Wonderful Wonderful Times Read online

  Even in here, in the unvarying gloom, Rainer is wearing his fashionable diamond-shaped perspex sunglasses. His hair is combed right into his face. This is supposed to be a Caesar haircut, but he does not look as if he were from ancient Rome, he looks as if he's from modern Vienna, which is incessantly whispering that he should go on helping to rebuild his home town and make it more and more beautiful. This, however, he has no intention of doing. Vienna, the City of Flowers: a perennial favourite for school essay-writing competitions, Rainer has already won a prize twice, once he won a rubber plant, the second time a handsome fern which has already died because loving Mummy watered it to death, ferns tend to prefer it dry, as the nursery gardener confided to the young essay-writing competition winner. (He came third, but so did nine other high school pupils.) The advice was ignored. His school always participates in things of this kind and then shows off about it afterwards. All those flowers, springtime blossoms and others, burgeoning in every corner, on every square, are now decidedly improving the city's appearance, fresh greenery, replacing the foreign uniforms that vanished when the Treaty was signed. At last. Even the Russians, the worst of all, vanished too, though as a rule they do nothing of their own free will, they prefer forcing others, particularly women, to do inexpressibly awful things. They enjoy that. Now they're gone, and the Nazis, both the neos and the old guard, can come out of their grey nesting boxes into the daylight again, like flowers. Hail fellow, well met.

  Oh and, while we're on the subject of blossoms and leaves, Rainer has only ever seen grammar school pupils among the other competition winners at the awards ceremonies in the Vienna schools board offices, which is because grammar school pupils can express themselves, they can write down what they feel when they see a tulip or a lilac bush. What they feel is Joy. And Hope for the Future. Even if someone else is capable of feeling Joy, it doesn't mean he can write it down, without making any mistakes, not by a long chalk. The language they speak isn't the language of high culture, it is the language of their own, which is not recognised. In Austrian usage there is a vast and gaping rift between these two linguistic levels, which comes from the inequality of Man. And will continue in perpetuity. Not Man, the inequality. All it takes is for one speaker to use the imperfect, and lo, the other no longer understands him. That is what happens to Hans with Rainer. Hans is awkward, Rainer is articulate.

  Rainer's talent for writing was already recognised back then, now he is out to make it his definitive profession. In his case, his profession will also be his hobby, which is ideal. Many people claim that this is how things are with them. Usually that is untrue. If a plumber or a butcher claims his profession is also his hobby, it is undoubtedly untrue. Nor do you believe it if a tram driver or bricklayer claims as much. If a doctor says his hobby is healing and helping people, you're more inclined to give credence to the statement. Healing and helping can be both leisuretime pursuits and jobs at one and the same time. Hobby is a word that is rapidly gaining currency. The Yanks have gone, their language remains, hooray.

  Reluctantly Rainer now notes that Hans, the jerk, is not his own tool at present but the jazz musicians'. Hans is zooming hither and thither, zealously folding up music stands, cramming double basses in canvas wraps, alternately closing and opening the piano depending on what he's told, wiping out trumpets, stacking the scores in piles and distributing them once again when he's given the order, picking up chairs and putting them down and scraping them along, undoing everything he's so carefully accomplished simply because one of them snaps that he's done something wrong, asking how long it takes to learn to play the flute, sax, trombone, bass, etc. Piano takes longest, no doubt, learning to play the piano is the best policy, like honesty, which this Rainer is about to make an end of. I'd like to do something like that some day too! Being able to play an instrument must be nice. Perhaps even nicer than being a gym teacher or an academic. In a minute, after the last number, 'Chattanooga Choo Choo,' he'll lug a whole lot of heavy things outside along with a crowd of other idiot volunteers, where another good-natured fool will let his car be misused for the transport of instruments, just to be part of it all for once, which is all that counts (see above) because winning isn't everything. A number of questions remain unanswered: Is it difficult? How long does learning to read music take? What is the correct way to tune a violin? Who do you approach if you seriously want to learn to play an instrument? I'll volunteer first thing in the morning. The things you like doing, you do voluntarily. Working on heavy current is something you have to do, though. That will have to be given up.

  I can't stand it any more! explodes Rainer, breaking out of his thoughts and into Hans's. What he was just thinking was: I spit on you all! With your packed lunches and fat bellies. I am gigantic, I walk on the ceiling, you can all see me, clear as day, right, that's me! He snatches the clarinet case which eager Hans is about to help carry outside out of the lackey's paws and smashes it down on his head, it makes a roaring sound and the wind instrument inside it howls. Hey you, yells the musician in question, have you gone crazy?

  The amateur clarinettist, a law student, does not understand the expression this prompts on Rainer's face (impenetrable, expressionless) and so ignores it. If he only knew what Rainer is thinking about him right now! Rainer is thinking: I'd like to rip your throat open with a meathook. The chemist's son has no idea that this is what he's thinking and thus has no occasion to be afraid, but Rainer is proud of having thought something so brutal. Soon it will be done, for real. At Rainer's table the plotting and planning is begun in earnest. I can't be saying everything four times, that goes for you too, Anna, though you know about it in rough outline. Being my sister. Sophie must know, since she is the woman I love, and Hans, seeing that he's the one who'll be doing the dirty work, will be put in the know as well, always assuming he can grasp what it's all about. Which is by no means certain. Are you coming, Anni, or aren't you? She is not coming yet because, perceiving a unique opportunity, she is casually trickling off Chopin's etude for the black keys at the piano, casually but a great deal of practice has to be put in at home if something like this is to result, and she's about to start on something from The Well-Tempered Clavier when the jazz pianist (a medical student) comes up: Kid, you're in the wrong groove, why not forget it and go on home to Mummy and keep up the practising, but not here, not in a cool joint like this. This isn't a music school, you come here when you've finished music school or you've taught yourself to play. But if there's anything else I can teach you, honey, I'll be glad to, stop by again when you've got some tits. With Annamother around, teaching yourself anything is quite out of the question, you have to have expert tutors, nothing else will do.

  A cold shiver goes through Anna because she has discovered that possibly she is not quite perfect and has to go on developing further, a notion she rejects. She has already reached the finish and has nothing more to lose. The fact that there might be something else ahead of her drives her crazy, because as far as she's concerned she's done it all, and murderous feelings surge within her.

  There must be nothing more to come, only absolute nothingness, where there are no moral standards, such as this student no doubt still has, even if he talks to a woman in a way that seems coarse. As she goes by she knocks a half-empty glass of beer and splosh, there go the contents all over the know-it-all young academic's brand new blue jeans, they'll have to be washed, which will mean a little more wear and tear, which will hurt the student's finances. Fine.

  Rainer is going on at Sophie, who is sipping lemonade, she shouldn't gabble, she should listen, though she isn't saying anything anyway. What Hans thinks is that if she doesn't want to listen to him (to obey him), she ought to feel (him). But Sophie does not want to listen (or obey), she wants to see. She wants to see Hans lift the heaviest of heavy objects, and even heavier ones, with the greatest of ease. There isn't a single soft spot on his torso, though hopefully there are soft spots inside him. Rainer's torso, by contrast, has something of a chicken about it. A c
hicken that has been totally starved of sun and almost totally of feed for a long time. Still, he doesn't just cluck, that's true.

  Hans flings himself into an armchair and describes in broad outline (the details are yet to come) his future music studies, which will enable him to give pleasure to people and help them relax and will make him successful. Down, boy, says Rainer. But he goes on to say how the old woman gets up his nose with her stupid envelopes and the work she did for the Party when she was young, that is why I want to get my distance from all that, maybe musically. Rainer says he'll hit him in the gob in a moment. In a low trawl, Sophie says: Leave him alone.

  Anna: You could bore the pants off the Goethe memorial on the Ring, Hans.

  Sophie: Don't be so arrogant.

  Hans: See that, Anna? When a woman loves a man and she can't show it and doesn't want to show it either, she'll stand up for him in front of other people. In doing so, she realises what her own feelings are, in spite of herself. I've seen it in films, time and again. Anna zaps her hand between his legs, not a bad spot. Are you two at it again, breezes Sophie. Hans shoves away the unloved hand, which he nonetheless still needs from time to time, and is ashamed. Sophie is not supposed to know. Though she is supposed to suspect. And to want it herself. On the one hand, Anna now wants to punish him, and on the other she is afraid that he doesn't want to do it with her any more. Although she was good, no doubt about it.

  Hans is my concern, defending him is no business of yours, he can defend himself and I'll tell him now. And anyway I don't give a toss (which is of course not true). Hans knows that a woman who stands up for a man in front of other people may often look as if she's doing it against her own will, but it is stronger than her will. Gentleness conquers toughness. The last impression in the world that Sophie gives is the impression of inner turmoil. She orders a rum and Coke. This is too expensive for the twins and they look away when the waiter comes, but the waiter is used to that kind of thing. Hans orders something even more expensive, his mother back home in her old kitchen chair would take leave of her senses if she had any notion of it. His secret overtime.

  Anna says that the weak are defeated by the strong in the world of Nature. A reed by the north wind, for instance. And silence by the forest. Rainer: So this is going to be robbery and assault.

  Hans: I'm not crazy. You don't know what you're all talking about. It's madness.

  Rainer: Madness? Categories such as that do not exist- as far as I'm concerned, everything is healthy, except for fruit and vegetables. In art, too, madness comes in handy, in the art of the insane, and soon there will no doubt be artists who inflict wounds upon themselves, they will be the most modern of all modern artists. For example, you're injured and you go for a walk along the street and display your injury to a police inspector, calling it a work of art, he does not understand this, and the gulf between him and the artist (who is at one and the same time his own work of art) becomes immeasurable, never to be crossed. Submission to something you didn't preach yourself is no good, I quote. Because Man must burst his ridiculous bonds, which consist of what is supposedly current reality with a prospect of a future reality of scarcely any greater value. Quote: Each and every full minute bears within it the negation of centuries of lame, broken history. End of quote.

  Bah, goes Hans, gurgling down a drink. That's one of the few jobs I wouldn't care for. Policeman or artist. Though maybe an instrumentalist. He will also see that the woman he loves (Sophie) is not exposed to disagreeable things, Beethoven and Mozart may be allowed once he's subjected them to close scrutiny.

  Anna turns her listening apparatus windward because there was a heart-felt inflexion in the name Sophie that she did not care for. It is shitty that, in obedience to a natural law, you no longer like what you already have quite so much and instead strive after the unattainable, she herself would like to be the unattainable but Sophie has already picked that role for herself. Shit. For all she cares, Sophie can die. Sophie promptly notices, she raises her eyebrows.

  Rainer says to Sophie, doesn't she think that of all of them Hans is the one who ought to want to be extraordinary most of all, because in the way he thinks he is the most ordinary. Don't you agree? Anna says that every sentence Hans utters comes out exactly how it's been uttered at least a thousand times by other people before. Is Anna at the helm or at the rudder in this love affair? We shall see. Perhaps we shall see in the next few fractions of a second because she is out to grope Hans's thighs again, where there is certain property she is interested in acquiring. But the thigh in question is removed, you don't do things like that in public, least of all with Sophie present, and so the hesitant loving female hand reaches smack into some old chewing gum that's been stuck there. It's sticky, and where Love has found its place, there Love sticks.

  Hans is against violence on principle. You only believe this if the one who says it is physically very powerful and thus does not need to use force. He bought a book by Stefan Zweig, an important writer, and liked it a lot, but he'd still like to ask a thing or two about it, since it is literature of a more complex kind. Sophie, do you think you could give me some information about this book? Rainer says that Sophie might be able to answer his questions but he will do so himself because literature is his field, not Sophie's. Sophie's exclusive field is his own literature, she has to concentrate on that twenty-four hours a day. If Hans tries his hand at simpler stuff first, that's fine. Hans says that Stefan Zweig is one of the most difficult writers there are, though. Rainer says that the mental bonds linking him and Sophie are far stronger and more enduring than any physical bonds could ever be. Intellectual ties last your whole life long, physical ties last a week or so at most. At present I'm reading Camus's Outsider together with Sophie. The hero doesn't care about anything, just like me. He knows that nothing is of any importance and that all he can be sure of is the death that awaits him. You have to get to that stage, Hans, where you don't care about anything and nothing is important. At the moment everything still has to be important to you, so that you have a position to build on.

  The assaults will be a powerful experience. Which one can subsequently discuss.

  Hans wants to save Sophie from herself and be there for her. Sophie says she doesn't need him to be there for her. Rainer says he quite deliberately does without support of any kind, that's why he is so strong, because nothing bothers him. Hans says that getting ahead in his career does matter to him.

  Anna: The best thing you can do is to imagine there's nobody else but you. Then you won't be judged by anyone's else's standards, only your own. That's how I do it, for instance.

  And now the Annahand, sticky with chewing gum, wanders over for a third time, and Hans, flattered, lets it stay. The bird in the Annahand is worth two Sophies in the bush.

  Rainer is pondering how to incite the others without getting his own fingers too dirty. First he'll need an elevated position to command an allround view, the view from the Hohe Warte is better than that from the Elisabeth Memorial in the Volksgarten. There are born leaders and there are the rest. He'd rather be the bellwether than the sacrificial lamb, that's for sure.

  HANS POKES HIS head (born in the Burgenland) first to one side and then to the other, to see if there aren't any more beautiful women around whom he doesn't know. There aren't any, or if there are they don't want to get acquainted with him. You wait till I have my new pullover on, you'll all be doing an about-turn and chasing me. Hans knows. He winks at a black woman with a little brown guy so you'd think there was something wrong with his eye. But he sees perfectly well whenever some female beauty goes by. When one does, he thinks she is his. Every man would like to possess all the women in the world, but a woman only wants the man she loves and to whom she is faithful. Anna will presently be transporting Hans off, to be alone with him. She realises that this boy means something to her. Hans realises that with his fresh and carefree ways he means something to this girl, probably because he's been reading a lot of good books recently and she can
accept him on that account. Anna represents practice for Sophie. Anna is fond of Hans because he has not read as many books as the others, he is more physical, she is all sensation, she doesn't know whether she's coming or going. The feelings of both are in turmoil, which is the hallmark of youngsters who have not yet discovered who they are and found their place in the modern economy. But Hans has had one of these places for a while now. The place in question is by a heavy current cable and he means to change it.