by A G Mogan
The following months pass relatively quickly without any major incident, besides my increasingly annoying friend, who sees fit to play the professor, taking under his wing a few students from the Conservatory for tutoring. If I am in a good mood I go to the park, where, lying stretched on my favorite bench, I read, peacefully, my favorite books.
Other times, when the noise made by the piano keys’ being hit improperly or the scratchy voice of some female student with musical delusions makes me jump salty, I roar at Gustl, defying and cursing his work. However, equipped as he always is with patience for us both and knowing how to cool me down, he invites me, with the money produced from his tutoring, to long walks out of town or to noisy cafeterias, where the food is always good, and cheap.
In marked contrast, my monthly pension goes almost exclusively to books, newspapers, and theater tickets, most often to the detriment of the hunger I constantly feel. Whatever coins I have left, I spend for this annoying biological necessity, buying bread and milk, which sums up my daily diet.
In July, at the end of the academic semester, Gustl goes home to spend the summer vacation with his parents and I urge him to pay his rent in advance to Ms. Zakreys. Left alone, I begin to consider a visit myself. I should probably go see my aunt, who spends the summer in Spital, in the region of Waldviertel. It has been a while since my last visit and I eventually decide in favor of departure.
When I arrive in Spital, I realize I am not the only one visiting my aunt. My sister, Angela, is also visiting with baby Leo and his one-and-a-half-month old little sister.
“What is her name?” I ask, staring at the little bundle. She resembles Edmund strikingly, but I guess all children at such a tender age look the same, whether girls or boys.
“Angela,” my sister answers.
Very original! I think ironically. Leo after his father and Angela after her mother. How difficult it will be for this couple, if they ever bear another child or, God forbid, more than one.
“And Maria,” she continues, “after the Holy Virgin.”
“The Virgin ... right!” Another child condemned to grow up with stories of enticing donkeys with carrots! I think, still staring at the little girl.
“I shall call her Geli, then,” I say. “As it would be better to avoid you answering in chorus.”
Angela stabs me with a cold, hateful gaze.
“Have you found work yet?”
My gaze turns as cold and hateful as hers.
“I know why I never visit! All you do is ask about bloody work! It’s like you’re all set up by some broken machinery forcing you to ask the same old crap over and over again!”
“Well, if you had to raise three children out of my mediocre income, you wouldn’t have considered my question as stupid as you obviously do, dear brother.”
“Cure your husband of his drinking problem and you will do better.” My words spill out nastily. “And why the hell must I always be held responsible for your insufficiencies?”
“Oh, little brother ... if only you and Raubal would have been half as responsible as a woman, something worthy might have become of you!”
My disgust mounts. “So many flaws you inherited from your father! Claims, reproaches, and demands! That’s all you know! Claims and accusations! You think yourself more valuable for giving vent to two children?”
“You must quit smearing our father’s memory at every occasion you get! He was your father, too, Adolf!”
“If only I could pinch myself out of that!”
“Stop it, Adi! Stop it with this hatred! I am a bloody orphan struggling to put bread on the table for two small children, not to mention Paula, and I really cannot endure your venomous words, too! Just answer me, have you found work?”
“Money, money, money! Is that the only thing on your stupid mind? You are just like all those Jews in Vienna, with their eyes set only on this filthy materialism! It will dry up your spirit one day!”
“Well, this materialism keeps our bellies from drying up in the meantime! Do you suppose we can all live on bread and milk, seven days a week, and feast on illusions and wishful thinking in our spare time? I cannot! My children cannot! And, mind you, I am a quarter-Jew, so what do you expect?”
I stare at her in disbelief, unsure if she is any longer in her right mind. She maybe turned a bit crazy, too, just like Paula.
“Motherhood turned you into a lunatic, sister, know that!” I smirk.
“Well well, you didn’t know, did you?”
“Know what, you fool?”
“Yes, Adi, I am a quarter-Jew, and that makes you also a quarter-Jew.”
Her face is white as paper and now I really think that she is gravely ill. It could be the postnatal neurosis or something — or Father’s disturbed genes, or the product of his incest. I am sure of it.
I head to the backyard, searching for my aunt. Surely, she can help Angela, like any old woman, using specific tea or food for women who just gave birth. Yet, as I recount Angela’s nonsense to her, I notice the same strange expression as my sister’s, the same paper-white, alarmed face. She rubs her hands over her apron and motions at me to follow her back inside.
“It is true, my son. I’m sorry we kept it from you, but you were too young to understand such things. It’s not a big deal, anyway.”
“Come on now! Please, not you, too!” I lament, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Listen to me, son!”
“Are you all mad? All of you?”
“Do you want to know the truth or not?” she shouts, startling and silencing me. “Now listen!” she demands, making swift gestures with her hand, ordering me to sit down. In her display of pathetic authority, she looks more hunchbacked than ever and her eyes are throwing out burning arrows again. Her expression reminds me of the dreadful night Edmund was born … her waving me off, the bloody towels, the basin with steaming water, Mother’s howls.
Propping her hands on her hips and looking at me reprovingly, she continues with her outrageous story.
“When your grandmother conceived your father, she was not married to Georg Hiedler, whom you know to be your real grandfather. When she conceived Alois, she was working as a maid on the property of a Jewish family from Graz. The son of this family, a youth of nineteen, seduced your grandmother and shortly afterward she learned that she was pregnant and she was going to have a child. She was deeply embarrassed to have gotten pregnant out of wedlock and even threatened suicide. Georg Hiedler took pity on her and married her, thus saving her from stigma and disgrace. Who knows, he might have even saved her life. Your father never spoke about it openly; he only confided the story to Klara, who passed it on to us. She whispered it to us, I should say, since Alois would have been very angry had he discovered his wife speaking about it.”
“Mazel tov!” shouts Angela, laughing hysterically.
Closing my opened mouth, I strain to remain quiet and to refrain from slapping her. “If only you could see your face, Adi ... you look as if you’ve just seen a goat puffing on a cigar!”
Her laugh digs holes in my brain. “The only goat I see in here is yourself! What a pity for these little children, for they are not to learn anything from your ba-a-as!”
My blood has reached the boiling point, and turning toward my aunt again, I seethe. “It’s not true. Mother would have told me if it were. She’d curse you for whispering such repulsive lies into my ears!”
I grab my coat and storm out.
Behind me, Angela is still bleating,
“You’d better give up your pension in Paula’s favor! Be a man now!”
Passing through the gates, I look at them once again, standing scandalmongering in the doorway. My family... I think, bewildered.
“Where are you going, Adi?” my aunt demands. “Please come back! Forgive me! I beg of you! Adi? Think of it! It’s not a big thing!”
“What isn’t? The story or your practical joke?”
“The truth!”
“There is no truth in y
our words. But, obviously, you are stupid enough to believe it. For me, it means nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Come back, Adi!”
“No matter where I go, no matter how far, you can still reach me and infect me with your poison … ” I blurt out dejectedly.
Then, turning my back to them, I head to the train station.
Never to come back again.
From Hell One Can See The Light
That night, I have the most terrific nightmare. I find myself in what appears to be a barn. I look down at my shoes and see that they are soiled with chicken manure and mudded hay. Bees swarm menacingly above my head and I move my hands desperately, hoping to make them go away; though I should have known by now this is not the way to escape them. Nevertheless, I start running and hide behind a haystack. Damn you Father, you and your damned bees!
A noise coming from the opposite side of the barn arouses my curiosity and without much thought, I crawl on all fours, making my way toward it. As I approach it, the noise becomes more pronounced and I try to imagine what could possibly be making it. Maybe some family of rats has made its nest under the hay. I wish I had my slingshot on me. Getting even closer, I catch a glimpse of a stack of golden curls and realize there are no rats, but rather a woman hiding in there. I continue to crawl as quietly as I can, eager to discover the woman’s identity. As I approach her, I notice that she is not alone. A blackish hand is covering her mouth in a desperate attempt to silence her.
Driven by a chivalric instinct I never knew I had in me, I spring to my feet, wanting to save the woman, but, as in most of my nightmares, I cannot move. I just stand there, stiff as a board, watching the assault on the poor helpless woman. It could have been my mother again, and I just stand there, as impotent as ever. I try to shout out, but of course, no sound comes from my mouth. As the poor woman struggles to wrench herself free of the blackish man, he grabs a handful of her golden hair and winds it around his fist until it pulls against her scalp. He bends her backwards and hikes up her skirts.
The same perverted, disgusting game as Father’s.
The woman continues to struggle and fight against her attacker and I suddenly see him. He looks like the Devil himself, with his hooked nose, pointed chin, and big ears. He is wearing a long black caftan and a strange hat with wide edges. Two black curls hang, one on each side of his face, and I suddenly imagine the scene as one taken straight out of a painting depicting the fight between Good and Evil. The soiled brute forces himself on the poor woman and I remember Mother again.
Drops of sweat coat my forehead, then slide down into my eyes.
All of a sudden the woman turns her face to the side and I somehow realize that she is my paternal grandmother.
“Stop! Stop it, you brute!” I scream at the top of my voice, but they cannot hear me. “Stop it! Leave her alone!” I continue, but again, to no avail. When the attack is finally over, she falls sobbing to the ground. Writhing in pain, she gathers her shredded dress about her naked body. Then, she sees me—how, I don’t know—the rules governing dreams and nightmares are always puzzling and will forever elude me.
“Run!” she shouts. Her voice terrifies me and for a moment I just stare. “Run! I am infested! Run! As far from me as you can! Can’t you hear me? I am infested!”
In a split second, as if my body obeyed my grandmother’s command by itself, I disappear from the barn and wake up in my room, panting heavily and inhaling kerosene-permeated air.
That beast! The Devil! The root of all evils! I shout in my head.
My effort to fall asleep again fails and I remain awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling in the faint light coming from the almost extinguishing gas lamp.
When I left Spital, I was certain that my aunt and sister had become schizophrenic like my cousin, Aloisia, or to have fallen in Paula’s footsteps and turned retarded. Then, I thought that maybe they saw fit to play a prank on me, a stupid game meant to amuse themselves.
Yet my dreams … my dreams have never fooled me. They’ve always had a seed of truth in them. Could it be true, then? No! No! Of course, it can’t! I lift my hands to my mouth and begin kissing them desperately. I am of pure Aryan descent and Providence selected me for a great destiny! Providence knows better, and her truth is my truth.
In the morning, I can barely get out of bed. My miserable depression returns and clings to me like poison ivy. If I do manage to sleep at night, it’s only to have another consuming nightmare. They are always so vivid, so frightening. Too many awkward things have happened lately and I cannot grasp them all. Yet I have no choice but to leave the past where it belongs, in the past, and start thinking at the future.
What if I am, indeed, more suited for an architect career? I hate having to reconsider the Rector’s words, but after all, I love architecture as much as painting, and at least in this area my talent has been acknowledged, as opposed to the harsh, biased assessment I received for my paintings. Still, to become an architect would be difficult, impossible even. I am now bitterly forced to rue my neglecting and despising certain subjects at the Realschule. Before taking courses at the School of Architecture in the Academy, it is necessary to attend the Technical Building School. However, a necessary qualification for entrance into this school is a Leaving Certificate from Middle School. And this I simply do not have, so eager was I to quit my studies before completing them.
With my destiny adverse to the possibility of becoming an architect, I decide to try my luck again at the School of Painting. This time however, I do not even pass the preliminary assessment, and my painting portfolio is returned to me without the slightest remorse. The bloody Jews at the Academy! They all conspired in ruining my future! I hate them! Never before have I hated them so ardently! The foul race! A race of stinky Pharisees, syphilitics, and whores! Who needs them? And who needs the educational institutions? From now on, I shall be an autodidact. I’ve said it before and I am saying it again: obstacles are placed across our path in life, not to be boggled at but to be surmounted.
Be that as it may, I can no longer endure seeing my failure reflected in the accomplishments of others, and I make a drastic decision. I will leave before Gustl’s return, and will also sever all ties with my relatives. As sad as it makes me to desert my friend, there is no other way.
I pack up my scarce belongings and leave the kerosene-smelling room forever. With my financial situation in a sharp decline, I only afford a single bed on Felber Street.
I can only imagine my friend’s consternation and disappointment upon his return, and that saddens me further. Three decades will pass before we meet again.
The mother’s darling is taken from her tender arms and handed over to a new mother: Poverty. And this new surrogate is never alone, but always accompanied by adversity, hunger, and despair. Now I am truly alone in this world and must learn how to make these new acquaintances my friends.
I should skim through the next four years spent in Vienna quickly, as it is the saddest period of my life. Though as sad as it will definitely prove, it will also teach me a great deal. The Hapsburg Monarchy offered me the education I so despised and avoided in primary school, and the same benefactor allowed me my most important education, the one of the five years of keen scrutiny of Vienna.
In a sense, I am thankful for this period of my life, because it hardened me and enabled me to become as tough as a nut. It also saved me from the emptiness of a sterile life of ease and helped me thus to come to know the people for whom I was afterwards to fight. But more than that, it is during these years that a certain view of life and a definite outlook on the world takes shape in my mind. These become the granite basis of my conduct and I will extend this foundation only very little, changing altogether nothing in it. For it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. This young age is the one that furnishes the building materials and plans for the future.
Now, for the first time in my life, I begin to lea
rn to know men, to distinguish between false appearances or empty manners and the true, inner nature of men who seem rough and resilient.
I understand the reasons underlying the psychological transformation of these essentially good men. The Hapsburg Monarchy and this Babel Tower in the streets are to carry the blame. Dazzling riches and loathsome destitution are intermingled in violent contrast. The splendor of the Court acts like a magnet on the wealth and intelligence of the whole Empire. And this attraction is further strengthened by the dynastic policy of the Habsburg Monarchy in centralizing everything in itself and for itself.
Besides the horde of high-ranking military officers, Government officials, artists and scientists, there is a still vaster one, markedly different, less splendid and dazzling: the horde of breadwinners. Thousands of unemployed loiter in front of the palaces on the Ring Boulevard, and below that Via Triumphalis of the old Austria, the homeless huddle together in the murk and filth of the canals.
I, myself, am destined to share this latter category in the next four years of my life.
By the end of summer I am stone broke. I gather my belongings once more, and through the following months, sleep in public parks with the starry sky as my beautiful vista and my books serving as a pillow. The money for milk and bread I earn from begging. What I feared most is now my reality, as I share park benches with the rest of Vienna’s beggars. I have nothing to keep my body warm, because I had to pawn my winter coat for food. Begging isn’t always successful.
And then, there are those glares …
As winter approaches, sleeping in the park is no longer an option, and I set out to find an alternative. Around Christmas time, I am admitted to the Asylum for the Shelterless in the Meidling district, behind the Sudbahnhof Railway Station. I take my first bath in months and give my clothes to disinfection. How wonderful it feels to be free of fleas and ticks at last, not to mention sleeping in a real bed, no matter how hard and narrow.
