The Hotel Years
Austria has no Pantheon, only its cemeteries and a Kapuzinergruft, and rightly so. They are all under the sward: Beethoven, Bruckner, Stifter, Raimund, Nestroy, Grillparzer. To represent Austria means to be misunderstood and maltreated in your lifetime; unappreciated after your death; and periodically, by the agency of anniversary celebrations, to be returned to obscurity.
Das Neue Tage-Buch (Paris), 4 December 1937
*Franz Seraphicus Grillparzer (1791–1872), Austrian dramatist and moralist.
† Kahlenberg: a hill outside Vienna, affording celebrated views of the city.
‡ Sadová, or Königgrätz: the decisive battle in 1866 of the Austro–Prussian War.
§ Lissa: sea-battle in the Adriatic in the same war.
∥ Heuriger: newly made white wine, drunk and celebrated in the hills around Vienna.
¶ Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress), Grillparzer’s play of 1817.
** Burying himself alive: Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, (1500–1558), who retired to the monastery of St. Yuste where he died.
62. The Bitter Bread
Day breaks, and the poor man wishes he could prolong the night. It is December, admittedly, so the day begins late, but it is still too early for him. Mornings are bad, but with the passage of time the poor man has learned that they need to be withstood, because the day is waiting. Not all days are as bad as their advance guard, the morning. Some, a rare few, have been surprisingly favourable, others, most, have been decidedly bad. But you can’t judge the day from the morning.
It is a tiny fourth-floor hotel room, with scarlet wallpaper, patterned with yellow sunflowers. A nearby church clock strikes eight. There is a rushing in the pipes, because a tenant on the first or second floor is running a bath. Now the poor man taxes the running water himself. For two weeks the same towel has been hanging over the brass rail. The towel is soiled by the dirt of the past days, the bearable, the ordinary, and the decidedly bad days. The bedding too is four weeks old. But in the morning you don’t absolutely have to look at it, and at night you can’t see it, because the overhead light fixture lights only the middle of the ceiling, it is there mostly for the benefit of flies. The spiders lurk in dark corners, behind thick grey webs of their own making, probably waiting for the poor man to switch off the light and feel his way, barefooted from the door to bed. Then the flies will be trapped in the webs, and will be rolled up, sucked dry and eaten. Because there is no creature that does not rob, steal, kill, eat and live. Only the poor man needs money, otherwise he cannot live.
That a poor man—of all things—needs money is no longer new. A poor man needs at least a small amount of money, it’s the rich man who needs a lot. But it’s easier for a rich man to get a lot of money than for a poor man to get a little; and it may be the same with spiders. The ones that are in advantageous corners with large densely woven nets will catch more flies. But even that is of little comfort to the poor man.
Least of all on Thursdays, and today is a Thursday. Because on this day the hotel presents its bill. If he had been able to pay a month in advance, then he wouldn’t have to be in weekly dread of the landlord, and even Thursday might be bearable. As it is, though, it is very bad; and the worst aspect of it is the morning. And today, as already stated, is a Thursday.
Even so, the poor man washes, as he did on Tuesday and Wednesday before, and tries to find an unsoiled corner of the towel to dry himself on. But a towel has only four corners, and all are dirty. Not to speak of the middle.
His coat hangs on the doorknob, because the coat hook is so loosely anchored in the plaster that it can only manage to support his hat. The poor man puts his hat on, and only gets into his coat on the way down. He doesn’t lock his room. He takes the key out, though, because he has to hand it in downstairs. He doesn’t lock the room, out of rebellion against poverty, and as if someone on the stairs or anywhere would say to him: You really should be careful, you know. And as if he, the poor man, would get a chance to reply: There’s no reason to. I’ve nothing to steal. But it doesn’t occur to anyone to warn a poor man of thieves.
Everything the poor man has by way of possessions, he takes with him. It fits into a little suitcase, and one can’t even claim that everything in the suitcase belongs to him: the pencils, the shirt-patterns, the collar studs, the rolls of thread, the rayon stockings, the soaps, the flacons of perfume: everything is his “on commission”. First he has to sell the wares, hand over what they fetch, and only then will he get a little money. The poor man checks his wallet, where he keeps his notebook. That contains his most important “recommendations”, which is to say, names and addresses of people who are rumoured to have more money than a poor man, and at least enough for them to lock their rooms. These people have been recommended to the poor man. But people don’t want to risk making themselves unpopular with their friends. They think it will do less harm to the poor man if he makes himself unpopular.
Without these “recommendations”, one really wouldn’t know where to bend one’s steps on leaving the hotel. As it is, one has at least a direction, and it’s probably better to go a little higher, because hope lasts longer the higher up the recommendations live. On the first floor, so thinks the poor man, he will encounter only disappointment.
He sets himself to sell a dozen pencils. One wouldn’t believe that pencils fetch more than collar studs for instance, or how hard they are to sell. If the poor man had ever been able to say he had sold a dozen pencils, then he could say he had clinched a deal. As it is though, selling only one pencil at a time, he tells himself he can rely on retail customers. And he adds: nowadays. The times are bad, no question. For rich people, perhaps. The poor man moves into their area by saying: nowadays.
This Thursday though seems to want to herald a better phase. One “recommendation” buys eighteen pencils and six shirt buttons and tells the poor man not to come again for two months. Two months is a very long time for a well-off person, licking his finger and flipping the pages of his pocket calendar. That’s all. But for a poor man, two months are two eternities. If someone wanted him to come back the day after tomorrow, even tomorrow, he wouldn’t be able to promise. You never know from where you’ll be coming home at the end of a day. The poor man doesn’t even know whether he’ll be coming home at all. He walks into a bistro, drinks a cup of coffee, dunks a croissant. He doesn’t quite give in to the pleasure of it, as he knows it’s a Thursday.
But it’s a good Thursday. Because before the onset of evening—and in December the days are so short, they’re over almost before they’ve begun—the poor man has sold three pairs of ladies’ stockings and has an order for three shirts (with attached collars). Who knows what he could sell, if only it wasn’t Thursday, and also December 29th. Because on that day the poor man has to go round to the police. He has a document that has his name on it and where he comes from and where he lives. But what it doesn’t say is how long he can stay there, and where he’s allowed to go.
He is told nothing. He waits. Then he puts down his suitcase, and stands at a counter, and an official stamps his paper immediately; so quickly that the poor man is tempted to ask the official if he could use a couple of pencils. Luckily the poor man thinks twice about that, and he walks off. What else does he need? He can pay the rent. He can stay another fortnight. He can afford a sausage, a piece of cheese, a bottle of beer. The poor man is full of optimism. And on a Thursday.
He goes home, pays his bill, goes up to his room, and lies down in his bed. Today he doesn’t even turn the light on: that’s how contented the poor man is.
Parisier Tageszeitung, 3 January 1939
63. Furlough in Jablonovka
The village of Jablonovka nestles in my memory like a jewel. Sometimes I am able to produce it, its thatched huts painted a pale blue wash, its one dwelling that was almost town-like because it had a shingle roof and a brown wooden door and two shallow ste
ps leading up to it: just two. The white church with its tin dome stood on the little hill, in the middle of its fenced-in graveyard, a short way beyond the last of the dwellings—or a short way before the first of them, depending on where you were coming from. Left of the church gate was the bell tower, with its one big bell flanked by two junior bells. Behind the huts that stood on the twice-round village street, there was a slight incline, and a few of the huts seemed to be slowly scrambling up the hill. I was last in Jablonovka three months ago. It was 10 October, on a silvery morning that couldn’t make up its mind whether to be warm or cold. Spots of thin mist lay over the stubble fields.
It was in the War. But Jablonovka, away from the main roads, had only been required to house an alternation of Austrian and Russian reserve troops and their general staffs. The women and children and the old men and the old priest had not come under any immediate threat for three years.
There were not many horses or vehicles, the animals looked ill-nourished, the geese and ducks as well, only the pigs looked respectable, but their numbers were down after many requisitions.
A few hours after we moved into Jablonovka we left it again. We have been through plenty of shelled villages. But this one—strange—was spared. If we stayed here, perhaps we would share in the miracle. Why not? Why shouldn’t we stay here? Isn’t a soldier worth as much as a duck, a soldier in the Twenty-First, or the Thirty-Fifth? You see—the village says—things can be peaceful too. Huts don’t have to be on fire, shells don’t have to go off. I don’t mind if the odd aeroplane draws its circles. Then on Sundays my bells ring. Why not? High days and holy days can be celebrated. And—think about it—all those peasants born in me, grown up in me, they could have grown old, instead of dying. But I have plenty of peasant lads left. Sired by foreign soldiers maybe, but at least they did it here, in my fields and meadows, in my huts. I for one would like to continue to exist, with the help of God, away from the catastrophe.
Thus the village, but I wasn’t able to listen to it for long. Until mid-December we were twenty miles east of there, on a quiet sector of the front. It was as though the village extended its benedictions to the trenches.
We were already receiving early Christmas parcels, and of course not opening them. I should say: I didn’t receive any myself; I would certainly have opened them if I had, to be honest. I’ve always hated surprises. I neither wanted to give nor to get any. I was all alone amidst the expectant merriment of my comrades. Yes, our sector was quiet. But we had stood and continued to stand in the face of death. I was upset at the way men who had stared death in the face now collapsed into the tinsel and mawkishness that for the past hundred years or so had marked the birth of our Lord. To tell the truth, I was trembling at the thought of Christmas, or rather the things attending it. I fervently wished not to get any parcels from home—what was home anyway but a kind of glorified hinterland?—or consolatory surprises from my comrades. Nowhere had the manger at Bethlehem felt so near or the “parlour” with its “gifts” so far. “Christmas in the field” was something for war correspondents.
Then a miracle happened, not a postcard miracle, but a real one. We went into furlough on 19 December. We went to Jablonovka. You see, the village says, it can happen. It was deep in snow. Icicles dangled from the thatch over the tiny windows at the back. And when I wanted to look out onto the wintry street from the hut I’d been quartered in, I had to take a candle and melt a hole in the ice on the window. It closed up again in no time. The temperature was twenty below.
On Christmas Eve the peasants came into regimental HQ. They asked us for sixteen candles. Hanamak, our warrant officer, produced eight, and cut them in half. Boys carved faces in hollow pumpkins, lit the candles inside them, and each of them had three pumpkins, and those were their Three Kings. Five boys, all sons of Frau Olszewska, had a manger they had carved themselves. It was a tiny hut, no more than fifteen inches high, painted green, three walls, an open stage. There were little bundles of actual hay inside. And if you poked your finger through a ring on the gable of the house, the whole thing seemed to rock by itself, and inside Mary was rocking her infant, the grey donkey shook its long grey ears, and the miniature Three Kings, who came out dressed in scarlet and gold, moved their trembly sleeves that were looped onto their wrists with thread. The star of Bethlehem shone within, as though it had come crashing through the thatch, and it turned out not to be a star at all, but a gold rosette as worn by our k. & k. officers. The war had reached Jablonovka after all.
The peasant woman I was billeted with was called Josefova Gargas, and I will never forget her. Although many of the village women had been widowed over the course of the war, she was the only one who was referred to as the Widow. Because her husband had died a natural death six months before the war began. She had three-year-old twins, a couple of winning bundles of flax. Her bony face enjoined her to silence and severity. But if you came to know her better, it was nothing but a doomed effort to suppress the kindness and goodness within her.
Karl Greiser, ensign, and pork-butcher in civilian life, slaughtered a pig. The widow scrubbed the floor, the table, the three chairs. When evening came, she set out a great dish with red stripes and blue flowers round the rim in the middle of the table. Two immense stoneware plates flanked it like children. Three wooden spoons, pale yellow as the table they lay on, looked like its children: they were wood of its wood. Kindling laid crosswise waited on the open hearth. And the heads of the twins smelled of that mustardy wartime soap: a smell of lye, dirty washing and poverty, especially poverty.
The mercury neither rose nor fell—and that was fine. A nothing sort of day disappeared into a clear night. Who could say how long we would remain here on furlough? Who could say where we would be dispatched to next? I dislike atmospherics. The field-post is carried out. Two parcels, all of two parcels. We are summoned to the officers’ mess at eight, Rainacher and I. He dislikes atmospherics as well. We are both billeted with the widow Josefova. Because he has seniority, he sleeps in the bed, while I sleep on a straw mattress on the floor. We both excuse ourselves. We can’t make the mess. We walk up the hill to midnight mass instead.
The sky glitters overhead, the snow glitters under our feet. It’s as though the sky is a reflection of the snow. There’s no point following the village street, which is all trampled. The snow was so seductive that it would have been a sin not to walk there, where it lay crisp and deep, noble, virginal, crystal and singing. So as not to encounter our comrades and to enjoy the night and the stars and the snow, we walked up the lane behind the houses. It was peaceful, no war anywhere. Ten or twelve times a searchlight crossed the sky, but even that seemed to be a kind of strolling, a peaceable pedestrian, paler than its brothers whom I knew better in the luminous sky.
The boys came in with their pumpkin lanterns. They sang. Stable and manger and donkey were nearby, if you could follow the singing. If you could believe them, the Saviour was born in Jablonovka, not far from Josefova Gargas’s hut, and not two thousand years ago, but sixty at the most, and the oldsters still remembered the event. You could practically see the footprints of the Three Kings in the snow. The star was graspable. The Podolian plain was swaddled in faith, God was in Podolia, and Bethlehem was a hop and a skip away, much closer than the front.
Lights went out one after another, and the huts went dark. Only the sky and the snow were still gleaming as the village traipsed up the hill to the church. Its double doors were thrown open, and it was as though the altar was coming out to meet you, to welcome the visitors in its splendour. There were no pews. People stood and knelt. Although the doors were left open, it soon grew warm, it was as though the furs were warming me, and the candles, and the fervour and the Gloria after the Introitus: Dominus dixit ad me: filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te. Quare fremuerunt gentes; et populi meditate sunt inania? What are the heathens purposing? What folly are the peoples pursuing?—Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes.—And th
ere were wakeful shepherds in that place—they were here next to us, next to Rainacher and me. We took the widow Josefova Gargas home between us. The door wasn’t locked, no door in the village was ever locked, even though strange troops, Hungarians and Bosnians were furloughed here. There were wakeful shepherds here.