Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutters

negligence to myself several times; I kept on repeating the word — it was as if the word gave me pleasure as I sat in the wing chair — until the people in the music room noticed, and when I saw them all looking in my direction I stopped repeating it. They were all friends of mine thirty years ago, I thought, and I could no longer understand why. For a time we go in the same direction as other people, then one day we wake up and turn our backs on them. I turned my back on these people — they didn’t turn their backs on me, I thought. We attach ourselves to certain people, then suddenly we hate them and let go. We run after them for years, begging for their affection, I thought, and when once we have their affection we no longer want it. We flee from them and they catch up with us and seize hold of us, and we submit to them and all their dictates, I thought, surrendering to them until we either die or break loose. We flee from them and they catch up with us and crush us to death. We run after them and implore them to accept us, and they accept us and do us to death. Or else we avoid them from the beginning and succeed in avoiding them all our lives, I thought. Or we walk into their trap and suffocate. Or we escape from them and start running them down, slandering them and spreading lies about them, I thought, in order to save ourselves, slandering them wherever we can in order to save ourselves, running away from them for dear life and accusing them everywhere of having us on their consciences. Or they escape from us and slander and accuse us, spreading every possible lie about us in order to save themselves, I thought. We think our lives are finished, and then we chance to meet them and they rescue us, but we are not grateful to them for rescuing us: on the contrary we curse them and hate them for rescuing us, and we pursue them all our lives with the hatred we feel toward them for having rescued us. Or else we try to curry favor with them and they push us away, and so we avenge ourselves by slandering them, running them down wherever we can and pursuing them to their graves with our hatred. Or they help us back on our feet at the crucial moment and we hate them for it, just as they hate us when we help them back on their feet, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. We do them a favor and then think we are entitled to their eternal gratitude, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. For years we are on terms of friendship with them, then suddenly we no longer are, and we don’t know why. We love them so fervently that we become positively lovesick, and they reject us and hate us for our love, I thought. We’re nothing, and they make something of us, and we hate them for it. We come from nowhere, as people say, and they perhaps make a genius out of us, and we never forgive them for it, just as if they’d made a dangerous criminal out of us, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. We take everything they have to give us, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and we punish them with a life sentence of contempt and hatred. We owe everything to them and never forgive them for the fact that we owe everything to them, I thought. We think we have rights when we have no rights of any kind, I thought. No one has any rights, I thought. There’s nothing but injustice in the world, I thought. Human beings are unjust, and injustice prevails everywhere — that’s the truth, I thought. Injustice is all we have to hand, I thought. These people have never done anything but pretend to be something, while in reality they’ve never been anything: they pretend to be educated, but they’re not; they pretend to be artistic (as they call it), but they’re not; and they pretend to be humane, but they’re not, I thought. And their supposed kindness was only pretense, for they were never kind. And above all they pretended to be natural, and they were never natural: everything about them was artificial, and when they claimed — in other words, pretended — to be philosophical, they were nothing but eccentric, and it struck me again how repellent they had seemed to me in the Graben when they told me they now had bought everything by Wittgenstein ,just as twenty-five years earlier they had said they had bought everything by FerdinandEbner ,with just the same tasteless pretense to a knowledge of philosophy — or at least to an interest in philosophy — because they thought they had to for my benefit, since they believed then — and probably still do — that I have a philosophical bent, that I am a philosophizer — which I am not, for to this day I really have no idea what the words philosopher and philosophize mean. At various times they pretended to know about French or Spanish or German literature. And it is of course true that I got to know the works of many Spanish and French writers, as well as most German writers, while I was staying with them, especially at Maria Zaal, where they have an enormous library, much bigger than the one in the Gentzgasse, though this too is fairly substantial — what one might call a representative library, even a scholar’s library, founded by the great-grandfather of Auersberger’s wife, also for show. The Auersbergers, who inherited this library, have probably taken out no more than twenty or thirty volumes in the past thirty years, whereas I positively fell upon these collections in the Gentzgasse and Maria Zaal with all the passion of the ignoramus, as I have to admit. And perhaps what tied me to the Gentzgasse and Maria Zaal was not so much the Auersbergers themselves as the extensive libraries which their forebears had founded merely for show, a show of scholarship, culture and comprehensive knowledge — the kind of wide-ranging knowledge that is deemed to go with metropolitan life — things that have always been in fashion. There has never, I think, been a time when it was not fashionable to pretend to comprehensive knowledge, and even if it has become somewhat less fashionable in the last two decades, it is now all the rage again. They’ve always gone in for show, I thought, because they lack any capacity for reality. Everything about them has always been show: their social relations amount to nothing but show, and the same is true of their relations with each other, their marital relations: they’ve always put on a show of marriage because they’ve never been capable of sustaining a real one, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. And it’s not only the Auersbergers who’ve always lived a life of pretense: all these people in the music room have only ever made a pretense of living — they’ve never really lived, they’ve never for one moment led a real life, a life that had any link with reality. They’ve never had the courage or the strength or the love of truth that is required for real living. They’ve always lived in accordance with fashion ,I thought, cloaking themselves in fashion and becoming slaves to fashion for the sake of show, I thought. When it was fashionable in Vienna to read Ferdinand Ebner they read Ferdinand Ebner, just as today, when it’s fashionable to read Wittgenstein, they read Wittgenstein, but of course they didn’t really read Ferdinand Ebner then, and they don’t really read Wittgenstein today. Thirty years ago they went out and bought Ebner’s works, just as today they go out and buy Wittgenstein’s; they talk about them but don’t read them, and they continue to talk about them, without reading them, until suddenly what they’ve been talking about continually — sometimes for years — goes out of fashion, and all at once they stop talking about it. Wittgenstein is now talked about in Vienna as much as Ferdinand Ebner once was, yet it seems to me that Wittgenstein was more a philosopher than a teacher and Ferdinand Ebner more a teacher than a philosopher, and that Wittgenstein will survive and go down in history as a philosopher, unlike Ferdinand Ebner, who has already gone down in history simply as a teacher. The Auersbergers always made a show of being grand, just as they made a show of being artistic, and of course above all they always made a show of being humane, indeed hyper-humane, I thought, though beneath all this show they were never capable of being anything but pathetic: they could never be what they really wanted to be — first-class citizens, aristocrats — and members of the highest ranks of the aristocracy at that. What was so grotesque about them was that they remained constantly wedded to this comic but distasteful view of the world and let themselves be worn down by it day and night. They also made a show of patronizing the arts, however, and whenever they invited anyone, no matter whom, from outside the ranks of the aristocracy, they felt this to be an act of patronage, I thought. In the end I dubbed them rural patrons of the arts —a kind of ironic carnival title, but they took this bitter jest of mine at face value. Instead of traveling extensively , instead of broadening their minds by extensive travel, as they could so easily have afforded to do with all their money, they wasted all their time — whole decades of their lives — aping the upper crust and endeavoring to be aristocrats. These sedulous apes exhausted themselves in this aristocratic mania of theirs, of which they could not be cured and had no wish to be cured, I thought. They made a show of being artistic, yet remained essentially petit bourgeois, too feeble to behave like members of the true bourgeoisie, let alone its upper reaches, which they feebly affected to despise, I thought. And so they exploited to the utmost anyone who walked into their trap, I thought. But the people they exploited had no one to blame but themselves, I thought, for they were fully aware that they were being exploited and derived the greatest benefit from it. The victims of the Auersbergers’ exploitation did indeed benefit from it, just as I did for years. It would be true to say that this exploitation eventually had the same effect as a health cure: the Auersbergers’ exploitation cure finally brought me back to health, I thought. Having been thoroughly sick in both mind and body when I first met them thirty years ago, I regained my health, though not my happiness, through submitting to the Auersbergers’ exploitation cure, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. They rescued me thirty years ago, I thought, but I also rescued them — that’s the truth. Now they’re pretending that they’re giving their artistic dinner for the artists they’ve invited, whereas in reality they’re giving it for their own miserable selves. Ostensibly they’re giving it for the actor, who, being an actor from the Burgtheater, allows himself to be fêted everywhere, just as all Burgtheater actors allow themselves to be fêted everywhere and all the time in every corner of the city — ostensibly they’re giving this party for the highly successful and highly acclaimed starof The WildDuck ,for Ekdal, but really they’re giving it simply for themselves — ostensibly the dinner is being given for the guests, but as always it’s being given for the hosts, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They’ve bought masses of food, all to be cooked and dished up for their artistic guests, yet it’s actually been bought and cooked for themselves, and then they’ll call this artistic dinner of theirs a contribution to the patronage of the arts. For weeks on end they’ll tell everybody in Vienna that they gave a dinner for the actor who played Ekdal in The WildDuck, but what they won’t tell them is that he accepted their invitation only after they’d begged him for weeks, and that in order to get hold of him they’d almost torn themselves apart, as they say in Vienna. They’ll tell people that they gave a dinner, an artistic dinner , for the Burgtheater actor, as well as for a host of other artists who are not quite as distinguished as the actor, but nonetheless great artists, people who are also artists, artistic also-rans, one might say. They say they’re giving a dinner for this actor, yet in all probability he agreed to come only under duress, for there’s an element of blackmail in all their invitations, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They owe their entire social life to blackmail, I thought: whatever social show they put on, it’s always contrived by blackmail. Even if people go to their dinner parties more or less of their own free will, I thought, the Auersbergers still put them under a certain degree of duress. They’d much rather be entertaining aristocrats at their dinner table in the Gentzgasse, or at least people they take to be aristocrats, instead of the people who are here this evening, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They’d rather be entertaining some seedy prince or degenerate count and his hangers-on than these artistic folk , of whom they’ve always had a horror; for they’ve never really been keen on anything artistic: they’ve only ever put on a show of being artistic, I thought, just as they’re putting on this supper party as an artistic dinner , as a kind of show in other words. They’re probably thinking that even if they don’t have a prince or a count at their dinner table, they do at least have an actor from the Burgtheater, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, at the very moment when the actor arrived. People always refer to this man as a Burgtheater actor, because he has been playing at the Burgtheater for the last thirty or forty years. At dinner I was placed opposite Jeannie Billroth, the person I had found so revolting that afternoon at Kilb. They had all taken their places in the dining room before I was asked to the table — I was summoned so late, in fact, that I could only assume that they had forgotten about me, as they probably had. I had actually dozed off for a few moments in the wing chair, out of exhaustion, and woke up only when I was called to the dining room, that exquisite Empire monstrosity of theirs. Auersberger’s wife came into the anteroom to summon me to dinner. She must have spent some time trying to rouse me, for when I first heard her call my name I was at once aware that she must have called it several times already. She was about to shake my shoulder to wake me, but I forestalled her and pushed her hand away, perhaps a little roughly. In the semidarkness of the anteroom I could not see the expression on her face, but I think I must have offended her by my somewhat abrupt reaction. However, I immediately got up and followed her into the dining room, where, as I have said, they had all taken their places, with the Burgtheater actor in the place of honor. I now realized that I had slept through his entrance. I had not heard him come in, and since he would have had to walk right in front of me to reach the dining room and I had not heard him, I realized that I must have been asleep, presumably for several minutes, possibly even for half an hour or longer. When I took my place at the table I was still somewhat dazed. I watched the cook bring in the soup — an absurd procedure at a quarter to one in the morning, I thought. They all ate hurriedly, listening to what the actor had to say as he spooned up his soup. It had not been a good night ,he said: Notmy bestnight, as he put it. Several times the audience at the Burgtheater had shouted Speak up,speak up , no doubt because he was speaking his lines too softly. He did not know why — it sometimes happened that an actor became so completely absorbed in his art while performing on stage that he entirely forgot about the audience, whereas the audience wanted not only to see him, but to hear him and understand what he said. He eats his soup as clumsily as he acts, I thought, though my eyes were not on the actor, but on Jeannie Billroth. She, on the other hand, was watching him and apparently taking in everything he said as he hurriedly spooned up his soup, as though what he had to say were something quite extraordinary, something unique. I found myself sitting opposite the Virginia Woolf of Vienna, this creator of tasteless poetry and prose who has never done anything throughout her life, it seems to me, but wallow in her petit bourgeois kitsch. And someone like this dares to say that she has surpassed Virginia Woolf, whom I consider the greatest of all women writers and have admired for as long as I have been competent to form a literary judgment — somebody like this has the temerity to assert that in her own novels she has surpassed The Waves, Orlando and Tothe Lighthouse . Jeannie showed herself once more in her true petit bourgeois colors when we were at Kilb, I now reflected, sitting opposite her and cursing this grotesque and distasteful artistic dinner , which was now, thanks to the Burgtheater actor, a late-night artistic supper. To serve potato soup at a quarter to one in the morning and announce that a boiled pike is to follow is a perversion of which only the Auersbergers are capable, I said to myself, sitting opposite Jeannie, who had always had her own special way of eating soup, with the little finger of her right hand sticking up about half an inch above the others. Imagine serving a pike at a quarter to one in the morning in honor of an actor from the Burgtheater! The actor had already spooned up half his potato soup with great rapidity, as though he were famished , with such rapidity that some of it was now lodged in his beard. Ekdal, he said, spooning up his soup, has been my dream role for decades. And then he went on, interrupting himself after every other word to spoon up more soup, Ekdal —pause for a spoonful— has always —another spoonful— been my —another spoonful— favorite part , adding, after two more spoonfuls, for decades. And the phrase dream role he actually pronounced as though it denoted some culinary delicacy. Ekdal is my favorite role , he said several times, and I immediately wondered whether he would have said that Ekdal was his favorite role had he had no success in it. When an actor is successful in a certain role he says it’s his favorite: when he isn’t, he doesn’t, I thought. The actor went on spooning up his soup and repeating that Ekdal was his favorite role. For a long time none of the other guests said anything, but merely ate their soup and stared at the actor, as though he were the only one entitled to speak. When he ate fast, they ate fast; when he slowed down, they slowed down; and by the time he had finished the last spoonful, so had they. Long after they had finished their soup I still had half a plateful left. I did not like the taste, and so I did not eat it. He had always wanted to play in The WildDuck , and now at last he had the chance, the actor said with some pathos. If the other members of the cast had been better, if he had had ideal fellow actors in other words, he said — for they were not the best, they were not ideal; apart from himself the casting had been a makeshift affair —the production of The Wild Duck would have been an enormous success as a whole and not just where he was concerned. As it was, everybody had concentrated on his performance; the newspapers had written exclusively about him. It was not The WildDuck , not the production as such, that had been the great theatrical event, but his performance as Ekdal. Where would The WildDuckbe,where would Ibsenbe , were it not for him? — that was more or less what all the papers had asked if one read between the lines. He himself had a high regard for Ibsen, just as he had for Strindberg, indeed for all the so-called Nordic dramatists, but where would these dramatists be without actors like himself? He asked this in all modesty, he said, but at the same time quite openly. But of course in his opinion there was more to these dramatists than the papers made out, he said: quite irrespective of whether the acting was superb or not, Ibsen was a great writer, and so was Strindberg — they were both towering geniuses, towering figures in literary history, but where would they be without superb actors ? He must have had at least two or three glasses of champagne on arrival, I thought when I heard him say, Drama comes to life only when a good actor brings it to life. Whereupon he placed his hands on the table, raised his histrionic head, and said to Auersberger, I greatly enjoyed your new com position, my dear friend. At this Auersberger lowered his head; the successor of Webern lowered his head at the same moment as the actor raised his and paid his compliment. The whole company now fell silent, thinking that the pike was about to be brought in, but they were wrong: all that happened was that the cook entered the room empty-handed to ask whether the pike could now be served. The hosts indicated that it could. We actors are accustomed to dining late, the guest of honor remarked. We don’t usually dine until after midnight. It’s a typical feature of our profession that we don’t dine until after midnight. It’s an unhealthy life, the life of the theater, he added, breaking a pretzel stick in two. But an actor gets used to eating after midnight, he said. The role of Ekdal, more than any other, was his dream role, he said. You have to have great writing if you’re to give a consummate performance. He had studied the role for a whole six months, the actor went on, and in order to carry out this study of Ekdal he had withdrawnto a remote alpine chalet in the Tyrol, for it was only in such genuine solitude that he was able to understandthe role properly. Actors tended to approach a part either too early or too late, he said, and a part like Ekdal had to be approached at just the right moment. Great drama and great dramatic roles must always be approached at just the right moment . Ekdal was always my dream role, he said, but I’d never understood it properly. It was only when I was in the mountain chalet, concentrating solely on Ekdal, that I discovered the true nature of the character — and of The Wild Duck as a whole. The true nature of The Wild Duck! he exclaimed. It was in the mountain chalet, he said, that he had suddenly understood Ekdal. It was there, in the mountain chalet, that I saw the light, he said. Whereupon he leaned back and remarked that he had always been partial to pike— preferably from LakeBalaton, the genuine Balaton pike . Auersberger’s wife now interrupted his disquisition on Ekdal to say that naturally she would never serve any pike other than a Balaton pike — what other pike was there? One has to approach Ekdal with great sensitivity, the actor said. We rush around in the city for months on end, racking our brains, yet failing to understand Ekdal or relate to the character in any way, despite the fact that in the whole of world literature we’ve always felt him to be the figure who most appeals to us, and we finally give up in despair, he said. And then we go up the mountain and live in the alpine chalet, and we see the light. I had the same experience with Prospero, the actor went on. If Ieverplay Lear, he said, I shall go back to the chalet, and Iwon’t spend months beforehand waitingaround for enlightenment in this dreadful city . It was the Tyrolean atmosphere, the actor said, that had revealed the secret of Ekdal to him — living in a chalet, five and a half thousand feet above sea level, far from civilization. No electric light, no gas, no consumer society! he exclaimed as a warm plate was placed before him and he was invited to help himself to the pike. We must all scale the mountain heights if we are to get a proper view of the world , he said, helping himself to a second portion of pike. Incidentally, he said, he had never played Ibsen before — Strindberg yes, Edgar in The Dance of Death , but never Ibsen. He had not even played Peer Gynt when he was a young man, though that would have been an obvious part for him to play. We come up against so many producers, he said, and they never give us the parts we really want to play. Or the dramatists who are close to our hearts. We want to act in a Spanish play and we’re landed with a French one, he said. We want to play Goethe and we’re condemned to play Schiller. We want to appear in comedy, and we’re pushed into tragedy. Even being famous doesn’t ensure that you always get the parts you want to play, the actor went on. And how often is one promised a part, one of one’s favorite parts, he said, only to learn later that it’s been given to somebody else! Theaters don’t plan properly; nothing in the theater ever turns out according to plan. What’s finally presented to the public is always a compromise, a sloppy compromise. By his age, he said, actors like himself had long since learned to live with all this. Evenat the Burgtheater, Europe’s premier theater , as he put it, all we get is compromises. But what compromises! he said, implying that the compromises reached at the Burgtheater still constituted great theater. Any accidents that happened there were after all Burgtheater accidents, he said, implying that when all was said and done the Burgtheater was a great theater, despite repeated disasters. What he said was quite ludicrous. I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open, but the actor was obviously not at all tired. The rest of us were exhausted after attending Joana’s funeral and then spending more than two hours waiting for the actor to make his appearance. To think that you have to devote a whole six months to a part like Ekdal, he said, and that during these six months you have to give up everything else! A role like Ekdal completely takes you over , robbing you of all creature comforts while you’re studying it (this was the word he used), for after all it’s not much fun locking oneself away for weeks in a chalet in the Tyrol for the sake of Ekdal, living on virtually nothing but bread and water and pea soup, sleeping in an uncomfortable bed and hardly ever washing — the audience has no idea about all this and gives one no credit for it. And even if they applaud and the role is a great success, as Ekdal was this time, he said, the price one paysfor suchdevotion — I might evensay for such sacrifice — is toohigh. But then an actor’s life was a life of sacrifice , he said, trying to insert a note of irony into the remark but not succeeding, since it was clear to all that it was meant seriously. Such a role, he said, required an actor to give his all. First getting inside the work , he said, but how? Then arriving at a proper understanding of the writer, then of the part, and then the long period of rehearsals , which in this case had taken up the whole of the fall and the winter. We begin rehearsing at the end of August, and when rehearsals are completed we’re not aware that spring has come around again. With Shakespeare it’s quite different, he said, without telling us what it was that made Shakespeare different from Ibsen. Or Strindberg. During the rehearsal period, unless he happened to be acting in another play and had to appear on stage, he went to bed at ten and got up at six. He memorized his lines, incidentally, in front of the open window, pacing up and down in his bedroom. Being unmarried has always been an advantage, he said suddenly. I walk to and fro in my bedroom more or less from seven o’clock to eleven and memorize the text. I arrive at the first rehearsal having learned the whole text, he said. Producers are always amazed at this. Most actors turn up for rehearsals without knowing their lines, he said. I always have all my lines in my head when rehearsals begin. It’s sickening when one’s colleagues don’t know their lines. Sickening, he repeated as he helped himself to more of the pike, which was served with a sauce containing far too many capers. If I hadn’t built myself a house in Grinzing in 1954, he said, I might have gone on the German stage — who knows? I had numerous offers. I could have gone to Berlin, to Cologne, to Zurich. But what are all these cities compared with Vienna? he said. We hate Vienna, and yet we love it like no other city. Just as we hate the Burgtheater, though we love it like no other theater. Thissuccess I’ve had with Ekdal was quite unpredictable , he said, and as he said this I was watching Jeannie Billroth, who had become somewhat agitated, feeling that this evening she had been pushed into the background; she could not make herself the focus of attention that she always wanted to be, since the Burgtheater actor had so far not allowed her to get a word in, despite her repeated attempts to intervene. Again and again she had tried to take him up on some remark or other, but he had not given her the chance. But now, having heard him say that Ekdal was the most difficult part he had ever studied or played, she managed to remark that in her opinion the role of Edgar in Strindberg was much more difficult. But Edgar is a much more difficult part than Ekdal , she said. At any rate that had always been her impression from reading the play. She had never thought of Ekdal as a difficult part — except of course that all parts are difficult if they are to be well played and if they actually are well played. She had always felt, when reading the plays, that Edgar was more difficult than Ekdal. No! cried the Burgtheater actor, Ekdal is the more difficult of the two — that’s obvious. There she could not agree with him, said Jeannie Billroth, pointing out that she had once studied drama, incidentally under the famous Professor Kindermann. This evening too, as on all such occasions, she managed to mention the fact that she was once a pupil of Kindermann. Perhaps an actor was bound to think that Ekdal was the more difficult part, she said, whereas in fact Edgar was the more difficult. No, you must understand, the actor said to Jeannie Billroth, that when one has been an actor for decades, as I have — and an actor at the Burgtheater moreover — and when one has played nothing but leading roles for as long as one cares to think back, one knows what one is talking about. As a student of drama, of course, one has quite different views about the theater, he went on, but there’s no doubt that Ekdal is the more difficult role and Edgar the easier — easier when it comes to playing it, don’t forget. Jeannie Billroth was not satisfied with what the actor had said, and replied that it had surely been a proven fact for as long as the two roles had existed that Ekdal, not Edgar, was the easier role to play. Kindermann, her teacher, had demonstrated this quite clearly in an article entitled Edgar and Ekdal: A Comparison . Had he not read the article? Jeannie Billroth asked, to which he replied that he was not familiar with Kindermann’s article. That was regrettable, said Jeannie Billroth, for if he had read Kindermann’s discussion of Edgar (a Strindberg character) and Ekdal (an Ibsen character) before beginning rehearsals he could have spared himself many of the unpleasant aspects of his study of The Wild Duck , whereupon Auersberger, who had been on the lookout for an opportunity to say something himself, suddenly interjected, And all those weeks in the chalet! By now the actor himself wanted to change the subject and announced that he had lost one of his gloves on the way to the Gentzgasse. Had he not been late setting out he would have gone back to look for it, but he could not retrace his steps as he did not want to keep the Auersbergers on the rack any longer. People did not know what they were letting themselves in for when they invited him to dinner. It’s easy enough to invite me, he said, but the hosts don’t realize what’s involved until they notice that it’s half past twelve and the guest still hasn’t arrived. Yes ‚ acting is quite a profession, he said, as though this were one of the remarks he habitually made when he was at a loss for anything else to say. The hostess, who had had a second serving of pike brought to the table, remarked that it really was a pity he had lost one of his gloves on the way to the Gentzgasse. Losing one glove was just as bad as losing two, she said, as there was nothing one could do with one glove. And all the people at the table said that they had once lost a single glove and had the same feeling. But possibly whoever had found the glove would have handed it in, the hostess suggested. Where would he have handed it in? Auersberger asked his wife, with a burst of laughter which prompted everybody else to laugh. Who might have handed the glove in or might still do so, and where? he asked. Whereupon everyone sitting around the table recounted his own glove story. It transpired that they had all lost one glove on some occasion and felt the loss of one as keenly as the loss of a pair. And none of them had found the lost glove — none of the gloves had been handed in. Oh, if only it had been a pair! Auersberger’s wife said, and proceeded to tell her own glove story. About twenty years ago she had gone to the ladies’ room at the Josefstadt Theater and left her black evening gloves there. Both of them , she said, looking around at the assembled company. The play was Der Zerrissene, one of Nestroy’s best, she added. She had left her gloves in the ladies’ room during the interval, and immediately after the performance she had gone back to get them, assuming that they would still be on the table where she had left them. In the Josefstadt I naturally took it for granted, she said, that my gloves would still be there. Butthey ’ dgone. The attendant knew nothing about them, she said. But just imagine: two weeks after the performance of Der Zerrissene my evening gloves were returned to me. Anonymously, she added, leaning back in her chair for a moment — anonymously, and accompanied by a little card with the words Best wishes written on it. To this day I don’t know who it was who returned my evening gloves, she said. Shortly after this the actor turned to her and said: An excellent pike, a genuine Balaton pike, and the others indicated that they too had the same impression — that the pike they were eating was indeed a genuine Balaton pike. But you know, said the actor, who every now and then used his napkin, which he had stuck in his shirt collar, to wipe his mouth and surrounding beard, acting is quite a profession. Once, ages ago, when I was playing in Munich— at short notice, as they say —in the role of Heinrich (though that’s beside the point), I met a colleague in the Kaufingerstrasse whom I’d known some time earlier, before the war, and whom I’d shared digs with in the Lerchenfelderstrasse. No heating, as you may imagine, rats all over the place, nothing to eat — you know what it was like at the time: the Americans hadn’t arrived and the Russians were already there. Anyhow, I asked this colleague why he’d left Vienna. I’ll tell you why, he said: I’m utterly sick of Vienna. And what about Munich? I asked him, the Burgtheater actor went on, wiping his bearded chin. And he said, I’m utterly sick of Munich as well! So you might just as well have stayed in Vienna, I said, if you’re sick of Munich too. Incidentally this colleague was engaged at the time to play the kind of roles I played, the actor went on. Possibly his voice was too high-pitched for the roles he was called upon to play. It was a Strindberg voice, not an Ibsen voice. Fine for Goethe, but not for Shakespeare — and no good at all for Ibsen. All right for Molière, but not for Nestroy, certainly not for Nestroy, he said. Perhaps he was too fat — an undisciplined life-style, said the actor from the Burgtheater. Born at Vöcklabruck, basically a provincial, but a nice enough fellow — voice too high-pitched, married young, one child, divorced, long engagement at the Volkstheater. So you might just as well have stayed in Vienna, I said to him. He had a curious facial twitch, the actor recalled — a man with a great sense of humor, but he always got through all his money — an easygoing type, very easygoing. I told him I was rehearsing the role of Edgar. Oh, Edgar, he said — I’m not interested. Not interested? I said. Not interested? It was so cold, and I hadn’t any gloves — I was freezing the whole time. I’m rehearsing the role of Edgar, I repeated, but he wasn’t listening. I’m rehearsing Edgar! I shouted at him, the actor recalled. Then I turned on my heel and left him. A sweet man, the actor said, helping himself to a spoonful of caper sauce. Next day I read in the evening paper that he’d killed himself. In the Kaufingerstrasse, where he was living, though I didn’t know he was living there. Hanged himself! the Burgtheater actor said, drawing out the syllables. Actors are predestined to kill themselves, to hang themselves, said the actor from the Burgtheater. I’m not the suicidal type — not at all — but when I think of how many people in my line of business have killed themselves! Thoroughly talented people, the actor said, all of them potentially great actors , and they go and kill themselves. I was the last person to speak to him. We’d known each other since we were young. All the best people kill themselves, he said, taking a gulp of wine. The weather has a great deal to do with suicide, he said. The Burgtheater actor, having become somewhat melancholy through telling the story about the actor who had committed suicide in Munich, now recalled that Joana, whom he had not known personally, but whom the rest of us had known, had killed herself a few days earlier and been buried only that afternoon at Kilb. I assume that he had learned this from Auersberger. I oncesawyour friend Joana when she gavea talkat the Burgtheater about the art of movement, as she called it. I remember her very clearly, he said, suddenly affecting an attitude of grief and modulating his voice into a mourning key. A gifted person, he said, but quite out of place at the Burgtheater. The course she gave was an unfortunate mistake, he said. He then went on to say that during the past year he had attended the funerals of several fellow actors — there had been an unprecedented number of deaths among actors, he said, adding, and among cabaret artists. Ah yes, he said, addressing Jeannie Billroth, I know what it means to lose a lifelong friend. But when we reach a certain age we lose all the people who mean anything to us, all the people we love. He took a gulp of wine, and the hostess filled up his glass. So long as it’s a quick death, he said. Nothing is more dreadful than a protracted illness. It’s a blessing when somebody just collapses and dies, he said. But I’m not the suicidal type, he said again. There were more women who killed themselves than men, he said. Whereupon Jeannie Billroth pointed out that this was not true: statistics showed that the number of male suicides was double the number of female suicides. Suicide is a male problem, she said. She had read a study of the incidence of suicide in Austria, which showed that, as a percentage of the total population , as she put it, more people killed themselves in Austria than in any other country in Europe. Hungary had the second highest suicide rate and Sweden the third highest. And in Austria, interestingly enough, the people most likely to commit suicide were those who lived in the Salzburg region, in other words the most beautiful part of Austria. The Styrians are rather prone to suicide , said Auersberger, who by this stage was just about totally drunk and had become highly agitated. He told the actor that he was surprised that so few Burgtheater actors killed themselves, since they had such good reason to do so. Saying this he burst out laughing at his own remark, though the others merely found it embarrassing and glared at him. I myself momentarily joined in his laughter, thinking that despite his generally repugnant behavior Auersberger had a certain clownish wit that occasionally made even me laugh, averse though I generally am to jokes. What do you mean? the actor asked. I mean something quite simple, Auersberger replied: if the actors at the Burgtheater realized how pathetic their acting was, they’d all have to kill themselves. Present company excepted, Auersberger added, draining his glass. All right, the Burgtheater actor replied, if that’s what you think of the Burgtheater, why do you still go? Auersberger replied that he had not been to the Burgtheater for ten years. His wife at once corrected him, saying that only two weeks ago they had seen the performance of Der Verschwender. Oh yes, Der Verschwender, Auersberger retorted, and the performance was so bad that it turned my stomach, and I immediately forgot all about it. At first the actor did not know how to react to Auersberger’s remarks. The Burgtheater has always had its detractors, he said, which is what happens to any institution that is superlatively good. The Burgtheater has always been attacked, especially by those who have been eager to join it and been rejected. All the actors who haven’t had an engagement with the Burgtheater, he said, inveigh against it until they land one. It’s always been like that. Anything out of the ordinary attracts hostility, he said. Hating the Burgtheater is an old Viennese tradition, just like hating the State Opera. Even the theater managers hate the Burgtheater, constantly ridiculing it until they succeed, by their unscrupulous endeavors, in becoming Burgtheater managers themselves. But look, the actor continued: where else would you see a performance of The Wild Duck like the one we’re doing at the Burgtheater? Nowhere! You can go wherever you like, but nowhere will you find a comparable performance of The Wild Duck . Nowhere, Auersberger replied, since you’ve just said yourself that this production of The Wild Duck at the Burgtheater is a failure, and that according to the critics the only successful aspect of the production is your own performance in the role of Ekdal. Your performance as Ekdal is superb, but apart from that the production’s no good. You can’t put it like that, the actor said, you can’t say that this production of The Wild Duck is no good, even though it may have its shortcomings. Even this partial failure is much preferable to all the other WildDucks I’veeverseen,and I’veseen all the Wild Ducks that have been put on in recent years. I once saw The Wild Duck in Berlin, the first postwar WildDuck, the Burgtheater actor said, at the FreieVolksbühne ; I also saw The WildDuck at the Schillertheater. Both of them disastrous productions — and the same was true in Munich and Stuttgart. The German theater is praised only by total incompetents who haven’t the first notion of what theater is all about. It’s all fashionable journalism written by half-baked critics, said the actor. No, no, this Wild Duck at the Burgtheater is the best Wild Duck I’ve ever seen, and I’m not speaking from prejudice, even though I’m playing Ekdal in it. It’s far and away the best Wild Duck. I once saw the play in Stockholm — in Swedish the title is Vildanden. I didn’t like it at all. I felt I had to go to Stockholm to see the best Wild Duck there was to be seen, but it was a total disappointment. It’s not true that Scandinavian theaters put on the best performances of Scandinavian plays. I once saw a performance of The Wild Duck in Augsburg and found it far superior to anything I’d seen in Scandinavia. Naturally everything depends on Ekdal. If Ekdal’s no good the whole play’s no good. Don’t imagine for one moment that you hear the best Mozart performances in Salzburg or Vienna. People always make the mistake of thinking that a play gets its best productions in its country of origin. But they’re quite wrong. I once saw a Molière play performed in Hamburg in a way you’d never see it performed in Paris. And a Shakespeare production in Cologne that put all English Shakespeare productions in the shade. Of course it’s only in Vienna that you can see a good Nestroy production, the actor added. But not at the Burgtheater , Auersberger interjected. You’re probably right there , replied the actor. I have to admit that you’ve gota point. There’s never been a successful Nestroy production at the Burgtheater. But then where has there ever been a successful Nestroy production? Surely not at the Volkstheater, where by rights he belongs? Ofcourse not at the Volkstheater , Auersberger replied— at the Karltheater,but that was pulled down nearly thirty years ago . Yes, said the actor, it’s a great pity the Karltheater was demolished. In a way, he observed not unwittily, when they demolished the Karltheater they also demolished Nestroy. By they he meant the Viennese authorities, who have most of the city’s demolished theaters on their conscience. After the war more than half the theaters in Vienna were torn down, said Auersberger. Alas, how right you are! said the actor. In Vienna it’s always the best that gets demolished, Auersberger continued; the Viennese always demolish the best, but at the time they don’t realize that it’s the best — that dawns on them only after the event. The Viennese as a whole are expert demolishers and destroyers, demolition and destruction specialists. How right you are! said the actor, who had by now finished eating and had his glass replenished by the hostess. If a building in Vienna is especially beautiful, he went on, it’s sure to be demolished sooner or later — no matter whether it’s a particularly beautiful building or a particularly successful institution, the Viennese don’t rest content until it’s been demolished. And they treat people in just the same way, the actor went on: being incapable of recognizing a person’s goodness or worth, they proceed to tear him down, just as they would tear down a monument, having suddenly forgotten that it was they who put it up in the first place. My interpretation of Ekdal is in a certain sense philosophical, said the actor, but when you read what’s been written about Ibsen you’re none the wiser — on the contrary, you find that it only deranges the mind. And you can’t approach an exacting role like Ekdal with your mind deranged , said the actor. Young Werle, Gregers — that would have been the part for me thirty years ago, perhaps even twenty years ago. I’d have liked to play it, but whenever I got anywhere near playing it, The Wild Duck was taken off the repertory. Gregers would have been an even more appropriate part for me to play, he said, looking around at the others. I had the impression that none of them knew what he was talking about, except for Jeannie Billroth, who had just admitted to having recently read and seen The Wild Duck for the first time. Gregers would really have been the part for me, rather than Ekdal, said the actor, and it was now clear that nobody at the table knew what he meant. I used to dream of playing Gregers, he said. I was once invited to play the part in Düsseldorf, but I turned the invitation down because I didn’t want to leave Vienna. If I’d gone to Düsseldorf to play Gregers — who knows? — I might have lost my contract with the Burgtheater. I was naturally thankful to be engaged by the Burgtheater, he said, but all my life it’s pained me to have forfeited the chance to play Gregers. Only once was I offered the part. I always thought I’d play it one day, but I never did. If we pass up a chance like that, he said, it never comes around again. Psychological theater , said the actor, leaning back in his chair after accepting a cigar from Auersberger’s wife. She made to light it for him, but he forestalled her and lit it himself. We always want the highest, he said, but we don’t attain the highest just by wanting it, he said, uttering this sentence as though it were a quotation, possibly from some play or other. While he was having such a success as Ekdal, he said, he was already preparing for his next role. In an English play, he said. An English director was coming over from London, and rehearsals were due to start the following week. An English conversation piece, but not Oscar Wilde, he said. Oh no! And naturally not Shaw. Something contemporary! he exclaimed, something contemporary! Amusing, but profound! Set in a theatrical milieu incidentally. He played the part of a writer who had married into the aristocracy. Not necessarily first class, he said, but entertaining and not unintelligent, far from unintelligent in fact — a very English play, good entertainment value and not excessively demanding intellectually. A rather sloppy translation, he said, but I’m tidying up the text. If only we had one good writer! he suddenly exclaimed, but we haven’t any . In the whole of Germany there isn’t a single good writer, let alone in Austria — to say nothing of Switzerland. And as a result only foreign plays are put on — plays by English, French or Polish playwrights. It’s a calamity, he lamented. Not a single readable play in twenty years. Dramatic talent has died out in German-speaking Europe, he said, leaning back and blowing his cigar smoke at Auersberger, who promptly began to cough. Probably the age we live in isn’t an age for playwrights, said the actor. When a talent does emerge it soon turns out to be a non-talent. How much garbage gets rave notices in the press! he said. It’s incredible what passes for talent these days, what is regarded as dramatic art. I found myself sickened by what he was saying. You know, he went on, you’ve no idea what it’s like having to rehearse with untalented people, having to grind away with them for weeks, sometimes for months. Young people in the theater today are all so spoiled, he said; the papers are always saying that they’re so gifted, that they’re geniuses, while in reality they’ve no gift whatever, not the least talent. And their most notable characteristic is their indolence. Like the rest of today’s youth they’re thoroughly spoiled, having been brought up in the most stupid fashion , said the actor. While I was working on The Wild Duck I saw what was wrong with these young people: they will not tolerate discipline. But the actor who plays Gregers is quite outstanding, Jeannie Billroth objected at this point. To which the Burgtheater actor replied, Everybody says Gregers is good, but I don’t understand what they see in him: I find his performance just average, no more than average — a piece of positive miscasting. Jeannie Billroth was the only other guest who had actually seen the production at the Burgtheater, and the others, having started off without even knowing what The Wild Duck was and only gradually learning that it was a play, were condemned to silence. Every now and then they nodded, either looking straight at the actor or gazing down at the tablecloth, or else staring in bewilderment at the person sitting opposite; they had no chance whatever of participating in the actor’s performance, with which he was regaling them so uninhibitedly, knowing that none of them could inhibit him. Auersberger’s wife, far from inhibiting him, repeatedly urged him to go on, and it was natural that the actor, having just come from performing in The Wild Duck at the Burgtheater, should continue to expatiate on the performance and related matters. It was a wonder, he said, that The Wild Duck had been put on at all in Vienna— put on was a phrase he used repeatedly — since putting it on in Vienna was a risk. After all The Wild Duck was a modern play . He actually used the term modern to describe a play that was just a hundred years old and was still as great, after a hundred years, as it was when it was written: to call such a play modern was patent nonsense. To present The Wild Duck to the Viennese public was not just a risk , said the actor, but a considerable gamble . The Viennese simply did not respond to modern drama, as he put it — they never had responded to modern drama. They preferred to go and see classical plays, and The Wild Duck was not a classical play — it was a modern play, which might admittedly one day become a classic. Ibsen might one day join the classics, and so might Strindberg, said the actor. He had often felt that Strindberg was a greater dramatist than Ibsen. Yet at other times, he said, I’ve felt the opposite to be true — that Ibsen is superior to Strindberg and has a better prospect of becoming a classic. Sometimes I think Miss Julie will one day become a classic, and at other times I think it’ll be a play like The Wild Duck. But if we attach too much importance to Strindberg we do Ibsen an injustice, he said, just as we do Strindberg an injustice if we attach too much importance to Ibsen. Personally, he said, he loved the Nordic way of writing, the Nordic way of writing for the theater. He had always loved Edvard Munch too. I’vealways loved The Cry , he said— which of course you are all familiar with. What an extraordinary work of art! I once went to Oslo just to see The Cry, when it was still in Oslo. That doesn’t mean that I have a preference for the Scandinavian countries, he said. Whenever I was in Scandinavia I had a nostalgia for the south, or at least for Germany, he said. Stockholm — what a dreary city! To say nothing of Oslo — so enervating, so soul-destroying. And Copenhagen — enough said! Young actors are always clamoring to get to the Burgtheater, he said, and even if they have no talent they get engagements there through personal connections — through having an uncle who’s on the board of management of the Volksoper or an official of the Federal Theater Trust. If somebody has an aunt in the Ministry of Education, he’s taken on at the Burgtheater as soon as he’s qualified at the Reinhardt Seminar, said the actor, though he may not have the slightest talent. These twenty-year-olds then sit around in the rehearsal rooms, blocking the way for other people and simply making a nuisance of themselves. Semi-talents at best , said the actor, which simply atrophy in our leading theater, keeping out the genuine talents. The only advice I would give to a young person with genuine talent would be not to go to the Burgtheater, since that would be a sure path to total destruction at the very beginning of his development, said the actor, helping himself to the dessert, a rum-flavored chocolate cake covered in whipped cream, of which I ate only one mouthful, reflecting that a dessert like that was far too rich for such a late supper. But all the others ate theirs, and so did the actor from the Burgtheater, who, having eaten half of his dessert, returned to the subject of The Wild Duck . Actually I should have played in Wallenstein , and originally I was to have played in the new Calderón production, but nothing came of either, I’m now thankful to say. I myself never dreamed of such a success, such a resounding success , said the actor. To think that The Wild Duck was produced at the Burgtheater — and was a success! He had been completely bowled over, he said. In April I’m going on my annual journey to Spain, he said — Andalusia, Seville, Granada, Ronda, he said, finishing his dessert. My Spanish nostalgia , he said, his mouth still full of chocolate cake. It was almost impossible to follow what he was saying with his mouth full of chocolate cake, even when, alarmed at his own table manners, he said, I do beg your pardon! and gulped down the last mouthful. In recent years I’ve taken to visiting Spain, turning my back on Italy so to speak. Spain is still an unspoiled country — at least large parts of it are unspoiled — so sparse , he said, using his napkin to wipe not only his mouth and mustache, but the whole of his beard and his forehead. Charles V, the Prado, he said, looking around the table. Ofcourse I’mno connoisseur of art , he said, just an artlover — that’s the difference . But when I think of Italy I feel sick, he said, whereas the thought of Spain really excites me. In Italy more or less everything screams to high heaven, but in Spain you still have this historical sparseness, this historical tranquillity, if you see what I mean. It’s no bad thing for an actor to make a longish journey once a year. It doesn’t have to be to Africa or the Caribbean. In my case it’s Spain, especially La Mancha — I find it regenerating. And believe it or not, I have a passion for bullfighting. An affinity with Hemingway , he said, a real affinity with Hemingway . But I’m not such a romantic as Hemingway was — more a man of reason, said the Burgtheater actor. I don’t have the romantic American view of bullfighting — I have a more scientific approach. Whatever is profound is naturally unromantic, he said. Nothing profound is romantic. Indeed, he said suddenly, suicide is a fashionable contemporary sickness. Now I am not the suicidal type. Joana — a Spanishname , he said. Twice he said Joana — a Spanishname, then leaned back and asked Auersberger whether his latest cantata had been published. All your cantatas are in print, aren’t they? he asked. Auersberger said, Yes, my latest cantata is in print. And is it going to be performed in Vienna? asked the actor. I doubt it , replied the successor of Webern. It would be impossible, he explained, to find first-class performers for his complicated cantata in Vienna. Ateither the Konzerthaus or the Musikverein, said Webern’s successor, raising his head to its full height. There’s not one flautist in the whole of Austria who could play it, said Auersberger. But I hear the London performance was very good, said the actor. Yes, replied Auersberger, the successor of Webern, London was the only place where his cantata could be performed as he envisaged it, where it could be performed ideally. His wife at once joined in, echoing the word ideally, after which they both repeated the word several times, so that it seemed as though everybody was saying ideally —everybody except Jeannie Billroth, who had sat watching me, consumed with hatred, all the time the actor was talking. It was now impossible to imagine that thirty years ago, even twenty-five years ago, I had read poems by Eluard to her while sitting on her sofa and stroking the soles of her feet, that I had played short scenes from Molière for her in her bedroom while she sat virtually naked on the bed, repeatedly demanding that I play these scenes from Molière after I had obviously bored her with my readings from Joyce and Valéry. It was inconceivable now that I had once read her the letters that her friend Ernstl wrote to her from the Salzkammergut. She wanted no one but me to read her these letters, which she described as the mostintimate letters imaginable —which indeed they were, as I now recalled — while she devoured me with her gaze, as they say. That I used to spend hours reading the text of one of her novels to her, thus affording her hours of supreme gratification while I myself became more and more depressed, and that I was the one who thought up a title for this novel, The Wilderness of Youth , under which title it subsequently appeared — regrettably, I thought. That I used to walk for hours with her in the Prater, once even going up on the Giant Wheel with her, talking to her all the while about Pavese, Ungaretti and Pirandello, that I had been to Kagran and Kaisermühlen with her on a number of occasions, because when I was with her I always felt an urge to cross over the Reichsbrücke to the north bank of the Danube, I thought. That she was the first artistic person I met in Vienna after completing my studies in Salzburg, I thought. That she was the first person in Vienna who heard me read my poems and did not immediately reject them as worthless — which was what had always happened back home — and hence the first person, as I now recalled, who can be said to have given me literary courage, for whatever reason. To think that I once loved this woman Jeannie Billroth, whom I have hated for the last twenty years, and who, also, hates me. People come together and form a friendship, and for years they not only endure this friendship, but allow it to become more and more intense until it finally snaps, and from then on they hate each other for decades, sometimes for the rest of their lives. For years I used to go and visit Jeannie Billroth, I thought. At this point the actor suddenly started recounting anecdotes, the kind of theatrical anecdotes that always go down well in Vienna and provide life support for many a Viennese party that would otherwise be in danger of dying of paralysis. Most Viennese parties are able to survive for a few evening hours only because these theatrical anecdotes are continually dished up, and this party in the Gentzgasse, which has been officially designated an artistic dinner party , is no exception, I thought. It was through Jeannie Billroth that I met the Auersbergers, and finally Joana, I thought. I met Jeannie through a philosopher friend of my grandfather’s whom I visited in the Maxinggasse in Hietzing thirty years ago at a time when I was extremely hard up and on the verge of starvation. It was my visit to the Maxinggasse in Hietzing that saved my life, I told myself — to the so-called Johann Strauss House, which was occupied by my grandfather’s philosopher friend, whose brother played the bassoon and the horn in the Vienna Philharmonic. I now recalled how, having arrived in Vienna without a penny and being close to starvation, even to suicide, I had summoned up what little strength I still had and made my way to the Maxinggasse, to an address that my grandfather had given me, hoping that I would somehow be saved. And the Maxinggasse did save me. First I was given a drink of milk, then something to eat, and finally a recommendation to a woman writer who lived on the west bank of the river Wien, by the chain bridge. She got me to clear out her cellar, and for this she paid me enough money to keep me above water for three days. I read a few of her poems at the time, and these made a considerable impact on me. It was through this writer, who died young, that I met Jeannie Billroth. I now recalled how Jeannie and I used to visit Joana at Kilb, and how we would often go to the Iron Hand with her and Fritz to eat and drink and play cards. It was after all Jeannie who introduced me to nearly all the great writers of the twentieth century by lending me copies of their works. That was the Jeannie of those days, I thought, not the Jeannie who was now sitting opposite me, filled with hatred because I escaped from her one day rather than let myself be devoured by her. Had I not escaped from her, at the high point in our relationship so to speak, I would inevitably have been devoured and annihilated. So I suddenly stopped visiting her. She waited in vain for me to appear. While Ernstl was working at his Chemical Institute , I had spent hundreds of afternoons with her behind drawn curtains, as I now recalled, either reading the great works of the major twentieth-century writers to her, or listening to her as she read them to me. And then, when Ernstl came home, we would all have a cold supper , or a goulash that had been warmed up a second time and so tasted outstandingly good. And when Ernstl was tired and had gone to bed, she would make me read Joyce or Saint-John Perse or Virginia Woolf to her again until I was quite exhausted, I now recalled. I never left Jeannie’s until about two o’clock in the morning, when I would set off home to Währing, walking down the Radetzkystrasse and along by the Danube Canal, my mind brimming with world literature. We stick to someone for years, I thought, looking straight at Jeannie; we are fascinated by them and in the end become utterly dependent on them, not only head over heels in love, as they say, but utterly in thrall, and when we leave them we believe we are finished, as I did at the time, yet one day we stop going to see them, without giving any reason. Not only do we stop visiting them — we shun them, we start to despise and hate them, and no longer want to see them. And then we do see them, and we fall prey to a terrible agitation that we can’t control. All the other people I met at the funeral in Kilb meant virtually nothing to me, I now thought, even the Auersbergers, but meeting Jeannie instantly plunged me into mental turmoil. I had thought of them all on the way to Kilb, all except Jeannie, and naturally I had not considered the dreadful possibility of meeting her again . But there she was. She even shook hands with me at the cemetery — she even managed to smile at me, I recalled, but it was an almost annihilating smile. Yet perhaps I returned it with an equally annihilating smile. I hated her as she stood by the open grave, acting the part of the lifelong friend, I now thought, going closer to the grave than anyone else, taking a handful of earth from the sexton’s shovel and throwing it into the grave with a dexterous movement of the hand. I must stop going to her apartment before she kills me, I had thought almost thirty years ago, and I had simply made good my escape , one might say. My behavior was not as despicable as might be thought: I acted in self-defense, fearful for my own survival, I now told myself, providing myself with an excuse that I could not expect anyone else to provide and did not demand from anyone. We meet someone at the right moment, I thought, we take everything we need from them, and then we leave them, again at the right moment. I met Jeannie Billroth at just the right moment and left her at the right moment — just as I’ve always left everybody at the right moment, it now occurred to me. We adapt ourselves to the mentality and temperament of a person like Jeannie, and for a time we take in only what this person’s mentality and temperament have to offer us, and when we think we’ve taken in enough — when we’ve had enough — we simply sever the connection, just as I severed my connection with Jeannie. We spend years sucking all we can out of someone, and then, having almost sucked them dry, we suddenly say that we ourselves are being sucked dry. And for the rest of our lives we have to live with the knowledge of our own baseness, I now reflected. And having parted from Jeannie, I changed sides and went over to the Auersbergers with colors flying , as it were — and to Joana. I had broken with Jeannie, to whom I owed almost everything at that time — simply deserting her for the Auersbergers and Joana, attaching myself for two or three years first to the Auersbergers, by whom I was immediately fascinated, and then to Joana. For the fact is that the moment I deserted the Auersbergers, the moment I escaped from them, one might say, I flung myself at Joana; having given up the Gentzgasse and Maria Zaal, at first inwardly and then outwardly, I opted for the Sebastiansplatz. After Jeannie had initiated me into the literature of the twentieth century and the Auersbergers had enabled me to widen my knowledge to an unbelievable extent — when suddenly the art of literature, especially twentieth-century literature, was no longer a mystery to me, thanks to Jeannie and the Auersbergers, I fell upon the so-called plastic arts ;from now on all my interest was directed to these and to acting —and of course to the artof movement , to dance , and to choreography , since it was only here that Joana was truly in her element. Looking back, I now thought as I sat facing Jeannie, I chose what was for me an ideal course of development. I chose this development, I thought — I did not think: I underwent this development, which proved to be absolutely ideal — I thought: I chose this ideal development for myself, I chose what was for me the ideal artistic development. This idea gave me pleasure — above all, I think, because all at once the notion of artistic development seemed self-evident. There could have been no more ideal, no more logical development for me, I now thought — encountering first Jeannie Billroth the writer, then the Auersbergers, and finally Joana — and through Jeannie her chemical friend Ernstl , and through Joana her tapestry artist Fritz; I could not have made a happier choice. Yet now I hated Jeannie, who was sitting opposite me, and she hated me. This hatred would of course be susceptible of precise analysis, but I have no wish to analyze it, though possibly Jeannie made her own analysis long ago. And a person like this ends up writing worthless sentimental prose, and poems that are equally worthless and sentimental, and finally falls into the universal cesspit of petit bourgeois mediocrity, I thought. We respect somebody — we may respect them for years — and then suddenly come to hate them, without at first knowing why . And we find it quite intolerable that this person, whom for so long we respected and perhaps even loved, who as it were opened our eyes and ears to everything, who revealed the whole world to us, and above all the world of art — that a person like this, who for so many years preached the highest standards, supreme standards , who guided and educated us to these supreme standards, should have ended up producing such miserable art and cultivating such appalling dilettantism. We simply cannot understand how such a person can eventually have produced something worthless and repellent, I now thought, and we can’t forgive them because, by merely pretending to subscribe to these supreme standards, they have cheated and deceived us. Jeannie cheated and deceived you with her own dilettantism, I told myself as I watched her sitting there, filled with hatred and revulsion and having to endure the actor’s endless anecdotes. Like all the others, he was leaning back in his chair, no doubt expecting that the Auersbergers would shortly ask the by-now stiff and lifeless company around the dinner table to get up and repair to the music room. I find nothing more distasteful than listening to the Viennese recounting their anecdotes, and I have to endure this Viennese perversion too, I thought. The Auersbergers’ dining room suddenly reminded me of a chapel of rest, largely no doubt because they had meanwhile switched off all the electric lights, so that the room was now lit only by the candles in the Empire lamps on the dining table. One could now see only the contours of the furniture in the dining room; one could no longer see the perverse beauty of the room — which I used to think altogether too beautiful — but only its somber theatricality. This atmosphere was in tune with the present company, who were waiting for a signal from the hosts that they might leave the dining room and move to the greater comfort of the music room. They seemed to have been plunged into a mood of despondency, above all by Joana’s death, but also by the lateness of the hour, I thought, and not even the actor was disposed to go on talking. He loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt, murmuring something about fresh air, whereupon the hostess jumped up to open a window. She opened the window overlooking the courtyard, rather than the one that gave onto the street, expecting the air to be fresher from that quarter. After this she went out into the music room, then returned to the dining room and sat down again at the table. She could have believed anything of Joana, she said, resuming her place at the table, but not that she would kill herself. The actor again brought up the case of his colleague who went to Munich, whom he described as an unhappy man right from the start . All these suicides, he said, were unhappy people right from the start, sometimes more so, sometimes less, but always essentially unhappy. It never comes as a surprise when they end up killing themselves, he said. When Joana was engaged by the Burgtheater management to teach the actors how to walk he had found the whole idea crazy. The managers of the Burgtheater were forever coming up with crazy ideas, he said. They wanted to help people like Joana, but this meant that they were bound to come up with some crazy idea. The actors at the Burgtheater are quite capable of walking, he said, and of standing and sitting and lying. He could clearly remember the observations of one Viennese criticaster, as he put it, which were published in the Presse , to the effect that the actors at the Burgtheater could neither walk norspeak , or at least that they could not do both at once. Whenever a critic writes this kind of nonsense, said the actor, it’s immediately taken up by the theater management. In this case they engaged a speech instructor , so that the actors could learn to speak. Absurd! said the actor. But if it helped our dear departed friend, he said, then there was some point in it. While he was speaking I recalled how distastefully Jeannie had behaved at Kilb. After the funeral she had gone to the woman from the general store and pressed a hundred-schilling note into her hand to cover the cost of the telephone call she had made from Kilb to inform her of Joana’s death. Less than a hundred yards from the grave she had pressed this hundred-schilling note into the woman’s hand, I thought, in such a tasteless manner that the woman could not help feeling insulted. In fact she really was insulted by Jeannie’s behavior, for it would never occur to a person like her to expect to be reimbursed for making a telephone call to report her friend’s death to another friend. But Jeannie always went in for that kind of tasteless behavior, I thought: she hasn’t changed. But not content with this, she turned up at the IronHand , where I had gone with the woman from the general store to continue our conversation about Joana, and had the impertinence to go around among the funeral guests begging for money for poorJohn , who was now all alone , she said, and had to pay for all the funeral arrangements — who did not have a single penny, but had to meet all the expenses connected with Joana’s funeral. She would make the first donation , as she put it, by contributing five hundred schillings. Jeannie has always played the Good Samaritan, I now reflected, and I’ve always found it repugnant, since she’s never been motivated by genuine charity: it’s always been an act intended to demonstrate her social concern. All her life she’s had an unstable and unsavory character and has never been above using any available means to put others in the wrong, as she did at Kilb after Joana’s funeral. She had the audacity to pick up an empty cigar box and place her own five-hundred-schilling note in it, then go from one mourner to another canvassing contributions, with an expression on her face that made one want to slap it rather than give her any money for John, poor though he may have been — holding out the cigar box and carefully noting the amounts her victims were prepared to contribute and actually did contribute. Everyone found this performance of hers quite tasteless, and curiously enough it was Auersberger who voiced their feelings by suddenly saying to her face, How tasteless you are,howtasteless,howtasteless! Twice he repeated the words howtasteless —in other words he uttered them three times altogether — and then threw a thousand-schilling note into the cigar box. Finally there was a sum of several thousand schillings in the box, together with a hundred and twenty pounds which I had put in. Jeannie walked over to the table at which John was sitting with the woman from the store and myself and tipped out the contents of the cigar box on the table in front of him, behaving as though it were her money, all her own work , as it were. And indeed it was all her own tasteless work , but by no means her own money — her own tastelessness, but not her own money, I had said to myself at the time, though I refrained from telling her that I thought she was disgusting. That was the proper word for her, and it was on the tip of my tongue. The Virginia Woolf of Vienna, I thought at the time, who has used John as a means of once more parading her social concern, thereby facing him with one of the most embarrassing situations of his life! He would have liked to crawl under the table. People like Jeannie Billroth, who have a great understanding of art (or used to have), lack any instinct for real life, for dealing with real people, I thought. And this, it now occurred to me, has more than a little to do with the fact that, having perhaps once been a truly gifted artist, an artist of considerable talent, Jeannie has in the course of the last two decades developed into an unscrupulous, petit bourgeois hypocrite of the most dreadful kind. But she always made this hypocritical pretense to social concern, I thought, though thirty years ago, even twenty years ago, this repellent side of her character did not strike me with such depressing force as it does today, I thought. In fact in those days I was unaware of her weaknesses and the generally disagreeable traits in her personality. For a long time we see only one side of a person’s personality, because for reasons of self-preservation we do not wish to see any other, I thought, then suddenly we see all sides of their personality and are disgusted by them, I thought. I sat in the Iron Hand for over two hours, and finally took my leave shortly after Jeannie had left for Vienna with the Auersbergers. Once more I could see her ostentatious fir wreath adorned with a bright silvery bow imprinted with the words FromJeannie , which the sexton had contrived to place on top of the pile of flowers by the graveside in such a way that everybody saw only the one name Jeannie . Not that I suspect Jeannie of having prevailed upon the sexton to give her wreath such prominence, but all the same it was her wreath with the words From Jeannie that had pride of place, and this seemed to sum up the whole of her performance at Kilb. She was also the only one who had prayed aloud with the local people; this I found almost insufferable, considering that Jeannie is not a Catholic and has always disparaged Christianity, at least when speaking to me. She put on a show of being pious, and this was the most repulsive aspect of the ceremony; no one else, I thought, had made this distasteful pretense of piety. At Kilb she behaved altogether as though she were Joana’s bestfriend , though I know that in reality she had let Joana down, abandoning her at the very moment when she was deserted by Fritz, the fashionable artist of the Sebastiansplatz — the moment the lights went out in the Sebastiansplatz, as it were, when there were no more parties and no longer anything to be gained by going there. She pretended to be her closest friend, whereas she had been a deserter from Joana’s cause for years. And then she had arranged for her wreath to have this dreadful bow with the words From Jeannie attached to it, in the belief that this would somehow cancel out years of disloyalty, I thought. And I thought to myself: she hates me because, contrary to her wishes, I finally became a writer, no matter what kind of a writer — a writer all the same, in other words a competitor, and not an actor or a producer or a theater manager, as she would have liked me to become. This, after all, was the reason why one day she introduced me to Joana, I thought. At all costs she wanted to prevent my becoming a writer, I thought, but now that I had become one she hated me for it. In her eyes I had committed a capital offense by becoming a writer in spite of everything — in spite of everything, I am bound to repeat, in spite of all her efforts to prevent me. And I thought of all the venom with which she had pursued me during the last twenty years in the pages of her journal Literature in OurTime , of the way she had put down everything I had published — or tried to put it down. And when she was not trying to put down my writings herself by publishing vicious articles and defamatory essays about them in her Literature in OurTime , she did not recoil from exploiting others in pursuit of her vendetta, penniless writers who were forced to rely on her, I now thought. But it was ridiculous to get so worked up: by getting myself worked up over something so nonsensical I was making myself ridiculous in my own eyes, and I told myself several times, though in such a way that only I could hear it: You’re making yourself ridiculous, you’re making yourself ridiculous in your own eyes — you’ve made yourself ridiculous in your own eyes. What a disgusting character you are! The words were addressed only to myself — no one else could hear them — and I went on addressing myself, working myself into a state of growing agitation. You betrayed Jeannie— she didn’t betray you , I told myself more than once, and I went on repeating it to myself until I was utterly exhausted. It was already half past two in the morning, and we were still sitting in the dining room. The actor was still talking and the others listening: throughout this artistic dinner he was virtually the only person who said anything, because nearly everyone else was much too tired to talk. The only others who made any contribution to the conversation were Jeannie Billroth — who every now and then said something that seemed to me invariably inept or ineffectual, though at times vicious and rude — and the Auersbergers themselves. None of the other guests said a single word — and there were seven or eight of them at this artistic dinner , or perhaps ten or twelve. For a long time I was not sure how many guests there were or whether I knew them all. I did know them all, of course, but I paid no attention to most of them — they were simply part of the scenery, I thought. One actually finds most people uninteresting, I thought, all the time — almost all the people we meet are uninteresting, having nothing to offer us but their collective mediocrity and their collective imbecility, with which they bore us on every occasion, and so naturally we have no time for them. If we look back, I thought, we see that they have quite automatically made themselves ludicrous and uninteresting in their thousands, their tens of thousands, their millions. How tiresome and insignificant celebrities like this Burgtheater actor can be! I now thought as I suddenly saw him yawn, after which the hostess yawned, and then Auersberger yawned. At this point they probably all yawned. Jeannie and I were the only two who did not, and by now we were staring fixedly at each other. The Virginia Woolf of Vienna, who remained simply the wife of Ernstl the chemist, was already as old at sixty as some people become only when they reach seventy or eighty, I thought. I recalled The Wilderness of Youth and all the nonsense she had put into it, in the belief that it was world-class literature, whereas it was only petit bourgeois kitsch. She hates you, I told myself, and you despise her — that’s the truth of it. But she hates you not just because you left her more than twenty years ago — twenty-five years ago in fact — and because you’re a writer, but because you’re ten years her junior. Such women never forgive you for the fact that they are ten years older than you, I thought. She hates me because I left her to go on living with her Ernstl in their apartment in the Second District and went over to Joana, exchanging the writer who was ten years older than myself for the movement artist who was only six years older, and who had a Fritz instead of an Ernstl. All the same Jeannie still has her Ernstl, whereas for the last eighteen years of her life Joana didn’t have her Fritz, I thought. She now hates me with a far greater hatred than twenty-five or twenty years ago, I thought. She hates you with a fundamental hatred , I told myself. No no, if the Auersbergers had said that they were inviting Jeannie to their artistic dinner , I wouldn’t have come to the Gentzgasse, I thought. I always make the mistake of not asking the hosts who else is being invited, I thought. Had they said, We’ve invited Jeannie Billroth too, I would never have come to the Gentzgasse. And so at once I fell into the Gentzgasse trap on two counts, on three or four counts, on a thousand counts, it seemed to me. I ought to have known that Jeannie would obviously be coming to an artistic dinner like this in the Gentzgasse, especially as it was taking place on the day of Joana’s funeral; and it was equally obvious that she would be coming without Ernstl, whom she has never taken to visit her artistic friends, I thought, and who never had any interest in artists or anything to do with artists, who never showed the slightest interest in anything that interested Jeannie, I have to say. Nothing that interested Jeannie was ever of the slightest interest to her Ernstl: he was interested only in chemistry and Jeannie herself, nothing else — only in his chemistry and the conjugal bed. And this was the one day, I thought, when I ought not to have laid myself open to Jeannie’s malice, for the effect she had on me was not only destructive, but annihilating; what is more, she at once realized this and gave me no quarter. There was no longer any way of escaping her: I might have got up and left, but I was already too weak to do this; on the other hand I thought I would be able to survive this night in the Gentzgasse, as I had survived hundreds of equally intolerable late-night parties there — after all I’ve survived all of them up to now, I thought. The actor from the Burgtheater had settled himself in one of the chairs in the music room. He was naturally the first to take his place; only after he had sat down did the others find themselves places in various parts of the room. Once again I was the last, and as I dragged myself into the music room I thought, Ah yes, no doubt Auersberger’s wife is now going to sing us one or two arias. Auersberger had the Purcell Music Book open in readiness, but as it was now three o’clock I hoped that she would refrain from treating us to a sample of her art. And in fact I was spared having to listen to her singing, though I am bound to say that she always sang with great charm; indeed she had a particularly beautiful voice, I might even say an extremely fine voice, I thought as I took my place in the music room. This too was furnished in the Empire style and full of treasures which no one could afford today, as it had been thirty years ago. Some were heirlooms which Auersberger’s father-in-law had brought to Vienna from Styria, from the family residence in Maria Zaal; others he had acquired in Vienna on highly favorable terms, having been well acquainted, as I happen to know, with an antique dealer in the Third District, who for various reasons preferred to call himself a secondhand dealer , although essentially he dealt only in valuable items. This so-called secondhand dealer had for years done business, on a quid pro quo basis, with Auersberger’s father-in-law, who treated him for his various illnesses and was in return supplied with all kinds of Josephine and Empire furniture, as well as some exquisite Biedermeier pieces, without having to pay a penny for them. Thirty years ago, I thought, I used to love this music room, which I always described as the most beautiful Josephine room I had ever seen. But later I realized that it was simply too beautiful, too perfectly furnished, and hence unbearable. Looking around the room now, I found it merely repugnant, probably because in the intervening years I had ceased to place such a high value on rooms like this which were furnished solely with antiques; my early enthusiasm for old furniture had diminished and turned almost to dislike. People furnish their apartments in an antique style, surrounding themselves with furniture that is centuries old, furniture from an age that does not concern them, and this makes them guilty of a certain kind of mendacity, I thought. Being too feeble to cope with their own age, one might say, they find it necessary, in order to keep themselves above water, to surround themselves with furniture from a bygone age, an age that is dead and gone, I thought. It really is a sign of appalling feebleness, I thought, if people fill their apartments with furniture belonging to past ages rather than their own, the harshness and brutality of which they are unable to endure. What they do, it seems to me, is surround themselves with the softness of the dead past that cannot answer back. The Auersbergers, who have always been credited with what is called taste, have never had any real taste, but only a secondhand surrogate, just as they have no life, no existence of their own, but only a secondhand surrogate. It was not they who were the focal point of their parties, I thought, but their furniture, their objetsd ’ art and their money. They don’t speak for themselves: they let their furniture and their money speak for them, just as they’ve done tonight, I thought. As this thought struck me, their true indigence was borne in upon me. The Auersbergers believe themselves to be objects of admiration, yet the truth is that those who visit them really admire only their furniture, their objetsd ’ art , and the skill with which these are disposed about their residences. They think people admire them , I thought, while in fact people admire only their polished cabinets and sideboards, their tables and chairs, the many oil paintings on their walls, and their money. It is by no means farfetched to think that what people admire about them, what draws people to them and inspires admiration, is their wealth, and the more or less shameless life-style it enables them to sustain. It’s not only the emperor’s clothes that make the emperor, but the emperor’s furniture and art treasures, I thought. But in the dimly lit music room it’s quite impossible to see any of these art treasures, I thought — not that I had any wish to see them, for I would undoubtedly have been sickened by the sight. How sickened I was by this whole apartment in the Gentzgasse, which once more struck me as perversely ostentatious! Such perfection, which hits you in the eye and crowds in upon you from all sides, is simply repellent, I thought, just as all apartments are repellent in which everything is just so , as they say, in which nothing is ever out of place or ever permitted to be out of place. We find such apartments repellent and would never feel at home in them, I thought, unless we were to some extent absentminded, as I was thirty years ago when I first set foot in this apartment. Being the last to take my place, I found myself sitting between the actor and Auersberger. The former now looked like a retired infantry general, and I noticed that even his loquacity had been dampened by the large intake of food: he had suddenly become silent, and as he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him there was something military about his whole demeanor, I thought. Such knife-edge creases are seen only in officers’ trousers, I thought — generals’ trousers, field marshals’ trousers. The hostess was circulating among the guests with a decanter of white wine, but by now everybody was tired and showed scarcely any interest in the wine or any other drink. Only Auersberger continued to drink nonstop. He was probably due for another drying-out cure at Kalksburg, I thought, looking at him from the side — at the sunken temples and the fat spongy cheeks that hung from them. Had the sight not been so repulsive I would have thought it merely grotesque, but I was devastated to see him in this condition. This is somebody you were once more or less in love with, I thought to myself as I viewed him from the side; there was a time when it might have been said that you’d fallen in love with this man. And now he was sitting next to me, I thought, puffy and bloated, able to draw attention to himself only by mumbling something from time to time in a drink-sodden voice. He’s wearing those grotesque knitted socks again, I thought, and that utterly tasteless peasant jacket, and that linen shirt with the colorful embroidery and stiff collar, which looks even more ridiculous on him than it would on anyone else. His wife obviously suffered under her husband’s perversely demented condition, which she could do nothing about. An hour earlier she had tried, without success, to persuade him to leave the party and go to bed; now she made a second attempt to get her husband, who had meanwhile drunk himself into a thoroughly infantile condition, out of his chair, out of the music room, and into his bed, but Auersberger pushed her away with a full glass of wine in his hand; in doing so he hurt her eye and spilled the wine on the floor, at the same time calling her a silly goose ‚ as he had done throughout the evening. He had behaved no differently thirty years earlier. I was used to these scenes at the Auersbergers’—I know them well. The present one was relatively innocuous. Such evenings usually ended with Auersberger flinging his wine glass against the wall and smashing up one of the priceless Empire chairs. Their chairs were constantly having to be repaired by a restorer in the city center who made a good deal of money out of the Auersbergers’ mania for destruction. Every now and then Auersberger succeeded in saying something, even in getting whole sentences out. One of these was The human raceought to be abolished , a pronouncement with which he more than once attracted the attention of the company in the music room, delivering it with a rhythmic precision that came from his musical training. He delivered himself of other pronouncements, such as: Society ought to be abolished and Weshould all killone another . I was too familiar with such pronouncements to find them original, but on this occasion I was not embarrassed by them, as the others no doubt were, not having heard them before, among them the actor from the Burgtheater, who had clearly not heard them before this evening and found them embarrassing, as I could see. Butmy dearAuersberger ,he said, what’s the matter with you? Why are you getting so worked up? The world’s a beautiful place and the people in it are good people. Why do you get so worked up and run everything down when everything is essentially so agreeable and well ordered? Having said this, he added, Whydo you have to drink yourself almost into a stupor ? He shook his head and drew on his cigar, which the hostess had lighted for him. Jeannie Billroth, sitting opposite me, remained silent, observing the scene between Auersberger, with whom she had been even more infatuated than I had been twenty-five years earlier, and the Burgtheater actor, with whom she had hoped to have what she always termed an intellectual conversation , though no such conversation had materialized: the actor had not been willing to respond to any of her questions or enter into any discussion with her, and thus had given her no chance to strike up an intellectual conversation , choosing rather to confine his attention to the genuine Balaton pike and the recounting of his own anecdotes. Jeannie always wanted to have intellectualconversations and took every opportunity to stress that this was all that mattered to her in her social dealings, that this was her sole motive for attending parties; but most of the time she had no precise notion — or even a rough notion — of what constituted an intellectual conversation . She doubtless thought that an actor from the Burgtheater would be just the right partner for an intellectual conversation , but she was wrong. An intellectual conversation was the last thing the actor wanted that evening: he had not even been willing to talk about ordinary topics of supposedly intellectual interest or even to discuss matters that might be thought germane to his profession. Jeannie had repeatedly tried to lure him out of his reserve, as it were; she did not know that he had no reserve — nor could he have, I reflected, since he was after all an actor from the Burgtheater, one of the many half-wits engaged to perform there, who remain within their narrow intellectual confines, their generally mindless confines, and reach a venerable old age on the national stage. Even this actor’s face betrays no sign of anything that might be called remotely intellectual, I told myself, but Jeannie failed to see this. Even so, there was a certain tactlessness in inviting an actor to talk about the theater or the acting profession, in other words about his livelihood: nobody likes doing this, nobody finds it acceptable or tolerable to have to give his views on what he is obliged to live with, namely his profession — what some might call his vocation. She herself has always refused to talk about writing, and so have I, for naturally, as a writer I hate nothing so much as having to discuss writing. I’ve always refused to do so, and in this way I’ve offended a great many people, though their tactlessness has always merited whatever offЧитать дальше