XXIV
As yet I wasn’t afraid of the new life that was awaiting me; as they nowadays like to say: I hadn’t “clocked” it. Rather, I kept to the little hourly tasks I had to perform; I was like someone standing at the foot of an intimidating flight of stairs, who takes the first one for the most daunting.
We no longer kept a manservant, just a maid. The old janitor did duty for a butler. At nine in the morning, I sent him with flowers and a note to my wife. I announced myself for eleven o’clock, which I thought seemly. I got gussied up, as we used to say. My civilian clothes were as they were. I set off on foot. I was there by quarter to, and killed time in a café opposite. On the dot of eleven, I rang the bell. “The master and mistress are both out!” I was told. My flowers and note had been delivered. Elisabeth left word that I was to see her in her office in the Wollzeile. So I made for the Wollzeile. A little plate on the door announced: Atelier Elisabeth Trotta. Seeing my name gave me a shock.
My wife greeted me with a “Servus” and: “Let’s have a look at you then!” I tried to kiss her hand, but she pushed my arm away, which instantly robbed me of my composure. The first woman to push my arm away was my wife! I felt something of the ill-at-ease that always befalls me at the sight of freaks of nature or machines performing human movements: lunatics or hermaphrodites, for instance. But it was Elisabeth all right. She wore a high-necked green blouse with floppy collar and a long masculine tie. Her face was still covered by faint down, I remembered the angle of her neck when she lowered her head, and the nervous drumming of the strong, slender fingers on the table. She was sitting in a bright yellow wooden office chair. In fact, everything here seemed to be bright yellow, the table and a picture frame, and the window surrounds on the large windows, and the bare floor. “You can perch on the table!” she said. “Help yourself to cigarettes. I’m not completely moved in yet.” And she told me she had built all this up herself. “With these two hands,” she said, showing me her lovely hands. In the course of the week, the rest of the furniture should arrive, and some orange curtains, who could deny that yellow and orange went together. When she had finished giving her report — she still spoke in her old, hoarse voice that I had loved so much! — she said: “And what have you been doing with yourself?” “Oh, I’ve been here and there.” “Thank you for the flowers,” she said, “you sent me flowers — why didn’t you telephone?” “We don’t have a phone!” “Well, tell me all about it!” she commanded, lighting a cigarette. She smoked in a way I’ve since seen in many other women, the cigarette jammed in the corner of the mouth, and a grimace when they light it, which gives the face the aspect of that paralysis doctors call facies partialis, and a hard-won appearance of casualness. “I’ll tell you later, Elisabeth,” I said. “Whatever you say,” she replied. “Have a look at my portfolio!” She showed me her designs. “Very original!” I said. She designed all kinds of things: carpets, shawls, ties, rings, bracelets, light fittings, lampshades. Everything looked somehow jagged. “Do you understand?” “No!” “And how could you!” she said. And looked at me. There was pain in her expression, and I sensed she was thinking of our wedding night. All at once, I felt guilty too. But what could I possibly say? The door flew open, and a dark creature blew in, a gust of wind, a young woman with short black hair and round black eyes, tawny face, and the makings of a moustache over red lips and strong gleaming teeth. The woman roared something into the room that I couldn’t understand, I got to my feet, and she sat down on the table. “This is my husband!” said Elisabeth. A couple of minutes later, I realized that this must be “Jolanth.” “Haven’t you heard of Jolanth Szatmary, then?” asked my wife. So I discovered that this woman was famous. She was even better than my wife at designing all those things that the arts-and-crafts business seemed to want. I apologized. It was true, neither in Viatka nor on the transports there and back had I come across the name Jolanth Szatmary.
“Where’s the old geezer?” asked Jolanth.
“He’ll be here soon!” said Elisabeth.
The old geezer was my father-in-law. And soon enough he arrived. He emitted the usual “Ah!” when he saw me, and embraced me. He was sound and healthy. “Back in one piece!” he called out triumphantly, as though he had brought me back himself. “All’s well that ends well,” he added a second later. Both women laughed, and I could feel myself blush. “Let’s have something to eat!” he decreed. “See this,” he said to me, “all built up from scratch with my own hands!” And he showed me the hands. Elisabeth pretended to be looking for her coat.
So we went for lunch, or rather drove, seeing as my father-in-law still had his car and driver. “The usual place!” he ordered. I didn’t dare ask what restaurant was his usual place. Well, it was my own stand-by, where my friends and I had eaten so often, one of those places in old Vienna where the maître d’ knew the guests better than the waiters who worked for him, and where a diner wasn’t a paying customer but a hallowed visitor.
It was all changed. New waiters served us who didn’t know me, and who shook hands with my garrulous father-in-law and brought him to his “special table.” I felt very much a stranger here, stranger than strange. I mean to say, the space was familiar, the walls were my friends, the windows, the smoke-blackened ceiling, the wide green-tiled stove and the blue-rimmed earthenware vase with dried flowers on the windowsill. But strangers served me, and I was seated with strangers at one table eating. I couldn’t follow the conversation. My father-in-law, my wife Elisabeth and Jolanth Szatmary were talking about exhibitions; they wanted to start magazines, print posters, attain international fame — what do I know. “We’ll take you on board!” my father-in-law would say to me from time to time; and I had no idea what he wanted to take me on board of. Yes, the very idea of being taken “on board” pained me.
“Put it on my tab!” called my father-in-law when we were finished. At that instant Leopold turned up behind the bar, Grandpa Leopold as we used to call him. Six years ago we had called him that. “Grandpa!” I called out, and he emerged. He was probably over seventy now. He walked on trembly legs and those turned-out feet that always give away a long-serving waiter. His pale, red-rimmed eyes behind the wobbly pince-nez identified me straightaway. His toothless mouth broke into a smile, already the white wings of his whiskers spread. He paddled towards me and took my hand tenderly in his, the way you might pick up a bird. “Oh, I’m so happy you’re back, sir!” he crowed. “Please come again soon. I’ll do myself the honour of serving you in person!” And without bothering about the feelings of the clientele, he called out to the landlady at the tilclass="underline" “A real guest at last!” My father-in-law laughed.
I had to talk to my father-in-law. Now, I thought, I had a view of the whole staircase ahead of me. It had an endless number of steps, getting ever steeper. Of course, I could always abandon Elisabeth and not think about her any more. But I didn’t even consider it. She was my wife. (Even today I have the sense that she is my wife.) Possibly I had transgressed against her, certainly I had. Perhaps it was my old, only half-smothered love that was trying to persuade me that it was just a question of my conscience. Perhaps it was my need, the foolish need of all young and halfways young men to take the woman they had once been in love with, then forgotten, and who has now changed, and at any price change her back to what she once was; for reasons of vanity. Well, I had to talk to my father-in-law, and to Elisabeth.