The miniature grandfather clock, standing on a shelf beside the entryway, is just striking ten with tinny strokes, although he knows it has to be at least 11:30 by now. All around he sees tables and cabinets, chairs with woven seats, stools and ottomans, glass cases with jewelry tangled in old silverware; lamps dangle from the ceiling, and the walls are hung with oil paintings, mirrors, barometers, crucifixes, and trays that once held movable type; shelves bear candelabras, plates, books, and glasses, and under the tables are wooden buckets and baskets filled with linens. Everything is squeezed in tightly together, each object casting its shadow on the next, so that, even on this bright May day, the room lies in its own twilight. At first the man cannot make out a seller, and no one speaks to him in greeting; only after his eyes have become accustomed to the low light does he see a man sitting in an armchair off in the back, immersed in a book.
What might please his mother? His mother who didn’t want to take anything when she moved to the rest home but the yellow wall hanging with its Uzbek sun, the small dark-blue suitcase, whose contents are unknown to him, and the little box with the gold buttons. He wouldn’t mind acquiring this set of Goethe’s writings for his own use — the final authorized edition, surprisingly complete with all its volumes — that no doubt costs less here than at an antiquarian bookshop. At random he pulls out Volume 9, the spine of which is a bit scraped, and leafs through it; he reads “Farewell,” then puts the book back in its place. How can he carry an entire Goethe edition on the train to Berlin? A brooch set with amethysts might be nice, or a silver spoon with the Vienna city arms, but he doesn’t feel like asking the shopkeeper to open the glass case. Finally he sees a miniature double portrait leaning up against a Meissen soup tureen, a double portrait of Prussian Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kaiser Franz Joseph as allies, In Steadfast Loyalty is written on the picture, and since his Viennese mother has wound up in Prussia, he thinks it might work, the piece’s political context now lying far in the past; he takes the picture from the shelf, approaches the man and asks: Excuse me, how much?
4
The owner of the Goethe edition and the clock is already nearly eighty when she has to leave everything behind, and in February ’41, leaning on her cousin’s arm, she begins her journey to the Jewish Home for the Aged on Malzgasse, which, for the sake of convenience, has been designated the first collection point for deportations to the East. The clock strikes eleven, the clock strikes twelve, Morning wind wings about the shady bay, then her cousin returns to the empty apartment. He sits for a while at the table, where a moment ago he shared a last cup of tea with the old woman. Es vert mir finster in di oygn, everything’s going black before my eyes. Then the clock strikes one. The old woman was forced to turn in her seven-armed candelabra the year before, for the metal collection. It’s surely long since been melted down. But the Goethe edition at least: the man now packs it up, grabbing three or four volumes at a time, in the very suitcase in which he transported it twenty years before on his cart. He removes the pendulum from the clock, wrapping the clock in a pillowcase and tying it up to make a package that he can put in a coal sack and hang over his shoulder. With suitcase and sack he leaves the apartment, which has grown completely cold, a thin sheet of ice has already formed on top of the water in the bucket. If he hadn’t slipped the clock’s pendulum into the breast pocket of his jacket, he’d think he was still hearing the clock ticking right through the sack and the soft fabric, as though he were hearing it through snow, he could swear the clock’s hands were still moving behind his back. After all, before the old lady started on her journey to Malzgasse, she had wound the clock one last time, just as she had done every morning for the last fifty years. With the stopped clock on his back, the old woman’s cousin walks through the February cold, the pendulum peeking out of his breast pocket with its delicate little hook, and the key to wind it is in his trouser pocket, where it is slowly growing warm. The cousin walks to the neighborhood around Arenbergplatz, rings a doorbell, speaks with someone, nods, then takes the streetcar to Mariahilfer Strasse 117, rings the bell, speaks, nods, then heads to Linzer Strasse 439, rings, speaks; Haidgasse 4, and finally he finds himself standing on Dampfschiffstrasse 10/6 in District II before a door, he rings the bell, speaks, and here he is finally relieved of his burden that has now become an inheritance, a reminder to the woman answering of something she doesn’t want to be reminded of, objects speak without speaking, and the woman now knows something she didn’t want to know: that there is a moment when it is forever too late. Last of all, the now-warm key from the cousin’s trouser pocket — oh, right — and the pendulum. The woman takes the key, pendulum, suitcase, and the coal sack, and carries them to a room belonging to her only in part, strangers are sitting there on beds, strange children playing under the table, strangers quarreling, and here — as if all these things had nothing to do with her — she takes the packet out of the sack, unwraps it, places the clock on the table, hooks the pendulum in its place, and already the clockwork begins ticking again, her mother’s life is still there in the tightly wound spring; she shoos a few children away, sits down in front of the clock, and watches as time — which is now forever too late — passes. Time is like a briar that has gotten caught in wool, you tear it out with all your strength and throw it over your shoulder. Minutes pass that no longer matter, cleanly divided by the minute hand one from the next.
Yet again, the suitcase and coal sack with the clock wrapped in its pillowcase are transported by the woman through the streets of Vienna, for a new official directive has ordered her to move from Dampfschiffstrasse to Obere Donaustrasse, and three months later from Obere Donaustrasse to Hammer-Purgstall-Gasse 3/12. Although the woman finds these moves quite burdensome, she nonetheless lugs the Complete Works of Goethe along with her, as well as the clock, these last two remaining possessions of her mother, who has long since been deported. And when she arrives at one or the other location, she unwraps the clock, winds it, then lays the key beside it, just as her mother always used to. Perhaps there’s secretly something magical about these inherited belongings, just like in the fairy tale, where, in time of need, a comb thrown over your shoulder can grow into a forest.
But no forest has grown as of August 13, 1942, when she boards the train at the Aspang Station in Vienna that will take her to Minsk. Forcing the doors, clearing out the shared apartment that served as a transit station for Jews at Hammer-Purgstall-Gasse 3/12, and making an inventory takes the Gestapo’s Division for the Processing of Jewish Personal Effects two and a half days. The clock has meanwhile come to a stop. The key for winding it lies, as always, beside it. Chaim Safir sticks the key through the little oval opening, through which you can see the pendulum, and into the clock case, then he puts the clock in a laundry basket, in which a stack of plates, a vase made of porcelain, several glasses and a crystal carafe are already awaiting deportation. To keep things from breaking, Chaim Safir stuffs some items of clothing between them, then he picks up the basket, carries it downstairs, and says to Herr Gschwandtner: All that’s left now is the furniture. Herr Gschwandtner follows him to do a check, looking around the room, he opens the cabinet doors, looks under the beds, pushes a little footstool aside, deftly pulling the suitcase out from behind it, saying: It’s probably full of jewels, you idiot. Chaim Safir says: I’m sorry, I overlooked the suitcase. Herr Gschwandtner says, The thing weighs a ton. At first the lid refuses to open, but then it does, such a mazl, Herr Gschwandtner says to Chaim Safir, nothing but books, just look what’s on the back of them: nothing but Goethe; he slams the suitcase shut again. To be or not to be, he says, grinning, as he gets to his feet. Chaim Safir nods without meeting Herr Gschwandtner’s eyes. Herr Gschwandtner pokes at the suitcase with his shoe-tip and says: This one goes downstairs too.