Some evenings when he came back from the hospital he’d go to Zum Sieg around the corner, where he got a decent goulash and on Fridays excellent fish. Once he saw a German, brought to this restaurant by a Viennese acquaintance, ask in anxious confusion, Zum Sieg? I hope this isn’t a Nazi place!
The waiter, who had heard this as he passed, propped his hands on the table, bent forwards and said, Hey listen! It means victory to the working class! Got it?
Martin had to smile. It was like a wave from the ghosts of history, a shard unearthed in an archaeological dig. Later the waiter came up to him and said, I was only kidding, you know! We’re called Zum Sieg because the restaurant’s been around since the victory of Aspern, the victory of the Austrians over Napoleon.
One layer deeper, another shard.
One Saturday he had breakfast at the Karmelitermarkt and bumped into Felix, a friend from his student days. He wouldn’t have recognised him. He was recognised, though. It’s great to see you! he lied. They drank coffee, chatted and Martin braced himself for sentimentality. It worked. The old days, oh yes, the old days! And do you remember back when? Yes, back when. They blinked in the sun, drank coffee and moved on to wine. All of a sudden the sentimentality turned to weepiness. Martin told him – why him? Why this stranger with the biographical pretext of having been an old friend? Maybe for exactly that reason! Martin told him he was vulnerable, depressive, he was suffering from depression . . .
Depression? Come off it, Felix said with morbid joviality. Tell me one thing: Do you brush your teeth before going to bed?
Martin looked at him in astonishment. Yes, of course, he said.
Felix laughed. Then you don’t have depression. If you brush your teeth you don’t have depression. At most you’re depressed, he said. And I know what I’m talking about! He pushed up his sleeve and showed Martin the scars on his wrist.
When was that?
Doesn’t matter, Felix said. The point is, I’d stopped brushing my teeth at the time.
In the meantime Florian was recovering slowly but surely. He didn’t want to read anymore. He took part in life again. And this was strange: at the same time he began in some way to make peace with his life.
He learned that a new president had been elected at the annual conference of the European Pig Producers in Budapest. He had been expecting that. After all, his accident on the way there meant he couldn’t attend, nor inform the E.P.P. board of the reason for his absence. Of course, this could only have been misinterpreted. As if he no longer had any interest in his position, nor even in the usual handing-over of office. So he could understand that they’d elected a new president, it didn’t offend him. But what did cause him great concern – more than that: sheer anger – was that a Hungarian had been elected president, the ineffable Balázs Gyöngyösi, a radical nationalist who to date had used his work and involvement in this European organisation only to gain advantage for his own large Mangalica enterprise. He tried to abuse the European Pig Producers’ lobbying position to have the “Hungarian Mangalica pig” trademarked as a protected designation of origin, thereby booting out Austrian and German Mangalica breeders. Besides, time and again Gyöngyösi had drawn attention to himself with his anti-Semitic remarks. For him the E.U. was a conspiracy of world Jewry to destroy the European nations, what he called the “host peoples”. All these contradictions – demanding legal protection from the E.U. for his Hungarian purebred pigs, while in principle rejecting the E.U.; running a pig enterprise, while describing his mortal enemies, the Jews, as pigs – were not only grotesque; in Florian’s eyes they were scurrilous and dangerous for the Union. It had thus been his intention to put forward a motion to have Balász Gyöngyösi expelled from the E.P.P. And now this individual was the new E.P.P. president. How was that possible?
Hungarian pig farmers and slaughterhouses were very well represented at the Budapest conference. Allegedly Gyöngyösi had bussed dozens of them in. His rival candidate was a Spaniard, Juan Antonio Jiménez, who Florian didn’t know. The Germans and Dutch had apparently abstained, whereas the delegates from the smaller countries had united behind the Hungarian, and this was sufficient to outvote the French, Italians and Spaniards.
Later Florian found out the reason for this. The Germans had indeed negotiated a bilateral trade agreement with China to the point where they were ready to sign, as had the Dutch. As far as they were concerned, the union of European Pig Producers and the question of who should be its president was now . . .
. . . irrelevant! Florian exclaimed. Pardon my French, but they don’t give a toss anymore!
He lay there motionless, staring at the ceiling, but Martin sensed that inside him a roaring animal was leaping against the bars of its cage.
Days later there came an e-mail from Gabor Szabó, the only Hungarian colleague Florian was still in contact with. Martin read it aloud. Hungarian pig producers were involved in bilateral negotiations with China. The delegation, led by Balász Gyöngyösi, was now in Beijing. “Just picture this. A welcome reception with food and plenty of toasts, and Balász raised his glass to say how delighted and honoured he was to be there and he drank to friendly relations etc. Then he said how the Chinese government was an example to Hungary for the clarity and determination with which it represented the interests of its people, for the benefit of the people, and particular admiration was due, for example, for the resolve with which they had undertaken their crackdown against enemies of the state in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese were extremely vexed. They hadn’t been expecting the Tiananmen Square massacre to be mentioned, nor were they at all interested in it. In the ensuing negotiations they might as well have read out the Budapest and Beijing telephone directories in turn. Even before he’d arrived back home, Balász was dismissed as chief delegate and president of the Syndicate of Hungarian Pig Producers.”
Florian smiled, then stared at the ceiling again. He ruminated. Martin squeezed his hand. Florian withdrew it.
At some point Martin felt the life sucked out of him by his brother, as if he had been a vampire. Was this a sign that everything had now returned to how it was, or almost? Florian could now lie on his side occasionally, get up for a short time and take a few steps.
I’ve got to go back to Brussels.
I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me.
I’ve got a flight next Monday. I’ll help you move to the rehab clinic over the weekend.
Thanks.
What are you going to do then? When you come out?
This is it.
What?
What I’ll be doing. Nothing.
I mean when you’re out.
What I just said. The E.U. is paying set-aside premiums for pig farmers. You get money for each pig you don’t fatten. I’ll let all our employees go. I’ll look out of my living-room window and watch the farm go to ruin. At some point your successors can excavate it and draw their conclusions. In the meantime I’ll collect the set-aside premium.
You’re not serious!
Oh yes. I’ll invest the capital in Germany, buy a share in a large pig enterprise, probably Tönnies Fleisch – I’ve got good contacts there through the E.P.P. – and with my experience and expertise I can play a role there. Or maybe not. At any rate, I’m going to stop farming. Can you see into the future?
No.
You can’t see anything?
No.
Me neither. I can’t see anything anymore.
The so-called “pyjama plane” to Brussels (7.00 a.m. Monday) was fully booked, of course. All the officials and M.E.P.s who had spent the weekend in Vienna and were now returning to work, and Austrian lobbyists and representatives of associations who had meetings in the morning and were flying back that evening or the following day. As was often the case, a dedicated Austrian schoolteacher was probably on board with their class too, as part of the “Young Europeans visit the European Parliament” scheme. Martin had only been able to get a seat on the afternoon flight, which was fortunate as he overslept and
would have missed the early one and possibly the lunchtime one as well. He hadn’t got to sleep until almost four, unable to switch off. Late that afternoon he had taken his brother to the rehabilitation clinic in Klosterneuburg, then from the Greek place on Taborstrasse he had bought three bottles of Mythos beer, some cheese and a bottle of “Drama” white wine, and a flatbread from the Turkish shop next door.
He ate, drank and stared at the packing boxes, trying to imagine what it would be like if the next time he visited his brother and family at his parents’ house, there was not a pig to be seen, the stalls, the large fattening shed, the slaughterhouse, everything empty, disused, the white tiles not bloody, nor gleaming white having been sprayed with a hose and washed down by Herr Hofer, but a dusty grey, dustily dry, Herr Hofer in early retirement, all the workers dismissed, nature having found its way into the disused sheds, ivy, ferns, creepers, weeds beginning to grow on the dung left behind by the pigs before the decommissioning . . . The windows broken, waterpipes burst due to frost in the cold stalls, cracks in the walls where airborne seeds have settled, sprouted and taken root, the render devoured by every variety of plant and the walls demolished, creating a biotope for mice, rats, hedgehogs, ants, spiders, swifts, hornets, wild cats, and Martin drank the third Mythos and saw the roof of the fattening shed cave in, it stood before the family house, the original living quarters of the old farmhouse that over the years had twice gained another storey and been extended, and Martin opened the wine and wondered whether they would really stand at the windows or sit on the bench outside and watch the roots of weeds and rank growth and the claws of all manner of wildlife sink themselves into the foundering family history. And if the business crumbled to dust, for how much longer would his brother be able to collect his set-aside premium?
He ought to go to sleep. He brushed his teeth. He smiled to himself: a good sign. A less good sign was that he sat down at the table again afterwards, wanting to smoke another cigarette and drink another glass of wine after all. He pondered what now awaited him in Brussels. Thanks to the circular e-mails he had realised that there were problems with the Jubilee Project. And of course he’d received the protocol of the Council working group too. He had skimmed it – and had not taken it particularly seriously. Important for him was that Xeno clearly wanted to go on with the project, at least there hadn’t been any “Stop!” from her. Some evenings he had sat at the computer making a note of additional thoughts relating to the project. Even though he was on leave, he wanted to have something to put forward when he came back. In any case, he hadn’t known what to do some evenings after spending the afternoon with his brother in hospital.
There was one idea in particular that he had pursued. If they were to present Auschwitz survivors as living testimony to the idea of the European peace project and the historical mission of the European Commission, then it would also be logical and rational to include officials from the time of the Commission’s foundation, to let them talk about the ideas, intentions and hopes with which they had set about their work. Martin was convinced that the officials from the first generation knew far more accurately what its purpose was than the current bureaucratic elite. This would be, Martin Susman thought, the second jaw of the clamp, as it were. On one side the survivors of the extermination camp as a reminder of the oath: no nationalism or racism ever again. On the other side representatives of the founding generation of the European Commission as a reminder that its precise purpose was to build supranational institutions to overcome nationalism, and ultimately the nations.
He had written Kassándra an e-mail: What do you think?
Kassándra: I’ll look into it.
One week later, Kassándra: First generation of the Commission: a) dead. b) dementia. c) no dementia, but can’t travel. Do you want to proceed with this idea? Poss. video messages from c)?
Martin had finished the “Drama” wine, but still didn’t feel ready for bed. In the kitchen he found a bottle of grappa. Don’t do it, he thought, and opened the bottle. He staggered slightly as he took the three steps from the kitchenette to the table.
Maybe, he thought, the Jubilee Project ought to be organised completely differently. They should go the whole hog. Be uncompromising. If dementia and death prevented people from giving testimony and being able to remember what it had all been about, and what it was still about, then let the dead and demented come forward and vouch for it. They would elicit horror and sympathy, and they might bring about catharsis. Understanding even. All of a sudden a society with dementia understands what it had wanted to be, all of a sudden a terminally ill continent remembers the medicine that had promised a cure, but which it had discontinued and forgotten. How? How could this be played out? With actors? They would have to hire actors to appear as the officials from the founding period, not famous actors already fêted for the many different roles they’d played – they would just be themselves yet again, but in a different role, stars of pluralism, for whom everything was equally valid – no, they would need old actors, idealists who had never become stars, had never been able to make the big breakthrough even though they were masters of their craft and had garnered experience that shaped themselves and their work, but meant nothing to subsequent generations for whom fame was more important than truth, as was the rhetoric of truth as a platform for fame and fame as a platform for earning money rather than as a beacon of significance and meaning. Failed actors wouldn’t even have to act this, they were what the dead founding fathers would demonstrate if they could be fetched up onto a stage tomorrow: inalienable respect for the ideals of their youth, despair at their failures and at their being forgotten, a longing for rediscovery and being remembered and the gravitas of an idea more beautiful than all the debris beneath which they were buried. Were there eighty- or ninety-year-old failed actors who weren’t gaga and who could still learn their lines? These would be the authentic representatives of the founding era of Europe.
Martin drank schnapps out of his tooth mug.
He saw it in his mind like a film: the march of the dead, on a large screen, through all the streets and alleys, converging on the Berlaymont building, a demonstration of suppressed history, a torch of the founding fathers of the European project of unification. Then came the coffin. What sort of coffin? Who was inside? The last Jew, obviously, the last Jew to have survived an extermination camp. And who, in fateful coincidence, had died on the very day of a major anniversary of the Commission! The jubilee would have an ostentatious procession, a solemn funeral, bigger even than a state funeral, the first supranational, European Union funeral, the Commission president renewing the oath beside the coffin: “Nationalism, racism, Auschwitz: never again!” And following the death of the very last eyewitness, eternity would be extended, the line drawn under everything would be crossed and once again history would be more than a pendulum whose oscillations put people into a vacant trance. Now dark clouds appeared in Martin’s film, in a dramatic spectacle of the firmament, as extraordinary as an eclipse, the clouds veiled the sun, veiled all light, with breathtaking speed, in fast motion – here the film faltered briefly because Martin got caught on the phrase “fast motion”, he smoked, stared into the distance and thought: fast motion. Then the clouds gathered more thickly, the sky turned ever darker, a storm whipped up, tearing the hats from peoples’ heads, he saw hats swirling through the air, darker and darker and . . .
Unconsciousness. It wasn’t sleep. At some point around four in the morning Martin fell into unconsciousness.
He took a taxi to the airport, almost nodding off during the journey. He dozed on the flight. He swallowed aspirin like Smarties. At Brussels airport he took the bus from level 0 to the European Quarter, from where he walked the short distance to Maelbeek Metro station because the Berlaymont exit was closed again. He wanted to go home. Never before had he felt so intensely that his Brussels apartment was home. On the platform he looked at the display board: Next train in 4 minutes.
Professor Erhart had to check out of H
otel Atlas at 11.00 a.m., which was too early to go straight to the airport. He walked slowly across the Vieux Marché aux Grains, pulling his case behind him, which hopped and leaped over the cobbles as if Brussels were trying to be rid of him. What should he do to fill the time? Go for a bite to eat? Yes. But he’d had breakfast very late and wasn’t hungry. He made for Sainte-Catherine Metro station. What to do? It was unbearably hot and he began to sweat. In the paper he’d read about the “Forgotten works of modernism” exhibition and the heated arguments it had unleashed. Maybe he ought to go and see it? He couldn’t make up his mind. When he arrived at the church of Sainte-Catherine he spontaneously went in. He had the time. It would be cooler inside. He had passed this church so many times before, but had gone in only once, on his first evening in Brussels, to escape a downpour. In fact the church looked like a cathedral. Maybe it was of historical or artistic interest.
No sooner had he entered than he wondered what he was looking for here. People sat praying in the pews, tourists held up smartphones or tablets and took photos, flashes kept lighting up the interior, while in the side chapels the flames of the votive candles quivered. He never visited churches in Vienna, so why should he go into one in Brussels? When he was twelve years old he had been on a tour of St Stephen’s Cathedral with his class. Not for religious reasons, but for the history of his home city. And at fifteen he had gone to Midnight Mass with his grandmother, who when she heard death knocking at the door had discovered her faith at the last minute. But only after she had slipped him twenty schillings. Since that day he had never been back inside a church. He was glad that he hadn’t been brought up to be religious; he was content with the inherent atheism of his parents, even though much later – far too late – he discovered that they had been staunch National Socialists and therefore anticlerical.
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