The Torch in my Ear Page 3

  The Challenge

  Rainer Friedrich was a tall, moony boy, who, when he walked, never thought about how or where he was going. It wouldn’t have surprised you if his right leg had gone in one direction and his left leg in another. He wasn’t weak, mind you, just totally uninterested in physical things, and that’s why he was the worst athlete in class. He was always lost in thought—in fact, two kinds of thought. His real gift was mathematics. He had a knack for it such as I have never seen. No sooner was a problem stated than he had solved it; the rest of us still hadn’t quite understood what it was all about, and he had already come up with the answer. But he didn’t show off; his answer came softly and naturally, as if he were translating fluently from one language to another. It was no strain whatsoever; mathematics seemed like his native tongue. I was surprised by both aspects: his facility and his lack of conceit. It wasn’t just knowledge, it was ability, which he was always prepared to demonstrate in any frame of mind. I asked him whether he could solve formulas in his sleep. He earnestly deliberated and then said simply: “I think so.” I greatly respected his ability, but I didn’t envy him. It was impossible to feel envy about something so unique; the very fact that it was so astonishing, so miraculous, raised it far above the region of any lower envy. However, I did envy his modesty. “It’s so easy,” he would say when someone expressed amazement at his instinctive solution. “You can do it, too.” He acted as if he really believed that you could do anything he could, but that you just didn’t want to—a kind of unwillingness that he never tried to explain except perhaps on religious grounds.

  For the second thing that occupied his thoughts was toto caelo remote from mathematics. It was his faith. He went to a Bible group; he was a pious Christian. Since he lived near me, we walked home from school together, and he made an effort to convert me to his faith. This had never happened to me at school. He didn’t try arguments, it was never a discussion; there was no trace of the rigorous logic of his mathematical mind. It was a friendly invitation, which was always preceded by my name, whereby he placed an almost adjuring stress on the first syllable. “Élias,” that was how he began, almost with a drawl, “try it. You can believe, too. All you have to do is want to. It’s very simple. Christ died for you, too.” He regarded me as stubborn, for I didn’t answer. He assumed it was the word Christ that went against my grain. How could he have known that “Jesus Christ” had been very close to me during my early childhood, in those wonderful English hymns that we sang with our governess [see The Tongue Set Free]. What repelled me, what struck me dumb, what horrified me wasn’t the name, which I, perhaps unwittingly, still carried inside me; rather, it was the “died for you, too.” I had never come to terms with the word die. If someone had died for me, I would have been burdened with the worst guilt feelings, as though I were profiting from a murder. If there was anything that kept me away from Christ, it was this notion of a sacrifice, the sacrifice of a life, which had been offered up for all mankind, of course, but also for me.

  A few months before the secret singing of Christian hymns had begun in Manchester, Mr. Duke, the Jewish instructor, had taught me about Abraham’s sacrifice of his son. I’ve never gotten over it, not even today—ridiculous as it might sound. It aroused a skepticism toward orders within me, a doubt that has never subsided. It alone sufficed to keep me from becoming an observant Jew. Christ’s crucifixion, although voluntary, had no less a bewildering effect on me, for it meant that death had been employed, whatever the purpose. Friedrich, who believed he was saying the best for his cause and always stated with warmth in his voice that Christ had died for me, too, never had an inkling of how completely he was thwarting his efforts with that sentence. Perhaps he misinterpreted my silence, mistook it for indecision. For otherwise, it would be hard to tell why he kept repeating the same sentence every day on the way home from school. His obstinacy was astonishing, but never annoying, for I always sensed that it derived from a decent conviction: he wanted to let me feel that I wasn’t excluded from the best thing he had, and that I could be as much a part of it as he. Also, his gentleness was disarming: he never seemed annoyed at my silence in this respect. We talked about lots of things and I was anything but silent. So he merely frowned, as though surprised that this one problem was so hard to solve, and then said when we parted: “Think it over, Elias”—this too more pleading than emphatic—and stumbled into his house.

  I knew that our walk home would always end with this conversion attempt and I grew accustomed to it. But only gradually did I learn about a completely different mood that prevailed in his home, next to the Christian one and diametrically opposed to it. He had a younger brother, who also attended the Wöhler School, two years below us. I’ve forgotten his name, perhaps because he encountered me so nastily and treated me with undisguised hostility. He wasn’t as tall as his brother, but a good athlete, who knew quite well what he did with his legs. He was as sure and resolute as Rainer was vague and dreamy. They had the same eyes; but while the elder brother always had a waiting, inquisitive, benevolent look, the younger one’s gaze had something bold, quarrelsome, provoking in it. I knew him only by sight. I had never conversed with him, but from Rainer I found out indirectly what he had said about me.

  It was always something unpleasant or insulting. “My brother says your real name is Kahn and not Canetti. He wants to know why you people changed your name.” These suspicious queries always came from his brother; they were expressed in his name. Rainer wanted my answers in order to refute his brother. He was very fond of him, I believe; he liked me, too, and so he may have felt that by reporting every malicious remark, he was actually mediating and trying to make peace. I was supposed to refute the comments. My answers were reported to his brother. But Rainer was quite mistaken about any possibility of reconciliation. On our way home, the very first thing I got to hear from Rainer was a new suspicion and accusation from his brother. These comments were so silly that I never took them seriously, even though I answered them conscientiously. Their main thrust was always the same, namely, that I, like all other Jews, was trying to hide my Jewish background. This was obviously not the case, and it was even more obvious a few minutes later, when I responded with silence to Rainer’s inevitable conversion attempt.

  Perhaps it was his brother’s inability to listen to reason that forced me to come up with patient and detailed replies. Rainer repeated all his brother’s comments in parentheses, so to speak. He transmitted them tonelessly, without taking a position. He didn’t say, “I believe it, too” or “I don’t believe it”; he delivered his message as though he were merely the go-between. Had I heard these inexhaustible suspicions in his brother’s aggressive tone, I would have lost my temper and never replied. But they were always perfectly calm, preceded by “my brother says” or “my brother wants to know.” And then came something so awful that I was forced to speak—even though it hadn’t really gotten my dander up—for it was so silly that you felt sorry for the person asking it. “Elias, my brother wants to know: Why did you people use Christian blood for the Passover Feast?” I answered: “Never. Never. Why, we celebrated Passover when I was a child. I would have noticed something. We had lots of Christian maids in the house, they were my playmates.” But then his brother’s next message came the next day: “Maybe not nowadays. Now, it’s too well known. But in earlier times, why did the Jews back then slaughter Christian children for their Passover Feast?” All the old accusations were dug up: “Why did the Jews poison the wells?” When I said, “They never did that,” he went on, “They did, at the time of the plague.” “But they died of the plague just like everyone else.” “Because they poisoned the wells. Their hatred of Christians was so great that they perished, too, because of their hatred.” “Why do Jews curse all other human beings?” “Why are Jews cowardly?” “Why were there no Jews in active combat during the war?”

  Thus it went. My patience was inexhaustible; I answered as well as I could, always earnest, never offended, as though I had checked my encyclopedia to find out the scholarly facts. These accusations seemed totally absurd, and my answers, I decided, were going to do away with them once and for all. And in order to emulate Rainer’s equanimity, I once said to him: “Tell your brother I’m grateful to him. This way, I can get rid of these stupid ideas for good.”

  Now, even my gullible, innocent, and sincere friend Rainer was surprised. “That’ll be tough,” he said, “he’s always got new questions.” But the real innocent was I, because for several months, I failed to see what his brother was after. One day, Rainer said: “My brother wants to know why you always keep answering his questions. After all, you can go up to him in the schoolyard during recess and challenge him to a fight. You can fight with him if you’re not scared of him!”

  I would never have dreamt of being scared of him. I could only pity him because of his unspeakably stupid questions. But he wanted to pick a fight with me and had chosen the peculiar detour of his brother, who had never stopped his conversion attempts on a single day during this period. My pity changed to scorn. I didn’t do him the honor of challenging him: he was two years my junior; it wouldn’t have been fair to fight with a boy in a lower class. So I cut off my “dealings” with him. The next time Rainer began, “My brother says—” I interrupted him in midsentence: “Your brother can go to hell. I don’t fight with little kids.” However, we remained friends; nor did anything change in his conversion attempts.

  The Portrait

  Hans Baum, my first friend here, was the son of an engineer at the Siemens-Schuckert Works. He was a very formal person, raised in discipline by his father, intent on not compromising himself, always earnest and conscientious, a good worker, not very gifted, but painstaking. He read good books and attended the Saalbau concerts; there was always something we could talk about. One inexhaustible topic was Romain Rolland, especially his Beethoven and his Jean-Christophe. Baum, feeling a sense of responsibility for mankind, wanted to be a doctor, which I liked very much about him. He did have thoughts about politics, but they were moderate thoughts. He instinctively rejected any extremes; he was so self-controlled that he always seemed to be in uniform. Young as he was, he thought out every issue from all sides, “for justice’s sake,” as he put it, but perhaps more because he abhorred thoughtlessness.

  When I visited his home, I was amazed at how spirited his father was, a vehement philistine with a thousand prejudices, which he never stopped voicing, good-natured, thoughtless, a prankster. His deepest affection was for Frankfurt. I visited them a few more times. Each time he read us poems by his favorite poet, Friedrich Stoltze (a local Frankfurt poet). “This is the greatest poet,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t like him deserves to be shot.” Hans Baum’s mother had died years ago; the household was run by his sister, a cheery girl, corpulent despite her youth.

  Young Baum’s rectitude was something I mulled over. He would rather have bitten off his tongue than tell a lie. Cowardice was a sin in his world, perhaps the greatest. If a teacher called him to account—which didn’t happen often; he was one of the best students—he would give completely open answers, heedless of the consequences for himself. If it wasn’t about him, he was chivalrous and covered up for his friends, but without lying. If the teacher called on him, he would stand up straight as an arrow. He had the most rigid posture in class, and he buttoned his jacket, resolute, but formal. It would have been impossible for him to keep his jacket unbuttoned in a public situation; perhaps that was why he often made you think he was wearing a uniform. There was nothing you could really say against Baum. He already had integrity when young and was by no means stupid. But he was always the same; every reaction of his was predictable. You were never surprised by him. At best you were surprised by the fact that there was nothing surprising about him. In matters of honor, he was more than sensitive. A long time later, when I told him about the game that Friedrich’s brother had indulged in with me, he was beside himself (Baum was Jewish) and he asked me in all seriousness whether he should challenge the brother. He understood neither the long, patient period of my replies nor my subsequent total scorn. The matter unnerved Baum. He felt there must be something wrong with me, because I’d put up with the game for so long. Since I wouldn’t allow him to do anything direct in my name, he investigated and found out that Friedrich’s deceased father had gotten into business difficulties, in which competitors of his, Jews, had had a hand. I didn’t understand the details; our information wasn’t precise enough for us to understand. But the father had died a short while later, and I now began to understand how the family had developed this blind hatred.

  Felix Wertheim was a merry, spirited boy, who was quite indifferent to whether and how much he learned, for during classes, he was busy studying the teachers. No idiosyncrasy of any teacher eluded him; he mastered them all like roles, and he had very productive favorites. His particular victim was Krämer, the choleric Latin teacher, whom he played so perfectly that you thought he was Krämer. Once, during such a performance, Krämer arrived in class unexpectedly early and was suddenly confronted with himself. Wertheim had gotten into such a rage that he couldn’t stop, and so he lashed out at Krämer, as though the teacher were the wrong one and were insolently arrogating his role. The scene went on for a minute or so. The two stood face to face, stared at each other incredulously, and lashed out at each other in the filthiest way, as was Krämer’s wont. The class expected the worst, but nothing happened—Krämer, choleric Krämer, had to laugh. He had a hard time stifling his mirth. Wertheim sank back on his seat in the first row. He had lost his own desire to laugh because of Krämer’s unmistakable desire to laugh. The incident was never mentioned; there was no punishment. Krämer felt flattered by the perfect fidelity of the portrait and was incapable of doing anything against his likeness.

  Wertheim’s father owned a big clothing store. He was rich and uninterested in hiding his wealth. We were invited to their home on New Year’s Eve, and we found ourselves in a house full of Liebermanns. Five or six Liebermanns hung in every room; I don’t believe there were any other paintings. The highlight of the collection was a portrait of the host. We were charmingly regaled; it was nice and swanky. The host had no qualms about showing his portrait. He spoke—audible to everyone—about his friendship with Liebermann. I said, no less loudly, to Baum: “He sat for a portrait, that doesn’t make him his friend by any stretch of the imagination.”

  This man’s claim to friendship with Liebermann irritated me; indeed, I was irked by the very thought that a great painter had occupied himself with this ordinary face. The portrait bothered me more than the sitter. I felt that the collection would have been so much better without this painting. There was no way of skirting it. Everything was arranged to make you see it. Not even my impolite remark had whisked it away; aside from Baum, no one had paid me any heed.

  In the ensuing weeks, Baum and I had a heated discussion about the portrait. I asked him: Did a painter have to paint everyone who approached him with a commission? Couldn’t the painter say no if he didn’t feel like making the person the subject of his art? Baum felt that the painter had to accept, but he had the possibility of revealing his opinion in the way he painted the picture. He had every right to do an ugly or repulsive portrait. This was within the precincts of his art, but a refusal would be a sign of weakness. It would mean that he was unsure of his abilities. This sounded moderate and just; my immoderateness, I felt, contrasted unpleasantly with his fairness.

  “How can he paint,” I said, “if he’s shaken by disgust at a face? If he gets even and distorts the sitter’s face, then it’s not a portrait anymore. The man needn’t have sat for him; the painter could have done it just as well without him. But if he accepts payment for this mockery of the victim, then he’s done something very base for money. You could forgive a poor starving devil, because he’s still unknown. But in a famous and sought-after painter, it’s inexcusable.”

  Baum didn’t dislike rigorous standards, but he was less interested in other people’s morality than in his own. He said that you can’t expect everyone to be like Michelangelo. There were people who were dependent and not so proud. I felt that all painters should be proud. Anyone who didn’t have the grit could take up an ordinary trade. But Baum gave me something important to think about.

  How did I imagine a portraitist to be? Should he depict people as they are, or should he paint ideal pictures of them? Yet for ideal pictures, you don’t need portrait painters! Every human being was as he was, and that was what the painter should capture. This way, later generations would know how many different sorts of people there had been.

  This made sense to me, and I admitted defeat. But I was left with a queasy feeling about the relationship between painters and their patrons. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that most portraits were meant to flatter and therefore shouldn’t be taken seriously. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I then sided so resolutely with the satirists. George Grosz became as important to me as Daumier. The distortion that served satirical aims won me over completely. I was irresistibly addicted to it as though it were Truth.

  A Fool’s Confession

  Six months after I entered the class, a new boy came in, Jean Dreyfus. He was taller and older than I, well built, athletic, handsome. He spoke French at home, and a little of it rubbed off on his German. He came from Geneva, but had already lived in Paris, and his cosmopolitan background made him stand out from the other schoolboys. There was something sophisticated and superior about him, but he didn’t show off. Contrary to Baum, he did not value school knowledge; he didn’t take the teachers seriously and treated them with exquisite irony; he made me feel he knew more about certain things than they did. He was extremely polite and yet appeared spontaneous. I could never tell in advance what he would say about something. He was never gross or childish; he was always controlled and made you feel his superiority without oppressing you with it. He was a strong boy; physical and mental things seemed well balanced in him. He struck me as perfect, but I was confused because I couldn’t ferret out what he took seriously. Hence this mystery was added to all his other charms. I brooded a great deal about what it could be. I suspected it had something to do with his background, but I was so dazzled by this background that I could never untangle the mystery.