by Alan Isler
"Ah, where, you are right, where? Right here, yes, why not? The Cabaret Voltaire, at eight o'clock."
Outside in the Spiegelgasse I wanted to leap and sing. I ran through the bitter streets, in love with life, in love with myself, in love with Magda Damrosch. Already I had excused her initial coldness. Perhaps I had caught her at an awkward moment; perhaps she had been embarrassed to be found in such company; perhaps because I had, like a fool, burst into an already established coterie, they had instinctively drawn together to expel a clumsy intruder. I heard only her warm laughter, saw only her eyes, her arched brow, felt only her charming hand on my sleeve. Fire ran through my veins. I leapt up the stairs to my room, threw myself fully clothed onto my bed, my "narrow cot," and fell immediately asleep.
My interview with Professor Dr. Winkel-Ecke went off more or less as I had anticipated. Somehow I got through the rest of the week. Work was impossible: I took icy showers, tramped for miles along the frozen margins of the lake, burned my energies in the raw air, fell exhausted upon my bed at night. I might have been Jumbo the Elephant. Slowly, all too slowly, creepingly, the week passed.
On the appointed evening I dressed myself, as you may imagine, with especial care. What a blessing that my mother had insisted on packing my formal evening clothes! ("He's
going to be a student, Frieda, not a playboy," my father had grumbled. "A student may receive a dinner invitation," said my mother firmly.) I was smugly satisfied with the report my mirror gave me: my recent tramps along the lake had replaced my student pallor with a healthy, ruddy glow. I even winked at myself. The cab was already waiting downstairs.
At ten minutes to eight I entered the Cabaret Voltaire. An hour later I dismissed the chauffeur. An hour after that I walked disconsolately home.
Magda, of course, had not turned up.
Later we sat on a bench in Central Park and watched the squirrels. The sun caressed us.
"It's time to think about your future," he said. "You're too old to live alone, you're not a squirrel. Listen to me, this is what I think: come to the Emma Lazarus. There we have first-class medical treatment, twenty-four hours; excellent kosher food; more activities than you'll live to enjoy. Every door has a mezuzah, except of course the toilets."
"I'm not such a fanatic, Benno. That was the Contessa, not me."
"We have an open-door policy: all Jews are welcome, you don't have to be religious, you don't even have to be Reform. Only the in-house rules are made by the rabbis. Apart from that you can live like a goy. It's like the State of Israel."
"But so many people under one roof."
"You can be as private or as sociable as you want. It's not an institution. Everyone decorates his own room, some even bring in professional decorators. We're not much on the outside, but inside is different. We're the Hotel Adlon, the Crillon, the Plaza of old-age homes. Believe me, I don't exaggerate."
"I'm not a Rothschild, Benno. I have only a small income."
"You don't know yet what the Contessa has left, may she rest in peace. Speak first to her attorneys, then decide."
She had left me everything: the condominium in Florida, the many canny investments made by the "Paganini of the Scalpel" in the days of his glory. I was amazed at how much there was. The attorneys would take care of everything, there were no problems, all I had to do was sign here, here, and here. A few weeks later I was able to tell Hamburger that money, at least, was no longer a problem.
"Then it's up to you," he said. "Come and take a look at us. I'll put your name up when next I see the secretary." He might have been a respected member of an exclusive British club.
"Perhaps it's for the best."
"That's the spirit!" he said, switching to the role of Marine Corps recruiting sergeant. "We can always use a few good men."
I FIRST MET BENNO HAMBURGER shortly after my retirement. It was in Goldstein's Dairy Restaurant, during a particularly crowded Sunday lunch hour. I told Goldstein I didn't mind sharing a table, and he took me over to Hamburger. There was the thin, sad face, now so familiar, the neatly cropped head that rests securely on a thick neck and portly torso. In sartorial elegance he can stand the test of comparison with Goldstein himself. The one, Hamburger, tends toward well-worn conservatism; the other, Goldstein, ever so slightly toward modish flamboyance.
Here I record the first exchange of words between us, as momentous in its way as the far better known exchange between Stanley and Livingstone:
"I'm almost finished."
"Take your time."
Joe shuffled over with a cup of black coffee for me and a check for Hamburger.
"I'll have the Walter Matthau," I said, "and perhaps a little extra sauce."
"You got it," said Joe, beginning a slow turn.
Hamburger had been examining his check with the scrupulosity of a government auditor. "You overcharged me a dollar-twenty on the Jack Klugman," he said.
Joe reversed his slow turn. "Goldstein put the prices up last week."
"A cup of coffee costs forty-five cents now?"
"It's a scandal," said Joe. "I wouldn't pay it."
"Goldstein is going to put himself out of business."
Hamburger took some bills out of his wallet and began to poke around in a change purse. He came up with a nickel and two pennies. " 'Poor in pocket,'" he muttered to himself, quoting in German, " 'sick at heart'. . ."
" 'I dragged my weary days along,' " I said.
Hamburger looked up from his change purse, his eyes suddenly bright. " 'Poverty is the worst of plagues'. . . ," he said quickly.
" 'Riches are the highest good!' '
"Goethe."
" 'The Treasure Seeker.' "
He sprang to his feet and extended his hand. I got to mine and took it.
"Hamburger, Benno."
"Korner, Otto."
We sat down again, and when Joe came back with my Walter Matthau, Hamburger ordered more coffee. We talked the afternoon away. There was only one awkward moment. "The name is familiar," he said. "I seem to remember it from the Bad Times. What were you then, a journalist?"
"Something like that," I said, and turned the conversation to safer topics.
It's hard to "get a handle" on Hamburger. Once, I asked him, as if I were seeking information, if he happened to know how the Dada Movement got its name. Since I propose to reveal in these pages the whole truth about the word's origin, a truth that has been suppressed for sixty years, Hamburger's immediate answer may amuse you:
"One day the infant Tzara was sitting on his potty in the nursery. In came his German nurse. 'Well, Tristan, little angel,' she said. 'Have you made a-a yet?' 'Yes,' said Baby Tzara. 'Made da-da, made da-da!' And there you have it: the Dada Movement."
Really, the man is impossible! On the other hand, I admit
that I have a personal weakness for this story. It has the ring of metaphorical truth.
Hamburger is like a picture made up from pieces of quite different jigsaw puzzles. Today he is a curious composite: gallant defender of a lady's honor, Jumbo the Elephant, literary critic with a taste for the sublime, advocate of women's rights and lesbian high jinks, and of course foliage fancier, nature's child.
Meanwhile, I sit here twiddling my thumbs.
Well, it didn't look like that at the time. They were intelligent young people, certainly; sensitive, no doubt. And they were not lazy: they worked hard at their nonsense. But they were enjoying themselves immensely, too. Their delight was to shock for the pure pleasure of shock itself. What did Europe, what did "Western civilization," know of their revolt? Or care? It was enough for them if they could shake the fuddy-duddies of Zurich into tut-tutting alarm, disturb the comfort of the local bourgeoisie, tweak a few noses, pull a beard or two.
Like them, I was young. If they despised the war, I, by the time I met them, in 1916, had lost my naive faith in its glory, in the moral Tightness of our cause as distinguished from the moral depravity of theirs, in Kaiser and Vaterland. Despite Huelsenbeck s mockery of
me, I did not think that "everything has to be as it is." But I could not see why, in order to welcome a Nadelman, an Arp, or a Selinger, I had to kick out the German Romantics, whose serenity I loved and who had painted in a time when music and art and poetry came together in wonderworking harmony. They could not convince me that their poemes simultanes, those meaningless chains of words and phrases brayed at an audience of beer-swilling students and punctuated by thumps on the table, clangs of the cowbell, gratings of ratchets, hiccups, bow-wows, and whatnot, were forging a new poetic language that would close forever the door on Goethe or, to step down but a rung, my beloved Rilke.
When Magda at last turned up at the Cabaret Voltaire, she was on the arm of Egon Selinger, the surrealist, the painter of eviscerated life-forms, with whom she was laughing and chattering away. They seemed to be on the most intimate terms. Well, they were a good-looking pair, I suppose. Selinger was an Adonis, tall and fair and gracefully muscled. Casual greetings were exchanged all around. No one got up; I, too, had learned to keep my place.
Magda paused by my seat, looked into my imploring eyes,
and pinched my cheek. "What," she said gaily, "are you still here?"
"For three weeks now, waiting to take you to dinner."
"Oh, that. I forgot. I had a headache."
"Which was it?"
"Both. I had a headache andl forgot. Besides, I saved you lots and lots of money."
There was no apology, not a hint of one. Nor would she pay attention to my complaints.
"Go away, junger Mann, I've had enough of you, you are boring me." She went and sat at the other side of the large round table where the "gang" held their conferences.
Meanwhile, Selinger had unwrapped a painting and was holding it up. "What do you think of it?"
It was a collage. An eviscerated fish reclined on the sports page of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. The painting was in blood-red, violent greens, and bright orange, a typical Selinger of this period. The table wholeheartedly approved.
"What do you call it?" asked Arp, who in profile looked like a turtle: hair cut close to the scalp, no chin, hanging lower lip.
"Primavera Four"
Thumps on the table, whoops, cries of "bravo!"
"Janco?" said Selinger, licking his lips nervously.
Marcel Janco, the dandy, with his perfectly regular features, his heavy-lidded eyes, his sensuous lips (the upper one a perfect bow), looked carefully at the painting again. He paused.
"It reminds me," he said, "that I've had no lunch today."
Anyway, it was midafternoon. The "gang" was discussing tonight's performance. They had already celebrated a French Night and an African Night. Their performances were growing wilder and wilder. They may not yet have known what to call themselves, but the sober citizens of Zurich already had a name for them: nihilists! Tonight was to be a Russian Night. Selinger could play the balalaika.
"Good," said Magda. "And I shall bring my scarlet tutu. I'll do the splits."
"Watch out for the suction, Liebchen" said Selinger. "It can be painful."
Everyone laughed. I was ready to rise and defend Magda's honor, but she too was laughing, tickling Selinger in the ribs. "Pig," she said lovingly.
They were also planning a Gala Night, something Zurich would never forget, for some time in the future, and a magazine whose name, if they could find it, would also identify what they already felt to be a movement. Omphalos^ Priapus, and Prank had been considered and rejected. Cosmo-Chaos was a strong contender, as was Ka-Ka-Kunst.
To an objective observer with a taste for farce, this was a moment not serious but hilarious. I stared at Magda with painful longing, she gazed at Selinger with hungry eyes, he watched Janco with evident ardor. As for Janco, he looked off into the distance with a mysterious smile. Who knew where his attention lay? His arm was around the neck of his current conquest, his hand resting comfortably on her bosom, his thumb idly flicking a nipple.
Well, at least Blum is making headway. I saw him and Mandy Dattner in jolly conversation in the fourth-floor hallway this morning, Sunday. She towers over him. He was making his point by poking her gently in the midriff, with each poke coming closer and closer to her breast. She was giggling. Who would think that fifty years—half a century!—separate them? The smart money bets on Blum!
I LOST MY SEXUAL INNOCENCE to Herr Ephraims waitress Minnie.
We met by chance one Sunday afternoon in spring. The rain had stopped, the air was fresh and mild, and from the mountains came the distant rattle of thunder. The lake's surface rolled, a dirty olive-gray. It would certainly rain again. Meanwhile, like many of the town's inhabitants, we were out for a stroll. "How elegant you look, Minnie!" And indeed, she had contrived a pleasing flair and flounce to her poor costume. She beamed with pleasure at the compliment and impulsively took my arm. "Herr Korner! Such luck! Come, let's walk together." The truth is, I was grateful for the company. My mood was that of the lonely man in the tale by Poe who desperately seeks the meager companionship of crowds. Minnie lifted my spirits, her bubbling chatter chasing the cobwebs of melancholy from my brain. And besides, I was conscious of her bosom, to which she, nature's child, had drawn my arm.
And so on we walked, until the rain began once more to spatter the pavements. Gonfalon's Konditorei was across the street; we dashed there, laughing, seeking shelter. In those years Gonfalon's was a Zurich landmark, a rendezvous of quiet opulence. Minnie was at once awed and delighted to find herself in such surroundings. What a sweet tooth she had! The richest pastries were not too rich for her, and as for Gonfalon's specialty, hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with nutmeg, she drank down two with scarcely a pause between. I can even now see the tip of her tongue licking the cream from her upper lip! "Ah, sir," she said, closing her eyes in ecstasy, "that was delicious."
I suppose I thought of myself as an elderly uncle taking his little niece out for a special treat. In any case, suffused with good feeling, delighted that a few francs could purchase for Minnie such pleasure, I took her hand in mine. "You needn't call me 'sir,' not when we're out together as friends."
Softly, she pressed my hand. "What shall I call you, then?"
"Otto."
"All right, sir. Otto it is."
The afternoon was on the wane. We left: Gonfalon's to find that the rain had abated. A blustery wind blew in from the lake. I was anxious now to return home, where the work I had earlier abandoned in lonely misery still waited. Minnie had served her turn. "Thank you for a most charming afternoon."
"Which way are you going, then?"
I pointed vaguely up the street.
"Ah, that's my way, too, we can go together, Otto. I've got an old auntie in that direction. I'll just pop in for a visit."
I was growing weary of her and, to be honest, already regretted having invited her to use my first name. She was, it must be admitted, common. (In those days one did not feel shame at such undemocratic sentiments.) She held my arm as before, chattering mindlessly on.
At length we reached the house where my landlady, a doctor's widow, eked out her pension by renting rooms to "young gentlemen with unimpeachable references." It was a solid, ample house in a solid, ample neighborhood. "And now, Minnie? ..." I raised my hat.
"You live here, then?" I nodded. "How posh it is!"
I looked with her at the house. "It's adequate."
Suddenly her face creased with pain. "Ouch!"
"What's the matter?"
"I've twisted my ankle, that's what's the matter."
How had she done that, just standing there? "Here, lean on me. How can I help?"
"I'll be all right. All I need is a tiny sit-down." Her smile was mischievous. "You don't happen to have one, do you?"
I was, of course, the very soul of chivalry. Here was a Damsel in Distress! In such circumstances obvious differences in social standing and breeding counted for nothing. "If you think you can make it up the stairs, you can rest in my room. If not, perhaps my landlady ..."
"I'll try."
In fact, she reached my room with admirable agility.
"Close the door, Liebchen, be so good. There's a horrible draft in here."
Scorning the easy chair and plump pouffe I showed her, Minnie made straight for my bed. She tried an experimental little bounce. "Ooh, so comfy!" She looked about her at the large room, the paneled walls, the ornate furnishings, the neat display of gentleman's toiletries. "You have this all to yourself, I bet." And when I nodded, she shook her head in wonder. "Some people are born lucky." With a gesture of dismissal she unpinned her hat and sent it skimming like a discus across the room.
I was rather at a loss as to what to do. I stood, therefore, leaning against the door as casually as I could, one hand behind me idly twitching the tails of my coat, the other smoothing my mustache. When the silence between us had grown embarrassingly lengthy, I asked her if she'd care for a brandy. She was eying me from top to toe, and she had a strange little smile on her lips. "A cognac, perhaps? Only as a restorative, I mean."
"Cognac makes me burp. You wouldn't have a nice creme de menthe? Well, never mind." She bent over to unlace her shoes, then took them off. "Here," she said, wiggling a foot at me. "Does it look swollen?" It did not, and I told her so. "Well, it hurts just the same. Come along, Liebchen, you're forgetting your manners. Take off that silly coat and help me off with mine. Then you can have a cognac if you like."
I silently cursed the mischance of our meeting. Now I would never be rid of her and her damned ankle. Nevertheless, I sprang to accommodate her.
"I need a tiny rub to fix me up—a massage, you know." She swung her legs up onto the bed and, using her elbows and rump, hitched herself back to a position of comfort, her head sinking into the soft pillows, her hair, unpinned with her hat,
gloriously arrayed upon them. "Ah," she breathed, and turning to me, she spoke with unexpected formality. "Would you be so kind as to apply a tiny massage to the afflicted member?" She pointed to her ankle and patted the bed.
At long last I was beginning to get a glimmering of my situation. But nothing in my experience had prepared me for this moment. At the same time, I was beset by doubts. Plump Minnie was indeed an alluring, an arousing sight, stretched out at ease upon my bed. Her smile was welcoming, even eager. But what if my imaginings were false, were merely vile? She came from a class that lacked all subtlety, that would not recognize the indecorum of such a request from a relative stranger. And a worse thought yet: what if she supposed I expected payment for the treat at Gonfalons?
