But when I say “today,” my breathing grows irregular and my heart beats a syncopation that can now be captured on an electrocardiogram, although the graphs do not show that the cause is precisely my “today,” always urgent and new, however, I can prove my diagnosis is correct. In the confusing code of the medical profession, the disorder precedes acute anxiety — it renders me susceptible, it stigmatizes me — although as of today I’m still functional, according to the experts. I’m just afraid “today” is too much for me, too gripping, too boundless, and that this pathological agitation will be a part of my “today” until its final hour.
Whereas there was nothing haphazard about establishing the Time — which I did under great duress — a charitable circumstance led me to the even more unlikely Place, which is not of my own discovery. I did discover myself there, though, and know the Place well — very well — since generally speaking it is Vienna. Really it’s only a side street, more precisely a small section of the Ungargasse, as it happens that all three of us live there: Ivan, Malina and myself. But whoever sees the world from such a narrow point of view as the Third District is naturally inclined to extol the Ungargasse, to study it, to glorify it and endow it with a certain significance. It might be called a special side street since it begins at a fairly quiet, friendly spot on the Heumarkt and since not only the Stadtpark but also the forbidding market hall and the Central Customs Office can be seen from where I live. At this point the houses are still dignified and uninviting, only after Ivan’s — starting at Number 9 with the two bronze lions in front — does the street become more random, less calm and ordered. Despite its proximity to the diplomatic quarter, the Ungargasse shows little affinity with the “Noble Quarter” (as the Viennese call it), which it simply leaves behind on the right. Small cafés and many old inns and taverns make the street useful: we frequent the “Alter Heller,” which we reach after passing a convenient garage, the Automag, a very convenient drug store, and a cigar stand at the Neulinggasse. The great bakery on the corner of the Beatrixgasse should not be overlooked, and also, to our good fortune, there is the Münzgasse, where we can always find a parking place. Here and there one cannot deny the Ungargasse a certain atmosphere, particularly around the Consolato Italiano with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, still the street can’t claim too much of that, especially when the “O” streetcar rattles by or when the ominous postal garage looms into view. There, two inconspicuous plaques curtly pronounce: “Kaiser Franz Joseph I. 1850” and “Office and Chancellery.” But these aspirations to nobility remain ignored, while the traffic calls to mind the street’s distant youth, the old Hungargasse where merchants and traders returning from Hungary with horses, oxen and hay kept their lodgings. And so the Ungargasse runs its course, “along a wide bow, inbound,’’ as it is officially described. Coming from the Rennweg, I often traverse this bow, but I can’t get very far in my description, because new details are constantly arresting my attention: insulting innovations, office buildings and stores known as Modern Living — all of which mean more to me than our city’s most triumphant streets and squares. Not that the Ungargasse isn’t well-known, on the contrary, except a stranger would never lay eyes on it, as it is strictly residential and devoid of tourist attractions. Sightseers would turn back at Schwarzenbergplatz, or certainly upon reaching the Rennweg near the Belvedere, with which we share the honor of belonging to the Third District, but nothing more. A stranger might approach the Ungargasse from the other side, from the skating club, if he were staying in that new stone block, the Vienna Intercontinental Hotel, and happened to stray too far into the Stadtpark. Once above this same park, a chalkwhite Pierrot serenaded me in a cracking voice:
* * *
but we don’t get to the Stadtpark more than ten times a year, though it’s a mere five minutes away by foot, and Ivan, who doesn’t walk on principle (despite all pleas and cajoleries on my part) only knows it from the car. It’s simply too close — for fresh air we take the children to the Vienna Woods, to the Kahlenberg, to the castles at Laxenburg and Mayerling, to Petronell and Carnuntum, all the way to Burgenland. And so, because we’ve never had to drive there, we abstain from the Stadtpark, in fact, we treat it quite coldly, and I can’t remember anything more from far-off days. Sometimes I still get a little anxious when I notice the first magnolia blossoms, but you can’t always make a fuss about that. When I’m uninspired and ask Malina, like I did today: By the way, did you see the magnolias in the park? he just nods his head and responds because he’s polite, but he’s heard all about the magnolia before.
There’s no doubt that Vienna has much prettier streets, however, they occur in other districts, and evoke the same response that overly beautiful women do: they are duly admired, but who would even consider approaching them? No one has yet claimed that the Ungargasse is beautiful, or breathtaking, or enchanting, as it intersects the Invalidenstrasse. So I don’t want to be the first to make untenable assertions about my, or rather our, street. Instead, I should look to myself if I want to understand this fixation with the Ungargasse as it follows its wide bow, inbound only into me, up to Number 9 and Number 6. I should ask myself why I can’t escape its magnetic field whether I’m crossing the Freyung, shopping along the Graben, taking a stroll to the National Library or standing at Lobkowitzplatz and thinking, this is where I should be living! Or at the Hof! Even when I’m loitering downtown, when I stop to leaf through an hour’s worth of newspapers in some café, I’m really only pretending, secretly I’d just as soon be on my way or already home. When I do arrive in the Third District, beginning at the Beatrixgasse (where I used to live) or the Heumarkt, my blood pressure begins to rise and at the same time the tension begins to fall, the cramps which attack me in unknown places abate, and although I keep walking faster and faster, I finally attain a happy, almost urgent tranquility. I don’t get sick the way I do with Time, although Time and Place suddenly converge. This little piece of side street is my greatest security, during the day I run up the stairs, at night I fall upon the outside door armed with the key, and once again that blissful moment returns, when the key twists, the locks unlock, the doors open and that feeling of having come home overwhelms me in the spray of traffic and people. This sensation radiates across one or two hundred yards where everything signals my house. Of course it isn’t really mine, considering it belongs to a cooperative or some gang of investors who rebuilt it or really just patched it up. But I know next to nothing about that, since I lived ten minutes away during the repair years. In fact, for a long time I used to pass old Number 26 — which remained my lucky number for many years — feeling oppressed and guilty, like a dog with a new master when he runs into his old one and doesn’t know who deserves the most affection. Today, however, I can walk by Beatrixgasse 26 as if nothing had ever been there, or almost nothing — well, there was something there once, a scent from long ago, I can’t sense it anymore.
* * *
For years my relationship with Malina consisted of awkward meetings, absolute follies and the biggest possible misunderstandings — I mean of course much greater misunderstandings than with other people. Certainly I was subordinate to him from the beginning, and I must have known early on that he was destined to be my doom, that Malina’s place was already occupied by Malina even before he entered my life. I was only spared — or perhaps I spared myself — meeting him too soon, for there were numerous occasions at the E2 and H2 streetcar stop by the Stadtpark when something could have happened, and almost did. There he stood holding a newspaper, I acted as if I didn’t see him, although I kept staring over my paper in his direction, without flinching. I couldn’t tell whether he was really so engrossed in the news or whether he had noticed my pinning him, hypnotizing him, wanting to force him to look up. Me forcing him! I thought: if the E2 comes first, everything will be fine, but heaven forbid the unfriendly H2 or the even rarer G2 should arrive first. Finally the E2 did indeed pull up, but by the time I had jumped onto the second car Malina had van
ished: he wasn’t to be found in the first car or in my own and he hadn’t remained behind. He must have dashed into the Stadtbahn station just as I had to turn around — after all, he couldn’t have dissolved into thin air. My whole day was ruined since I couldn’t find an explanation, I kept looking for him and was as much perplexed by his behavior as by my own. But that was ages ago, and today there’s not enough time to talk about it. Years later the same thing happened in a lecture hall in Munich. He was suddenly standing next to me, took a few steps forward against a shove of students, searched for a seat and then retreated, while I listened — kept very alert by my fear of passing out — for one and a half hours to a lecture on “Art in the Age of Technology,” while looking and looking for Malina amid this mass of people forced to sit still and be moved by the speaker. On that evening I realized beyond a doubt that I could not count on art, technology or this age to help me in any way, and that I would never have anything to do with the thoughts, themes or problems under discussion. I was also convinced I wanted Malina, and that whatever I desired to know must come from him. In the end I applauded abundantly like everyone else, then two people from Munich helped me to the back of the hall and showed me the way out. One held my arm while the other kept saying intelligent things to me, others joined in, and I kept looking over to Malina, likewise moving toward the back door, but slowly enough to allow me to gain some speed. It was then I performed the impossible: I rammed into him as if someone had pushed me, or as if I had tripped, and down I fell, right on top of Malina. This way he couldn’t help but notice me, though I’m not sure he really saw me. I did hear his voice for the first time though, calm and proper, on one note: Excuse me.
I didn’t know how to answer him, since no one had ever said that to me and I wasn’t sure whether he was begging my pardon or granting me his. The tears came so quickly to my eyes I lost sight of him, and because of the others I stared at the ground, took a handkerchief from my purse and pretended that someone had kicked me. When I looked up he had lost himself in the crowd.
In Vienna I stopped looking for him, assuming he was out of the country, and hopelessly retraced my way to the Stadtpark, as I did not yet own a car. One morning I found him in the paper, but the article wasn’t about Malina at all, it mainly dealt with Maria Malina’s funeral, the most magnificent and impressive ceremony the Viennese ever celebrated voluntarily — only for an actress, of course. Among the mourners gathered at the Zentralfriedhof could be counted the brother of the deceased, the young, highly talented and well-known writer, who wasn’t well-known at all but whom the journalists quickly helped make famous for one day. For in those hours, as all Vienna marched in a long procession, from the Minister of Culture to the janitor, from critics who sit in the best boxes to high-school students who have to stand, Maria Malina had no use for a brother who had written a book that nobody knew and who was himself a “nobody.” The words “young, highly talented and well-known” were necessary attire on this national day of mourning.
* * *
As if it had had nothing to do with him and even less with me, we never discussed this third, unappetizing newspaper contact, which really existed only for me. For in the lost time when we couldn’t even ask each other’s name, much less about each other’s life, I secretly called him “Eugenius,” since the first song I ever learned, and with it the first man’s name, was “Prince Eugene, the Noble Knight.” The name immediately held great appeal for me, also the city “Bel-ge-rad,” whose significance and exotic ring didn’t evaporate until it turned out that Malina was not from Belgrade but only from the Yugoslav border like myself, sometimes we still speak to each other in Slovenian or Windish, a few words, as in the first days: Jaz in ti. In ti in jaz. Other than that we don’t need to talk about our good old days, because our days are getting better and better, and I have to laugh about the times when I was furious with Malina for having allowed me to squander so much time with other people and things. That’s why I banished him from Belgrade, took away his name, attributed mysterious stories to him — soon he was a swindler, soon a philistine, soon a spy — and when my mood improved, I had him disappear from reality and lodged him in fairy tales and sagas, christened him Florizel, Thrushbeard, but I liked him best as St. George who slew the dragon so that my first city could be born, so that Klagenfurt could arise from the barren swamp, and after much idle play I would return discouraged to the only correct supposition, namely that Malina was indeed in Vienna, and that in this city where I had so many possibilities of running into him I had nonetheless always managed to miss him. I began to talk about Malina wherever his name came up in conversation, although this was not often. It’s an ugly memory (which no longer causes me pain) but I felt compelled to act as if I knew him too, as if I knew something about him, and I was as witty as anyone else when it came to the notorious, droll story concerning Malina and Frau Jordan. Today I know that Malina never “had” anything with this Frau Jordan, as they say here, that Martin Ranner never even met secretly with her on the Cobenzl, because she was his sister — first and foremost Malina cannot possibly be considered in a context with other women. It’s not out of the question that Malina knew other women before me, he knows a lot of people, so of course he knows women as well, but this doesn’t mean anything at all since we’ve been living together, I don’t think about it anymore because as far as Malina is concerned, all my suspicions and confusions have come to nothing under his astonished gaze. Moreover, the young Frau Jordan was not the woman long rumored to have uttered the famous saying, “I’m pursuing a policy for the world to come,” when her husband’s assistant surprised her one day on her knees scrubbing the floor and she demonstrated her full contempt for her spouse. It happened otherwise, it’s a different story and one day everything will be set right. The real figures will emerge great and freed from all gossip, like Malina for me today, no longer the product of rumors, but redeemed, sitting next to me or walking with me around the city. The time has not yet come to correct the other things, that’s for later. Not today.
* * *
Since everything between us has happened as it has, the only thing I still have to ask myself is what we can be for each other, Malina and I, since we are so distinct, so unalike, and this isn’t a question of sex or kind, the stability of his existence and the instability of my own. Of course Malina has never lived as convulsively as I have, he’s never wasted his time on trivialities, by phoning around, letting events take over, he’s never gotten into trouble, much less spent half an hour staring at himself in the mirror only to rush off somewhere, always late, stammering excuses, perplexed by a question or embarrassed by an answer. I guess even today we don’t have much to do with one another, we put up with each other, are mutually amazed, but my amazement is curious (is Malina really ever amazed? less and less, I think), and there’s tension precisely because my presence never upsets him, since he acknowledges it as he pleases and doesn’t bother when there’s nothing to say, as if we weren’t constantly passing each other in the apartment, impossible to overlook, performing everyday actions impossible to ignore. Then it seems to me that his calm comes from my ego being too familiar, too unimportant for him, as if he had rejected me as waste, a superfluous something-made-human, as if I were merely the dispensable product of his rib, but at the same time an unavoidable dark tale accompanying and hoping to supplement his own bright story, a tale that he, however, detaches and delimits. Thus I am the only one who has anything to settle, and above all I must and can explain myself, but only to him. He has nothing to settle, no, not him. I’m cleaning up in the front hall — I want to be near the door because he’ll be here any minute — the key moves inside the door, I step back so he won’t knock me down, he locks the door behind him and simultaneously, kindly, we greet one another: hello. And walking along the corridor I add:
I must talk. I will talk. There’s nothing more to disturb my reminiscing.
Yes, says Malina, unamazed. I enter the living room, he he
ads on toward the back, since his is the last room.
I must and I will, I repeat loudly to myself, for if Malina won’t ask and doesn’t want to know more, then it’s all right. I can be reassured.
However, if my memory only entails the usual recollections, remote, decrepit, abandoned, then I’m still far away, very far away from the silent reminiscence where nothing more can upset me.
What should upset me about a city, for example, in which I was born, without understanding why it had to be exactly there and nowhere else, but do I have to keep reminding myself about that? The Office of Tourism distributes Most Important Information on that subject, some things do fall outside its domain, but I must have learned in school where “manly courage and womanly fidelity” unite and where, according to our anthem, “the Glockner’s glacier glistens.” Thomas Koschat, our city’s greatest native son, as attested to by the Thomas Koschatgasse, is the composer of the song: “Verlassn, verlassn, verlassn bin i,” in Bismarck Elementary School I had to relearn multiplication tables I already knew, in the Benedictine school I went to religion (later not to be confirmed) with a girl from another grade, always in the afternoon — everybody else, the Catholics, had their religion before noon, and so I always had time off, the young vicar was said to have been shot in the head, the old deacon was strict, wore a mustache, and considered questions immature. The doors to the Ursuline high school (which I rattled once again) are now barred shut. Maybe I didn’t get my cake at the Café Musil after the entrance exam but I wish I had and picture myself dissecting it with a small fork. Maybe I didn’t get the cake until a few years later. At the foot of the promenade overlooking the Wörthersee, near the steamboat landing, I was kissed for the first time, but I no longer see a face approaching my own, also the stranger’s name must be buried in the silt of the lake, I can only remember something about ration tickets I gave to the stranger who did not return to the landing the next day, since he had been invited to visit the most beautiful woman in the city, who used to walk along the Wienergasse wearing a large hat and who really was named Wanda, once I followed her as far as Waagplatz — without a hat, without perfume and without the self-assured step of a woman of thirty-five. The stranger was probably on the run or else he wanted to exchange the tickets for cigarettes and smoke them with the beautiful tall woman, except I was already nineteen then and not just six, with a satchel on my back, when it actually happened. In a close-up you can’t see the western bank of the lake, just the little bridge over the Glan, this bridge in full sun at noon with the two little boys who were also carrying satchels on their backs, the older one, at least two years older than myself, called out: You, hey you, come here, I’ve got something for you! Neither the words nor the boy’s face have been forgotten, my first vocal challenge, so important, nor have I forgotten that first wild joy, the stopping, hesitating and the first step toward another person, all on this bridge, and all at once the hard clap of a hand on my face: There you go, now you’ve got it! It was the first time I had been hit in the face and my first awareness of someone else’s deep satisfaction in hitting. The first experience of pain. Holding the ties of her satchel, without tears, someone who was once me trotted home with measured steps, for once not counting the pickets along the edge of the path, having fallen among humans for the very first time, and so sometimes you really do know exactly when it began, how and where, and which tears were meant for crying.
Malina Page 2