by A G Mogan
Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of our species, the Aryan. When the Aryan blood is exhausted, stagnation and even death supervenes.”
As I turn the last page, tears are already soaking my cheeks. I look at my hands and almost without thinking, I raise them to my mouth and kiss them. In my mind I thank the Almighty for having given me the honor of belonging to the sacred race.
That is on the one hand.
On the other, I finally realize that for one Goethe, Nature brings into existence ten thousand despoilers who act as the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls.
It is a terrible thought, and yet it cannot be avoided that the greater number of the Jews seem specially destined by Nature to play this shameful part.
This last read initiates me forever in what is to become my view of history and of the current world I live in. Few things will have the power to alter the strength of my convictions formed on this day. Very few, if any, indeed.
If my long inner torment of finally accusing the Jew for all the ills of Vienna, nay, of our entire society now ends, a new, much deeper, more meaningful and holy struggle would soon take its place. But, a few more months must pass until I finally, and permanently, become aware of it.
Muffled noises from the door reach me and I close my eyes, pretending to sleep. I suspect it’s Mrs. Zakreys bringing me food. She always took pity on me.
Once the noises cease, I open my eyes and see a tray with food on the floor. Next to it is a letter. The hope that I might have news from Gustl about my beloved shoots a dose of strength into my muscles. Half-dazed, I slowly get out of bed and drag myself to it, ripping open the envelope, while greedily biting at a slice of buttered bread.
The writing isn’t that of my friend, yet it looks strangely familiar, reminding me of the hurried, illegible handwriting of Dr. Bloch.
A single sentence, laid out in dark blue ink, rips my soul into pieces.
Hurry back, my son, your mother is living her last days.
The bread slips through my fingers, and for the third time in my life, I succumb to the vast spaces of lightlessness.
In That Hour It All Began
Once I get off the train, I begin to shake uncontrollably, even though the weather is not yet that cold. It is Linz that gives me the shivers today. I often dreamed of my return home, but in my dreams I was always coming back gloriously accomplished, even arrogant. In reality, I return defeated, stunned by the truth that brought me back. I pray that everything will be nothing but an exaggeration, a professional error, typical of doctors. On weak trembling legs, I drag myself to Mother’s home, grateful that this time I have no baggage, apart from the pain in my heart, which weighs heavily enough.
Hoping that the reality might prove kinder than I was made to believe, I have left everything intact in Vienna, even paying a month’s rent in advance and promising Frau Zakreys to return before Christmas.
The streets seem narrower and the houses tinier, now that my retinas have been shaped by the grandeur of the capital city. Just like Vienna, the streets are also covered in rust-colored leaves, yet here I already catch the scent of lurking winter.
I linger in front of the house, taking in deep breaths of familiar air. When I finally summon the courage to enter, a pungent hospital smell hits me straight in the face. I find Aunt Johanna lying on the living room couch, whispering with the postman’s wife. When she sees me, she jumps up and runs to embrace me.
“Iodoform, my son. It gives me the same sensation.”
“Is it true?” I ask curtly, staring her with begging eyes. “Is she going to die?”
Pulling back, she sighs deeply. Now I know her answer.
She gathers her hands in prayer. “We’re still hoping, son, we’re still hoping. After you left, terrible pain sent her back to the hospital. Dr. Bloch told us the operation was carried out too late, and now they found metastases in her pleura … incurable he said … ”
I hit the table with my fist. “Incurable? What the hell does that mean?”
She motions with her hands to quiet me.
I continue to roar, half-maddened by grief.
“I tell you what it means! Not that her disease is incurable, but that the doctors are incapable of curing it! She is not even old! Forty-seven is not an age to die! But once the doctors are incapable of doing something about it, they hurry to categorize it as incurable!”
“Shhh, Adolf! You’ll wake her up with this howling!”
Why? Why isn’t she dying instead of Mother? I yell angrily in my head, turning my face away to conceal my thoughts.
“Why wasn’t I told earlier?” I ask.
“It was your mother’s will … he need not worry … she said.”
I drop on the couch clasping my face in my hands and realize my worst nightmare is about to unravel. Becoming increasingly nauseated by the pungent smell, I ask, “And the iodoform?”
“We apply it in high doses on her open wounds.”
I am about to throw up. The smell, the pity I feel, my powerlessness, all conspire to break me.
“Is she in pain?” I inquire. I am not even sure I want to hear the answer, not sure I could bear it.
“Greatly so.”
I run into the courtyard and splatter yellowish puke all over a wind-swept pile of dried leaves. Falling to my knees, I begin to weep. My aunt is smart enough to allow me the space to grieve and I spend a long time with my face buried in the soil, moistening it with my tears.
As my grief slowly subdues, I return inside.
Through her slightly open bedroom door, I see Mother. She is sleeping. An even stronger smell of iodoform attacks my nostrils and I struggle not to puke again. All sorts of medicines, bandages, and small bottles are scattered all over her room. On the floor near her bed is a basin full of clean steaming water. It takes me back to the time she gave birth to Edmund. I am incapable of helping her now, just as before. Then, Edmund died. I realize Death is always around, always lurking in the shadows, always ready to get her nasty claws on another member of my family.
I look at Mother’s face. Her once-long hair with hundreds of shiny curls is now chopped short and bathed in sweat, and her once-gentle features are now strained by awful pain. She looks so old and thin, almost unrecognizable, as if I had been gone for decades. Her aged face stuns me.
I approach the bed and lift up the blanket covering her. White gauze encircles her chest and her arms are riddled with needle sticks from perfusions. It’s almost maddening to witness how ruthlessly a disease can attack a healthy body and reshape it in such a short time. I kiss her forehead and quickly turn to leave the room.
“My cub … ” she whispers, “you are here … ”
I turn back and throw my arms about her neck, causing her to whimper.
I loosen my grip but fail to fight back my tears.
“Right next to you … ”
“Now, now … don’t cry, my cub … I am so happy … ” Her words make me burst into hysterical sobs. Happy? I yell in my head. If this is what happiness looks like, I may as well die alongside her. Her eyes fill with dancing lights, strangely, the only part of her body that seems alive. “My darling son … ”
“I must tell you, Mother, so you can be proud of me! I am a freshman at the Academy in Vienna! I study painting now … they teach me many great things there … ”
“My son, please forgive me.”
“What in God’s name must I forgive?”
“I doubted you, Adi. I often thought you wouldn’t succeed, and was often troubled by not knowing what will become of you … forgive me … ” she begs, tormenting my pathetic guilty conscience. I stroke her short, wet hair.
“I have nothing to forgive, and now there is nothing left to bother you. All
you need to fuss about is how to get better. And soon, for I have big plans for us!”
“I love you, Adi, with all my heart … ”
I had to lie all the way, and now everyone knows that little Adi is a student, and not just a common student, but one admitted at the most prestigious academy in the country. All my acquaintances regard me differently now and keep quiet whenever I speak. In secret, however, I am tortured by contradictory feelings of pride and regret. As proud as I am to finally be given the value and respect I deserve, I am ashamed by the fact that it is all a grotesquely inflated lie. And if those around me would find out the truth, I would go back to being the same old Adi, so well summed up by Father as good-for-naught, a leaf carried about by wind, without its own will and ambition.
I resolve to resume the role of master of the house and look after all of Mother’s needs. My aunt helps me, as well as the postman’s wife, who knows the chores around a dying person, since only recently she lost her husband to the merciless clutches of death. That big man I often saw tirelessly moving around our neighborhood, proudly wearing his blue uniform, and always arranging his bushy black mustache before ringing on a door, fell victim to disease too soon. Surely, he left behind a vacancy at the post office, and even surer it was immediately occupied by one of my former classmates.
My sister, Angela, doesn’t offer her help, being pregnant with her second child. Or so she claims, but I am sure it’s Raubal’s doing. When Mother gave me the consent to go to Vienna, he saw fit to protest by severing his relationship with her, and even forbidding his wife to visit her own mother.
Dr. Bloch makes regular visits, each time expressing, with his head bowed, the regret that he couldn’t do more. And each time, I just stare at him in silence. Perhaps that is why he keeps repeating the same apology, hoping I will absolve him of the guilt he undoubtedly feels.
Even though my help and presence bring relief to my poor mother, an acute feeling of impotence still consumes my soul. All I can do is cook her favorite food, then serve it to her, always thinking it might be her last meal.
Sometimes, when the gloomy atmosphere hovering about us proves unbearable, when the suffocating, pungent smell reminds me with every breath I take that Death is hiding nearby, ready to pounce, when I realize that I am about to lose the most precious thing that brightened my life, I take Gustl on long walks through the woods or the nearby hills. At these times, I inhale the fresh, brisk winter air, seeking to cleanse my lungs. Other times, knowing how only music can disconnect me from reality, Gustl takes me to the Opera House where we watch a play or listen to one of Wagner’s operas.
Today, the premiere of Rienzi snatches me away from Mother’s bedside. I cannot stress strongly enough what Wagner’s music means to me. I cannot help but describe my frequent visits to the Opera as a communion only religious people could understand. The master’s music is my religion. I attend his operas as others attend church.
This last day of November is unbearably cold. I feel this both physically and spiritually and decide that the weather unequivocally enhances the mood you have on the inside. Only an inner state of complete euphoria could overlook the blizzard swallowing Linz today.
I throw on my black winter coat, shove my hat over my eyes and head for Gustl’s home. I spy on him through his bedroom window, as he stands before the mirror, trying on the only two suits he owns. He always takes so long to get ready! I anxiously knock on the window, motioning for him to hurry, else we might lose our spots in the Promenade Hall.
A strange figure reflecting from the same window I peer through glares at me, and I turn around, startled, thinking that some mugger is about to rob me. But there is no mugger, there is no one standing behind me. The reflection is nobody’s but my own. I realize I hadn’t looked in a mirror in more than two weeks. I look like a mugger indeed, with my red tired eyes, my over-grown beard, and the dropped corners of my mouth.
When we arrive, the Opera House lobby is choked, full to the brim. I hate overcrowdings, as they instill in me an irritable feeling of competition; in this case, the battle for the best seats. As usual, one can easily differentiate the nobility from the rest of the crowd. Women of all ages wearing expensive Mulberry silk dresses, their shoulders wrapped in genuine furs, hands buried in gloves up to their elbows, with glittering jewelry on top, suffocate the atmosphere with fine perfume and cigarette smoke. Their faces are relaxed, knowing of course, that they have the best seats. They always do.
I breathe in, trying to banish their image from my head, but the smoke is choking me. I hate cigarette smoke to the bone. It reminds me of Father’s disdainful laughter when I was being stung by his bees, and it forces me to wash my clothes each time I return from the Opera.
A few meters to my right, the entrance to the Promenade Hall is jam-packed, the commoners huddling near it, ready to burst in once it opens. I elbow my way through them, ignoring the angry looks around me, until I get near the entrance. I would try a fall with each one of them for the spots near the wooden poles. Gustl trots behind me, his head lowered, his cheeks flushed. Surely, he’ll appreciate my audacity once he’s leaning against his favorite pole.
When the lights go off, a shiver of enthusiasm spreads throughout my body.
We are still whispering, Gustl and I, unable to refrain from commenting on the crowd, the stifling smell, and the disparity between the rich downstairs and the commoners in the Promenade, when the shout of a trumpet, signaling the beginning of the first act, mutes us. It sounds so familiar, so magical, and I strain to remember where else I’ve heard it.
Tiny, vibrating, spectacularly-colored gems begin to dance in front of my mind’s eye … green, then yellow and blue, then a color I cannot describe, so strange and unfamiliar.
Suddenly, I remember. It was in a dream or maybe in the strange reality surrounding me more than a decade ago, when I was so close to meeting death after falling into River Inn. Back then, the trumpet urged me to pay attention to the message I was about to receive: It is not yet your time. Go back and fulfill your great destiny.
The events following that experience were nowhere near beautiful, much less great, so I quickly forgot the incident. But now, I wonder if the trumpet is trying to tell me something again. I prick up my ears and stare wide-eyed at the stage. I barely move, and by the opera’s end, I realize my body has been covered in goosebumps the entire time.
Later, as we walk out into the thick darkness, I hear Gustl complaining of how bored he was and of how he could never comprehend why any opera, play or anything similar, must last for six long, dreadfully boring, hours. His assertion stuns me.
Rienzi instantly becomes my favorite opera. Its action takes place in magnificent Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval Italian populist, who manages to trick, and then defeat, the nobility, transferring the power to his people. Tragically, at the end, the people’s opinion changes, and even the Church that initially helped Rienzi in his struggle turns against him.
Following the thread of this fascinating story in heartbreaking musical arias, the rise and fall of its hero, the betrayal, proves too much for me to endure. In a strange way, the story touches a sensitive spot in me that I had not been aware of.
Inhaling the cold air of this strange night, I grab Gustl by the clothes and drag him after me. It is long past midnight and the storm has abated, leaving behind only a quiet drizzle. I pull my coat’s collar over my ears and begin shuffling through the dark streets of Linz.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks. Being accustomed to my angry haranguing after each opera we see, he is puzzled by my silence.
But, today I feel different. Today, my inner voice urges me to pay heed to it, to understand it.
“Adolf, you look odd, are you all right?”
“Shut up!” I shout, and he recoils.
I must remove any interference. I can’t stand any noise other than that of my own inner voice, even the sound of our feet striking the cobblestones bothers me.
/>
“Follow me!” I say instead and head for the nearby hill. A strange energy fills me and I climb the hill effortlessly. Behind me, Gustl pants heavily. From the top of the hill, leaving the drizzle underneath, the sky looks translucent and near. Still silent, I stare at the billions of stars overhead.
“I had a vision!” I suddenly exclaim, grasping Gustl’s hands into mine.
“What vision? When?”
“The trumpet. Then the voice. The message!”
He furrows his eyebrows and twists his mouth in a humorless smile.
“Rienzi was played for me … Rienzi was me!” I say, squeezing his hands even harder.
“What are you saying, Adolf? You always speak in goddamn code. It’s getting harder to follow you.”
“No, no! What code? Rienzi was me!”
“All right … this was the message?”
I read in his eyes that he thinks me half-mad, like those lunatics claiming to have visions of calamities or apocalypses.
“Yes, the day is at hand when Rome shall rise again from her ashes; Justice shall dethrone Oppression; men shall walk safe in their ancient Forum. We will rouse from his forgotten tomb the indomitable soul of Cato! There shall be a people once more in Rome! And I-I shall be the instrument of that triumph, the restorer of my race! Mine shall be the first voice to swell the battle cry of freedom, mine the first hand to rear her banner. Yes, from the height of my own soul as from a mountain, I see already rising the liberties and the grandeur of the New Rome! And on the corner-stone of the mighty fabric posterity shall read my name! My friend, this was the message!” I say triumphantly and feel my whole body shaking uncontrollably.
“You remember Rienzi’s words, okay. But I still don’t get it. What does this have to do with you and how─”
“If you choose me to be the defender of the rights of the people look back at your ancestors and appoint me the tribune of the people! Long live, Rienzi! Long live the tribune of the people!” I shout, spellbound.
