The Loser (12 page)

essayistic
, to use this hated word once again on my way to self-destruction, I write down these essayistic remarks, which in the end I will have to curse and tear up and thus destroy, and not a single person knows anymore that I myself once played the Goldberg Variations, though not as well as Glenn Gould, whom I’ve been trying to describe for years because I judge myself to be more qualified than anyone else to write such a description, that I went to the Mozarteum, which is still
considered
one of the premier music conservatories in the whole world, and that I myself have given concerts and not just in Bad Reichenhall and Bad Krozingen, I thought. That I once was a fanatical music student, a fanatical piano virtuoso, who competed on a par with Glenn Gould in playing Brahms and Bach and Schönberg. Whereas personally this secrecy was always to my advantage and thus a great help to me, I thought, this secrecy always profoundly harmed my friend Wertheimer, whereas I have always propped myself up with this secrecy, he was always sickened and made sick by this secrecy, and finally, as I now firmly believe,
killed
by it. For me the fact that I played the piano for fifteen years day and night and because of this practice finally achieved a thoroughly extraordinary degree of perfection was always a weapon not only against my surroundings but also against myself, but Wertheimer always
suffered
from this fact. In everything and anything the fact of my piano study has always been useful for me, I mean it has been crucial, and precisely because no one knows anything about it, precisely because it’s forgotten and because I keep it secret. For Wertheimer however this same fact has always been the root of his unhappiness, of his uninterrupted existential depression, I thought. I was much better than most of the others in the Academy, I thought, I
stopped
from one moment to the next, that strengthened me, made me stronger than those, I thought, who didn’t stop and who weren’t better than me and who took lifelong refuge in their amateurishness, call themselves professors and let themselves be decorated with titles and medals, I thought. All these musical idiots who graduated from our conservatories and went into the concert business, as they say, I thought. I never went into the concert business, I thought, something inside me wouldn’t allow it, but I didn’t go into the concert business for a completely other reason than Wertheimer, who, as mentioned, didn’t go into it because of Glenn Gould or at least broke it off immediately, as they say, because of Glenn Gould, something inside me wouldn’t let me go into the concert business, whereas Wertheimer’s path was blocked by Glenn Gould. A concertistic life is the most horrible imaginable, no matter whose, it’s awful to play the piano before an audience, not to mention the awfulness of having to sing before an audience, I thought. It’s our greatest fortune to be able to say we studied at a famous conservatory and graduated from this famous conservatory, as they say, and do nothing with it and keep the whole thing a secret, I thought. Don’t piss away this fortune by performing in public for years and decades, etc., I thought, but consider the whole thing a closed book in order to keep it a secret. But I’ve always been a genius of secrecy, I thought, quite unlike Wertheimer who basically couldn’t keep anything a secret, had to talk about everything, had to get everything out in the open as long as he lived. But naturally unlike most others we were lucky not to have to earn a cent because we had enough from the very beginning. Whereas Wertheimer was always ashamed of this money, I myself was never ashamed of this money, I thought, for it would have been crazy to be ashamed of the money one was born into, at least I think it would have been perverse, in any case disgustingly hypocritical, I thought. Everywhere we look we find hypocrites claiming to be ashamed of the money they have and that others don’t have, whereas it’s in the nature of things that some people have money and the others have none, and sometimes they have no money and the others have some and vice versa, nothing will change there, and there’s no reason to feel guilty about having money, just as there’s none to feel guilty about not having it, etc., I thought, a fact which nobody understands however, neither the haves nor the have-nots, because in the end the only thing they understand is hypocrisy and nothing else. I never reproached myself for having money, I thought, Wertheimer constantly reproached himself for it, I never said I suffered from being wealthy, unlike Wertheimer, who said it very often and who didn’t shy away from the most inane spending maneuvers, which in the end didn’t help him at all, the millions he sent for example to the Sahel region in Africa and that, as he later learned, never arrived because they were gobbled up by the Catholic organizations he entrusted the money to. The uncertainty of man is his nature, is his desperation, as Wertheimer very often and very correctly put it, it’s just that he never managed to hold himself to his own observations, to hold
fast
to them, he always had monstrous, truly monstrous
theories
spinning around in his head (and in his aphorisms!), I thought, actually a redemptive philosophy for life and human existence, but he was incapable of applying it to himself. In theory he mastered all the unpleasantness of life, all degrees of desperation, the evil in the world that grinds us down,
but in practice he was never up to it
. And so he went to pot, completely at odds with his own theories, went all the way to suicide, I thought, all the way to Zizers, his ridiculous end of the line, I thought. In theory he had always spoken out against suicide, deemed
me
capable of it however without a second thought, always went to
my
funeral, in practice
he
killed himself and
I
went to
his
funeral. In theory he became one of the greatest piano virtuosos in the world, one of the most famous artists of all time (even if not as famous as Glenn Gould!), in practice he accomplished nothing at the piano, I thought, and fled in the most pitiful manner into his so-called human sciences. In theory he was a master of existence, in practice he not only didn’t master his existence but was destroyed by it, I thought. In theory he was our friend, that is my friend and Glenn’s, in practice he never was, I thought, for he lacked everything necessary for
actual
friendship, as he did for musical virtuosity, as his suicide indicates, I thought. The so-called bottom line is
he
killed himself, not
I
, I thought, I was just picking up my suitcase from the floor to put it on the bench, when the innkeeper walked in. She was surprised, she said, hadn’t heard me, I thought, she’s lying to me. She surely saw me enter the inn, has been spying on me the whole time, hasn’t come into the restaurant on purpose, that disgusting, repulsive and yet seductive creature, who’s left her blouse open to the waist. The vulgarity of these people who don’t even try to hide it, I thought, who put their vulgarity on display, I thought. Who don’t need to hide their vulgarity, their commonness, I said to myself. The room I always stayed in, she said, wasn’t heated, but it probably wouldn’t be necessary to turn on the heat since it was warm outside, she would open the windows in the room and let in the warm spring air, she said, while starting to button up her blouse without actually buttoning up the blouse. Wertheimer had been with her, she said, before he left for Zizers. That he had killed himself she learned from the transporter, the transporter had heard it from one of the woodsmen who looked after and guarded Wertheimer’s property, from Kohlroser (Franz). It wasn’t clear who would take over Traich, she said, Wertheimer’s sister surely wouldn’t, she thought, she was in Switzerland for good. She had seen her only twice in the last ten years, an
unapproachable woman
, completely different from her brother who was approachable, she even used the word
affable
, which surprised me, since I had never connected the word affable with Wertheimer. Wertheimer had been
good
to everyone, she said, she actually said
good
, but in the same breath said he had
abandoned
Traich. Recently outsiders had often shown up in Traich, stayed for days and even weeks, without Wertheimer himself putting in an appearance in Traich, people who had gotten the key to Traich from Wertheimer, as she said, artists, musicians, her tone of voice in saying the words
artists
and
musicians
was contemptuous. These people, she said, had only exploited Wertheimer and his house in Traich, drank and ate for days and weeks at his expense, lolled around in bed until noon, traipsed through town laughing loudly and in crazy clothes, all of them disheveled, in her opinion they had made the worst impression. One could see that Wertheimer himself, she claimed, was getting more and more disheveled, she drew out the word
disheveled
, she got that from Wertheimer, I thought. In the night she would hear Wertheimer play the piano, she said, often half the night until morning, finally he would walk through town with bags under his eyes, his clothing wrinkled and torn, would come into her inn for no other purpose than to
have a good sleep
. In the last months he stopped going to Vienna, wasn’t even interested in the mail waiting for him there, hadn’t had this mail forwarded. For four months he was alone in Traich without leaving the house, the woodsmen brought him supplies, as she said while picking up my suitcase and going up to my room. Immediately she opened the window and said that no one else had spent the night in this room for the whole winter, everything was dirty, she said, if I didn’t mind she would get a rag and clean things up, at least the soot on the windowsill, she said, but I refused, I couldn’t care less about the dirt. She turned down the covers and claimed the sheets were clean, the air would dry them. Every guest always wants the same room, she said. Wertheimer never used to let anyone spend the night in Traich, all at once his house was teeming with people, the innkeeper said. For thirty years no one besides Wertheimer had spent the night in Traich, in the last weeks before his death dozens of city people, as she put it, had stopped in Traich, spent the night in Traich,
turned
the whole house
upside down
, she said. These artists, she said, were
peculiar
types, the word
peculiar
wasn’t hers either, she got it from Wertheimer who was fond of the word
peculiar
, as I thought. For a long time people like Wertheimer (and me!) put up with their isolation, I thought, then they have to have company, for twenty years Wertheimer held out without company, then he filled his house with all sorts of people. And killed himself, I thought. Like my house in Desselbrunn, Traich is meant for solitude, I thought, for someone like me, like Wertheimer, I thought, for an artist type, a so-called intellectual type, but if we push a house like this one beyond a very specific limit it kills us, it’s absolutely lethal. At first we equip a house like this one for our artistic and intellectual purposes, and once we’ve equipped it, it kills us, I thought, the way the innkeeper wipes the dirt from the wardrobe door with her bare fingers, completely without embarrassment, on the contrary she enjoyed the fact that I watched her do it, that I kept my eyes on her so to speak. Now I suddenly understood why Wertheimer had slept with her.

I said I would probably spend only one night at the inn, I’d suddenly felt the need to visit Traich one more time and thus spend the night in her inn, did she recall the name Glenn Gould, I asked her, yes, she answered,
the world-famous one
. He made it past fifty like Wertheimer, I said, the piano virtuoso, the best in the whole world, who was once in Traich twenty-eight years ago, I said, which she probably didn’t recall but she immediately contradicted this by saying she distinctly recalled
this American
. But this Glenn Gould didn’t kill himself, I said, he had a stroke,
fell over dead at the
piano
, I said, I was conscious of the helplessness with which I said it, but I was less embarrassed before the innkeeper than before myself, I heard myself say
fell over dead
again as the innkeeper went to the open window to confirm that the stench from the paper factory was fouling the air, as it always did in windy weather, she said. Wertheimer killed himself, I said,
this Glenn Gould
didn’t, he died a natural death, I’ve never said anything so stilted in my life, I thought. Perhaps Wertheimer killed himself because
this Glenn Gould
had died. A stroke was a wonderful way to go, said the innkeeper, everybody wants to have a stroke, a fatal one. A sudden end. I’m going to Traich immediately, I said, did the innkeeper know whether someone was in Traich, who was guarding the house now. She didn’t know, but surely the woodsmen were in Traich. In her opinion nothing had changed in Traich since Wertheimer’s death. Wertheimer’s sister, who without doubt had inherited Traich, hadn’t even put in an appearance here,
nor had any other heir
, as she said. Whether I cared to eat something that evening in her inn, she asked, I said I couldn’t say now what I would want this evening, naturally I would eat one of her sausage and onion salads, I can’t get them anywhere else, I thought, but I didn’t say that, I only thought it. Business was as usual, the workers in the paper factory kept it going, they all came in the evening, hardly ever for lunch, that’s the way it always was. If anybody, it was the beer-truck drivers and woodsmen who came to the restaurant for some liverwurst, she said. But she had enough to do. That she was once married to a paper worker, I thought, whom she lived with for three years until he fell into one of the dreaded paper mills and was ground to death by this paper mill, and that she never married afterward. My husband has been dead for nine years, she said spontaneously, and sat down on the bench by the window. Marriage was out of the question now, she said, it’s better to be alone. But at first you risk everything for it, to get married, to find a husband; she didn’t say, and then I was happy he was gone, which she certainly was thinking, she said the accident didn’t have to happen,
Herr Wertheimer was a great help to me in the period after the funeral
. The moment she couldn’t stand living with her husband, I thought while watching her, he fell into the paper mill and was gone, left her at least a proper, if not sufficient, pension.
My husband was a good person
, she said,
you knew him of course
, although I could barely remember this husband, only that he always wore the same felt overalls from the paper factory, sat at a table in the restaurant with a felt cap from the paper factory on his head, putting away tremendous quantities of smoked meat that his wife placed in front of him.
My husband was a good man
, she repeated several times, looking out the window and straightening her hair. Being alone also has its advantages, she said. I had surely been at the funeral, she said and instantly wanted to know everything about Wertheimer’s funeral, she already knew it had taken place in Chur, but she wasn’t familiar with the immediate circumstances that had led to Wertheimer’s funeral, and so I sat down on the bed and gave a report. Naturally I could only give her a fragmentary report, I started by saying I’d been in Vienna, occupied with the sale of my apartment, a large apartment I said, much too big for one person and completely unnecessary for someone who has taken up residence in Madrid, that most wonderful of cities, I said. But I didn’t sell the apartment, I said, just as I have no intention of selling Desselbrunn, which she knew. For she once visited Desselbrunn with her husband, many years ago,
when the dairy farm burned down
, I said, with the economic crisis we have today it would be crazy to sell a piece of realty, I said, purposely repeating the word
realty
several times, it was crucial for my report. The state is bankrupt, I said, at that she shook her head, the government is sleazy, I said, the socialists who have been in power now for almost thirteen years have exploited their power to the hilt and completely ruined the state. As I spoke the innkeeper nodded her head, alternately looking at me and out the window. They all wanted a socialist government, I said, but now they see that precisely this socialist government has squandered everything, I purposely pronounced the word
squandered
more clearly than all the others, I wasn’t even ashamed of having used it at all, I repeated the word
squandered
a few more times with regard to our bankrupt state and our socialist government, adding that our chancellor was a low-down, cunning, shady character who had simply exploited socialism as a vehicle for his perverse power trips, like the whole government by the way, I said, all these politicians are nothing but power-hungry, unscrupulous, vulgar schemers, the state, which they themselves constitute, is everything to them, I said, the people they represent mean just about nothing to them. I am and love this people, but I won’t have anything to do with this state, I said.
Never before in its history
has our country sunk so low, I said, never before in its history has it been governed by more vulgar and therefore more spineless cretins. But the people are stupid, I said, and are too weak to change such a situation, they are always taken in by untrustworthy, power-hungry people like the ones in government today. Probably nothing about this situation will change in the next elections, I said, for Austrians are creatures of habit and they’ve even grown accustomed to the muck they’ve been wading in for the last ten years. These pitiful people, I said. Austrians especially are always taken in by the word
socialism
, I said, although everyone knows that the word
socialism
has lost all meaning. Our socialists aren’t socialists anymore, I said, today’s socialists are the new capitalists, all a sham, I said to the innkeeper, who however didn’t want to listen to my senseless digression, as I suddenly noticed, for she was still thirsting for my funeral report. And so I said I had been surprised in Vienna by a telegram from Zizers, a telegram from the Duttweiler woman, I said, Wertheimer’s sister, reached me in Vienna, I was in the famous Palm House, I said, and found the telegram at the door. To this day I’m not sure how this Frau Duttweiler knew I was in Vienna, I said. A city that has grown ugly, which can’t be compared with the Vienna that used to be. A terrible experience, after years abroad, to come back to this city, to this decadent country, I said. That Wertheimer’s sister telegraphed me at all, that she informed me of her brother’s death at all, came as a surprise, I said. Duttweiler, I said, what an awful name! A rich Swiss family, I said, which Wertheimer’s sister had married into, a chemical plant. But as she herself knew, I said to the innkeeper, Wertheimer always oppressed his sister, wouldn’t leave her alone, at the last, the very last possible moment, she pulled away from him. If the innkeeper were to go to Vienna, I said, she’d be horrified. How this city has changed for the worst, I said. No trace of grandeur, all scum! I said. The best thing is to keep out of everything, withdraw from everything, I said. Not for a second have I regretted going away to Madrid years ago. But if we don’t have the chance to go away and have to stay in such a cretinous country, in such a cretinous city as Vienna, we perish, we don’t hold out for long, I said. In Vienna I had two days to think about Wertheimer, I said, on the train to Chur, during the night before the funeral. How many people had been at Wertheimer’s funeral, she wanted to know. Only the Duttweiler woman, her husband and I, I said. And of course the under-takers, I said. Everything was over in less than twenty minutes. The innkeeper said Wertheimer had always told her that should he die before her, he would leave her a necklace,
a valuable one
, she said,
from his grandmother
. But Wertheimer surely wouldn’t have mentioned her in his will, she claimed, and I thought that Wertheimer certainly hadn’t even made a will. If Wertheimer promised the innkeeper a necklace, I said to her, she’ll get this necklace. Wertheimer had spent the night in her inn from time to time, she said with a red face, when he was frightened in Traich, as he often was, upon arriving from Vienna he would first go to her inn to spend the night, for he came to Traich from Vienna during the winter surprisingly often and there was no heat in Traich. The people he’d invited to Traich recently wore
wild clothing, actors
, she said,
like circus people
. They never drank or ate in her inn, stocked up on all sorts of drinks from the general store. They just used him, the innkeeper said, hung out for weeks in Traich at his expense, made a mess of everything, made noise the whole night until morning.
What trash
, she said. For weeks they’d been in Traich on their own, without Wertheimer, who showed up only a few days before his trip to Chur. Wertheimer often told the innkeeper that he was going to visit his sister and his brother-in-law in Zizers but kept putting it off. He sent many letters to his sister in Zizers, she should come back to him in Traich, separate from her husband for whom he, Wertheimer, had never had any respect, as the innkeeper said,
for this dreadful person
, as she said with Wertheimer’s words, but his sister hadn’t answered his letters. We can’t tie a person to us, I said, if a person doesn’t want it we have to leave him alone, I thought. Wertheimer had wanted to tie his sister to him for all eternity, I said, that was a mistake. He drove his sister crazy and in the process went mad himself, I said, for it’s madness to kill yourself. What will happen now to all the money Wertheimer left behind? the innkeeper asked. I didn’t know, I said, his sister had surely inherited it, I thought.
Money goes to money
, the innkeeper said, then she wanted to know more about the funeral, but I didn’t know what else to report, I had already said everything about Wertheimer’s funeral, more or less everything. Was it a
Jewish funeral
, the innkeeper wanted to know. I said,
no, no Jewish funeral
, he was buried the fastest way possible, I said, everything went so fast I almost missed it. The Duttweilers invited me to a meal after the funeral, I said, but I refused, I didn’t want to be with them. But that was a mistake, I said, I should have accepted and had lunch with them, as a result I was suddenly standing there alone and didn’t know what to do, I said. Chur is an ugly city, I said, gloomy like no other. Wertheimer was only buried
provisionally
in Chur, I suddenly said, they want to bury him
permanently in Vienna
, in the Döbling cemetery, I said, in the family crypt. The innkeeper stood up and claimed that the mild air outside would warm up my room before evening, I could rest assured. The winter cold is still in these rooms, she said. At the thought of having to spend the night in this room, where I had already spent so many sleepless nights, I actually became afraid of catching cold. I couldn’t have gone anywhere else however, because either it was too far or was even more primitive than here, I thought. Of course I was once much less demanding, I thought, not yet as sensitive as I am today, and I thought that in any event I would ask the innkeeper for two wool blankets before I went to bed. Whether she could make me some hot tea before I went to Traich, I asked the innkeeper, who then went down to the kitchen to make some hot tea. In the meantime I unpacked my bag, opened the wardrobe and hung up the dark gray suit I had taken along to Chur as my funeral suit, so to speak. Everywhere they hang these tacky Raphael angels in their rooms, I thought while looking at the Raphael angel on the wall, which had already become moldy but for that reason was now bearable. I recalled that I’d been wakened around five in the morning by the sound of pigs bumping against the trough, of the innkeeper thoughtlessly and stupidly closing the door. When we know what’s in store for us, I thought, it’s easier to deal with it. I bent down to see myself in the mirror and discovered that the infection on my temple, which I’d been treating for weeks with a Chinese ointment and which had gone away, was now suddenly back, this observation made me anxious. I immediately thought of a nasty disease that my doctor was concealing from me and that, simply to humor me, he was treating with this Chinese ointment, which in truth, as I now had to conclude, was worthless. Such an infection can naturally be the start of a severe, nasty disease, I thought and turned around. That I had gotten out in Attnang-Puchheim and traveled to Wankham in order to get to Traich suddenly struck me as totally senseless. I could have done without this dreadful Wankham, I thought, I didn’t need that, I thought, suddenly to be standing in this cold, musty room, afraid of the night, all of whose horrors I had no trouble imagining. To have stayed in Vienna and not responded to this Duttweiler woman’s telegram and not gone to Chur, I said to myself, would have been better than embarking on this trip to Chur, getting out in Attnang-Puchheim and going to Wankham to see Traich one more time, which is none of my business. Since I hadn’t said a word to the Duttweilers and even at Wertheimer’s open grave didn’t feel the slightest pang of emotion, I thought, I might as well have spared myself the whole agony, not taken the trip upon myself. My behavior disgusted me. On the other hand, what would I have had to discuss with Wertheimer’s sister? I asked myself. With her husband, whom I had nothing to do with and who actually repelled me, even more in my personal encounter with him than in Wertheimer’s descriptions, which of course had put him in a worse than unfavorable light. I make it a point not to speak with people like the Duttweilers, I thought at once upon seeing Duttweiler. But even a man like Duttweiler was able to make Wertheimer’s sister leave her brother and move to Switzerland, I thought, even a man as repulsive as Duttweiler! I looked in the mirror again and observed that the infection was not just on my right temple but had already reached the back of my head. It’s possible the Duttweiler woman will go back to Vienna now, I thought, her brother is dead, the Kohlmarkt apartment has been vacated for her, she no longer needs Switzerland. The Vienna apartment belongs to her, Traich as well. On top of which it’s her furniture in the Kohlmarkt apartment, I thought, which she loved, which her brother, as he himself always said, hated. Now she can live in peace with her Swiss husband in Zizers, I thought, for at any time she can move back to Vienna or Traich. The virtuoso lies in the Chur cemetery near the garbage heap, I thought for a moment. Wertheimer’s parents had been buried according to Jewish rites, I thought, Wertheimer himself had always characterized himself as