One day I accompanied Chojnicki on his weekly visit to his brother in Steinhof. The mad Chojnicki went walking in the courtyard; he lived in the locked ward, even though he showed no inclination to violence at all. He didn’t recognize his brother. But when I told him my name, Trotta, he was straightaway lucid. “Trotta,” he said. “His father was here a week ago. The old District Commissioner Trotta. My friend, Lieutenant Trotta, lost his life at Krasne-Busk. Well, you are all dear to my heart! All you Trottas are.” And he embraced me. “My address is Steinhof,” he continued. “Since I moved here, it has become the capital city and residence of Austria. I keep the crown here. I am authorized to do so. My uncle Ledochovsky used to say: that little Josef will one day be a great man. Now I am. He was right.”
Chojnicki was now talking nonsense. He called for his socks. When he was confined to the asylum, he became an enthusiastic knitter. “I am knitting the Monarchy,” he would say from time to time. When I tried to take my leave, he said: “I don’t have the honour of knowing you.” “My name is Trotta,” I said. “Trotta,” he replied, “was the Hero of Solferino. He saved the life of the Emperor Franz Joseph. That Trotta is long dead. It seems to me, sir, that you are a deceiver.”
It was on that same day that I learned what kept my wife away from home so often and for such long periods, why she left our boy alone, and my poor crippled mother. When I got home, I ran into the only two people in the world I really hated: Professor Jolanth Szatmary and Kurt von Stettenheim.
It turned out that they had been back in Vienna for ages. It turned out that they had abandoned arts and crafts. They were now utterly devoted to the cinema. Alexander Rabinovich — “the renowned Alexander Rabinovich, have you not heard of him?” thus Herr von Stettenheim — had started a “production company” in Vienna; another company! It turned out that Elisabeth had no intention of remaining a mother, no, she was dead set on becoming an actress. Film was calling her, and she felt a calling to go into film.
One day she disappeared, leaving me the following note:
Dear husband, your mother hates me, and you don’t love me either. I feel a calling. I will go with Jolanth and Stettenheim. Forgive me. The call of art is powerful. Elisabeth.
I showed this note to my crippled mother. She read it twice over. Then she took my head in her still hale left hand, and said: “Boy! B-b-boy!” she said. It was as though she was congratulating me and pitying me, both.
Who can say what clever things she might have said, if she hadn’t been paralysed.
My son no longer had a mother. The mother of my son was an actress in Hollywood. The grandmother of my son was an old crippled woman.
She died in February.
XXXIII
My mother died during the first days of February. She died as she had lived, quietly and aristocratically. To the priest who had come to give her the last rites, she said: “Please hurry, Your Reverence! God doesn’t have as much time as the church sometimes likes to imagine.” The priest was accordingly quick about it. Then my mother called for me. She was no longer babbling. She spoke fluently, as before, as if her tongue had never been paralysed. “If you should ever see Elisabeth again,” she said to me, “I don’t think it’s very likely, but tell her if you do that I never cared for her. I am dying now, but I don’t think much of those devout individuals who even on their deathbeds are still lying and come over all magnanimous. Now bring me your son, so that I can see him once more.”
I went downstairs, I picked up my son, who was big and already quite a weight; I was happy that he was so solid as I carried him up the stairs. My mother hugged him and kissed him, and gave him back to me.
“Send him away,” she said, “far away! He’s not to grow up here. Go away now!” she added, “I want to die by myself.”
She died that same night, it was the night of the Revolution. Shots rang out through the city, and Chojnicki told us over dinner that the government was shooting at the workers. “Dollfuss,” thus Chojnicki, “wants to kill the proletariat. God forgive me, I really can’t stand him. He is digging his own grave. The world has never seen the like!. .”
When my mother was buried, in the Central Cemetery, Second Gate, there was still shooting throughout the city. All my friends — which is to say, all our lodgers — accompanied my mother and me. It was hailing, just as it was on the night of my return from the War. It was the same vicious stony hail.
We buried my mother at ten in the morning.
When we emerged from the Second Gate of the Central Cemetery, I saw Manes Reisiger. He was following a coffin, and I went with him, without a word. The coffin was taken to the Third Gate, to the Jewish section.
I stood over the open grave. After the Rabbi had spoken the prayer, Manes Reisiger stepped up and said: “The Lord hath given him, the Lord hath taken him away, praised be His Name in all eternity. The Cabinet Minister has shed blood, and his blood, too, shall be shed. It shall flow like a rushing torrent.” People tried to restrain Manes Reisiger, but he carried on in a strong voice: “Whoever lives by the sword,” he said, “shall die by the sword. God is great and just.” And then he broke down. We took him aside, while his gifted son Ephraim was buried. He was a rebel, he had taken up arms and been killed.
Joseph Branco still came to our house occasionally. His chestnuts were now his only interest in life. They were mouldy this year and wormy, and he, Joseph Branco, could only sell roasted apples.
I sold the house. I kept the bed and breakfast.
It was as though the death of my mother had driven all my friends out of our house. They moved away, one after the other. We met in the Café Wimmerl.
Only my son was still alive for me. “Whoever kills,” said Manes Reisiger, “shall be killed.”
I had no more interest in the world. I sent my son away to my friend Laveraville in Paris.
I was alone, alone, alone.
I went to the Kapuzinergruft.
XXXIV
That Friday too I was waiting for evening to fall. It was only in my dearly loved evenings that I still felt at home, since I no longer had a house and a home. I waited, as usual, to commit myself into its care, which was kindlier in Vienna than the silence of the nights once the cafés have shut, once the lamp posts are tired, worn out from their pointless illumination. They longed for the tardy morning, and their own extinction. Yes, they were tired, the insomniac streetlights, they waited for morning, so that they could sleep.
Oh, I remembered how they had silvered the nights of my youth, the kindly sons and daughters of the heavens, suns and stars that had agreed to come down to light the city of Vienna. The skirts of the girls on the game in Kärntnerstrasse still went down to their ankles. When it rained, the sweet creatures picked them up, and I saw their exciting button-boots. Then I went to Sacher’s to see my friend Sternberg. He was sitting in a corner, always the same one, and he was always the last one there. I picked him up. We meant to go home together, but we were young, and the night was young (although the hour was advanced), and the streetwalkers were young, especially the older ones, and the lanterns were young too. .
So we strolled through our own youth, and the youthful night. The houses we stayed in seemed to us like tombs, or at best shelters. The night watchmen saluted us, Count Sternberg gave them cigarettes. Often we patrolled with the constables