10

George Shtift cultivated a thin moustache, composed of wisps of honey-coloured hair on his long face, and smoked short, fat Cuban cigars. All was well with Herr George Shtift. The business — thank God! — was doing well. The rest too. Gertrude and Erna — no complaints. As for the little peccadillo that had given him a few pleasant hours — the painted woman in the Ritz Hotel in Klagenfurt — a harmless distraction, no more. Such things only strengthened the ties between husband and wife. Hadn’t someone already said that family life needed to be aired every now and then to prevent it from growing stale, ha ha. George Shtift leaned back at his ease and dwelled pleasantly on the details of that episode in Klagenfurt. He puffed on his cigar.

Her head on her hand, Erna looked down at the book lying unread on the table in front of her. From time to time she cast a penetrating glace at Rost and her mother, who were making conversation in indifferent, insincere tones about some public scandal that had recently been chewed over ad nauseam in the press. The real relations between them were kept under lock and key in another room in the house, and did not infiltrate this banal conversation by so much as a single glance.

George Shtift removed himself from the room in the Ritz Hotel and the arms of the woman in question, and spared a magnanimous thought for Rost. Not a disagreeable young man, and wise beyond his years in the ways of the world.

‘What do you have in mind to study, Herr Rost, if I may be permitted to ask?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘I myself studied law. Five semesters, and then I fell in love, isn’t that so, Trudy?’ He smiled at his wife. ‘I didn’t want to wait. I did not have unlimited means at my disposal, and then by a lucky chance I was offered a good job. I can tell you that I have never regretted it. In your case, I take it, the question of means presents no problems.’

‘No problems.’

‘And you are not about to fall in love.’

‘Why do you think that I’m not about to fall in love?’

‘In the first place, there is only one Trudy in the world, and she is already taken. Full stop. And secondly, you don’t look like someone who loses his head easily. Aren’t I right, Trudy?’

‘Please stop making tedious jokes.’

‘This time you’ve missed your aim, Herr Shtift,’ said Rost, half in earnest and half in jest, looking at the unlit cigarette in his hand, ‘because I am already in love, and precisely with that woman who has no equal in the world.’

Herr Shtift laughed loudly and complacently. ‘In that case, my dear young man, I pity you, for all your aspirations in that direction are doomed to fail.’

‘And I pity myself too.’

‘Let me tell you something, my friend — since you have only just started to take your first steps in life, allow a man of some experience to give you a word of advice. There are some women who are wayward by nature, and there are some who aren’t. To some extent it depends on the husband. There are some husbands whose wives will never deceive them. Never!’ He emphasised the last word with a gesture that dismissed any argument in advance.

‘To my regret.’

‘That’s all there is to say! Aren’t I right, Trudy?’

Gertrude gave her husband a contemptuous look, which he failed to notice. In a bored tone of voice she said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’

Erna no longer pretended to read but took in every word and every glance with a tense expression. What a despicable game! What falsity! Her anger against her mother mounted, against her only, and she had to restrain herself with all her strength from hurling the words at the three of them like bombshells: Liars! Scoundrels! You’re weaving a web of lies! But I know the truth! I know everything! And she couldn’t suppress a feeling of contempt for her father, which contained perhaps a hint of the contempt felt by her mother — contempt for the deceived, the defeated, the weak; for this father whom up to now she had loved with a simple, natural, unquestioning love. He had always been there, a solid, undeniable fact, surrounding her with love and kindness, and she had loved him back. She had never considered him superior to others, better than them. He was her father and she loved him. And now, all of a sudden, he had become small and ridiculous in his complacency, his fatuous self-confidence. At that moment a void seemed to come into being around her. These two people who had been her parents grew ever more distant, completely strange to her, like figures on a movie screen. There was an unbridgeable gulf between them. She was all by herself, without a refuge. And Rost, the only one who could save her, was together with them in their conspiracy, and he took no notice of her.

In some obscure reluctance to abandon the subject, George Shtift continued, ‘And so let me urge you to turn your attention elsewhere, because here, you see, your efforts are in vain. Why waste time on a lost cause!’

Rost said piously: ‘But such matters cannot be decided by cold logic. When matters of the heart are at stake, a man has no more control over himself than a sacrificial lamb.’

‘You should be pitied, my friend; that’s all I can say to you.’

‘So there’s no hope?’ Rost refused to give in.

‘Hope! You see that wall across the street?’ Shtift pointed at the window. ‘It would be like trying to make a hole in it with your fingernails! The same thing exactly!’

Gertrude rang for the maid to serve coffee and various sweetmeats. The Saturday evening crept on. George Shtift slurped his coffee noisily. In a good mood improved even further by the young man’s certain failure, he suggested that they all go to a fashionable café with a band — including Erna. Her attempts to excuse herself on the grounds of tiredness were in vain. Her father had just returned home today after an absence of almost a month. Surely she would not deprive him of the pleasure of spending a delightful evening in the bosom of his family, especially since tomorrow was a Sunday and she would be able to stay in bed as long as she liked. Apart from which, she was already a grown-up girl, ‘isn’t that so, Herr Rost?’ The latter nodded. And she didn’t have to go to sleep with the chickens; she was permitted to change her habits and go out once in a while with her parents to a café. Gertrude, on the other hand, responded eagerly to her husband’s suggestion and went to get dressed. She could already taste the disagreeable taste of the coming night, when she would be alone with her husband, and she wanted to postpone it and keep it as short as possible, since she could not wipe it out entirely.

Outside, a warm drizzle, fine as dust, was falling. The street lamps were misty; their light seemed sifted through a sieve. Erna was sent back inside to fetch an umbrella while the others waited in the entrance. The pavement grew dark. The light wind brought intermittent gusts of a vague, distant smell of linden trees.

It happened that Erna found herself walking with Rost, at a little distance behind her parents. She took advantage of the moment to whisper to him: ‘You’re completely shameless!’

‘What makes you say so?’

‘You know yourself.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘And a coward into the bargain.’

‘You may be right.’

‘Tell me, Herr Rost, won’t you be looking for another room soon?’

‘I don’t think so; my room suits me very well indeed.’

‘But you’re in the way here. Haven’t you realised yet that you’re in the way?’

‘I must admit that I haven’t.’

‘And now that you know, what will you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What insufferable impertinence!’

‘It’s up to your mother.’

‘But when you’re told to your face that you’re not wanted,’ she said furiously, ‘yes, absolutely unwanted! Don’t you have a grain of self-respect?’

‘Listen, Fräulein Erna,’ said Rost earnestly. He even took her hand, which felt feverishly hot, but Erna immediately withdrew it. ‘There’s no need to get upset. I’m a little different from the person you imagine. We’ll still be real friends, you’ll see.’ In the meantime they had reached their destination. Rost only said: ‘Good. We’ll come back to this later.’

In the big, crowded café they threaded their way through the tables until they found a suitable spot. On the stage an ungainly conductor displayed a shining bald pate to his audience. With barely a gesture he coaxed the tempestuous notes of a fashionable operetta from the band. When he turned round to bow to the applause, all that could be seen of his face was a hairy moustache and a monocle. George Shtift, still in high spirits, urged Rost to order kirsch. He held the floor alone. Gertrude hardly spoke, and Rost confined himself to the responses demanded by politeness. All this time Shtift behaved towards Rost with a kind of exaggerated concern, like a person known to be ill who needed to be handled with kid gloves. It seemed that he was grateful to Rost for his lack of success, which confirmed his own sense of self-worth and underlined his happiness. While Rost thought to himself: What an idiot.

He was already feeling bored to tears in the family circle; but for the music, which made conversation unnecessary, he would have taken off on some plausible excuse. From time to time he caught a stolen glance, full of desire, from Gertrude. Looking round the room he suddenly saw Peter Dean sitting a few tables away with a man he didn’t know. He got up immediately and went over to greet him.

Dean welcomed him gladly. He introduced him to his companion — a man called Shtanz, with a stern, stiff face — and invited him to join them. Rost apologised, saying that he could only stay for a few minutes, since he was there with his landlord’s family. To this, Dean said jokingly: ‘I see you are getting used to the idea of becoming a family man, and losing no time about it.’

‘Soon.’ Rost laughed.

‘My Franz will be grateful to you. I was going to send him to you with a letter early tomorrow morning. You are invited to my home for lunch. Now that I have met you, he won’t have to go.’ And after a moment: ‘And how are you spending your time?’

‘Quite well. Every day has its charms.’

‘Yes, it’s clear that you’re not dying of boredom.’

‘Absolutely not. I’m too curious.’

‘At your age,’ Shtanz opened his mouth for the first time, his voice low, his speech confident, assertive, and brooking no doubt, ‘the world is wide and varied. Over the course of the years it grows narrower and its colours grow darker. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.’

The band now began to play a wild czardas, and Rost stood up and took his leave.

‘Why, that’s Dean, the American you were just talking to,’ George Shtift exclaimed admiringly when Rost returned. ‘I congratulate you on knowing him. Peter Dean is a millionaire, one of the richest men in the country! Anyone in his good graces has nothing to worry about.’

Rost did not reply. He glanced at Erna, whose fingers were drumming nervously on the table as if of their own accord, and who was looking distractedly into space. What fire! A veritable volcano! She bore no resemblance to her bloodless father, at any rate. Perhaps more to her mother. She would wreak havoc on her surroundings!

Suddenly he felt a wave of affection for this girl, in the turmoil of adolescent upheaval and her tempestuous emotions. His face softened. A quiet smile even crossed his lips. Now he was no longer bored by his company. He even began to feel a certain closeness to George Shtift with his Cuban, humming softly and contentedly to the music through his nose. He picked up the glass in front of him automatically and drank the dregs of the kirsch. The cool, honeyed drink, distilling the essence of a secret world of vivid images, uprooted from ordinary, material reality, and planted in another reality, perhaps more intense and authentic, gave rise in him as if by magic to one certainty: this girl was meant for him, and she would be his.

‘The band isn’t at all bad,’ he said to George Shtift.

‘Not at all.’

It was already close to midnight. Shtift called the waiter. It had stopped raining in the meantime. Among the tattered clouds a few stars were even shining here and there, washed clean as new. At the edges of the park, the leaves of the trees arching over the fence scattered belated raindrops. Shtift went on humming to himself the last tune played by the band. He still bore the smell of the café, foreign to the rinsed, fragrant air outside. Gertrude, walking next to Rost, took advantage of an unguarded moment to whisper to him: ‘I’m so sad. If only you knew how sad I was.’ Rost said nothing. He took hold of her hand in secret and squeezed it. Apart from these whispered words, nobody said anything all the way home. Next to the entrance Rost said goodnight: he wanted to go for a little walk on this glorious night.

In Gertrude’s heart, something seemed to be suddenly torn from its place. She felt as if he were leaving her forever, never to return. She was overcome by weakness, as if she were about to faint, and only by an exhausting effort was she able to climb the steps, with the sound of the receding Rost’s sure, resolute footsteps echoing relentlessly in her mind. Gertrude was left alone, alone to the point of despair.