Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

  (Herr Mühlbauer waves both hands. Apparently not in agreement.)

  * * *

  4th Question: . . . . . . ?

  Answer: My favorite what? Favorite occupation, quite right, that’s what you said. I am never occupied. An occupation would be inhibiting, I would lose even the smallest overview, any view at all, by no means may I occupy myself in this ubiquitous bustle, I’m sure you see all this crazy activity in the world and hear all the infernal noises it produces. I would have occupations outlawed if I could, but I can only outlaw them as far as I am concerned, however, I wasn’t so tempted, I don’t claim any credit, I don’t understand such temptations at all, I’m not trying to make myself seem better than I am, of course I have been tempted in ways I dare not mention, everyone is always confronted with the most difficult temptations and succumbs to them and struggles with them hopelessly, please, not in the present . . .

  I’d rather not say that. My favorite, how did you put it now? Landscapes, animals, plants? Favorite what? Books, music, architecture, painting? I don’t have any favorite animals, no favorite mosquitoes, favorite beetles, favorite worms, even with the best will in the world I cannot tell you which birds or fish or predators I prefer, it would also be difficult for me to have to choose much more generally, between organic and inorganic things.

  (Herr Mühlbauer points encouragingly at Frances, who, having entered quietly, yawns, stretches and then leaps with one bound onto the table. Herr Mühlbauer has to change tapes. Small conversation with Herr Mühlbauer who didn’t know I had cats in the house, it would have been so nice if you had spoken about your cats, says Herr Mühlbauer reproachfully, the cats would have added a personal note! I look at the clock and say nervously, but the cats are only here by chance, I can’t think of keeping them in the city, the cats do not come into question at all, anyway not these cats, and now that Trollope is also coming in, I madly shoo them both away. The tape is running.)

  * * *

  4th Question: . . . . . . ? (For the second time.)

  Answer: Books? Yes, I read a lot, I’ve always read a lot. No, I’m not sure we do understand each other. I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, with flight, with complicity in an absurd, solidified effusion, with a vile overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life. Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books, of course I have certain preferences, many books don’t suit me at all, some I take only in the morning, others at night, there are books I don’t ever let go, I drag them around with me in the apartment, carrying them from the living room into the kitchen, I read them in the hall standing up, I don’t use bookmarks, I don’t move my lips while reading, early on I learned to read very well, I don’t remember the method, but you ought to look into it, they must have used an excellent method in our provincial elementary schools, at least back then when I learned to read. Yes I also realized, but not until later, that there are countries where people don’t know how to read, at least not quickly, but speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over, a sentence which only consists of subject and predicate must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom, since a sentence doesn’t convey anything to itself, it has to “convey” something to the reader. I couldn’t “work my way through” a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading . . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn’t read and doesn’t want to, a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands such a state of innocence, really unless people are truly capable of reading they ought not to read at all.

  (Herr Mühlbauer has erased the tape by mistake. Herr Mühlbauer apologizes. I’d only have to repeat a few sentences.)

  Yes, I read a lot, but the shocks, the things that really stay with you are merely the vision of a page, a remembrance of five words on the lower left of page 27: Nous allons à l’Esprit. Words on a poster, names on doors, titles of books left in a store window, never sold, a magazine ad discovered in the dentist’s waiting room, a gravestone epitaph that struck my eye: Here Lies. A name while flipping through the phone book: Eusebius. I’ll get right to the point . . . For example last year I read: “He wore a Menshikov,” I don’t know why, but I was immediately convinced that whoever this man might have been, this sentence meant he wore a Menshikov, indeed, that he had to wear one, and that this was important for me to know, it belongs irrevocably to my life. Something will come of it. But, to get back to the point I was trying to make, even if we were to have more sessions, day and night, I couldn’t list the books which have impressed me the most or explain why they made such an impression, in which places and for how long. What sticks, then, you will ask, but that’s not the point! there are only a few sentences, a few expressions that wake up inside my brain again and again, begging to be heard over the years: Der Ruhm hat keine weissen Flügel. Avec ma main brûlée, j’écris sur la nature du feu. In fuoco l’amor mi mise, in fuoco d’amor mi mise. To The Onlie Begetter . . .

  (I signal and blush, Herr Mühlbauer has to erase that at once, no one cares about that, I wasn’t thinking, I let myself get carried away, the Viennese newspaper readers wouldn’t understand Italian anyway and most of them wouldn’t understand French anymore, not the younger ones, besides, it’s not to the point. Herr Mühlbauer wants to think it over, he couldn’t keep up entirely, he, too, doesn’t know Italian or French, but he’s been to America twice and never once encountered the word “begetter” in his journeys.)

  * * *

  5th Question: . . . . . . ?

  Answer: Earlier I could only feel sorry for myself, I felt as disadvantaged here as someone who has been disinherited, then I learned to feel sorry for people elsewhere. You’re on the wrong track, my dear Herr Mühlbauer. I get along well with this city and its diminished and disappearing surroundings which have retired from history.

  (Uneasy alarm of Herr Mühlbauer. Unruffled, I proceed.)

  You might also say that, as an example to the world, an empire, along with its practices and tactics embellished with ideas, was expelled from history. I am very happy to live here, because from this place on the planet, where nothing more is happening, a confrontation with the world is all the more frightening, here one is neither self-righteous nor self-satisfied, as this is not some protected island, but a haven of decay, wherever you go there is decay, decay everywhere, right before our eyes, and not just the decay of yesterday’s empire, but of today’s as well.

  (Increasing alarm on the part of Herr Mühlbauer, I suddenly remember the Vienna Evening Edition, maybe Herr Mühlbauer is already worrying about his job, I have to give a little thought to Herr Mühlbauer.)

  More and more I find myself saying, as people used to say: the House of Austria, because a country would be too big for me, too roomy, too uncomfortable, I only say country when I’m talking about smaller entities. Looking out of a train window I think to myself, the country here is truly beautiful. When summer comes I’d like to drive out to the country, to the Salzkammergut or Carinthia. After all, it’s easy to see what happens to pe
ople living in real countries, how heavily their consciences are burdened, even if as individuals they have little or nothing to do with the shameful deeds of their noisy countries swollen with greatness, even if they don’t benefit directly from their country’s increase in power and resources. Just living with other people in one house is enough to scare you. But, my dear Herr Mühlbauer, I didn’t say that at all, right now I’m not saying it’s the republic that is at fault — who said anything here against an inconspicuous, small, ignorant, defective yet harmless republic? certainly neither of us, there’s no reason to be upset, please stay calm, the ultimatum presented to Serbia has expired long ago, a few centuries have simply passed in this rather dubious world and brought it to ruin — we accepted the new world order ages ago. That there’s nothing new under the sun, no, I’d never say that, new things do exist, they do, you can bank on that, Herr Mühlbauer, it’s just that seen from here, where nothing is happening anymore, and that’s a good thing, too, one must tolerate the past completely, it’s not yours and not mine, but who’s asking whether it is, you simply have to put up with these things, in their countries other people don’t have the time, they’re busy, planning and dealing: sitting in their countries, they’re the ones who are behind the times, because they lack a language, for always, in all ages, those without a language rule. I will tell you a terrible secret: language is punishment. Language must encompass all things and in it all things must again transpire according to guilt and the degree of guilt.

  (Signs of exhaustion in Herr Mühlbauer. Signs of my own exhaustion.)

  * * *

  6th Question: . . . . . . ?

  Answer: An intermediary? A task? A spiritual mission? Have you ever tried mediating? It’s a thankless role. Please, no more missions! And I don’t know about missionizing in general . . . We’ve seen what that’s led to wherever it was tried, I don’t understand you, but then again your vantage point must be higher, and anything above that — if it exists at all — would have to be very high indeed. It might be too painfully high for one to be taken there alone, in the thin air, for even just an hour, and how is one to pursue such heights in the company of others, while at the same time languishing in the most abject debasement, spiritual things — I don’t know if you still want to follow me, since your time is so limited and so is your column in the paper, spiritual things demand constant humiliation, one must go down, not up or out on the street to attack others, it’s absolutely outrageous, it should be outlawed, I don’t understand how people can arrive at these highflying expressions. Who could perform such a task anyway, and what would a mission achieve! It’s unthinkable, it weighs me down completely. But maybe you were talking about administrative matters or maintaining archives? We’ve already made a start, with our palaces, castles and museums, our necropolis has been researched, labeled, described in great detail on enameled plaques. You never used to be sure which palace belonged to the Trautsons and which to the Strozzis and where Trinity Hospital was located and what its history was like, but now you can get by without any special knowledge, without a guide as well, and the close friends needed to obtain entrance to the Pallfy Palace or to the Leopoldine Wing of the Hofburg are no longer necessary, administrations ought to be given a boost.

  (Embarrassed coughing on the part of Herr Mühlbauer.)

  Naturally I’m against administration in general, surely you won’t doubt that, I’m against this worldwide bureaucracy which has taken over everything from people and their depictions to potato bugs with their pictures. But here in Vienna something else is going on, the cultic administration of an Empire of the Dead, I don’t know why you or I should be proud, why we should want to attract the world’s attention with all these festivals: Festspiele, Musical Weeks, Commemorative Years, Festival Weeks, Days of Culture. The world could do nothing better than studiously ignore them all so as not to be frightened, because otherwise they’ll see what lies in store for them — in the best case — and the more silently things proceed here, the more secretly our gravediggers go about their work, the more covertly things occur, the more quietly the requiem is played and the more inaudibly the last words are spoken, then, perhaps, true curiosity would be all the greater. Vienna’s crematorium is its spiritual mission, you see, we’re discovering a mission after all, you just have to keep talking until it all unfolds, but let’s not speak about that, it is here, at its most fragile point, where this century sparked some minds to thought and then incinerated them, so they’d begin to have an effect, but I ask myself, and I’m sure you ask yourself too, whether every new effect doesn’t effect a new misunderstanding . . .

  (Change of tape. Herr Mühlbauer empties his glass in one gulp.)

  * * *

  6th Question: . . . . . . ? (For the second time. Repeat.)

  Answer: “The House of Austria’’ has always been my favorite expression because it best explains my ties to Austria, better than all the others at my disposal. I must have lived in this house at different times, as I can immediately call to mind the streets of Prague and the port in Trieste, I dream in Czech, in Windish, in Bosnian, I have always been at home in this House and — except while dreaming, in this dreamed House — without the slightest desire to reinhabit it, to come into its possession, to raise any claim, for the Crown Lands fell to me, I abdicated: at the Imperial Church am Hof I renounced the oldest crown. Just imagine, after each of the last wars the new border was to be drawn through the village of Galicia. Galicia, which no one knows except me, which doesn’t mean a thing to anybody else, which nobody visits and which doesn’t amaze a soul, always fell right in the path of the pen on Allied staff maps, and it reemerged each time, though for different reasons, with what is today called Austria, the border is only a few kilometers away, in the mountains, and for the longest time during the summer of 1945 nothing was decided, I was evacuated there, I kept wondering what would become of me, whether I would be counted as a Slovenian in Yugoslavia or a Carinthian in Austria, I was sorry I had dozed through my Slovenian classes — French came more easily to me, even Latin interested me more. Naturally Galicia would have remained Galicia under any flag, and we wouldn’t have had much of an opinion, since we never worried at all about this expansion or that, at home we always said that once it’s over we’ll go back to Lipica, we have to visit our aunt in Brünn, what could have possibly become of our relatives in Czernowitz, the air in Friuli is better than here, when you grow up you have to go to Vienna and Prague, when you grow up . . .

  I want to say that we always accept these realities with indifference and apathy, we were completely indifferent as to which places ended up in which countries and where they might wind up eventually. Nonetheless, traveling to Prague was different from traveling to Paris, but all the time in Vienna I wasn’t truly living my life — nor can I say the time was completely lost — only that in Trieste I wasn’t a stranger, but now that matters less and less. It doesn’t have to be, but sometime and soon, maybe this year, I’d like to go to Venice, which I will never get to know.

  * * *

  7th Question: . . . . . . ?

  Answer: I believe there’s been a misunderstanding, I could start over and answer you more precisely, if you’ll be patient with me, and if another misunderstanding should arise, at least it would be a new one. We couldn’t make the confusion any greater than it is, nobody’s listening to us, questions are being asked and answered elsewhere now as well, people are fixing their sights on even stranger problems, new problems are ordered from each day to the next, they’re invented and put into circulation, they don’t really exist, you hear people talking about them and so you start talking about them yourself. I, too, have only heard about the problems, otherwise I don’t have any, we could sit quietly with our hands in our laps, wouldn’t that be nice, Herr Mühlbauer, sipping a drink? But at night, alone, is when the erratic monologues arise, the ones that last, for man is a somber being, only in the darkness is he master of himself and during the day he goe
s back to being a slave. Right now you are my slave and you have made me yours, you, a slave of your paper, which had better not call itself Evening Edition, your slavishly dependent newspaper for thousands of slaves . . .

  (Herr Mühlbauer presses a button and turns off the tape recorder. I didn’t hear him say: thank you for the interview. Herr Mühlbauer is in a state of utmost embarrassment, ready to redo the whole thing as early as tomorrow. If Fräulein Jellinek were here I would know what to say, I will be indisposed or sick or out of town. I would have some meeting, some appointment. Herr Mühlbauer lets me know that he’s lost a whole afternoon, he packs up his tape recorder crossly and leaves saying: Küss die Hand.)

  * * *

  To Ivan on the telephone:

  * * *

  Oh, nothing much, I was just

  You sound awful, were you asleep

  No, just exhausted, the whole afternoon

  Are you alone, have the people

  Yes they’re gone, also the whole afternoon