Instead of the sunglasses, she’d much rather have the new gray-flannel ensemble that one of the girls is wearing. But it’s hard to steal clothes if the wearer wears them all the time. To make up for it, SHE does some masterful sleuthing and finds out that the ensemble was earned by child prostitution. SHE shadows the wearer’s gray silhouette for days on end; the music conservatory and the Bristol Bar—together with middle-aged businessmen, so lonely—are in the same district. The schoolmate, only sweet sixteen, is reported for her misdemeanor (law and order!). SHE tells her mother which ensemble she wants and where she can earn the money herself. The words flow over her lips in feigned childhood innocence, so her mother can delight in the child’s blissful ignorance and praise her for it. Mother instantly attaches the spurs to her hunting boots. Snorting and foaming, tossing her head, she stomps off to the school and gets the culprit kicked out but good! The gray ensemble leaves with its wearer; it is now out of sight, but not out of the mind that it haunted for such a long time, cutting bloody furrows and fissures. The ensemble wearer is punished by becoming a salesgirl in a cosmetics store. She will have to suffer through the rest of her life without the benefit of general education. She will never be what she could have been.
Meanwhile, SHE is rewarded for reporting the delinquent so promptly. SHE is permitted to make an extravagant school-bag out of cheap leather remnants. In this way, Mother makes sure SHE does something useful with her leisure, which she really doesn’t have. It takes HER a long time to complete the schoolbag. But now, something has been created that no one else can or would call her own. SHE is the only one to have such an extraordinary bag, and she actually has the nerve to carry it outdoors!
The future men and present music pupils with whom she performs chamber music and is forced to play in orchestras arouse an ache in her, a yearning, which has always seemed to lurk in her. That is why she flaunts tremendous pride, but what is she so proud of? Mother begs and beseeches her never to forget anything, for she will never forgive herself. SHE cannot overlook the tiniest mistakes; they sting and stab her for months on end. Often she stubbornly broods about what she might have done, but it’s too late now! The small would-be orchestra is conducted personally by the violin teacher. The first violin embodies absolute power here. She wants to side with the powerful, so they’ll pull her up. She has always sided with power, even since she first laid eyes on her mother. During breaks, the young man, on whom the other violins orient themselves like the wind on a weather vane, reads important books for his upcoming degree examination. He says that soon life will become serious for him, by which he means that he will begin attending the university. He is making plans and courageously talking about them. Sometimes, he absentmindedly gazes through HER in order to repeat a perhaps mathematical, perhaps cosmopolitan formula. He can never catch her eye since she has been majestically eyeing the ceiling for a long time now. She does not see the person in him, she sees only the musician; she does not look at him, and he is to realize that he means nothing to her. But on the inside, she almost burns up. Her wick burns brighter than a thousand suns, focusing on the rancid rat known as her genital. One day, in order to make the young man look at her, she violently shuts the lid of her wooden violin case, slams it on her left hand, which she needs for fingering. The pain makes her scream. Maybe he’ll cast an eye at her. Maybe he’ll act gallant toward her. But no, he would like to join the army, just to get it over with. He would like to teach natural science, German, and music in a high school. Of the three, music is the only subject he has already mastered to any extent. In order to have him recognize her as a woman and register her as “female” in his mental notebook, she plays the piano for him alone during breaks. She is very skillful on the keyboard, but he judges her purely by her terrible ungainliness in daily practical life-—the clumsiness with which she cannot trample into his heart.
She makes up her mind: She will not entrust the utmost and ultimate edge of her being, the very last bit of herself, to anyone! She wants to keep everything and, if possible, add to it. You are what you have. SHE piles up steep mountains, her knowledge and abilities form a smooth, snowy peak. Only the most courageous skier will reach the top. The young man can slip on her slopes at any time, he can slide through a crack in the ice, plunge into a bottomless pit. SHE has given someone the key to her precious heart, to her finely polished icicle mind; so she can take the key back at any time.
SHE waits impatiently for her value as a future star to rise on the stock exchange of life. She waits silently, more and more silently, for someone to choose her, and she will then promptly choose him. He will be an exceptional man, musically gifted, but not conceited. However, this man has already made his choice: He’ll be majoring in English or German. His pride is justified.
Outside, something beckons, but she deliberately refuses to take part, so she can boast about not taking part. She desires medals, badges for successful completion of nonparticipation, so she won’t have to be measured, weighed. A clumsily swimming animal with porous webs between its dull claws, she paddles along in fits and starts through the warm maternal discharges. Her head looms out anxiously. Just where is the shore, where has it vanished to? It’s so difficult to scramble up to the foggy shore, she has slid back down the smooth embankment far too often.
She yearns for a man who knows a lot and can play the violin. Once she bags him, he’ll caress her. That mountain goat, ready to flee, is already clambering through the detritus, but he doesn’t have the strength to track down her femininity, which lies buried in the debris. He is of the opinion that a woman is a woman. Then he makes a little joke about the female sex, which is known for its fickleness: oh, women! Whenever he cues HER to play, he looks at her without really perceiving her. He does not decide against HER, he simply decides without HER.
SHE would never get into a situation in which she might appear weak, much less inferior. That is why she stays where she is. She only goes through the familiar stages of learning and obeying, she never looks for new areas. The gears squeal in the press that squeezes the blood out from under her fingernails. Learning requires her to be sensible: No pain, no gain, she’s told. Her mother demands obedience. If you take a risk, you perish. That advice comes from Mother too. When SHE’s home alone, she cuts herself, slicing off her nose to spite other people’s faces. She always waits and waits for the moment when she can cut herself unobserved. No sooner does the sound of the closing door die down than she takes out her little talisman, the paternal all-purpose razor. SHE peels the blade out of its Sunday coat of five layers of virginal plastic. She is very skilled in the use of blades; after all, she has to shave her father, shave that soft paternal cheek under the completely empty paternal brow, which is now undimmed by any thought, unwrinkled by any will. This blade is destined for HER flesh. This thin, elegant foil of bluish steel, pliable, elastic. SHE sits down in front of the magnifying side of the shaving mirror; spreading her legs, she makes a cut, magnifying the aperture that is the doorway into her body. She knows from experience that such a razor cut doesn’t hurt, for her arms, hands, and legs have often served as guinea pigs. Her hobby is cutting her own body.
Like the mouth cavity, this opening cannot exactly be called beautiful, but it is necessary. She is entirely at her own mercy, which is still better than being at someone else’s mercy. It’s still in her hands, and a hand has feelings too. She knows precisely how often and how deep. The opening is caught in the retaining screw of the mirror, an opportunity for cutting is seized. Quick, before someone comes. With little information about anatomy and with even less luck, she applies the cold steel to and into her body, where she believes there ought to be a hole. The aperture gapes, terrified by the change, and blood pours out. This blood is not an unusual sight, but presence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. As usual, there is no pain. SHE, however, cuts the wrong place, separating what the Good Lord and Mother Nature have brought together in unusual unity. Man must not sunder, and revenge is quick. She fe
els nothing. For an instant, the two flesh halves, sliced apart, stare at each other, taken aback at this sudden gap, which wasn’t there before. They’ve shared joy and sorrow for many years, and now they’re being separated! In the mirror, the two halves also look at themselves, laterally inverted, so that neither knows which half it is. Then the blood shoots out resolutely. The drops ooze, run, blend with their comrades, turning into a red trickle, then a soothingly steady red stream when the individual trickles unite. The blood prevents HER from seeing what she has sliced open. It was her own body, but it is dreadfully alien to her. She hadn’t realized that one cannot control the path of the cut, unlike a cut in a dress, where you can roll a tiny wheel along the individual dotted, broken, or alternately dotted and broken lines, thus maintaining control. First SHE’ll have to stop the bleeding. She’s scared. Her nether region and her fear are two allies of hers, they usually appear together. If one of these two friends drops into her head without knocking, then she can rest assured: The other cannot be far behind. Mother can check whether or not SHE keeps her hands outside the covers at night; but if Mother wanted to gain control of HER fear, she would have to pry her child’s skull open and personally scrape out the fear.
In order to stem the flow of blood, SHE pulls out the popular cellulose package whose merits are known to and appreciated by every woman, especially in sports and for any kind of movement. The package quickly replaces the golden cardboard crown worn by the little girl when she is sent as a princess to a children’s costume party. SHE, however, never went to a children’s party, she never got to know the crown. The queen’s crown suddenly slips into her panties, and the woman knows her place in life. The thing that once shone forth on the head in childlike pride has now landed where the female wood has to wait for an ax. The princess is grown up now, and this is a matter of opinion on which opinions diverge. One man wants a nicely veneered, not-too-showy piece of furniture; the second wants a complete set in genuine Caucasian walnut. But the third man, alas, only wants to pile up huge heaps of firewood. Yet he, too, can excel: he can arrange his woodpile functionally and efficiently to save space. More fuel can fit into a neat cellar than one in which the wood is dumped helter-skelter. One fire burns longer than the other, because there is more wood.
Right outside her building door, Erika K. was expected by the wide-open world, which insisted on accompanying her. The more Erika pushed the world away, the pushier the world became. A violent spring storm whirled her along. It swept under her flaring skirt, and then, crestfallen, let it drop. The air, leaden with exhaust fumes, banged and bashed her, clawing her lungs. Objects rattled and crashed against a wall.
In small shops, the modern mothers, dressed colorfully and taking their job seriously, bend over a ware, flinch behind the wall of the wind. The children are kept on long leashes while the young women, applying knowledge they have gleaned from gourmet magazines, test innocent eggplants and other exotic foods. Poor quality makes these women cringe, as if an adder were rearing its ugly head out of the zucchini. At this time of day, no healthy man is out in the street, he has no business being here. Around the entrances to their stores, the greengrocers have piled up crates of colorful vitamin-sources in all stages of rot and decay. An obvious connoisseur, the woman grubs around in these heaps. She braces herself against the storm. A repulsive inspector, she taps everything, checking freshness and hardness. Any vestiges of pesticidal ammunition on surfaces provoke dismay in the educated young mother. Here, on this bunch of grapes, you can see a fungus-green coat, probably poisonous; the grapes were crudely sprayed while still on the vine. Going over to the storekeeper’s wife, who wears a dark-blue apron, the disgusted customer shows her the grapes as proof that once again chemistry has conquered nature, and that the seed of cancer could be planted in the young mother’s child. A recent poll has demonstrated beyond the shadow of any doubt that people realize you have to test food for its poisons; in fact, more people know that than the name of Austria’s poisonous old chancellor. Even the middle-aged housewife cares about the quality of the soil in which the potato was grown. This customer, unfortunately, is at greater risk because of her age. And now the lurking risk has drastically increased. Ultimately, she buys oranges; after all, you can peel them, thus palpably reducing the ecological damage. This housewife has tried to draw attention with her knowledge of poison, but it doesn’t help, for Erika has already walked past her, ignoring her. This evening, the woman’s husband will also ignore her; he will read tomorrow’s paper today, having bought it on the way home, so he can be ahead of his time. Nor will their children appreciate the lovingly prepared lunch: They are already grown and don’t even live at home anymore. They got married long ago and are now eagerly buying their own poisonous produce. Someday, they will stand at this woman’s grave, weeping halfheartedly, and time will then be reaching for them. They won’t have to worry about their mother anymore, and their children will already have to worry about them.
Such are Erika’s thoughts.
On her way to school, Erika compulsively sees people and food dying everywhere; she very seldom sees that something is growing and thriving—at most in the city hall park or in the Volksgarten, the vast park where roses and tulips are pushing up and fleshing out. But their joy is premature, because they already contain the time of withering. Such are Erika’s thoughts. And everything confirms them. Only art, she reflects, can survive longer. Art is cultivated by Erika, pruned, tied back, weeded, and finally harvested. But who can tell how many things have already been disparaged and dispatched with no justification. Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive. In Erika’s piano class, children are already hacking away at Mozart and Haydn, the advanced pupils are riding roughshod over Brahms and Schumann, covering the forest soil of keyboard literature with their slug slime.
Erika K. resolutely plunges into the spring storm, hoping to arrive safe and sound at the other end. She has to cross this open square in front of city hall. A dog next to her likewise senses the first breath of spring. Erika despises anything pertaining to bodies, animals; they are constant handicaps on her straight and narrow path. She may not be as handicapped as a cripple, but her freedom of movement is limited, after all. You see, most people move lovingly toward another person, a partner, a mate. That’s all they ever hanker for. If a female colleague at the conservatory takes Erika’s arm, Erika shies away from her presumptuousness. No one is allowed to lean on Erika. Only the featherweight of art may settle on Erika, but it is always in danger of floating off at the slightest puff of air and settling somewhere else. Erika squeezes her arm so hard against her ribs that her colleague’s arm, unable to break in between Erika and Erika’s arm, sinks back in discouragement. Such a person is usually called unapproachable. And no one approaches her. People take detours. They would rather wait, endure a delay, so long as they don’t have to make any contact with Erika. Some people vociferously attract attention; Erika doesn’t. Some people wave; Erika doesn’t. It takes all sorts. Some people hop up and down, yodel, shout. These people know what they want. Erika doesn’t.
Two female students or trainees approach her, giggling loudly, huddling arm in arm, sticking their heads together like two plastic beads. They cling together, like apples. They will probably dissolve their togetherness the moment either girl’s boyfriend approaches. They will instantly tear themselves out of their warm, friendly embrace in order to aim their suckers at him and burrow under his skin like antitank mines. Later on, vexation will explode with a bang, and the wife will leave her husband in order to develop a talent that has been lying fallow.
People can barely make it alone, they have to move in packs, as if each single person weren’t already a strain on the earth’s surface. Such are the thoughts of Erika, a loner. Nocturnal slugs, shapeless, spineless, mindless! Never
touched or overwhelmed by any magic, by the spell of music. They stick to one another with their skins, which are never agitated by a puff of air.
Erika cleans herself by patting herself. With soft whipping strokes, she runs her hands over her skirt and jacket. It was so stormy and gusty outside that the dust must have settled in her clothes. Erika sidesteps passersby before they even come within eyeshot.
It was on one of those wickedly flickering spring days that the Kohut ladies delivered the feebleminded and completely disoriented father to the sanitarium in Lower Austria. That was before the public madhouse Am Steinhof (known far and wide from somber ballads) welcomed him and invited him to remain. As long as he liked! Who could ask for anything more!
Their family sausage dealer, a famous self-made slaughterer, offered to transport the patient in his gray VW van (which normally contains dangling halves of calf carcasses). Papa traveled through the spring landscape, breathing the fresh air. He was accompanied by his baggage, each piece neatly monogrammed, each sock bearing a clearly embroidered K. A painstaking handiwork that he had long been unable to admire or even appreciate, even though he benefited from this manual skill. After all, the initial would prevent an equally dotty Herr Novotny or Herr Vytvar from misusing Papa’s socks, albeit with no malicious intent. Their names would have different initials-—but what about that senile Herr Keller, who made in his bed? Well, he lived in a different room, as Erika and her mother were delighted to learn.
They started off; they would get there soon. They’d arrive any moment! They drove past Rudolfshöhe and the Feuerstein, past Vienna Woods Lake and Mount Kaiserbrunnen, past Mount Jochgraben and Mount Kohlreit, which they used to climb with Father in the old days, which weren’t good. They would almost pass Mount Buch if they didn’t have to turn off first. Snow White herself was surely waiting beyond the mountains, in delicate splendor, laughing joyously because someone new had entered her domain—a huge two-family house belonging to a rural family with tax-evasive income. This mansion had been remodeled for the humane purpose of housing humans with unsound minds and sound finances. In this way, the building served not two families, but many, many patients, offering them refuge and protection from themselves and from others. The inmates could choose between taking a walk or practicing a handicraft. Either choice was supervised. In the workshop, there were harmful scraps; and on walks, there were dangers (escape, injuries, animal bites); plus good country air, gratis. Anyone could breathe it, as much as he liked and needed. Each inmate paid a nice tidy sum through his legal guardian, in order to be accepted and remain acceptable, which required many extra gratuities, depending on the seriousness of the case and the untidiness of the patient. The women were lodged on the third story and in the garret, the men on the second story and in the side wing, which had officially renounced its former identity as an add-on garage, because it had turned into a real little cottage with running cold water and a leaky roof. The sanitarium cars were not expected to get moldy or mildewed, so they stood outdoors. In the kitchen, someone sometimes relaxed in between special sales and extra-special sales; he sat there, reading with the help of a flashlight. The ex-garage was built large enough to hold an Opel Cadet; an Opel Commodore would get stuck in the door, unable to advance or retreat. The area was enclosed by a good, strong wire fence as far as the eye could see. After all, the family couldn’t just take a patient back after going to so much trouble to bring him here and paying such an enormous amount of money for the privilege. The administrators had made so much off their guests that they had probably bought an idiot-proof chalet somewhere else. And they would probably live there alone in order to recover from all their charity work.
The Piano Teacher Page 9