* * *
The case of Kranewitzer changed me greatly, internally, imperceptibly. I have to explain this to Malina, and so I do.
* * *
Me:
* * *
Since that time I know what is meant by Privacy of Mail. Today I am able to picture it in its entirety. After the case of Kranewitzer I burned my letters of many years, then began writing completely different letters, mostly late at night, till eight in the morning. I didn’t send all these letters, but they’re the ones I’m concerned about. Over these four, five years I must have written ten thousand letters, just to myself, letters that contained everything. I also leave many letters unopened, in my attempt to practice Privacy of Mail, in my attempt to approach the height of Kranewitzer’s thinking, to comprehend what could be unlawful in reading a letter. But now and then I’ll have a relapse, all of a sudden I’ll open one and read it, even leave it lying around so that you, for example, could read it while I’m in the kitchen — that’s how poorly I guard the letters. So it isn’t a crisis of mail or writing that I’m not quite equal to, it’s that I backslide and revert to curiosity, every now and then I tear open a package, especially at Christmas, blushing as I take out a scarf, a beeswax candle, a silver-plated hairbrush from my sister, a new calendar from Alexander. I’m still so inconsistent, although the case of Kranewitzer could have helped me mend my ways.
Malina:
Why is this Privacy of Mail so important to you?
Me:
Not because of this Otto Kranewitzer. For my own sake. For yours as well. And in the University of Vienna I swore upon a scepter. It was my only oath. I was never able to swear anything to any person, any representative of any religious or political doctrine. Even as a child I would immediately fall very ill, since I had no other defense, I would get downright sick, with high fever, and couldn’t be sent anywhere to take an oath. But people who’ve only sworn once have it harder. Several oaths can certainly be broken, but not just one.
* * *
Since Malina knows me and is familiar with my stumbling about from one topic to another, it’s easy for him to believe that I nevertheless have the willpower to carry things further than I let on, confined as I am to the limited possibilities of our everyday existence, that Privacy of Mail is also something I would like to get to the bottom of and something I will uphold.
* * *
Tonight all the mailmen in Vienna are to be tortured, people want to test if they are equal to the Privacy of Mail. However some are only to be examined for varicose veins, flat feet and other physical deformities. It’s possible that as of tomorrow they’ll call in the military and have it deliver letters, because the mailmen will be maltreated, injured, tormented, tortured, or broken down by injections of truth serum — and no longer capable of delivering anything. I am considering an inflammatory speech, a letter, yes, an inflammatory letter to the Minister of Postal Affairs, to protect all mailmen including my own. A letter that may already have been intercepted and burned by the soldiers, the flames will burn the words or blacken them, and it could be that the messengers in the Ministry of Postal Affairs are pursuing the Minister down the corridors to hand him what is nothing but a charred piece of paper.
* * *
Me:
* * *
You understand, my inflammatory letters, my inflammatory appeals, my inflammatory stance, this entire fire I have put on paper with my burned hand — I’m afraid it could all become a charred piece of paper. Ultimately all the paper in the world is charred by fire or melted by water, since they douse fire with water.
Malina:
The ancients used to say of someone stupid that he had no heart. They placed the seat of intelligence in the heart. You don’t have to hang your heart on every single thing and have all your speeches flame and blaze and all your letters.
Me:
But how many people have just a head and nothing more, and no heart at all? I’ll tell you what’s really going on now: tomorrow Vienna is being relocated to the Danube, with whatever force it takes, including the military. They want to have Vienna on the Danube. They want water, not fire. One more city with a river flowing through. That would be horrible. Please, call Department Director Matreier at once, call the Minister!
* * *
But Vienna doesn’t have much time left, it’s slipping away, the houses are falling asleep, people are turning their lights off earlier and earlier, no one is awake anymore, entire districts are gripped by apathy, people aren’t coming together or splitting apart, the city is slipping into decline although isolated thoughts and erratic monologues still occur at night. And from time to time the final dialogues between Malina and myself.
* * *
I am at home alone, Malina is keeping me waiting for a long time, I’m sitting with Chess for Beginners in front of the board and am in the middle of a game. No one is sitting opposite, I keep switching places, this time Malina won’t be able to say that I’m about to lose, since ultimately I both win and lose at the same time. But Malina comes home and sees only one glass, he doesn’t look at the chessboard, this game doesn’t interest him.
Malina says, as I expected: Vienna is burning!
* * *
I’ve always wanted to have a younger brother, better still a younger husband, Malina should understand that, after all everybody has a sister, but only some people have brothers. Even as a child I kept a lookout for these brothers, placing not one but two pieces of candy by the window at night, since two pieces are for a brother. Besides I already had a sister. Every older man horrifies me, even if he’s only older by a day, and I would never bring myself to confide in an older man, I’d rather die. The face alone tells nothing. I have to know the dates, I have to know he’s five days younger, otherwise I’ll be haunted by these doubts that attachments could ensue, that I could fall under the supreme curse, because it’s possible that something could happen to me once again, and I have to work harder and harder to avoid the hell I must once have inhabited. But I do not remember.
* * *
Me:
* * *
I have to be able to submit voluntarily, after all you’re a little younger than I am, and I didn’t meet you until later. Sooner or later wasn’t so important, but this difference was. (And I don’t even want to mention Ivan, so Malina won’t find out anything, because even though Ivan wants to drive old age right out of me, I would still like to keep it so that Ivan won’t age in relation to me.) You’re just a tiny bit younger than I am, that gives you enormous power, take advantage of it, I will submit, I can do that on occasion. And this is not the result of any rational deliberation. It stems from either affinity or aversion, I can no longer change it. I am afraid.
Malina:
I may be older than you.
Me:
You certainly are not, I know that for a fact. You came after me, you can’t have been there before I was, you’re completely inconceivable before me.
I don’t especially trust the last days of June, but I’ve often determined that I especially like people who were born in summer. Malina rejects observations of this kind with disdain, I might sooner come to him with questions about astrology which I don’t understand at all. Frau Senta Novak, who is very much in demand in theatrical circles, but who is also consulted by industrialists and politicians, once drew all my configurations and possible tendencies into circles and quadrants, she showed me my horoscope which struck her as incredibly curious, I should have a look myself and see how sharply it is defined, she said that at first glance my chart shows an incredible tension, it’s really not a picture of one person but of two people standing in extreme opposition to one another, which must mean that I am always on the verge of being torn in two, with configurations like
these, if all the dates I had given were accurate. I asked hopefully: The torn man, the torn woman, right? If they were separated it would be livable, maintained Frau Novak, but scarcely the way it is, furthermore male and female, reason and feeling, productivity and self-destruction also stand out in an unlikely manner. I must have made a mistake with my dates, since she liked me right away, I’m such a natural woman, she likes natural people.
* * *
Malina treats everything with a uniform seriousness, he doesn’t find superstitions and pseudosciences any more ridiculous than the sciences, which themselves were based on superstitions and pseudosciences, as every passing decade reveals more and more clearly, and which are compelled to renounce so many conclusions in order to progress. Dispassionate is the best way to describe how Malina devotes himself to everything, people as well as ideas and things, and thus he belongs to that rare breed of men who, without being entirely self-sufficient, have neither friend nor foe. He also devotes himself to me, sometimes biding his time, sometimes paying close attention, he lets me do what I please, he says you only understand people if you don’t press them, if you don’t demand anything and don’t let them provoke you, everything is revealed without all that. This balance inside him, this equanimity, will eventually drive me to despair, since I react to every situation, submit to every emotional upheaval and suffer the losses — which Malina notices, detachedly.
* * *
There are people who think that Malina and I are married. We never once considered that we might be, that such a possibility could exist, nor even that other people might think we were. For the longest time it never even crossed our minds that wherever we go, like other people, we appear as a man and a woman or even man and wife. This was a complete surprise for us, we had no idea what to make of it. We laughed a lot.
* * *
On a given morning, for example, while I’m walking around exhausted and absentmindedly fixing breakfast, Malina is capable of showing interest in the child who lives across the courtyard and for a whole year has been shouting only two words: Helloo, Helloo! holla, holla! Once I was on the verge of interfering, I wanted to go over and speak to the mother, since she apparently doesn’t talk to the child at all, since what’s happening here makes me worry about the future, and since this daily helloo and holla is torture to my ears, worse than Lina’s vacuuming, running water or breaking plates. But Malina must hear something different and doesn’t think I have to call the doctors or the child welfare representatives right away, he listens to this child’s calling just as if another kind of being had arisen, one which seems no stranger to him than those beings whose vocabulary contains more than a hundred or a thousand or several thousand words. I believe Malina is completely indifferent to change or transformation, since nowhere does he see anything good, bad or least of all better. The world seems to exist for him exactly as it is, exactly as he first discovered it. And nonetheless he sometimes scares me because his view of a person is informed by the greatest, most comprehensive knowledge, impossible to acquire at any given place or time and impossible to impart to others. His listening insults me deeply, because behind everything that’s said he also appears to hear things unsaid — as well as what’s said too often. I myself often imagine too much, and Malina often points out my delusions, still I can’t imagine how precise and how extraordinary his sight and hearing really are. I suspect he doesn’t see through people or unmask them, as that would be very common and cheap, even vile in its attitude toward others. Malina beholds people, and that is something entirely different, since that does not diminish, but rather enlarges them, they become more unearthly, and my imaginative faculty, which he ridicules, is probably a very inferior variant of what he himself uses to develop, fill out, distinguish and perfect everything. So I no longer discuss the three murderers with Malina and have even less desire to talk about the fourth, about whom I don’t have to tell Malina a thing, for although I have my own form of expression I have only very little skill at description. Malina doesn’t want any descriptions and impressions of some dinner or other I once spent in the company of murderers. He would have gone all the way and not contented himself with a mere impression or this dull unease, he would have presented me with the real murderer and used this confrontation to force me into a realization.
* * *
Since I let my head droop, Ivan says: You just don’t have anything that requires you to be there!
He’ll win his case, because who wants anything from me, who needs me? But Malina should help me find a reason for my being here, since I don’t have an old father to support in his old age, I don’t have any children always needing something, like Ivan’s: warmth, winter coats, cough syrups, gym shoes. Nor does the law of conservation of energy apply to me. I am the first perfect example of waste — extravagant, ecstatic and incapable of putting the world to any reasonable use, able to show up at the masked ball of society, or stay away like someone who has been detained, or has forgotten to make a mask, or can no longer find his costume out of carelessness, and so one day will no longer be invited. When I stand in front of a familiar door in Vienna, perhaps because I am invited, it occurs to me at the last moment it might be the wrong door, or day or hour, and I turn around and drive back to the Ungargasse, too quickly tired, too much in doubt.
* * *
Malina asks: Have you never thought how much trouble other people have often gone to because of you? I nod thankfully. They have indeed, they didn’t spare themselves the trouble of providing me with character traits either, they equipped me with stories, and even with money as well, so that I can run around in clothes and eat leftovers, so that I can continue to make do and so it won’t be too obvious how I am doing. Too quickly tired I can sit down in the Café Museum and leaf through newspapers and magazines. Hope springs up inside me once again, I am animated and excited because there’s now a direct flight to Canada twice a week, you can fly to Australia in comfort on Qantas, safaris are getting cheaper, in Vienna we should soon see Doro-coffee with its unique aroma from the sunny high plains of Central America, Kenya is advertised, Henkell Rosée lets you flirt with a new world, no building is too high for Hitachi elevators, men’s books are now available which are just as inspiring for women. To make sure your world never gets too confined, there’s Prestige, a breath of wide-open space and the sea. Everyone is talking about mortgages — You’re in good hands with us, proclaims a mortgage bank. You’ll go a long way in Tarraco shoes. We coat your Flexalum blinds twice so you’ll never have to varnish them again, a RUF-Computer is never alone! And then the Antilles, le bon voyage. That’s why the Bosch Exquisit is one of the best dishwashers in the world. The moment of truth is coming when customers ask our experts questions, when process technology, calculation, rate of return, packaging machines, delivery times are all up for debate, Vivioptal to jog your memory. Take it in the morning . . . and the day belongs to you! So all I need is Vivioptal.
* * *
I wanted to conquer in a sign, but since I am not needed, since I have been told this, it is I who have been conquered by Ivan and these gyerekek whom I might be allowed to accompany to the movies once again, Walt Disney’s Micky Maus is playing in the Burg cinema. Who should conquer if not they. But it may not just be Ivan, perhaps something greater has conquered me, it must be something greater, since everything is driving us to one destiny. Sometimes I still wonder what I might do for Ivan, since there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, but Ivan doesn’t demand that I jump out the window, that I leap into the Danube for his sake, that I throw myself in front of a car, perhaps to save Béla and András, he has so very little time and no needs. Nor does he want me to replace Frau Agnes and clean his two rooms and wash and iron his clothes, he only wants to drop by, receive three cubes of ice in his whiskey and ask how things are, he’ll also let me ask how things are with him and how things are at the Hohe Warte. On the Kärntnerring it’s always the same thing: a lot of work, but nothing special. There isn’t enough time
to play chess, I’m no longer making any progress since we play less and less. I don’t know when we started playing so much less, we really don’t play at all anymore, the chess sentence sets are lying fallow, other sentence sets are also suffering losses. It just can’t be that the sentences which we discovered so slowly are also slowly leaving us. A new group emerges.
* * *
Unfortunately I’m, my time’s a little
Of course if you’re so pressed for time
It’s just today my time is particularly
Naturally if you don’t have any time now
When I have some more time
In time we’ll manage, it’s just right now
Then we’ll be able to, once you have time
Just right at this time, when it’s on again
Malina Page 23