This was Xeno’s triumph. She had got what she wanted. This is what she was telling herself when, having arrived back at 70, rue Joseph II, she fetched a coffee from the canteen. With her coffee she made for a table in the courtyard where she joined two salamanders, and suddenly she felt a warm affection for Conte Strozzi, yes, business suits ought to be banned, she asked whether anybody had a cigarette, this was the moment for one of the very occasional cigarettes, and the salamanders recoiled as if she had asked for arsenic or opium. Martin and Bohumil stepped into the courtyard with their coffee cups, Xeno waved them over and said, Good news! The Jubilee Project now has the president’s full backing. Have either of you got a cigarette for me?
She was nagged by a feeling of unease, which she pushed to the back of her mind. What she was suppressing were the comments Strozzi had made at the end of their conversation, about the planning for the project: Oh yes, I’ll look into how we might involve the Member States.
The Member States? You mean the Council? Xeno had said. Why? We agreed that the project is the Commission’s baby.
Yes, absolutely. But the Member States founded the Commission.
Bien sûr.
This was precisely the point at which Xeno was not alert. This “bien sûr” opened up her guard. She didn’t notice the sabre cut. And that was the end of it. With her “bien sûr” she now had around her neck those institutions that Martin, with good reason, had recommended ought to be kept out of it: the European Council and European Parliament. Instead of everyone pulling together, from now on there would be an almighty tangle; rather than the common interest prevailing, many different interests would be brought to the fore. Only a few days later Xeno, who had been so keen to demonstrate her visibilité, now wanted to become invisible, to off- load everything onto Martin – who just happened to be sitting at his brother’s bedside at Lorenz Böhler Hospital in Vienna.
But first there was the Inter-Service meeting. This too ran incredibly smoothly. Most of the directorates-general didn’t turn up. For anybody in the Commission wishing to advance a project, a general lack of interest in it came as a great relief. It meant that you didn’t have to grapple with endless opinions, counter-opinions, unproductive suggestions and petty criticism, but could make rapid and immediate progress and get to a stage from which there was no turning back. And now everybody had been informed.
Somebody did turn up from the D.-G. COMM (Communications), of course. After all, the idea for the project had originated with Mrs Atkinson, with whom Xeno was in regular contact. A representative came from the D.-G. HOME (Migration and Internal Affairs), which was to prove most fruitful as Holocaust commemoration was one of their fields of activity; it meant they could bring useful skills and contacts to the project. A young man came from the D.-G. TRADE. This had been arranged by Fridsch, who was evidently interested in Xeno’s project; the young man himself just made the odd note and nodded occasionally. It came as a surprise that somebody turned up from the D.-G. JUST (Justice and Consumer Affairs). As it transpired, this was because the JUST official responsible for cooperation with the E.A.C. (Culture) was the grandson of French Holocaust survivors. Martin had immediately taken an interest: were his grandparents still alive? No, unfortunately not: they had been dead for more than thirty years.
No-one here from AGRI? Martin said ironically at the beginning of the meeting.
The D.-G. AGRI (Agriculture) was the ministry that commanded the biggest budget, comparable to a state within a state, with fierce interest-driven politics, but notorious for its lukewarm engagement with the interests of other directorates-general. The official from COMM said, The farmers only assume responsibility when grass has grown over the issue.
Not only were there no objections in the meeting to a major campaign to boost the Commission’s image, but nobody questioned the idea of putting Auschwitz survivors at the heart of the Commission’s jubilee either. The news that the project had the president’s unqualified backing ensured that Martin’s paper was accepted in toto and only a few practical and organisational details were discussed: schedule, financing and necessary resources, including staff. After one and a half hours the meeting was over and everything seemed to be definitively on track.
Friday afternoon. On the way home Martin Susman had stopped off at the cheese shop on Vieux Marché to buy a baguette, a bottle of white Sancerre and a small selection of cheeses. The sales assistant, a young man whose own mouth watered at everything he sliced and packed with such relish, had also talked him into buying a fig mustard from Ticino, a new addition to their range. You won’t believe this, but it’s even better than the moutarde aux figues from Burgundy, he said, ecstatically and audibly kissing the tips of his fingers. And fig mustard is an absolute must with goat’s cheese, he said, but of course you know that. But this time you really have to take the one from Ticino.
Alright then, this time I’ll take the one from Ticino, said Martin, who had never bought fig mustard from this shop before.
Once home Martin arranged the cheeses on a plate and put the plate on the table together with the mustard. Cheese with mustard? He tore off a piece of the baguette, it tasted like cotton wool. It was sticky and hot, he took off his shoes and trousers and opened a window. The wine wasn’t chilled. He put the bottle in the freezer, took a Jupiler from the fridge, stood by the open window and looked down at the square. He drank beer from the bottle, smoked a cigarette, looked out of the window at the hustle and bustle down below, the ash fell from his cigarette, the cheese melted and ran on the plate.
The view from his window reminded Martin of a children’s book he had adored and spent ages poring over time and again, even before he had learned to read. It was called The City, a large-format search-and-find book with colourful, detailed scenes. His mother had never had the time to look at the book with him and he couldn’t remember who he’d been given it by, but it must have been a present because his parents would never have bought it for him. Sometimes Florian, his elder brother, would sit on his bed and they’d gaze at the book together, just as he was staring out at the square now – Where is the flower lady?
There!
Where is the policeman!
There!
Where is the postman?
There!
Where is the fire engine?
There!
Where is the fountain?
There!
Where is the vegetable stall?
There!
Where is the man with the shorts and camera?
There!
Where is the woman with the shopping bag?
There!
Where are the soldiers with the machine guns?
There, there, there, there and there!
His smartphone rang and Martin looked at the display. He didn’t recognise the number, but he took the call anyway.
And so standing there in his underpants with a bottle of beer, looking aghast at “the city”, he learned that his brother was in hospital.
When Alois Erhart was twelve years old he became a member of M.A.C., Mariahilf Athletics Club, a small but dynamic sporting association in their district of Vienna. In Erhart’s recollection this had been his father’s wish rather than his own, and there hadn’t been any discussion: of course Alois had to become a member of the “club”. Otherwise what would people say? Is the son of the sports shop owner unsporty? The world was a smaller place back then, people thought in terms of their local district identity. If you lived in Vienna’s 6th district you knew as much as you possibly could about who, what, how and why, from Laimgrube over to Magdalenengrund and down through Gumpendorf to the Linke Wienzeile. Alois Erhart could remember his father raving about a wedding that had taken place in St Ägyd parish church on Gumpendorfer Platz: “That was the loveliest wedding Mariahilf has ever seen!” Mariahilf! Not Vienna! You were a “Mariahilfer”, and if you walked down Mariahilfer Strasse and crossed Babenberger Strasse into the first district, you were “going into town”. In Café Kafka peo
ple prattled on about only having seen the “laddie”, the son of “Sport-Erhart”, with books, never a ball. And all of a sudden Alois was a member of the “club”. He had to choose a “section”. Floor gymnastics was not an option as it was for women. Apparatus work was utterly alien to him – he was already terrified of it at school and on the horizontal bar he couldn’t even manage an upward circle forwards. On the other hand he found the gymnastics instructor at M.A.C. to be a friendly and amusing man: Jakab Görgey, a ’56 refugee from Hungary who called himself “Gym Jim”, welcomed him with a beguiling Hungarian accent: “The gym’s a nice place of ours, for nasty folk don’t play on bars.” But no – no parallel bars, no horizontal bar, no horse! M.A.C. was renowned for its boxing section, having produced the Austrian champion in three weight divisions. The boxing trainer, Toni Marchandt, tweaked Alois’s upper arm, croaked something incomprehensible in a hoarse voice and looked at him so contemptuously that Alois was confirmed in his belief that boxing wasn’t a sport but a behavioural problem amongst madmen. He was willing to sign up for the football section – he knew the rules and boys discussed football at school, so he would be able to talk about it with more authority – and he reckoned he would be able just to trot up and down a bit without standing out, because there were always others who really wanted the ball.
The ball.
One day after training, which had been a mud fight in the pouring rain on the Denzel-Wiese, the coach, Herr Horak, gave Alois the club ball to take home. At the time they were still playing with a hand-stitched leather ball, a so-called “genuine” ball, an object of value with which club members distinguished themselves from street boys who played in the park with “Fetzenlaberl”, balls cobbled together from scraps of fabric, or cheap plastic balls and better-quality balloons.
This time it was Alois’ turn to undertake the ball care, which meant cleaning the ball of all mud, dung and rain, “work” dubbin into the little cracks and tears in the leather and then, when the leather was nicely “greased”, rub and polish the ball with a soft cloth “as if it were a pair of shoes you put on for an audience with the emperor.”
Alois Erhart smiled to himself. Actually, he thought, he had learned something back then which he couldn’t possibly have understood: how persistent the continuing influence of history is, even in the most banal matters.
Perhaps Herr Horak had felt a pedagogical impulse and believed he could effect more engagement and identification with the club in Alois by allocating him this task. Perhaps Herr Horak had noticed that Alois had already lost all enthusiasm for attending the club, having been driven too hard during training, and then sitting on the substitute bench during the actual games, but acting as a walking advertisement for his father’s shop; he alone had the latest football boots with removable studs, available from “Sport-Erhart”.
So Alois took the ball home and was to bring it back the following Sunday for the game against Ottakring. One of the most important fixtures of the season, because there was a particular rivalry between Mariahilf and Ottakring: the Mariahilfer would scornfully refer to the Ottakringer as “the Bavarians”, or even “the Teutons”. There were historical reasons for this which nobody could quite remember. Supposedly Ottakring had been founded as a Viennese suburb by Bavarian immigrants. This legend somehow merged with the widespread hatred at the time of the “Piefkes”, the Germans who were of course to blame for all misery of the war, the post-war and the occupation period. It was grotesque, but it ratcheted up the emotions which ran high enough anyway, on account of the traditional rivalry between the inner districts and outer ones, those beyond the “Gürtel”.
The Ottakringer came. And the Mariahilfer had no ball.
It was in Alois’ bedroom, in the dark corner beside his wardrobe. Alois hadn’t turned up to the game. Having decided to quit the club he had forgotten the ball and hadn’t brought it back.
One can imagine the chit-chat in Café Kafka in Capistrangasse on the Monday. Erhart’s father was only able to rectify the scandal by donating to the club a brand-new “genuine” ball as well as kit for the entire team. And he took his son to task.
Alois Erhart sat on a bench in Brussels cemetery, head back, eyes closed and a smile on his face. Why was he remembering all this now?
Reliability, his father had said, is the be-all and end-all in life. Do what you want, but make that an iron law. You need to be reliable towards two sets of people: those you love and those you need.
I don’t love Herr Horak, Alois said.
His father looked at him in silence.
And I don’t need him, either.
Are you sure? Are you sure you’ll never need him? Nor any of your teammates?
Alois looked at his father in silence.
Right. Have you understood? Repeat what I said to you.
I must be reliable.
Towards whom?
Those I love and those I need.
No, my son, we’ve moved beyond that. So then, towards whom?
Alois looked at his father in silence.
You must always be reliable. As a matter of principle. Towards those you love – that’s obvious. But towards everybody else too, because you never know who you might need and who might do you harm. So then?
I must always be reliable.
If you make a promise what must you do?
Keep it.
If you take on a task what must you do?
Ful . . . ful . . .
Yes, fulfil it.
If somebody expects something of you and you don’t make it clear from the outset that you can’t do it, nor do you have any good reasons for not wanting to do it, what must you do?
Alois looked at his father.
Correct: do it! Never again do I want to be accused in Café Kafka of not being able to raise my son properly, do you understand?
Yes, Father.
Why was Alois Erhart thinking of all this now, half-moved and half-amused, as he sat on a bench in Brussels cemetery, watching and waiting.
He was angry because he’d flown back to Brussels for the second “New Pact for Europe” meeting. He was angry when he booked the flight, angry when he packed his case, angry in the taxi to the airport, furious with himself in the aeroplane, aggressive to the young lady with her honeyed voice at reception as he checked into Hotel Atlas, because the whole thing was getting on his nerves terribly, this self-important wheeling of suitcases around Brussels, this crucial hurrying to meetings, this answering of cliché with cliché, the whispering transformation of no ideas into a Babylonian gibberish – all of it was pointless as far as he was concerned, utterly pointless, it was wasted time. He wanted to roll the ball into the corner and forget.
But he had said yes. He was part of this team. Moreover, he had agreed to give the keynote speech to open the second consultation round. He had taken on this task. The ball was with him. That was why he had come. He was reliable.
He smiled.
He couldn’t help it. This reliability was deeply ingrained and had taken him far. From Mariahilf around the world and to himself. Compared to that, what was the disappointment he’d felt at the first meeting of the think tank? Compared to that, what was the petty contempt he felt – yes, he, the philanthropist, had to concede that it was contempt – towards the other members of the group?
Could he generalise in this way? Claim that they were all contemptible? At the very least he should assign them degrees of contemptibility and degrees of efficiency. Professor Erhart divided the members of the think tank into three categories. First there were the conceited. Fundamentally they were all conceited, even he was in a way, so he needed to be more specific: the nothing-but-conceited. For them the think tank was hugely important – precisely because they were members. And that very fact exhausted the importance of the think tank, because it was all about them feeling their own importance and radiating this to the others. Erhart knew these types, he knew the way they purred self-importantly at home, at their university or other in
stitutes where they worked: “By the way, I have to go to Brussels tomorrow. I’m in the Commission president’s Advisory Group, remember!” For them this was the elixir of life: the impact on their immediate professional environment, the pride at having made it so far that they no longer had to listen, but could always lend an ear. They were easily enthralled – by themselves – when they spoke, rhetorical exhibitions of sheer bliss at being able to be part of the conversation. They never came up with a single original idea, nor could they comprehend or acknowledge any idea that hadn’t already been cross-referenced hundreds of times by people of their ilk, and backed up by footnotes. In essence they were harmless. But was that really true? They were the people who could produce a majority when it came to decision-making and resolutions.
Then there were the idealists. Weren’t they all idealists to a certain extent, including Erhart? But their ideals were different. What appeared to one as an ideal state of affairs – having, for example, a far greater income than other people because one had merited this in a meritocracy – contradicted another’s ideal of distributive justice. Erhart had discussed such banalities in his first semester of economics. Deep down you could only call someone an idealist if they didn’t actually benefit from being one. The nothing-but-idealists. To begin with they were allies against the conceited, but the alliance very quickly crumbled because there was always some aspect, some detail that contradicted their selfless ideals. They were so selfless that “to be able to look in the mirror” and see themselves they needed something that only they possessed. Which was them. When it came to voting and decision-making, suddenly they were no longer uncompromising, concerned as they were with preventing greater evils by agreeing to lesser ones. For the most part, however, the nothing-but-idealists were irrelevant for obtaining a majority as they were too few in number. Usually the nothing-but-conceited were enough to secure a majority. It was striking, however, that the idealists often voted with the conceited. They must believe the familiar, the self-evident to be less dangerous, the lesser evil compared to the vague, the uncertain, which their conscience would not permit them to embrace. What nonsense! Conscience–nonsense: Erhart apologised to himself for this silly play on words, even though it wasn’t bad. He smiled. At any rate the deception was astoundingly effective: the certain, the realistic, these always appeared with tables and statistics, boxes and arrows – oh, the realistic things you could do with these! – then more boxes and arrows, sheet after sheet on the flipchart filled with boxes and arrows drawn with different-coloured markers, even the movement required to flip a sheet like that over the flipchart frame, there was something magnificent, something dynamic about it, and whoosh! New boxes on a new sheet, connected by arrows . . . The only problem was that the world didn’t work like that, nor any alternative world and surely not the world hereafter either. But for the idealists you only had to draw one box, write one of their ideals inside this box, sketch a few arrows from the box up to the president, then a few arrows from below to this box, while calling out, Demand-driven, bottom-up, not top-down, and there in the tangle of arrows and connecting lines you had a net in which the idealists were trapped.
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