Wonderful Wonderful Times Page 12

  Up top, Rainer has pushed the dress aside yet again and bites Sophie's right tit, which is tiny and pale pink like a child's, there is a little yell like one of the countless birdcalls you hear around here. But the yell promptly lapses into silence again. Ouch, it went.

  You're nuts. I think I'd best cool you off a bit. I'll go fetch your ice cream in a moment, I'll fetch it right away.

  The lawn rises to meet Rainer, this comes of his nausea, the nausea comes of his aggression, the aggression comes of his desire for Sophie, the desire for Sophie is caused by the fact that she is such a pretty girl. Reality slops across Rainer as if the swimming pool were being emptied on him. Underneath, he is in absolutely black wetness, which can penetrate at every opening, even though you desperately try to plug them. When he finds himself being licked he looks up but licking him is only Sophie's pointer Selma, named after the writer Selma Lagerlof, one of Sophie's early literary experiences, but one who has no merit since at that time she didn't yet know Rainer. Rainer hugs the unfeeling animal, which snuggles up to him. At times animals are better than human beings and you can learn from them. You can learn tenderness and how to show affection, for example. Sophie lacks both qualities. Rainer takes his ice cream from the servant's hand and trots off, long since deserted by Sophie and more recently by Selma too, who races wildly off across the lawns, taking high-spirited leaps with her well-groomed legs (she is not on duty at present), chasing an imaginary quarry. And Rainer plunges into the darkness in pursuit of an opponent that is very real, probably it is Rainer himself because after puberty the young male is his own worst enemy, or so he is informed. This comes from his seething hormones. He opens the gate of the grounds and enters a part that becomes poorer the further he goes. His figure becomes smaller, not because it is growing more distant but because it can't help being scaled down by its surroundings. Just now in the grounds he was still somebody, now he is a nobody on a tram. To experience this is dreadful because it implies the danger of vanishing altogether. The darkness swallows up the railings of the estate as if they had never existed. The estate is gone, Rainer is still there, but elsewhere.

  Behind him, all the light disappears, it is called Sophie and never stays for long. Rainer, however, always has to stay where he happens to be, because he cannot change the way he is. In this respect, for once, he resembles other people, who cannot change the way they are either.

  NOW THAT I have seen larger rooms, small rooms likethis one seem even smaller to me. And they really are small, says a petulant Hans, and angrily he kicks at the council flat which can't help its size and is humane nonetheless since it has everything that is essential in life. Which isn't much. Because mankind can get by with very little if need be. And so the flat does not have much to offer.

  There is a wind blowing here as well, but it is a city wind laden with dirt and dust from building sites where the last of the ruins are being cleared in order to make Vienna even more beautiful. Gentle light passes through, from which you can tell that the gentleness of springtime has arrived early. The light is typical of this old quarter of Vienna, it leaves nothing unregarded, though neither does it reveal anything especially worthy of regard. The air is dry, splinters of glass, insects and 'flu bugs are to be found in it for brief spells. Girls with bobbing stiffened skirts and pony-tails sail by, their basic characteristic is youth, which they will shortly lose. They enjoy dancing and music, one floor higher dwells the pleasure they take in their future job prospects. They will be able to choose a profession because the economic boom is on, though it needn't necessarily shift you a floor higher. It might just as well fall on top of you.

  Hans has a memory of the years of his youth. It goes like this. For five schillings you can sit in the first or second row of the stalls at the Albert cinema and see for yourself what the economic boom looks like, the boom you're on the brink of joining, though for the time being it's just for other people and you only look at it from the outside. It wears fetching tailored suits over corsets, or dirndl dresses with plunging necklines, and kisses Rudolf Prack or Adrian Hoven or Karlheinz Bohm. Everything is better now, or if it isn't better yet it soon will be. 1937: Managers 100, Workers 100. 1949: Managers 115, Workers 85. If it's a man, he kisses Marianne Hold or dear jolly Conny, who is to a younger person's taste. Sometimes he sings while he's about it. He often does so, in fact! What he sings is a little hit tune and his name is Peter Kraus. Often there are comical mix ups and you roar with laughter and it turns out that Christian Wolff is in fact the son of a company chairman, though he doesn't look it, his audience look like nothing at all and that's exactly what they are. Conny is saucy and promptly falls in love with him, when he still looks like nothing. This says something for her heart and character. Which are what counts. The slicked curls of the viewers bob in time like cocks' tails and are already looking forward to the moment when they will prove, under the caresses of girls' hands (those of trainee hairdressers or secretaries of the future), to be precisely what they in fact are: the slicked curls of apprentices and young employees. You shouldn't wish to appear to be more than you are, that is the message. At times the movie heroes even try to seem less than they are, on purpose. It is totally incomprehensible. Sometimes the girls' hands reach one storey lower to the pale tool that never gets to see the light of day, bathing trunks at most, but often it's tired from sitting around and simply won't be persuaded to stir. Sometimes it stands to attention instantly, but it pays no attention to the feelings of the person handling the tool. All it wants is to squirt off, then it's happy, and not into your hand, right.

  And sometimes bumper-bosomed Edith Elmay turns out to be what she is: a factory owner's daughter, which you couldn't have told by looking at her. But the cinemagoer knows all along and enjoys the delicious mix-up situations where someone pulls someone else's leg, in the grip of a great love which is misunderstood at first but which will conquer all. We would never jeopardise a burgeoning love with misunderstandings, who knows when the next will come along, you're lucky if you find someone.

  Many of the young cinemagoers (who see themselves as the hub of the action because the girl next door is the movie's heroine) are already dreaming of their own car or Vespa, their parents have barely had their war-damaged lives restored to them in good order, have barely had time to get somewhere in their dull, confined, timorous ways. Do those lives still work or have they gone rusty? They can't have gone rusty because the parents keep on working and working, they have to rebuild the Fatherland. Egoistic wishes have to be stifled, the only wishes that can venture out into the open are those for new vacuum cleaners, fridges or radiograms, thus keeping trade and exchange going. Trade certainly keeps going, but nothing changes. Not so very long ago, a Socialist Party paper in Graz called for the liquidation of strike leaders, and thus choked off one particular change, soon the only sign of life there'll be will be advertising, at least it changes the street scene into one of brightness and colour.

  Ruth Leuwerik kisses O. W. Fischer, weeping. Maria Schell kisses O. W. Fischer, weeping. Weeping, a mother's heart considers the Sunday pot-roast which its negligence has let burn. Meat is dear and something of a luxury. The Alps jostle into the picture with ever greater frequency, and folk music makes itself heard. Twins populate the Wachau or the Dachstein, singing incessantly, till every one of them gets the husband that suits her and retires into private life with him. Their viewers are disturbed at the thought that these glossy people have any private life at all, just like themselves, if they lose it they won't get another. The main thing in that private life of yours is your health. You have to do as much as you can to provide content in that private life, which some seek in a villa at the Wolfgangsee and others in a council flat or a caravan, what counts is having the will. But not even the blonde long-legged Kessler twins have two lives at their disposal, that is to say, of course they do have two but each of them only has one. Peter Weck drives up in a new sports convertible and presently drives away again, but before he was on his ow
n and now the enchanting Corny Collins with the dimples in her cheeks is sitting beside him, snuggling up and bubbling over with charm. For the next few hours she will not leave him, probably she never will. Nor would any other woman in her position do so, because it takes so long to find True Love and once you've found it you mustn't let it get away again. The girls in the cinema wouldn't let it either. They always stay as long as possible, and if they are uncouthly sent packing they shed lovesick tears, as Maria Schell has often done. Now and then some adolescent creates an unpleasant disturbance, puking beer and hitting people, then he goes home and is thrashed, to balance things up and restore the immutable order. Along the way, a lot of people hurl abuse at him, especially on account of his unclean leather clothing, which he likes so much precisely because it is dirty and which he saved up a long time to buy. He knows he won't get a Corny Collins anyway because the latter already belongs to Peter Weck, but he tries hard. Heinz Conrads, the local star, now somewhat advanced in years, also kisses a lass at last, he is more of an elderly person's star because he has human qualities, the unimportant elderly people who no longer play any part in the production process can make do with a native star, no special guest star need be imported from abroad. He provides the proof that the older generation have values whereas the young generation go by appearances. Youngsters spit on the elderly and their ideas, but a year or so later they haul out the same ideas themselves because they themselves are older now and have settled down. Hans is also a little older now, but he simply won't settle down. Then they even buy a flat of their own, if they can afford it.

  The sun sets, as it so often has done before, and Maria Andergast sings a duet with somebody I've forgotten, it couldn't have been Attila (Paul) Horbiger, could it? Peter Alexander sings a duet with Caterina Valente. Caterina sings a grotesque duet with Silvio Francesco, who is her own brother in real life, and pulls a face so that you can tell what high spirits she's in again today, such high spirits she can scarcely believe it herself. Lolita sings about a sailor and then does a duet with Vico, who likewise pulls faces so you think any moment the rest of his face is going to fall off, leaving only his teeth. The sailor abandons his dreams and the travel agencies boost their turnover in dreams. Vico rolls his eyes so you can see the whites, he's so happy, it's as if he were having an epileptic fit. If he goes on like that, they'll have to wedge a piece of wood between his lips and secure his tongue so that the talented Swiss singer doesn't choke. Otherwise his great future will be prematurely ended. Young bambis pole timidly across the screen, their long baby legs are so sweet, and presently they're scooped up from the ground and squeezed to a corseted bust so that their tongues pop out and their eyes roll. There isn't a starlet alive who can leave a bambi, which is a creature of the forest, on the ground where it is. Because they love it very very much indeed, this little fawn standing merrily by the fringe of the forest. The person picking it up is Waltraud Haas, Haasi, playing a blonde orphan who finds a good master in the priest of Kirchfeld. She is on the brink of being led astray but she runs away. The young salesgirls in the cinema squeeze their thighs together, weeping, so that the groping lathe operator or welder hands are jammed in tight with no room to manoeuvre. The hands want to get in, but all they get into is the bag of popcorn, a recent American invention which is overflowing with sheer abundance because there's a lot in the bag. The oft-practised boob-grope is nipped in the bud this time round because Conny, that cute little Marianne, has an exam to take at the conservatoire. Watching her, they sweat the sweat of leisure, which is pleasanter than the sweat of labour because it is sweated on a voluntary basis. She (Conny) has been trained to play serious classical music, true, but she prefers singing lively hit songs in a night club, where the director of the conservatoire tracks her down, but he has to laugh (heartily) at his very best pupil's transgression, she will soon be marrying a rich young man, even though at present she's still putting up resistance. At times, Conny groans out loud in this film, which isn't normally in character since she is of a carefree, cheerful nature, as Youth should be (the serious side of life makes its appearance quite soon enough), but lovesickness even gives her a hard time, it's hard to believe. But you know her worries will soon be over. Bibi Johns and Peter Alexander sing a duet of love, jazz and fantasy, they want a house by the sea so blue with a garden I'll be true to you. Ernsti, alas, comes home later and later, he wants a VH, he'd be better off getting married. In the end the four lasses from the Wachau are married off too. Not to Wachau lads, though, they'll be marrying city boys, let's hope the latter don't think in too materialistic terms (as people in the city often do), they ought to have picked a country boy who knows what values are and where you get them: Nature.

  The envelope-addressing Hansmother butts in on the pot-pourri of her son's thoughts because she would like to improve his mental ability. She fails in the attempt, because all he listens to is rock'n'roll, which his friend Rainer frequently explains to him. Rainer will have a Campari and soda before him at such times and he will explain how modern music achieves its effects, Hans would rather let it go ahead and achieve its effects but Rainer's blather prevents this. Rainer has already lied, too, claiming to know a musician personally, which wasn't true. He doesn't know any musicians at all and is only bragging. This Rainer often supplies interminable overall views of subjects that are of no interest to anyone. And now Mother also supplies an overall view so that her son will be far-sighted, all in vain. Today as always it is a history lesson, Hans has had as much as he can take of that. Mother opens a book and reads in a dispassionate tone: On Friday 6. 10. 1950 the schilling was devalued, from 14 to 21.60 to the dollar. Allegedly this showed that the wage and price agreement of that year, which supposedly compensated fully for the increase in prices, was a con intended to deceive the people. (So what. All that matters is having the schillings in your pocket at Cafe Hawelka or the Picasso Bar.) Mummy reports that many social democratic union officials left the old party they loved so dearly because they couldn't stand the united front that had been formed with the reactionary volkspartei against the struggling workers. The emotional burden was too great. If you're a socialist and a socialist union secretary calls you a bastard, you have to leave the party. Mother goes on and on like this in her boring way, working as if she were being paid for it, which she is. She needs the money. She would rather do something more interesting but she is too old. Because the future belongs to the young workers and so does the present. And in the past, too, young people were permitted to bite the dust first. Youth is never passed over. It is always up front. When the old has become unbearable you have to start something new. Hans finds his old life unbearable and wants to start a new one. If your marriage has become unbearable and you can't take it any more, you have to get out, thinks Hans, who saw this in an American film where there were problems. Mostly he prefers German films, though, not because he wants to support the homegrown product but because they are not so full of problems. With James Dean everything goes so fast and often you don't get what's going on, you've hardly understood one problem but the next has reared its head. It's better to break things off, a short sharp cut that may well be very painful, than to endure everlasting torment. Hans thinks of Anna and her cunt and that the old must give way to the new, usually something better is already waiting, otherwise you could just as well stick with the old, which in fact you chuck for the sake of what's new and better. What counts is choosing the right moment and the right place to make the break. You have to follow your heart, which in any case always tells you what you already want. Hans's heart says Sophie out loud and jumps, and four-metres-plus further on it lands in the sand, well done! Hans has private problems, his mother has public problems which are uninteresting because they produce no apparent profit and only waste time. Work wastes time too, to be exact: the time it takes to do it, but then you have money to take home, and with that money you get on the trail of quality, if you have a nose for it. Hans is beginning to understand his feelings for Sophie.
In films this often takes a long time but then it can suddenly go very quickly and acquire powerful momentum.

  Sophie alias Vera Tschechowa alias Karin Baal are so cool and classy, they commit trivial and serious crimes, walking the wet streets, for the sake of a man, which is the wrong way. When Hans says: Stop, choose another way, not the path of dishonesty, they consent and on the next day they are already off with him to do something better with their lives than committing crimes. Hans has made them do this because he loves them. A valiant social worker lends his assistance, which in this case Hans will not even need because he has enough willpower for several people. From time to time someone will be shot and will lie dead on the cobbles. You have to avoid things reaching the point where a gun is drawn, you have to see about changing course before it's reached. Crime is not essential to happiness and a career. In fact it rules them out, totally. To forge a career, you have to inspire trust. Hans has taken this first step, because Sophie trusts him. He will take the second shortly. At times Rainer boasts about a pistol that supposedly belongs to his father but which he can borrow whenever he wants, which is bragging too, they all know Rainer's talk. But then, his father does occasionally let him drive the car though he doesn't have a licence, that much is true, Hans has seen it for himself. This may come to a bad end, to be exact: the death or injury or imprisonment of Rainer.