One evening, I returned home unexpectedly. I wanted to say hello to my mother, and let her know I was back. The maid said she was in the library. The door of our library, which opened off the drawing room, was ajar so that I didn’t have to knock. Evidently the old lady didn’t hear my initial greeting. I supposed at first she had fallen asleep over her book. She was sitting facing the window, with her back to me. I came nearer, she wasn’t asleep, she was reading and even turned a page just as I approached. “Good evening, Mama!” I said. She didn’t look up. I touched her. She jumped. “Where have you sprung from?” she asked. “Just passing by, Mama. I wanted to get Stiasny’s address.” “I haven’t heard from him for a long time, I think he must have died.” Dr Stiasny was a police surgeon, the same age as me; my mother must have misunderstood. “I mean that Stiasny,” I said. “Yes, of course. I think he’s been dead for two years now. He was over eighty.” “Dead. I see,” I repeated, and I was forced to realise that my mother was deaf. It was only thanks to her discipline, that unusual discipline that we, her juniors, had been excused from birth, that she achieved the extraordinary strength to suppress her infirmity during those hours when she was expecting me back, me and others. During her long hours of waiting, she was readying herself to hear. She must certainly know that age had struck her one of the blows it likes to deal out. Soon — so I thought — she will be quite deaf, like the piano without strings! Yes, perhaps even that occasion, when in a fit of confusion she had asked for the strings to be taken out, even that had been a sense of her approaching deafness alive in her, and a vague fear that before long she wouldn’t be able to hear notes any more! Of all the blows that old age has to give, this for my mother, a true child of music, must have been the worst. At that instant she attained for me an almost preternatural grandeur, moved into a different century, the epoch of a long-gone heroical nobility. Because to conceal and to deny frailty can only be heroic.
And so it was that she came to appreciate Herr von Stettenheim. Obviously she found it easy to understand him, and so she was grateful to him. His banalities didn’t exhaust her. I said goodbye; I wanted to go to my room to find Stiasny’s address. “Can I come at eight, Mama?” I called out, raising my voice a little. It was a little too much. “No need to shout!” she said. “Do come. We’re having cherry dumplings, even though the flour is maize.”
I tried desperately to dismiss the thought of a boarding house. My mother running a B&B! What a truly absurd idea! Her deafness added to her dignity. Now perhaps she couldn’t even hear the knocking of her own stick or her own footfall. I understood what made her so kind to our blond, heavy-set, rather slow-witted maid, who was apt to crash about, a good dull child from the suburbs. My mother and house-guests! Our house with innumerable bells, dinning into my ears already, the more my mother was unable to hear their impertinence. I had (so to speak) to hear for both of us, and feel offence for both of us too. But what other solution was there? Dr Kiniower was right. The arts and crafts swallowed one mortgage after another.
My mother didn’t pay any attention to it. So I was left, as they say, with the responsibility. I and — responsible! Not that I was a coward, you understand. No, I was just not up to it. I wasn’t afraid of death, but such things as offices, notaries and bureaucracy alarmed me. I couldn’t count, it was all I could do to add. Multiplication made my head reel. So — yes. Me and responsibility!
In the meantime, Herr von Stettenheim was living his happy-go-lucky life, a ponderous bird. He always had money, he never had to borrow; on the contrary he treated all my friends. Of course we disliked him just the same. We suddenly fell silent when he wandered into the café. Moreover, he was in the habit of turning up with a different woman every week. He picked them up all over the place: dancers, checkout girls, seamstresses, milliners, cooks. He went on jaunts, he bought suits, he played tennis, he rode out in the Prater. One night I ran into him in our gateway on my way home. He seemed to be in a hurry, the car was waiting for him. “I have to go!” he said, and threw himself into the car.
Elisabeth was sitting with my mother. She must have come with Herr von Stettenheim. I sensed something different in our rooms, like an unusual, strange smell. Something unexpected must have taken place while I was gone. The two women were talking together when I walked in, but it was a sort of forced conversation, and I could tell its only purpose was to mislead me.
“I ran into Herr von Stettenheim in our gateway just now,” I began. “Yes,” said Elisabeth, “he gave me a lift. He was just here for ten minutes.” “He’s worried, poor fellow!” said my mother. “Does he need money?” I asked. “That’s just it!” replied Elisabeth. “There was a scene in the workshop today! Not to beat about the bush: Jolanth asked for money. We had to give her some. It’s the first time she’s asked for money. She’s getting a divorce, you see. Stettenheim needs money urgently. My father has some bills due in the next few days, he says. I came here with Stettenheim.” “Did my mother give him money?” “Yes!” “Cash?” “A cheque!” “What amount?” “Ten thousand!”
I knew that my mother had just fifty thousand crowns left in Ephrussi’s Bank, where they were gradually losing what was left of their value, according to the “Jew” ’s report.
I began to pace up and down the room, as I had never dared to do before, in front of the stern and alarmed eyes of my mother. For the first time in my life I raised my voice in her presence, almost to a shout. At any rate, I was vehement. My whole accumulated anger with Stettenheim, with Jolanth, with my father-in-law overwhelmed me; and also my anger with my own weak nature. Anger with my mother was involved as well, jealousy of Stettenheim. For the first time in my mother’s presence I dared to use an expression that was not acceptable outside officers’ messes: “Prussian swine.” It gave me quite a fright.
I allowed myself another liberty: I forbade my mother to issue cheques without my approval. In the same breath, I forbade Elisabeth to introduce anyone in need of money to my poor mother; any Tom, Dick or Harry was the expression I used. And since I knew myself, and knew very well that it was only once in a blue moon that I would express my will, my revulsion, yes, even my honest opinion of people, I deliberately worked myself into a deeper rage. I yelled: “And I don’t want to see the Professor ever again!” And: “I’ve had it up to here with arts and crafts. I’m going to set things straight, Elisabeth! You’re moving in here with me.”
My mother looked at me with her big sad eyes. It was obvious that she was equally frightened and delighted at my sudden outburst. “His father was just the same,” she remarked to Elisabeth. Today, I even think it was possible that my father was speaking through me. I felt an impulse to stalk out of the house right away.