The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  Morning

  I go into town and see the city councillor. She is just about to get into her car, probably to drive to the office. I wrote her an angry letter yesterday which will be waiting for her when she gets there. I won’t mention it to her just now, I think, instead I’ll ask her who the man might be who sent me his book in English from Japan. I go up to the councillor, who is just putting her briefcase, with the files she probably spent all night going through, in the boot. I ask my question and notice there is someone else with her. I know him vaguely, he’s called Gunter. The matter seems to interest not only the councillor but Gunter as well, and they come with me to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. The contents of the parcel are examined, Gunter picks up the picture, bends it right round a few times and observes that it is one of the best pictures Hans Staudacher has ever painted. ‘People will keep on sending me the latest atlas for use in secondary schools,’ I reply. The main problem, the problem of the English book from Japan – really it should be the business of the councillor to deal with it – is simply ignored.

  Midday

  A walk in the nearby park. Gunter and I climb a huge birch tree, but I climb so high I can’t find the way back down and the city councillor, who is sitting on a bench at the bottom, shouts up to ask me why I look so sad, is there anything wrong with me? ‘You’ll find an angry letter when you get to your office today,’ I growl in reply. Then I discover that the birch tree I have climbed is a weeping birch and some branches hang down to the ground like ropes. I immediately grab one of the ropes and a start to let myself slowly down, hand over hand. But then Gunter, who by this time is back at the bottom, goes to the trunk and starts shaking the tree vigorously. ‘Stop fooling around,’ the councillor shouts to him, but he clearly has not the slightest intention of obeying her, he is obviously enjoying the way the tree is swaying. The birch rope I am hanging from swings back and forward, more and more violently, until I can hold on no longer and fall down, but land in the blanket which some firemen, who have been urgently called to the scene, hold out at the last minute. The councillor finally goes to her office, and Gunter leaves as well.

  Afternoon

  Soldiers march up, position themselves outside the entrances to the café and forbid people like me to go in. Menacingly, they release the safety catches on their rifles when I come too close and engage the bolts with a resounding clash.

  I creep up to one who seems, to judge by the expression on his face, to be slightly more good-natured, well-disposed and understanding, ask ‘why carn’t oi go t’ the caff’ and am told the antiques dealers have occupied the media, some of them the press, some the radio and television, and protested against people like me because of unfair competition. That’s why people like me carn’t go t’ the café. The owners of the galleries selling paintings of alpine sunsets, glittering watercourses and mountain huts with appropriate animals, he added, had in the meantime joined in the protest. Pity, I think to myself, I’d have loved to have a glass of Vintner’s Pride in the café.

  Evening

  I go to a concert with my grandmother and my mother. A Japanese pianist is playing. Of course we arrive too late, as usual, the pianist has already begun her programme. We have tickets for the third row, however I don’t sit in the seat reserved for me at the end of the row, but on the floor beside it. We are not the last to arrive late, someone else comes after us. I turn round and see that he is Japanese, clearly the boyfriend, brother or husband of the pianist. He makes no attempt at all to be quiet so as to create as little disturbance to the concert as possible, the clatter of his footsteps can be very distinctly heard throughout the concert hall. He comes closer and closer and then sits down on the seat which is actually mine, so that I end up sitting on the floor at his feet. He immediately starts talking, describes a dish he must have just partaken of in a nearby restaurant, saying I simply must procure the recipe for him, he didn’t know how to explain to the people in the restaurant what he wanted, being a foreigner they didn’t understand him properly but I probably knew exactly how to go about something like that. The thought of the meal the Japanese described arouses such a feeling of delight within me that I immediately start to stamp my feet alternately on the floor at intervals of one second, precisely in time with the piano music the Japanese woman is playing. At this the pianist breaks off playing, gives me and then the Japanese beside me an angry look and hisses some incomprehensible words, probably indicating her intention to abandon the concert on the spot if there is not immediate silence in the auditorium.

  During the interval I go to the foyer, meet Gunter and the city councillor, tell them about the Japanese and how he simply sat down in my seat, though, as I explain, I was sitting on the floor beside my seat at the time, so he might well have had the idea the seat was unoccupied, but that is no reason to sit in my seat without so much as a by-your-leave, however much of a foreigner you are and don’t know they way things are done here.

  Conjecture: perhaps the man has something to do with the book in English from Japan that I received in the post today.

  Then, however, I remember the duties of a local inhabitant towards a foreigner and think of the recipe the man absolutely has to have, but it occurs to me that in the end he was not so insistent on his need for the recipe, he just went on and on about it, what he in fact absolutely had to have was a comb, I should help him get a comb as quickly as possible, he had said, any minute now he had to comb his hair. So I go to the snack bar and buy a packet of threes and a comb. The interval crush in the foyer is too much for me, so I go back into the auditorium to take the comb to the Japanese, who has stayed in my seat. But what do I see, hardly have I entered the hall? My aunt, who is about fifty years old, is standing right in the middle, on the rostrum, and I didn’t even know she had come to the concert too, I would never have expected to see her here at the concert because she is not in the habit of going to concerts and today of all days she has come to a concert, so there is my roughly fifty-year-old aunt, right in the middle, on the rostrum, stark naked in a wooden trough filled with steaming hot water rubbing down her already somewhat wrinkled body with a sponge, making her breasts wobble like anything, and scarcely has she seen me come into the hall than she drops the sponge with a splash into the steaming water, throws her arms in the air and calls out to me in ringing tones, ‘Anselm, bring me a towel at once!!!’

  Night

  Nothing.

  The Thief

  Michael Köhlmeier

  Do you know the story of Tschawo? No? Then listen.

  Now Tschawo was a poor man, everything had been taken from him. That is, he had taken everything from himself: drinking, gambling … he stole his whole life from himself. In the end his wife left him. It happened like this:

  He says to her, ‘Hey, fetch some tobacco.’

  She says, ‘Let’s have the money.’

  He says, ‘Anyone can fetch tobacco with money.’

  So, two hours later she comes back, slaps her hand down on the table and says, ‘There, get smoking.’

  He says, ‘Where’s the tobacco?’

  She says, ‘Anyone can smoke with tobacco.’

  And then she leaves him. Tschawo –

  Hang on a minute, stay there. The story’s not over yet.

  So, Tschawo thinks a bit. Then he goes to the town. He wants to see the mayor. But there’s a secretary. The secretary wants to know who he is.

  ‘Well, then,’ says Tschawo. ‘Listen. I’m Tschawo. Yes.’

  ‘Fine,’ says the secretary. ‘Now write your name down here.’ Tschawo has to write his name on the list. ‘Then I’ll know when it’s your turn,’ the secretary says.

  But Tschawo can’t. He can’t write and he can’t read either. So he says, ‘Listen, secretary. The thing is, I’ve got an unusual name. The way it’s written is quite different from the way it reads. It’s as if your name was Peter, but you wrote it Paul. D’you see? There’d be no point in my writing it down here.’

 
The secretary does see and lets him in to see the mayor.

  To the mayor Tschawo says, ‘I’m the best thief in the world. I imagine you can use someone like me.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ says the mayor. ‘Prove it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Steal the parish priest?’

  Tschawo says, ‘Give me some expenses.’

  Right then. The mayor gives Tschawo some money. With it Tschawo buys twenty live crabs and twenty candles. Then during the night he goes to the church, sticks the candles on the crabs and lights them. Then he hangs onto the bell-rope and the bells ring. And the priest comes running. He rushes into the church. He wants to know what’s going on.

  Then the priest sees lights moving over the floor. He can’t see the crabs underneath the lights. And the priest thinks the lights are the souls at the Last Judgment. So the priest thinks it’s the end of the world.

  Tschawo stands behind the altar and cries out in a deep voice, ‘Kneel down, sinner. Close your eyes, sinner. Crawl on your knees, sinner.’

  And the priest does. The priest wants to go to heaven. He kneels down, closes his eyes and crawls on his knees. And crawls straight into Tschawo’s potato sack.

  Tschawo ties up the sack and takes it to the mayor. ‘There you are,’ he says, ‘one stolen parish priest.’

  Hey, wait a minute. There’s more.

  The mayor says, ‘That was good. No buts about it. If you really are the best thief in the world, however, then you must be able to do more than steal a stupid priest from his church.’

  ‘What else must I be able to do?’

  ‘Well, now,’ says the mayor, ‘you’ve to steal my wife’s nightdress, during the night while she’s wearing it, and the wedding ring off her finger.’

  ‘And what if I succeed?’

  ‘Let’s say that if you succeed I’ll resign and you’ll be mayor,’ says the mayor. ‘And you’ll get my beautiful wife into the bargain.’

  And Tschawo asks, ‘And what if I don’t succeed?’

  To which the mayor says, ‘Quite simple. Then I’ll chop your head off.’

  So what does Tschawo do? He goes to the graveyard and digs up a dead body. A newly dead body. And during the night he carries it to the mayor’s house. Places it underneath the bedroom window. Lifts it up. From inside it looks as if someone is trying to climb in through the bedroom window. It’s that Tschawo, the idiot, thinks the mayor, who’s lying in bed beside his beautiful wife.

  And the mayor says to his wife, ‘Do you see that. Just a moment while I sort it out.’

  Then Tschawo lifts the dead body a bit higher. Now the head is leaning into the mayor’s bedroom.

  Then the mayor takes the axe he has ready and chops off the dead man’s head. And he says to his wife, ‘I think I’d better just nip out and clear up the mess. We don’t want the neighbours getting funny ideas.’

  After the mayor has gone out of the bedroom, Tschawo comes in through the door, doesn’t put the light on and behaves as if he were the mayor. He says to the wife, ‘You know, I think I’ll do that later. I fancy you first. Take off your nightdress.’

  The mayor’s wife does that and Tschawo sleeps with her. While he’s doing that he also takes her wedding ring off her finger. And then he says, ‘Right, now I’ll go and clear up outside.’

  And just as he gets outside the mayor comes in, at the very same moment, and he says, ‘Right, I’ve cleared up outside. Now I fancy you. Take off your nightdress.’

  And his wife says, ‘Are you mad? You’ve just said that and just done that.’

  Then Tschawo comes in, switches on the light and produces the nightdress and the ring. He’s made mayor, gets the mayor’s wife.

  Hey, don’t go. You haven’t heard the end. A story’s only finished when Death comes.

  Tschawo was a good mayor. Well, a bit corrupt, yes. But otherwise a good mayor. And at the end Death comes for him.

  He stands there, does Death, and says to Tschawo, ‘It’s your turn, Tschawo.’

  And Tschawo says, ‘But, but – I don’t believe you. There must be some mistake.’

  Death says, ‘No buts about it. You’re here on my list.’

  And Tschawo says, ‘Oh, so that’s it. Well, I can explain that. You see the way my name is written is quite different from the way it’s spoken. It’s as if your name was Peter and you wrote it Paul. It’s a case of mistaken identity. Let me see your list, Death.’

  Death gives him the list.

  Then Tschawo tears the page out of Death’s order book and swallows it. – Exactly. And since he didn’t die, he’ll live for ever, will Tschawo…

  Now the story’s finished. Musicians who travel from village to village used to tell it – or something like it.

  Snitto-Snot

  Michael Köhlmeier

  Fairy tales aren’t beautiful, ugliness was invented in them. Fairy tales don’t smell nice, stench was invented in them. It was in this fairy tale that stench was invented. Until then it was just called a bad smell.

  In the Finnish midgeland lived a young man called Snitto, lazy Snitto. People used to say he had invented laziness. But that’s not true, it existed before him. Snitto’s favourite occupation was to sit beside the roadside watching. Lazy people always find something to look at. A man came along on a cart. He looked like anyone and everyone, as if he were everyone’s father, and he said to Snitto, ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Snitto. He could just as well have said, ‘No, sir, there’s nothing wrong,’ but that would have been too much like hard work for his lazy tongue.

  ‘Looking for work?’ asked Tomdickorharry.

  ‘Only very easy work,’ said Snitto.

  ‘Jump up then,’ said the man.

  Off they went to the man’s farm and in no time at all Snitto was sitting at a large stone table in a large stone room.

  ‘What now?’ asked Snitto who, though lazy, was a pleasant enough fellow, a handsome one at any rate.

  ‘Now,’ said the man, ‘comes the work.’

  He put a silver thaler down on the table beside Snitto’s hand. ‘Take the coin and hit the table with it. Go on.’

  Snitto did so, and there were two silver thalers. He did it again and there were three.

  ‘Does it keep doing that?’ asked Snitto.

  ‘It keeps doing that,’ said the man.

  And that’s my work?’

  ‘That’s your work.’

  ‘And apart from that?’

  ‘Apart from that you’re not allowed to stand up, you’re not allowed to wipe your nose, the snot will run out and you’re not allowed to do anything about it, and you have to pass water where you’re sitting and you’re not allowed to mop it up, and even your number twos you have to leave down there and you’re not allowed to wipe or clean up and you’ll be fed and are not allowed to wash and it’s for three years.’

  Snitto understood that, it wasn’t difficult to understand. But to do it was difficult, you just try!

  So there sat Snitto, with the snot running down, hitting the table with one coin after another, and when three years were almost up the stone room was full of silver thalers and filth, and in the middle of it sat Snitto, black with filth, with flies on his face, and only occasionally taking a coin and hitting the table with it, for there was a danger Snitto might suffocate in thalers and filth. And he was no longer hitting the table with coins out of greed, but just to pass the time, for he thought time passed a little more quickly if it was chopped up into pieces with thaler-taps.

  Nearby lived a man who no longer had a wife but three daughters who were called the First, the Second and the Third. The First was the oldest, and so on. The man was in debt and said to the First, ‘I know there’s a man living on the neighbouring farm who has a lot of money. Go and ask him if he’ll make us a loan.’

  The First went and when she entered the stone room she smelt a stench that had not existed before, until then there had only been bad smells. She breathed through her mout
h and said, ‘Can I have some money?’

  ‘Yes’, said Snitto, ‘as much as you like. But you have to give me a kiss.’

  She couldn’t. ‘Anyone who stinks like that,’ she said, ‘could die and no one would shed a tear.’

  At home she said, ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Stupid girl,’ said the Second, ‘father’s going to lose everything.’

  She went, and the same thing happened. ‘Anyone who stinks like that,’ she said, ‘could die and no one would shed a tear.’

  And the Third, the youngest, cried, ‘Does he really stink like that?! Does he really look like that?! Do I have to? Do I really have to?’

  ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘you have to.’

  The youngest daughter took soap and water with her, and sweet-smelling oil. And she went into the foul, stinking room where Snitto was sitting, sunk in a mound of filth and silver, and said, ‘I want a loan.’

  ‘And I want a kiss,’ said Snitto. And he got one. The youngest daughter even forgot to wash her mouth with soap and water and sweet-smelling oil when she was outside. She carted off as many thalers as she could carry and her father was saved.

  Then the three years were up and the man who looked like everyone’s father and was actually the devil came and said, ‘Haven’t I got your soul?’

  ‘No,’ said Snitto, ‘not that.’

  ‘Then I’ll wash you,’ said the devil. Three hours for his skin, three hours for his hair, three hours for his teeth. And the devil dressed him in fine clothes and said, ‘Go and ask for the hand of the youngest daughter.’

  It was the First who opened the door and she wanted him for herself. ‘You stink,’ said Snitto. ‘Anyone who stinks like that could die and no one would shed a tear.’

  The Second showed him into the parlour. He said exactly the same to her.

  But the Third, whom he called the youngest daughter, he took in his arms and there were wedding bells.