I stand a while in the cloakroom and smoke, Herr Franz glances at me kindly as he runs by with his tails swaying, I have to smoke and wait. After a few minutes I return to the diseased table. I ask the Bulgarian to kindly go to my travel agency, the train is leaving in three hours, a certain Herr Suchy will take care of everything. I call out: Check please! Herr Professor Mahler, whose nod of recognition I repay with a confused greeting, cries out more loudly: Check please! Herr Franz rushes past us and calls back: Be right there! I leave the twenty schillings on the table and signal to the Bulgarian that that should take care of the check. I don’t know what I should wish him but I say: bon voyage!
Ivan says: You’ve let yourself get taken in again.
But Ivan!
Malina says: Here we go again, and a thousand schillings for the road! I say: Usually you’re not so petty, I have to explain it to you better, it’s a terrible disease.
Malina answers thoughtfully: I don’t doubt that, Herr Suchy already called me, your Bulgarian really did show up. You see! I say, and if he doesn’t have any disease and both legs won’t be amputated then it’s a good thing, but if he does have the disease then we have to pay.
Malina says: Don’t worry about it, I’ll manage it somehow.
Today I couldn’t have sat another hour with the leper at the Café Raimund, I wanted to jump up right away and wash my hands, not to avoid contamination but just a handshake was enough to transfer the knowledge of leprosy, at home I wanted to wash out my eyes with a solution of boric acid so my eyes would calm down after seeing such a ravaged face. Also just before my one flight of the year, Munich and back in two days because I can’t stay away from the Ungargasse any longer than that, I ordered a taxi and noticed too late that the driver didn’t have any nose, we were already moving because I had said frivolously: Schwechat, to the airport! and it wasn’t until he turned around to ask whether he might smoke that I noticed, so I rode to Schwechat without a nose and got out there with my suitcase. But in the lobby I started to have second thoughts and canceled my flight, I went back right away with another taxi. That evening Malina wondered what I was doing home instead of in Munich. I couldn’t have flown, it wasn’t a good omen, and in fact the plane never made it to Munich but landed late in Nuremberg with damaged landing gear. I don’t know why such people cross my path and why some of them constantly want something from me. Today two Frenchmen whose names I didn’t even understand came with a recommendation, they stayed without any reason until two in the morning, I just don’t understand why people come into the house and stay for hours, why they don’t disclose their intentions. Maybe they don’t have any intentions, but they don’t leave, and I can’t phone. Then I’m happy that Frances and Trollope are staying a while longer, that they are my boarders, that they give me an opportunity to get out of the room for half an hour since they have to have their Kitkat cat food and fresh chopped lung, then they parade around, satisfied, steering conversation with the strangers their way and aware that their presence is useful to me.
Of course, a month from now at the latest, the time with the cats will come to an end, they will return to the Hohe Warte or be taken to the country, Frances will grow too quickly and soon have kittens, after that she should be spayed. Ivan, with whom I discussed Frances’s future, is of the same opinion, he’s more for it than against, and I didn’t let it show that I would prefer not to see Frances any bigger or in heat, that she should remain a little cat who never has kittens because I would like everything to stay the way it is, so that during the next few months Ivan, too, won’t grow a few months older. But I can’t tell that to Herr Kopecky who knows everything about cats because he once had twenty-five of them at the same time and still keeps four, who also knows everything about the behavior of Barbary macaques and rat packs and their fascinating peculiarities, but as I listen, I can scarcely take in all his very funny cat tales, about the jealousy of a Siamese named Rose of Istanbul, about the suicide of his favorite Persian named Aurora, who — he still can’t grasp it — threw herself out the window. Frances isn’t Siamese or Persian, just a gently caressed central European backyard cat under Viennese jurisdiction, of no race, and Trollope, her brother, came out white with a few black spots in his fur, with a phlegmatic disposition, completely at ease, never whining like Frances, an obediently purring tomcat who leaps onto my bed, sits on my back when I read, climbs on my shoulder and looks into the books along with me. For Frances and Trollope like reading with me more than anything. When I shoo them away they clamber around in the library and hide behind the books, they work hard until a few volumes come loose and fall to the floor with a crash. Then I again know where they have hidden themselves and are doing their mischief. It’s high time that Béla and András get their cats back or that Ivan’s mother keeps them in the country. I’ve only told Herr Kopecky that I’m keeping them temporarily, until friends of mine, certain friends no more clearly specified, return to Vienna from a trip. On the other hand I ask Malina to have a little more patience, he doesn’t have anything against cats, but cats in our apartment who mess up his papers, clear off his desk and knock books out of the bookshelves when he least expects it, are not something he is capable of putting up with for long. Also lately the whole apartment smells of cat urine, I’m getting used to it, but Lina is in league with Malina, she delivers an ultimatum: her or the cats.
Malina says: That was another one of your great ideas, you’ll never get them used to the litterbox, they don’t take you seriously, get some guinea pigs or canaries or parrots, no, better not, they’re too loud for me! Malina has no appreciation for stray cats that belong to two children, Malina is concerned about his peace, he doesn’t think Frances and Trollope are nice or witty or droll. But whenever I forget to feed these nice cats, Malina remembers, he does it as though he’d always done it, he never forgets. That’s the way Malina is, and unfortunately the way I am.
* * *
Today Lina reminds me, in all seriousness, of the fact that last year I had wanted to rearrange my apartment, naturally not the whole apartment but just three pieces of furniture and before Lina can explain to me that it’s now time, I say casually: Some other time, and we’ll call two men to help out! Lina snorts: Men! gnädige Frau, we don’t need any men for that! She’s already pushed my writing desk five centimeters and I start to lend a hand, after all it is my writing desk, it isn’t budging or even tilting, it seems heavier than a thousand cubic feet of oak. I suggest to Lina that we first lighten the desk of its contents, that we take everything out of the drawers, I mumble: Couldn’t you take advantage of the opportunity, of this unique opportunity and sort the drawers for once, no, I didn’t say anything . . . I look down piously at the dust of several years. Today Lina is not to be upset, otherwise she’d be sure to say that she “runs over it” every week anyway. Lina snorts loudly: Küss die Hand, küss die Hand, this cabinet sure is heavy!
Me: But Lina, it’s best we call a couple of men now, we’ll give each one a beer and ten schillings and basta. For Lina should realize how valuable she is to me, how much her strength is worth to me, that I would be prepared to buy many beers for many men, that she is essential for Malina and for me. Malina and I don’t want her to have a hernia or a heart attack, she doesn’t need to be moving wardrobes and cabinets around — it isn’t me, it’s Lina, who is stronger, together we lift the desk from one room to the other, though naturally Lina has to handle more than eighty percent of the load. Nevertheless, I’m annoyed with Lina today since she isn’t giving in on anything, since she never gives in and even now she’s still jealous of the men on whom I wanted to spend twenty schillings, “might as well throw it out the window” says Lina. Once again I’ve done everything wrong. Lina and I are dependent on each other in an inescapable way, we are closely connected although she doesn’t give in to herself or to me concerning the men with the beer, although only she is allowed to criticize me out loud and not vice versa, but I do criticize her in sec
ret. That’s why I imagine the day when no one is dependent on anyone, when I live by myself in an apartment where Lina will be replaced by one or two small machines, when pressing a button will suffice to lift a desk and move it, as if it were nothing. No one will keep saying thank you to someone else, no one will help other people while secretly being annoyed by them. No one will gain or lose the advantage. But then I picture myself with the electric machines, which once a year Lina advises me not to purchase, whereas today she is again advising me to buy. She believes you can’t live without an electric coffee grinder these days and an electric orange squeezer. But I drink coffee so rarely and my strength ought to suffice to squeeze Malina’s orange juice. Of course I do have a vacuum cleaner and a refrigerator, but once a year Lina would like to see our apartment transformed into a machine factory, she says emphatically: But these days everybody has that, all the ladies and gentlemen have one of these!
* * *
A day will come when people will have black-golden eyes, they will see beauty, they will be freed from dirt and from every burden, they will rise into the sky, they will dive into the waters, they will forget their calluses and hardships. A day will come when they will be free, all people will be free, even from the freedom they had presumed. There shall be a greater freedom, beyond measure, a freedom to last a whole life long . . .
* * *
In Café Heumarkt I’m still mad at Lina since she’s the dangerous accessory to certain thoughts of mine, she also sometimes hears me say sentences over the phone that she considers the purest heresy and that would give her reason to defenestrate me immediately, to send me to the guillotine, to the garotte, to burn me at the stake. But I can never fully grasp whether she only minds my going around completely exhausted in the morning, not knowing whether she should buy Ata or Imi for cleaning, or whether she just minds the fact that I can’t do arithmetic correctly and don’t check the sums she has painstakingly assembled, or whether it’s more the sentences I utter, and whether she simply guesses these thoughts, which give her the right to kill me.
* * *
A day will come when human beings will rediscover the savannas and the steppes, they will pour forth and put an end to their slavery, when the sun is high in the heavens the animals will approach the humans who are free, and they will live in concord, the giant tortoises, the elephants, the aurochs, and the kings of the jungles and deserts will be reconciled with the liberated people, they will drink from one water, they will breathe the purified air, they will not mangle one another, it shall be the beginning, it shall be the beginning for a whole life . . .
* * *
I call out: Check please! Herr Karl calls back cheerfully: Be right there! and disappears. I’m being too unfair, I crumple the paper napkin on which I’ve jotted a few sentence fragments, the thin paper wilts in the coffee that has slopped onto the tray. I want to go home at once, to the Ungargasse, I’ll apologize to Lina, Lina will apologize to me. She’ll squeeze some orange juice for me and make coffee. It doesn’t have to be for my whole life. It is my whole life.
In the afternoon I’m certain I’ll be able to calmly walk past Number 9, though to be sure on the opposite side of the street. I’m also certain I’ll be able to stop for a minute, since Frau Agnes cleans Ivan’s place early in the morning and then has to move on to the two men living on their own. I never see the couple who manage Ivan’s building out on the street, no exchange of information is maintained with Herr and Frau Breitner from Number 6, I only see Frau Agnes every now and then in front of my building, deep in intimate conversation with Frau Breitner. But this time Ivan’s car is not parked in front of Number 9 just by accident, as I think at first glance, since Ivan now emerges from his house and walks right up to the car, I want to keep moving quickly, but Ivan with his good eyes has already spotted me, he is waving and calling, all aglow, I run over, what’s he doing here, just right now, when I’m thinking he’s in his office, and then I stop glowing, because there are two small figures craning their necks, snuggled together in the front seat where by now I have sat many times. Ivan says: This is Béla, this is András, say hello! But the “gyerekek,” as the children are known collectively, do not say hello, they do not answer, and when I ask, perplexed, whether they know German, they start to laugh and whisper to each other, I can’t understand a word, so these are Ivan’s children — whom I always wanted to meet, whom I know a little about, for instance, that Béla is the older one and already in school — embarrassed, I talk to Ivan and no longer know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, oh, yes, up to the Automag in the upper Ungargasse, since my car is being lubricated and may be ready, I keep promising myself I’ll visit a friend in the Nineteenth District, what’s more she’s sick, but I’d have to take a taxi if my car isn’t ready. Ivan says: That’s practically on my way, so we can take you, you’ll come with us! Ivan didn’t say: You’ll come with me. He says something to the children in Hungarian, walks around the car, pulls the children out and opens the back door, he shoves them onto the back seat. I don’t know, I’d really rather not right now, I’d like to go to the Automag or take a taxi. But how can I make Ivan understand that it’s all too sudden for me? He says: So get in the car! During the drive I let Ivan talk, occasionally I glance back, I have to find a first sentence, I’m not prepared. I am not going to ask Béla which grade he’s in, which school, I’m not going to ask the children how they are, what their favorite things to do are and whether they enjoy eating ice cream. There’s no question about it. The children interrupt Ivan every few minutes: Did you see that? look, a fiaker! hey, a chimney sweep! did you remember my gym shoes? look, an Alfa Romeo! hey, a license plate from Salzburg! is that an American? Ivan is telling me about a difficult afternoon at work, in between he sends short, exact answers to the back seat, he talks to me about “little time,” about difficulties, of all days to have to take the children to the dentist. Doctor Heer extracted one of Béla’s teeth, András had to have two cavities filled. I look back, Béla opens his mouth wide, exaggeratedly so, with a grimace, András wants to do the same thing, but has to laugh, and now the opportunity is there, I don’t ask whether it hurt, whether Herr Doktor Heer is a nice dentist, but open my mouth just as wide and say: But he took my wisdom teeth out, I already have wisdom teeth, you don’t have those yet! Béla shrieks: Hey, she’s lying.
Malina Page 11
