And thus the days crept by. Exercise, someone would remember. Why aren’t I exercising? Isn’t that what I came here for? I left a flourishing shop, business connections, customers and friends. Instead of exercising, breathing fresh air into my lungs, I spend my time playing poker. Isn’t that a crime! He forgot to mention a few insignificant details, of course: he had not abandoned his shop for nothing. The shop had gone downhill from one week to the next, his debtors had not paid their debts, his creditors had grown insistent, his friends had stopped visiting him, his good services to the village had been forgotten, his wife, the district nurse, met her untimely death. The young men had persecuted him, throwing stones at his little shop as they passed and shouting: Jews. He had come across Balaban by chance, and Balaban had persuaded him to come up to the mountain and change. He had not wanted to come. In the end, lacking any other choice, he had come.
He had come, but he had not fulfilled his obligations. He played poker as enthusiastically as if he were a product of the city, sometimes too enthusiastically. When Balaban was in a bad mood he would castigate him: “You’ve lived in the country. You’ve seen trees and animals. And yet you’ve learned nothing from them. Nothing. Why haven’t you learned?”
“They didn’t teach me.”
“Why didn’t you look?”
“I did look.”
“And why don’t you know how to swim?”
“Nobody taught me.”
“And what about horse riding, do you know how to ride a horse?”
“No.”
“So now do you understand why they broke your windows?”
And when Balaban desisted and turned away, he remained sitting in his chair and muttering to himself. “He’s right of course. If I was stronger they wouldn’t have tormented me. All my troubles are due to the fact that I have no determination, no perseverance, I give up too soon. In short, I’m a coward.”
Lotte too had lost her peace of mind. Two weeks before she had written a long letter to her daughter and expressed a wish to visit her. Her sins were not so great that she had to purge them in a convent. She missed the streets, the cafés, the theater. There was no reply. Herbert sat by her side and comforted her. He too received no letters. Nobody there received letters. That too was for the best.
“Who will pay for my stay here? Who will pay my fees?”
“Don’t worry,” said Herbert. “We will arrange a grant for you.”
“A grant. How wonderful,” said Lotte in a whisper.
For years this fantasy had haunted her imagination. A grant to go to Vienna. To Berlin. To be free for a year from the chains of the provincial theater, to see the world, breathe the atmosphere of true theater, great theater. Nothing, of course, came of these hopes. The grants were given to the young and promising, handsome young actors and, especially, pretty young actresses. Lotte was given small parts—shamefully, embarrassingly small. Small parts too, they told her, were important. And when she turned thirty they no longer said anything but “Take it or leave it, Lotte.”
When the pretty, blank-faced actresses took liberties and skipped rehearsals, came late, didn’t know their lines, said without shame, “I’ve forgotten, remind me,” their self-indulgence was regarded as a charming caprice. Lotte hid her wounded pride and worked hard. Made something of nothing. True, from time to time she would be rewarded with a compliment, but for the most part nobody took any notice of her. The stars shone radiantly while she toiled obscurely in the winds, in a gray desert of anonymity.
“But how?” Lotte recovered her voice.
“It’s quite simple. The board sits and makes its decisions. Believe me, they know what they’re doing,” said Herbert emphatically.
“But why me?” Her voice choked on the words.
“You were on the stage for years. As far as I know, you have never received a grant. Nobody ever bothered to ask, what is Lotte doing nowadays, or what have we done to advance Lotte. Small parts are important too, no doubt. But the time has come for greater things.”
“But me, are you sure it’s me,” said Lotte, and there were tears in her eyes.
“Yes, you, you. Without a doubt, you. The board has been watching you for years. Nothing escapes their eyes. Justice is sometimes done in this world too.”
Lotte felt uncomfortable. She wanted to escape to her room and cry. Supper brought her welcome relief. The hatch opened and the austere face of the cook appeared in its frame. Happiness such as she had not known for years flooded her. And as at the end of a play she wanted to curtsy and thank everybody. And later too, when she sat by herself in her room, the wave of warmth did not leave her. The thought that this time the board had noticed Lotte and chosen her, this thought momentarily stanched her hidden wound and she fell asleep as if she had swallowed a healing drug.
TEN
The next day it became known that Isadora had put an end to her life. The night before they had stayed up late playing cards as usual, although not excessively late. Isadora, as usual, took no part in the game, but she did not seem angry. She sat in the armchair and made a number of remarks about Balaban which were greeted with loud laughter. There was nothing unusual about this. And suddenly, silently, in the dark, without any warning, she had torn the thread of her life to shreds.
The woman who discovered the calamity stood leaning against the door, her hair rumpled and her staring eyes full of a cold terror. Nobody knew what to say. And as always after a shock the words welled up and burst out in all their nakedness. One small, shrill woman stood next to the eyewitness and muttered ceaselessly, “I told you, I told you.” Her hollow words gave rise to no anger.
Nobody dared go into the room and confirm the bitter news. The hatch was open, but nobody wanted coffee. Herbert, for some reason, sat in the armchair. “She couldn’t bear it,” a woman pronounced. Strangely enough, this matter of fact sentence infuriated the eyewitness.
When Balaban appeared in the doorway he looked as if he had been dragged out of a deep sleep. His strong body and thick face were dull, heavy and disapproving. He went up to the door and knocked, and when there was no reply he went inside. A moment later he emerged. Any remaining hope was instantly crushed.
A dark quiet mingled with the faint smell of nocturnal perspiration invaded the corridor. People stood huddled in a circle a little way off. Balaban looked like an old peasant about to cross himself. Isadora lay on her bed, her long, fine face no longer expressing anything. A faint smile hovered at the corners of her lips.
The inmates retreated from the door and went into the lobby. The morning light had already crossed the glass door and lay on the floor, alternating with squares of shade. “That’s life,” said someone pointlessly.
“In ten minutes’ time I’m closing the hatch,” announced the cook—a warning that nobody needed. No one had intended asking for breakfast. The shock was very deep. One or two people stood in a corner drinking coffee. They looked like petty thieves.
And in the shocked silence one or two people did not refrain from uttering long, pompous and somewhat indignant remarks, but nobody reacted and nobody argued. Their sorrow was very heavy. It absorbed the words as if they had not been spoken.
In the end Herbert was delegated to go inside and see if the dead woman had left any last request. Herbert put on his cap and went into the room with a strangely hurried step. The cook shut the hatch with a bang which sounded no different from usual.
It transpired that Isadore’s last requests were to be buried without Jewish rites, that her daughters were not to be notified of her death and that no euologies were to be delivered. These three negations now trembled in Herbert’s hands. He read them aloud in a choked voice.
One after the other they gathered in the lobby. There were no more than twenty of them, and as they stood there huddled together they looked even less. And while they stood waiting, Balaban reappeared. Now he looked like a small-town Jewish laborer. As if the strong pagan lines had been wiped off his face. Balaban knew that t
he dead woman had not liked him, and this knowledge seemed to impose an extra obligation on him now. People seemed to understand this and no one expressed surprise at his presence. The eye witness, Mrs. Kron, asked to be left alone in the dead woman’s room for a moment, and her request was granted.
Afterward everything became more organized. Herbert, Balaban and Mrs. Kron went down to the forest clearing and selected a suitable spot. The janitor brought a few spades and hoes up from the cellar. The crude, cylindrical implements seemed to show more than anything else what the nature of reality was.
When they returned from the forest Balaban’s face was in utter confusion. He looked like a poor grave digger whose face had turned to earth with the labor of the years. His sorrow had no hope in it, only dumbness. The others stood next to the walls waiting for a sign. And when no signs was given they began smoking cigarettes. Before long the lobby was filled with dense smoke.
The funeral took place in the afternoon in the cold sunlight. The janitor wore his blue suit and tied a black band to his sleeve, thus giving public expression to their mourning. The others were dressed as usual. And although the dead woman had expressly requested no speeches to be made at her graveside, Herbert understood that it would be appropriate, and perhaps even to the liking of the departed, if a few of Rilke’s poems were read. One thought led to another, and he asked Lotte to read.
Lotte was taken by surprise, and she pulled the little face of refusal she remembered from days gone by, when she was asked to stand in for another actor, but she immediately realized that this was not the appropriate expression now, and that it would be only right for her to accede to Herbert’s modest request.
“Where is the text?” she said, angry despite herself.
“In the room of the departed,” he said with a kind of chilly correctness. Lotte was frightened by this coldness and she said, “I must prepare myself.” She knew the works of Rilke by heart. His poems were like the prayerbook with which she shut herself up in times of trouble. An evening devoted to Rilke, this was her life’s dream, and like most of her dreams this one too had come to nothing.
The men carried the stretcher. At the head the janitor in his well-pressed blue suit, which gave him the air of a retired army officer, next to him Herbert wearing a gray jacket, like a high school teacher. Behind them Balaban, looking broad and strong.
They crossed the hillside at an angle. Faint, wintry shadows covered the slow, tortuous procession. From this vantage point the landscape was revealed in all its bare and leafless glory. Herbert turned his head, as if he was asking the company to approve the chosen site. They nodded their heads as a sign of approval.
The constraint was profound, and no one wept. They stood beside the open grave for a long time in silence. And but for the janitor who lifted his spade, they would have gone on standing there. The janitor filled in the hole and stuck the wooden sign into the loose earth. The sign, hastily carved only an hour before, was more expressive than anything else of Isadora’s last request: discretion.
It was Lotte’s turn. She was moved, and the words which she knew as intimately as a daily prayer emerged from her lips harsh and choked. All her experience on the stage seemed to drop away from her. The words scratched jarringly on the silent air. Lotte covered her face, as if she had failed shamefully.
After the funeral the cook opened the hatch and brought out hot coffee. Her face next to the hatch looked stiff and censorious. She did not utter a word as if she understood that this was not the time for words.
ELEVEN
With Isadora’s death a new cold descended on the retreat. No one spoke about it. They preferred to speak of other matters, sad and remote, which had preoccupied them all autumn long and now too did not cease to trouble them. Lang rejoiced in his achievements with a kind of boyish wonder which made it impossible to be angry with him. Every morning he ran all the way down to the village, drank a tankard of beer and ate a country sandwich, thereby killing two, or rather three, birds with one stone. He exerted his muscles to make his body strong, tasted healthy food and learned the local dialect, bracing as beer to his palate.
Lang had been born in Galicia. He remembered his native town well, but he did not like talking about it. All his defects—his shortness, his long face, his broken accent—he blamed on the place of his birth, his corrupt inheritance. For this reason too he had never married, lived from hand to mouth and drifted from place to place. Two years ago he had decided to come up here to correct his defects, and he was doing so with praiseworthy perseverance.
Every morning he got up early, took a shower, put on his sports suit and ran down the hill. He spent most of the day down in the village, in the tavern and running along the riverbanks. And there was no denying it: he had changed. In his time Balaban had praised him and held him up as an example. When he came back in the evening he was not only too tired to take part in the arguments, gambling and card games, but he deliberately turned his back on them. The previous winter he had suffered from a chest complaint which had obliged him to retire to his room, but in the spring he had recovered his strength and ever since he had not missed even one morning run. Sometimes, in high spirits, he would stand and admire himself: his muscles. A kind of boyish wonder covered his face. It was hard to be angry with him.
When he heard of Isadora’s sudden death he hid his face, wishing in this way to devote himself for a moment to the memory of the dead woman. Of all the people in the retreat, the one who had most enjoyed listening to him was Isadora. And although she had often mocked him, called him “shorty,” “kurz,” ridiculed him for his stupid running and described him as an incorrigible Jew, he liked her. On her sixty-fifth birthday he had made an enthusiastic speech about the new way of life, untainted by any speck of Jewishness, and called Isadora a naturally straightforward human being who detested all crookedness.
Lotte came back from the funeral in a dejected mood. Never before had she so disgraced herself. Not even as an inexperienced young trouper. Herbert sat next to her and comforted her as if she was in mourning. What are you talking about, your reading was great, powerful, incisive. His consolations sweetened her shame a little and she cried.
“I’m ashamed.”
“You are a great actress.” Herbert raised his voice as if she were deaf. Strange, this compliment, intended only to shut her up, had its effect. She stopped crying, like a child seduced by false promises. Balaban took the opportunity to confess. The dirty little town of his birth was still rooted in his heart. Perhaps because he had run away without leaving a note or writing a letter. If only he had said goodbye, the separation would have been final. But since he had not said goodbye, he remembered them all, one by one. Especially his sister Tzili. Her quiet, clever eyes. Although he spoke of himself and his secret pain, it seemed as if he were speaking to Isadora, appeasing her and begging her forgiveness.
That night nobody played cards or gambled. They sat and spoke of their memories, as if they wanted to meet Isadora in her new home, invisible to the naked eye.
For two years she had lived among them and how little they knew about her. Apart from her name, her surname, her birthday—nothing. Such pride and reserve; but her daughters, the daughters to whom Isadora had given the best musical education with the most famous teachers in Berlin and Rome, thought that their mother was a nuisance, a nag, irritatingly maternal and too Jewish for comfort. Accordingly, there was no more suitable place for her in the whole of Austria than Balaban’s retreat. They had not even taken the trouble of bringing her up the mountain. A coachman had brought her there.
Isadora, who detested Jewish institutions and organizations from the bottom of her heart, who avoided everything Jewish like the plague, had been banished not by strangers but by her own daughters to the Jews and their shamefulness, exposed for every eye to see. But you had to hand it to Isadora: her hostility to her origins, up to the very end, was total and uncompromising. Even her daughters’ treachery did not soften her attitude toward the Je
ws.
TWELVE
And while the winter winds blew cruelly over the bare mountain slopes Mrs. Kron packed her blue suitcase and announced that she was leaving. Strange, in the days preceding this decision her face had not expressed displeasure: on the contrary, she had had much to say in favor of the place. She was often to be seen in the company of Lang, discussing the beneficial effects of the mountain air. Lang, for his part, was full of optimism. His daily run in the frost filled his skinny body with the determination to overcome his weaknesses. She asked many detailed questions, and Lang kept nothing from her. Isadora’s death was not forgotten, but it cast less gloom.
And suddenly, as if waking from a nightmare, she packed her bag and said, “I’m leaving.”
“What have we done wrong?” said Lang in surprise, spreading both thin hands.
“I’m going home.”
“In that case we can all go. If anyone can decide to leave in a moment of weakness, what will become of the rest of us?”
“She had not, apparently, expected to hear words like these. She bowed her head and said, in a womanly voice, “I left a home, didn’t I?”
“What home are you talking about?”
“My home in the Herngasse.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lang. “I need more information.”
“Isn’t it clear?”
“No, it isn’t. Not to me at any rate.”
Mrs. Kron put her case down and took off her gloves with a very domestic air. She said again, “Isn’t it clear?”
The Retreat Page 6
