Ofcourse I’mno connoisseur of art, he said, just an artlover — that’s the difference. But when I think of Italy I feel sick, he said, whereas the thought of Spain really excites me. In Italy more or less everything screams to high heaven, but in Spain you still have this historical sparseness, this historical tranquillity, if you see what I mean. It’s no bad thing for an actor to make a longish journey once a year. It doesn’t have to be to Africa or the Caribbean. In my case it’s Spain, especially La Mancha — I find it regenerating. And believe it or not, I have a passion for bullfighting. An affinity with Hemingway, he said, a real affinity with Hemingway. But I’m not such a romantic as Hemingway was — more a man of reason, said the Burgtheater actor. I don’t have the romantic American view of bullfighting — I have a more scientific approach. Whatever is profound is naturally unromantic, he said. Nothing profound is romantic. Indeed, he said suddenly, suicide is a fashionable contemporary sickness. Now I am not the suicidal type. Joana — a Spanishname, he said. Twice he said Joana — a Spanishname,then leaned back and asked Auersberger whether his latest cantata had been published. All your cantatas are in print, aren’t they? he asked. Auersberger said, Yes, my latest cantata is in print. And is it going to be performed in Vienna? asked the actor. I doubt it, replied the successor of Webern. It would be impossible, he explained, to find first-class performers for his complicated cantata in Vienna. Ateither the Konzerthaus or the Musikverein, said Webern’s successor, raising his head to its full height. There’s not one flautist in the whole of Austria who could play it, said Auersberger. But I hear the London performance was very good, said the actor. Yes, replied Auersberger, the successor of Webern, London was the only place where his cantata could be performed as he envisaged it, where it could be performed ideally. His wife at once joined in, echoing the word ideally, after which they both repeated the word several times, so that it seemed as though everybody was saying ideally—everybody except Jeannie Billroth, who had sat watching me, consumed with hatred, all the time the actor was talking. It was now impossible to imagine that thirty years ago, even twenty-five years ago, I had read poems by Eluard to her while sitting on her sofa and stroking the soles of her feet, that I had played short scenes from Molière for her in her bedroom while she sat virtually naked on the bed, repeatedly demanding that I play these scenes from Molière after I had obviously bored her with my readings from Joyce and Valéry. It was inconceivable now that I had once read her the letters that her friend Ernstl wrote to her from the Salzkammergut. She wanted no one but me to read her these letters, which she described as the mostintimate letters imaginable—which indeed they were, as I now recalled — while she devoured me with her gaze, as they say. That I used to spend hours reading the text of one of her novels to her, thus affording her hours of supreme gratification while I myself became more and more depressed, and that I was the one who thought up a title for this novel, The Wilderness of Youth, under which title it subsequently appeared — regrettably, I thought. That I used to walk for hours with her in the Prater, once even going up on the Giant Wheel with her, talking to her all the while about Pavese, Ungaretti and Pirandello, that I had been to Kagran and Kaisermühlen with her on a number of occasions, because when I was with her I always felt an urge to cross over the Reichsbrücke to the north bank of the Danube, I thought. That she was the first artistic person I met in Vienna after completing my studies in Salzburg, I thought. That she was the first person in Vienna who heard me read my poems and did not immediately reject them as worthless — which was what had always happened back home — and hence the first person, as I now recalled, who can be said to have given me literary courage, for whatever reason. To think that I once loved this woman Jeannie Billroth, whom I have hated for the last twenty years, and who, also, hates me. People come together and form a friendship, and for years they not only endure this friendship, but allow it to become more and more intense until it finally snaps, and from then on they hate each other for decades, sometimes for the rest of their lives. For years I used to go and visit Jeannie Billroth, I thought. At this point the actor suddenly started recounting anecdotes, the kind of theatrical anecdotes that always go down well in Vienna and provide life support for many a Viennese party that would otherwise be in danger of dying of paralysis. Most Viennese parties are able to survive for a few evening hours only because these theatrical anecdotes are continually dished up, and this party in the Gentzgasse, which has been officially designated an artistic dinner party, is no exception, I thought. It was through Jeannie Billroth that I met the Auersbergers, and finally Joana, I thought. I met Jeannie through a philosopher friend of my grandfather’s whom I visited in the Maxinggasse in Hietzing thirty years ago at a time when I was extremely hard up and on the verge of starvation. It was my visit to the Maxinggasse in Hietzing that saved my life, I told myself — to the so-called Johann Strauss House, which was occupied by my grandfather’s philosopher friend, whose brother played the bassoon and the horn in the Vienna Philharmonic. I now recalled how, having arrived in Vienna without a penny and being close to starvation, even to suicide, I had summoned up what little strength I still had and made my way to the Maxinggasse, to an address that my grandfather had given me, hoping that I would somehow be saved. And the Maxinggasse did save me. First I was given a drink of milk, then something to eat, and finally a recommendation to a woman writer who lived on the west bank of the river Wien, by the chain bridge. She got me to clear out her cellar, and for this she paid me enough money to keep me above water for three days. I read a few of her poems at the time, and these made a considerable impact on me. It was through this writer, who died young, that I met Jeannie Billroth. I now recalled how Jeannie and I used to visit Joana at Kilb, and how we would often go to the Iron Hand with her and Fritz to eat and drink and play cards. It was after all Jeannie who introduced me to nearly all the great writers of the twentieth century by lending me copies of their works. That was the Jeannie of those days, I thought, not the Jeannie who was now sitting opposite me, filled with hatred because I escaped from her one day rather than let myself be devoured by her. Had I not escaped from her, at the high point in our relationship so to speak, I would inevitably have been devoured and annihilated. So I suddenly stopped visiting her. She waited in vain for me to appear. While Ernstl was working at his Chemical Institute, I had spent hundreds of afternoons with her behind drawn curtains, as I now recalled, either reading the great works of the major twentieth-century writers to her, or listening to her as she read them to me. And then, when Ernstl came home, we would all have a cold supper, or a goulash that had been warmed up a second time and so tasted outstandingly good. And when Ernstl was tired and had gone to bed, she would make me read Joyce or Saint-John Perse or Virginia Woolf to her again until I was quite exhausted, I now recalled. I never left Jeannie’s until about two o’clock in the morning, when I would set off home to Währing, walking down the Radetzkystrasse and along by the Danube Canal, my mind brimming with world literature. We stick to someone for years, I thought, looking straight at Jeannie; we are fascinated by them and in the end become utterly dependent on them, not only head over heels in love, as they say, but utterly in thrall, and when we leave them we believe we are finished, as I did at the time, yet one day we stop going to see them, without giving any reason. Not only do we stop visiting them — we