The World as I Found It

by Bruce Duffy

  Kurt, six years older than Wittgenstein, was another story. Woeful Kurt. Even his father was willing to concede that somewhere Kurt had been lost, or dropped on his head. By any standards Kurt was well above average intelligence, but by Wittgenstein standards he was deficient, and Karl Wittgenstein made no effort to conceal the fact. Not that this fazed Kurt. To him, it seemed his father’s standards were meaningless, and yet this patent denial had also taken its toll: with no apparent will to combat his father, Kurt’s personality had gone from a liquid to a gaseous state. He was perfectly pleasant and intelligent, but he was a counterfeit. Karl Wittgenstein even had a gesture for him: a vague pass of his hand, as if he could merely waft his fingers through Kurt’s ghostly head.

  The irony was that Kurt had never defied his father. Having entered the business, he was following his father’s wishes to the letter. But because Kurt had no real brains or backbone, Karl Wittgenstein found him only another disappointment. With the help of a ghost manager, Kurt ran one of Karl Wittgenstein’s lesser steel factories on the eastern outskirts of the city. Once a month or so, usually on a Sunday, Kurt would spend the day at home, burying himself in the paper or affably moping. Otherwise he lived alone and collected stamps — at least, his father said, when he was not collecting dust.

  Like compass points, the three brothers faced in different directions, while all veering away from that force field emanating from the head of the table. The two other brothers were installed above in a now bygone constellation called The Empty Chairs, two staring holes where once stars had flickered.

  All this and more was weighing on Wittgenstein as he sat there pitted against the face of his box, the symphony imploding below him with Schubert’s Ninth. And then he could wait no longer. He had to relieve himself.

  He dreaded this in public, especially the pressure of doing so during intermission — having to produce, with a line of uncomfortable men butting up behind him. Turning to Gretl, he whispered, My leg is cramping. I must get up now. I will see you by the stairs at intermission.

  He knew, and she knew, why he was leaving. Wittgenstein saw his sister’s disappointment, that he should still be suffering this anxiety, but then in his urgency he was gone, walking stiff-legged down the gilt and marble foyer, hoping to find the lavatory empty now as the orchestra was storming to crescendo.

  And he was in luck! The lavatory was deserted, and he whisked in, clasping the stall shut as he spread his black tails and dropped his trousers. But just as he was settling himself on the seat, the lavatory door opened, and he heard someone lock the next stall. Trying to relax, he closed his eyes and thought of water — clear, free, running water, as his knotted bladder unclenched, draining into the ringing porcelain. But when he opened his eyes, Wittgenstein suffered a shock: beneath the marble divider, he saw in the next stall not trousers but a skirt and high-heeled shoes.

  His first thought was, The poor woman, she took the wrong door. But then he heard the lavatory door open again, this time with women’s voices! But how was this possible? He yanked up his trousers and crouched atop the seat with his knees hiked to his chin, certain he would be exposed, arrested!

  And no escape! Outside now he heard applause, then the hubbub of the intermission crowds, a sound like rushing surf down the foyer. Quick! What to do? Hide as if the stall were out of order? Run?

  He did not run. Flushing the toilet to cover his escape, he walked out like a gentleman, ramrod straight, eyes half closed. Up went a gasp, a cry! A fox was in the hen house! Amidst those clotted pink walls, he had a fleeting sensation of angry geese, of threatening white crinoline wings warding him off. He flinched as a woman looming under a gigantic nebula of hat veered toward him with a sound of either excited clucking or choking. Huddled in the corner, another woman covered her face.

  Shrieks and cries as he burst out the door and pushed through the clotted bodies, slipping down the stairs, past the attendant, then out the doors and down the darkened street, where, against all principle, he started running, his forked tails flying as he tore like a thief through the dirty December snow.

  On the Origins of Charity

  ONCE SAFELY down the street, he felt soiled. Deranged. Not daring to return for fear of being recognized, he took a cab to the palais, where he telephoned the concert hall to ask that his family be told that he had been taken ill and was now resting at home.

  Hardly had he hung up than his mother appeared, having been alerted by her excitable maid, who had been told by the night butler — in spite of Wittgenstein’s explicit orders not to disturb his parents — that her red-faced son was so terribly ill and in such a state that he had come home in a cab, gnädige Frau, without even a coat and hat!

  What-is-the-matter? demanded his frantic mother, indignant to find him sitting up in his condition.

  Please, he said. I’m really all right. I became ill.

  Ill? she sputtered, as if to say he surely must be gravely ill to appear at this hour hatless and coatless and plainly absent of his senses. Where is Gretl? she asked, looking around.

  Dabbing his eyes, he said very softly, I called the hall. She’s there still.

  Frau Wittgenstein was incredulous. You left and did not tell them?

  And he, laboring now, I told you … I felt too ill.

  Ill! she cried. What is this, ill! How are you ill?

  But here he was stuck: in all the ruckus, he had had no time to concoct an alibi, and so he found himself in the double bind of having to find an illness serious enough to justify his sudden departure yet not so grave that he would be plagued for days with questions and solicitude. At the same time, he dared not make things any fishier by hesitating, so he said, I vomited. But in that flash of his mother’s eyes, he saw his error.

  I knew it! she cried, knitting her frayed fingers together. With overwork and this needless stoicism of yours, you have given yourself a nervous ulcer.

  It’s not stoicism, he said irritably. Those are Father’s words. A stomach is not a creed, it’s only a stomach.

  Don’t be clever, his mother reprimanded. You never had such a stomach in my house. Did you see blood in your sputum?

  Blood?

  His father’s voice. Rushing in still slick from his evening bath and swaddled in his smoking jacket, Karl Wittgenstein was leading a brigade consisting of the guilty maid and the butler, who was carrying a chest filled with enough bandages and medicinals to have supplied a polar expedition.

  What blood? demanded his father.

  No blood. Peeved at him for barging in and taking over as usual, Frau Wittgenstein was unusually snappish. I asked if he vomited blood.

  He vomited blood?

  And he said no, insisted Frau Wittgenstein. No.

  Well, the father demanded, shaking his arms. Then what did he vomit?

  My dinner, groaned the son.

  Oh. The father nodded. Our dinner, was it?

  It hardly helped matters when, in the midst of this now heated medical inquest, Gretl arrived, throwing off her fur in alarm as Wittgenstein stared her down, directing her with his emphatic eyes not to make this any more of a scene.

  Fifteen minutes later, it was all he could do to convince his father not to summon the family physician out of bed, and this only after promising he would see him in the morning for a complete physical examination. Still, for Karl Wittgenstein to persuade his son to see the doctor after the fact was hardly as gratifying or demonstrative as taking action now, even if it only meant picking up the telephone. Karl Wittgenstein found few acceptable opportunities to show fatherly solicitude. These moments were rare as eclipses, yet despite their bungling, awkward quality, the feeling in them ran deep, so deep that Karl Wittgenstein finally burst from the room, wounded that his ungrateful son should deny him even this. Wittgenstein called after him appreciatively, while for his mother, who seemed sure he was hemorrhaging, he contrived to swallow some buttermilk. Then, with a worried, suspicious look, Frau Wittgenstein also left, off to quell her wounded husban
d.

  Once they were alone, Gretl managed to pry the truth from him. But almost as soon as he began, she broke in, saying, Please, don’t be offended at this. But so you won’t accuse me later of pretending to know after the fact what happened, let me tell you what I think it was.

  Fine, he said bitterly, sure she would never guess. Tell me.

  All right, she said, taking a breath. You somehow found yourself in the women’s lavatory. Seeing him go white, Gretl hastily added, Lest you worry, nobody recognized you, and no one told me this. But I heard about a man in the ladies’ room and — I don’t know — I had a feeling.

  But why a hunch about me? Why me? He was grasping the armrests, his head swaying back and forth. Do you even know what you’re saying?

  Ludi, she said, laying her hand on his arm. I’m certainly not suggesting you make a habit of it. But I knew — I just did. Knew even from how you looked when you got up — so chased, and nothing I could do. Why else do you think I kept Mining and Paul from going to the management to find you? I was afraid they might make the connection.

  Oh, God, he moaned. You told them?

  I had no choice. Otherwise they would have made inquiries. They’re upstairs now. They agreed it would be best if we spoke alone.

  A long, anguished wince. He was sick now, pale and trembling sick, his voice stumbling, saying, It was a mistake … a horrible accident. You do know it was an accident, don’t you?

  Well, of course.

  But Gretl agreed a little too easily, with that telltale squeak in her throaty voice. He could hear the gears churning now. Protesting in advance, he said, I’m telling you that it was an accident. Oh, I know, you’ll say it was a dark wish — an unconscious wish to return to the womb or something.

  Well, she said carefully, there are accidents and accidents.

  I told you, I was distracted! I merely reached for the wrong door.

  Distracted? Her voice turned accusatory. Is that the word? Distracted to walk through a completely different door, a door on the opposite side of the hall, no less? And to walk not only through the wrong door but through a pink powder room filled with feminine settees and mirrors? Distracted?

  Is it necessary, he broke in breathlessly, is it necessary to make me feel any worse than I do already?

  I’m sorry, she squeaked. I am. But tomorrow, I think we ought to talk about it — I do.

  But you forget, he said bitterly. Tomorrow I’m to meet Fräulein Ketteler.

  Gretl’s eyes flew up. That’s right! I’d forgotten about her.

  Oh, I see! he said sarcastically. Now I understand, Herr Doktor. Those were her shoes I saw in the stall beside mine.

  Shoes? sleuthed Gretl. Whose shoes?

  This was too much. He jumped up. Oh, yes! You really must go work for the shoe doctor.

  Soul doctor, you mean.

  Oh! He winced. Soul — sole! Good! This is getting good, isn’t it! And he started to laugh, a long, ripping, seasick laugh that boiled up out of him, until she cried, Stop it! And he did stop. He stopped with a hiccupping bump. But he still was not rid of it, that expectoration. It was not his stomach that was sick, it was his soul, his soul.

  Gretl more or less managed to work a truce before he went off to bed. Feeling as if his pockets had been turned out, he moved like a sleepwalker across the glassy parquet. And then as he was gliding down the darkened hallway, he saw a crease of light beneath the door of the library, where his father was no doubt sulking, having again found himself too late with his useless medicine.

  As he hesitated there, blurry and trembling as a flame, it occurred to him that he might undo the lock, might unfreeze the past and go to his father. Physically, it was possible. But to knock on that door with the vain expectation of explaining, apologizing or offering solace — this was impossible, and not just impossible but downright shameful: to do this, he felt, would be to expose some part of his father or himself as he had been tonight exposed, hobbled in that coven, with his trousers wrapped around his ankles.

  And later, lying in bed, stifled under blankets and his own burden of darkness, Wittgenstein saw something else he had overlooked downstairs, namely, his father’s love. It was a love so turgid and disfigured as to be almost unintelligible, but still it was there, struggling like a spring shoot to dislodge a winter of snow. And what of that chest of medicinals? he thought. This seemed a relatively new development. Was it crude insurance so his father would be ready this time to snatch his flesh from the flames? But this, too, was smothering, and again Wittgenstein wondered why he should feel pricked and besmirched by the blackthorn of his father’s thwarted love. And then he remembered how as a child he had gone through a period in which he feared toe-snatching elves and giants, nights when he would cry out, Wasser, Wasser, bitte. His kindly old Iglauer wet nurse, who slept in the next room, would dutifully bring him his water cup, soothing him as he gulped it down. But one night, when it came to his father’s attention, Karl Wittgenstein told the nurse that he would bring the boy his water. One glass his father gave him, one glass with a scolding that he was not to cry out again, so big a boy as he. His father must have waited outside the door, because when the boy cried out again, he appeared in the darkness with another glass, beading and sparkling in the liquid darkness. Wittgenstein could distinctly remember his father’s gleaming white collar points as he came forward with that glass of liquid succor, saying, You want water? Here is your water! and throwing it cold in his face.

  It taught him. The child learned. Never again did he call out in the night, and so it was now, when the man would neither ask for forgiveness nor offer it.

  Crystal Logic

  THE NEXT MORNING was more of the same. Asleep around four, up at eight. Down at nine to the invalid’s breakfast, bland and milky. Saying, Ja, to the concerned mother, wringing her napkin, Much, much better. Then propping himself up for his father, who it seemed could levitate with his expectant eyes. Eating the good, good food, and happily, to show his newfound wellness. Talking the bland, bland news to appear happy and voracious, so they could see he was committed to a definite course in life and, yes, ready, too, to meet Fräulein Ketteler — and all the while wondering why they did not foist her on his brother Paul, that feather-bedder sitting at the end of the table, distinct and erect of posture, with his single boiled egg.

  Then it was off to the doctor, rousted out this Saturday to inspect the sickly scion. Directed to the waiting automobile, where the chauffeur, puffing steam and stamping his freshly polished boots, grasped the silver handle, then carefully tamped shut the black door. Joy to the world. Piles of old snow and the fog snared in the bare branches as they motored round the drive, past the manger, with the empty crib still waiting for the ceramic Christ child from Florence with the queer moorish skin and chipped nose. Then past the two brass angels standing on the gateposts, and down the Allegasse, where over imposing walls could be seen other vaultlike homes with wreaths on their doors. But on this street there were also a few like the Feines and Schupps who did not go along, who did not mark their doors for the wraiths of Yule and so were thought by their neighbors to be closed and somber, somehow vaguely forbidding.

  A few blocks later, the rubber tires were thumping on the cobbles of the Ringstrasse, that great gyre in the heart of the city that had been built over what formerly had been its fortifications. Begun with the emperor’s proclamation in 1857, the Ringstrasse was now, some fifty years later, lined with heavyset buildings bedecked in the polyphonous, often cacaphonous strains of historicism, Greek and Roman, then a Götterdämmerung of neo-Gothic and Baroque — heavy, heavy brick and stone already soaking up the coal soot and pigeon streaks of days. In that city, all was embellishment. Having razed one fortress, they had erected another. These walls and steeples were really the ramparts of Germanic, cosmopolitan Kultur struggling to remain ascendant over a racial cauldron brimming with Czechs, Ruthenes, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians and Diaspora Jews. Beauty u
pon beauty, delirium upon delirium, the stones rose up in a lapidary confection, with piers giving way to columns, columns rising to spandrels and spandrels vaulting to imposts and roofs of beaten copper where stood the three Fates, winged cherubs and basilisks spewing rainwater.

  Beautiful, improbable city, where the electric trams perambulated around an architectural circus wreathed with trees and iron-cupolaed kiosks splattered with bills clarioning every conceivable offer and entertainment. Sitting in the rear of the car, Wittgenstein saw but blankly the incomprehensible weave of this coat of far too many colors. But still, life happened along, switching like the tail of that indolent dray horse clopping just ahead, carelessly dropping his burden. And didn’t Wittgenstein want to ooze down the seat as they passed the Musikverein from which he had fled the night before. Then on past columned Parliament, whose roof was piled like a necropolis with deities and winged chariots. In the fountain, amid stone waves and leaping dolphins, various sages tried with oars as useless as lollipops to steer a course through that brimming Styx. And standing powerfully over them all, holding forth a bronze-headed spear, was Athena, protectress of the polis and — to Wittgenstein’s still smoldering eyes — the sworn avenger of ladies’ toilets.

  Five minutes later, he was mounting the stairs to Dr. Friedhof’s office. He hated doctors, and it was an excruciatingly long visit, which did not fail to make him feel any less criminal. After the usual ahhhing, thumping and groin poking, Dr. Friedhof inserted his stubby hand in a greased glove and thoughtfully plumbed the patient’s rectum before sending him off, suspiciously sound, with a homily about overwork and a prescription for paragoric.