Extinction (19 page)

the doubter
. Maria stopped, and Eisenberg went up to her, I had told Gambetti, as I now recalled, standing at my study window and looking down on the Piazza Minerva. Continuing my narration, I told him that I had then heard a dreadful bang, like a thunderclap, and that at the same moment the earth had quaked. But oddly enough, as I learned later, nobody else heard the bang or felt the earth quake. Maria and Eisenberg didn’t hear the bang or feel the quake. As Maria and Eisenberg walked toward the inn, unaware that I was watching them intently from my window, Maria appeared to be walking barefoot, and then I saw that Eisenberg was carrying her shoes; she really was barefoot. Eisenberg was always the most considerate person, I told Gambetti—consideration was second nature to him. I stood awhile longer at the window, looking down and trying to follow as far back as possible the footprints left by Eisenberg and Maria as they walked toward The Hermitage. I counted a hundred twenty. I remember it exactly, I told Gambetti—it’s as though I were dreaming it all now, not four or five years ago. Then there was a break in the sequence. Suddenly I see
Maria and Eisenberg in the inn lobby. She pulls off his boots, then puts her shoes on his feet, and he puts his boots on hers. All the time they laugh uproariously, but they stop as soon as I enter the lobby. Then, after a short pause, they burst out laughing again so that the whole of The Hermitage shakes. Maria stretches out her legs and holds them up with Eisenberg’s boots on her feet, the black boots that he always wears, those incredibly soft black boots, Gambetti, while Eisenberg hops to and fro in the lobby, wearing Maria’s shoes, ballet shoes with a slightly silvery sheen. Both of them yell, We’ve swapped shoes! We’ve swapped shoes! until they’re exhausted, and Maria falls on my neck, draws me down onto the seat in the lobby, and kisses me, while Eisenberg stands with his back to the wall and watches as we collapse on the seat. Maria goes on kissing me, but suddenly I jump up. At this moment Eisenberg demands that Maria give him back his boots. She takes them off and throws them at his head. Eisenberg dodges and avoids being hit by them. He bends down to pick them up, while Maria points to her ballet shoes, which Eisenberg is still wearing. It was a grotesque sight, Gambetti: Eisenberg in his black overcoat, reaching almost down to his ankles, and with Maria’s ballet shoes on his feet. Eisenberg says he won’t take off Maria’s shoes himself:
we
must take them off. Whereupon Maria thumbs her nose at him. But then, seeing that he’s upset about having to take off her shoes himself, she bends down and takes them off for him. He stands barefoot in the lobby, I told Gambetti, and then goes up to Maria, who presses herself against me. He kneels down in front of her and hands her the shoes. They’re
your
shoes, he says. After giving her the shoes he stands up. Maria kisses him and runs out of the inn, carrying the shoes. Eisenberg and I watch her as she goes out. I hope that child won’t freeze to death, says Eisenberg. It has started snowing again. I next see myself sitting with Eisenberg and Zacchi at a little corner table in The Hermitage, I told Gambetti. Open in front of us are Maria’s poems and Schopenhauer’s
World as Will and Idea
. The landlord comes in and wants to serve our breakfast. He tells us to clear the table. Move that stuff off the table, he says, then makes to clear it himself. Maria comes in just as the landlord is about to start clearing the table without having been given permission. He tries to whip
The World as Will and Idea
off the table, but Eisenberg shouts at him,
What do you think you’re doing?
Maria, standing
behind the landlord, doesn’t understand what’s going on, I told Gambetti. Eisenberg jumps up and shouts at the landlord several times,
What do you think you’re doing?
This makes the landlord really angry. As quick as lightning he tries to whip the open volume of Schopenhauer off the table. But Eisenberg forestalls him; he snatches up the book and clasps it to his chest. I snatched up Maria’s poems and Zacchi rescued our notebooks, which were also on the table. The landlord was so furious that he threatened to kill us. He was a strong man and we were all scared of him. Maria had now sat down next to me and pressed herself against me. She didn’t understand what had happened. In Rome she’d been told that The Hermitage would be an ideal place for our project, that it was run by a friendly and extremely accommodating landlord and was in every way the perfect setting for our project. And now she was faced with a man who was getting fearfully worked up, threatening to kill us, and would clearly shrink from nothing. We had chosen The Hermitage because no other inn seemed suitable for our purpose. Continuing to threaten us, the landlord laid the table,
because he was accustomed to laying the table for breakfast
under all circumstances, I told Gambetti. He had to lay it because his wife had told him to, and so, while continuing to threaten us, he simultaneously laid the table.
And you haven’t even paid yet!
he shouted as we clasped our books and papers to our chests in fright, unable to utter a word. You must pay right away! he shouted, and repeated this several times until he’d finished laying the table. We couldn’t say a word, but we knew that the landlord’s wife was lurking behind the kitchen door. Or at least I did, as I could hear her breathing. At the sight of our books and papers the landlord couldn’t contain himself, and even after he’d finished laying the table he went on threatening us. People like you should be locked up, he exclaimed, they should be behind bars, people like you who carry books and papers like that around and wear clothes like that, he said, quite out of breath and pointing first at Maria’s outfit and then at Eisenberg’s long black coat. Finally he pointed at Eisenberg’s beard and said, People with beards like that should be hanged. He worked himself into a terrible state, I told Gambetti, and shouted several times, Riffraff like you should be
exterminated
. Several times he screamed the word
exterminated
in our faces. Then he seemed to suffer some sort of seizure. He suddenly put his hand to his chest and
supported himself on the table with the other. We took advantage of the landlord’s sudden indisposition to leave the parlor and flee from The Hermitage. We ran down the valley, clutching our Schopenhauer and Maria’s poems, as if we were running for our lives. Maria ran in the middle. There was such a dense snow flurry in the valley that we couldn’t see a thing, but it was a narrow valley and we managed to reach the end. Gambetti, as always, had listened attentively. He did not ask a single question about my dream. Naturally I had told Eisenberg, Zacchi, and Maria about it too. None of them had said anything either. Gambetti speaks of Maria as someone who has everything permanently present in her mind and, because of her intelligence, can hold her own in any company. This is why Maria immediately becomes the focal point of any gathering, without having to say a word. Spadolini too, in his way, is the focal point of any gathering. Maria is inevitably the person on whom everyone
has
to concentrate, and she knows it, just as Spadolini always knows that he is bound to be the center of attention in whatever company. If Maria and Spadolini are both present at the same party they inevitably disrupt it; they quite simply break it up. I’ve often seen this happen, I told Gambetti. When they’ve been together at a party it has immediately split up into its constituent parts, as they say, because they’ve disrupted it. Either Spadolini or Maria is the focal point, but they can’t both be. Spadolini at least gives the impression that he doesn’t hate Maria, but she never conceals her contempt for him; on the contrary, she flaunts it whenever she has a chance, I told Gambetti. Spadolini constantly says how much he admires Maria’s poems, thereby hoping to divert attention from his hatred of her and seeing such expressions of admiration and esteem as a means of concealing his hatred, but of course he doesn’t succeed, Gambetti. He always goes a shade too far in his praise for Maria’s poems, which incidentally can’t possibly appeal to him because they are directed against him in every way and must have a positively devastating effect on him, I said. Spadolini publicly praises Maria’s translations of Ungaretti’s poems, but his praise is so fulsome as to reveal the true measure of his hatred. He pays court to her, even though he doesn’t like her and finds everything she says repugnant. Maria, on the other hand, openly criticizes Spadolini and can’t understand why I didn’t sever my links with him long ago, Gambetti. She
can’t understand that I’m attached to him and don’t
want
to give him up. She always describes Spadolini as a depraved character and tells me why, Gambetti. She reproaches me for seeing him
relatively often
, for meeting
this dingy character who repeatedly seduces your mother
, as she puts it. In her eyes Spadolini is the most hypocritical person, a born charlatan, a born opportunist when his own interests are involved, not just his ecclesiastical interests but his wholly despicable personal interests. Only last night she told me that my continued association with him showed a lack of character on my part, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. Maria gives a poetry reading at the Austrian Cultural Institute and Spadolini applauds enthusiastically because he thinks it will be to his advantage, not because he’s enjoyed the poems, I told Gambetti. Spadolini introduces Maria to the Peruvian ambassador as
the greatest living woman poet
, although he can’t stand her. He hates her, and yet he invites her to dinner at least once a month in the Via Veneto, which he loves but she loathes and detests, and although she declines all his invitations he goes on issuing them. He says to me, I’ve invited Maria out again and she’s turned me down. I’ll go on inviting her out and she’ll go on turning me down. In his way Spadolini is what they call a great personality and therefore bound to be rejected by Maria. She can’t tolerate a great personality beside her, but Spadolini is a great social diplomat who has mastered all the subtleties. Maria hasn’t mastered them and demonstrates this openly because she can’t do otherwise. Each of them, I told Gambetti, is the focal point—
there aren’t two focal points
—Spadolini through his sophistication, Maria through her naturalness, I told Gambetti. Maria’s naturalness derives from her Austrian origins, Spadolini’s sophistication from his Vatican connections, I told Gambetti. Both are equally great, and they hate each other with equal fervor. Both are conscious of their greatness and their hatred, but Spadolini is the stronger of the two and therefore does not always have to retreat, unlike Maria, whose only weapon has always been retreat. Spadolini really comes into his own when things get dangerous, I told Gambetti, but Maria retreats. Both have a penchant not only for sartorial extravagance but for extravagance generally. After all, they both came from the provinces, Gambetti, and could assert themselves only through their extravagance. Everything about Spadolini is extravagant, and so is everything about Maria; his extravagance is extremely sophisticated, hers
extremely natural. She once told me that if she were to write a book about the quintessence of charlatanry she wouldn’t hesitate for one moment to make Spadolini the chief figure. She says she’s always dreamed of writing prose, but all her efforts in this direction have failed: either she’s given up at once or, if not, she’s realized that she hasn’t produced a work of art but only what she calls an
astonishing performance
. Spadolini is the great zealot, Maria the great artist, I told Gambetti. Basically I’m fortunate in having two such people, two great personalities, as friends, no matter how these friendships are viewed from outside, no matter how Spadolini views Maria or she views him. I’ll go on cultivating them and never forfeit them, never, I told Gambetti. Listening to Spadolini telling me about Peru is just like listening to Maria reading me her poems: both experiences are on a par, Gambetti. If we associate only with people of high character we very soon become dull, I told Gambetti. We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death. We must be especially careful to avoid their company, I told Gambetti. Maria and Spadolini have always taught me a great deal, Gambetti. But I’ve never told them this. I got to know Maria through Zacchi, who is an expert at bringing people together—Zacchi the eccentric philosopher, the much traveled man of the world. He was already acquainted with Eisenberg, who introduced me to him. Before going to Vienna, Zacchi spent three years in Rome. Eisenberg broke away from his home in Switzerland in order to go to Vienna, where he became my dearest friend. It now occurred to me that the time I spent in Vienna with Eisenberg after my flight from Wolfsegg—for which I have to thank Uncle Georg—was vital to my subsequent mental development. The direction in which I developed was determined by Eisenberg. I began to study the world and gradually to decode and analyze it. Eisenberg, who was my own age, was the person who had the greatest influence on me intellectually and pointed my ideas in the right direction. Standing by my window and watching the few people strolling across the Piazza Minerva, I recalled that when I was in Vienna with Maria we had spent most of our time with Eisenberg, making excursions to the Kahlenberg, the Kobenzl, and Heiligenstadt. He introduced Maria to Vienna and showed her the
beauties of the city, which was crucial to her existence too. We were always happy when we were with Eisenberg and never bored, I thought. Right from the beginning Eisenberg and Maria had a
philosophical relationship
, which I found quite fascinating and was able to observe without feeling in the least disturbed emotionally. Observing them, I was able for the first time to see how people of an intellectual disposition can be ideally attuned to one another, and it always struck me how rare such mutual understanding was. Maria came from the ridiculous little provincial town in southern Austria where Musil was born—though throughout the rest of his life he had nothing more to do with it—and she exploited this fact with the most tasteless insistence. This town was dangerously close to the border, in an area notable for the vulgar efflorescence of nationalism, National Socialism, and provincial stolidity. With its stolid self-importance, its stifling petit bourgeois atmosphere, its depressing and ineptly planned streets, its dreary topography, and its stale and unrefreshing air, it had all the ridiculous features that typify a town of some fifty thousand souls who know nothing of the world outside, yet fancy they are at its hub. For the same reasons that made me quit Wolfsegg, Maria set off from her equally dreary hometown and went to Vienna. With all her future poems in her head, I reflected, with her little handbag and all the illusions of the rebel, of the fugitive intent on escape, she set off for Vienna, as I had done, in the hope of gaining a foothold, as they say. But it was not easy. After the war all thinking spirits in the provinces expected more of Vienna than it could deliver. At that time the city did not keep its promises, to Maria or to anyone. Initially Vienna proved to be a lifeline, but only for a short time, after which it paralyzed all who sought their salvation there, as it still does. Vienna affords only a brief respite to those of a philosophical or reflective cast of mind who go there for mental stimulation. I discovered this myself, and it has been demonstrated a million times. To go to Vienna is to be saved for only a brief spell. Anyone who takes refuge there must therefore leave as soon as he can, for he will come to grief unless he turns his back as soon as possible on this ruthless and utterly decadent city. Maria soon grasped this, and so did I. Eisenberg is the only one of us who has survived in Vienna to this day, but then Eisenberg is much tougher than either of us and has a far clearer head, I thought, standing at the window. A soul like