“I’ve been with her.”
“Where? Why didn’t you bring her back?”
“I didn’t know, Mama. Besides, it was very late.”
“He wants to get you on board somewhere, he said. You have no skills. You can’t keep a wife. I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to get you on board; you’d have to bring some capital with you. And we have nothing. Everything went into those war bonds. So it’s lost, just like the war. This house is all we have left. We could take out a loan on it, he said. You might talk to Dr Kiniower about it. But where are you going to work, and what will you do? Do you even know the first thing about arts and crafts? Your father-in-law seems quite the expert. His lecture about it was more exhaustive than your Elisabeth’s. And who is Professor Jolanth Keczkemet anyway?”
“Szatmary, Mama!” I corrected her.
“Szekely for all I care,” my mother retorted. “So who is she?”
“She has short hair, Mama, and I don’t like her.”
“And Elisabeth is a friend of hers?”
“A very close friend!”
“Very close, you say?”
“Yes, Mama!”
“Ah!” she said. “Then leave her be, boy. I’ve heard about friendships like that. I know. I’ve read things in books, boy. You have no idea how much I know; a boyfriend would have been better. A woman is practically impossible to get rid of. And since when have there been lady professors anyway? What faculty is she in, this Keczkemet?”
“Szatmary, Mama!” I corrected her.
“Have it your own way: Lakatos,” said my mother, on reflection. “How are you going to compete with a lady professor, boy? A wrestler or an actor would be something else!”
How poorly I had known my mother. The old lady who went to the park once a week to “take the air” for two hours at a time, and for the same purpose took a cab to the Praterspitz every month, was fully informed about so-called inverts. What a lot she must have read, how clearly she must have reflected and thought about it in the long and lonely hours she spent at home, propped on her black cane, wandering from one of our dimly lit rooms to the next, so lonely and so rich, so sheltered and so knowledgeable, so remote and so worldly wise! But I had to defend Elisabeth — what would my mother think if I didn’t! She was my wife, I had just come from our embrace, I could still feel the smooth weight of her young breasts in the palms of my hands, still breathe the scent of her body, the image of her features with the blissful half-closed eyes still lived in mine, and on my mouth was pressed the seal of her lips. I had to stand up for her — and as I defended her, I fell in love with her all over again.
“Professor Szatmary,” I said, “doesn’t stand a chance against me. Elisabeth loves me, I am certain of that. Last night, for example. .”
My mother didn’t let me finish: “And today?” she interrupted me. “Today she’s back with Professor Halaszy!”
“Szatmary, Mama!”
“I don’t care what she’s called, boy, you know that perfectly well, stop correcting me the whole time! If you want to live with Elisabeth, you’ll have to keep her. So, as your father-in-law says, you’ll have to take out a loan against our house. What am I saying our house — it’s your house! Then that professor with the bloody name will have to go back to making corals out of pine cones — for the love of God! The flat on the ground floor is empty, four rooms, I think, the janitor
will know. I have something in the bank, I’ll share it with you, ask Dr Kiniower how much there is! And we can share the household. Can Elisabeth cook?”
“I don’t believe so, Mama!”
“I used to be able to,” said my mother. “I expect I can still do some things! But the main thing is that you can live with Elisabeth. And she with you.” She’d stopped saying: your Elisabeth, I took it for a sign of exceptional maternal grace.
“Go out on the town, boy. See your friends! Maybe they’re still alive. How about that? A trip to town?”
“Yes, Mama!” I said, and I went to Stellmacher in the War Ministry to ask after my friends. Stellmacher ought to be still extant. Even if the War Ministry was now just a Department. Stellmacher was bound to be around still.
He was — old, stooped and iron-grey. He sat there, behind his old desk, in his old office. But he was in civilian clothes, in a strange, baggy suit which was much too big for him and had been turned. From time to time he drove a couple of fingers down between his neck and collar. His collar bothered him. His shirt-cuffs bothered him. He kept ramming them against the edge of his desk to push them back. He had some information, though: Chojnicki was still alive, and living in the Wieden; Dvorak, Szechenyi, Hallersberg, Lichtenthal and Strohhofer got together every day to play chess in the Café Josefinum on the Währinger Strasse. Stejskal, Halasz and Grünberger were unaccounted for. I went round to Chojnicki’s in the Wieden.
He was sitting in his old drawing room, in his old flat, but he was almost unrecognizable, because he had had his moustache taken off. “Why, whatever for?” I asked him. “So that I can look like my own manservant. I am my own valet. I open the door to let myself in. I polish my own shoes. I ring when I want something, and then I inquire: what would sir like? Cigarettes! Very good, sir. And I send myself round to the Trafik. I can still eat for nothing at the old lady’s.” The old lady, in our circle, meant Frau Sacher. “I still get wine at Fatso’s.” Fatso in our circle was Lautgartner in Hietzing. “And Xandl’s lost his marbles and is in the Steinhof,” and with that Chojnicki closed his tour d’horizon.
“Lost them?”
“Utterly. I look him up every week. The crocodile” — the uncle of the Chojnicki brothers, Sapieha — “slapped a court order on the estates. He’s Xandl’s guardian. I have no say whatever. This flat has been sold. I have another three weeks here. What about you, Trotta?”
“I’m about to mortgage our house. I’m married, you know. I have a wife to feed.” “Uh-oh, married!” exclaimed Chojnicki. “Come to think of it, so am I. But my wife is in Poland, God save and protect her, and give her a long life. I decided,” he went on, “to leave everything in the hands of the Almighty. He made my bed, let Him lie in it.” He was silent for a while, then he smashed his fist on the table, and shouted: “It’s you that’s to blame for everything, you” — he groped for a word — “you smart alecs,” he finally said, “you wrecked our state with your stupid witticisms. My Xandl saw it coming. You failed to see that those Alpine goiters and those Sudeten Czechs, those Nibelung cretins, offended and attacked our nationalities for so long until they began to hate the Monarchy and turned against it. It wasn’t our Czechs or our Serbs or our Poles or our Ruthenians who committed treason, but our Germans, our core people.”
“But my family’s Slovene!” I said.
“Forgive me,” he replied quietly. “It’s just that I have no Germans here to address myself to. Get me a Sudeten German!” he suddenly yelled, “and I’ll break his neck! Let’s go find one! Come on! We’re going to the Josefinum!”
Dvorak, Szechenyi, Hallersberg, Lichtenthal and Strohhofer were sitting there, most of them still in uniform. They all belonged to our old group. Aristocratic titles were banned now, but what difference did it make? “No one who doesn’t use my first name,” said Szechenyi, “is worth talking to anyway!” They played chess endlessly. “All right, where’s the Sudeten German?” yelled Chojnicki. “Here I am!” came the reply, from one of the kibitzers. Papa Kunz, old Social Democrat, editor of the Party newspaper and ready at any moment to prove historically that the Austrians were actually Germans. “Your proof, sir!” called Szechenyi. Papa Kunz ordered a double slivovitz and embarked on his proof. No one listened to him. “God damn the Sudetens!” cried Chojnicki, who had just lost a game. He jumped up and ran up to old Papa Kunz with raised, clenched fists. We managed to restrain him. He was foaming at the mouth, his eyes were bloodshot. “Pruzzian blockheads!” he yelled finally. That was the height of his rage. After that he became visibly milder.