by Steve Weiner
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
Pretty girls in ribbons and pink stockings fluttered by. A primitz—peasant priest—ran past Bernai holding on to his hat.
“Isn’t she divine?”
“Who?”
“The bride!”
“Bride? At her age?”
“Age?”
“She’s only seven!” Bernai said.
“Yes! Isn’t she sensational!”
The bride curtsied to Bernai.
“Your obedient servant …”
Bernai followed. They came to a brewers’ field. Mimes from Bratislava danced a wedding mummery.
“Hola!”
Beer banners snapped in the wind. Bernai sat. Bavarians served salty bretzeln. Men in black vests carried platters of roasted duck, trout smoking on leaves, and beef with herbs. Girls ran through hoops. Many were barefoot or in nightgowns. Dancers kicked on a platform nailed to an oak.
The primitz poked him.
“Tonight …”
“Tonight what?” Bernai said.
“You’ll find out what kind of man you are.”
“I am a man of blood.”
“Yes, but what kind?”
Bavarians laughed. Bloodred sun streaked mountains. A woodpecker banged its head on a stone wall. Bernai drank to a stupor.
“It’s time!” a Bavarian shouted.
Bernai tried to focus.
“Now?”
“Go!”
Bernai went down a path of thorns. He came to a rustic cabin. Inside, a rack of painted wood dishes stood over an iron stove. He went in. There was a dark, crooked stairway. At the top, light came from under a door. He climbed. He knocked.
“Entree.”
Bernai opened the door. The bride lay under a white coverlet. Her eyes were bright. An iron crucifix hung on the wall.
“Gnädigster Herr,” she whispered. “Gracious Sir …”
Bernai came closer.
“Am I dreaming?” Bernai said.
“No.”
“Am I awake?”
“No.”
Bernai put the lantern down. Red rain: a tree fell.
“Are you Elise?” he said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“I am and I am not.”
“Who are you?”
“I am what you do not let go of.”
Lightning hit a barn. Owls fled.
“Am I mad?” Bernai said.
“You are now.”
Bernai slept three days at Kurhaus Traibaisen. Dr. Dehmel made him do nude gymnastics. Alcohol was forbidden. But on the fourth day Bernai wrote to Dr. Dehmel.
For my funeral I order a mourning coach, horses with black cockades, black satin curtains, two footmen. Rifles to be reversed, drums beaten, Dead March to precede triple volley. Costs of wine, disbursements to the regiment, detailed.
Bernai of Breslau
Dr. Dehmel gave Bernai sedation. Bernai slept a day. He read Schiller.
Kurhaus Traibaisen celebrated the engagement of Dr. Dehmel and Elise Geiger. A jausa took place in the rose garden. Elise wore a forest-green dress with red trim. Frau Möhler served breads and sausages, grilled meats, and sweet onions. Dr. Dehmel’s father made a toast.
Bernai incised V on his forehead. Elise’s eyes widened in horror.
“What is it for?”
“Viril.”
Bernai bowed.
“O, comme c’est drole, que nous nous recontrons toujours a des occasions si tristes,” he said. “O, how strange, that we always meet each other on such sad occasions.”
“Sad?” Elise said.
“You’re happy?”
“Very.”
“With Dehmel?”
“Very.”
“It’s good to be happy, isn’t it?” Bernai said.
“It’s the best thing.”
“I see that—now.”
A bakery car drove in. Children shouted. There were sugar cakes, tortes, chocolates, peppermints, and plum cakes. Elise and Dr. Dehmel held hands.
Suddenly hail fell. Guests scattered. Bernai and Elise ended up in lilacs by the Kurhaus wall. She shook ice from her hair. She laughed.
“What a beautiful storm!”
The party was over. Bernai went to his suite. He fell on his bed into a twisted cross.
“Elise …”
Bernai carved his door. Juden und Hunden ist den Eintritt verboten. Entrance forbidden to Jews and dogs.
* * *
Föhn blew, Austria’s relentless wind. Grit, feathers, and bits of egg hit the Kurhaus. From Athens to Potsdam the classical world fell apart. Bernai dressed as Schinkel. He built a Temple to Rational Thought. It had a rotunda of Italian marble and a bronze statue of himself. Sheep in knickers invaded the Temple. Cows with bifocals defecated. A Jewish vulture ate red-tailed monkeys.
Bernai was taken to the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, a walled hospital on Alserstrasse in Vienna’s Second District. He was installed in the Fool’s Tower.
He dressed as Goethe: sea-green dress coat, black stockings, shoes with black bows, waistcoat with flapped pockets. Ravens from the Vienna Woods settled on the roof.
Klezmer musicians serenaded Bernai.
Dudeldemden
Adam stands in Paradise
Eve has seduced him
Hunted him down
With thorns of distress
And plagued him with love-pain.
The Klezmer musicians left. An Austrian cavalry officer rode by. Bernai leaned out.
“Hey, night rider!”
The officer turned.
“Yellow Sailor!”
“Yes!” Bernai shouted.
“But Yellow Sailor no more.”
The officer rode away. An actor went past a Julius Meinl store. Bernai waved his arms.
“Marek!” Bernai shouted.
The actor turned.
“Yellow Sailor!”
“I am he!”
“But Yellow Sailor no more.”
The actor turned up Spitalgasse. He met friends who were clowns. The clowns pointed to Bernai and mouthed:
“H-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l.”
Bernai walked the hospital grounds, past the busts of Jewish doctors. Nurses who were blond avoided him. Jewish doctors scrubbed Bernai in a cold-water tub.
Nichts hilft vor Liebesschmerzen.
Nothing helps against the pain of love.
The doctors toweled Bernai. A hare mounted a female in the raspberries.
Like this
The rabbit giggled
like this like this
he thumped
like this
Night fell. Prager’s enforcers, disguised as Klezmer musicians, ran up the stairs.
si verwrfen ir samen
da und hi,
herre und jung
fur nichts
nur sünd und blank
You threw your semen
here and there
man and youth
for nothing
but sin and emptiness
The Jewish enforcers dragged Bernai down the stairs, out a heavy door into an alley.
“Her is ein sô unreine man!” a Jew said. “Here is a very unclean man!”
They tied his hands.
“Er sî ein kezzer!” a Jew said. “He’s a seducer!”
“Er kenn die sünd von somodma!” a Jew said. “He knows the sin of sodomy!”
Jews hoisted Bernai from a drainpipe.
“My wrists!”
They turned him around.
“My arms!”
Jews shoved a broom handle.
“My anus!”
Bernai learned kanderwelsch, language of the insane.
“Gutenbibbl, Herr Demplbebble, ick bin ja sozufriedenden dasz ick kein pimperbubble bistl.”
Bernai became a Meerschaum pipe. Jewish doctors smoked him on rainy mornings.
“Ah, Dehmel … how happy we could have been …”
Elise Geiger sent a note.
Mein lie
ber Herr Bernai,
Stefan and I will be married at a small church in the Voralpen. As you know, he has converted. Then we leave for Trieste. I am so sorry to know of your distress. I think of you often and send my love.
E. G.
A sun burned in Bernai’s chest. Two suns burned. One burned around the other.
Late at night Bernai, dressed as Werther, glided to Elise Geiger’s house.
Suitcases marked Trieste stood by Pygmalion. The red gladioli were dead.
Elise?
Elise slept on her father’s bed. She wore the dark blue dress she had worn at Baden. Her right arm trailed. There were photographs of Elise as a child.
Elise
Beethoven’s “Freude” stuck. Bernai lifted the gramophone needle.
He came closer.
You must know, Elise, that I would like to say so many things to you, but I feel I cannot and should not.
Clocks ticked.
I knew you such a short time.
Clocks accelerated.
But I saw something.
There were no clocks. A moth thrummed at the window. It couldn’t get in and it couldn’t get out.
Perhaps just a glimpse of a possibility.
Elise turned.
“Stefan?”
Bernai withdrew.
“No. It’s Herr Bernai.”
ELISE!
Bernai kissed her hard on the mouth. The most expensive wine ever made entered his head.
“What a beautiful woman—”
He wrote Julius Bernai on a slip of paper. He put it under her tongue.
“Remember this,” he whispered. “All the days of your marriage.”
Bernai opened the shutters. A road fishtailed to the moon in a cut between the pines. An angel flew over Hainfeld.
Make an end to misery
No more women
No more men
Better you should praise God
Orgelum, orgelen
Dundeldumden
The angel carried bowls of cranberries. Blue flames dripped.
Look What Happened to YOUR Sweet Dream.
EPILOGUE
KARL TRAMPED the Ruhr. It was snowing. He begged for drink money.
He went to Dortmund. His clothes were black rags. Dortmund was full of Poles. He went to Hamborn. Hamborn was also full of Poles. He went to Duisburg, Mülheim, Essen-Werder, Bochum. Russians barged past sooty banks. Ukrainians urinated into the Ruhr.
Karl tramped to Essen. A blizzard hit the steel mills. Rheinlanders and Westphalians played soccer. Karl crossed the Ruhr. Electric signs glowed: Krupp, Thyssen, Haniel. Germans spoke ruhrdeutsch—the oldest dialect. A boy gave him a chunk of coal.
“It’s sweet!”
“Nothing is sweet,” Karl said.
Karl went to the Rhine. Barges pushed whitecaps. He broke into wine vaults and swam in Hochheimer, floated on Schloss Johannisberger, dove deep into Markobrunner.
He stumbled past the Lorelei. He slept in the Black Forest, in a deserted cabin carved with a proverb. A sow gelder comes with sweet song but also with a side bag of knives. A group of Germans stood at the door.
“What’s wrong?” Karl said.
“Look.”
A boy’s bones had fallen from the walls.
“Jews did this,” Germans said.
Karl went to Surwasser house. Leaves matted his hair. There was another group of standing Germans.
“Look.”
Skeletons of boys came up in melting snow.
“Jews did this,” Karl said.
Karl tramped to Bavaria. Lorch, Lorchhausen gleamed in a bleak sun, and on the heights, Wollmerscheid. Medieval houses, unpainted, stood in blank light.
Prostitutes stood in doorways.
“Blessed are the dead.”
“Better not to have been.”
“Than to be.”
Karl went south. Bavarian farmhouses stood on steep green slopes with balconies of red geraniums. Cowbells rang. The Pioneer Regiment of Bavaria maneuvered. Karl came to Königsee, a dark, narrow lake under Austria’s snowcapped mountains.
Karl followed Ramsauer Creek. Berchtesgaden’s wine presses stood in a cloister. A priest pulled a bell rope.
“Help me pull,” the priest said.
“Why?”
“So the world knows we die.”
“Sin and die.”
Karl came to the white pebble lakeshore. Blue Wittelsbach flags rattled over a dock. Sunburned hikers trooped in from Hoher Goll. Karl followed them to Café Malerwinkel. The German hikers bought him beer. Grilled sausages smoked. Beer sloshed onto Karl’s coat.
Karl pounded the table.
“More!” he shouted. “More beer!”
Germans clinked beer steins.
“Who has weapons like ours?”
“Nobody!”
“What animal on earth carries weapons like ours?”
“None!”
Karl looked down on the water. Double-hulled boats carried old Germans to dark water.
St. Bartholoma’s red roof and onion-dome steeple stood on Christlieger Island. Pilgrim barges floated the church. Garlanded cattle bellowed.
Café Malerwinkel turned on a string of tiny yellow electric lights.
“Karl!”
Karl turned.
“Alois!”
“I!”
Karl carried his beer and plate to Alois’s table.
“You’ve gotten fatter,” Karl said.
Alois bunched his breasts.
“Wobble wobble!”
“Where were you, Alois?”
“Flanders.”
They drank.
“I didn’t know you were the military type,” Karl said.
“I’m not.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Karl laughed. A storm was coming. Clinks of glasses, laughter.
Wars come and go. Houses remain.
“What happened to Nicholas?” Alois said.
“Dreaming of Agatha.”
“Oh.”
Houses come and go. Women remain.
“The future lied to us,” Karl said. “There was no beautiful future.”
“No.”
“Our hard work, our suffering, came to nothing.”
Königsee turned choppy.
Women come and go. God remains.
“Now what?” Alois said.
Karl stood. They had drunk a lot.
“I don’t know.”
Karl jumped over the rail.
“Where are you going?” Alois said.
“Austria.”
“Karl!”
Karl slid through raspberries. He came down to the shore. Romanies tented in the birches. Their tents had blue curtains and yellow zigzag, scarlet rugs. Romany children laughed at Karl.
“Black-ragged man!”
Karl fell. He crawled on hands and knees. There was a circus wagon. Abnormals laughed at him.
“Ape!”
Karl crawled into Königsee.
God goes. Nothing remains.
The moon flared. Austria’s snowcapped mountains grew bright. Torches glowed, dripping flames on pilgrim boats.
“… beautiful …”
Karl swam.
“So beautiful …”
Karl’s coat took water. He sank. A bugler stood on a pilgrim boat. He played a canon with echoes.