Franz himself should really have become a musician. But old Major Tunda failed to appreciate the musical gifts of his younger son. He was a soldier, for him a musician was a military bandmaster, a civilian functionary attached to the Army by an ordinary contract, always in the embarrassing position of being subject to dismissal with a meagre pension entitlement if things went wrong. The Major would have liked to have made one son into a civil servant, the other into an officer.
George fell down one day, broke his leg, and was to limp for the rest of his life. He was unable thereafter to attend school regularly. Franz had received some musical instruction and wanted to become a musician. But as his brother’s illness was very expensive, and as the Major had in any case lost interest in George because of his infirmity, he decided that George should have the music lessons from then on.
On grounds of economy Franz entered the Cadet School.
In those days Franz hated his brother. He envied him the good fortune of having fallen and broken his leg. He wanted to quit the Cadet School at any price. He hoped that he too might fall over one day and break a leg or an arm. He did not worry about what would happen afterwards. At the very least he wished for heart-disease. He thought himself very crafty. But the outcome of his exertions was the delight of his teachers and his father and excellent prospects for a military career.
The greater his success at the Cadet School, the stronger grew his hatred for his brother. Meanwhile George studied at the musical academy. Both brothers had to go home for the Christmas and Easter holidays. They slept in the same room, ate at the same table, and did not say a word to each other. They differed markedly in outward appearance. Franz took after his father, George after his mother. It is possible that it was because of his infirmity and the necessity to keep to his room, because of solitude and introspection and preoccupation with books, that he acquired the melancholy expression which is characteristic of so many Jews and sometimes gives them a superior air. But Franz, because of his mode of life, was able to suppress any tragic predisposition which he might have inherited from his Jewish mother. Moreover, I am prepared to concede that a man’s occupation may have a greater influence on his features than his race. (I have even seen anti-semitic librarians who might easily have passed for ministers in some Western Jewish synagogue without being at all conspicuous.)
So the two brothers were not on speaking terms.
It was my friend Franz who was the originator of this sullen silence. For George, as will soon be apparent, was of a conciliatory nature. He was the pampered darling of his mother and Franz envied him this almost more than his lame leg. He would gladly have lived in the warm proximity of his mother rather than in the arid, indifferent, alcoholic atmosphere which enveloped his father. Any praise from his father distressed him. Any caress that George might receive from his mother distressed him even more.
Franz particularly remembered holiday mealtimes in the parental household, and sometimes talked about them. There he sat, to the left of his father, opposite his mother; George sat next to his mother, opposite cousin Klara who went to a high-school in Linz and was in love with George. One might well have imagined that, in the eyes of a young girl, a crippled musician would be less important than a healthy stout-hearted cadet. But this was not so. Girls, especially those who attend high-schools with their particular emphasis on gymnastics and excursions, are captivated more by those who limp than by those who ride horses, and more by the musical than by the martial. This situation changed only during the four years of the World War, when music, gymnastics and nature, together with their male and female devotees, were drawn into the service of the Fatherland. But at the period of the silent mealtimes in Tunda’s home the world was still far from war. Franz had reason enough to envy George.
It sometimes happened that they woke at the same time in the room they shared. Their eyes would meet, nothing would have been easier than for one to say ‘Good morning’ to the other. For so declared was their enmity that it had become almost remote, capable of being forgotten overnight — and, if not forgotten, by no means increased. But then one or other would remember — usually Franz, who would at once turn his back and go back to sleep until his brother had dressed and left the room.
XIV
After the war George married his cousin.
He married his cousin from lack of imagination, because it was convenient, because it was expected of him, out of good manners and friendly conciliation, and also for practical reasons — for she was the rich daughter of a rich landed proprietor. Only a man lacking in imagination could have married her, for she was one of those women who are labelled ‘good friends’, who give a man support rather than love. They can be turned to good use by anyone who happens to be a mountaineer or a cyclist or a circus acrobat or even a cripple in a wheelchair. But what a normal man is to make of them I have always failed to understand.
Klara — I find the very name revealing — was a good friend. Her hand resembled her name; it was so simple, so healthy, so trustworthy, so dependable, so honest, that it lacked only calluses; it was the hand of a gymnastics instructor. Whenever she had to greet a man, Klara feared that he might kiss her hand. So she developed the habit of giving a quite special handshake, a stout and resolute handshake which depressed a man’s entire forearm — the handshake in itself was a gymnastic exercise from which one emerged invigorated. In Germany and England, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, in many Protestant countries, there are women who clasp a man’s hand in this fashion. It is a demonstration in favour of equal rights for the sexes and of hygiene, it is an important aspect of humanity’s battle against germs and gallantry.
Klara’s legs were matter-of-fact straight legs, legs for hiking, in no sense instruments of love — rather of sport, without calves. It seemed an indefensible luxury that they were sheathed in silk stockings. Somewhere she must have had knees — I always used to imagine that somewhere they must merge into thighs; it would hardly be possible for stockings to grow into panties just like that. But so it was, and Klara was no creature of love. True, she had something resembling a bosom, but it served only as a container for her practical goodness; whether it held a heart, who can tell?
My conscience is not very clear over this description of Klara. For it seems to me sinful to judge one of the most virtuous persons I have ever met principally on the grounds of her secondary sexual characteristics. It goes without saying that she was virtuous; what else could she be? She had a child, naturally by her own husband, the conductor — and although it is in no way a sin but, on the contrary, a virtue to have children by one’s own husband, Klara’s legitimate honourable pregnancy seemed like an escapade, and when she suckled the child it was like the eighth wonder, anomalous and sinful at the same time.
Moreover, the child — it was a girl — could ride a bicycle in her fourth year.
Klara had acquired and inherited her social sense from her father, the rich landed proprietor. Social sense is a luxury which the rich allow themselves and which has the further practical advantage of serving, to some extent, to maintain property. Her father loved to drink a little glass of wine with his head forester, to take a brandy with the forester, and to exchange a word with the assistant forester. Even social sense is able to make subtle distinctions. He would never allow any of his servants to pull on his boots, he used a bootjack out of common decency. His children had to wash in snow in the winter, travel the long road to school alone, climb up to their pitch-dark rooms at eight o’clock and make their own beds. Nowhere in the neighbourhood were domestic servants better treated. Klara had to iron her vests with her own hands. In short, the old man was a man of principle and fibre, a virtuous landowner, a living defence against socialism, respected far and wide and elected to the Reichstag, where he demonstrated as a member of a conservative party that reaction and humanity are not irreconcilable opposites.