Wonderful Wonderful Times Page 3

  It is lighting-up time and the current is surging into the first street lamps. That current was created by Hans single-handed. Not the Almighty. But you've always liked your work, admonishes Mother. There's better things in life, and I know what they are, too, counters Hans briskly.

  To think that that is what your father died for. So what, he didn't have to die on my account (Hans).

  Imagine there were just one more person here, Mama, you couldn't swing a cat. But Hans, there are people who have more room than they need to live in. There's a cosy little bench in Helenental, and old villas in the Hietzing part of Vienna. Which is where Sophie lives. One way or another I'm going to get in there too, swears Hans. Tenderly he folds up the expensive cashmere pullover and puts on the mended cardigan he's had since childhood. He's looking after things for later (something you have to learn early, because when you're young there's always a later, but when you're old it's all over), and later he'll be saving for later still, so that he has something for that rainy day which hopefully will never come.

  Now, as if at a signal, evening cooking commences all over the building, and smells both nasty and pleasant fill the stairwell, settling into the flaking plaster, where they meet old acquaintances for a chat: cabbage and sauerkraut, potatoes and beans. A second shift of clouted kids howl through the doors. Daddy's tired. His nerves are bad. Psst, be quiet, or else his nervous insulation will tear good and proper.

  Hans has a vision of glistening china, silver cutlery, and a prevalent muted atmosphere in both actions and words. In tone and bearing you never make a slip, you'd sooner slip your hand into someone else's pocket. Hans has an ideal because he is an adolescent. Adolescence and ideals go hand in hand. What they produce are resolutions involving love, which is always selfless. For which reason you can help yourself to as much as you can get.

  Hans reports that Rainer said that in Nature the strong crush the weak. It's logical, isn't it, which of the two I want to be. Who is this Rainer (Mother's uneasy query). You drive me up the wall with your stupid questions, snaps the son cantankerously, and he pushes off, although he hasn't even had anything decent to eat, which is another need that young people have. As so often, potato goulash was on the menu today.

  Mother stands there in the darkened room, her back aching from writing, swaddled in the dark and battered furniture about her. Which is an indication that she has achieved nothing in life. Which is her own fault. All of the guilty are perpetrators and all perpetrators are guilty. She is also swaddled in the human tea-cosy of the murdered, the hanged, the gassed, those who were shot and those who had the gold teeth torn from their mouths. Servus, Hansi, sleep well (that was her husband's name and it is also her son's). Her Hans, who is already a grown lad and thus no longer a Hansi, is just leaving the house. A pity Papa couldn't see him grow up. But strangers always mattered more to him than his own family. Now Mama has to watch out on her own. It's tough for a boy if he doesn't have a father, you read this all the time, it doesn't matter so much to a girl. People cleverer than Hansmother have said that, so it must be true. And the sun does not laugh at this because the sun has just tramped off for good. All that is left of the Kochgasse are the bright circles the lamps carve out of the darkness of the houses. That doesn't mean that what you cannot see does not exist. If it is not over and done with, forgiven and forgotten, it is still there. It is still there, the setting for many fates of no particular interest. To avoid all that, Hans is heading off for a more interesting fate, and is wholly absorbed in it.

  Autumn always did have a good deal on its conscience. Especially when someone still young in years is responding sensitively to it. Old people are forever thinking of death, young people do so only in autumn, the season of universal decay in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Rainer maintains that in autumn nights he puts forth the wings of a magic all his own. Then later, bleeding cats on chains lick the caterwauling from their mauled fur. This is a poem. Rainer's mind involuntarily turns to women whenever he thinks of autumnal decay, his mother (for instance) is decaying without let up. A woman always wants to have something shoved into her, either that or she's giving birth to a child, which comes out of her. That is Rainer's image of Woman. There's an effusive stench of light, says Rainer, in the poem about autumn. It's not quite over, but very nearly. As in his mother's case. Father's still a go-getter. But Mother's all no-ever. More than she loves him, Mother loves his sister. Her need is greater (she says) because her soul is in greater danger. His father, on the other hand, prefers him, because he is the Son and Heir and will perpetuate his name.

  Using all those senses that are not currently required for the pursuit of poetry, he keeps his ears pricked for the telephone, which will convey Sophie to the house, no effort involved. If he's asked if he's expecting a call he says no, what would I be expecting, but in reality he is waiting for that beloved voice. Which only materialises on rare occasions. You ought not to take the first step on account of your status. Why on earth can't the voice reach him via radio waves instead of this idiotic request programme where idiotic people send messages to others who are even more idiotic, wishing many happy returns of their dreary birthdays or saints' days. It would have been better if these people had never been born, it makes no difference if they're alive or not.

  Sophie thinks of sport a lot but very rarely of love. A sporting lass has other things on her mind.

  There are too many unbeautiful things within Rainer. These things are a tremendous burden on a child, and an adolescent cannot shrug off the burden so easily. Far too often the boy saw his mother, like the skeleton of an old horse, buckle into a big V beneath the father's blows. Usually old slippers were employed for the purpose, which could be thrown away after use. Apparently the beatings began on the very day the War was lost. Up till then, Father had been beating sundry foreigners. Now only Mother and the children were at his disposal. He had chased people into the marshes, too, where they quickly passed away. He can prove it. It was just his bad luck that others who did the same are now climbing up the ranks once more, whereas he is not. That's Fate. It's an individual thing. Even in that erstwhile elite troop there were failures such as his father, destined to remain unimportant little shits forever. The elite component disappeared and all that remained was a lump of humanity. But he's an honest worker and has nothing to be ashamed of, he says. He has already tried his hand at a variety of jobs, but so far he's always failed at them. He drove to France because he wanted to handle balloon advertising for a French product, but they found someone they thought smarter and assigned the project to him. One more chance passed by. And Father is gradually shrivelling up, naturally, with age.

  Mother tells him the children's education is the most important thing. It is a duty. The grammar school affords the opportunity for that education. Father tends to say they should go and start earning, which rather alarms the educated twins. They do not believe this can be expected of them.

  From the overgrown corners of the room, the ugly mug of impending poverty (which in fact is no longer impending but has long since been a fact of life) gives a friendly grin and a wink. The twins' jeans, oft altered and reinforced to protect them from wear, drag furrows through the floor's protozoic ooze, Mother has to go cleaning strangers' homes, her own home is neglected. In the homes of those strange people there are strange men. For this reason Father roars like an ox being roasted alive. Mother won't be spared, there's nothing to protect her, constantly she's kicked and knocked about. Furthermore, she does not create that atmosphere of tranquil cosiness which should be the hallmark of the housewife's home. And it really is up to her to create that, since the ex-officer's task is quite different from the promotion of contentment. Wherever he comes across cosiness he destroys it.

  Among their acquaintances, who are few in number, Father is considered an oddball who utters bizarre comments and won't accept a single thing he is offered, because he'd just as soon not eat from other people's fleshpots, thank you very much (as he puts it). />
  Father often thinks of the dark skeletons of people he killed. The white and immaculate snow of Poland turned bloody and maculate. But snow goes on falling, again and again, and by now it bears no trace of those who disappeared there.

  Mother, on the other hand, tries to teach her children the principles of humanity. That is the task of a mother. Still, Mother soon has to abandon the attempt because the children are out to be inhuman and do everything they can to look the part as well. Whatever you do is in vain. And revolting. Everything's revolting, but it's never disposed of. Not at all. It's all revolting: the crumpled papers, old cigarette butts on the floor, cheese rind, wurst skins, coffee stains and in particular apple cores and orange pips. They are the worst. They are not cleared away because retching is a delicious feeling. The flat is full of corners and recesses crammed with piled-up garbage. The petit bourgeois always has something to hide, that is what those corners are there for. Chez Witkowski you can view everything the petit bourgeois has to hide because they throw nothing away. And there he stands, the Good Citizen, amidst his corners and recesses, ready to withdraw at the drop of a hat and indulge in unseen piggery.

  The twins' unhappiness makes them superior because they have shaken off the shackles and do what they want. Rainer says: people's lives are predetermined in some way or other, but not mine, I'm superior to them on account of my Will. On the other hand, the individual is free if he wants to be. Rainer avails himself of that freedom, graciously: here he is, being awarded his accreditation certificate. There is a certain heroism in him. In this lonely youth. Lonely in the sense that no one sees him, which halves the value of even the prettiest heroism. Still, at least Rainer can look himself in the face when he's alone with his mirror.

  From time to time a day will be quite normal, and Father will pick one of the children at random and beat it, bellowing as he does so. Because the child in question doesn't want to do what he wants it to do. At such times the child will flail about helplessly. But the child proper will rise from out of the body to a somewhat higher elevation which affords a better view of the cruel goings-on. Anna and Rainer got into the habit of doing this when they were kids, and now they imagine they are still high up aloft, looking down on the rest. Physically, their development is troublesome and hesitant. But their sense of Higher Things has remained intact. In their heads, something is building up, gathering for an explosion of orange light at some later date.

  And the time has already come, now that the twins have left Father behind in terms of knowledge. But nevertheless Father believes he knows more than the children do. Age and experience have made him knowledgeable. In this new era, what sets you free is knowledge, not work. We don't want to work, no, least of all with our hands. Many of these youngsters who only want to dance and listen to jazz are too immature to do anything in their leisure time, which is why they are deprived of it.

  Mother came of a superior background, but that was a long time ago. She was a teacher. Then all of a sudden the two halves of the parental couple unexpectedly found themselves fucking on the floor. Anna and Rainer hate their parents, because Youth is often over-hasty and uncompromising. Frequently they behave wickedly towards their detested father, disgustedly aping his every movement, snatching his crutches from him, tripping him (that is, his solitary leg), spitting into his food, and not bringing him the things he wants. Bloody-mindedness! bawls the ageing man. But he can never establish whether they are doing things on purpose. Nonetheless he keeps them at grammar school, so that he can go about saying they go to grammar school. This is how values disintegrate. You can clearly see it happening: the value of authority, the value of paternal rule.

  But there's still a wife and mother to take revenge on. By telling her that her body bears an ever-increasing resemblance to a mouldy piece of cheese, or by pinching the housekeeping money from the china mug where it's always kept and accusing her of squandering it on herself. Take today, for instance: Mother seeks solace from her children because he has just maliciously cut up the brand new apron (made of pretty flower-pattern material bought in a sale) which she ran up herself on the hire-purchase sewing machine. She has no talent for sewing, but she did the job with care. Taking pleasure in her own handiwork. Things you make yourself are usually better made and of better quality because you know what's what whereas in the case of bought goods you never do know. Though naturally you suspect that the workmanship is slovenly and substandard, so that the buttons will promptly fall off, and the price is far too high. You can do it cheaper. So Mummy's saved a whole load of money, using her fingers, only to have Papa cut the lot to shreds. Deliberately. Because he was opposed to having a sewing machine in the house. On principle. If Mama runs up a new number for herself, other men, total strangers, might take it into their heads to take a close look at her figure, which is still feminine although she's been losing it. What kind of materials has she been picking, anyway? Right: attractive, bright fabrics, or at least what she finds bright (little mushrooms, bees, beetles, flowers etc.). And what kind of patterns has she been picking? Right: the very ones that emphasise her breasts, hips and ass (insofar as she possesses breasts, hips and an ass). Of all things! Those parts of her anatomy are not supposed to be emphasised. They are there for Daddy alone. And no one else. You're out to pick up a man, eh? Well I may be a cripple but I'm still more of a man than some other fellow with two legs. Want me to prove it? No time like the present. Anywhere will do, the patchwork rug by the bed or the bed itself, which has seen a good deal of suffering and menstrual blood in the past and reeks of it pungently. You can't be busy washing the whole time, you have to relax with a good book now and then. Typical, you buy a sewing machine instead of a washing machine. To think how clean we could all be. But what are we? Dirty. But there you are with your new red apron. Snick-snick go the scissors! All that work, done for, just like that. What a mean thing to do.

  Be thankful I'm not doing you bodily harm. I was taught how to. You have to force yourself at first, but then it comes easily, of its own accord. By the way, I've got an idea for a new series of photos, I could make cuts, incisions and little holes in your skin. Or I could use the children's water-colours to get the effect.

  I've been baking, I made you an apricot flan, poor Mumsie tells the children ingratiatingly, seeking sympathy and not finding any. She is counting on education, which prepares the way for understanding and sympathy, and on their hearts, but their hearts have long been missing that particular beat. You invest so much in Rainer and Anna, but all you get back is Rainer and Anna, minus the warmth and affection, and nothing more. There is the flan and there are the glass dishes. I'll put it here, with all the books, there's no room for a fresh flan any more, clear this stuff away, can't you!

  No. Won't. Those books are worth more than any flan. We're just reading about how this existence of ours is valueless. Get lost, Mama, the twins chorus, sending their mother packing. She's unwelcome everywhere, poor soul. This has catastrophic consequences for her general condition.

  Having given their mother a thorough yelling-at, the twins promptly turn to the flan and gobble it all up. This isn't beneath them at all.

  Not a single piece is left for Mama, though she would have liked one too.

  RAINER BELIEVES IT is tantamount to degradation of a woman if she submits to physical contact. You can see this in the case of Mother, who is frequently to be heard shouting for help in the bedroom. But it is out of the question that abnormal acts are being performed upon her and that that is why she's shouting. Relatives have often noticed that Rainer's look isn't normal, perhaps it is because he has witnessed this bedroom business too many times. But he has never watched. His head has always disappeared instantly under the blanket. You see nothing in there, and all you smell is yourself. On occasion Rainer will only take soup and he'll refuse to eat solid fare in spite of the fact that men usually adore hearty food. Anna sometimes eats nothing whatsoever. This may go on for days. When the siblings get up from table after eating no
thing, they lie down together on one of their beds (which have been separated by means of a purpose-built partition wall, he being a boy and she a girl) and screen off the outside world. Rainer writes poems, the better to screen it off. Frequently he sees faces in trees and they inspire him, headcase that he is. He has no friends, only mates, and Rainer, who despises matiness on principle, finds that often they don't behave in maty ways to him. In the case of a writer like Musil, writing is often a graceful act, like a silvery fish leaping; but not with Rainer. In his case it is someone rummaging and then digging his teeth in.

  Every moment, Rainer and Anna are aware that thanks to their parents' having moved to the city they were spared places like Ybbsitz, Laa an der Thaya, Laa an der Pielach or sundry St Michaels. They are glad they don't have to live in the kind of wretched provinciality they know from Grandmother's farm. Anything but that. Where screaming alpine choughs, crows and other vermin claw at trees already seared by winter. Where various clouds go whizzing across the dismal sky, deer call, and reeking Volksschule kids and feeble-minded Hauptschule kids pack their flesh into the mail bus. The poverty bacillus is rife amongst them. A steaming mush of woollens handed down by older siblings.

  They don't have any fate ahead of them, says Rainer, they're already condemned to death even before they're born, and every one of their heads contains the same picture. The picture inside one head is identical to the picture in the next. And to think that this is in the open country, a free country, though there isn't really the least hint of freedom. Dreary landscape stretches away into the rain, you can't see where it ends but it does end, the limits are in the people's heads. The siblings have discovered narrow-mindedness in the city too. And they rejoice in the discovery, because they themselves went beyond those limits some time ago. They have snatched at the bluish umbilical cord of the places they were meant to stay and bitten it through with their sharp teeth. The trickle of blood is dripping off their chins. A pale pair of tongues, Rainer's tongue and Anna's tongue, are licking at it. Soon there won't be a shred of skin left of the natural bounds of birth. Infinite expanses are revealed, with a cold sun like an unbroken yolk in a bowl of milk.