Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

by Gregor von Rezzori

  As was her optimistic habit with each newcomer, she’d welcomed me with open arms, immediately suggested that I take my siesta in her room, as mine overlooked the busy street. But I refused this and all other offers as well, knowing that nothing would remain a secret at Löwinger’s for long: it didn’t need the dog to pinpoint one’s movements on the ancient landings; twenty pairs of cocked ears noted every creak. So although I would have liked to sample Iolanthe’s ample charms, my fear of appearing ridiculous in my fellow boarders’ eyes and thus jeopardizing my integration into the community was stronger. I was savoring the questionable comfort of conformity for the first time in my young life, little knowing that I was soon to be confronted with it as an apotheosis.

  Apart from which there was another female present, the servant girl Marioară, a Rumanian country maid of most extraordinary beauty. She was tall, with a sumptuous figure, wonderful shoulders and breasts; erotic promise emanated from her like a golden aura. As was the custom with girls of her station, she wore traditional peasant dresses; the wide belt that separated the bounty of her wraparound skirt from the thrust of her low-cut blouse was pulled so tight that the tips of a man’s ten fingers met with ease around it; inimitable, the grind of her behind when she walked.

  It was said that she went to bed with every Tom, Dick, and Harry at the drop of a hat. And with the same vehemence that the male connoisseurs at Löwinger’s considered it slumming to steal into Iolanthe’s room, they proclaimed it a must to have spent at least one night’s dalliance in Marioară’s.

  Needless to say, I did everything to give proof of my qualities as a seducer. But, to my disappointment, Marioară’s only response was the taunting gleam of her smile, as if it came through veils of lust. The fact that I always found her door locked seemed ample evidence to me that she preferred the others’ company to mine.

  Nevertheless, I was quite popular in Löwinger’s Rooming House. I enjoyed the reputation of being gregarious and witty. The days when a wanton masculine assessment of Josephine Baker’s charms would make me furious were long past; now, when conversation turned to the fair sex, its various physical and inherent attributes and shortcomings, its needs and foibles, I could chip in with an observation or two, these based not so much on wide experience as on a kind of expedient philosophy. Thanks to my checkered academic career, I had come by a rich repertoire in bawdy jokes and verses and could usually crown each specific erotic circumstance under discussion with a pertinent quotation and thus ascend from the earthy detail to the sublime realms of porn poetry. This facility earned me much applause. The melancholy of my recent past was soon forgotten.

  It would be wrong to suppose that an era of vigorous activity now dawned for me: I simply took life as it came. The plaster cast around my neck was no great hindrance—except when tying my shoelaces—and was therefore not a good reason for staying away from some form of study or other useful occupation, but I used the accident as a welcome excuse for a long period of recuperation. Money was no problem; I had saved a little to finance my aborted Abyssinian enterprise, and life in Bucharest at that time, especially under Löwinger’s roof, was cheap. I did nothing in particular and a lot in general. To pass the time of day and still my curiosity, I often went with Mr. Löwinger on his gambling sorties to the cafés; the experience I gained there in respect of types of humanity and their behavior was not to be found in any handbook. Sometimes he took me along on his trips to outlying villages, where he replenished local stock in marbled pens, and I still carry with me the vivid memory of dusty country roads, of oxen sauntering home along them by the orange glow of evening as though paddling through shallows of burnished gold, of the resinous smell of fresh-cut logs, piled high in blocks before black forests above which the grass-green domes of the Carpathian outriders loomed like a child’s cutout pattern; or, in the midst of this magic, a shepherd boy swathed in sheepskins sitting cross-legged on a tree stump whittling his stick but not looking up; or the dirge of boys’ unbroken voices through the open windows of a Jewish school, their pale egg-shaped faces framed by long earlocks; or the stamping of dancers at a peasant wedding, the sweat flying from the fiddler’s brow, the girls’ plaits streaming out from under their slipping head scarves; of meadows couching the silver of a stream, storks stalking through its marshes, accelerating and then rhythmically pulling themselves up to an azure sky; sparkling drops of water shooting in streaks from green flax whipped by girls hidden by the willows—these and many other priceless memories ….

  My supple tongue had won me the friendship of Pepi Olschansky, the luckless journalist. I could never quite decide whether I liked or loathed him. He was a small, wiry fellow, reddish blond, with devilishly vivacious brown eyes, a pointed nose, a pointed chin, and a thin-lipped mouth that could twist itself into the most perfidious smile I’ve ever seen. As a German from the Bukovina, he’d served in the former Imperial Austrian Army, and quite famously, apparently; talk had it that he’d been awarded the Silver Cross of Valor. Some rays of this glorious past were still around him; although I had never seen him in anything but rather shabby civilian clothes—hatless, even in those days; no stick, let alone gloves—I envisaged a first lieutenant’s star glistening on his collar when I thought of him, but that may well have been because certain aspects of his glamor aroused unpleasant memories of my rowing relative in Vienna. Olschansky was not so militantly brash as the other blade, though, and was light years ahead in intelligence and education. His literary taste was impeccable. He even composed verses himself, a talent that had led to his dismissal as editor from a German-language newspaper in Bucharest.

  A romantic story. A privately printed edition of his poems had found its way into the hands of the Queen Mother, Maria, who was something of a poetess herself. Pepi was summoned to Cotroceni Palace and received graciously, indeed on an equal footing; thereafter her resplendent majesty commanded Pepi’s undying devotion. When in the course of a political intrigue a certain statesman persuaded the publisher of Pepi’s newspaper to launch a slanderous campaign against Queen Maria, and the publisher in turn commissioned Pepi to write the articles, Pepi adamantly refused. It came to a flaming row, news of which leaked out and caused a public scandal: the statesman resigned, the newspaper temporarily ceased publication and came under public fire when eventually it returned to press; Pepi was sacked, branded a traitor by the Germans in Bucharest, and snubbed by them thereafter. This gave him a rather dubious aura, which he sensed not without guilt and which he tried to make up for with insolence. At the same time, there was something of a martyr about him: after all, if a man is a true outcast, then he isn’t much helped by the reputation of being the gentleman who never betrays a lady—especially since the queen could not compromise herself and therefore could not express her gratitude. Which was why she never again received him at the palace. All of this made him intensely interesting for me, of course.

  Since he had just as little to do as I, we took to going for long walks together, and I learned a lot from him. He knew his Bucharest, a city I had till then regarded as a sloppy conglomeration of Balkan disorder and faceless modernity, but under Pepi’s tutelage, hearing his expert account of its history, I came to see it in a different light, began to apprehend it, as one does a new language. Its jumble of junk came to life and started to speak, told a story of boyars and Phanariots, monks, pashas, and long-haired revolutionaries who had descended from the mountains. I was given the code to the Rumanian arabesque and found much that complemented my own character, by birthright, which till then had been blurred by the stamp of my Austrian education.

  Löwinger’s Rooming House stood near a park that bears the sweet-sounding name “Cismigiù.” I was used to rising early since childhood, and my equestrian period had strengthened this habit. While the Löwinger rafters were still ringing to the snort of snores, I stole away to walk in that park. It was fall. Nowhere in the world have I seen colors to match those of Rumania in this season. It may well have been the fact that Pepi Olsc
hansky came with me on these matinal marches that finally endeared him to me. He was a bad sleeper since the Great War, when a howitzer shell had exploded right beside him and buried him; although the shrapnel had not struck him, the blast had peppered his back full of particles of earth which now, after so many years, still kept festering their way out.

  Not that this heroic misfortune alone made his company welcome, but it did prompt me to be civil, and his apparent liking for me did the rest. With the same indulgence I imagined he’d shown with his cadets in the good old days of the Imperial Army, First Lieutenant Olschansky did me the honor of allowing me to pay for his umpteen tzuikas in the bars on our way along the Calea Victoriei, winding up with his marghiloman at the Café Corso, then returned the compliment by accompanying me to the racetrack, where I nostalgically stuck my nose into the stables, chatted with the jockeys and trainers, and gave Pepi hot tips on how best and quickest to lose my money at the betting windows.

  These visits helped me close a chapter of my life; I realized that my career as an amateur jockey was at an end, not so much on account of my fractured spine, not even because the few weeks’ participation at Löwinger’s table d’hote had sent my weight rocketing to a level I knew I would hardly even have the energy to reduce. Even if I had—to ride for three hours at the crack of dawn, drink six cups of hot tea, don a rubber vest, shirt, one lightweight and one heavyweight sweater, a leather jacket, and pound the pedals of a bicycle for an hour, then collapse into a steam bath and eat nothing but potatoes with a sprig of parsley for the rest of the week—I knew that it would be impossible to pick up again where I’d left off. And since turning points have always fascinated me—a change of time’s quality, so to say, when a mere change of atmosphere can alter the course of one’s own life or that of a whole epoch—this change from the open-air solitude on my roof above the Biserică Albă to the lusty carnivalesque existence at Löwinger’s Rooming House became a part of my biography that has recurred in my thoughts ever since. As I’m unable to put my finger on any one circumstance that would logically explain the tangent, I am inclined to think that a new chapter began with the day that I was released from my plaster collar.

  Löwinger’s was agog with excitement that day, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I kept the whole company of long-term lodgers from going with me to the clinic. Still, my escort was large enough: all four Löwingers; Pepi Olschansky, of course; the rear end of the horse, named Dreher; and a salesman who had a car.

  “I had no idea you’d such a large family,” said the assistant doctor I’d made friends with over the months.

  “Yes, a colorful bunch, aren’t they?”

  “At a guess I’d say that with the exception of the blond one with the pointed nose and the fellow with the gray forelock, they’re all from Galicia?”

  “No, from Temeshvar.”

  “Watch out that the doctor doesn’t see them. He eats Jews on toast for breakfast, bones and all.”

  “He can hardly make more of a botch of my neck.”

  “True, but he can add a couple of digits to your bill.”

  I can still feel the coldness of the big scissors blade as it slipped underneath my cast. “Please be careful,” I requested. “Remember I put a sweater on underneath to keep the cast from hurting. I wouldn’t want it ruined.”

  He applied pressure and began cutting. It went much easier than I’d imagined; there was a dull grating sound and the cast fell apart. The sweater was nowhere to be seen.

  “You’ve absorbed it,” the assistant said. “Must have been good wool, pure lanolin. It’s protected your skin, all right.”

  I felt oddly naked and chilly. “Will my head fall off if I nod?” I asked.

  “Give it a try.”

  I did. My head stayed put. I gingerly turned it first to the left, then to the right.

  “Keep doing that carefully,” he said, “come back tomorrow for a massage, and we’ll show you a couple of exercises which will help as well. The doctor will want to see you too, so come without the Semitic caravan, if possible.”

  Outside in the corridor my Semitic caravan welcomed me with unrestrained joy; all three Löwinger ladies had tears in their eyes, and Iolanthe threatened with a kiss.

  “Be careful, for the love of God!” Mrs. Löwinger cried. Her mother took me by the hand and led me to a chair. “Slowly does it now, boy, take it easy, one step at a time.”

  I felt like a peeled egg: “Like the baby in Philipp Otto Runge’s Morning,” I said to Pepi Olschansky.

  He smiled his perfidious smile. “Iolanthe will be only too glad to change your diapers,” he answered.

  The rear end of the horse shook his wild gray revolutionary’s mane. “I trust for your sake that you regard the occasion as one of rebirth. With that shell of plaster, shake off the shackles of the useless and asocial life you’ve led till now, and apply your energy to a more worthy cause!”

  This was not the immediate case. That night, after an evening of revelry and mirth at Löwinger’s table—the Greco-Romans showed me all manner of tricks and exercises to strengthen my atrophied muscles—I sat up with Pepi. “I feel weary and very content,” I said. “Why on earth shouldn’t I complete the pleasure and allow Iolanthe to rock me to sleep? She’s really eminently beddable and would certainly show her gratitude.”

  Pepi reached across and selected a cigarette from my case. “The same thought has often crossed my mind,” he replied. “Generally speaking, I’ve nothing at all against Jewesses, but with Iolanthe it would somehow seem like a betrayal of one’s race and creed. I don’t understand why it should be so, but everyone here feels the same, even Cherkunof.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” I said, in a flash of inspiration. “Committing a sin, like sleeping with one’s mother.”

  He looked up in surprise, then laughed aloud. “You’re dead right, that’s it exactly. A strange thought, the taboo in a nutshell. Have you ever thought of writing?”

  The thought was alien to me and I somewhat asininely asked, “Writing what?”

  “Stories,” he said, “perhaps a novel, who knows? You’re extraordinarily observant.”

  I laughed and right away dismissed it from my mind.

  I was more preoccupied with another incident. One evening the conversation had—once again—turned to Mr. Löwinger’s amazing knack for any kind of game. Olschansky had expressed his doubts. I murmured to him, “Be careful! I’ve watched him winning money from sly old foxes in various coffeehouses.”

  “Yes,” jeered Olschansky, “at dominoes, or tarot, or poker! But not at games of real skill.”

  I myself had once tried to hold my own against Mr. Löwinger in morris, which had been a forte of mine in my boyhood. But here too I had lost miserably. Olschansky waved me off with a sneer. He insisted on challenging Mr. Löwinger to a game of chess.

  “Now you watch out,” he muttered back at me. “At the military academy, I used to beat people who wound up on the general staff.” Nevertheless, he lost the match after a dozen moves. “One game doesn’t mean anything!” he cried, running his hand nervously through his hair. “Would you like to see who wins two out of three?”

  “Gladly!” said Mr. Löwinger timidly, peering up at his women, who sat around him with immobile faces. We all formed a thick ring around the two opponents: they had long since stopped being players; a duel was being fought.

  It was soon decided. Olschansky lost the second game within a bare quarter hour; insisted on playing the third one and lost it so fast that he leaped up, furiously knocking over the chess board, and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Not that I’m normally a poor loser,” he later told me. “But I couldn’t stand that nasty lurking and finally that triumph in the faces of those Jewish harpies. Did you see the way they sat there, to the left and the right of that little Yid? That unkempt crone, that lecherous Iolanthe, that screechy anemic bitch with that eternal bun in her oven, those witches, all
three of them so greedy to see me humiliated that I couldn’t even think about any moves. I had to keep fighting the puke rising in me.”

  “That’s known as psychological warfare, isn’t it?” I asked, a bit maliciously. “Didn’t they prepare you for that at military school?”

  Olschansky ignored my baiting. “You know, I really believe they’re capable of certain kinds of witchcraft,” he said. “Being lucky in a game isn’t sheer chance. A man is lucky if he has a certain rapport with the world, the time, the place he’s playing in—”

  “Yes, but not in chess,” I broke in. “A chess player, as the popular adage so nicely puts it, has the law of action in his hand!”

  “What do you really have in your hand?” he said, passionately earnest. “You get to recognize that in war. During the first few years in Galicia, I saw a whole lot of Jews. You can experience all kinds of things with them.”

  “What?” I asked. “Don’t keep me in suspense! Do they really slaughter Christian children to enrich their Passover matzos with protein?”

  “No, but they believe in one God!” he blurted out, downright fanatically.

  “So do my aunts,” I said. “One of them goes to Mass every morning.”

  “It’s different, it’s different!” He was working himself up. “They’ve got their God in their blood. They can’t get rid of him ….” He suddenly threw up his hand as though to shoo a fly away from his nose. “But what nonsense I’m talking, don’t you think? Tell me about betting on horses. You say I can bet on win, place, and draw?”

  I’m no longer sure whether this conversation took place before or after the Löwingers took in the new female lodger. It caused quite a stir when it was announced one evening that a young lady had moved into room number eight and would be joining us for meals. Mr. Löwinger, who in spite of his scrawniness had undeniable authority—“the dignity of a microbe” was Pepi’s definition—appealed to the male assembly in a few well-chosen words to exercise restraint in the lady’s presence, at least for the first few days: she was not only a pure country maid but a schoolteacher to boot.