Wonderful Wonderful Times Page 13

  Karin Baal dashes out into the headlights of a car. Hans dashes after Sophie, catches up with her, flings her to the ground, and makes it clear that honesty is the best policy. She believes this right away. Vera Tschechowa's raincoat is snazzy, the material is shiny, a man could wear that too.

  Mother asks Hans to fetch her the soup she's been warming up on the stove. She has put one foot up because it is hurting. She is scattering paper all around her: On Tuesday 26. 9. 1950 strikes began at almost 200 firms in Vienna. 8,000 demonstrators advance as far as the Ballhausplatz, which has been sealed off by the police, and hold a rally outside the federal chancellery.

  Wednesday 27. 9: In Vienna, Linz, Steyr and other industrial towns, but particularly in Wiener Neustadt and St Polten, there are vast rallies and protest marches. It is the climax of the strike.

  Hans fetches the soup and, unnoticed, spits a thick gobbet of phlegm into it, stirs it in, and hands the soup to his mother as if he hadn't spat in it at all.

  On Saturday 30. 9. 50 the all-Austria congress of factory committees convenes in the assembly shop of the Floridsdorf locomotive works. 2,417 delegates take part, at least 90% of them members of factory committees. The congress makes the following demands: 1. The price increases to be cancelled. 2. No devaluation of the schilling. In response, the government calls for the defence of Liberty, which is being endangered by the worker's rash and ill-considered actions, they mustn't be intimidated by violent criminals, in other words: Communists. They also call upon the workers to dismantle the street barricades and expel any high-handed outsiders who may have infiltrated their factories, because this strike is allegedly out to destroy the basis of the workers' Future: all-round prosperity, which (as is well known) the workers get the lion's share of, though all in all they haven't deserved it. Mother goes on reciting yet more of this text.

  But Hans gets up and goes out. As he goes, pretending to do it accidentally, he sweeps a high stack of newspapers and books off this educated working class household's kitchen table onto the floor. Without picking up the mess he has made, he goes out in a hurry.

  THOUGH RAINER DOESN'T have a driving licence yet, his father occasionally lets him use his car, which they have trouble paying for. Father only has capital principles, no principal capital, and he has already been convicted once of faking bankruptcy. He has difficulty accepting his unstoppable decline. The tiniest speck of flyshit will give him new hope. But everything will be fine if his son, a minor without a licence, drives. The car's the main thing. Which is Rainer's view of the matter too. But mostly he is only allowed to drive when he's taking his father somewhere, very seldom on his own. The cripple squeezes in and out of the car as if he were doing bar exercises, a complex and wearing process that gets a man quite out of breath. Today is one of those days when he suddenly decides to drive out to Zwettl in the woods. It's nice out there. Hardly has he taken the decision but he's whipping his wife Gretl in the bedroom, where man and wife can be intimate. The whip is one of his numerous souvenirs of the old days. One of the others is a bayonet. All the son and daughter hear of Mother is a low moan, but that is enough to tell them that she is being beaten again for her marital sins, particularly infidelity. You whore, you whore, the moment my back's turned you're in bed with another man. And this other man is the businessman downstairs that I've been keeping an eye on. I won't put up with these goings-on for long, though. But Otti, you're wrong, I don't go to bed with any man but you, that's enough for me. You only live for those moments you can be with that impotent good-for-nothing! No, I don't live for those moments, I live for my children and their education, that's all. See, you admit it. What did I admit, Otti? At any rate, I'm going to give you a thrashing to remember now, so you never do it again, and if you didn't do it I'm going to thrash you so that you don't think of doing it. But I didn't do it, not at all, please don't hit me, Otti, ow! That was the ow the siblings overheard.

  Rainer says: Anni, we've got to do something about that old bastard. But Anna says no what can we do anyway, let the old folk alone, let's worry about ourselves. But he's going to kill her. Let him, it'll be one less, and the other will be gone too, in gaol, where he'll die like a dog, all alone. We'd be free at last. But he's got the pistol. So what. He's far too much of a coward.

  So Mother, having enjoyed no protection from her children, hurries bruised and worm-ridden into the kitchen to prepare the lavish Sunday breakfast. Anni wants to put in a lot of piano practice today and then go for a walk with Hans, Rainer on the other hand is to drive Father to Zwettl because Father wants to go there and work things out of his system physically. He'll try to be unfaithful to his wife but won't succeed, still, no harm in investing a clean shirt in the enterprise, just in case. He's always dressed up to the nines, is Papa. He will try to pick up women who are even younger than Mama, who is much younger than he is. He's adopted an elegant German accent for the purpose, to arouse interest. Come on, come on, let's be off, if we don't get started now we'll never get anywhere and I want to be off into the woods. You can be the chauffeur, son, because you're my boy, all I have apart from you is a daughter. Also you can play chess with Papa in the evenings, which Anna can't because she doesn't think logically. Unfortunately philosophic books by Kant, Hegel and Sartre have to be left behind when Papa wants to go out to the woods, no power on earth can do anything about this. If I come back and find you in bed with that businessman again, I'll murder you. I'm not yelling the way I usually do when I make the threat, Gretl, you've disregarded me often enough already, no, today I'm telling you coolly but incisively that I shall kill you with my Steyr-Kipplauf pistol, I am one hundred percent in the right. But Otti, no, for Christ's sake no, the businessman's happily married and the only contact I've had with him has been out shopping, but I always hurry and don't pause for any private talk. But you do pause to change your panties first, I've caught you there, haven't I? Only to be clean, and smell clean, when I go out, Otti. I don't have anyone but you and the children, I'm seeing to it that they get a good education at school because I come from a well-thought-of teacher's family.

  Revolted, Anna goes to the piano, in quest of oblivion through sound, and she finds it too because music requires concentration. Father says it sounds horrible. But she is her mother's darling. Mother has a woman's feelings, as she does too… Mother pats Anna in passing, which makes her livid.

  Thus Father and Son, one on this side and the other on that, one bored and the other labouring and heavy laden, clamber into the automobile, which can seat four (though today there are only two), and drive off on a north-bound freeway, into Nature, where there is a popular cafe for outings where you can make the acquaintance of ladies who are on their own at first but often leave accompanied. And already they are amidst gentle wooded slopes and meadows, and reservoirs burrow into the ground, a typical feature of this landscape, which borders closely on Czechoslovakia and where you can already sniff the harsh air of neighbouring Communism. The air is harsher because you're further north. Spring hasn't progressed as far here either. There is a smell of pine needles, like the spray you can buy, the houses are fewer and further between, the economy is depressed, as is proper in an economically depressed area. The voices of birds are uplifted in warning, watch out, don't have an accident, and deer appear on the horizon, only to disappear again promptly in their beloved natural heritage, revolted by the car exhaust fumes, which promise to become a problem if the cars increase in numbers. Nowadays, not everybody has one yet. It's a pity you have to put up with cars, seeing that Nature itself is so pure and uncontaminated, says Father. Cheerfully. As if he hadn't been threatening murder (just now).

  Right now he is a poor thing and in the hands of his chauffeur son. You're my very own boy, she couldn't manage a second, couldn't Gretl. These men are always taking pornographic pictures of your mother, I'll show them to you some time, they're the filthiest things you've ever seen. If it weren't for the fact that strange men took the dirty stuff, I'd say the photos weren't altogethe
r without artistic merit, but these other men are simply lecherous and that renders the effect null and void. Ugh.

  The son grinds his jaws and says nothing, defending Mummy is pointless because Pop will only attack her all the more violently. He'll calm down. Rainer's knuckles stand out white on the wheel as if they were going to split through the skin. The only thing that helps is thinking of Sophie, whom he can't see today because of Papa and his wanderlust. One hopes she won't be giving any other young man the eye. They wanted to have a long talk about Camus, about his book on absurdity and obsession, but now they can't talk at all because the woods are beckoning seductively and asking: Where are you from? The city? Then this is the place you want, this is the place for country matters.

  His son's silence turns Father nasty and he accuses him of incest, have you screwed your Mama too, when I was out slogging my guts out for all of you?

  Stray villages make their appearance by the road and then fall behind again, with regrets because they haven't been chosen for lunch, because a different village has been chosen. In terms of quality, Zwettl is not much better, though it is bigger and situated by a reservoir. At last it appears and makes a good impression, one it frequently practises. It even has a monastery to offer, called Stift Zwettl, which they don't take a look round because you can't expect it of a war invalid. On Sundays the town is resting and jolliness is rampant. Father and son eat a good schnitzel with a cucumber side-salad and a beer each. They are shrouded in the rural earthiness of a real ethnic pub. Father is already flirting with a strapping dark-haired can't-be-more-than-mid-twenties at the next table, all on her own, he buys her a wedge of Sachercake with a particularly large dollop of cream and a glass of wine to go with it. A coffee to follow. The girl gives a high-pitched giggle. Eh, schones Fraulein, how about it, you and me (better than all alone!), even if I'm disabled, I can still stand on my own two feet, or one as the case may be, I'm still a man. Giggle giggle cackle. She comes over to Papa's table, Papa pays for a couple of liqueurs, a kiss with love, advocaat with raspberries and cream. They are expensive and taste terrible. Papa has already bought her that much. The son will be throwing up any moment. Father ruins the fat woman's bee-hive hair-do, grabbing the bird's nest, may I, hoho. You may, sir, heeheehee. The girl scrutinises the son, who looks the student type. The son fixedly scrutinises the synthetic curtains at the window with their enormous pattern. The invalid scrutinises what has been waiting for him and him alone beneath the dirndl skirt all these years. His hand shoves up to dark heights. Meanwhile his son is in those loftier altitudes where he composes poetry: Here you pitch and toss, pale scraps in the depths. I am the great relief, crying out for itself. My dwelling place is all the images of the day after tomorrow.

  Father anchors his other hand in her cleavage, where things are full to turning, they'll be thrown out any second now, every one of them. But the landlord, who like Father fought in the War and was an illegal party member in the old days too, stops by in jovial mood with drinks on the house. Whenever Father is offered something free he doesn't say no. He is already a little merry and cracks a pretty naughty joke: is the lass old enough to go on the game yet, she's too stupid for it, that's for sure. Screech cackle cackle. Perhaps you could teach me a thing or two, sir. There's nothing you don't know, but if anyone can still teach you anything, it's me. Hawhawhawhaw. Heeheehee.

  The jolly party breaks up, though not before the question whether the boy has done it yet has been asked, or hasn't he ever, is he allowed? Father proudly says yes and declares that he coached him himself. But Rainer never has done it, which only his sister is permitted to know, because his talk says the exact opposite. To hear him talk you'd think he'd already slept with any number of girls goodness knows how many times, only for Rainer to have to abandon them all too soon. These things are indicative of Rainer's minimal social adjustment. He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.

  Books are where people get their lies. Better to have a son serving an apprenticeship than a lying son at grammar school.

  Bye-bye waves the girlie's little mitt. Her name is Frieda and she works in a sugar refinery. All's foul that ends foully. I'd have laid her easy as pie, wouldn't have needed more than a finger and something else, drools Papa, and he shoves his hand down the top of his Sunday trousers, which are freshly pressed though they won't be for much longer. Inside the trousers he moves his busy fingers, which haven't done any real handiwork for a long while, the last time was during the War with intent to kill. Now they're doing the very opposite. Father strikes his member in order to cause an ejaculation. This will bring him relief after his good lunch and no doubt he will then fall silent and asleep. But right now he still feels the need to report on the quality of women's pussies, which are sometimes moist and wide-open and at other times dry and tight so that you have to expand them first. Listen carefully, my boy. Whatever else, he has to stand up straight, otherwise none of it's any use, like this fellow here, isn't he a splendid specimen? A red mushroom cap spies inquisitively out, perhaps it'll all hit the windscreen with a splash and have to be wiped off.

  Rainer keeps his own puke down, it doesn't taste as good as before when the schnitzel was still intact and undigested. This wretch does all of this with my mother, he thinks. And she has to put up with it as a marital obligation. And I still want to do it with Sophie, though with her it'll all be completely different.

  Father picks up speed and breathes deeply. At fairly regular intervals a beery belch or even one of those farts Rainer particularly dreads fills the old banger. Rainer steers the vehicle down minor roads towards the reservoir, Nature is coming menacingly close, opening wide a yawning chasm to drag him down. The green's growing dazzling and dangerous. So much green. Like a vast hollow made of spinach. Father's wrist is working away ambitiously, he undid the top button back at the pub and now undoes others. You have to have room to manoeuvre. Father is approaching his climax at top speed and his son the reservoir likewise. The reservoir lies deserted in the feeble afternoon warmth, it is still far too cold to go swimming, you can't do that till summer. Father gives his son a man-to-man look. The son does not return his gaze but stares straight ahead. Light is mirrored on a ruffled surface. The water murmurs in amazement: What, it's this cold and you want to come in? A pair of wild ducks lift off, flapping and spraying. Sauve qui peut, it's familiar enough and no one wants to die too if some jerk takes his own life. The trees rustle as one man.

  Now we're both going to die together, horrible, thinks Rainer, putting his foot down, and instantly the engine, which is relatively feeble but still powerful enough, starts to roar. Have you gone crazy, boy? The water's surface beckons, keen to embrace them. At last something's happening for a change at this dreary time of year. It's very deep here because the water has been dammed up artificially. Nature cannot always come up with dangers of this kind on its own. The gravel on the shore squeals in agony. With a scream the springtime landscape swings round and waves a stop sign. Stop! No going past this point. Danger. Millions of tiny creatures are run over, their faint warnings fall silent. Somewhere or other a watchdog barks, it has no freedom and has never known what freedom is because it has always been on a chain. It doesn't pine for the unknown. A peasant with chickenfeed in her apron gawps at them. The juices are beginning to rise in the grass because it senses the approach of summer. The water's edge surges towards them to welcome them, well well, today of all days, and we were thinking nothing was going to happen. Air-borne creatures drone on, flying low, but cannot be heard above the noise of the car engine.

  At the very last moment the patricide plus suicide is aborted. One is too much of a coward to put a premature end to one's own life, there is too much still ahead of one. Which is invariably a mistake, but you believe it anyway and that is what counts. Rainer sits on the shoreline, white as a ghost and trembling. He gets a clip round the ear and says: I only wanted to give you a fright, I knew exactly when to brake, I'm a good driver, Papa. Did I alarm you? And what if th
e brakes had failed, huh? Another blow, one to the right and one to the left. Dad practically wet himself, luckily he managed to hold back. But he's got to relieve himself, urgently, thanks to the beer. Rainer, still weak from his intent to kill, has to drag his beer-bloated Papa to the edge of the forest, where the latter wants to have a piss. By way of punishment and revenge he insists that the lad support him the whole time while he's about it and admire his prick. How big it is. And back there Rainer saw how big it was then. There, that's that.

  They turn slowly and carefully (the cri-sis having been overcome for today) and drive back to the city. The woods protest, they'd have liked to see more of these two, they very nearly got to keep them altogether. But as it is Papa keeps Rainer and Rainer keeps Papa.

  THE JORGER BATHS provide a strong contrast. In the first place a contrast to the woods, where Rainer was recently and where Man has not yet won the struggle against Nature- 'the dark green, mighty forest and tough grey granite have shaped the destiny of these parts, and the deep gorges and vast plateaux have a sparse, stern beauty all their own. The impressions of these dark, silent forests have borne fruit in many who have succeeded in penetrating the defences of that formidable beauty.' The parental flat, which the Jorger Baths also provide a contrast with, is totally different. There is no liberty there, no clear open spaces like in the woods. Instead, the walls are gradually becoming smothered in complete gloom. There is no blue sky to be seen, nor any mysterious dark lakes embedded anywhere. The gloom is located in countless washpowder packs, old suit-cases, crates and boxes, stacked up to the ceiling, which have absorbed the horror of an unimportant bourgeois household (far too small for four people) over the years and are now generously pouring the aforesaid horror back out over the adolescents. All you have to do is lift any lid, at random, and out wells the fug and does its fuggy job. Nothing is thrown away, everything has to be kept to mark its own filth and that of the owners. Yellowed articles of clothing, broken crockery, children's toys, sporting equipment, souvenirs of the remoter parts of the country, papers, heirlooms, sundry apparatus for various activities, and in among the lot the yellowed, broken lives of four people, two adults and two adolescents. Rainer wants to raise himself up to the light, no matter where, in a wide-open landscape or a brighter flat with no clutter, if possible, except for tubular steel and glass; but to reach the light he has to leave the house, because inside there isn't any. You can't even breathe in and out freely because even the air is in short supply. And young people need air especially in order to grow to their intended physical proportions. But you can create your own light if none is available. To this end, Rainer often tells the others at school that his father drives an E-type Jaguar and has often taken planes abroad, which is all lies. His father, for his part, claimed in front of witnesses that the well-known pop singer Freddy Quinn was his illegitimate son and that he had had to pay maintenance on his account for a long time. This is also untrue. No matter how often Rainer parrots the story, it still isn't the truth.