by Linda Stift
*
At court they feared the picnics she organized for Gypsies, showmen and all manner of other shady characters. She had such a big heart, my beauty! Especially for the poor and disadvantaged in the world. Whether in the Prater or the Gödöllő Palace, the travelling people were always allowed to sit on the lawns and had to be served by the court attendants as if they were royal guests. For this the court attendants despised my szeretett angyalom, because they were obliged to wait on men, women and children dressed in rags. Each time they would count the silver cutlery and plates because it was plainly obvious to the servants that the Gypsies would try to make off with everything that wasn’t nailed down. She, however, would walk with her tall frame between the colourful rows of ragged individuals, sitting either on the grass or on benches that had been put there especially for the occasion. She would stroke children’s scratched heads, let the people fiddle for her or have them read her palm, baffling many an old Gypsy woman by turning the tables and telling their fortune, which these crones did not appreciate. Each to his own: this was the only thing that the Gypsies and footmen were agreed upon.
*
Charlotte was probably waiting by the phone. I ought to have called and said that I wanted to be on my own for a few days. She wouldn’t have understood – how could she if I didn’t tell her the truth? – and soon would have been ringing at my doorbell. The truth. The truth was that I’d visited the sex museum without her. She’d always wanted to go to the sex museum with me; she’d been talking about it for years. I’d have to go again and pretend it was my first visit. Sink once more into contemplation of the brightly coloured penises. Actually, why not? Charlotte isn’t thin, she’s got a powerful, well-proportioned body with pronounced hips and thighs. I was never bothered by other women not looking thin. On the contrary, I liked them being a little rounder. It was just pregnant women I couldn’t stand, with their overladen, gross bodies, which they proudly flaunted to all and sundry. That belly which kept growing bigger, which dominated all else, the triumph of proliferating flesh, spreading obscenely over the bones and covering everything. I, on the other hand, wanted to be pale and starved. Whenever my grandfather said how terrible I looked, like a skeleton or concentration-camp victim, I took it as a compliment, without the slightest understanding of how malicious the expression concentration-camp victim was. If my grandmother heard this she’d say, Oh, come on, Josef. By that she meant that you couldn’t compare me, her granddaughter, to concentration-camp inmates, those poor devils. However, the more sunken my cheeks and the darker the rings around my eyes, the more I felt content. If my grandmother said I looked well, so healthy and with such round cheeks, I felt ill and bloated. Her ideal of beauty came from another era. I did not wish to be associated with food. I harboured the permanent desire to fall unconscious, but I never managed a proper blackout, only two or three instances of circulation problems with dizziness. I wanted to melt into thin air, vanish like a fugitive essence that dissipates the moment it comes into contact with food. I kept thinking of the consumptive women in literature, pale and delicate and thin, and forever passing out even if they did nothing all day – as in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain – except eat (the patients were served five meals per day: huge breakfasts, lunches and dinners with several courses and two snacks in between, because otherwise they would lose too much protein – I was particularly fascinated by this symptom of tuberculosis) and lie on sun terraces, 1,600 metres up, wrapped in furs and camel-hair blankets. They were given smelling salts, held in people’s arms or laid down on sofas. Then they were taken to their afternoon tea, where they would be offered milk or hot chocolate and large slices of fruitcake with a thick layer of butter. Five or six times I picked up the receiver and replaced it again. Charlotte mustn’t find out anything. I could only tell her about Frau Hohenembs. But even that would baffle her. Why had I spent my Saturday afternoon in the Prater with two elderly ladies I didn’t know? Because you can’t ever say no, Charlotte would answer. She always accused me of never being able to say no, of being sucked into everything, of being used in every way possible, of allowing myself to be saddled with everything to my own disadvantage, just because I couldn’t say no, out of politeness or misconstrued friendliness, which in truth was no more than cowardice. Frau Hohenembs had wanted to organize another get-together, this time in the Lainzer Tiergarten, which I had declined. So I was able to say no. After our visit to the sex museum we’d gone for a couple of beers in a pub. It was Frau Hohenembs’s regular haunt whenever she and Ida went to the Prater. The copper whale on the roof, covered with verdigris, reminded her of her past sea voyages. Although she’d never seen a whale, she had often spied dolphins off the Greek islands and the African coast. In her house on Corfu she’d chosen the dolphin as the heraldic animal to put on her crockery, bedclothes and letter-writing paper. Unfortunately, barely any of this was left; things had disappeared over the years, as they tended to – something breaks, something else is stolen. If Ida were to get the house she’d have to kit it out again from scratch. But she didn’t need much, dear Ida. She was a great deal more modest than herself, Frau Hohenembs added. You’ve been promising me Corfu for thirty years, Ida had snorted, briefly sitting up straight before sinking back down again, holding on to her glass. She had ordered a schnapps to accompany each of her beers. In front of the astonished waiter she sank the shot glass in her beer mug, describing the resulting drink as a submarine. In the meantime, Frau Hohenembs suggested one date after another for our next meeting. I cited urgent and unpredictable work as an excuse, which was partly true; I had to visit a new client the following week and didn’t know what would come of it. The firm I occasionally worked for, Hoarders Unlimited, had put me in contact with the man and described him as a serious case. Others refuse to believe just how many people are incapable of keeping their homes in a habitable state and are grateful for outside help, even though they feel ashamed at the same time. Clearing out clutter, getting rid of superfluous stuff within the shortest possible time, was the only thing I’d learned how to do. After all, I’d always had to remove the traces of my eating and puking as quickly as I could. The man had sounded utterly desperate on the phone; his flat was overflowing with old catalogues, magazines and mail-order goods he’d never opened; his daughter used to help him tidy up and chuck away, but she’d emigrated to Australia, came back only once a year and of course didn’t have any time for that sort of thing (You can’t begin to imagine! Couldn’t I?) I paced up and down my flat. It was Saturday evening and in the fridge were two squeezed-out tubes of mustard and a bottle of ketchup. Upstairs the usual crashing, which made the doors rattle on their hinges. I thought about being sick, but the picnic was too long ago. A squeamish aversion to the stench of semi-digested food prevented me from doing so. I’d been weaned off it for too long. My body was demanding to be filled up and then emptied again. I went from room to room, opened cupboard doors, looked in drawers, folded items of clothing or tossed them into the washing basket. If I passed the fridge I checked to see that I hadn’t overlooked anything edible. The childhood cakes, straight from the oven, the potatoes mashed with gravy – these didn’t exist any more. Strawberry jam cooked up for hours with fruit from our own garden, spreading the walnuts out on the kitchen table with both hands, the silent shelling of the large runner beans. Thrusting your hands into a bowl of the colourfully speckled beans and letting them run through your fingers. Picking the little, round currants from the branches, a game of patience that, in combination with the blazing summer sun, could put you into a trance. Being sent into the garden to fetch parsley and (for the hundredth time) coming back with carrot tops. Going to the vegetable patch with a bowl to fetch peppers and salad for lunch. The bolted lettuces, which against my better judgement I insisted on calling lattices. The certainty that today, tomorrow and the day after lunch would be on the table at twelve. I hadn’t come down so far in the world, thank God, that I was forced to make myself porridge out of polenta flour or oats.
I hit upon the superb idea of getting drunk. That was the way out! Charlotte couldn’t raise any objections, either.
*
In her album of beauty she collected photographs of women from all over Europe. My kedvesem did not discriminate on the basis of class; she was just as happy with a Tuscan peasant girl as she was with the countess from St Petersburg. Lola Montez and George Sand were there, both in stages of advanced, mature beauty. But the main focus of the album was her sister Marie, ex-Queen of Naples; there were more portraits of her than anyone else. The two looked so similar, the same melancholy beauty was typical of both. The ex-queen dressed far more eccentrically than my dove, disapproving of simple elegance. My kedvesem had not included any pictures of herself, but with her grace she outshone all others like the majestic morning star. Austrian diplomats were instructed to send portraits from the upper classes in the cities where they were posted. Photographs of aristocratic women, all in the same studio setting, came from everywhere. The ambassador in Turkey was an exception to this rule. He sent pictures of exotic women from uncertain backgrounds, wearing pantaloons, short embroidered jackets and velvet slippers, as if they had come straight from the harem. In an accompanying letter he expressed his regret that the upper-class Turkish women, save for a few, refused to be photographed; not even their husbands could persuade them. I actually think that the Turkish men had their own objections and forbade their wives to have their picture taken. From Paris, on the other hand, came scandalous likenesses of artistes, actresses and ballet dancers in their professional wear, short skirts or even tight-fitting trousers that hid nothing. They appealed to her love of the circus and vaudeville; she was unperturbed; in fact she took particular delight in these photographs.
*
Frau Hohenembs waved me over and explained to me the function of the duck presses. They had been imported from France, where they were used for the dish canard au sang. After the meat had been carved from the bone, the remaining carcasses were pressed to extract the juices. These devices resembled the large citrus presses used in coffee houses and bars, although the handles for pressing down the carcasses were bigger and looked more merciless. They reminded me of compact thumbscrews. In the past they used such gadgets to press raw veal and beef, and drink the juices, seasoned with salt and pepper, sometimes raw, sometimes cooked. This helped, she said, if you didn’t want to become too strong, by which I’m sure she meant fat. It was nourishing, too, she added, and staved off the feeling of hunger for a good while. But she couldn’t drink it any more as sadly she no longer had a single duck press in her possession. These days she had to make do with simple bouillon – something even Ida was capable of rustling up. She had often thought about making off with one of the presses; it didn’t seem especially difficult to steal something from a museum. Particularly here, where there was no cloakroom and people were channelled through the exhibition rooms with their bags. And ever since the testimony of the Cellini Salt Cellar thief, she continued, we know that CCTV monitors aren’t always being watched. Besides, it was essentially her property. I asked what she meant by that. She said she couldn’t explain now, but the duck presses belonged to her. She looked at me. I was carrying a medium-sized bag into which all four duck presses would fit comfortably, as I suddenly realized. The presses stood beneath a glass dome, which presumably would set off an alarm the moment it was lifted. Frau Hohenembs gently stroked the edge of the glass with her fingers and raised it cautiously to begin with. Open your bag, she whispered, taking the dome with both hands and lifting it right up. Now Ida was there; she took over the job of holding the glass cover while Frau Hohenembs grabbed the largest of the duck presses and put it at the bottom of my bag, which, obeying her orders, I’d opened and was holding out to her. She arranged the other presses to make it look as if they’d always stood there in a group of three, and removed one of the labels, which she slipped into her dress. Ida carefully placed the protective glass dome back down. Zip up the bag, Frau Hohenembs hissed, and I did. At that very moment my mobile rang. I had to open my bag again, it kept ringing, on the screen was a number I didn’t know – probably Charlotte using a different phone. My hand trembling, I cut off the call. She would realize, of course, that I had deliberately refused to take it. I’d have to lie to her. No getting into a flap now, Frau Hohenembs said, and we proceeded calmly to the exit. She went ahead, with Ida and me following on behind. Taking my arm, Ida supported and more or less guided me out. On the other side of my body I was clutching the bag, which was leaden. I felt as old and decrepit as the two other women. On my own I wouldn’t have managed a single step; I would have sat on the floor and waited until they carried me out, to prison, to hospital, to the Fools’ Tower, wherever. We made it to the exit unnoticed and onto a staircase with runners of red coconut matting. A young man with a kepi sat on the third step from the bottom, reading a book. It was a paperback and he clamped the pages he’d read so tightly to the back of the book that the spine must have been broken several times. A name tag was attached to the pocket of his left breast: Johannes. As we passed him he looked up briefly from his book and gave us a friendly Goodbye. We hurried down two floors and, noticing the office of the arts minister, it struck me that stealing the duck press was probably easier than securing an appointment with the minister to give it back. We moved speedily away from the Hofburg towards Karlsplatz, where we boarded a tram. Ida helped me with the bag. After two stops spent in silence, Frau Hohenembs said that I should accompany them to her apartment. She stood beside the two-seater bench where Ida and I were sitting, although all the other seats were free. I detected a poorly suppressed cheerfulness in her voice; indeed she was giggling to herself, trying to keep her mouth shut with her hand. Ida peered melancholically out of the window. She was probably thinking of the nauseating process she’d have to carry out to extract the meat juice and the laborious business of cleaning the press, which was necessary to avoid the place being immediately overwhelmed by a rotting stench. The sooner I was rid of this object the better. Once inside her apartment I took the press out of my bag, placed it on a table and made for the hallway without saying goodbye. With his tall body, the Irish wolfhound stood in my way, preventing me from leaving. Won’t you try a glass of meat juice? Ida, get some veal cutlets, quickly! Frau Hohenembs called out, adding, You’ll be amazed! Clambering awkwardly over the dog, I slammed the door behind me, without checking to see whether his muzzle was in the way. I was close to tears. I took a stroll in the little park opposite my flat. The bag, now light again, too light, swung back and forth, knocked between my legs and tripped me up. It will take its revenge later, this bag’s lightness, I thought, seeing myself gluing equally light paper bags in prison. I sat on a bench and gazed up at my windows, four mirrors dazzling in the sunshine, impossible to see whether anyone was behind them, searching the flat or watching me stare up. No one else in the park was looking at my windows. A few homeless people sat at one of the wooden tables, passing round a two-litre bottle of red wine. Mothers stood at the edge of the sandpit, taking care that their children didn’t dig with other children’s spades. Pigeons were shooed away, which didn’t stop them from coming back again undeterred. A normal summer weekday afternoon in a normal, slightly down-at-heel park. The police couldn’t be in my flat, impossible, I thought. No one saw us, no one followed; even if we had been observed no one knew who we were, let alone where we lived. Besides, the duck press was in her apartment, and at my place there was not a shred of evidence pointing to the existence of any Frau Hohenembs. Having said that, she and Ida were highly conspicuous figures who could easily be recognized any time, by the cashier, the attendants or other visitors to the museum. There was definitely a third woman, they’d say, a nondescript one, we can’t remember exactly what she looks like, she wasn’t wearing a long, black dress like the other two, she was in normal gear, jeans and T-shirt probably, like all young people these days, how are we meant to remember a face, etc. I emptied the bag onto my lap. The display on my mobil
e didn’t show any new messages or missed calls. There wasn’t much else in the bag. I stuffed everything into my trouser pockets, wandered on a little further and threw the bag, my favourite one and a thirtieth-birthday present from Charlotte, into a dustbin. I tried to banish all thoughts of Charlotte. The look she would give me, knitting her eyebrows, if I had to admit to her that I’d left the bag somewhere. Would it have been better, perhaps, if the thing had been stolen, snatched out of my hand, the strap cut?
