9

The Koblers lived in a large apartment whose many rooms were all luxuriously furnished. They were rich. Herr Kobler, fifty years old with an imperial beard strewn with grey, a Moravian Jew born in Vienna, bought and sold shares on the stock exchange, trading in abstract bushels of wheat that nobody had ever seen and that existed only on paper. He had a company called Kobler Brothers, Export and Import (the firm was named Kobler Brothers for the purposes of reinforcement alone, since he himself was the only brother — the others had never been born). Somewhere or other he had a large country estate that he never visited, and a handsome villa in Ischl, where they spent the summer months almost every year, unless they went to the seaside or abroad. He was preparing to receive the title of court councillor and sometimes, for his private enjoyment, he would try on the anticipated title in advance: ‘Herr Hofrat Heinrich Kobler, eh, Emmy?’

His wife, Emmy, was a Christian from a poor family, and had married Kobler because ‘the Jews have money’. She considered herself superior to him on account of her Christian origins, but the truth of the matter was that she was not an ill-natured woman. Her sole ambition now was to hang on to her long-lost youth, to cling to it with all her might, and her movements and exaggerated girlish laughter made an unnatural and grotesque impression. She did not allow herself to show any sign of weariness, and when it sometimes happened that someone in her company complained of being tired, she would immediately exclaim, ‘I’m never tired — I haven’t reached that stage yet, thank God!’ while all those present thought to themselves: The old hag!

But her husband would see her when she woke up in the morning, crumpled and wrinkled, without the armour of her cosmetics and outfits in the latest fashion, and he kept a little blonde mistress who cost him a few hundred kronen a month and with whom he spent the afternoon three times a week. He was in the habit of remarking, ‘My wife, Emmy, who comes from an aristocratic family …’ until in the course of time he came to believe it himself. As far as possible he avoided the company of Jews and sought that of non-Jews, especially those with titles. He would emphasise their titles when addressing them, conveying an impression of humble gratitude and pride at the privilege of rubbing shoulders with them and being counted as one of them. He donated generously to Christian charities, especially those that could buy him fame. But his close friends and those who took his money would refer to him behind his back as ‘that Jew bastard’.

Apart from Friedel, they had a twelve-year-old son, Johann Wolfgang — after Goethe, because Heinrich Kobler loved classic poetry and Goethe in particular, and giving this name to his son expressed his admiration for the poetic genius on the one hand, and constituted a sly nudge to fate on the other. But Johann Wolfgang Kobler paid no attention whatsoever to his father’s secret intentions and was a boringly average boy. He did not distinguish himself in anything, apart from, perhaps, the snub nose and colourless hair he inherited from his mother, which in themselves were regarded as a great advantage by his father, whose family was afflicted with black hair and typically Semitic noses. Johann Wolfgang struggled from one grade to the next only by dint of exhaustive labour, with his body, as it were, preceding his head. Johann Wolfgang Kobler was like a swimmer advancing with great effort, only to be pushed back to his starting point by a new wave, again and again. His friends at school called him by the nickname Wolf, to his father’s secret sorrow. And one more little detail that added to the father’s sorrow: his son chose, as if to spite him, to befriend precisely the Jewish boys, and there was no way to stop him. Although Heinrich hinted obliquely at his displeasure with these friendships whenever the opportunity rose, he could not speak plainly and explain his reasons in so many words.

Erna arrived at the Koblers’ after supper. The parents had gone out, as they usually did on every evening of the week except for Thursdays, when they received guests at home. Friedel and the others welcomed her with glad cries. They were sitting in the drawing room, and Karl Greener was playing the piano. Without stopping, he turned his head and waved his hand. He was playing a piece by Schubert. When he finished he swivelled round on the piano stool, with his face to the room. He reached for an apple from the bowl of fruit on a nearby shelf, and began to eat it ostentatiously. He looked at Erna, who was sitting close by with a rather impudent air, and she made to turn her head away, but changed her mind halfway and stared back at him with a mocking look. She didn’t like him.

‘So you like eating apples.’

‘Yes, I like eating apples.’

‘A praiseworthy characteristic.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Apart from which, you have a great future too — Friedel herself told me so.’

‘I have a great future too.’

‘I don’t like great futures.’ She pulled a face. ‘I prefer people with a present.’

Karl Greener suddenly leaned forward and thrust his face into hers. ‘Yes, yes. I want to paint you with exactly that expression.’

‘Paint me? You? Not on your life.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t want to.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that.’ He crossed his legs with an arrogant expression and lit a cigarette.

On the sofa Friedel laughed and chatted vivaciously with Willy Martin and his sister Suzie. Next to them sat a silent, bashful boy who had been introduced to Erna when she arrived as Fritz Anker. He looked as if he were trying as hard as he could to efface himself. Occasionally he smiled a shy, detached smile that was unrelated to the conversation. He was extremely short-sighted and wore glasses with very thick lenses. From time to time he sat up straight, simply out of embarrassment, and immediately sank back into the low sofa. His movements were heavy, embarrassed, rather clumsy, and resembled those of a tired old man. His very being seemed somehow dim. Everything about him was tenuous, vague, uncertain, and even his age was hard to tell. He must have been about eighteen, but he could have been thirty. He had no sign of a moustache or beard — nothing grew on his face. And nevertheless it was old, the colour of parchment. He moved away to make space for Erna, who came to sit beside him.

‘Are you bored?’ she asked him.

‘Bored? No, as a matter of fact, I’m not bored.’ He smiled, showing large, yellow, uneven teeth. Then he added: ‘But I can tell that Fräulein Erna … how shall I put it … is not altogether here; that her thoughts are somewhere else.’

‘That my thoughts are somewhere else?’

‘I can tell.’

‘I think you’re mistaken.’

‘That’s possible too; I am often mistaken.’

‘In that case you should hold your tongue.’

‘Quite right. I usually hold my tongue for fear of saying something stupid, and in the end I say it, and it sounds even stupider than I thought it would.’

‘And do you think that other people always speak words of wisdom?’

‘More than I do, at any rate.’

‘Not at all. They’re simply less modest.’

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to his hands, which were exquisitely delicate and beautiful, slender with very long fingers. Perhaps somewhat feminine. The hands seemed to sense her eyes on them, and the fingers started drumming nervously on their owner’s thighs. One glance at these hands was enough to ensure that they would never be forgotten, and the same was true of his entire person, with all its ugliness.

‘Your hands … it seems to me that hands like these could never do any harm.’

‘I … I’m very ugly.’

‘Yes.’ She gave him a quick glance as if to confirm the truth of her observation. ‘I mean, perhaps you’re not so ugly. You’re just different.’

Willy Martin took out a packet of cigarettes and the girls practised smoking, laughing and pulling faces. Friedel persuaded Erna to try too, but after two or three puffs she was overcome by a fit of coughing and threw the cigarette away to general merriment. Afterwards they played party games, and Erna found herself having to kiss Karl Greener, of all people, as a penalty. Johann Wolfgang, in yellow pyjamas, joined in the laughter through a crack in the half-open door, until Friedel saw him and sent him back to bed. He obeyed with sulky reluctance. Willy Martin, with his short bull-neck, whispered something in Karl Greener’s ear, and they both looked lewdly at Erna.

Erna was seized by a powerful urge to tease Greener. She turned to him. ‘So you want to paint me?’

‘To kiss you too.’

‘Ah!’

‘Especially the latter.’

‘Wishes that will never be fulfilled.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes, I do. So there.’

‘I can wait.’ Greener laughed self-confidently.

‘You’ll have to put another head on your shoulders first.’

‘No, with my own head.’

‘Don’t quarrel, children,’ Friedel intervened.

All this time Suzie Martin did not take her eyes off Karl Greener, her protuberant fish eyes in a dull, boring face. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, lacking any charm or particular temperament; when you looked at her the idea of life was instantly diminished in your eyes. It grew narrow, limited, without any point or value. Everything Suzie Martin said and did lacked significance: it failed to move things forward to the slightest degree. From her it was impossible to hope for any surprises; you were doomed to remain in the same place with her forever, as if drowning in a swamp.

Erna turned to look at Fritz Anker, sitting next to her and lost in thought, with a faint, forgotten smile congealed on his lips. For some reason she suddenly remembered her home, her mother, Rost; and her heart contracted. There, now, tonight, the pair of them with no one to disturb them. A surge of hostility towards both of them, especially her mother, rose within her. Now something even more terrible would happen between them when she wasn’t there. As if her being there could serve as some sort of supervision, place a limit on their relations, inhibit them to some extent. She felt a pressing need to hurry home at once, but she remained where she was without moving. In the depths of her heart she knew that it would make no difference. The chatter of the people surrounding her, along with the laughter that flared up from time to time, reached her ears from a distance, as if through a curtain, the words making no sense. She felt sad and discouraged. Life stood before her like a blank, insurmountable wall. She was still very young — she did not know yet that behind this wall there was nothing, absolute nothingness. She did not know that the essence of life was in the seeking.

‘Is he your friend, that Greener?’ she whispered to Fritz Anker.

‘My friend? I wouldn’t say so. I have no friends.’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘I don’t know. He has qualities that arouse in me a sense of wonder, a kind of humility. Because I don’t have them.’

‘But he’s an empty person, without any substance.’

‘It makes no difference. He’ll be happy. In his own eyes he’s without a flaw. He isn’t intelligent enough to be unhappy.’

‘That’s the reason?’

‘He’s full of self-confidence because his brains don’t stand in the way. Popular, likeable, mediocre: he’ll succeed due to this very banality. Sparkling without a spark of inspiration.’

Erna stood up. ‘Do you know how to dance?’ she asked Anker loudly.

‘No, I don’t.’ He smiled a helpless, bashful smile.

‘Come on, I’ll teach you.’

‘No, I’d rather not … it would be too grotesque.’

‘Don’t be such an idiot! Friedel, go and play something. A waltz.’ She beckoned Karl Greener and began whirling around with him.

‘You’re beautiful, Erna,’ he whispered as they danced.

‘Not for you, at any rate.’

‘Why not? Are you trying to tell me that you prefer that orangutan Fritz Anker? Would you really rather kiss him than me?’

‘Keep your mind on the dance! The rest is none of your business.’ She extricated herself from his arms and pounced on Fritz Anker and kissed him quickly on the lips, to his great embarrassment. Then she sank onto the sofa next to him, as if exhausted. A mean, twisted smile crossed Greener’s face.

‘Please be so good as to pass me a pear, Herr Greener,’ said Erna.

Wordlessly he handed her a pear.

‘Thank you! You’re a real gentleman!’ she said mockingly.

Friedel turned to look over her shoulder as she played the piano. ‘Isn’t anybody dancing?’ she said, and stopped in the middle of a chord, which went on echoing in their ears for a few seconds.

People got up to go; it was already half-past eleven. Friedel drew Erna by her side to see them on their way. Outside there was a pleasant coolness in the air. Karlsplatz was deserted, still, and spellbound. The church rose at its side, grey and stern, its columns and crosses silvery in the moonlight. The square itself was suffused with a suppressed, vibrant yearning, not for anything in particular; but the buildings surrounding it were lifeless, and the trees in its little garden were withdrawn and motionless. They seemed to Erna like faithful guardians whose protection would never fail. She could have wept for no particular reason, without even feeling particularly sad, as she walked next to the silent Fritz Anker, smiling his groping, uncertain smile.

To his distress, his never-ending efforts to efface himself and avoid attracting attention usually led to the opposite result, but there was nothing he could do to change the situation. He always felt uncomfortable in his own skin, as if he were suffering from some physical ailment that caused him constant pain. He hated his long, ungainly body, his myopic eyes, his naked face, his glasses. He was ready to admire any empty-headed dandy with easy manners and a smooth, uninhibited, self-confident way of talking, even though he was well aware of who and what they were. But the girls were attracted to them, to these smooth-talking, empty-headed dandies, and not to him, Fritz Anker, who sailed through his courses on philosophy and the history of literature, who was the only son of wealthy parents, and who had plenty of money to spend. True, money could buy things, money made up for a lot, but he did not want to buy. He wanted a freely given gift, love for his own sake, because in spite of his ugliness he was a living, feeling human being, who was himself and nobody else. Someone else could have his philosophy and all the rest of it in exchange for a little bit of simple, earthly, human love. He didn’t need anything but that. Not even the vast fortune he stood to inherit from his father.

When this Erna had kissed him before — was he fool enough to imagine that this kiss was meant for him and not to spite somebody else? Perhaps Karl Greener, or perhaps someone who wasn’t even there? What wouldn’t he have given to believe that the kiss was meant for him alone, without any ulterior motives. Nevertheless, she was a marvellous girl.

‘It’s a pity I can’t love you,’ Erna suddenly blurted out.

‘No surprises, a man like me …’

‘A man like you more than a thousand others, but not me.’

The possibility had not even occurred to him.

‘But I want you to remain my friend. My friend — yes?’

‘I’d be delighted.’

‘You are permitted to fall in love with me a little too. But only in secret, of course, without making it obvious. All right?’

‘Done.’

‘Good.’

On the way back with Friedel they bumped into her parents not far from the entrance to their building. Erna greeted them with a little girl’s curtsey. Heinrich Kobler removed the aromatic cigar in its amber holder from between his teeth, and said in a paternal tone: ‘Ah, good evening, Fräulein Erna, excellent! And at home — is all well? Excellent!’

They did not tarry with her parents and retired at once to Friedel’s room.

‘You looked so beautiful tonight,’ said Friedel as she undressed. ‘Didn’t you notice how Karl was devouring you with his eyes?’

‘No, I didn’t notice.’

‘I wish I were as beautiful as you.’ Friedel gave up her bed for her friend, and lay down on the couch, where a bed had been made up for her. But she soon moved to the bed and stretched out next to Erna. ‘Guess what,’ she whispered in the dark, with a secret boastfulness in her voice. ‘My father has a mistress.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I once saw them together with my own eyes! A pretty girl. They were coming out of a café. I followed them and I know where she lives.’

‘And your mother doesn’t know?’

‘God forbid! She would claw out his eyes.’ After a short silence she pronounced: ‘Men are apparently all the same. They all cheat on their wives. How about your father?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I bet he does too.’

‘He loves my mother.’

‘So does mine. But that doesn’t stop him.’

‘And your mother?’

‘You mean, does she have a lover too? Not as far as I know.’

For a while they murmured and giggled in the darkness. Friedel nestled against Erna, who made no objections as her friend cupped her breasts in her hands and fondled them. Erna felt a wave of heat sweeping through her; her blood raced, and her heart beat rapidly and loudly. They kissed each other feverishly on their burning, trembling limbs. Friedel’s body clung more and more tightly to Erna, a soft, smooth body.

‘Oh my sweet, my one and only! How I love you,’ whispered Friedel, and a second later: ‘How does it feel to embrace a lover? Tell me.’

‘I’ve never tried; I don’t have one.’

‘I have. Just a little, not properly, you know. But you’re better than a boy, a thousand times better.’

The two girls trembled like a flickering flame in the depths of the night as if at the bottom of a deep pit, two pulsating little lives merging into one. The silence hovered over them, covering them like a living thing and making the air vibrate both in the room, where the furniture floated like vague shapes in the darkness, and in the stillness outside. The two girls were suddenly new to each other and to themselves. At that moment they were no longer in their fixed, final forms — they had crossed the boundaries of their beings, stretching into infinity, turning into a blind, alien, abstract force, the hidden force that ceaselessly drives nature into being, becoming nature itself. They mingled with each other. Was there anything, any act that was forbidden to them? Who could take it upon himself to forbid or permit? It was the law of nature, and nothing else existed.

Erna did not feel the touch of the bedclothes on her skin, as if there were a gap between her and the bed, as if she were floating above it. But the memory of home lay deep down in her soul, like a muffled pain, and now, when Friedel fell asleep, it began to rise to the surface and take on a concrete shape. She tried to imagine what was happening between them there at this very moment, and now, in the middle of the night, to her confused, excited senses, it all seemed more terrible, more shocking, like a scene in a nightmare. The betrayal, his as well as her mother’s, was directed against her, Erna, and her only.

Suddenly she felt unbearably hot. She threw off the covers, but to no avail. Then she groped her way from the bed to the window and carefully parted the heavy curtains. The little street was deserted, dimly lit by the street lamps. A cat emerged from the darkness, stopped on the verge of the light, and turned its head this way and that, as if seeking something, and then crossed the road at an angle, with unhurried, soundless steps. The whole scene was bathed in the unreality of a dream. It was a little chilly. Cold shivers ran down her spine, but she took no notice. She leaned on the windowsill and looked forlornly into the emptiness. Tears fell from her eyes without her being aware of them. Footsteps rang hollowly in a nearby street, and Erna listened to them unconsciously and followed them with part of her mind until they died away.

She would write him a letter and say:

The world has no value without you. I may be a child but I’m not a child at all. I’ll kiss you every morning on the lobe of your ear and on your eyelids and on the tip of your nose. We’ll drink hot chocolate together with the city spread out at our feet. We’ll love the city together, and we’ll love the winter and we’ll love the summer and we’ll love the autumn, and I, only I, will love my mother. Everything will proclaim your love for me: the walls, the dishes, the air outside. And if you go away it will only be to see me in your imagination, more beautiful, more desirable, and to taste the sweetness of your return, and I’ll quarrel with you a little, to taste the pleasure to making up.

No, she wouldn’t write him anything. Not a single word. Now he was lying in bed with her, body to body, and kissing her, and they were laughing. She didn’t want him. She would tell Karl Greener, that scoundrel, that he could paint her portrait and kiss her. He was an expert at kissing, that Karl Greener; he had said so himself. She burst out laughing strangely and was horrified by her own laughter. She waited tensely to see if her laughter had woken anyone up. No. Everything was as quiet as before. Even quieter.