unlucky creature , from the day she was born until the day she died, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. And it was on the very day Joana killed herself that I went to the Graben and ran into the Auersbergers — I don’t believe that was pure chance, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. For ten years I didn’t bother about Joana, I thought; I completely lost sight of her for years and didn’t hear anything more of her. And today at Kilb I learned that during the last few years of her life she had had what is called a
constant companion , a second companion in other words; I saw this man for the first time at the
IronHand , I thought, a Carinthian from the Gail Valley, who made a continual effort to speak standard German, though it came across as the most pathetic variety of standard German I’ve ever heard. This man had put on an ankle-length black coat for his friend’s funeral, as well as a broad-brimmed black hat, a so-called slouch hat of the kind that has recently come back into fashion, especially among provincial actors. Of course we can’t judge people by their clothes, I thought — that’s a mistake I’ve never made — but at first everything about Joana’s companion, with whom she’s said to have lived for eight years, struck me as revolting — the way he spoke, what he said, the way he walked, and above all the way he ate his food in the
Iron Hand . I was shattered to discover that Joana had in the end landed up with someone so
seedy , who, after a spell as an actor at a small theater in the Josefstadt, had become a commercial traveler, hawking cheap earrings manufactured in Hong Kong; even for a commercial traveler he made a shabby impression, reminding me rather of a market trader — and the humblest kind of market trader at that. The way he pronounced the words
potato salad to the waitress in the
Iron Hand almost made me want to vomit, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and watching the guests in the music room. They somehow seemed like figures on a distant stage; it was rather like watching a moving photograph through the haze of cigarette smoke that had formed as a result of everyone’s smoking. The Auersbergers suddenly announced they would hold supper only for another quarter of an hour. We’ll wait till
halfpasttwelve at the latest , the hostess said to the writer Jeannie Billroth, to whom she had been talking for some time, naturally about Joana. This woman, who was now fat and gross and ugly, fancied herself as the Viennese Virginia Woolf, though everything she wrote was the most dreadful kitsch, and in her novels and short stories she never rose above a kind of loquacious, convoluted sentimentality. This woman, who had come to the Gentzgasse in a black home-knitted woolen dress, had also been a friend of Joana’s. She lived in the Second District, not far from the Praterhauptallee, and had for years actually imagined herself to be
Austria’s greatest writer, its greatest literary artist . This evening — or rather night — in the Gentzgasse she had no compunction in telling Auersberger’s wife that in her latest novel she had
gone a step further than Virginia Woolf (I was able to hear her say this because I have such acute hearing, especially at night). Her new book far surpassed
The Waves , she said, whereupon she lit a cigarette and crossed her legs. She said she intended to go and see
The Wild Duck again. In Ibsen there’s so much beneath the surface, she remarked to Auersberger’s wife. She had been unable to buy a copy of the play at any Viennese bookshop; not one bookshop in the city center had
The Wild Duck in stock, she said — she had not even managed to find a paperback edition. But naturally she knew
The WildDuck ; she loved Ibsen, especially
PeerGynt , she said, speaking through a smoke screen of her own making. She was a heavy smoker and consequently had a raucous voice, and her face was bloated from overindulgence in white wine. In the days when I had close ties with the Auersbergers I used to spend a good deal of time with Jeannie Billroth — far too much time, as I now realize — in her municipal apartment, where she lived for more than ten years with a chemist called Ernstl, who never got around to marrying her — or whom she never got around to marrying. Ernstl earned the money, and Jeannie contributed her reputation, attracting artists and pseudo-artists, scientists and pseudo-scientists, and — as Joana used to say—
bringing color into their drabmunicipal apartment with its utterly petit bourgeois atmosphere. Jeannie herself was nothing if not petit bourgeois and had become set in her petit bourgeois ways over the years, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. After the death of my friend Josef Maria, who hanged himself just as Joana did later, and who edited Austria’s first official
literary magazine , entitled
Literature in OurTime , in the early fifties, Jeannie took over the editorship, with the result that the magazine became unreadable. It became a thoroughly dreary publication, utterly worthless and witless, subsidized by our dreadful, disgusting and benighted state, and carrying only the most fatuous and inane contributions, pride of place being given time and again to poems by Jeannie Billroth herself, who was convinced that she was not only the successor, even the surpasser, of Virginia Woolf, but also a
direct successor and surpasser of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ,Germany’s greatest woman poet. She fancied she wrote
the bestpoetry in Austria ,but she actually wrote unrelievedly bad poetry, in which neither the sentiments nor the ideas had the slightest literary merit. For fifteen years she edited this pedestrian periodical, until she was finally bought out with the promise of a life pension. But this did nothing to improve its quality, I thought: on the contrary, the present editor is if anything even more stupid and inept than Jeannie. It was unfortunate, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, that I had chosen that particular day, March 14, to go to the Graben, intending to buy myself a tie in the Kohlmarkt or the Naglergasse — I’ve always bought my ties in the Kohlmarkt and the Naglergasse — only to fall into the clutches of the Auersbergers. In all probability they wouldn’t have spoken to me, I now reflected, had they not had the pretext of telling me about Joana’s death, and I’d never have accepted their supper invitation had I not been
thrown off balance , as it were, by Joana’s death. Naturally I had not recognized the woman from the general store in Kilb when she telephoned; I did not recognize her voice, having last heard it twenty years before at Kilb, when I had taken her and Joana to the
Iron Hand , for a meal of cold sausage and salad — for a few hours’ relaxation and amusement, in other words — as I now recalled distinctly, sitting in the wing chair. She had told me over the telephone that Joana must have hanged herself between three and four in the morning. This was the conclusion reached by the doctor, who had cut down he body with his own hands from a beam over the door of the entrance hall. Country doctors aren’t squeamish, I thought. I had seen this doctor, a childhood friend of Joana’s, at the cemetery. The funeral was a grotesque affair. I had taken the train to St. Pölten and then changed onto the Maria Zell branch, arriving at Kilb at half past ten. In order to arrive by ten thirty (the funeral was scheduled for one thirty) I had to be at the Vienna West Station by half past seven. I had turned down various offers from friends to drive me there. I attach the greatest importance to being independent, and there is hardly anything I hate more than accepting lifts from other people and so being at their mercy for good or ill. I had clear recollections of the landscape between St. Pölten and Kilb, and even on this sad occasion it did not disappoint me. During the journey through the hills of Lower Austria I naturally recalled my earlier visits to Joana, most of which I had made either with her husband, the tapestry artist, or with the Auersbergers. But I had often gone there alone too, when I happened to be over from England; I recalled these cross-country journeys to Kilb with the utmost pleasure. Wherever I travel I prefer to be alone, just as I prefer to be alone when I am out
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