The Torch in my Ear Page 2

  Herr Caroli not only knew a lot by heart, he cleverly varied entire quotations and then waited to see if anyone understood what he had pulled off. Fräulein Kündig, an eager playgoer, was hottest on his trail. A witty man, he was particularly skillful at distorting superserious things. But Fräulein Rebhuhn, the most sensitive boarder, told him that nothing was sacred to him; and he was impudent enough to reply: “Certainly not Feuerbach.” Everyone knew that Fräulein Rebhuhn lived only for her asthmatic brother—and Feuerbach, and she said about Iphigenia (Feuerbach’s, of course): “I would gladly have been she.” Herr Caroli, who looked Southern and was about thirty-five, and had to put up with being told by the ladies that he had a forehead like Trotsky’s, never spared anyone, not even himself. He’d rather be Rathenau, he said, three days before Rathenau’s assassination; and this was the only time I ever saw him shaken. For, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me, a schoolboy, and said: “It will soon be over!”

  Herr Rebhuhn, that warmhearted and Kaiser-possessed man, was the only one not rattled by the assassination. He esteemed old Rathenau a lot more than the son and never forgave the younger one for serving the Republic. However, he did concede that Walther had been something of a credit to Germany earlier, in the war, when Germany still had its honor, when it was still an empire. Herr Schutt said fiercely: “They’re going to kill everyone, everyone!” For the first time in his life, Herr Bemberg mentioned the working class: “The workers won’t put up with it!” Herr Caroli said: “We ought to leave Germany!” Fräulein Rahm, who couldn’t stand assassinations because something often went awry, said: “Would you take me along?” And Herr Caroli never forgot this; his claim to intellect abandoned him on that day. He quite openly courted her, and to the annoyance of the ladies, he was seen going into her room and then not coming out again until ten o’clock.

  An Important Visitor

  At the noon meal in the Pension Charlotte, Mother played a respectable but not dominating part. She was marked by Vienna, even if part of her resisted Vienna. All she knew of Spengler was the title of his opus, The Decline of the West. Painting had never meant much to her; when Meier-Graefe’s Vincent came out and Van Gogh became the chief topic of conversation at the boardinghouse table, Mother couldn’t join in. And if ever she did let go and say something, she didn’t cut a very good figure. Sunflowers, she said, had no fragrance, and the best thing about them was the seeds: you could at least munch them. There was an embarrassed hush, led by Fräulein Kündig, the supreme authority on current culture and truly moved by many of the things brought up in the Frankfurter Zeitung. Around this time, the Van Gogh religion began; and Fräulein Kündig once said it was only now, after learning about Van Gogh, that she understood what Jesus was all about—a statement which Herr Bemberg emphatically protested against. Herr Schutt found it extravagant, Herr Schimmel smiled. Fräulein Rebhuhn pleaded: “But he’s so unmusical,” meaning Van Gogh; and when she realized that no one understood what she was talking about, she undauntedly added: “Can you imagine him painting Feuerbach’s Concert?”

  I didn’t know anything about Van Gogh and I asked Mother about him upstairs in our rooms. She had so little to say that I was embarrassed for her. She even said something she would never have said before: “A madman who painted straw chairs and sunflowers, everything always yellow. He didn’t like any other colors, until he got sunstroke and put a bullet through his brain.” I was very unsatisfied by this information. I sensed that the madness she ascribed to him referred to me. For some time now, she had been against any kind of eccentricity; every second artist was “crazy,” as far as she was concerned, but this referred only to modern artists (especially those still alive); the earlier ones, with whom she’d been brought up, escaped unmolested. She allowed no one to touch a hair on her Shakespeare’s head; and she had great moments at the boardinghouse table only when Herr Bemberg or some other incautious soul complained how awfully bored he’d been at some performance of Shakespeare—it was really time to put an end to him and replace him with something more modern.

  Mother would then at last become her old admired self again. With a few sparkling sentences, she demolished poor Herr Bemberg, who woefully cast about for help; but no one came to his rescue. When Shakespeare was at stake, Mother didn’t give a damn about anything. She threw caution to the winds, she didn’t care what the others thought of her, and when she concluded by saying that for the shallow people of this inflation period, who had only money on their minds, Shakespeare was certainly not the right thing, she conquered all hearts; from Fräulein Kündig, who admired her élan and her spirit, to Herr Schutt, who embodied the tragic, even if he had never called it by its name, and even Fräulein Parandowski, who supported any pride and visualized Shakespeare as proud. Why, even Herr Schimmel’s smile took on a mysterious quality when, to the amazement of the entire table, he said “Ophelia,” repeating the name slowly lest he had mispronounced it. “Our cavalrist at Hamlet,” said Fräulein Kündig. “Who would have thought.” Whereupon Herr Schutt promptly broke in: “Just because a man says ‘Ophelia’ doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s seen Hamlet.” It turned out that Herr Schimmel didn’t know who Hamlet was, which provoked great mirth. Never again did he sally out so far. Nonetheless, Herr Bemberg’s attack on Shakespeare was beaten off; his own wife solemnly declared that she liked the women disguised as men in Shakespeare, they were so chic.

  In those days, the name Stinnes often cropped up in the papers. It was the period of inflation. I refused to understand anything of economic matters; behind anything that smelled of economy, I sensed a trap laid by my Manchester uncle, who wanted to drag me into his business. His major attack at Sprüngli’s restaurant in Zurich, just two years earlier, was still in my bones [see The Tongue Set Free]. Its effect had been intensified by my terrible argument with Mother. Anything I felt threatened by I blamed on him. It was natural that he should overlap with Stinnes for me. The way people talked about Stinnes, the envy I sensed in Herr Bemberg’s voice when he mentioned his name, the cutting scorn with which Herr Schutt condemned him (“Everyone keeps getting poorer, he keeps getting richer”), the unanimous sympathy of all the women in the boardinghouse (Frau Kupfer: “He can still afford things”; Fräulein Rahm, who found her longest sentence for him: “What do we know about his sort?”; Fräulein Rebhuhn: “He’s never got time for music”; Fräulein Bunzel: “I feel sorry for him. No one understands him”; Fräulein Kündig: “I’d like to read the begging letters he receives”; Fräulein Parandowski would have liked to work for him: “You know where you are with a man like him”; Frau Bemberg enjoyed thinking about his wife: “A woman has to dress chicly for a man like him”)—they always talked about him for a long time. My mother was the only one who didn’t say a word. This one time, Herr Rebhuhn concurred with Herr Schutt and even used the harsh word parasite; more precisely: “A parasite in the nation.” And Herr Schimmel, mildest of all smilers, gave an unexpected twist to Fräulein Parandowski’s comment: “Maybe we’ve already been bought up. You can’t tell.” When I asked Mother why she held her tongue, she said it would be inappropriate for her as a foreigner to meddle with internal German matters. But it was obvious that she was thinking of something else, something she didn’t want to get off her chest.

  Then, one day, she was holding a letter in her hand and saying: “Children, the day after tomorrow, we’re having company. Herr Hungerbach is coming to tea.” It turned out that she knew Herr Hungerbach from the forest sanatorium in Arosa. She said she felt a bit embarrassed that he was visiting her in the boardinghouse; he was used to a completely different life style, but she couldn’t very well say no. It was too late anyway; he was traveling and she didn’t even know where to reach him. As usual, when I heard the word travel, I imagined an explorer and I wanted to know through what continent he was traveling. “He’s on a business trip, of course,” she said. “He’s an industrialist.” Now I knew why she had been silent at the table. “It would be better if we didn’t
speak about him in the boardinghouse. Nobody will recognize him when he comes.”

  Naturally, I was biased against him. I wouldn’t have needed the mealtime talk to dislike him. He was a man who belonged to my ogre-uncle’s sphere; what did he want here? I sensed an uneasiness in my mother and I felt I ought to protect her against him. But I didn’t realize how serious the matter was until she said: “When he is here, my son, do not leave the room. I would like you to hear him out from start to finish. This is a man who’s in the thick of life. In Arosa, he promised to take you boys in hand when we came to Germany. He’s got an endless number of things to do. But I can now see that he’s a man of his word.”

  I was curious about Herr Hungerbach; and expecting a serious collision with him, I looked forward to an opponent who would make things hard for me. I wanted to be impressed by him in order to stand my ground against him all the better. My mother, who had a keen scent for my “youthful prejudices” (as she called them), said I shouldn’t believe that Herr Hungerbach was a spoiled brat from a rich background. On the contrary, he had had a difficult time as the son of a miner, and he had worked his way up step by step. In Arosa, he had once told her his life story, and she had finally learned what it means to start way on the bottom. She had finally said to Herr Hungerbach: “I’m afraid my boy has always had it too easy.” He then asked about me and eventually declared that it’s never too late. He knew just what to do in such a case: “Throw him in the water and let him struggle. All at once, he’ll know how to swim.”

  Herr Hungerbach had an abrupt manner. He knocked and was already in the room. He shook Mother’s hand, but instead of looking at her, he focused his gaze on me and barked. His sentences were short and abrupt; it was impossible to misunderstand them; but he didn’t speak, he barked. From the instant he arrived to the instant he left (he stayed a full hour), he kept barking nonstop. He asked no questions and expected no answers. Mother had been his fellow patient in Arosa, but he never once inquired about her health. He didn’t ask me what my name was. Instead, I got a rehash of all the horrifying things my mother had thrown at me in our argument one year earlier. The best thing, he said, is a tough apprenticeship as early as possible. Don’t bother going to university. Throw away the books, forget the whole business. Everything in books is wrong, all that counts is life, experience, and hard work. Work till your bones ache. Nothing else deserves to be called work. Anyone who can’t take it, anyone who’s too weak, should perish. And good riddance. There are too many people in the world anyway. The useless ones should vanish. Besides, it’s not out of the question for someone to turn out useful after all. Despite a totally wrong start. The main thing is to forget all this foolishness, which has nothing to do with real life. Life is struggle, ruthless struggle, and that’s a good thing. Otherwise, mankind can’t progress. A race of weaklings would have died out long ago without leaving a trace. Nothing will get you nothing. Men have to be raised by men. Women are too sentimental, they only want to dress up their little princes and keep them away from any dirt. But work is dirty more than anything else. The definition of work: something that makes you tired and dirty; but you still don’t give up.

  I find it terribly distorting to translate Herr Hungerbach’s barking into intelligible utterances; but even if I didn’t understand certain phrases and words, the meaning of every individual directive was more than clear. He absolutely seemed to expect you to jump up on the spot and get down to hard work (no other kind counted).

  Nevertheless, tea was poured. We sat around a low, circular table; the guest brought the teacup to his lips, but before he could manage to take a sip, a new directive occurred to him, and it was too urgent for him to wait one sip. The cup was brusquely set down, the mouth opened to new terse phrases, from which at least one thing could be gleaned: their indubitableness. Even older people could hardly have contradicted him, much less women or children. Herr Hungerbach enjoyed his impact. He was dressed all in blue, the color of his eyes. He was immaculate, not the tiniest spot on him, not a speck of dust. I thought of various things I’d have liked to say, but what crossed my mind most often was the word miner, and I wondered if this cleanest, hardest, most self-assured of men had really worked in a mine when he was young, as Mother claimed.

  Since I never opened my mouth even once (when would he have granted me a split second?), since he had hurled out everything, he added (and this time it sounded like a directive to himself) one last thing: He said he had no time to lose and left. He did shake Mother’s hand, but he no longer paid me any heed; he had, so he thought, shattered me much too thoroughly to consider me worth saying goodbye to. He prohibited Mother from seeing him downstairs; he said he knew the way and absolutely refused to hear a word of thanks. She should first wait and see the effect of his surgery before expressing her gratitude. “The operation was a success, but the patient died,” he added. This was a joke to mellow the previous seriousness. Then it was over.

  “He’s changed a lot. He was different in Arosa,” said Mother. She was embarrassed and ashamed. She realized she could hardly have picked a worse ally for her new methods of upbringing. But, while Herr Hungerbach had been talking, I had had a terrible suspicion, which tormented me and left me speechless. It was quite a while before I felt capable of blurting it out. Meanwhile, Mother recounted all sorts of things about Herr Hungerbach, the way he’d been earlier, just a year ago. To my amazement, she emphasized—for the first time—his faith. He had spoken to her several times about how important his faith was to him. He had said he owed his faith to his mother; he had never faltered, not even in the most difficult times. He had always known that everything would turn out all right, and it always did: He had gotten so far, he said, because he had never faltered.

  What did all this have to do with his faith, I asked.

  “He told me how bad things look in Germany,” she said, “and that it will have to keep getting worse before it gets better. You have to pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps; there’s just no other way. And in such a crisis, there’s no room for weaklings and Mamma’s boys.”

  “Did he talk the same way back then?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean did he always bark and without looking you in the eye?”

  “No, it surprised me, too. He was really different back then. He always inquired about my health and asked me whether I’d heard from you. He was impressed that I spoke about you so much. He even listened. Once—I remember clearly—he sighed … Just imagine this man sighing. And he said it had been different in his youth. His mother hadn’t had time for such niceties, with fifteen or sixteen children, I’ve forgotten how many. I wanted him to read your play. He took the manuscript, read the title, and said: Junius Brutus—not a bad title. You can learn something from the Romans.’”

  “Did he even know who that was?”

  “Yes. Just imagine. He said: ‘Why, that was the man who sentenced his own sons to death.’”

  “That’s all he knows about the story. He liked that part, it suits him. But did he read it?”

  “No, of course not. He had no time for literature. He always studied the business section of the newspaper, and he kept telling me to move to Germany. ‘You can live there very cheap, dear Frau Canetti, cheaper all the time!’”

  “And that’s why we left Zurich and moved to Germany?” I said it with such bitterness that even I was startled. It was worse than I had feared. The thought of leaving the place I loved more than anything in the world, leaving it just to live more cheaply somewhere else, was utterly humiliating. She instantly noticed that she had gone too far, and retreated: “No, that’s not why. Not at all. It may have been a factor sometimes when I was considering the matter, but it wasn’t decisive.”

  “What was decisive?”

  She felt cornered, on the defensive, and since we were still under the impact of the disgusting visit, it did her good to account to me and clear up a few things for herself.

  She seemed unc
ertain, as though groping through her mind, groping for answers that would stand up and not melt on the spot. “He always wanted to talk to me,” she said. “I think he liked me. He was respectful and, instead of joking around like the other patients there, he was always earnest and spoke about his mother. I liked that. You know, usually women don’t like it if a man compares them with his mother, because it makes them feel older. But I liked it because I felt he was taking me seriously.”

  “But you impress everyone because you’re beautiful and intelligent.” I really thought so, otherwise I wouldn’t have said it at this point. I was in no mood for friendly words. On the contrary, I felt a terrible hatred. I was finally on the trail of what had been my gravest loss since my father’s death: our departure from Zurich.

  “He kept saying it’s irresponsible of me, as a lone woman, to bring you up. He said you ought to feel a man’s strong hand. ‘But this is the way things are now,’ I used to answer him. ‘Where in the world do you expect me to get him a father?’ I’ve never remarried, so that I could devote myself fully to you boys, and now I was being told that this was bad for you: my sacrifice for you would ultimately harm you. I was terrified. Now, I believe he wanted to terrify me in order to make an impression on me. He wasn’t very interesting intellectually, you know. He always kept repeating the same things. But he did frighten me, as far as you were concerned, and he promptly offered to help me. ‘Come to Germany, my dear Frau Canetti,’ he said. ‘I’m a terribly busy man, I have no time whatsoever, not a minute, but I’ll see about your son. Why don’t you come to Frankfurt? I’ll visit you and have a serious talk with him. He doesn’t know what the world is like. His eyes will open in Germany. I’ll take care of him, and thoroughly. Then you can throw him into life! He’s studied enough. No more books! He’ll never be a man! Do you want to have a woman for a son?’”