In record time, as if she were practised in exiting at break-neck speed, she strode over to the foyer and grabbed a suitcase. 'I call it quits!'
I pointed out the dangers of taking to the streets at that hour, but she spoke loudly to the wall behind which my father was likely to be, if he hadn't moved. 'Plenty of time ahead of me for a nice walk! Some fresh air!' She rounded the corner so he could see her and threw his ticket down. 'Come or not, I don't give a damn! You do what you want! But if you come, you'll need this!'
It was the only time she ever looked at me in half defeat, as if she were counting on me to convey the message if, as the lost look on his face indicated, he'd missed it.
My father stayed still on the floor, enthroned on his pillow with the fallen bedclothes twisted about his shoulders like the cloak of a fallen king. I let him be, slumped down myself in the armchair nearest him, and sat waiting until the first pink streaks of morning eased into the sky. It was time to warn Elsa that the coast would not be clear at seven, as I'd thought.
***
'Johannes.' We turned, startled. My father had been standing at the door of my room.
He uncrossed his arms and they dropped to his sides. 'It can't be.'
We didn't know what to do or say, each for our own reasons. Neither did he. He pivoted, straightened himself, and gave the length of balustrade orderly chops as he descended. About six minutes later I heard a shot, short, remote and muffled, like an inoffensive cough.
xxii
I was forced to sell our furniture to pay the inheritance taxes. Inexperienced as I was, I'd made the usual mistake of telling the truth. I should have told the Bürgermeister it had been given to me in my parents' lifetime, or used family connections to procure official valuations of lesser worth. This common practice (there was theory and practice in affairs of succession) was called, ironically enough, Chuzbe, a Yiddish word that translates roughly as 'managing cleverly'. I had no idea the state took into account everything, from my father's watch (which I wore) to a portrait my grandmother had posed for when she was sixteen. Since my father had given a good part of my mother's jewellery to Madeleine, and I a few pieces to Elsa, some valuables actually escaped the inventory. My only other option would've been to mortgage the house, but I was warned by my grandmother's notary that if I didn't keep up the payments, the bank would be entitled to sell the house out from under me.
The auction was scheduled for Saturday at Dorotheum, the oldest auction house in the world. There was pushing and shoving when the doors opened as there weren't enough seats, and two-thirds of the crowd stood packed like sardines in the back, their envy growing with the passing hours. Among other lots — Baroque, Empire, Viennese Thonet, Jugendstil, Art Deco, Bauhaus, Biedermeier — familiar furniture of ours was positioned at strategic points of the showroom, looking as out of place to me as newcomers at a cocktail party edging themselves close to the chattering clusters without actually being let in.
Above, as many styles of chandeliers were dangling, including three Empire ones of ours. They were strung up a trifle lopsided so that the gilded branches looked about to release their harvest of glass teardrops. By chance I was not far from my grandfather's leather armchair. Tempted to sit in it, I must have glanced over once too often, for a fat woman got the idea, pushed past me and plopped herself down.
The first object to be sold was our Louis XVI cylinder desk with marquetry decoration, which had come down to us from Pimmichen's side. Several hands were raised, and the bidding went three times higher than the value printed in the catalogue. This made me anticipate a healthy sum for my mother's dresser, but the auctioneer's flowery description failed to incite a single person to lift his hand. After he scolded the public for their lack of appreciation, and cut the opening figure in half, there was an exchange that petered out in a matter of seconds and the hammer came down.
The most cumbersome pieces were left behind for later transportation arrangements, but most buyers walked away with what they'd come for. A young couple lugged off our Empire commode in rosewood, breathless over the bulk as much as, I guessed, the bargain they'd struck. The room was expeditiously stripped, the ceilings, walls. I felt helpless watching it all. The rugs were next; the floor was bared, our Bokhara pulled out from under my feet.
Of course no one knew these objects had once belonged to my family, that I'd spent my life among them. Everyone was only concerned about the new addition to their own home or antique shop. The total taken would have been sufficient to pay the taxes I owed, but the percentage due to the auctioneers had to be deducted, as did transport costs. Only after their next sale, in which I sold our mirrors (down to the last trumeau and bathroom glass), as well as my grandmother's piano, was I able to break even.
All at once, every room in our house looked bigger, as if the walls had miraculously moved out. The interior, without being devoid of possessions, was empty enough to echo. A cough, a word, like a footstep, was sonorously doubled yet inexplicably hollow. Absent vitrines, secretaires, pier-glasses, armoires left rectangular markings along the walls like doorways leading nowhere. The light-toned quadrates on the floor testified to our missing rugs. Night-time's unwelcome boost of the imagination turned these into ghost traps eerily inviting me down to who knew where. Coin-like dents were left by chairs and sofas. Three such dents designated the position of our former piano — a corner I avoided because of its singular melancholic silence. Defects I'd never noticed now mercilessly drew the eye: paint peeling, wallpaper ungluing, chintzes coming apart.
Order became a problem. Absent beds gave way to linen heaps in otherwise bare rooms. The want of chests, drawers, wardrobes led to the formation of many a composite dune. The auctioneers had assured me that the bookcases made specially to fit our library would fetch a high price, and they were right, but as a consequence the leather-bound volumes hit the floor as well.
Winter came and the house grew cold. The wooden stoves contained cold ashes. Having no other choice, I chopped, kicked and swore down a tree in our back yard. Hoping to find a discarded item to help me ignite the damp timber, I climbed up to the attic. I'd already used up whatever I could for this purpose: there were no more rotting straw seats, no more brooms, no more anything. Far to the back of the attic sagged the powdery drapes of what must have once been flourishing webs, delicately laced and taut. There, I found the boxes I'd been looking for. I swept the grime off and took a look inside: the banned books my mother had salvaged. We had to keep warm.
Madeleine's former 'house' had refused to take her back, after she'd left them twice. It wasn't only 'a resentment thing', she told me, though that had a part in it, but more of 'a competition thing'. Her place had been taken. With all the foreigners in the city, there had been an influx of younger and prettier — and thus higher-selling — aspiring professionals. I was forced to take her back in. If I didn't want her up on the roof crying out the truth, she said, I'd better put a roof over her head. After this vile intrusion she behaved fairly enough. She was out working on the streets all night, home sleeping all day, or at least three or so days a week when she actually came around. Where she spent the other days I didn't care to know; nor did she care to tell. Our paths only crossed on rare occasions. She and Elsa were still civil enough when they happened to meet, though as sparse as ever in their words. On the whole, they avoided each other as much as they could. Elsa was afraid of Madeleine, whom she saw as a harlot and scheming blackmailer. And Madeleine was too proud to pay tribute to Elsa, whom she considered now held the rank of a kept lady.
I knew I had to get a job or it would mean utter ruin. I had no idea how to go about it. Along with my parents and grandparents, I had always assumed I'd work for the family business. My father had told me as a child that the day I had enough experience, he'd be of retirement age, so I'd take over. He'd pass the torch on to me, he said, just as his father had to him, and I would to his future grandson, when the time came.
Of course there was no more factory. It had b
een bombed while producing war material it shouldn't have been. As a general rule, whoever wasn't around was blamed for whatever couldn't be proven, in order to keep the survivors out of trouble, and no one made an exception of my father. His car had never been found among the debris. My grandmother had suspected it had been stolen by one of his employees, who'd gone across the border to sell it in Hungary. Even if this wasn't the case, I would never have got it back — or anything else, at that — since the factory was situated in what was now the Soviet sector.
Naturally, the car and factory had been insured, but there were clauses in the contract exempting the company from compensating for damage or loss due to war. My hopes revived briefly with the Marshall Plan, and although I cannot minimise the help this programme was to countless others, it was of no direct benefit to me.
Sitting in a coffee shop, I went over the situations vacant with a sole kleiner Brauner for company — brown in a manner of speaking: this brew of coffee with its dribble of milk was an aquarelle sort of beige, but it was the cheapest beverage one could order. It was either that or a glass of hot milk. Just wetting my lip with it from time to time, I could make it last hours, a practice that made me a fiend of the waiter whose job it was to incite poor people like me to more profitable consumption. Every quarter-hour he slipped the list of drinks on top of whichever advertisement my finger was pointing to and asked me if he still couldn't get me anything — beer, sparkling water, a hot coffee or espresso? Usually, I was sensitive to such pressure, but whatever I ordered would have lightened my pocket of what I needed for Elsa's next meal, so the answer was the same as the last and the next: no.
Not that there were pages of vacancies; never even a whole one. It was giving thought to each that took time. The majority were for construction and reconstruction jobs, for which I was physically unqualified. Others sought dynamic young men who had completed their studies. I didn't even have my high-school diploma so there was no point getting my hopes up there. Too bad I was too old to be a newspaper delivery boy, glass-blower's apprentice, petrol station attendant, bellboy, cloakroom keeper . . . Typesetter would have been a step towards journalism, but who in their right mind would employ someone manually limited like me? Maybe I was being negative, maybe just realistic, but those afternoons I convinced myself of being defeated without giving anything or anyone — perhaps most of all myself — a try.
In the streets I had more guts. One of my habitual bakers was, according to the sign in his cracked window, looking for part-time assistance. I popped in to say help had come. He didn't see it that way. I went to half a dozen factories, offered to work on the line. No one would take me with one hand and no experience. I offered to work for half the minimum wage, facing up to what they themselves were insinuating — 'one hand, half a person' — but that didn't change their minds. I offered to do it for free until I'd proven myself; still they shook their heads. They said that if I got injured, they would be liable. I tried railway stations, the post office, the municipal authorities, thinking that the Austrian government, by not paying me a correct pension, would at least compensate me this way. How wrong I was. Someone from the latter did, nevertheless, refer me to the Wiener Arbeitsamt.
I almost turned around when from outside I saw the crowd milling about in the fluorescent-lit hallway. Stepping inside was worse. Though it contained humans, the body odour was worse than in certain areas of Schönbrunn's zoological garden. Just finding the elbow room to fill out an application required an appreciable effort, but not as much as the next step: having one's picture taken by a token-fed machine. This meant offering oneself as spectacle to a public of bored, moping faces in an attempt, against all odds, to smile. The office closed before my turn came, and this was to happen twice more before my name was called.
The skinny brunette whose hair was parted into two limp plaits edged her index fingers in behind her glasses to rub her eyes. They were watery when she opened them to catch me studying the poster behind her of our republic's double-headed eagle. It had originated from the Hapsburgs' coat of arms, but when the Austro–Hungarian Empire fell, Austria had kept it and put the imperialistic bird to work with a hammer and scythe. Or was it a sickle? I knew nothing of farming. I started to remark that even it had employment, but she cut me short.
'Your application is incomplete. What are your qualifications?' She picked up a pen, tapped it on the line as rapidly as a sewing machine needle.
'Well . . . I'm hard-working . . . I'm honest . . .' I tried to come up with other qualities.
'How would you know if you're hard-working if you never worked before?'
Her pen continued to tap away, destabilising me further.
'At home. At home I have always worked hard. Cooking. Cleaning. All that. It's a lot of work, you know.'
She smiled but, as my eyes were drawn to the gap between her two front teeth, her expression turned acid. 'My husband never bought that. Thank you. Next!'
I stood up but couldn't bring myself to move. I wanted to make a favourable impression somehow, but another man was occupying my chair and she'd forgotten I'd ever been there.
In the meantime, taxes had to be paid, piles of bills had to be faced. I received letters from bailiffs threatening to show up at the door, and if I didn't open up, a court order would entitle a locksmith to do so. I could only imagine what Elsa would think at that! At the bailiff's discretion, possessions could be confiscated, sold to cover my debts. Panic inspired my next decisions. I had the house stripped of its oak panelling, stone cornices, imported Florentine floor tiles, as well as the antique doors to our rooms with their embossed bronze handles. The front door stayed, but the lion's-head knocker did not. These were sold at auction, my debts reimbursed, my anxiety appeased. Momentarily.
The extracted cornices left scars in the wall that frowned at me from above. Empty doorways gaped like toothless mouths, shocked at what I'd done. The foyer and living room looked as if they were in mid-construction, as, come to think of it, did most of the rest of the house. No corner was snug any more. It felt rather as if Elsa and I — and Madeleine too, I suppose — were living clandestinely in a house that wasn't ours. In these unnaturally bare surroundings I found myself focusing on the cracks in the wall, the ceiling. They seemed to multiply, to grow overnight, centimetre by centimetre. They grew in a slow, twining movement one way, then another. I had visions of leaves growing out of them.
Elsa reacted to all this with integrity. She put her hands on her hips the way she used to and scolded me. 'Johannes. Don't expect me to stand by and say nothing! I know you're broke. I've been a burden. You've had to put food in my mouth, clothes on my back, and money into the palm of that Hure because of me!'
'Me? Owner of such a house? Most of Vienna would love to be broke like me.'
'The grander the house, the grander its expenses. The greedier the Hure . . .'
'These are no concerns for a woman.'
'I have a brain just like you or any other man!'
'That you have already proven, but maths is not finance, any more than Marxism on paper is communism. Book-smart people like you can't manage real life.'
'Don't underestimate me.'
'Precisely what you're doing to me.'
'I'm not going to just stand by and do nothing. I'm going to help.'
'There's nothing you can do.'
'I can try to pay her myself.'
'I won't have it.'
'Allow me at least to pay my way. That will help.'
'Your "way" is my responsibility.'
'I'm not a kept woman!' I saw the old fire light up in her eyes. 'If a boat were sinking and a man and woman were both on it, what good would it do for the man to bail the water out by himself? The boat sank, they both drowned — how many lives would he have saved? Zilch. If they bailed the water out together and the boat remained afloat, how many lives will each one have saved? Two.'
I shook my head at my old Elsa with her rhetorical arguments, which she pulled out of her hat
at will. Sensing a breach in my defences she took her chance to change my mind. 'I have a talent, a craft, you know. You invested in it; you should get something out of it.' She waited for me to catch on but I didn't. 'My painting! If you let me, I can do one per day, at least, maybe even two. You just sell them at whatever price you choose, and use the money to keep the house going. And that Hure's mouth from going!'
'I appreciate the thought, but no thanks.'
'Can you still afford arrogance? My father always said arrogance was an expensive vice. A man has to pay for it all his life, and in life after life it continues to tax his soul.'
'In case you didn't know, there's a difference between real money and pocket-money.'
She kept jabbing me with her finger, forcing me to maintain my lie. 'But look at the success I was having before my accident! You said yourself I was having great success! I was "someone small who touched the whole world"! You said! Why do you deny it now? To humiliate me? To make me feel like I'm nothing, that I've never accomplished anything? That I've never done any good in my life?'
'Critical success, yes.' I swallowed. 'Yes. Commercial success too — it's true, but you forget, I had to reimburse the costs — you have no idea the grease it takes to keep the old gears turning. Do you have any idea the cost of renting halls, having invitations printed, purchasing materials, paying for transport, insurance? Art is for prestige, not profit.'
'You don't have to do it so fancy this time around. Just sell right here in Vienna. No message on my side, no fuss on yours. However, and for whatever you can.'
'That's kind, sweet Elsa, but the greatest help you can be to me at this point is to let me find the solutions myself.'
'Let me tell you something that's going to surprise you, sweet Johannes. I want to do it. It's the only thing I have wanted to do for ages, and, to be perfectly honest, I don't even think I would be doing it for you. The truth is, I would be doing it for me! Just the idea of having a purpose in my life again, a goal, a reason for getting out of bed in the morning and going back to bed exhausted at night, with sore feet and tired hands and a spent mind, and I feel the life flowing back into my veins, my body and entire being swelling. I feel like I'm going to blossom, to open my arms towards the sun and lick the rain, feel bees tickle my ears, birds kiss my face, stab me in the cheeks with their little beaks until I feel. Can you understand that?'
Caging Skies Page 25