Herr Liscov used to talk about Johannes’s father a great deal, having been his closest friend in his younger days, and this was to the detriment of the uncle who was bringing the boy up, and was very decidedly cast into the shade when his brother appeared in bright sunlight. One day, for instance, the organ-builder was extolling the deep musical feeling of the boy’s father, and mocking his uncle for teaching him the elements of music in the wrong way. Johannes, whose whole soul was pervaded by thoughts of the man who was his closest relation, yet whom he had never known, wanted to hear more and more about him. But Liscov suddenly stopped, and stared at the ground like a man confronting some vital idea touching the essence of life.
‘What’s the matter, Master?’ asked Johannes. ‘What moves you so?’
Liscov started, as if waking from a dream, and said, smiling, ‘Johannes, do you remember how I kicked the stool away from your feet and you slipped down under the spinet when you were made to play me your uncle’s terrible murkys and minuets?’
‘I don’t like to think of my first meeting with you,’ replied Johannes. ‘Upsetting a child gave you pleasure.’
‘And mightily cross the child was about it!’ said Liscov. ‘Yet I’d never have thought at the time there was such a fine musician in you, so be kind enough to play me a good chorale on the paper positive,7 my boy, and I’ll work the bellows.’
It should be repeated here that Liscov had a great taste for all manner of odd trifles, and entertained Johannes vastly with them. When he was still a child, Liscov used to bring him some curiosity every time he came to visit.
Whereas he would sometimes give the small child an apple that fell into a hundred separate pieces when you peeled it, sometimes some strangely shaped piece of confectionery, he would please the older boy with this or that astonishing trick of natural magic, and the youth helped him to make optical devices, concoct invisible inks, and so forth. But chief among the mechanical marvels which the organ-builder made Johannes was a positive organ with eight stops, its pipes made of paper, and resembling that masterpiece of the old seventeenth-century organ-builder Eugenius Casparini8 which may be seen in the Imperial Cabinet of Art in Vienna. Liscov’s strange instrument had a tone of irresistible power and charm. Johannes tells us that he could never play it without being deeply moved, and many truly devout sacred melodies sprang clearly into his mind as he played.
Johannes was now to perform on this positive for the organ-builder. After playing a couple of chorales, as required by Liscov, he struck up the hymn Misericordias domini cantabo,9 which he had set to music a few days earlier. When Johannes had finished, Liscov leaped up, pressed him tempestuously to his breast, and cried, laughing out loud, ‘What, you craven, d’you think you can fool me with your lamentable cantilena?10 If I hadn’t always been blowing the bellows for you, you’d never have got anywhere at all! But now I’m going away, leaving you to your own devices, and you may cast around for another organ-blower as well disposed to you as I am!’
As he said this, tears came into his eyes. He hurried out of the door, slamming it extremely hard, but then put his head around it once again, and said, very quietly, ‘There’s nothing else for it, you see. Farewell, Johannes! And if your uncle misses his red-flowered gros de Tours waistcoat,11 tell him I stole it to have it made into a turban for my presentation to the Grand Sophy! Farewell, Johannes!’
No one could understand why Herr Liscov had left the pleasant town of Göniönesmühl so suddenly, telling nobody where he was going.
‘With his restless spirit, I’ve long expected him to be off and away,’ said Johannes’s uncle, ‘for although he builds fine organs, he thinks nothing of the saying that tells us to stay at home and make an honest living! Well, at least our spinet’s in order; I’ll say no more about that excitable character himself!’
Johannes certainly thought otherwise, for he missed Liscov constantly, and all Göniönesmühl now seemed to him a dead, dark dungeon.
So it was that he decided to follow the organ-builder’s advice and look around for another mentor. His uncle said that now he had completed his studies, he could go to the residence and become fully fledged under the wing of the Privy Legation Councillor, and that was what he did!
At this point the present biographer feels a quite extraordinary degree of annoyance, for just as he comes to that second incident in the life of Kreisler which he promised to narrate to you, dear reader, to wit, how Johannes Kreisler lost his rightfully acquired post of Legation Councillor and was (so to speak) thrown out of the residence, he discovers that all the information on this point he has at his disposal is poor, scanty, inadequate and disconnected.
Consequently, it must suffice to say that soon after Kreisler had replaced his late uncle as Legation Councillor, and before anyone knew what was happening, a mighty crowned Colossus12 descended upon the prince in his residence, and clasped him so fervently in his iron arms that the prince lost the greater part of his vital breath. There was something quite irresistible in all that mighty visitant was and did, and so his wishes must be satisfied even if they cast all else into trouble and confusion, as indeed they did. Many felt there was something dubious about the friendship of that powerful personage, and indeed sought to reject it, but thus found themselves in the difficult dilemma of either acknowledging its excellence or seeking another vantage point abroad, from which they might perhaps see the mighty man in a truer light.
Kreisler was one of these.13
Despite his character as a diplomat, Kreisler had retained an engaging innocence, and for that very reason there were times when he did not know what to do. At such a moment, he asked a pretty woman in deep mourning what she thought of Legation Councillors in general. She replied at length, phrasing her remarks decorously and delicately, but the upshot was that she could not think much of a Legation Councillor if he felt enthusiastic about art but did not devote himself entirely to it.
‘Most excellent of widows,’ said Kreisler, in reply, ‘I am leaving!’
When he had his travelling boots on and came to say goodbye, hat in hand, not without some emotion and a suitable amount of sorrow at their parting, the widow gave him a document appointing him to the post of Kapellmeister to that Grand Duke who had swallowed up Prince Irenaeus’s little country.
We need scarcely add that the mourning widow was none other than Madame Benzon, who had just lost her late husband the Councillor.
Curiously enough, it so happened that Madame Benzon, just when –
M. cont. – Ponto ran straight up to that girl selling bread and sausages, the girl who had almost killed me when I helped myself to her wares in a friendly manner. ‘Oh Ponto, my dear poodle, what are you doing? Take care, beware that heartless, barbarous female, beware the vengeful law governing sausages!’ I cried after Ponto, but he went his way, taking no notice of me, and I followed – at a distance, so that if he fell into any danger I could make my escape directly. On reaching the stall, Ponto stood on his back legs and pranced around the girl with the prettiest little leaps. She liked them very much and called him over to her; he went and laid his head in her lap, jumped up again barking cheerfully, gambolled round the stall once more, sniffed unassumingly, and gazed into the girl’s eyes with an amiable expression.
‘Do you want a sausage, nice poodle?’ asked the girl, and when Ponto yapped happily, wagging his tail in a charming manner, she picked up one of the best and biggest sausages, not a little to my surprise, and gave it to Ponto. As if to thank her, Ponto did another little dance, and then hurried back to me with the sausage, which he laid before me with the kind words, ‘Here you are, old fellow! Eat this and you’ll feel better!’ When I had finished the sausage, Ponto told me to follow him and he would take me back to Master Abraham.
We walked slowly side by side, so that it was not difficult for us to conduct a sensible conversation as we went along.
‘I can see, my dear Ponto,’ (thus did I open the conversation), ‘that you have a much better notion t
han I of how to get on in the world. I could never have managed to touch that barbaric girl’s heart as you did with such uncommon ease. But forgive me for saying that there was something about your entire conduct towards the sausage-seller against which my natural, innate feeling rebels. A certain subservient flattery, a disavowal of one’s personal dignity, one’s nobler nature – no, my dear poodle, I couldn’t bring myself to be as friendly as you were, to make myself quite breathless employing such attacking tactics, to beg so humbly! Even when I am very hungry, or an appetite for some particular thing comes over me, I confine myself to jumping up on the back of my master’s chair and making my wishes known with a gentle purr. And even that is more of a reminder of his bounden duty to care for my needs than a request for charity.’
Ponto laughed out loud at this, and began, ‘Oh Murr, my dear good cat, you may be a great scholar, you may understand things of which I have no notion, but you know nothing whatsoever about real life, which would be the ruin of you, since you have no worldly wisdom at all. For one thing, your opinion might have been different before you ate that sausage, since hungry folk are much more docile and behave more civilly than the well-fed, and for another, you are quite mistaken about what you call my subservience. Surely you know that I really enjoy dancing and leaping about, so much so that I often do it of my own free will! Well, when I perform tricks in front of human beings, just on my own account really, I derive uncommon pleasure from it, since the fools believe I act out of particular fondness for their own persons, purely to amuse and entertain them. Oh yes, that’s what they think, even if I obviously have different ends in view, and you, my dear fellow, have just seen a perfect example. You’d think the girl would have realized at once that I only wanted a sausage, and yet she was delighted to see me doing tricks for her, a stranger, as if I knew her for a person able to appreciate such things, and since she was so delighted she did as I wanted. The worldly-wise must be able to make everything done purely for themselves look as if it were done for the sake of others, who will then feel very much indebted to them and be willing to do as they wish. Many a man appears easy-going, modest and obliging, as if he lived entirely for others, and yet his mind is set on nothing but his precious self, to whom those others are useful without knowing it. What you are pleased to call subservient flattery, therefore, is merely judicious conduct soundly based on recognizing other people’s folly and then fooling them to the top of their bent.’
‘Well, Ponto,’ I replied, ‘you are certainly a man of the world, and I repeat that you know how to get on in life better than I do, but all the same I can hardly believe you really get any pleasure from your curious tricks. I for one was horrified by that shocking trick you played one day in my presence, bringing your master a nice slice off the joint and holding it neatly between your teeth, taking not a bite until your master gave permission.’
‘Ah,’ said Ponto, ‘but tell me, my dear Murr, tell me what happened next!’
‘Well,’ I replied, ‘both your master and Master Abraham lavished praise on you and gave you a whole plateful of roast meat, which you ate with an astonishingly good appetite.’
‘Very well, then,’ Ponto continued, ‘very well then, my dear cat, do you think I’d have got such a good helping, in fact do you think I’d have got any roast meat at all, if I’d gobbled up the little slice I carried over? Learn, O inexperienced youth, learn that you must not shrink from small sacrifices if you have great purposes in view! I’m surprised that all your studious reading hasn’t taught you what throwing out a sprat to catch a mackerel means! Paw on heart, I must confess that if I came upon a nice joint of meat all by itself in a corner, I’d certainly gobble it all up without waiting for my master’s permission, if I could but do the deed unobserved. However, it’s natural for people to act quite differently in private and in public. Moreover, it’s a sound principle, based on profound experience of the world, that honesty in small things is the best policy.’
I was silent for a moment, thinking of the ideas Ponto had expressed, and I recollected reading somewhere14 that everyone should act in such a way that his conduct may be regarded as a general principle, or as he would wish everyone to act towards him. I tried in vain to reconcile this idea with Ponto’s worldly wisdom. It struck me that all the friendship Ponto was showing me at this very moment might actually be intended to injure me, might be solely for his own advantage, and I said so frankly.
‘You comical little thing!’ cried Ponto, laughing. ‘I don’t mean you! There’s no way you can do me either good or harm. I don’t envy you your dry-as-dust learning, your concerns aren’t mine, and were it to cross your mind to express hostile feelings towards me, then I’m your superior in strength and agility. One leap, one good bite from my sharp teeth, would soon send you packing!’
I began to feel horribly afraid of my own friend, and even more so when a big black poodle gave him a friendly greeting in the usual way, and the pair of them whispered together, looking at me with burning eyes.
My ears laid back, I stole aside, but pretty soon Ponto, who had parted from the black poodle, came running up to me again, calling, ‘Come along, old fellow!’
‘Heavens above!’ I cried in consternation. ‘Who was that grave gentleman? I dare say he’s just as worldly-wise as you!’
‘Why,’ replied Ponto, ‘I do believe you’re afraid of my good uncle Scaramouche! I thought you were a tomcat and not such a rabbit!’
‘But,’ said I, ‘why did your uncle cast me such glowering looks, and what were the two of you whispering about in such a secret, suspicious sort of way?’
‘I will not conceal from you,’ replied Ponto, ‘I will not conceal from you, my dear Murr, that my old uncle is a trifle gruff, and as is commonly the case with elderly folk, he has some old-fashioned prejudices. He was surprised to see us together, owing to the fact that the inequality of our social rank must preclude any intimacy. I assured him that you were a young fellow of much education and amiable character who sometimes gives me great amusement. So he said in that case I might converse with you in private now and then, but I mustn’t even dream of taking you into any social assembly of poodles, since you aren’t fit for such society and never could be, if only because your small ears betray your vulgar origins all too clearly, and would be regarded as most improper by all right-minded, large-eared poodles. I gave him my word.’
Had I known at the time about my great ancestor Puss in Boots, who achieved great dignity and office and was King Gottlieb’s bosom friend,15 I would have indicated very gently to my friend Ponto that any social gathering of poodles must feel honoured by the presence of a descendant of that most illustrious family, but as I had not yet emerged from obscurity, I was obliged to suffer the pair of them, Scaramouche and Ponto, considering themselves above me.
We walked on. Going down the street just ahead of us I saw a young man who stepped back with a loud cry of delight, so suddenly that he would have injured me badly if I hadn’t quickly jumped out of the way. Another young man, coming down the street towards him, cried out just as loud. Then the two of them embraced each other like friends who haven’t met for a long time, and walked on ahead of us for a while, hand in hand, until they stopped and parted, showing as much affection as before in their farewells. The man who had been preceding us down the street stood still for some time watching his friend go, and then slipped quickly into a doorway. Ponto stopped and so did I. Soon a window opened on the second floor of the building into which the young man had gone, and a girl as pretty as a picture looked out. The young man was standing behind her, and both of them were laughing heartily as they watched the friend from whom the young man had just parted walking away. Ponto glanced up and muttered something between his teeth which I didn’t quite catch.
‘Why are you waiting here, my dear Ponto? Why don’t we go on?’ I asked, but Ponto would not move from the spot until, after a few minutes, he shook his head hard and then continued on his way in silence.
‘Le
t us,’ said he, when we came to a pretty square surrounded by trees and adorned with statues, ‘let us stop here for a while, my dear Murr. I can’t shake off the thought of those two young men who embraced so affectionately in the street. They’re fast friends, like Damon and Pylades.’
‘Damon and Pythias,’ I corrected him. ‘Pylades was the faithful friend of Orestes,16 and used to put the poor man to bed in his dressing-gown and give him camomile tea when the Furies and demons had been plaguing him. I observe, my dear Ponto, that history isn’t your strong point.’
‘Never mind that,’ continued the poodle, ‘never mind that: I know the history of those two friends very well, and I will relate it to you in every particular, just as I’ve heard my master tell it twenty times. Then perhaps you will count Walter and Formosus worthy to stand beside Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, as a third pair of friends. Formosus is the young man who nearly knocked you down in his pleasure at seeing his dear friend Walter again. That handsome house with its shining windows is the home of the rich old President, and Formosus, with his clever mind, his skill and his brilliant knowledge, managed to worm his way into the old man’s favour so well that he was soon like a son to him. Now one day Formosus suddenly lost all his good spirits, looked pale and ill, and would sigh heavily ten times in quarter of an hour as if to sigh away his life; he was entirely absorbed in himself, lost in his own thoughts, and seemed unable to unburden himself for anything in the world. Over a long period the old President vainly urged the youth to tell him the cause of his secret grief, and at last it came out that he was desperately in love with the President’s only daughter. This took the old man aback at first, since he had very different plans for his little daughter than to marry her to Formosus, who had neither rank nor office, but when he saw the poor young fellow fading away more and more he braced himself to ask Ulrike how she liked young Formosus, and whether he had ever told her of his love. Ulrike cast down her eyes and said young Formosus had not actually declared himself to her, out of sheer modesty and reticence, but she had realized long ago that he loved her, for such things are very obvious. Moreover, she said she liked young Formosus very much, and if there was no other objection, and her darling Papa had nothing against it, and – in short, Ulrike said everything girls usually say on such occasions, when they are no longer in the very first bloom of youth and are assiduously asking themselves, “Who will take you off the shelf?”
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr Page 16