Naturally, this game could not go on forever. One day, as Geib stood brooding, half turned away from the car, I shook my head wordlessly, refusing to take aim even though Wolf Goldmann poked me in the ribs, egging me on. I must admit that I made little effort to stop him when he finally took the slingshot from my hand, picked up one of the pellets which I had placed in front of me, inserted it into the loop, drew the powerful elastic taut, and shot.
I assumed he would not hit the target. But he was so wide of the mark that the pellet struck the middle of the windshield. The glass shattered in a narrow cobweb of cracks around a core of gravelly splinters.
Now, it was almost impossible for Geib not to discover us at our skylight. Even though we tried to scramble away behind the barn wall, he quickly spotted us and shouted and it was useless to hide. Shamefaced, we climbed down the ladder he had put up to get to us. “I’d like to tell Uncle Hubert myself that it was me,” I said to him — less out of generosity than because I knew it would make our iniquity more forgivable if I were the wrongdoer rather than the Jewish boy from the village. “I’m sorry,” I said to Geib. “I didn’t mean to break anything.”
But I had reckoned without Wolf. “What are you?” he snapped. “My guardian? Are you totally meshuggeh?” His ram-face was as red and twisted as if he were holding it very close to a strong fire. “Get a load of the goyish heroism! What’s the big deal, a piece of glass! My father’ll pay for it.”
“You just explain that to his lordship!” said Geib, and took his arm.
“Hands off or I’ll scream till the whole village comes running!” said Wolf Goldmann. “You think I won’t go on my own? I’m scared maybe? Oy gevalt!” He swiftly took the lead, heading straight for my relatives’ house.
In the salon, where Geib had us wait, Wolf broke into giggles again: “The horns!” He pointed at the hunting trophies on the wall. “If I were you people, I wouldn’t hang them up so publicly.”
I did not understand what he meant. I did not know the figurative meaning of horns or what he was alluding to. But I felt as if I were seeing them all for the first time: the menacingly lowered horns and antlers of doe and stag and chamois all around us, the stuffed wood grouse with fanned-out tails, and the shiny razors of wild boar. Never before had I sensed the barbarity that dragged such Stone Age flaunting of power and ability into the twentieth century. At the time, of course, this was more a feeling than a thought I could verbalize. Nor did I have any chance to reflect upon it, for my friend Wolf had discovered Aunt Sophie’s grand piano, and he emitted an appreciative whistle through his teeth. “A genuine Bösendorfer! What’s it doing here?”
He opened the lid and struck one or two chords; then, without turning around, he pulled the piano stool over with his foot, sat down, and began to play — with a virtuosity that took my breath away.
Uncle Hubert apparently was not at home, and Geib had got hold of Aunt Sophie to call us wrongdoers to account. She entered, halted in the middle of the room, waited until the Wunderkind Goldmann had finished playing, then walked toward him, and said, “You do that very well. How long have you been playing and whom are you studying with?” She used an old-fashioned form of “you” which was generally reserved for inferiors.
Wolf Goldmann did not even go to the trouble of turning his head toward her. “Chopin always makes an impression on laymen,” he said over his shoulder. “At the moment, I’m working on Brahms.”
He struck a few measures, but paused, closed the lid, swung around on the revolving stool, and looked freely into Aunt Sophie’s eyes: “I smashed the windshield on your car.”
“I know,” said Aunt Sophie. “But first, stand up and say good day properly; then we can go on with our conversation.”
“Formalities,” said Wolf with a theatrical sigh, but he did get to his feet. And to my amazement, Aunt Sophie laughed and said, “You will have to learn them all the same. And now, answer my questions. How long have you been playing and whom are you studying with?”
I was subsequently to make the acquaintance of a new feeling I had never known before: jealousy born of envy. It was ugly, it inspired all sorts of nasty thoughts and wishes, and, if it did not piercingly drive me to self-torment, it left me with an empty soul which was again invaded by that hazy and urgent yearning: skushno.
Aunt Sophie developed a true passion for young Goldmann. He was in the house every day; no sooner had we finished our second breakfast than he was sitting at the grand piano in the salon, and he practiced all morning, during which time everyone — aside from myself — was busy elsewhere. At midday, he vanished but was back again in the early afternoon, and he played until Aunt Sophie had finished her daily rounds. Then, when she had changed for the evening and appeared in the salon with the glowing face of a woman happy in love, on went the stormy tumult of the notes. Occasionally she would intervene to demonstrate an interpretation of her own, but mostly she would drop her hands and say, “Of course, I’m completely out of practice!” It sounded pious, as if she were illuminated by the promise that this boy had outdistanced her in order to achieve far greater things than she could ever have done. Almost blushing, with the happy self-renunciation of a lover, she added, “I only wanted to show you how I’d heard Liszt play this when I was a girl.”
It was obvious even to me, a thirteen-year-old, that all the wishes, dreams, and hopes of her youth, buried for a lifetime, had gained new, tangible, blood-warm life in this red-haired boy. And when Uncle Hubi’s eyes met mine or mine his, they clearly mirrored his regret at losing the familial unity and intimacy of our stirring national song soirées — losing them to something with a loftier status than our heartfelt musical bungling but which left us out entirely. Beyond this, however, we were bound by manly agreement not to interfere with Aunt Sophie, indeed, to strengthen and assist her and perhaps at some point protect her from herself. And at such times, of course, we could read in the other’s gaze physical disgust at the Jewish brat, who had managed “insidiously” (as the ironical Stiassny was to put it), “by utilizing the blandishments of Aryan tonal art,” to throw off balance this exemplary, warmhearted, prudent woman who stood so solidly in life.
It was almost uncanny to sense Stiassny watching me, to sense all he seemed to know about my feelings — and not just Stiassny, either, but just about everyone in the house, with the old butler Geib in the lead, except for Aunt Sophie, who was blind to everything. Bizarre scenes, whose tension was virtually woven from the resonance of the events, kept everyone fascinated, yet not the two oblivious protagonists at the center, Aunt Sophie and Wolf Goldmann, “the lovers.”
Occasionally, for example, intense practice of a single passage would drag on even though Geib had long since announced dinner, and he would stand at the door to the dining room while Uncle Hubi tactfully inserted little coughs in the pauses during the tempest of sound, or ultimately almost whined, “Sophie, dinner’s been ready for almost half an hour.” But his efforts were in vain. All of us, even Stiassny, were under something like a spell, which weighted down our movements and gave each look so much meaning that no one dared glance at anyone else.
The mood would intensify until Aunt Sophie finally observed that it was enough for today; then she would turn to Geib and say impatiently, “Isn’t dinner ready yet?” And when Geib answered that it was probably being warmed up for the second time, she would rejoin, “Set a place for young Goldmann!”