Erika doesn’t allow a single leaf to whirr or whisper on her body. She remains still and dead, like a rotten branch that has broken off the tree and is uselessly perishing in the grass.
The woman threatens to walk out on the guest worker. The guest worker wants to make a nasty retort, but changes his mind and just keeps searching mutely. He has to put up a bold front to keep the respect of the woman, who has abruptly reawakened into an Austrian. Encouraged by the fact that nothing is stirring, he moves in an ever-widening circle, thereby becoming more ominous for Fräulein Kohut. His woman gives him one last warning and picks her handbag off the ground. She arranges the last things in and of themselves. She buttons, she tucks, she shakes something out. She starts walking back slowly, in the direction of the restaurants, gazing at her Turkish friend one last time, but quickening her step. She howls some unintelligible nastiness by way of farewell.
The Turk shilly-shallies. Once this woman’s gone, he might not find a replacement for weeks on end. The woman shouts: She can find another jerk like him very easily. The Turk stands and jerks his head, once toward the woman, once toward the invisible bushman. The Turk is unsure of himself, he wavers between one instinct and the other; both instincts have often brought him misery. He barks—a dog who doesn’t know which prey to follow.
Erika Kohut can’t stand it anymore. Her need is stronger. She gingerly lets down her panties and pisses on the ground. A warm stream patters down between her thighs to the meadow ground. It ripples upon the soft mattress of twigs, foliage, refuse, filth, and humus. She still doesn’t know whether she wants to be discovered or not. Rigidly furrowing her brow, she simply lets the stream run out. She grows emptier and emptier on the inside, and the ground soaks up the fluid. She ponders nothing—no cause and no consequence. She relaxes her muscles, and the initial patter turns into a gentle, steady running. She has stretched the image of the upright, motionless foreigner in the micrometer spindles of her pupils, fixing it there while urinating vigorously upon the earth. She is ready for either solution, they’re both fine with her. She leaves it to fate, in the form of chance, whether the Turk is good-natured or not. She carefully holds her plaid skirt together over her bent knees to keep it from getting wet. It’s not the skirt’s fault. The itching finally stops; soon she’ll be able to turn off the faucet.
The Turk still looms statuesque in the meadow. His companion, however, is hurrying away, shrilly yelling across the vast meadow. Now and then she looks back and makes a dirty gesture that’s known worldwide. She thus overcomes a language barrier.
The man is drawn now here, now there. A tame animal between two masters. He can’t tell what the swishing and whispering mean, he didn’t notice any water around here. But there’s one thing he knows for sure: The companion of his senses is slipping away from him.
At this point, Erika Kohut is certain he will manage to take the two giant steps separating him from her; at this point, Erika Kohut shakes out the last few drops while awaiting a human hammer to thud down upon her from the sky: this mockup of a man, fashioned out of a thick oak board by a skillful carpenter, will crush Erika like an insect. But then he about-faces and, while constantly looking around, walks hesitantly, then more rapidly and resolutely, pursuing the prey he pulled down at the outset of this merry evening. A bird in the hand. After all, you can’t tell whether a bird in the bush will measure up to your demands. The Turk flees from the uncertainty that has so often reared its painful head for him in this country. He dogs the woman’s heels. He has to hurry, for she has dwindled into a distant dot. And soon he too becomes but a flyspeck on the horizon.
She’s gone, he’s gone too, and in the darkness, heaven and earth again hold hands, the hands that loosened for a moment.
Erika Kohut’s one hand has been playing the keyboard of reason, the other the keyboard of passion. First, passion had its say; now, reason has its way, quickly driving Erika home through dark avenues. However, others have reaped the fruits of passion in Erika’s place. The teacher observed them and graded them on her curve. She very nearly became involved in one of these passions, and only barely escaped detection.
Erika dashes along rows of trees that are endangered by many varieties of mistletoe. Many branches have had to bid farewell to their boles, and they bite the dust. Erika scurries away from her observation post in order to settle in her nest. She betrays no outward signs of inner disturbance. But a whirlwind sweeps up in her the instant she sees young men with young bodies strolling along the edge of the Prater, for she is practically old enough to be their mother! Everything that occurred before this age is irrevocably gone and can never come again. But who knows what lies ahead? Given the lofty achievements of modern medicine, a woman can perform her female functions even when she reaches a ripe old age. Erika pulls up her panties. This isolates her from contact. Even chance contact. But in her bruised interior, the tempest rages over her succulent pastures.
She knows exactly where the taxis are; she gets into the one at the head of the line. Nothing is left of the vast Prater meadows aside from a wee bit of dampness on her shoes and between her legs. A slightly sour odor rises from under her skirt, but the cabby probably doesn’t notice, his deodorant covers everything. He doesn’t want to force his hack sweat on his fares, and he doesn’t have to perceive the grossness of his passengers. The cab is warm and dry; the heater operates silently, struggling against the cool night. Outside, the lights race past: the endless dark chunks of slums in numb, lightless sleep; the bridge across the Danube Canal; small, unfriendly, debt-ridden bars, from which drunks come tumbling, only to jump up and start punching one another; old women in kerchiefs, walking their dogs one last time for the day, hoping that just once they’ll run into a lonely old man, a widower with a dog. Erika flashes by—a rubber mouse on a string, with a gigantic cat playfully leaping after it.
A pack of mopeds. Girls in skin-tight jeans with would-be punk hairdos. However, their hair doesn’t quite manage to stand on end, it keeps falling. Grease alone won’t do the trick. The hair keeps collapsing despondently on the scalp. And the girls hop on behind the moped pilots and zoom away.
A lecture hall releases a crowd of knowledge-seekers, who throng and jostle around the lecturer. They’d like to find out more about the Milky Way even though they’ve heard everything that can be said about it. Erika recalls that she once lectured here on Franz Liszt and his misunderstood work. She spoke in loosely crocheted air stitches. And two or three times, she lectured in a regular knit-two/purl-two on Beethoven’s early sonatas. She explained that Beethoven’s sonatas, whether late or, as in this case, early, show so much variety that one has to ask oneself the fundamental question of what the much-vilified word “sonata” really means. Perhaps Beethoven applied the word to entities that are not even sonatas in the strict sense of the term. One has to perceive new laws in this highly dramatic musical form. Often in the sonata, feeling eludes form. In Beethoven, that is not the case, for here the two go hand in hand; feeling makes form aware of a hole in the ground and vice versa.
The night is growing brighter: The center of Vienna is approaching. Light is used more generously here, so that tourists can easily find their way home. The opera is over for the night. This generally means that it is already so late that Frau Kohut, senior, will rage and roar in her domestic precinct, where she does not go to bed until her daughter has come home safe and sound. Mother will scream in jealous rage, she will create a dreadful scene. It will take Mother a long time to make up with Erika. The daughter will have to court her with a dozen highly specialized services. Tonight has finally made it clear that Mother gives her all, while the child won’t even give up one second of her leisure! How can Mother fall asleep knowing she’ll wake up the instant her daughter climbs into her half of the double bed? Looking daggers at the clock, Mother stalks through the apartment like a wolf. She pauses in her daughter’s room, which has neither its own bed nor its own key. She opens the closet and angrily throws senselessly purchas
ed clothing through the air, an action contrasting with the delicate materials and recommended handling. Tomorrow morning, before leaving for the conservatory, her daughter will have to put everything away. For Mother, these clothes are evidence of egotism and obstinacy. And the child’s selfishness is made even more evident by the late hour. It’s already past midnight, and Mother is still all alone. It’s outrageous! After the movie on TV, there’s no one for her to talk to. The movie is followed by a late-night talk show. She doesn’t want to watch because she’d doze off, which she mustn’t do before her child is scrunched up into a shapeless wet blob. Mother wants to stay wide awake. She digs her teeth into an old concert gown, which, in its pleats, still hopes that someday it will belong to an international piano star. They once saved up for it, Mother and crazy Father, pinching and scraping, gritting their teeth. Now, Mother’s nasty teeth bite into the gown. At the time, Erika, that vain hussy, would rather have died than perform in a white blouse and taffeta skirt like the others. Mother and Erika figured it would be a good investment if the pianist looked nice. So much for that. Mother tramples the gown under her slippers, which are as clean as the floor and therefore unable to violate the gown. Besides, her soles are soft. Ultimately, the gown just looks a bit crumpled. So, grabbing some kitchen shears, Mother charges onto the field of dishonor to put the finishing touches on this creation by a squinting tenement seamstress, who hadn’t looked into a fashion journal for at least ten years when she got to work on the gown. Mother doesn’t improve on it. The frock might cut a better figure if Erika had the guts to wear this innovative striped creation with air between the narrow ribbons of material. Mother slashes her own dreams along with the dress. Why make Mother’s dreams come true if Erika can’t even take care of her own dreams? Erika doesn’t dare follow her own dreams through, she always just stupidly gazes up at them. Mother resolutely slashes away at the neckline trimming and the graceful puff sleeves, which Erika rebelled against. Mother then slices away remnants of the gathered skirt on the top. She toils. First she had to scrimp and scrape to pay for the dress. She pinched pennies from the housekeeping money. And now she has the drudgery of destroying it. The various parts lie before her; they ought to go into a meat grinder, which she doesn’t have. The child still hasn’t come home. Soon the phase of fear will replace the state of fury. It’s hard not to worry. Terrible things can happen to a woman at night, where she doesn’t belong. Mother calls up the police. They know nothing, they haven’t even heard rumors. The police explain to Mother that if anything happened she’d be the first to know. Since no one has heard anything about anyone fitting Erika’s age and height, there is nothing to report. Besides, no body has been unearthed. Nevertheless, Mother rings up one or two hospitals, and they don’t know anything either. They explain that such calls are completely useless, ma’am. But perhaps at this very moment, gory packages containing pieces of her daughter are being dumped into garbage cans all around the city. Mother will then be all alone, destined for an old-age home, where she can never be all alone! On the other hand, no one will sleep with her in a double bed, as is her wont.
It is now ten minutes later than before, and there is no grinding in the lock, no friendly telephone buzzing that says: Please come to the hospital immediately. There is no daughter who says: Mama, I’ll be home in fifteen minutes, I was delayed unexpectedly. The alleged chamber-music hostess doesn’t answer the phone, even after thirty rings.
The maternal puma steals from the bedroom, where the bed is made and ready. She stalks into the living room, where the TV, switched on again, fades out with the national anthem. It is accompanied by the red-white-red Austrian flag billowing in the wind, a sign that day is done. It wasn’t worth turning on the TV, for Mother knows the national anthem by heart. She transposes two knickknacks. She shifts the big crystal bowl from one spot to another. There is wax fruit in the bowl. She polishes the fruit with a soft white cloth. The daughter, a connoisseur of art, calls the fruit horrible. Mother negates this harsh judgment; it is still her apartment and her daughter. Someday, when Mother is dead, everything will change of its own accord. In the bedroom, the arrangement is meticulously checked yet again. A corner of the bedcover is carefully folded back, to form an equilateral triangle. The sheet is as stiff as an upswept hairdo. On the pillow lies a bedtime chocolate in the form of a tinfoil-coated horseshoe, left over from New Year’s Eve. This surprise is removed, for sweets are only for the sweet. On the night table, next to the night-table lamp, the book that the daughter is reading. Inside it, a bookmark from a hand-painted childhood. Next to it, a filled glass of water for nocturnal thirst (the removal of the candy is punishment enough). Erika’s kindhearted mother refills the glass with tap water for the nth time, to keep the water cold and fresh, so no bubbles will rise, indicating staleness and flatness. On her own side of the bed, Mother is somewhat more casual about these precautions. However, she is considerate enough to remove her dentures from her mouth early in the morning in order to clean them. Then in they go again, right away! If Erika has a wish at night, it is promptly satisfied if at all possible. This applies only to external wishes. Erika should keep her internal wishes to herself—doesn’t she have a nice, warm home? After lengthy deliberation, Mother places a large green apple next to the bedtime book to widen the selection. Like a mother cat who drags her kittens around because she doesn’t trust their peace and quiet, Mother carries the slashed dress from one place to another. And then finally to a third, where it can be seen glittering. The daughter should instantly see the destruction for which she is ultimately to blame. But it should not be too conspicuous. Eventually, Frau Kohut spreads the vestiges of the gown over the TV couch, very carefully, as though Erika were to slip into this creation for a piano recital. Mother has to make sure that the gown keeps body and soul together. She arranges the sleeve tatters in various ways. Her lawful devastation is virtually presented on a silver platter.
Mother briefly suspects that Herr Klemmer, from that long-past home recital, is forcing his way between mother and child. That young man is very nice, but he can’t replace a mother. A mother comes in a unique model, and Erika’s got the original. If Erika did get together with Herr Klemmer, it will have been the last time. They are approaching the deadline for the down payment on the newly built apartment. Every day, Mother forges a new plan, then rejects it, which is why her daughter will have to sleep in the same bed with her, even in the new apartment. Mother should also forge Erika right now, while the iron is still hot. And not yet hot for that Walter Klemmer. Mother’s reasons: various dangers such as fire, theft, burglary, leaky pipes, Mother’s heart attacks (blood pressure!), nocturnal anxieties of a general and specific nature. Every day, Mother refurnishes Erika’s room in the new condo, and always more cunningly than the day before. But there’ll be no bed for her daughter—forget it! A comfortable easy chair will be the sole concession.
Mother lies down, then instantly gets up again. She is already wearing her nightgown and robe. She traipses from wall to wall, pushing away decorative objects and taking their places. She looks at all the clocks in the apartment and compares them with one another. The child is going to get it, she’ll pay for this.
Okay, here we are, the child’s arriving, the lock is clearly clicking, the key grinds briefly, then the gates open up to the gray and gruesome land of mother love. Erika enters. She squints like a drunken moth in the bright hall light. All the lights are switched on as if for a party. However, the time of the eucharist went by, unused, hours ago. Softly, but crimson with rage, Mother sprints out of her abode, accidentally knocking something over, almost knocking Erika over (that phase of the struggle won’t come till later). Mother soundlessly strikes out at her child, and the child strikes back again a brief reaction time. Erika’s shoe soles give off an animal smell, indicating at least decay. Because of the neighbors, who have to get up early in the morning, the two women keep their wrestling silent. The outcome is uncertain. In the end, the daughter may allow her mot
her to win out of sheer respect. Mother, worried about her child’s ten little musical hammers, may allow the child to win. Actually, the child is stronger because she is younger. Besides, Mother used up all her strength fighting with her husband. However, the child has not yet learned how to exploit her strength fully against her mother. Mother smacks away at the loosened hairdo of the late-season fruit of her womb. The silk kerchief adorned with horseheads flutters up, settling, as if deliberately, on a hall lamp, toning it down, damping it—the proper lighting for moodier performances. The daughter is at a disadvantage, her shoes are slippery from all the shit, clay, and grass. She slips on the mat. Her body crashes on the floor, which is barely softened by the red sisal runner. A noisy development. Mother hisses at Erika: Quiet! (The neighbors!) Erika gives tit for tat, reminding Mother about the neighbors: Quiet! They scratch each other’s faces. The daughter shrieks like a falcon pouncing on its prey. As for quiet, Erika says the neighbors can complain all they like tomorrow, Mother’s the one who’ll have to put up with it. Mother howls, then instantly chokes back her howl. It is followed by a half-voiceless, half-vocal gasping and whimpering, sobbing and simpering. Mother starts pressing the “pity” button, and, since the fight is still undecided, she resorts to such unfair devices as her age and her imminent death. She mumbles these arguments, a sobbing chain of poor excuses for not winning today. Her laments hit home. Erika doesn’t want Mother wearing herself out in this struggle. She says Mother started. Mother says Erika started. It’s taken at least a month off Mother’s life. Erika scratches and bites only halfheartedly. Mother takes her advantage and rips out a handful of Erika’s forelock, some of the hair that Erika is proud of because it curls down in such a pretty twirl. Erika lets out a falsetto shriek, which frightens Mother so intensely that she stops. Tomorrow, Erika will have to wear a Band-Aid on her scalp. Or else she’ll have to keep on her kerchief, quasi una fantasia, when she teaches. The two women sit on the crumpled runner, facing each other under the shaded glow of the lamp, loudly breathing in and out. After several gulps of air, the daughter asks whether this was necessary. Like a loving wife who has just received dreadful news from abroad, Erika presses her right hand convulsively against her throat, where an artery hops and twitches. Mother, a retired Niobe, sits next to the hall bureau, which sports all kinds of things with vague functions and unexplained uses. Mother answers without finding words. She says that it would not have been necessary if Erika had only come home on time. Then they aim silence at each other. Their senses are heightened. They have been polished into inconceivably thin blades by rotating whetstones. Mother’s nightgown has slipped down during the fight, showing that, despite everything, she is still first and foremost a woman. Her embarrassed daughter recommends that Mother cover herself. Ashamed, Mother obeys. Erika gets up, saying she’s thirsty. Mother hurries to satisfy this modest wish. She’s afraid that Erika, out of sheer defiance, will buy herself a new dress tomorrow. Mother gets some cider from the refrigerator, a special weekend sale, for she seldom lugs the heavy bottles home from the supermarket. She normally buys concentrated raspberry syrup, which lasts a lot longer for the same amount of effort. The concentrate, diluted with water, can be stretched out for weeks. Mother says she’s finally going to die, the flesh is willing and the heart is weak. The daughter tells her not to exaggerate. She is already numbed by those constant threats of dying. Mother wants to cry, which would make her the winner by a knockout in the third round—or, at worst, by default. Erika warns Mother not to cry so late at night. Erika wants to drink the juice, then go straight to bed. Mother should do the same, albeit on her side of the bed. She should not talk to Erika anymore! Erika is not going to be so quick to forgive her for assaulting a blameless homecomer, a chamber musician. Erika doesn’t want to shower because the pipes can be heard throughout the building. She lies down, as is, next to her mother. Today, one or two of her fuses shorted, but Erika returned home all the same. Since the fuses were meant for rarely used devices, Erika doesn’t notice they’re out. She lies down and falls asleep right after saying good night, to which there is no response. Mother lies awake for a long time, secretly wondering how her daughter could fall asleep right away, with no sign of regret. Erika should have noticed that Mother paid no attention to her good night. On a normal evening, both of them would lie motionless for about ten minutes, stewing in their own juice. Then the inevitable reconciliation would take place with a long, quiet heart-to-heart talk, sealed by a good-night kiss. But today, Erika simply fled into sleep, whisked off by dreams that Mother will never know about because she never hears about them the next day. Mother tells herself to practice utmost caution during the next few days and weeks, even months. These thoughts keep her awake for hours on end, until the gray dawn.
The Piano Teacher Page 15