Tubutsch Page 3

  I used to dream of fame. It was never allotted to me. And what remained were sarcastic remarks directed at the more fortunate. I had always shown a talent for this. When I had eaten myself to the core, I would start on others. But now I have become weaker, milder. As I said, I write in pencil. My food is as delicate as an invalid's. Recently I spent a whole morning watching a general who stopped in front of every shop window on Mariahilfe Street, regardless of whether it was a lingerie shop or a hairdresser's. It was just after the maneuvers. I experienced neither malicious joy nor commiseration; I simply stood and watched until I myself was the general and felt ready to take over the role he had to continue playing. The way in which he lifted his sabre so that it wouldn't drag along the pavement, normally a reflex, was unspeakably sad. . .The next day I meditated just as long on a jackdaw which was hopping back and forth, restlessly back and forth in front of a florists in Weihburg Lane. Broken, its clipped wings dragged along the dirt of the cobblestones. And just a few days before it had circled round the spire of St. Stephen's cathedral or been in command of a brigade. . . I would have dearly loved to have arranged a meeting between the general and the jackdaw. But I no longer dare to carry out such great undertakings, since my last venture went so awry. . .

  On my travels I often passed an inn whose landlord's first name was Dominik. Now the Christian name Dominik is not uncommon among landlords. But why? This is an unfathomable mystery; but because of the regularity with which I have to walk past the sign outside the wine tavern, a relationship had gradually established itself between myself and the proprietor. Not that I had ever seen the landlord. Heaven forbid! Such realistic prerequisites are quite unnecessary where I'm concerned . . . But looking at the calendar one day, I saw that it was his Saint's day. "Today you must at last go in and visit him," I said to myself, and put on my red kid gloves. I entered. None of my expectations came into being. I was served by a man in a blue apron, the porter, a duster over one shoulder. I keep waiting and waiting so as to catch sight of the esteemed gentleman. He doesn't arrive. Nothing of the kind. I get impatient and want to leave soon, so I ask the porter where his master has got to. The lad hesitates, I tell him to his face that the landlord has presumably got to pay the brewer that day and has done a bolt. And so it all came out: the host had treacherously gone off to the vintners' inns to taste the new wine, had gone away on his name-day to booze with another landlord, in his own company, as it were. There can be no doubt, the idea is as funny as can be and would make a fine subject for a Dutch painter: a landlord who goes for a drink at another landlord's, but I had sacrificed both time and money and not found the fulfillment I had longed for. As if a mocking fate, which dearly loves to take everything from the little man in order to heap even more on the greater, wanted to rob me of this meager event of mine, the staggering sight of a landlord celebrating his saint's day! Odd, but typical, for tricks of this sort are forever being played on me. Perhaps in order to put me out of the running, unviable creature that I am, by checkmating my every move. I won't even mention how, as I still had acquaintances, I would often not see them for months, only to see them all during the one day on which they had presumably agreed to congregate, with the aim of giving me — at the very least — a paralyzed arm by continually waving at me. There are better examples.

  Years ago, when I was somewhat more full of the joys of life, the shattering death of the two Pollack flies having not yet occurred and thus not warned me to maintain a calmer relationship with fate, in those days I bucked myself up, overcame any misgivings and bought myself a cane. In order to set out on adventures. That's not on without a cane. Just as a knight could not have battled with giants, dwarves and dragons for the sake of a virgin without his targe or with an undubbed saddle.

  One Sunday I knotted my tie for the first and last time with a care which can only be compared, if at all, with that which the prophets must have spent girding their loins, and took the tram to Sievring. No small pleasure to whizz past the stops while others had to wait stiffly at them. Unfortunately a distant cousin boarded at Billroth Street, a snob of the first water with a volume of Balzac jutting ostentatiously out of his pocket. I jokingly admonished him for lugging bound books into the open countryside, particularly those which would soon be in everyone's pockets, pointing out that it was only truly worth his while to hawk books which weren't yet modern. He, however, misunderstood me completely and drew me into a lengthy discussion. About Balzac's end, how Friederike had supposedly betrayed Goethe like Sand betrayed Musset and Oh, the idyll at Sesenheim! As a vicar's daughter she would have brought the theologist's child into the world as a matter of course — which is to say, when one leaves Lenz and a few French immigration officers to one side . . . truth and poetry! We talked about woman and how every being, male or female, which bears the weight of reason or imagination, is more or less bound to be jealous and moreover cannot avoid suffering under the jealousy it has inherited from its animal forebears . . . and one subject led to another and only when it was too late — the forest had already swallowed us up — did the pitiable wretch open his mouth to tell me that I had missed the most important thing! An attractive young miss had been sitting in the tram, listening to my witticisms and resting her gaze on me all the while, and afterwards had even followed us a good way, but in the end, since it was difficult for her to speak with me, had dropped behind. I had been talking about woman until life, laughing, swaying and skipping and blossoming in all its glory just two steps away, had gone and left me! . . As if that wasn't enough, as we tried to make way for a unit of lovers to pass by on a narrow path, the female part of it stepped onto the cane I was elegiacally dragging behind me: the cane broke — a clear sign from Providence that I should at once leave the path I had scarcely set foot on . . . On a nearby meadow a slender sixteen year old girl in the company of her mummy could find nothing better to do than pluck the autumn crocuses. I followed her example. . .

  I always live in expectation of something astounding which should come, enter, and break in on me. Such as an orangutan, a wood grouse with eyes aglow, or best of all a raging bull. But then it occurs to me that he couldn't even get through the door, and I let my inflated hopes fade. . . When someone rings, all of the neighbours peer out of their doors and I also go immediately to the threshold of my one-windowed room complete with separate entrance . . . ready, should it be one of my old friends looking me up, to wrap myself in my overcoat and accompany him on a walk or, should he prefer, to show him the points of interest in my room: my boot-jack Philipp and — in sepulchral tones — the two Pollak flies. . . I expect the astounding, or at least something pleasant: when I open up the bell is usually for next door. Or it's a beggar. I don't give them anything. Firstly because I've got nothing myself, and secondly if you give them something they depart at once, leaving you standing. And that is not my intention. . . Unfortunately other people are also equally inconsiderate, they ring and go immediately they have received their information. A case recently. . . there is a ring in the early hours, in a flash I am half dressed and have opened the door, standing in a draught: there is a man outside who asks me if I am the gentleman who ordered the crystal oil? Anyone else would have slammed the door in his face with a curse, I'm polite, rashly answer with: "No!" but be that as it may, indicate my readiness to allow myself to be drawn into conversation. . . simply on account of the strangeness of his profession. Crystal oil vendor . . . however, he turns round brusquely, turns his back on me, and stomps off up the stairs . . . and I have to pull myself together so as not to fall apart under all the disappointments I have suffered. . .

  Jehangir Mirza says: "I wave back and forth like a bodiless shadow, and fall flat on the ground if there is no wall to support me." I have no wall to support me. It seems that something like a fall on the ground is also going to happen to me . . . No, I can't take it anymore! What still sustains me? Schnudi, the toy bulldog, is no more. An old man with a fierce, bristling beard and a bundle over his shoulder . . . Ahasuer
us . . . entered the courtyard, cried out his "Any old rags and lumber?" The stranger's arrival seemed to confuse the dog, it let fly. The hawker shouts once, twice: "Scram, won't you?" The dog doesn't hear, snaps at the intruder's legs. He in turn spits demoniacally between its eyes and the dog spins round like a mad thing, trying to remove the foreign object above its nose with its short tongue. He doesn't manage it, the hawker leaves, the dog carries on spinning, its eyes no longer see a thing, are blinded by the wild chase, Schnudi, Schnudi with the pink bow, keeps on turning and turning . . until he has to be shot . . . Now I have nobody left. I even looked at a cabby's nag in the hope that it might want to talk with me . . .

  I bet it just didn't want to be seen talking with me. I'm sure that with a bit of effort it would have managed to talk if I were someone else . . .

  What stops me from making an end of it all, finding eternal rest in some lake or inkwell or solving the question: which crazed god or demon owns the inkwell in which we live and die, and to whom in turn the crazed god belongs? Would it really be such a joy to slip up to some Marischa, and be she what she may, at any rate a whore or loose woman or adulteress, watching out all the while for the dung heap to the left, the cesspit to the right ... then to return home and sing the joys of the passionate love between Jehangir Mirza and Maasumeh Sultan Begum . . . would it really be such a joy to manufacture ambrosia while having to devour filth oneself? And if one were born a poet, one would still be no more than a born animal imitator. And even if you are a master of the word, who has found words as resonant as the roaring of a bull, you are still just a beggar and your sounding forth is no more than an imitation of the voice of the prince who rules the horses, and of the butterfly which wings its way to the light from out of its black chrysalis, assuming it’s not just the voice of some other poet — yes, you imitator of animals, you let every conceivable voice ring out from you in order to drown your own emptiness, the lack of a voice of your own . . . What am I waiting for? Off! Before I turn into a palsied cobbler. . . Why keep on choking back the enervating conflict between petty fortunes and vast feelings and concepts?

  Life. Such a magnificent word! I imagine life as a waitress who asks me what I want with my sausages: mustard, horseradish or gherkins . . . the waitress's name is Thekla . . . the possibilities are limited, but always these magnificent words! A discrepancy for many. Once I was invited to watch a famous chess master play a game of simultaneous chess. The assembly hall was a stuffy, oppressive room full of tobacco smoke. Suddenly a cry rang out: "The master's coming!" Who enters? A gormless looking individual with thin protruding ears in a worn out suit. But his short, blue jacket was certainly no more worn out than his face. Ha ha! the master is coming . . . What else was there left to do? Not a lot. Once I had an acquaintance who in turn had a chum who had been in the fourth class with him at school. But did my one-time acquaintance's friend get taken out of the school and stuck behind a butcher's block or in a cobbler's shop because he lacked the application to become a blockhead like the rest and gain the teachers' approval? No, by chance he landed in a wine merchant's. A few weeks later he met my acquaintance on the main street — Waldemar Tibitanzel was his name, and he wrote unpublished poems — and he kept on boasting that after what was only a short apprenticeship he could already manufacture hundred year old Bordeauxs within a few minutes. It is regrettable indeed that a young man who inspired such hope could also lose his footing in this career with such dream-like rapidity. Doubtless with his genius he would soon have been able to serve us a Bordeaux from the dawn of time, or at least from the Cambrian Era. He did nothing of the kind. The shape- shifter turned up in the Burg Theatre as an archangel. Shortly afterwards my acquaintance saw him again by the cathedral. Viewed artistically, Waldemar Tibitanzel's beard was the exact meeting point between Christ's and a young girl's, and a keen observer would have uttered the surmise, which was near to the truth, that he hadn't shaved. The black lacquer had flaked from the buckles of his shoes, revealing the yellow of the brass, and likewise the smallest details revealed the desolate state of his finances and his Austrianness. The archangel, seemingly engrossed in his clean-shaven face, ignored the unpublished writer who, a day later, complained to me bitterly. And before yet another week had run its course, Waldemar Tibitanzel died in the middle of a five act tragedy. And if tomorrow I call this unknown wine adulterer and cod-actor to account for bygone deeds, then I do it out of a sort of solidarity, or to put it briefly: this is purely a matter of principles . . . and not just empty wishes ... Then I, my God, even in the old days when I was still a king and many a person hankered after my greeting, I only bestowed it with irregularity. Sometimes I would give a double greeting with a deep bow and the next time, afflicted by a sort of paralysis of the will, none at all, and when the populace wasn't content to put the double portion together with the non-received and divide it all by two, grumbling instead at my uncouthness, I didn't give a tiny damn for these flies. And if tomorrow I send my seconds — and lacking anyone else, then my fellows in fate and elective comrades, the old cobbler and the hat-maker, up to the archangel — then that is a completely different matter. I want to die and so eliminate a second person whose nothingness I have seen through, just as one eliminates a poisonous gas by turning off the tap and Ahasuerus eliminated Schnudi, the inferior toy bulldog . . . Should I remain alive, which I hope I won't, I shall nevertheless bequeath my boot-jack and a certain inkwell to anyone who turns up: and should several contenders prove to have the same qualifications, then perfumed policemen will have priority. But before I crank the engine into action and go flying out of the curve to smash against a milestone, before I set off for that distant land. . . close the shutters for the last time and deprive myself of my view of Linz Street, I want to make a last effort and bark an answer to the pinscher nervously pacing back and forth on the roof of a van, sit with the six children looking at the street worker, ask the cobbler Engelbert Kokoschnigg why he displays the sign "The Two Lions," and the greengrocer woman whether she is a widow and, if not, why she tolerates the pea-picking sparrow — I envy him his carefree existence — I shall try to clap eyes on landlord Dominik, observe myself in the lame-winged raven in Weihburg Lane, and should I be in a suitable mood, I shall solve the problem with my own ears as to whether poetesses really do say "Tandaradei" in particular situations. This life grants us no other joys than these . . . Am I taken for a merry soul? Yes! Heartrendingly merry! This is all just gallows humour. And fear. And if life seems to consist of just such trifles, as I propose, then what if death chooses to play a befitting role just to make fun of me? Disappoint me. Death, once the farmer with his scythe, an oaf to be sure, but even then a respectable personage accredited by countless paintings from notable artists, takes on increasingly ludicrous forms in my imagination. I don't picture him as the Black Knight; he appears as the approaching chess master, or a clown turns up, sticking out a tongue which grows into infinity and stabs me through . . . I see him as a tram-conductor who clips my ticket, tells me it's invalid and won't wait for the next stop before insisting I get off. . . with a few indispensable words in a Czech accent ... I see him as a young ruffian nailing up bats by their wings, a student kicking out the street lights, a minister who dissolves parliament and recently I even saw him as a bus driver. "The driver is not permitted to talk with the passengers." The parallel is obvious. . .

  I don't think I could bear it if even Death should fob me off with yet another disappointment. . .

  I have sunk into a deep apathy and listlessness, my soul is unable to take wing, I have avoided reading Goethe for a long time now because deep down I feel myself unworthy of him. And now will glorious death elude me too? My friend the reaper be reduced to a caricature? Would that be fair? He can look after himself, I've no alternative but to take my leave from earth, this one- windowed room complete with separate exit! Abandoned and forsaken . . . What's so exceptional about that? Shutters fall . . . nothing can be seen of the streets . . . how I look forward t
o it! Why be afraid? I'll take a run up and jump out. Or should I stay after all? Everyone's doing just fine. There are Dalmatian wines in the grocer's window. That didn't use to be the case. But I don't have anything at all, nothing which could make me happy deep inside. As I said, I've nothing except for — my name is Tubutsch, Karl Tubutsch. . .