fifties I was utterly convinced that he was: he was simply a pathetic little bourgeois with a certain talent, who gambled away his talent in his first few weeks in Vienna. Vienna is a terrible machine for the destruction of genius, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, an appalling recycling plant for the demolition of talent. All these people whom I was now observing through their sickening cigarette smoke came to Vienna thirty or thirty-five years ago, hoping to go far, only to have whatever genius or talent they possessed annihilated and killed off by the city, which kills off all the hundreds and thousands of geniuses or talents that are born in Austria every year. They may think they’ve gone far, but in reality they haven’t gone anywhere, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, and the reason is that they were content to stay in Vienna: they didn’t leave at the decisive moment and go abroad, like all those who did achieve something; those who stayed behind in Vienna became nonentities, whereas I can say without hesitation that all those who went abroad made something of themselves. Because they were satisfied with Vienna, they ended up as nonentities, unlike those who left Vienna at the decisive moment and went abroad, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I will not speculate about what might have become of all these people in the music room, all these people who were waiting around for the artist to make his entrance and for the artistic dinner to begin, if they had left Vienna at the crucial moment in their lives. It took no more than a minor success, a favorable press review of her first novel, to make Jeannie Billroth stay in Vienna, no more than the sale of a couple of pictures to national museums to make Rehmden the painter stay in Vienna, no more than a few fulsome notices in the Kurier or the Presse to persuade some promising actress to stay in Vienna. The music room is full of people who stayed on in Vienna, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. And at the cemetery in Kilb those who followed Joana’s coffin were almost exclusively people who had stayed on in Vienna, almost suffocating in the comfort of their petit bourgeois world. What a depressing effect the funeral at Kilb had on me, for this reason more than any other! I thought, watching these people from the wing chair. What depressed me was not so much the fact that Joana was being buried as that the only people who followed her coffin were artistic corpses, failures, Viennese failures, the living dead of the artistic world — writers, painters, dancers and hangers-on, artistic cadavers not yet quite dead, who looked utterly grotesque in the pelting rain. The sight was not so much sad as unappetizing, I thought. All through the ceremony I was obsessed by the spectacle of these repellent artistic nonentities trudging behind the coffin through the cemetery mud in their distasteful attitudes of mourning, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair. It was not so much the funeral that aroused my indignation as the demeanor of the mourners who had turned up from Vienna in their flashy cars. I became so agitated that I had to take several heart tablets, yet my agitation was brought on not by the dead Joana, but by the behavior of these arty people, these artistic shams, I thought, and it occurred to me that my own behavior at Kilb had probably been equally distasteful. The very fact that I had put on a black suit was distasteful, I now told myself; so was the way I had eaten my goulash in the Iron Hand and the way I had talked to Joana’s companion, as though I were the only person who had really been close to Joana, the only one who had any claim on her. The more I thought about the funeral, the more I became aware of the distasteful aspects of my own behavior: no matter what circumstances came to mind, they were all equally distasteful. Finding the others distasteful, I naturally could not help finding myself distasteful too, I thought, and the more I thought about everything connected with the funeral, the more reprehensible my own conduct seemed to me. It had been distasteful to go to Kilb alone ,despite the fact that several people had offered to drive me there, I thought, and it had been distasteful to talk to the woman from the general store, Joana’s friend, as though I had been closest to her; it had been inconsiderate to monopolize her company, leaving her no time to attend to the other people who had come to the funeral, I thought. I had made myself the starof the funeral ,I thought, and I now saw how monstrous this had been. I had downgraded Joana’s companion and all the others at the funeral and at the same time upgraded myself — and that was contemptible. On the other hand I had believed at the time that I was behaving properly. During the funeral I had been unaware of incurring any guilt: only now, sitting in the wing chair, did I develop what might be called a sense of guilt with regard to my conduct at Kilb. The fact that Joana had killed herself did not make me feel any sadder in Kilb, I thought, sitting in the wing chair: it simply aroused my indignation against her friends, though I could not explain to myself why this should be. The truth is that I was not in the least shocked to get the telephone call from the owner of the general store, informing me that Joana had committed suicide; I pretended to be shocked, I now reflected, but in fact I wasn’t — I was curious,but not shocked. I only feigned shock; I was merely curious and immediately wanted her to tell me everything about Joana’s suicide. I displayed the most outrageous curiosity, and it was only now, sitting in the wing chair, that I felt shocked by this — by the fact that I had not been sad, but merely curious, and that I had forced more information out of the woman than she was willing to impart, for during our telephone conversation she showed a decency that was entirely lacking in me. Naturally Joana had become such a stranger to me and we had been out of touch for so many years, that the call from the woman at the general store, as I have said, could not possibly have come as a shock, nor could it cause me any immediate sadness; it produced merely curiosity, and this curiosity forced her to tell me everything about Joana’s suicide there and then. I was interested not in the fact of her suicide, but in the circumstances. I was sad. I was really saddened ,and it was in this mood of sadness that I walked into town — to the Graben, the Kärntnerstrasse and the Kohlmarkt, then to the Bräunerhof in the Spiegelgasse, where I glanced through the Corriere, LeMonde ,the ZürcherZeitung and the Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung ,as I had been in the habit of doing for years. Then, sickened by the newspapers, I went back to the Graben to buy myself a tie, but instead of buying a tie I ran into the Auersbergers, to be told once again about Joana’s suicide. By now I knew much more about it than they did, yet I pretended to know nothing. I put on such an act of bewilderment that the couple must have felt I was shocked by Joana’s suicide, whereas in fact I was only feigning shock. I had actually felt saddened by Joana’s suicide as I walked back and forth in the city, and then, quite suddenly and quite shamelessly, I pretended to the Auersbergers that I was shocked by it. And just as my shock was feigned, so too was my acceptance of the invitation to their artistic dinner ,because the whole of my conduct toward the Auersbergers during our meeting in the Graben was pure dissembling. Sitting in the wing chair, I reflected that I had pretended to be shocked by Joana’s suicide and pretended to accept the Auersbergers’ invitation to their artistic dinner . When I accepted it I was only pretending, I now thought, yet in spite of this I had acted upon it. The idea is nothing short of grotesque, I thought, yet at the same time it amused me. Actually I’ve always dissembled with the Auersbergers, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and here I am again, sitting in their wing chair and dissembling once more: I’m not really here in their apartment in the Gentzgasse, I’m only pretending to be in the Gentzgasse, only pretending to be in their apartment, I said to myself. I’ve always pretended to them about everything — I’ve pretended to everybody about everything. My whole life has been a pretense, I told myself in the wing chair — the life I live isn’t real, it’s a simulated life, a simulated existence. My whole life, my whole existence has always been simulated —my life has always been pretense ,never reality, I told myself. And I pursued this idea to the point at which I finally believed it. I drew a deep breath and said to myself, in such a way that the people in the music room were bound to hear it: You’vealways lived a life of pretense,not a reallife — a simulated existence,not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real . But I must put an end to this fantasizing lest I go mad, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and so I took a large gulp of champagne. While I had been drinking champagne all the time, the people in the music room, as I could see, had been content with sherry and in the end simply with water, not wanting to get as recklessly drunk before supper, before the so-called artistic dinner , as Auersberger was already. I was not afraid of drinking too much, and so I went on drinking. But naturally I did not drink so recklessly that I became as drunk as the host. I continued to drink, but confined myself to one mouthful every ten or fifteen minutes — that is the truth. After all I was no longer twenty, but fifty-two — a fact that I never once forgot during this evening in the Gentzgasse. At Kilb all these artistic people had seemed grotesque. Their artistic preoccupations and their artistic activity made them seem somehow unnatural, at least to me: they had an artificial wayof walking ,an artificial way of talking; everything about them was artificial, whereas the cemetery itself seemed the most natural place in the world. When they bowed their heads they bowed them too low. When they stood up or sat down they did so too soon (or too late); when they started to sing they did so too soon (or too late). When they spoke the responses they spoke them too soon (or too late) — whereas the local people, of whom there was a good turnout ,as they say, did everything naturally — they spoke naturally, sang naturally, walked naturally, stood up and sat down naturally, doing nothing too soon or too late or too quickly or too slowly. And whereas the artistic people from Vienna were grotesquely attired for the funeral, the local people were dressed with the utmost propriety, I reflected as I sat in the wing chair. The local people were in tune with the village and its cemetery, while the artistic folk from Vienna clashed with both. The metropolitan note struck by these Viennese mourners is out of keeping with this village cemetery, I had thought as I walked in the long cortege. Every one of these mourners from Vienna is a foreign body in Kilb, I had thought as I followed the coffin, walking between the woman from the general store and Joana’s unhappy companion, who coughed as though he had some lung disease all the way from the church to the cemetery (which must have been over a mile). The possibility that he might have lung disease made me anxious, and whenever he coughed I held my breath for fear of being infected, until suddenly I reflected that I too had lung disease and was probably more infectious than he was, whereupon I began to cough even more than he did, and as soon as I started coughing he stopped, as though realizing that I had lung disease and might infect him ,for as soon as I began coughing he turned his face the other way and held a paper tissue to his nose as he walked. The woman from the general store wore a gray waterproof coat, the most sensible garment I saw at the funeral, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. In fact the local people were all sensibly dressed, whereas all the people from Vienna got hopelessly drenched, and those who had come in their ostentatious fur coats, expecting the weather to be cold (though in fact it was fairly warm), seemed grotesque and ludicrous; moreover the rain at once made them look messy, trickling down their fur coats like so much dirty gravy. Their umbrellas were soon blown inside out, and some were broken, by a fierce gust of wind that blew across the graves from the mountains as the cortege reached the cemetery. As always on such occasions, I recalled in the wing chair, the village priest had delivered a totally inept address at the graveside. All the same, times have changed, I remembered thinking as I stood at the graveside: he was at least delivering an address —only ten or twelve years earlier no priest would have delivered an address by a suicide’s grave anywhere in Austria. It was as primitive as all the other graveside addresses I have heard, and the voice of the priest, who seemed to have some kind of throat ailment, was so disagreeable and high-pitched that it hurt my ears to listen to it. Unfortunately, however, his address was also comprehensible and contained all the mendacity and hypocrisy the Catholic Church purveys on such occasions. Toward the end he recalled that he and Joana had both attended the village school and that he liked to remember her as the nicelocal girl ,and referring to her years in Vienna he spoke of the morass of the big city. He had the face of a small town official, not a typical peasant face, but the kind of face we find ourselves looking at whenever we go into a country store and ask for a hammer or a hoe, a pair of rubber boots or a scouring cloth, I thought, sitting in the wing chair — a sly, distrustful face that we dare not look at for more than a few seconds. By attending this funeral, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, this whole artistic contingent from Vienna was subjecting itself to a Catholic ceremonial with which it was no longer familiar (if it ever had been) or had become unfamiliar over the years, as I had; having had no contact with this kind of Catholic ceremonial for decades, if for no other reason, I found it entirely hypocritical. The Viennese mourners pretended to know when to stand up and when not, what to sing, what prayers to say and when, yet like me they were completely at sea. Consequently they prayed and sang mezza voce in a way that nobody could understand, always sitting down and standing up a second later than the local people. This Viennese artistic contingent only mouthed their words, and so the effect they produced was merely theatrical, I thought, and so was the effect I produced — or failed to produce, as the case may be. During the funeral my mind was totally occupied with the contents of Joana’s coffin and what they must look like. Throughout the ceremony my mind was taken up by this one abominable thought. After everything that Joana’s companion had told us in the Iron Hand about his experience in the mortuary chapel, I could not expel this obscene thought from my mind during the whole of the funeral ceremony, however hard I tried, for in all truth I did not wish to think about such a thing — naturally not, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and it occurred to me that what had prompted these speculations about the contents of the coffin was the complete lack of embarrassment shown by Joana’s companion (whom the woman from the general store always addressed as John ,though I did not yet know why) as he gave us his grisly account of his visit to the mortuary chapel and the transfer of Joana’s body. John shouldn’t have returned from the mortuary chapel and told us this story while we were eating our goulash, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; on the other hand I now admired him precisely for his lack of embarrassment and his obvious truthfulness, and I reflected that it would have been impossible for me or any of these artistic folk to give such an unembarrassed account of the transfer of the body. The mention of the plastic bag had made me feel sick, and indeed John did not spare us any details of the proceedings in the mortuary chapel. Only an unartistic person like him would have been capable of giving such a grisly account without feeling embarrassed, yet at the same time without any appearance of indecency, for there seemed to be nothing indecent about what he said, whereas it would have seemed indecent had anyone else said it. I reflected that it would have been indecent — indeed it would have been base and contemptible — had I given a similar account of the transfer of the body. John remained silent throughout the funeral, whereas all the others whispered to one another from time to time, I thought. It had seemed strange to all who were present that he should be the first to step up to the edge of the grave, take a handful of earth from the shovel held out to him by the sexton, and throw it onto the coffin lying far below, though probably none of them could have said why it seemed strange; in fact it was entirely logical for him to do so, since Joana’s former husband, the tapestry artist, was not present and there were apparently no surviving relatives. Standing by Joana’s open grave he looked both ugly and pathetic; the people watching him were profoundly disturbed by the sight, and I myself was revolted by it, though privately (without expressing or in any way indicating how I felt) I was prepared to think of him as a good man. He’s a good man ,I said to myself, seeing him standing like that beside Joana’s grave; I do not know what prompted this reaction, and it is not important. While we were still at the graveside Auersberger’s wife spoke to me and asked me whether I would like to drive back to Vienna with them, but I immediately refused with a brusqueness which never fails to give offense whenever I resort to it. I simply said No. Afterwards, in the Iron Hand ,most of the people from Vienna got together at a long table; I had to sit there too, the Auersbergers having more or less forced me to do so by addressing me in characteristic fashion in front of all the others and inviting me to join them, in such a way that I was unable to refuse. I would much rather have sat at the same table as Joana’s companion, the woman from the general store, and one or two other local people who had been childhood friends of Joana’s. The Auersbergers forced me, by the manner of their invitation, to sit at their table, which was something I had been dreading throughout the funeral: I had no wish to spend even the shortest time with them in Kilb ,since I was invited to their artistic dinner that same evening in the Gentzgasse. I pretended to be struck dumb by grief over Joana’s suicide and did not say a word, while the Auersbergers and the others had a goulash like the one I had had before the funeral I ordered myself a plate of sliced sausage and salad with extra onions; I also ate a couple of rolls, something I had never done before — simply out of nervousness. The Auersbergers talked incessantly about their artistic dinner , to which they had invited the actor, the Burgtheater actor, and they kept on saying how much this tragedian (as Auersberger’s wife insisted on calling him) had impressed them in The Wild Duck. Auersberger’s wife kept on wanting to tell us what role the actor had played in The WildDuck ,but she could not remember, until in the end I said Ekdal ,whereupon, in a hysterical outburst, she shouted the name Ekdal across the room in a way that embarrassed everyone. She kept on shouting Ekdal, Ekdal, Ekdal, right, Ekdal, until her husband told her to calm down. Auersberger, little paunchy Auersberger, was of course drunk as usual. He had been drunk during the funeral service, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. He’s been drunk almost continuously for as long as I’ve known him — it’s a miracle that he’s still alive; twice a year he goes to Kalksburg for a drying-out cure, I thought, and that’s apparently enough to keep him alive. He had the same bloated face he had had twenty years earlier — hardly any wrinkles, the characteristic gelatinous gray complexion, the same glassy blue eyes as before, I thought. Ekdal, Ekdal, his wife kept screaming, though nobody in the room knew what she was screaming about. Finding her so repellent as she shouted out Ekdal, Ekdal, I became very rude and asked, Which Ekdal? What do you mean — which Ekdal? she asked. To which I replied, Old Ekdal or Young Ekdal? There was a pause, during which everyone stared at her; she saw that I was needling her — in the most despicable fashion, I am bound to admit — and without looking up from her goulash she said, Old Ekdal. At that point she really hated me, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I could have slapped her face. Then her husband, who by now seemed totally drunk, suddenly pushed his goulash to the middle of the table and shouted toward the kitchen door, Thisfood’sabominable! He shouted these words in a voice of purest upstart viciousness. I had had the same goulash before the funeral and found it quite excellent, and all the others who had ordered goulash were of my opinion, not his. For as long as I have known him Auersberger has always found fault with the food served at any inn or restaurant, even the choicest. At least it was ill-mannered to make such a scene, especially at an excellent establishment like the IronHand ,which I know to be generally well run, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. For as long as he’s been married to his wife, who provides the financial support, Auersberger has always behaved atrociously in restaurants. Having yelled these words in the direction of the kitchen, he leaned back in his chair and stuck his tongue out at his wife. During the course of their marriage she had become so accustomed to her husband’s tasteless foolery that she was not at all surprised when he stuck his tongue out at her. She merely lowered her head and tried to finish the goulash, for which he had wanted to destroy her appetite. Her manner of eating, while hardly the acme of refinement, was not inelegant, whereas her husband’s had always been simply comic, I suddenly thought, sitting in the wing chair. This parvenu had wanted to acquire aristocratic table manners, but never progressed beyond a grotesquely comic use of his knife and fork. He was always ridiculous at table, I now thought, sitting in the wing chair, just as he was ridiculous in everything he did, and he became more ridiculous as time went on, because he constantly endeavored to do everything in an increasingly refined fashion, to make himself more refined, to apply whatever knowledge he acquired about so-called aristocratic manners in every sphere, and this in time made him seem not only increasingly comic and grotesque, but increasingly repellent, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. After he had hurled his insult in the direction of the kitchen, leaned back in his chair and stuck his tongue out at his wife, a pause intervened. Then he said suddenly, I don’t like Strindbergat all , and looked around at the assembled company. At this point I jumped up and ostentatiously went to sit with John and the woman from the general store, thinking to myself, No, I don’t want to have anything to do with this party. After joining John and the woman from the general store at their table, I heard Auersberger’s wife say, The Wild Duck is by Ibsen. From then on I simply ignored the artists’ table and ordered a glass of beer. I wanted to get more information out of John than he had already vouchsafed, not only about the transfer of the body, but about everything connected with Joana, and the woman from the general store was just as keen as I was to get him to tell us what his life with Joana had really been like. He told us that he had first met her in her apartment in the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse, which she had converted into what she called a movement studio in the mid-sixties. A girl friend of his, who had taken lessons from Joana for some time, took him along with her one day to Joana’s apartment in the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse so that he could see what a good sport Joana was, or, as John put it, what an artistic nature she had, as I recalled, sitting in the wing chair. He had paid a second and then a third visit to Joana’s with his girl friend, and then he had started going alone, without his girl friend, with whom he split up overnight because of Joana. He had not taken lessons from her, he said, but found security with her, and she had found security with him. Basically he had no time for the movement studio ,as Joana called it; right from the start he had been convinced that Joana used the movement studio simply as a means to keep herself above water from a personal point of view ,as he put it, since there was nothing in it for her from an intellectual or financial point of view. The only people who went there were people with virtually no means, young hopefuls in the acting profession and older theatrical people who at the age of fifty or sixty had not yet given up hope of a career, though naturally they no longer had the slightest prospect of making one. After he had slept with her several times he moved in as her lodger. His real name was Friedrich ,but Joana disliked the name, and so from the beginning she had called him not Friedrich, but John ,and ever since then he had been John to everybody. He came from Schwarzach Sankt Veit, a rail junction I knew well, in the Salzburg province. His father had been a railroad worker among other things. He had gone to school at Sankt Johann, then to a technical college in Salzburg. At the age of twenty-three he had gone to Vienna, and to make ends meet he had worked for a film company in Sievering, where he had got to know his previous girl friend, the one who introduced him to Joana, I recalled in the wing chair. At first he had pretended to Joana that he was interested in her movement lessons, though in fact he did not have the least interest in them, and to prove how great his interest was he had hopped around a few times ,as he put it, with his girl friend, but then he had abandoned the pretense, giving Joana to understand at a fairly early stage that he was interested in her and not in her movement lessons. According to John she was not at all put out by this, I recalled in the wing chair. Joana earned no money, and by now more or less all her possessions had been sold. She got no support from her tapestry artist, not having heard from him since he had left her; all this time she had no idea whether or not he was still living in Mexico, or whether he was still with her friend who had gone with him to Mexico (according to John she used to speak of her friend’s being abducted ). He therefore took it upon himself to provide for her. She had continued to give lessons for another two years after he moved in with her, but finally, on his orders, she gave up the movement studio, which had brought nothing but unhappiness, vexation and dissension into their lives. Wanting to wean her off drink, he had paid for her to have seven periods of treatment at the KalksburgClinic ,but all to no avail: no sooner had she returned from Kalksburg than she started drinking again, until in the end she became a complete lush ,as he put it. But he did not desert her. He said he had really loved her ,I recalled, sitting in the wing chair and looking into the music room; he said he had wanted to carefor this unhappy girl ,as he described her in the Iron Hand. Joana was always an unhappygirl ,he said, as I now recalled, sitting in the wing chair; he repeated these words several times. I did not see it that way, for the Joana I had known was a happy person — at least she was happy in the fifties, I thought, and up to the mid-sixties, at any rate until the time when she was deserted by the tapestry artist. It was only then that unhappiness and misfortune closed in on her, I thought. John, however, had known her only as an unhappy girl whom he wanted to make happy, though he had not succeeded, I thought. He said several times, I wanted to make Joana happy, but I failed. The whole helplessness of his situation was summed up in this sentence, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. He told us that she often went to Kilb, not always with him; she often went back home, only to return to Vienna disillusioned. At first he’d tried to do it by gentleness and then by firmness (these were his own words), I recalled. But finally he realized that Joana could not be saved. On the evening before she killed herself she had said good-bye to him, as she always did when she went to Kilb. It was six in the morning when the woman from the general store had called him. She had told him straight out, without beating about the bush , that Joana had hanged herself, whereas with me she had behaved quite differently, not telling me straight out, but only gradually as I began to press her for details. She told John at once that Joana had killed herself, that she had hanged herself, but she did not tell me at once. I mulled this fact over for some time in the wing chair. She’s more familiar with John than she is with me, I had thought as I sat with them in the IronHand ,and immediately confided in him. To John she says directly what she thinks, but not to me: she speaks to me in a stilted and roundabout manner, as country people do when talking to people from the city, as so-called uneducated people do when talking to so-called educated people, as people who consider themselves inferior do when talking to their so-called betters. It had not surprised him, John suddenly said, turning to the woman from the general store, with whom he must have had fairly close contacts for some time, I reflected in the wing chair. He had put his winter overcoat on, slung his black bag over his shoulder, and come out to Kilb. What happened after that, he said, had been utterly depressing. If there was one person in Kilb today who truly mourned Joana and was genuinely shattered by her suicide, I thought, it was John, who is not at all as degenerate as I had thought all along. As I thought about this man I suddenly became aware that he had many good qualities and decided that, even though Joana had ultimately killed herself, he had been the saving of her, her refuge ,somebody she could believe in, at any rate for seven or eight years, for without such a refuge she would probably have killed herself much earlier, I now reflected in the wing chair. Joana had wanted to achieve something special in Vienna, but according to John she couldn’t break loose from Kilb, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I cannot remember how she met Fritz, the tapestry artist. When I met her she had been married to him for some years, and I always believed that they were very happily married: at least this was the impression I always had when I visited them in the Sebastiansplatz. At times I actually thought of the apartment in the Sebastiansplatz, this big studio where I could do more or less as I pleased, as my home. Fritz and his wife Joana, née Elfriede, were a focal point of Vienneseartistic life ,where the so-called dramatic and the so-called plastic arts had entered upon a seemingly ideal marriage, and where all art — or what I then considered to be art — could come together. At this studio in the Sebastiansplatz, in the mid-fifties, I met more or less all the significant Viennese artists and scholars who were well known at the time, though not necessarily famous — as well as all the pseudo-artists and pseudo-scholars — and it was among such people and through contact with them that I came to see myself as a writer in the making, even as a fellow artist. I had lodgings in the Nussdorferstrasse, in the Eighteenth District, where I spent my time sleeping, but it was in the Sebastiansplatz, in the Third District, that I had my temple of art ,which I would enter at about five o’clock in the afternoon and not leave until about three in the morning. Fritz’s looms, worked by two or three female assistants, were set up in enormous rooms, eighteen or twenty feet high; it was on these looms that he created his tapestries, which were already much sought after, at least by experts, all over Europe. It was quite by chance, Fritz said simply, that he had become a tapestry artist, having previously been a painter working in oils. He always gave the impression of being a quiet man who did not parade his intelligence and for whom a precise program of work was the be-all and end-all of existence: all the time I knew him he could never be deflected by anything or anybody from his eight-hour working day, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. He smoked a short English pipe, which he never removed from the corner of his mouth, not even when he was talking to you, which he was always reluctant to do when weaving, but always did without losing his cool, as they say. The English pipe remained in his mouth even when it had gone out and was completely cold. His brother was a highly esteemed Viennese architect, who built what are called major residential apartments on the outskirts of the city and whom his brother always referred to as that brilliant urban vandal. Despite having grown up in a well-to-do family with a town house and a more or less princely estate in the wine-growing district of Baden, Fritz was a thoroughly modest man ,or so it appeared right up to the time when, as already mentioned, he bolted to Mexico. It was not only artists who gathered in the apartment in the Sebastiansplatz, but so-called important people from every walk of life, whom Joana would seek out and invite to visit them, on the one hand to satisfy her already pathological need for company, and on the other to ensure that her husband’s tapestries became increasingly well-known and increasingly expensive. And so naturally newspaper critics and politicians were always being invited to the Sebastiansplatz; this, it now strikes me, was precisely the kind of social ambience I craved more than anything as a young man in search of wider horizons. In the Sebastiansplatz I found, as it were, an ideal cross-section of Viennese society, which was necessary, indeed indispensable, to the up-and-coming artist, and above all to the up-and-coming writer I fervently believed myself to be, and I can say without hesitation that the Sebastiansplatz suddenly afforded an important foundation for my intellectual development, the course of which was charted, as they say, once and for all in the early fifties. Joana had all the attractiveness that beautiful women from Vienna and its environs can possibly have, and her taste served her purposes ideally, exercising a powerful magnetism over the artistic, intellectual and political society of Vienna. When she received her guests in the Sebastiansplatz, she would wear long dresses of her own design (though not of her own making), now in the Indian style, now in the Egyptian, now in the Spanish, now in the Roman. At all these receptions she displayed a gaiety of temperament which was enhanced by a highly individual intelligence, embodying as it were the artistic spirit of Vienna, and naturally captivated everyone who visited the Sebastiansplatz. Having attended two or three of her receptions, I suddenly became her favorite regular guest, so to speak. In those days no other address in Vienna exercised such a pull over me as the Sebastiansplatz, for I loved the studio, I loved Fritz the tapestry artist, and I loved Joana. Before I went to the Sebastiansplatz I had never seen a studio like this, such a large theaterof art ;I was fascinated by everything in the Sebastiansplatz, which for many years remained for me the very center of Vienna. Gradually I acquired what I may call a conception of art ;I met all the artists, all the geniuses, as well as all those who were set upon becoming artists and geniuses. Observing Joana in the Sebastiansplatz, I was able to see how such a society comports itself ,how it develops, how it is attracted, cultivated, nurtured and tamed, and how it can ultimately be abused and exploited. To put it in the simplest terms: in the Sebastiansplatz I studied society — and not only artistic society — and began to get a clear view of how it functioned. It was in the Sebastiansplatz that I first saw what artists were, what they were like ,and what made them what they were. I also learned what they were not and never could be as long as they lived. In the Sebastiansplatz I was free to study them as I have never been able to since, with supreme intensity and hence with supreme receptivity, for at that time I was capable of the utmost intensity and receptivity. I may say that it was in the Sebastiansplatz that I first got to know human beings; I already knew them to some extent, better than many others in my position, but it was only in the Sebastiansplatz that I found out what human beings were really like, human beings of every kind, by making a conscious study of them. It was in the Sebastiansplatz that I began to evolve a method of watching and observing people which was to become my own personal art, an art which I was to practice for the rest of my life. It was in the Sebastiansplatz that I learned not only to admire human beings and human society, but also to despise them, I thought, to find them at once attractive and repellent. It was in the Sebastiansplatz that I first became clearly aware of the power and the impotence of artists, and of human beings in general; it was as though I was able at last to disperse the impenetrable fog that had hitherto blocked my view of so-called artistic society. Never before or since have I seen so many artists almost every day and every night as I did in the Sebastiansplatz, and all these artists — most of whom, it occurs to me, were probably what I would now call non-artists ,and probably remained such — flitted in and out of the apartment in the Sebastiansplatz, while I stayed there nearly all the time, admiring Fritz as he sat dedicatedly working at his tapestries, and loving Joana as she dreamed of her future fame in the biggest of all Vienna’s studios. Today, if I see some so-called celebrity mentioned in the newspapers, it is almost certain to be somebody I met in the Sebastiansplatz. Joana’s fellow students who had studied and qualified with her at the Reinhardt Seminar had long since disappeared in the many theatrical cesspits that existed in Vienna in those days. Meanwhile Elfriede Slukal, in what she believed to be a moment of clairvoyance, decided to transform herself into Joana and become the wife of Fritz the tapestry artist. While her former colleagues had for years been forced into the nerve-racking business of pandering to a sick public with an insatiable appetite for entertainment, prostituting themselves to a brand of literature that can be described only as pathetic, it is possible that Joana had already given up her dreams of having her own career and was concentrating solely on furthering that of her tapestry artist. She staked her whole talent — not only an artistic talent, but her phenomenal social talent —on her devoted Fritz, and in this she was successful right from the start. For without Joana, Fritz would never have become the international tapestry artist he now is; he would certainly not have won the big prize in São Paulo for his Associative Mountain Range ,and without Joana he would not be the famous professor who from time to time hits the headlines, as they say, in today’s newspapers and magazines. Joana sacrificed herself for Fritz, it seems to me, and never recovered from her sacrifice; this was probably the cause of the lifelong despair she had to endure, without ever showing it, a despair which I think probably broke her, as they say, though not until eight or nine years after the collapse of her marriage, when she tried to find consolation with John, the commercial traveler. She made of Fritz what she had wanted to make of herself — a respected, celebrated and finally world-famous artistic personality. She forced him to the top because she could not force herself to the top; of the two of them it was Fritz ,not she, who was actually cut out for world fame. From the moment she realized that she was not cut out for a career, let alone for an international career and international fame, she forced Fritz into a career, into an international career, into the straitjacket of an international career, as it now strikes me, but this brought her only temporary, not permanent, satisfaction. Without Joana, it seems to me, Fritz would have remained a charming pipe-smoking painter and carpet weaver, catering to middle-class demands, an affable fellow who was content with his work, his pipe and a glass of wine before he went to bed, either alone or in company. Joana more or less jolted him out of his mediocrity, first causing the artistic sap to rise and then bringing him into full bloom. But in the long run Joana could not be satisfied by Fritz’s tapestries, which in due course hung in all the important museums and on the walls of executive suites in all the big industrial concerns, insurance companies and banks: the more well-known, the more famous his name and his art became, the more dejected she, the author of his success, was bound to be. When Fritz was at the zenith of his fame, Joana herself had naturally reached the nadir of dejection, but by now she could no longer break off her work, the building up and perfecting of her Fritz, at this high point in his career; Fritz was her one work of art, at which outwardly she continued to labor, progressively increasing its dimensions, though in her heart of hearts, as they say, she had long since come to hate it. It was, I think, this process of being perpetually forced to go on adding to the stature of her work of art and in doing so to push herself down to ever greater depths, that brought about her ruin. Joana was finally crushed, it seems to me, by the immense weight of the work that she had created and brought more or less to completion — by her beloved Fritz. What she had been unable to achieve in herself, namely the birth of a great artist, a so-called major artist, she achieved in the person of Fritz, and when the work had become reality and she saw what she had done, what she had on her conscience, it literally frightened her to death. If we cannot become what we want to become, we resort to another person — inevitably the person closest to us — and make of him what we have been unable to make of ourselves, Joana had probably thought, and so, I think, she fashioned Fritz into this colossal work of art which finally crushed and destroyed her. No one who knew Fritz would have thought it possible for him to become the world-famous artist he did become, or for his work to achieve the international acclaim it did achieve, for it was obvious to all that everything about him was quite incompatible with fame of such magnitude. Yet despite what everyone thought he did become a world-famous figure, thanks, I believe, to Joana. It was she, I believe, who transformed the honest unpretentious Fritz into the celebrated man of the world he is today, because she was able, through her absolute dedication, to invest in him everything she was forced to deny herself, a boundless and unquenchable thirst for fame. I have no hesitation in saying that Fritz is Joana’s handiwork; I will go further and say that Fritz’s art, the works he created, all the tapestries that now hang in famous museums throughout the world, are really Joana’s, just as everything he is today derives from Joana, is Joana. But obviously nobody takes an idea like this seriously, even though of course such ideas, which are not taken seriously, are actually the only serious ideas and always will be. It is only in order to survive, it seems to me, that we have such serious ideas which are not taken seriously. What am I doing in this company, with which I have had no contact and have wanted no contact for twenty years, people who have gone their own way just as I have gone mine? I asked myself, sitting in the wing chair. What am I doing in the Gentzgasse? And I told myself that I had momentarily yielded to sentimentality in the Graben and that I should never have yielded to such disgraceful sentimentality. To think that I weakened for a moment in the Graben and made myself cheap by accepting an invitation from the Auersbergers, I said to myself, sitting in the wing chair, people whom I’ve despised and detested for so many years! For no more than a moment we become disgustingly sentimental, I told myself in the wing chair, and commit the crime of stupidity, going somewhere we ought never to go and even visiting people we despise and detest, I thought, sitting in the wing chair: I’ve actually come to the Gentzgasse, and this is without doubt not just an act of folly, but conduct of the most contemptible kind. We become weak and walk into the trap, into the social trap, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, for to me this apartment in the Gentzgasse is nothing but a social trap, and I’ve just walked into it. For there can be no doubt that the Auersbergers feel nothing but hatred for me, and so do all the other members of the party in the by now foul-smelling music room, as they await the arrival of the actor from the Burgtheater, who is enjoying such a great success in The WildDuck ,as Auersberger’s wife never tires of repeating, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They’ve been waiting for him longer than they’d ever have waited for me, I thought. The actor’s bound to make their evening, I thought — this self-important theatrical blockhead! For the sake of this disagreeable individual they’ve let themselves be kept waiting over two hours for a supper which the hostess insists on calling an artistic dinner ,probably because that’s what she’s always called her dinners, though I remember them only too clearly as revolting dinners ,I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Whether at Maria Zaal or in the Gentzgasse, dinners at the Auersbergers’ were always more or less revolting; they always wanted to give the grandest dinners and always convinced themselves that they succeeded, but in reality their dinners were always revolting and ridiculous, utterly ludicrous and unappetizing, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They were always meant to be the acme of refinement, but they always turned out to be the acme of tastelessness — they were intended to be the most splendid occasions, but they unfailingly turned out to be unmitigated disasters, I recalled in the wing chair. The food was supposed to be superb, yet what was dished up was always inadequate, I thought; whenever they gave a supper party they planned to serve the choicest food, but time and again what eventually arrived on the table fell so far short of what they had planned as to be positively embarrassing. Basically their suppers never worked out: the food was never particularly good, though it was often quite good, and the wine was never particularly good, or even quite good: it was uniformly bad — of poor quality and served either too warm or too cold, and it was always either too sweet or too dry, I recalled in the wing chair. And as hosts the Auersbergers always came unstuck ,as they say, right at the beginning of any supper party or dinner party they gave: after the first two or three mouthfuls they would invariably rise to each other’s dreadful provocations and drag their guests, willy-nilly, into the chaos of their personal lives. They never showed any consideration for their guests, whom they would start pelting quite shamelessly with their marital filth when they tired of merely pelting each other; in addition to the inadequate food they would dish up their own distasteful innards in front of the outraged guests, whom they finally drove away with their marital brawls, their mutual insults, and their torrents of mutual recrimination. I can remember scarcely a single supper with them, either at Maria Zaal or in the Gentzgasse, that did not culminate in some marital explosion; all their dinner parties — or rather supper parties — in the Gentzgasse would finally blow up, in the truest sense of the word, and at Maria Zaal they usually left behind a scene of conjugal carnage and a foul stench of unholiest matrimony, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and looking into the music room. The Auersbergers were perversely obsessed with their own social indigence, she because she came of a rather ridiculous family belonging to the Alpine gentry of Styria, he because his maternal grandfather had been a butcher’s assistant at Feldbach and his father a petty local government official. This was no doubt why they always felt they had to hoist themselves up the social ladder, an effort that required all the energy they could muster and was always obvious to the eye of the trained observer, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. All her life she was constantly trying to escape from her origins, just as he was from his — she from the idyll of her gentle Styrian birth, he from the paternal destiny of petty local officialdom and the maternal low-pressure zone inhabited by butchers’ assistants — all of which was bound to appear irresistibly comic to anyone around them who had eyes to see and ears to hear. She was forever trying, by every means at her command, to climb just one rung further up the ladder from her pathetic Styrian idyll into the higher echelons of rural barons and counts, though in all the years I have known the Auersbergers her endeavors were of no avail, for whenever she so much as got a grip on this higher rung of the nobility which she so fervently wished to reach, she was brutally and unceremoniously thrust down by those who occupied it, by the very people with whom she longed to be associated, and this, I know, caused her endless pain. She failed in all her attempts to reach this superior rung of the rural nobility and hold on to it — at least for a while, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, for she knew that she could not hold on forever.Читать дальше