artistic dinner , which can’t be anything but dreary, like all their dinner parties, like all the evenings you can recall spending with them. Only a half-wit devoid of all character could accept an invitation like that, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. It’s now thirty years since they lured you into their trap and you let yourself be caught. It’s thirty years since these people subjected you to daily indignities and you abjectly submitted to them, I thought as I sat in the wing chair — thirty years since you more or less
sold yourself to them in the most despicable fashion, thirty years since you played the fool for them, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. And it’s twenty-six years since you escaped from them — at the last possible moment. For twenty years you haven’t set eyes on them, and then, all unsuspecting, you go for a walk in the Graben and fall right into their hands; you let yourself be invited to the Gentzgasse, and, what’s more, you actually turn up, and you even tell them you’re looking forward to their
artistic dinner ,I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Auersberger’s wife was talking incessantly about the
superb actor who had reached the peak of his career in the new production of
The Wild Duck. Meanwhile the guests, having arrived two hours before midnight, consoled themselves with one bottle of champagne after another; every fifteen minutes the hostess circulated among them to replenish the glasses which all these more or less distasteful people held out to her. She was wearing the yellow dress I knew so well. Possibly she’s put it on
specially for me , I thought, because thirty years ago I used to compliment her on this dress, which at the time I thought looked extremely good on her, though now I did not find it at all becoming — on the contrary I actually found it tasteless — and which now had a black velvet collar instead of the red one it had had thirty years ago. She kept repeating the words
a superb actor and
a fascinating production of The Wild Duck in that voice of hers which even thirty years ago used to grate on me, though thirty years ago I had thought it an interesting voice, even if it did grate, whereas now I found it simply vulgar and repellent. The way she said
altogether the most important actor and
the greatest living actor I found quite unendurable. I never could stand her voice, but now that it was old and cracked and carried a permanent undertone of hysteria — now that it was strained and worn out, as they say of singers — I found it quite insupportable. This was the voice, I reflected, that used to sing Purcell and the
Songbook of Anna Magdalena Bach ,and when her husband, who was my friend (and whom the experts always called a composer in the Webern tradition), accompanied her at the Steinway it used to bring tears to my eyes. I was twenty-two at the time and in love with everything that Maria Zaal and the Gentzgasse stood for; I even used to write poems. But now I was sickened at the thought of the loathsome scenes I had been quite happy to take part in thirty years earlier. I would accompany the Auersbergers as they moved back and forth between Maria Zaal and the Gentzgasse every two weeks, continually switching between their two residences, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, having drunk several glasses of champagne in a very short time. Observing the Auersbergers from my wing chair, I recalled that it was she who had spoken to me in the Graben, not her husband. And you immediately accepted her invitation!
They came up from behind and spoke to you , I told myself; they’d probably been
observing you from behind for some time,
following you and observing you , and then
suddenly, when the time was ripe , they addressed you. Sitting in the wing chair, I recalled that thirty years earlier I had once seen Auersberger — who incidentally has been drunk for the last thirty years — walking along the Rotenturmstrasse with a woman I did not know, a woman of about forty who looked thoroughly dissipated and was obviously down at heel, with long hair and worn-out leather boots. I observed everything about him and his companion fairly thoroughly, wondering all the time whether I should speak to him or not, but in the end I did not speak to him. My instinct told me, You mustn’t speak to him; if you do he’ll make some offensive remark that will demoralize you for days. And so I refrained: I controlled myself and observed him all the way down to the Schwedenplatz, where he and the woman disappeared into an old house that was due for demolition. All the time I could not take my eyes off his revolting legs, clad in coarse-knit knee-length stockings, his oddly perverted rhythmical gait, and the bald patch at the back of his head. He seemed a good match for his seedy companion, who was doubtless an artiste of some kind, a worn-out singer or a low-class unemployed actress, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. Sitting in the wing chair, I recalled how I had turned around, quivering with revulsion, and set off toward the Stephansplatz after the pair had disappeared into that dilapidated building. I was so sickened by what I had just witnessed that I turned to throw up against the wall in front of the
Aida coffeehouse; but then I looked into one of the mirrors of the coffeehouse and found myself staring at my own dissipated face, and my own debauched body, and I felt more sickened by myself than I had been by Auersberger and his companion, so I turned around and walked as fast as I could in the direction of the Stephansplatz and the Graben and the Kohlmarkt. Finally, as I now recalled in the wing chair, I reached the café
Eiles , where I fell upon a pile of newspapers in order to forget the sight of Auersberger and his companion and my encounter with myself. This trick of going to the café
Eiles had always worked. I would go in, get myself a pile of newspapers, and recover my composure. Nor did it have to be the café
Eiles : the
Museum or the
Bräunerhof also produced the desired effect. Just as some people run to the park or the woods in search of calm and distraction, I have always run to the coffeehouse. Thus it was as likely as not, I reflected in the wing chair, that before finally addressing me the Auersbergers had observed me for some time, just as closely as I had observed Auersberger that day in the Rotenturmstrasse, and no doubt with the same ruthlessness, the same monstrous inhumanity. We learn a great deal, I reflected in the wing chair, if we observe people from behind when they are unaware of being observed, observing them for as long we can, prolonging our ruthless and monstrous observation for as long as possible without addressing them, keeping control of ourselves and refraining from speaking to them, then being able simply to turn on our heel and walk away from them, in the truest sense of the phrase — if we have the skill and the cunning that I displayed that day at the bottom of the Rotenturmstrasse, when I turned on my heel and walked away. We should apply this observation procedure both to people we love and to people we hate, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and observing Auersberger’s wife, who kept glancing at the clock and trying to console her guests for having to wait for supper so long, that is to say until the actor made his entrance. I had once seen this actor at the Burgtheater, many years before, in one of those emetic English society farces the inanity of which is tolerable only because it is English inanity and not the German or Austrian variety, and which have been put on at the Burgtheater again and again with appalling regularity over the past quarter of a century, because during this time the Burgtheater has made a specialty of English inanity and the Viennese public has grown accustomed to it. I remembered him as a so-called matinee idol, one of the theatrical dandies who own villas in Grinzing or Hietzing and pander to the sort of Austrian theatrical imbecility that has its home in the Burgtheater, one of the mindless hams who, over the last quarter of a century, have collaborated with all the directors appointed to the
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