‘Look, I was in Paris. Let’s forget the fact that, after my return, I dared tell no one that I would rather live as a poor man in Paris under a Seine bridge than in our city with an average-sized factory. No one would believe me, I even doubt myself whether it is what I really wanted. But there’s something else I want to tell you. Someone accosts me in the Avenue de l’Opéra. He wants to show me the brothels. Naturally I am cautious; the man seeks to dispel my scruples. He enumerates his clients. He mentions the name of the very Minister with whom I had been negotiating the previous week. He not only names names, he has proof. He shows me letters. Yes, it is the Minister’s handwriting. “Dear Davidowiczi,” writes the Minister, obviously a good friend of Davidowiczi. Why does he call him “Dear”? Because the Minister has a very peculiar perversion. Because day and night he things only of goats, and nothing else. I ask you, goats! And he is not even the Minister of Agriculture! He sets about the negotiations with unbelievable zeal. One feels sure that his department can rely on him. And on what are his thoughts fixed? On animals. Who forbids him to speak of what really concerns him? The decree.’
The manufacturer had hurriedly to rearrange his clothing because of the approach of two ladies. Strange to relate, it was one of the prosaic group with one of the Parisian group. They were discussing clothes; it looked as if the prosaic lady was seeking information from the elegant one.
‘He need not,’ whispered the manufacturer, ‘have spoken as freely about animals to Davidowiczi as he did. He could have referred to them in a roundabout way, for instance to their usefulness in domestic economy. But he did not even do that. Who does? How many things do you think would be uncovered if we could rummage in the closets of each individual — and, more than that, in their innermost secret recesses?
‘When you spoke of the wind, tears came to my eyes. But do you think I would have dared to weep? I dared only bluster.
‘I confess to you that I sometimes go to the cinema just to have a good cry. Yes, the cinema.’
A lady approached, saw Tunda and smiled at him in a gracious, enticing yet aloof manner, as if she held a tape measure in front of her body, as if there were a specific law which laid down that only a certain number of teeth should be exposed when smiling.
‘And were you never homesick?’ she enquired. ‘We used to speak of you occasionally. Because you were missing.’ She inclined her head as she mentioned the word. She found it embarrassing to have to say to a man’s face that he had been missing. It was a painful, possibly even an improper condition to be missing. It was something like telling a living person that he has been taken for dead.
‘Your brother has often told us about you. How you were both in love with your cousin Klara when you came home for Christmas and Easter, and how you almost got angry with each other on that account. And how you said goodbye when you went off to the war (she very nearly said ‘marched’) and kissed your brother who was so grieved that he was compelled to stay at home on account of his leg. Yes, we often spoke of you. Did you sometime think that people might be talking about you, as if …’
She did not finish the sentence. Possibly she had intended to say: ‘As if you were dead.’ But one does not say that to the face of the living.
Franz was astonished by these stories his brother had told.
In any case, the only thing to say to a woman who talks about such things is ‘Let’s sit down!’ So they sat down. The conductor’s house offered many facilities for sitting down; and it was a particular quality of these facilities that one no sooner sat down than one lay back, a usage which seemed to be linked with feminine fashions. The clothes that were worn called for recumbency or, at any rate, they called recumbency to mind. Moreover, a certain renunciation of European customs was evident.
So Tunda sat down with the lady behind the broad brown back of a Buddha, almost as in an arbour, behind wild vines. The lady’s smoothly shaved legs lay side by side like two similarly clad sisters, both in silk sheaths. Tunda laid a hand on one leg, but the lady seemed quite unaware of it. Whenever steps approached she endeavoured to draw away.
Ah, what will one not do for a missing person?
If Tunda had exploited to the full the possibilities afforded by his Siberian glamour and by the solid city of the religious setting, his fate might possibly have been postponed but in no way averted. Whether he turned them to advantage later I do not know.
XX
After the guests had departed, the brothers remained alone in one of the rooms; alone, if one takes no account of pictures, gods and saints. Tunda was unaccustomed to these silent witnesses; and, for my part, I have no use for lackeys who stand behind my chair counting the hairs on my head. There would certainly have been lackeys in the conductor’s house, had it not been for Frau Klara’s social conscience. It was manifestly repugnant to her to degrade men so.
However, this was not the case with the gods.
Furthermore, there was in the room where they sat, installed by Frau Klara, one of those practical inventions which has been called the housewife’s delight.
It was a remarkable lamp, a soft standard lamp whose light emerged through numerous small apertures of equal circumference perforating its fragile transparent body. But the object of this lamp was not so much to illuminate as to devour the smoke which had collected in the room during the course of the evening. This lamp obviated the need for open windows, draughts, chills — and ultimately the doctor. Excellent inventions of this kind are made in Germany and America every year. The conductor, too, was making use of one; that is, he smoked nicotine-free cigarettes. And even their smoke was gobbled up by the magic lamp.
It was a hygienic home without parallel.
‘Good night!’ said Klara, after she had installed the lamp, coming over to give her husband a hearty kiss on the forehead. It was a sex-free kiss, devoid of eroticism. Franz received a similar one, but nevertheless found himself somewhat aroused. He pushed back his chair and endeavoured to stand up, but his sister-in-law pressed him down by his shoulders.
So now the two brothers were left alone and had to converse for the first time.
The conductor, who was well-known for his skill in glossing over difficult overtures, was the first to utter and sensibly chose a neutral topic:
‘How does our town strike you?’
Nothing is so contagious as polite sociability. Franz suppressed the most important and major part of his opinion and replied:
‘I had pictured it as gayer, more lively, more Rhenish in fact.’
It has a pleasant and peaceable population. The working class is not so radicalized here as elsewhere. The Lord Mayor is a member of the German People’s Party, the Burgomaster and his deputy are Social Democrats. The are even five members of the Social Democratic Party in my orchestra. The bass-player is very good, in fact.’
‘What’s so surprising about that?’ asked Franz. ‘Why should the Party prevent anyone from being a good bass-player?’
‘Certainly!’ said the conductor. ‘Political activity is unfavourable to art. Art is something sacred, something separate from daily life. Whoever serves it practises an almost priestly vocation. Can you conceive of anyone delivering a political speech and then conducting Parsifal?’