The booth smells of disinfectant. The cleaning women are women, but they don’t look like women. They heedlessly dump the splashed sperm of these hunters into a filthy garbage can. And now concrete-hard squooshed tissue is lying there again. As far as Erika is concerned, the cleaning women can take a break and relax their harried bones. They have to bend an infinite number of times. Erika simply sits and peers. She doesn’t even remove her gloves, so she won’t have to touch anything in this smelly cell. Perhaps she keeps her gloves on so no one can see her handcuffs. Curtain up for Erika, she can be seen in the wings, pulling the wires. The whole show is put on purely for her benefit! No deformed woman is ever hired here. Good looks and a good figure are the basic requirements. Each applicant has to undergo a thorough physical investigation: No proprietor buys a pig without poking her. Erika never made it on the concert stage, and so other women make it in her stead. They are evaluated according to the size of their female curves. Erika keeps watching. A single sidelong glance—and a couple of coins have gone the way of all flesh.
A black-haired woman assumes a creative pose so the onlooker can look into her. She rotates on a sort of potter’s wheel. But who is spinning it? First she squeezes her thighs together, you see nothing; but mouths fill with the heavy water of anticipation. Then she slowly spreads her legs as she moves past several peepholes. Sometimes, despite all efforts at equal time, one window sees more than the other because the wheel keeps rotating. The peep slits click nervously. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Venture once more, and maybe you’ll gain something more.
The surrounding crowd zealously rubs and massages, and is simultaneously mixed by a gigantic but invisible dough-kneading machine. Ten little pumps are churning away at top capacity. Outside, some customers are secretly pre-milking a bit, so they can spend less. Each man will have a woman to keep him company.
In the neighboring cells, the thrusting, jerking pumps discharge their precious freight. Soon they fill up again, and a yearning must be satisfied again. If you’re jammed, you’ll be charged quite a bit until you’ve discharged. Especially if you’re so busy looking that you forget to work your pump. That’s why they often bring new women in, as a distraction. The jerk gawks but doesn’t jerk.
Erika looks. The object of her peeping thrusts her hand between her thighs and shows her pleasure by forming a tiny O with her mouth. Delighted at being watched by so many eyes, she closes her own eyes, reopening them and rolling them up very high in her head. She raises her arms and massages her nipples, making them stand up straight. Then she sits down comfortably and splays her legs far apart. Now you can peer into the woman from a worm’s-eye view. She toys playfully with her pubic hair. She licks her lips palpably, while now one sportsman, now another, cocks his rubber worm. Her entire face reveals how wonderful it would be if only she could be with you. But unfortunately, that’s out of the question because of the overwhelming demand. This way, everybody, not just one man, can get something.
Erika watches very closely. Not in order to learn. Nothing stirs or moves within her. But she has to watch all the same. For her own pleasure. Whenever she feels like leaving, something above her energetically presses her well-groomed head back to the pane, and she has to keep looking. The turntable on which the beautiful woman is perched keeps revolving. Erika can’t help it. She has to keep looking. She is off-limits to herself.
To her left and right, she hears joyful moans and howls. I personally can’t go along with that, Erika Kohut replies, I expected more. Something spurts and splashes against the plywood wall. The walls are easy to clean, their surfaces are smooth. On her right, some gentleman has lovingly notched a few words into the wall, “Holy Mary goddamn slut,” in correct German. The men don’t scrawl that many things here, they have other fish to fry. Anyway, they’re not all that good when it comes to writing. They’ve only got one free hand, and usually not even that. Besides, they have to keep inserting money.
A dragon lady with dyed red hair now thrusts her chubby backside into view. For years now, cheap masseurs have been working their fingers to the bone on her alleged cellulite. However, she shows the viewers more for their money. The right-hand booths have already seen the front of the woman; now, the left-hand booths get a look. Some men like to evaluate a woman from the front, others from the back. The redhead moves muscles that she normally uses to walk or sit. Today, she’s earning her living with them. She massages herself with her right hand, which has blood-red claws. Her left hand scratches around on her breasts. Her sharp artificial nails tug at her nipple as if it were rubber, and then let it bounce back. Her nipple seems alien to her body. The redhead is practiced enough to know that the candidate is about to make it! Any man who can’t do it now will never do it again. Any man who’s alone now has only himself to blame. Like it or not, he’s going to remain alone for a long time.
Erika has reached her limit. You have to know when to stop. That’s really going too far, she says as so often before. She stands up. Erika staked off her own limits long ago, securing them with ironclad treaties. She surveys everything from a high vantage point, which allows her to look far across the countryside. Good visibility is required. But once again, Erika does not care to look any farther. She leaves.
Her gaze alone suffices to push aside the waiting customers. A man greedily takes her place. A road emerges through the customers; Erika strides across and marches away. She walks and walks quite mechanically, just as she previously looked and looked. Anything Erika does, she does wholeheartedly. Do nothing halfheartedly, her mother always demanded. Nothing vaguely. No artist tolerates anything incomplete or half-baked in his work. Sometimes a work is incomplete because the artist dies prematurely. Erika walks along. Nothing is torn, nothing is faded. Nothing is bleached out. She’s achieved nothing.
At home, a mild reproach from her mother descends upon the warm incubator that the two of them inhabit. Hopefully, Erika didn’t catch cold during her trip (she fibs about the destination). The daughter slips into a warm bathrobe. She and her mother eat a duck stuffed with chestnuts and other goodies. This is a banquet. The chestnuts are bursting through the seams of the duck; Mother has gilded the lily, as is her wont. The salt and pepper shakers are silver-plated, the silverware is pure silver. The child’s got red cheeks today, Mother is delighted. Hopefully, the red cheeks aren’t due to fever. Mother probes Erika’s forehead with her lips. Erika gets a thermometer along with the dessert. Luckily, fever is crossed off as a possible cause. Erika is in the pink of health—a well-nourished fish in her mother’s amniotic fluid.
Icy streams of neon light roar through ice-cream parlors, through dance halls. Clusters of humming light dangle from whip-shaped lampposts over miniature golf courses. A flickering torrent of coldness. People HER age, enjoying the lovely peace and quiet of habit, loll around kidney-shaped tables. Tall glasses, containing long spoons, look like cool blossoms: brown, yellow, pink; chocolate, vanilla, raspberry. The colorful, steaming scoops are tinted an almost uniform gray by the ceiling lights. Glittering scoopers wait in containers of water, with threads of ice cream floating on the surface. In the casualness of fun, which doesn’t have to keep proving itself, the young silhouettes relax in front of their ice-cream towers. Tiny, gaudy umbrellas stick out of the glasses, concealing the harsh detritus of maraschino cherries, pineapple chunks, chocolate chips. The loungers incessantly poke pieces of coldness into their own ice caves, cold to cold; or else they heedlessly let the good stuff melt, while telling one another things that are more important than the icy delight.
SHE only has to glance at this scene, and HER face instantly becomes disapproving. SHE considers her feelings unique when she looks at a tree; she sees a wonderful universe in a pinecone. Using a small mallet, she taps reality; she is a zealous dentist of language. The tops of simple spruces turn into lonesome, snowy peaks for her. The horizon is lacquered by a spectrum of colors. Far in the distance, huge, unidentifiable airplanes glide past, their gentle thunder barely audib
le. They are the giants of music and the giants of poetry, wrapped in enormous camouflage. Hundreds of thousands of bits of data flash through HER well-trained mind. An insane, intoxicated mushroom of smoke shoots up, and then, in an ash-gray act of vomiting, slowly descends to the ground. A fine, gray dust quickly covers all the apparatuses, all the test tubes and capillary tubes, all the flasks and spiral condensers. HER room turns to solid rock. Gray. Neither cold nor warm. In between. A pink nylon curtain crackling at the window, not stirred by any puff of wind. The interior furnished neatly. Untenanted. Unowned.
The piano keys begin to sing under fingers. The gigantic tail of culture-refuse moves forward, softly rustling as it curls around, closing into a tight circle, millimeter by millimeter. Dirty tin cans, greasy plates with leftovers, filthy silverware, moldy remnants of fruit and bread, shattered records, ripped, crumpled paper. In other homes, hot steaming water hisses into bathtubs. A girl mindlessly tries a new hairdo. Another girl picks the right blouse for the right skirt. There are new, sharply pointed shoes here, to be worn for the first time. A telephone rings. Someone picks up. Someone laughs. Someone says something.
The garbage, an immense mass, lumbers along between HER and THE OTHERS. Someone gets a new permanent wave. Someone matches a new nail polish to a lipstick. Tinfoil twinkles in the sun. A sunbeam gets caught on the tine of a fork, on the edge of a knife. The fork is a fork. The knife is a knife. Ruffled by a gentle breeze, onion skins rise up, tissue paper rises up, sticky with sweet raspberry syrup. The decaying strata underneath, dusty and disintegrated, are an inner lining for the rotting cheese rinds and melon skins, for the glass shards and blackish cotton swabs, all facing the same doom.
And Mother yanks at HER guide ropes. Two hands zoom out and play the Brahms again, this time better. Brahms is very cold when he inherits the classics, but quite moving when he grieves or gushes. Mother, however, is never moved by Brahms.
A metal spoon is simply left in melting strawberry ice cream because a girl just has to say something, which another girl laughs at. The other girl rearranges the gigantic plastic barrette, shimmering like mother-of-pearl, in her upswept hairdo. Both girls are well versed in feminine movements! Femininity pours from their bodies like small, clean brooks. A plastic compact is opened; in the shine of the mirror, something is freshened in frosty pink, something is emphasized in black.
SHE is a weary dolphin, listlessly preparing to do her final trick. Wearily eyeing the ludicrously multicolored ball that the animal pushes on its snout—a movement that has become an old routine. The animal takes a deep breath and then makes the ball whirl like a top. In Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog, you see two concert grand pianos. Then the two donkeys, half-rotten, bloody heads suspended over the keyboards. Dead. Putrescent. Outside of everything. In a totally airless room.
A chain of false eyelashes is glued to natural lashes. Tears flow. An eyebrow is painted vehemently. The same eyebrow pencil makes a black dot on a mole right by the chin. The stem of a comb is inserted repeatedly into a very high topknot, in order to loosen the haystack. Then a clasp holds some hair fast again. Stockings are pulled up, a seam is straightened. A patent-leather pocketbook swings up and is carried away. Petticoats rustle under short taffeta skirts. The girls have paid, they leave.
A world opens up to HER, a world whose existence no one else even suspects. Legoland, Minimundus, a miniature world of red, blue, and white plastic tiles. The pustules with which the world can be joined together release an equally tiny world of music. HER left hand—rigid talons paralyzed in incurable awkwardness—scratches feebly on several keys. She wants to soar up to exotic spheres, which numb the senses, boggle the mind. She doesn’t even make it to the gas station, for which there is a very precise model. SHE is nothing but a clumsy tool. Encumbered with a slow, heavy mind. Leaden dead weight. A hindrance! A gun turned against HERSELF, never to go off. A tin screw clamp.
Orchestras made up of nothing but some one hundred recorders begin to howl. Recorders of various sizes and types. Children’s flesh is puffed into them. The notes are created by children’s breath. No keyboard instruments are summoned. Cases for the recorders have been sewn by the mothers. The cases also contain small round brushes for cleaning the instruments. The bodies of the recorders are covered with the condensation of warm breath. The many notes are created by small children with the help of breath. No support is provided by any piano!
The very private chamber concert for voluntary listeners takes place in an old patrician apartment on the Danube Canal; a Polish émigré family, which has lived in Vienna for four generations now, has opened up its two grand pianos and its rich collection of scores. Furthermore, in a place where other people keep their automobiles (close to the heart), these people have a collection of old instruments. They don’t own a car, but they do own a few lovely Mozart violins and Mozart violas, as well as an exquisite viola d’amore, which hangs on the wall, constantly guarded by a family member when chamber music erupts in their home, and taken down only for purposes of study. Or in case of fire. These people love music, and want others exposed to it too. With loving patience; if necessary, by force. They wish to make music accessible to adolescents, for it’s not much fun grazing in these meadows alone. Like boozers or junkies, they absolutely have to share their hobby with as many people as possible. Children are cunningly driven toward them. The fat little grandson, whom everyone knows, whose wet hair sticks to his head, who yells for help at the slightest occasion. The latchkey child, who stoutly resists, but has to submit in the end. No snacks are served during a recital. Nor can you nibble on the hallowed silence. No breadcrumbs, no grease spots on the upholstery, no red-wine stains on piano cover one or piano cover two, absolutely no chewing gum! The children are sieved for any garbage brought in from outside. The coarser children remain in the sieve, they will never achieve anything on their instruments.
This family is not going to any unnecessary expense; only music should operate here, by itself and of its own accord. Music should beat its path into the hearts of the listeners here. After all, the family is spending next to nothing on itself. Erika has virtually subpoenaed all her piano students. The professor only has to wave her little finger. The children bring a proud mother, a proud father, or both, and these intact nuclear families fill the premises. The pupils know they would receive poor grades if they didn’t show up. Death would be the sole excuse for abstaining from art. Other reasons are simply not understood by the professional art lover. Erika Kohut is brilliant.
As a curtain-raiser, Bach’s second concerto for two pianos. The second piano is played by an old man, who, earlier in his life, once performed at Brahms Hall, on a single piano all to himself. Those times are past, but the oldest people here can still remember. The approaching reaper seems unable to prod this gentleman, whose name is Dr. Haberkorn, to repeat the marvels he, the reaper, once achieved with Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Schubert. And Schubert certainly didn’t have much time. Before we begin, the old man, despite his age, greets Professor Erika Kohut, his partner at the second keyboard, by gallantly kissing her hand—a national custom.
Dear music lovers and guests. The guests dash to the table and smack their lips over the Baroque ragout. Pupils scrape their feet at the very start, their heads filled with evil desires, but lacking the courage to carry them out. They do not escape from this chicken coop of artistic devotion even though the laths are quite thin. Erika wears a silk blouse and a simple, floor-length black velvet chimney skirt. Barely shaking her head, she eyes some of her pupils with a glare that could cut glass (the very glare her mother hurled at her daughter’s skull after Erika messed up her big concert). The two pupils were talking, thus disrupting the host’s introduction. They will not be warned a second time. In the front row, next to the hostess, Erika’s mother sits in a special armchair, feeding on a box of candy (she is the only one permitted to do so) and feasting on the attention enjoyed by her daughter.
The light is vehemently dimmed when a
cushion is propped against the piano lamp. The cushion causes the players to be shrouded in a demonic red glow. Bach rushes by earnestly. The pupils are in their Sunday best, or what their parents consider their Sunday best. Moms and dads have crammed their offspring into this Polish vestibule so that the parents can have some peace and the children can learn some quiet. The Polish vestibule is decorated with a gigantic Art Nouveau mirror depicting a naked maiden with water lilies on which little boys stand still forever. Later, up in the music room, the children will sit in front and the adults in back, because they’re above it all. The elder ones give the host and hostess a hand when it’s time to make a younger colleague stop short.
Walter Klemmer hasn’t missed a single evening here since sweet seventeen, when he started working a piano seriously and not just for fun. Here he receives inspirations for his own playing—cashlike incentives.
The Bach swirls into the presto movement, and Klemmer, with a spontaneous hunger, scrutinizes the back of his piano teacher, whose body is cut off by the stool. That is all he can see of her figure, all he can judge it by. He cannot make out her front part because a fat mother blocks his view. (His favorite seat is occupied today. During lessons, SHE always sits at the second piano.) The maternal frigate is flanked by a tiny lifeboat, her son, a beginner, wearing black trousers, a white shirt, and a red bow tie with white dots. The boy is already slouching in his seat, like a nauseated airplane passenger who only wants the plane to land. Art sends Erika gliding through higher air corridors, almost off into the ether. Walter Klemmer eyes her anxiously, because she is floating away from him. But he is not the only person to reach out to her involuntarily. Her mother likewise grabs the string of this kite known as Erika. Don’t let go of the string! It already yanks away so violently that Mother has to stand on tiptoe. The wind howls fiercely around the kite as it always does at this high altitude.
The Piano Teacher Page 6