I disturb, I’ve never done other than disturb, I disturbed the pianist just like I disturbed a whole pack of people who nevertheless were quite well disposed to me, as I once disturbed my mother-in-law, I remember, once is enough and nothing could ever repair that one occasion which led to my original doubt as to my readiness for collective happiness, despite my mother-in-law being well disposed towards me that day, so well disposed that she had welcomed me into the privileged circle of her tennis partners, though I had already warned her of my inabilities. I’m warning you I don’t know how to play, I’d told my mother-in-law but she stuff and nonsense, would stand for no gainsaying, displayed that admirable educational determination, I now know for certain, born of the girl-guiding spirit, she believed in my sporting future, in sporting futures in general therefore in mine without concern for particularities, had put her money on me as a participant in the outdoor, sporting life. She would ultimately dedicate and waste her time attempting to draw me into a tennis match in which I too wished to believe body and soul just to please her, all in all a foregone finish, without any result and losses all the way. I would have believed in anything with every inch of body and soul just to please my mother-in-law now I think about it but it’s a lost cause, pleasing my mother-in-law is something anyone can do, the smallest attention is enough to make her day, no need to bend over backwards to touch my mother-in-law’s heart, a small gesture of gratitude, a little thank you now and then she doesn’t ask for more, not bending over backwards for her has always been the rule, flowers she won’t have ’em, gushing no thank you, birthday cards and courtesy visits, all this fuss over politeness is unnecessary and even inimical to my mother-in-law’s tranquility, she detests arse-lickers above all, she has often said it to the general company, that such and such was an arse-licker and she hated that. Actually it was enough not to disturb her quietude with disquiet and everything would go perfectly well, I realized though too late that something, a factor, an unknown thing in me was resisting the quietude required for my mother-in-law’s quiet happiness, not that I’m an unquiet person, I am not often disquieted, all in all I’m disquieted a good deal too little in fact, would do better to be disquieted more often, it’s actually a personality trait, I’m never disquieted even when it’s serious. Nothing’s serious for you, I’ve often heard that when objectively everything was serious, in those days when I was more or less living in anticipation of a para’s jump bringing him down right over the family home while my sister, for her part, preferred to jump out by the window and make her getaway in a mid-winter night to go and see the sea, hand me my violin, my sister’d said, I’m taking the violin to the sea and don’t you go snitching on me, don’t say a word to Maman or to Papa, what could be more of a blast than going to the seaside in winter with my violin, my sister exulted reaching out to receive her violin case as if it were a rugby ball, you see it’s easy to run away with a violin and off she went on foot unilaterally, my sister’s audacity and Papa’s face in the pallid early hours, Maman’s distress so upsetting to see though comforting her It’s not so bad, Maman, was all I could think of to say, which wasn’t in the least reassuring but actually made things worse, Maman’s distress and Papa’s face, nothing next to the distress caused by this inability to recognize the serious during my increasingly disastrous marriage, this truth about myself would indeed condemn my apparently successful marriage to the most complete disaster, by dint of my unconcern I concerned others more and more, a girl as concerning as me is probably hard to find, I concern as a matter of course and that’s why I’m disturbing, I said to my sister in the plane which flew on straight ahead. You don’t disturb anyone replied my sister who knows far better than I the truth about myself, my sister can at any moment tell the truth about me for she knows me better than anyone, she knows the entire truth about me without having to labor the disagreeable truths, she’s no need to do annual accounts for my truths, doesn’t total truths about me to complete a picture of my person, she has never trapped me between unpleasant truths, yet she can at any time tell me any truth about myself without ever being wrong, that’s my sister for you. You don’t disturb at all, really not at all, from your first cry you refused to cry out loud so as not to disturb you were already not disturbing, I remember, the day you first cried you refused to cry aloud, Maman worried about your breathing you spent so long not crying, so many times Maman begged you to cry to be sure you were breathing but you wouldn’t, after that first cry that you refused to cry you became obsessed with not disturbing and you pursued your refusal of personal expression while I cried the whole time and had tantrums and stamped my feet and disturbed everybody, anyone would think you practically didn’t exist, if you disturb it’s more by default, the floor’s yours when it comes to disturbing my sister said, you can express your presence in a much more striking way without anyone being disturbed by your crying. I know I told my sister but morally I ought to concern myself a little, I ought to show some consideration, I lack consideration living like this without disquiet, I ought to disquiet myself in life because a moral life is always disquieting nevertheless if you think about it. Morally you have nothing to worry about my sister replied and took a Brötchen out of her bag, eat please, it’s teatime.
Talking about my moral life is rather ridiculous, the pianist had said to whoever’d listen, to talk of my moral life is absurd but not to talk about it is impossible, how then to talk about my moral existence without endangering my existence, my morale and the both of them together, he often wondered. “The conviction that I have written nothing I should be ashamed of forms the foundation of my moral existence,” Schoenberg had said on the 31st of March 1931 on Radio Berlin, he’d publicly referred to the moral life, radiophonically refused the collective morals of musical happiness and reaffirmed the individual morality of the composer, could have enjoyed applause but could not compose for applause, bore solitude better than shame, had chosen between shame and solitude, would reap no benefits from nor have any share in the collective happiness of which he must have been ashamed. After reading Schoenberg’s letter to the Reich’s culture minister, the pianist had gone back to the Blue Self-Portrait intending to examine the portrait’s blue, had registered the blue’s chill negativity, had taken a few steps back because of the negativity, this reflex move allowing into his field of vision a screen on which was unfolding a scene at once musical and fashionable, political and musical, Nazi and fashionable. He had only to see the director of the Reich Music Institute at the piano, that old Cavalier à la Rose gazed at by Nazi couples swimming in musical felicity, and Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait in the background with no audience and swimming in nothing, to be brutally plunged into that negative solitude as if he’d been rubbed out. At the restaurant in Neuhardenberg Castle he had then imbibed in his blended whisky the courage he needed to refuse applause, had hung Schoenberg’s painting among the black trees in the park, refreshed his musical memory among those trees and begun to imagine the possibility of a brand-new original musical phrase, the music not collectively prepared-for but music that was personal, unheard by any before, a composition of resistance for which the pianist-composer would never have to blush.
Still, had the girl been there he’d have been able to talk to her, just talk, no need to explain but so as not to be silent, without having to reveal his personal moral code, the moral code of a composer in difficult times, he might have felt better in the company of the girl who perfectly understood the question of compositional morals, who knew about it not through musical experience but as if by magic, understood the necessity for a personal compositional moral code without any connection to the public mores of collective happiness, he would simply have felt all right with the girl no need to explain what to think about Schoenberg or about black trees or about music, she would have been there and they would at last have begun to explore the territories of the present, they’d have been there together in the untrod reaches of the present. The future wouldn’t yet have been at issue
and the girl would have known it, she’d have realized the impossibility of discussing the future and of course would not have pushed the pianist to conceive the art of the future in this conversation, the contrary rather, would like him have persisted in anticipating nothing, she would have crossed her legs and uncrossed them unthinkingly the way this girl always does. The first time she’d already crossed and uncrossed, he had noticed, not all girls do that with their legs, some do others don’t, and among those who cross and uncross many do it in a womanly manner, others in no manner at all but imitating others’ manners and more’s the pity, yet others cross and uncross in hopes of hiding more or less of one leg beneath the other, the less lovely beneath the more lovely, change their minds about which is less lovely and hide the suddenly less lovely more lovely one beneath the suddenly more lovely less lovely one, then give up when they realize that each of their legs is as lovely as the other, in other words they’re equally ugly, too short or too fat the girls generally think, even if in fact neither too this nor too that, and end up looking actually quite fat or short, they’ve obsessed so much. Crossing and uncrossing the girl would have known exactly how to react, phrase after phrase always this presence of mind, she’d have done nothing more than understand the pianist not as a mother nor as a friend nor as a sister but as if by magic, would have smiled at the pianist, would have smiled sweetly and running her hand through her hair and twisting a lock round her finger and untwisting it would have shown none of the well-meaning comprehension of a mother or brother or friend but a comprehension incomprehensible if not by magic. She’d have crossed and uncrossed her legs, would have listened to the pianist without traditional insufferable feminine decorum and he’d have been troubled, as he’d been the first time, by the non-feminine understanding of this very feminine girl and indeed, he decided now as he drove through the forests of Brandenburg, again thinking about the girl though he hadn’t meant to think of her again, this non-feminine understanding of hers is the most seductive thing about the girl, about any girl actually, an understanding kind of girl hardly ever attractive but a girl who understands like this girl understands, in that non-feminine or rather a-feminine even as it were counter-feminine way, everything that’s most disturbing, had the girl understood the pianist with that banal decorum he’d have had no wish to chance on her again here at the exhibition, no, her indecorum, that’s what he’d have liked to come across, as if by chance in front of Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait, if not in the restaurant that’s where she’d have been, a surprise, she there before he was, having been round the exhibition before him and already looking on, at a table by herself but with no despondency nor that terrible negative feeling of isolation that single girls have sometimes, extinguishing all desire around them, she on the contrary a statue gazing with her living eyes at the black trees in the park. Seeing her there, yes it’s her, her espresso and tobacco, nothing else on the table, staring at the trees, rigid and pale, he thinks perhaps she hasn’t eaten, has a notion that she should eat, of taking care of the girl and taking charge of her nutrition, of strengthening the girl with a good square meal, suggesting that she lunch with him, feeding her to infuse strength and movement into her, but remembers that he isn’t alone, impossible to eat with the girl for he’s already accompanied by his faithful accompaniment, the girl will not go well with the accompaniment, once before she had come to dine with the pianist, just one evening in company and it had been a disaster, how could he forget, the way the girl hadn’t for a moment managed to adapt to the usual, the way the girl had endured the accompaniment and the way, despite his efforts, the pianist had been unable to rescue her, no, it’s not an option to torture the girl yet again with the imposed company of an accompaniment, nor is it an option for the pianist to be tortured from starter to dessert by his inability to fix the problem of the girl’s non-adaptation to the accompaniment, impossible to sit through that, the sight of a girl like her, the image of her there from first course to last, he gives up on inviting the girl, still approaches her table and stops for a moment, Hallo salut! the pianist says, how incredible to see you here, amazing! I had no idea, hadn’t a clue, dachte nicht, he’s translating simultaneously, marshals his language as best he can but his eyes already elsewhere, eyes go before speech, in a flash, ein Blitzblick, out of control he plunges, through the eyes into the mouth and the back of the throat passing right under the soft palate hurtles down the trachea as far as the stomach red and shiny as a heart, right there on the thrumming stomach will diffuse like fresh blood into the artery which winds down around the leg, starting at the top of the thigh where the legs cross he starts to feel dizzy and heaves back up to the middle, here thanks to valiant exercise of reason’s safeguard makes a determined effort to tear himself away, he has no business, he our pianist, in the girl’s insides, time to present his excuses, his eyes make out the escape route and with a few words about the exhibition and the countryside around Neuhardenberg the words follow the eyes’ example, he goes on amiably, yet driven by an unknown imperative mentions Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait which has particularly struck him but as if the Blue Self-Portrait were fading out behind that expression ‘particularly struck’ such that it no longer struck at all, ends up taking polite leave of the girl, turns and returns to his faithful accompaniment, with the ease of habit at last allows himself to be led towards a table near the great bay window, chooses a place with his back to the girl, facing the black trees. He has the idea of ordering a tall blended whisky on the rocks and is to be found shortly after, holding his glass and swirling the ice, there with his everyday company deep in vast solitude, the very kind that holds nothing for him, he’ll realize that this solitude has done nothing and never will do anything for him. Better with his usual accompaniment than with the girl who understands without feminine decorum, he thinks, tries to convince himself, looks out gloomily at the black trees, this is how he should be, much better to be accompanied than understood, much much better. He lays his jacket over the back of the chair and sits as if on a piano stool, he’s never known how to lean back, wouldn’t refuse to lean back if he had to but has long ago forgotten the possibility of leaning back, feels relaxed straight-backed like this, sleeves rolled up as in spring, plays his part in a laidback conversation that helps digest their guided tour of music and the Third Reich, the meal is pleasant, the food exceptional. The gleaming and beautiful trout presents to eye and knife an extraordinary flesh, the white burgundy, ideally chilled, felicitously accompanies the sweetness of life in company. At this juncture in the pleasure of his usual accompaniment the pianist mentions the Blue Self-Portrait by Schoenberg, can’t he talk about anything else, a self-portrait he hardly knew anything about, discovered at the exhibition, a painting which, he says again, ‘particularly struck’ him, can’t he say anything else, in this expression dissolving away the Blue Self-Portrait which strikes nothing at all, it’s enough to call the Blue Self-Portrait a particularly striking work just once to be rid of said Blue Self-Portrait, he remarks to himself with a tacit cheerless irony, but time marches on, the pianist gives the accompaniment a sign they should leave, going back past the girl’s table he will not stop again, twice would be once too many, will devote himself to the future both near and distant, the schedule that drives him, he is aware, his open-cast mine of a career, smashing the resonant ore, his career and nothing but the mineral in the open air, that weighs on him at times, rarely, like a tragic destiny.
Blue Self-Portrait Page 5